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ere we go, with two more chapters of Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) – which C-SM hopes will lead to you purchasing a copy of the book for yourself and any college-age kids in your acquaintance – and two more lies liberal history profs are teaching to pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #16 – Prohibition Was Unpopular From The Beginning And Failed In All Its Objectives

Prohibition … offered another example of reforming zeal channeled into a drive for moral righteousness and conformity . … The Anti-Saloon League [mobilized] Protestant churches behind its single-minded battle to elect “dry” candidates. – George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History

My grandmother was an prohibitionist and a staunchly conservative Methodist, and I thought it positively odd that my great aunt and uncle would lower their kitchen shade so grandmother wouldn’t look across the alley and see them drinking a beer with their Sunday night sausage and sauerkraut.

Be that as it may, prohibition is now offered up as a precursor to the moral battlegrounds of today – first abortion and drugs, now gay marriage – as history profs have hayseed hicks and ignorant fundamentalists battling the enlightened forces of coolness. It’s also used as an immigration lesson, with prohibition seen as the white majority forcing its will on the (then-white) immigrant populations (those drinking Irish and Italians!). And ultimately, prohibition serves as the foundation of teaching that “you cannot legislate morality.”

Temperance, in fact, was a longstanding thread leading up to prohibition. Abraham Lincoln ran on a “temperance” platform and most states had restrictions on alcohol before prohibition. Why? Because alcohol had become a huge social problem. Prohibition helped quell it, as arrests for public drunkenness and incidents of hospitalization for alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver declined during Prohibition.

Saloons – which often offered up prostitution in addition to booze – were thought by many doctors to be the source of syphilis outbreaks and the Mann Act was passed to stop white slavery that was thriving in the saloons.

So drinking wasn’t just a nice passive pastime; it was a big social problem (as it remains today), leading to wide support for Prohibition not only among conservative Protestants, but among much of America, both urban and rural, lower class and upper.

To Schweikart’s view, Prohibition failed primarily because sufficient enforcement was never funded, and because the media turned against it, followed by … sound familiar? … the intellectual elite in NY and DC. And finally, it was the desire for those lucrative liquor tax revenues during the Depression that ended the social experiment.

I’m not a fan of heavy-handed government policies like Prohibition, but I am a fan of having them taught in the proper context and not misused. If historians used Prohibition as a lesson about America’s strong and ongoing moral fiber, and against over-reaching regulation, that would be fine with me.

#17 – Sacco And Vanzetti Were Innocent And Wrongly Executed

The excesses of the fundamentalists, the xenophones, the Klan, the red-baiters, and the prohibitionists disturbed American intellectuals profoundly. … Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists and Italian immigrants. Their trial was a travesty. Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, American Destiny.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti may be lost in the mist of time to most readers, so the easiest way to put them into perspective is to consider that the anarchists of the early 20th century were akin to the terrorists of our time. Their act of violence – killing a guard and paymaster in the midst of a robbery – was just another of anarchist actions against America: They had assassinated President William McKinley, had nearly killed a Carnegie Steel exec in his office. They shot people, made bombs, and blew things up, all in the name of bringing down all government.

From the 20s until they were replaced by the Rosenburgs in the 40s, Sacco and Vanzetti were the cause clebre of the American left. Future SCOTUS Felix Frankfuter wrote a book calling for a new trial, socialist author Upton Sinclair took up their cause, and as recently as 1977, then-Governor Michael Dukakis of MA called S&V innocent, saying “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.” Says Schweikart of that proclamation:

Unfortunately for Dukakis, a firearms panel would meet only a few years later and virtually reattach the disgrace to the names of the two murderers.

But long before recent forensic tests put this issue to rest, a fair jury did the same based on overwhelming evidence that the Left would have you ignore.  Nine eyewitnesses ID’d Sacco as being at the scene; four ID’d Vanzetti.  Both defendants were caught in lies on the witness stand.  Alibi witnesses proved not to be credible.

As recently as 1985, liberals have published books coughing up “new evidence” to show S&V were good guys put down by an evil system.  But the evidence against this view is overwhelming:  Forensic tests have proved Sacco’s revolver fired the shot that killed one of the victims, that defense arguments that bullets were switched are specious, that Sacco was a participant, and separate from these tests, that Vanzetti also was guilty.  This has long been proven to such an extent that even Upton Sinclair admitted as much, saying he was “completely naive about the Sacco-Venzetti case, having accepted the defense propaganda completely.”

