March 2, 2021
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 3 of the Nihilism series titled “American Human Rights History.” This is the first segment of the history section which will continue through segment 9. In this segment an overview of the traditionalist version on U.S. History will be presented followed by an overview of the Social Justice revisionist history developed from a minority perspective. You can judge the good and bad points of each.
My Takeaways:
This segment is about beliefs – beliefs about our history as opposed to last week’s segment 2 which was more about values.
The beliefs underpinning the Traditionalists view (Labeled Unionists view in the excerpts) are as follows:
The beliefs underpinning the Social Justice Revisionists view (labeled as Disintegrationists in the excepts) are as follows:
Next:
The next six segments are intended to help you determine whether both of these views exist, in what kind of strength, and what is good and bad about both. Segment 4 will focus on the most popular and successful revisionist history author in the country’s history: Howard Zinn. It will focus on his book The People’s History of the United States which has sold over 2.6 million copies and is used as the basis for curricula in many schools in the country today. Debate is provided by Mary Grabar who penned Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation Against America. Both books are lengthy (Zinn’s book being 729 pages and Graber’s 327 pages). I narrowed the debate in part by just focusing on the Slavery & Civil War plus World War II passages with brief reference to Christopher Columbus and his treatment of the American Indians.
Following next week’s segment on Zinn, there will be three segments providing examples of revisionist history. Then segment 8 & 9 will focus on slavery including excerpts from two books written by former slaves published in 1845 and 1901 and a third book written by a prominent black author in 1901 about slavery. That will conclude the revisionist history section of the series.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
This is Segment 3 of the Nihilism series titled “American Human Rights History.” This is the first segment of the history section which will continue through segment 9. In this segment an overview of the traditionalist version on U.S. History will be presented followed by an overview of the Social Justice revisionist history developed from a minority perspective. You can judge the good and bad points of each.
My Takeaways:
This segment is about beliefs – beliefs about our history as opposed to last week’s segment 2 which was more about values.
The beliefs underpinning the Traditionalists view (Labeled Unionists view in the excerpts) are as follows:
- The story of America is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but it is more heroic than tragic.
- America is a nation that freed the world of Nazis and Communism, a nation that powered the economy of the world for over a century and raised billions of people from poverty.
- A nation that brought freedom, liberty, and prosperity to its citizens.
- A nation that brought democracy to the world which has spread far and wide.
- Without America, the world would have fallen to tyranny long ago, the beauty of individual rights would have been subsumed by the collective long ago, and the notion of a multiethnic democracy would have collapsed long ago.
- America also has a dark side: the treatment of Native Americans and black Americans most predominately.
The beliefs underpinning the Social Justice Revisionists view (labeled as Disintegrationists in the excepts) are as follows:
- The American system was created by white, male, straight Americans with the intent to dominate over all other Americans which they successfully did. It is a story of the strong crushing the weak -- both domestically and internationally.
- America is a nation of corruption and lies – promising liberty but guaranteeing tyranny. The Declaration of Independence was a lie and the Constitution enshrined slavery and brutality.
- America’s role throughout the world has resulted in poverty, death, inequality, and injustice most specifically within its own borders.
- America was founded in evil, is irredeemably divided and can never escape her past without dismantling her founding principles.
Next:
The next six segments are intended to help you determine whether both of these views exist, in what kind of strength, and what is good and bad about both. Segment 4 will focus on the most popular and successful revisionist history author in the country’s history: Howard Zinn. It will focus on his book The People’s History of the United States which has sold over 2.6 million copies and is used as the basis for curricula in many schools in the country today. Debate is provided by Mary Grabar who penned Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation Against America. Both books are lengthy (Zinn’s book being 729 pages and Graber’s 327 pages). I narrowed the debate in part by just focusing on the Slavery & Civil War plus World War II passages with brief reference to Christopher Columbus and his treatment of the American Indians.
Following next week’s segment on Zinn, there will be three segments providing examples of revisionist history. Then segment 8 & 9 will focus on slavery including excerpts from two books written by former slaves published in 1845 and 1901 and a third book written by a prominent black author in 1901 about slavery. That will conclude the revisionist history section of the series.
Happy Learning,
Harley
NIHILISM: GOOD OR BAD? – SEGMENT 3
AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS HISTORY – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All excerpts are from How the Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro
UNIONIST VIEW: It is fair to say that while America has participated in evils common to all humanity, America has brought to humanity immense good that is entirely unique. Without America, the world would have fallen to tyranny long ago; without America, the beauty of individual rights would have been completely subsumed by the collective long ago; without America, the notion of a multiethnic democracy would have collapsed long ago. The Unionist history of America is the story of American exceptionalism; why America is different. And that story is the story of our philosophy and culture, rooted in foundational ideals.
