nixon/kennedy debate,. , and magazine issues would be in advance of a presidential election that would preview the eight or ten or 12. and it struck me after see some many issues, women were not making it on that list. they were not thought to be presidential. they fought for some reason not to be presidential contender. as an academic you ask why and that for me was the origin of the book. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> for the next 45 minutes juan

williams presents the history of america's global participation and influence from 1898-1945. in this time the united states introduced numerous political, cultural and economic ideas to the rest of the world. >> good afternoon. thank you for joining us at the heritage foundation. we welcome those who joined us on our heritage.org web site on these occasions. we ask everyone in the house if he would be so kind as to check cellphones one last time and see that they are turned off. amazing how many speakers start doing that. we will post a program on our web site within 24 hours for your future reference and of course our internet viewers are always welcome to e-mail us with questions or comments, simply writing those to speaker@heritage.org. our guest today, dr. juan williams is a native of arizona,

a master's degree at arizona state university and received his doctorate from the university of california santa barbara. throughout his high school and college, however, he spent most of his time playing drums in a variety of things. as a rock drummer he was part of several groups one of which opened for steppenwolf among other performers for those old enough to remember that. his first film, rocking the wall about rock music had spared in bringing down communism started airing on pbs this weekend will continue throughout this year. he serves on the faculty at the university of dayton where he has talked business, economic history and military history, he is the author of a dozen books including first, a patriot's history of the united states which he co-authored. other topics on which he is written include national defence, history, the u.s.

economy. a television series based on winklevoss is currently in development as well. we are pleased to welcome juan williams to hear about his newest book, winklevoss which in this case will be from 1898 -- winklevoss -- a patriot's history of the modern world. >> thanks so much to heritage foundation for inviting me here. it is an honor and one i wish my daughter was alive to see. heritage is one of those bastions of liberty in a sea of collectivism. you probably didn't know you are getting somebody here that was the previous rock drummer. this later became significant as a learning experience when i began working on this film but all along my experiences in the

rock band were pretty informative. i tell my students i know all about communism because i was in a rock band. we shared everything, has nothing and starving. when mike allen and i wrote a patriot's history of the united states in 2004 we identified three major elements that made up americanism. nevertheless we never provided a definition of american exceptionalism and tearing the revisions over time we corrected that would the next edition we hope will be out next year. in 2004, it seemed a national -- natural progression to move toward a history of the world especially the modern world. it is tumwater and world we see the fullness of american liberty and prosperity on display. and under attack. through an amazon book review of patriot's history of the united states i met david doherty comment an arkansas businessman, historian, computer expert from

evening shade. there is an evening shade, arkansas. we began to talk about errors in patriot's history of the united states and over time i discovered he is a wonderful co-author so i asked him to help me with "a patriot's history of the modern world" and. he proved good in areas where i was week. as a former intelligence officer in the army he brought a new perspective to the cold war, especially in the second volume we are working on now. john mentioned this is volume one, goes up to 1945. volume 2 will be about this time next year, 1946 to presents. i have to warn readers up front especially those who have seen me speak before, probably they know me for some more light hearted or comic insertion but this is a very sober and serious book. after all the period from 1898 to 1945 is an era dominated by

two deadly world wars, worldwide depression and characterized by mussolini, stalin and hitler. i don't even think joe biden could laugh at that material. we have some side by sections, one of my favorites is a comparison and contrast between the world, three leading architect of the day, frank lloyd wright, walter -- to the demise nature, god and man in that order or the race for the north pole. the bulk of this book is dedicated to those political forces that reshaped the century. as one who gravitates toward the great man theory in most of my history i was almost at a loss for words at a book signing event when a question asked me who is the most important person in your book? it dawned on me this really

isn't a book about most important people. it is a book about great ideas and terrible ideas. ideas that in the course of a century were tested in the most climactic of ways, war. the most important idea we discussed is something many writers and intellectuals pay lip service to, american exceptionalism, but which no one has defined. we were surprised to find there wasn't a good definition of american exceptionalism. i think that is our first accomplishment in "a patriot's history of the modern world". we examine and define american exceptionalism through the identification of what we call the four pillars. these pillars shaped america and the same colors were often largely or even entirely ignored in shaping the post war world in world war i and later the decolonization of the third world which is part of the second volume.