But some Leftist profs continue to profess their innocence, and they can no longer be called merely naive.

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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ur quick summation of Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) – which C-SM hopes will lead to you purchasing a copy of the book for yourself and any college-age kids in your acquaintance – continues with three more lies from this solid review of what liberal history profs are doing to revise the past and pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #13 – Thomas Jefferson Favored “Small Government” And Was A Pacifist

“He can with some justice be called a ‘half-way pacifist.’” Reginald C. Stuart, The Half-Way Pacifist

The chapter starts with a recounting of Jefferson as the first president with a preemptive war policy, as displayed by his aggressive approach to the Barbary pirates. While he favored a small navy (a half-way pacifist), he had no problem using Adams’ big navy against Tripoli (an all the way warmonger).

As for small government, it is true Jefferson cut the federal budget from Adams’ final budget of $10 million down to just over $7 million. Those were the days! But by 1805, the Jefferson admin was spending a budget of $12 million. Under him, per-capita income fell and government spending as a share of all national spending increased slightly.

Jefferson also directed Sec. of Treasury Albert Gallatin to develop plans for roads, harbors, navigable rivers and canals – all work that had previously been the business of the private sector. Says Schweikart of this supposedly “small government” president:

It is therefore surprising to see Jefferson order Gallatin to prepare an extensive report to Congress in 1808 in which he concluded, “The General Government can alone remove these obstacles”‘ to improving transportation.

At a time when the entire federal budget was $10 million, Gallatin and Jefferson recommended a $20 million federal spending program on infrastructure. Small government indeed.

Lie #14 – Women Had No Rights In Early America

“The United States had founding mothers … but on the whole our history celebrates only the white founding fathers ….” – Carol Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, Women of Amercia

Schweikart starts his rebuttal with an admission that being a woman in colonial America “was no picnic,” but adds that colonial women enjoyed more rights than English women, and better than today’s women in North Korea or Saudi Arabia.

Colonial inheritance laws allowed women to inherit parts of their husbands’ estates (all if the couples were childless), and lawyers in Colonial America invented the prenuptual, protecting the inheritances of many wealthy young women from nefarious scoundrels.

Many women of the era inherited their husbands’ businesses under these laws, and went on to run them successfully.

Where education was available, “Dame Schools” taught young women and there were examples of truly visionary approaches to education here, such as at the Lowell Mills in MA, where “Lowel Girls” working in the mills received an education at company expense. Our churches also offered women great freedom. Many were warm-up preachers to the main sermon, and many denominations included them in the church’s decision-making leadership.

Schweikart sees the problem feminist revisionists face:

One of the problems feminist historians have faced is that they must simultaneously portray women as victims and heroines: for women to be worthy of study as a separate historical topic, women must have done something exceptional or out of the ordinary. Y et as soon as there were examples of women achievers, it challenged the feminist notion of a rigid “classist/sexist” society that held women back.

Lie #15 – Restrictions On The Right To Vote Kept Voter Participation Low

“The roaring flood of the new democracy was now foaming perilously near the crest.” – Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization

Most early colonies had restrictions on the vote. Not only did voters have to be men and white, they had to either own land or property, or in some cases, have certain levels of wealth. Generally, only somewhere around 60 to 80 percent of white men were qualified to vote.

But this didn’t lead to lower voter registration than we have today. Between 1776 and 1780, turnout of eligible voters in the 13 states was between 48 and 65 percent. Between 1952 and 1960, just 64 percent of adults qualified to vote voted. In 2000, 64 percent of the eligible population registered, of whom 83 percent voted, or about half of all qualified voters.

The “foaming perilously near the crest” quoted above is a reference to historians’ portrayal of the surge of popular democracy during the Jackson years. At this time, Jackson’s foes were portrayed as the Eastern business elite “who grew rich by … government-bestowed privileges,” according to John Murrin et al.’s Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People. But, Schweikart says,

What universally goes unmentioned is that Van Buren’s party system, which produced Jackson’s election, was based on patronage and spoils. Both Jackson’s’ and Van Buren’s administrations greatly expanded the scope and power of the federal government, as well as spending by the government, precisely because they had to reward their supporters with party and government jobs.

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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et’s return now to Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School), with two more lies from this solid review of what liberal history profs are doing to revise the past and pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #11 – No Terrorists or Weapons of Mass Destruction were Hiding in Iraq

A systematic search found no active production facilities or stockpiles for chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons of mass destruction, refuting one of the basic justifications for the war. – David Goldfield et al., The American Journey

Did the failure to find “active” WMD evidence in Iraq really refute one of Bush’s three justifications for the war? Ever heard of a murder conviction that came without a murder weapon or a body? Of course you have, but David Goldfield et al. would rather ignore the complex and hang on the simplistic – as would many of his colleagues.

