gut medicare. mudslingers should take this answer from one of fmer writers, he stachbdz for an america as an ideal, not as america as a practice. that is a wrap on fox news watch. i'm rick folbaum. take care. >> john: my guests say that is not true. i'm told political campaigns are worse than ever. >> campaigns have been taken to a whole new level. >> john: i believe what they say about me. is this new? you should hear what the founders said about each other. >> if thomas jefferson, rape and

incest will be openly practiced. >> and what about regulate regulate. >> mr. gorbachev tear down this wall. >> and this is more to end the cold war. ♪ >> john: finally we're all taught that politics changes history but larry flint says sex lives just as much. >> private lives of presidents and first ladies did shape you on how things went. >> a politically incorrect look at history. that is our show tonight. >> john: what built the middle-class? unions i'm told you about unions landlords tell me when i confronted them about it, we

built the middle-class they say. the head of wisconsin firefighters union. >> the middle-class would not be where it is today without the union. >> john: and they claim they help minorities. here is the sample of my interview with new york city's 34,000 member transit union. >> you discount the extremely positive impact that the trade union movement has had in this country, launching people into the middle-class. particularly african-americans and latinos. >> john: but that is just not true, say tom woods and day monday route. the author of 33 questions about american history you are not supposed to ask. day monday root writes for reason magazine were shocked how much what they learned in school turned out to be wrong. like what? >> well, the union question for one. what did we get on unions other than propaganda.

they raised it all up with rules. >> john: if the union mythology were correct history wouldn't have turned it out the way it did. civil war, wages are rising consistently and 3% of the labor force were unionized so unions can't take credit for that. american workers got the eight-hour day than their counterparts in europe did. the unions say they got the eight-hour day only because of unions. >> this is not correct because for reasons we'll talk about workplace safety. i think my own father's case he was a teamster and he drove a forklift for 15 years. imagine if he had to stack pallets with his bare hands, how much could they have paid him, $1.50, it's because of the act that makes my father more productive it makes it plausible he could make a decent wage.

>> john: and unions delay the work. >> it would have prevented this healthy outcome from occurring. >> john: unions say they made the workplace safer. >> they claim credit for a lot of things. one of the things they say they are a progressive wonderful force in american history. if you look at the history of organized labor, their success, it came at expense of disadvantaged groups particularly african-americans. 1935, wagner act originally contained a clause forbidding unions from discriminating against black members. that was taken out at the insistence of american federation of labor. so this idea of wonderful force for racial equality is wrong. >> john:. and they lamented labors

being sought to demoralize wage rates. they pushed for the davis bacon act which we are still stuck with. it was in response in long island, a veterans whom being built and the contractor brought a group of black construction workers from the south. the unions freaked out about this, this is colored labor it's depressing the white man's working wage and he got a bill passed. it sets wages called the prevailing wage. if you are a black person, unions are discriminatory, they are racist or they treat you badly. what you can do to compete, you can work for a lower wage. that is what many african-americans did, davis bacon act goes into effect and it's illegal for them to compete on federal projects. >> safer workplace question? >> capitalists that want steel

beams falling on their head, they couldn't care less. but the long and short of it is, if we were to introduce american safety standards into bangladesh would it turn it into a ui taupe yeah. they would be sitting in their huts doing nothing. there is a limit to workplace safety. that limit is the wealth of the society. as society becomes wealthier, as we invest more capital equipment and wages increase they can begin to opt to take some of that in the storm of safer work places. as we've seen, government tries to take credit for the advantages when the wealth that the market create makes it possible. without that we would be in danger. >> and head of osha under president clinton, held up a chart, injuries had dropped since osha begin. then somebody charted for osha

and it was dropping at the same rate. slope of the line is the same. things get better because of free market. >> they create more wealth and possible to optfor safer workplace environment. most workplace injuries are caused by getting traffic fatalities on the highways, it's not what most people think. you are sitting there and your leg gets caught in a grinder. >> john: let's move on to another myth. the newer deal. it solved the great depression, most people think that. we had a depression, fdr spent all this on the program and lifted us out. >> it's the propaganda that is shoved down their throats 24 hours a day. the answer to this, is look to the one oen people.

