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From War to Earth Democracy

Chris Hedges is a Lecturer at Princeton University – he is the Ferris Professor of Journalism there. In a 2003 commencement speech at Rockford College, Illinois, Hedges denounced the US war on Iraq only to be booed off stage and forcibly escorted by security officers off of the campus, taken to his hotel room to pack his belongings, and put on a bus to leave town. Afterwords, his then employer, The New York Times, gave him the choice of staying true to his beliefs or conforming to the official story – he chose the former.

Having worked as a war correspondent for many media outlets for fifteen years, Chris Hedges has seen war, and its effects upon those who wage it, at close range. His reports from the front lines bear on the very nature of war itself, its causes, consequences, and the physical, emotional, and moral devastation it leaves in its wake. Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines, but also entire societies – corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. One of his latest books is entitled, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.” Chris Hedges spoke recently in Southern California.

Gore Vidal is a novelist, essayist, and playwright whose career has spanned six decades, beginning in the years immediately following World War II and continuing into the early years of the twenty-first century. Gore Vidal first made a name for himself right after World War II with his first few novels, especially Williwaw (1946) and The City and the Pillar (1948). Since then he has become one of America’s foremost celebrity authors, famous for his prose, his intelligence and his sophisticated sassiness.