Including race, education, the environment, health care andd m. More. Host Walter Williams inter your most recent book american in contempt for liberty, you write its difficult to be a good economist and simultaneouslyved perceived as compassionate. Mp oo be asasion g od economist one has to deal with three out threey, t audi of the two appear topassionate often one has avoid unpleasant questions. Oid p that is absolutely right tor. Te a good economist, you have to look at the cause and effect and many times people dont want toa see cause and effect and so an economist will also talk about cost that is when people talk about the benefit that they are doing something, someone has to talk about cost and a lot of times people dont like to talk about cost. Host is a coldblooded creature . Guest i think one of my issues is my initial premise we each go to ourselves i and my private property and you are your property. If you accept the self ownership, then certain acts are moral and immoral. It violates private property. I think that you can get a fairly good addition of how the world should be from the moral standpoint that looks at the initial premise. Host what about the concept of the common good . Guest it doesnt make a lot of sense whatsoever. What was done in the name of the common good many acts that you see around the world and over the history of the world hasnt been very moral. Host back to american contempt for liberty in many view American Education as a failure but in at least one important way its been a success in dumbing down the nation so that we fall prey. Host that is absolutely right. I havent watched any of the debate but if you look at some of the debate in particular those on the democratic side of the spectrum you find that americans dont really care about the character for of the person and what they are calling for in the nation and i think thats because americans have become dumbed down by the educational system but theres another success in the system and that is teachers and the people that run the system. Host you spent quite a bit of time writing about American Education. Whats happened to it . Guest there are several things that have happened for the good of the system one has been the monopolization of education in the country. I believe the number is around 1950 there were 52,000 School Districts in the country. Today theres about 13,000 School Districts so thereve been massive consolidation and then theres fewer accountability standards both for students and educators and then we see teachers and principals get pay raises and promotions whether the kids can read or write and the kids get their diploma whether they can read or write and i think a startling commitment condemnation for the School System is that close to 50 of the take remedial education in writing and mathematica thats the same thing the schools are issuing a fraudulent diplomas. I can teach the micro economic theory and in the fall i teach the first phd course and in the spring i teach intermediate which is an undergraduate course i would love for my students to share my values but i dont talk about my values and class. It is to learn how to think and how to engage in this passionate analysis and hopefully if they get out in the world and get into the policy commission they can come up with compassionate policies or compassion of ideas. Host what kind of education that you have . Guest i tell people coming and its not nice of me to say this but i tell people that i am very happy that i got virtually all of my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people. What i mean by that is that when i heard this he did it cope us he high school or college that was an honest to god score that i earned in when i earned an a. That was an honest to god a dedicated and care but the legacy of discrimination or my handicaps being poor. They held up to standards and i think that is very good and i think that many students both black and white are not held to high standards. For example, in my junior high school, one of the assignments was to write a three page essay torrent into four pieces with a little note on top of it but if the teacher did that today they might be in a lot of trouble because she might be hurting the kids feelings of selfesteem. When i was going to School Teachers didnt care about my selfesteem. Host you write about doctor rosenberg one of three teachers . Guest yes he was i anguish teacher in high school. Those kids that hes all but had some college potential that arrive at 7 00 in the morning and he would drill us on english topics and grammar. One day in class one of his teaching techniques was to write a sentence on the board and have one of the students corrected sentence info one day he wrote a sentence into the student of the error and he was about ready to erase the sentence from the board and i raised my hand and i said theres another error and he looked at it and decide what is it and i said there is lack of agreement between the subject and he said very good you are very alert this morning and so i said to my friend is sitting beside me im paying taxes for the teacher to teach me and i have to teach him and he heard me and went into a tirade. He said its like catching pearls, you will never be anything. He was really frustrated with me and legitimately so because i was kind of the clown in class but him addressing me that way was the first real challenge that i had in high school and i graduated second in my class but i need to do that kind of dressing down. Can you imagine what would happen to a white teacher telling it black kid today with doctor rosenberg said to me he would be kicked out of the School Committee would be called a racist and condemned for not caring enough about the kids feelings and selfesteem. Host one of your books