The dangerous myths about American history that Obama believes

Every nation has its myths, i.e. interpretations of past events that shape the national psyche. These myths – which may be wholly true, partly true, or wholly untrue – provide a semi-rigid framework for political discourse and action. Every myth places certain political actions – no matter how sensible - beyond the pale, and makes it easier to implement others, no matter how harmful. Many of America’s current problems are a result of Obama working within a structure comprised of myths which are demonstrably false. Here are some of the main ones:

1. The attempt to rid the American government and Hollywood of communist infiltrators in the ‘40s and ‘50s was an irrational witch hunt against decent, innocent idealists who just wanted a square deal for the little guy.

2. FDR’s Keynesian New Deal dragged America out of the Great Depression by placing the country in the hands of an army of Progressive experts who spent huge amounts of taxpayers’ money on successful infrastructure projects, thereby getting people back into work.

3. LBJ’s Great Society reforms brought hope and change to millions of underprivileged Americans and went some way to redressing sins against the black population by fast-tracking social justice.

4. It’s the job of the rich to fund America’s burgeoning welfare system more generously than they already do.

5. JFK was a liberal martyr, killed by the Mafia, Cuban exiles, the CIA and Texas oil barons acting in concert to thwart the democratic process.

6. A major source of America’s strength is its cultural diversity.

7. The world’s wealth and its natural resources are finite: America’s wealth means poverty for other countries, and America’s use of natural resources foreshadows ecological disaster.

Everything Obama has said or done since he started campaigning for the presidency, rests on one or several of these myths. That’s why America finds itself in such a sorry state – it’s a case of Rubbish In, Rubbish Out. Without these myths, he wouldn’t have had a hope of getting away with the dreadful harm he’s done in office.

Here’s a right-wing (i.e. correct) perspective on each of those myths:

1. Senator McCarthy and his allies were right from start to finish. The American government, most importantly the State Department and sections of the military were riddled with communist spies, fellow-travellers and useful idiots who were acting covertly (and often pretty damned overtly) in the interests of Soviet or Chinese Communism. For instance, the pro-Mao propaganda campaign run by eminent communists in the State Department resulted in the US withdrawing supporting from Chang Kai-Shek and handing power to a monstrous tyrant who would proceed to starve to death and butcher tens of millions of his own people. Other commie traitors bamboozled the American government into allowing the Soviet Union to enslave a host of European countries after the war. In addition, Hollywood was seething with Soviet agents and sympathisers seeking to inject socialist propaganda into mainstream entertainment.

The demonization of Joe McCarthy and the (unrelated) House Un-American Activities Committee has been one of the American Left’s greatest achievements. It has allowed left-wingers to dismiss accusations regarding their own extreme socialist views as populist scare-mongering, and has meant that the only way to outmanoeuvre them is to appeal to more ancient American myths to do with the Frontier Spirit, the Founding Fathers, self-reliance, individualism, patriotism and sheer guts: but it takes a political genius of the stature of Ronald Reagan to do that, and, Mitt, you ain’t no Reagan!

2. Spending vast amounts of tax-payers’ money in order to kick-start the economy was an almighty failure in the 1930s – it held up recovery for at least five years – and has proved an even greater failure since 2008. It just doesn’t work: it’s the ultimate form of Indian Rope Trick economics. This is the myth that underpins a number of nonsensical beliefs, e.g. governments know how to micro-manage the economy; governments create real jobs; governments create wealth. Obama’s latest attempt to keep the myth alive was to tell American business leaders, “You didn’t build that”.

3. LBJ’s Great Society offered career advancement for countless left-wing "experts" and professional race-mongers, if no one else. By increasing crime rates, promoting the growth of single-parent families, destroying education standards, lowering black employment rates, and by vastly increasing the number of people dependent on welfare, LBJ’s mad spending spree reversed all the gains blacks had made in the preceding 60 years, tore America’s cities apart into the bargain, and almost destroyed the US economy in the ‘70s. Again, spending vast sums of taxpayers’ money to create a more “just” society achieved exactly the opposite result to the one intended – it always does.

4. Rich entrepreneurs create real, worthwhile, productive, tax-yielding private sector employment. To propose confiscating yet more of their money in order to create wealth-destroying, government-funded “pretend” jobs, and to swell America’s vast army of welfare dependents demonstrates an almost criminal level of economic illiteracy.  The idea that, no matter how much of their money you confiscate, the capitalist private sector will be able to go on squeezing out sufficient profits to fund an increasingly ruinous socialist welfare state is probably the most damaging myth of our age. Unfortunately, a large number of Americans (not to mention most Europeans) seem only too willing to swallow this deranged world-view.

5. JFK was murdered by a communist because he understood the terrible dangers posed by extreme socialism. If JFK were alive today, he’d be horrified by the left-wing drivel spewing from the White House – I imagine even poor old LBJ would utter a characteristic string of profanities if he could see what damage his policies had wrought.

6. America’s strength resulted from centuries of insisting that newcomers leave their past behind and sign up to core American values: before modern Progressives got to work destroying the system, America was a shining example of the power of monoculturalism.

7. The notions that the global wealth pie is finite and that we’re about to run out of fossil fuels are, frankly, babyish, and create a dangerous climate of fear and hatred between classes, nations and races  - hatred which Obama seems to share, and, which if he doesn’t, is quite willing to exploit for petty political ends.

Having comprehensively lost the Battle of Ideas in the 1980s, the Left simply
vacated the field of rational debate, and, unable to find any proof that what they believed would work has actually ever worked in the real world, simply substituted myth for reality. I presume the reason this ploy has proved so successful lies in the observation of that great conservative thinker, T.S. Eliot: “Human beings cannot stand too much reality.”

Which I guess is why there’s still a good chance that Obama will be re-elected later this year.