this book follows the 50 years' struggle between those we call constitutionalists who want to strengthen the four pillars and progressives who want to destroy them. what are the four pillars? first, america was founded on the christian religion and predominantly influenced by protestant, by the 20th century catholics and jews played an important role, the culture 1900 was fundamentally protestant and even the progress of the merged from the liberal protestant churches. this reenforce the second exceptional killer, common law, which posits god -- the law is given from god to the people and bubbles upward to the rulers. this gives us the government of the people, by the people and for the people that lincoln referred to. common law stands in stark opposition to almost every other

nation on earth that has developed some form of civil law in which what trickles down from the top. germany and england had common law for a while but by the 20th century both had more or less abandoned it, germany more so than england. by the end of world war ii when your unloaded, however unwillingly, its colonies, those colonies were themselves designed on principles of civil law. the first true colors taken together mean a christian protestant religion influenced and shaped everything about american foundation of laws and define a system of personal rights. wasn't just that the united states with a democratic republic but that the very premise of what democratic republic men were likely to be far different in the united states than anywhere else.

the second -- third of the pillars involves economic freedom, private property rights, legal titles and deeds. and a free-market economy. save me -- these may seem synonymous but they are not. in many places of the world there's a semblance of a free economy at work but no system of title deeds to landor other property. this has two significant effect. first it means property ownership is never secure. you can never be sure government won't come around and grab what you have. second, it means individuals with deeds and titles can use their land as collateral for business loans. this in turn elisa its growth. in 1898 the united states had all four of these pillars.

britain had three. was slowly losing, law. france, germany and most european states had three. some european states saw their religious character beginning to fade. around the world, in africa, latin america, a few states had common-law and property rights with titles and deeds. america first came to world prominence after the spanish-american war ended in 1898. for the first time it is argued by leftist historians the u.s. required an empire with cuba and the philippines. yet this war only revealed a deep difference between america and everyone else in history. one of the first things the american congress did after the war was pass a law requiring the united states to give up cuba. one searches in vain for a major world powers to ever voluntarily departed from conquered regions. the 20th centuries, a group of

liberal elites who embrace the program. in node as progressivism challenging criticize these four killers. most were hostile to common-law with president woodrow wilson being the prime example of one who thought the constitution needed to be malleable and -- as america stood on the edge of world leadership europe entered a decade in which it convinced itself war was impossible. the book grand illusion captured the view that europeans were too led vance, sophisticated to fight each other. john mccain echoed this with his famous observation how the world was tied together, and englishmen could order from his doorstep products from faraway lands and have them delivered to him. it is an early version of thomas friedman's theory which claims advanced countries that use computers won't go to war with each other. are, the starbucks theory. any two countries that have

starbucks won't fight. unless they have triple espressoss. another observer-block, in a much different way, posited war would be so bloody and weaponry so deadly that no one would dare risk a conflict. all of these views assume european leaders can be rational, a stretch even in the present day. this of course vanished in august of 1914, a war sparked by one of the most unlikely of accidents when archduke franz ferdinand on his way back from a speech in sarajevo turned away from his planned route to visit a guard injured in an earlier, failed assassination attempt. of course he drove to his death, an incident that would plunge the world into a conflagration. i won't they dow they -- built into the details of world war i. the most significant aspect in the united states was when america entered the war the

british and french hope to insert americans piecemeal into their own shattered units. general john black jack pershing, to his son buying credits utterly refused, insisting the americans fight as an independent army which they did. the revival of progressivism came at the versailles conference of 1919 in which wilsonian ideals dominated the discussion but not the actual final arrangement in most cases. practical british bowls of eliminating the german navy or the french objective of eliminating germany as a land-based frats received wilson's supports so that he could institute a league of nations. and feel-good, toothless, and mated -- unmotivated group of international and leads. wilsonian idealism played a central role in reshaping postwar europe's map as millions of people were moved around the continent like chess pieces and

orders were changed like lines on an etch-a-sketch. won their soccer to second called people under discussion, quote, abstract lumps. another warren quote, the phrase national self-determination, simply loaded with dynamite. it will raise hopes that can never be realized. think of the misery it will cause. ..

