WEBVTT NOTE An Interview with Thomas DiLorenzo 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 I'm sitting here with Thomas DiLorenzo, a professor at Loyola College in Baltimore, and he's teaching at the Mises University on a variety of topics, but you took a short trip to New Orleans yesterday. Did you take another talk? 2 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Yes, I did. I spoke at a convention there, and I spoke about my forthcoming book, Lincoln Unmasked, What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, which is sort of a sequel to The Real Link in my earlier book. 3 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:34.280 and so and since it was New Orleans sort of a not unexpectedly I had a standing 4 00:00:34.280 --> 00:00:41.760 ovation from 600 people including a few rebel yells in the in the back of the room so 5 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:47.520 the anti-government attitudes are pretty intense these days in New Orleans well 6 00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:52.000 in New Orleans they certainly were I came back with a t-shirt that has big 7 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:55.360 black letters of FEMA you know the Federal Emergency Management Association 8 00:00:55.360 --> 00:01:03.360 Association, the top, and then a long line of cuss words underneath that everyone so far I've showed it to has gotten a good laugh out of it. 9 00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:11.360 But I guess the one good thing that's come out of the hurricane down there is that people hate and despise FEMA and the federal government for what they've done. 10 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:22.360 Not only that, but people I talked to fully understand that it was the Army Corps of Engineers screw up with the dyke system that caused the disaster. 11 00:01:22.360 --> 00:01:31.360 It wasn't the hurricane per se. Everyone I talked to knew this, and they all knew that the Corps of Engineers spun this for about six months. 12 00:01:31.360 --> 00:01:36.760 and then after the news died down there was they admitted it they admitted well 13 00:01:36.760 --> 00:01:42.640 that's yeah we goofed we didn't build a good enough system to protect the people 14 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:47.440 from this hurricane and but that was our page 28 news by that point and they 15 00:01:47.440 --> 00:01:52.120 understood that I thought these really ordinary people they weren't scientists 16 00:01:52.120 --> 00:01:57.760 or academics or libertarians like us they were just ordinary working people 17 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:13.760 I guess the message hasn't gotten out to the general population, but wasn't there some kind of, didn't FEMA, or was it the Army Corps of Engineers, that issued a report, actually, a big, it was a huge study. 18 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:17.760 That it would not withstand a Category 5 hurricane? Yeah, I think I remember that. 19 00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:21.760 This is one after everything that came out and sort of assessed the government's response. 20 00:02:21.760 --> 00:02:23.760 I guess this is what government does, right? 21 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:27.760 When there's a disaster, they hire, they assign a committee to kind of look into things. 22 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:28.760 Yeah, they assign a committee. 23 00:02:28.760 --> 00:02:35.760 I remember reading this news article and it was an eye-opener because they did admit it was our fault, 24 00:02:35.760 --> 00:02:38.760 but I think the way in which they're going to use it, of course, is to say, 25 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:40.760 well, therefore we need a bigger budget. 26 00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:43.760 We need more money because that's how government always operates. 27 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:50.800 Failure is success. When you fail spectacularly like this, they probably will double or triple 28 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:56.400 or quadruple their budget, just as though when NASA blows up a space shuttle, I think 29 00:02:56.400 --> 00:03:01.200 they literally did double NASA's budget the last time they did that, a big accident. 30 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:06.600 Yeah, it's proof that government failures end up being proof that taxpayers are too stingy 31 00:03:06.600 --> 00:03:08.040 and aren't willing to cough up enough. 32 00:03:08.040 --> 00:03:11.720 Yeah, that's what I always tell my students, if you think about the incentives, if you're 33 00:03:11.720 --> 00:03:16.760 You're wondering why it is that government so-called services are so poor, well the incentives 34 00:03:16.760 --> 00:03:17.760 are completely backwards. 