Aug 212010
You can’t have history without a historian. Other people lived the past, but there’s no story of it unless someone puts it all together. Accordingly, you have to have a historian. So, U.S. history starts when we get our first historian. Who was that? I always find it interesting that we learn all kinds of historical facts about our country in school but never who kicked off the gig. We still operate under the illusion that history writes itself or that these stories are found and being True are the same no matter who writes it. The historian, then, is unimportant. But, that’s a lie. One of many we tell ourselves. Oblivious to the historian, we remain obtuse about his motives (and I do mean his).
You could argue that our first historian was William Bradford (1590-1657) — the Puritan leader who left behind the record Of Plymouth Plantation. That was really a memoir though, rather than a history. He wrote it some years after the fact and it seems his memory got a little away from him at parts. That’s how it is when you go back ten years later and try to recall it all. It might be better to say that our first historian was Juan Bautista Chapa (1627-1695), an Italian monk who took up service in the Spanish Catholic settlements of the southwest. He wrote a History of Nuevo Leon, 1650-1690 using actual governmental records for his sources. Thus, it was researched and inclined to be more scholarly and less biased (perhaps) than a memoir. But, it also celebrated the Spanish settlement of the southwest as the good work of the Catholic fathers (which the Indians would probably dispute). Interestingly, we do not generally start the history of the United States in the southwest. We define ourselves as heirs of the Anglo tradition instead, and this is because those historians who managed to capture the public eye and create the myths of our foundings were white men who lived on the east coast. Chapa has been forgotten.
In between him and professional history lay the fraudulent history of Washington Irving (1783-1809), best known for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Irving was a great storyteller, but his “history” was not so much fact. In 1809, he published a satire on local history under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving created his character and then pulled one of the greatest public relations stunts in American literary history. He planted a story in the papers saying that Knickerbocker, a notable Dutch historian, had gone missing. For a time, the City of New York was fascinated with the story. It made a name for Knickerbocker, and when his “history” of New York came out subsequently, it sold well. So successful was Irving in imprinting his character on the public psyche that New Yorkers came to be known as Knickerbockers (or Knicks). (Irving also dubbed the city “Gotham.”) Later, Irving served as Minister to Spain and had the opportunity there to peruse Spanish sources on Columbus’ journeys. He used this research to write historical fiction on the subject. It was closer to a scholarly work, but still fiction. In his later years, he traveled the mid-west, and wanting for money afterwards, he wrote Tour of the Prairies — a first record of Indian Territory at the time of the removals. This was more of a current events kind of piece however, and, meanwhile, an up-and-comer named George Bancroft (1800-1891) was creating the first scholarly Anglo-American history about this same time — eclipsing Irving and ushering in the dominate paradigm we still use.
Bancroft published the first volume of his History of the United States in 1834. He was an educator and a civil servant. He served as Secretary of the Navy, helping to found the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a WASP who was educated at Harvard and pursued additional studies in Germany (when only few could afford such an undertaking). Ultimately, he would write four volumes of the history, and it would be marked by romanticization of the founders and the themes of progress and exceptionalism. The founding of the United States, Bancroft wrote, was the greatest moment in the political history of mankind. Of course, Bancroft didn’t cover the history of the Indians or the colonization by the Spanish. No, his history was about the spread of democratic ideals from the English colonies and a celebration of the WASP tradition that produced the Constitution — that most sacred of texts. The most influential of our first historians, Bancroft and his interpretation really set the stage for future historians. Only John Fiske (1842-1901) would match him in influence during the nineteenth century.
Fiske was our first professional historian of note. Like Bancroft, he was educated at Harvard — where he later taught philosophy and history — and studied abroad as well. Early work on evolutionary theory led Fiske to believe in the racial superiority of whites as scientific fact, which naturally would color his history. Again, his work focused on the English colonies for the most part and ignored the Spanish settlements and Native American cultures. However, Fiske also helped further our history as a scholarly endeavor relying on the use of credible sources and factuality. It was part of the new history that attempted accurate representations rather than a celebration of God’s hand at work in the world or the value of the Church. His were civic myths rather than religious ones. A professional, he aided in the promotion of the discipline from a dalliance by wealthy amateurs to a rigorous scholarly undertaking.