it's hardly a surprise that within a decade most of these had collapsed into totalitarian dictatorship, unstable, unpopular or undesirable democracies or autocratic regimes. rather than blaming communism or progressivism, most of the collapse of and did their fury on democracy. the 20s which reduced an astounding web -- level of wealth had the birth of public health programs that morphed into eugenic, concerns about public hygiene meant the possibility to the jewish in europe and ethnic minorities in america. as early as 1920 in germany lawyer carl binding and psychiatrist alfred hajj called for quote, the destruction of

life that is no longer worth living. can you say death panels? he insisted it was a doctor's national duty to quote laminate idiots and the valuable as unquote. voluntary sterilization laws were passed in denmark, sweden and norway, switzerland. britain's report on mental deficiencies called those identified with mental disorders quote, a social problem. in both europe and america is has fused easily with eugenics. in america, a group led by such people as margaret sanger, whose journal the birth control review, endorsed her friend, the title was the rising tide of color, against white world supremacy. her infamous project is black ministers including anna clayton howell to promote birth control.

in england germany and united states to meld eugenics ran far deeper than the rantings of stoddard are hajj. whether they found their way into national and state policy from groups such as the national committee for mental hygiene, urging sterilization that they need to quote prevent this class of person from propagating, unquote. germany used disease laws to enlist.year's, greatly extending the power of the state into the private sphere and producing a union with a medical profession that would be rather easily in the third reich. in germany one expert observed quote the more scientific a doctor's outlook was, the more politically naïve he was. perhaps the highest and most sinister irony that an american eugenicist, charles davenport, gidley wrote to mary harriman daughter of railroad tycoon e. a chairman who headed the eugenics

record office in new york, saying quote the fire you have kindled is going to be a purifying conflagration one day unquote. is prophecy would come true only 20 years later at a cost of millions. fairly easy for governments to manipulate public health, medicine and doctors for purposes of quote family-planning. bissoon blood into policies about colonial possession and citizenship. peoples of egypt india algeria clearly did not fit the progressives view of the educated elite and by their definition they were close to quote life unworthy of life unquote. but these trends would marinate for a decade. in the meantime american prosperity continued spreading to the rest of the civilized world. american advertisers found and even literature became highly desired in europe. it's another irony at this time,

american movies call it a production code that emphasized universal american themes of patriotism, god, fair play and they avoided sensationalism and other things. american movie sold american exceptionalism, including quote puritanical moralism as one observer put it. they occasionally made fun of those values to the work of people such as buster keaton and charlie chaplin but this was all done tongue-in-cheek and never meant to totally undermined the system itself. by 1930, the u.s. had 18,000 movie houses and compared to frances 2400 britain's 3000. europe simply get.compete with hollywood and as long as hollywood sold american exceptionalism, europeans wanted to be like clark gable in this

case. conflation communist education, ethnic unrest and most of all the contradictions cause the post-war european structure to crumble into the totalitarian moment. spain of course with its civil war was the first to see the future. the fascist rise in italy, then germany and the samurai totalitarian culture japan were assassination awaited anyone who questioned its destiny of all of asia and the remaining democracies lack of will to stop the weekend. when mussolini successfully crushed ethiopia and none of the league of nations opposed him, the entire notion collected security was already dad in this of course was long before hitler and voided -- invaded poland. world war ii let me only briefly say that would save the world in our view was that the progressive liberal new deal government of government of franklin d. roosevelt most

likely out of sheer desperation unleash the productive power of free-market capitalism to bury the axis powers in the tsunami of tanks, planes and ships. anyone who is read my book knows that the statistics are not far from where i teach, tank was built from scratch in four and a half hours. henry kaiser shipyard churned out a liberty ship in a record four and a half days. that is faster than most of my students can write one of their semester papers. this undergirded american military strategy of using weapons and technology to thoroughly pummel the enemy before a single american soldier was sent into battle. the war also exposed the fact that japan, which adopted some of the capitalistic production methods seen in america come a lacked the essential pillars of