henry morgenthal said in 1939, showing unemployment at about 20%, said, well we've done everything that the experts told us to do. >> john: we have spent more money than ever before and it does not work. >> it turns out that we still get double-digit unemployment in the '30s. we have a lot of things administration like this i don't want to risk my capital so i'm going to hold back from investing. >> john: are you talking roosevelt or obama? >> that is the parallel here. fdr gets credit for solving the depression? >> it's astonishing. the record with his own people pointing out it's been a failure. what more would it require to concede this? >> john: let's move on to -- you made the comment about hoover

did nothing. hoover didn't do nothing. hoover increased spending. hoover is the opposite of laissez faire. it's what we call the hoover dam that was completed under fdr and was started under hoover that made the reconstruction finance corporation. >> we have a graph of spending under hoover and before hoover it would increase the years before hoover. hoover comes to power, that is the yellow, the increased spending 50%. >> this idea that he is laissez faire is absurd. >> and you mentioned the hoover dam. that. it was done under him and it's still separated by advocates of big spending the wonderful things government should do. >> it's a project of national

significance. we've got no projects on the menu right now and we have to figure out if we are still a country this that can think this big. >> john: i think the advocates of big spending are winning. most people think that government has to control economies. >> here we have the examples of the opposite. for the current situation this was caused by the free market when you have a fannie and freddie and regulations and federal reserve pumping in with cheap credit, the best thing is five investment props properties and have no job. that is crony capitalism at its worst. >> john: thank you. the election season is under way and now we're going to get those ugly, nasty campaign ads. worse than ever i'm told. but that is myth, too.

do you want to see a really nasty campaign mudslinging? that is next. hey, the new guy is loaded with protein! really? 25 grams of protein. what do we have? all four of us, together? 24. he's low fat, too, and has 5 grams of sugars. i'll believe it when i--- [ both ] oooooh... what's shakin'? [ female announcer ] as you get older, protein is an important part of staying active and strong. new ensure high protein... fifty percent of your daily value of protein. low fat and five grams of sugars. see? he's a good egg. [ major nutrition ] new ensure hh protein. ensure! nutrition in charge! but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! specialists, lots of doctors, lots of advice... and my hands were full. i couldn't sort through it all. with unitedhealthcare, it's different. we have cess to great specialists, and our pediatrician gets all the information. everyone works as a team. and i only need to talk to one person about her care.

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>> john: the election is coming and the media is obsessing about it and how nas si it's going to be. >> this presidential campaign is going to be the media intensive

vicious propaganda filled hate fest that we've ever seen. >> i think it's absolutely true. i think it's going to be a real mudslinging campaign. >> john: mud sliang go, throw plenty of dirt and some will stick which it probably will. i have to be honest, i only started paying attention to politics 20 years ago. during every election from those 20 years i heard politicians and pundits complain how mean this campaign is. they claim politics is different yes, sir and meaner than ever. >> this could be the nastiest and negative election science of all times. >> this campaign season they have taken dirty to whole new level. >> when pundits start shouting, it can seem like a return the s not possible. >> a return to civility used to

governor campaigns but that is nonsense. if they read history they would know politicians have always said horrible things about each other. jefferson and adams didn't have television but what if they did? >> john adams is a blind bald, toothless man that wants to start a war with france. >> while he is not busy importing mistresses from europe he is trying to get his shone married to daughter of king george. >> murder, rape and incest will be taught and practiced. are you prepared to see your dwellings in flame in females lie rated late? >> john: they used actual statements made then. nick gillespie because you were