Clearly, Fiske and Bancroft set the trajectory of our interpretations with their work and their biases. Thus, it’s valuable to recognize who they were and with what they blessed and cursed us. Really, until we can be conscious of that, we can’t really understand our history — or our historiography for that matter. Thus, to know our history, we must first know our historians.
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Aug 062010
August 6, 1945, a day that should live forever in infamy. On this date, sixty-five years ago, the United States dropped the only nuclear weapon ever used in combat on the civilians of Hiroshima, Japan. If ever there was a greater conscious act of inhumanity, I do not know. Certainly, this is on par with the intentional slaughter of Jews, Serbs, and Tutsis. The difference is that America is much more efficient in its atrocity. It required no face-to-face contact or more than one sortie to kill at least 78,000 souls (and injure or disable another 100,000). By comparison, the attacks of September 11, 2001 killed approximately 3,000 persons.
How do Americans treat this monumental wrongdoing? Do we attempt to rationalize it? Do we own it? Are we dismissive of the act or judgment against it? My textbook treats it this way: “[Harry] Truman was torn between his awareness that the bomb was ‘the most terrible thing ever discovered’ and his hope that using it ‘would bring the war to an end’…Considering the thousands of Americans who would surely die in any conventional invasion of Japan and, on a less humane level, influenced by a desire to end the Pacific war before the Soviet Union could intervene effectively and thus claim a role in the peacemaking, the president chose to go ahead.” Yes, you read that correctly. The decision to kill thousands of unarmed non-combatants was partly due to a desire to squeeze the U.S.S.R. out of peace negotiations. I mean, you want to keep the odds stacked in your favor and you wouldn’t want an equal like the Soviets to keep you from running rough-shod over the Japanese. If they’re going to be pawns, you want them to be your pawns. The other deciding factor — the more “humane” one — was how the deaths of thousands of little children would save you from sacrificing a lesser number of grown, male soldiers. The inherent — and appalling — assumption in that statement is that American lives are more valuable and more desirable to be saved than Japanese ones (even innocent Japanese children where were in no way culpable for the war being waged around them). Drafted or not, part of the nature of military service is that there is a real potential to lose one’s life; it’s part of the code of war. Childhood does not come with the same inherent risk by definition. Yet, the American government and military intentionally assigned a higher value on U.S. soldiers than Japanese civilians — something that has always gone against the code of war. No wonder Robert McNamara said of the war on Japan: we were war criminals and had the war gone the other way, we would’ve stood trial for the things we did.
In an effort to sidestep any civic responsibility or remorse, history textbooks in the U.S. skirt the issue like the passage cited above. Similarly, they do not include any photographs of the atrocity that might make real what we did to the people of Japan. If there are any pictures at all, these are of the rubble of buildings or scorched earth. That is more palatable than facing the horror of what we did to the actual people of Hiroshima. We still don’t want to have to look them in the face.
Really, the historiography is offensive. I submit that perhaps our textbooks should — rather than presenting insulting justifications — just contain photo essays of the victims and let our natural guilt do its work. There is no need for words.
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One of the most painful aspects of studying history is that it often forces us to face ugly truths about our pasts. How we react to those truths says a lot about our cultures and what we have learned from our history (or refused to learn). Our responses indicate our denials, acceptances, repudiations, and other feelings about the stories of our pasts. Leaving aside issues about how we create those stories, the truths we construct and our reactions to them are complicated insights into who we are and how our history has shaped us to this point.