exceptionalism to employ them fully in wartime. without free speech, free-market, free market, constitutional protection that allowed great businessman to try new ideas and fail without punishment, japan fell behind the u.s. almost instantly. in four years of war, the u.s. produced 17 fleet carriers. japan, one. we go into for example failures or at least not very successful and that would need andrew jackson higgins who produced an incredible number of craft, landing craft but after the war was -- out of business but especially if you look at people like howard hughes. howard hughes was a giant failure during world war ii. he doesn't produce any weapons that were. he produces the wooden

recognizance airplane very fast but they aren't really use before the end of the war. sent -- this is the whole point. people like howard hughes were necessary so that we could have people like henry kaiser. it's only because you have the failures that you know what doesn't work. every time something doesn't work you know not to go there and so is because we have this and other countries did not, they insisted you went every time or you'd die, that's going to cause a problem down the line. it's no different in europe. the german miracle of economic production was in fact a façade. supported by mass conscription that eliminated unemployment but by 1934 and early 1935, germany's economy was already rolling back to its pre-hitler status. only the imposition of tariffs on eastern europe which had no other trading partners and send the acquisition of that new land

and enslaved workers allowed albert shafir to sustain nonproduction. even then germany faced a fatal and hugely ironic reality of reversed -- in which undesirable people were flooding back into germany to sustain the war effort while german soldiers in vast numbers were being sent to russia to die. when the germans surrendered and the japanese were pushed back to their home islandislands, the american propensity to safety or human life while wasting cheap bullets and bombs reached with the dropping of the two atomic bombs. virtually all of the relevant evidence, recent evidence for both american and japanese sources validates president harry truman's decision to drop both bombs. japanese leaders did not display the slightest acknowledgment of the military realities, illustrated by the report of

dr. machine off, japan's top atomic scientist who was sent to hiroshima the following day and had to report back to the emperor and he was asked was this an atomic bomb? then came the line, how long until we can make one? that is hardly the response of somebody looking for a way to surrender. truman intended to show japan that he would use any weapons at our disposal. there was no atomic diplomacy. he wanted to show the japanese that it was surrender or die. which surrender came to temporary victory in the principles of american exceptionalism worldwide. unlike all the previous empires, the u.s. was unwilling to dominate the free world the way previous big yours had. that post-war world, active america that ensured resources insured resources unreservedly,

restrained itself economically and rebuild the rebuilt former friends and enemies enthusiastically. this in turn would produce heretofore wealth and leisure in western europe. all provided by the protection of the american military. that wealth and leisure would in turn erode the very institution and discipline needed to maintain let alone expand freedom and prosperity for others. i want to mention just for a moment the role of the soviet union in world war ii because i think we take this on as a challenge to most of the prevailing wisdom. yes, after 1942, the red army overwhelmed the nazis in men and tanks but it was nip and tuck in the winter of 1941 and 42. one studies suggest a full 85% of heavy armor outside moscow in the winter of 1942 was british.

the best fighter plane in 1941 and 42 in the red air force was a plane the americans wouldn't even fly, the p. 39th air cobra. we supply the soviets with all their radios, all their radio wire, all the shipping to provide all of that stuff, trucks. all they had to do was get men in uniform and make tank and artillery which they did. so yes, the overwhelmed but not these but it came with a fantastic amount of support from the united states. as american soldiers arrived in england in a war and between american and british generals for the command of allied armies. dwight eisenhower was the supreme commander of the british denigrated american troops in general and private and public. ide's great talent was he found a way to brush this aside much the way george washington

