Lies My Teachers Told Me

Just over a year ago, I received a degree in history from the largest state college in Massachusetts. Having enrolled as a history major with the hope of acquiring a well-rounded historical perspective, I assumed that my professors would encourage my disinterested ambition. I was wrong.

With just a few exceptions, my professors were leftists who infused their lectures with political opinion and assigned reading material that reinforced their leftwing views. For information that would help me develop a balanced perspective on history, particularly the history of the West, I was forced to look beyond the confines of my formal education.

I was lucky. For whatever reason, perhaps my upbringing, perhaps my world experience, I saw that my professors were only giving me half the story. Many students, however, do not catch on. I watched a number of classmates and friends fall under the spell of radical professors. More than one close friend who entered college as a Christian graduated as a devout follower of the America-loathing MIT professor Noam Chomsky. Many friends who walked onto campus as proud Americans marched off of campus as dedicated leftists, ashamed of their heritage.

Once the radical spell is cast over an impressionable student, it is difficult to break. Of this, radical professors are well aware. It is for this reason that droves of New Leftists filed into academia at the close of the 1960s. Each year, colleges and universities enroll thousands of young, eager minds. What better place to find converts for the radical faith?

For those conservative students still trapped behind enemy lines in academia, I offer the following list of lies, told to me either directly or indirectly by radical professors, and my personal response to each. It is my hope that this list will be of use to any student who is searching, as I often was, for intellectual ammo to ward off the false gods of the left.

The radical historian Howard Zinn has popularized this lie, and it is repeated in the classrooms of his disciples on a daily basis. Responding to this lie is easy, just ask your professor to kindly produce a world map and point out all of the nations that have fallen into America’s imperial realm. The fact is, America has no empire. Consider the myriad of wars that America has recently fought against foreign powers-WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War-to name just a few. From none of these wars did America accumulate landholdings that can be construed as constituting an “empire.”

Leftist professors love to point out that the Vietnam war is an example of America’s “imperialist ambitions,” and that the only reason America did not envelop South East Asia is because the communist North Vietnamese were able to ward off the "imperial invaders," meaning Americans. In response to this lie, you should inform your professor that America only got involved in Vietnam to stifle the spread of communism, which was being exported around the world by a real “imperialist nation” called the Soviet Union.

You should respond to this lie by requesting that your professor present a short list of countries where socialism has worked. Your professor will inevitably shout out, “Sweden,” because this is the only nation where socialism has not led directly to the gulag. Sweden, of course, is not so bad, compared to, say, Guatemala. But Sweden is not exactly a world power. While America has put its citizens in space shuttles and shot them to the moon, Sweden has put its citizens in Volvos.

Socialism takes all incentive away from workers. This is why it will never work. If, for example, a man can make $100 per week being a doctor, or $100 per week sitting in his government-subsidized house smoking hashish and playing Nintendo, chances are he’ll opt out of the torturous years of medical school.

This lie has become quite popular in recent years, as radicals have discovered that furthering their political agenda is no more difficult than finding some leftwing Judge who agrees with them. To justify subverting the Constitution, a school of thought has emerged in academia which claims that the Constitution was not intended to be a steadfast document, but instead a mere legal outline that is designed to adjust with the changing times.

In response to this lie, you should ask your professor why the Framers boldly state in the Preamble to the Constitution that the document is intended to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity… .”

It really could not be any clearer than this. The Constitution was designed to protect the freedom of those who would be born after the Framers. The Constitution, then, is not “alive” in the sense that its various parts can be ignored or intentionally twisted by a Federal Judge.

Realizing that times would change, the Framers did provide future Americans with a process to amend the Constitution. “When ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof,” the Constitution can be amended. Only in this sense is the Constitution a “living document.”

This lie is usually followed up with disturbing stories of Indian massacres and slavery abuses that play heavily on the emotions of students

Slavery is an ugly stain on the record of human history, and America is no exception. What's more, some Americans atrociously mistreated many Indian tribes. But American history is the story of progress, and when one looks back over the course of American history, it should become evident that in less than two hundred years, the United States evolved from a nation where human bondage was a legal practice into a nation where people of all colors and religions are provided equal protection under the law. This, more than anything, exhibits the true American character.

It should also be remembered that the foundation for slavery’s eventual abolition was laid down in the Constitution, a document that was created by white, Christian men. The practice of slavery was outlawed only because it was deemed incompatible with the Judeo-Christian view of human equality encapsulated in the Constitution.

Slavery existed in areas of the United States from 1776, when the colonies declared their independence from Britain, to 1865, when Congress adopted the Thirteenth Amendment. This means that it took the American people a mere 89 years to end a practice that had existed since at least the earliest days of recorded history. Moreover, the American people were so determined to end slavery that they fought a civil war, in which more than 360,000 Union soldiers sacrificed their lives, to end it. Included in the list of war dead is a president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who was shot and killed by a southern sympathizer.

