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Saturday, January 29, 2005

The Difference Between Politically Incorrect and Historically Wrong

"The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" seems quite a piece of work:

The introduction bills the book as an effort to 'set the record straight,' but it is actually an attempt to push the record far to the right. More than a history, it is a checklist of arch-conservative talking points. The New Deal public works programs that helped millions survive the Depression were a 'disaster,' and Social Security 'damaged the economy.' The Marshall Plan, which lifted up devastated European nations after World War II, was a 'failed giveaway program.' And the long-discredited theory of 'nullification,' which held that states could suspend federal laws, 'isn't as crazy as it sounds.'

...It is tempting to dismiss the book as fringe scholarship, not worth worrying about, but the numbers say otherwise. It is being snapped up on college campuses and, helped along by plugs from Fox News and other conservative media, it recently soared to No. 8 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list. It is part of a boomlet in far-right attacks on mainstream history that includes books like Jim Powell's "FDR's Folly," which argues that Franklin Roosevelt made the Depression worse, and Michelle Malkin's "In Defense of Internment," a warm look back on the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

...Then there was the large Christian school in North Carolina that assigned its students a booklet called "Southern Slavery: As It Was." At first, the school argued that the booklet - which describes slavery as "a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence" - simply provided a valuable "Southern perspective." But after North Carolina newspapers reported on its contents, and quoted local pastors expressing their concern, the school quietly withdrew the text last month, apologizing for the "oversight."

Sick people.

Jack Clark 10:16 PM [+]   
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