and if you don't have titles and deeds, you can't prove that you have the collateral for the loan, hence, most people stay relatively poor, you know, without the ability to build a lot of wealth because you can't prove you have a lot of wealth. and then the fourth factor i think everyone agrees. we have pretty much a free market system. so those four factors if you look at those taken together, we're about the only ones on % who have all four. -- on earth who have all four. some have three, many have two, but we're the only ones of who have common law christian religion, private property rights and free market. >> and in your book from 2011, "what would the founders say," one of the questions you ask there is, is the government responsible for protecting the land and private property? what's the answer to that question? ..

the people. >> host: what about the question of money supply in the government? >> guest: that is interesting. take it back a little ways. in 1990-'91 i was invited to a meeting in europe, only time i have been to europe to a meeting. there were a lot of big brains there. going down the danube with five

nobel prize winners and i wasn't one of them and it was milton friedman, and headed debate with milton friedman, mr. freemarket about free and competitive money and he was arguing the government should control the money supply. competitive money, reliable economy with fewer panic. >> religion, what would the founders say? >> the founders were unanimous the government should not establish a religion nor should it prevent the worship of any sport. every state constitution has the words god and half of them have a word jesus christ in them. and they had jesus christ in their constitution. virtually all of the founders were of a mind that you needed

to make sure government did not force people to practice a particular religion. to them that was different from saying you couldn't have a nativity scene on public property because the time almost all of them were engaged in some sort of government support of churches, paint pastors for example, have national days of prayer, prayer services in the capital, things like that. jefferson's famous letter which was a private letter and not a policy theme in which he says there should be a wall of separation in which people, there is no line in the constitution that says there is a wall of separation between church and state. jefferson meant that in terms of we don't want to see anglican church establishment in virginia but we don't want to prevent anglicans from worshiping in virginia. >> host: with the mention of christ, does that say that yes

we are christian nation and christianity is official? >> guest: i don't think it is the official but it is understood and the example i would give business, virtually all of the founders were christian. we have a pretty good link for example to disabuse people the notion that franklin was a deist. he was not. he believed in the intervention of god. the only one of the founders who could reasonably, diaz was probably jefferson. certainly george washington was a professing christian, he took us including the words jesus christ once a month, so they all came from a notion that america was the christian religion and they structured, christian country and they structured the government in light of that assumption and here is the example i will give you. when the federal reserve act was established in 1913 there is not one mention in it of gold, the

gold standard and yet every single person, all the bankers who suggested the reforms everyone who crafted all understood this is operating under the gold standard. is not meant to operate under any other standard at the time and it is the same way with the founders. >> host: larry schweikart, one more question about "what would the founders say?: a patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems," you make the deck of all the founders were small government men. what do you mean by that? >> guest: i mean they were greatly concerned that government, either through its executive branch and in terms of the jeffersonians or the legislative branch and hamiltonians they were concerned government would and could be abusive if given half a chance and so they built into the system. every conceivable check and balance you possibly could to keep government from acting radically and rapidly, they wanted to act slowly with great

deliberation to make it very difficult for us to difficult for us to do >> host: "a patriot's history of the modern world: from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb: 1898-1945," just came out last year. you talk about what -- one of the themes is progressive versus constitutionalism, that fight. what do you mean by that? where do we stand today? >> this originated in the 89s. the populist party, i hate using these terms for and older europe but populists were more a leftist party, world democratic, they died out after the election of mckinley. a republican backed wing, called the progressives, teddy roosevelt is the most famous, there were a number of

progressives and the progressives believed man could be reformed, if you simply put man through enough hoops that he could be perfected. they are the one is that changed the penal system from one that punished and incarcerates to one informed. i asked how comfortable they would be with charles manson sitting next to them because he made a lot more license plates. at any rate they reform everything about the income tax or federal reserve board and their goal is nothing short of perfect man in this world. the constitutionalists are very much out of the founders mold and say we don't trust men. and so we want to make sure there are so many checks and balances that it is difficult for people to enact laws on other people even out of the goodness of their heart. usually the worst legislation comes from. >> host: where do you teach?

>> guest: i teach history at the university of dayton. it has been very good to me. a wonderful place to work. i have been supported, named scholar of the year, great place to work. >> host: along have you been there? >> guest: 27 years. >> host: how did you get into history and teaching? >> guest: i grew up in arizona, great little town of 12,000 people, and now it is a quarter of a million. all through high school and college i played drums in a rock-and-roll band and as soon as i got out i got on the road with a rock band and for the next four five years i played on the ground for groups like stephan wilson. >> host: the name of your band? >> guest: that band was called the rampage. we even used some of our music in the film rock in the wall. there are some rampage songs in

that. anyway, the road is very hard. the road is very hard especially if all these roadies and guys sitting stuff up and doing your driving, flying planes, we bring in vans, trucks with all our own driving, setting up, it was very difficult sell wanted to get off of the road. i wanted to play rock music at night and daytime, if i didn't work that we, as the money and i thought teaching would be easy. i thought teaching would be an easy gig. i wanted to teach high school and i get back to arizona and don't have a teaching certificate. to get a teaching certificate i need a u.s. history class. i had gone to four years, no knock on arizona state but i had gone through arizona state university four years, b.a. in political science, never took a single u.s. history course. i had to go back during the summer in order to teach to get this u.s. history course.

i had a professor named robert lundberg who runs a think tank in jerusalem. in six weeks he was so inspirational he challenged all my assumptions and within a six week period i said that is what i want to be, i want to be a professor and slowly i got out of music and got a master's at arizona state, kicked me out because they can't get you a good job. so i ended up at university of california santa barbara with a great mentor named elliot brownlead. got a ph.d. and went to -- i went to one job before dayton, i taught in wisconsin in the wisconsin system. >> host: are you a conservative? >> definitely. >> host: have you always been a conservative? even when you were opening? >> guest: the only member of the band who didn't drink. and won't say never did drugs but never did drugs away -- kids

do drugs. real-time i have ever been drunk in my life i tell the story to my students was in mississippi and a hurricane was coming through, the first big hurricane after camille and they took it seriously, boarding everything up so we were sitting around that night waiting for the hurricane to hit and watching monday night football, the raiders and dolphins. they were always writing me trying to get me to drink or do whatever, come on, just a drink of why won't hurt you. all right, i will take that. they are back there spiking the wine with bob the. pretty soon the game seems to be going on forever. the longest quarter of football i have ever seen. i think i am getting a little drunk here, get me some coffee, we will get you some coffee and their spiking the coffee too. outside of that i was pretty much conservative. >> host: what does it mean to be a conservative historian?

>> guest: it means you are a historian who has a conservative perspective on the world's. one of the fallacies we got from the germans will historians is you can have a truly objective history. you want to have accurate history but that doesn't necessarily have to be objective history. every selection of facts, the mere fact that i choose to report this fact over that fact is itself a bias. and so you cannot be free of bias no matter how much you say i am objective, your selection of facts is going to determine your bias. what you have to do instead is aim for accuracy and truth. does this tell the true story, not just factual story but does it tell the story of what was really happening? that requires a historian put himself or herself in the era of

the time. we have a lot of historians today who write with present him trying to criticize events in the past or justify events in the past based on their current political beliefs and you have to look at things in the context of what the people were seeing at the time, what were their views at the time. most brought out by the film lincoln is doing well, brought out by the criticisms of lincoln, lincoln was a racist. for his day lincoln was phenomenally advanced in terms of race relations. by today's standards of course he was a racist. everybody was that then. but compared to everybody else at that time lincoln was way ahead of the curve. >> host: 2004, christopher columbus, a lot of writing that his discovery was not so great, that he wasn't the first.

>> guest: we have a sidebar, a two page sidebar called did columbus kill all the indians? there's a tremendous amount of scholarship that has come out that shows that in fact a lot of the diseases that were attributed to columbus and the europeans in fact existed in the americas before the spaniards ever got here. does he introduce some practices like slavery? not really. indians were engaged in slavery and aztecs were enslaving thousands, not only enslaving but murdering and cutting their hearts out. all in all columbus's arrival was a wonderful thing for all of humanity. >> host: what did he bring? >> guest: columbus bring the european context to the americas, the idea of human life has value, something called polis which thin people operate, you may have a king but even

within the standards of the day monarch's could be challenged both within the catholic church and within the civil society up to a point. once again in the context of the day nothing like modern democracy. but in the context of the time, it was a pretty credible world view where you see someone like montezuma is not a god and he -- you can divide his word. >> host: how many books have you written, co written, edited, etc.? >> guest: i don't know. i have given away a couple of my name is not even on. >> host: over 20? >> guest: i think so. >> host: larry schweikart is our "in depth" guest, he is a historian. we will put the numbers on the screen if you like to participate in our conversation on booktv on c-span2. two 02-585-8880. in east and central time zones

585-3881. in mountain and pacific time zones you can also contact us on social media. you can make a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. you can send us a tweet@booktv is our twitter handle and finally you can send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. para eight of larry -- larry schweikart's books. beginning with a patriot's history of the u.s. came out in 2004, "america's victories," why the u.s. wins war that will win the war on terror, "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)" came out in 2008, seven events that make america america and prove that the founding fathers were right all along,

2010, american entrepreneur, patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems" in 2011, "the patriot's history reader: essential documents for every american" in 2011 and finally his most recent, "a patriot's history of the modern world: from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb: 1898-1945". and is there a second volume? >> guest: should be out in december, 1945-2012. >> guest: >> host: back to seven events that made america america why do you include martin van buren? >> guest: the most important event in the seven events and the one least known. martin van buren was anti slave. when the missouri compromise was agreed to thomas jefferson said he sat up and here's a siren, martin van buren had the same

reaction. this is very bad for america. this is going to cause a civil war. his and jefferson's vision on that was as the territories are open up, more and more of them are going to be free. as more territories become free states, congress will get a majority of free votes and when congress gets a majority of free votes sooner or later it will vote to end slavery. seeing that, when that happens you get a civil war. seeing that on the horizon, martin van buren sought to make an end run in which he would short circuit all discussion about slavery in congress and in the political arena and the way he sought to do this was to create a totally new political party. we were a 1-party system, few people know this. we were a 1-party system from

