Peter Thiel - Interview 1996 [C-span]

We're back with the newspaper roundtable this morning. Joining us is Ellen Moran of Emily's List. She's the training director there. And Peter Thiel, the Independent Institute, and he's a research fellow there. He's also written a book. His co-author was here some time ago, David Sacks, and the book is called The Diversity Myth. The two of them are going to be our newspaper roundtable this morning, and we invite you to join us. Let's start first with your first article, Mr. Thiel.

Well, I think the most important article was the TWA bombing one, 'Crash Clues Point to Bomb.' It now looks like there was an actual bombing that took place on the TWA jets. That's certainly the preponderance of the evidence. People are still a little bit hesitant to... make that point explicitly. What I think is very interesting about it, uh, is that there does seem to be some evidence now that it was the same people who, um, masterminded the bombing of the World Trade Center are behind the TWA bombing. At least that's the preliminary speculation, and certainly if that's the case, um, this does lead to all sorts of questions as to what we're going to do going forward, what, uh, what the problem is. I mean, it's very sad what happened, but I think the real question we have to ask ourselves is...

How do we prevent something like this going forward? And if this is part of the same pattern that you had in the World Trade Center bombing, I think the threat of Islamic terrorism in the U.S. may be really a long-term thing. The World Trade Center may not have been an isolated instance, and this is going to be a real problem.

Just quickly, you mentioned there was some evidence that seemed to indicate it. What was that evidence?

In the Baltimore Sun, there was an article where ABC News has apparently received a claim of responsibility for the TWA explosion from a group tied to Ramzi Yousef. He was the guy who was the mastermind of the World Trade Center. I guess he's suspected of being the mastermind there. And so that's the one group that so far claimed credit. You never know whether that's right or not, but certainly if it is, it suggests there's a real problem here.

Well, another article that I was looking at that sort of begs your question of where are we going to go from here was in the Post. Let's see if I can find it... regarding the scanning devices that could potentially be used at airports to scan checked luggage. I, of course, just found out this week that my luggage, when I check it, is not scanned, so I didn't realize that. And it would appear that in the last 10 years they've made some efforts to tighten the security at airports, and there's a little box here that talks about during the Gulf War how they tightened security, but the fact remains that anyone can check luggage getting onto a plane, and there's no way of knowing what's inside it because it's not X-rayed.

The unfortunate side of this, or that the debate that's going to ensue, of course, is that these machines cost about a million dollars each, so...

That article you're talking about, written by Laurie Goodstein with the Washington Post, mentions in the lead that the latest scanners which can detect the most elusive plastic explosives capable of blowing up a 747 are not routinely used. And she indicates that primarily costs are prohibitive. What do you make of that?

Well, they are prohibitive. And the airlines are under tremendous pressure to keep their businesses solvent. And the airports and the government that regulates this certainly are under tremendous pressure to keep the costs down. But obviously, it is looming larger as a safety issue for the public. And so I think that that's what the next debate is going to be around, is whether or not we can introduce these machines in more airports. Apparently they're being tested in San Francisco and Atlanta right now.

Tell us a little bit about what you do for Emily's List. I know you're the training director, but what does that job entail?

When I started EMILY's List about three years ago, we initiated a campaign training program primarily or initially for staff, campaign staff people who go out and work on campaigns as campaign professionals. We train campaign managers, press secretaries, and fundraisers over the course of three to six days. We give them an intensive training, and we invite experts in the various fields to come and speak to the campaign staff. Additionally, I help recruit and assess candidates for support by EMILY's List. As you know, we support pro-choice Democratic women running for House and Senate in gubernatorial races.

Mr. Thiel? Another story? Yes, sir. Well, let's see. Another story that I thought was quite interesting, this is more sort of a background story, was in the Baltimore Sun, 'Assault Case Fuels Tension at Academy.' And this is a story on the Naval Academy, where apparently there's another one of these sexual harassment-charged cases is emerging. And what's very interesting about this story is that unlike the Tailhook scandal, where basically the Navy just took it and was beaten up for years and years in the press. At this point, people are fighting back. And the initial story was that this midshipman, Scott Ward, had sexually assaulted a number of women. This was the initial charge. But then he did not just take this lying down.

He got some lawyers involved. And the more they looked into the story, the more it started to unravel. It turned out that he had a relationship with one of the women. And so that, of course, already makes it much, much trickier to suggest that there was any real sexual assault. And there were a lot of mixed motivations. And what I think this is symptomatic of is that we've reached a point where people are a little bit more skeptical in our society about sort of the politically correct crusades. And when there's a sexual harassment case, we're much more skeptical whether there was real harassment. We're willing to ask some questions that were not necessarily being asked four or five years ago.

And I think that's a very positive development, because sexual harassment is a very serious charge, and serious charges need to be corroborated. Mr. Moran?

Yes, I took a look at that article. Clearly, this gentleman is entitled to a fair hearing on this issue, but in reading the initial article on this, it appears as though the women are claiming that he, after a night of partying, went into dorm rooms and demanded to have sex with the women in the rooms. Now, if that is not the case and he is unduly charged, then obviously that's... You know, that's too bad. But I think that these things need to be taken very seriously. And regardless of whether or not he had a relationship pre-existing with one of the women who are filing this claim, who's on trial here? I mean, you know, obviously that relationship doesn't mean that he's not guilty either.

