A History Professor on Why Nations That 'Cheat' Are Just Playing by Different Rules

William Prigge [00:00:00] Free trade is perfectly good for some countries at certain stages of their development. But to say that the world should be just based on free trade and that all countries interests will equally benefit from that, you would say that's not quite the case. I'm Brian Mos, a farmer living in Florence, South Dakota, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:31] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We talk with one of those history professors that shocked me awake. I was at Marquette University and I had a TA that said things in class that I had never heard before, and those type of people that wake you up are the type of people that are great to stay in touch with. So we had since gotten together for beers and stayed in touch over email, but this was the first time that we had reconnected. And you can see why Dr. P Prge was such a big name for me and a fixture that helped me understand how to analyze what had gone on in the world around you so that you can better understand what is going on. Now, we're gonna get to that interview in just a second, but if you are the type of person that likes doing book clubs for the month of October, we are doing the book club. And this month since inside of the network, we're doing a, a concept called dragon spotting. We're looking for those things in our lives that hold us back, and we know that dragons are the things that hoard what you want most, maybe gold or a damsel in distress. So our, our object this month, or our theme this month is dragon spotting. And so we decided that the book club this month would cover a book on dragons and what book is more quintessential about dragons than the Hobbit. And so if you've ever thought about joining the book club, sometimes we do some of the more difficult books. Sometimes we do ones that you need a group of people to get you through, but this time we're doing one that's fun, maybe one that you wanna read to your kids, or one that you haven't revisited in many years.

Vance Crowe [00:02:04] So if you're interested in joining the book club, it is the last Sunday of October, and all you gotta do is read the book and get ahold of me, and I can help you get a link to our call. They're a really good time with really intelligent people from all over North America, and it's a great way to get you prompted to read books, to challenge you, to think about things in a new way and just to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself. So if you're interested, we'd welcome you to join us. And for now, let's jump into this interview with Dr. Will Pricky. Dr. Will Pricky history professor at South Dakota State University. Welcome to the podcast.

William Prigge [00:02:45] Good to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:02:46] You know, it's one of those rare gifts that I have as a, as a podcaster that I get to reach back into my history and find the people that made a huge difference in my life. And you were one of the very first professors I had in college that shook me awake to the idea that college is not high school and you are going to encounter ideas that you have never heard before. And it, so it is really exciting to me that we're sitting down and talking about history today.

William Prigge [00:03:13] I can't believe how many years it's been, I mean, think of what's changed. I, I think when we knew each other it was nine 11 or pre nine 11. I mean, it's been over 20 years. A lot of history has happened since we first met.

Vance Crowe [00:03:29] You know, one of the first things that you pointed out, we were in a history class and you were a ta and you said democracy is the governing system right now, but it may not be the governing system in the future, and it may not even be the best system. And for me, I had this one dimensional view of history before ever encountering that idea. So I literally had never thought about that. It's gotta be a, a weird thing for you as a history teacher to see those look those wide eyes on students when you make them encounter an idea they've never had before.

William Prigge [00:04:04] Well, you know, my, my philosophy with teaching has always been, well, first off, I I always ask myself, is this the same history that they would have gotten in high school? Or what is the value added of, of going to college? And I've always sort of been skeptical of this idea that you have to give people the basic kind of wrought information, rot memorization first before you can go on to analytical themes and analysis is only for upper division classes. And I thought, no, you can do maybe less coverage, but you go into greater depth and let's chew on things. Let's analyze. And to me, that's more interesting for the, for the student, if it's just simply memorization of dates and names, that's great for Trivial Pursuit, but what does that do for you now? But if you can kind of get under the hood and sort of understand and analyze why things unfold as they do, to me, that's what justifies my, my paycheck. And with history, if it can tell us nothing about the here and now, then again, what's the point? And so why is it that things sort of happen as they do? What's the, what's the system that underlies these things?

Vance Crowe [00:05:32] What is the draw to history? I mean, you've decided to make your, your life's work, your future based on a study of the past.

William Prigge [00:05:41] Yeah. I, from my earliest stage, we used to have encyclopedia from 1974, and I would, there's just a little rocking chair next to the encyclopedia and I would just sit and I would pour over those things and, and, and, and I absorbed every last little sort of aspect that I could out of these encyclopedia. And the thing that drew me, of course, the most was history. I actually thought I was going into Fish and Wildlife management, and that's why I went up to University of Minnesota Duluth. But somebody told me that they sent me to a fire watch tower after three months, I went crazy and went into a different line. And I thought, that does sound bad, but I've always done well in my history classes. And so I veered in that direction. But then in choosing a field, I thought, well, I wanna know what goes either very well or what goes either very poorly. And so I was sort of torn between Soviet history on the negative side and American history on the positive side. And I went to, with, with Soviet history.

Vance Crowe [00:06:58] Soviet history is one of those things I really had no concept of because our American system either just isn't, isn't bent that way. It's too complicated or too far away. But I was in my thirties before I even had ever heard of the concept of like the deco accusation of the world or how Stalin came to power. Yeah. What what drew you to Soviet history?

