It Really Is a Jetsons World

Last night I participated in something quite amazing by any standard, something with truly revolutionary potential. Three U.S. historians (Kevin Gutzman, Brion McClanahan, and I), each one an author in the Politically Incorrect Guide series of books, answered questions in a live Q&A for members of Liberty Classroom, my new site.

Content at Liberty Classroom is instantly downloadable, but I knew from the beginning I wanted to supplement it with live sessions. That was the right idea.

All three of us appeared on the screen simultaneously, each in his own box. Attendees could chat among themselves in a chat box, and submit questions to us via a special “Ask a Question” button. I, the host, could see all the questions that had been submitted. When I chose one for us to answer, it popped up onto the screen right beside our faces, so everyone could see it.

The platform automatically records the session for people who couldn’t be present live. And those people can now glance through all the questions that were posed, click on ones they find interesting, and be taken to the precise parts of the recording in which we answered just those questions.

Given that it was our first attempt, it was amazingly glitch-free. We had to get used to the fact that there was (inevitably) a bit of a delay, so sometimes we’d start talking over each other a bit. We eventually got used to it, and will be super polished for next time. But everyone seemed to love the idea and the execution.

And we couldn’t have done it without the brilliant platform created by the guys at Vokle.com. Absolutely wonderful. (And they’re Ron Paul people, too.)

Here are the questions we answered last night:

What do you think about Madison’s flip-flop on the national bank?

Is there a book that covers the history of jury nullification more in depth?

The Japanese aggression against the U.S. to start World War II has always baffled me. What were they thinking?

Could you go into more detail about Bretton Woods? How it started and why it failed.

Did criminals come to the New World to escape punishment? Could the very poor make the trip?

Who, in your respective opinions, was the worst president of all time?

What were the reasons for the bank panics in early America, and can you recommend a good book on the subject?

Madison is referred to as the father of the Constitution. Please explain why this is incorrect.

At what point did the federal government take control of the militia from the states?

Leading up to the Civil War, what specific kinds of tariffs did the South feel most harmed by?

What percentage of free men (white or otherwise) owned slaves before the Civil War?

What was the intent of the drafters of the 14th Amendment? Should we fully incorporate the Bill of Rights?

Was the trade embargo of 1807 unnecessary interventionism or did Jefferson have justification?

Do you see a need for a constitutional convention? Any chance of it happening? What changes would you make?

Did Jefferson have constitutional authority for the Louisiana Purchase?

Something really great is taking place at this site. Please consider joining us!

Kelli

It really was great. I wasn’t an active participant but listened as I knitted. To all you knitters and spinners out there, Liberty Classroom is a great way to learn while you work.
Guest

Those are some really interesting questions.

Congratulations, and thank you for sharing all of this, Tom.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Voluntaryist-Sikes/100002420573065 Voluntaryist Sikes

what is the Delegate count so far for Ron Paul?
JRT

Where can I watch the recorded session?
Greg

its quite low, only about 1/8ths of what romney has:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2012_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries i don’t know what paul is doing, romney has won the majority so he can just ignore everyone and do what he wants, thats democracy.
Greg

madison wrote the constitution!!! from the questions i guess most of your listeners were neo-confeds
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Greg, are you joking? Madison’s Virginia Plan was rejected in all its fundamentals. I demand you defend this ignorant statement, along with your stupid insult of people you do not know.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

(If this were an innocent error, I would of course not have responded this way. But Greg constantly attacks people and opinions here, and as we can see from this example, the attacks are not necessarily well founded.)
Direhippo

That’s actually incorrect. The total won’t be known until the convention, and only after several rounds of voting. Even with the article that you reference from Wikipedia (a risky reference, for certain), it specifically indicates that the numbers are projections.

Even with your calculations of the projections (again risky) the number is actually greater than 1/7th. But since Paul’s delegate strategy actually has claimed all of the Paul, nearly all of the Santorum and Gingrich, and majority of the Romney delegates, he still looks to be in pretty good shape.

But we won’t know for sure until the National Convention.
Greg

oh come on. stop mythologising every little bit of american founding. madison is the father of the constitution, jefferson wrote the declaration of independence and the french won the american revolutionary war (or the minor skirmish on the other side of the world in the global war between uk and france as it is correctly known).
Anonymous

I can’t seem to find the Vokle.com page on which we can watch the recorded session. Is it simply not up yet, or am I not looking closely enough?

Sounds like a great Q&A. Sorry I couldn’t be there!
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Translation of Greg’s reply: “I have no idea what I’m talking about.”

