A Patriot's History of the Modern World

August 13, 2012
Schweikart and Dougherty examine nearly 50 years of growing American political and military mastery from the Spanish-American War to WWII. Choosing a theme of Yankee exceptionalism (with four pillars: common law, Protestantism, free market capitalism, and private property), the authors (Schweikart is a professor of history at the University of Dayton and coauthored The Patriot’s History Reader with Dougherty) make a convincing case for the series of trial-and-error achievements from Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations through Prohibition to the ultimate victory over Japan with the atomic bomb: “America’s ascent to world power demonstrated that so long as the essence of American exceptionalism remained at the core of all efforts foreign and domestic, the likelihood of success was nearly guaranteed.” There is a conservative slant on some issues, such as the criticism of FDR’s New Deal, but the sections on Margaret Sanger’s embrace of eugenics (less well known than her birth control advocacy) and the rise of the fascists in Europe are noteworthy in their detail. Sweeping in scope and, as the title indicates, unapologetically patriotic, this book honors the American way at home and abroad with its firm emphasis on “human dignity and prosperity.” Maps. Agent: New England Publishing Associates,

September 1, 2012
Schweikart (History/Univ. of Dayton; What Would the Founders Say?: A Patriot's Answers to America's Most Pressing Problems, 2011, etc.) and Dougherty (co-author: The Patriot's History Reader: Essential Documents for Every American, 2011) pen a conservative paean to American exceptionalism. In 2004, Schweikart published A Patriot's History of the United States (co-authored with Michael Allen) as a conservative response to Howard Zinn's bestselling A People's History of the United States. This similarly titled book has a narrower focus, filtering a half-century of American history--from 1898 to 1945--through a right-wing lens. The authors focus on American involvement in both World Wars and how American virtues, particularly free-market capitalism, helped to win them. An overarching theme is the idea of American exceptionalism, that the United States is a "shining city upon a hill" above all others. The book is aimed at a hard-core Republican audience, so while it is extensively sourced and footnoted, it is steeped in conservative dogma. The authors label progressivism as "one of the most destructive forces since slavery" and Woodrow Wilson as a "self-appointed messiah," and the phrase "economic justice" appears only in ironic quotation marks. The authors even paint Warren G. Harding, consistently ranked by many historians as one of the worst presidents in American history, as a thoughtful and capable leader. They also discount criticism of Japanese-American internment during World War II, implying that it was justified by FBI-gathered evidence--though they grudgingly note that "Japanese-Americans' life in the camps was no picnic." A predictable right-wing slant on American history.

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