William Prigge [00:07:22] It was in the news at the time that I was growing up. And, and even going to college, the Berlin Wall came down in my first year of, of college and then two years later the Soviet Union itself. And, and, and Gorby mania was a big thing when I was growing up too. Gorbachev came to Minnesota and I, and, and met Dave Berg and all this stuff. And we were just fascinated with, with, with the Soviet Union. But I never sort of imagined that that system would ever be gone, just like you can, I'm sure, almost never imagine a time in which there was a Soviet Union for me, I remember it was a Sunday morning or something in 1991 when they lowered the flag of the Soviet Union and raised the Russian flag. And it just perplexed me. I didn't get it. I didn't get, even after two years since the Berlin Wall, I almost could understand that maybe eastern European states could, could disappear, but the fact that there would never be a Soviet Union that just, it didn't compute even after having two years of chewing on this. And so it, it, the whole system sort of utterly fascinated me

Vance Crowe [00:08:47] Would. So that's an inter that brings up an interesting thing. If you describe what was the Soviet Union, how do you, how do you even begin that? What was it? Was it the equivalent of the United States just over in the east?

William Prigge [00:09:02] Some people have described it as anti-capitalism. So one of the ways that I'm fascinated to, to study the topic is, you know, is there one type of system that's better than another type of system? And maybe that's a theme that we worked on, even back at your West Civ class at Marquette. And if you know, and if some things are just intrinsically better, then it's in the real world that these things are tested out. And so after, you know, 75 years of Soviet rule has one system been found superior than another? And what are the aspects and characteristics that make one, you know, a superior to to, to another And and, and was the Soviet Union, could it have gone on forever or were there just fundamental structural issues that it would never be able to overcome? And it

Vance Crowe [00:10:09] Is the fact that it didn't continue make it objectively less good than the capitalistic system. Like how, how do you even start to break apart this concept of good or bad or better or, or lesser or something like that?

William Prigge [00:10:23] Yeah. And, and that's, I think that's how I would try to analyze it is we would take it on a single plane though, like the economic plane and say, okay, objectively was the Soviet system superior or lesser than the free market capitalism? And if so, why is that? And so in my western civilization classes, I've always argued that it's just simply an inferior system. And that eventually the political reality of that fact catches up with what had been developing economically for so long. But I think then as you get further into the topic, it's like peeling back the layers of an onion and that there's all sorts of different ways that you can understand the Soviet Union. And the more you get into it, the less black and white these things become, and the the more ways that I think you can, you can understand that,

Vance Crowe [00:11:28] Well, there's you there. So where would you go from there? Like, 'cause 'cause right now I'm trying to think of like, well, what would be better? Like did they have better healthcare? Did they have better? Yeah, like how would you describe that?

William Prigge [00:11:38] And I mean, you could look at things such as gender roles, race relations, and you start to compare some of these things with say the United States at the same time. And there are some things even under the worst dictatorship of, of Stalin that were wanting here in the United States that, that the Soviet Union was really quite progressive with. And so, and, and then a lot of times people kind of try to dismiss it as well, that's just simply ideology or that's for media consumption. But when you actually get in and start to look at the system that you find that no, these things were taken seriously and, and, and for real. And so

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] Were women treated better or, or

William Prigge [00:12:35] In Yeah, and, and they were treated as equals. Now, now again, if you were to say look at the Polar bureau or the, the central committee and you tally up the number of men, tally up the number of women, you can see that yes, there's, there's certainly sexism, but in terms of of roles responsibilities, say compared with America where the living wage was really meant to, to, to support an entire household so that the woman could stay home and the men would go to work. There was none of that concept in the, in the Soviet Union. And so, and so, there were tremendous opportunities for opportunities women and minorities in the, in the Soviet Union.

Vance Crowe [00:13:31] It's interesting, if somebody's watching this on YouTube, you can see that behind you, you have a picture of Stalin and it's

William Prigge [00:13:38] Oh, Lenn linen

Vance Crowe [00:13:39] Lenn. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. Lennon, I, I, my mistake. So tell me about that. Because if you had a figure from somebody that was from say the Nazi regime that would be like, people would, would curse you for that, but, but in our society there is some acceptance of, of the Soviet rulers that, that gained prominence. That's different. Why do you think that is? Why is it okay for you to have on there, but it wouldn't be okay for other figures?

William Prigge [00:14:05] Ah, that's because I think, well, with, with Hitler and the Holocaust, that is something very specific where you are taking an ethnic group and you're attempting to eradicate them. Now with the Soviet Union, what they might be doing is taking a class of people, and I don't wanna quite say eradicate though, there were times when they were targeted, but there were also attempts to reform. And so I think that that wholesale eradication is the thing that makes Nazi Germany so unique. Now, if you were to say, just tally up the death tolls, if you look at Mao's China, the Soviet Union, and you compare that to the, to Nazi Germany, the, the, the Soviet Union and the, and Mao is China is, is going to come out worse in terms of, of death tolls. But then you look at why it is that deaths happen. And I think depending on who you are and, and the histories can become exceedingly politicized.

William Prigge [00:15:41] But one of the things that I find is I look at famines and things like that, that it's not just simply people kind of behind the scenes rubbing their hands together saying, how can we utterly eliminate these people? The death of everybody is not necessarily the first goal or priority. Sometimes it is, but oftentimes is just dealing with large numbers of people and the logistics of it. And that whenever that happens, things are going to happen and, and people die. And so that I think is a big part of it as well. And, and also if you look at say, the Ukrainian famine, sometimes it's a question of priorities. It's not necessarily that they wanted to kill 11 million Ukrainians, it's just that they wanted to sell grain abroad to raise money for industrialization. And if 11 million Ukrainians died, that wasn't, that was an acceptable cost.

Vance Crowe [00:16:49] That is fascinating. I so, because my reading of history, which of of, you know, Russian history is very, very meager. But I, when I read the Gulag Archipelago, and I really only got through maybe two thirds of it before I just, I couldn't stomach anymore of it. Yeah. My sensation was that it was done with intention. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:17:11] But

Vance Crowe [00:17:12] It, your, in, in your reading of it, it's saying, look, their primary goal wasn't to kill it was that they had priorities that they prioritized more than human life as opposed to let us target this group of people for the sake of targeting them.

