Posted on 08/04/2007 10:19:48 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
A review of 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed To Ask
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Crown Forum, New York, 2007
"History has many cunning passages..."
T.S. Eliot, Gerontion, (1920).
History is a supremely complex discipline. Take, for example, the following "philosophically pregnant" description of the historical process provided by the erudite, Dr. Eric Voegelin:
"The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it, is not the story to be told from beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation."
Another truth about history is that it's very pliable. History is used by all sorts of people, organizations, and government entities to justify any number of ideologies, ordinances, and belief systems. Just juggle a few facts here, emphasis a statement there, ignore one or two events and bingo-bango you've got propaganda, mind control, and "Newspeak." Which is pretty much where we are.
Another truth is that there are a large number of Americans who could care less about their country's history. However, we'll concentrate on those Americans who have some interest in American history; we'll identify them as "good Americans."
Now "good Americans" like their history untainted by political propaganda, they like it straight up, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale. They "can handle the truth!"
The problem is that there are darn few historians running about who aren't of the "progressive" stripe, a requirement that, for the anointed, has the serendipitous effect of guaranteeing interviews on PBS (pibbs), the right to exchange bloviations with Larry King, or to sit opposite the Queen of Daytime Talk, Ms. Winfrey. Yes, sir, you must spout the party line if you want a fast track to tenure, which goes a long way toward explaining why so many "historians" lean to the left.
Consequently, when you stumble upon an objective historian, with pronounced analytical skills, who can write with clarity, panache, and precision then the "good American" must read his work. One such historian is Tom Woods.
Thomas E. Woods Jr. is the author of the New York Times "bestseller" The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Woods took his B.A. in history from Harvard and his M.A. an M. Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He also wrote several other books including How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, as well as innumerable essays. He's an editor with The American Conservative magazine and he's won the Templeton Enterprise Award, the O.P. Alford III Prize for Libertarian Scholarship, and an Olive W. Garvey Fellowship from the Independent Institute. He's currently a fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama.
Dr. Woods's latest book is titled: 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask.
"This book...poses 33 questions about American history,"
Woods tells us in his introduction,
"for which the typical answers are either misleading, grossly unsatisfactory, or clearly and demonstrably wrong. Worse than the standard answers to these questions is that many of them are simply never raised in the first place, since they may give rise to forbidden thoughts that run counter to established opinion."
I will guarantee you that Woods's book will give the reader a whole lot of "forbidden thoughts" about our shared history. Now, the previous sentence is a "lead in," and I'm duty-bound to present the reader with some examples of Woods's politically incorrect violations. The problem is I really have to save the juicy ones for the book. You see it wouldn't be fair to Dr. Woods to detail certain "chapters;" for example, What Was the Biggest Unknown Scandal of the Clinton Years (hint: it wasn't body fluids on any dress)? Or, How Does Social Security Really Work (warning: if you're over 55 please have a box of Kleenex available for this one)? Or, a really, really, good one for those of you who refer to the "civil war" as the War Between the States, or The War for Southern Independence, or the War of Northern Aggression is Was the Civil War All About Slavery, or Was Something Else At Stake?
But we can take a quick peak at a really, really good example titled: Who is Most Responsible for The "Imperial Presidency?" Now, I know that there are Republican Party stalwarts reading this who are salivating over the prospects that Woods names Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson. And, if you did, you'd be wrong. No siree, Tom Woods says it was good old Teddy Roosevelt, he of the beloved Rough Riders, who Woods implies should have been the first recipient of a Ritalin prescription.
Now before you get excited about Woods picking on the Republicans lets take a quick look at Teddy. First of all that handsome, cigar smoking, teller-of-tales, Mark Twain met with Teddy twice and "declared him ‘clearly insane,'" which, coming from a man who consistently exhibited a certain discernment in his literary efforts, cannot be construed to be approbation.
Dr. Woods also informs his readers that (1) at the age of twenty Teddy had a fight with his girlfriend, came home and shot and killed the neighbor's dog. (2) Upon shooting and killing his first buffalo - PETA members please don't read any further - he "abandoned himself to complete hysteria...." And "as historian Edmund Morris put it, ‘whooping and shrieking while his guide watched in stolid amazement.'" And, (3) for the proverbial kicker Woods adds, "His reaction was similar in 1898 when he killed his first Spaniard." Oh, and by the way Dr. Woods cites the Spaniard killing incident in Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979). Dr. Woods's book is full of citations.
To give you an indication of Teddy's state of mind, during the United Mine Workers strike of 1902, when questioned by House Republican Whip James E. Watson regarding the constitutionality of sending federal troops in to operate the mines, Teddy responded, "The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution," a comment that would surely warm the heart of Howard Zinn.
And, as Woods informs his readers, it was the beloved Teddy "who pioneered rule by executive order as a governing style among American chief executives." And, it was Teddy, who in his dealings with the Dominican Republic in 1905 over possible debt collection by various European nations, that "converted the executive agreement into a major instrument of American foreign policy."
In concluding this chapter on the founding of the imperial presidency Woods tells us that conservatives groused about Teddy's unconstitutional usurpation "during the Progressive Era." He tells us that "William Howard Taft, a man of sober disposition who was much more at home on the Supreme Court than he ever was as president, vainly warned of this growth in presidential power and of the great difficulty in keeping that power restrained once unleashed. Nobody was listening."
Woods is right, of course, nobody was listening, or cared enough to do anything. Heck, they even carved his head on a mountain in the Dakota badlands. Hello!
Tom Woods's book has a sad irony to it. In his conclusion he writes,
"You almost have to give the architects of this system credit for the cleverness of the racket they have going: the same group of people who hold a monopoly on the power to tax and the power to initiate force also wield an effective monopoly on the power to educate future generations of Americans."