That's true. However, if you have a charge, a serious charge like this, and someone brings it and it's false, that's a very, very bad thing. One of the interesting things was, of course, that some of the women talked about how a sexual harassment charge would totally destroy this guy—had great credentials, a great career going for him—and that's why we need to take this stuff very seriously. And that's why political correctness and sort of the hunt for sexism, racism, sexual harassment, these sorts of things, is not... There are opportunity costs to this. If you have a charge that's wrong, people do get hurt, and often very badly. And I'm glad to see that we're being a little bit more skeptical of that.

This article in the Baltimore Sun that was brought up has a portion of it. It's written by three writers, Tom Bowman, Scott Shane, and Joanna Daemmrich. It reads, 'For the scandal-scarred Naval Academy, the Scott-Ward case has exposed a larger conflict when Ward's friends whisper about a feminist conspiracy to frame him, and the women's friends say the Academy's macho culture punishes women who dare complain. They speak across a chasm that divides the institution, similar to the division between you two.' What do you make of that in a larger scheme?

I think... In the larger scheme, I think military academies are flashpoints for these kinds of disputes because women are just beginning to gain acceptance in larger numbers. They're obviously still in a very small minority at most of these academies. It becomes the flashpoint, I think, for the public debate on these issues of sexual harassment in the workplace and the debate over, as you refer to, political correctness.

Well, I think that's true. It is obviously symptomatic of much more that's going on. But, you know, it's also the case, I think, that these military academies are viewed as institutions that, you know, that it sort of ties into the whole debate of the Clinton administration and sort of the tension between the Clinton administration and the military has, I think, played another role in this whole debate, where basically they, you know, they were... There's a sense in which a lot of people in the Clinton administration are not sympathetic to the military. A lot of people in the military have felt under tremendous attack. These institutions have sort of felt that they've been attacked relentlessly.

Certainly the Tailhook scandal in the Navy, where the initial aviators were presumably quite guilty, but then you had more and more careers were implicated, lives ruined, as it widened and widened and widened. And there is a sense that the commander-in-chief is not standing up for the people below him.

Talking with Ellen Moran of EMILY's List this morning, along with Peter Thiel of the Independent Institute, we'd like you to join us this morning as well on the Washington Journal. And if you'd like to do that, you can call us, if you're a Democrat, 202-624-1111. If you're a Republican, it's 202-624-1115. And if you're of some other political party, 202-737-6437. Please join us. Mr. Thiel, you have written a book, as we mentioned before, and you reside, or you grew up in California. Do you still get back there now, and do you still, that book, The Diversity Myth, we talked about, was based on some experiences, I believe, at Stanford University. So do you get back to Stanford often?

Oh, yes. Well, I'm still in the area. I still talk on the subject quite a bit. I've been on a number of radio talk shows and so on talking about The Diversity Myth. Our basic thesis is not that diversity is a bad thing. I don't think any sane person would be against diversity per se. But it is that you do not have real diversity when you have a group of people who look different but think alike. And that the real problem in these debates about diversity is the incredible hypocrisy that we have university communities, we have everybody trumpeting diversity, but basically you have people who are all ideologically out of the same mold. And that's a very big problem.

I'd like to ask quickly and get Ms. Moran's response, your response to an article in The New York Times this morning, 'Multiracial Americans Ready to Claim Their Own Identity.' They're asking essentially for a separate category on the census.

Well, I certainly think that it's a big problem in the sense that this group identification can go on and on and on. One of the things at Stanford that there was a debate about was something called the Half-Asian People's Association. It was an organization set up for people of mixed Asian and American descent. And the question was, did you need an organization like this? Was this constructive? Were half-Asian peoples being oppressed, marginalized? And, of course, they went through the list. And they specifically argued that they were oppressed because they were not on the census forms.

Do you think they should have a category or not?

I don't think it's possible to have categories for everybody. I would actually move the other direction. I think we should get rid of all racial categories. I do think that there is an issue. Why should we have categories for people who are of one particular racial background and not people who are of mixed racial backgrounds? That may be discriminatory, but the way you solve the problem is by getting rid of all racial categories.

And you have to get in on this. He keeps raising interesting points. How would you count the number of people and types of people in this country, or would you?

I don't think that's something we should be counting. I don't see why that's an important thing to be counting, and I don't see why the government should be counting it.

Well, obviously, I disagree with that. I think that it's not likely that that's going to happen, that they would do away with all racial categories. You know, as a society, we're going to study what's going on in this country and how it affects various groups. You know, what the United States Census does track are some of those issues. I think it's important to maintain that information. I think that furthermore, over time, other groups have introduced different terminology, different Asian Pacific, Asian, other, on the census. And I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a multiracial category added to the census, rather than pigeonhole people who are uncomfortable with one racial distinction or another, give them an opportunity to classify themselves as they wish to be classified.

I agree with you that descriptively it's very unlikely we're going to get rid of this racial categorization game anytime soon. But I do think that it's something we should not be playing anymore.