William Prigge [00:17:27] Yeah. And you know, speaking of, of that work, Sol Genson has a very good sort of description of what it is that I'm talking about. He talks about people being loaded on the trains, and so then you have a deadline that you have to keep. So what should we do? Should we, should we provide these people with water knowing that that means that they're gonna have to stop and everybody's gonna have to get out to go to the bathroom and you're gonna have to guard all these people and it becomes kind of a hassle. So what would then be easier, just maybe foregoing the, the water and then you can forego a, a bathroom, bathroom break, and then maybe if some of the older people that need that water are gonna die as a result, well at least we're keeping things on schedule. And so you can see that it's, it's, it becomes very complicated.

Vance Crowe [00:18:18] How do you as a historian, I mean like you appear right now to be more objective about it than I am, right? Like I hear these things and I become impassioned or or inflamed. Yeah. And so it's very difficult for me to have a reading of that without just judgment upon judgment upon judgment. But I don't think that's helpful if you're a history professor.

William Prigge [00:18:38] Yeah. And, and as I see this, and this is how I tell my students to write, is that this isn't an op-ed, this isn't you telling us your opinion. This is you getting under the hood looking at the mechanics of why something is, and that let the reader draw their own conclusion. You don't need to tell them that the Holocaust was bad. After you go through all this stuff, they will figure it out just fine on their, their own. And so it's not that we don't have opinions, but it's, it's not necessarily our place to editorialize that we just, I see myself as a social scientist that just sort of presents the, presents the evidence in a coherent way. But, you know, in history, and especially if you go to a place like Eastern Europe where I do so much history, it's very much like a morality tale. And it's, and there's a close connection between sort of folk tales and modern day history that there is a good guy, there is a bad guy, that there's some type of Titanic struggle. And, and if you're on the losing end of this, the, the, the narrative is that we will at some point return to that golden age or we will have a revenge, or if there's a triumph, then sort of we finally have triumphed over adversity, but we can never go back to the way it was.

William Prigge [00:20:20] But it says so much more about politics in the here and now rather than the actual history that's, that's being portrayed history is a very political thing.

Vance Crowe [00:20:31] Yeah. I mean I think that's k kind of goes to the human mind, right? Like it's very difficult for us to just sit and recount facts and then be able to make it so I can transfer from me to you. But if I pack those facts into a story, and then that story is something that you can attach to and root for one side or for the other. Yes. That is the way our brains are, are all designed, I think, to, to be able to handle huge amounts of information.

William Prigge [00:20:57] And I think that in the earliest forms of history, it was sort of meant as to prop up nationalism and to, to, to, to create a sense of, of patriotism. And that's always been a role of history is to say, take immigrants coming in from wherever and turn them into Americans. And how you're gonna do that is tell them the great stories of our heroic past and triumph over adversity. And every state has, I think, some, some version of that. But then there's the other type of historian that doesn't see that as their role, that sees it as an objective analysis so that you learn something about the here and now. And that's really where I try to, to take the history.

Vance Crowe [00:21:47] So tell me a little bit about how, because you've spent quite a bit of time in Eastern Europe, how is it that they view their history with whether it was Stalin or the, you know, the things we were talking about with the Gulag Archipelago, how, how did they view that part of their, their background?

William Prigge [00:22:06] They see themselves, I think as very much victims and I like let's say Latvia where I was, they, they see themselves as between kind of the hammer and the anvil. And you've got Germany on the one side and you've got Russia on the other side, very similar to Poland, I think too. And in this unfortunate position of being between two great superpowers and being sort of their, their play thing. And so with somebody like Latvia, which was the most advanced of the, the Soviet Republics, the Baltic states were, they see that time as 70 years taken from them. And they could have been Sweden or Finland if there hadn't been this sort of Soviet interruption. And that time was stolen from them. And so now they want to scramble to get it back. But that victim narrative is exceedingly important because it's not just about the past. It's you've got to argue to get into the European Union, you've got to argue to get into nato. And the strongest point that they make is look at what was done to us the past 70 years. This is why we need to be under this umbrella. And anything that might go towards diminishing that would be a blow not only to their narrative, but to their political prospects today.

Vance Crowe [00:23:49] So when we look at the, the map, or at least when I look at the map, I see it as Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia. Do they view themselves in that same kind of, you know, like rainbow or

William Prigge [00:24:02] Yeah, they don't like the term eastern Europe, though. I think they prefer the term central Europe. And so it's, it's funny how terminology becomes different. 'cause Eastern Europe I think implies sort of on the edge, the hinterlands, the frontier. Whereas center is, you're kind of in the center of things. But I think there's also a healthy tension between Western Europe and central Europe in that they definitely don't see eye to eye with each other. And I, I think you saw this maybe with say the Iraq war, if you remember with Bush's coalition of the willing,

Vance Crowe [00:24:47] It

William Prigge [00:24:47] Was comprised a lot of eastern European states, which saw the United States as the strongest guard against Putin's aggression and Western Europe as being sort of squishy and weak on that front. And, and so central Europe is very, was at least very closely aligned with America and it's Western Europe and America that have the, the, the greater tension. So that, and, and now that dynamic I think has been turned on its head quite a bit in the past three or four years with, with Trump and, and his different view of, of Putin, which is so different from typical Republican view of it. So,

Vance Crowe [00:25:34] So tell me about that. When, when you, as the history teacher that is, that that believes that history has to be relevant to the present. What do you see when you see Trump's relationship with Putin and Russia and, and tearing apart nato? What do you see there that are an ordinary observer wouldn't observe?

