My series of blog posts on myths that American conservatives believe is now twelve years old, dating to this 2014 post of untruths told about Obamacare. It's been my experience that conservatives live largely in a bubble that cannot be penetrated by facts and what facts mean. President Trump and other Republican leaders still consider climate change to be "hoax" even as scientists agree that industrial pollutants will cause enough global warming to raise sea levels enough to inundate the entire southern third of Florida within the lifetimes of today's young adults.
Are American liberals also guilty of believing myths to support their worldview? At least occasionally, yes. For example, I've been told by many Bernie Sanders supporters that the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination was rigged and stolen for Hillary Clinton. That is false. But in my estimation conservatives are orders of magnitude more likely than liberals to believe and espouse a lot of comforting dogma that can be disproven by objective reality.
But what if I'm wrong? What if liberal pundits and historians are actually as prone to believing and propagating lie as conservatives are? To find out more, let's consider the 2008 book, 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School) by Professor Larry Schweikart. The premise of this book is explained by the title.
First some context. Two of the most influential history books written in recent decades are Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. A People's History is an outstanding text on American history that focus less on our traditional elite heroes and more on the struggles of America's marginalized groups - women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. In Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen concludes that American history textbooks commonly propagate false, Eurocentric, and mythologized views of American history. For example, Loewen notes that history textbooks typically include hundreds of words on Christopher Columbus. Putting aside that these textbooks often have the facts wrong regarding what Columbus was trying to and did or did not accomplish, Loewen deconstructs how strange it is that Columbus is usually described in heroic terms when actually his "discoveries" were not particularly significant and his chief legacy is the genocide of the indigenous people he encountered.
Larry Schweikart has published a series of books essentially waging a one-author campaign against both Zinn and Loewen. In 2004, Schweikart co-wrote a direct counter-point to Zinn titled, A Patriot's History of the United States. I have not read this book, but I understand it was written to emphasize that the history of America shows it to be a force of good in the world while minimalizing the bad things America has done. Some people believe that a lot of unquestioning, nationalistic flag-waving make a person a "patriot".
48 Liberal Lies is then Schweikart's answer to Loewen. From his point of view, America's history textbooks have not erred in overemphasizing the contributions of our white male heroes at the expense of everyone else. On the contrary, Schweikart believes that textbooks are full of liberal nonsense and flat-out untruths.
I'll cut to the chase right now: Spoiler alert! 48 Liberal Lies is a terrible book for two reasons:
First, virtually none of this book's 48 chapters, or "lies" supports the book's premise that American history textbooks and/or books commonly assigned to students in history classes contain misstatements of fact or specious reasoning written from a liberal point of view.
Second, as we will see, the scholarship in this book is atrocious. The liar here is Schweikart himself.
I'm not going to comment on all 48 "lies". But I do want to discuss many of them. Most of the 48 fall into one of two categories:
One: Straw man arguments: Things that are not true, but not things that liberals believe and that do not appear in books taught in school.
Two: Schweikart's terrible scholarship and/or refusal to see objective reality. The "lie" is actually true.
First, let's look at some of the straw man arguments. The most representative example is:
#3 FDR knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1999, a man named Robert Stinnett wrote a poorly-researched book called Day of Deceit that suggested that President Roosevelt was secretly aware of Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Serious historians found Stinnett's claims to be baseless and the book is now more or less forgotten. In no way does Day of Deceit qualify as a liberal lie and it certainly has never been taught in American schools.
Some of the other straw men in the book:
#10 September 11 was not the work of terrorists: It was a government conspiracy.
This is not something that liberal historians argue, and Schweikart does not cite any who do. He does cite actor Charlie Sheen, who is certainly not a historian, or even liberal as far as I know. Schweikart mentions Hillary Clinton discussing the fact that President Bush had been warned of possible terrorist attack. But that of course does not suggest that 9/11 was not the work of terrorists or that it was any kind of conspiracy, it merely suggests that Bush was incompetent.
#12 The founders envisioned a "wall of separation" between church and state, keeping religious influence out of government.