Sometimes, our responses are ludicrous and telling about our absolute inability to grasp the obvious. Again, using the example of the recent Arizona legislation regarding the teaching of ethnic studies is illustrative. Proponents of the law say teaching the history of an ethnic group (or, presumably groups together) is acceptable; what is not is using that history to promote ethnic solidarity or resentment. There really isn’t any way to strip the story of slavery in the U.S. from its offensiveness. It isn’t possible that the story could not cause resentment to black citizens, and it is beyond naïve and moronic to believe that it wouldn’t. Whites who don’t want to face their culpability here may try to soft-pedal it, but the only persons they are fooling in doing so is themselves. It isn’t possible to honestly present things like the Zoot Suit Riot, Chinese Exclusion Act, slavery, and Indian removal without causing resentment or building a sense of community among the descendents of those wronged. Chinese-Americans recognize that it was their participation in that group — and that alone — that made them unwelcome in the U.S. They weren’t barred because Americans came to hate the lot of them individually for personal failings. The hatred was directed toward them as a racial group. How that is not supposed to cause them anger toward white Americans, I do not know, but it’s sheer idiocy to think that you can spin that inoffensively.
At some point, whites and minorities have to face one another, acknowledging the truth of the past. Forcing legislation that minimizes the repercussions and resentments toward the oppressing class does nothing to acknowledge that truth or heal past hurts. Contrast the law in Arizona with those in Germany making it a crime to deny the Holocaust. No flinching, no falsification there. Until we can look unblinkingly at our past without attempting to rationalize or minimize it, we will not have truly learned the lessons of our history — which is why we still struggle with it. These are not easy lessons to learn. It’s uncomfortable at the least and haunting at worst. We can’t resolve these issues and truly make peace with one another until we do though.
The key to this is that we learn to face our history — and more importantly, that white citizens can face the mirror and what they see there. You are the product of white supremacy, racial terrorism, and discriminatory benefits. You still profit from this in many ways. It’s an ugly image. It’s sickening to accept. But, when whites can face this, they can face their fellow Americans of other races with honesty and respect. They can accept the consequences and repercussions of their ancestors’ actions and participate in true reconciliation. When we can face ourselves and others, then — and only then — can we begin to leave behind the burden of our past (although we will never not live with the legacy). We have much history to learn before that happens though, and we have not yet come to the point where we can even do that, as the situation in the Southwest demonstrates.
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Remember these names: David Barton and Rev. Peter Marshall. You should know these men because it is in good part due to their efforts that the Texas public school curriculum will soon, among other things, minimize the role of Thomas Jefferson as a contributor to the ideology of the American Revolution and the development of the U.S. Constitution. You see, they are the “experts” that the Texas School Board relied on to alter the recommendations of the scholars and historians involved in drafting the original proposed curriculum. The drafters celebrated Jefferson, but the Board voted to remove that information and talk about Moses as an inspiration instead. Vocal board member Dr. Don McLeroy (a dentist) believes that the notion that our founders wanted to separate church and state is a myth propagated by secular liberals. McLeroy rejects the work of professional historians and scholars and, instead, relies on that of Barton and Marshall to substantiate his claims.
Barton is a self-educated, self-published author on the Christian foundations of our country. Barton does not have a degree in history or theology, but he founded an organization (WallBuilders) to promote his work. He sells his books in church bookstores and online rather than through traditional public (read: secular) booksellers. Again, his books are not published by any noted press. Marshall, on the other hand, is the son of a former Senate chaplain who has an ivy league education. Marshall has theology — but not history — degrees from Yale and Princeton. He also has written books on the U.S.’s purpose as a Christian nation and God’s plan for America. Despite his notable education, Marshall’s works are not published by any important press either. Instead, his books are printed by a specialty Christian publisher. His works are similarly marketed to church people rather than the general reading public.
Because of the influence of these authors and the power of the conservatives relying on them who dominate the School Board, the Texas curriculum is being revised to accentuate the alleged Christian foundations of our country. It is not true that none of our founding fathers were religious men or that none of them believed in God. It is true that they referenced a Creator, talked about God, and opened sessions with prayers. It is also true that John Adams was a Unitarian who did not believe in God as a trinity. Thus, Jesus to him was an important prophet, but not God himself. Thomas Jefferson shared this view of the son of God — and, incidentally, it is from one of his letters that we get the phrase “separation of church and state.” George Washington was a member of the Anglican Church, but he refused to take communion. Thomas Paine, who wrote Common Sense, the pro-independence pamphlet that influenced many American revolutionaries, also wrote a book called The Age of Reason, in which he rejected all organized religions and referred to them as means for enslaving mankind. In other words, our founders held a mixture of various religious beliefs. It is disingenuous to claim that our founders were not influenced by Christianity. However, it is also incorrect to claim that they intended to establish a country where the Christian religion was intertwined with the political structure. Nothing proves this more clearly than the fact that they never passed any resolutions or laws establishing an official national church or churches. Those who claim that our country was designed to be a Christian nation conflate (some of) the founders’ personal feelings with their political work.
