if you'd like to see a blogger version, go to booktv.org, type in the search and watch the full program. >> host: author larry schweiker, why do use the word teacher is history in a series of your book? >> is a direct play on people's history. if he can say this is the

history of the people, we say this is a picture if and who doesn't want to be a patriot? >> host: who are the pastries? >> guest: those who love america even with her false, went to see her improve, to stand beside her. i'm always asked, who is a patriot and it's easier to give an explanation of who was there. someone says i love my wife. you're not wearing a wedding ring. the last two times i heard you were running down in public. but you still live your wife? she's getting beat up in the parking lot. she probably deserves it. that is not a patriot. >> host: in her most recent book, a pastries history of the modern world: from america's exceptional dissent to the atomic, if you write its democratic processes or self-confidence. america remains the world's sole exceptional nation, which is to say it aloud is a self written

narrative that explains why the u.s. should, not just good influence others. why is america exceptional? >> guest: we get into this with four factors that we are to make american exceptional nation. first of, ma and the germans started, ma, but a fella sometime around 101,100. a recent surge by the british. we have a common law system and we observed from a. the british are rapidly losing their common law system through the e.u. not because we are the only nation on earth to common law. everybody else follows french civil law. common law is the notion that god plans the law in the hearts of the people, that they know what's right and wrong and the

other theaters as the germans did to enforce the law that everybody else i ready knows is right. civil law stems from divine right of games, which does god plans the law and the heart of the ruler and dispenses it as he sees fit. that's really where most of the state fire. a christian, mostly protestant, i don't think too many people would argue with that. private property rights with titles and deeds. this is brought out in a boat by hernando desoto called the mystery of capital, in which he argues one of the missing things in much of what i used to call a third world which they have property, but they don't have written titles and deeds to the property that allowed them to the so-called leverage that to build businesses. one of the first things they say is do you have collateral for

the one. you can't prove the loud. without the ability to build wealth. and the fourth factor everyone agrees with pretty much a free market system. so those four factors if you look at this taken together, were about the only one center to have all four. some have three common in many have to come up to where the only ones who have, bob christian religion, and free market. >> host: in your book from 2011, but what the founders say a patriot answers to america's most pressing problems. one of the questions you've asked to resist if the government responsible for protecting the land and private property? was the answer to that question? >> guest: in a very limited sense of days. and this is jefferson's idea, not mine. jefferson wanted to get as much

land and to people as possible. when should belong to individuals and of course if his ideas to craft the land ordinance of 1785. if the northwest territory were going to get read of the land as fast as we possibly can because the government should be the biggest landowner in america, just as the church was in medieval europe. it should be the people. >> host: what about the question of money supply in the government? >> guest: that's interesting, you know. in 1990, 91, was invited to a meeting in europe, the only time i'd had was to munich and there were a lot of big brained stare. i was on a barge with five nobel prize winners and i wasn't one of them. as milton friedman and buchanan and i forget the other two.

i had a debate with milton friedman, mr. free market about for you competitive money and he was arguing the government should control the money supply. iud from american history in the 1830s to 1850s at competitive money will give you a sounder, more reliable economy with fewer panic. >> host: religion, what the founders say? >> guest: founders were unanimous that the government should not establish a religion, nor should it prevent the worship of any sort. virtually every state constitution had the words god and half of them have the words jesus christ and. many of them up and tell the 1820s by jesus christ in the constitution. so virtually all of the founders were of a mind to you needed to make sure the government did not

force people to practice a particular religion. too, that much different than saying you couldn't have a nativity scene on public property because at the time almost all of them were engaged in some sort of government support and churches being pastors, for example, having prayer services in the u.s. capital. jefferson's level, which is a private level in which he says there's a separation and there's no line in the constitution. there's a wall of separation between church and state. jefferson meant that in terms that we don't want to see the anglican church established in virginia, but we don't want to prevent anglicans from worshiping virginia appeared >> host: professor schweikert, with the mention of christ, does that say we are a christian

nation and christianity as the official? >> guest: i don't think it's official, but i think it's understood. the example is virtually other founders were christians. we go to pretty good links, for example, disabuse the notion that franklin was absolutely not. he believed an interventionist god. the only founder who could reasonably call it jefferson, certainly george washington professing christian. he took oaths, including the words jesus christ once a month. they all came from a notion and a structured christian country and structured the government in light of that assumption. when the federal reserve act was in 1913, not one mention of the gold standard.

and yet every single person, all the bankers who suggested this is operating under the gold standard. it's the same way with the founders. >> host: one more question about what would the founders say. you make the point that all the founders are what you call small government banned. what tv. >> guest: by that, they were all greatly concerned that government come to either through its executive branch in terms of the jeffersonian or in terms of the legislative ranch, the hamiltonian scum that were concerned that government could and would be abusive if given half the chance. to be built into the system every conceivable check and balance you possibly could to keep government from acting erratically and rapidly. they wanted to ask slowly with great deliberation and make it very difficult to do things.

>> host: futurist world of the modern world. 1898 to 1945 just came out last year. you talk about one of the themes is progressive versus constitutionalism, that site. what do you mean by that? where do we stand today? >> guest: this originated in the 1890s. the populist party, i hate using terms for an older era, but more of a leftist party, mostly rural, democratic, poorer. they died out after the election of mckinley. in their place came a republican backed waiting call to progressives. teddy wristlet is the most famous, but there were a number of progressives in the progressives believed man could be reformed, that if you simply

put man through enough hoops that he could be perfected. by the way, they're the ones to change the penal system from one that punishes and incarcerates to one that reforms. i just miss him a comfortable they be the charles manson sitting next to them because he made a lot more license plates. they reform everything about the financial system with the income tax and their goalie is nothing short of perfect man in this world. the constitutionalists right of the founders multicity don't trust men. even good men, we don't trust the man. we want to make sure there's so many checks and balances that it's difficult for people to enact laws on other people. even out of the goodness of their heart, which are usually for the worse legislation comes from. >> host: where do you teach? >> guest: the university of

dayton. dayton has been very, very good to me. i've been supported. it's a great place to work. this'll be 27 years. >> host: how do you get into the history of teaching? >> guest: i grew up in arizona, a great town called chandler, only 12 dozen people. today it's a quarter of a million. all through high school and college i played drums in rock 'n roll bands and as soon as i got out, i got on the road with iraq beyond him for the next four or five years i paid for groups. >> host: what was the name of your band? desk of that band was called rampage. but even used her music in the film rock 'n roll. the road is very hard.

especially if you're not springsteen without these rarities and dry setting stuff up and flying in planes. we rent vans, trucks, is very difficult. so i still wanted to play rock music at night, but i wanted a daytime gig that if i didn't work that we could have some money. i got teaching with the ec. i thought it would be an easy cake, so i wanted to teach high school and i get back to arizona i don't have a teaching certificate. to get a certificate and 80 u.s. history class. i'd gone through four years. no not then arizona state. but i had a ba in political science can never took a single u.s. history course. so i had to go back during the summer in order to get this u.s. history course. at a professor professor named robert wallenberg who runs a

think tank now in jerusalem and in six weeks he was so inspirational and he challenged the assumption is that within a fixed it. i said i want to be a professor and slowly accredited music, paymasters at arizona state and they kicked me out because they said we can't get you a good job. ended up at university of california santa barbara with elliot brownlee and got a phd and i went to one job before dayton. i taught in wisconsin and then i went to dayton. >> host: are you a conservative? >> guest: definitely. >> host: have you always been? >> guest: i was the only member of the band who didn't drink. eyeballs they never did drugs, but i never did drugs the way they do drugs. the only time i've been drunk in

my life, i tell the story to my students. we ran mississippi. the first big hurricane they took very seriously were boarding everything. so we were all watching monday night football with the readers and the dolphins. they are always writing me trying to get me to drink or do whatever. come on, just drink it. it will hurt you. so they are back there spiking the wind with vodka and pretty soon the game seems to be going on forever. pilatus corder football. it's that i'm getting drunk, can you get me some coffee? of course their stake in the coffee with vodka, too. i decided that it a conservative. >> host: what does it mean to be conservative historian? >> guest: it means you are a historian who has taken her to bomb the world.

one of the fallacies look up from the german school is you cannot truly object of history. you want to have accurate history, but that doesn't necessarily have to be object of history. every selection of a fat, the mere fact that i choose to report this fact over that fact is a sofa by courtesy you cannot be free of bias. her selection effect will determine your bias. so what you have to do instead is aimed for accuracy and truth. does this tell the true story, not just factual story, but does that tell the story of what was happening in these events? that requires that historian put himself or herself in the era of the time. we have a lot of historians

today who write train to criticize events in the pads would justify events based on their current political beliefs. you have to look at things in the context of what the people were seen at the time. it is most brought out by the filmlike and doing very well, the criticisms of lincoln. lincoln was a racist. for his day, lincoln was phenomenally danced in terms of race relations. by today's standards accorsi was a racist. every was back then. compared to everybody else, lincoln was way ahead of the curve. >> host: 2004, teacher of history from columbus' great discovery to the war on terror came out. christopher columbus, a lot of writing that he wasn't the first. just go right. we have a sidebar, almost a

two-page sidebar and i think there's a tremendous amount of scholarship that come out -- is in fact a lot of the disease is attributed to columbus and the europeans existed in the americas before the spaniards ever got here. does he introduce practices like slavery? not really. indians were engaged in slavery. aztecs were enslaving thousands and cutting their heart though. so all in all, columbus' arrival was a wonderful thing for all of humanity. >> host: what did you bring? >> guest: columbus brings the european context, the ideas of human life has value, the idea there is something called a polis with the chin people operate. yes he may have a king, but even within the standards of the day,

could be challenged within the catholic church and the civil society of to appoint. once again, nothing like what modern democracies fire. but in the context of the time, is a pretty radical worldview, where seven lake montezuma is not a god and you could defy his work. >> host: larry schweikart, how many books have you written, co. written, edited. >> guest: i can't tell you. >> host: over 20? >> guest: i think so. >> host: larry schweikart is our guest on "in depth" this month. if you'd like to participate on c-span 2, (202)585-3880 in eastern and central time zones to go to 3551. you can also contact us via

social media. you can make a comment on her face but page, facebook.com/booktv. then each week. @booktv and finally sent an e-mail. booktv@c-span that work. here are eight of larry schweikart's book. columbus is great discovery to the war on terror in 2004. america's victories, where the u.s. wins wars and will win the war and terror, 2006. 48 liberal lies about american history probably learned in school came out in 2008. seven event that make america america and proof that the founding fathers were right all along. america much but never came out in 2010 as well. but what the founders say? featured answers to america's most pressing problems.

2011, teacher's history reader essential document for every american also came out in 2011. in his most recent, capacious history of the modern world from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bombs 1898 to make 1945. is there a second volume? >> guest: yes, should be december. 1945 to 2012. >> host: seven event that made america america. why do you include martin van buren? >> guest: this is actually the most important event in the seven and the one least known. martin van buren was anti-slaves. when the missouri compromise was agreed to, thomas jefferson said it will come like a fire bell of the night. van buren had the same reaction. this is going to cause a civil

war. his than jefferson's vision are not was at the territories or rip it up, more and more will be free. asmara territories become free states, congress will get a majority of free throws. when congress gets a majority of free votes, sooner or later it will vote to end slavery. so when that happens to get a civil war. see that on the horizon from the van buren sought to make it and run in which he was short-circuit all discussion about slavery and congress have in the political arena. the way he sought to do this has created a new political party. we worry one party system. from about 18162 mike 1824 called the democratic

republicans. there's a lot of people that think we are still a one-party system. van buren creates a new party. to be a member of his party, all you have to do is essentially vow not to talk about slavery, not to bring it up in legislature, legislation, not to speak about it on the stump. you won't introduce any legislation about it. you're just going to shut up about slavery. what would he have to offer someone who is also anti-slaves who sees as he does that receipts will eventually be in the maturity. what can he offer them? has the answer is jobs, patronage. he creates something called the spoils system where politicians promised supporters jobs in return for them getting out the vote. a great film version of this if you saw gangs of new york, where

they go through and heard people to vote. van buren system depended on to other things. it depended the states be sovereign, that the states have a great deal of power and the federal government remains weak and it also depended on having a person in the white house if he was in a southerner and van buren should not think you're going to get a southerner in the weekend. van buren wanted somebody who would be sympathetic to the slave state concerns. the phrase was in northern minnesota in principle. he succeeds all the way up to 1860. but in keeping the stays strong in the the federal government week, his plan works against itself because each time there is an election, politicians are giving away jobs. if you're going to run against me as the weeks come in, they've

got to give away more jobs than i give away. pretty soon cover but starts to grow with every election, become speaker of taker. states start to get weaker of the federal figure. before you know it 1860 they haven't paid much attention since 1828. it's very big and powerful and has a lot of influence and all of a sudden the wrong guy gets in the white house. abraham lincoln, in northern end of the other principal who so slavery is wrong. we'll keep it from moving into the territory and that is when the fight starts. >> host: larry schweikart, and van buren developed a system? >> he tries it out in new york state first with the bobtail parity and then he creates a democrat party, who its original founding mission was to protect

slavery. >> host: dwight eisenhower's heart attack is another of your seven event. >> guest: i know. i kazin heart attack while playing golf and coincides with the movement to have a boat crash on heart disease by the american heart association and the use heart attacks has the opportunity to press for more concerned about heart disease. there was that more heart disease. what was happening was we had our testing methods, so we were discovering more heart disease. it was like breast cancer. we had better tested methods of fighting breast cancer, which looks like an increase in the number of cases. so this gets taken over by a nutritionist at the university of minnesota need esops at

esops agenda is to reduce fat in the diet because he sees a connection between heart disease, cholesterol. he manages to pack the appropriate committees of his people and they began a campaign to get americans to eat less fat and less me, to eat more carbohydrates. long story short the 1977, the committee is heavily lobbied and they put up the new food guidelines, 40% more cards, 40% less fat: says pretty clearly that the obesity epidemic in america. >> host: going to the said title of your book, improve the founding fathers were right all along, how does that tie in? >> guest: i have a chapter in what would the founders say that the government getting involved in our diet.