35 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:23.480 The failure of success in government, in the private sector, if you serve consumers well, 36 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:24.480 you're rewarded. 37 00:03:24.480 --> 00:03:25.480 It's just the opposite. 38 00:03:25.480 --> 00:03:31.860 Is there an in-between solution, somewhere between the privatization of all this public 39 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:37.040 infrastructure and the current system, is there anything that, yeah, because people 40 00:03:37.040 --> 00:03:51.840 How likely is that? Being there yesterday, just picking up the local paper in New Orleans, 41 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:56.840 the government bureaucrats and their contractors are still working feverishly day and night 42 00:03:56.840 --> 00:04:00.800 literally on these levies because we're entering the peak of the hurricane season right now 43 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:06.340 this year. And so the government is gaining a big stronghold and taking over this rebuilding 44 00:04:06.340 --> 00:04:36.340 of the Levees. 45 00:04:36.340 --> 00:04:43.340 The Superdome was packed with people from all walks of life and they weren't academics, it wasn't an academic convention. 46 00:04:43.340 --> 00:04:51.340 They understood that at the Superdome, you remember seeing on television all these people crowded into the Superdome. 47 00:04:51.340 --> 00:04:58.340 They said there were thousands and thousands of automobiles parked around the Superdome that these people drove to the Superdome in. 48 00:04:58.340 --> 00:05:03.540 and so they could have left but my take on it is these are people who were so 49 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:07.340 conditioned to being taken care of by the government. The government told them 50 00:05:07.340 --> 00:05:11.460 go to the Superdome and that's what they did and they didn't have the wherewithal 51 00:05:11.460 --> 00:05:16.740 a day earlier to say let's get out of here like ordinary people would have 52 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:21.140 done but all these people who have been on generations of welfare are so 53 00:05:21.140 --> 00:05:27.660 used to being just told what to do and taken care of by somebody. They 54 00:05:27.660 --> 00:05:29.660 The Theory of Money and Credit 55 00:05:57.660 --> 00:06:08.660 I know that. It seems to be increasingly part of the culture of emergency in the US, where there's these little storm troopers, you know, sort of come out of nowhere. 56 00:06:08.660 --> 00:06:15.660 I mean, even around here, there was a case, I think last year, that there was a little bit of lightning and a thunderstorm or something like that, 57 00:06:15.660 --> 00:06:22.660 and we had one of those FEMA alarm systems that went off, and immediately everybody was held in wherever you were, all over town. 58 00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:23.660 Really? Couldn't go anywhere. 59 00:06:23.660 --> 00:06:27.660 In public libraries, you weren't allowed to leave? 60 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:33.660 Well, we've become a nation of sheep, I guess, with all these years of statism we've been suffering under. 61 00:06:33.660 --> 00:06:39.660 And the post-9-11 era has sped this up, I think, a great deal. 62 00:06:39.660 --> 00:06:45.660 You just walk through the airports like I've done in the last week four or five times, and everybody's yelling. 63 00:06:45.660 --> 00:06:49.660 Even the private airline employees are yelling at you now on the airlines to do that. 64 00:07:49.660 --> 00:08:19.660 But no one else said anything. I think that was the obvious question. I mean, they're a business, and they discon... inconvenience their customers tremendously, you know, there were all sorts of business people on that thing, they were buzzing away on their cell phones, cussing, I can't, I'm going to miss this big meeting, and who knows how much money they lost because of that. And the issue was probably had something to do with the unions, that they didn't want to... they probably have a union contract, or they won't work before 7 a.m. or something like that, I would guess. 65 00:08:19.660 --> 00:08:22.660 I think it struck me that no one would have spoken up about that. 66 00:08:22.660 --> 00:08:28.660 I'm probably over the top regulations concerning the instruments on the panel. 67 00:08:28.660 --> 00:08:37.660 I guess if the FAA bureaucrat wasn't on the job at that hour, they couldn't have done it at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. 68 00:08:37.660 --> 00:08:40.660 without the government's permission. 69 00:08:40.660 --> 00:08:47.660 It does seem that the culture has, the political culture, and just generally, things have really... 