[00:01:59] Host: Throughout your career, you've been a strong advocate for economic liberty and free markets. How do you view the connection between free speech, intellectual freedom, and the principles you promote in economics?

[00:02:14] Dr. Mark Skousen: I think it's vitally important that you feel the freedom to express yourself within the confines of social norms. You do have to be careful that you don't insult people, that we treat each other civilly. That's not always going to happen. You have to have a wide berth of what people can say and do. I put on this conference, FreedomFest, and we don't set any dos and don'ts other than treat each other civilly, try not to engage in physical fist fights. [laughs] This is a difficult issue when you're dealing in society.

You, as an individual on the website, can say anything you want. You can say anything you want. That's what happens these days. You do find out rather quickly what people are like when you have that kind of liberty. At the same time, when it comes to what books you select in the classroom, for example, I do remember a professor that was in a class where he used four-letter words and so forth. I just thought that was totally inappropriate. It's not like you can't do that. It's just not appropriate in a society where you have lots of students with lots of backgrounds, some of them are religious and find those kind of words offensive.

Why engage in that sort of thing? It is a difficult issue. I'm certainly not in favor of banning books and so forth. One thing that's great about Amazon is that pretty much every book is out there. You can buy Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, but if you go into a bookstore, and you buy a copy of Mein Kampf, and it is available in Barnes & Noble, you wonder, do you really want others to see that you purchased this book, or a book on bizarre sexual behavior, or what have you? There is this privacy issue. There's a lot of issues in terms of censorship and public schools and that sort of thing.

You've got to be careful what you expose children to. If you're going to have pedophilia pornography in the public school, I don't think anybody would favor that kind of thing. When it comes to public schools and public money and taxpayer support and stuff like that, I do think you can make a case for limiting what is available for reading, exposing children to excessive violence, pornography, things like that. As adults, it's a wider berth. Even at FreedomFest, we have adult sex workers who had an exhibit booth at FreedomFest. That was okay because we're all adults there, but if it was in the school situation, I don't know if that would be appropriate. I don't know what questions you would want to pursue in this regard. I've covered a lot of territory, but you want to maximize freedom within the limits of a civil society is the way I look at it.

[00:05:58] Host: Building off of that, as someone who has authored over 25 books, and you've contributed to a lot of various platforms like The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, what would you say are your thoughts on the rise of censorship, especially in literature and academic spaces, as well as media outlets, and how that has been changing in the world?

[00:06:17] Dr. Mark Skousen: I've never really encountered any censorship per se. Your work is always edited. They may edit out some things that Wall Street Journal editor or Forbes editor-- These people have lots of experience. They don't want to face lawsuits, so there's self-censorship and there's editor control over what you write and talk about. What I write about isn't really that controversial. We talk about Wall Street, its economic policy. It's controversial in terms of what that policy is, but in terms of language, it's not really that particularly controversial.

I don't think I've written-- I take it back. I used to write a column for the Franklin Prosperity Report, which is published by Newsmax. It's a conservative outlet, politically conservative, culturally conservative. I wrote an article called more or less The Sex Life of Benjamin Franklin, and they canceled it. They said, "That's not for us." I thought it was totally appropriate and really fun to read and stuff. He had an illegitimate child, and he talked about the hard to govern passions as a young man. He talked about flirting with French women and so forth, but he was a widower at that time.

I didn't think it was really that difficult. Anyway, they had the right as a private company to say, "No, that column is not going to run." By the way, I am publishing a new book about Benjamin Franklin. It's called The Greatest American: the world's most versatile genius. That chapter is in there on sex and Ben Franklin. I haven't had much experience in censorship in that respect.

[00:08:20] Host: How many years ago was that original thing that you pitched about Ben Franklin, as opposed to now that you have it in your book? When was that first one that they said no?

[00:08:30] Dr. Mark Skousen: That was maybe 10, 15 years ago. I suspect they would be of the same opinion today. They seem to be very sensitive to topics that-- The Christian tradition is, sex is a rather taboo topic. There's a lot of issues there with encouraging sexual behavior. Aberrant sexual behavior is frowned upon by many Christian groups, the Evangelicals especially. I thought it was really a fun topic, but to each his own. Private publishers do have a right to censor. They do have a right to say, "No, we're not going to publish your book. You have to go somewhere else." That's the great thing about the free enterprise system. You have publishers that are willing to publish that. You have the Playboy magazines type of things out there that are willing to publish that and publish a language that would be inappropriate for more conservative publications. I like the diversity that our country has. What I don't like is the censorship that went on, on Facebook and Twitter and so forth when it was under the control of Democrats who, for whatever reason, and I'm not saying all Democrats are like this, but those particular, Mark Zuckerberg and the others, that were involved prior to Elon Musk taking over Twitter, and now calling it X, which is a terrible name, but that's his privilege, I do think that was, people didn't like that, that they were censored for their political opinions.