they would be a port at mayor bloomberg. washington would go up there and whack him with his cane or something. it's not the federal governments role to tell people what to eat or drink. as we know, the founders were pretty good drinkers that we've gotten into some some of their diets and looked at what they were served at mayor. very heavy on meat. >> host: america's rock music. that would show some video as you talk about why america's rock music is so important in our history. >> guest: rock 'n roll, and i include country and jazz, publishers say rock 'n roll. it's essentially american music form. american rock music starts together as a band, ends together as a band, but what does almost every sans have in the middle? is so low. this is a tremendous picture of

america. we work together, but we never allow the individual to be subordinated into the group in socialist societies. i think that message comes out in the music itself, even when you don't know the lyrics. i'll give you two studies. one said 40% of kids don't know what any of the lyrics i and another study said that only about 30%, 40% heard or understood any of the lyrics. and yet they internalize this message that rock 'n roll is freedom. so one thing led to another. i ended up with producer mark leave, documentary producer in hollywood and we did a film on pbs right now prepared in november. it's going on right there. when i interviewed people from behind the iron curtain, they all spoke to a freedom rock 'n

roll brat. it was inspirational. we see freedom when we hear rock 'n roll music. >> host: what are we watching here? rock in the wall. >> guest: into snippets from the whole movie. ..

breaking down the walls, why aren't the soviets sending in the tanks? part is not only german bus -- but russia has been influenced. i interviewed bill for the book, he is not in the movie. i asked him about his experience when he went to moscow. the first american to play moscow since van cliburn in 1964, and he said, the guards were all armed with tranquilizer darts and they were told to trank the kids if they got too crazy. i said were you told anything you could or couldn't say? he says no, they told me, whatever you don't, don't encourage the kids to charge the stage. i said so the first thing you did was that. he said, told hem to come on down. the guards were throwing their

hats at me. >> host: 48 liberal lies about american history. how did you organize these lies? >> guest: they're pretty much juggled politically and cultural. we thought keeping them together might invite people to only read a little bit of the book. >> host: so you organize them by priority, your person priority? >> guest: not at all. just in terms of what we thought would interest readers. the way i got them was i looked at 20 of the top u.s. history college textbooks. and i did include books like howard -- people0s history bought it's used as a textbook, as is baker, and sometimes they're used together, and i think is terrific. that's wonderful. so, i found these were common themes on many of this subjects.

and so i started kind of making a compilation of what would all these books say about these different things? and that's where he get them. >> host: let's go through some of them and let you comment on the ones you want. number one, the intent of the u.s. to be isolationist, the number two, the mexican-spanish american war were empireol efforts drummed up be corporate interests. number three, fdr knew in advance about the japanese attack on pearl harbor. harry truman ordered the bombing of japan to intimidate the soviets. jfk was killed by lbjs secret team to keep it from getting out of vietnam. six, nixon expanded the vietnam war. seven, the peace movement activists were not dupes of the kgb. eight, reagan knew star wars wouldn't work but want to

provoke a war with the ussr. nine, gorbachev was responsible for end the colored war. >> we can't get through all of these. read me the first one about the founders. >> host: the first one was the first president intended for the u.s. to be isolated. >> guest: one of the things i wanted to do the publisher didn't want it, i wanted to call it 48 liberal lies. you see the one on fdr, there's some falsies on both sides of the political spectrum. george washington was not a an isolationist. the famous speech in which he talked about no entangled alliances, includes the term 20 years, and includes the term several times, it's written by hamilton. hamilton believed that -- and in this 20-year phrase is interesting. first of all let's remember, we took an alliance with france to

win our revolution. we had an armed neutrality. washington had negotiated successfully for alliances with the indians insofar as they were nonaggression pacts. you don't shoot at you, don't shoot at us0. washington was fan of alliances. his concern was that the u.s. did not have a navy, that the u.s. did not have a standing army, we would be sucked into some sort of european war that might come over here on our shores and not be able to conduct it. and so he uses this term "for 20 years" and then says something along the lines as, at which time we will be free to act with immunity. in other words, after we established of us, an economy, a navy, an army, then we can say the people, bug off, we don't want to be part of your or not going to follow your rules or

whatever. but he thought, until we got to that point, we were going to have to avoid any kind of alliances at all because it might suck us into something. >> host: why 48? >> guest: we originally had 50, and then some overlapped. and then i began to think -- when you go on amazon, you see seven something, 50 something -- i need something where other books -- who does 48 of anything, right? but let me get back to roosevelt. this is another one that i think -- it starts on the list. that the amazing thing. starts with charlesed into charles hansen but in recent times it's gravitated to the right, and the idea was that roosevelt knew in advance about pearl harbor, he allows it to occur so we will get sucked into war. the fact is almost all the

recent collars- -- scholars, specially a man by jacobson, they have shown that, a., various transmissions didn't get to us. b., they weren't translated or decrypted in any time that gave roosevelt any warning. and c., they weren't brought to his attention. we find for example that 80% of the crypts from 1941 did no go through the final phase where they were handed over as intelligence until 1944. so, it's things like that. i have my axes to grind with roosevelt but pearl harbor is not one of them. >> host: if you can't get through on the fine lines because their busy, you can on tact larry schweikart, go to our facebook page, make a comment there. you'll see professor schweikart's posting up there. so go ahead and make your comment there and we'll look at

those as well. or send us a tweet: >> host: let's start with the female from sturgess, south dakota. mr. schweikart, i enjoyed two of your latest books. in your research for these books, what one of them surprised you as underappreciated or underreported in the course of american history? >> guest: grover cleveland doesn't get any credit. i call him the last good democrat. he was very constitutional in terms of his approach to the office. and he is famous for vetoing a seed corn bill. there was a drought in texas, and the texas farmers wanted government assistance, a la general motors, to keep from

going under and they wanted the government to provide them the seed corn. congress, always being willing to spend taxpayer money, passed the bill. cleveland issues a veto message and says, i can find nowhere in the constitution that empowers me to take taxpayer money from one group and give it to another group. he says i do encourage the members of congress who want to be so generous to take up a collection among themselves and give it to the farmers. of course they didn't do that. >> host: david in homes town, florida. >> caller: good afternoon, david. excuse me, peter. become tv -- book tv. as a conservative, i just would like mr. schweikart -- that in america, christianity was not perverted the way it was in -- to bring about wars, that

american christianity is of a different variety than european christianity, and he should always mention this when he talks about conservatism, and other than that, keep punching, mr. schweikart. >> host: david, as you call it, a nonchristian conservative, what are your thoughts about christian influence in the u.s.? >> caller: in the context of what i just said, for the most part christians influence the united states has been terrific. terrific for the american people generally, terrific for catholics and protestantses, and yet terrific for jews. this is the golden era for jewish people because the american variety of christianity

that was mottled on president washington and his -- and it was a matter of no -- and mr. schweikart should talk about this when he talks about christianity in america. >> host: thank you, david. >> guest: that's very astute. he nailed it. that's exactly right. american christianity was different. there was of course, concern about catholicism only because american president -- president extents were concerned they might take matching orders from rome. and one of the forgotten intelligence of history were the intolerable acts, rite after the boston tea party, one of them was going to take over juris -- hand over jurisdictional control of british north america to

quebec, and in the eyes of the colonists, this is akin to placing america under catholic rule and one of the reasons why americans so quickly united behind the effort, the revolutionary effort. let me also bring up -- your caller is exactly right. tom payne is one of our most famous athiests and yet was certainly roundly accepted among the founders. >> host: bill in new hampshire, good afternoon. >> caller: hi, peter. hi, dr. schweikart. [inaudible]

>> host: bill, what is your interest in the rosetta stone? >> caller: pardon me? >> host: what's your interest in the rosetta stone? >> caller: i just -- to me it's -- my argument, it's -- [inaudible] >> host: any comment? >> guest: i don't get into the rosetta stone very much and this is certainly pretty much before -- once in my work on europe. so i'm going to defray that question. >> host: john in traverse city, michigan. you're on book tv on c-span2. >> caller: hello. good afternoon. i want to -- make the point

about the historians should be objective, i.e., if you can't be, or dr. schweikart mentioned, once you choose to report a fact, then having done so, to step into a realm in which you may be operating from an agenda standpoint, and i want to express to the country, of course, that therefore, -- could be called -- [inaudible] therefore, they're can't be no such thing as a truly objective news organization. and i believe relatively

sound -- [inaudible] >> guest: he is exactly right. two things. first of all,'ll give you a caveat. apparently we have a new book coming out from roman in littlefield, a journalistic history of america with jim of virginia tech, and we make that exact point. the news media was founded by martin van buren. mart vein van buren creates the first newspaper to support the democrat party. they only published democrat prop began dark only advanced democrat interests. the wig do the same thing. back then they would tell you what they're agenda was. it was called the richmond whig. they stated on the masthead what you were buying.

nobody pretended to be objective because their goal was to advance a political agenda. i think we are rapidly getting back to that point. we had about 100 years of seemingly objectivism with the news but we're rapidly getting back to a very partisan news. i don't think that's bad. i think that eventually, giving the -- almost all the news sources owned and operated by some wing of one of the major parties. >> host: american history. the u.s. will win the war on terror, came out in 2006, and in that book you write: americans win wars because we tolerate and accept them as a fact of life and antimilitary segment of society constant criticism, pushes our armed forces to even greater economy with our soldiers' lives and to even greater efficiency of destroying

our enemies, and this e-mail from david in new york city, the reasons given as to why nations start wars are usually just rationalization, most impressive -- in the benefit of the citizens who have control and will gabe from -- will gain from it. >> guest: strongly disagree. of you look at, for example, the american revolution, there have been a number of economic studies -- the economists are the only ones to quantify this. the economists have done a number of studies and looked at the impact of the navigation act on the american revolution. peter mcfarland is just one. he found that the cost of the navigation act on the average colonist was about between 20 and 40-cents a year.

will you go to war over 40-cents? no. the entire net impact of the navigation act was about 1%. will you go to war over 1% of your gnp? no. and so the conclusion has to be that the revolution was about something much greater. it was about the rights of englishmen, and where these laws were -- not necessarily the taxes but the ability of parliament to impose taxes without even consulting those who were paying the tax. no taxation without representation. let me get back and address your point about -- the idea that americans value life and that peace movements have found that trying to emphasize to the american public what we are doing to another country, aren't

we destroying -- look at all these civilians being killed. tragic as that is, that does not work on the american public. the only thing that moves the public to oppose war are american deaths. and the peace movement has certainly learned that lesson. early on, in world war i, the te american army figured that out, too. that the taxpayers and the public citizens are not going to tolerate large numbers of casualties, and this was an official paper published by the u.s. army called, the casualty issue, and hey said we have to train better, we have to find more effective ways so we take fewer casualties, and one of the -- if you want to you the term american way of war -- we just blow the hell out of something before we ever send in one soldier, and d-day is a

classic example. huge loss of life but nevertheless 600 ships and 11,000 planes pummeled the beach before any american ever set foot on it. >> host: malcolm, columbus, ohio, good afternoon. >> caller: yes, i happen to teach down the road from your guest. first of all, the american version of christianity. [inaudible] -- terrorized ancestors and one of the most brutal forms of christianity. second of all, lincoln was enlightened, not compared to stevens, not compared to hairot beecher stowe and many other white abolitionists of lincoln's day. in lincoln's day -- called the