William Prigge [00:25:55] You know, I, first I would say I try not to personalize it. I, I, and, and this kind of goes to this world systems approach that we're talking about with imperialism and in these different stages of advancements that countries have. And if you are at this top stage, there are certain luxuries that you can afford that if you're further down, like say if America's at the top, Russia's a full notch below. And so there might be strategies that say the Russians employ, which we, or, or say China too, China's a step down as well that they see us as smart politics to advance their cause where we might see it as cheating. And that's unfair and that's outside of the norms. But we should always ask ourselves, who created the set of norms? Who are they created for? And if somebody's not playing by those norms, why aren't they? And and is it to our advantage or to their advantage that they play by certain sets of, of rules. And so I I, you know, I see it as an American, but I also see, you know, what a country is, is trying to do and what type of advantages are they trying to gain for themselves?

William Prigge [00:27:29] And at the end of the day, everybody has to be out for themselves. That's just kind of the nature. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:35] You use this word imperialism, and we had kind of chatted about this beforehand, but imperialism is one of those words that if you don't define it, it becomes so fluffy or filled with so much meaning that it's a little bit like using words like racism or sexism where there's meaning there, but it could also just be used as a, as a throwaway insult. So as a history professor, when you're describing imperialism, what does that mean?

William Prigge [00:28:03] Yeah, it terms are so important in my papers, I, I require that students lay out terms and the more that they're commonly used and more easily misunderstood, the more important it is that you define them. So what imperialism means to me, how it's I think been traditionally understood is, is say the time of scramble for Africa in 1885 and this period where the Africa is being carved up. And then eventually that's when the period begins and then it ends with decolonization at the end of World War ii. But it's, notice how it's again, very political because it's nice tidy time period. There is a beginning, the middle and end. And it's not something that we do, it's something that they did. And even more they than us is, it's something that these Europeans tended to do, but we Americans, that wasn't really our thing. We are, we are, we are, we remember what it was like to have the British in our living room and kicking them out. And so that's a European thing, that's not us. What I'm saying is that that's very convenient, but when you sort of have these limited definitions like this, by stepping back a bit and having a broader definition, you can begin to understand that there is an entire system at play.

William Prigge [00:29:43] And that let's not think of necessarily good guys or bad guys because again, that clutters our interpretation. Let's just think of it as a process where people are trying, striving to get advantage. And if you weren't, then the next person would, if they had the chance. And that, that this is a process that has been going on in sort of a either a formal or informal version since the age of commerce, since the age of capitalism, since the age of discovery around 1500. It's not something that's been around forever. It's specific to around 1500 and it continues up to this day, albeit in different forms than than what it's been in the past.

Vance Crowe [00:30:31] Yeah. It's, when I think about how people get behind certain ideas, you know, you were describing good guys and bad guys, I went to diplomacy school and there was definitely this emphasis that towards globalization or towards this idea that the good guys are on behalf of let's make the un as strong as we can. Let's make these European PACS as strong as we can. And that inherently within that, that that was like not a decision that they were making in order that the board would be stacked in one direction or the other. No, that was just what the good guys do. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:31:06] It's

Vance Crowe [00:31:07] Really difficult to erase those ideas from somebody's mind and just say, well look at the board and say, why is it that, say for example, the Clinton Global initiative would really, really push for the un. Is it because they're being good guys or is it because they're trying to set up the situation so that it's certainly not going to harm them over the long term?

William Prigge [00:31:28] There there is a, to, to thicken that plot just a little bit more, the people who are espousing a certain position may not even be sort of behind the scenes rubbing their hands saying, how can I stick it to the other person, but maybe doing things with the very best of intentions. And I always look at the example of Livingston in Africa there as a missionary with the very best of intentions further propagating a unequal system and not even realizing that he's doing that. There is a, a concept called cultural hegemony and free trade often gets put into this camp as well. That the idea is is that we as people become sort of so indoctrinated with that thing that is in our advantage and say with free trade that all bolts rise with the tide. If everybody practices free trade, that it becomes so second nature to us that you stop even questioning how do we know that? And it just becomes fact, it just becomes conventional wisdom. And so then say the people that are pushing it think that they are doing the very best on behalf of not just the United States, but Latin America or Central Asia, whatever it might be, and that all boats are rising with the tide and they go to bed with a clean conscious happiness.

Vance Crowe [00:33:14] I mean, you're describing me to a t like there are a lot of things that I can say. So since you and I saw each other last night, I, I went to diplomacy school, but then I went to work at the World Bank And I spent a couple of years there and I began to realize like, hey, this system is not inherently good. I I and to your point, I, I think there is almost nobody there that was doing anything other than what they thought was the best of intentions. Yeah. But I could see the frame set of like, there are some things, there are some policy things that they do there that I'm not a big fan of. But when it comes to free trade, I as, as you're describing this, I basically am thinking anyone that stands against free trade is for the deco accusation of the world. And that they, they absolutely, you know, are are trying to change the rules to make it so they're in an advantaged. And you're right, I I don't have another way of thinking about it that you would, why you would choose a system that wouldn't be free trade.

