Posted on 09/01/2013 6:16:15 PM PDT by rlmorel
I have begun reading a book recommended to me by a friend, "Bunker Hill: a City, a Siege, a Revolution", by Nathaniel Philbrick.
I am about a quarter of the way into it, and I find myself wondering why this conservative friend of mine would recommend this book to me.
I have always placed the Founders of this country on a high pedestal, and that pedestal has became more solid and pronounced the more I have learned about those men, with a few exceptions. I have always tried to view those men realistically, knowing they weren't deities, but men, and often flawed men at that. Furthermore, I have tried not to view them solely through a prism of the values some of us hold today, but have tried to view their actions in the context of the world they lived in at that time, from what I know of it.
But I do know that they placed all they had on the line, including their necks, and shepherded this country through rocky shoals that are nearly unimaginable today, and for that, I hold them in very high regard.
This book relates the time leading up to the Battle of Bunker Hill in what I see as a completely one-sided view of the founders involved in Boston to that time, as grasping, ungrateful, Machiavellian brutes. It accepts the views of the Crown and the loyalists in their totality, and impugns the men in New England including John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren (amongst others) as being so deeply unhinged by their flaws as to invalidate any claims they might have legitimately had against the crown.
John Hancock was a back-stabbing double-dealer. The author went out of the way to stress that Joseph Warren's young wife had their first child less than nine months after they were married. John Adams was psychologically unstable and unreliable. Rank and file patriots of the day made their trade completely on the assault and mistreatment of loyalists. And so on.
The view presented by this author is so completely one sided that I found myself questioning whether I understood and correctly comprehended what I was reading.
I am interesting in knowing if any other Freepers have read this book, and if so, what were their impressions of it?
As I said above, I have always tried to view those men of the American war for independence as flawed, human and fallible men, but this one seems so far to that viewpoint that I am concerned I am somehow not understanding it correctly at all.
Given what I have read to this point, it would not surprise me if the author was a far left liberal with an axe to grind against the current day Tea Party movement, and this was his way of attempting to deconstruct the foundations of this country.
I am well aware of the viewpoints that the founders had elements of ungrateful selfishness in their refusal to recognize claims that England was simply trying to extract taxes to pay for money spent by the crown in protecting the ungrateful colonials, but this author takes this as prima facie evidence that the colonials were wrong to fairly consider this aspect.
I have always felt there was a degree of truth to the Crown's motives in this their efforts to tax the colonials, but I have never accepted as wrong the stubbornness of the colonials to not accept all that was done with respect to taxation as the be all and end all of the benevolence of the crown.
Any comments on this? I intend to finish this book, but this really bothered me today.
I realized several years ago, while studying history, that the royalists never left after the revolution. It appears their descendants have been working to undermine our republic ever since and have found common cause with the European Fabian Socialists, Frankfurt School, and of course the USSR. Socialism is nothing but populist rhetoric for tyranny.
Just an excuse to bash Israel.
“I find myself wondering why this conservative friend of mine would recommend this book to me.”
maybe your friend is a closet lib and hates you.(j/k) Recommend Mark Levin’s book and ask him what he thinks of it.
I have this as one of many I have recently started. Have you read it and can you offer an opinion about it or the author?
I realized several years ago, while studying history, that the royalists never left after the revolution. It appears their descendants have been working to undermine our republic ever since and have found common cause with the European Fabian Socialists, Frankfurt School, and of course the USSR. Socialism is nothing but populist rhetoric for tyranny.
Scratch a Marxist, and you'll find an imperialist, a monarchist, a tyrannist, or a feudalist.
I doubt it's exactly that simple, but all those -isms share a set of feelings and beliefs:
• Hatred of commoners being accepted as equals by one and all.
• Hatred of commoners being allowed to determine their own fates and participate in governance.
• Bitter, deep, abiding resentment of flexible social hierarchies.
• Absolute certainty the "better" people deserve to govern one and all. There's considerable difference over the qualifications for "better" people; that in no way, however, changes the certainty.
• Hatred of open economic, religious, and intellectual markets even in the face of incontrovertible evidence of their superiority.
• Distrust and often hatred of human nature, which is always seen as base, grasping, malicious, evil, dishonest, et cetera.
I'm sure that list could be extended quite a bit, but the arthritis is giving me trouble this evening.
Oh, gosh no. That isn’t it at all...he is a real conservative across the board, and we agree on nearly all books we’ve read.
I wonder if I misunderstood him...maybe he bought it, but hasn’t yet read it, but I assumed he had (which I might, if he recommended it. Most people don’t recommend a book they haven’t written, in my experience.)
I loved Mayflower, but I read it for pleasure only. I never considered that the author may have a bias. Maybe the "NY Times Bestseller" should've been a clue for me!