It is, of course, our children and grandchildren who are unwitting subjects of the apologias for the state elite.
"For this reason alone, the state's official version of history, which is always and everywhere another such apologia on behalf of itself, deserves not the benefit of the doubt but an abiding and informed skepticism. No free people ever survived on a consistent diet of official propaganda. Hayek was right: how we understand the past dramatically influences how we view the present. That is why, for the sake of American freedom, there should be no questions about American history you're not supposed to ask."
Tom Woods's book will disabuse those Americans who are naïve enough to think that they live under the protections guaranteed in the old Constitution. Those protections are long gone, replaced by a pernicious democratic socialism that more closely reflects the dystopian horror of George Orwell rather then the federated republic of George Washington.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tom Woods is a gifted scholar determined to bring a true and accurate rendering of American history before the public. Buy his book, read it, then join him in his efforts to restore the old republic.
Might be interesting to note commentary on history by FReepers. Maybe the Pres would like to drop by.
Here are the question this book purports to answer based on the author’s study of research made by historical scholars :
— Did the Founding Fathers support immigration?
— Did Martin Luther King Jr. oppose affirmative action?
— Were the American indians really environmentalists?
— Were states’ rights just code words for slavery and oppression?
— What was “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years”?
— How wild was the “wild West”?
— How antiwar have American liberals really been over the years?
— Did the Iroquois Indians influence the United States Constitution?
— Did desegregation of schools significantly narrow the black-white educational achievement gap?
— Was the Civil War all about slavery, or was something else at stake as well?
— Can the President, on his own authority, send troops anywhere in the world he wants?
— Is it true that during World War II “Americans never had it so good”?
— How does Social Security really work?
— Was George Washington Carver really one of America’s greatest scientific geniuses?
— Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document that changes with the times?
— Did Indian wisdom help the Pilgrims grow corn?
— Who is most responsible for the “imperial presidency”?
— Is discrimination to blame for racial differences in income and job placement?
— Where did Thomas Jefferson’s radical states’ rights ideas come from?
— What really happened in the Whiskey Rebellion, and why will neither your textbook nor George Washington tell you?
— What made American wages rise? (hint: it wasn’t unions or the government)
— Did capitalism cause the Great Depression?
— Did Herbert Hoover sit back and do nothing during the Great Depression?
— Did Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal lift the United States out of the Depression?
— Does the Constitution’s commerce clause really grant the federal government the power to regulate all gainful activity?
— Does the Constitution authorize the federal government to do whatever it thinks will provide for the “general welfare” of Americans?
— Does the Constitution really contain an “elastic clause” that gives the federal government additional, unspecified powers?
— Did the Founding Fathers believe juries could refuse to enforce unjust laws?
— What do foreign-aid programs have to show for themselves?
— Did labor unions make Americans more free?
— Should Americans care about historians’ rankings of the presidents?
— Who was S.B. Fuller?
— Did Bill Clinton really stop a genocide in Kosovo?
intersting question and not answered correctly in public skrewls... :)
The post says Woods wrote a book on “How the Catholic Church” built Western civilization. I would ask: Which Catholic Church? The Eastern or the Western?
Most of these questions are fallacious in form and content. Asking proper historical questions is nearly an art with few practitioners, of which the author is apparently not one.
Good Afternoon, RightWhale... could you elaborate more on your post. How does one go about asking historical questions?
Tom Woods wrote a book. Who actually wrote this article reviewing his book? For that person, a remedial punctuation class is in order.
“How does Social Security really work?”
The real, and invariably more interesting question ought to be:
What Federal law compels/requires/mandates the ordinary citizen participate (via wihholding) in the Social Security benefits program?
Aside from asking what date somebody was born, it is nearly impossible to ask a valid historical question. Start with that. Charles Beard asked if the Founding Fathers of the second Constitution, 1787, the present Federal Constitution, had personal financial interests in that Constitution. That might be a valid question, but whether he was able to show the answer one way or another is still being debated. Most of the questions in this list are examples of one historical fallacy or another. It is nearly impossible to avoid historical fallacy, so perhaps there are no valid historical questions.
Piffle.
Here are a few:
What year did Columbus leave Spain for the New World?
What year was the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution ratified?
When did the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor take place?
There are three.
Charles Beard asked if the Founding Fathers of the second Constitution, 1787, the present Federal Constitution, had personal financial interests in that Constitution
Of course they did. The entire country had a personal financial interest in the document.
The only people actually interested in 'debating' such a silly question are over educated history professors.
L
Geez. So many choices! (But it wasn't Whitewater or Monica which were smokescreens for many others.)
ML/NJ
I looked at the website, but couldn't find a name.
For that person, a remedial punctuation class is in order.
Maybe that's why the author remained anonymous.
I read the “Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” and it was excellent.
F
"He was in a skirmish once at San Juan Hill, and he got so much moonshine glory out of it that he has never been able to stop talking about it since. I remember that at a small luncheon party at Brander Matthews' home once, he dragged San Juan Hill in three or four times, in spite of all attempts of the judicious to abolish the subject and introduce an interesting one in its place. I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war in which he can spectacularly perform as chief general and chief admiral, and go down in history as the only monarch of modern times who has served both offices at the same time."
"Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance to show off; in his frenzied imagination the Great Republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown and the whole world for audience; he would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off, and he would go to hell for a whole one."
- link
The problem would be the answer I come up with. Did I ignore sources? Did I interpret a source correctly? Did I start to answer the question from the correct context or point in history? Did I leave out a variable because it would change my conclusion, etc? Do I have all the facts, or am I missing something?
To me, Beard's question is a valid one. The problem, as you describe it, is the answer. Just because the answer might be disputed doesn't mean the question is not valid.
Ping for later read/reference. Good thread!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.