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The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Medved
Publisher: Crown Forum
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 335
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307394069
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780307394064
ASIN: 0307394069
Publication Date: November 18, 2008
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Product Description
“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble,nineteenth-century humorist Josh Billings remarked. “It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”
In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on ten of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country—in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In The 10 Big Lies About America, Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues.
The myths that Medved deftly debunks include:
Myth: The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor.
Fact: The colonies that became the United States accounted for, at most, 3 percent of the abominable international slave trade; the persistence of slavery in America slowed economic progress; and the U.S. deserves unique credit for ending slavery.
Myth: The alarming rise of big business hurts the United States and oppresses its people.
Fact: Corporations played an indispensable role in building America, and corporate growth has brought progress that benefits all with cheaper goods and better jobs.
Myth: The Founders intended a secular, not Christian, nation.
Fact: Even after ratifying the Constitution, fully half the state governments endorsed specific Chris tian denominations. And just a day after approving the First Amendment, forbidding the establishment of religion, Congress called for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to acknowledge “the many signal favors of Almighty God.”
Myth: A war on the middle class means less comfort and opportunity for the average American.
Fact: Familiar campaign rhetoric about the victimized middle class ignores the overwhelming statistical evidence that the standard of living keeps rising for every segment of the population, as well as the real-life experience of tens of millions of middle-class Americans.
Each of the ten lies—widely believed among elites and taught as truth in universities and public schools—is a grotesque, propagandistic distortion of the historical record. For everyone who is tired of hearing America denigrated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, The 10 Big Lies About America supplies the ammunition necessary to fire back the next time somebody tries to recycle these baseless beliefs. Medved’s witty, well-documented rebuttal is a refreshing reminder that as Americans we should feel blessed, not burdened, by our heritage.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Balance to What My Children Hear in School November 20, 2008
Mom of Teens (Seattle, WA)
143 out of 182 found this review helpful
My high-schoolers' history textbooks casually spout several of the lies that this book debunks in easily-understood, well-researched chapters. I was looking for something that would present the "other side" of what they hear, and this is authoritative and so engrossing that my son (age 16) read the entire book without stopping (even eating while he read!) as soon as we got it.
I'd heard Michael Medved on the radio and was always struck by his knowledge of history and ability to communicate, which this book confirms.
Reading The 10 Big Lies restored my positive feelings about the history of our nation, and also added to my pride and gratitude for living here. It was especially helpful to read well-supported GOOD news as a counterbalance to the negativity all over TV and the newspapers.
An uplifting book filled with useful and sometimes surprising facts--that I enjoyed reading.
A great book for the American patriot November 19, 2008
J. Adatto
83 out of 119 found this review helpful
In The 10 Big Lies About America, Michael Medved addresses 10 popular misconceptions about the US that are taught in the world of academia. The types of issues he addresses cover both the history of the country (Myth: The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor) and modern political dialogue (Myth: The alarming rise of big business hurts the United States and oppresses its people). In his clear-thinking style of writing, the author makes the case that America is by and large a force for good in the world and that it is really the "greatest nation on God's green earth".
Thank you, America November 25, 2008
Jose L. Mendiguchia (Tres Cantos, Madrid Spain)
80 out of 102 found this review helpful
As European (Spaniard), I have enjoyed the most peaceful period in our 2000 + years of History... thanks to those vilified Americans. You helped us getting rid of fascism and communism (well, maybe you helped Franco to stay in power more than desired, but when he died, your Government was a good mediator in our transition period to democracy). And thanks to your protection, we didn't have to spend that much in weapons to scare off the soviets, thus establishing our so much well-liked welfare society(sorry, not as good as many American lefties think it is). You have been a bargain to Europe. Thank you. I will buy this book as a vaccine against the lies I have to endure in Spain regarding USA and its noble people.
 Allan Bloom Redux November 20, 2008
Eric Whetzel (Chicago, IL)
68 out of 203 found this review helpful
Since the best propaganda contains a grain of truth, when dissecting it one should always be looking for what is left out. In his discussion of slavery - which is emblematic of his overall line of reasoning - he ignores a great deal. His thesis, which is admittedly very narrow, namely 'slavery was bad, but not as bad as we've been led to believe', is wrong headed from the outset. Slavery was bad - period. Does it really matter how it was implemented or practiced? Slavery is the ownership of one human being by another human being- why would anyone try to lessen the impact of this fact?