-- [inaudible] not tell the audience there are many white radicals, abolitionists who are far more liberal toward african-americans thank you. >> malcolm, have you soon the movie lincoln, and if so, what did you think? >> caller: i did see it and i leaves out the role of fred douglass in an african-american community and establishing -- i thought it was a good film. so people in euro centric film that distorts history but i think it's a wonderful film. i think he this greatest president this country ever produced inlight of the most evil system of human oppression the world had seen, american slavery. >> guest: i'm glad he mentioned frederick douglass but none

other than frederick dug laws said of lincoln he was extremely enlightened, and lincoln talked slow but he acted fast and decisively, and frederick douglass is a phenomenal admirer of lincoln. those guys, despite the fact their views were maybe in the caller's more advanced, the fact was they were far too radical for the time to accomplish anything. nobody is really listening to stevens but everybody listened to lincoln. >> host: what about his point about american christianity and slavery? >> guest: i didn't really hear all that. >> host: that american christianity perpetuated slavery, particularly in the south. >> guest: that's true to an extent. certainly christian teachings in the south changed beginning around 1798, 1800. they changed from a necessary

evil kind of approach to the positive good kind of approach, and you see ministers coming up with the wildest kind of explanations of the mark of cain and the curse. i did some ghost-writing for a very influential african-american minister, and he did a series on race simple -- raisism -- racism in america and we talked about the biblical precepts don't support slavery in the concept it was used in america in any way, shape or form. yes, jews had slavery rut under very strict conditions, had to be voluntary after seven years if you said i want to attach myself to you, you could but there was no racial or hereditary slavery in the jewish system and the system that originally came into christianity.

so, the idea that these guys distort the biblical record is horrendous. this would have been fixed if you had free access of information in the south. but of course all abolitionist tracks were shut down by southern postmasters. you couldn't sell uncle tom's cabin in the south. ministers who preached against slavery war tarred and feathered and driven out by government. so here's a case where you have government oppression, government restriction of the free market. die think slavery would have ended if there had been a truly free market? no, because slaves were capital, and lincoln's mistake in thinking he could buy emancipated slave, had a fundamental flaw and it was with each additional slave you purchase to liberate, the value

of the next slave goes up, and so you would eventually get to the point where you couldn't afford to buy -- even the u.s. could not afford to buy anymore slaves to rib rate. >> host: in your become, seven event that separate america you write about the dred scott decision. the decision in 1857 represented a unique moment in which the supreme court managed to simultaneously abuse the constitution, rule against human rights, severely damage the economy, and help start a war, all in one fell swoop. >> guest: yeah. that was quite a trick. >> host: explain. >> guest: well, a southerner, former slaveholder, was determined to interpret dred scott's appeal appeal -- by the way at that time scott was free -- to interpret scott's appeal not only in such a way as to say scott can't bring a case,

he is a slave, but to make a grander ruling on all of american slave legislation, including in the northwest ordinance, which prohibited slavery in the american northwest. including the missouri compromise, which said all territory before the 36-30 line had to be free. this is why van buren got to agitated because all of the states, including south dakota, from which we just had a caller, would be free states and wouldn't allow slavery. so he looked to overturn that and he does, and he persuades two of them, northern justices to go along so it looks like a bipartisan court. a case for bipartisanship and he starts a panic, and this part is the only part i claim any kind of original rights rights to prr

a professor and i did a paper in 1991 on the panic of 1857. i think we showed convincingly, at least so far, in the 20 years since it was written nobody has challenged itself -- the dred scott decision opened up the territories to bleeding kansas. it was going to make the dakotas and wyoming, all those territories look like kansas, with the massacre, bloodshed and all the rest, and as a result, what dred scott did was it caused the railroads running only east and west to just collapse. en in of the ones running north and south. that in turn caused the banks in new york city to fail. provokes the panic. >> host: you're watching book tv on c-span2. this is our "in department" program. once a among we feature an

author, this month, larry schweikart. robert in livingston, montana, good afternoon to you. >> caller: good morning. [inaudible] >> guest: 1972. >> caller: in all the travels, university write, et cetera, et cetera, have you found any university that teaches two courses on the federal reserve and had you read secrets of the federal reserve with the creature of jet and montana, chapter 21 -- 20 and 21? >> guest: i have not read that. i do know the essence of that book. i have not found that -- again, i do not teach an economics department but i've not found any history departments that

teach about the federal reserve. now, as a conservative, i'm a dissenter in terms of demonizing the fed. i don't think the fed does a very good job, but on the other hand i don't believe in conspiracies. the fact is eugene white has a terrific book called "regulation reform of american banking" and traces the fact that the federal reserve was the result of more than 30 years of efforts by local small, montana, arizona, nebraska, new york, south carolina, unit bankers who were seeking to reform the banking system to minimize the power of new york city and thought they had done that with the feds by splitting into it 12 districts of which new york is only one and missouri has two. providing a lender of last resort so it would not be the new york fed or j. p. morgan, and so i understand the concerns

of the feds. my -- this is what i told professor friedman when we debated on the barge going down the danube mitchell view is the competition saw a soft spot and if you allow free and unlimited, private notes -- yes, allow people to print their own money, you will soon minimize the power of the fed because you'll have groups and institutions whose money will be more valuable than dollars and the fed will have to compete with them. >> host: and last summer, book tv interviewed the author of the free system. if you want to watch that go to the web site, booktv.org, up in the upper left-hand corner you'll see a search section. type in the name and you can watch it. r.j. in brooklyn, new york, you're on book tv with larry schweikart. r.j., you with us?

>> caller: hello? yes. professor schweikart? >> guest: yes. >> caller: i have a brief question regarding the -- [inaudible] [inaudible] >> caller: the problem of the conservative movement is that the people --

[inaudible] >> guest: okay, well, first of all, i grew up in arizona with tons of conservative hispanics. it wasn't odd to have conservative hispanics. what has happened in the meantime is that many groups have become wards of the state, as it were. this first happened with african-americans, largely in the great society. people wanted to blame fdr, but the shift occurred in the great society with the single program, afdc, that we don't need to get into. in terms of the term itself,

conservatism, i'm a political -- the muslims were the greatest slave-holding area in the world at the time. certainly the vast majority of slaves did not come to america but went to south america and to cuba and the west indies. so, again, when you apply the present glasses to the past you're asking for trouble. but as political conservatives-what the founders wanted to do is to maintain the rights of englishmen as outoutlined and keep the state small so individuals would have the greatest opportunity and freedom to purr sure their dream. >> host: larry schweikart is our guest. here's a summary of his books:

america's victory, why the u.s. wins wars and will win the war on terror, came out in 2006. 48 liberal lies about the american history. came out in 2008. seven events that made america america, 2010. american entrepreneur, also came out in 2010. what would the founders say, 2011. the patriot's history reader, essential documents. 2011. and the most recent, patriot's history of the modern world from america's exceptional -- in the patriot history reader. you write about this become that we hope this book provides anyone interested in our history a collection of some of the central documents placed into context that will aid them in understanding the time, place, and above all, the is in so cal

setting. does this book include the typical documents, the constitution, the declaration of independence, et cetera? >> guest: no. and we deliberately left those out. we figured that most people, most home schoolers are always going to have that. we wanted to include representative documents that aren't always found. obama's speech. >> host: why was that included? >> guest: because i think it was quite revealing about how barack obama sees the world, how he sees america's role in the world and how he sees is lamb. -- islam. there were a number of other documents that were quite representative of the time. a mellon book on taxation, for example, is incredibly appropriate because andrew mellon came in, in 1920 -- never

heard of the great depression in 1920. but we had 22% unemployment. very high in some parts. most unemployment was reaching on average well over 15%. as veterans came back from the war, and we were already producing at 100%, here come all the veterans. and of course, -- mellon does a study of tax revenue, and he says, you know, looks like tax revenues have been declining a little bit. why are tax revenues declining in and in the study, he found that tax rates had gone up steadily, and yet everytime the tax rate went up more, the revenues declined a little bit more from that group. and he concluded that, you know, it might be better to actually lower tax rates and the government would get more money.

it's an early version of the last -- there's two points on the curve at which the government will get no money and 100%. nobody is going to give 100% of their check so mellon makes an argument for lowering taxes and then we get down to an astounding 1.6% unemployment. now, a president today who could get 1.6% unemployment, they just blew up mt. rushmore and just put him up there. he would be treated with that kind of appropriate level of achievement, and yet somehow the roaring 20s were demonized as this period that leads up to the great depression. >> host: larry schweikart, you included president obama's speech, did you think about

putting in his race speech in philadelphia in '08? >> guest: sure. we wanted to use his hope and change speech and could not get rights to it. this one was a public document so we were able to get it. >> host: hope and change not public? >> guest: as far as i know. that's what i was told. could be wrong. that was the first win we asked to get. we wanted to use a couple of other speeches, as i recall, which didn't -- all the time you can't get the writes to everything you want to use. but we have the agenda 21, which i don't think you're going to find in a lot of readers, which americans really ought to be aware of. >> host: which is? >> guest: the u.n.'s agenda for climate change and all these other social changes they're going to institute through central and urban growth, economic growth, and elements of the u.s. government are

unfortunately already adopting elements of agenda 21. i'm not a cop spiers theorist, i don't think this is being done under the radar. >> host: john, in syracuse new york, go ahead with your question or comments. >> caller: yes, how you doing, mr. schweikart. first i want you to comment on your book about that america will win the war against terrorism, and what happens back when you -- with afghanistan, they lost the war, because afghanistan did not have a -- [inaudible] therefore, -- [inaudible] >> in vietnam was similar to afghanistan, and the united states had -- also, i heard

somewhere that washington was the eighth governor and not the first. please comment. thank you. >> host: why don't you start with the washington and then -- >> guest: i've never heard that one before. maybe i'll google and it see what comes up. i argue vietnam is a very poor example how to win a guerrilla war. i think a better example of one we fought and won was the filipino incentury expression the moral wars of 1911. interesting, in america's victories i point out that the percent of land forces fighting in the philippines, as the share of our total land army, that is, army and marines -- was very close to the percent of troops we had fighting in iraq and afghanistan in 2001 through 2010 as a percent of our total lan forces, and we won that.

it does take time. one study i've seen of ten communist insurgencies in the late 20th century show that the government -- that would be the antiguerrilla forces -- won seven of the ten. vietnam is obviously one we last. but ma lay ya is one the government won. the average length of time it takes to win an insurgency war is six years. >> host: where in your view do we stand on the war on terror? >> guest: i think that we have made some great strides in some ways. we have not experienced another major attack on america's homeland. i think al qaeda is pretty much defanged, and was before we killed osama bin laden. i think we had taken out the whole deck of cards and three or four others. in america's victories, for example -- i don't think that bush intended this but what

happened was by putting troops in iraq we suck in certainly all of al qaeda from around the world, and so i did a study -- it's in the conclusion of the revised edition only of america's victories. what i found were iraqi statistics and they separated out iraqis, others. well, our soldiers had their own handling procedures. so we were not the other. these were clearly not iraqi soldiers. so, who are the other? if you have civilians, who remember the others who were being killed? they would be terrorists. and so i evaluated, add up all those and found that from 2001 to mid-2006, we had killed conservatively about 40,000 terrorists. most of them in iraq.

