Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, discusses Thomas Jefferson’s theory of inflationary money and the business cycle, the history of fiat money in America and around the world from Marco Polo’s adventures through Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Revolutionary War, 1812-14, Andrew Jackson’s battle with Biddle, Lincoln’s greenbacks, the Gilded Age, progressive era tyranny of Woodrow Wilson, passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the World Wars, Great Depression, Cold War, Terror War, the multi-trillion dollar bailout, end of the empire, and the heroic Ron Paul.

MP3 here. (57:33)

Lew Rockwell is the founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, and publisher of the political Web site LewRockwell.com. He served as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff between 1978 and 1982. Check out his new podcast show here.

Thomas E. Woods, senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and co-author of Who Killed the Constitution? and We Who Dared Say No to War, discusses America’s turn from republic to empire in the late 19th century, the conquest of Hawaii, the bogus propaganda of the War Party then and now, Grover Cleveland’s refusal to steal Cuba, the neoconservatives’ pretended reading of Article II which they say grants the president “plenary” war powers, the leading role of war in setting the precedents which render the constitution irrelevant, the horrible competing doctrines of “the living constitution” and “the president has more authority than God” held by liberals and conservatives, Christian support for the torture state and the Democrats’ complete failure to oppose John McCain and the GOP with any credibility.

MP3 here. (36:07)

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His most recent book is Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (with Kevin R.C. Gutzman). His others include Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass, 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask, the New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, and The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy. His critically acclaimed 2004 book The Church Confronts Modernity was recently released in paperback by Columbia University Press. A collection of Woods’ essays, called W obronie zdrowego rozsadku, was released exclusively in Polish in 2007. Woods’ books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Polish, German, Portuguese, Croatian, Korean, and Chinese.

Woods edited and wrote the introduction to four additional books: We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now (with Murray Polner), Murray N. Rothbard’s The Betrayal of the American Right, The Political Writings of Rufus Choate, and Orestes Brownson’s 1875 classic The American Republic. He is also the author of Beyond Distributism For eleven years Woods served as associate editor of The Latin Mass magazine; he is presently a contributing editor of The American Conservative and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. A contributor to six encyclopedias, Woods is co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an eleven-volume encyclopedia, part of the Acton Institute’s Christian Social Thought Series.

Woods is the editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies and a contributing editor of The American Conservative. For eleven years he served as associate editor of The Latin Mass magazine. A contributor to six encyclopedias, Woods is co-editor of Exploring American History: From Colonial Times to 1877, an 11-volume encyclopedia.