Hogeye wrote: Perhaps you are making some unwarrented assumptions, e.g. that these four major inputs ("waves") were the only immigration. But Woods does not say that.
DAR
No, multiple even sympathetic reviews say he leaves that impression (see above).
This reviewer makes the point better, showing how inadequate Woods' is on this matter:
***
American History for Ideologues
Joe Lockard
The opening two paragraphs of Thomas Woods’ The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History are astonishing. Chapter 1 on ‘The Colonial Origins of American Liberty’ begins:
“First basic fact: the colonists were not paragons of ‘diversity.’ They came from one part of Europe. They spoke a common language. They worshipped the same God.”
From 1629 to 1775 there were four waves of migration from four geographical regions of England…”
Then Woods provides a specious list of four migration waves, all from the British Isles and all Protestant. And so, in this exercise in what used to be called Anglo-Saxonism, major streams of migration from elsewhere simply disappear. The Dutch immigrants of Woods’ own New York disappear; the Germans of the mid-Atlantic colonies, almost as numerous as the Scots-Irish, disappear; the Catholics of Maryland disappear (not to mention the Catholics of Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere, in communities established long before the original thirteen colonies); and, most tellingly, the entire African diaspora in North America and the Caribbean disappears. Even the settlement dates provided for Virginia and Massachusetts are plain wrong.
This is not simply bad history; it is excruciatingly incompetent history."
link
DAR
The book is terrible rightwing junk. I have read enough about it now to know I would never waste my time with it. This lady, a libertarian and certainly a peer, has taken the time to give it a good roast. Worth a skim:
***
This isn't history, this is political screed., March 12, 2005
Reviewer: Kristan O. Overstreet (Livingston, TX United States) -
As a libertarian, I was hoping for a book which would truly debunk Liberal myths. Instead this book props up conservative myths, with a good chunk of racism and intolerance along the way... oh, and there's the lies it tells about history, too. There's a good bit of truth in here, but it's swallowed up by the author's burning desire to justify greed, bigotry, inequality, and injustice for all who aren't white male Republicans.
To make things even better, there are no footnotes or references to specific cites. There are cute quotes without context, and there is a long bibliography at the end, but for the most part we have to take each of Dr Woods' assertions as fact- unless we have learned better through more direct sources already.
Factual errors:
* Sorry, Dr. Woods- Virginia, New York and Rhode Island did NOT reserve the right to secede when they ratified the Constitution. Virginia and New York demanded a Bill of Rights; Rhode Island ratified without conditions.
* Sorry again, but the Puritans- as all Europeans of their time- were quite definitely racist. You entirely ignore the many Indian wars prior to the Revolution, most of which were triggered by European violations of treaties and encroachments on Indian land.
* The words "We the States" was changed to "We the People" *specifically* to render the federal government independent of the states. Woods utterly ignores the Articles of Confederation, the problems they caused, and their affect on the Constitution which followed them.
* Yes, the struggle over slavery prior to the Civil War was about political power... but only insofar as that power was to be used to -defend slavery.- Insofar as the South had any unifying cause, slavery was it. Woods would have you believe that slavery was unimportant to the South except as a tool for gaining supremacy over the North in a Washington pecking order.
* The right to secede is not so clear-cut as Woods would have you believe. His application of the Tenth Amendment- "you can do anything not specifically prohibited you"- ignores the repeated references to the President's power to suppress rebellions and insurrections. Even at the time of the civil war, and even in the deepest South, there was no unified opinion on the subject. Woods, however, would have you believe nobody except Lincoln and his fellow tyrants endorsed Union Forever.
* Confederate armies- including Lee's armies- did not go for the total destruction of civilian property, but they did destroy a lot, both for military purposes (railroads, bridges, supplies) and for lack of discipline. Woods ignores the vast documentation of Southern civilians who feared Confederate cavalry depredations more than Union troops.
* Yes, extremely racist "vagrancy laws" and black codes existed in the North during Reconstruction and after. Northern Jim Crow, however, does NOT excuse or justify Southern Jim Crow.
* A monopoly is any company with effective total control over a commodity, class of product, or service. It does not -have- to jack up prices astronomically to strangle competition, no matter what Woods would have you believe.
* Woods praises John D. Rockefeller and claims that Rockefeller did no wrong in undercutting his competition. He completely ignores exclusive service agreements with railroads for transport of his product, and claims that laws which force equal trade for all are unjust!
* In Dr. Woods' universe, the Zimmerman telegram, urging Mexico to declare war on the United States, never existed. Wilson went to war because he was personally pro-British... oh, and siege warfare is against international law if it involves the seas, according to Woods.
* Woods claims that boom-bust economic cycles are solely caused by centralized government banking. How do you explain the Panics of 1837, 1853, and 1873, then, all of which were worse than the Great Depression, and all of which took place when there was no central bank whatever?
* As distasteful and corrupt as socialism is, Dr. Woods, it is and was quite possible to be leftist without being in the pay of Stalin.
Things Woods endorses in the course of the book:
* That states have the right (and, indeed, the obligation) to mandate religion and to force citizens to worship or depart.
* Intolerance and persecution is required for freedom- not for people to flee from, but for people to -live under.-
* The Fourteenth Amendment, which extends prohibitions on violations of individual rights to state as well as federal governments, should be repealed. Go censorship! Go kangaroo courts!
* Thomas Jefferson, although he had nothing to do with the crafting of or ratification of the Constitution, is the sole Founding Father to be relied upon for interpretation of what the Constitution means.
* Abolish unions. There's no such thing as exploitation of workers.
* Joseph McCarthy, far from being an opportunist politician seeking to promote himself by destroying others, was a well-intentioned hero.