is called race and economics. Guest i think there is a lot of confusion between race and economics but race has played a role in our country in terms of the economic wellbeing of blacks or other discriminated against minorities that has had an effect. Discrimination doesnt explained what people think about race in the country. Host and this is from a column in 97 per year to veto for years i said if they wanted to establish Academic Excellence they couldnt find this tool more perfect than the majors at cities. Keyword at the board of education. Did that affect you at all or change your class is . Guest i went to Benjamin Franklin high school and at the time Benjamin Franklin high school was the lowest rated schools in the city it was in north of adelphia predominantly black and low income area but however, if you could imagine a time tunnel and you could pull Benjamin Franklin from 1954 up to today, then Benjamin Franklin would be probably one of the highest schools in the city of philadelphia. And that is the reason why is that standards have plummeted so much. Now my statement about the ku klux klan ive often said that if you want to sabotage any chance of black Academic Excellence you couldnt find a better way than the public School System in most cities and what we do see that most americans are unaware of and particularly black americans are unaware of is that its the average black High School Graduate or average black high school 12th graders as the reading, writing, math and Civics Knowledge of the average white seventh or eighth grader. That is a devastating statistic that is where a majority that graduate from high school with a fraudulent diploma. The quality of education that white students get is nothing to write home about. That is because the standards are very, very low and that is according to the recent National Assessment of education process statistics for 2015. I think that is only 30 or 40 of the white students that are proficient in reading and math but it is 7 score proficiency in math and i think like 10 score proficiency in reading. Host where do you see those disparities in rates of . Guest they are probably a member of reasons. One has to do with the Education System in general but i think that one of the things we have to recognize is that there are many inputs that preventive education and if some of the inputs are off their editors and get difference how much money you spend on education and education would occur. In other words what im saying is that for a kid to do well in school, somebody must make sure that the kid is in bed by eight or 9 00 at night. Somebody must get him up in the morning and get him to breakfast. Somebody must make sure that he arrives to school in time and he does his homework and somebody must make sure that he minds the teacher. If that isnt done, i dont care how much money you put into the education budget, education will not occur unless those things are done and if you ask ten politicians to those things and big short kid is in bed on time and can donate here are the congressman or senator, though you need a parent and by the way i think you need two parents. Host when in your view did this start to switch, when did the standards become dualities and when did the change in education beginquotes guest i think if i were to try to find a time during the 60s and 70s, standards begin to change. As a matter of fact my mother used to complain about the preachings saying you shouldnt spank your children regardless of what the doctor advised i got spanked. So what we we started to do, we started to in terms of education we started to move away from things that worked very well two things that sounded good as we went from things that work well to things that sound good and that were not very productive. One example of this is that i live in a high Income Neighborhood and in the state of pennsylvania but my wife had been trying to get me to move my daughter out of this fairly good Public High School and i was resisting it because the tuition at a private school was like 14,000 a year just back in the 80s. And what convinced me to move her to the private school was a parentteacher meeting that i had with her teachers come and her math teacher with all the teachers in the room at the math teacher said while your daughter hasnt been turning in assignments and paying attention and we didnt know anything about it. We want the kids to feel good about themselves and i told him, i said i feel good about myself every time i sold a set of equations, and so i went home that evening and i told my wife lets start looking for a private school. Host and did the standards change . Guest is as a matter of fact one of the things of the at the private school we are interviewing the schools and those that we ultimately decided to send money to said we dont tie your education measures. That is if you teach the course in english you have to have your degree degree and in galicia and teach the course in math and you have to have your degree in math and also if my daughter would slack on some of her jobs, we knew within the next ten days because they send an interim report home and if she did something very well, we would know that as well. Host in an interview that you did with the National Review magazine, you said im not a member of any party i would call myself a jeffersonian or madisonian liberal. We need to take back the word liberal because people that use it to describe themselves are not liberal at all. It goes on to say that williams is in large part a libertarian but some people call a Classical Liberal though he says he splits with many libertarians on National Defense and foreignpolicy and that he doesnt mind being labeled a conservative. Guest ive been called a lot of things in my nearly 80 years of life but yes