The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History

From 1950 to 1980, Americans were indeed Losing Ground. Charles Murray’s book on social policy debunks welfare programs. The programs are the problem. It is not possible to design a wealth transfer program that will not produce net harm.Within Lyndon Johnson’s legacy of failure were the kids who were never educated, the health care system that was already working, and the jobs that weren’t created. ‘60s liberalism discouraged all the right things and encouraged all the wrong ones. Criminals went free. A good portion of Americans began to see welfare as a right.Lecture 13 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Boom-busts were a feature of markets. Under consumption caused the depression. WWII ended the Great Depression. All three Keynesian beliefs were inaccurate. Only the Austrian Business Cycle Theory got it right.Artificially lowered interest rates mislead investors. The Federal Reserve’s policy of cheap money creates mal-investments. The cause of boom-busts is this commercial credit expansion that is not backed by real pools of private savings.Herbert Hoover’s policies prolonged the Great Depression. His agricultural policy was a disaster. Raising tariffs an average of 59% on more than 25,000 items hurt. Lots of tax increases crippled businesses. Hoover sought prosperity through central planning, as did his successor, FDR, who also knew nothing about how wealth was created.Lecture 14 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

The doctrine was separate but equal according to the Constitution. Segregation was not unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education consolidated several cases about separation, and stated that if schools were separate they were, ipso facto, not equal.Instead of law, sociology ruled. This influenced Roe v. Wade. By the early 70s, it was thought that you must force busing of white and black races, even for several hours daily. Affirmative action always meant huge advantages given to those under the quota program. A 1983 survey by the Department of Education could not turn up a single study that found integrated schooling to have had any appreciable effect on black educational achievement.Meanwhile, net black migration has been overwhelmingly away from the North and toward the South, the only region in the country where a majority of blacks polled say they believe they are treated equally.Lecture 12 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

The Marshall Plan didn’t help get Europe back on its feet: free markets did. The Plan was another failed giveaway program. The Plan’s disastrous legacy was the wrongheaded approach it inspired in foreign aid programs for the rest of the century.Just throwing money at countries was not beneficial. Aid dependency made people political, not productive. The message that should have been sent was that prosperity follows from rule of law, respect for private property, and other institutional mechanisms on which the market order rests.A study of ninety -seven countries, including Egypt and Zambia, revealed that foreign aid had retarded production and destroyed local incentives.Lecture 11 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

While many Americans were hungry and destitute, FDR ordered the slaughter of six million pigs and the destruction of ten million acres of cotton. Public-sector jobs created by the New Deal displaced or destroyed private-sector jobs. World War II didn’t end the Great Depression; a return to free-market activity after the war did.Lecture 10 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

In the 1920s Presidents Harding and Coolidge never got close to the poll favorites of Washington, Lincoln and FDR when ranked, because they killed fewer, taxed less, made their administrations almost invisible, and sought no wealth or glory.Without grand programs, Harding and Coolidge presided over one of the most economically prosperous times in America’s history. Income tax rates fell from 73 percent to 40 percent and later to 25 percent. Most people in the lower income brackets saw most of their income tax burden eliminated altogether.Isolationist is a smear term, but in reality, the American administrations in the 1920s disarmed naval ordinance, joined the Four Power Pact, and the Nine Power Pact. Holding international meetings is hardly isolationist action. Starting the Student Exchange Program fostered international relations.Lecture 9 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Rockefeller, Carnegie, Dow, Hill, and other great American businessmen did more for America than all the big-government programs combined. These men were market entrepreneurs, not political ones. Thanks to government subsidies, political entrepreneurs often built inefficient circuitous routes for many of America’s railroads, resulting in waste and corruption.Antitrust laws were demanded by competitors who were jealous of more successful businesses, not by consumers. Predatory pricing is a myth. The courts say that you are predatory if you cut prices, raise prices, or leave them where they are. Natural monopolies don’t last long because entrepreneurs see opportunities and move on them. The only monopolies that stand are those boosted by government interventions.Lecture 8 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Reconstruction is the readmission of the Southern states to the Union. Lincoln decided that ten percent of the eligible voters in 1860 had to take an oath of loyalty to the Union. Andrew Johnson, after Lincoln, added that wealthy Southern Planters had to beg for pardons. The Southern states were militarily occupied.Radical Republicans wanted tougher punishment. They insisted all freed slaves get the right to vote, which would assure that the Republican Party would dominate. The Southern states did create black codes which did discriminate against blacks. The codes were modeled on Northern vagrancy laws. Southern states began protecting blacks’ rights.Southern states were ordered to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The Radicals sought to incorporate provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 into a constitutional amendment – the Fourteenth Amendment – in order that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 not be overturned as unconstitutional.Section 1 was most significant. All persons born or naturalized in the US, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the US: nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.Lecture 7 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Secession is a progressive, not a reactionary force. It is civilized. Jefferson Davis argued that because secession is not mentioned in the Constitution it is retained by the states under the Tenth Amendment. Thomas Jefferson said that the time for separation had not yet come.Garrison had long called for the secession of the Northern states in order to bring about a peaceful abolition of the slave question. Alexis de Tocqueville said the individual states have not given up their sovereignties. The thirteen colonies separated from Britain. Any colony can separate from the thirteen. Several New England states threatened to secede several times over policies with which they disagreed.Serious points are made in Lincoln Unmasked by Tom DiLorenzo. Lincoln and Hitler both were totally opposed to states rights. The Lincoln mythos today serves the purpose to mask wickedness and the violation of civil liberties behind party and nationalistic zeal.What would have happened if the South had peacefully seceded? Perhaps, there would not have been WWI.Lecture 6 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