If Barton and Marshall have indeed done extensive research and have educated themselves well, as they claim, they know better than the things they advocate. And they certainly must know better than to try to minimize Jefferson in the story of the country’s ideological beginnings or to exaggerate the role of religion in the framework our founders established for our nation. Because of the influence they’ve had in shaping Texas’ — and therefore the nation’s — social studies curriculum, it is important to identify these men and to remove them from the anonymity of history. We should know who our historiographers are and their agenda.
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Jan 282010
How to torture an American: force them to conceive of a history of the United States wherein we are not the greatest military force on earth, we are aggressive bullies and thieves, and others are more wily and sophisticated than we are. Now, make them tell that story. Actually, I don’t think it can be done. Even the most leftist American historian I’ve ever read is a patriotic apologist. C’est le nationalisme. Le nationalisme est un bourbier.
This is a natural habit well cultivated by a tendency never to ask others for their opinion. My professional training reinforced the inclination. None of my masters ever asked me to read any American history written by a non-American. What’s more, none of them even asked me to read histories of other North Americans. It is in this way that I was trained to keep my thinking parochial and my attitude dismissive. Now, I struggle to teach myself the history of Nueva España and Nouvelle-France in order to broaden my take on American history. It’s damn hard to do so, by the way. It’s pretty much the ignorant leading the stupid.
Happily, I stumbled onto a history of the French in North America (subtly entitled The French in North America), which is largely a history of Canada. What a difference your perspective makes! The author is English but he was trained in Canada and France. Free from many of our prejudices and assumptions, he makes daring statements. The most surprisingly nuanced is that the greatest military force in North America in the seventeenth century was the Iroquois Confederacy. Upon reflection, I think it’s largely true. The group dominated the northeastern part of the U.S. at that time and being a combination of six nations, it was significant in numbers — giving it a numerical advantage over its foes. It certainly outnumbered the European settlers in the colonies. I have yet to discover an American textbook that in anyway acknowledges the superiority of any Indian nation or body. I guess the Canadians and French don’t feel threatened by acknowledging this truth.
Also, during the course of his story, the author — W. J. Eccles — recounts a number of incidents of aggression on the part of English colonists against the Canadians. I was completely unfamiliar with these. No one had ever instructed me before that New Englanders raided Acadia and Newfoundland for spoils. These were apparently unprovoked and the sole purpose was to steal from the French. So noble. Did I mention that these New Englanders settled the territory before the Puritans? I guess that’s how Squanto knew already knew English and could teach them how to plant corn so they wouldn’t starve to death. Anyway, so much for our founders coming to our shores in search of religious liberty. Damn the inconvenience of truth. Pillaging pirates, not prayerful Puritans — these were our English forefathers in the northeast.
Well, we can always console ourselves with the myth of social Darwinism: Anglos conquered the continent — driving out the French, Spanish, and Native Americans — because it was their manifest destiny as the greater culture/force (chosen by God). Through various military endeavors, we eventually bested the Indians and took their land. Those pathetic Frenchies weren’t up to the task. But, wait! Eccles says: early on, the French realized that they were grossly outnumbered and militarily inferior to the Indians in North America. The French government determined that it did not wish to commit the necessary money and troops to fully develop Canada. The returns would not be that great, and it was more interested in besting the English in Europe. As such, they came up with an Indian policy that was essentially to trade with the Indians and depend on them for protection and assistance. In short, they opted to be the subservient in order to make money off of the fur trade. They decided that was all they really wanted with North America anyway. Genius. Then, they figured out that they could use their settlements in America as a thorn in the flesh of the English. They — along with their Indian allies, to whom they gave guns in return for valued furs — could mount enough of a military threat to force the English to commit troops to protect their colonies. This would siphon off soldiers from the battlefields of Europe, giving the French the advantage they preferred there. Further, the French realized that with proper encouragement, they could sit back and let the rebel colonies do the dirty work for them. If the English were busy fighting their colonists, the French would again have the advantage in Europe, as the English would be fighting two fronts. (Unfortunately, in the end, they did have to send in the navy to save us because alone the American military was not up to the task and colonists were too cheap to pay for the necessities of war.) Shortly thereafter, Napoleon would prove the wisdom of this policy and lead the French empire to dominance. As painful as it is to accept, to the French, the Americas were but a pawn. We may have been undertaking a noble experiment, but they were playing at a larger game.