William Prigge [00:34:10] Yeah. Well one of the things that this world systems approach presents, and I have this class that I teach with this political scientist ever angelic wiltsey called imperialism then and now. And, and she kind of does the modern version of it, what's going on today. And I do the more historical side, but it's based on this work by e Emmanuel Wallerstein. And this world systems approach basically argues that free trade is perfectly good for some countries at certain stages of their development. But to say that the world should be just based on free trade and that all countries interests will equally benefit from that, you would say that's not quite the case. And it's, he would say that it depends where you are. What stage of development are you at and who are you within the societies? So Nicaragua or India, these aren't, or America, they're not monolithic societies. They have people, as you know, with economics, it's always a double-edged sword. Somebody might win, somebody might lose. And so, and so depending on where you are in your development, the society may generally benefit from free trade, although there'd definitely be losers.

William Prigge [00:35:45] And in places that are very early in their development, they may benefit from free trade as well. But then there are some that are sort of not in the periphery, not in the core that protectionism may be just their thing. And one of the best ways to determine this is to look at our own American history to see when did we advocate free trade policies, when did we advocate protectionist policies who are advocating them and why? And you see that there's a very definite pattern that emerges even in our own history.

Vance Crowe [00:36:21] Yeah. And as you're saying this, so I have a, a lot of involvement with farmers and farm groups and it's very interesting to me that the farmer ethos is we are libertarians, we believe in free trade, and yet they are all cashing checks that are handed out when, when trade gets gummed up and they aren't gonna be able to trade corn. So we're gonna make sure that we get to keep them floating. And, and it's, it's this weird thing of like, you're always the hero in your own narrative. Yeah. And I, I mean, I can't think of any example where people truly internalize that they're the villain and yet they're still allowed to keep going.

William Prigge [00:36:58] Yeah. And I mean that, that is such a perfect example of how important ideology is to, to kind of even go deeper with this. If you think about what is a state, what is a government, what it's doing is it's taking in your tax dollars and then it's redistributing that. And if I pay in a dollar to taxes and you pay in a dollar to taxes, will you get that same dollar back? Will I get that same dollar back? Or will I get a dollar 50 in taxes to me and 50 cents to you? And that can cost. And, and, and so within any society, some people are gonna feel greater pleasure, some people are gonna feel greater pain because of how the distri distribution goes. And, and, and so one of the things that I see is that ideology is a great solve for a wound to make people that might be losing something feel better. And so, and so internalizing these certain ideologies can make people feel a lot better that a we're a country that is based strictly on free trade. And if you look at the number of agricultural subsidies and, and things like that, you see that it's not perfectly free trade by any means.

William Prigge [00:38:29] And so, but, but for the average thinker, they're thinking, oh, we're basically a free trade, no tariff, no subsidy based country. And that's, that's not really true.

Vance Crowe [00:38:39] So on this podcast a couple of weeks ago, I had a guy on that talked about this concept called fractal localism, which is where depending on what level you look at your world, that should determine your political system. So for example, in my family, I'm a communist, everybody shares everything. Then you get outside and you're with your close friends and maybe your extended family, then you're a socialist. As you get further out, you become you more accepting of personal responsibility and therefore less onerous rules to say you have to be sharing. So by the time you get to the state level, you know, there's certain things that you're allowing the state to decide, but that, that liberty becomes more and more important and then you get to the top level and that's where you want your federal government to have the least amount of control because they're the furthest away from you. So you have this kind of federalist system where, where that gets put into place. And I recently encountered this other idea where, you know, in the, in the American ethos, liberty is considered to be a very, very high priority. That's right. But there's this weird conundrum with liberty in that liberty has to be the highest priority in order that it is a priority at all. Yeah. So if you, if you say, well we really value liberty, but we also value safety over top of liberty, well then you don't really value liberty over safety.

William Prigge [00:40:03] Only one thing can be in the front seat.

Vance Crowe [00:40:06] That's right. And so you have this like weird situation going on, and I think you might be a good person to ask this. So based on all that, I have this curiosity that maybe it's possible that when you start having densely populated groups or large groups of people, that liberty starts to be something that breaks down a society. Because as you, for example, in a city, people don't wanna have as many gun rights because you aren't as responsible for protecting yourself as you are maybe in Oklahoma or in Montana. And in fact, having everybody have guns might be more dangerous. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:40:43] So

Vance Crowe [00:40:43] You limit liberty in order that you can have population density. Yeah. And maybe you hit some point where those two things, those two concepts become disjointed.

William Prigge [00:40:54] Yeah. There, there's, I think there's all sorts of ways that, that, that could be analyzed. There's a fascinating book called Albion Seed, which says that America is not one cultural group, but four, and that these cultural habits go back not only hundreds of years, but thousands of years. And if you understand what they are, you can see that these clashes of cultures explain things from the Magna Carta to John Ball's revolt in 1383 to the English Civil War, to the American Civil War, to the red blue divide that we have in America today. But there is a, there is a culture, and I'm of that culture as well, scotch Irish from the English borderlands and, and the cultural norm of that group is to place an exceedingly high premium on liberty in a way that puritans from East Anglia or even Tidewater, Virginia Cavaliers never did are Midlands Quakers. And so, and so what this book would argue is that it's a very particular cultural trait. It's not new, it's not a product of urbanization or industrialization, but you would find this exact same sort of focus on liberty if you're to go back and talk with these people a thousand years ago.

William Prigge [00:42:28] And that that sort of, they settled in Appalachia and then sort of go west with the migration into the, the American heartland. And you have this totally different sort of cultural group, these Yankee Puritans from East Anglia, and, and it's no accident that New England becomes the first to become a merchant society, capitalist industrial. And that that sort of sensibility is taken with them as they migrate to the west into the Great Lakes region into Wisconsin and Minnesota. But you can really see, and these two groups have been, and there there's the Virginia Cavaliers, we'd add into this too. They were on opposite sides of the fight in the English Civil War. They're on opposite sides of the fight during the Magna Carta. They were on opposite sides of the fight during the Civil War. And if you look at our election map today, even though the political parties have changed 180, that that cultural difference, small government, big government, liberty, nanny state, that's the, the, the political divide today is, is almost identical to what you would see during the time of the, the Civil War. You look at our political map and it looks like the same north south division.

