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Understanding America's Terrorist Crisis
What Should Be Done?
Thursday, April 18, 2002

Speakers

Gore Vidal
Author, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Dreaming of War, Burr, Lincoln, Empire, 1876, The Golden Age, United States, and many other books.

Lewis H. Lapham
Editor, Harper's Magazine

Author, Fortune's Child, Hotel America, Imperial Masquerade, Lapham's Rules of Influence, Money and Class in America, Waiting for the Barbarians, and The Wish for Kings

Host, America's Century, PBS-TV

Barton J. Bernstein
Professor of History, Stanford University

Author, The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (HarperCollins), Editor, Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (Pantheon Books), Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, and Twentieth-Century America: Recent Interpretations

Robert Higgs
Senior Fellow in Political Economy
The Independent Institute

Editor, The Independent Review. Author, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (Oxford University Press); Editor, Arms, Politics and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Thomas Gale Moore
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Author, Economics of the American Theater, Central Planning USA-Style, Privatization Now or Else: The Impending Failure of Democracy and Freedom in Central Europe, Public Claims on U.S. Output, and Trucking Regulation: Lessons from Europe

Editor, The Essence of Stigler

Could the horrific events of September 11th be setting in motion a chain of events far more significant than the terrorist attacks themselves? After retaliating against the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and its Taliban enablers, the Bush Administration now speaks of "bringing justice" to an "axis of evil" countries not involved in the 9/11 attacks—all while Osama bin Laden and most of the major terrorist leaders have escaped.

Meanwhile, the Middle East may be teetering on the brink of a major war. World leaders in Europe, Asia, Africa, and ehsewhere view U.S. military intervention with increasing alarm, and international opinion indicates that the United States may be more hated than ever. Could U.S. policies be provoking this hatred and the ever more ominous threats to the safety of Americans and people around the world? If so, how can we produce a safer world?

On the home front, the U.S. government has acquired broad new police powers to systematically spy on and detain both American citizens and foreign nationals without due process. Will the USA PATRIOT Act—legislation still being written when it was passed by Congress last fall—really hinder terrorists, or will it simply enable militant fundamentalists to destroy American liberty as the U.S. itself shreds the Bill of Rights?

Please join us for a special evening with world-renowned author Gore Vidal, moderated by Lewis H. Lapham, with a distinguished panel of scholars, Barton Bernstein, Robert Higgs, and Thomas Gale Moore, to discuss why terrorism now threatens America and what should be done.

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