So, here is a bit of American history from a completely different perspective — one in which we are not the grand heroes and enlightened victors. In this history, we are cheap, greedy, aggressive, and militarily inferior to both the French and <gasp> the Indians. I dare you to tell that story to your children. Oh, the horror! Don’t worry. It would never make it past the Texas School Board.
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Dec 252009
I understand that the works of Ayn Rand are gaining popularity again. Aficianados of the free market system are boisterously promoting its virtues and bandying about the bugaboo of imminently threatening socialism. Their fervor and simple absolutes breed interest, and the curious turn to Rand for inspiring depictions of ideal capitalism. Her work makes the capitalist heroic and virtuous. He is noble and principled, and who would not aspire to such? Rand’s capitalism is not about greedy fat cats sucking the blood of the proletariat. Her vision appeals to our highest instincts and caters to our vanity. Of course, it is also fiction. Yes, the best expositions of free market ideology are made up tales.
History tells us a very different story. Boosterish proponents of free market ideology may point to the overarching narrative of the American century to promote their theory, but, as they say, the devil is in the details. Our best shot at a truly free market economy in the United States was in the late nineteenth century. It was brief and chaotic. Many literally died in the violent exchanges between workers and hired hands brought in by company owners to crush strikes and rebellions. These disputes were often settled with guns, fists, torches, and other weapons. Railroad transportation was often stalled by strikes and other means of disruption. Boycotts and walk offs frequently meant that consumers could not access the goods and services they wanted or needed. Order was upset by the violence and disputes; in some cases, property and towns were actually destroyed due to arson and riots. Urban life was not safe in the way we understand it today. Further, there were no employee protections, assuring that they would not have to work in unsafe conditions, be shorted in their pay, or lose their jobs if injured at work. Workers who were injured on their jobs were not entitled to medical treatments at their employers’ expenses and they were often fired after the fact for being unable to fulfill their duties while incapacitated. Maimings and serious injuries were common then. Factory workers were often permanently injured or disabled at work. They then had no means to support themselves and no social security benefits to fall back on. The average male factory worker made about $400.00 a year in the late nineteenth century. Budget estimates by social workers of the time indicated that it took at least $600.00 a year for a family of four to get by — and that’s without medical care or savings. Accordingly, families were forced to put everyone to work in order to get by. Children got jobs instead of schooling because their wages were necessary to their familial unit. For families, for employees and employers, and for local communities, this period was one of violent upheaval and want. This is not the picture of heroism or virtuous achievement. It was class war — workers vs. owners — pure and simple.
This is the difference between history and fiction and why our historiography is so important to value. Boosters rely on appealing fiction, but what people need to make realistic choices is knowledge of what really happened in our past. Free market capitalism sounds great in theory, but our actual experience of it was not so fine or beneficial. When making choices about what we want for our society today, we must bear that in mind. Nothing’s as good as its ideal.
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Dec 222009
I have a photograph of my brother and myself hand-in-hand off to our first day of kindergarten. We look so innocent. I have a bow in my hair and little sandals that match my feminine dress on my feet. My brother looks buttoned up and spit-shined. My mother groomed and pressed us and memorialized the grand moment when we would venture out into the world — our first foray into public life. Little did we know at the time, in our excitement over reading hours, recess, and playgrounds, that we were being sent off to be socialized in the American way. We did not know that we were being groomed into little capitalists. I wonder if my parents knew it. They probably didn’t think about it. Does anyone?
