Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Benjamin Franklin: The Greatest American with Mark Skousen
Roger welcomes Dr. Mark Skousen, economist, author and the Doti-Spogli Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University, for a conversation about Benjamin Franklin’s enduring wisdom and what it means for today’s debates on liberty, economics and civic life.
They explore Franklin’s defense of wealth and philanthropy, his views on capitalism and free trade, and his complex relationships with fellow Founders such as Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Skousen shares lessons from Franklin on personal finance, diplomacy, optimism in the face of crisis and even the power of compound interest.
The discussion also touches on Franklin’s role in shaping the postal system, his influence on Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations", and why Franklin’s humor and optimism still resonate in divided times.
Skousen is the bestselling author of more than 25 books, including his latest, “The Greatest American: Benjamin Franklin, the World’s Most Versatile Genius.” He has served as president of the Foundation for Economic Education, writes widely on business and finance, and is the founder of FreedomFest, a national conference celebrating liberty, ideas and free enterprise.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact. Today. I'm your host, roger Ream. My guest today on the Liberty and Leadership Podcast is Dr Mark Skousen, a writer and economist and the Dodie Spogli Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University in Southern California. He's a lecturer on business economics and finance, former president of the Foundation for Economic Education, an organization I have a long history with as well, and is a frequent speaker and writer on many topics around the country. He writes and speaks for the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Libertarian Party, the Council on National Policy and the Mont Pelerin Society. He's the editor of MarksGaussancom and the founder of Freedom Fest, one of the largest pro-liberty nonpartisan conventions held each year in our country.
Speaker 1:His latest book is the Greatest American, benjamin Franklin, the World's Most Versatile Genius, which was published earlier this year, something I highly recommend, and you can find wherever fine books are sold. Mark, thank you for joining me on the Liberty and Leadership podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. Another book I don't know what number this is, it's probably you've written at least a dozen over the years and a lot of really good books on economics Another Franklin book earlier which we'll touch on. But you've had a very diverse career as well, in government, academia, business, writing and publishing. What inspires you to write books? I?
Speaker 2:always want to write a book that nobody else has really written about. If somebody has come up with a book that I just put my name on it and it's virtually the same, I wouldn't be interested in that. So I wrote my economics textbook, economic Logic, because I didn't like the way other textbooks were written. For example, no economics textbook has a profit and loss statement, a P&L statement, which is all accountants and finance. That's their main focus. No economics textbook has on that and I think it's because most economists are academic and they don't have any real world experience with hiring and firing people and making payroll and all that sort of thing. So I've added that to the economic logic textbook that I wrote.
Speaker 2:The making of modern economics is a history of the great economic thinkers and there's no plot to all the others. There's just this school, that school, this economist. It's a hodgepodge and I tried to make it into an actual story with a hero and enemies and has a good ending and so forth. So that's my Making of Modern Economics. I completed Franklin's autobiography. Nobody had ever done that before. So I try to do things making a real contribution in my writing.
Speaker 1:Well, and you've done that with these books and you've touched on some of them. There was a pile right here on the set and I've got some off the set here because they said if I put them all here, we won't be able to see us. That brings me to maybe a question I was going to ask you, which now becomes a challenging question perhaps is a biography of Benjamin Franklin. Surely people have written those. So what inspired you to write about Ben Franklin and what's unique about your book?
Speaker 2:It's not a biography. There's a two-page biography to just give a little summary of his life and then there's 80 short chapters on how to apply Franklin's life and his work to today's hot issues and topics that would be of interest of politics, of economics, personal finance, healthy living, religion. There's a variety of topics diplomacy and so forth, so you can read any chapter. It's a standalone chapter because it was originally a series of columns that I wrote for Newsmax's magazine called Franklin Prosperity Report. It came out every month. I wrote these columns and then I've edited them and I've added some new chapters as well, and it created this book, the Greatest American. But I will tell you that Newsmax did reject one of my columns. Is that right? Yeah, they censored one of the columns. So what do you think the topic was? It's in the book, yeah, yeah, I put it in the book Is this about Jefferson and sex?
Speaker 2:It is on sex and it's Franklin. I mean Franklin.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you could do one on Jefferson.
Speaker 1:I saw that in there.
Speaker 2:Sex as as well, for sure. But so it's in the book and I had a lot of fun putting this together. But it took six or seven years to put it together and it's all applying Franklin to today's issues of the trade, war, inflation, taxation, foreign policy personal finance all of these kinds of things.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of great one-liners by Franklin. He was really the original one-liner stand-up comedian. In a lot of ways you have a personal connection to him, right. I've completed Franklin's autobiography with my wife's help and she was instrumental in putting as an English professor of working to me with that. And then this one is this series of columns called the Greatest American. So I'm probably a little prejudiced with the title.