most of them al qaeda. we had captured by official statistics over 25,000. using traditional military wounded to kill ratios, i cut it in half. they don't have very good medical care. i said four to one. you can figure in another 100 to 150,000 wounded and typical desertion rate shows of 10%. so from 2001 to 2006, the captured, killed, and wounded, took off the battlefield, almost a quarter of a million terrorists or insurgents. nobody survives those kinds of losses the persian empire gave up trying to conquer greece when it lost 30,000 men. so, i think that we badly damaged al qaeda and the world terrorist network. it's also a mistake to say you can't win a war against an

ideology. we clearly won a war against fascism, and a war against communism. so you can defeat guerrilla groups and you can defeat ideology. it does appear some of the northwest afghanistan is unraveling but that's a little too current to go there. >> gregory, new jersey, you're on book tv on c-span2. >> caller: i'm amazed by your disingenuous. first of all, for those terrorist were in iraq was we innovated it. they weren't there before half. second of all, the previous caller when he said washington was the eighth president, it's common in trivia games to count the seven presidents of the continental congress under the articles of con federation as the first president. i know that's pseudo history. i want to talk about a comment you made early on in the program playing down the effect of columbus. i think if you look at the

chronicles of the explorers of the generation of columbus, you'll fine the population of north and south america was vastly more than it was than when those areas were settled 100 years later. i also think you rule fine it's disengine reduce to compare the slavery imposed in the western hem spheres to any other slavery in duration and the whole sale integration of people into a new place, and not only was there much more slavery in the southern hemisphere, but let's not forget that after the war of jenkins, the slave trade was month knoppizeed by the birching in the abolished slavery. what i really -- >> host: gregory, there's a lot of the table there let's get an answer. >> guest: first of all, let's start with iraq. in fact the information is pretty clear that'm as al --

al qaeda was pouring into iraq. i use the example of a roach motel. we set up a roach motel and the roaches came in. in terms of columbus, i had a charge chart that said columbus killed the indians and i have the recent scholarship you will fund. one thing you will note is every new piece of scholarship that comes us reduces the number of estimated -- i rule call them indians -- in the new world with every single new estimate that -- it gets lower and lower and lower. so this notion that indian population numbers were just decimated is just simply wrong. don't do trivia a lot so i don't know the one about washington in terms of slavery, i'm sorry, the caller is wrong. islamic slavery was the worst in the world. it was perpetual. goings up and down the coast of

africa, and this is where we get the very word, slave. from the slavs that the muslims were taken out of eastern europe. so he is right there there's no comparison. islamic slavery was worse. >> host: a book we have not talked about. american entrepreneur, came out in 2010. who was jack daniels. >> guest: he was a baptist whiskeymaker. either in kentucky or tennessee. and he found that people had a hankering for his product, and he became quite famous at selling jack daniels history. interestingly enough at almost the same time, dr. thomas welch comes out with a grape juice so people don't have to drink wine and they can get the same wine taste. so, entrepreneurs out of almost any product. >> host: why did aclu jack daniel. >> guest: he was a successful entrepreneur.

my goal was include as many different entrepreneurs from as many different walks of life as possible. by the way, that's a -- i co-authored -- chapman university, is a expanded version of a book auld run trip neurallal adventure, and i wrote that book originally to be a general trade book, but it was picked up as a textbook, and i learned a harsh lesson that textbooks don't get into book stores, so it never got out to a broader public. it was written to a broader public but never got out there. it was quite successful as a textbook but when we wrote american entrepreneur again, our goal was to make sure we had something that would go out the broader public in book stores. >> host: you mention that jack daniels is -- was a baptist, and in your book, american entrepreneur, you write:

capitalism's spiritual side was the most cheerly seen in the activities of entrepreneurs who constantly must act on faith. ultimately they must believe their idea, product, service, or business, will succeed. >> guest: yeah. and i think authors know this as well as anybody. right? certainly your first book, to some people, you have to write it first. and you submit it to the publisher like a sacrifice. here is my creation. please say you love it. but you don't get a dime from it until it's already accepted and put out and published and sold. so you really have to have the leap of faith that what you have done is worthwhile, that people will like it, and that you're going to submit it out on to the market and see what happens. we're very spiritual exercise. >> do you. >> host: do you have a favorite entrepreneur you mention in the book? you talk about thomas welch and

joseph campbell, isaac singer, charles post, the serial -- cereal, tupper of tupperware. >> guest: i think post is one of my favorites. he has done everything. been a school teacher, sold insurance. and his health is failing and he is middle-aged guy. just like ray roc -- ray crock, a this is al bundy, a more than middle age shoe salesman and yet post goes to battle creak, michigan to kellogg sanitarium. and developed kell cereals and post doesn't get well so he goes to another sanitarium where he comes one if this stuff called postum, a coffee substitute, and then starts coming up with a

cereal and it's very crunchy and takes like grapes so it's called drape nuts even though it doesn't have nut -- nuts or grapes in it. so he make a cereal empire out of almost nothing. >> host: jb in toledo, thanks for holding. you're on with professor larry schweikart. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. a couple of questiones. one, you spoke of the johnson-jfk connection to the vietnam war. i was just wondering, jfk executive order 11110 in relation to his assassination.

>> host: will you actuals what executive order 11110 is? >> caller: can give your -- [inaudible] i have another question. can you give me an example of the influence of greenbacks during abraham lincoln's presidency? >> guest: sure. i'm not sure what order he is referring to i suspect it's the order in which jfk removed a thousand engineers from vietnam after an engineering battalion completed its job, and this is used by all the conspiracy theorists to say, see, jfk was going to get us out of vietnam. i don't see how you make that

argument when kennedy had 600 american advisers in vietnam when he starts and has 16,000 when he is assassinated. by his own admission in a speech, he later said -- he said that at one point we have, quote, 25,000 american military personnel in southeast asia. so i don't know if he let the cat out of the bag and he actually had more there, if he was counting everybody in thailand, and he never made clear what he was talking about. again, i'm not a conspiracy theorist. i think oswald acted alone, but if he didn't, show me the bullet and show me the audio sound track because we have no other shell casings no other bullets that day. the guys from csi would say, there's no forensic evidence, and we have audio recordings, and there's three shots. what with waist other question? >> host: greenbacks and abraham lincoln. >> guest: yes, lincoln doesn't have a lot to do with grownbacks. his secretary of the treasury from ohio, sam chase, comes up

with the idea, and the union's job in the civil war, one of their main problems was to fund the war, and chase comes up with a number of methods to fund the war. he starts the first income tax, which is soon ruled unconstitutional. he borrowed a lot for u.s. bonds. but he also inflates. turns on the printing press. and the greenbacks were part of that effort to inflate the currency. unlike national bank notes, which were created in 1862-63, which had to be backed by gold and silver, greenbacks had that famous line that our money has on it today, this note is legal tender for all debts public and private. they were not backed by gold and silver. so it was a deliberate inflation area issue. they issued 480 million of them. it does not insulate in the north for a lot of reasons.

they're convertible into national bank notes which are convertible into gold and silver. b., 480 million sounds like a lot but in terms of money it's not that much money in the north. and c., genius of chase, he accepted both national bank notes and greenbacks as payment for cash. the cop fess was si does not accept confederate note for payment of confederate taxes. by doing that chase imbued the paper money with some value. you could always pay your taxes with it. in the south, confederate notes have no value. couldn't even pay your tasks. >> host: wasn't there a lot of problems with counterfeit bills prior to the national currency? >> guest: yes. after the national banking currency act. but prior to that time, competitive money, and competitive money -- you had

your printing press, and a lot of people take your money because you always redeem them in gold and silver, and word gets out -- i had in one of my books on banking in the american south, i had evidence of a atlanta bank whose notes were the sole circulating medium in chicago in the 1840s. could be in 50. i think it was the 40s. but because he always backed them in gold, and because they had a great reputation. but it wasn't just the reputation. they had in the day something called bank note reporter, which was a telephone book, if you will, of all the notes out there and you could turn and say i got schweikart bucks from ohio. they only selling for a .3% discount. they're okay. and you can find out if any money was of any value or if a

50% discount-don't take it. >> host: ron, huntington beach, california. you are on book tv on c-span2. professor larry schweikart is our guest. >> caller: good morning from southern california. my question has to do with, you wrote a book which i believe you said, what would the founders say. my question has to do with political parties and just a little context. jefferson says -- [inaudible] george washington wrote about the effect -- madison wrote all sorts of nasty things about factions and parties. in the context of the separation of power, -- [inaudible]

legislative branch working together to put people on the court. election day, you have two small minorities that provide those choices on the ballot for the general election, and the election -- the effect on representative -- [inaudible] >> guest: thank you. you mention some of the most appropriate -- what you did not mention what madison went on to say after he denouns political parties. he then says but they're necessary. he said, and in addition, check, and addition.

madison was the first one to say we need competition among -- in the political process among different groups. now, madison had in mind dozens of factions that would thoroughly diminish the ability of any one group to control the government. this is where our friend martin van buren comes back in. van buren gets it down to two parties and the way van buren does that is that when he sets up the spoil system, he makes it so you have to appeal to a large segment of the american public to get elected. we had a two-party winner take all system, unlike, for example, israel or france where you have personal representation. this takes away the experience. the good news. bad news it pushes all parties toward the middle.

so third parties don't have a a voice because over time, due to the spoil system, they're not going to have any speech in control no control of the executive, hence they won't have jobs to give away. and without those jobs to continually give away to your supporter, they aren't going to continue to be supporters. so the libertarians might elect a single ron paul type to a single district. you reward your friends in the van buren system. so you can thank vanburn for the party system. it's what we have to live with. >> host: a couple of sweets. ...

... that probably is the context there. >> host: tane in king george, virginia, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hi, mr. schweikart. >> guest: hi. >> caller: in doing research for my book, i came across a question i'm hoping you can answer. i included in the appendix to my book the various resolutions for ratification for the original constitution. and in looking at those and then looking at how the final bill of rights was written, there's a huge disconnect. has anyone done a study or

published anything that explains why the bill of rights used the language that they did? >> guest: yeah, and i can't name the books off the top of my head, but there are a number of good, scholarly books out there that deal with not only the ratification of the constitution, but the bill of rights, i think the first draft of the bill of rights -- i could be wrong, but i think it had 13 different rights enunciated. it was 12, okay, i was pretty close. and, yeah, i mean, i think there's some good stuff out there. if you just go to amazon and put in ratification and bill of rights, i think you'd come up with probably the top ten scholarly books in a heartbeat. >> host: this is our monthly "in depth" program on booktv on c-span2. this month it's history professor larry schweikart as "a patriot's history of the u.s." came out in '04, "america's

victories" came out in 2006. "48 liberal lies about american history," 2008. "seven events that made america america" was his next book. "american entrepreneur" came out in 2010. "what would the founders say," 2011. "the patriot's history reader: essential documents for every american," and, basically, the first half of two-part series on that one. again, very quickly, why the use of "a patriot's history"? >> guest: the term was, first of all, to identify with the reader that this is not going to be a volume that bashes america. it's going to present an optimistic, pro-american approach to history. it doesn't mean we don't include warts because we have plenty of warts in there. but it's not going to be my

country always wrong i think was the line that mike allen wrote in "patriot's history." it's certainly not my country always wrong which is where, for example, zinn goes. >> translator: patriot's history.com is your web site. >> guest: all one word, and you can see the film at www.rock www.rockinthewall.com. >> host: and which film is that? >> guest: that's rockin' the wall. i started a film company, and you can see all our trailers at rockin' the wall studios.com. >> host: so a couple of different web sites. an hour and a half to go in our conversation with professor schweikart. every month the producerrer of this program, tonya davis, likes to send the author a questionnaire to get some more background on the authors. we want to show you the answers that she got.