None of this means that American history doesn’t have a dark side, most obviously in the treatment of Native Americans and black Americans. But it is to argue that in America, goodness and strength overcome horror – not in every instance, not immediately, but over time, thanks to adherence to founding philosophy and culture. This is a story of the nation that freed the world of Nazis and communism, that powered the economy of the world and raised billions from poverty. In short, Unionist history argues in favor of three key principles: first, that America was born with glorious ideals; second, that America has been united by those ideals more and more universally over time; and third, that the world has benefited from America’s power and greatness.
The story of America is neither wholly good nor wholly bad – but it is far more heroic than tragic, far more representative of justice than injustice. A majority white country that once enslaved black Americans and repressed women regularly elects black Americans and women to high office (in fact, women represent a majority of the electorate, and black Americans routinely outvote their percentage of the population), demonstrating the durability and growth of the uniquely American belief that all men are created equal; a country that fought for its own liberty, and taken in tens of millions of Americans seeking their own American dream; a country founded in relative wilderness has become the engine of growth that powers the entire world.
DISINTEGRATIONISTS VIEW: In the Disintegrationist view, America is corrupt, a ruse and a sham promising liberty but actually guaranteeing tyranny. The American system merely created a system of dominance by white Americans, male Americans, straight Americans. All the high-minded talk about unalienable rights and delegated powers is simply kabuki theater. The true story of America is the story of the strong crushing the weak, both domestically and abroad. America is the story of exploitation and greed, of patriarchy and abuse, old hierarchy and manipulation. The Declaration of Independence was a lie, not an unfulfilled promise; the Constitution was an enshrinement of slavery and brutality, not a bulwark against tyranny. Deprivation and inequality and failure are natural results of Americanism. Disintegrationist history relies upon three fundamental principles: first, that America was born in sin; second that America has always reflected divided sects and hierarchies of power; and third, that America’s role in the world has resulted in poverty, death, inequality, and injustice.
The goal of Disintegrationism is to dissolve the country’s ties, not to reinforce them. Thus, to understand the Disintegrationist view of history, we must begin with a simple premise: for Disintegratinists, the purpose of history is not to understand the nature of America or even her development over time. The purpose of history is to provide fodder for the argument that modern problems are simply the latest manifestation of a deep-seated incurable philosophic and cultural cancer lying at the heart of the U.S. This dark and inaccurate view of the U.S. has become dominant in recent years. That’s thanks to the generalized increase in Disintegrationist philosophy and culture, both of which suggest that individuals in America aren’t responsible for their own successes or failures. Since America is, by all available metric, incredibly tolerant and open, it has grown more and more difficult to find instances of true oppression in America. When demand for victimization narratives exceeded supply, Disintegrationists mine American history for such oppression, then declare that modern ills can be attributed to historical injustices. Unfortunately, there’s a large market for the Disintegrationists narrative of victimization.
The Rise of Disintegrationist History. The most popular of the class-based revisionists was Howard Zinn. Zinn’s poorly sourced extraordinarily biased history of America, A People’s History of the United States – in which America is responsible for nearly every ill of the past two centuries – has sold more than two million copies at the time of his death. Professors across the country assign Zinn’s book in their classrooms; increasingly, high schools use curricula built around Zinn’s writings. In many circles it has become the dominant narrative. This view casts America not as a nation but as a series of competing interest groups, which can remake America only by overthrowing the corrupt status quo. The core of critical race theory likes in the propositions that racism is ordinary and permanent; that whiteness and property coincide; that history is told only by dominant groups and requires a counternarrative; and that color-blindness is a myth, and that the notion of equality of rights is itself a reflection of color hierarchy. The net result is that the system itself must be torn down, and all the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are lies. As Derrick Bell, a founder of critical race theory, wrote, “the concept of individual rights, unconnected to property rights, was totally foreign to the founding fathers, and thus, “despite two decades of civil rights gains, most Blacks remain disadvantaged and deprived because of their race.” Victimization can never be alleviated under the current system. On the disintegration of that system will rectify the modern imbalances that simply mirror the sins of the past.
The rise of class-based theories of American history has been accompanied by a skyrocketing ignorance of American history altogether. Across the country for decades social studies has supplanted history in high schools and middle schools – an attempt to make history “relevant” by replacing history teaching with indoctrination into a particular brand of politics. But this reductionist view of the study of history owes much to the critical studies theories that became dominant decades ago.
Born in Sin: Disintegrationist history teaches three fundamental principles: first, that America was founded in evil; second, that America is irredeemably divided and can never escape her past absent dismantling her founding principles; third, that America has been, on net, terrible for her citizens and terrible for the world. America may have generated great wealth and prosperity and peace, but that’s in spite of its founding principles, not because of them. America’s true founding can be found in its treatment of natives, centuries-long perpetuation of barbarous slavery, industrial exploitation or workers, and corruptions by certain industrial and financial barons. America was born in sin.