Did the founders envision a wall of separation between church and state? Yes, and they said so quite clearly in the first amendment to the Constitution. The founders did not however mean to keep all religious influence out of government, and Schweikart doesn't cite historians who claim they did. Schweikart also goes on a bunch of weird tangents about how much state-sponsored religion there was in colonial America. Are the Puritans of 17th century Massachusetts now considered part of "the founders" of the United States? Because that would be news to me.
#14 Women had no rights in early America.
No historian, liberal or otherwise has even made this claim to my knowledge, and surprise surprise, Schweikart doesn't cite any.
#15 Restrictions on the right to vote kept voter participation low.
This is another one where I'm not sure where Schweikart is coming from. Yes, in the days of Andrew Jackson most white males Americans did vote. Virtually all other Americans were not allowed to vote. I've never seen anyone suggest otherwise.
#16 Prohibition was unpopular from the beginning and failed in all its objectives.
The laws making alcohol illegal were quite popular when first passed, even among people who ignored them and continued to drink. And a least for a while, consumption of alcohol declined. Another example where no historians, liberal or otherwise, are making the argument Schweikart suggests they are making.
#19 The Rosenbergs were not spies and were wrongfully executed.
Schweikart actually begins this chapter with two quotes from other authors that admit Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty of espionage on behalf of the USSR. So... not a lie then? The real substance of this particular chapter is the claim that yes, despite some gross violations of the Rosenbergs' rights by the government the two really did provide significant intelligence to the Soviet Union and thus deserved to die. Schweikart doesn't bother to mention that according to Julius's Soviet contact, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."
#24 Abraham Lincoln only freed the slaves to beef up his troop strength.
Again, no historian is making this suggestion, and Schweikart does not cite any. Lincoln freed the slaves for moral reasons, to gain favor with other countries, to deprive the south of labor and for troop recruitment. Nothing is particularly controversial about this.
Note this chapter includes some of the worst scholarship in book. Schweikart writes, "A largely forgotten fact of the Civil War is that a large number of free blacks and slaves served in the Confederate Army, with slaves promised their freedom in exchange for service. Some fought because the South was there home, even if as slaves." "A handful actually did see combat."
Some free blacks took jobs as laborers and musicians with the Confederate Army. There men were not enlisted "in the Army". Many masters brought their slaves with them when they went to war. There was no policy of promising slaves freedom "for service". The idea that some slaves were eager to defend the Confederacy is ridiculous. The Confederacy only made it legal for free blacks to join the army one month before the war ended. Only a few joined, and no black Confederate unit ever saw combat.
#32 The news media is objective, fair, and balanced - and always has been.
Even the most casual fan of American history has heard of "yellow journalism" and the era of hyper-partisan newspapers like the Hearst network. And no reasonable person would suggest Fox News is objective, fair or and balanced. One more time - it's not a "liberal lie" if no liberals or anyone else is making the claim.
Category Two: Schweikart Has the Facts Wrong And/Or Simply Makes No Sense
#2 The Mexican and Spanish-American wars were imperialist efforts drummed up by "corporate interests".
According to Schweikart, since the US only kept half of Mexico after the 1846 war, and because the US allowed a puppet government to exist in Cuba while we occupied it militarily, and because we granted the Philippines independence only five decades after conquering it, the United States cannot be said to have have imperialist ambitions.
#6 Richard Nixon expanded the Vietnam War.
Schweikart admits that Nixon increased the bombing of North Vietnam while invading neutral Cambodia. So... doesn't that mean Nixon expanded the war? No, according to Schweikart, because Nixon eventually withdrew from Vietnam when forced by Congress. Also I believe that Schweikart is the first person I've ever seen who described our hopeless quagmire as, "very nearly won on the battlefield" as of 1969.
#8 Ronald Reagan knew Star Wars wouldn't work but wanted to provoke a war with the USSR
Schweikart begins this chapter by saying, "Probably no lie is taken for granted more in college textbooks than the notion that "Star Wars won't work."" But that is not a lie. The SDI "Star Wars" program was always a pipe dream. The United States did not develop a program of space-based, laser-firing weapons platforms. Here Schweikart makes the oh-so-clever argument that because decades later the US developed land-based missile defense systems, Star Wars did work.
#18 Senator Joseph McCarthy concocted the "Red Scare" and there was nothing to fear from communist subversives.