70 00:08:47.660 --> 00:08:51.660 9-11 represented something like a turning point, didn't it? 71 00:08:51.660 --> 00:08:57.660 Yeah, I remember emailing, I recall emailing our good friend, Professor Ralph Rakow, 72 00:08:57.660 --> 00:09:04.660 the very, one very eloquent message of, we're screwed after 9-11, 73 00:09:04.660 --> 00:09:09.660 because he just, anyone who's ever read Robert Higgs's book, Crisis and Leviathan, 74 00:09:09.660 --> 00:09:16.900 would have anticipated exactly what the state was going to do. It was going to explode in terms of the building of bigger and new 75 00:09:17.500 --> 00:09:20.860 bureaucracies and taxes and rules and regulations and 76 00:09:21.580 --> 00:09:26.500 restrictions on our travel, and that's exactly what has happened. And we're no safer. 77 00:09:26.500 --> 00:09:30.820 To show you how naive I am, I've read the book, but after 9-11, I thought, well, 78 00:09:32.060 --> 00:09:39.100 that's what happens with our interventionist foreign policy. Maybe at long last somebody's going to see this and I will do something about it. 79 00:09:39.100 --> 00:09:49.740 Unfortunately, the voices that would articulate that correct argument are too few and not 80 00:09:49.740 --> 00:09:50.740 quite as powerful. 81 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:54.700 That doesn't mean they always will be in that state, but as I've said in some of my other 82 00:09:54.700 --> 00:09:59.340 writings, as you know, Jeff, I've written books on such topics as tax-funded politics 83 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:03.780 of how government writes checks to special interest groups that use the money then to 84 00:10:03.780 --> 00:10:06.380 lobby for bigger government. 85 00:10:06.380 --> 00:10:16.380 The government has the ability to drown out all of their voices if it wants to on an issue like this. 86 00:10:16.380 --> 00:10:23.380 Even though there are great reasons to believe that our foreign policy is the root cause of this, 87 00:10:23.380 --> 00:10:31.380 so far it's been drowned out by the terrorizing of the population, not by the terrorists, but by our own government. 88 00:10:31.380 --> 00:10:40.780 Just the other day here at Mises U and I ran back to my condo and turned on the television 89 00:10:40.780 --> 00:10:46.220 news. There was a map of the United States on the Fox News Channel and the lettering 90 00:10:46.220 --> 00:10:52.300 below it had about 30 stars on the different cities in the map all over the country that 91 00:10:52.300 --> 00:10:58.140 were blinking off and on and underneath it it said Hezbollah terror cells in America. 92 00:10:58.140 --> 00:11:00.980 And I looked at that and I'm thinking well if the government knows where these terror 93 00:11:00.980 --> 00:11:30.980 The question is, how do they know where the terrorist cells are exactly, that they can pinpoint them on a map? Why don't they go get them? Or if they do, if I was a terrorist and I saw that map, I'd get out of town. So it struck me that it had to be made up. How do they know there's terrorist cells in Dubuque, Iowa, in Seattle, Washington, and all that? And if they did know, why aren't they doing anything about it? And why would they reveal to the terrorists that they know where they are? It doesn't make any sense at all. And so the only thing that makes sense is they're trying to use the current war in Lebanon 94 00:11:30.980 --> 00:11:38.100 to stir up more fear in the minds of Americans so they can grab more power over us 95 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:44.260 because that map was just totally stupid. It's inconceivable that that was true. 96 00:11:45.780 --> 00:11:50.100 The same thing with it. You remember all the color-coded nonsense where on Thursday would be 97 00:11:50.100 --> 00:11:54.100 a red alert and probably a yellow alert. Then they changed it and confused everybody. 98 00:11:54.100 --> 00:12:07.860 The assumption is somehow the government is privy to special kinds of information and special 99 00:12:07.860 --> 00:12:14.660 plans that are going to secure us that other people don't have. 100 00:12:14.660 --> 00:12:21.140 Yes, we're from the government and we're here to help you. 101 00:12:21.140 --> 00:12:29.240 As long as enough people believe in that, they'll continue to control us. 102 00:12:29.240 --> 00:12:32.820 What you just said reminds me of something our old friend Yuri Maltsev said when I first 103 00:12:32.820 --> 00:12:33.820 met him. 104 00:12:33.820 --> 00:12:38.320 He came here from Russia in the late 80s and I started asking him questions about what 105 00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:43.140 are some of the biggest differences between life in the Soviet Union where he grew up 106 00:12:43.140 --> 00:12:49.140 until middle age and life in America now that you've been here a couple of years. 107 00:12:49.140 --> 00:12:54.140 He said he couldn't believe how everyone believes just about everything the government says here. 108 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:59.140 Whereas in the Soviet Union, no one believed anything the politicians said over there for his entire life. 109 00:12:59.140 --> 00:13:03.140 They just went along with it because there was nothing they could do about it. 110 00:13:03.140 --> 00:13:09.140 But as long as we have this childish attitude that our parents are in Washington D.C., 111 00:13:09.140 --> 00:13:14.140 no matter how old we are, they'll keep controlling and abusing us like that. 112 00:13:14.140 --> 00:13:23.140 How much of a contribution do you think you've made to helping a broad sector of the public to rethink the Lincoln question? 