Collateral Bloggage What passes for thought around here…

Free-For-All Friday: The 10 Big Lies About America

I try not to dwell overmuch on politics, because little good ever comes from such musings.  But to put all my cards on the table, I’m fairly conservative, actually bordering on libertarian on many issues.  And I listen to Dennis Prager most days, and sometimes also listen to Michael Medved.

The thing I enjoy most about Prager and Medved is that they emphasize disagreement, trying to find the best possible defenders of the other side and having smart dialogue with them.  This is also the reason I have no use for the left-wing commentators on MSNBC.  I want to hear both sides.

Well, one of the issues Medved brings up a fair bit is the way America is portrayed negatively in books, films, and television.  And that’s the subject of his book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation.

Now, I’m one of those conservatives who finds whining on either side to be unpalatable.  I didn’t like it when leftists trashed everything Dubya did, and I really hoped that those of us on the right would do better in dealing with Obama’s policies.  But we largely don’t, as far as I can tell.  I have no use for the Tea Party movement, even if I think it’s been unfairly portrayed by the media (shocker).  I have no respect at all for the Birther movement, and actually think it hurts the conservative cause to support such stupidity.

Fortunately, Michael Medved isn’t a whiner, and he presents his arguments logically and passionately on these ten Big Lies:

1. America Was Founded on Genocide Against Native Americans
2. The United States is Uniquely Guilty for the Crime of Slavery, and Based Its Wealth on Stolen African Labor
3. The Founders Intended a Secular, Not Christian, Nation
4. America Has Always Been a Multicultural Society, Strengthened by Diversity
5. The Power of Big Business Hurts the Country and Oppresses the People
6. Government Programs Offer the Only Remedy for Economic Downturns and Poverty
7. America Is an Imperialist Nation and a Constant Threat to World Peace
8. The Two-Party System is Broken, and We Urgently Need a Viable Third Party
9. A War on the Middle Class Means Less Comfort and Opportunity for the Average American
10. America Is in the Midst of an Irreversible Moral Decline

Right up front, I have to point out that Lie #9 confused me from the get-go.  Certainly no one could argue that a War on the Middle Class would be a good thing, right?  But Medved argues that no such war exists, contrary to the frequent charge from the political left.  I just didn’t get that from the title of the chapter.

I’m not going to dwell long on any of the topics, but I’ll say that the chapter on Lie #1 was probably the most interesting, because it explodes, among other things, the myth of the Smallpox Blankets we so often hear about. 

Lie #3 was fairly fascinating, too, as the perception that the Pilgrims came here to escape religious persecution is a bit overblown.  In fact, they typically sought more rigorous religious observance than was found in Europe, where the church was corrupt.

I do wish Medved had included more than one Lie told by the right, as only Lie #10 was really targeted that way.

I also wish the book had been shorter.  I had a terrible time getting through it, between reading other books.  But I tend to focus on one book if it’s interesting enough.  And I’m afraid this one just didn’t hold my attention.  (I originally checked this one out in April 2009.)

Still, I consider it worth picking up, and I might at some point pick up Medved’s new book, The 5 Big Lies About American Business.

Next up is Robert Crais’s latest, The First Rule, which I got from the Bestsellers rack at the Library