HANNITY: But are liberal professors really misinforming today's generation of kids? Well, here to set things straight is the author of the "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," Professor Thomas Woods.
Hi, professor. How are you?
PROFESSOR THOMAS WOODS, AUTHOR: How are you doing, Sean?
HANNITY: Lincoln, slaves, Civil War. Why was it fought?
WOODS: Well, Lincoln fought the war to save the union rather than to end slavery.
And there are all kinds of issues that this conflict raises as to whether -- was a war necessary to do this? Was a war that led to 1.5 million dead, wounded and missing, that destroyed two centuries worth of a code of civilized war that had been instituted?
And the fact is that William Lloyd Garrison, the best-known abolitionist in American history believed that, if the northern states were allowed to withdraw from the union, they could become a haven for runaway slaves and you could have a peaceful resolution.
HANNITY: Chris Wallace had a great piece about this in his book, too. That they actually -- different points took different positions on the issue, correct?
WOODS: Well, I think Lincoln spoke out of both side of his mouth, basically. But the important thing that I would want to emphasize about the war is that...
HANNITY: Sort of like Al Gore?
WOODS: Well, sort of like a lot of people basically in American history. But I think significant thing about the war is that, when the war is all over, what's the ultimate consequence? The states, in effect, by having lost the right of secession, by having lost any real corporate right of resisting the federal government are now just helpless before the continuing expansion of the growth of the federal government.
HANNITY: How do we know when we read history, or when we send our kids to school, that they are actually getting the proper history? You raised the point about FDR made the great depression worse. It's the first I heard that.
WOODS: Oh, I'm afraid that's the case, Sean. In fact, that's a typical example of the bias that we see in history books, because the bias that we see is always anti-market, pro-government, that the market created the Depression and government solved it.
There is not a stitch of truth to that, couldn't be more wrong.
HANNITY: What happened with FDR?
WOODS: Well, in fact, FDR did things like he increased minimum wages to a point where it was absolutely impossible for impoverished businesses to hire people. He destroyed cotton and destroyed and killed six million pigs at a time when people were starving so as to raise prices of those goods.
Well, that worked, but it meant that people starved. What's also important is that textbooks typically -- what do they leave out? In my opinion, there should be a whole chapter on how leftists in the '30s were pro-communist, not all of them.
They said the Soviet Union was a model for the future. The New York Times reporter Walter Durante covered up, when Stalin tried to kill -- killed five million people in Ukraine, the New York Times reporter covered that up.
HANNITY: Let me ask you...
(CROSSTALK)
WOODS: Why do don't we read about that?
HANNITY: Now, when you say that Lincoln had a different position on slavery, FDR may the depression worse, that the puritans didn't steel Indian land.
WOODS: That's right.
HANNITY: Are you ready for Alan, who is about to join us here in a second? Are you ready for his friends and the attacks that are going to come against you and the names that -- not Alan. Alan is one of the nicer liberals, but I mean the names that liberals are going to use against you. Are you ready for this?
WOODS: I think I am ready for it, Sean.
HANNITY: You can handle it? You've prepared yourself?
WOODS: I don't want to say, "Bring it on," but I'll say I think I am ready for it.
HANNITY: You're ready for it.
COLMES: Well, let's look at -- well, first of all, I'm not here to call you names. I don't handle people like that.
WOODS: I appreciate that, Alan.
COLMES: But between 1939 and 1944, our nation's output almost doubled, unemployment plummeted from 14 percent in 1940 to 2 percent in 1943. Labor force grew by 10 million. Doesn't FDR get any credit for that?
WOODS: No, he doesn't, because that's war-related expenditure.
COLMES: He gets no credit?
WOODS: In other words, I could have a lot of great output figures if I spent our entire annual budget, you know, buying feathers...
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, PWA, all provided employment for lots of people.
WOODS: Yes, but those programs do not stimulate the economy. They take from some to give to others. That's all they do. There is no net stimulus.
In fact, because those programs had no profit and loss test, it means that sometimes he's employing people to chase starlets off the White House lawn.
COLMES: Are you're saying the building of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Camp David, and some of the things that these programs did, created no other benefit economically to this country? You've got to be kidding me.
WOODS: The thing is, there's no -- in the absence of a profit and loss test, there is no way to know exactly what benefits...
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: But you can't say that there's been no benefit to putting tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to work and building some of these monuments which still exist, that there's a create economic value to this?
WOODS: But the point is that he -- By taking all of that wealth out of the private economy, he's drying up capital at a time when businesses are starved for capital. Capital investment was positively negative in the '30s, thanks to programs like that.
COLMES: All right, but to say there's no value to that, people would disagree.
WOODS: And also, the public works programs were geared toward areas where FDR needed more votes. They were not geared toward the areas...
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: All right, but to say that there was not an economic benefit or an employment benefit -- also, you said the First Amendment doesn't prohibit school prayer?
WOODS: Absolutely not. No one for the first 170 years of American history thought it did.
COLMES: There's a teacher in Cupertino, California, right now...
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: ... who is upset. He's claiming that he is being preventing from teaching the Declaration of Independence. I have from others in that school that the Declaration of Independence indeed is taught in that school. Do you believe that there is a movement toward preventing the word "God," the teaching of God, or anything to do with God, including our founding documents? Is that something you believe is going on?
WOODS: Well, this is the first I'd heard about this case because of your program. I can't say there is a huge -- it doesn't seem to me there is a huge movement, because this seems like an extreme case. But the fact is that it does seem as if there is an attempt in the schools to push God entirely out.
COLMES: But schools are teaching the Declaration of Independence. They sing patriotic songs in schools. They even sing Christmas songs in school.
WOODS: That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. But issues like this, or issues involving school prayer, were intended by the Constitution to be decided by local school boards. There is no reason for federal courts or the U.S. president or anybody to have anything to do with this.
Thomas Jefferson believed in local self-government. And I would hope that a traditional liberal like yourself would believe in traditional, decentralized Jeffersonian government.
HANNITY: All right, Thomas. Good to see you. Thank you for stopping by.
WOODS: Thank you very much.
HANNITY: We'll be following you closely.