Authors Forum: The New American History

0:00You're all tired of hearing about this book for heaven's sake now, right? I mean, how many whiny articles is this guy going to write about this stinking thing? But the one on the Mises site the other day can blame Jeff Tucker for that, because he's such a good friend, he wants to help me and support me, and he said, we should write a Mises version of the article. Well, just say a few things about this book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. As I mentioned in the preface, this was an idea that Regnery had. They had the idea for the concept and the title, so the title is not mine. The idea is that they want to do a whole series of these, a series of politically incorrect guides. So it would be an answer to the complete idiot's guide to whatever. And plus, there is a left-wing series out there, and it's called Introducing Blank, like introducing whatever, Islam, capitalism, whatever.

0:50And you look through it and it's just complete, just left-wing propaganda. in Uganda. No one seems to be upset about that. That's okay. But this, because I'm highlighting particular episodes and I'm giving sort of a free market angle on them, well this is just completely out of the question, so when they find out there's going to be a whole series of these, some people are just going to have to be hospitalized over this. Oh my gosh, another one! I haven't recovered from the first one. Anyway, I'd like to say hello by the way to all the people who have been stalking me since the book has come out. Nice to see you. Thank you so much. Now, a couple complaints about it I completely share. I mean, there are some things in here I'm not entirely happy with and issues that were sort of finessed a little bit.

1:36But the thing that frustrates me the most, really, there are two things. Number one is there are no footnotes in the book. And a lot of people have used this as grounds to say, well, you know, how can we take it seriously? Well, two things. Number one, Regnery said no footnotes. Okay, that's it, no footnotes. And as you can see from my other books, I'm footnote crazy. I mean, footnotes everywhere. You know, George Washington was the first president. Super script won. OK? So it's not like some kind of secret plot of mine, you know, to put fake stuff in here and not footnote it. The idea of the book is that it's supposed to be fun and accessible, like the complete idiots guys, which don't have footnotes. So the purpose of it is, you know, I introduce people to new material, I have a long bibliography. I'm citing people as I go along, which is good enough.

2:22And I've answered, people have emailed me to say, well, how do I find more about this or where did you get that? You know, typically I've been replying to that as time permits. So that's an unfortunate aspect, but that's the way this type of book is written. They don't want it to be weighed down by a heavy scholarly apparatus. The second thing is there was a word limit that was strictly imposed. They said this cannot exceed 80,000 words. Now, I've gotten a lot of complaints about it from people on the left saying it's not victimological enough, it's not focusing on this or that group. Again, with 80,000 words, and look, it's my book, I want to focus on things that interest me. So I'm interested in the Constitution, I'm interested in World War I, I'm interested in things of that kind.

3:07So that's what I'm going to write about in my 80,000 words. 80,000 words go by so fast, trying to cover the history of the US, it's unbelievable. What I originally submitted to Regnery was 100,000 words, secretly hoping they just wouldn't count. Oh man, they've got a full-time counter over there, because it was scaled. But first they told me to scale it back, so I scaled it back a little, and then sent it back again. and then they basically in consultation with me they scaled it back to 80,000 so I feel like it would have been better as a longer book but on the other hand the reason they wanted short is again they're excellent marketers at Regnery got to hand them that and their view is that it needs to be of a size that people will actually read it might be intellectually satisfying for me to write 800,000 words but then it'll just sit there on the shelf and nobody read the idea is that this is not meant to be a history of the United States it's a guide it's a

4:05to highlight the certain episodes of interest and importance. Now, the reason that I am pleased with it, even though it's, you know, okay, it's at a sort of popular level, which is fine. It's different from sort of other things I've written. The reason I'm particularly pleased with it, though, is that it introduces to a large audience a lot of our people and their work that they would never have found out about before. Because I don't think a lot of people are reading, you know, Armantano on antitrust, but now maybe they might. Okay, I never heard of them, because we tend to talk to scholarly communities, that sort of thing. Ordinary person doesn't get acquainted with this sort of thing. Or scholarly articles that people can look up, that sort of thing. How would they have known about this before? So what I'm trying to do is, as you go through the book, I have in little boxes on the various pages, a little box called a book you're not supposed to read. That was my idea.

4:54A book you're not supposed to read. And it would be some book that, you know, again, like, I think Burt Folsom's book is one of those books you're not supposed to read, and the idea is to highlight a whole tradition of scholarship that flies totally under the radar, that doesn't get on television, you don't hear much about, but to acquaint people and say, here are things, here's how you can pursue your research on this and your reading on this, here are reliable sources. So that I was pleased with. Now it's true, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for some time, which was an absolute shock to me. I was very happy, but some of that has to do with, I'm sure, the fact that, again, Regnery has got just an absolute unstoppable machine when it comes to publicity and promotion and marketing.

