Some good news for a change

This will be the last blog dealing with Michael Medved’s recent book, The Ten Big Lies about America. I wanted to end on a positive note, so I jumped to lie # 10: “America is in the midst of an irreversible moral decline.” The author says this is not true, and that, in fact, improvements are visible in the vast majority of social indicators.

Medved starts by noting that the idea of imminent doom has been part of America’s history for as long as there have been people here. William Bradford, a longtime leader of Plymouth colony, saw evidence of deadly moral decay within 25 years after landing at Plymouth Rock. In the 1740s, Jonathan Edwards wrote that his time period was more degenerative than any before it. About 100 years later the anti-slavery advocate William Lloyd Garrison complained bitterly about his generation’s moral standing.

Medved looks back at our history to discuss several great awakenings that have improved the morality of the people in America. The first, from the 1730s to the 1750s, was led by Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley Brothers. This religious revival helped lay the groundwork for the American Revolution. The second awakening, which occurred between 1800 and1830, brought camp meetings and a new energy for the antislavery and women’s suffrage movements. The third of these awakenings, from the 1880s through the early 1900s, brought the holiness movement, the beginnings of American Pentecostalism, the social gospel, progressive politics, and a new crusade against alcohol. Medved says many sociologists and theologians see a fourth great awakening beginning in the late 1970s and continuing to the present. The results of this last revival can be seen in the power of the religious right, the growth of evangelical megachurches, and a greater Christian influence in popular culture. I have noticed this in the area of Christian publishing--good authors are getting their message out clearly.

One example of an improvement in morality can be seen in New York City. In late 2007 it was reported that the city was on track to have the lowest number of homicides since statistics became available in 1963. Other major cities all show less violence and property crimes from their peaks some 20 years ago.

What are other positive signs? In many attitudes the current generation of teenagers and young adults appears to be more culturally conservative than its immediate predecessors. For example, Americans from 18 to 30 are the most likely of all age groups to oppose abortion. Teenage drug use, which had moved up throughout the 1990s, has declined since then by an impressive 23 percent. Teenage use of alcohol has also fallen greatly in the last 10 years. Fewer high school students today are having sex. Abortion rates have declined by a full 24 percent between 1990 and 2004. The divorce rate has been falling continually over the last 25 years. Even out-of-wedlock births have begun to level off in recent years. One recent survey found that there has been an unmistakable declining in extramarital sexual activity. The number of people on welfare has plunged, overall poverty has decreased, and employment figures for single mothers have risen. Medved also says religious activity is on the upswing—“the most demanding and scripturally rigorous denominations show the greatest vitality of all.” It looks like religion is not in danger of dying out in our secular age, for which I offer a hearty “amen.” Why is that? Religion offers people community, ritual, and support for values they hold, according to Medved.

Medved says there are huge forces out there which threaten these advances. I especially like this thought: “Any effort to roll back immorality faces formidable government bureaucracies, official regulations, the smug assurance of nearly all of academia, and ceaseless special pleading in mass media meant to protect and glamorize the most deeply dysfunctional values.” But the new technologies offer us unprecedented alternatives –cable, satellite, and internet options, for example.

So things are not out of control. We can be encouraged by his findings and resolve to help make our society a “shining city upon the hill.”

Is America a threat to world peace as the left suggests?

Another of the big lies that Michael Medved attacks (The 10 Big Lies About America) is the charge that America is an imperialist nation and a constant threat to world peace. His point is that involvement in overseas conflicts is not new; it has characterized every stage of our emergence as a world power. These clashes have little connection to colonialism or empire building – instead, they were often done with unselfish intentions. Their long-term impact most often benefited the peoples involved as well as the world at large.

He starts with a look at foreign fights. As an example, United States fought against Islamic extremists more than 200 years ago. These battles took place in North Africa where ruthless pirates devastated U.S. shipping. Thomas Jefferson made war successfully on these pirates and their fanatical rulers. Medved says American was never truly an isolationist nation. Virtually all of our major wars began without enemy attack on American soil – the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. So, the current war in Iraq is not a new situation for America; as in other wars, we attacked a country that had not attacked us first.