Speaker 1:You have some data in there, some quotes from historians and others who put them right up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of people who really would be regarded as the greatest Americans, but Franklin is one who, as the subtitle says, the world's most versatile genius. I came up to 22 careers that he had, so he's a jack of all trades and a master of many. Getting back to my tradition that my family was related to Benjamin Franklin through my mother's line, john and I went back and did the genealogy and found the missing link, if you will, because we didn't know exactly how we were related and it turned out to be through an illegitimate line, just like a traditional Franklin perspective.
Speaker 1:Well, I think my mother once found my line related to Benedict Arnold of all people. Fortunately, she found an illegitimate line, so I'm actually not.
Speaker 2:It was illegitimate. It's still the line, it's still DNA.
Speaker 1:But I think it was an adoption. Well, let's talk about some of the 80 practical lessons in your book, and you may have some favorites that are particularly relevant to people today, but I saw one was that Franklin, his defense of the rich. Most people may know his belief in hard work, but what's his defense of the rich?
Speaker 2:So he described how the poor laws that were passed by England were passed by wealthy people who wanted to help out people who were poor and needed a chance to educate and so forth. So he was a firm believer in the capitalist system and he's really, in many ways, the father of American capitalism. Because how do you encourage people, how do you give them incentives to perform well? And wealth is a way to do that. He felt very strongly that money that you made in business should be used for good purposes. He would qualify the defense of wealthy people by suggesting you need to do good with your wealth and not just splurge on a big mansion and being on a cruise ship around the world and so on. You need to be involved in good, charitable works.
Speaker 2:He made this point about religion as well. So he said at the end of his life the years go by and the longer I live, I'm hopeful that at the end I will be known as the person who used my money well, rather than I simply died rich. So usefulness was very much and he started the Junto. There's lots of things he did to encourage industry and theft, but you have to be able to keep that money. If it's progressively taxed away, then what's the incentive to become wealthy? But he did feel the wealthy had a responsibility to use their wealth prudently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know you wrote in there about his emphasis on economy and not just being spin thrift. That millionaires go broke, yeah, they can. And there's a story in there you tell about him leaving a bequest for the cities of Philadelphia and Boston of, I think, a thousand pounds each and how he directed them to use it so it would grow. And do you recall that story?
Speaker 2:I have a chapter on the case for compounded interest. He heard this story about compounded interest and he said well, I think at the end of my life I'm going to test and see if this skill he's not going to be able to live for 200 years. So he gave a thousand pounds to each of the cities. This is in his last will and testament. Then he said the first hundred years you simply invested in bank accounts and you compound interest, however much that is. After a hundred years you will give out to loans, to artisans and to people of practical skills, but they're loans and they have to be paid back on the interest. And so he did this and finally they dissolved both of these accounts after 200 years, as what he said in his last will.
Speaker 2:I think Boston had more. I mean, they ended up with $13 million together between the two of them. I think Boston did a better job of investing than Philadelphia, but the result demonstrated very clearly that you could do quite well with power of compounded interest, and you could do good as well, because you're loaning the money out to small businesses.
Speaker 1:You have a chapter each on Franklin's relationship with John Adams, thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Franklin was at both the Constitutional Convention and the Continental Congress where the. Declaration was drafted. What was Franklin's relationship with those other founders?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, with George Washington he was a very big fan and he said he single-handedly took on the British and he was able to succeed. So he was very positive about George Washington and his ability as a general, even though he lost a lot of wars and stuff like that. So he's been criticized over the years. But Franklin was a big supporter of George Washington. In the case of Thomas Jefferson, jefferson took his place as ambassador to France. He got along with Jefferson a lot. But he disagreed with Jefferson on two areas. One is Jefferson was very critical of paper money. He believed in gold and silver only Franklin was an inflationist.
Speaker 2:He actually wrote a pamphlet in favor of printing up money because the British denied gold and silver and wouldn't allow them to mint their own gold and silver. They had to use British money. So Franklin put out a pamphlet advocating the printing of money and got the contract by the Pennsylvania legislature. So he was the first crony capitalist as well. But later in life he recognized that inflation was not necessarily good. But he was in favor of commercial banks. He loved commercial society. Jefferson thought farming was the best industry that you could have as an occupation. Franklin was a city man. He loved the big cities. He loved London, he loved Paris. He thought Philadelphia was a small town, even though it was the biggest town in colonial time periods. There are these two areas where Franklin was defending commercial society, defending the banking industry. He would probably support Hamilton Central Bank. So he's a pretty modern person in that respect.
