Monday, June 02, 2008

Ten Truths about American History

These ten truths are taken from 33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask (2007) by Thomas E Woods, Jr. The truths are:

  1. The Founding Fathers were generally wary of immigration and many of them warned about the consequences for the United States if immigration levels were not limited.
  2. The American Indians practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, destroyed forests and grasslands, and wiped out entire animal populations.
  3. A far greater scandal is that in his war against the Serbs, Bill Clinton aided and abetted the spread of Islamic radicalism into the Balkans.
  4. Even in the absence of gov't, the old West was far less violent than most American cities today. Frontiersmen developed private mechanisms to enforce the law and define and enforce property rights.
  5. Liberals supported all major American wars, including (initially) even Vietnam. On the other hand, traditional conservatives like Richard Weaver and Senator Robert Taft have been cautious about the use of military power, and skeptical of utopian claims about what it can accomplish.
  6. As the US gov't has conceded only when forced to before the Supreme Court, the Social Security payments an individual makes are not an "insurance premium" but a tax, which does not give the individual the right to any benefit or earmark funds for him. The individual receives nothing but a promise "to tax your children to take care of you in your old age."
  7. It was precisely Britain's own "living, breathing" constitution--and the oppressions it produced--that the Founding Fathers rebelled against.
  8. Gov't intervention in the economy is counterproductive and ends up hurting the very workers it is supposed to help, as it hampers the very thing--capital investment--that raises our standard of living.
  9. As a growing body of scholarship continues to show, the New Deal actually prolonged the Depression and crippled American capitalism.
  10. Americans are actually less free as a result of changes in American labor law since the 1930s. It is simply a myth that workers have little to no bargaining power if they are not unionized.
An interesting book. If you get the chance, read it. I also have read his other book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004). A good book too.

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