First, the lib revisionists need to deal with who else was involved in the WMD “deception” – the French, British, Spanish, Australian, Japanese, German, Israeli intelligence services, the Egyptian and Russian presidents, the king of Jordan, and the United Nations Security Council, all of whom stated that Hussein had or was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

Then, of course, you’d have to overlook his gassing of the Kurds, which led Hans Blix of the UN to state Hussein had 6,500 WMDs. And there were Saddam’s two sons in law, who during their brief defection testified about Iraqi WMD programs. They were executed upon their foolish return to Iraq. (So foolish that I’ll go ahead and accept that their testimony may be discounted since they were obviously idiots.)

Then there’s little niggles like this:

In 2003, a UN weapons inspector confidently stated that Ira had an ongoing nuclear program, and that he knew personally of uranium reporcessing at a facility six miles from Tarmiya. A twenty-gallon barrel found in northern Ira tested positive for Sarin, and another tested positive for mustard gas.

And Goldfield et al. conveniently ignore the tape recordings found of Hussein discussing his WMD program, and the need to hustle the evidence out of Iraq prior to an invasion – and the 56 “sorties” ‘of commercial jetliners, their seats removed, between Iraq and Syria prior to the war.

As for terrorists in Iraq, Schweikart runs through the same sort of sources – our own State Dept., evidence found in Iraq, respected publications like Janes and less respected news sources like CBS, etc. – to prove that Hussein was supporting terrorists in general and al-Qaeda in particular.

There’s plenty more in this chapter; real, hard evidence, as opposed to cute “Bush Lied, People Died” sloganeering.

Lie #12 – The Founders Envisioned a “Wall of Separation” Between Church and State, Keeping Religious Influence out of Government

The Founding Fathers did not intend to establish the United Sttes of America as a Christian nation [and] the assertion that the United States … was founded as a “Christian Nation” is itself a myth. – Mark Weldon “Whitten, The Myth of Christian America

I found myself using my Kindle’s highlighting function multiple times on every page of this chapter because its stuffed full of rebuttal of the vapid claims of the separation of church and state fanatics. If, for example, America’s founding fathers didn’t see America as a Christian nation, how come the colony’s own constitutions saw it as one. Here’s Virginia’s:

We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Deisres for the Furtherance of so noble a Work … in propagating the Christian Religion to such People [native Americans] as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true knowledge and Worship of God [establish the colony of Virginia.

The Charter of New England (1620) stated that the main objective of the colony was "the enlightenment of the Chrisitan religion, to the Glory of God Almighty."

Why, if America was not a Christian nation, did some colonies have statutes requiring attendance at church? (The sort of thing correctly precluded by a proper interpretation of separation of church and state.)

In 1812, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment allowed Christianity to "receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and freedom of religious worship." In 1892, SCOTUS found unanimously:

Our laws and institutions necessarily are based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind ... [In] this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian. … This is a Christian nation.

And it remains one to this day, if you check any national polling or any compilation by government or religious organizations.

The Chapter also delves into Jefferson’s letter, which is the basis of fraudulent interpretations of separation of church and state, effectively dismissing the arguments as misinterpretations or outright frauds.

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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nward through Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) we go,with two more lies from this solid review of what liberal history profs are doing to revise the past and pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #9 – Michael Gorbachev, Not Ronald Reagan, Was Responsible for Ending the Cold War

Gorbachev’s revorm policies led not only to the collapse of the Soviet empire but also to the breakup of the Soviet Union itself. – James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations

This is one of the lies that appals me the most, since I remember the incidents in such detail, it having been one of the most riveting times of my life – but living memories or not, liberal profs hate Reagan for his successes and his enduring popularity and are doing all they can to strip away his greatness.

First, let’s dispense with the notion that Gorbachev willingly put a stop to Russian imperialism, which is a part of this myth. Schweikart reminds us that Gorby kept Soviet forces in Afghanistan until their losses were no longer supportable, then unhappily pulled them out. He also tried to pull off Cuba II, the Soviet-supported Cuban take-over of Grenada, which Reagan put a quick end to.