William Prigge [00:44:03] And so, and, and, and then one could argue, well why is there change? And I think migration could have a lot to do with that too, as these Yankees with their Yankee culture and sensibilities move down to Atlanta and Atlanta becomes bigger. And as that sort of urban center becomes larger, that that sensibility becomes larger. And then I think as well, sort of the, the scotch Irish view in the great plains and, and Heartland in Indiana and Minnesota and elsewhere too.

Vance Crowe [00:44:38] So this is so much deeper of a look at it. I've been looking at the divide between urban and rural for a while because I, I, since I spend, I live in the city or, and, but I spend so much time in the ag world, I've been seeing that there's this different pace and there's different values that you need to have when you have people spaced out, there's not as dense.

William Prigge [00:44:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:44:59] But then I encountered an idea the other day by this guy named Balaji, who is the founder of Coinbase, one of the, the VCs that were using Bitcoin. And he had this Twitter thread where he talked about read only culture where, and he's using the comparison to writing computer code. So he is saying, you know, you can write computer code and then you can pass that on to another coder who can mess around with the language. They can add new things to it because they're so familiar with it that they're able to keep it alive.

William Prigge [00:45:31] Whereas

Vance Crowe [00:45:32] When you start getting into, and I'm gonna use the word he didn't, into a cosmopolitan society where you've stripped out cultural dance, you don't have a language that keeps you separate, you don't have these traditions that make you different, then it's, it's like the equivalent of maybe I grew up in a house where my parents spoke Spanish, but I didn't actually speak Spanish, so I'm not going to pass it on to my children. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:45:56] Then

Vance Crowe [00:45:56] You have this same thing with culture. Yeah. And it's a weird, I I wonder from the historical perspective, is it possible to whitewash out and make a read only culture where then a new one is created, whereas it's like an urbanization or a cosmopolitan culture that hasn't been there before?

William Prigge [00:46:13] Yeah. And Albian seed would say everybody that moves into this culture assimilates into it. And so if you are say a Swedish ranch farmer moving into sort of a area dominated by Scotch-Irish culture that you just assimilate into the, the, the larger culture, or if you're say, Irish moving into New England, like the Kennedys, you adopt the, the, the East ang twang. But there's also I think maybe a, there's this idea of a cosmopolitan culture is, is very interesting to me. And that this culture is not particular to say northeast United States, but it's international in scope. And maybe it comes from America or Western Europe, but it is a very sort of specific culture which people sort of buy into. Like when I think about my, my coworker ever Wiltsey, she's part of this cosmopolitan international culture where her views are, even though she's Muslim and I was raised in a Protestant background, her views are infinitely closer to mine than say I have with my brother who has more of this Republican culture versus maybe my democratic.

William Prigge [00:47:49] But it's, it's just, you have far more in common with this cosmopolitan and, and then my brother Carl would probably have far more in common with people elsewhere in the world than I would. So I think that this cultural divide does cross national boundaries for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:48:07] Yeah. My experience of, you know, I lived in Washington DC for a while, and then I would travel to places like Brussels, but you could go to other major cities and my, my take on it was once you know how to swim in the cosmopolitan culture, it's very easy to do. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:48:25] But

Vance Crowe [00:48:25] If you tried to get out into the countryside and say, well, I'm gonna go out into the Belgium countryside and assume that the same ideas that made me successful in Washington DC will make me successful out here, they won't because those people have some, it's, it's probably not fair to call it a richness, but it definitely a diversity of ideas that are, that, that are, that I think are maybe the read only culture of the cosmopolitan, which isn't necessarily a negative thing, it's just saying you're not transmitting the same historical values that your, your forefathers had.

William Prigge [00:48:58] Yep. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's fascinating. And, and, and I think cultures are ever evolving too as well. They're, they're not things that are static. They, they evolve to the, to the time and, and what's, what's happening. So yeah, I think that's interesting. So

Vance Crowe [00:49:17] If you look back, you know, we were talking, we began this interview with 20 years ago, I was your student, and we look at how much history has happened since then. But it's also interesting to think about how do you view history differently now that you've had 20 years of experience hacking away through it?

William Prigge [00:49:35] Oh, I know. You, you become a lot more humble I think, in what you know or what you don't know. 20 years ago, kind of going back to some of that free market dogma, I always presented it as an argument that others could feel free to disagree with, but I never really quite expected anybody to disagree. And nor did I think that there was a such a plausible alternative. And so I, I did it to be gracious. But, but I think as you get older you see how complex this stuff is and how there is no sort of easy answer. And I think, and it becomes a challenge to sort of construct models to make things operate because there are so many variables that can take it off track that you just become humble in what you know or don't know. And I'd always say too, that with history, it's great for understanding the past and maybe contextualizing a little bit the present, but don't think of it as any way of somehow predicting the future because who knows what tomorrow brings. It's like the butterfly effect where, you know, something does have a reason or cause, but can the weatherman predict precisely whether it's gonna be rainy or sunny beyond a week out?

William Prigge [00:51:19] You can't, 'cause there's too many little variables that come in and intrude.