This one might belong more in the straw man category. No one argues that McCarthy invented the Red Scare witch hunts or that Soviet spies were not a serious threat to America's nuclear program. But according to Schweikart, it is an, "absurd lie that McCarthy never exposed a real communist in government." Consider, Schweikart says, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney, Edward Posniak, John Carter Vincent and Owen Lattimore. The truth is that McCarthy uncovered none of those people as communists. Duran, Keeney and Lattimore had been identified years before McCarthy came on the scene and his charges against Posniak and Vincent were never substantiated.
If one asks Google AI, "McCarthy never exposed a communist", the answer summarizes what really happened quite well: "Historical consensus strongly supports the claim that Senator Joseph McCarthy never successfully exposed a real communist or Soviet spy. During the "Red Scare," his sweeping accusations ruined innocent lives without producing any credible evidence of subversion within the U.S. government." "Senator McCarthy rocketed to national fame in February 1950 by claiming he had a list of 205 "known communists" working in the State Department. He constantly changed the number of names on his lists and never produced legitimate proof to the press or the Senate. The Senate eventually formed the Tydings Committee to investigate, which formally concluded that McCarthy's accusations were a "fraud and a hoax"."
#21 Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians.
In other chapters Schweikart strikes me as merely wrong, but here he seems to be dishonest. He begins by selectively quoting Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. "Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people... When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain... [the census] of Indian adults in 1496 [was] 1,000,000." Schweikart then uses this quote to attack Loewen, calling his work "drivel" and mocking the idea that Columbus' crew of fewer than 1,000 men, "could kill seven million people in three years."
Loewen of course never makes such a suggestion. Here's what he actually wrote: "Estimates of Haiti’s pre-Columbian population range as high as eight million people. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1.1 million. The Spanish did not count children under fourteen and could not count Arawaks who had escaped in the mountains. Kirkpatrick Sale estimates that a more accurate total would probably be in the neighborhood of three million. "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than two hundred full-blooded Haitian Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone."
In other words, Loewen suggests that at the time of Columbus' arrival there was a population of three million or more indigenous persons in Haiti. Thanks to the genocidal policies of the Spaniards, combined, no doubt, with the spread of European diseases, that population of three million was exterminated withing six decades. So it's true that Columbus was responsible for killing millions of indigenous people.
#22 The Early Colonies were intolerant and racist.
Given that America's early colonies imported slaves from both Africa and Caribbean nations, and that they considered Native Americans to be ignorant savages to be excluded from white society, is it not reasonable to suggest that those colonists were intolerant and racist? No, says Schweikart, "the colonists were remarkably tolerant of the natives, where virtually any other kingdom or empires - Mongols or Muslims come to mind- would have simply wiped them out completely our subjugated them." So apparently nothing short of killing or enslaving an entire populace is "intolerant and racist".
#30 George W. Bush was selected, not elected, in 2000, and votes were stolen on his behalf.
Schweikart has a lot to say about the 2000 Presidential election, but never gets to the substance of the argument being made by those who know that more ballots were cast for Gore. Unfortunately, rumors had circulated before the election in minority communities that voters should mark their ballot for Al Gore and also write in his name on the write in line. These votes were thrown as as "overvotes". Studies show that Gore likely would have won a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes.
#33 Native Americans were great environmentalists, while white settlers destroyed the buffalo.
In the 19th century, Euro-American expansion and industrial-scale commercial hunting decimated the American bison population. An estimated 30-50 million buffalo were reduced to just a few hundred wild survivors by the late 1880s. This is not controversial among historians, and is thus not a "liberal lie." Schweikart tries to support his position here with the baseless claim that the Indians would have eventually killed off the buffalo themselves.
#35 The "robber barons" pillaged the land and destroyed the environment.
As this book goes on, the chapters become less discussions on history and more a lot of political ranting. Here Schweikart argues that it's just fine for Americans to live unsustainably, because we're so darn productive. He again attack James Loewen, this time for Loewen's concern regarding Americans' overconsumption of resources as Loewen writes, "we can only hope other nations will never achieve our standard of living, for if they did, the earth would become a desert." Schweikart argues that poorer nations, "need us to export more capitalism to them." He never explains how the world is supposed to survive further adoption of America's unsustainable practices.