>> host: and as we continue "in depth" for this month, our guest is professor larry schweikart, university of dayton. want to start off with this e-mail that we've received from james in tyler, texas. given that you listed quite a few musical greatest influences, he says: as a fellow drummer, i would like to know your opinion as to the greatest rock drummer of all time, and who was our greatest president? >> guest: well, it's a tough question only because it's like when you talk about greatest guitar player. you have to always throw in people like bebe king even though they're not with hendricks or clapton -- hendrix or clapton. so i always go to run -- ringo starr. most drummers will cite ringo starr as an excellent drummer. most nondrummer musicians will

say he was lame, which is kind of fun uny. that said, in terms of just at his peak carmine of peace, he backed up ozzy osbourne, when he was of in his prime from '68 to have '72, he was by far, in my view, the best. john bonham of led zeppelin said that he learned most of his stuff from carmine. i really like ginger baker of cream, but it's interesting that baker said in his own biography that he was not a rock drummer. he's a jazz drummer -- by the way, a very good polo player, too, did you know that? [laughter] so i would go in order with carmine, ginger baker, ringo starr, john bonham, and i love the guy from the tubes, native arizonaen in there, prairie prince. and president's top five are washington, lincoln, reagan,

coolidge, cleveland. >> host: why coolidge? >> guest: coolidge was tremendous. he kept his hands off everything. he's the one where unemployment went down to 1.6%. we were at peace. we had a phenomenal economy. the only thing that i criticize coolidge for is he was a little too noninterventionist, and i think contributed very, very slightly to the rise of nazi germany and the japanese in terms of not wanting to get involved in some of the things there. >> host: professor schweikart, you list under favorite writers the prendergast series by douglas preston and lincoln child. what is that? >> guest: yeah. prendergast is the fbi agent. i -- the sense i get from their books is he's very tall and almost an albino. very interesting-looking guy. he can use a gun, but he's one of these guys that more often solves crimes with his mind.

they wrote a whole series, one of the earliest ones was "cabinet of the curiosities" which is a tremendous book. they then got "the relic" which was made into a movie, but it doesn't feature pendergast, even though he's in the book slightly. and then they have a series, "dance of death" and "wheel of darkness" and a couple others. those are tremendous fiction books. >> host: are members of steppen wolf still alive? >> guest: i don't know. >> host: what was their biggest hit? >> guest: these were some of the earlier guys, so by then hendrix and zeppelin, all the rest were out there. you look back at those early guys, all those guys with were just, you know, they were so lame. and when i heard them in concert, my jaw dropped at how tight and how professional they were. we just had newfound respect for

steppenwolf after that. >> host: who is paul johnson, and why do you list him as one of your favorite authors? >> guest: paul johnson is a british author. he was the editor of one of the large british newspapers or magazines, i can't remember which. you probably know this, right? >> host: can't remember offhand either. >> guest: okay. but he saw every news article that came across his desk for 30 years. and he internalized all of it. and he wrote a book called "modern times," came out in the late '80s. it was a history of the world from the '20s to the '80s that was just masterful in going through world history. he got everything. but he would make allusions to stuff that students today just would be, you know, very helpless. the names he throws out and just assumes, because you're a well-read person, you're going to know who, you know, the third president of tanzania was or something like that. at any rate, it was revised and

updated in '91, so it's now a his roy ri of the world from the '20s to the '9s. i can't really use it for world civilization classes. it's just too deep. there's just too much there. >> host: and paul johnson has been a guest on this program as well. you can go to booktv.org, type in paul johnson in the search function, and you can watch it online. in the tweet for you, professor: what is your opinion of alexander hamilton and his relationship with george washington? it comes from somebody tweeting under the moniker horoscope of usa. >> guest: i'm a big fan of hamilton. this torques off any number of my conservative friends, but i like hamilton a lot. the biography of hamilton is masterful. hamilton put people in their context, right? hamilton came out of a mercantilist background. he did not know capitalism. it was fairly new to him.

and so when he seeks solutions for the american economy, they tend to drift toward bigger government solutions. however, as i show in "what would the founders say," hamilton's first challenge was a panic in 1791, a bank panic. he refused to bail out thomas willing who was the perpetrator. he didn't pull a gm bailout. he said, sorry, bud, you're on your own. but in keeping with his background, he quietly went to all the private banks in new york city and said we want you guys to lend to each other, because we don't want this to become a citywide panic. so i thought that was the perfect blend of not newsing government power to bail out an individual who had messed up, but using the government's

authority to encourage people to bail each other out. i think hamilton is a tremendous secretary of the treasury, and he was very close to washington, and he wrote all of washington's speeches as i alluded to earlier. quite brave man. he charged the bunker at yorktown, and he was one of the two men to charge one of the guardhouses at trenton. >> host: doubled the size of government and used terrorism to restrict civil liberties. >> guest: that's your opinion. >> host: jeff e-mails in to you -- and, by the way, if you want to dial in and talk with professor schweikart directly, we'll put the numbers up on the screen in just a second. 202-585-3880 in the east and central time zones. 585-3881 in the mountain and pacific time zones. this is an e-mail from jess. some historian said, and i paraphrase: history is a prism

by which we could understand the present and see broad outlines of the future. my question, from the way it's gown on all fronts -- going on all fronts, economic, political, demographic, etc., where do you see america situated in the next 50 years? >> guest: um, you know, yoda said always in motion, is the future. and, um, i'm torn. because if you go down a linear model of of his prism, i think he's right. we're in, we're many trouble. certainly, we cannot keep up with 16, 17 trillion debt. you have a sequester battle over either 1-2% depending on whose numbers you accept of growth of the federal budget. not just 1-2% of the budget. and it's heralded as the end of the world. how are we ever going to tame a $17 trillion debt if we can't

deal with that? so on the one hand, if you just go by a linear progression, you'd have to say by 2050 we probably wouldn't even be here. the other side of me sees how rapidly in history, literally overnight, things can change. for example, in may 1942 we were in deep trouble. the japanese had yet to lose a single battle in the pacific. they controlled one-third of the pacific, more people and territory than any empire in human history. they had blown all of our battleships out of the water. they had already sunk one carrier. we only had two carriers actively left in the pacific at that time. and yet within one month they essentially lost the war. after the battle of midway, they could not win the war. they might not lose if we gave up trying to prosecute the war,

but they could no longer win the war just one month later. and so i think -- and you can do any number of these things to see how rapidly history turns on just one or two sudden events. i mean, van buren, whom we've talked about a lot, forms the more than party system in less than four years, and it's continuing to shape us today. >> host: larry schweikart is our guest, and bill from manhattan beach, california, is our caller. >> caller: hello, professor schweikart, you're a hero to me primarily because you insist on the truth, and i don't mind hearing about the warts as long as we figure out a way to not do that. or soft it. solve it. but i have a bone to pick. coincidentally, both issues are about roosevelt. you straightened me out when you took apart the book about the day of deceit, roosevelt knew that pearl harbor was going to be attacked and all that.

i respect your research and all that, so i stand corrected. but when you get on to the federal reserve and you say it was a good thing that we get off the gold standard, that sure was a disaster. >> guest: no, i did not say that. i didn't say that. i said that the federal reserve can work so long as you have a system of competition whether it's private competition, i think other states can, you know, the yen, the peso, can work a little bit toward that. but i didn't want say that we should have -- i didn't say that we should have gone off the gold standard. i said that when the fed was conceived, nobody thought that a federal reserve would act without a gold standard in place. does that help? >> caller: that's -- but look at the book by wayne jett on amazon, it's called "the fruits of graft," and it'll tell you from roosevelt's treasury secretary, roosevelt caused the

depression by buying gold and rattling it in the sense that he didn't create currency to match it. roosevelt knew it. look at "fruits of graft," please. >> guest: well, let me give you a slightly different take on that. i i certainly would agree, certainly, with burt folsom, my friend who did "new deal or raw deal." i would certainly agree that roosevelt exacerbated a temporary recession and turned it into the great depression. i have a friend, former colleague at uc santa barbara, steven, he's retired now. steve did a paper that very few people have ever cited, but i've never seen anybody really refute it in which he argues that the my mum wage law which first -- minimum wage law which first came into effect in 1934 as a temporary measure drove down hiring and business expectations to a catastrophic level. and we never would have gotten out of the depression as reasoning as the minimum -- as

long as the minimum wage law made it such that an employer had to pay, ten employees a dollar each, now he had to pay $2, but he could only hire five employees, okay? so i certainly agree that roosevelt had a major role to play in exacerbating the depression. i would argue that when roosevelt took us off gold, he did the country major favor for the -- for this reason: the world was on the gold standard at the time in the 1920s, but slowly nation after nation had gone off the a gold standard while the u.s. was on the gold standard. well, you know gresham's law, bad money drives out good. and what was happening was other countries or were redeeming dollars in gold. gold was flowing out of the country. gold is the reserve or was the reserve for our nation's banks. we were drastically destabilizing the nation's banks by allowing an outflow of gold.

so what roosevelt did was by taking the country off gold, he stopped that outflow. i think that's one of the few really good things roosevelt did. let me mention to you since you brought him up stennis' book, i did a review of ten net in a journal called continue knewty. since that time a number -- continuity. since that time a number of other things have come out such as the one i mentioned by phil jacobson that showed that, in fact, ten et's research was off. what i showed in my review, i went through every single phrase where he said something, what i would call an active and conclusive sentence such as this means roosevelt knew, except he never said that. in every single instance i found in his book, i think i counted 147, he said almost certainly or roosevelt should have almost certainly -- surely roosevelt

knew. he couldn't say with a single footnote one time a piece of evidence that showed roosevelt knew about the pending attack on pearl harbor, and that's when i said this book's full of it. >> host: alan lazarus e-mails in from shreveport, louisiana: your guest misspoke when he attributed the phrase "entangling alliances to washington." >> guest: jefferson. >> host: jefferson used it in his first inaugural. washington's was -- [inaudible] >> guest: i think, though, sir, if you look at the draft -- i could be wrong, but i think if you look at the draft of the speech, i'm pretty sure entangling alliance is in the draft too. either way, they both shared that view that at least for the time being we could not form an entangling alliance with somebody ls else. >> host: what was the gilded age? >> guest: guilded age, roughly 1870 to 1900. it's, um, it's a derogatory

term. all these people were getting rich kind of at the expense of everybody else. the fact is during the gilded age the wages of the average american worker skyrocketed. people got to be better off faster than at any other time in human history. it was really quite remarkable. and this is all, almost all due to the efforts of people like vanderbilt, carnegie, rockefeller, morgan, you know, the so-called robber barons who i think were, in fact, captains of industry. >> host: and thomas henderson, fyi, just tweeted in: what is your view of the robber barrens? do you want to expound on that at all? >> guest: sure. i'll give a plug to burt folsom for another of his books, he has a book called "myths of the robber barons." and i think he shows these guys were indispensable. that carnegie was worth more to america and its future than all the people, unfortunately, who worked for carnegie, that he did something no one else could do.

he found a way to make low-cost steel that was good and sell it. rockefeller found a way not only to make very low-cost kerosene for home illumination, i argue rockefeller saved the whales, that he did more to save the whales than greenpeace ever did. because interior illumination of the day was whale oil. but after rocky's kerosene, whale oil was out, whaling came to a dramatic -- not total end, but it fell off dramatically. i tell my students that i think if james cameron ever gets to the bottom of the marianas trench, he's going to find a statue to john d. rockefeller erected by the whales and that once a year they do a pilgrimage to the statue and do the whale thing. >> host: doug in mercer island, washington, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. i very much appreciate what c-span does. i'm hoping to give a little ammo to the professor for his myth

about jfk's assassination being due to a conspiracy to continue to vietnam -- the vietnam war. i had a radio show, and we had donald kagan and walt rahs tow who was national security adviser both to kennedy and johnson for a while and asked him that very question. and he said, bunk. he said jack kennedy, before he died, had no intention of withdrawing from vietnam. thank you. >> guest: no, you're absolutely right. and, um, i'm sure many of our viewers have seen jfk, the oliver stone movie. and the premise of that is that johnson has kennedy killed in order to sell more bell helicopters, because bell helicopters were gonna -- were used in vietnam, and they were made in texas. now, a small problem with that. nobody even thought of using

helicopters in a widespread, anti-guerrilla move until 1966 which is made famous in another book, "we were soldiers once and young," when the 7th cavalry taliban began using -- began using helicopters to drop troops into a hot zone. so the notion that johnson has the prescience to say, oh, we're going to be needing bell helicopters here pretty soon, it's just nonsense. >> host: next call comes from cliff in claireton, pennsylvania. >> caller: yes, professor. >> guest: hi. >> caller: yes. you mentioned that you weren't a conspiracy theorist on the jfk assassination. >> guest: right. >> caller: i was wondering if you were aware that hunt, former oss, former cia and watergate burglars on his deathbed made a taped confession that he was a back bencher on it and that cord meyer from the cia ran the

assassination? >> guest: yeah. there's all these deathbed confessions that come out, for example, jack ruby on his death bed apparently told a fellow convict that it was all lee harvey oswald and nobody else. you know, who do you believe on all this? there is a conspiracy book out there, a more recent one that i think adds a little bit of light, which is, um, i'm drawing a blank. big brown book. and the guys argue that kennedy -- one of them, okay, let me back up. one of my main arguments against conspiracy is that bobby kennedy was attorney general, the top law enforcement officer in america. his own brother was killed. if that's the case, if it's my brother, i'm going to move heaven and earth to find out who did it. yet bobby doesn't. so either bobby's convinced it was a single shooter, or there's something else in the works.