1816-1824. called the democratic republicans. a lot of people think we are still a 1-party system. martin van buren creates a new party. to be a member of his party, all you have to do is essentials the vow not to talk about slavery. not to bring it up in legislature, not to bring up in legislation, not to speak about it on the stump. won't introducing legislation about it. you are just going to shut up about slavery. these anti slaves, what would he have to offer someone who is also anti slave who sees as he does a free state will eventually be in the majority or to the opposite? the answer is jobs, patronage. he create something called the spoils system whereby politicians promise supporters jobs in return for them getting out the vote and a great film

version of this if you start getting to new york, terrific where they're going through the bars and hurting people ought to vote. martin van buren's system depended on two other things, depended that the states be sovereign, that the state have a great deal of power the federal government remain weak and it depended on having a person in the white house, if he wasn't the southerner and martin van buren did not think you'd get a southerner elected again. if you wasn't the southerner, martin van buren wanted somebody who would be sympathetic to the slave states's concerns. the phrase was a no. man of southern principles. he succeeds in that all the way up to 1860 but in keeping the state's strong and the federal government week, his plan worked against itself because each time there is an election politicians are giving away jobs and if

you're going to run against me, they run against martin van buren's party they have to give away more jobs than i give away so pretty soon government starts to grow with every election, becomes bigger and bigger, states start to get weaker and the federal government is getting bigger. before you know 1860, they have not paid much attention to the growth of government since 1828, it is very big and very powerful and has a lot of influence and the wrong guy gets in the white house, abraham lincoln. of northern man of northern principals who said slavery is wrong, we are going to keep it from moving into the territories and that is when the fight starts. >> host: when did martin van buren develop the system? >> between 18241828, the bucktail party and then he creates the democrat party, modern-day democrat party, gets its original founding mission

was to protect slavery. i >> host: plan eisenhower's heart attack is another of your seven events. >> guest: mike has a heart attack while playing golf. it coincides with a movement to have a big push on heart disease by the american heart association and they use ike's heart attack as the opportunity to press for more concerns about heart disease. there wasn't more heart disease, we now know. what was happening we have better testing methods and we were discovering more heart disease. it was like breast cancer, there was a breast cancer epidemic, which looks like there was an increase in the number of cases. this gets taken over by a

nutritionist from minnesota, and the agenda is to reduce fats, and cholesterol. he manages to pack the appropriate committees on the american put -- heart association with his people and begin a campaign to get americans to each less fat and less meat, to eat more carbohydrates. long story short by 197070 mcgathering committee has been heavily lobbied and put out new food guidelines, 40% more carbs, 40% less fat coincides pretty clearly with the obesity epidemic in america. >> host: going to the subtitle of your book seven events that made america and proved the founding fathers were right all along. how did that tie in? >> guest: i have a chapter in

"what would the founders say?: a patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems" what would they say about the government getting involved in our diet, they would be aboard at mayor bloomberg. washington probably laughing with his cane or something, it is not the federal government's role to tell people what to eat or drink. the founders were pretty good drinkers, have gone to some of their diets in founders say?: a patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems," you have that. >> host: america's rock music. we will show some videos, you talk about why america's rock music is so important in our history. >> guest: rock and roll and country and jazz, it is and essentially american music form. american music, rock music starts to get there as a band, it ends together as a band, almost every song in the middle, a solo.

this is a tremendous picture of america. we work together, we do things to get there but we never allow the individual to be subordinated into the group as in socialist societies. and i think that message comes out in the music itself even when you don't know the lyrics. i will give you two studies. there was one study that said 40% of kids don't know what any of the lyrics say and another study said that only 40% heard or understood any of the lyrics and yet they in turn allies this message that rock and roll is freedom. one thing led to another. i ended up with producer mark lee, documentary producer and hollywood, we did a film called rock-and-roll, documentary film on pbs right now, premiere in november. going on right there. when i interviewed people behind

the iron curtain they all spoke to the freedom that rock-and-roll brought in as inspirational, we see freedom when we hear rock-and-roll music. >> host: what we watching here? rocking the wall? >> guest: this is the trailer for rocking the wall, we interviewed people like mark stein, not the writer but the singer, robby krieger, the doors,to, we had a panoply of rock stars but also people from behind the iron curtain who spoke about rock as it spoke to them. >> host: you say it brought down the berlin wall. >> guest: i don't go that far. was influenced. ronald reagan and robert thatcher brought down the berlin wall but it was a major influence, one of the reasons the tanks don't roll when the wall starts being chopped down. this is a question historians

ask. let me break down wall, why aren't the soviets in the in the tanks and part of this is not only germany, but russia had been influenced by this. i interviewed billy joel for the book. he is not in the movie, he had back surgery at the time and couldn't appear in the movie. i asked about his experience, he was the first american to play moscow since than cliburn in 64. he said the guards were all armed with tranquilizer darts. they were told to tranquilize, to knock out the kids if they got too crazy. i said where you told anything you could say or couldn't say or could think or couldn't think? no. but they told me whatever you do don't incurred the kids to charge the stage or come to the front, first thing you did i told them to come on down. the guards were throwing their

hats in the air. >> host: in the "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)". how did you organize these 48 liberal lies? >> guest: pretty much juggled economic, political, cultural. we start keeping them all together might invite people to only read a little bit of the book. >> host: you organize them by priority, personal priority. >> guest: not at all. 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. i didn't go below that and i didn't include books like people's history because it is used as a textbook in many college classes as patriot's history of the modern world: from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb: 1898-1945" and sometimes they're used together. i am happy with that. i found these were common themes

on many of these subjects, that out his was innocent, things like this, i started kind of making a compilation of what all these books say about these different things and that is where we get the 48 liberal lies. >> host: let's go through some of the mend, and on the ones you want. number one, the first president intended for the u.s. to be isolationist. number 2, the mexican and spanish american wars were imperialists efforts drummed up by corporate interests. number 3, fdr knew in advance about the japanese attack on pearl harbor. 4, harry truman ordered the atomic bombing of japan to intimidate the soviets. 5, jfk was killed by lbj and the secret team to get keep us from getting out of vietnam. 6, nixon expanded the vietnam war, 7, the peace movement activists were not dupes of the kgb, 8, reagan new star wars

wouldn't work but wanted to provoke a war with the u.s.s.r.. 9, gorbachev was responsible for ending the cold war. >> we can't go through all of these. why don't we start with the first one. read me the first when you did about the founders. >> host: the first president intended the u.s. to the isolationist. >> guest: one of the things i wanted to the publisher didn't want me to do is i wanted to call in 48 liberalize and a few libertarian one is too because you see with the one on fdr there are some fallacies on both sides of the political spectrum. george washington was not an isolationist. the famous speech in which he talked about no entangling alliances, in 20 years includes the term several times, it is written by hamilton, hamilton believed that and this 20 year phrase is interesting. first of all, but remember we

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

your rules here or there or whatever. he thought until we get to that point we were going to have to avoid any alliances all because it might suckers into something that would destroy us. >> host: y 48? >> guest: we were going to do 50. i thought a couple of the overlap and then i began to think when you go on -- this is so mercenary -- when you go on amazon you look seven something, 50 something all these books come up, i need something where other books won't come immediately, who has 48 of anything? that me get back to roosevelt. this is one of the ones that starts on the left, that starts with charles beard, in more recent times it has gravitated to the right and the idea was roosevelt knew in advance about pearl harbor, that he allowed it to occur so the we could be sucked into the war, and the fact is almost all the recent

scholarship, especially great work by a guy named phil jacobson who was a quick tallest in world war ii, they have shown various transmissions hardly got to us, they were not translated and they weren't decrypted in any time at all to give roosevelt any warning of anything and even when they were they were not brought to his attention. we find for example that 80% of the decrease from 1941 did not go through the final phase where they were handed over as intelligence until 1944. it is things like that, i have my axe to grind with roosevelt but pearl harbor is not one of them. >> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines because they are busy you can contact larry schweikart and ask the question on social media or go to our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv, make a comment there and you can see professor schweikart's posting up there so go ahead and make a

comment and we look at those as well and send us a tweet twitter.com/booktv or an e-mail booktv@c-span.org. let's start with this e-mail from wesleyan rock in south dakota. mr schweikart i enjoyed two of your latest book, patriot's history of the u.s. and seven events that made america america. in your research for these books, what one event or persons surprised you as underappreciate it or underreported in the course of american history? >> guest: that is easy. grover cleveland is one of the greatest american presidents who 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 famous for vetoing a seed corn bill. there was a drought in texas and the texas farmers wanted government assistance, general

motors, to keep from going under and they wanted the government to provide them with seed corn. congress, always being willing to tax their money to passed the bill, cleveland issued a veto message and he says i can find no where in the constitution that empowers me to take taxpayer money from one group and given to another group but i encourage members of congress 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: larry schweikart is our guest, david in florida, high. >> caller: good afternoon. excuse me, peter. good to hear your voice again too. as a non christian conservative unlike mr. schweikart to always add that in america christianity was not perverted the way it was in europe to bring about wars

and holocausts, that american christianity is a different variety than european christianity and he shall always mentioned this when he talks about conservatism and christianity and other than that keep punching, mr. schweikart. >> host: you call it a non christian 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 christian influence in the united states has been terrific, terrific for the american people generally, terrific for catholics and protestants getting along with each other fat and yes, terrific for jews. this is great for jewish people

and it was because of the american variety of christianity that was symbolized by president washington in his letter to the jewish congregation of newport, road island that in america, no man need fear persecution. mr schweikart should talk about this when he talks about christianity in america. >> host: thank you. >> guest: very astute. e-mail it. that is exactly right. american christianity was different. there was a concern about catholicism only because american protestants were concerned catholics might take marching orders from rome and one of the forgotten elements of history is the intolerable acts right after the boston tea party, one of them was going to hand over jurisdiction and

control of british north america to quebec. in the eyes of the colonists this is akin to place in america under catholic rule and one of the reasons americans so quickly in united behind the effort, the revolutionary effort. let me also bring up -- your caller is exactly right, thomas paine was one of our most famous atheists and yet was certainly roundly accept among the sound -- founders. >> host: bill in meredith, new hampshire, good afternoon. >> caller: good morning, professor schweikart. professor, what factors would you saying the rosetta stone has had on the course of the events and civilization after it was discovered by the french in 799 and captured by the british, a pile in alexandria captured by a