sick of hearing how much worse everything is now? >> yes. every political election seems to be worse than the previous one. but when you crack a history book you find out it's a status quo. >> john: your example jefferson and adams and jackson is running quincy adams? >> massacring indians and illegally executing soldiers that had a significant effect. adams who had been minister to russia was accused of pimping out his maid to the czar of russia. >> john: grover cleveland runs for president? >> he didn't run for anything. he shambled slowly but he had autoof wedlock child. and cartoon, hey, ma, where is

pa? and had gone to the white house, ha, ha. >> he admitted he fathered he might have fathered a child out of wedlock and he paid for the child? >> that's right. >> john: 80 years later, johnson against goldwater? >> this is classic. casey ad, which shows a girl picking flowers and counting. >> john: it looks innocent enough. it's going to count down for a nuclear bomb being dropped. a magazine had a thousand psychiatrists that gold water was insane. >> this ad one only once yet was talked about so much it had impact.

the these are the stakes to make a world in which all of god's children can live or to go into the garden. we must either love each other or we must die. >> bare goldwater, they said he was member of a john birch society, that he was a schizo firemen i can from analysts. he won a defamation lawsuit against this magazine. >> john: we have a cover of the malg magazine. he sued and they made it up. >> but that has not gone away. what the fact is contemporary ads have positive attributes. one political they studied ads

from 1960 to 2004 and negative ads, three-quarters attack statements of a fact that candidates had. the negative ads is where you see the engagement with the issues and ideas of competing political ideology. >> instead of those wonderful family man's and they reply with facts. >> so everybody benefits from it. negative ads or negative campaigns correlate with higher voter turnout. there is no evidence of that. >> if you interest more people, more people turn out. >> that is exactly what happened in 2004 when john kerry versus george w. bush did a very nasty and dirty campaign with swift votes and questions of duties on the international guard. it increased voter turnout.

you have to say the negative activity is wrong. it's actually about information and bits people arguing over something that is very important. >> john: thank you, nick. it makes you wonder, what would it be like if my critics made attack ads about this program and me. >> don't watch stossel? he is nothing but a shill. >> this ad has been approved by the mainstream media. gas and bloating. with the strains of good bacteria to help balance your colon. you had me at "probiotic." [ female announcer ] phillips' colon health.

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>> john: what is it that liberates oppressed people? i was taught it was american power. during world war two are. we liberated europe and rescued people. 45 years later i'm told just the threat of our military, our military build-up defeated the soviet union. now our troops in the middle east will create islands of freedom. no, says thaddeus russell. how do i have it wrong. >> in general american military intervention has increased and

hardened repressive regimes. on the other hand, american popular culture, in many cases have done more for liberation and for national security. >> john: let's talk about the soviet union. my understanding that it was reagan's military build-up and they collapsed? >> it collapsed from within. it didn't collapse from without. there was not an invasion. what happened in the soviet union and in eastern bloc is people walked away from the ideology of communism. that happened when jazz and rock and roll infiltrated those countries after world war ii. >> john: evidence? >> american soldiers brought jazz during world war ii to the eastern front. soviet soldiers brought it back. they brought it and spread it across the countries and then on the streets all over the soviet

union and big cities and eastern europe, you saw these kids on the streets, in the soviet union they were kids would re jeans and listened to jazz and rock and roll and smoked cigarettes. stalin called it from the left. that is the best evidence that american culture, that stalin were hysterical about that. >> john: they kept arresting them? >> they made jazz illegal and made playing the drums in seven you'll ways illegal. >> john: because it was a too sensual? >> because any repressive regime depends on social order to maintain power and the pleasures of the body are fundamentally at odds i would say. stalin understood that.