Vance Crowe [00:51:24] So when you think about history repeating itself, there's a concept, and I don't know it very well, you might be more familiar with it than I am called the Lucas Effect, where it's basically describing history as a circle, but that it's a spiral going upwards and that you always are going to have revolutions. And that there are always going to be, you know, too much, there's too much of one thing prompts another thing to happen, and then it just goes around. Do you feel that way? Is history always repeating itself in some way? Or is that a cliche?

William Prigge [00:51:53] If we were to look at imperialism, there are certain things that repeat themselves because, and it has to do, I think with sort of economic laws more than anything else. And economics gives us some of our, if you can have any foundation in history that gives any type of science to being a social scientist within history, the economic portion would be that. And, and, and and how this informs states and growth is are these sort of boom and bust cycles. So I think that there is always a tendency to make profit when somebody doesn't have much of something. And that a tendency for people to go into that field when they see how the other guy is making money on it. And that for that market then to become glutted and saturated and then the whole thing collapses and it needs to be reconfigured or the next new killer app needs to be figured out. And, and, and you could then take that cycle based on economics and technology and apply that to how states rise or fall. And then, and so then there does become sort of a cycle of states going up and states going down. And so,

Vance Crowe [00:53:20] And so as you think of that and you apply it to your own nation, the United States, does that make you say like, oh man, we are in late stage capitalism and this is the end? Or does that make you have a more humble, we don't really know. It's hard to see because you, when you're in the, on the crest of the wave.

William Prigge [00:53:37] Yeah, I, you know, I think we, if I liken a state to a thunderstorm and, and that the technology in economics is the updraft fueling the thunderstorm, we know that no thunderstorm has ever lasted forever. We can say that with certainty, but we don't know how big the thunderstorm is going to be, how long it's going to last for or when it's ultimately going to dissipate. But then there are certain sort of economic reasons why the thunderstorm starts to dissipate that the updraft is eventually countered by the downdraft which the rain creates. Then eventually the downdraft begins to dominate over the updraft and the thunderstorm falls apart. And so we can see this with the Dutch and the British, and I think we can see signs of it as well with the United States. But if you're then to ask me what is the next up and coming state is now China gonna be the new replacement for the United States? And are they gonna go through this similar cycle, or is it Germany or Western Europe or Japan that I have no idea on. And so again, I'm better at seeing what's been, rather than what is to be,

Vance Crowe [00:55:05] Well, I don't know if you like science fiction or if you have time to read books that are outside of your domain, but I am two books into the most fascinating trilogy I have ever read in my life. And I would say I, I would recommend it to anybody that particularly likes history or, but it's called The Three Body Problem. Have you heard of this series?

William Prigge [00:55:24] Uhuh?

Vance Crowe [00:55:25] So it's written by a Chinese author and it basically is describing what if we encountered an alien civilization and then we took history forward like thousands of years. Yeah. And it, it's, it's a, it's a hell of a, of an ask, right? Because if you tried to go back and ask people in the 15 hundreds tell us what it's gonna look like in the 18 hundreds, let alone the two thousands, yeah.

William Prigge [00:55:50] It's

Vance Crowe [00:55:50] Nearly impossible. But the reason I think it's so interesting for a history professor is because he talks about what the fundamental concepts are for a civilization. And from those, those basic axioms, all civilizations want to pursue a way where they can continue onward and all of them will fill the, the, the, the glass that they're in. Right. Whatever, whatever you put them in, they will fill it up. Yeah.

William Prigge [00:56:20] And

Vance Crowe [00:56:21] From those two axioms, then he builds out this entire world. And it is the most mind-bending book I've, I've, I've maybe ever read.

William Prigge [00:56:30] Oh, that's, that's, that's fascinating. I, you know, sometimes I think science fiction is how we can sort of get outside and imagine what all possible scenarios might be, even though conventional wisdom say that could never happen because so oftentimes we're victims of our own limited imagination. I think that's fascinating.

Vance Crowe [00:56:55] So you, your teaching students history, are many of them coming to you now and saying, I want to be a history teacher too?

William Prigge [00:57:05] I I think that I dissuade them if they want to become a history professor, if they want to become a history teacher, I definitely encourage them because in the, in the secondary schools, people might forecast the end of history and the curriculum, but there's no danger of that at all. And so it's a very safe profession to go into. But when I think about going into academia, I always feel like I was Indiana Jones as he is kind of grabbing his hat just as the rock is coming down or whatever. And I think my lucky stars that I got the position that I did and I would never, and I would have a student think long and hard about going down that, that field maybe in the community colleges, but not the, not the four year schools. And

Vance Crowe [00:58:08] So, and is this because it's easy to produce a cl I mean, my sense is that in all levels at academia, you could have a professor that is producing, let's say six PhDs every decade and then that the, there aren't now six new jobs opening up and that goes on for every single other professor. So eventually you have way more people with PhDs prepared for a professor role than there are those roles. Is that right?

William Prigge [00:58:37] That's right. I, I mean, we forget that higher education is a product to sell at our own peril. And this becomes, I think, particularly true with graduate school. So with undergraduate work there, they show that even with the rise in cost of education, that it's still head and shoulders the best investment that, that somebody can make regardless of what your degree is. But when you start to get into graduate school, it kind of depends on what it is that you're doing that program for. And when it gets to PhD, to me then the, the, the primary function for that degree is to teach in academia. And that's a seven year, I don't know how many thousand dollars time commitment. And so the school will always be happy to sell you a PhD in your field, but there's no even concept that the needs of the market match what the, the, the number of graduates being produced are and that the graduate school, just like any other business needs to make a profit. And so that's, that's how it's done.