States had the right to secede. The War Between the States was not launched to free slaves. Lincoln believed that whites were superior and favored the deportation of freed slaves. The South was for free trade; the North wanted protectionism.The compact theory states that separate sovereign states compact together without losing any of their sovereignties. The United States are. The Constitution was ratified by the sovereign peoples of each state individually. Secession is natural and understandable with this theory, as is nullification. States rights is the model against empire.The phrase the United States is reflects the nationalist theory. Neither secession nor nullification is legitimate under this way of thinking. There were no thirteen states. They were just a single people. When does this happen when thirteen separate independent states become a single people? This theory created the modern state from federated polities. The original decentralized system became a single state – an empire. It was a crime against humanity.Lecture 5 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Lysander Spooner in the antebellum period has been overlooked. He was a radical abolitionist lawyer. He wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. William Lloyd Garrison felt the Constitution was a bloody pro-slavery compact.Spooner felt that since there was no universal consent to the Constitution, then no authority existed, not even implied. Spooner looks to the text of the document alone and to natural law. Spooner has an interesting view. First, the fugitive slave clause does not contain the word slave. Neither service nor labor is necessarily slavery. Second, the three-fifths clause interprets all other persons to mean slaves. But English law had used the word free to mean citizen. Thus, other persons would just mean resident aliens. Third, the importation of such persons… Spooner says nobody would look at those words and mean the slave trade. It would just mean the general importation of foreigners.Fugitive slave laws were meant to give statutory standing to demand the return of runaway slaves. Passed in 1850, the slave laws were seen by some to violate some other parts of the Constitution. Federal commissioners determined whether the man who is found is indeed the man who appears in the claim. The fugitive was denied a jury trial. The federal commissioners were exercising judicial power, paid by a fee that earned them more only if they returned the person. This was perhaps a violation of the due process clause.The Principles of ’98 said the states can nullify any law that was not constitutional. Here, states’ rights were used on behalf of liberty.Lecture 4 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

1798 was an important year. The Principles of ’98 influenced all of American history. The Alien and Sedition Acts and the Kentucky Resolutions revealed these principles.There existed hostility between the US and France. The Alien Act involved immigrants, but the Sedition Act made clear that it was a crime for anyone to criticize the US government. Although Jefferson thought this violated the First Amendment, others didn’t think so. It was possible that the Federalists and/or the Republicans would use these Acts in partisan fashion – particularly to shut down the Republican Party. Jefferson drafted a series of resolutions that were presented in Kentucky and in Virginia as protests against the Acts.The Kentucky Resolutions explained what was wrong with the Sedition Act and what could be done about it. Jefferson saw that the Tenth Amendment said that the Federal government did not have any power to deny speech. He noted that the states created the federal government. Only certain few and defined powers were extended to the federal government. All other powers remained with the state. The state needs to defend itself if the federal government illegitimately goes beyond its power. Jefferson opted for the nullification process. He knew that states had the power to secede, but Jefferson did not think the time for secession had yet come. Sheer submission to the Acts would just encourage worse behavior. Petitions and elections don’t always solve problems. The Supreme Court was staffed by Federalists who would not support Jefferson. Jefferson saw the Supreme Court’s role as advisory only. He believed that all three branches had the power to interpret the Constitution. So, nullification, or interposition, was the best response.Lecture 3 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

As of 1790, all original thirteen colonies had ratified the Constitution. Four clauses have caused great trouble ever since.The War Powers Clause: Article II, Section 2, makes the President Commander-in-chief to direct a war once it has been declared by Congress. He can make war against a sudden attack on US territory, but he cannot declare war. There are only two powers granted the president in terms of foreign policy. Framers did not want to model the US on the British monarchy but Congress wimped out on its responsibility.The Commerce Clause: Article I, Section 8, “to regulate commerce among the several states” has been variously defined from mere trade to all activity that might have some effect upon commerce between or within states. Because everything affects everything else, this clause was used to justify amazing and incredulous powers, including growing wheat upon one’s own land for personal consumption. One 1995 case (Lopez) trimmed this overreach back a bit.The Necessary and Proper Clause: Article I, Section 8, this elastic clause has been used to cover anything the federal government wanted to do. But the Framers did not intend this clause to be an additional grant of any powers. It was just to carry out the limited powers directly granted. Today this clause simply means convenient.The General Welfare Clause: Article I, Section 8, “to provide for the general welfare” has been interpreted to allow the government to do whatever it liked, despite the clear listing of specific powers. We have ended up with a government of unlimited powers.Lecture 2 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.

Fischer’s book Albion’s Seed described four British folkways into the colonies. The four were Puritans to New England, aristocrats to Virginia, Quakers to Pennsylvania, and borderland immigrants to Appalachian backcountry. There was no common union in the thirteen colonies. Each colony selected its own religion. Yes, Anne Hutchinson was driven out of Massachusetts for religious reasons, but the colony contributed a great deal, including the important document called a Body of Liberties.Confederation attempts generally failed, even when ordered by the King. The colonies were attached to self-government. The American revolutionaries were actually conservatives. In the 1760s British acts began to violate that self-government tradition. The colonists opposed innovation and wanted to be left alone. Do not make the constitution a blank document. Amend it when you must, but it is not a living, breathing constitution.Lecture 1 of 14 from Tom Woods' The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History lecture series.