Another feature of our American clashes shows that we generally avoided the temptations of conquest. In 1848 we defeated Mexico, but instead of annexing all or much of that nation, we agreed to assume that country’s national debt and to pay the government what was considered a large sum of money for a sparsely populated territory that eventually became the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. It’s true we fought one imperialist war against Spain in 1898, yet we did not attempt to incorporate Cuba as part of American territory. After World War I, we were the only one of the major victorious allied powers that sought no territorial or colonial enhancement at the Versailles conference. When we defeated Germany and Japan in World War II, we provided a security shield for our European allies.

Generally speaking, the states and peoples aligned with America in world affairs prospered economically and developed functioning democratic institutions. Think of our enemies in World War II (Germany, Italy, and Japan). In addition, South Korea has a vibrant economy and is certainly more robustly democratic than many nations in the area. Consider two nations which were once affiliated with the West but have become anti-American --Cuba and Iran. They have both suffered spectacularly. Or consider Hawaii compared to Fiji and Tahiti. They all have stunning beaches and breathtaking landscapes, but Hawaii is by far the most prosperous, functional, and dynamic society in all the Polynesian islands.

But critics often attack the United States for its international affairs during the Cold War. Medved says we must weigh the events in the context of the multigenerational, worldwide struggle against the aggressive force of worldwide communism. A rough estimate counts over 100 million victims of communist murder in the 20th century. Those who concentrate on our mistakes during this period don’t realize that the result was freedom for nearly 500 million human beings liberated from Soviet tyranny.

Medved ends the chapter by using a thought experiment. Imagine that the United States had never become a world power or even existed at all. Would the ideals of democracy and free markets be as important in the world today? Would murderous dictatorships have claimed more victims or fewer? Would nations be under the rule of Nazism, communism, or some other tyranny?
I don't see how anyone could answer these questions without realizing the force for good the United States has been over the years.

Are government programs the best way to help the poor?

Michael Medved has important things to say in his recent book, The 10 Big Lies about America. I have covered several of these lies, but there are still several interesting ones left. One involves faith in the powers of the federal government to take care of us (sound familiar?).

He says many Americans instinctively accept the idea that government programs provide the best way to cope with economic hardship in the problems of the poor. But he says this is not true. Democrats love to recall the stirring days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal; they believe his programs helped lift people out of terrible poverty. However, during the Depression FDR's radical policies were little help. He controlled money generated by society's most productive elements and then distributed it in an often arbitrary manner to his government's favored groups. The truth is, the New Deal brought higher tax burdens and a corresponding loss of liberty with little gain (sometimes serious damage) for the intended beneficiaries of this wealth.

Medved offers a great deal of proof for this perspective. For example, in 1931 the national unemployment rate was 17.4 percent. After more than five years of Roosevelt and all his new government programs, the national unemployment rate was exactly the same. At no time during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. After seven years of New Deal experiments, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had collapsed far below its mark during the Hoover administration. Federal spending during this time soared from 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 1929 to 9 percent in 1936.

What's the main point of all this? A "growing majority of economic historians now concede that the programs of the New Deal prolonged, rather than terminated, the Depression." Now some people will want to say that the rest of the world was suffering right along with us, but that's not true. In nearly all European nations the Depression ended more quickly than it did in Roosevelt's America. The Brookings Institution (a left-leaning think tank) concluded that the most ambitious and controversial program of Roosevelt's, the National Recovery Administration, had "on the whole... retarded recovery."

Medved says an examination of depressions throughout our history reveals something interesting. Leaders who cut government to revive the economy succeeded far more quickly and painlessly than did FDR with his New Deal. He uses examples from Presidents Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan.

Medved also takes on more recent government programs. He looks at Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Poverty, illegitimacy, crime, and social dysfunction grew at the same time that government spending to address these ills vastly increased. Antipoverty programs encouraged a culture of dependency and discouraged self-reliance. Johnson also established the Job Corps in an attempt to train disadvantaged young people for productive employment. A later study found only trivial benefits to Job Corps graduates compared to nonparticipants. But Congress continues to authorize money for this program, which costs taxpayers $21,500 for each enrollee in the eight-month program.