It's one thing to use foul language and stuff like that. It's another thing to say, "We're not going to allow you to say that. That's a racist comment." You can call anything racist these days. If you're Caucasian, and you're writing something about race, they seem to think that you have no right to say stuff like that, but I'm really opposed to that kind of censorship.

[00:10:48] Host: I was curious what your thoughts were on having Elon Musk buying Twitter and then Zuckerberg's recent decision to change Facebook from having the monitoring that they had, where they would take down certain posts, to now, where they have community notes. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. They have more of an open platform for people to say, "Oh, well, this is fake news," or, "This is whatever it is." That's a lot more open and free speech-based. I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.

[00:11:25] Dr. Mark Skousen: I'm not a particularly big fan of Donald Trump, but I do like Elon Musk, and I like Mark Zuckerberg's decision to confess that it was the government, under the Biden administration, that pressured Facebook to engage in this kind of censorship. I thought it was disgraceful and a violation of the First Amendment. I'm really glad to see Mark Zuckerberg open things up and so forth. I really dislike also where they might have a banner going across saying, "This is fake news," or, "This is misinformation." One person's misinformation is another person's truth.

People have to have the right, frankly, to engage in misinformation, what you would regard as misinformation. You have to have that kind of wide freedom, and people are going to say stupid and dumb things. That's part of the American way is people will say some-- We just need the broadest possible freedom of expression that we can allow within a civil society, is the way I look at it. I don't like the emphasis on trying to say, "You're engaged in misinformation." I tell you, one of the things that really bothered me was the major press, and they still do this. They say Donald Trump made the false claim, the “false claim” that the election was stolen. Just take off the word “false,” and just say, "He claimed it." You don't have to say he's right or wrong. You don't do that when someone is accused of being a murderer. You always say, "The alleged murderer," something like that. They always put the word alleged, and that's acceptable because you don't want to be sued. The media now seems to be the leader in the truth with the big T, and I dislike that kind of editorializing in what is supposed to be just a straight news story.

Now, I have no problem with them challenging the claim that Donald Trump said that the election was stolen, but to say there is no evidence of fraud whatsoever, that's baloney because every election has elements of fraud in it. 2020 was a unique election, and there was all kinds of questionable activity, let's put it that way. Let's be a little more generous with how people say things, and let's not be so quick to say, "That's misinformation. That's fake news." Of course, Trump himself does that, too. He says, "Oh, that's fake news." Maybe it's not fake news. Let's just call it news.

[00:14:23] Host: Obviously one of your big events is FreedomFest that you do every year, this year happening in Palm Springs, which is really exciting. How do you feel FreedomFest promotes the right kind of free speech and gives a space for people to discuss new ideas and get on the same page about things?

[00:14:47] Dr. Mark Skousen: We pride ourselves at FreedomFest-- By the way, if anybody is interested in our conference this year, just go to freedomfest.com. It's a pretty easy website to go to, and we have special discounts for students. I think it's $195 for students. The normal price is $600, so you get a pretty good deal for students. I think we're going to have quite a few students at this year's event from Chapman and other local colleges. We do a lot of debates. The subtitle FreedomFest is, "The world's largest gathering of free minds, of open-mindedness."

We encourage people who come to FreedomFest, have an open mind, be able to listen to somebody who doesn't agree with you. Learn to disagree without being disagreeable is the way we look at it. We usually have a dozen debates. We're going to have a big debate with Art Laffer of the Laffer curve and John Tammy of RealClearMarkets. Both of them don't think the deficit is a problem. In fact, John Tammy has written a book called The Deficit Delusion. You don't have to worry about the deficit. I am going to take the side that I think it is a serious problem.

We've also had debates on Donald Trump, whether he's a good guy or a bad guy, and it's really fun to see the heated debate. These debates can get quite heated, but nobody has thrown a fist and really hasn't used particularly foul language. We maintain a level of civility, and that's really important because emotions, the name-calling, we discourage name-calling as much as possible. Of course, you can't do anything about it. Left wing, right wing, far right, far left, there's all these labels that are out there, and we say, "Listen, can we just talk about the issue? Is this a good policy or a bad policy?"