brushed aside his own complaining subordinates in the revolution. while at key moments he put his foot down and essentially told the brits to stuff it. that didn't stop peter marshal bernard montgomery from becoming a thorn in the sight of all american commanders in europe for the duration of the war, but ike, omar bradley, george patton all managed to work around to minimize the negative impact of the war effort. so when the war ends, we are expected to supply wealth and prosperity to all. we do it to the best of our ability and yet did rings with it as irony that by supplying wealth and protection, you you are eroding the very disciplines that are necessary to maintain and perpetuate posterity for yourself and prosperity and freedom for others. that would be the challenge of the next 75 years and the topic of volume two. how to provide a canopy of

liberty and perpetuate american exceptionalism while allowing the rain of difficulty and disappointment to remind americans and the world that the air in which we have all been blessed with is no golden -- and with that i will open it up for questions. [applause] >> we will accept questions from the floor. there will be a microphone and when you are recognized if you would not mind stating your name and affiliation if there is one. i have a the first question for larry. is there not a fifth pillar, what i would call the american spirit that most of the people they came to this continent chose to come to do what they could do for themselves and how well they could do as opposed to starting to ask, i am here now, what he is going to do with me? >> you know, that is the subject of heated debate among americans because many americans will argue wealthy got the drag.

the famous line from bill murray's movie stripes where he was saying we are the leftovers and we got kicked out of every good country in the world, so i do agree there is an american spirit but i believe it's an existing for but yes that's an important element of americanism yes, sir? i thought you had the mic. >> good afternoon. much is made of the, and when people try to argue about government expenditures like the new deal or the recent stimulus package of the government expenditures during world war ii and i was wondering if you could address that? >> a great question and we do address it at length in the book. first of all, people need to understand that war is different than piece.

what is a consumer good in peacetime? what is a consumer good in wartime? is a tank or a bullet or obama. any consumer would gladly forgo other products to buy that if it means they stay alive. so the first thing you have to recognize is that in wartime, people are redirecting their purchasing power and efforts away from consumer goods into wartime goods. the second thing i would argue is that in fact, world war ii does stimulate, but not for all of the demand side keynesian reasons that are usually given. it stimulates because it's a giant supply-side primer. what happens is americans have nothing to buy for four years. no factories are making any cars. they are not making any consumer items at all. there is nothing to buy so most americans certainly with the urging of their government, in fast and they invest in savings bonds. so at the end of four and a half

or five years they come out and they have all this pent up demand but they also have invested for four years and business now has the ability to go in and make a giant supply-side investment. i think it is killed or asked response to an economic situation and just the opposite of what keynes argued. >> what do you think addresses the second volume, what are the circumstances required to keep the american exceptionalism, a robust idea? >> yes, that is of course the question before us right now and it is, how much ethnicity, how much national difference, how much diversity do you permit and without destroying the very element that permits that diversity to come in the first-place? i think certainly the english language is one of those things

that must be maintained. i think certainly having control of your quarters is absolutely essential. i think that there are a number of cultural issues that probably have to be maintained like religion and so on. charles murray not to give a plug to another book on booktv but charles murray has a great book called coming apart and it deals with these very issues and he shows how segregated our society has become in the last 50 years. not racially, but i hate this word because i'm not a marxist, but class wise and it's very true. i remember growing up in chandler arizona, city of about 12,000 my dad was a ranch foreman on a cattle ranch. he didn't make a ton of money but somehow he provided for my mother, my college education and i don't know how he did it but i looked across the street at other middle-class families. i look across the street diagonally one of the richest families in chandler live there,

farming family in the lot next to them was their pool in their pool house yet who is the guest at their pool every single week? me. who played monopoly with their kids? me. you don't see that much anymore. they are highly insulated and rarely get middle america at all. exceptionally, culturally in terms of entertainment, it's just a terrible split. that is something we have to repair. >> map land. when you say it needs repair what would you prescribe to be a fix for that? is not undermining the idea of spontaneous order? >> i think all order has certain constraints. water is formed when you unite oxygen and hydrogen and so i think that spontaneous stuff has to happen when you have control