Greg, in what sense are you correct? Your whole argument is mere assertion.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

http://www.libertyclassroom.com/live
Greg

i’ve noticed there is a significant number of people in the libertarian movement who are in it for one reason: to try to paint the south as somehow noble in their wish to be free and whitewash what it was exactly that the south wanted to have freedom in: slavery.

its interesting because libertarian movement is quite broad and very few libertarians focus so much on civil war and this idea that the south were some how the good guys.

thats the thing. cato never talks about slavery or civil war, milton friedman and hayek didn’t make it their primary focus, nozick didn’t talk much about it. but mises and woods ALWAYS talk about it. which is a bit strange considering woods is from mass and mises was a jew from austria. why on earth do they make such a big deal out of it? why does mises institute have SOO many speakers and books about the civil war. why does mises institute have so many speakers with a southern accent who sound like they just came back from the cotton plantations.

the vibe i get from this particular section of libertarianism is certainly a bit uncomfortable: slavery is officially condemned at the beginning of each lecture or article but then the lectures and articles always end up talking about the south being the victim. the condemnation is half hearted, it sounds more like an official statutory requirement rather something the speaker really means and supports in his heart. its always on the border of being clearly pro-south. its also very strange how EVERYTHING has to revolve around the civil war. the vibe i get is that the south didn’t win but its supporters are going to do everything in their power to paint the north as evil as possible.

i can’t quite put my finger on it, but its certainly the vibe i get. and i don’t see why me saying this is bad, this is my honest opinion and assessment.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

A fascinating aside, but has absolutely nothing to do with Madison’s role at the convention. Which planks of the Virginia Plan were adopted?
Greg

you asked me about my “attack” by which i thought you were talking about me calling some people here neo-confeds.
Greg

oh yeah, so why is madison known as the father of the american constitution smarty pants???

ok i’ll pretend that the founders didn’t copy everything from john locke and ill pretend that the myth of founding is true (namely that founders were supermen sent by jesus and single handedly wrote the so called greatest document in all of history in one month during their summer holiday). who wrote the constitution then?
Direhippo

Wow, I’ve seen some straw men before, but you have engineered a full-fledged scarecrow here Greg.

Tom is right. Unless you have actual argumentation backed by evidence, it appears you have no idea what you’re talking about.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Greg, it was a common effort of many people. No one person “wrote” it. The proceedings of the convention are available for you to read, mainly in the form of Madison’s notes. You owe me an apology for your nastiness, particularly since it was grounded in no knowledge whatever.
Anonymous

Greg, to be ignorant of history and form one’s facts, truth, and ideologies based upon ‘lower intellect digestible’ snippets of events makes any discussion with people such as yourself simply a self-indulgent task more befitting the schizophrenic moronic.
Greg

so slavery was ok?!
Greg

i don’t want to be nasty, if i made you feel bad i feel sorry for upsetting you.

but i just searched for “father of the constitution” and all the links say that madison was the guy.

didn’t madison write the federalist papers including the whole check and balances and stuff, fed. 10 or something???

i just don’t see what the big problem is. maybe a culture class, i view the who constitutional convention as you view the diamond jubilee.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Greg, you barked at us that of course Madison “wrote” the Constitution, and that probably we must be “neo-Confederates” for denying this, though the link between these two propositions is not obvious. I asked you to explain to me which of the major planks of the Virginia Plan wound up in the Constitution, and I got a lengthy disquisition about how I spend all my time talking about Lincoln, which a quick search of this site, using the search box, will not corroborate.

If you’re naturally a belligerent person, there isn’t anything I can do about that. But when you start throwing around accusations, or automatically assuming that people who ask a question of which you do not approve must be weirdos, I am going to ask you to stop, especially when your own knowledge base consists of a Google search. Have a little humility for once, in other words. I would say I have been extremely patient up to this point.
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

So your conclusion from the above is “Slavery is OK”? I give you an F for logic, but an A in politically correct fanaticism and hypersensitivity. No one on the Left could have improved on “so slavery was ok?!”
Anonymous

Bit more of a complex issue taken in context of 200 years later and also at the time of the founding. Also, did not the ‘institution’ of slavery predate the creation of the USofA?

And, for another thought relating to our Civil War……Why were we the only the country that ended slavery in the 19th century to be the ONLY country to fight a WAR (supposedly and fallaciously) over it?

And also, why would more than 90% of the Confederates who fought for the South were as ‘piss-poor’ as the slaves, and owned NO slaves themselves?

Think a bit more DEEPER on the issues but be careful not to ‘fry’ the few neurons you got left.
Guest

The reason Tom, et al, focus on the South so much is because Abraham Lincoln is so often used to make a case for a far greater national cohesion than our Founders intended.

Our Founders warned about the dangers of the consolidation of power into the national government.

Concepts such as “supremacy clause” have been used to do just that, for some time; and this collectivist thinking has been destructive of liberty.

(Since the Constitution spells out enumerated powers for the national government, and all other powers are to be retained by the states, there is no overlap of powers, and therefore no need for the concept of a “supremacy clause”.

(For example, with regard to immigration, the national government has sole power over granting citizenship, but not over protecting against trespassing/invasion.

(In fact, the Constitution specifically says:

(“No State shall … engage in War, unless actually
invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

(We mistakenly think that “illegal immigration” has to do with Naturalization because it has the word “immigration” in it.)

So, it is toward the end that state sovereignty is restored that they focus so much on the South.