William Prigge [01:00:09] But for a student, it should definitely be buyer beware when it comes to something like academia. And for me personally, I tell 'em, don't do it. Please. They, they may listen or not, but I tell them, I I wouldn't,

Vance Crowe [01:00:23] Would you have listened if somebody had told you that?

William Prigge [01:00:26] I don't know. It's always do as I say, not as I do. But I just, you know, the older I get, the more I see what role just dumb luck has played in whatever it is that I am today. And that, and that I couldn't guarantee that kind of luck for my kids or grandkids. And so I become a lot more risk adverse. But, but no, so, so maybe that sort of extreme risk aversion, it's good that sort of youthful naivete balances that out and maybe a little combination of the two is, is okay. And, you know, as you have a family and a house and all that, stability becomes very important. But you have maybe a little bit more freedom just even in your own mind when you're in your twenties that maybe I'm just gonna roll the dice and if I can't do this, then I'll find something else. And that's, that's probably good.

Vance Crowe [01:01:37] Yeah. I mean there's like a, there's a time for the novelty search where you don't actually have to be extracting value out of it immediately. In fact, just the search itself is probably the most valuable part of it. What do you recommend your children do when, when you're prompting them as you're getting them to go forward?

William Prigge [01:01:55] I, I work with them hard on the math. It's always my, my, my theory has always been if it's hard, people are going to avoid it. And so there's gonna be a higher demand for that. So go ahead long into that. And if people love it as a passion, like they do with history, don't seek it out as a professional career path. But, and that's, here's the other tricky thing is that the world is constantly changing and you think, you know what? You, you have the finger on the pulse of what the next big thing is going to be and it turns out that everybody does. And so they all go to that and then it's flooded and kind of that economic cycle that I was talking in a micro sense. And so the other part I would say is you gotta love what you do. And, and that pay and security can't always be the first thing. You've gotta enjoy your 40 hours of your work week. 'cause you only have 120 hours in a week, so you gotta love it. And, and so I want them to find their passion, whatever that might be. Give them sort of a dose of realism as and, and I also tell 'em, don't think about maybe the degree, think about the career path. What do you want that career to be?

William Prigge [01:03:26] And then we can figure out what degree best suits that. But always keep your focus maybe on what that real world thing is that you could do. People avoid looking at that 'cause they don't know. And so then they come in and they just grab a degree as kind of a placeholder to buy them four more years until they've figured out closer what they wanna do in the real world. Internships I think are a great sort of antidote to that as well.

Vance Crowe [01:03:55] Well, I was gonna say that I, I often am somewhat negative on the university education system because when I look back on it without thinking about it too deeply, I say, well, what did I learn there that, that I couldn't have gotten from library books? But as you and I are talking and reconnecting again, I'm realizing one of the things that you is very difficult to name and certainly very difficult to value is colliding with ideas Yeah.

William Prigge [01:04:20] That

Vance Crowe [01:04:20] You would never have found on your own. Yes. That it took this serendipitous slam into another person

William Prigge [01:04:26] Yeah. For you

Vance Crowe [01:04:27] To be woken up and say like, oh, the, the, the view that I thought was absolutely correct maybe does have some ideological bias or some cultural implications and it might not be bad for me on the long term to be exposing myself to people that are gonna challenge me and wake me up.

William Prigge [01:04:45] I, I think that that's so true. And I think that particularly with the non-professional degrees, the actual degree itself is less important than the exercise that you're asking your brain to go through, which is taking on new ideas, digesting them, trying to make sense of them, drawing independent conclusions from that. And I think that's really what the world needs is, is that type of of person. And I think what a lot of employers are looking for is that moldable clay and that they will teach the details of the job when you get there. But is your brain sort of ready to think independently like that. And I think about my position as department head. I was doing nothing with history at that time, but it was sort of all those intangible skills that I had developed. It was really, problem gets set on your desk in the morning. You've got to think through it methodically and arrive at the best answer by the end of the day. And there's a process to that. And it goes way back to my earliest days, sort of looking at the argumentative nature of history and what was the, sort of the better argument and why, and what's the evidence that leads you to that and the analytical aspects of it.

Vance Crowe [01:06:16] Yeah, I think I, the, the interesting thing about the way that you ran your classroom, as best as I can remember is, is very easy for a professor to say, I'm going to teach you how to rip apart arguments or rip apart the, the, the thing of culture that you thought was so important. But, but the, but the valuable professor figures out like, I'm gonna teach you how to analyze it so that you can know what is, but it's not, there's no benefit necessarily of you tearing it down unless it's helping you come to a more nuanced and better understanding. It's not critical for the, for the virtue of being critical.

William Prigge [01:06:51] Yeah, that's right. And that if you can sort of understand the process of how do you approach a question or a problem, then you can take it to your own particular situation or question as it arises. Go through those steps to come to, to your own conclusion. And it may not be the conclusion that I have, but at least it's a well considered position I think.

Vance Crowe [01:07:17] Well, Dr. Will Pricky, it was such a fantastic opportunity to get back together with you. You are at South Dakota State University, but if people were interested in what you had to say, what would be the best way for them to find more about you or, or get ahold of you?

William Prigge [01:07:33] I think that basically my, the website, the School of American and Global Studies, and there you can find my biography, my publications, my email address, all of that. So you just go to the university website and the School of American and Global Studies and you'll find me there.

Vance Crowe [01:07:52] Well, the next time I'm up in South Dakota, which I was just last October, I, and I didn't know you were there, so we will have to encounter each other. But it was great seeing you on this call.

William Prigge [01:08:01] It was good seeing you two fans.