"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.

You might as well claim there was a famine in the Ukraine.

Are you referring to the famine in the 1930s where millions died because of Stalin's policies? The Holodomor happened-it was intentional and millions died.

If anyone is interested in the state of history text book adoptions in middle and high school I highly recommend The Language Police by Diane Ravitch.

I have never seen a middle or high school history text that is worth the paper it is written on.

Now watch and see how many schools use it anyway.

The more interesting side of the issue is how it is used. I'd definitely use it to clearly demonstrate the errors in it and then show why they are errors.

From what I have seen of it, the document is ideological and ideology of any kind is seldom a good idea. Ideologues cause a lot of suffering and death throughout history.

I've also seen the author interviewed on television-she is not impressive. She presents herself badly and comes off as a fanatic.

Kevin, glad we agree on some things. I wish you'd give LAND OF HOPE and its accompanying TEACHERS GUIDE a look. Highly suitable for high school or even for a high quality middle school. And the WORKBOOK we are finishing up now will include some excellent map exercises, if I do say so myself.

LOH is necessarily selective, for length; for example, it presents the Civil War almost entirely from the Union perspective. It COULD be taught in a single semester, which sadly is all that is allowed in too many schools. But in the happy event that two semesters are available, the text can be covered in about 60% of the time leaving lots to spend on supplemental stuff, of the which the TG provides a great deal. For example, there are many significant documents to be studied, with notes for the teacher to guide a discussion. The sections on "teaching the Declaration" and "teaching the Constitution" and "teaching the Bill of Rights" and "teaching the two-party system" are particularly outstanding (ahem)!

There's quite a bit of people who believe evolution doesn't exist and that the Confederacy wasn't really fighting to preserve slavery. It doesn't seem to worry too many people and frankly, the sun does still rise every day.

But one black female journalist suggests (in a paper no one reads bc it's obviously Marxist from an event 100 years ago) that the AWI was about slavery and suddenly it's a threat to the Republic? Gee, i wonder what the protest could really be about?

Incidentally, the two party system sucks. Something the Founders would agree with.

Yep, it's a 'tempest in a teapot' over the 1619 Project. I wonder if people are going nuts over it because it's about slavery, it was written by a black woman, or the author was awarded a Pulitzer, or all three.

People need to calm down before they hurt themselves.

I wish you'd give LAND OF HOPE and its accompanying TEACHERS GUIDE a look.

It's on my 'to buy' list on Amazon. It's a long list.