Customer Reviews

48 Liberal Lies About American History: (That You Probably Learned in School)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

While I think the title of the book is needlessly provocative, I think this a very useful book for anyone who has been subjected to the kind of indoctrination that passes for history education in too many of our public schools and colleges. If you are looking for some quick information on these four dozen issues, this can help you pass on some solid information that probably runs counter to what your friends believe is so. I said the title is needlessly provocative because not all liberals buy into the points of view this book argues against. However, Larry Schweikart is correct that there is a general cultural agenda that supports the liberal view of things. He starts off each article with two or three short quotes from liberal histories that are countered in that article.

The articles cover notions of America's role in the world since the founding, the issues in the various wars we have fought, what FDR knew about Pearl Harbor, Truman and the Atomic Bomb, the JFK assassination, Reagan, key liberal causes such as Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, the Scopes Trial, Columbus and the death of millions of Indians, that pesky wall between Church and State, Women's Rights in early American, the Settling of America and the Indians, and the Robber Barons. Modern issues such as Iraq, 9/11, Global Warming, Media Bias, Educational Bias, and the social theories about our Constitution are also covered. Schweikart admits that saying that the 9/11 conspiracy nuts are liberal is a stretch, but he says he wanted to head off the kind of shoulder shrugs modern texts give to the JFK assassination conspiracy nonsense.

The articles are all relatively short and pack a punch. I am absolutely positive that it will annoy liberals a great deal and some of them will attack the book without bothering to read it. I guess that is a side benefit of the book. Its real point is to push back against what some are trying to make dominant and accepted without critique. Of course, wanting to indoctrinate students is a matter of faith rather than scholarship or education.

If you home school you will definitely want that as an addition to your readings in American History.

You will also want to look at Schweikart's `A Patriot's History of the United States".

A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

We still have an edition World Book Encyclopedia published in 1984 and one published in 1965. It is interesting to verify his complaints about modern text books. The re-writing of history is most disburbing. Find an old encyclopedia and check it out for yourself unless you are old enough to actually remember some of the events of the 1940's till today like I am. Many of us are still around who remember when the nasty lies about the USA were told by our enemies; not by our text books, movies, etc. After verifying facts for yourself, please take action to break this pattern of self-destruction. Please confront your local school boards when you find lies in text books. Hit the text book publishers in the "pocket book." One test is that if a text gets Reagan right, it might be OK. Surely you are old enough to remember those actual events!

Professor Schweikart has written a valuable and timely book. He takes on rampant political correctness in the writing of history texts and comes through with a five star performance. He is an expert on U. S. economic history but his breadth is apparent when he takes on standard leftist biases in diplomatic history as well as political history. One interesting thing Schweikart notices is that often a liberal slant will emerge on a topic and become entrenched in the texts. Then other historians will test the liberal idea and find many facts to contradict it. However, the history texts do not make the corrections and the bias is passed on to future generations. Schweikart shows this to be the case in the view of the motives in writing the Constitution and also in the Sacco and Vanzetti case (among others). Schweikart is an expert on economic history, but is very capable when exposing biases on Ronald Reagan, JFK, and LBJ. His emphasis is on modern U. S. history, but he is also excellent describing the first Thanksgiving, Thomas Jefferson, and the Mexican and Spanish American Wars.

This book is an excellent resource that corrects many errors in popular American History textbooks and misconceptions about American history. Every history teacher and school administrator should read this book BEFORE ordering his or her history textbooks. It would also be good reading for everybody else to correct misinformation they may have been taught in school. If you care about facts and real history, you should read this book. Highly recommended!

I love doing these reviews. I particularly love the lack of anonymity for most who post their opinions. It is as easy as clicking a link to see the other opinions folks have offered. You can often find that seeing what folks have said about other things is very revealing.

The bottom line is that this book discusses events and issues that have room for the consideration of viewpoints outside the current popular conclusion.

As with any work like this, the proof is in the bibliography. What are the writers sources? Are they primary sources? While you may not agree with some of the conclusions based on the evidence, the author in this case at least makes points that you can follow. You might even go so far as to see how the author has come to his conclusions, even if you do not agree with him.