Watertown, New York. Good morning.

Fine. How are you today?

Fine. Even though I'm calling in on the Democratic line, I want to assure everyone that this is not a partisan comment. I just happened to pick that one because it was easy to get through. I would like to comment on the TWA disaster. If we look at, first of all, the purpose of terrorism, assuming that it is, and I believe that it is, because of all the indications from my knowledge of explosives and what have you, that you want to have the maximum impact to the greatest number of people that can see it or witness it or know about it. Now, they could have blown up the plane at the terminal, but that would have allowed investigators to have probably found a lot of things showing it was a bomb.

So what they elected to do was blow it up over the water, but not too far out in the water, where it would hamper any other people seeing it from the shoreline. So I think that's why they picked that particular site.

The second part of my question is... Before you go through that, New York, let me ask you, what's your knowledge? You say you have knowledge of explosives. What's your knowledge of explosives?

Well, I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps, and I've had a lot of chances to see landmines, artillery shells. I was a forward air controller in aircraft, and I know what bombs look like when they go off and what have you, and missiles and rockets, and et cetera. So that's based upon that.

Second point I wanted to make is, I almost lost my thought there for a second. Sorry about that. What the U.S.'s response will be, I think this is critical, not only the U.S., but the entire world, as it were, because if it is a terrorist attack, the response has to be, indeed must be, swift, severe, and unified. And that's my comment.

Right. Of course, I think that the response has to be swift and forceful and unified. But first we need to determine whether or not there was in fact a bomb. And certainly the authorities, as you alluded to earlier, Peter, are indicating more and more that that has been the case. Obviously, as they assemble more clues, find more facts about this, I do believe that the response will be swift.

I have to say I'm rather skeptical whether the response is going to be swift at all. If you look at what happened with the TWA bombing in 1988, for example, which was, I guess, eight years ago almost now, over Lockerbie in Scotland, they did actually identify the terrorists. They're in Libya. They're still in Libya. And basically, we have a list of governments around the world that are sponsoring terrorism. We have Syria, we have Libya, you have Sudan, Iran, North Korea, two or three others. And our response has been extremely limited. The real problem is that there is not so much the government can do about these things. We always like to say that there's something we can do to solve these problems, but unfortunately there's not all that much the government is capable of doing or is willing to do.

Tucson, Arizona.

Yes, I was reading the Weekly Standard this week, and I was really devastated when I read something about an internal memo going from John Boehner to Republicans concerning the partial-birth abortion ban. It seems to me that the Republicans are just as disingenuous as the liberals are when he can send a memo to the people that are for the ban, and explaining to their constituents why they are, and on the other hand, to the people that are against it, and saying, 'Well, this is a good opportunity to explain to your constituents and draw more people in.' It just seems that nobody has any real base. Like, I read Roger Morris's book, and I almost believe he's right, that they're all bought and paid for, especially when you see what happened in Saudi Arabia.

My son was there a couple of years ago in Riyadh, and, you know, we're still dependent on foreign oil, and why? And it just kind of, you know, kind of knocked the wind out of my sails to say, 'Gee, you know, I like these Republicans and what they were doing and trying to give power back to the states,' and I still agree with that. But it just bothers me that nobody, that there's very few people that you really can trust. Like, I trust John McCain and maybe a handful of freshmen, and that's it. I think the rest of them are all bought and paid for, and I'm really sorry to see that.

Well, to address your initial concern about the partial-birth abortion ban, I think that this debate is over a procedure that is extremely rare and used only in the most dire of circumstances. And I guess that's...

Well, let me just address your point about the question of how these political representatives work. I think generally a very good rule is to trust in ideas, not in people. And certainly one of the big problems with a lot of political candidates is that they don't really have a lot of principles. And I think, you know, we can make a very strong case about that with respect to both Clinton and Dole. It's sort of this political game. You try to read the polls, and it's like we're electing someone who's the best poll taker in the U.S. And certainly I think that was what animated that memo on the partial-birth abortion.

San Antonio, Texas. Good morning. How are you doing?

Fine. How are you? I had a comment. It was an article in our paper, the San Antonio Express-News, about Bob Dole's plan for school vouchers and the like. And, you know, he talks—he's trying to act like he's going to be the education president. I believe President Bush did that. And if you look at Dole's record from the past, you know, he voted against Head Start in 1965 and the school lunch program. And he voted against Head Start again in 1996. And he voted against drug—you know, safe, drug-free zones around schools. I was wondering, do you think that he has talked—does he practice what he preaches, or is he just preaching?

Is he preaching, Ms. Moran?

I think that there's been a real concerted effort on the part of the Dole campaign to craft message and language around popular ideas. He has obviously a very long history in the Senate. He has invited the opposition to look at that record, and you're exactly right, he did vote against Head Start, voted against Medicare. I mean, he's voted in the past against a lot of programs that the American people care about. You know, and there's obviously a distinctive move to move him to the center in this election year. It's not surprising at all, in my mind.