113 00:13:23.140 --> 00:13:31.140 Well, I don't have any scientific measurement. I know I've sold a lot of books. My book is being used at quite a few universities. 114 00:13:31.140 --> 00:13:39.140 Even if it's being used as a foil where a professor will use it and then criticize it all semester, they're still making the students read the book. 115 00:13:39.140 --> 00:13:45.500 and you know everywhere I go I've given lots of speeches all over the country 116 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:50.180 to all kinds of groups mostly student groups I've had dozens of invitations 117 00:13:50.180 --> 00:13:52.900 to go to universities and they always come for the students never from the 118 00:13:52.900 --> 00:13:56.420 from the professors because it's a little too politically incorrect I guess 119 00:13:56.420 --> 00:14:00.980 but the students love it they love having someone someone come on campus and 120 00:14:00.980 --> 00:14:05.620 and say things that they know will some of their professors will disagree with 121 00:14:05.620 --> 00:14:23.700 In my next book, Lincoln Unmasked, the final chapter is called Contra the Lincoln Cult. 122 00:14:23.700 --> 00:14:28.700 It's basically about a number of authors who are not professional Lincoln scholars, but 123 00:14:28.700 --> 00:14:34.300 who have nevertheless written books either about Lincoln or part of a book about Lincoln 124 00:14:34.300 --> 00:14:40.620 that basically agree with my interpretation of the whole thing, and one of them is James 125 00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:45.140 Webb, the former U.S. Navy secretary, who wrote a book on the history of the Scots-Irish 126 00:14:45.140 --> 00:14:50.220 in America, and he has a big section since the Scots-Irish overwhelmingly settled in 127 00:14:50.220 --> 00:14:55.100 the South and were very heavily represented in the Confederate Army in what I call the 128 00:14:55.100 --> 00:14:59.340 war to prevent southern independence. He provides some pretty good arguments. There's a man 129 00:14:59.340 --> 00:15:28.780 Stephen Weisman, Lincoln's Wrath, Lincoln's Crackdown and Demolition of Civil Liberties 130 00:15:28.780 --> 00:15:58.780 The History of Slavery in New York 131 00:15:58.780 --> 00:16:00.780 The Theory of Money and Credit 132 00:16:28.780 --> 00:16:40.700 What I think is really great about your method here is that you're able to write commercially 133 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:49.140 successful books, which is not easy, but also make them rigorous from a scholarly point of 134 00:16:49.140 --> 00:16:50.140 view. 135 00:16:50.140 --> 00:16:56.860 I mean, rigorously persuasive, that's not easy, there's not many people who can manage 136 00:16:56.860 --> 00:16:57.860 that. 137 00:16:57.860 --> 00:17:27.860 I've been thinking of that my whole life pretty much. When I was a college student, I thought Milton Friedman and James Buchanan were among my best, my sort of role models as far as writers because I thought they both had really good techniques for explaining things and in addition to being eventually Nobel Prize winning economists and so even as a young student I worked hard at trying to imitate some of the better writing styles of some of the economists 138 00:17:57.860 --> 00:18:03.860 How did you manage that? 139 00:18:03.860 --> 00:18:10.860 Well, the real Lincoln actually, I had published an article in The Independent Review called The Great Centralizer. 140 00:18:10.860 --> 00:18:15.860 And then I looked at that article and I said, I can turn this into a book. 141 00:18:15.860 --> 00:18:21.860 I'm going to do more research and I just took each section of that article and expanded my research and my writing. 142 00:18:21.860 --> 00:18:25.860 And I did this over a summer and it was the end of the summer and I was pretty much done. 143 00:18:25.860 --> 00:18:38.860 I had a manuscript there and I got a phone call from a publisher from a publishing company that was affiliated with Random House who said I read your article in the Independent Review, would you consider turning this into a book? 144 00:18:38.860 --> 00:18:49.860 And I said yes I would. In fact I just did that. So I sent them that and they published it and it sold very well as you know it created a big controversy. 