squadron of lord nelson's navy and ended up in the british museum. >> host: what is your interest in the rosetta stone? what is your interest in the rosetta stone? >> caller: i just -- toomey it is my argument is if napoleon had captured it and >> reporter: hold of it and the pope ended up with it he would finance the buying of north america and all world history would have changed. >> host: any comments? >> guest: i don't get into the rosetta stone very much. it is pretty much before most of my work on europe. >> host: john in michigan, you are on c-span2 on booktv. >> caller: i want to express my

gratitude to dr. schweikart making the point about the false idea that historians should be objective. that they can't be for the reason that as dr. schweikart mentioned, being once you choose to report a fact, having done so you immediately stepped into a realm in which you may be operating from an agenda standpoint and i want to express to everyone listening, the country as well of course, therefore it has been the case that news organizations could be called historical organizations, therefore there can be no such thing as a truly objective news

organization. i believe this is relatively salient in the time in which we live. that is all i have got to say. >> guest: exactly right. two things. first of all i will give a plug for a book you don't have yet. we have a new book coming out from rome in littlefield. i don't know the exact title yet but it is a journalistic history of america with jim kuiper's of virginia tech. we make that exact point fell. the news media was founded by martin van buren. martin van buren creates the first newspapers to support the democrat party. they only publish democrat propaganda. they only advance democrat interests. the whig is due the same thing, they only publish whig oriented news but back then they would tell you what their agenda was. it was called the richmond whig, the arkansas democrat. they stated on the map what news

you were buying but 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 have 100 years of objectivism in the news but we are rapidly getting back to a very partisan news. i don't think that is bad. eventually given the decline in revenue for most news organizations you will also see news sources don't and operated by some wing of one of the major parties. >> host: "america's victories," why the u.s. wins wars and will win the war on terror came out in 2006 and you write, professor schweikart, americans win wars because we tolerate and accept as fact of life and ongoing anti military segments of society whose constant criticism much to their dismay pushes our armed forces to even greater economy with our soldiers lives and to even greater efficiency of

destroying our enemies. this e-mail from david in new york city, the reasons given as to why nations fight wars i usually just rationalizations. most aggressive actions are in reality for the benefit of the citizens who have the control and will gain for from it. >> guest: strongly disagree. if you look at for example the american revolution, there had been a number of economic studies. the economist are the only ones able to quantify this. otherwise as he said/she said the economists of the number of studies and looked at the impact of the navigation act on the american revolution. peter mcclellan is just one. he found the cost of the navigation acts on the average colonist was $0.20 to $0.40 the year. where you go to war over $0.40?

the entire net impact of the navigation act on gnp was about 1%. will you go to war over 1% of gnp? no. so the conclusion has to be the revolution was about something much greater. it was about the rights of englishmen and where these laws were going. 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. if i can let me get back and address your point about america's victories really quickly. the idea that americans value life and peace movements have found that trying to emphasize

to the american public what we're doing to another country, aren't we destroying, look at the civilians who are being killed, tragic as that is that does not work on the american public. that does not seem to move them. the only thing that moved the public to oppose war are american deaths. the peace movement has learned that lesson. early on in world war i, the american army figured that out too. 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 col the casualty issue and they said we have got to train better and find more effective ways so the we take fewer casualties. and if you want to use the term american way of war, one of the characteristics of the american way of war is we blow the hell out of something before we ever

send in one soldier. classic example, huge loss of life but nevertheless 600 ships and 11 fouls and planes pummelled the beach before the first american set foot on it. >> host: malcolm in columbus, ohio, good afternoon. >> caller: i happen to teach down a road from your guest. i wanted to offer two dissenting views. first of all he talks about american version of christianity. american christianity created slavery which enslaved and terrorized my ancestors, having the most brutal form of christianity in the world. second of all, your guest eluded that lincoln in his day was an line as a white man. not compared to thaddeus stevens, not compared to wendell phillips, not compared to harriet beecher stowe and many other white abolitionists of lincoln's day. in lincoln's day, he was very

racist, so on television to say lincoln -- and not tell the audience there were many white radical abolitionists who were far more liberal toward african-americans. thank you. >> host: before we have professor schweikart answer heavy seen the movie lincoln and what did you think? >> caller: i did see it and it was a typical eurocentric movie that leaves out the role of frederick douglass and the african-american community in establishing the thirteenth amendment. i thought it was a good film. typical eurocentric film that distorts history but considering the nature of what lincoln brought to this country is a wonderful film. he was the greatest president the country ever produced and he end they deuce most evil system of oppression world has ever seen, american slavery. >> guest: i am glad he mentioned frederick douglass.

there is none other than frederick douglass who says of lincoln that he was extremely enlightened and that lincoln talked slow but acted fast and decisively. and frederick douglass was a phenomenal admirer of lincoln. douglas does not go around quoting thaddeus stevens for the others because those guys despite the fact that their views were maybe in the caller's mind more advanced, the fact was they were too radical for the time to accomplish anything. nobody was really listening to thaddeus stevens that everybody listened to lincoln. >> host: what about his point on american christianity and slavery? >> guest: i didn't hear all that. >> host: american christianity perpetuated slavery. >> guest: that is true to and extend. certainly christian teachings in the south changed beginning around 1790, 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 explanation that mark of cain, and those writing for influential african-american ministers, he did a series on racism in america, and this is one of the things we talked about, the biblical precepts don't support slavery in the concept was used in america in any way, shape or form. jews had slavery but under strict conditions. had to be voluntary "what would the founders say?: a patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems" seven years, there was no racial or hereditary slavery in the jewish system and the system that

originally came into christianity. 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 abolitionists tracks were shut down by southern postmasters. you couldn't sell uncle tom's cabin in the south. ministers to preach against slavery were tarred and feathered and driven out by government. here is a case where you have government oppression, government restriction of the free market. i think slavery would have ended if there had been a truly free market? know. because slaves were capital. lincoln's mistake in thinking that he could buy and a mad pace waves at a fundamental flaw, and was with each additional slave

that you purchase to liberate, the value of the next slave goes up. so you would eventually get to the point that you couldn't afford to buy them even in the u.s.. >> host: in your book seven events that made america america you write about the dread scott decision. the decision in 1857 represented a unique moment in which the supreme court managed to simultaneously abuse the constitution, ruled against human-rights, severely damage the economy and help start a war all in one fell swoop. >> guest: that was quite a trick. >> host: explain. >> guest: he was a former slave holder determined to interpret dread scott's appeal, at that time scott was already 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 the northwest ordinance which prohibited slavery in the american northwest, including the missouri compromise which said all territory above the 36-30 line had to be free, this is why martin van buren got so agitated because all of the state including south dakota were going to be free states and outlaw -- his goal was to overturn all of that. and he does and he persuades two of the northern justices to go along so that it looks like bipartisan court. here's where bipartisanship is bad. game that a bipartisan bad decision and starts a panic and this is the only part that i claim any kind of the original

rights to, i did a paper probably most prominent paper i have ever written in 1991 on the panic of 1857 and i think we should convincingly at least so far after 20 years no one has raise a serious challenge, that the dread scott decision opened up the territories to bleeding kansas. was going to make the dakotas, wyoming, all those territories look like kansas, with bloodshed and dollar rests. as a result, what dread scott did was caused the railroads running only east and west to just collapsed. none of the ones running north and south. that in turn caused the banks in new york city to fail provoking the panic of 1857. >> host: you are watching booktv on c-span2. this is our >> caller: -- "in depth" program.

where this month our guest is university of dayton history professor larry schweikart. robert in livingston, montana. good afternoon. >> caller: good morning. what year did you graduate from a as you? >> guest: 1972. >> caller: 62. in all your travels and universities, writings and etc. have you found any university that teaches two courses on the federal reserve? and have you read secrets of the federal reserve, a creature of jekyll island and montana, high, white and hanson chapters 21? >> guest: i have not read that but i know the essence of that book. i have not found -- i do not teach in the economics department but i have not found

any history departments that teach about the federal reserve. i am a dissenter in terms of demonizing the fed. i don't think the fed does a very good job put on the other hand i don't believe in conspiracies. the fact is eugene elson white has a terrific book called regulation reform of american banking and he traces the fact that the federal reserve was the result of 30 years of efforts by local, small, montana, arizona, nebraska, south carolina, unit bankers seeking to reform the banking system to minimize the power of new york city and they thought they had done that with the fed by splitting into 12 districts of which new york is only one in missouri has two, providing a lender of last resort so it would not be the new york fed or jpmorgan.

so i understand the concerns of the fed. this is what i told prof. friedman when we debated going down the danube, my view is competition solves problems and if you allow free and unlimited private note issue, i said allow people to print their own money, you will soon minimize the power of the fed because you will have groups and institutions whose money will be more valuable than dollars and the fed will have to compete with that. >> host: last summer booktv interview the author of the creature from jekyll island. if you would like to watch that go to our web site booktv.org. in the upper left-hand corner you will see a search function. type in jekyll island and you will be able to watch it on line. r j in brooklyn, new york, you are on booktv with larry schweikart.

i you with us? please go ahead. >> caller: mr schweikart, i have a brief question regarding the past. you use the term conservative, we know it is a wing of the republican party, it always makes me wonder because what are you trying to conserve? you look at the titles of your books, pounding of is, european slave holders, these are people, anybody in who is a minority these other people we look up to, we start from that point. conservative, what you trying to conserve? the next question is you can tell america, everybody not being indoctrinated, reading for themselves, not becoming just christian because the -- everybody is thinking for themselves and a problem the conservative movement is having is different people of different religions, people who are hispanics, minorities, how do

you as a conservative, how are you able to maintain a conservative viewpoint? how can intellectuals' based on an ideology that doesn't -- based on nothing but european ancestry and culture? that would be my question for you? >> guest: thanks. first of all i grew up in chandler, ariz. with tons of conservative hispanics. wasn't that all of back then to have conservative hispanics. what has happened in the meantime is many groups have become wards of the state, as it were. it happened with african-americans, largely in the great society. people want to blame fdr but really the shift occurred in the great society with a single program, afdc that we don't need to get into. in terms of the term itself,

conservatism, i'm a political conservative and again, we can't look with present to spies on people in the past and say they were slaveholders. most of the world were slaveholders at that time. the muslims were the greatest slave holding area region in the world at the time. certainly the vast majority of slaves did not come to america but when south of america to cuba and the west indies so again when you apply present test glasses to the past you are asking for trouble. but political conservatives, what the founders wanted to do was to maintain the rights of englishmen as outlined by john locke and keep the state small so that individuals would have the greatest opportunity and freedom to pursue their dreams. >> host: larry schweikart is our guest. here is the cover of some of his 20 plus books.