When a professor unleashes this lie in class, he is doing so with the hope that most of his students do not have a grasp on the complex history of the Middle East. In response to this lie, you may want to begin by asking your professor why the Palestinians walked away from the peace table in 2000 and kicked off an intifada, after the Israelis agreed to 95% of their demands. Chances are, your professor will not be able to answer this question.

To counter the lie that Israel victimizes the Palestinians, it is necessary to understand a few basic facts about modern Middle Eastern history.

Prior to WWI, Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire and was referred to as the area of Palestine. It, however, was not the nation of Palestine; it was merely one of many territories under Ottoman rule. At the close of WWI, the Ottoman Empire was divided up between the French and the British. From the end of the First World War until 1948, the area referred to as Palestine was under British rule. During this period the area witnessed an influx of Jews. In 1948, Britain officially pulled out of the area of Palestine and, with the blessing of the U.N., the nation of Israel was officially created.

Israel was attacked on the very day of its creation by five Arab neighbors-Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Israel successfully fought off its enemies and a peace treaty was signed in 1949. When the dust settled after the fighting, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled the West Bank. These are the so-called “disputed territories” that the Palestinians claim to be fighting for today.

It is important to note that Egypt and Jordan controlled these territories from 1949 until Israel won possession of them during the Six Day War in 1967. Never during this time was there a movement among Palestinians to “liberate” their “nation” from Egypt and Jordan. It was not until after 1967, when Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, that Palestinians launched a war to “liberate” these territories. In fact, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964, three years before Israel controlled Gaza and the West Bank. The goal of the PLO was, and continues to be, the eradication of Jews from Israel. When Israel won the areas of Gaza and the West Bank, the PLO was simply provided with a convenient excuse for attacking Israel.

Today, Arafat claims to want nothing more than the West Bank and Gaza, but he wears on his military fatigues the official map of the future state of Palestine. It is a map encompassing the entire nation of Israel.

This is one of the most humorous lies that the academic left has concocted. Professors across the nation often repeat this lie so matter-of-factly that students don’t give it a second thought. The idea, however, that Karl Marx was a genius is simply ridiculous.

Marx was a well-educated man who was steeped in economics and history. He studied at the University of Berlin and he spent his entire adult life pursuing an intellectual mission. But to categorize him as a “genius” is to dramatically overstate his intellectual contribution to the world.

The word “genius” implies that the person in question has, at the bare minimum, created something that works. One would hardly refer to a person who creates a computer that doesn’t function or a car that doesn’t run as a “genius.” Yet leftists insist on applying this moniker to Marx, even though he originated a theory that has proven to be a dismal failure.

Marx’s accomplishments include formulating the theory of historical materialism, claiming that humans can create a heaven on earth, and calling for workers to achieve this utopia through armed revolution. His ideas have directly led to the slaughter of more than one hundred million people (that’s more than sixteen times the number of Jews who died in the holocaust) and sentenced millions more to the gulag, leaving yet even more unfortunates to wither in abject poverty. You may want to present this point to your professor and ask him how that qualifies Marx as a “genius.”

Many leftwing professors were student radicals in the Sixties who cut their political teeth protesting the Vietnam War. They therefore have a tendency to portray the communist Vietnamese as the good guys. These professors will often cite the ambiguous incidents surrounding the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which brought American troops into Vietnam in full force, or the terrible My Lai Massacre, in which GIs massacred more than 300 unarmed villagers, as evidence that the Americans, not the Vietcong, were the aggressors.

You can counter this lie by reminding your professor that America never invaded North Vietnam; U.S. troops were only there to defend South Vietnam from a communist invasion. Therefore, if the communists had been willing to confine their totalitarian rule strictly to North Vietnam, the war could have ended much sooner than it did. Because the communists were unwilling to stop infiltrating the South, the U.S. was forced to keep a military presence in South Vietnam.

You may also want to jog your professor’s selective memory by reminding him that after the U.S. withdrew its forces from Vietnam in 1975, the communists in South East Asia exterminated more people than were killed on all sides during the entire Vietnam War.

Academic radicals perpetuate this lie because, in addition to taking over academia, the hard left has seized control of the Democrat Party. Therefore, leftist professors see it as their political duty to cover the backs of their comrades in the Democrat Party by demonizing Republicans. History, however, is a bit kinder to Republicans.

The Republican Party was formed in February 1855, in response to the spread of slavery. The most immediate cause of the Republican Party’s formation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act allowed for both Kansas and Nebraska to be brought into the Union, with the process of "popular sovereignty" set to decide the question of slavery. Anti-slavery men correctly viewed this as a violation of the earlier agreed upon Missouri Compromise, which forbade the spread of slavery in any new territory north of Missouri’s southern border. In protest, the Republican Party was formed.

Far from being the Party of Racism, as the left portrays it, the Republican Party since its inception has promoted policies that benefit minorities. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and his great sacrifice for the cause of human equality brought black Americans into the Republican camp for almost a hundred years. It was not until the 1960 presidential race that a large percentage of blacks left the Republican Party to support JFK, who, in contrast with his opponent Richard Nixon, publicly allied himself with Martin Luther King.