This chapter is the most fascinating so far, describing the National Security Decision Directives issued by the Reagan administration starting in 1982 that spelled out how the US would bankrupt the USSR: attacking Soviet expansionism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, limiting sources of cash (like delaying the gas and oil pipeline to W. Europe), and limiting high-tech exports the Soviets desperately needed because they couldn’t come close to matching our technology.

“You have declared war on us, economic war,” said Gorby’s precessor, Leonid Brezhnev. Part of that war was NSA’s “Farewell Dossier,” a collection of punches using the Soviet’s never-ending efforts to steal our technology by sending fake technologies their way – including one that trashed their pipeline for a time.

Schweikart concludes:

As president, the Gipper played the [arms race] card. Across the board, using American banks and bullets, money and missiles, tehcnology and diplomacy, the United States put a full-court press on the Soviet Union. The best tha tcan be said for Garbachev was that he was open to defeat.

Lie #10 – September 11 Was Not the Work of Terrorists: It Was a Government Conspiracy

Don’t ask me to tell you want happened on 9/11. All I know is that the official account of the buildings’ collapse is improbable. – Paul Craig Roberts, Gullible Americans

This is another pre-emptive chapter in the book. Schweikart was unable to find a quote from an existing textbook for the beginning of the chapter, but as I said earlier, profs do allow and encourage outside reading – often from a prof-chosen list – so he feels compelled to attack these lunatic conspiracies as well.

C-SM readers don’t need a rehash of the disgusting and fantabulous arguments proffered by the 9/11 Truthers Dingbats, but like me, they might need a reminder of what our Sec of State-apparent did on the floor of the Senate:

In May 2002, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton waved a copy of that day’s edition of the New York Post with the headline, BUSH KNEW.  The story claimed the president had been given a briefing warning of impending terrorist attacks.  “The presidnet knew what?” she asked. “My constituents would like to know the answer to that and many other questions.

Questions like what, Hillary?  That steel doesn’t melt at those temperatures? (It loses tensile strength and bends.) That thousands of pounds of explosives were packed into the building by the CIA or Mosad?  That the missing passengers of the four planes have all been quietly, willingly secreted away to some unfindable destination, where they’ve stayed mum for seven years out of fervid love of George W. Bush?

Hillary just might look good in a tinfoil hat.

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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ontinuing with Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) here are the next two lies Schweikart lists in his review of what liberal revisionist history profs are doing to despoil the proud history of our nation and pollute the minds of the next generation with their drivel.

Lie #8 – Ronald Reagan Knew “Star Wars” Wouldn’t Work but Wanted to Provoke a War with Russia

Nicknamed “Star Wars” after a popular science fiction film, it spent billions of dollars trying to establish a space-based defense system. Most scientists contended that the project was as fantastic as the movie. – James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations

Despite the flip dismissal of SDI technology by the Left, when Reagan announced the program in 1983, most of the technologies needed were in place, Schweikart says. The Left should have loved it because they hated the Cold War strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction which SDI sought to deconstruct – but because it came from Reagan and was directed at the Soviets, no such normalcy was evidenced.

Recently released National Security Council docs from 1982 lay out a U.S. goal of not just containing the Soviets, but reversing their expansion, with tapping out USSR military spending as one of several tactics to be employed. The strategy cunningly used the Soviet’s great respect for our technology so that “you leverage their perceptions dramatically” through technology investments.

Contrary to the Davidson quote above, it was the media not the scientists who pegged the Star Wars moniker on the program. The Soviets, fearful of our computer technology, certainly didn’t see the system as fantasy – and subsequent tests (carried out within Reagan’s original 20-year timeframe) proved that ultimately it was anything but Hollywood scriptwriting. Schweikart provides these quotes;

Inside the Kremlin, the top Soviet generals were terrified. They knew SDI had the potential to work. Nikolai Leonov said “it underlined still more our technological backwardness.” Gen. Makhmud Gareev, the deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff, agreed, saying it was “beyond our power” to compete with the Americans technologically. In 1981, a Soviet arms negotiator said, “Oh, you Americans! … You are going to make us spend and spend to keep up and our lousy standard of living will go down and down and in the end you will win.”

And we did. And not soon after, during the first Gulf War, Patriot Missiles shot incoming Scuds out of the air, and in 1992, space-based interceptors – real Star Wars stuff – were successfully tested, just 10 years, not 20, after Reagan’s speech. By 2008, an SDI antimissile missile shot a falling satellite to smithereens – but no one’s revising the textbooks yet.