It doesn't matter who is supporting this policy. It's not a question of who, but what. What is right, not who is right. We try to avoid labels. At least I start off the conference every year saying, "Hey, can we dial down the rhetoric and focus just on the issues, whether it's abortion or transgenders or taxes or Trump, or what have you? Can we have a civil discussion without it coming to blows?" So far, we've been pretty successful.

[00:17:34] Host: That's amazing. Very cool.

[00:17:36] Host: Yes. Basically, a big part of what we're doing this podcast for, is for libraries and books, so I'm curious about, with your background in writing books and publishing, how did you first get into that world? What was your inspiration to start to write your first book?

[00:17:56] Dr. Mark Skousen: First of all, I have always been a big book reader. My generation, I think, reads a lot more than your generation. In fact, I tell my students at Chapman, Isaac, you may have heard this when I said to students one time, I said, "You don't read, but you do look."

[00:18:15] Host: Yes.

[00:18:16] Host: I think that's unfortunately very true.

[00:18:19] Dr. Mark Skousen: Most of my students nod in agreement, but we need to get back to reading, and that's what I did as I was growing up. I've always been attracted to bookstores and finding out interesting things. Now that we have lots of ways of learning new things, especially with the Audible audiobooks is a great way, and graphic novels and stuff like that. There's lots of ways to learn new information and read novels and stuff like that. My attitude on writing books is, I only want to write books where I feel there's a gap that nobody has written, a book that should present economics or politics in this way or that way. To duplicate, I don't know why people duplicate the same book over and over again, except they want their name on it.

I like to think of trying to write something that is creative. I want to mention one other thing about FreedomFest, going back to that is, one of the things that we try to do in our debates is we tell people, "This is a formal debate. It's not where two people are sitting next to each other, and you say something, the other person says something, because then you start interrupting." I don't know how many times you've seen on Fox News or CNN where they start yelling at each other, and they're talking over each other, and you can't understand each other. This is why we actually have a formal debate, where you have five minutes, the other person can't say anything, then the other person gets five minutes. That way, you concentrate and listen just to that one person. To me, that's really important.

Anyway, getting back to book writing, I think that's one of my successes is that I tend to write books that no one else has written, or if I've written it in a unique way like my book, The Maxims of Wall Street, which is my financial collection of quotes. I do it by category, and I have short stories in it. Nobody else has done that.

There's no other financial quote book on Wall Street anywhere that I'm aware of. I've written that, and it's gone through 11 editions now. In the case of my history of economic thought, The Making of Modern Economics, lots of people have written books on that, like The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. I thought that nobody has written a history of thought that has a running plot in it with a hero and enemies and a storyline where you have the hero coming under attack, being left for dead, resuscitated by his supporters, and victorious in the end, which is the way I like a novel.

My Making of Modern Economics is that Adam Smith is the hero, and he comes under attack and is left for dead by the Keynesians and the Marxists, and the Socialists. Then he's revived by the Austrians and the Chicago School and the supply-siders and free marketeers. Then, in the end, Adam Smith's model wins with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet system. It worked out together really well. There's lots of histories of economics, but nobody has done it with a storyline like my book. That's the reason it's in its fourth edition and published by Routledge.

[00:22:00] Host: Wow.

[00:22:01] Host: Amazing. With the topic of books and you being one of the founder and producer of FreedomFest, what's your perspective on how the increasing trend of book bans in the United States could impact future generations of innovators, especially when it comes to the field of economics?

[00:22:27] Dr. Mark Skousen: My book, The Making of Modern Economics with Adam Smith as the hero, has a extremely critical chapter on Karl Marx and Marxism and communism. It's called Marx Madness, kind of a play on March Madness, Plunges Economics Into a New Dark Age. You know where I feel about Marx and Marxist economics. I really thought it was a detraction from sound economics. I'm very critical of the Marxists. There are some benefits, some value in the Marxist doctrine, but anyway, the communist groups in the Philippines took great umbrage with this chapter after one of my readers, a student at the University of Philippines, he typed in the entire chapter and then sent it around to all of his friends.

The local chapter of the Communist Party there was very upset with this. They banned the book because University of the Philippines at the time was a hotbed of Marxism. They were organizing groups going out into the wilderness and getting them ready to take over the Philippines, or, what have you, violent takeover of the country and stuff like that. They did not take comfort in my negative attack on Marx, but the other students really liked it. My book was removed from the library at the University. An Economics book. Can you imagine that? That was pretty amazing.

[00:24:05] Host: Wow. That's crazy.