Well, I'm not sure I'm that worried about Dole's votes against Head Start, programs like that. The record is very mixed. These programs do not appear to have been terribly successful. I do think this has been one of the most interesting initiatives of the Dole campaign—has been the school voucher initiative. It is sort of the one major new idea in public education in the last ten years, is to make the process competitive, to open it up, to make schools compete and that way to try to improve them. Not to try to have some top-down, federally mandated approach like Head Start or drug-free school zones or national standards or whatever you want, but instead to try to have a bottom-up approach where you let different ideas be tried in different school districts, you see what works, people learn from each other, and that way gradually things might get better.

Talking with... Ellen Moran of EMILY's List, which, by the way, is hyperlinked to C-SPAN's homepage. And the way that that works is if you click on our homepage, you'll get some EMILY's List information today. And if I'm wrong about that, correct me. I was briefed on this, and I have recently delved into the... computer world myself at home, so if I'm wrong, correct me, but I don't think so. Peter Thiel wrote The Diversity Myth. He's also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and we are talking with them about today's news. We'd like for you to join us, and I think Newark, Arkansas. Newark, Arkansas is next on the phones. Good morning, Newark.

Don't be nervous, just relax like the rest of us.

OK. Last week in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, there's a lot of hoopla about Jim Guy Tucker and he was—he resigned, and then he decided not to resign, and the lieutenant—lieutenant governor was—he's a Republican. And they kind of jerked him around there for a few days. And he was going to be impeached and threatened to. And I was wondering why the national media didn't get in on that.

Well, I guess it was an Arkansas-based story. Of course, Arkansas has been of some interest because there's the Clinton link, and there's a sense that things that are going on in Arkansas are important because of the Clinton administration. And there is, of course, the perception of media bias that a lot of people are not really interested in probing Clinton's background all that much, precisely because... because there's a lot probably in Arkansas that's rather fishy. What I think is always interesting is precisely how different Arkansas really is from a lot of other states in the U.S. I mean, just what you've read in the newspapers over the last couple of years, what we've learned about Arkansas is it's almost like a banana republic with, you know, a lot of poor people, a small middle class, and this wealthy elite that basically runs the political process and controls the state government and sort of doles out government funds to itself.

I'm not sure if the caller's question was aimed directly at whether or not there was national news play when you referred to a national link, but I can assure you there was quite a bit of national news play up here on Governor Tucker's... indecision, I guess, over the course of that day. And obviously, I think most people think that it was very poor form. He made a decision to resign. He then went on to think, maybe I won't resign, and then, you know, had to basically be told by the Lieutenant Governor and other Democratic leaders in the state that, in fact, you know, you will be impeached if you don't resign. And so, you know, that did get serious national play. How that kind of behavior reflects on the president, I think, is, you know, it's not Bill Clinton's fault that, you know, he went through these flip-flops over the course of a very trying news day.

Well, I agree with you. Bill Clinton does not answer for everything that goes wrong in this country.

Got that straight. Now, now you have a homepage too, and you're hyperlinked to C-SPAN as well. And I'd like for both of you, if you will, to tell us what—well, there they are, you know. I'd like for you to give us your addresses if you know them. If you don't, we'll just let the folks in the other offices deal with it. Well, I believe our—our address is on the World Wide Web at independent.org, and

I'm sorry, I don't know what our email address is. I think it might be http://www.emilyslist.org, I think.

At any rate, both their pages are hyperlinked to C-SPAN's homepage, and if you click on C-SPAN today, you'll get information about both of these groups, the Independent Institute and EMILY's List. Let's go to Daytona Beach, Florida. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good, sir.

I'm looking at a piece on the op-ed page in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, "Dole is GOP's Whipping Boy," and it caught my attention because I was listening to talk radio yesterday, and a right-wing talk show host was talking about the possibility of Newt Gingrich and other Republican heavyweights sitting down with Mr. Dole and saying, talking about the possibility of his withdrawing from the race and throwing this thing open in November. And this piece here this morning is almost suggesting the same thing, and I had not heard a comment on it. I think the man's a fine man. We're into this quite a ways, and it just shocked me. And I wanted to get a comment from you guys.

Let's go with Ms. Moran first.

Well, I think that clearly, you know, the news media has been reporting some real inner factions that are very, they're very deep chasms within the Republican Party. You can see it in the platform fight. You can see it, I mean, in the Washington Times on the front page today, there was a story on 'GOP Convention Lineup Seen as Wooing Liberals' with a whole host of Republican Party leaders bashing the nominee for his choice of General Colin Powell and Representative Susan Molinari in major visible roles in the convention. You know, the GOP is not unified. There are huge arguments going on within the leadership of the GOP. I don't know that that'll wind up resulting in Dole being asked to step down.

In fact, I doubt that. But it is indicative of a party that just can't seem to get its act together to try to wage a successful campaign.

Well, I do think there are some deep divisions in the Republican Party. There are also very deep divisions in the Democratic Party. It's probably a symptom of any large political party. I would say the reason they are being so exacerbated right now is, of course, that Dole does not have a message himself. He doesn't really know what he wants to say. There doesn't seem to be any guiding principle. It seems to all be sort of this personality-driven campaign. And Dole does not come across as a kinder and gentler candidate, certainly, so it's not a very good strategy for the Dole campaign. And when there's no principled message, the default is that a lot of other people go out and try to define it, and that's why you're having a lot of these disputes.