I'm especially concerned right now with Medved's analysis since our current President places so much hope in an enlarged government to solve all our problems. It hasn't worked before, and there's no reason to think it will now. I'll cover more of Medved’s book in a future blog.

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.

Was America started by secular men?

In previous blogs I covered two lies about America as discussed in Michael Medved's bestseller, The 10 Big Lies about America. Another lie he deals with has to do with our Founding Fathers: did they intend a secular, not a Christian, nation? His answer is simple -- no.

Medved writes this chapter in response to contemporary critics of religion who try to terrify the public about religious people in this country; they push the idea that our founders meant to establish a secular nation, not a Christian one. But he exposes this for the lie that it is.

In summary, he claims the earliest settlers came to establish, not to escape, devoutly Christian societies. In addition, the founders worried about government’s influence upon religion far more than they did about religious influence on government. In fact, they saw strong faith as an indispensable component of a healthy society. It is, instead, the extremists, not Christian conservatives, who seek to transform the nation and its institutions by overturning long-established constitutional balance in the process.

Let's start with his first claim -- the earliest settlers established Christian societies here in America. The Pilgrims, for example, left the Netherlands not because that nation had too many religious restrictions but because they believed it was too secular. Later on, the Puritans had the same reason for coming to America and setting up the Massachusetts Bay colony. These groups came to the New World seeking purity, not freedom.

The American Revolution itself was strongly influenced by the Great Awakening, an explosion of Christian enthusiasm and revival started earlier by George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. Those fighting for independence saw their battlefield and political opponents not just as enemies of liberty but as enemies of God himself. They believed religious revival was a huge part of their potential victory.

When the revolution succeeded, the leaders of the struggling new nation did not dump their religious beliefs. In fact, the First Amendment reflected the importance of religion to the new Republic. The Establishment Clause actually protected the established churches in the states. Those in Congress who debated the First Amendment expressed no intention of interfering with the states that openly promoted and funded religious institutions. They intended the establishment of religion clause to protect state religious establishments from national displacement and to prevent the national government from helping some, but not all, religions. Even Thomas Jefferson, the favorite of so many secularists today, was far more worried about potential government harassment of minority faiths rather than worries over the state's ongoing promotion of religious principles and institutions. He recommended to Congress in 1803 the approval of a treaty that provided government funds to support a Catholic priest in ministering to Indian tribes. He participated weekly in Christian worship in the Capitol building. Imagine that today.

Were our Founding Fathers mostly Deists, not Christians? Medved says the dictionary definition of Deism is the belief that God exists and created the world but did not assume any control of it after that. But the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson and Franklin, talked a lot about God’s unceasing control of the world. Ben Franklin, for example, wanted a national seal showing Moses standing by the Red Sea stretching his hand out over it, showing God’s power at work.

The Founding Fathers went beyond religious truth when they commented on the value of religion for society. They unanimously agreed on the importance of fervent faith in protecting and nurturing the United States. Washington said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." John Adams wrote, "It is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand."

It's too bad that we have to have all of this explained to us again since it is so obviously true and has been a part of our understanding for generations. But recent textbooks, media outlets, teachers, and best-selling authors have drummed into us a new story—we are threatened by the religious right and must go back to the old days of our glorious secular past. The only problem—this story isn’t true.

I’ll cover another lie in a future blog.

Another big lie

In his book The 10 Big Lies about America, Michael Medved tackles fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country. In the last blog I covered his comments on Native American genocide. In this one I would like to look at his exploration of another huge issue -- is the United States uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery, and is its wealth based on stolen African labor?

His response rests on four important propositions -- slavery is a universal institution, not an American innovation; the slave economy played only a minor role in building American power and prosperity (frankly it retarded economic progress more than it advanced it); America deserves unique credit for rapidly ending slavery; there is very little reason to believe that today's African Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained back in Africa.