[00:24:07] Dr. Mark Skousen: Then I had the book translated in Chinese. As you know, China is still run by the Communist Party there. They have a group that reads and censors books that might say negative things about the Communist Party. My book was submitted, but the Chinese translator did something rather clever to get it so that the censors would accept it in China. What he did was he changed the title. The chapter itself is exactly what it is, very critical of Karl Marx, but the chapter title, Marx Madness Plunges Economics Into a New Dark Age, was changed.

The reason I know that is because when I got a copy of the Chinese edition, I asked one of my Chinese students, I said, "Can you tell me, this chapter headline my Chapter 6 on Marxism, Karl Marx, is it a positive or a negative headline?" He said, "Oh, very positive." I said, "Really? What does it say?" "It says Karl Marx and Classical Economics." What the translator did was he changed the headlines so that the Communist Party would not be offended with that bland title. Then he said, "Everything else in the book is exactly the same." Somehow it escaped the censorship of the censors in that regard.

There's always ways to skin a cat. Now, that's economics, and censorship is not very common in economics except maybe the communist being afraid of this sort of thing. Culturally, public schools, look, you have to go to the book. You have to open up the book. It's not like it's forced for you to read it. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to what should be in public libraries, but look, if you're taking your child to the public library and there's a book there that you don't want your child to read, you don't have them read it. You go to another. "Let's go to this other place and read this book."

I don't know, it's hard for me to judge, overall, the PTA and what they're hearing in terms of criticism. I've heard that there are books out there that encourage students to experiment in sex and all kinds of different things and things like that. I can understand parents being concerned about that. Maybe that's the basis of the censorship. I haven't really read that much about it. Maybe you guys have more than I have.

[00:27:08] Host: Yes. I definitely think, on this topic that we're talking about with the libraries, we know that they have been such pillars of free thought and where they're very open to access for information that people go to. In your opinion, how do you think we can ensure with these institutions staying true to who they are and their mission, especially when certain books or ideas are being restricted or removed from shelves? How can we make sure that they stay alive moving forward?

[00:27:35] Dr. Mark Skousen: I really wondered to what extent it really does-- It's so funny, when you censor a book, that's what everyone wants to read. Maybe it's, it backfires on parents and stuff like that, saying, "Oh, this is a banned book, you better not read it." It's like banning cigarettes and banning alcohol. You can't drink until you're 21. Does that keep people who are under 21 from drinking? No.

[00:28:04] Host: Right. It makes you want to do the thing that people tell you you can't do it.

[00:28:09] Dr. Mark Skousen: Yes, exactly. That's right. I'm a reluctant censor, that's for sure. I would probably do so with my own family and limit what they can see and stuff like that. Again, I'm really not that familiar with what the issues are and what books are actually being censored. Perhaps you can tell me and give me some examples.

[00:28:34] Host: In terms of stuff that's banned right now, what are some examples of stuff that's we've seen be banned?

[00:28:41] Dr. Mark Skousen: If it's Huckleberry Finn, because it used the N-word, I think that's a silly kind of banning that-

[00:28:45] Host: Right. Exactly.

[00:28:48] Dr. Mark Skousen: -what are they thinking? Come on.

[00:28:49] Host: Yes, I know.

[00:28:50] Host: Yes, no, there's definitely been a lot of talk while we've been working on this, about that book, in particular, and stuff like that, where it's like you can't erase history or censor these books just because they have things that historically were different, and so it is important to show people.

[00:29:11] Dr. Mark Skousen: By the way, it reminds me, I recently was listening to a history book, which I really enjoy on Audible books. I was listening to this book, and every time it used the N-word, it went, "Beep." It just went, "Beep," but you knew what the word was. I thought, "This is interesting. The narrator didn't want to use the N-word, but I wonder if the book itself put a bracket in there or asterisk." Sure enough, when I looked at the actual book itself, the historian, even though he was quoting people who use the N-word on a regular basis, he censored them and put a blank so that you wouldn't actually see the word.

I do find it culturally really strange that we don't censor the F-word anymore at all. It's used all the time. I guess it's still censored in the newspapers, the major newspapers and so on, but The Economist is now using it, spelling it out and stuff. There's cultural change that's taking place where the N-word is verboten, but the F-word is now used on a regular basis. We have the strangest culture, so I don't get it.

[00:30:49] Host: Yes. It's interesting. We saw last week that a children's book that we grew up with has been banned in some counties. It's a children's book, and we were so shocked to see that.

[00:31:01] Dr. Mark Skousen: What was the name of the children's book? Do you know?

[00:31:02] Host: It was called Pinkalicious.

[00:31:05] Dr. Mark Skousen: Pinkalicious.