of your borders, when you have an english-language. let me go back to a previous book to give you a plug for that, what would the founders say? in one of the things we noted or i noted in the section on education was, surprise me, almost all the founders favored some sort of public education. i was getting into that and i was like all right i'm going to find homeschoolers here. it didn't happen but what i found was in that public education they essentially demanded that certain things because in those certain things, math and language skills but also a patriotic history, and this was what they used. a history about how great it was to be an american and i didn't prepare that book for this talk but he said something to the extent was all these other countries are great. all these other countries have stuff that we are the best in me can understand them until we

understand ourselves and we much teach a patriotic american history. so i think that is set in the founding that in order to have that spontaneity you have to have a certain construct of structure. >> i am with the heritage foundation. how would you evaluate it fdr's overall presidency? >> disaster. i think that he said america's economy back 10 years. there is very good evidence now, and i call your attention to a study by steven steven kania which is not widely cited. his study is one of the wage and hours activity shows that this act alone probably ensured that we would never get back to 1929 employment under roosevelt. basically he compares the hours worked to business confidence and business expectations and what he shows is that, the

number of hours worked stayed -- went down while the number -- the number of workers stayed constant while the number of hours worked went down. another words they were going from 10 full-time employees to five part-time employees or something along those lines. he finds 85 to 90% of the decline after 1934, when the first wage and hour's act goes into place, can be traced directly to this idea of minimum-wage. in terms of all of the other regulations and excessive taxation, it's one disaster after another. one of the things we do in patriots history as we have a three-page chart that i've never seen anywhere else, of the new deal program and we show what the program was, what its original goal was and what it looked like 50 years after and it's amazing that 50 years after, all of these things are

disasters from banking regulation to minimum-wage laws, to agriculture. my stepfather, when my dad died my mother remarried and another farmer and i used to do his books. i remember getting the government subsidy check and i want to thank you all very much to -- for putting me through school. they were huge and was ridiculous that they were getting these kinds of checks. it pays farmers not to grow. you students, come on. you are going to get paid not to turn in papers? teachers are going to get paid not to teach? that was the equivalent of the agricultural adjustment act so you know, without that we might have without the war. as i say roosevelt out of desperation turns really, unleashes american business and turns to free-market principles unless the americans more or less free.

>> i am with the heritage foundation. as you know it's the primary text in some classrooms in america unfortunately. [inaudible] an audience of students who might have grown up on people's history, how do you introduce your work and your frame of reference to them who might have started with a different -- >> i do have a -- you need a history of united states but couple of years ago i did a book and it's a clever title but really what i did was i looked at the top 20 u.s. history textbooks. college textbooks, and what i found was that they all, almost without exclusion, share a certain similar falsehood like the rosenberg or sacco and vanzetti or one favorite one is

transcontinental railroad never would have been built without government help and in fact, candidate or barack obama use that example when he was arguing for a computers are. we need to have the computers are because after all, the transcontinental's could not have been built without government help. excuse me, there's a guy named james j. hale and james j. hill hild built the northern pacific of road without a dime of government support and guess what? is the only one not to fail in the panic of 1873. all of the government supported railroad collapsed. my own students usually comes in me having not read them. i get constant e-mails from people that we had to read it in school and i hated it and thank god for your book and i am sure when we get those messages, and schweikart thank god for your book. it's interesting, we are making a rapid progress towards

catching his total sales in the last four or five years on a trajectory and he had a 15 year headstart. >> my name is pete gillen and i memory and core fellow. i have to question. number one your thoughts and how you found the paris peace conference was specifically causing -- the 20th century and number two, why did you choose the -- on the cover of your book? >> number one perhaps next to the new deal the first high conference was one of the worst things of the 20th century and gives us an essence world war ii. it not only is bad from the standpoint of destroying national entities by moving people around and putting us in a situation where there is going to be inevitable conflict.

that is one of the things it does. it destroys the very concept of collective security is obviously the league of nations is a monstrous failure. in terms of the flagraising on sarah bocce, it just seems very symbolic that is the flag goes up americans are rising to the point of promise. sempre fi. >> thank you, larry. [applause] and is noted we do have copies available. larry will be glad to sign them. we have an additional conversation on the panel table as well. we thank you all for your kind attention and hope to see you again soon in the future. we are dismissed.

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