>> john: black music and dancing excessive movements of the hips, arms and legs. >> that is what people were saying about the jazz 30 years earlier. at the first inception in the 1920s was attacked roundly as bringing down youth. stalin said the same thing with the same words later on. >> john: then rock and roll came? >> it was more threatening. there were possibly millions of rock fans. disco and rock in 1980s were enormously popular. >> john: they thought they had to relax the rules? >> by the '80s it was too late. he says if he continues to present re presents this desire for freedom and pleasure. he would lose. and it took off from there. >> john: they left these in.

bruce springsteen went to east germany and drew a huge crowd. on we have a clip of him singing born in the u.s.a. in east germany this is pretty remarkable because so many people were there and they are singing along to born in the u.s.a. they weren't allowed in the u.s.a. >> that is right. theenormous popularity. this signaled the end of the communist regime. >> john: i can see how the music had a big effect but a much bigger effect would be raw consumerism. have a choice, they wanted the stuff, the phones, bikes and cars. >> i was in the 7 yet union in 1986 and i was immediately sbarmd when i walked in red square that wanted to buy my jeans. this happened. they were desperate. i got a soviet uniform in

exchange for it. >> john: that is what brought the wall down? >> if you look at the revolution that culminated in 1991 you see people walking away from ideology and internal documents they were saying it to themselves. if we continue to allow western influence, popular culture this n our people will want to leave. >> john: it reminds this wendy's commercial. let's take a look.

>> john: people wanted choices. people want freedom. they want the freedom to en dumping in pleasure and desires. >> john: thank you thaddeus russell. his book a renegade history is filled full of untold stories. next, the famous pornographer, that says america was shaped by presidents' sex lives.

>> john: when i think of sex magazines i think playboy, penthouse and hustler. this is a show about history. playboy was first and then came penthouse and then came hustler which became popular with people

who thought penthouse was too tame. the man who brought hustler into the world is larry flint. he has made millions of selling pictures of naked women. he is a passionate defender of free speech. he is in a wheelchair because he was shot by someone about a picture he published. tonight we're talking about history and in this case, sex in history. larry and columbia professor david wrote in book, one nation under sex, called the private lives of presidents, first ladies and their lovers changed history. come on. larry, sex lives make that much difference. >> ironically they did. they used the information to campaign against one another and so nothing has really changed.

>> john: it's reported about much but in those days, people liked to hush that up? >> i'm astonished it took 200 years that thomas jefferson fathered six children by a slave girl. we weren't able to establish that until dna until 1998. there is a lot of history out there which historians look the other way and didn't get reported. >> john: you aren't looking the other way. you say sex shaped history? >> that's right. it's a claim that has been ignored because they never wanted to touch the personal lives of the president. the problem is historians missed a major component of the story of america. the private lives of presidents and first ladies did shape how

things went. civil war. you think james buchanan gay love affair caused the civil war? >> that's right. he arrived in washington a young congressman from lancaster pennsylvania. he wants to abolish slavery. he is politically ambitious and he comes under the wing and tutelage of rufus king who a slave owner from alabama. two of them fall in love. they have a 32 year long love affair. >> john: how do you know? >> it's well known in washington, d.c. they were known as the siamese twins because they were always together. >> john: they might have been friends? >> not according to their letters. >> john: now you have what they were saying to each other? >> they talking about it and jealous of each other. the problem with that rufus king

indoctrinates buchanan of the importance of the institution of slavery in the fabric of america and slaves are happy. and buchanan takes those into this the presidency and when the southern states starts to secede he refuses to crack down on them. had he done that he might not have left half a country and lincoln comes along in 1861 and we could have avoided the civil war. >> john: going back before that, ben franklin and his success with women saved the revolution. >> ben franklin was a well known ladies' man. in 1776 when the continental congress is looking for someone to send over to france to get the french government support, they choose a man who had the capacity to win over the ladies

and wasn't so squeamish about french sexual you'll themes. >> he had actually written a thesis attributes of making love to older women. >> john: he wrote a paper, it's good to get an older lover. this is well known is. this is our guy to go over to france. he uses his capacity as a 70-year-old ladies' man to meet the hierarchy. he meets the right ladies. they introduce him to the right ministers in the french government. >> john: and the result? >> the french who were reluctant to support a revolution against the monarchy were won over.