in 2004 a patriot's history of the u.s. from columbus's discovery to the war on terror, "america's victories," why america wins wars and will win the war on terror in 2006. "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)" came out in 2008. .. >> host: the philosophical setting of these primary sources.

does this book include the typical documents, the constitution, the declaration of independence, etc. >> guest: no. and we deliberately left those out because we figure that most people who are going to get readers, most home schoolers, for example, they're already going to have that. we wanted to include representative documents that aren't always found. obama's cairo speech, for example. >> host: why was that included? >> guest: that was included 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 islam. there were a number of other documents in there that i think were quite representative of the time. mellon's booklet on taxation, for example, is incredibly appropriate to today's debate. because andrew mellon came in in 1920. you never heard of the great

depression of 1920. but we had 22% unemployment. it was very high in some parts. most unemployment was reaching on average well over 15%. we were already producing at 100%, and here come all these veterans, so you're going to have some unemployment. >> host: treasury secretary, correct? >> guest: mellon? yeah. and, of course, he's not in until 1921 when harding is elected and mellon comes in. mellon does a study of tax revenues x he says it looks like tax revenues have been declining a little bit. why are tax revenues declining? and in his study he found that tax rates had gone up steadily. and every time the tax rate went up more, the revenues declined a little bit more from that group, and he concludes 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

lover curve -- laffer curve that there's two points on a curve in which the government will get no money. nobody's going to give away 100% of their check. so mellon makes an argument for lowering taxes. what follows is the roaring '20s. we get down to an astounding 1.6% unemployment. now, a president today who could get 1.6% unemployment, they'd just blow up mount rushmore and just put him up there. i mean, it would be treated with that kind of appropriate level of achievement. and yet somehow the roaring '20s are kind of demonized as this period that leads up to the great depression. well, no, the '20s are not the cause of the depression. the cause of the depression more than anything is the smoot smoot-holley tariff. >> host: did you think about putting in his race speech in

philadelphia from '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 -- >> host: hope and change not public? >> guest: as far as i know. that's what i was told. i could be wrong, but that was the first one we asked to get. we wanted to use a couple of other speeches, as i recall, and we couldn't get rights to use them. so all the time you can't get the rights to use everything you want to use. but, um, you know, we have the agenda 21 which i don't think you going to find in a lot of readers which americans really ought to be aware of -- >> host: which is? >> guest: agenda 21 is the u.n.'s agenda for climate change and all these other social changes that they're going to institute through controlling urban growth, economic growth and elements of the u.s. government are, unfortunately, already adopting elements of

agenda 21, and americans don't even know it's out there. again, i'm not a conspiracy theorist. i don't think this is being done under the radar, it's all quite public. >> host: john in syracuse, new york, please go ahead with your question or comment for larry schweikart. >> caller: yes, how you doing, mr. schweikart? yes, briefly i would like you to comment on your book about that america will win the war against terrorism and what happened is back when the ussr was involved with afghanistan, they lost the war because afghanistan did not have a fixed army. therefore, it's just about impossible to win a war of that nature. because you go pack to vietnam -- you go back to vietnam, they were similar to afghanistan. and the united states backed out of that conflict. and also i heard somewhere where

george washington was the eighth president and not the first. would you please comment? thank you. >> host: well, why don't you start with washington -- >> guest: with the eighth? >> host: that's right. >> guest: i've never heard that one before. maybe i'll wikipedia that one and see what comes up. i would argue vietnam is a very poor example of how to win a guerrilla war. a better example of one that we fought and won quite handily was the filipino insurrection and the wars of 1901-1911. interestingly n "america's victories" i point out that the percent of land forces fighting in the philippines as a share of 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 land forces.

>> guest: malaya is one that the government won. the average length of time it takes to win an insurgency war is about six years. >> host: larry schweikart, you wrote that book that was published in 2006, where in your view do we stand in the war on terror? >> guest: i think that we've made some great strides in some ways. we have not experienced another major attack on measuring's homeland. -- on america's homeland. i think al-qaeda is pretty much defanged and was before we killed osama bin laden. i think we've taken out the whole deck of cards, three or four others. in "america's victories," for example, and i don't think that bush intended this, but what happened was by putting troops

in iraq, we sucked in virtually 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 morgue statistics. and in those morgue statistics they separated out iraqis, other. well, our soldiers had their own morgue and handling procedures, so we would not be "other." these were clearly not iraqi soldiers. so who are the other? be you've got civilians, who are the others who are being killed? they would be terrorists. and so i evaluated, added up all those and found that from 2001 to about 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. instead of 8 to 1, they probably don't have very good medical care, i assume 4 to 1. you can figure another 100-150,000 wounded and typical desertions are about 10%, so you figure another 10,000 deserted. in other words, we captured and culled or wounded or 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 about 300,000 men with an empire of 20 million people. so i think that we badly damaged al-qaeda and the world terrorist network. it's also a mistake to say, well, you can't win a war against an ideology. we clearly won a war against

fascism, we won a war against communism, and we won a war against japanese pew she doism. you can defeat ideologies and guerrilla groups, and i think we've dope a great job so far -- done a great job so far. it does appear that some of the effort in afghanistan is unraveling, but that's a little too current event toss go there. >> host: gregory, montclair, new jersey, you on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: i'm amazed by your disingenuousness. first of all, those terrorists were in iraq because we invaded it. 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 confederation as the first presidents. i know that's pseudo history. what i really want to talk about was a comment you made early on in the program playing down the effect of columbus. i thinkyou look at the -- i think if you look at the

chronicles of the explorers of the generation of columbus, you'll find that 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 that you'll find that it's disingenuous to compare the slavery that was imposed in the western hemisphere to any other sort of slavery both in its duration and in the fact that it involved the wholesale importation of peoples into a new place. and not only was there much more slavery in the southern hemisphere, yes, but let's not forget that after the war of jenkins ear, the slave trade was monopolized by the british pretty much until they abolished slavery. what i really wanted to talk about -- >> host: you know what, gregory? there's a hot on the table there. let's get an answer from professor schweikart. >> guest: first of all, let's start with iraq. in fact, the information is pretty clear that asal sa carry himself showed that foreign

fighters were just pouring into iraq after we went in, so i think i use the example of a roach motel. we set up a roach motel, and the roaches came in. in terms of columbus, that's why i have that large chart that says did columbus kill all the indians x i have some of the most recent scholarship you will find. one of the things you will notice is that every single new piece of scholarship that comes out reduces the number of estimated, i'll call them indians, in the new world with every single new estimate, it gets lower and lower and lower and lower. so this notion that the 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's simply wrong. islam you can slavery was by far the worst in the world. it was perpetual. they were going everywhere. they were going up and down the coast of africa, and this is

where we yet the very -- we get the very word "slave," from the slaves that the muslims were taking out of eastern europe. so he's right, there is no comparison. islamic slavery was worse. >> host: book we haven't talked about, "american entrepreneur," came out in 2010. who was jack daniels? >> guest: jack daniels was a baptist whiskey maker, it's either in kentucky or tennessee, i forget which. and he founded, you know, people had a hankering for his product. and he became quite famous at selling jack daniel's whiskey. interestingly enough at almost the same time, dr. thomas welch comes out with a grape juice so that people don't have to drink wine, and we they can get the se wine taste. you can get entrepreneurs out of almost any product. >> host: why did you include jack daniels in your book? >> guest: because he was a successful entrepreneurs.

my goal was to include as many entrepreneurs from if as many walks of life as possible. by the way, that's -- i co-authored that with lynn pearson doty, but that is an expansion of a book i wrote in 2000 called "entrepreneurial adventure." and i wrote that book originally to be a general trade book. but it was picked up by harcourt as a textbook, and i learned a harsh lesson that textbooks don't ever get into bookstores. it was written for a broader public, but it never got out to a broader public. 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 to the broader public in book stores. >> host: you mention that jack daniels was a baptist, and in your book "american entrepreneur" you write: capitalism's spiritual side is

most clearly seen in the activities of entrepreneurs who constantly must act on faith. ultimately, they must believe that their idea, product, service or business will succeed." >> guest: yeah. and i think authors know this as well as anybody, right? because, certainly, your first book for some people our tenth, twelfth book, you have to write it first. and you submit it to the publisher like a sacrifice. here is, 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 that leap of faith that what you've done is worth while, that people will like it and that you're going to submit it out onto the market and see what happens. it's a very spiritual exercise. >> host: do you have a favorite entrepreneur that you mention in this book in many -- in this

book? you talk about isaac singer, charles post -- cereals -- earl tupper of tupperware, etc. >> guest: i think post is one of my favorites. he's washed up. i mean, he's done everything. he's been a schoolteacher, sold insurance, and his health is failing, and he's a middle-aged guy. i mean, it's just like ray crock is a 55-year-old dixie cup saleman. this is al bundy, right? he's a more than middle-aged shoe salesman. and yet post goes up for health reasons to battle creek, michigan, to the cel olds -- kelloggs. they themselves are these great entrepreneurs. and post doesn't get well. and so he goes to another sanatorium where he comes up with this stuff which is a coffee substitute, right? and then he starts coming up with a cereal, and it's very

crunchy, and it tastes like grapes, so he calls it grapenuts each though it doesn't have grapes or nuts in it. and he starts the post cereal empire out of almost nothing. so he's one of my favorites. >> host: j.b. in toledo, thanks for holding. your on with professor larry schweikart of the university of dayton. >> caller: thanks for taking my call. a couple of issues. one, you spoke of the johnson/jfk assassination connection to the vietnam war which you discredited. i was just wondering what you thought of jfk's executive order 11110 in relation to his assassination. >> host: j.b., will you tell us what executive order 11110 is?