Speaker 1:And what about with Adams? They had a less favorable.
Speaker 2:Yes, they got along in the Declaration of Independence, part of that. Then they had severe differences when they got over to France. Because Franklin was 70 years old when he was sent over to be the ambassador, they sent over four or five other commissioners because they didn't trust Franklin, because he was too old and they thought he would be too favorable toward the French. John Adams, he hated the French. He didn't get along well at all. He couldn't raise a single livre in funding. He finally raised some money with the Dutch. So they argued a lot.
Speaker 2:Adams thought he didn't take the spies seriously, that he was disorganized, that he was a heretic, that he was a nonbeliever, that he was a womanizer you go through the whole list. And they did not get along well at all. And in fact at one point John Adams wrote a letter I think it was to Thomas Jefferson saying yeah, the history of America will be told that Franklin took his electric rod and struck the ground and out plopped George Washington and together they completely won the American Revolution without the help of anyone else. And so he was really very envious of Ben Franklin's success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Franklin was quite a celebrity in Paris, right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I think there's an envious factor, and especially with the women. Franklin got along really well with the French society. You'd go to these salons, which were intellectual get-togethers, and they're run by women. Franklin's very modern in that respect. He didn't see women as simply sexual objects, but he enjoyed the intelligence and the wonderful discussions that you would have with women, including Madame Brionne, who was a married woman, and Madame Elvisus, who was not, and he actually proposed marriage to Elvisus after his own wife had passed away and that didn't develop. But it was really a wonderful situation and John Adams as well as Abigail they were together as commissioners and they were appalled by the behavior of the women kissing Franklin and putting their arms around him and all of the salacious behavior.
Speaker 1:With the Puritan, massachusetts background.
Speaker 2:They were definitely puritanical.
Speaker 1:On Saturday, before the day we're recording this, the Postal Service celebrated its 250th anniversary. I'm wearing a pin for a stamp they've put out in honor of that anniversary. It's a reissue of a four-cent stamp that once was put out earlier, with Ben Franklin on it, but he was the first postmaster. Tell me a little more about that role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was assistant general manager and then he was made the first full-scale postmaster general when they declared their independence and he put his son-in-law, richard Bache, in charge at one point in Philadelphia. But he was overall. When he was back in town. He really developed the post office and I actually have a whole chapter in the Greatest American on him and his abilities to turn a profit. I think there's some lessons there with the post office and his efficiency. It took two weeks to send a letter from Boston all the way to Philadelphia. He got it down to three days.
Speaker 1:So he really did. They can't do it now, in three days.
Speaker 2:And that increased dramatically the volume of mail and so forth. And he created the dead letter office to try to deal with the letters that were not sent properly and he put it in one particular office so they could check on it and stuff like that. He did a lot of things that were really impressive with the postal system and the postal roads between Boston and New York, for example. You can still take those roads and they're cleared and they're available.
Speaker 1:Still called the post road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the post road Exactly.
Speaker 1:It went past the Foundation for Economic Education's headquarters in Irvington, New York.
Speaker 2:We were on that trail quite frequently, and I should mention that Franklin has been honored equal to him, perhaps a little better than George Washington now, in the number of stamps that have been issued with Franklin's image on there. And I was hopeful. You know, I have always had my idea that we issue a one penny stamp with Franklin's image that says a penny saved is a penny earned. Wouldn't that be a nice permanent stamp?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the rumors are they're going to discontinue the penny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that will hurt.
Speaker 1:In a decade, kids won't know what a penny is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. In fact there is a half-cent Franklin stamp. Did you know that issued during World War II.
Speaker 1:I recall that in 2020, I think it was you interviewed Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2:That's the final chapter where I've actually performed as Benjamin Franklin a number of times and it's been a treat. And I'll tell you one thing I've learned because I've seen a lot of impersonators of Benjamin Franklin. They never have the humor and the satire that Franklin had. Like he said, three people can keep a secret if two are dead. You know stuff like that. That's really quite funny.