they support the american revolution, our revolution succeeds. they bankrupt their own government and franklin winds up seducing his way into two revolutions. >> john: and roosevelt became a feminist because of the lesbian lover? >> eleanor catches franklin having an affair. she goes off on her own personal odyssey where she meets up with lesbians and carries on affairs. they are the ones that introduce roosevelt to the struggle to of women's right. she was against the equal rights amendment but they are the ones, women's rights are is the way to go. >> john: how do we know this now? >> people in the white house were writing about this diaries and books. it's been unacknowledged because

this is the personal lives of roosevelt. >> john: moving ahead in time, ed car hoover secretly taped martin luther king. he did this because john f. kennedy saw prostitutes? >> he got permission from kennedy because he caught j.f.k. hoover caught j.f.k. having a fling with a prostitute from east germany. the f.b.i. alleged indicated she was east german spy. hoover could destroy kennedy. they leaked it to whispering willie williams who is determined to tear down kennedy by exposing this affair. the kennedys had to turn to hoover. hoover had sex files on every senator, every congressman, anybody who is anybody in america. >> john: and washington was cess

pool of sex and sexual blackmail? >> that's right because hoover used these sex files to create a government within a government. he brings in the head of the senate and shows the sex files. no more investigation into this east german spy miss stress but hoover wanted in return for that one, his reappointment as f.b.i. director. >> john: which he got. >> and to bug and wiretap martin luther king which he used having affairs to persecute king. >> john: one more example we learned about the teapot dome scandal in school. warren harding's sex life caused it. >> the teapot dome scandal was one of many in the harding administration a corrupt administration in history of american politics. the original ins of this go back

to -- orj ins of this the party bosses are told, i got all these miss stresses we need to keep quiet. we need to pay off these women to keep them quiet. so the republican party creates a slush fund to pay them off. the men who contribute to that slush fund wants a return on their investment and they want their cash back. they got oil from the teapot dome. >> john: so today's sex scandals is nothing new you a? >> they pale in comparison to what we had from the very beginning of the early republic all the lie way through the 20th century. >> thank you. more myths about history when we come back.

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many americans know so little about history. a poll asked americans what country did united states declare independence from. 26% were not sure. that is a problem. but what people think they do know is often wrong and there are plenty of examples from this book. the believing brain from ghosts and gods and politics to

conspiracies. it's a new book from michael sherman. for this show, history myths. what are some? >> one of myths of history is that it unfolds in this beautiful coordinated lock stop logical fashion which only makes sense after the fact. with hindsight after an event you you can trace the chain. why didn't bush act on august 9th memo that condoleezza rice that al-qaeda will strike on united states soil. that was one of about 2,000 pieces of information that came to the state department. >> john: you hear about the one memo. >> so we notice the fact after the event. so history is chaotic and accidental. weird things happen. i have the discussion of franz ferdinand, this was a conspiracy

by nationalists that wanted independence. he was going to sarajevo to give a speech but one guy didn't get the right weapon. third guy missed. fifth guy threw the hand grenade and blew up. people were injured. franz was fine and gave his speech. turned around and drove back to the hospital. he is going down the same boulevard and the last assassin is sitting on the curb eating a sandwich. here he comes. thank you very much. boom! that is how history really unfolds. after the fact we look back and try to find some secret hidden organization there. >> john: your book's sub title is this? >> our beliefs come first, reason for beliefs how we were raised, what culture, our peer groups and how it shapes our

beliefs. after the fact we search in evidence to support it. >> john: a myth that the founding fathers were believing christians. i thought they were. >> in a way. liberal christians. they had a general belief in a creator but nothing like modern christians who. that is not one of these great myths. founding fathers were like us. that wasn't the case at all. we have letters and original discoverys because they told us what they believed. >> john: in god we trust has been on the currency since the 18 50s? >> beautiful thing about the american engs piavy, our founders were scientists. this they were philosophers and they talk about the american experiment and it's like a scientific experiment. we don't know how to govern. let's set it up and rerun the experiment. they are called elections.