As to his individual 6 arguments:
1. Slavery was an ancient and universal institution, not a distinctively American innovation:
Since other people did it, it must be okay for us to do it? Does this logic ever lead to a strong argument? Or perhaps more pointedly: Why is someone from the political Right trying to use moral relativism to make an argument about something as morally repugnant as slavery? And to what end? Furthermore, who is he arguing with? He claims there is a "mania for exaggerating America's culpability for the horrors of slavery", presumably by the same "America-bashers" he notes in the preceding paragraph, yet he fails to name a single concrete example- no politician, no public intellectual, no author, no work of scholarship is referenced. Moreover, what makes the American brand of slavery so regrettable is that it occurred in a country that wrote, "All men are created equal" in its Declaration of Independence and which was supposed to be a truly representative democracy. Not to mention the obvious fact that a bloody Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans had to die, was fought, in part, to end the odious institution. What also goes unstated is who led the resistance to any form of abolition. Who was against Transatlantic abolition? Northern abolition? The eventual Southern abolition? Were these wild-eyed Radicals, or Conservatives desperately clinging to tradition, the status quo, and deathly afraid of change, viewing it as an uncontrollable and therefore destabilizing force. Why does this go unacknowledged?
2. Slavery existed only briefly, and in limited locales... involving only a tiny % of (our ancestors):
Again the use of moral relativism to further an argument. For example: How many Americans ever owned a factory in which children worked in unhealthy, cruel, or even life threatening conditions? It's irrelevant how many people are directly engaged in a certain act, or who created the environment, the fact is, it is the very existence of those acts or conditions which is morally reprehensible. It is also surprising to hear a devout believer in the Old Testament rail against "generational guilt" when Original Sin is the very bedrock of their faith. Finally, his attempt to separate "a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination" from "those [years] connected to the long-ago history of bondage," strains credulity. One wonders if the author also believes the struggles of Frederick Douglass and the struggles of Martin Luther King, Jr. to be wholly dissimilar.
3. ...Slavery wasn't genocidal...:
The UN definition of genocide (and by extension the US definition, since it was made the law of the land in 1988): "ANY of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group. b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide)
In addition, how much real difference is there between being killed outright, or being enslaved (and being raised and bred like a farm animal)? What also goes unmentioned is what effect did slavery have on the peoples and cultures of Africa, regardless of who implemented or profited by it. And since the author brought it up, are there any parallels between slavery in America and the Nazi Holocaust? For one, if we follow the author's logic, shouldn't we let Nazi officers, low level soldiers, and even German citizens off the hook since, honestly, how many of them had a direct hand in or direct knowledge about the Holocaust? Or was the blind faith and free hand they gave Hitler and his party the core of the crime, particularly since his plans were no secret, laid out on the pages of Mein Kampf, or in the actions of Kristallnacht.
4. It's not true that the US became a wealthy nation through the abuse of slave labor...:
What was the South growing? (cotton) Where was it exported? (in part, to Northern textile factories) Who benefited? (everyone connected to the transport and production of cotton products, including the "dynamic banking centers" of the North). And while it is true not every citizen in the Confederacy was wealthy enough to own a slave, they went off in their thousands to defend the peculiar institution (state's rights was rooted in a defense of slavery as a Southern institution; see Madison's notes on the Constitutional convention) - does this help or hurt the author's overall argument when even those too poor to own slaves were willing to fight and die to maintain this dubious right for others? Furthermore, the South lagged behind economically due in large measure to the North's ability to transform its economy during the Industrial Revolution. What he also leaves unstated is the harsh environment faced by the labor movement in the South; while exceedingly violent in the North it was positively bloodthirsty in the South, so, unsurprisingly, they have levels of unionized labor far below the North to this day.
5. ...US merits special credit for its rapid abolition:
Nations which abolished slavery before the US: Canada (1834), Denmark (1848), Haiti (1803), Great Britain (1833), Prussia (1807), Spain (1811), Netherlands (1863), Portugal (1773), France (1848), Ecuador (1852), Colombia (1821), Venezuela (1821), Chile (1821), Mexico (1829), Bolivia (1851), Uruguay (1842), Argentina (1813), and even in British occupied India (1860). Adding insult to injury, virtually all of these governments were monarchies, not Republics. How this "merits special credit" is beyond me. Furthermore, it begs the question, Who in the US resisted abolition for so long? Was it not the defenders of tradition and privilege? And what does one do with official US support for Apartheid South Africa - a system arguably more vile and destructive than even Jim Crow - right up until its abolishment in 1990?
6....No reason to believe that today's African-Americans would be better off... remained in Africa:
This argument ignores not only the impact of slavery, but also colonialism/imperialism, and even the violence visited upon African countries during the anti-colonial period, not to mention many of the misguided if not brutal policies of international bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, or WTO on the continent's economy and its many diverse cultures. A basic tenet of ethics, of any system of right and wrong, is universality- if it's wrong for the other guy to do it, then it must be wrong if I do it. So would the author find acceptable the proposition which asserts the Holocaust was the best thing to ever happen to Jewish people since part of what came out of it was the creation of the strong, vibrant nation state of Israel? Any morally coherent person would reject this on its face- so too, then, with the author's proposition.