145 00:18:49.860 --> 00:19:19.860 and there have even been magazine articles about my current publisher Crown Forum that I have someone sent me about the publishing business that actually points to this book as one of the early successes of this whole enterprise where the Random House decided to devote a few resources to publishing conservative books they call them conservative books and they highlighted mine as one of the first successes they had 146 00:19:19.860 --> 00:19:34.860 The big seller of my publisher is Ann Coulter. Her latest book is also published by them. 147 00:19:34.860 --> 00:19:39.500 And God bless Ann, she sold half a million copies in about a week, so maybe I can ask 148 00:19:39.500 --> 00:19:44.660 for a bigger advance next time, now that I know they're loaded. But that's how I got 149 00:19:44.660 --> 00:19:51.820 connected with this division of Random House, Crown Forum, and they've published my Capitalism 150 00:19:51.820 --> 00:19:56.820 book, How Capitalism Saved America, and I just sent them a proposal for another book 151 00:19:56.820 --> 00:20:01.140 that they said, we like it, and we'll get back to you shortly about details. 152 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:05.140 Do you, but this is another proposal? 153 00:20:05.140 --> 00:20:09.460 They're publishing my third, my second Lincoln book, so they've published two of them. 154 00:20:09.460 --> 00:20:13.820 They've published The Real Lincoln, How Capitalism Saved America, and then this one, Lincoln 155 00:20:13.820 --> 00:20:43.720 The proposal I sent them is a book called Hamilton's Curse, and the subtitle I'm still working on is something like Why Jefferson's Arch-Enemy Disavowed the American Revolution. 156 00:20:43.720 --> 00:20:52.200 The title comes from John Steele Gordon's book called Hamilton's Blessing, where he 157 00:20:52.200 --> 00:20:57.000 claims he argues that the public debt has been a blessing to America. 158 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:06.320 I'm looking much closer at Hamilton in terms of his economic ideas, and I think he is the 159 00:21:06.320 --> 00:21:11.280 main source of so many bad ideas that have come to fruition in America. 160 00:21:11.280 --> 00:21:17.780 He was a champion of corporate welfare, central banking, business and politics being linked, 161 00:21:17.780 --> 00:21:24.200 protectionism, the idea that there are implied powers in the Constitution that aren't actually 162 00:21:24.200 --> 00:21:28.760 written down, because that was Hamilton's idea that Justice John Marshall ran with and 163 00:21:28.760 --> 00:21:30.960 has plagued us ever since. 164 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:37.700 He was a big tax increaser, he championed public debt, and so as a free market economist, 165 00:21:37.700 --> 00:21:43.160 You can't see a good economic idea anywhere in Hamilton, but of course America has been 166 00:21:43.160 --> 00:21:48.200 one big battle between the philosophies of Hamilton and Jefferson, and in recent years 167 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:53.700 there have been quite a few big books written that lionize Hamilton and demonize Jefferson. 168 00:21:53.700 --> 00:21:59.060 And so I argue to my publishers in my proposal that I think I'm uniquely qualified to do 169 00:21:59.060 --> 00:22:04.040 something like this, because the only historian who has ever written about Hamilton who claims 170 00:22:04.040 --> 00:22:07.040 And Mises' economic expertise is Forest MacDonald. 171 00:22:07.040 --> 00:22:10.040 And he's a historian. He's not an economist. 172 00:22:10.040 --> 00:22:13.040 And he does have more of an economic background than most historians. 173 00:22:13.040 --> 00:22:15.040 But still, not very good. 174 00:22:15.040 --> 00:22:17.040 He gets a lot of Hamilton's economics wrong. 175 00:22:17.040 --> 00:22:19.040 He's a champion of Hamilton. He thinks he's great. 176 00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:24.040 But Hamilton's economic ideas were universally terrible from my perspective. 177 00:22:24.040 --> 00:22:27.040 And so, I'm proposing to... 178 00:22:27.040 --> 00:22:31.040 sort of each chapter after I get through the introductory material will be... 179 00:22:31.040 --> 00:22:35.240 Here's what went on during Hamilton's day with his big debate with Jefferson or whoever 180 00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:37.600 over these issues. 181 00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:42.800 And then I want to trace through in the same kind of language that I use in my other books, 182 00:22:42.800 --> 00:22:48.840 how what happened once we did get Hamiltonian central banking, what has been the record 183 00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:49.840 of central banking? 184 00:22:49.840 --> 00:22:54.820 And then I'm going to make a case against central banking, hopefully in a readable form. 185 00:22:54.820 --> 00:22:59.280 And then his protectionism, he was sort of the champion of protectionism. 186 00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:02.560 How has America fared over the years with that? 187 00:23:02.560 --> 00:23:06.480 It's an interesting strain of thought, because you did the same thing, of course, with the 188 00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:10.960 whole of your studies of Henry Clay and the Lincoln period. 