Let's go to Austin, Texas. Good morning.

Fine. How are you?

Well, I have been listening to the news in the last couple of weeks, hoping to hear further about a story that I heard just briefly, and that was a story about a woman who was jailed for calling out to the president, and I'm quoting, 'You suck.'

And I haven't seen anything in the news about that story. And I even called CNN, the program Headline News, and...

If you'll hold tight, we have, there is some news about that today. In fact, it's in the Washington Post. I'll find it very quickly and tell you what it says because it's very short. And if you have a question, you can address that question. Essentially, the article is entitled, we can show this here, 'Disorderly, Menacing, or Just Rude?' And this is written by Edward Walsh. What this basically goes to today is that there is some dispute over who said what and how it was said. I'll read a brief portion to you. As Clinton sampled the food wares at a booth, this was at the Taste of Chicago Festival, police said, and this is a police officer, or rather someone who, yeah, police officer, said the Mendozas were in close proximity yelling obscenities like 'you suck' and words that rhyme with suck.

As Clinton was leaving the park, according to Camden, Patricia Mendoza was overheard to say, 'You suck and you ought to die,' or words to that effect. It was then that a Secret Service agent began to question Mendoza to clarify her intentions. And according to this person, Camden, that woman with her husband became loud, abusive, profane, drawing a larger and larger crowd. And that is the latest development on that. And, Patrick, Camden is with the Chicago police. So do you have a question? Comment?

Well, it sounded like, and I'm not sure, it sounds like she was arrested for speaking, okay, what she said. It doesn't sound like she actually did anything, okay. And isn't that, I mean, basically, isn't she being jailed for speaking her mind?

We'll defer to our guest, Mr. Thiel.

Well, I guess it's hard to know exactly what's going on. Certainly, if you threaten the president's life, that is normally a pretty bad thing, and it's never really clear whether that's merely speech or whether you're actually serious about that. What I think is... somewhat interesting about it is if she was, in fact, just speaking sort of the—the terminology you use, like 'you suck,' things like this. Um, and what's interesting about it is, of course, this is not—I don't think this is what people would have said about the president 20, 30 years ago. There's been this tremendous loss of dignity, loss of stature of the presidential office in the last couple of years, and, and, uh, I'm not sure whether it has anything to do with the current occupant or whether it's—it's something that's a more general thing happening in sort of increasing coarseness in American society, but, uh...

Uh... well, this is funny that you bring up this article because this is an article I—I chose, uh... because I thought, actually, kind of funny. I mean, the Secret Service, who has never been portrayed as big fans of Bill Clinton, uh... took this woman aside, uh... and questioned her because if you do threaten the president or tell the president that you want or wish that they would die, that's a federal offense. And I think that we have to trust the Secret Service to do their job. And, you know, that the news talk hosts Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy have, um, uh, moved forward to try to make this some kind of free speech issue. And, you know, uh, regardless of whether or not she threatened the president, I think she was arrested for, uh, you know, loud and disorderly conduct after heckling and screaming for 15 minutes. In almost any public forum, you'd probably be taken away. And so, I think that there's a real misassignment here of what this issue is really about, whether or not it's—

You know, a free speech issue. You know, certainly everyone's entitled to their opinions. However, you know, if that involves threatening the president, then you are going to be taken away, and you should be.

Any comment on that?

The issue of free speech is something that's been pretty, pretty... prominent recently, and as the campaign probably grows closer to us, it will be more. I'm wondering if either of you has any suggestions about what the Secret Service should do because this kind of thing might happen more often as we approach the campaign season, closer to the campaign season.

Well, I do think speech should generally be tolerated. I think this is sort of the exception that proves the rule, in a sense. It's the exception because you actually were threatening someone's life. But absent that sort of threat, I think we have to tolerate free speech. I think that we're a worse society if we do not have a pretty rigid tolerance of free speech across the board. You agree?

I agree with that. The sort of outcome, though, of this president is that, you know, this president likes to get in among the people and is at his best when he's one-on-one in small groups greeting crowds at the Taste of Chicago. You know, I'm sure he was visiting booths and there were, you know, people in very close proximity. And so while I do think we need to be for free speech, I do think that, again, we need to let the Secret Service do their job. And if they think that

there's reason to, uh, pull somebody away because, you know, the president could be in some sort, sort of trouble, and we need to support them in doing that. Tampa, Florida, good morning. Hi, how are you this fine—how are you today? Just fine, thank you. There have been other cases where he had, where President Clinton has certainly been accused of quieting people. There was a case where he was going to speak to a college up your way. And there was a young man who represented a large portion of the, I believe it was the graduate school in that particular college. And he was approved to ask questions until after they found out that he was more conservative than they wished. And he was not allowed to ask the questions at that point.

I am terribly concerned about freedom of speech. And I think that you young people—I am in my 60s, and I feel like that you young people certainly should be concerned about some of the things that are going on now. And I'm sorry, I'm a little bit nervous.