every four years we'll throw the bums out and we'll trying tweak it. science works that way. we run an experiment, collect data. we are rerun it and tweak the variables because we don't know the truth. we try to understand how the world works but democracy and science are closely related in that sense. >> john: he runs a magazine called skeptic and i have stolen stories from. another myth you say that humans years ago, native peoples were naturally peace loving and lived in eco harmony. >> wrong again. >> and westerns and europeans and messed it up. >> the myth of the noble savage. this is the deepest historical

myth that has deep social policy implications. if you believe they live in peaceful harmony, it means our nature is kind. we don't have a dark side because it's brought about through imperialism and all the evils of western civil days. that is one of great myths. we now know long before europeans came to america the native americans were war like way more than we ever were as europeans. the percentage of males that died in conflicts is way higher. we have artifacts and arrow heads and spears inside skeletons. we know they de-forested most of new england before we came here. they were doing everything that people do, we expand out and we use resources and before we understood the long term

consequences, that is what people do. they are like us. they are not noble savages. so that is another great myth. it has political implications. if you believe that you are going to engineer social policy from the top down, we can end crime by taxing more and giving more money to the poor because we know that that poverty leads to criminality. no, we know there is a whole set of causes you have to assume there is some human nature to it. >> john: thank you. i'll tell you about my take on the biggest myth of history.

to me the biggest most destructive myth about history what historically made life good for people or bad for people is the idea that if we are to prosper, governments must make smart plans for us. of course, it must plan the economy. this is what i was taught in college. despite the failure of the soviet union, many government leaders still believe that is true. some years ago i went to india and interviewed a boss there. he was a social i-and party had been in charge of that parts of

india for years but despite the poverty he should have seen all around him, he said the free market and american capitalism are no good. >> political boss of india that i visited, it's not surprising this is the poorest part of country. >> it's poor because of your stupid policy, no? >> socialism just works better? >> that interview was done years ago. he and his party continued to rule and plan for another dozen years only this may after indian voters got upset watching businesses and jobs flee to other parts of india did they vote the socialist government out, overwhelmingly. but the socialists ruled for decades because central planning

makes sense to people. life is complex we can't pay attention to everybody. we have lives. of our intuition tells us someone should be in charge. what would be the economy be like if no one was in charge? well, it would be pretty good actually. certainly better than one is centrally planned. look at this list of countries. these places are centrally planned. these of are the nations at the bottom of index of economic freedom. country's ranking depends on rule of law, is your person and property secure. is the country relatively free from corruption? what is the level of government spending in relation to the economy? do they have labor freedom, are you free to hire people? it's no coincidence that the countries with the least economic freedom are the ones places in the world to live, but

not only not free but they are poor. now, look at the countries on top of the economic freedom list. the united states is 9th because mostly because of increased regulation, increased government spending and government guarantees for things like housing. at the top of the list is hong kong. what does at a time ticking be ranked the most economically free? well, they have low taxes and as i learn when i went there, they make it easy to become an entrepreneur. >> you are in hong kong, signing one form is all i had to do the next day i was running my own business. this opportunity to try. it's what made hong kong thrive. >> and hong kong have thrived. they have few natural resources. they don't have even democracy

of them were ruled by the british for years and communist chinese are in charge but good news, most the brits and chinese left hong kong alone and left alone free people making themselves rich. it's amazing story, 50 years from poverty to income levels that are among the highest in the world. prosperity thanks to economic freedom. we should try that here. that is our show for tonight. good night. my doctor told me calcium is besabsorbed in small continuous amounts. only one calcium supplement does that in one daily dose. new citracal slow release... continuously releases calcium plus d for the efficient absorption my body needs. citracal.

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