The last two places I've lived have been Plymouth and Charlestown, Massachusetts, so his works hold a special interest for me.
For now, Bunker Hill is on my Amazon wish list.
Thank you in advance.
Al
I had kind of a funny experience in this vein (well, at least it was funny to me) with my introduction to Howard Zinn…
My departed mother-in-law was, in life, a major-league liberal. She was a community organizer type of liberal. Now, I didn’t know this about her before I married my wife, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to me.
As the years went on, both my viewpoints and her viewpoints became known to each of us… and we entered a phase where she would say things deliberately to get a response out of me (or to see if I would just sit and say nothing)
Needless to say, I wasn’t about to sit and get baited by my mother-in-law, so I gave back in like kind when she initiated something. This went on for a relatively short period of time, then we kind of came to a mutual understanding. Neither one of us said a thing, but the understanding was there nonetheless that we would keep the peace by keeping our tongue. Not to say she wouldn’t occasionally poke at me (or me at her) but after that, that was pretty much all it was. I was kind of got the impression she was doing it just to see if I would stand up for myself.
In any case, I received a Christmas present from her one particular year. She knew that I was a history buff, and I read history prodigiously, so it was no surprise to me when I opened one of her Christmas presents and saw a history book. It was a fairly good-sized glossy volume, and I figured I’d put my feet up when I got home and begin reading.
When I got home, I opened the book up and began reading. At first, I was puzzled. “What the heck is this?” I read little bit further, and got even more perplexed. “What the hell kind of book is this?” I thought to myself.
I immediately begin skipping through the book, preferentially stopping in key areas in American history. As I reached each section, I would read sometimes only a sentence, or occasionally a paragraph. After I had been through multiple sections in this manner, I stood up angrily and exclaimed “screw this piece of crap!”
I walked out in the garage and through the book in the trash.
The name of the book was “The People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn.
I was appalled. I had never seen a history book quite like that one. I was even more disturbed to find out later that this was an actual textbook used in public school classrooms all over the country. I’m still appalled at that thought.
In retrospect, it popped into my mind almost immediately as I was throwing the book in the trash, that this was perhaps my mother-in-law poking her finger in my eye. After a few more seconds of contemplation, I guessed that was not the case.
Knowing how my mother-in-law shops, particularly for Christmas presents, this book was almost undoubtedly on the bargain bookshelf at the front of the Borders bookstore when she walked in. I’d be willing to bet that she didn’t pay more than a few dollars for, because I doubt you could find it inside the store at regular price.
So, every time I hear the name Howard Zinn, I think of the anti-American far left political screed that was his book, that I had the pleasure to throw into a garbage can.
I’m glad I looked for a ping to Larry before doing the same. Bump for the thread.
Zinn Ping.
Your review of the book here is interesting. Apparently history is no longer taught in many of our high schools. I was watching the teen tournament on Jeapordy last week and the 3 finalists knew nothing about General (President) Eisenhower. This book sounds like another re-writing of history by the liberals.
I will.
I don’t believe I am being unduly influenced by the author’s personal views (Whatever they are, but...if what I think I am reading is right, I have a good idea what those are...)
My only experience with this author is from reading his book “In The Heart of the Sea” about the whale ship Essex.
As an aside, I first heard about the Essex when I visited the Nantucket Whaling Museum some 25 years ago and bought the “Narratives of the Wreck of the Whaleship Essex”.
It was dry reading to me at the time, and I thought this author Philbrick told the story very well, far better than the stilted (to me) telling of the story by the survivors (or at least the accounts they related)
My God. You aren’t kidding there, are you?
Few things irritate me like people who trash the Founders. They’ll cheerfully tell anyone that Washington owned slaves, Jefferson slept with slaves, whatever knocks a Founder off the pedestal and gives the critic a chance to sound sophisticated and well-read.
When I hear such things I’m as thorough and merciless as a wood chipper.
Thank you for the warning. Too bad Philbrick didn’t stick to Nantucket history, and even there he wasn’t the best to be read. :(
No. I can't remember the exact final Jeopardy question, but it referred to a quote from a military officer on the date of the Normandy invasion.
Just as I suspected ping
It sounds like the supermarket tabloid culture to me, but that’s not a new thing either — there were ancient authors, some of whose work survives, that recorded scurrilous fables about the high and mighty.
John Adams was a bona fide nut, but he also played a vital role in organizing the Revolution; he defended the British soldiers tried for the Boston Massacre; and perhaps most importantly, took on the most difficult job of the era, perhaps of all time — he followed George Washington as POTUS. That’s not the only reason he had just one term, or why his presidency suffers in comparison with both Washington and Jefferson who followed Adams, but it was one reason.
Today’s liberals are the descendants of the Revolution’s loyalists.
I would agree with that. A valid comparison, fraught with meaning.
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