That is what the free exchange of ideas is all about. Let me suggest that some of the power of the book is not limited to what you are going to specifically read, but rather the books listed as sources that you might want to track down yourself.

For the extremists out there that have just completely attacked this book, let me just suggest that readers simply do a quick click on other opinions written by those folks to get a feel for their bias. In just about every case, you will find that the detractors have a consistent and often intellectually dishonest track record of praising only extreme left offerings (in many cases ones which we now know were filled mostly with incorrect information).

In this case, the author loses a star for some occasionally stale or lackluster writing. However, he does do a good job of keeping your attention on what he is talking about and walking you through his conclusions with references.

We are heading into an election and we have a massive credit crises that could throw us into a deep recession. If you don't have time to read all 48 lies, because you are watching the stock market. And the money market too! I recommend you start with lie #44 "Business Failures and Tax Cuts Combined to cause the Great Depression". You will gain perspective and you will be better able to see how the ground-work for new lies that will surly come out of this current great economic crises is already being laid today.

It is really sad that a book such as this needs to be written. One of the striking fallacies of Keynesian economics is the benefits of deficit spending. Milton Friedman (who is quoted in this book) and Ludwig von Mises completely destroyed Keynesianism years ago. But unfortunately there are many other flat out lies or exaggerations that are taught as fact in our schools and colleges today through either blatant political, economic or social bias/envy that are even today being implemented by government policy. One major lie that is covered is that tax cuts decrease tax revenues! Anyone who has read anything on economics outside of the buffoon Keynes knows that tax cuts spur economic growth and produces more income for the government, while tax increases decrease job creation and tax income. This was proven during the second Reagan term and into Bush's term until Bush and Congress raised taxes. Political beliefs have nothing to do with it, it is pure economics.

There are many other points covered in here (obviously 47 more) that are covered by the author. He'll even make you laugh out loud with his comments about the lunacy of some of the 'thinking' of liberal history and textbook authors.

Excellent read/ I skipped some chapters to jump ahead to areas of history-that interest me: Lie #24 "Abraham Lincoln Only Freed the Slaves to Beef Up His Troop Strength". Many of these agendas and misconceptions that are held by many people shooting their mouths off:"Bill Clinton was impeached over sex{Lie # 29),etc. I recommend this to anyone,not just Republicans or Republican history buffs-which might put some people off. Historians or Liberal Historians that compare President Obama to Lincoln should read this.

Wow, I knew this book was coming out and got it in the mail last week. I sat down with it the first night and ended up reading about a third of it in one sitting.

What a nice change from the usual politically correct historical mantra---what a relief! I know Larry and have read many of his books, but this new book is kind of a Schweikart "greatest hits" collection of short engaging essays. It is a perfect present for someone's bedside reading table.

Schweikart pinpoints four dozen *key* historical debates and *proves* how they have been misinterpreted and politicized in mainstream college and high school history texts (0ne of the books is assigned in my son's history class!!). This book is a scathing indictment of the modern historical profession. Schweikart proves that some (not all) contemporary historical writing is motivated by politics---its end is not the pursuit of truth but rather propagandizing a leftist perspective of American history. When Schweikart gets done surveying American history texts (he has carefully examined over twenty), one must conclude that much of what has been written in them is more folkloric than historic.

Schweikart's overarching conclusion is that, despite the "48 Liberal Lies" ubiquitous in the modern curriculum, the *truth* about American history is, by and large, a positive and uplifting story. Certainly, there have been mistakes and shameful acts, but compared to what? In the large view, the American cup is not only 'half full,' it is 3/4 full! Thank you Larry Schweikart.
Mike Allen
University of Washington, Tacoma

For the most part an accurate review of how history has been slanted in recent years. The section on Richard Nixon and on Bill Clinton was spot on. The American Indian chapter was a bit shakey and lacking in concrete facts, probably because it depended on debateable historical information. Overall, however, it reinforced a statement of one of my old college professors (c. 1953) that history must be written at least 50 years after the fact, anything else is just newscasting; and we all know how inaccurate that can be.