And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations.

I'm very pleased to be joined today by Newt Gingrich,

the former Speaker of the House, political leader and intellectual leader of American conservatism and more than American conservatism.

Let's talk about the world.

It's this year 2015 is what, 70 years after the end of World War II, 25 years after the fall of

the Berlin Wall, and we're talking, we're speaking just a couple of days before September

11th, what 14 years after an attack on the US you've thought a lot about this what

do you make of the world we're in? Well I think first of all we underestimate how much

the world affects us and I think that you have forces on the move all across the planet

that are going to make the next 10 or 15 years very complicated. And I think

actually we don't have the right language to describe what we're faced with and our very words get us, you know, and make it very hard to do policy.

I mean the current Syrian refugee case is a perfect example. These are not

refugees in the classic sense. This is a population on the move almost in the

late Roman Empire sense of you of populations pouring out of Central Asia,

20% of Syria is now on the move.

Now if that were happening in this country,

there would be 60 million people.

And the idea that Europe is somehow going to absorb everybody in Africa who would like to have a better

life and absorb everybody in the Middle East who would like to not be killed,

you'll see the collapse of the European system over the next few years

if they continue to have this kind of mindless openness and a sense of being guilt-ridden.

...