"A Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Regnery, 2004, 270 pages.

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History Without Blinders

by Anthony Gregory

In today's world, "political incorrectness" means little more than a reflexive gainsaying of every left-liberal disposition and sentiment, whether harebrained or rational. Many libertarians have proudly embraced and self-applied the label "politically incorrect," and wannabe libertarians such as Bill Maher have transformed its meaning into one signifying style more than substance: an inflammatory and in-your-face approach to commentary designed to offend the sensibilities of those in the political mainstream.

Conservatives especially love the term, often employing it in the duplicitous mission of defending the state, which their preferred political party now controls. To be against violations of civil liberties and war is seen as "politically correct," even though such positions oppose the actual dominant political regime and status quo.

No doubt, many such conservatives have picked up copies of Thomas Woods' new book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," expecting to find in its pages rhetorical ammunition and personal reassurance that the main threat to America comes from an alleged and perhaps conspiratorial leftist drive toward totalitarian political correctness, to the detriment of the country's taxpayers, families, religious institutions, and traditional civil society.

They'll find much of this in the book. He dismantles the case for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its progeny, such as affirmative action and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He attacks the Civil War for masquerading as social justice while consolidating power and overturning the secessionist principles of the American Revolution; and he portrays Lincoln as a racist, opportunistic powermonger who wavered between a plan to keep blacks in bondage indefinitely by constitutional decree, and a proposal to send them all to Africa. Woods puts the post-war Republicans to the fire, suggesting the strong possibility that "the real purpose behind Radical Recon-struction was to secure the domination of the Republican Party in national political life through the newly freed population of the South," and even boldly comments that "[i]n the Northeast, as well as in Indiana and Wisconsin, the vagrancy laws were as broad as any [black codes] in the South, with more severe punishments for violating them" (pp. 79, 81).

Woods argues that the government caused the 1929 stock market crash, and the New Deal didn't bring America out of the Depression. He defends such rarely defended subjects as Joe McCarthy, school prayer, Andrew Johnson, and even the notorious robber barons.

Politically incorrect conservatives will find all this amusing, but may begin to wonder: is it really conservative to attack the Civil Rights Act anymore? Many conservatives are more likely to boast that the Republicans, more than the Democrats, deserve credit for this program of federal intervention. Modern conservatives frequently argue that the egalitarian Civil Rights Act and affirmative action are based on opposite principles, the first on racial equality and the second on discriminatory quotas. However, as Woods points out, "Since it is impossible to read minds, it cannot be known whether a private employer is engaged in 'discrimination,' or if he is perfectly unbiased but in the course of hiring failed to employ various minority groups in proportion to their representation in the general population. In order to prove they have not discriminated, employers must now establish quota systems in hiring to protect themselves from government lawsuits. Thus the logic of antidiscrimination legislation leads directly to affirmative action" (207, emphasis in the original). To further provoke heavy-duty political soul-searching, Woods reminds his readers that it was Nixon, not a Democrat, who gave America its first major federal affirmative action programs.

And is it really conservative to condemn the New Deal? Sure, it was socialism, but among today's conservatives Franklin Roosevelt is more revered as a great leader than lambasted as a villain. Woods astutely places the blame for the beginning of the New Deal where it belongs, on Republican Herbert Hoover, who backed the protectionist and devastating Smoot-Hawley tariff that "[v]ir-tually all American economists united in urging Hoover to veto," signed into law "the largest peacetime tax increase in United States history up to that point," and headed the administration under which "[m]ore money was spent on [public-works projects] in four years than in the previous thirty" (143, 144).

Woods relentlessly attacks the cherished wars of old, documenting the propaganda, deceit, and futility surrounding U.S. entry into World War I. But exactly whose politically-correct nose is he thumbing here? Rarely does the modern Left express strong opinions about World War I, other than its being a futile and destructive waste of time. To discredit the Great War in the way Woods does attacks a more fundamental political correctness: that of the U.S. military state.