189 00:23:10.960 --> 00:23:11.960 There is a tie. 190 00:23:11.960 --> 00:23:16.720 There was the mercantilists in America, the leaders of the mercantilism in America, historically 191 00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:21.840 were Hamilton, then Clay, then Lincoln, and then the Republican Party in general in the 192 00:23:21.840 --> 00:23:28.560 late 19th century, and then Roosevelt when FDR came around, the New Deal was the neo-mercantilism 193 00:23:28.560 --> 00:23:38.100 with all the wage codes that propped up prices and things like that were his version of mercantilism. 194 00:23:38.100 --> 00:23:46.560 But Hamilton remains the patron saint of all this, but I don't think the average American 195 00:23:46.560 --> 00:23:47.560 has any understanding of this. 196 00:23:47.560 --> 00:23:52.600 He might know there was a big debate between Hamilton and Jefferson, but I think it has 197 00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:56.560 a lot more economic meaning. 198 00:23:56.560 --> 00:24:04.060 Has your opinion of the Federalist Papers changed at all as you've done your studies? 199 00:24:04.060 --> 00:24:11.060 Yeah, actually one of the things I'm planning on getting into in this book, Hamilton's Curse, 200 00:24:11.060 --> 00:24:22.480 is looking at how the way I've come to see it is that the Constitution was a coup against 201 00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:44.480 The Jeffersonians really, and the limited government contingent among the founding fathers, as Albert J. Knox said in his work, he said it was a bloodless coup that opened the door to centralized governmental power, especially giving the central government the power to tax. 202 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:47.480 That was sort of the beginning of the end of liberty in America in my view. 203 00:24:47.480 --> 00:25:05.480 I guess it's all relative. Compared to what we've got today, if you were to enforce the Constitution, we would be better off in terms of freedom and prosperity, but we would be even better off yet if we had never had the Constitution and stuck with the Articles of Confederation and had a loose confederation and not a centralized state. 204 00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:35.480 and so I have changed my mind a bit about that, with all my work on Lincoln and that I think what happened in America now is that the Constitution was a coup d'etat that the nationalists succeeded with and they made all kinds of promises that this Constitution would limit government, don't worry about it, but then they worked diligently to undermine the limits on government 205 00:25:35.480 --> 00:25:45.480 John Marshall bears a lot of the blame for that, for talking about implied powers of the Constitution, not real powers, for example. 206 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:57.480 And then I think the war between the states was the final end of that coup d'etat, where we finally cemented into place, at gunpoint, what the nationalists always wanted. 207 00:25:57.480 --> 00:26:05.480 and then from then on they rewrote the history and we celebrate nationalism and patriotism and militarism 208 00:26:05.480 --> 00:26:11.480 which is what these people and their political ancestors were always about in my view. 209 00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:16.480 Did you go to any 4th of July celebrations this year? 210 00:26:16.480 --> 00:26:23.480 No, I didn't go to any. Unfortunately I live in downtown Baltimore and they blew off the fireworks right in front of where I lived 211 00:26:23.480 --> 00:26:50.480 So my dog was very frightened by them, but she recovered, and now I never say the Pledge of Allegiance because I know it was written by a late 19th century socialist whose idea was to indoctrinate into school children obedience to the state, and so I'll stand up and smile, but I won't put my hand on my heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance. 212 00:26:50.480 --> 00:27:12.480 The independence day idea is a wonderful one. It's amazing how that whole holiday has been converted into the celebration of the military. 213 00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:20.480 I know the meaning of Independence Day. It was our declaration of secession from the British Empire. 214 00:27:20.480 --> 00:27:27.480 But you're right, it's been turned into one big militaristic state-worshipping event. 215 00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:35.480 You turn on the television in the evening, on July 4th, and you'll see down at the mall in Washington, D.C. 216 00:27:35.480 --> 00:27:38.480 with all the military people and the cannons and all that. 217 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:45.480 A Canadian friend of mine, a very pretty song is O Canada. As far as anthems goes, I like O Canada. 218 00:27:45.480 --> 00:27:53.480 And a Canadian friend of mine once remarked, why is America bombs bursting in air? 219 00:27:53.480 --> 00:28:00.480 Why is everything so militaristic and warlike in your anthems compared to O Canada? 