* FDR -forced- the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor- indeed, the world would be a better place had America remained neutral in the Second World War.
* Legislated segregation is not merely lawful, it is a good thing. Besides, the South would have given up segregation by itself eventually, right?
*Michael Milken, far from being a perpetuator of fraud and deception in trade, was a hero for creating the junk bond.
And this is the stuff I get just from skimming the book!!
In his preface, Woods says: "[This book] is not intended to be a complete overview of American history." You bet it's not- it's merely a partial and extremely selective covering of issues to present a fundamentalist conservative viewpoint of America. Libertarians who believe in -equal- freedom for all, and political students who seek a balanced and accurate presentation of disputed facts, should AVOID THIS BOOK LIKE THE PLAGUE.
If you listen to Limbaugh and watch O'Reilly, and dislike independent thought, then this book is for you.
***
DAR
But then I look a little closer and find this Woods character is a founding member of these
racists bastards:
The League of the South
"The League of the South is a Southern nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is "a free and independent Southern republic."[1] The group defines the Southern United States as the states that made up the former Confederacy, plus Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland."
Views
As noted, the League promotes the "independence of the Southern people" from the "American empire"[4] and this on a variety of levels: culturally, economically, socially, and politically.
Politics
Seeking support in the American Declaration of Independence, the League believes the "Southern people" have the right to secede from the United States, and that it "must throw off the yoke of imperial [American] oppression".[12] The League promotes a Southern Confederation of sovereign, independent States that "work together . . . to conduct foreign affairs".
...Though the ultimate goal of the League is to create an independent Southern nation, it sees this aim as the final step in an ongoing process:
Once we have planted the seeds of cultural, social, and economic renewal, then (and only then), should we begin to look to the South's political renewal. Political independence will come only when we have convinced the Southern people that they are indeed a nation in the organic, historical, and Biblical sense of the word, namely, that they are a distinct people with a language, mores, and folkways that separate them from the rest of the world.[15]
The League's current official activities focus on recruiting and encouraging "cultural secession" and "withholding our support from all institutions and objects of popular culture that are antithetical to our beliefs and heritage."[16]
LoS President Michael Hill has argued for the centrality of Christian white men in the movement: "But let us never deny (for the sake of pleasing the implacable Cultural Marxists) that we, the descendants of white, European Christians, are central to a movement to preserve and advance a particular civilization, cultural inheritance, and physical place."[18] Hill has also advocated the ideology of kinism, and would outlaw racial intermarriage and non-white immigration, expel all “aliens” (including Jews and Arabs) and limit the right to vote to white landowning males over the age of twenty-one.
DAR
So basically they are a cross between the Klan and nazis.
Much more on Woods
here
Rightwatch has
this,
which is even better and shows how the vile Lew Rockwell is wrapped up with these filthy, nasty, rightwing racist bastards:
Sample:
***
I was doing some research today about the extreme Right. These are people who are authoritarians, often violent, almost always racist, etc. In the process I came across an article about the Southern Patriot Shop which is owned by the League of the South which paid $158,000 for the building. The manager is David Sutter. All this is easily confirmed via League of South web sites.
The bookstore has a massive Confederate flag flying outside. Really massive. Inside is Joshua Caleb Sutter, an employee and the son of David.
Now David Sutter is not unknown in among radical racists. He was known as a major activist in the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist Nazi group. He called himself Wulfran Hall, High Counsel of Aryan Nations. Sutter lived at the compound of the Aryan Nation for awhile. And when the group split the new leader, and Sutter’s mentor, August Kreis, moved the “headquarters” to a trailer not far from the Southern Patriot Shop.
Joshua Sutter was previously arrested when he tried to purchase a firearm with the serial number ground off. Sutter also was a member of the Church of the Sons of Yaweh, a racialist Identity church, that preaches that only whites have souls and that Jews are the physical offspring of Satan. After the 9/11 attacks Sutter was appointed by the Aryan Nations as their Minister for Islamic Liaison. His job was to start building alliances with radical Islamic groups.
Sutter also penned a “message of solidarity and support” to Saddam Hussein where he expressed his desire that “the evil regime of the United States... shall be utterly wiped off the face of the earth. He apparently got of jail in November and found employment working for the League of the South in their bookstore.
The main founder of the group, Michael Hill, has said that people other than white Christians will be allowed to live in the new Confederacy which they envision but only if they acknowledge “the cultural dominance of Anglo-Celtic people and their institutions”. And he has allegedly said that slavery is “God-ordained.”
This is a view shared by many extremists, especially individuals associated with the Christian Reconstructionist movement, a movement with close ties to Rockwell and crew. In one article about the bookshop the author interviews one of the League members visiting the shop who says: “People today misunderstand what slavery was all about. Slavery is a natural part of man. It explains that in the Bible. And that’s what really separated the North from the South, is that the South recognized the Bible as the true word of God when it came to slavery.”
Rev. Steven Wilkins is a Reconstructionist minister and a board member of the League. Prominent League officials attend his church. He repeats a message very similar to that of Thomas Woods in his infamous essay on the South. The Woods essay, which we covered earlier, was written for a Reconstructionist publication.
Wilkins says the major conflict between North and South was one of culture, particularly Christian culture. He claims the North wanted “not merely to destroy slavery and its evils but to destroy Southern culture.” He says: “There was a radical hatred of Scripture and the old Theology, which they felt were so bad for the country. They saw the South as the embodiment of all they hated. Thus, the northern radicals were trying to throw off this Biblical culture and turn the country in a different direction.”
***
So there we have it. No wonder Hogeye thought Woods' book was so accurate.
I am on to better things.
D.