#36 Federal regulators have protected the public's health by identifying harmful products.
The Food and Drug Administration has protected the public health by banning many chemicals, dyes and other substances known to cause cancer or to otherwise by highly toxic. This is inarguable. So where's Schweikart coming from here? He cherry-picks a few old cases where the FDA did something controversial and call them over-zealous.
#37 Global warming is a fact, and it's a man-made, American-driven problem.
When this book was written almost 20 years ago, there where still a few studies being talked about that suggested causes for global warming other than greenhouse gases released by industrial sources. Today that is no longer the case. In this chapter Schweikart grasps at any straw he can, citing a 1991 study from the Danish National Space Center, which suggested that solar activity is the main forcing agent in global climate change. Numerous leading experts have concluded that the work of the authors of that study (Friis-Christensen and Svensmark) showing apparent correlations between global warming, sunspots and cosmic rays was deeply flawed. 35 years later, no study is making any similar claim.
#43 The income tax was created to make the rich pay their fair share, and tax cuts only benefit upper-income Americans.
and
#47 The Reagan tax cuts caused massive deficits and the national debt.
The real purpose of chapter #43 is for Schweikart to show off his worship of Ronald Reagan. He says, "Tax cuts always yield more revenue from the wealthiest groups," and "for those obsessed with Reagan-era "deficits," they certainly did not come from the tax cuts." That is wrong. Federal revenue as a percentage of GDP rose under President Carter, reaching 21% in 1981. Under Reagan federal revenue as a percentage of GDP fell substantially, and did not reach 21% again until the Clinton years.
In #47, Schweikart makes a number of false claims:
1. "What caused the deficits? The Democratic Congress, with its pork-barrel spending." Republicans controlled the Senate all but the last 2 years of Reagan's presidency. Reagan was all for increasing federal spending and growing the federal government; he never saw an expensive defense program he didn't like. And he did not veto congressional spending.
2. "The tax cuts generated the most remarkable boom in American history." What boom? Under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the economy grew at more than 5% per year. Under Reagan, it grew 3.6% per year, barely exceeding the anemic growth of the Carter years. And in the 4 years after Reagan left office, it grew at only 1.9%. Job growth under Reagan was actually worse than under Carter.
#44 Business failure and tax cuts combined to cause the Great Depression.
This chapter is interesting in that it discusses a number of things that contributed to the Great Depression, but then we get to the big rant attacking the New Deal at the end.
1. "The public hoopla of "jobs programs" barely dented the unemployment numbers." Unemployment fell from 25% to 10% during FDR's first two terms. That's "barely a dent"?
2. "Modern economists are almost unanimous that the New Deal programs hindered recovery." This claim is definitely false, although economists are divided on the issue.
3. "State bank deposit laws, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, actually contributed to bank weakness in the 1930s." This is nonsense. Federal Deposit insurance was created in 1934. During the first 4 years of the depression, 9000 banks failed, representing more than one-quarter of the banks in the US. In the year following creation of the FDIC, only 9 failed.
#45 LBJ's Great Society had a positive impact on the poor
Schweikart claims that between 1961 and 1977, "there was no appreciable change in the poverty level." That is false. Federal welfare as we know it is generally understood to have begun with President Kennedy's New Frontier program in 1961 and to have continued with President Johnson's Great Society, or the "war on poverty". These were a series of comprehensive programs to create jobs, improve education and build the country's infrastructure. Under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the poverty rate fell from 23% to 12%. And even as the poverty rate stagnated in the 1970s (and federal welfare programs were curtailed) the minority high school graduated rate continued to climb.
#48 Alger Hiss was innocent
State Department Alger Hiss was innocent of spying for the Soviet Union, and Schweikart provides nothing to prove the contrary but the same illogical, unprovable accusations that have been the basis of the charges against Hiss for most of a century.
But finally... Schweikart gets one right:
#27 Richard Nixon sent burglars into the Watergate Office Complex
Schweikart quotes two authors who write that President Nixon authorized the Watergate break in. That is false. To this day, no one knows who in the White House thought up the Watergate break in. Attorney General John Mitchell authorized it.
Congratulations, Mr. Schweikart. You went 1 for 48.
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