- the US has a government funded k-16 education system
- almost all political journalists rely on government press credentials to do their reporting
- most journalists rely on cultivating strong relationships with the permanent civil service in order to get the inside dirt on politicians.
Now consider these three outrageous claims:
- the New Deal was among the worst things to happen to America in the last 100 years
- forcing universal suffrage democracy on Zimbabwe was a tragic mistake
- the American revolution was accompanied by an incredible amount of mob violence on innocent colonists. It would have been better for everyone if the instigators had been caught and hung. Instead, they won and set up our current government, so we remember them as heroes.
No respectable person believes these last three claims. Indeed, the fact that I even posted such claims indicates that I may be a barbarian from Digg who somehow found his way onto Hacker News. There are two possible reasons why these claims seem so repellent: 1) these views really are crazy and wrong, or 2) believing these three things would undermine the legitimacy of our entire government, including its education system. Thus, via self-selection and overt-selection, no one in the education system or mainstream media defends these claims. We spend our entire life only hearing one side of the story. Americans views of FDR end up being as inaccurate as the Chinese view of Mao.
If you are willing to entertain the idea that #2 may be a possibility, Sydney George Fisher is a fine place to start. Take a look at Chapter 8 of his history of the American Revolution: http://books.google.com/books?id=YmFMcvSIwOEC&printsec=f...
- the US has a government funded k-16 education system
- almost all political journalists rely on government press credentials to do their reporting
- most journalists rely on cultivating strong relationships with the permanent civil service in order to get the inside dirt on politicians.
Now consider these three outrageous claims:
- the New Deal was among the worst things to happen to America in the last 100 years
- forcing universal suffrage democracy on Zimbabwe was a tragic mistake
- the American revolution was accompanied by an incredible amount of mob violence on innocent colonists. It would have been better for everyone if the instigators had been caught and hung. Instead, they won and set up our current government, so we remember them as heroes.
No respectable person believes these last three claims. Indeed, the fact that I even posted such claims indicates that I may be a barbarian from Digg who somehow found his way onto Hacker News. There are two possible reasons why these claims seem so repellent: 1) these views really are crazy and wrong, or 2) believing these three things would undermine the legitimacy of our entire government, including its education system. Thus, via self-selection and overt-selection, no one in the education system or mainstream media defends these claims. We spend our entire life only hearing one side of the story. Americans views of FDR end up being as inaccurate as the Chinese view of Mao.
If you are willing to entertain the idea that #2 may be a possibility, Sydney George Fisher is a fine place to start. Take a look at Chapter 8 of his history of the American Revolution: http://books.google.com/books?id=YmFMcvSIwOEC&printsec=f...