But I am concerned about the way our country is going. I do not like these things that are being hushed up. And I also feel like that y'all ought to be concerned. Please look into it. Please be concerned because our freedoms are very, very important to us. And I think that there have been so many things that this particular administration has done that they are not deserving the same kind of respect that we've had for our presidents in the past. Thank you very much.

Well, I don't know a lot of information about the incident in Florida that the caller is referring to, but, you know, again, I would underscore that. You know, freedom of speech is perhaps or arguably the most important right that we have in this country.

We have a fax here from M. Robinson at St. Francis College. I'm curious as to whether Mr. Thiel is willing to be as cynical about Paula Jones's allegation as he is about the Academy incident. It seems that many Republicans are willing to take the ball and run. Whenever someone makes an accusation towards some alleged wrongdoing by the president while not being at all curious about propriety—about the propriety, it should say, of Senator D'Amato's involvement in hearings against the president while being at the top of the Dole campaign—it seems that at least, at the very least, D'Amato should recuse himself from his chairmanship of the Dole campaign until matters are settled. Any response?

Well, I guess there are two different issues that are raised there. I think as far as the Paula Jones case goes, I am somewhat skeptical of the case there. I mean, it is not clear that she was really coerced. It looks like there was a lot of different stuff going on. Of course, in some ways, the issue with the Paula Jones case is not really a question of sexual harassment. It's more a question of Clinton's sexual conduct and whether he was faithful to his wife, things of that sort. That's sort of the larger political question that underlies why there's so much focus on that particular case. But certainly, I think the sexual harassment charge is very odd. What's interesting, of course, is that the double standard really cuts the other way, that a lot of people who are extremely concerned about sexual harassment and have sort of made this into a crusade are not all that concerned about the Paula Jones case.

Let's go to Miami. Good morning.

Good morning. I've got a nonpartisan issue here that outrages me. Miami Herald this morning has a story about... The headline reads, 'Children of Japanese Repatriated in World War II May Get Cash.' Now, as a World War II veteran, this really turns me off because these are children of the 2,400 Japanese diplomats that we interned at the beginning of the war under international law. A number of them had infant children that were born in the United States while they were here on duty. They were exchanged on the Swedish liner Gripsholm for American prisoners sent back from Japan under similar circumstances. Now the Justice Department has decided that these people are victims of human suffering, and they want to amend the Japanese Money Bill of 1988 to include these children who were repatriated,

Also Japanese citizens, dual citizenship, you know, and give them $20,000 each to the tune of $2,500,000 of our taxpayers' money. This is an outrage to me, and I just wonder what you folks think about it, if you've ever heard about it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Peter Thiel.

Well, I couldn't agree with the caller more. I think it is an outrage. I think that there are some real victims and there are some people who are not real victims and pretend to be victims. And I think this is sort of the latest in that sort of thing where people use their victim status as a proverbial stick with which to beat other people over the head or even more directly to get money from the government. Ellen Moran, any comment?

Well, you know, aside from cash award to people who have dual citizenship, which is news to me, you know, the Japanese internment, most Americans agree, was wrong. And, you know, to intern people who were American citizens in, you know, almost concentration camp-like surroundings during that war was not the right course of action, and the U.S. government does have a responsibility to apologize and admit that that was the wrong thing to do. You know, cash awards? I don't know.

St. Louis, good morning.

Morning. Uh, I just wanted to make a comment first about the, uh, general, uh, state of society. Mr. Thiel mentioned, uh, the president or people, uh, uh, being rude or, etc. Uh, it seemed to me that that's nothing to do with the presidency; it's to do with the society. Uh, I recall that, uh, Mr. Reagan took the blame when Beirut barracks were all blown up. There weren't any hearings; nobody yelled at him. And for a guy who ran that he was going to instantly strike and get at everybody who did anything to us, nothing has ever happened from that incident. So the people who call in that we should do this and that right away, as soon as we find out, they'll blame the president, of course, but never think that the same thing happened before.

The other comment I just make about that incident in Chicago... As usual, it seems that the first thing out of the box, the talk show hosts have to get on it. It's the president, it's this, it's that, it's free speech. This lady living in fear that just called in from somewhere in the South, I gather, is worried about her freedoms. She seems to forget that Mr. Nixon ran a whole campaign with... people sitting in an audience who were hand-picked; nobody got in that had any kind of question that wasn't a softball that he could handle. And talking about some guy in Florida, some student, just seems a little odd to me. I think free speech is alive and well in the United States. If anything, there's more of it today than there's ever been.

Thank you.

Thank you. Well, let me just make another comment on sort of the emerging presidential campaign. I think there's a mistake a lot of people are making, which is to focus on it a little bit too much. The presidential campaign is sort of like what Shakespeare said. The 196, I think, is particularly true. It's like a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. And I do think, as I said before, it's a mistake to blame President Clinton... or for that matter, Hillary Clinton, for everything that's wrong in the United States. At the same time, it's a serious mistake to think that these people are capable of solving all the problems in this country. And that's sort of why the two things go together.

We blame them for everything that's wrong because we assume if they just did things right, they could solve all these problems. And I think we should be a little bit more skeptical about what government can do and what some of its real limits are in solving some of the problems our society faces. Thanks, Charlie. Laura, did you want to make a comment? Okay.