well, this new book -- i think it's called "legacy of secrecy," that has come out has some revealing information that the kennedys were involved with a guy named alameda, a cuban general whom they were backing to replace castro when and if they assassinated castro. and in this book their explanation is that bobby did not go after a full-scale investigation because it would have outeddal maid da and exposed him and revealed the source. again, just a tidbit, i don't think that proves the point, but i think it's interesting. >> host: jim e-mails in, and he talks about a new c-span series. very quickly, a new c-span series that just began a week or two back. it's "first ladies." and each week we'll be looking at all the first ladies. we'll go for the entire year, coming up this week is abigail

adams. mondays, 9 p.m. eastern time live on c-span. but his e-mail is: in conjunction with the new series on first ladies, did the british ever contemplate attacking mount vernon or kidnapping martha washington, and who is your favorite or most influential first lady? >> guest: well, i don't know of any british plot to invade mount vernon. this is well into virginia. you've got to remember that the british liked to stay fairly close to the big torrey cities like new york city, that the further they got into the hinterland as they found in the south once they left charleston, the more casualties they took. and that's what i tell is a race to get up to yorktown and get away from the armies and be resupplied by the british navy. i don't know anything about

that, i've never heard of that plot. could be. i've never heard of it. in terms of influential first ladies, martha washington was not a very influential first lady. i think dolly madison kind of sets the table for an active and somewhat aggressive first lady. one of my favorites is lemonade lucy only because she stands up to the washington party crowd and says no parties here, we're going to serve lemonade. >> host: lucy hayes. >> guest: hayes, yes. lemonade lucy hayes. >> host: robert in lancaster, pa, e-mail: how has the composition of the academy changed since you began teaching? would you say there have been a suppression of conservatives and their views within higher education? if so, how has this affected you in your teaching career? >> guest: that's a great question. um, i think that on most campuses there has been a rather dramatic change. i think that when the new left act da missions came in, the old left would respect you if you

published and if you did your work and it was solid, you're welcomed as a colleague. they differed with you, but you would be treated with respect. but the new left began to come in the late '60s, really '70. and it became all about ideology. and all of a sudden conservatives, we have these various testimonies of people, in essence, being driven out of jobs because they're conservatives or they had conservative viewpoints. my take on it is that it's more institutional and more difficult to weed out because, um, once the left got control of the terms of the debate especially what was legitimate grounds for study, conservatives from the dock toral level on were in a world of hurt. for example, you could no longer write a new biography of washington or a new study of the civil war. it had to include race, class, gender. well, those are all categories of the left.

and they you can seeded, for example, in doing away with period history in most universities. of there's no longer jacksonian era, there's no longer american revolution constitutional, even at ud which, as i say is a wonderful school, we haven't taught civil war during the day to students in maybe 20 years. of so you're doing away with these classical interpretations of history, how we view history and replacing them with much more race, class, gender or orientation. so every new course has to have a race, class, gender aspect, every dissertation has to have that, and it's very difficult to break out of that mold. >> host: less than an hour left with this month's "in depth" guest, larry schweikart from the university of dayton. tom in arizona, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you for c-span. professor schweikart, i really enjoyed "patriot's history," the it was a tremendous refresher after all the other histories that have been published.

>> guest: bucky o'neill, huh? bucky o'neill. [laughter] >> caller: that's right. the first volunteer cavalry. i'm also a wallet ross tow -- walt ross tow student. he was my mentor at the university of texas. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: and as well as being a retired intelligence officer who has served in pakistan. so i have a real interest in jihaddism. >> guest: yes. >> caller: and in your statement you said we defeated the ideologies of naziism and, therefore, we can defeat islamism or jihaddism depending on what word you want to use. >> guest: yeah. >> caller: but in order to defeat those isms, we had to totally decimate the societies. and do you believe that islamism can be defeated without massive kinetic destruction? >> guest: well, yeah, that's a prescient point. you've got to separate, and this

is a hard part, separate the fundamentalist radicals from the majority of so-called moderate muslims. it can be done, but first step is you have to be willing to define your terms. and i think we have far too many politicians and even now people if our military who don't want to define radical islam for what it is. i mean, the fort hood shooter is categorized as a case of workplace violence. well, that's nonsense. it was clearly an act of jihad, and once we get to the point where we can define that, we'll have a better chance at countering it. that said, i have a number of middle eastern students in my classes, and, you know, they say we're sent over here to learn america's ways, we're sent over here to learn freedom of speech and all these kinds of things. so they do want to learn, they do want to in some ways be like us. not in all ways. and we have to be careful about sharia law.

it is a threat, it is being imposed certainly in parts of england and other places, and we've got to resist that here. >> host: larry schweikart, what do you find your students are most interested in? >> guest: band stories. [laughter] better than the band stories. they like stories. this is history, his story, right? and as long as you can frame a point within a good story, they'll listen. and they'll internalize it. if it's just a series of names and dates, they're going to have trouble wit. but you've got to make it -- with it. but you've got to make it a story about people in the past. >> host: craig hoff, north las vegas. e-mail: following the ussr collapse, the files of the former soviet were opened. did these documents change the story of the recent u.s. history and the appraisal of our politicians of that cold war era? >> guest: certainly they have

changed, all, our assessment of how deeply the kgb was involved in american politics. we have found through the files and others dozens and dozens of kgb outright agents, the highest-placed of which was the assistant secretary of the treasury, harry dexter wright. one heartbeat away from being secretary of the treasury. and white was being touted as the vice presidential candidate if harry wallace won the democrat nomination. so -- or if he had stayed on as roosevelt's veep and had askippedded to the presidency -- ascended to the presidency. this is very serious stuff. and i think alier hiss is now without a doubt exposed as a communist agent. the rosenbergs have been totally exposed. even nikita khrushchev said, yeah, we couldn't have done it without the rosenbergs. so i think the fall of the soviet union has shown to all

but the most radical on the left that, in fact, we had been deeply penetrated by soviet intelligent. >> host: next call, michael in westland, michigan. please go ahead. >> caller: yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. >> guest: hi. >> caller: mr. schweikart, you've referenced the general motors pailout twice -- bailout twice during this appearance, and you piqued my curiosity regarding the decision to loan general motors the money. also i would like your feelings towards that, and before you answer, can you take into considerations the enormous contributions general motors made during the world war ii effort and the spectacular success that is undeniable of saving well over one million american jobs -- many in ohio, as a matter of fact -- and the ability for general motors, a corporate icon in american history, to continue and thrive

as it is? thank you. >> guest: well, i'll give a plug back to c-span. just before i came on, your previous show had the current chairman -- >> host: former chairman. >> guest: former chairman of general motors. and he made an excellent casement -- case. here's the criteria i use. the criteria that's used in "what would the founders say" when we talk about hamilton, and i discuss some of these bailouts. i thought that the chrysler bailout was legitimate pack -- back in, was it '84? >> '79. >> guest: i thought that was legitimate, and the reason was chrysler was to technology manufacturer of m1-a1 abrams tanks. i thought the lockheed pail outback in the '70s was legitimate because we needed them to produce military aircraft, and only they could produce certain types. i did not think the bailout of harley davidson was legitimate.

so i think that your criteria needs to be not jobs saved. yes, there will be jobs lost, yes, there will be pain. but the only criteria is, is it constitutional for the government to bail out a company? and i think that criteria needs to be used is, is this necessary to national security. absolutely, gm was critical in world war ii. i tell my students the ford motor company outproduced the entirety of italy in world war ii. no doubt about it. but the question can't be will this cause pain and suffering as a result of a free market failure, which is what government's exhibit m was going up to that point -- gm was going up to that point. but is it constitutional that we put the burden on all the other taxpayers to step in and save a particular company? >> host: larry schweikart, when you look at today's budget and sequestration battles -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- here in washington,

is there a time in history that comes to mind? in american history? tell you what, we'll let you think about that if you don't want to -- you want to think about that a little bit? >> guest: yeah, because i did have one in the mind the other day, but i want to remember how i phrased the argument. >> host: okay. and we will take this call from nick in monroe township, new jersey. hi, nick. >> guest: hi there. and thank god for c-span, we love it. the professor, i'm sure, is familiar with the pinckney brothers' book "decision in philadelphia." in one section there, um, they comment on their position about madison's recording of the events at the convention where according to their research charles pinckney of south carolina essentially originated the man for the constitution.

now, their position is that he was not given credit for that because madison as the secretary for the convention didn't record it. the their phrase was, i believe, that madison, james madison suppressed it and, therefore, madison, you know, historically took credit for the origination. i would just like to know the professor's, professor schweikart's position on that. is there some veracity to this position? >> guest: i don't know. i am not a constitutional scholar. it's not my area of special interest. it's possible. but also remember the pinckneys, obviously, have their own historical position to assert. it's like it's not the votes that count, who counts the votes. in the case of the history of the constitutional convention, it's not what really happened, but what madison said happened. he's our only source on that.

so i don't know what to tell you. but, you know, there's a book called "miracle in philadelphia" that's an excellent review of that that you might want to check. otherwise i don't know what else to tell you on that one. i did come up with an answer though. right before the civil war we were at a total deadlock to the point the house of representatives could not even elect a speaker. we can still do that today. but they could not even elect a speaker. so there have been times in our history where we have had such divergence among the groups that the government was almost at a standstill. and i'll give you one that did not result in war. in many -- in 1911-'12, the only thing congress was concerned with was a revision of the tariff bill. and very similar to our modern tax debates, right? the debate was is so horrible that a group -- was so horrible

that a group called the insurgents tried to unseat the existing speaker of the house. they failed. william howard taft cost himself re-election of the presidency by going back and forth between the insurgents and the traditionalists and not picking a side. eventually, teddy roosevelt comes out of retirement, runs against him, splits the vote, wilson gets elected. the point is, tariff was never passed into law. it's a wasted four years where absolutely nothing happened. and so this happens from time to time in our democracy. it appears to be a little more exacerbated today, i think, because of the news media and the pressure on, for example, the republicans to constantly moderate their views and compromise. but we'll see. >> host: next call for larry schweikart comes from ed in stanford, connecticut. hi, ed. >> caller: hi. dr. schweikart, i'm thoroughly enjoying your interview.

>> guest: hi, ed. >> caller: my question has to do with abraham lincoln, and wouldn't he be even a greater president had he led us out of slavery without war? my premise to that question is i understand one-third of the human race was slaves in the tenth century. you allude today a lot of those slave-holding eras. the economic costs were tremendous of that war. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: i understand many countries used con traited emancipation to rid themselves of slavery, brazil, the spanish empire, etc. you also mentioned questions who regulated the treatment of slaves. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: similarly today, you know, pure capitalism didn't work for us, you know? we had to put in antitrust laws and other things the to regulate capitalism. some will say lincoln had to go to war because of fort sumter, that he actually precipitated that war after only a few weeks in office before trying

different things. i understand that great war, that great battle one horse was killed, so i'm just saying does the emperor really have all the clothes to be given credit for? >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: yeah. i think that lincoln did absolutely everything he could to avoid war, you know? nobody wants to plame, blame the criminal in this case which was the confederacy was the one that wrote slavery into their constitution not once, but three separate times. lincoln had been one of the first to argue for compensated emancipation, but the economic reasons i gave earlier in the show, it wouldn't work here. why did it work with britain? well, britain had no slaves in england. all of the slaves were in tiny parts of the british empire that the british government could easily control. that's not the case in the where the south made up one-half of the american land mass, if not more, made up more than a third

of the american population, and, um, let me bring another book to your attention here. historian out of oklahoma, james houston, has a book called "calculating the value of the union." and houston made a phenomenal argument about the capital value of slaves. we always tend to see slavery in terms of its labor value; slaves picking cotton as the standard image that comes to mind. that was profitable. but what people forget was that slaves were property, and as property they had a great deal of value. how much value? well, i'm grad you asked -- i'm glad you asked. they had more value as property than all the railroads and textile mills this the north put together -- in the north put together. now, we were earlier talking about what does a man go to war over? do you go to war over, you know, 40 cents a year? in this case the south went to

war over something it constituted easily half of its entire capital assets in 186 of 0. so the answer is i don't think there was another way to get rid of slavery. and in large part this is due to the fact that capitalism couldn't work. it would have worked, but it couldn't work because the government, here we are with government again required able able-bodied males to be involved in posses that would chase down runaway slaves. the government, by spreading to the taxpayers the cost of bringing slaves, runaway slaves into court and so forth spread the burden of owning a slave onto everybody. there were innumerable ways houston points to out that government was involved in

perpetuating slavery in the south. not the federal government, but the state governments. and this is what lincoln had to deal with. >> host: leonard ornstein, hi. >> guest: hi, leonard. >> host: do you know him? >> guest: i know him. >> host: well is william county high school? >> guest: i don't remember. i'm pretty sure it's arizona. >> host: arizona, okay. what are your views and feelings about the decreased history instruction time in american middle schools and high schools as a result of no child left behind and race to the top and common core? should instruction of history be dependent on a standardized test? should history teachers really be english and math teachers since that is what schools are judged upon in common core and race to the top? >> guest: yeah. these, these programs are disastrous. no child left behind had, as