It’s not like you can do much to avoid it anyway. What with the truancy laws, your only option is to teach them at home, and who has the time and resources to home school, really? In most families, both parents work — and have to do so — and home schooling is a luxury in which they cannot indulge. Also, it’s likely that a number of them aren’t much interested in spending their days at home teaching their children anyway. So, they cart them off to schools — public and private — where they are molded into fans of the free market. That isn’t, of course, why you send them off to school — anymore than to teach them to be little pro-American automatons or knee-jerk patriots. But, it comes with the package.
Of course, the indoctrination is subtle. Children don’t stand at attention, saluting the flag with pledges like “All hail Capitalism” or “The Future is the Free Market.” Far from it. In fact, most students can’t tell you the difference between capitalism, socialism, or communism. Rather, “capitalism” is normative and familiar to them through unconscious exposure, and the message vaguely reinforces that, suggesting that other systems are anti-Christian or anti-American. Children don’t know what socialism or communism really is, but they sense that it’s dark and ominous — something to be feared and avoided. They know it’s bad from the way their books and teachers speak about it and infer from their economics classes — where they learn about playing the stock market from local businessmen volunteers, courtesy of the Rotary Club or other civic organizations — that the free market is what makes us great. It is the uncritical and unquestioned presentation of our economic system that serves to indoctrinate. To question that is to be an outsider or a deviant. Again, by refusing to suggest there are workable alternatives, educators direct you to embrace capitalism (as the only available/desirable option).
So, students go to their elementary schools as innocents and emerge as believers — if the schools do their jobs correctly. And, these institutions of learning are then political tools for the powers that be. The brick and mortar buildings that should serve as temples of learning become free market sanctuaries. And, the sweet encouraging woman who taught you to write your letters and work fractions was really a political propagandizer, in whose hands you were impressionable putty that didn’t stand a chance. In time, when you had become a good capitalist — who may or may not be able to read, identify the number of justices on the Supreme Court, or understand the principles of basic algebra — they gave you a diploma and set you free. Your time at the free market seminary was done.
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Dec 132009
On election day 2008, Barak Obama and I shared the dubious distinction of being labeled “socialist” by critics. I don’t know if it bothered the President (particularly since he won), but I didn’t so much mind because I was sure that the Bubba in the beater pick up truck who yelled the “insult” at me as he drove past where I held my campaign sign had no idea what a socialist was or what was so bad about them. I figured he — like most Americans — was a product of the socialization agenda at work in American public schools and the propaganda machine at work in the public discourse (well, not so much discourse as recourse to punditry). He’d been taught to believe that socialism was wrong and that covered everything that free-market promoters labeled as such.
When you ask these uber-capitalist advocates what’s so wrong with government intervention, they insist that the market knows best and that government interference does nothing but undermine innovation and growth. Left to its own devices, they claim, the market will find level and provide the most benefits available to the majority at the best cost. The government should not be involved in commercial exchanges and should remain neutral on price setting and sector development, they maintain. It sounds reasonable to believe that consumers and producers acting in their own best interests will reach a mutually acceptable balance, but theory is theory and in reality it’s bullshit — much like how in the abstract, the four way stop is an efficient traffic design.
In any economic system, the government plays a vital and defining role in making the system work. It is necessary, and no economy can function without a coercive political arm behind it, despite the claims of the free-market boosters. Their expectation that private exchanges provide the foundation of an effective system itself relies on a government to enforce it. I am not the first to note that without a legal system to compel compliance with contracts, private exchanges are only worth what the individual contractors have the power to obtain personally. If you contract with someone for a product — new overalls, say — and they renege on supplying that item, without recourse to the law, you can only collect said Ozark tuxedo through threats, intimidation, negotiation, or force. In a system where might makes right, large powerful parties dominate and the political system tends toward the oligarchical, or at least something other than substantive democracy. In any case, the free market system — where everyone has the freedom to contract and exchange as will — needs a government with coercive power to enforce the very terms on which private exchanges rely.
