More of the lies about America

Michael Medved's recent book, The 10 Big Lies about America, has much that is interesting to talk about. In three previous blogs, I've touched on three major lies that he says critics have made about America. At this point I'd like to cover two more lies in one blog.

He believes another lie involves the claim that we would all benefit from a more diverse and multicultural United States. He says there are no good international examples to support this. For instance, Canada has been a disaster, teetering for more than 40 years on the verge of dissolution because of its split between French and English communities. Belgium has tried to keep distinct, stubbornly unassimilated nationalities within its borders with little success. Critics of America suggest the famous melting pot never function as advertised. They sneer at the old ideal of unifying Americanism. The multiculturalists overlook the single cultural origin of this country: the Founders affirmed their common language, heritage, and core religious values as a point of pride. They and those that followed them for the next two centuries widely embraced the idea that an identity as an American easily should trump any distinctive ancestry. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, said, "There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism." Woodrow Wilson agreed: "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready." Despite the way the multiculturalists insist that no one nationality deserves primacy in terms of contemporary American identity, Medved says it's obvious the British Isles played a wildly disproportionate role in shaping the nation. So when today we hear people talking about "English only," they are not attacking immigrants but rather predictably reasserting American norms. In addition, Medved says most contemporary accounts hugely exaggerated diversity in American life. In 2006, for example, 80% of us identify ourselves as white, the same percent as existed at the time of the Constitution. Medved says the multiculturalists who are trying to impose divisions from the top down can't stand up to the unifying force of our shared goals and character. "Americans instinctively transcend all the artificially constructed cultural divides, managing to work together, live side by side, and, in increasingly significant numbers, marry one another."

The second lie Medved tackles involves big business. He says modern American critics talk about the power of big business and how it hurts the country and oppresses the people. But Medved's major point is that these major business organizations make possible our productivity, pleasures, and private opportunities. To start with, it was precisely such businesses that planned and established the early settlements that eventually became the United States. The Founding Fathers never embraced antibusiness attitudes because most of them were themselves entrepreneurs. After the country gained its independence, its internal development and entrepreneurial activity was sponsored by corporations. But critics often point to greedy capitalists who dominated the late 19th century, often referring to them as robber barons. However, many of these "evil people" succeeded because they brought valuable services and goods plus low prices to American consumers. They did not oppress the masses. It's true that political entrepreneurs worked for special concessions in government. However, market entrepreneurs like Vanderbilt refused to entangle themselves with the political process and built their more successful and durable corporations without favoritism from political machinery. Medved says all of the most important economic reform movements sought to disentangle government from the free market, not to impose new bureaucratic controls. The age of the so-called robber barons saw living standards rise rapidly, immigrants assimilated, frontiers settled, states and cities built, and the United States rise to the top rank of world power. The working class benefited greatly from this explosive growth. Real wages grew quickly while the average workweek shortened. The efficiency and productivity made possible by corporations gave typical Americans an amazing range of choices and economic power unimaginable to previous generations. Even poor people today enjoy options and privileges that the wealthiest could not dream of 100 years ago. Medved says that the idea that laborers or customers somehow benefit when a corporation feels squeezed or faces shrinking profits "remains one of the profoundly illogical legacies of discredited Marxism." There are those who argue today that small businesses are somehow better than big businesses, but Medved doesn't see how a small business could do better than big international companies which are providing us with such things as cars, computers, cell phones, and medical supplies. Yes, he says there have been nasty corporate scandals, but the market system allows the public greater and swifter recourse against an abusive corporation than it does against an abusive government.

Next time I'll tackle a couple more lies that Medved deals with.