most government programs do, a good intention. which was to institute a series of tests and thresholds over which every person should pass. everyone should know certain things when they get out of high school, when they get out of, you know, junior high, whatever. and it usually becomes more about telling teachers what they must teach and, therefore, restricting what they cannot teach. and as a result, it looks as though history education has fallen even further behind. there were some recent polls out that showed that students can't even put major historical figures in the right century anymore. i mean, it's just -- it's disastrous. that said, i'm not opposed to teaching to the test. i do that all the time. if you're a paratrooper, you're taught how to pack a parachute, you teach to the test, and you better be able to pass that test, because when you pull the rip cord, the parachute better

open. it should not be the federal government's job to administer these it'ses, because the federal government -- these tests because the federal government constitutionally does not have a role in education and should not be involved there. so, leonard, i think we're on the same page with this if i know you. this has been something with good intentions that went bad awry, and as a result we're worse off than even 15 years ago. >> host: christine in santa fe, north carolina. >> caller: hi, i'm really enjoying the program. if i'm hearing you correctly, i believe you were not opposed to our going into iraq -- >> guest: right. >> caller: and i think it's a war that cost in the vicinity of half a trillion dollars. and, um, what i'm wondering is, you know, the war was questionable, and i believe it's got questionable results. but if we'd taken that half a trillion dollars and invested it into our infrastructure and leveling the playing field, all,

in many our own country -- in our own country, that would result in the brightest and best rising to the top, coming up with the best idea, putting the u.s. ahead of the curve in terms of, you know, all the new technology inventions, etc. that would be the strongest vote for our way of thinking, and, you know, our freedom system. would that not have been a far better use of a half a trillion dollars? >> guest: okay. i think you're mixing apples and orangings. national defense is -- oranges. national defense is constitutionally ordained by function of government. it's something government should be doing. i do believe that there was a threat there. i think that a lot of those wmds have ended up in syria. i think that there's already rumblings in the obama cia that, in fact, the syrians have some stuff that they shouldn't have and that it probably came from iraq. that said, no president in his right mind in 2002 would have taken a chance that al-qaeda

could have gotten a weapon of mass destruction from saddam hussein. it just wasn't going to happen. now, that said, you can't just say because we don't spend it here on something that is constitutionally approved we can go spend it over here. it is questionable as to whether the government should be spending money on roads and bridges. indeed, for the first 0, 30 years of -- 20, 30 years of our exuns the government spent no money on roads and bridges. those or were all privately-funded companies. i realize today it would be hard for a company to get its revenue back on a freeway and then, you know, if you don't pay your bilker what, your car's shut down on the freeway. i understand that. but the point is that just because you don't spend it on space doesn't mean you're not going to spend it on roads and bridges, or you're going to spend it on education. they're different things used in different ways. >> host: from "48 lies," no

terrorists or weapons of mass destruction were hiding in iraq. >> guest: yeah. news article, i want to say 2009, 550 tons of enriched uranium was processed out of iraq quietly. and was hidden for a long time until it was processed out. i don't know what you call enriched uranium except a wmd in the hands of somebody like saddam hussein. >> host: from your book "seven events that made america and prove that the founding fathers were right all along," one of those events, larry schweikart, is president obama and the media in 2008. what is that event you talk about, and why do you include that? >> guest: it was an event in which for the first time really the media absolutely failed to do its job. i think bernie goldberg has a book called "a big, fat, slobbering love affair," something like that. charlie rose was one of the

first to say was -- we don't know what he believes. we didn't vet him. we don't know who influenced him. we don't know any of these things. well, charlie, it's your job to dig that stuff up. he wasn't vetted on any of this stuff. and to a large degree still has not been vetted on a last lot of this stuff. and -- on a lot of this stuff. and i think that's a shame that we don't know how you can sit in reverend wright's church for 20 years and not hear what the man had to say or how you can have friends like bill ayers and not have an opinion on, you know, what should happen with bombers. so, um, i think this was the epitome of van buren's system. that's why i use that. it comes full circle. this is back to the partisan press. and in this case the press overwhelmingly is liberal, democratic if you want to use that phrase. there is a minority voice press;

fox news, rush limbaugh, is so on and so forth. but it is still a minority voice. and the phrase today is low information voter. your low information voters are not going to hear a lot of that information. >> host: jack, deer harbor, washington. thanks for holding, you're on with professor and author larry schweikart. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. it's been a long wait but worth it. i've been a fan of booktv since its inception on television, and your guest today reminds me of of many that i've seen through the past years. they come on your program full of impressive credentials and well disposed with knowledge and facts, and they share a lot of valuable insights. and there's many things that he has said today that i enjoy. but in the middle of such discussions, sometimes it'll come out with baffling statements if not absolute falsehoods. i refer earlier today when he

called thomas paine an atheist. now, let's forget that he died broke, forgotten, maybe fond of the bottle, a few other things. back in the vital period of his life when he was writing the great works, in his book "the age of reason" on the very first pick he clearly -- page he clearly states, and i'm quoting: i believe in the quality of man. i believe in one good and no more -- one god and no more, and i hope for happiness beyond this life. so i have to ask, how can any right-minded person construe these words as that of an atheist? thank you very much. >> guest: i think what people believe, um, varies from time to time during their life. i'll use the example of alexander hamilton. hamilton early in his life was extremely devout. one of his college roommates said i've never seen anybody pray as much as he does. by midlife, though, hamilton was

all but an atheist. if you'd asked him, he probably would have said i don't believe in god. by the end of his life -- and, admittedly, he didn't know it was coming to an end, but close to the end of his life, he began a transition back to god. so i think there are people at different points of their lives have different religious experiences, and you've just got to kind of reference them when they do. i don't think paine is ever held up as a christian voice among the founders. let me put it that way. >> host: terry, brooklyn, new york. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, everybody. love your channel, love everything. it's great to watch different per spent is -- perspectives and to get a different perspective on something you believe in. a but about something i saw a few months ago. i don't remember his name, he was an expert on lyndon johnson, and he said that towards the end of johnson's term in '68 that johnson pretty much had a solution for the vietnam war, and there was of a treaty just about to be worked out, and

somehow richard nixon was able to or torpedo that and sabotage it. considering all the deaths between '68 and '72 when the war was finally ended, why isn't that mentioned more in people's recollections of nixon? i mean, he's known for watergate, he's known for -- but that, to me, is a worse sin that possibly he let the war continue for another four years just to get back at johnson for some reason. loved your comments about band and beating the band. it's so true, man, all the work in the beginning is so hard, all the carrying equipment. you looking for great drummers, look into a guy called jerry no land. heartbreakers, new york dollings. one of the great drummer ors. thank you, guys. >> guest: i would say this, if johnson had a plan to end the vietnam war, he wouldn't have resigned. and certainly johnson was powerful enough and clever enough. he took a backseat to no one. certainly not richard nixon who had no official authority. at the time, nixon didn't even

have an elected post in 1963. so i find it very hard that johnson would have had a way to get out of vietnam that he didn't employ. >> host: i believe that caller was probably talking about robert caro whose latest book -- >> guest: was he a guest? >> host: ye. he's been on week tv several -- booktv several times. have you heard that story before? >> guest: i have not heard that one. what i do find interesting is that nixon gets so much blame for vietnam, and he takes us down to 70,000 troops when he leaves office, when he resigns. >> host: what about the cambodian bombing? >> guest: and certainly people who, have you hat victor hanson on the show? >> host: yes. >> guest: he would say, hey, why didn't they do that earlier? i have students in my classes -- not so many now because, you know, age is changing, but maybe ten years ago i'd have students whose dads had served in vietnam, and i remember one

student said my dad was serving up near the ho chi minh trail, he used to tell me he could see the north vietnamese in rifle range, and he was inhinted from shooting them knowing that the next day they'd be on the south side of the border, and he'd have to shoot them then. >> host: ray from california, go ahead with your question or comment for professor schweikart. >> caller: yes, larry schweikart. you said fdr took us off the gold standard. what was it that richard nixon did with the gold standard when he was president? thank you. >> guest: yeah. because we were put back on gold after the war under bretton woods. the dollar became the word's reserve currency backed by gold. now, there's a difference between backed by gold and convertible into gold. technically, we were on the gold standard, but you could not go into any bank and take a $20

bill and save give me a gold dollar. it didn't work that way. it was still privately-held gold was still prohibited in a marketplace. i remember buying my first krugerrands in 19, i think it was '73 or '4. i made a killing on them at time. but i took advantage of being able to get gold at the time. so there's a difference between gold as a reserve currency which it was not under roosevelt and gold being in private hands. i hope i didn't muddy the water there. >> host: larry schweikart, you mentioned that when you were arguing with milton friedman on the danube, that was your only trip to europe. why was that? >> guest: i haven't had a desire to go back. >> host: all right. you also report that when we asked you what you're currently reading, you say you're working on your next book which is "patriot's history of modern

world, volume ii." >> guest: right. >> host: and reading scripts and screenplays. what does that mean? >> guest: well, since rockin' the wall came out in 2010, um, i've started a little 23eu8 m company called rockin' the wall studios. you can see our trailers, and we've been developing -- we're currently completing a second documentary called "other walls to fall" about music's part in opening up oppressed parts of the world. we have a heavy metal band from inside tehran, we have a cambodian rapperrer who's on his country's death list, and we've got celebrities like clint black and so on and so forth. and that movie's almost done. but i've been reading a lot of scripts and screenplays for other things that we might produce and do. one of the things that's on the near horizon and some of your viewers might like this is we want to make "patriot's history of the united states" into a

television series like "the men who built america" or "the pacific" and we have a terrific trailer on the web site there. so if you're interested, by all means, get in touch with me, and we'll talk. >> host: dennis, orange city, florida. hello. >> caller: professor schweikart, how are you today? >> guest: hi. thanks for calling. >> caller: did i read that you're at the university of dayton? >> guest: i am. >> caller: i'm a buckeye, graduated from ohio state back in the '70s, and it isn't as left-leaning as some of the other -- i started ohio westland. but let me get to my point. i'm watching c-span, well, maybe a month or two ago, and oliver stone and his associate come on. and, you know, oliver stone is a hollywood movie guy. >> guest: right. >> caller: well, he's presenting himself as a history expert. and what it was was a rewrite of

history. they, he and his cohort are lamenting the fact that truman wasn't making nice with stalin. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: that if only truman would have been nice to stalin, things would have been dramatically different. we wouldn't have had the to drop the bomb and numerous other things, further lamenting that wallace a -- that's the right guy, wasn't he the commie -- b. >> guest: uh-huh. >> caller: that he wasn't elected. that, you know, things would have been dramatically different if only the trumans of the world wouldn't have to have torpedoed. you know, i have a hard enough of tomb trying to reeducate my nephew who went to ohio state and various other schools in ohio, and here you come with a complete rewrite. what in the world is oliver stone doing? is he a dedicated commie? >> host: all right, dennis.