Woods documents how leftist American newspapers and journalists whitewashed the genocidal regime of Stalinist Russia during the 1930s. He tells the shocking story of how the New York Times "denied the existence of the [Ukrainian] famine" (quoting Times reporter Walter Duranty as saying, "The 'famine' is mostly bunk"), and tells the reader that "[p]rominent Americans could even be found to defend Stalin's show trials, a spectacle of political theater so transparent that it would have taken genuine effort not to see through it" (165, 166, emphasis in the original).

But then he exposes Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman — heroes of today's conservatives (compared to Bill Clinton, anyway) — as being sympathetic towards Stalin. Here Woods exploits the anti-Communist, pro-McCarthy sympathies of the New Right, while denouncing two of its greatest heroes. Meanwhile, he slips in facts about "Mr. Republican," Sen. Robert Taft, a man who would feel about as comfortable with the Bush administration — or, for that matter, Rush Limbaugh — as does today's antiwar libertarian Congress-man Ron Paul. "Conservative" Bob Taft opposed the Cold War, and especially the Truman Doctrine: "Not only would it potentially involve the United States in countless conflicts around the globe, but it was also, in [Taft's] view, founded more in hysteria and paranoia than in a rational and sober appraisal of Soviet capabilities" (192). So Mr. Republican opposed the Cold War while the Democratic "liberal" communist sympathizer Harry Truman waged it. This is certainly not the run-of-the-mill political correctness of, say, Sean Hannity. Nor should we expect many of today's conservative shock jocks to share Woods' interest in Pearl Harbor revisionism, now that the interventionist warfare state and the accompanying delicate web of mythologies on which it thrives are part of the Republicans' view of the world.

The Guide's best section details one of the most abhorrent, and least known, atrocities of the Second World War: Operation Keelhaul. At the end of the war, in accordance with agreements made at Yalta, the Allies forcefully rounded up 1 million or so war prisoners, mostly expatriates from the USSR, loaded them onto boxcars, and shipped them off to Stalin. "Uncle Joe," as FDR used to call him, worked many of them to death and murdered the rest, a predictable consequence of Stalin's forced repatriation, as anyone who had noticed Stalin's gulag, purges, and mass starvations could have predicted: "Some of the men simply committed suicide rather than return" (188). Woods tells how the atrocity hit American soil: "About 200 Soviet nationals were among the prisoners of war at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in mid-1945. . . . They were taken prisoner with the solemn promise that under no circumstance would they be repatriated to the Soviet Union, where they faced certain death. That promise was betrayed so that the American president might be faithful to Uncle Joe" (188). Today's textbooks don't mention this war crime at all, and few educated people know much about it. This piece of history is far more politically incorrect than anything you will ever see in an Ann Coulter column, and it's a reminder that the worst Communist sympathizers, the ones with the most blood on their hands, were not the ignorant liberal journalists, but rather the most celebrated heroes of the U.S. warfare state.

"A Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" is a bit soft on Reagan, who, as Woods explains, did not cut government at all, but rather expanded it. Yet Woods defends Reagan as a man who "was unable to do more of what he had hoped to do" (237, emphasis in the original). Some would argue that Reagan never had any interest in cutting government in the first place. The book also glosses over the Vietnam War, and speeds past entire periods of history with barely a comment. Woods acknowledges this in his preface, and points readers interested in further study to his selected bibliography.

The book is being pitched primarily to conservatives as an anti-leftist piece of work. Nevertheless, its anti-state message is strong and consistent, and the author does not pander to the right at the expense of principle. He explains the differences between political capitalists — such as most of the railroad tycoons, who fed off the powers of the government — and entrepreneurial capitalists, who made their enormous wealth by producing for the masses and raising their standard of living. The "Politically Incorrect Guide" explains the economics behind Europe's recovery after World War II, and obliterates the myths surrounding the so-called "success" of the Marshall Plan, concluding that it "worked no better than any other government giveaway program" (190) — another government program you won't hear many modern conservatives condemn amidst the "reconstruction" efforts in Iraq. Woods consistently defends the free market and opposes the collusion between Big Business and the state that has become so pervasive, especially under Republican rule.

Overall, Thomas Woods has produced a wonderful book. I recommend it highly for high school and college students who have been exposed to nothing but leftist propaganda in academia. I recommend it even more highly for today's self-proclaimed "politically incorrect" apologists for the very politically correct ruling ideology and regime of our times.

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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