Here is a helpful article on this issue:

The Real Significance of the ‘Civil
War’
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods31.html
Greg

i highly agree with you that there are very good and intellectually honest reasons for being interested in the civil war and being highly critical of lincoln.

but thats just not the vibe i am getting from where i am sitting. i am getting this gut feeling from mises institute that something is not quite right. there is something in their closet.

you can call me a troll or belligerent but i just can’t shake off that feeling. its an honest feeling which i can’t deny, but can suppress.

this is not the Oxford Union so i am not particularly concerned with being proved right or wrong or winning or loosing the argument. i just threw this out there because i wanted to see what people would say. you have been so far the only one who made any sense.
Greg

so you finally decided to indulge?!

1) Royal Navy had to enforce the abolition of slavery all across the world. so it wasn’t so simple. none of the european powers had any need for slaves in europe, they needed slaves for the colonies. slavery in the colonies (in all its forms), even i am sorry to say in the british colonies, persisted well into early 20th century. that is why there was little conflict caused by slavery (apart from rebellions) because most nations just kept slavery or had de facto slavery.
2) slavery was profitable (you could read “Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery” but ill save you the time: if slavery was not profitable it would have ended straight away, but it didn’t, it persisted)
3) yeah, why would someone fight for slavery??? if i were a southerner i certainly would have not fought for the south! i guess its because the southerners were just dandy with slavery. after all they didn’t seem too bothered about it up until the civil war, and then after the war they very quickly came up with ways of keeping themselves racist. its as if mississipi and alabama has the least racist people in the world right?! oh wait, they are racist. i guess the glorious south is not so glorious.
Greg

i read your article on the civil war on rockwell, i don’t agree, it was the right and proper to fight the south and end slavery. as i have said before, it was the only way. and i think the world is better off without slavery in usa, which would not have ended were it not for the war. as i said, i am getting this neo-confed vibe which i can’t really shake off. i am not belligerent (unless there really are neo-confeds here, or anywhere) i honestly get this gut feeling, and it is perfectly honest for me to say so. you can delete all my comments or try to ban me but i am still going to have this feeling.

now look, you have not answered me this one question: why is madison called the FATHER of the constitution??? clearly there must be a reason for that.

lets just keep it friendly. this is not the Oxford Union. i don’t particularly want you to provide me with a million citations and sources. just friendly chit-chat. ill take your word for it. ok, so this virginia plan you speak of wasn’t implemented. but still, he is the father, isn’t he? so whats the deal?????
Greg

my logic is impeccable:

slavery is badthose who support slavery are badsouth supported slavery => south is badi get the vibe that there are people here who support the south => they might support slavery => they might be bad (this is why i said i get a vibe, not that i can prove anything)those who support the south will attack those who oppose iti am attacked by Nullify for, from what i understand from his message, attacking the south => ??? question does Nullify support the south, is he ok with slavery??? this is not clear because it is possible that there are people who would attack those who attack the south without actually supporting the south => request for more information.
Guest

It’s kind of like how Ron Paul gets accused of being a hippie Leftist because he talks about drug legalization so much.

But that’s what people keep bringing up when Libertarians talk about individual liberty, so he HAS to talk about it.

The same argument could be said about raw milk, but that’s not what often gets raised.

Same with Lincoln and the South:

Lincoln is used so much in defense of the idea that secession equals insurrection, that the Lincoln Myth must be squashed, or else the Progressives are going to continue using it to destroy liberty.

It’s also like how the Austrians want to squash the WWI and WWII myths. It’s not that they don’t think America was founded on a lot of great ideas, but that America had ABANDONED those great ideas.

We’ve become LIKE the governments we were against. We aren’t free.
http://TheInterventionistParadox.wordpress.com/ Bharat

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2011/12/in-defense-of-the-mises-institute.html
http://TheInterventionistParadox.wordpress.com/ Bharat

I was about to ask why you didn’t just listen to Gutzman’s answer in the video but then I realized you likely didn’t have access to it.

A quick summary of his answer was that Madison’s ideal was a much larger government than the Constitution laid out. He didn’t get his way on virtually anything he wanted. After the Constitution was ratified though, he supported it as was intended and explained at the ratification processes in each state.
Guest

I promise this will ease your mind about the bad vibe you’re getting.

The following article BLASTS Lincoln something awful for the racist he was.

Good stuff.

Another Big Lincoln Lie
Exposed
http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo211.html
Greg

very interesting. i always like a bit of backroom politics.
The helpful grammar granny

“Kevin Gutzman, Brion McClanahan, and me “, Tom. And “me”.
Guest

You know, I was about to say that it should be “I” because Tom is saying “I answered questions” …

But the function of the names in his sentence isn’t to have them doing anything, but rather to comprise a list of the members of the group “three U.S. historians”.

If he had said, “Kevin Gutzman, Brion McClanahan, and I answered questions …”, then he’d be right.

Good catch.
Chad E Nelson 1

Will the live sessions ever work for the iPad?