It must also be remembered that Democrats led the southern racists against whom Dr. King and his followers marched. Alabama governor George Wallace, Arkansas governor Orville Faubus, and Georgia governor Lester Maddox, to name just a few, were all Democrats who attempted to keep the south segregated. It took a Republican President named Dwight Eisenhower, with an army of National Guardsmen, to desegregate the south.

Today, the Republican Party continues to be the Party of Civil Rights. Its stand against racial quotas, its defense of the nuclear family, its push for more severe criminal penalties, its enthusiastic support of the second amendment, and its call for the creation of school vouchers are all part of the Republican Party’s desire to empower minorities.

This is not a complete list of lies that my teachers told me, but I believe that the above list captures the basic lies with which I was often confronted as an undergraduate. It is unfortunate that such a list needs composing. But until widespread and lasting measures are taken to eliminate academic bias, the lies cited above will continue to pervade the lectures and the textbooks that today constitute a college education.

In the meantime, it is up to all of us outside of the academic gulag to funnel information into those young conservatives who are trapped behind enemy lines, and whose only hope for intellectual survival is a strong dose of the truth about their nation’s valiant history.

"I was lucky. For whatever reason, perhaps my upbringing, perhaps my world experience, I saw that my professors were only giving me half the story."

Most American kids these days aren't that "lucky." That's why we're in such deep sh*t. Great article. BTTT.

"Lie Number Six: Marx Was A “Genius:”

"The manner in which the word "job" lost its magical potency illustrates the irony of history. I remember how scornful I felt when I first read Marx's description of the worker's attitude toward work in a capitalist society. The worker, he said, feels physically and morally debased by his work. He is an exile in his place of work and feels at home only when away from his job. Marx never did a day of work in his life, and never took the trouble to find out how a worker really feels when on the job. He naturally assumed that workers were a lesser breed of intellectuals." -E. Hoffer

"The nineteenth century planted the words which the twentieth ripened into the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler. There is hardly an atrocity committed in the twentieth century that was not foreshadowed or even advocated by some noble man of words in the nineteenth."

Leftist professors love to point out that the Vietnam war is an example of America’s “imperialist ambitions,”

The real reason LBJ escalated the assistance that the US offered So. Vietnam, under the SEATO treaty, was to insure LBJ a second term and the continuation of the "Great Society". Sadly, nothing more and nothing as noble as fighting communisim. However, that's what the American soldiers were really doing, fighting communism, despite their cynical manipulation and abuse from Wash. DC.

Excellent article that does a great job debunking the left's loony revisionist history.

It left out one important (and oft-repeated) myth, though: that McCarthyism was a brutal reactionary oppression of peaceful left-wing democratic sympathists. The truth is, the CPUSA had close ties to the Soviets, and we had every reason to be afraid of them. The "Hollywood Ten" was, indeed, a group of trecherous Communists.

As for McCarthyism itself, these so-called "Communist Witch-Hunts" were not a product of McCarthy; rather, McCarthyism was a product of the (rightly held) antipathy toward Communism. McCarthy had the right idea, even if he took the wrong approach.

As if to drive the point home, the "blacklist" that McCarthy used was nothing new. It had been formed to root substance abusers, alcoholics, Communists, and Nazi sympathists out of governmental positions; given his alcoholism, had the litmus test been applied to McCarthy himself, he would've been toast long before the Senate voted for his censure.

Another myth: that John F. Kennedy was a liberal saint who would usher in the new era of peace and tolerance. (Of course, the idea that leftism promotes peace and tolerance is debatable, but that's a topic for another day.)

The truth: JFK cut the capital gains tax. He was friendly with Richard Nixon. He and his brother Robert were friends with and political supporters of Joseph McCarthy. Kennedy was decidedly anti-Communist, and he waffled a bit on the Civil Rights Amendment.

The truth is, the CPUSA had close ties to the Soviets, and we had every reason to be afraid of them.

Actually, you are understating the case here. The CPUSA was both funded and controlled by the Soviet Union. We know this both from the Venona data and also because the bagman was an American spy.

His name escapes me at the moment, but he had been a former communist who was sent back in to the party at the the behest of the US government. He became highly trusted by the Soviets after making a spot on analysis of what would happen to Nixon in regards to Watergate.

And what better way to ensure sweeping indoctrination than to require that all job applicants have a college degree?

If you liked that, I would recommend reading the books of Eric Hoffer. He was a self-taught writer, who worked as long shoreman, miner, and migrant farm worker. He is the left's worst night mare. A working man, who states the truths of everyday life.

"It is part of the sickness of our time that money has lost its magic power. What ails societies at present is not that everybody wants as much money as possible but that everybody wants to do as little as possible. We used to wonder how in the nineteenth century it was possible for so few to have so much at the expense of the many. Now the wonder is that so many get so much at the expense of the few. A showdown between the few who work and the many who don't will make a strange sort of revolution." - E. Hoffer

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