December 13th 2008
The Lies They Teach #20 And #21
T
oday we turn to the 20th and 21st chapters of Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School), which details the revisionist lies history profs are teaching to our next generation. C-SM presents this in the hope that you’ll buy the book.
Lie #20 – Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK because he was a deranged Marine, not because he was a Communist
Oswald was a troubled former Marine – Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty
I was a bit skeptical that Schweikart had a case here – are history books really teaching this? – but he ran through a half dozen quotes calling Oswald a misfit Marine, a quiet Marine, a deeply disturbed Marine. They all say “former,” but we who understand the military – a demographic that apparently doesn’t include history profs – know there’s no such thing as a former Marine.
Several history books he researched mentioned that he had spent time in the Soviet Union and one actually called him a Marxist, but none called him what he called himself: a Communist. (Noted lefty historian Howard Zinn doesn’t even deal with the JFK assassination and Oswald in A People’s History of the United States.) James Pierson does cover it in his book, Camelot and teh Cultural Revolution:
Pierson notes that “the assassination of a popular president by a communist should ahve generated a revulsion against everything associated with left-wing doctrines. Yet something very close to the opposite happened.” Instead the historians routinely described Oswald as “emotionally unstable -and one whose] actions were never fully explained….”
Not fully explained, of course, unless you take Oswald’s own admission that he was a communist.
Lie #21 – Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians
When Hernando Cortes and his Spanish army of fewer than a thousand men stormed into Mexico in 1519, the native population numbered about 22 million. By the end of the century, following a series of devastating epidemics, only 2 million people remained.
Excluding epidemic, such destruction is ridiculous. A bludnerbuss-armed handful of men simply couldn’t eliminate 20 million people in such a short timeframe – not even if the natives lined themselves up to be neatly and expeditiously executed.
The problem with these teachings is that assumptions about pre-Columbian populations are just that – assumptions. There are, of course, no recorded censuses of Aztek, Cherokee, Navejo or any of the other native populations; there are just various guess and extrapolations, some as high as 100 million or more. Writes Schweikart:
Most recent research puts the entire native populations on both continents and the islands ofthe New World at 53 million. But an interesting trend has been that with each new study, the population estimates fall: since 1976, the experts have lowered their estimates by four million. More conservative estimates are that there were a total of (on the high side) 8.5 million for all of North America, and a low estimate of only 1.8 million. The “European genocide” crowd has more Indians being killed or dying of disease than ever existed in all the New World put together!
The other element in this formula is the baseline: How many native Americans were dying of disease before Columbus appeared. Are we to believe that the Americas were a disease-free paradise? Obviously not; now some anthropologists are positing that epidemics were killing natives by the mass-grave-full before the Spaniards waded ashore.
Also, these anti-European historians neglect to mention how efficient the noble savages were at killing themselves – the Azteks alown killed hundreds of t housands in their religious ceremonies (and these may well be the same historians who call Christianity a violent religion!).
Of course, Native Americans died as a result of European settling. But historians have an obligation to do all they can to report the truth, not feed anti-European prejudices.
The Lies They Teach: #19
The Lies They Teach: #16 and #17
The Lies They Teach: #13 – #15
The Lies They Teach #11 And #12
The Lies They Teach: #9 And #10
The Lies They Teach – #8
The Lies They Teach: #6 And #7
The Lies They Teach: #4 And #5
The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3
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December 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 am
Larry Schweikart is a bitter, deranged hallucinator. Truth be told, he’d like to send us hurtling back to the days when we staged huge bonfires with all books not fascist-whitewashed. His book should be re-titled: “48 Schweikart Lies About US History.”Tim Flemingwww.eloquentbooks.com/MurderOfAnAmericanNazi.htmlhttp://leftlooking.blogspot.com