The Lies They Teach: #6 And #7
The Lies They Teach: #4 And #5
The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3

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Continuing with Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) here are the next two lies Schweikart lists in his review of what liberal revisionist history profs are doing to despoil the proud history of our nation.

Lie #6: Richard Nixon Expanded the Vietnam War

[I]n April 1970, Nixon sent American forces on a sweek through Cambodia … A seeming Escalatino of fighting, this move electrified the anti-war movement.” – Irwin Unger, These United States

A brief history of Vietnam:  Kennedy put the first troops in, and there were probably about 25,000 American troops in Southeast Asia, primarily Vietnam, when he was assassinated.  In 1969, when Lyndon Johnson left office after deciding not to run for a second term, there were 553,000.  That is an expansion.

By 1971, Nixon had cut the number of troops down to 200,000, and down to 155,000 in 1972.  At this time, 65 percent of Americans approved of the way Nixon was handling the war – way up from Johnson’s ratings, which forced him not to consider a second term.  By 1973, Nixon  had withdrawn all but about 50,000 troops.

Still, in American text books on Vietnam, it is Nixon how is the villain of the war, not Johnson and certainly not Kennedy, who, Schweikart points out, “receives almost no blame or criticism for his actions, while the man who extracted us – in line with, supposedly, the wishes of the liberals – is routinely portrayed as though he started, rather than ended, the conflict.

Lie #7: The “Peace Movement” Activists Were Not Dupes of the KGB

During 1983, the antiwar and nuclear disarmament movements, in exlipse since the end of the Vietnam War, revived explosively. … [T]here were demonstrations in major cities to protest the arms race adn demand a “nuclear freeze.” – Irwin Unger, These United States

This is the most fascinating chapter in the book thus far.  Personally, this was the point where I began to see the leftists, with whom I had previously affiliated, as dangerous loons, so the chapter illuminates that gut decision – which leads to the second thing that makes it fascinating:  It is based in large part on KGB documents smuggled out of Russia by a KGB archivist, Vasili Mitrokhin.

Mitrokhin’s documents show the KGB worked to spread rumors that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for “the military industrial complex,” that the AIDs virus was invented in Fort Detrick MD and spread by us to third world countries, and that they invested heavily in funding the left to discourage further development of American nuclear campability.

This money – including $2 million to the Communist Party here, 5 million deutsch marks annually from East Germany’s Stasi to the German Peace Union and $50 million a year to the World Peace Council – may explain why the left was so quick to attack America while leading the totalitarian Brezhnev regime uncriticized.

The Lies They Teach:  #4 And #5

The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3

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arry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) is continuing to infuriate me, which is a good thing.

I’m providing quick summaries of the lies, but the book is rich in detail and I strongly suggest you read it.

The title is almost self-explanatory. Let me just add that it is a review of college-level history text books. Here are lies four and five:

Lie #4: Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Japan to intimidate the Soviets with “Atomic Diplomacy.”

Truman agreed with [James] Byrnes that use of the bomb would permit them to “out maneuver [sic] Stalin on China,” that is, negate the Yalta concessions in Manchuria and guarantee that Russia would “not get in som much on the kill” of Japan or its occupation. – Arnold Offner, “Another Such Victory,” 1999

The theory that Pres. Truman used the bomb to intimidate the Soviets instead of conquer Japan is a theory, Schweikart shows, that only an academic could concoct.

The revisionists start by revising the estimates of U.S. war deaths that would occur Operation Olympics by first declaring the stated estimates wildly over-estimated – the “casualty myth,” they call it – then conjuring up their own, lower, estimates based on numerous  false assumptions.  They also reject actual documents in Japanese and Soviet archives in favor of their own conclusions – even the Japanese deputy chief of staff of the Japanese Army General Staff, who wrote, “There is nothing we can do about the … atomic bomb.  That nullifies everything.”

Schweikart didn’t go into it, but I believe this lie is fired by elitist fires.  Truman had the misfortune of assuming office, unelected, following the most elite of all elites, FDR.  This haberdasher from the Midwest could not be allowed to do anything right, and liberal elite historians have worked hard to miscast him.

Lie #5: John F. Kennedy was killed by LBJ and a secret team to keep him from getting us out of Vietnam.

This is another of the lies Schweikart includes not so much because it is dwelt on in college texts, but because liberal profs, fearful of being called part of the education establishment, frequently let students go to sources beyond the required text books – books like Barr McClellan’s Blood, Money & Power:  How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K.