>> caller: yes. yes, i'm sure that the professor can give you a more succinct explanation. i have another question. and i would wish that you had not cut off the guy who was talking about disingenuous, because he had another question, but let me ask another question. can you give me the import of the issuance of greenbacks during abraham lincoln's presidency? >> guest: sure. i'm not sure what order he's referring to. i suspect it's the order in which jfk removed a thousand engineers from vietnam after an engineering battalion had 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 he's got 16,000 when he's assassinated. by his own admission in a speech, in fact, he later said -- later -- he said that at one point we have, quote, 25,000 american military or 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, i don't -- and he never made clear what he was talking about. again, i'm not a conspiracy theorist. i don't think -- i think oswald acted alone. if he didn't, show me the bullet and show me the audio soundtrack. because we have no other shell casings, no other bullets that day. the guys from csi would say, hey, there's no forensic evidence, you know? and we have audio recordings, there's three shots. what was his other question? >> guest: about green pacs and abraham lincoln. >> guest: yes. lincoln doesn't have a lot to do with greenbacks. his secretary of the treasury from ohio is the one who comes

up with the idea x. 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 borrows a lot through u.s. bonds. but he also inflates. he turns on the printing press. and the greenbacks were a 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 on them that our money has on today, this note is legal tenderer for all debts public and private. they were not backed by gold and silver. so it was a deliberate inflationary view. they issued 480 million of them. it does not inflate in the north for a lot of reasons. a, they are 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 taxes. the confederacy does not accept confederate notes for payment of confederate taxes. by doing that chase imbued even the paper money with some value. because you could always pay your taxes in it. in the south confederate notes had no value whatsoever. you couldn't even pay your taxes with them. >> host: but, larry schweikart, wasn't there a lot of problems with counterfeit bills prior to a national currency? >> guest: yes. after the national bank and currency act. but prior to that time you had, as we talked about earlier, competitive money. and competitive money, and you'd have your printing press and why

would people take your dollars? well, because you always redeemed them in gold and silver. and word gets out, i had in one of my books on banking and the american south i had evidence of a, an atlanta bank whose notes were the sole circulating medium in chicago in the 1840s, as i recall. could be the '50s, i think it was the '40s. but because you 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, be you will, of all the the notes that were out there. and you could immediately turn to, okay, i've got schweikart bucks from dayton, ohio, how valuable are these? well, they're only selling for a .3% discount, they're okay. and you could immediately find out if any money was of any value or, hey, if it's 50%

discounted, don't take it. >> host: ron, huntington beach, california, you are on booktv on c-span2. professor larry schweikart is our guest. >> caller: good morning from southern california. >> guest: hi. >> caller: my question has to do with you wrote a book, i believe you said "what would the founders say," my question has to do with political parties and, um, just a little context. jefferson said that if he had to go to heaven with a party, he wouldn't go there at all. george washington wrote about the baneful effects of the pitter of party. madison -- the spirit of party. madison in federal 14 wrote all sorts of nasty things about factions and parties. you know, just in the context of their effect on the separation of powers, because, you know, you have democrats and the executive branch, you have democrats in the legislative branch, and, you know,

politicalization of the supreme court based on, you know, the executive and the mettive branch -- legislative plan with. working together to put people on the court. the choice on election day, you know, you have two small minorities that decide the choices on, for the general election. and the election, you know, the effect on representatives, representative democracy, i mean, do we really live in a democracy because of the effects of party leaders and such? my question would be what would the founders say about political parties? i'm curious about what your response would be. >> guest: okay, yeah, thank you. and you mentioned some of the most appropriate quotations there, but you did not mention what madison went on to say after he denounces political parties. he then says but they're necessary. he said let ambition check ambition. madison was the first one to say that 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 have a two-party, winner-take-all, single-member-district system unlike, for example, israel or france where you have proportional representation. this takes away the extremes. that's the good news. bad news is it pushes all parties toward the middle, and so third parties, i'm sorry to say, don't have a hope in hell.

because over time due to the spoils system they're not going to have any seats in congress, they're not going to have any control of the executive. hence, they won't have jobs to give away. and without those jobs to continually give away to your supporters, they aren't going to continue to be supporters. so, for example, the libertarians might elect a single, you know, ron paul-type to a single district, but over time you're not going to vote libertarian for presidency if you want to actually get anything done and/or if you want to see your friends rewarded, which was the basis of van buren's system. is so -- so you can thank van buren for the party system but, unfortunately, it's what we have, and it's what we're going to have to live with. >> host: okay, a couple of tweets. jose says, okay, buying this one is a no-brainer, "american

entrepreneur," wish i could say that word. and brian tweets in that executive order 11110 is about silver certificates, not vietnam, and he went to wikipedia to find that information. >> guest: okay. >> host: so that's all we have at this point to work with. >> guest: that might refer then to the notion that you could no longer exchange silver certificates for gold or silver. this isn't made official, of course, until the nation takes -- until nixon takes the nation off gold in '71. but that probably is the context there. >> host: tane in king george, virginia, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hi, many 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 apep dix for my book the various conclusions for ratification from the original constitution. and in looking at those and in 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 will 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 that 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. one author, his or her body of work. this month it's history professor larry schweikart. "a patriot's history of the

u.s." came out in '04. "america's victories" in 2006. "48 liberal lies about american history," 2008. "seven events that made america america" was his next book. "american entrepreneur" also came out in 2010. "what would the found orers say: a patriot's answers to america's most pressing problems," 2011. the "the patriot's history reader," and "a patriot's history of the modern world," basically the first half of a two 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. we have plenty of warts many

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 not my country right or wrong, but it's certainly not my country always wrong which is where, for example, zinn goes. >> host: patriot's history.com is your web site. >> guest: all one word. and you can see the film at www.rockin'thewall.com. >> host: and which film is that? >> guest: that's rockin' in wall, and you can see -- i started a little film company since we did that, and you can see all of our film trailers at rockin' the wall studios.com. >> host: so a couple different web sites. an hour and a half to go in our conversation with professor schweikart. every month the producer 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, um, it's a tough question only because it's like when you talk about greatest guitar players. you have to always throw in people like bebe king. even though they're not with eleven distribution or clapton -- hendrix or clapton. so i always go to ringo starr. ringo was a great drummer, and most drummers will cite ringo starr as a great drummer.

most nondrummer musicians will say he was lame, which is kind of funny. that said, in terms of just at his peak, carmine apiece hofstra nil la fudge cactus, he backed up ozzy osbourne, rod stewart. when he was in his prime, he was by or far, if 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, he's a very good polo player, too, did you know that? he was not a rock drummer, he was a jazz drummer. so i would go in horde probably with carmine, ginger baker, ringo starr, john bonham and i love the guy from the tubes, native arizonan, prairie prince.

coolidge kept his hands off everything. 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 with some of the things. >> host: professor schweikart, you list under favorite writers the pendergast series by douglas preston and lincoln child. what is that? >> guest: yeah. pendergast is a 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 your cowsties which is -- your curiosities which is a tremendous book. they then got the relic which was made into a-off i have, but it doesn't feature pendergast even though he's in the book very slightly, and then they have a series, dance of death and wheel of darkness and a couple of others. those are tremendous fiction books. >> host: are members of steppenwolf still alive? >> guest: i don't know. >> host: what was their biggest hit? >> guest: of course, "born to be wild." and we got them on their reunion tour. and it was all the original members, you know? and growing up in rock and roll, and these were some of the earlier guys, so by then hendrix and the fudge and zeppelin and all the rest were out there, you look back at those early guys, the soap bubble -- all those guys were so lame -- and when i heard hem in concert -- them in concert, my jaw dropped at how

tight and professional they were. we just had newfound respect 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 tough that students -- to stuff that students today would be 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 history of the world from the '20s to the '90s. 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 this 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, i think his first name was thomas, who was the perpetrator of the panic. he didn't pull a gm bailout. he said, sorry, bud, you're on your own. but in keeping with his kind of mercantilist 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 a perfect blend of not using 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. 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: laura tweets in: this professor can't be conservative if he supported bush who 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 for those of you in the east and central time zones. 585-3881 in you live 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 going on all fronts, economic, political, moral, 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 his prism, i think he's right. we're in, we're in trouble. certainly, we cannot keep up with 16, 17 trillion debt. you have a sequester battle over either 1 to 2% depending on whose numbers you accept of the 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. might not lose -- 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 american party system in less than four year, and it's continuing to shape us still today. >> host: bill from manhattan beach, california, is the caller. go ahead, bill. >> 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 can figure out a way to not do that or solve it. but i have a bonn the pick -- a bone to pick. coincidentally, both issues are about roosevelt. you straightened me out when you took apart mr. stint net's book about the day of deceit. roosevelt knew that pearl harbor was going to be attacked and so

forth. and i respect your research and so forth, so i stand corrected. but when you get onto the federal reserve and you say it was a good thing that we got off the gold standard, that, sir, is 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, whatever, can work a little bit toward that. but 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: but look at the book by wayne jett on amazon, it's called "the fruits of graft." and it'll tell you in there with good research from morgan thaw,

roosevelt caused the depression by buying gold and then rallying anytime the sense that he didn't create currency to match it. and that drove down our money supply, and that was the cause of the depression. roosevelt knew it. look at fruits of graft, please. >> guest: well, let me give you a slightly different take on that. i certainly would agree, certainly, with burt fulsome 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, he's retired now. steve did a paper that very few people have or ever cited, yet i've never seen anybody really refute it in which he argues that the 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 long as the minimum wage law made it such that an employer had to pay where he formerly would 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 this reason: the world was on the gold start at the time in the 1920s, but slowly nation after nation had gone off the 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 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 ten et's book. i did a review in a journal called 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, the research was off. what i showed in my review, i went through every single phrase where stennet said something, what i would call an active and conclusive sentence such as this means roosevelt knew. in every single unstance i found in his book, i think i counted 147, he said almost certainly or roosevelt should have almost

certainly known, surely roosevelt knew. he couldn't say with a single l 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 phrase was permanent alliances. >> guest: i think though, sir, if you look at the drafts, i could be wrong, but i think if you look at the drafts of washington's speech that hamilton wrote, i'm pretty sure entangling alliances was in the draft. either way, they both shared the view that at least for the time being we could not form an entangling alliance with somebody else. >> host: what was the gilded age? >> guest: gilded age, roughly 1780-1900. it's a derogatory term.