First, slavery is a universal problem. For example, Brazil imported at least seven times as many African slaves as the future United States and abolished slavery 25 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Then there is the 1300-year history of ceaseless Arab slave trading. Muslim societies enslaved many more innocent Africans then did people in the New World. In fact, it is in Muslim societies that black slavery is perpetuated today in Mauritania, the Arabian peninsula, Sudan, and elsewhere. Medved says the Arab slave trade lasted longer, covered far greater geography, and enslaved more human beings then later European traders. For example, Saudi Arabia outlawed slave owning only in 1962. Even the most primitive indigenous peoples practiced slavery in every corner of the globe. It existed in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and czarist Russia.

Even Africans themselves were involved in slavery long before any intrusion by Europeans. During 400 years of European slave trade, it was Africans who acted as collectors of the victims. Kings of some regions attacked neighboring villages on a regular basis to seize slaves for commerce.

Medved, in addition, attacks the idea that slavery brought about economic development in America. He says the persistence of slavery in southern states actually limited the pace of economic development while abolition in the northern states led to faster growth in population, wealth, and productivity. The slave system in the South produced great wealth for only the tiniest minority in a struggling region that remained predominantly poor.

Who deserves credit for getting rid of slavery in the world? The movement was spearheaded in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere by fervent evangelical Christians. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin both committed themselves to the abolitionist cause. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included a strong condemnation of slavery, but the Continental Congress removed this in order to win approval from slave owners.

Medved says the United States should not offer reparations for slavery. He makes a case for the fact that modern African Americans are better off here than in Africa, where there is chaos, corruption, and violence on a large scale. He claims that Americans of African dissent enjoyed much greater prosperity and human rights than citizens whose families lived for a long time in Africa.

The author has much more to say about other lies involving the United States, but I will save those for future blogs.

A different look at American history

For Christmas one of my sons gave me a book by Michael Medved, The 10 Big Lies about America. I want to share some of his chapters with you because he does an excellent job looking at misrepresentations of the historical record.

He starts with the idea that America was founded on genocide against Native Americans. Using the dictionary, Medved defines genocide as "the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political or ethnic group." If there is no intent to slaughter, there is no genocide. What killed off most of the Native Americans? Infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus. Some critics of America tell of smallpox blankets used to infect unsuspecting tribes. But this rests solely on controversial interpretations of two unconnected and inconclusive incidents seventy-four years apart. That hardly suggests a consistent pattern of genocide covering roughly 400 years of white-Indian interaction.

But, the critics say, what about abundant examples of brutal episodes of warfare along the moving frontier? Were these one-sided horrors perpetrated by bloodthirsty whites against peaceful natives? Medved says these were, instead, fierce battles with casualties on both sides. Only one instance clearly involved rampaging white militia, and the U. S. Government unequivocally condemned this isolated incident. Medved focuses on one of those encounters -- the famous episode at Wounded Knee. A group of Indians fleeing from authorities who wanted to restrict them to a reservation surrendered to troops of the Seventh Cavalry. Several of the Indians had hidden rifles, and two soldiers started struggling with one Indian who had a rifle. The gun went off, resulting in five or six other warriors throwing off their blankets, producing rifles they had concealed, and beginning to fire directly toward the troop of soldiers. The fighting that followed was fierce with losses on both sides. It was a fight, not an unprovoked slaughter of unarmed innocents. The soldiers had brought artillery with them, but they did not use them on the Indians as they might have if they really had genocide in mind. On several occasions they actually tried to encourage the Indians to surrender, but the warriors chose to continue their struggle.

Thanks to recent movies, TV shows, and books, we have been led to believe North America was home to gentle, happy native societies before Columbus. But the truth is that the natives had an age-old tradition of fierce intertribal warfare. Cannibalism, mass human sacrifice, ritualized violence -- all were part of ancient Native American life.

Actually, the United States experience with Native Americans strongly resembled other encounters between people at vastly different stages of development. When members of more enhanced and dynamic societies encounter aboriginal peoples who belong to a much earlier era of human history, there is little doubt of the outcome.

Medved has several other eye-opening chapters in his book. I'll cover them in a later blog.