I’m sure I don’t have to re-hash this for C-SM’s audience; suffice it to say that Schweikart presents five different JFK myths and quickly dispatches them all in a flood of big facts and juicy details, including good stuff on Jack’s real position on Vietnam vs. the recasting of that position for the benefit of Bobby.

Previous in this series:

The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3

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arry Schweikart’s book, 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) is one infuriating read. It leaves you feeling impotent and frustrated, knowing that the liberals and their revisionist history are doing more to win the next generation than we are. But it’s an important read, so I’ll share quick summaries of the 48 lies here over time. I strongly suggest, however, that you read the book.

The title is almost self-explanatory. Let me just add that it is a review of college-level history text books. Here are lies one through three:

Lie #1: The first presidents intended for the United States to be isolationist.

In his farewell address, [George] Washington urged that the United States stay out of European affairs and make no permanent alliances, a principle that would be a hallmark of American foreign policy for a century and a half. – James West Davidson et. al., Nation of Nations

Of course, Washington spent much of his administration seeking foreign alliances, so any historian should ponder that line from Washington’s final address before drawing such a simplistic conclusion. Schweikart shows that Washington wanted about 25 years of breathing room without hard set alliances so the nation could get strong enough to stand alone, without alliances, if need be. Washington was particularly concerned with alliances entangled by old European prejudices, that he wished to leave to the Old World.

The chapter also deals with the leftist historians’ penchant for turning Jefferson into a pacifist, debunking that theory by reminding us that Jefferson sought, in effect, “an alliance of the willing” to fight the Barbary pirates, and when Europe cowed in fear, he pursued unilateral action. Sound familiar?

Lie #2: The Mexican and Spanish-American wars were imperialist efforts drummed up by “corporate interests.”

Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation … [The Mexican War] was a war of the American elite against the Mexican elite. – Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Liberal historians want to look at wars like the Mexican American War and our campaign in the Philippines as proof of our societal racism, because we wage war against brown people.  And when we leave when we’re done, in order to not allow us to be disproved as imperialists, these historians make the case that we left because … you guessed it:  We don’t like brown people.

To make their case, liberal historians “ignored the eagerness with which our foes entered the wars,” Schweikart says.  Mexico’s army was four times larger than ours, and Europe was betting on Mexico as the winner.  Wrong.  We did win, but the books minimize the brilliance of our campaigns, like how Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish flotilla without losing a single man.

Lie #3: FDR knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Schweikart thoroughly debunks this old myth, but fails to make the case for it actually being taught in college textbooks.  Still, I appreciated the chapter because it revealed the same ugliness we see in the 9/11 Truthers Dingbats:  That for their theory to be correct, hundreds of Americans would have had to conspire, and stay quiet after the fact.

That’s an atrocious view of America, and Pearl Harbor and 9/11 conspiracists are both beneath contempt.

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he line at the fire station this morning was the longest I’ve seen since I started voting in this precinct in 1992. It could have been that I was there at 7 a.m., eager to vote in this historic election, or it could have been that I was voting in an historic election.

The gal behind me in line was a recent transferee from Chicago. We joked about the rain (the first of the wet season, it started about 4 this morning) and how odd it is for Midwesterners who move here to get used to months without precipitation.

She said she got to vote twice because she’s from Chicago, and got a chuckle out of me.

It grew increasingly obvious that she was a liberal – she mentioned listening to Bill Mahr, she has a Buddhist saying app on her iPod (I showed her my Holy Bible iPod app), she said the vote was so exciting this year that she didn’t get disgusted by it all by the time November rolled around. I told her I never get disgusted; it’s always a thrill.

There was obviously a chasm between us, but we amicably chatted the entire 10 or 15 minutes we were in line, swapping stories, comparing our iPod apps, letting each other know who we would vote for without discussing politics, and giving each other a parting smile as I went forward to my voting booth. A half minute later, she came up beside me and started voting in the machine next door – casting votes that would almost certainly cancel out mine.

And so it was. In some countries we would try to kill each other or deprive the other of the vote. In some countries we would burn down the other’s house or forbid our children from marrying the other’s, or conspire with our allies to send them into poverty.

But not in this country. Not in America. I voted, and she voted too – in an American election, and I’m awfully darn proud.

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‘m finally getting around to reading Mark Steyn’s America Alone, so as I read I check out from thinking about the election and start thinking again about Islam’s growth, its demand that we meet its intolerance with tolerance so that it can grow at our expense, and its commitment to jihad.

And so without further adieu, this shrine to what makes America great and, most definitely, non-Islamic:

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