On a larger scale, how is one consumer to take on the Acme Corporation and have any semblance of equality under the system? It doesn’t happen. A group of consumers, however, has the numbers to balance the power and achieve their common ends. Similarly, employees may combine their demands to equalize the strength of their bargaining position. Additionally, sometimes smaller companies do this as well, in order to compete with big box stores. It often happens, however, that in trying to gain the upper hand — to ensure their own economic ends, as is their purpose in a free-market capitalist system — parties involved sometimes <gasp> act illegally or in extra-legal ways that give them an unfair advantage (like hiring thugs to harass strikers on a picket line in order to resolve a labor dispute). When this occurs, the market is circumvented and the only way to right it is to employ the power of government. Thus, in the real world, governmental intervention is often necessary to protect the market.
What’s more, sometimes a “neutral” government isn’t really neutral on economic issues after all. The government may choose not to take sides in a dispute between polluters and environmentalists, but that generally ensures more trash. The government hasn’t been able to make Exxon pay the full costs of cleanup for the Valdez spill yet; there’s no way the Sierra Club could do it. Meanwhile, the fishing industry suffers. Also, as Anatole France noted sarcastically, the law equally prohibits the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges, but of course, the rich don’t need to sleep under bridges to escape cold winds and driving rains. The only purpose of that law is to further harm the poor — and for no economic benefit to the rich. In this way, a government that pretends not to favor one side over the other actually ensures the advantage go to the wealthier party. Governmental neutrality, then, tends to reinforce the advantages of the system and favor the rich.
Over the course of our history, our ancestors came to the conclusion that governmental intervention was a good thing, so as to protect us from the failures of the market in practice. They came to understand that a neutral government wasn’t completely neutral and that the best interests of the whole of the citizenry were only protected when the State intervened through regulation and financial controls. That history, however, is glossed over in history books, in order to comply with the demands of free-market advocates and their devotees. As long as they maintain control over public school textbooks, the history of the economic struggles in America will remained skewed and education, economic propaganda. Thus, public school historiography promotes the fallacy that a free-market is desirable and beneficial to our citizenry and that the government should stay out. People can believe then that the government is neutral and that this is a good thing. If only the history backed up the historiography.
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If you are to believe that our country is, and always has been, a capitalist nation, it is logically necessary to conclude that our Founding Fathers — those wise, benevolent drafters of our future course (when not busy having sex with slaves and ripping off Indians) — must have been devoted capitalists. How else could they have put us on the path of free-market fealty? If they were the priests of the sacred American faiths of democracy and private property, it is they who must be responsible for our economic ideology as well, you would think. The problem with that conclusion is that it isn’t so much, well, true.
Capitalism is a collection of economic ideas cobbled together into a general theory. Its origins developed over time and grew out of the contributions of several thinkers. However, its first real formulation came in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, written to critique the monopolistic and inefficient economic practices of his day. Smith’s work debuted in 1776.
That year, our founders were well occupied with certain domestic affairs. Even if copies of Smith’s work were immediately available to them — in a day before Fed-Ex shipping and paperback editions — it is unlikely that our fighting patriots had much down-time for reading in economic theory. I think it was probably not the case that Washington — or more properly, his slave — thought to grab the twelve hundred page tome for ballast for the crossing of the Delaware, although it may have provided kindling for five minutes at Valley Forge. When Thomas Paine was drafting Common Sense, I don’t believe he included a shout-out to A-Smith and the free-trade boys. And, what with all the bombs bursting in air and musket-drilling going on, I doubt that many of the revolutionaries had much time for thoughtful scholarly perusals. C’est la guerre.