The political Right in America is talking at cross-purposes with the Left. The Right sees America as it should be; it assumes we have fulfilled the promise of the Constitution and therefore it is great. The Left sees America as it is, with all of its faults, and believes the Constitution holds great promise, but we still have a ways to go before that promise is fulfilled. It's not unlike a parent-teacher conference where the parent keeps insisting how great their child is, while the teacher keeps pointing out the many areas where the child needs to improve performance. Does it make sense to suggest the teacher in this analogy hates the child as the author does when he refers to "America-bashers". There are many things one could decry on the Left, but a lack of patriotism is not one of them. People on the Left enter into debates with those on the Right assuming their counterparts love their country, why is this so often not the case with those on the Right? Is it not possible to both criticize and love one's country? If not, how does one go about making their country better?
The author's arguments, when taken together, amount to little more than obfuscation and an attempt to distract his reader from the real problems and issues facing America - foreign policy, income disparity, healthcare, education, decaying infrastructure, too few of our young people going into or excelling in the hard sciences, and the state of our environment. As long as the middle-class continues to identify with the over-class and their interests, Americans will be told by their pundits and their politicians what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.
 A Useless Exercise In Apologist Literature. November 25, 2008
Mr. Fellini (El Paso, Texas United States)
55 out of 213 found this review helpful
"The 10 Big Lies About America" is a useless, curious book by failed hack film critic Michael Medved that serves no valuable purpose except make radical nationalists tingle with joy. Medved tries to appease readers with his rabid assurances that Americans are a superior people above all others, that sure we've had some slips, but our history overall is squeaky clean. Can we please grow up and join the rest of the world? Commentators like Medved have an unhealthy obsession with people who decide to ask a few more questions about our history, foreign policy and the wars we've fought.
In typical neofascist fashion, Medved warns that most of school texbooks and respected scholars are wrong, they are feeding us "Liberal" propaganda meant to make us feel bad. Why? So we won't go around shouting USA #1" of course! Medved rants and rails about everything from slavery to radical capitalism. He pouts about people wanting to confront our past in regards to slavery, whining that we should commend America for getting rid of slavery and that hey, it wasn't THAT bad. Medved only presents one side of the coin on these issues. He is correct in stating that we should commend our leaders for abolishing the practice, but why should that stop anyone from acknowledging the horrific reality of that history? Those who do not study the past are condemned the relive it. Medved has a disturbing obsession this particular topic of slavery, earlier this year he wrote an article trying to convince everyone that the practice was not as brutal as some make it out to be.
Medved also tries to make excuses for corporate greed and avarice, claiming corporate America has been a boon for Western civilization. Of course he ignores very real poverty, labor and wage declination figures. He glorifies Ronald Reagan of course (who set much of the ground for the modern economic crisis) and tries to hustle the classic Gordon Gekko idea that "greed is good."
The foreign policy sections are of course a joke. Medved tries to instill the fear of God into the reader with his rants about Islamic Jihadis ready to storm our borders, so therefore the completely imperialist Iraq war is necessary, who cares what the Iraqis themselves think right? Medved complains about people calling the US an "Empire." His excuse is that we are "noble" and "spread democracy," so how could we possibly be an empire? Apparently it's just for pure goodwill that we have bases all around the world, overthrow governments, invade countries based on false pretexts and threaten to bomb countries who don't follow our specific demands.
The basic problem with "10 Lies About America" is that it tries to crush dissent and instead sell readers the idea that our nation has never done wrong, that somehow we are above human in character. And when we did make mistakes it was because we tried to do the right thing and it went wrong somehow. This kind of nationalism is quite dangerous because it is nothing but catering to the state, Medved would have been quite at home in Stalinist Russia, praising the Great Leader and making excuses for Soviet expansionism. There are few mentions in this book about our brutal incursions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, but of course to us our neighbors down south don't exist, they are just subhumans living on trash heaps. Medved vilifies Iran, forgetting to mention we overthrew the elected government in 1953 for nationalizing it's own oil. Of course he has nothing but praise for Israel.
"10 Big Lies About America" invites the reader to ignore the challenges and harshness of history, of our present times, and simply slip into pleasant dreams colored red, white & blue. No doubt I will be attacked as "anti-American." But real patriots and concerned citizens examine our history, study it, question it and don't just bow before nationalist dogma.
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