220 00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:04.480 That's our culture. It's been our culture for quite a long time, I guess. 221 00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:17.480 The problem is that many people assume that the purpose of the American Revolution is to make us ruled by the Constitution instead of a king. 222 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:24.480 That's not understanding that there is a period of time that passes between the Revolution and... 223 00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:29.480 Yes, that's right. And you can't rely on the government schools to teach you that. 224 00:28:29.480 --> 00:28:55.480 The whole principle of divided sovereignty, which is what the founders understood, that they set up this system whereby if this central government was to be controlled by the people, the only possible hope for that would be if the people could organize politically at their local or community level or state level to exert control over this central state. 225 00:28:55.480 --> 00:29:04.280 It turns out that was not effective, and I argue that the war of 1861 to 1865 was fought 226 00:29:04.280 --> 00:29:10.120 to destroy that once and for all, the ability of the people to be the masters rather than 227 00:29:10.120 --> 00:29:12.560 the servants of their central government. 228 00:29:12.560 --> 00:29:16.640 That's the real purpose of the war, and it was accomplished, too. 229 00:29:16.640 --> 00:29:22.480 The final nail in the coffin of that was the income tax in 1913, along with the Fed that 230 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:40.480 One of the things I really admire about the way you've handled all of this since your 231 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:46.440 first book on Lincoln came out is you've been the source of enormous controversy and many 232 00:29:46.440 --> 00:29:51.480 controversies stirred up in all kinds of circles over the book and yet you stayed on topic. 233 00:29:51.480 --> 00:30:21.480 The Theory of Money and Credit 234 00:30:51.480 --> 00:31:21.480 The Theory of Money and Credit 235 00:31:21.480 --> 00:31:29.480 Foundations, and of course Carnegie and Ford have been criticized by conservatives for decades as being tools of the left wing. 236 00:31:29.480 --> 00:31:36.480 They're also funders of Harry Jaffa's career, who's the preeminent Lincoln idolater as I call them. 237 00:31:36.480 --> 00:31:45.480 And so people like that, with that sort of financial support, aren't used to criticism because they have the ability actually to finance, 238 00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:30.480 You make it seem easy, but it's very difficult, and a scholar with less maturity and less courage than you would have collapsed under the pressure. 239 00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:35.480 Well, thanks for the compliment, but that's the way I've always been. 240 00:32:35.480 --> 00:33:05.480 And you're right, most people are too intimidated. That's why, you know, if you look at all the people who call themselves libertarians and who write on issues related to this history, economic history, very, very few will even touch this topic, in my opinion of why that is, is that their first and foremost goal is to be acceptable to the mainstream. In academe, that means left-wingers. But I don't care about that. 241 00:33:05.480 --> 00:33:10.560 I look at people like Murray Rothbard as my inspiration, and Ludwig von Mises who pursued 242 00:33:10.560 --> 00:33:18.240 truth and weren't so interested in how their socialist colleagues will look at them, or 243 00:33:18.240 --> 00:33:22.400 whether or not they can get these people to write blurbs for their next book. I'm not 244 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:26.840 concerned about that. I don't care if James McPherson doesn't write a blurb for my next 245 00:33:26.840 --> 00:33:31.920 book. Jeffrey Hummel may care, but I don't care about that sort of thing. You have a 246 00:34:01.920 --> 00:34:20.920 and wrote about states, rights, federalism. Felix Morley, his book, Freedom and Federalism, is a great little book on this, but you don't see anything like that coming out of any of the more visible libertarian think tanks or writers anymore, apart from me. 247 00:34:20.920 --> 00:34:28.920 You're doing your part to bring it back and we're grateful to you for teaching this week at the Mises U where you're mostly talking about economics, not about history. 248 00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:33.420 That's right. To me, this is Mecca. I enjoy coming to Mecca, even though it's a hassle 249 00:34:33.420 --> 00:34:37.680 going through those transportation security aircrafts at the Atlanta airport. It's worth 250 00:34:37.680 --> 00:34:42.680 coming to Mecca. Mecca on the Chattahoochee, maybe we can call it someday. 251 00:34:42.680 --> 00:34:44.960 Well, thank you very much for visiting with us today. 252 00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:45.460 My pleasure.