THE AUTHOR’S VIEW: The claim that American citizens benefited broadly from slavery does not hold water. America’s wealth was not dependent on slavery; slavery destroyed million of lives and created wealth for a select few southern aristocrats but left the South extraordinarily economically underdeveloped overall. Slavery was indeed an important part of the American economy. It was also a backward part of the American economy. Freeman labor is simply more economically efficient than slave labor. In fact, the growth of the southern economy remained slow throughout the Jim Crow period. Only as Jim Crow waned did growth rates in the South suddenly spike. Jim Crow benefited a select few at the expense of the broader American economy. Jim Crow prevented competition, led to mass migration of blacks from the South to more tolerant parts of the country, and generally depressed the southern economy. Had the economic power of black America been unleashed, the American economy would have exploded. When it comes to income disparities in modern America are due, in the main, to individual rather than structural issues. That is why Asians now out-earn whites in America by a wide margin; it is why Hispanic Americans are moving up in the income distribution across generation, while black Americans are not.
It is nearly impossible to attribute current income gaps directly to racism. It is worth noting that black immigrants to the U.S. have outperformed the descendants of slaves economically. Forty years ago, Thomas Sowell observes, “West Indians in the U.S. have continued to hold sizable advantages over American Negroes in incomes and occupations.” It is still true today. What, then, are the easily identifiable factors that lead to lower income mobility for black Americans? First, lack of fathers in the home: single motherhood is one of the most powerful predictors of intergenerational poverty. Approximately seven in ten black children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. The increase in single motherhood in the black community has nothing to do with either Jim Crow or slavery.
The story of America is one of the great stories in human history. America was founded on great principles; America has struggled to live up to those principles, but with each step toward those principles, America has magnified its own greatness. The world is better off for America. We ought to understand the shadows and the curses of our history; we ought to understand how history affect the present. But we all ought to understand, most of all, that we are part of the same history, not rivals in a country divided by identity or class.
Source: How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro (2020)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS HISTORY – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All excerpts are from How the Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro
UNIONIST VIEW: It is fair to say that while America has participated in evils common to all humanity, America has brought to humanity immense good that is entirely unique. Without America, the world would have fallen to tyranny long ago; without America, the beauty of individual rights would have been completely subsumed by the collective long ago; without America, the notion of a multiethnic democracy would have collapsed long ago. The Unionist history of America is the story of American exceptionalism; why America is different. And that story is the story of our philosophy and culture, rooted in foundational ideals.
None of this means that American history doesn’t have a dark side, most obviously in the treatment of Native Americans and black Americans. But it is to argue that in America, goodness and strength overcome horror – not in every instance, not immediately, but over time, thanks to adherence to founding philosophy and culture. This is a story of the nation that freed the world of Nazis and communism, that powered the economy of the world and raised billions from poverty. In short, Unionist history argues in favor of three key principles: first, that America was born with glorious ideals; second, that America has been united by those ideals more and more universally over time; and third, that the world has benefited from America’s power and greatness.
The story of America is neither wholly good nor wholly bad – but it is far more heroic than tragic, far more representative of justice than injustice. A majority white country that once enslaved black Americans and repressed women regularly elects black Americans and women to high office (in fact, women represent a majority of the electorate, and black Americans routinely outvote their percentage of the population), demonstrating the durability and growth of the uniquely American belief that all men are created equal; a country that fought for its own liberty, and taken in tens of millions of Americans seeking their own American dream; a country founded in relative wilderness has become the engine of growth that powers the entire world.
DISINTEGRATIONISTS VIEW: In the Disintegrationist view, America is corrupt, a ruse and a sham promising liberty but actually guaranteeing tyranny. The American system merely created a system of dominance by white Americans, male Americans, straight Americans. All the high-minded talk about unalienable rights and delegated powers is simply kabuki theater. The true story of America is the story of the strong crushing the weak, both domestically and abroad. America is the story of exploitation and greed, of patriarchy and abuse, old hierarchy and manipulation. The Declaration of Independence was a lie, not an unfulfilled promise; the Constitution was an enshrinement of slavery and brutality, not a bulwark against tyranny. Deprivation and inequality and failure are natural results of Americanism. Disintegrationist history relies upon three fundamental principles: first, that America was born in sin; second that America has always reflected divided sects and hierarchies of power; and third, that America’s role in the world has resulted in poverty, death, inequality, and injustice.