well, 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 was your view of the robber-barons? do you want to expound on that at all? >> guest: sure. i'll give a plug to burt fulsome, he has a great book called "myth of the robber-barons." and i think he shows that these guys were indispensable. carnegie was worth more to america and its future than all the people, unfortunately, who

worked for carnegie. 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 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 the vietnam war. i had a radio show many years ago called relooking history, and i had donald kagan of yale and walt rostow 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 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 used in vietnam, and they were made in texas. now, there's 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 seventh cavalry began using helicopters to drop troops into hot zones. so the notion that three years earlier johnson has the prescience going to be needing some bell helicopters here 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 howard 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," um, that has come out has some revealing information that the kennedys were involved with a guy nameddal maid da, a cuban general whom they were backing to replace castro when and if they assassinated castro. and they're, in this book, their explanation is that bobby did not go after a pull-scale investigation -- a full-scale investigation because it would have outeddal med da and exposed him and revealed the source. again, 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, there's 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, um, 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. 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 why it's almost a race to get up to yorktown and get away from the armies and be resupplied by the british navy. so i don't know anything about

that, but i've never heard of that plot. could be. i've never heard of it. in terms of influential first ladies, um, 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: yes, i'm sorry, 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 has 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, um, academician 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'd be treated with respect. but the new left began to come in late '60s, early '70s, 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. ..

had to include raise, class, gender. those are all categories of left. they succeeded for example in doing away with period history in most universities. there's no longer jacksonian era or a constitutional, even at you d. wonderful school we haven't talked civil war during the day to students in 20 years. you're doing away with classical interpretations of history. how we view history, and replacing them with much more raise, class, gender orientation so every course has to have a raise, class, gender aspect, every dissertation has to have that and it is difficult to break out of that mold. >> host: less than an hour left with this month's in debt guest larry schweikart from the university of dayton. good afternoon. >> caller: professor schweikart,

i really enjoyed "a patriot's history of the united states: from columbus's discovery to the war on terror, a tremendous refresher after all the other histories that have been published. >> guest: o'neill. >> caller: first volunteer cavalry. also, a student -- my mentor at the university of texas. as well as being a retired intelligence officer who is in pakistan, i have a real interest in teapotsism.. you said we defeated the ideologies of nazism, therefore we can defeat islamism or jihad is some depending on what were you when to use. but in order to defeat those we had to totally decimate their societies. they believe islam can be defeated without massive kinetic

destruction? >> that is a pressing point. you have got to separate what the fundamentalist radicals for the majority of so-called moderate muslims. it can be done but the first step is you have to be willing to define your terms and you have far too many politicians and even now people in the military who don't want to define radical islam for what it is. love for hood shooter is categorized as a place of workplace violence. that is nonsense. it was clearly an act of jihad and once we get to the point we can define that we will have a better chance at encountering at. that said, i have a number of middle eastern students in my classes, we are sent over to learn america's freedom of speech and all these kinds of things. they do want to learn, in some

ways be like us, not in all ways. we have to be careful about sharia law. it is a threat, is being imposed in parts of england and other places. >> host: would you find your students are most interested in? >> guest: dan's story. they like stories. this is history, stories. as long as you can frame a point within a good story, they will listen and they will internalize it. if it is just a series of names and dates they are going to have trouble with it but you have got to make a story about people in the past. >> host: craig hoff, north las vegas, e-mails following the u.s.s.r. collapsed the files of the former soviets were opened and these documents changed the story of the recent u.s. history and the appraisal of our

politicians. certainly they have changed -- >> guest: our assessment of how deeply the kgb was involved in american politics. we have found through the winona files and others dozens and dozens of kgb agents, the highest place of which was the assistant secretary of the treasury harry dexter white. one heartbeat from being secretary of the treasury. white was being touted as a vice-presidential candidate if harry wallace won the democrats' nomination. or if he had stayed on as roosevelt's theme and ascended to the presidency, this is very serious stuff. and alger hiss is without a doubt exposed as a communist agent, the rosenbergs have been totally exposed. even nikita khrushchev said we couldn't have done it without rosenbergs and we have to take his word because he is the

communist. 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 intelligence. >> host: next call, michael and westland, michigan. >> good afternoon, gentlemen. mr schweikart, the general motors bailout twice during this appearance, you piqued my curiosity regarding the decision to below general motors the money, also i would like your feelings toward that. before you answer can you take into consideration the enormous contributions general motors made during the world war ii eckert and the spectacular success that is undeniable of saving over 1 million american jobs, many in the ohio, and the

ability for general motors, corporate icon in american history, continue. >> guest: i will give a plug back to c-span. just before i came on your previous show at the current chairman, former chairman of general motors and he made an excellent case. here is the criteria i use, the criteria used in what the founders say when we talk about hamilton and i discuss these bailouts. i thought the chrysler bailout was legitimate back in '84 -- >> host: 79. >> guest: i thought that bailout was legitimate and the reason was chrysler was the only manufacturer of am 1 tanks, i thought the lockheed bailout and the 70s was legitimate because we needed lockheed to produce military aircraft and only they could produce certain types. i did not think the bailout of harley-davidson was legitimate

because we don't send troops into battle on harleys unless you are the sons of anarchy. i think your criteria needs to be not jobs saved. there will be jobs lost and pain that the only criteria is is it constitutional for the government to bailout company? the criteria that needs to be used is is it necessary to national security? absolutely gm was critical in world war ii. i tell my students of ford motor co. out produced the entirety of italy in world war ii. no doubt about it. the question can't be will this cause pain and suffering as a result of a free-market failure which is what gm was going 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 here in washington is very time in history that comes to mind in american history? we will let you think about that if you don't want -- you want to think about that? >> guest: i did have one in mind the other way what i want to remember how i phrased the argument. >> host: we will take this call from nick in monroe township, new jersey. >> caller: thank god for c-span. we love it. the professor i am sure is familiar with the ringling brothers book decision in philadelphia. in one section, they comment on their position about manage reporting of the events at the convention where according to their research charles pinckney

of south carolina essentially or originated the plant of the constitution. their position is that he was not given credit for that because management as the secretary for the convention didn't record it. there phrase was i believe madison, james madison suppress it and therefore madison historically took credit for the or origination. i would like to know the professor's position on that. is there some veracity to this position? >> guest: i don't know. i am not a constitutional scholar. it is not my area of special interest. it is possible but also remember the pinckneys have their own historical position to a search. it is like it is not the votes that count but who counts the vote. in the case of the history of

the constitutional convention, it is not what really happened but what madison said happened. he is our only source on that. i don't know what to tell you. there is a book called miracle in philadelphia that there is an excellent review of that you might want to check. otherwise i don't know what to tell you. i did come up with an answer. right before the civil war, we were at a total deadlock to the point that the house of representatives could not even elect a speaker which we still do today. they could not even elect a speaker so there have been times in our history where we have had such diversions, the group's that the government was almost at a standstill. i will give you one that does not result in the war. in 1911-12, the all leafing congress was concerned with, almost the only thing was a revision of the tariff bill. very similar to our modern tax

rebates. the debate was so horrible that a group called the insurgents tried to unseat the existing speaker of the house. they failed. william howard taft costumes of reelection to the presidency by going back and forth between the insurgent and traditionalists and not taking the side and teddy roosevelt comes out of retirement and run against him and splits the vote and wilson gets elected. the point is the tariff was never passed into law. it is a wasted four years where absolutely nothing happened. so this happens from time to time in our democracy. it appears to be a little more exacerbated today because of the news mia and the pressure on for example the republicans to constantly moderate their views and compromise but we will see. >> host: next call for larry schweikart from stanford,

connecticut. >> caller: dr. schweikart, i am thoroughly enjoying your interview. my question has to do with abraham lincoln. wouldn't he be a greater president had the lead us out of slavery with our work? i understand one third of the human race were slaves in the tenth century. you alluded to a lot of those slaveholder in here as. more americans were killed in the civil war than all the wars combined, the economic cost was tremendous of that war. many countries compensated emancipation, brazil, the british empire, the spanish empire etc.. you also mention countries who regulated the treatment of slaves. similarly today, pure capitalism didn't work for us. we had to put in laws and other things to regulate capitalism. some will say lincoln had to go to war because of fort sumter

but there's some evidence he precipitated that war after only a few weeks in office. i understand one horse was killed, does the emperor have all the clothes we given credit for? >> guest: i think clinton did everything he could to avoid war. nobody wants to blame the criminal in this case which was the confederacy, 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 on the show, it wouldn't work. why did it work with britain? britain had no slaves in england. all of the slaves were in the tiny part of the british empire that the british government could easily control. that is not the case in the south 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 let me bring another book to your attention here, historian out of oklahoma james houston has of 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 is the standard image that comes to mind. that was profitable. what people forget was that slaves were property and and as property, they had a great deal of value. how much value? glad you asked. they had more value than all the railroads and textile mills in the north put together. we were earlier talking about what does a man go to war over?

they go to war over $0.40 a year? in this case the south went to war over something that constituted easily half of its entire capital assets in 1860. the answer is i don't think there was another way to get rid of slavery and other than the war. in large part this is due to the fact that capitalism couldn't work. it wouldn't work but it couldn't work because the government, here we are with government again, the government was ensconced in the southern states, protecting and preserving slavery. for example the government required able-bodied males to be involved in posses that would chase down runaway slaves as a government by spreading to the taxpayers the cost of bringing slaves, runaway slaves into court and so forth, spread the burden of a running a slave on

to everybody. there were innumerable ways houston points out that government was involved in perpetuating slavery in the south. not the federal government but the state governments. this is what clinton had to deal with. >> host: leonard warns scene, high. e-mail, do you know him? >> guest: i know hmmm. willow canyon high school is in -- shadow remember. >> host: what state? >> guest: it doesn't say. >> host: what are your views and feelings about the decrease history instruction time in american middle schools and high schools as a result of no child left behind and raise the top and common core. should instruction of history be dependent on a standardized test? should history teaches the

english and math teachers? >> guest: these programs are disastrous. no child left behind at as most government programs do a good intention which was to institute a series of tests and threshold over which every person should pass. everyone should know certain things when they get out of high school, get out of junior high, whatever. 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 further behind. there were recent polls that showed that students could not put major historical figures in the right century anymore. it is disastrous. that said, i am not opposed to teaching to the test. i did that all the time. if you are a paratrooper you are taught how to pack a parachute.

you teach to the test and you better be able to pass the test because when you pull the rip cord the parachute better open. it should not be the federal government's job to administer it these tests because the federal government constitutionally does not have a role in education and should not be involved. we are on the same page with this. if i know you, this has been something with good intentions that went badly awry and were worse off than we were 20 years ago. >> host: go ahead, christine. >> caller: i am really enjoying the program. i have a question. if i am hearing you correctly i believe you were not opposed to our going into iraq and i think it is a war that cost in the vicinity of half a trillion dollars. what i am wondering is the war was questionable and i believe it got questionable results. if we took that half a trillion

dollars and invested it into our infrastructure and leveling the playing field in our own country, and the best idea, putting the u.s. ahead of the curve in terms of the new technology invention's etc. that would be the strongest vote for our way of thinking, and our freedoms system, would that be a far better use of half a trillion dollars? >> you're mixing apples and oranges, national defense. and it is something government should be doing. there is a threat there. we ended up in theory. and it came from iraq.