I was just going to say that I think you're right. Certainly the office of the presidency can't solve every problem in the country, but this president has made some efforts to strengthen families and make things easier on families, to build a strong family and raise their children in an environment in which they will be successful. And the hullabaloo in news talk radio would have you believe that that is not the case.

I don't disagree that he's made an effort to do these things. I think the more difficult question is whether any such effort will actually bear fruit, whether there is anything that can be done from Washington, D.C., to strengthen families or local communities or what have you.

Let's go to East Orange, New Jersey while you're looking for your next articles. East Orange, good morning.

Good morning.

How you doing? Just fine. How are you today?

Okay. I'm calling in reference to the article you referred to in the Miami Herald about the new category for biracial folks.

No, that was actually the New York Times this morning. Oh, the New York Times.

Great. Then I'll get a copy of that. My problem is I'm an African-American. I represent probably some African-Americans who think that this is a further attempt in this conservative environment to weaken the political strength of the African-American community. If in fact this becomes a problem, or if in fact this goes through, then in view of the fact that we live in a very racist society in general, it's going to further

destroy the political power of the African-American community, and with that, I'll hang up and listen to your comments. Thanks. New Jersey, yeah, I know it's a concern in the African-American community, and, you know, certainly, uh, a valid one, uh, but I think that, you know, in a society where we afford people, you know, the choice of how to define themselves or how to, you know, articulate themselves, they ought to be able to, you know, indicate on a census form or when asked, or refer to themselves in conversations in everyday life however they wish. And, you know, I think that's going to have to be the way it is.

Well, I agree that people should have a choice in terms of how they identify themselves. And I don't think group identification is ever a good thing. But if people want to identify themselves as part of a group, I think that's their perfect right. I think it's much more of a concern when you have the U.S. government defining the groups and encouraging people to divide themselves along group lines. And again, I think the solution to this has to be to get rid of all racial categories on these forms, not to start including a whole bunch of new categories. Because there's no end to categories we could list.

I think what you're seeing in these articles, though, and there was one in the Post just yesterday, is that the movement is not coming from the government. It's coming from the people. Both articles interview people who are relieved, in fact, to be able to have a broader category to identify themselves with. And you would like to not have people identify themselves with groups, but people do want to identify themselves with groups. So I think we should allow for that.

We have a fax here. C-SPAN guests. Nazi Olympics, Berlin, 96. Twice I've seen C-SPAN show the Holocaust Museum and its Nazi Olympic display. It appeared to me that rather than this museum being in D.C., it should be in Germany. Furthermore, it's my understanding that American taxpayers have federally budgeted $27 million for this museum. What is of more concern is that the land of the museum sits on what was publicly donated and at the same time is a private foundation. We won't have an opportunity to read the whole facts. We will be bringing you a tour of the Holocaust Museum's Olympics, 36 Olympics, Nazi Olympics, in about 10 minutes. And at that point in time, we'll take some questions at that point in time, so maybe we'll be able to solve any concerns about it at that point in time.

In the meantime, we're talking with Ellen Moran of EMILY's List and Peter Thiel, Independent Institute. Let's go to Pascagoula, Mississippi. Good morning. Pascagoula, you there? You there, Pascagoula? Yes, sir. Good morning. Good morning.

My father had worked with the press all his life. My question is, do y'all feel that the press possibly not cover up, per se, but when it comes to... wrongdoings or something to the extent that the Republicans and Democrats, there's, there's maybe, maybe more of a liberal help to the Democratic Party? Could you rephrase that question, sir? Let me make a sample. I'm sorry. As far as things, per se, Watergate, uh, subjects like that, that the, uh, Democrats, their wrongdoings are maybe less covered on TV, newspaper, any media than the Republican Party.

Well, it's really hard to actually judge to what extent wrongdoings are covered, to what extent they compare. It's extremely difficult to make these sorts of assessments. It is true that the mainstream media is quite liberal. You have these polls that are consistently taken that show that the vast majority of people identify themselves on the left or the liberal end of the political spectrum who work in the major media groups. It's an interesting question to what extent they are able to sort of transcend their particular biases in covering the news.

Well, I don't know. I've seen some of the most liberal or supposedly liberal members of the news media go after Democrats, almost bending over backwards to treat the issue fairly. And so far as the press coverage is concerned of Democratic wrongdoings versus Republican wrongdoings, I think that the... You know, the media reports both evenly. I mean, you know, conflict or scandal or wrongdoing is a story in the news media. And, you know, their job is to report what's interesting to the people. And, you know, I think that they do that accurately. And I think we have to, you know... Well, I cut them a little slack for being professionals.

Well, I also think the media is a competitive industry. It's more competitive than ideological, perhaps. And so if there are newspapers that do not cover important stories, well, people are not going to read those newspapers. People are going to read the newspapers that cover the news. And that's why I think we still have a pretty free press in this country.

Okay, here's a question. Any more articles?