Speaker 2:So I was interviewed maybe 10 years ago by somebody who and I pretended that I was Franklin in getting the answers and are you an optimist? A pessimist about America? And of course he was always very optimistic and he firmly believed in the American dream, which still, if he were alive today, would be deeply impressed with the higher standard of living and the technology. He'd be the first one to have a cell phone and AI and texting and all that sort of thing. But he would be appalled by the monstrous national debt which he felt should be paid off and the welfare state. He was not a particularly fan of the welfare state and things like that, so he'd probably be pretty conservative in that respect, although I found Republicans and Democrats all love Franklin.
Speaker 1:Let me shift gears a little bit. Say something about Freedom Fest. You've turned that into this major conference every year, drawing us people from around the world.
Speaker 2:I'll start with a quote from Ben Franklin, who said it's incredible the quantity of good that a single man can do if he makes a business out of it. And Freedom Fest is actually a for-profit event, and so we focus on our customers, our attendees. You know a lot of nonprofits. It's the donors that really make the difference, but for us the focus is on the attendees. We want to make sure they're happy, and so we have 2,000 to 3,000 people who come every year.
Speaker 2:The idea of Freedom Fest got started when I was president of FEE and I thought well, what can we do to jumpstart the freedom movement? It seems like freedom is on the defense, it's always struggling and socialism is advancing. I think it's Thomas Jefferson that said liberty is always receding and government's always expanding. So my ideas are like rabbits who are going in all kinds of different directions. And could we all come together, take some time off for three or four days to learn from each other, to network and socialize and celebrate liberty? So that's been the idea. We've been doing it for 14 or 15 years, started in 2007. And it's really been a big success.
Speaker 2:And we try to bring in all the freedom organizations and the exhibit is John Mackey of Whole Foods calls it the trade show for liberty. Steve Forbes is a very big fan and he comes every year and it's just been great. It just really stimulates the mind with all kinds of debates and topics. It's a renaissance gathering of philosophy, history, science and technology, healthy living, politics, economics, finance. We have a three-day investment conference. We have the Anthem Film Festival that my wife goes on. You can't believe the hundreds of people who want to see the latest films, documentaries, narratives and stuff like that. Shorts features. We have a comedy show. We have a libertarian magician. I have my white mates in two chess problem in the exhibit hall.
Speaker 1:I've seen that before.
Speaker 2:There's something for everybody to do and nobody's ever bored at Freedom Fest, so it's once a year. We're doing it next year in Las Vegas at the Caesars Forum Convention Center right across from Caesars Palace. It's July 8th through the 11th. We're hoping to have another big crowd and some celebrity speakers. Kennedy is always our emcee. Now for the last three or four years from Fox. News. It's really a lot of fun. We're hoping to see the fun for American studies out there and Roger Reeves Maybe do a show there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, harkening back to something about Franklin and Jefferson, you just mentioned Jefferson's comment that the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
Speaker 2:That's what it is Great quote.
Speaker 1:Which is kind of a form of pessimism, and many of the framers were pessimistic about how long this experiment in liberty would last. There's a story told about Franklin at the very end of the Continental Congress. I think it was that he said to the delegates I've been looking at the back of General Washington's chair throughout the convention and there's a sunburst painted on it and I've wondered whether it's a rising sun or a setting sun. Throughout much of the convention I thought it must be a setting sun, but now that we've reached agreement on this document I realize it's a rising sun and he seemed optimistic about the future, and you said he was an optimist.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, that's exactly the story told. And what's interesting is, you know, this is the American Eagle silver dollar that I'm holding here and I use it quite frequently and give it out as gifts and to my students who take my course and stuff, and the front is quite a few symbols. There's Lady Liberty, which Franklin would really like, says In God we Trust. He was a believer, although he was not a churchgoer, and it has the rising sun on there.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts about where we're headed in the economy? I go out to visit a lot of our donors, a lot of people when I travel around the country and I run into people like I did last week, I'm just so bullish on. I think we're booming because Trump's bringing all this business to America. Companies are building plants here and then there are others really gloomy about. You know, we're going to go into a deep recession and, because of trade policy or other factors, the spending is out of control. Of course, government is reaching a point where it just can't even fund its basic services because of interest on the debt. The various Social Security, medicare programs how are you thinking of things will be like, at least in the short run? Security?
Speaker 2:Medicare programs. How are you thinking of things will be like, at least in the short run? I have a chapter in the Greatest American on Franklin and pessimism, because he was an optimist and he actually refers to those who are doom and gloomers as croakers, that they're always croaking and complaining and stuff like that. He tells a story in the autobiography of doom and gloomer croaker that came along and told ben franklin listen, you need to sell all your property because the dearth of business, a depression, is coming and you need to sell. And he said I was really happy to see that 10 years later he had to pay considerably more when he finally decided to buy real estate.
