WHAT YOU NEED NOW - CONTENT UPDATED THROUGH THE DAY -
April 6, 2005
BOOK REVIEWS: You Don’t Know Much About History and What You Know is Probably Wrong: ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History’; ‘Unholy Alliance’ Attacks Home-Grown America Haters; Crichton’s ‘State of Fear’ Probes Eco-Terrorism
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| Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz Regnery Publishing, Inc. (2004) ISBN: 089526076X (B&N) |
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton (HNN) — Whether it’s global warming, demolished in typical Michael Crichton fashion in “State of Fear” (HarperCollins, 624 pages, $27.95) or American history retold by Thomas E. Woods Jr. in a libertarian manner in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” (Regnery Publishing, 281 pages, $19.95) the questioning reader is reminded that much of what we are presented as solid, take-it-to-the-bank fact by the mainstream media and many writers is often absolute bunk and complete fabrication.
Add to the mixture David Horowitz’s “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left” (Regnery, 301 pages, $27.95) and we are presented with an America that is worse than Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia or Saddam’s Iraq, if one is to believe most of the left-wing historians and activists in our so-called “prestige” universities. Horowitz isn’t talking about a third-rate figure like Colorado’s Ward Churchill in “Unholy Alliance”: He’s referring to A-List academics like Eric Foner, Todd Gitlin and Nicholas De Genova, whose Op-Ed pieces can be found in major newspapers from coast to coast. Throw into this witch’s brew female useful idiots like Medea Benjamin, Angela Davis and Bernadine Dohrn and you wonder why anyone wants to live in the good old U.S.of A!
We’re being lied to so much it’s a wonder we believe in anything!
Both Crichton’s page-turning techno-thriller – I’ve read most of them and I think this is the best – and Woods’ survey of historical misinformation came out in the last month of 2004. Horowitz, one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s who converted to libertarianism/conservatism, published his book a month or so earlier.
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| State of Fear by Michael Crichton HarperCollins Publishers (2004) ISBN: 0066214130 (B&N) |
“State of Fear,” which has an eco-terrorist-generated tsunami at the end of the huge novel, ironically came out just before the Indian Ocean tsunami, which as far as anyone knows, wasn’t caused by big corporations or S.U.V. drivers. I recommend “State of Fear” to anyone who firmly believes in global warming as proven fact rather than a politically-driven theory; the novel is based on three years of research by one of our best writers and contains documentation rivaling the best of fact-based science literature. One of the characters everyone will be able to decipher in “State of Fear” is Ted Bradley, who plays the president of the U.S. in a popular TV series. His fate at book’s end on an island in the South Pacific is horrific; why do I find it so hilarious?
In an appendix to “State of Fear”, Crichton cautions against combining science and politics by using case studies of eugenics and of Lysenko’s revival of Lamarckian genetics, as opposed to the Mendelian kind that is generally accepted. Trofim D. Lysenko was a Soviet pseudo-scientist whose theories about acquired characteristics being inherited were put into practice by Stalin and resulted in millions dying from famine. Lysenko (1898-1976) was the leading proponent of Michurianism during the Lenin/Stalin years. I. V. Michurin, in turn, was a proponent of Lamarckism. Lamarck was an 18th century French scientist who argued for a theory of evolution decades before Darwin.
Eugenics, wildly popular a century ago with people as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Theodore Roosevelt, led to the German/Nazi destruction of millions of people in gas chambers and killing fields. Crichton points out that “progressive” California led the nation in forced sterilization of “feeble-minded” people well into the 1930s. He doesn’t have to remind us – or does he? – that the Golden State, home to more crackpots per square mile than any other state, still has the death penalty, something that often derided West Virginia abandoned in the 1960s.
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| The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas E. Woods Jr. Regnery Publishing, Inc. (2004) ISBN: 0895260476 (B&N) |
Reading these books about the same time reinforced in my mind the view that Crichton, 62, a graduate of Harvard Medical School with impeccable scientific credentials, is absolutely correct in his attack on the blending of politics and science. Woods, a history professor at one of the State University of New York campuses with a doctorate from Columbia University, shows that blending politics and history is just as disastrous. Horowitz – like Whittaker Chambers, who has been fully rehabilitated in the wake of the Venona revelations (see Harvey Klehr’s “Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America”) – was privy to the twists and turns of those who found nothing good about this nation. It’s a wonder they all haven’t moved to the beaches of Cuba, instead of Malibu!
The current generation of history professors and textbook authors is dominated by baby boomers, who in large part still subscribe to outdated Marxism, Woods notes, echoing Horowitz. Woods singles out one of the more noted ones – Eugene D. Genovese – in a sidebar on Page 161. Genovese, one of the nation’s foremost historians of the South, began to come out of his Marxist coma in the 1990s and has since regained his reason.
Genovese is no longer an apologist for the mass murder committed in the name of Communism: “We were led into complicity with mass murder and the desecration of our professed ideals not by Stalinist or other corruptions of high ideals…but by a deep flaw in our understanding of human nature…and by our inability to replace the moral and ethical baseline provided by the religion we had left…,” Genovese wrote in the mid-1990s as he returned to his Roman Catholic faith, which he has abandoned at age 15.