no president in his right mind, there's no chance out i could have gotten a weapon of mass destruction from saddam hussein. you can't just say because we don't spend it here on something that is constitutionally approved. and the government should be spending money on roads and resources and for the first twenty or thirty years of our existence government spent no money on roads and bridges, those were all privately funded companies. i realize today would be hard for a company to get its revenue back on a freeway and if you don't pay your bill let your car shutdown, understand that. the point is just because you don't spend it on space doesn't mean you are going to spend on roads or bridges or because you don't spend it defeating al qaeda doesn't mean you're going to spend on education.

there are different things used in different ways. >> host: from 48 -- "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)," no terrorist weapons of mass destruction were hiding in iraq. news article 2000, i want to say 2009, 550 tons of enriched uranium was processed out of iraq. and was hidden until was processed out. i don't know what you call enriched uranium except wm ds in the hands of saddam hussein. from your book seven events that made america and profound and fathers were right all along, one of those events, larry schweikart, is president obama and the media in 2008. what is that event? how do you include that? >> guest: for the first time the media failed to do with job. bernie goldberg had the book

called big fat slobbering love affair or something like that. charlie rose was one of the first to say what he believes. and it is your job to go know and did that stuff up. he wasn't vetted on any of this stuff and to a large degree still has not been that a lot of this stuff. that is a shame because if 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 reference by bill ayers and not have an opinion on what should happen with bombers. this was the economy of martin van buren's system. why i use that? comes full circle. this is back to the partisan press. in this case the press

overwhelmingly is liberal, democratic you want to use that phrase, there is the minority voice press, fox news, rush limbaugh and so on and so forth but it is a minority voice, and the phrase low information voter, low information voters are not going to hear a lot of that information. >> host: jack, dear harbor, washington, thanks for holding, you are on with professor and author larry weicker. -- larry schweikart. >> caller: a long wait but worth it. i have been a fan of booktv since its inception on television and your guest today reminds me of many that i have seen for the past years. they come on your program full of impressive credentials and well disposed with knowledge and facts and cheryl lot of valuable insights and many things he has said today that i enjoy, but in the middle of such discussions

sometimes baffling statements are not absolute falsehoods. i referred earlier today when he called thomas paine and atheist. he died broke, forgotten, a few other things. in the bible period of his life when he was writing the great works, in his book the age of reason, on the very first page, he clearly states and i am quoting, i believe in the quality of man. i believe in one god and no more, and i hope for happiness beyond this life. 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 varies from time to time during their life. i use the example of alexander hamilton. hamilton early in his life was extremely devout. one of his college roommates set

i have never seen anyone for a as much as hamilton does. by mid like hamilton was all but an atheist. he simply had if you asked him he would have said i don't believe in god. by the end of his life and admitted he didn't know it was coming to an end, close to the end of his life he began a transition back to god and so i think there are people at different points in their lives have different religious experiences and you just have to reference them. and christian voice among the founders. >> host: kerri in brooklyn, new york. >> caller: great to watch different perspectives and get a different perspective on something you believe in. and don't remember his name, he was an expert on lyndon johnson and he said towards the end johnson's term in 68 that

johnson had a solution, a treaty just about to be worked out and somehow richard nixon was able to torpedo that answer budget. considering the death between 68 and 72 when the war was finally ended why isn't that mentioned more and people's recollections of nixon, he is known for watergate. at toomey is a worse sin that possibly he let the war continue for four years just to get back at johnson for some reason. of your comments, it is sold for about all the work in the beginning, so hard, the carrying of equipment. looking to a guy called jerry nolan, heartbreakers, one of the great dramas. >> guest: i would say this. if johnson had a plan to end the vietnam war he wouldn't have resigned. 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 1968. so i find it hard to believe that johnson would have had a way to get out of vietnam that he didn't employ. >> host: that caller was probably talking about robert caro's book on lbj. >> guest: have you -- >> host: have you heard that story before that that caller shared? >> guest: i have not heard that one. what i find interesting is nixon gets so much blame for vietnam and he takes us from 545,000 troops to 70,000 when he leaves office, when he resigned. >> host: what about the cambodian bombing? >> guest: certainly if you had victor hansen on the show, somebody like victor hansen would say why didn't they do that earlier? i have students in my classes, not so many now because their

age is changing the ten years ago students who served in vietnam and i remember one student said my dad was serving near the coach team in trailing used to tell me he could see the north vietnamese coming down the trail with a rifle range and he was prohibited for shooting him knowing that the next day they would be on the south side of the border and he would have to shoot them them or they would shoot him. >> host: ray in orange county, calif. please go ahead with your question or comment for professor schweikart. >> caller: you said fdr took us off of the gold standard. why was it richard nixon did the gold standard when he was president? >> guest: we were put back on gold after the war under britain, the dollar became the world's reserve currency, backed by gold. there is 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 say that the gold dollar. didn't work that way. it was still privately held gold was still prohibited in the market place. i remember buying my first cougar rams in 1973 or 74 and made a killing on them but i to a good vantage of being able to get gold at the time. there is a difference between gold as a reserve currency which was not under roosevelt and gold being in private hands. i hope i didn't muddy the water. >> host: you mentioned when you were arguing with milton friedman on the danube that was your only trip to europe. >> guest: haven't had a desire to go back. >> host: you also report when we ask what you are currently reading you say you are working

on your next book which is patriot's history of the modern world volume ii and reading scripts and screenplays. what does that mean? >> host: since rock-and-roll came out in 2010 i have started a little from company that you can go to rock in the wall studio's stock, and see our trailers and we have been developing or currently completing a second documentary about music's part in opening up of rest parts of the world. we have a heavy-metal band from inside pteron, cambodian rapper on his country's death list and celebrities like your ronny and buster rhymes and clint black and so and so forth, that movie is almost done but i have been reading a lot of scripts and screenplays for other things that we might produce and do, one of the things on the near or rise and that some of your viewers might like is we want to

make "a patriot's history of the united states: from columbus's discovery to the war on terror into a television series like the men who built america or the pacific and we have a terrific trailer on the web site. you are interested, by all means get in touch with me and we will talk. >> host: dennis, orange city, florida, hello. >> caller: how are you today? did i read that you are at the university of dayton? >> caller: i am a buckeye, graduated ohio state in the 70s. isn't as left-leaning as some of the other. i started ohio west land. let me get to my point. i am watching c-span maybe a month or two ago and oliver stone and his associate come on. oliver stone is a hollywood movie guy.

he is presenting himself as the history experts. what it was was a rewrite of history. he and his cohorts are lamenting the fact that truman wasn't making nice with stalin. that if only truman would have been nice to stalin, things would have been dramatically different. we wouldn't have had to drop the bomb and numerous other things further lamenting that wallace, that is the right back, our economy, that he wasn't elected, that things would have been dramatically different if only the trumans of the world wouldn't have torpedoed stalin. i have a hard enough time 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 the dedicated economy? >> guest: i wrote two reviews of two of the episodes of oliver stone's the untold history of america is the correct title. one on jfk and one on lyndon johnson. the errors were overwhelming. the insinuations were stunning. you can find these on frontpagemagazine.com where i wrote these reviews. i am perfectly fine with stone producing and showing whatever you want to show. my argument is let's get the other side of the story of. let's get "a patriot's history of the united states: from columbus's discovery to the war on terror out on film so people can see another version. like i said before, we will win that competition every time. i am convinced 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 is one. fox news has divided the country in a way not seen since the civil war. >> guest: that is just silly, and why would that be? would it be because the mainstream news organizations had a total monopoly on news? rush limbaugh makes a great point when he came out, the news organizations were in a a tizzy because for the first time, their view of what was news was challenged. now we have several places aware that view of what is news is challenged. what we know longer have is that middle voice that tries to come up with some sort of objective news understanding that that is impossible. it was a standard to the mainstream media for about six -- 60 or 70 years from 1900 to

1960. in the journalism books that you don't have, there was a code of ethics from journalists from 1913 and it had some things, let's see if your support of these other news organizations holds to these, you should always get the other side of the store. i can't remember them as nbc ever getting the other side of the store. you shall always have more than one source for every quotation, that all sources needed to the public, you could have no anonymous 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. i don't think fox has divided the country but provided a much-needed voice. >> host: joseph in omaha, neb. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i have a question for you. and the statement also. give them what they want and

they will take it. your greedy few win. control, keeping what you have if you win. you are bent on gross style. a chance to -- in afghanistan, why didn't he do it? >> guest: roosevelt? >> caller: dick cheney and the war goes on in middle east right now. >> guest: you said roosevelt had a chance to catch osama bin laden? do you mean -- >> host: read talking about president bush? >> caller: yes, sir. >> guest: if you read tommy francs's book and don't just go by what you think happened, francs made it very clear that he could not deploy 10,000 troops necessary to the tour of borrow mentioned -- mountains in time to seal off for a bora. knowing the military the way i do i don't find that unusual. i totally disagree with your statement about war = greed.