Speaker 2:Franklin was very suspicious and questioned people who were overly pessimistic. It's not to say there weren't troubles. I mean, franklin himself went through two world wars. He went through depressions, a banking crisis, runaway inflation in America, and yet he was still able to survive and prosper. Why? Because he had a diversified portfolio of rental properties. He had three bank accounts, he had a beautiful gift that he got from Louis XVI, like 100 diamonds or something, and I mean there's some really cool collectibles Successful printer too right.
Speaker 2:And he was a very successful printer. So he had a lot of money in gold and silver and stuff like that, but it was well diversified so he was not hurt by all of these events and stuff and he seemed to feel optimistic. Quite frequently he said there was really bad winter in France one time but then the sun came out and the flowers started blooming and I was happy. I think, even though our country has a lot of problems, we should never sell America short, because we seem to have that ability to make a comeback all the time and so forth. Is that a bust of Franklin back there? Yes, it is. Oh my gosh, is that the Houdon bust?
Speaker 2:I believe it is it could be and I should tell you, houdon did busts of Franklin and Jefferson and Washington as well. The Houdon bust is in the White House and a month or so ago Donald Trump had a press conference and he brought in the Houdon bust of Franklin and had it there in presence. I think he was trying to channel Franklin's unique ability as a diplomat and use his skills in all these negotiations. So that's my thinking. Ken Burns in his documentary said Franklin was by far America's greatest diplomat.
Speaker 1:Someone mentioned in your book on the greatest American is Adam Smith. Was Franklin familiar with Smith and his ideas?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a chapter called Ben Franklin, adam Smith's Invisible Hand, and so they've influenced each other. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. While he was preparing it, franklin was in London at the same time for a couple of years. Franklin says that Adam Smith would bring in his chapters as they were writing them and would present them to these various clubs that are in London, and he was one of the readers and he would give suggestions.
Speaker 2:There's a huge section in the Wealth of Nations on America as a very up-and-coming colony. Adam Smith actually declares. He says that soon America will be a great and prominent nation in the world, which was really quite controversial because you had people like Edward Gibbon who were very much opposed to American independence, and, of course, all the government there. So Adam Smith was taking a chance there. But I believe he was heavily influenced by Benjamin Franklin and vice versa. Adam Smith's free trade and so forth. Franklin has a lot of strong views in favor of free trade. He says no nation was ever ruined by trade, even those who are most hurt by it. Well, that's very different from Donald Trump saying we've been ripped off all these years. He would argue that globalization has been very beneficial.
Speaker 1:Dr Michael McClendon Often try to remind people of Adam Smith's influence on the framers, on the founding fathers, because Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, a lot of them all made references to Adam Smith.
Speaker 2:They all read.
Speaker 1:The Wealth of Nations.
Speaker 2:It was a bestselling book. It sold out within six months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my organization is going to be doing a number of events next year to celebrate America 250. And we want to make sure economics and Adam Smith and capitalism is the commercial republic that we were founded, as is a big part of that story.
Speaker 2:Well, the first hundred years, there's no question that the government depended largely on tariffs for their revenues, because, our government was much smaller than today.
Speaker 2:Well, the government was small, but also the United States and it's eventually 50 states was a free trade zone. We didn't import a lot particularly, and so they made money from that, but the country boomed despite the high tariffs that were in existence in the 19th century. So Donald Trump has that wrong historically that this was a golden era where we have very high tariffs. Well, that's because the US economy was much bigger than the global economy. Now it's totally different. Now, 25% of our GDP is in foreign trade and 40% of US-made cars have components that come from outside the United States foreign components. So this is a dangerous game that Trump is playing, and hopefully the end result will be lower trade barriers. That's where we're hopeful.
Speaker 1:Well, mark, thank you very much for joining me today on the Liberty and Leadership podcast. Congratulations on your book the Greatest American. I encourage anyone listening to go out and buy the book. It makes a great gift, especially even for young people, especially, I think, to read the lessons that you presented there.
Speaker 2:And I'm also arguing that it's a good coffee table book. Yeah, instead of being on a bookshelf for the nightstand, put it out there and see what people say about the Greatest American and have a little debate. But the fact of the matter is, I found that Americans are very unified. They like Benjamin Franklin, whether you're Republican or Democrat, and we need that in today's world that's so divisive. So nobody can be embarrassed about putting this book out and seeing what people think. That's for sure. Amen to that. Thank you, mark. Thank you, be free, as Franklin would say.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