we need to take back the word liberal because it essentially means that you are for personal liberty and people who call themselves liberal today, they are not for personal liberty they are for things like using the government to forcibly use one american to serve the purpose of the matter and they are anything but freedom oriented. Host how did you get from the projects of the philadelphia to the economics professor at George Mason University . Guest while it wasnt easy and the one who has gone from where i started to where i am now, you dont do that without luck and chance and help from many other people. I am not a selfmade person. But i think that very significant about my journey is that its a wonderful testament about the nation that is just because you know where somebody ended up in life, you cant be sure about where he started and i think that is so great about our nation. Thats part of the uniqueness of the United States that is we are not a class society. That is in europe if you dont start at the top, youre not going to get to the top. But in the United States it is possible to start at the bottom and move all the way to the top command very interestingly if you look at forbes list of the 5100 richest people in the United States, you dont find the names like rockefeller, carnegie, ford and all these people, you find steve jobs, bill gates, and people who start off with relatively modest incomes were middleclass in a move to be the richest people in the world and that is a great commentary about the United States into something we should work hard to preserve. Why havent you watched any of the debates so far . Guest im not turned on by politicians so much. I think that it very important that politicians are salesmen and they are trying to sell people on their particular vision or get people to vote for them and they will use any tools at their disposal to get people to vote for them and im just not turned on by politicians. Host up from the projects page 128 you write its always been my opinion that save for a precious few congressmen peace people are not deserving of the honor and respect they receive and most of them a handful of snow are seen as enemies of both the constitution and the moral precepts of the Founding Fathers. Guest that is right. And i think that any politician who would rigorously live up to the oath of office to uphold the United States constitution he just would not get elected to office by the American People because what the politicians reflect, they reflect the values and the views of the American People, that is those that elect them to office. Some people might say that is a little bit strong. While he we just might ask ourselves what would happen to a publication that had the vision of whats a James Madison acknowledged in the United States constitution and in 1794, the congress appropriated 15,000 to help a french refugee and a James Madison stood on the floor of the house i rate and says, and im virtually quoting him he says i cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the constitution that authorizes congress to spend the money of their constituents for the purpose of the netherlands . Now if you look at the federal budget, two thirds and three quarters of it is for the purpose. Now just ask yourself what would the American People do to a politician or anybody running for office would make a Statement Like madison or make another statement madison also said that charity is not a legitimate function of government can you imagine what is they would do to politician so what im saying is that politicians are reflecting the values and the views of the people that are elected to office and unfortunately, the values and the views of most americans are distinct from those of the founders of the nation. Host so has the key Party Movement in a positive in your view of american politics . Guest i think it has been a movement or a group of people who are saying lets go back to the constitution, lets have the constitutional principle. But whether they will be successful or not is another matter. And keep in mind that, you know, if you look at the founders of the nation, they wanted a very limited government. If you read in the federalist paper i think it is 45448 when he was trying to describe to the citizens of new york was in the constitution to get the citizens of new york to ratify the constitution, he said the power that was delegated to the federal government are few and well defined, and restricted mostly to external affairs, those left with the people and the states are in definite and numerous. If you turn that upside down you would have what we have today, that is the power of the federal government are in definite and numerous into those are the people in the state are limited and welldefined. Host from your book liberty versus the socialism you rightly often hear the claim that the nation is a democracy. That wasnt the vision of the founders they saw democracy as another form of tierney. If we have become a democracy, i guarantee you the founders would be deeply disappointed by our betrayal. Guest yes i think that is absolutely right. If you read the statements by madison, jefferson and adams, they condemn the idea of democracy. As a matter of fact you dont find the term democracy in any of our founding documents. That is futile to find the word democracy in the declaration of independence or the word democracy anywhere in the United States constitution and if the listeners want further convincing of this, when we talk about when we pledge allegiance to the flag to the democracy for which it stands or the republic or the solemn during the war of 1861 is at the battle hymn of the democracy without with a little hymn of the republic . The founders thought the idea of the majority rule was a form of tierney