we proved that with the revolutionary war. in fact fees men went to work even though it was only costing them $0.40 a person a year. why did they do so? ideas were important, the rights of englishmen were important, your third point about it = control, it is interesting the united states is the only country i am aware of that wants to conquer some place gives it back. i referred to the teller amendment that says five years after conquering cuba we needed to give cuba back to the cuban people. the amendment placed in the war resolution. >> host: alan e-mails some say the second amendment was put into the bill of rights to allow citizens to shoot at our government. others say it is there to allow citizens to chase off burglars or shoot dinner. what is your opinion? >> guest: both. i will give another prop to

stephen how brooke's book that every man the armed. the goes into an excellent analysis of what the english version of the term militia men, leading to up to the american revolution and the constitution and it is pretty clear english understanding of militia is the militia was an armed body of men apart from and separate from the standing army who could oppose and unnecessary fight the standing army of the government. is also interesting coming down from the arms of 1182 henry ii said that every man should be armed and in fact the mayor's job was to go through the town and mark on doors and not too a gun buyback program that is a are you on? if not give that man any weapon he should so needed. i doubt you'll see mayor

bloomberg going door to door saying can i give you a shot gone? the second amendment was put in for both reasons. people will be able to oppose tyranny and be able to protect themselves. >> host: susan e-mails i live in new york and new jersey my entire life but and the u d 78 graduates and she is happy that there are conservatives at our wonderful catholic university, but her point is she agrees with you on most everything except when it comes to the monetary system. >> guest: you are not alone. there are a lot of gold bugs out there, people who think we need to a go back currency, and i spent, had to be in the late 90s, i went to 8 liberty fund symposium, a three day meeting with several scholars, most of

them conservative and very devout libertarians, studying a book by a lehman yeager called the fluttering they'll about the gold standard and at the end of three days the libertarians and conservatives could not come up with a single monetary standard, gold platinum market basket or whatever that would actually work and they were surprised they couldn't do so. our current gold supplies are totally insufficient to back money. philosophically i don't necessarily want the gold standard. i want to competitive standard. i want money to compete and the best money to win whether it is private or government. >> host: dave in atlanta, you are on booktv. >> caller: during the early 70s, there was a pervasive amount of communist propaganda that was

along with the peace movement and i have come to believe that the left these days was affected by that more than they would like to admit intellectually and what the professor's feelings are on that? >> guest: you are right, there was a dedicated effort to influence people in american institutions. i have never seen anything but showed they attempted to control or place people in such institutions. was always necessary, people like angela davis and without much control at all. the soviets were very active but there were also targeted in what they did and you were asking earlier about the fall of the soviet union and the archive barking up, one of the question is it and one of the things we found was they were spending 70% of their propaganda budget in the 80s on star wars.

why would you specify all of your propaganda to stop something that, quote, won't work? if i'm a football coach india this side is running an up the middle play and i stuffed it every time i am not going to try to get him to switch to a pitch or pass? i will keep running that way, we will stop every time but the soviets were desperate to stop star wars. that should tell people that they new star wars would work and they had done extensive work on lasers and stuff in the 70s. we talk about this in another book we don't mention called trident. as a result i think they didn't need to target americans hippies as you call them or liberals. they kind of felt they had the mall ready. their propaganda budgets were going elsewhere. >> host: mary ann brown e-mails earlier you made a comment that

howard zinn's book premise was in history america got it wrong. i disagree. it is a manifestation of the african proverb, quote, if lions had historians the tale of the hunt would not always glorified the hunter. >> guest: i ask anyone who reads that book and thinks it is reasonably accurate as a portrayal of history. forget american history. most people would agree that 90% of human history has been war and combat. how do you write a history of the united states without going him to the impact or the battlefield occurrences of a single battle? he doesn't discuss a single battle and yet the greeks fought military history was the most important of all history. prof. hanson would agree with this.

one day at antietam did more to change america than all the social history that has ever occurred. all the i love lucy episode for whatever it they may show about the role of women or suburbia or 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 loan history of america without discussing work and the impact of war is beyond me. >> host: brian e-mails 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 the louisiana purchase. >> guest: there's a lot of truth to that. i would not say not more than anyone else. when i go to a founding father jefferson is there but he wasn't

at the constitutional convention. i think that is crucial, that he wasn't there. i can 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, the one guy that everybody agreed had to be the first president. not jefferson. it is interesting everybody didn't want jefferson to be the first president. more than half to 20 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 is a reason that you have all men are created, the constitution is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, that yes, we have this body of laws but they have to enforce jefferson's laws. i would not want to minimize jefferson in any way but i'm not sure i would say he more than anyone is responsible for who we

are. >> host: ten minutes left with our guest larry schweikart. next month, amy goodman will be our guest. larry in minneapolis, you are on with larry schweikart. >> caller: what branch of the armed services that you serve in and when did you serve, what was your specialty? >> guest: i didn't serve. i was 4 f. they wouldn't take me. >> guest: wide u.s. that question? d you have a followup? he is gone. we are going to move on to mike in lisbon falls, maine. >> caller: in an argument with several of my friends. did the south ever happen out of the constitution as it was ratified, was there extension of the confederacy and extension of the american revolution? >> that is a great question and

a point that is debated might neo confederate types of historians and there are not that many anymore but more of those types and libertarians in the present time. here are the two argument. one argument was the government of the united states, it the union, was the men's club. and in this men's club, anyone could pick up and leave the men's club anytime they wanted. the other view of this is that the union was a body. this was lincoln's view that you have a body and you can no more severe and arm or leg from the body without doing horrible damage, possibly killing the body. the answer is it depends on which of the two views you take? it is very interesting. jefferson going back to the previous caller, jefferson is

quite influential and one of his most influential acts was inspiring the land ordinance of 1785 and this is in our reader and one of the most crucial laws ever passed in america. it put property into the hands of the people. jefferson's argument why we needed such a law was he had virginia unload all of its property from what was called a landed say, land going all the way to the pacific whereas states like delaware and rhode island were trapped. jefferson said we virginians need to give up this land to the union and sell it off because there are going to be said there is going out there and at some point the settlers, if we don't make it possible for them to become citizens toward us and a part of the government that are our = they will become rebels as we were to england and they will rebel against us.

i say that to get to this. in that argument jefferson said that these new lands needed to be loyal, they needed to sign a loyalty oath or take a lower -- loyalty oath to the constitution. and to the congress. i would not go that far but it is interesting that jefferson said these lands all have to be obedient to the constitution. >> host: if you enjoy history are reminded that c-span's new first lady ceres is every monday night at 9:00 p.m. on c-span. you can go to c-span.org/firstladies and look up the whole series and see the whole schedule every monday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern time. larry schweikart, events, a johnstown, pa. flood. why do you say that made america

america? >> guest: these and other most import events in american history but that delineate our character, say who we are and the interesting thing about the johnstown and dayton flood of 1913 is 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. johnstown, they immediately as soon as the floodwaters assuages the little they e immediately cut out ten starnes for 70 deputies, 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 as far as the road would go into conover land with horses on their shoulders if necessary and they told the

national guard stay out. we don't need you. in dayton in 1913 the same thing. they told the ohio national guard stay out, we don't need you. mr. patterson, national cash register, immediately turned his company into a vote building business, 400 small boats, he would send a couple of employees to sale around dayton and rescue people who were stranded, pick up people in the water, deliver food stuffs to people who couldn't otherwise coming and turned in c r headquarters into a giant aid station and again stay out, we don't need your help. was days before the ohio national guard came in. federal troops never got there at all. >> host: john in parkersburg, west virginia, go ahead. we have a minute and a half left. >> caller: i see that you teach at a catholic university. with all that is about to happen

in rome, i would like your thoughts especially the fox of young people. for as i read the new testament, i see that christ was sort of -- not even recognized after his resurrection by his own. if he were dressed up like these cardinals he would have been recognized. what is the link between the simplicity, the simple life that christ lived in the new testament with what is happening in rome with all the pomp and circumstance and ceremony and gold and banners and all that. >> host: we have to get an answer from our guests. >> guest: i am not a catholic. this is one of the excellent things at the university of dayton that they allow all faiths to teach there and be part of the community and they

have been good to me in that respect. in terms of who jesus was and what his life was all about i think it would take another three hours and i am not prepared to go there. >> host: what about the pope as a political figure? >> guest: the pope is an important political figure who played a key role in the demise of the soviet bloc. the three key figures were reagan, margaret thatcher and john paul ii without a doubt. >> host: pa. 30 seconds. >> caller: i will talk as fast as i can. i think this is a fantastic show. i watch c-span, mr. schweikart is unbelievable. i have gone to the library tomorrow to pick up as many books. >> guest: by the books did that don't go to the library! by adam! >> caller: enjoy it very much. i appreciate it. >> host: if you were to suggest

one book for our viewers to go to the library and/or purchase, which one would it be? >> caller: you want an easy read introduction it would be "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)" or seven events, if you want to know american patriot's history of the united states: from columbus's discovery to the war on terror. >> host: the books, 20 plus that larry schweikart has author or co-author with and to show you quickly, eight of them, discovery to the war on terror, "america's victories," "48 liberal lies about american history (that you probably leaned in school)," seven events that made america america, american american most pressing problems," patriot's history of the modern

world: from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb: 1898-1945," the first half of "a patriot's history of the modern world: from america's exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb: 1898-1945," in december of 2013 the other half will be coming up. website is patriotshistoryusa.com, the author, larry schweikart. this is booktv. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see your online. fight the offer or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> original people, navy seals, the alamo, our environment, journalism, panels and discussions from this year's tucson festival of books, live this weekend on booktv starting

today with dr. timothy egan on the photography of curtis, and barbara horowitz on health and healing. tomorrow live starting at 1:00 eastern, afghanistan followed at 2:birdy by eric larsen on social security. panels and office from the tucson festival of books, part of booktv on c-span2. >> that should make you encouraged about the power of probability and statistics in general. now i am going to make you scared. this is the end of the book, a question, of the questions i went to earlier. who gets to know what about you? last summer we hired a new baby sitter. when she arrived in the house i began to explain family background, i was a professor and my wife was a teacher, she cut me off and said oh, a i

know. i google you. i was simultaneously relieved that i did not have to finish my spiel and mildly alarmed by how much of my life could be cobbled together, short internet search. our capacity to gather and analyze huge quantities of data, things are referred to earlier, the marriage of digital information with cheap computing power and the internet is unique in human history. we are going to need some new rules for this new year. let's put the power of data in perspective, just one example from the retailer target. this is a story in new york times magazine summarized. like most companies targets strive to increase profits by understanding its customers. very good thing. to do that the company hires statisticians to do the, quote, predicted analysts described earlier in the book using sales data combined with other information on consumers to figure out who buys what and

why. nothing about this is inherently bad. it means when you go to target your likely to be carrying things you actually want to buy. let's drill down for a moment on one example of the kinds of things the statisticians working in the windowless basement at corporate headquarters can figure out. i don't actually know about the windowless basement i'm assuming. statistics pale when working underground. target has learned that pregnancy is a particularly important time in terms of developing shopping patterns. pregnant women, retail relationship that the last for decades. as a result target wants to identify pregnant women, particularly those in their second trimester and get them into the stores more often. a writer for new york times magazine fall of the predictive analytics team at targets as it sought to find and attract pregnant shark is. i am sure target deeply regrets