[00:31:06] Host: Pinkalicious. Yes.

[00:31:06] Dr. Mark Skousen: Why was it censored? Do you know?

[00:31:09] Host: They said that it had something to do with because it's a book about cupcakes and everything, that it had problems-

[00:31:15] Dr. Mark Skousen: Cupcakes?

[00:31:15] Host: -with body positivity and stuff like that, which I just thought was insanity. It was crazy. It's interesting that it goes to show that some people, depending on the area, they are now finding issues with certain things. The author was like, "I wrote this originally to promote that it's okay to eat what you want, and it's about positivity and everything." She was just as shocked to see that in-- It wasn't everywhere, it was in one county, but we just found that very interesting for sure.

[00:31:42] Dr. Mark Skousen: Yes. It's becoming universal. Aunt Jemima Pancakes, or now just Pancakes or something. I don't know. I'm more of a traditionalist given my age and so forth, so I'm not bothered by any of that sort of thing, but it'll be interesting to see because President Trump has been reversing a lot of this woke culture and stuff like that. Maybe that's in reaction to this overreaction over time. I don't know, but I do know that Ron DeSantis in Florida, the Florida governor, has imposed some censorship on public schools and stuff like that, but I don't know what he's banning.

[00:32:29] Host: I'm from Florida.

[00:32:31] Dr. Mark Skousen: Oh, you are?

[00:32:35] Host: He's been doing some things, and I can't say I'm thrilled about them, but you know what? That's why we're doing this now to help speak out against it and say that we think some of these things shouldn't be happening. It's our goal.

[00:32:47] Dr. Mark Skousen: Yes, especially if it's Huck Finn or something like that. I don't know.

[00:32:51] Host: Absolutely.

[00:32:53] Host: Yes. Okay. Since we're starting to run out to our final question, I just wanted to ask is there anything that you would like to say or any advice you'd want to give to younger students or young economists on how to navigate this, how the world is right now, especially with concerns to freedom of speech and speaking out to unpopular ideas.

[00:33:23] Dr. Mark Skousen: The most important principle is to be open-minded and to be willing to listen, without criticism, what somebody else has to say that you don't agree with because it's only through the debates, and hopefully, they're civil debates, do you find out what the truth is. I was talking to a person just the other day. I was pointing out that the Trump-- By the way, when you mention Trump, you divide people right away. There are some people who just, you can't even discuss anything about the guy without somebody blowing a gasket one way or another, or if you criticize Trump to a Trump supporter, they get close-minded as well.

It's just really crazy. I was talking to this guy last night, who, I told him, I said, "When Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, especially the steel industry in 2018 during his first administration, he imposed a 25% tariff on imported steel, it created 1,000 jobs. That sounds really good until you realize that it also destroyed 75,000 jobs."

[00:34:43] Host: Wow.

[00:34:43] Dr. Mark Skousen: He said, "Oh, that's fake news. That's absolutely fake news. Skousen, you're promoting fake news." I sent him today the source, and the source was a pretty good economic study that demonstrated pretty clearly that he created 1,000 jobs and lost 75,000. Haven't heard back from him.

[00:35:02] Host: Wow.

[00:35:02] Dr. Mark Skousen: He's not willing to admit that-- People are like that these days. You have to be very careful what you say these days on almost any topic. I suppose, at some point, I'm going to get in trouble in my own class at Chapman for saying something. I do notice that some people, they don't agree with what you say. They just walk out of the classroom, and they take another class. They don't want to hear anything that they don't agree with. I think that's really unfortunate. The open-mindedness is really important. Be willing to listen to other people and read other people.

I don't agree with the New York Times, but I get the online New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I hear what other people have to say. I'm subscribing to Skeptic Magazine to question things and stuff like that, but see, I question everything. I question global warming, climate change. I question the censorship that's going on. There's lots of things where there's supposed to be consensus, where I'm willing to listen to other voices out there. That would be my most important advice.

[00:36:20] Host: Absolutely. I definitely think being open-minded is something in today's day and age that is very difficult. It is something that I hope people will work on more going forward in the future. We wanted to say thank you so much, Professor Skousen, for telling everybody your incredible story. We want to say to everyone listening that this has been Episode 3 of Without Libraries, our final episode in our three-part podcast series, brought to you by Chapman University's 2025 Bateman Competition Team for EveryLibrary in collaboration with Past Forward. If you want to learn more about EveryLibrary and what we are fighting for, you can follow our Instagram @everylibrarycu and help us by signing the petition, which will be linked in the bio for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

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