Well, I had one other article. It was "The Top Bosnian Serb Agrees to Resign" in the whole Bosnia episode. And, of course, what I think the larger theme behind that story is, is that it looks like we may have peace in Bosnia, but we're not going to have justice. And it's sort of this interesting problem. You know, after one caller was faxed in about the Nazi Holocaust, and at the time people vowed that we would never let this happen again. We would never again allow a government to... against its own people. And yet, you know, it has happened over and over and over again. It's happened in Maoist China, it happened in Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge, it's happening in Sudan right now with Christians in the south of Sudan, and of course it happened in Bosnia, it happened in Rwanda, Burundi, you can go down the list.

And so I think that even though we sort of have papered over this peace process on a governmental level, it has not really solved any of the underlying problems.

Well, my understanding is that the war criminals in Bosnia are being tried, and this is why this guy is stepping down. I think you can make an argument that we should have gotten involved earlier. Certainly, what happened in Bosnia is an atrocity, and it is right up there with some of the most egregious things that have happened in our world's history. But I do think that working towards peace is a productive endeavor, and I think, in going back over there to try to broker something that would work, you know, has been an important step because the American people have, you know, started to think that this is, you know, that peace, we need to be involved in the peace process in Bosnia.

Miami, Florida.

Good morning. Good morning. I'm calling about the article about the Japanese, paying the money to the Japanese, the reparations.

This is the Miami Herald.

Hello, yes.

Okay.

Okay, my opinion about that, if they do that, why don't they pay the Native Americans and Blacks for slavery?

Okay, Mr. Thiel.

Well, that's a good question. I don't think there's actually a good answer to that. I think that certainly if you want to talk about paying Blacks or African Americans or Native Americans, you have a much more compelling case than the descendants of people who were interned. I really think there's no limit to this. You can ask, why shouldn't we be paying all these groups of people, people who were exploited by capitalists in the 19th century? Why shouldn't we be paying people who got a bad public school education? Why shouldn't we be paying reparations to people whose parents didn't treat them properly when they were growing up? And I think the problem is, once again, there are no political solutions for certain types of problems.

There is not a remedy for every ill.

That's Maria. She doesn't want to touch that. Okay. Wilmington, Vermont is next. Good morning. Hi, good morning. How are you?

Yes, this is George in Wilmington, Vermont. And looking at the bias of the press, matter of fact, Wolf Blitzer was the only individual that actually questioned the president as to the cuts that the Republicans made were giving us, and they were not cuts, there were increases. I'm a senior citizen. They are increasing my, uh, Medicare, they're increasing a lot of different things that—that the press has not reported that out there. The other thing else, too, is that every time you see something to do with, uh, Clinton's, uh, situation about the papers, where one of those files—that man back in Watergate went to prison for looking at one file, and yet he has 700 and something that's been exposed. And also, too, is the fact that not one person, okay, knows who hired Livingston.

And, you know, there's so many other things that can go on that I say to myself, I say, how come that this person, myself, who was once a Democrat, okay, that voted for John F. Kennedy and voted for the supply side of, you know, cutting taxes like he did, why doesn't Clinton look at what Reagan did and what Kennedy did for the better portion of our country? And, you know, I just want to make five comments that we are in a real problem. Look at these five things that knocked out 19 out of 22 civilizations. And you young people, they ought to be considering this very much. Number one on the list is inflation. Number two, crooked politics. Number three is this, you know, divorce. Number four is mysticism, the Santeria, you know, devil worship and astrology and all that stuff.

And then the last thing on there is, 'If it feels good, do it.' The morality—I'm 64 years old. The things that are going on in this country now were never considered when I was a younger person.

Okay, thank you. You people have to get on the ball. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any response, either of you?

Well, initially, I don't think we need to worry about the news media underreporting, you know, Filegate right now. You know, the media is obsessed with it. So, you know, these questions that he asked are being explored in a very public way, and, you know, we'll see what the facts are. So far, there's really—I mean, there's been an open discourse about this, and so we'll see.

Yeah, well, it's interesting that he mentioned both Medicare and Filegate. On a superficial level, you think these are two totally different things. On the one hand, you have this massive Medicare program. On the other hand, you have this sort of Filegate, which seems like sort of a sideshow in a circus. But I think there's actually some connection between the two. And I think it is worth exploring Filegate quite a bit more. Because if you have a White House that can't even administer its own internal files, how could they possibly run the health care system for the country as a whole? How could the executive branch possibly do a good job doing that? And I think that's the bigger political question that needs to be asked.

Just quickly, I wonder how you respond to his five factors leading to the destruction of this country: inflation, crooked politics, divorce, mysticism, and 'if it feels good.'

Well, let's see. We don't have a big inflation problem. The cultural problems are serious, but it's unclear to what extent you can solve any of those problems directly. There's nothing the government can do to solve the problem of divorce, or 'if it feels good, do it,' or anything like that.

You know, I think to a certain extent that that is true, but I do think that, you know, the President and the government has a responsibility to try to help cut a break for families who are trying to, you know, work hard and play by the rules, as it were. Things like the V-chip for television, you know, for family television sets and that sort of thing that the President has introduced, I think, is going to help families try to fight this cultural onslaught.

Thanks. We've been talking with Ellen Moran of EMILY's List this morning and Peter Thiel of the Independent Institute in the newspaper roundtable. We appreciate you both being here. Take care. Thank you. And we'll be right back. Thank you.