Walter Duranty of The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence in 1932 – in spite of the fact that he lied or covered up the massive starvation in the Soviet Union – particularly in the Ukraine – under Stalin’s enforced collectivization program, Woods points out. Duranty was one of many who turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Russian Revolution. He lists several, including muckraker Lincoln Steffens, who famously proclaimed to Bernard Baruch in 1919: “I have been over into the future and it works!”
I was particularly pleased by Woods’s demolition of the Woodrow Wilson myth. Woods, describes in considerable detail how Wilson – who ran a strongly neutral campaign in 1916 – on April 2, 1917 dragged the United States into the 1914-1918 war that later became known as World War I. Woods takes the position – which I’ve long held – that the entry of the U.S. into the war virtually guaranteed the horrors of World War II. Wilson was violently pro-British and, Woods says, provoked the Germans into sinking passenger liners like the Lusitania in 1915. In contrast to FDR, who 35 years later discouraged Americans from traveling into the war zone, Wilson went out of his way to encourage ridiculous tourism travel to a warring Europe, often on ships carrying war materiel to the allies.
Horowitz in “Unholy Alliance” attempts to explain why the supposedly progressive and aggressively secular American Left, including many leaders of the Democratic Party, could join forces with radical Islam. The quick and dirty answer: The firmly entrenched Left – including many of his former buddies like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times – shares the view with radical Islamists here and abroad that America is the “Great Satan” (Israel is the “Little Satan”).
The Left, which adhered to the Communist Party line even when the Soviet Union joined forces with Nazi Germany in 1939-1941 to conquer Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic nations, finds no discomfort in joining forces with Islamists who deny basic rights to women and minority religions and who still practice slavery in Africa, Horowitz says.
The common thread of all three books, which are worth reading for liberals, conservatives, libertarians and everyone, is not to take conventional, received wisdom as the gospel. Question authority – something the Left does – except when it comes to Fidel’s Cuba and other paragons of freedom — and you may find the truth is out there somewhere.
And to Civil War buffs wondering if that is Mort Kunstler’s painting of “Old Pete” (Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet of Gettysburg and Chickamauga fame) on the cover of Woods’ large-format paperback book, the answer is yes. One of the more controversial sections of the book is his discussion of the causes of the Civil War and why it is not technically a civil war in the sense of the Spanish (1936-39) the English (1640s) or the Russian (the battle of the Reds and Whites after the Bolshevik Takeover in 1917). As Woods explains (Pages 61-62), a civil war is one in “which two or more factions fight for control of a nation’s government….The seceding Southern states were not trying to take over the United States government; they wanted to declare themselves independent.”
| Publishers' Web Sites: | www.regnery.com |
| www.harpercollins.com | |
| Authors' Web Sites: | Michael Crichton www.crichton-official.com |
| David Horowitz www.frontpagemag.com/AboutHorowitz/index.asp |
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More Book Reviews by David M. Kinchen
— 10/28/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bill Kurtis on the Death Penalty; Ms. Moffett Becomes a Teacher
— 11/15/04 BOOK REVIEW: Roth Envisions a Frightening 'What If?' in 'The Plot Against America'
— 11/24/04 BOOK REVIEWS: Bush, Blair and Iraq; A Shrink at Nuremberg; Updike's Sexy Geek; Potomac Fever Smites an Academic
— 12/15/04 BOOK REVIEWS: 'Past Imperfect' Covers Complexities of History, Plagiarism Issues; 'His Excellency' Reveals George Washington's Accomplishments
— 12/29/04 BOOK REVIEWS: ‘de Kooning’ Chronicles Rise of American Art Supremacy; ‘Adams vs. Jefferson’ Shows That Controversial Presidential Elections are Nothing New
— 01/17/05 BOOK REVIEW: Max Hastings on Germany's 'Armageddon' as Allies from West,
East Conquer Third Reich
— 01/24/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Images of America: Huntington’ Displays Glorious Architecture of West Virginia’s First Planned City
— 01/29/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Auschwitz’ Personalizes Horror That Should Never Be Forgotten
— 01/31/05 BOOK REVIEWS: ‘Election 2004’ Shows How Bush Won; ‘Santa Cruz’ is Captivating Picture History of California’s Laid-Back Resort town
— 02/06/05 BOOK REVIEW: 'French Women Don't Get Fat' is a Delightful Way to Read Yourself Thin; Monsieurs: There's No Reason Why It Won't Work for You!
— 02/14/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Irish Milwaukee,’ ‘Italian Milwaukee’ Capture Flavor of One of America’s Best Cities — And Best Kept Secrets
— 02/17/05BOOK REVIEW: ‘Freedom Rising,’ Vividly Re-Creates Life in Nation's Capital During the Civil War
— 02/21/05 BOOK REVIEW: ‘Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?,’ Economist Says There's No Danger of Housing Melt-Down; Says Media Exaggerates 'Bubble'
— 03/02/05 BOOK REVIEW: 'Freedom Rising' Vividly Re-Creates Life in Nation's Capital During the Civil War
– 03/21/05 BOOK REVIEW: 'Lipstick Jihad' Deals with Family, Career Matters of a Young Iranian-American Journalist
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