5:39Unbelievable. I mean, the first week, when I had my so-called launch week, which is the week that they're really going to start pushing the publicity, I mean, I must have gone three days with almost no sleep at all, because I was on Hannity and Colmes, then I did Alan Colmes' radio show after that. The funny thing is, we got along great. I mean, we got along just great. On the commercial breaks, I remember saying to him, how do you keep your sanity at this network? You know, we all want to ask you this question. How are you doing this? I appreciated that sort of frank with me, you know, with the things. So we got along just great, you know, and he said, you know, my wife is a Christian, because I was saying to him, you know, I can't believe there are so many Christians in the country who are just completely, they They think that Pentagon press conferences are like sacred scripture, for heaven's sake.

6:32He said, my wife's a Christian, but at least she walks the walk. He said, I don't share her faith, but she walks the walk. So we had a great exchange. But anyway, so then I was supposed to be on Fox and Friends the next morning, which I've never watched, not because I don't watch the channel or whatever, but because when would I ever be up at six in the morning? Like I've never. Never. I'm an academic. I'm having it up at nine in the morning. So I went on this program and I'll tell you, these folks, they couldn't have been nicer. They could not have been nicer. And I didn't know any of them because I don't watch this program. But sure enough, it was the first thing in the morning and I was all wired when I got back from the late night raid. So I hadn't slept a wink. It wasn't like I slept an hour, nothing, no sleep at all. And I thought, oh my God, how am I going to do this?

7:18But sure enough, there's like some chemical in my brain that when there's no sleep, it's this magic chemical that comes aboard. I think it may be in effect right now, as a matter of fact, coming ahead, helping me out, lack of sleep. So I can't tell you how exciting this whole thing was, because normally I lead this very sort of quiet life and very uneventful. Now all of a sudden, I'm going three days where I'm not getting any sleep, or then I'm supposed to be on Ernie Brown's show, and his show is from midnight to one, and then I was supposed to be on Scarborough Country that week and I can't possibly do this. I actually wrote to the directory and said, please, please cancel something. I'm going to drop dead here. So thank goodness for them though. They've got connections with everybody. So it's been great. The thing that has sort of disappointed me, alright, at this point I don't look at Amazon anymore.

8:07You know, you have this heady period where you look at Amazon every day and see what your rank is and how it's going. You know, I'll admit that. I mean, Virginia Postral admitted that, that she looks at it like ten times a day or something. Well, I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not. But I stop because I just, you know, I don't, I know that there are some people who, I guess I didn't realize this before, there are some people who don't read a book and then they post a review of it. Like, they read a bad review and then they say, oh well, I'm a big crusader for justice, for Justice, I've got to go and write a review against this book before the country goes completely down the tubes because of it. And so we get, you know, this David Greenberg writes this review the other day. And I wondered to myself, because only recently have I stopped totally

8:55stumbling through names, I wondered, well, gosh, it's funny, there's a whole slew of one-star reviews by people who obviously haven't read it. Like, I mean, just flagrant that they haven't. I wonder what's causing this. And then it turns out, like, whole sentences from these reviews are lifted from this guy's review. So Amazon is just, that's just a shame, but what's disappointed me though is that people on the left, it amazes me how much they don't understand libertarians, they don't understand conservatives. It amazes me. Because I used to have at least an abiding respect for some of the people at Foxhounds where they would keep an eye on the Fox News channel and tell us what they're saying. But then the way they treated me I thought was unbelievable. They were saying, well, Sean Hannity, this book will be right up Sean Hannity's alley. You mean you watch Sean Hannity basically round the clock, and you can't tell the difference between Sean Hannity and me?

9:46I mean, what is the matter here? Why does the left have such a problem making distinctions? Why can't they at least say, well, this isn't Rush Limbaugh, it's a kind of a, I still don't agree with it, I agree with it, but at least it's an older tradition that doesn't think that, you know, that isn't maniacally focused on war, that's focused on decentralization of power, as, you know, some older lefties used to favor that. I mean, you'd think they would see some distinctions here. None. None. This is just a Sean Hannity. I mean, come on. You know, it's just very frustrating. So anyway, that's that. So I think that by now we're looking at, there's a paperback edition, which is the main, these are all going to be paperback books, that's the main issue.

10:31But then there's also a special hardcover edition that was printed mainly for select book clubs. So when you put those together, I think we're in the vicinity of about 50,000 sold at this point. I have a second book here that I'm publishing. This one, you might think that maybe I just got cold feet after I had Longstreet on the cover. Now I have a cover like this. But this isn't doing wonders for me at all. No, actually, the thing is that this other book is called The Church and the Market. It actually, this is a book that is published by Lexington, which is a division of Roman and Littlefield. And actually, they publish hardcover and paperback simultaneously. But the paperbacks are all sold out at the moment.