After the war, it took a few years to get any kind of national economic theory working — in part because the founders were largely opposed to any kind of national anything. The Articles of Confederation were hardly a blueprint for free-market capitalism. It took us a number of years to even embrace federalism — that is the notion that a nation exists, and then, the “nation” didn’t warrant an anthem, much less a cohesive fiscal approach. For the first years of the republic, our leaders couldn’t agree on having a national bank, let alone a shared devotion to an economic cause. Moreover, whereas Smith was opposed to the protective tariff (because it discouraged specialization and free-trade), A-hole Hamilton — probably our foremost financial planner of the early years — thought it a good thing. TJ (0f Monticello) thought individual agricultural self-sufficiency was the key to true democracy and equality. He had no interest in Smith’s industries. And, of course, Smith objected to slavery — which was the foundation of the southern agricultural system, and he had no boosters on that point among the many southerners who served as our initial leadership and dominated the Oval Office early on.
Capitalism did not develop in the United States, then, because it was promoted by our devoted founders. In actuality, the overthrow of the monarchy left a bit of a vacuum that was filled by incremental, organic growth. Since there was no longer a crown to grant the East India Tea Company a monopoly over the tea trade in the colonies, it was kind of up for grabs to all of the mom-and-pops that sprouted up. Essentially, in the early years, everything was a start-up (or start over). While our leadership didn’t necessarily get in the way of the development of capitalism in our country, they were hardly ardent supporters of free-market theory. It is, then, possible to conceive of an America — and American patriots — where capitalism was not joined to the political ideal, and any suggestions to the contrary are rot and propaganda.
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There’s nothing so totalitarian as a public school board. These little central committees rule with iron fists — dictating what your children will learn, how they will learn it, and why. As the political winds change, they will mandate that your children study evolution, intelligent design, scientific know-nothingness, or some combination of these. They will stipulate whether kids will learn old or new math, read phonetically or not, and whether to paste fig leaves onto pictures in art books. When they aren’t busy debating what tomes to censor from school libraries, these dictators turn to creating good citizens — that is, the study of history and government. Textbook makers — who eat or not at the whim of the boards — cater to the politics of public education. No state board is more particular or censorial than Texas’. Accordingly, school book publishers aim to please Texas and then repackage that product for other states as well (to control costs). Every school in America, then, gets some version of the Texas historical canon. There, the political powers that dominate the state school board require a number of things of approved textbooks. Among these is the requirement that school texts teach that America is great because of our free market economic system. Leaving aside the fact that we do not have a truly free market in our country, there are serious problems with this mandate. The odiousness of it for historians can be unbearable, as it asks them to manipulate and obfuscate historical facts and evidence (it’s really hard to make the robber barons out to be heroes, for example).
Under the school board guidelines, students are taught to revere the Constitution while at the same time admiring free enterprise. The two faiths are not mutually exclusive; however, they are not necessarily mutually reinforcing either. Fortunately, schoolchildren are taught to admire and support the Constitution, but not to read it. If they did, they might discover that this grand document does not actually outline a particular economic system for our country. Capitalism is not enshrined there. In fact, capitalism didn’t come to the United States until well into the nineteenth century. Our best attempt at the free market came after the Civil War and it didn’t last long. The social and economic upheavals of the nineteenth century sold citizens early enough on regulation.
Textbooks gloss over this fact, in order to reinforce commitment to the economic system in our country. If you can’t conceive of another order, you aren’t likely to kick off the one you’ve got and try on another. Also, long-term commitment suggests perfection. If people think it’s always been this way, they aren’t much inclined to criticize the system or consider that there might be a better one. In other words, little children are being socialized to buy into our system and support it uncritically. To question capitalism is to question American virtue, hard work, or apple pie.
Now, you can’t outright lie about these things because that means you’re promoting propaganda. ”Truth,” however, is an entirely different sale. So, textbook authors just don’t explain what the economic system was like in the early part of our country’s history. They talk about mercantilism in the colonial period and then don’t go into economics (aside from issues like the tariff and the national bank) until they talk about industrialization. You’re not supposed to put two and two together and figure out there might be something in between. More importantly, you’re not to believe that from the git-go we weren’t committed capitalists and that the free market wasn’t as carefully crafted as our political system. Surely, the Constitution, which so particularly sets out the three branches of government and provides for checks and balances among them, weighs in on the way our economy should work. You’d think so, but it really doesn’t. You can get that impression though from the careful omissions in public school textbooks — and, really, the Texas school board insists that you do so.
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