The goal of Disintegrationism is to dissolve the country’s ties, not to reinforce them. Thus, to understand the Disintegrationist view of history, we must begin with a simple premise: for Disintegratinists, the purpose of history is not to understand the nature of America or even her development over time. The purpose of history is to provide fodder for the argument that modern problems are simply the latest manifestation of a deep-seated incurable philosophic and cultural cancer lying at the heart of the U.S. This dark and inaccurate view of the U.S. has become dominant in recent years. That’s thanks to the generalized increase in Disintegrationist philosophy and culture, both of which suggest that individuals in America aren’t responsible for their own successes or failures. Since America is, by all available metric, incredibly tolerant and open, it has grown more and more difficult to find instances of true oppression in America. When demand for victimization narratives exceeded supply, Disintegrationists mine American history for such oppression, then declare that modern ills can be attributed to historical injustices. Unfortunately, there’s a large market for the Disintegrationists narrative of victimization.
The Rise of Disintegrationist History. The most popular of the class-based revisionists was Howard Zinn. Zinn’s poorly sourced extraordinarily biased history of America, A People’s History of the United States – in which America is responsible for nearly every ill of the past two centuries – has sold more than two million copies at the time of his death. Professors across the country assign Zinn’s book in their classrooms; increasingly, high schools use curricula built around Zinn’s writings. In many circles it has become the dominant narrative. This view casts America not as a nation but as a series of competing interest groups, which can remake America only by overthrowing the corrupt status quo. The core of critical race theory likes in the propositions that racism is ordinary and permanent; that whiteness and property coincide; that history is told only by dominant groups and requires a counternarrative; and that color-blindness is a myth, and that the notion of equality of rights is itself a reflection of color hierarchy. The net result is that the system itself must be torn down, and all the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are lies. As Derrick Bell, a founder of critical race theory, wrote, “the concept of individual rights, unconnected to property rights, was totally foreign to the founding fathers, and thus, “despite two decades of civil rights gains, most Blacks remain disadvantaged and deprived because of their race.” Victimization can never be alleviated under the current system. On the disintegration of that system will rectify the modern imbalances that simply mirror the sins of the past.
The rise of class-based theories of American history has been accompanied by a skyrocketing ignorance of American history altogether. Across the country for decades social studies has supplanted history in high schools and middle schools – an attempt to make history “relevant” by replacing history teaching with indoctrination into a particular brand of politics. But this reductionist view of the study of history owes much to the critical studies theories that became dominant decades ago.
Born in Sin: Disintegrationist history teaches three fundamental principles: first, that America was founded in evil; second, that America is irredeemably divided and can never escape her past absent dismantling her founding principles; third, that America has been, on net, terrible for her citizens and terrible for the world. America may have generated great wealth and prosperity and peace, but that’s in spite of its founding principles, not because of them. America’s true founding can be found in its treatment of natives, centuries-long perpetuation of barbarous slavery, industrial exploitation or workers, and corruptions by certain industrial and financial barons. America was born in sin.
THE AUTHOR’S VIEW: The claim that American citizens benefited broadly from slavery does not hold water. America’s wealth was not dependent on slavery; slavery destroyed million of lives and created wealth for a select few southern aristocrats but left the South extraordinarily economically underdeveloped overall. Slavery was indeed an important part of the American economy. It was also a backward part of the American economy. Freeman labor is simply more economically efficient than slave labor. In fact, the growth of the southern economy remained slow throughout the Jim Crow period. Only as Jim Crow waned did growth rates in the South suddenly spike. Jim Crow benefited a select few at the expense of the broader American economy. Jim Crow prevented competition, led to mass migration of blacks from the South to more tolerant parts of the country, and generally depressed the southern economy. Had the economic power of black America been unleashed, the American economy would have exploded. When it comes to income disparities in modern America are due, in the main, to individual rather than structural issues. That is why Asians now out-earn whites in America by a wide margin; it is why Hispanic Americans are moving up in the income distribution across generation, while black Americans are not.
It is nearly impossible to attribute current income gaps directly to racism. It is worth noting that black immigrants to the U.S. have outperformed the descendants of slaves economically. Forty years ago, Thomas Sowell observes, “West Indians in the U.S. have continued to hold sizable advantages over American Negroes in incomes and occupations.” It is still true today. What, then, are the easily identifiable factors that lead to lower income mobility for black Americans? First, lack of fathers in the home: single motherhood is one of the most powerful predictors of intergenerational poverty. Approximately seven in ten black children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. The increase in single motherhood in the black community has nothing to do with either Jim Crow or slavery.
The story of America is one of the great stories in human history. America was founded on great principles; America has struggled to live up to those principles, but with each step toward those principles, America has magnified its own greatness. The world is better off for America. We ought to understand the shadows and the curses of our history; we ought to understand how history affect the present. But we all ought to understand, most of all, that we are part of the same history, not rivals in a country divided by identity or class.
Source: How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro (2020)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 3_nihilism_long__human_rights_history_--_segment_3.pdf |