>> guest: well, i wrote two reviews of two of the episodes of oliver stone's "the untold history of america," i think, is the correct title. one on jfk and one on lyndon johnson and vietnam. the errors were just overwhelming. the insinuations were stunning. and you can find these on frontpagemagazine.com where i wrote these reviews. i'm perfectly fine with stone producing and showing whatever he wants to show. my argument is let's get the other side of the story out. of let's yet "a patriot's history of the united states" out on film so people can see another version. and like i said before with zinn, we'll win that competition every time. i'm convinced that one-on-one our ideas will triumph. >> host: larry schweikart, world citizen is a little upset with you regarding your remarks about fox news.

several tweets, but here's one: fox news has divided the country many a way not seen -- in a way not seen since the civil war. >> guest: a, that's just silly. and, b, why would that be? would it be because the main three news organizations had a total no knop hi on news? -- monopoly on news? i mean, rush limbaugh makes a great point. when he came out, the news organizations were in a tizzy because for the first time their view of what was news was challenged. and can now we have several places where that view of what is news is challenged. what we no longer have is that middle voice that tries to come up with some sort of objective news understanding that that's impossible. but it was a standard hued to by the so-called mainstream media for about 60, 70 years, about 1900 to 1960. in the journalism book that you don't have, there was a code of

ethics for journalists in 1913. and it had some things in there x let's see be if your support of all these other news organizations holds to these. it says you should always get the other side of the story. it said you should always have more than one source for every quotation, that all sources needed to be public. you could have no anonymous or on-background sources. right there most of the news media is out the window in terms of their own standard of ethics that was adopted in 1913. is so, um, no, i don't think fox has divided the country, i think it's provided us with a much-needed voice. >> host: joseph in omaha, nebraska. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, sir. professor, i have a question for you, sir. i have a statement also, sir. war, war equals greed. give 'em what they want, or they'll take it. it's the greedy if you win. control, taking what you have if you win.

sir, your opinion on roosevelt, he had a chance to kill bin laden in the mountains of afghanistan, why didn't he do it? >> guest: roosevelt? >> caller: it was because of -- >> guest: you just said roosevelt had a chance to catch bin laden -- >> host: josephs, did you mean, were you talking about president bush? >> caller: yes, sir. >> host: all right, thank you. >> guest: okay. if you read tommy franks' book and don't just go by what you think happened, franks made it very clear that he could not deploy 10,000 troops necessary to the tora bora mountains in time to seal off tora bora. knowing the military the way i do, i don't find that at all unusual. i totally disagree with your statements about war equals greed. i think we proved that with the revolutionary war that, in fact, these men went to war even

though it was only costing them 40 cents a person, a year. why do they do so? because ideas were important, the rights of englishmen were important, and, you know, i think your third point about it equals control, it's interesting. the united states is the only country that i'm aware of in human history that once it conquers someplace gives it back. and i'd refer you to the teller amendment which said within five years after conquering cuba, we needed to give cuba pack to the cuban people. it was an amendment place inside the or war resolution. >> host: alan, e-mail. some say the second amendment was put into the bill of rights to allow citizens to shoot at our government. others say it's there to allow citizens to chase off burglars or shoot dinner. what is your opinion? >> guest: both. i'll give another prop to p steven hall brook's book that every man be armed. halbrook goes into an excellent

analysis of what the english version of the term "militia" meant leading up to the american revolution and the constitution. and it's pretty cheer that english understanding of militia was that the militia was an armed body of men apart from and separate from the standing army who could oppose and, if necessary, fight the standing army of the government. it's also interesting that coming down from the arms of 1182 henry ii said that every man should be armed and, in fact, a mayor's job was to go through the town and knock on doors and not do a gun buyback program, but rather say, hey, are you armed? if not to, quote, give that man any weapons as he should so need. i doubt you'll see this going door to door saying, hey, can i give you a shotgun? you need an a, -- ar-15?

so i think the second amendment was put in so people would be able to oppose tyranny and protect themselves. >> host: susan, e-mail: i've lived in new york and new jersey my entire life but am a ud '78 graduate which is -- and she is happy that there are some conservatives at our wonderful catholic university. um, her point is she agrees with you on most everything except when it comes to the monetary system. >> guest: uh-huh. well, and, you know, you're not alone. i know there's a lot of gold bugs out there. people who think we need to get to a gold-backed currency. i spent, it had to be in the late 90s, i went to a liberty fund symposium. it was a three-day meeting with several scholars, most of them conservative and very devout libertarians. studying a book by leland yeager called "the fluttering veil"

about the gold standard. and at the end of three days, these libertarians and conservatives could not come up with a single monetary standard, a backing, gold, platinum, market basket, whatever, that would actually work. and they were all surprised that they couldn't do so. our current gold supplies are totally insufficient to back money, but philosophically i don't want necessarily gold standard, i want a competitive standard. i want money to compete and the best money to win whether it's private or government. >> host: dave's in atlanta. dave, you're on booktv. ghk yeah. during the early '70s there was a pervasive amount of commune u.s. propaganda -- communist propaganda that was kind of along with the peace movement, and i've come to believe that the left these days

was offended by that more than they would like to admit intellectually, and i would just like to know what the professor's feelingsing are on that. -- feelings are on that. >> guest: i think you're right. i mean, there was a dedicated effort to influence people and american institutions. i have never seen anything that showed they attempted to control or place people in such institutions. i don't think that was always necessary. you've got people like angela davis in there without much control at all. the soviets were very active, but they were also quite targeted in the what they did. and, peter, you were asking earlier about the fall of soviet union and the archives opening up, or one of our questioners did. and one of the things that we found was that they were spending 70% of their propaganda budget in the '80s on star star wars. now, why would you spend all of your prop began da trying to

stop something that, quote, won't work? you know, if i'm a football coach and the other side's running an up the middle play and i stuff it every time, i'm not going to try to get him to switch to a pitch or a pass. i'm going to, yeah, keep running that play. we're going to stop it every time. yet the soviets were desperate to stop star warses. that should tell people that they knew star wars would work and, in fact, they had done extensive work on lasers and stuff in the early '70s. we talk about this in another book that we don't mention here called "trident." it was doug dog lesh. and as a result, i think they didn't immediate to target american hippies, as you call them, i think they kind of felt they had them already. i think their propaganda budgets were going elsewhere. >> host: aryan brown, e-mail: earlier you made a comment that howard zinn's book premise was that in history america got it wrong.

>> guest: yeah. >> host: i disagree. zinn's book is a manifestation of the african proverb, quote: if lions had historians, the tale of the hunt would not always glorify the hunter. of. >> guest: i would ask this of anybody who reads zinn's book and wants to think it's even reasonably accurate as a portrayal of history. forget american history, history. people would agree at least 90% of human history has been war and combat and fighting. how do you write a history of the united united states withoug into the impact or the battlefield occurrences of a single battle? he doesn't discuss a single battle. and yet the greeks thought military history was the most important of all history. again, professor hanson, i'm sure, would agree with this. in that one day at antietam did more to change america than all the social history that has ever

occurred, all the "i love lucy" episodes for whatever they may show about the role of women or sub you are by ya or even cubans. none of that had the same impact on america that a single day on the antietam battlefield did. and how you can write a history of anything, let alone a history of america without discussing war and the impact of war, it's beyond me. >> host: brian e-mails in: could you please respond to this statement, quote, more so than any other founding father we are the country we are and the people we are because of thomas jefferson, because of the declaration of independence and because of the louisiana purchase. >> guest: there's a lot of truth to that. i'm not sure i'd say more than anyone else. when i go to a founding father, i tend to -- jefferson is there, but he wasn't at the constitutional convention. and i think that's crucial that he he wasn't there.

i tend to look at washington as the person who set the tone for what america is and what it should be. certainly, he was the indispensable man. he's the one guy that everybody agreed had to be the first president. not jeff. it's interesting -- not jefferson. it's interesting that everybody didn't want jefferson to be the first president. indeed, more than half didn't want him to be president at all. absolutely, the declaration is critical. but lincoln's greatness was that he tied the declaration to the constitution and said there's a reason that you have all men are created -- that the constitution is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. in other words, that, yes, we have this body of lies, but they have to enforce -- this body of laws, but they have to enforce jefferson's laws. i wouldn't want to minimize him, but i'm not sure i would say he more than anyone is responsible for who we are. >> host: just ten minutes left with this month's "in depth" guest.

next month, amy goodman will be our guest. larry in minneapolis, you're on with larry schweikart. >> caller: yes, professor, what branch of the armed services did you serve in, and when did you serve? what was your specialty orr mo -- >> guest: i didn't serve. i was 4f. they wouldn't take me. >> host: and, larry in minneapolis, why do you ask that question? do you have a follow up? he is gone. we're going to move on to mike in lisbon falls, maine. hi, mike. >> caller: hi. hi, i was just -- i've been in an argument with several of my friends. did the south ever have an out out of the constitution once it was ratified? or was their extension of the con fed rahs is si an extension of the american revolution? >> guest: that's a great question, and it's a point that is debated certainly by neo-con fed rate types of historians.

more of those types and libertarians in the present time. here are the two arguments. one argument was that, um, the government of the united states, the union was a men's club and that in this men's club anyone could pick up and leave the men's club anytime they wanted. the other view of this was that the union was a body. this is lincoln's view, that you have a body, and you can no more sever an arm or a leg from the body without doing horrible damage, possibly killing the body. um, so the answer is it depends on which of the two views you take. now, it's very interesting. jefferson, going back to our previous caller, jeff szob was quite influential. and one of his most influential acts was inspiring the land ordnance of 1785.

and this is in our reader, and i think it's one of the most crucial laws ever passed in america. because it put property into the hands of the people. jefferson's argument in why we needed such a law was he had virginia unload all of its property from what -- it was called landed state. it had land theoretically going all the way to the pacific whereas states like delaware and rhode island were trapped. and jefferson said we virginians, we need to give up this land to the union and sell it off because there are going to be settlers going out there. and at some point these settlers, if we don't make it possible for them to become citizens toward us and a part of our government that are our equal, they will become rebels as we were to england, and they will rebel against us. i say all that to get to this. in that argument we haveson said

that -- jefferson said that these new lands needed to be loyal, they needed to sign a loyalty oath or take a loyalty oath to the constitution, and he went even further, and to the congress. now, i would not go that far, but it's interesting that jefferson said, i'm sorry, these lands all have to be to bead crept to the constitution. >> host: if you enjoy history, reminder that c-span's new "first ladies" series is every monday night, 9 p.m. on c-span. you can go to c-span.org/firstladies, and you can look up the whole series and see the whole schedule. every monday night, 9 p.m. eastern time. larry schweikart, seven events, another one, the johnstown, pennsylvania, flood. why do you say that made america america? >> guest: understand that these are not the most important events in american history, but events that delineate our character, that say who we are.

and the interesting thing about both the johnstown and dayton flood of 1913 is that in both cases the people did not look to the federal government for relief or support, they didn't even look to the state government for relief or support. in johnstown they immediately, as soon as the floodwaters assuaged a little, they immediately cut out ten stars for 70 deputies. they deputized 70 men to stand guard over the town. there was no looting. they immediately began to get relief supplies from all over pennsylvania. carnegie's famous manager captain bill jones personally paid for an entire railroad train full of relief supplies to go into johnstown. they got it as far as the road would go, and then they took it over land with pack mules, horses, on their shoulders if necessary. and they told the national guard -- forget federal, they told the national guard, stay out. we don't need you. in dayton in 1913, same thing.

hay told the ohio national guard, stay out, we don't need you. of mr. patterson of national cash register immediately turned his company into a boat-building business. they built about 400 small boats. as soon as one was done, he'd seasoned out a couple of ncr employees to sail around dayton, rescue people who were stranded, pick up people in the water, deliver food stuffs to people who couldn't otherwise come in, and he turned ncr headquarters into a giant aid station. and, again, they said stay out, we don't need your help. it was days before the ohio national guard came in. federal troops never got there at all. >> host: john in parkersburg, west virginia, pleads go ahead. we have just about a minute and a half left. >> caller: yes, professor, i see that you teach at a catholic university. >> guest: yes. >> caller: and with all that's about to happen in rome, i would like your thoughts, especially

the thoughts of young people. now, as i read the new testament, you know, i see that christ was sort of like a peasant. and he was not even recognized after his resurrection by his own. now, if he were dressed up like these cardinals, he would have been recognized. what's the leap between the simplicity, the simple life that christ lived in the new testament with what's happening in rome with all the pomp and circumstance and is ceremony and gold and banners and all the rest? >> host: john, i apologize, but we're going to have to get an answer from our guest. >> guest: well, first of all, i'm not a catholic. i think this is one of the wonderful things at the university of dayton is that they allow all faiths to teach there and be a part of the community. and like i said, they've been very good to me in that respect. in terms of who jesus was and what his life was all about, i

think it would take us at least another three hours, and i'm not prepared to go there. >> host: what about the pope as a political figure though? >> guest: pope is a very important political figure who played a key role in the demise of the soviet bloc. the three key figures were reagan, thatcher and john paul ii, without a doubt. >> host: hugh, telford, pa, 30 seconds. >> guest: 30 seconds. >> caller: i will talk as fast as i can. i think this is a fantastic show. i watch c-span, and the, mr. . >> walk art is unbelievable. i'm going to the library tomorrow to pick up as many books -- >> guest: no, no, no, buy the books! don't go to the library, buy them! [laughter] >> caller: but i just enjoy it v or very much, guys. i appreciate it. >> guest: thank you. >> host: all right. so if you were to suggest one book for our viewers to go to the library and/or purchase, which one would it be?

>> guest: if you want just an easy read introduction, it would be "48 liberal lies" or "seven events." if you want to know american history, you need "patriot's history of the united states." >> host: and the books, 20-plus that larry schweikart has authored, co-authored, we want to show you quickly eight of them. "america's victory, why the u.s. wins wars." "48 liberal lies about american lust ri." "what would the founders say: a patriot's answer to america's most pressing problems," 2011. "the patriot's history reader: essential documents for every reader," 2011. and finally the most recent, the first half of "a patriot's history of the modern world up through45