The people. Host what about the question of money supply in the government . Guest that is interesting. Take it back a little ways. In 199091 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 wasnt 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 couldnt 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. Jeffersons 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 dont want to see Anglican Church establishment in virginia but we dont 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 dont 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 patriots answers to americas 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 patriots history of the modern world from americas exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb 18981945, 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 dont 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 rockandroll 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 didnt 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 dont 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 masters at Arizona State, kicked me out because they cant 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 didnt drink. And wont say never did drugs but never did drugs away kids do drugs. Realtime 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 wont 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 worlds. 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 doesnt 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 todays 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 wasnt the first. Guest we have a sidebar, a two page sidebar called did columbus kill all the indians . Theres 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 columbuss 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 monarchs 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 dont 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 cspan2. Two 025858880. In east and central time zones 5853881. 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 email to booktv cspan. Org. Para eight of larry Larry Schweikarts books. Beginning with a patriots history of the u. S. Came out in 2004, americas 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, patriots answers to americas most pressing problems in 2011, the patriots history reader essential documents for every american in 2011 and finally his most recent, a patriots history of the modern world from americas exceptional ascent to the atomic bomb 18981945. And is there a second volume . Guest should be out in december, 19452012. 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 heres 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 jeffersons 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 1party system, few people know this. We were a 1party system from 18161824. Called the democratic republicans. A lot of people think we are still a 1party 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. Wont 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 theyre going through the bars and hurting people ought to vote. Martin van burens 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 wasnt the southerner and Martin Van Buren did not think youd get a southerner elected again. If you wasnt the southerner, Martin Van Buren wanted somebody who would be sympathetic to the slave statess concerns. The phrase was a no. Man of southern principles. He succeeds in that all the way up to 1860 but in keeping the states 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 youre going to run against me, they run against Martin Van Burens 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, modernday democrat party, gets its original Founding Mission was to protect slavery. I host plan eisenhowers 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 ikes heart attack as the opportunity to press for more concerns about Heart Disease. There wasnt 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 Fa