11:31And for a split second I thought, wow, sales must be great, but then of course I'm forgetting it's a scholarly press, the print run is probably 50. Of course they're out of it. So to get books in here in time for the conference, they sent the hardcover. Now the hardcover, I'll tell you what this book is all about in a minute, but the hardcover typically retails, I kid you not, $75. You can get it for $20 at this event, okay, because they said to make up for the fact In fact, they were out of the paper. They'll give us this at the hardcover price. Why would they sell the hardcover for $75? Basically to take advantage of institutions that have to purchase them, like libraries or whatever. That'll be $75. Thank you very much. So they don't expect many individuals to buy them.

12:17But today's your lucky day, because that's basically the same price. They're selling it for $20. It's the same price as the paper. Well, this book actually came right out of an Austrian Scholars' Conference of a few years ago, where I gave a paper on Catholic social teaching because now that I've basically alienated everybody on the left now I'm going to go after all my traditional allies so that it'll be pretty much me and Tom DiLorenzo a few other people will be my friends still let's see anybody else who can be alienated by me well I wrote it because you know I'm associated I have certain I'm in all different circles I'm in so many different circles it's unbelievable and occasionally I see at a conference like this one guy from like the Latin Mass Magazine Conference I was at it on Sunday, and it's like worlds are colliding. You're not supposed to be at this conference.

13:02Well, you know, I think of myself, you know, I'm sort of an amateur Austrian. I mean, I've been studying the Austrians pretty intensely for about 12 years now, ever since I went to the Mises University, which is one of the greatest experiences I'd ever had academically. And when I was in college, I had the benefit of a great university library. I was at Harvard and they had everything, and they had every journal. It was unbelievable. I think I had to use Interlibrary of Oil maybe three, four times my whole college career. It was unbelievable, the resources. So when the Institute sent me this bibliography saying, here are some sources that, well, they sent a few things like, you know, what has government done to our money? But then they sent a bibliography saying, here are some additional articles and resources you might look at. I read all of them. I mean, talk about a geek. I spent the whole summer going through the library and just looking through all these articles.

13:53I remember Tom DiLorenzo won't remember this, but I remember meeting him for the first time out in California and saying, Oh yeah, I've read your antitrust material. What a geek, right? A little suck-up. But I love this stuff. I found it so compelling. I just absolutely fell in love with it. And then in my life I went through a brief little phase where I sort of became one of these anti-market conservative types. the market leads to bad things. But finally I thought, the more I talk to people in that tradition, the less I found they knew what they were talking about, the less I found they knew about economics. And I think what really absolutely solidified me and put me completely back, totally, 100% in the pro-Mises camp was actually Hans Hoppe's book on democracy.

14:40Which was exactly where the point I was at, at that point, that he was making arguments that sort of appeal to my brain. So now I'm totally here. The problem is that among traditional Catholics, the sense is that capitalism is another one of these bad modern ideologies. And my own view is that capitalism in a certain sense is not really an ism. It's not an ism. It's just saying, don't steal things. Okay, just don't, just stop it. If you're tempted to do it, don't. Okay? I mean, okay, that's maybe just a little bit of an, you know, oversimplification, but that's the way I look at it. And I'm so compelled by the Austrian tradition. So I wrote this book trying to show, in effect trying to justify myself and the position of other people who have this vague sense that they're being somehow disloyal to the Church if they like Austrian economics.

15:27So I've tried to show to the contrary that there has been such a diversity of opinion on economic matters over the centuries within the Church that certainly there is room for legitimate, illicit disagreement on these matters. and so I've got a chapter, I've got an introduction, I've got a chapter called Indefense of Economics because there are some people I think who think that economics is just a sham science that's developed as a rationalization for greed and I'm trying to show that's not the case, trying to show the unique virtues of the Austrian School in particular why that should be appealing and everything, I mean major issues you can imagine, wages, prices, labor unions, money and banking, there's a chapter on foreign aid and the economics of foreign Foreign Aid and the Morality of Foreign Aid, because there was a whole encyclical letter in 1967 basically saying we've got to support foreign aid programs. Well, they've been a disaster. So what now is the, what is the moral status of that demand? So I'm trying

16:19to again carve out a space again for illicit disagreement on non-essential matters. There's a welfare state chapter. So this, in case you're thinking Michael Novak has already done all this, Michael Novak looks like a girly boy next to this book. Totally, totally And then finally, the last chapter is on distributism, which is this view among some traditionalists that, you know, instead of the division of labor, wide-scale division of labor, we should instead have a situation in which most people are landowners, property owners, largely if not entirely self-sufficient. That type of thing is sometimes presented as if it's the only licit Catholic system, which I hope not, because most people would be dead under that system.

17:04So I've written, the longest chapter is a critique of that. Now if any of you know of any long critiques of distributism, let me know because I wanted to find some so I could use some of those ideas and I couldn't find any long critique of it. So I had to, it's all my own. So it has all the weaknesses of the fact that it's entirely original to me, but I did the best I could with it. So here you go, you got these two things, but please, since I'm not gonna have any friends Stay my friends, folks. Thank you so much.