Free Republic

Bell: We think one of the main challenges facing America today is the growth of the so-called pro-military conservative movement. We believe the movement almost purposefully confuses people about Jeffersonian classical liberal thought and is far more challenging to the growing Misesian free-market ideology than the Democrats. Agree? Disagree? Woods: I think they're both pretty awful. I [was] one of these "the Pentagon can do no wrong" conservatives until I realized a few things: (1) the contradiction at work in my holding up this one government institution as beyond reproach; (2) the fact that government lies surrounding foreign policy are...

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel Thomas Woods and His Critics: A Review Essay Thomas E. Woods, Jr., THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY. Washington: Regnery, 2004. xvi + 270 pp. Reviewed by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Department of Economics, San Jose State University.[*] Forthcoming in the JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES. Thomas E. Woods, Jr.’s, POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY not only became a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller but also raised an amazing amount of furor, to a certain extent among the left leaning, who are the book’s bête noire and would be expected to take offense, but especially in conservative and...

It is somewhat ironic that Dr. Thomas Woods recently released How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, as its celebration of Christianity may well make it as unpopular among the intelligentsia as is The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. The latter is a directed tour of our nation’s forbidden history, and the title alone guarantees that it will never be found in any liberal arts syllabi. I finished reading it yesterday and am somewhat surprised to admit just how much it has to offer. In fact, I am now thoroughly bewildered as to the extent in which it was...

Thomas Woods, author of "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization," was online to discuss the book. [snip] Thomas Woods: Thanks to everyone for being here. I'm pleased that with relatively light publicity thus far, "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" seems to be doing rather well. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope readers profit from it. Now on to the questions.East Lansing, Mich.: I have not read your book, but the title is very presumptuous, let alone provocative. (Did you intend for it to be that way?) Many of us who are not Catholic feel that had...

The poet Robert Frost once described a liberal as someone who refuses to take his own side in an argument. He could have been speaking about all too many Catholic universities today, where you’d have about as much chance of hearing a commencement address delivered by a prominent Catholic who loves the traditional faith as you would Ted Nugent doing a public service announcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. For decades, Catholics have wondered why, on truth-in-advertising grounds alone, such institutions continue to be permitted to identify themselves as Catholic. Last week, the Archdiocese of New York...

My apologies for not bringing a should-be classic, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," to the attention of our Internet readers in a more timely fashion. What Dr. Thomas Woods does is directly confront many of the falsehoods that are weighing down Americans with boatloads (dwarfing the Mayflower) of junk knowledge. Frankly, many well-meaning people, including many educators, have been sucked into thinking things "that just ain't so." In fact, I have been divested of quite a number of things in my head. The academic world has miserably failed the public in accepting, teaching, and promoting many "clichés," to...

I first became aware of Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History when the New York Times Book Review took note of its rise on the paperback bestseller list and described it as a "neocon retelling of this nation's back story." A neocon retelling? What would that be, exactly? Curious to find out, I cracked open The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. It gets off to a slow start with a recitation of civics-text nuggets. Bet you didn't know that the Constitution "established three distinct branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — and provided...

February 06, 2005 History, but not as America knows it Sarah Baxter, New York EVERYTHING (well almost everything) you know about American history is wrong. With these provocative words, a book that turns conventional wisdom about the history of the United States on its head has caught the imagination of the country’s conservatives. According to The Politically Incorrect Guide to the History of America, a surprise bestseller, early settlers treated native Americans — whom it calls Indians — with respect, buying rather than stealing their land. President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated the slaves, was opposed to racial intermarriage and did...

My book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History has received far more attention than I ever expected. Once the book hit number eight on the New York Times bestseller list, the Times’ editorial page condemned it without actually showing where its arguments were mistaken; several weeks later, to my surprise, the Times published a favorable profile of me. The controversy surrounding the book has reached at least two other continents: Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo, with the highest circulation of any newspaper in Latin America, published a full interview with me, as did a major Catholic newspaper in Ireland....