"this looks promising" Topic

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"America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic."

Being compared to Bailyn and Wood is high praise.

Nonsense! The New York Times has already explained that the AWI was fought to preserve and expand slavery. To believe anything else proves one to be a member of the radical right. You might as well claim there was a famine in the Ukraine.

or a holocaust in Cambodia.

everyone clearly knows that every single thing the United States has ever done is nothing but pure evil !!

Seriously, if you have kids who are being taught that, get them to read Bill McClay's LAND OF HOPE. And their parents to read the TEACHERS GUIDE by McClay and myself. Honest history well told, from a patriot's perspective.

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In fact, the epilogue is on "the shape of American patriotism." Not "blood and soil," but also not allegiance to certain universal ideas. Instead, the basis of our patriotism is the memory of shared experiences. Our history itself. The best text is a visit to Valley Forge or Gettysburg. or Arlington. Attacking that memory attacks the nation.

Nonsense! The New York Times has already explained that the AWI was fought to preserve and expand slavery. To believe anything else proves one to be a member of the radical right. You might as well claim there was a famine in the Ukraine

This is inaccurate. The Times printed an explanation and correction some time ago:

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Now the Times admits: Her obsession bested her reason.

Words for all of us to keep in mind.

MP, yes, thanks. Now watch and see how many schools use it anyway.

I'd seen the Heritage piece. The Newspaper of Record refuses to tell me anything: the link won't work without money or my e-mail. Last time I checked, they'd hedged the original text, but weren't willing to talk about it--or even admit they'd changed the text. And they were still claiming (as a "correction") that "many" revolutionaries had taken up arms in defense of slavery, though no one has been able to produce a single name.

MP, whatever it might have been in 1960, the New York Times is no longer a trustworthy source of information. It deserves far more mockery than I can provide. And to say they have hedged slightly later--and invented excuses for themselves--hardly makes the criticism "inaccurate."

Duranty. Holodomor. NY Times. Pulitzer.

MP, yes, thanks. Now watch and see how many schools use it anyway.

Well, that's the price of losing to the Marxists.

Not the only nor lowest price.

"MP, whatever it might have been in 1960, the New York Times is no longer a trustworthy source of information. It deserves far more mockery than I can provide. And to say they have hedged slightly later--and invented excuses for themselves--hardly makes the criticism "inaccurate."

It never has been a trustworthy news source. link

'Marxists.' Did I miss something?

I dont read the NY Times but I am also not subject to the intense propaganda perpetuated about it. If you dont read it and you have an intense aversion to it, you must consider whether you are the victim of someone's "agenda".

The apparent Wilfred M. McClay quote by doc mcb seems to suggest that:

1. We need unassailable heroes in our past which justifies pretending they didn't do anything unsavory.

2. Questioning tradition is heresy because not only do words matter but they are a threat to existence and status quo.

3. Our solid heroes and ideals are so weak that they cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny and thus we will reinvent "patriotism" as a kind of mindless, lemming-like populism.

MP, none of your three objections is even close to being accurate. Which you would know if you read the book.

OK, I am not reading that book. I am working off of your quote and some of the blurbs and reviews I read on its Amazon listing. I assume you posted what you posted for a reason but if that's not the case, then I don't really know what you are asserting. Clarify it if you want.

For my part, I don't need someone else to put ideas in my head nor do I fear other people's ideas because they might be contrary to mine. I do, however, have contempt for people submitting unexamined, callow reactions to ideas they "don't like". Nor do I respect sinister insinuations of global conspiracies behind every argument one cant muster a defense against.

The "It's Marxism" gets applied too often as a write off. If someone just wants to believe something because they just want to believe it, then admit it. Otherwise, where is the enjoyment in thinking one is always in the right, no matter what?

Further, I welcome my tenets being stress tested as proof that they are worthy; I don't cringe in fear that there is some sort of "barbarian at the gate" coming to get me if I don't draw a line in the sand.

You are a bold and fiercely independent thinker, for sure!

Actually all MP is doing is setting up a straw man and knocking it down. Without addressing the statements/questions raised by other people.

Yes. I was being sarcastic.

Doc, you have to highlight the text and then hit ctrl+alt+sar for sarcasm, or ctrl+alt+irn for irony. Otherwise it just doesn't come through.

MP, there is a serious difference between having my beliefs challenged by facts and reason and having a "news" source or historian lie to me. That's a distinction worth maintaining.