Via Twitter, from Bill Chapman and then J.L. Bell, : a nice, straight-ahead, witty piece here by Tim Hodson of Sacramento State, on how rightwingers like Armey, Bachmann, et al, make up stuff about American history. Hodson writes:
… For example, Dick Armey recently proclaimed the Jamestown Colony as “socialist venture” that left “everybody dead and dying in the snow.” Let’s see: Jamestown was founded as a for-profit venture by the London Company, a joint stock company in 1607, or about two hundred years before French thinker Saint-Simon first wrote about socialism. Perhaps Armey confused Capitan John Smith, soldier of fortune and tireless promoter of North America as a place to get rich, with Karl Marx. After all, both men had beards.
Armey also invoked the Federalist Papers as a guide to small government and insisted that Alexander Hamilton believed in a weak national government. …
Love it. Things do get a little dicier, at least to me, when further along Hodson says:
… many conservatives trotted out the canard that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Sorry, folks, that just ain’t so …
The apodictic “yes, it was!” “no, it wasn’t!” on this question, with all of its oft-cited chapter and verse on each side, feels old to me, and fruitless. Maybe there’s a fresher and more complicated way to air that matter out? Anyway, the piece is smart and fun and worth checking out.
William Hogeland 