Virtue Magazine

“This [book] tells you what really happened—not what liberals wish had happened.”*

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and I was sitting in Morris Hall, Room 212, waiting for my 2 p.m. U.S. History class to start. The few other students who had decided to show up at that day were also waiting, and some of us were talking about what we wanted to study in the future.

The student next to me loved history, she said, but she wasn’t particularly interested in U.S. history.

“It’s just a bunch of oppression and crap,” the student explained. She was more interested in studying the history of African tribes and other cultures that were apparently perfect until Europeans “messed everything up” through colonization.

I didn’t say anything, but perhaps I should have. This student’s attitude towards U.S. history and culture seems to be alarmingly common among Americans today, and if the U.S. History class I’m taking is the norm among schools, it’s easy to see why.

Inordinate time is spent on the victimization of Native Americans, women and slaves, while events like the Revolutionary War are literally barely covered. When the Civil War or related events are discussed, they’re done so through decidedly liberal-tinted glasses. As humor columnist Dave Barry once noted: “I’m a middle age white guy, which means I’m constantly reminded that my particular group is responsible for the oppression of every known minority PLUS most wars PLUS government corruption PLUS pollution of the environment, not to mention that it was middle-age white guys who killed Bambi’s mom.”

Barry’s exaggerating a little, but not as much as one might think. As a result, we have brainwashed students dismissing the rich history of our country as being nothing but “a bunch of oppression and crap.”

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. tries to battle similar misconceptions in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. The title may sound a bit silly but the content is decidedly serious in nature, as Woods provides an outstanding survey of American history in an easy to understand manner.

Woods doesn’t necessarily deal with issues like the treatment of slaves, although the author has a chapter on the treatment of Indians. Woods does, however, spend a great deal of time addressing a number of other harmful misconceptions (or flat out lies) in convincing fashion: The Second Amendment was not meant only to protect the right of states to maintain militias, as the ACLU and others claim. The phrase “general welfare” in the Constitution was not intended by the Founding Fathers to allow anything near what we see today. The 14th Amendment is an embarrassment that was unlawfully ratified and today allows the government to freely encroach on states’ rights.

More importantly, Woods addresses common misconceptions about the Civil War, the role of the south in the war, and World Wars I and II.

He says there technically was no civil war, since a “civil war” refers to factions fighting for control of a nation’s government. The war that did take place, more accurately referred to as the “War for Southern Independence,” was certainly not fought to end southern slavery, and the southern states had the right to secede peacefully as they did. (Woods quotes U.S. Grant, the most famous and successful of the Union generals, as saying: “If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side.” Grant was a slaveholder until the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.)

Woods argues the United States should never have gotten involved in either of the world wars, but did so because of the dishonest actions of presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. While publicly arguing for neutrality, Wilson was privately doing everything possible to get the U.S. into WWI, including making unreasonable, outrageous demands of Germany that eventually led his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, to resign in protest. Germany tried to make major concessions to Wilson while struggling to deal with a starvation blockade from the British. Wilson would have no part of it though; the president eventually had merchant ships armed with navy guns and crews and ordered them to fire on any submarines when in the war zone. When Germany sunk four such ships, Wilson had what he needed to ask for a declaration of war.

FDR made similar attempts to get the U.S. involved in WWII, writes Woods. Roosevelt essentially goaded the Japanese into attacking America, freezing Japanese assets and cutting off oil shipments to Japan while refusing to negotiate with the nation despite the pleas of his American ambassador, Joseph Grew. Secretary of War Henry Stimson even wrote in his diary two weeks before Dec. 7, 1941, that the U.S. needed “to maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.”

Ultimately, the The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is a wonderful read filled with entertaining and not-so-entertaining sidebars. (One quote from Roosevelt: “Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer … can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?” That FDR, he was truly one of America’s greatest presidents!)

Reading Woods’ excellent book made me realize the student sitting next to me in that history class was right – American history is filled with a lot of “oppression.” Just not the type she probably had in mind.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
270 pages
Published in 2004 by Regnery

5 stars (out of 5)

*Quote from the book jacket