A lie here, a lie there, and yet some other lie elsewhere.
Now, though, author Michael Medved has put them all together in a ten-point summary in his new book, The ten big lies about America: Combating destructive distortions about our nation.
Launching the book at a recent event at the Heritage Foundation, Medved elected to whet his audience’s appetite with three examples.
“In one of the lies, it has been suggested to us that the solution to the economic down-turn is aggressive government programs. It is amazing how many Americans still believe this as an article of faith,” he said, poking holes into the legacy of “sainted” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It was the Second World War and not FDR’s New Deal, he argued, that had ended the Great Depression. Modern-day Democrats, he said, are using the prevailing crisis to re-make the world’s political, economic and social order.
Another lie, he argued, is that the United States is imperialistic and a constant threat to world peace, with increased characterization of the nation and some of its leaders as “the evil empire.”
The emergence of the United States, he argued, was the most important event in the past 500 years and the country remains a credible force for global good.
The third lie of the day, he argued, was the notion that America is in the midst of an irreversible moral decline.
“Keith Olberman and, before him Jerry Falwell and Jonathan Edwards have given us the idea that things are going down. Moral commentators in each generation describe their own generation as the worst. They all cannot be right,” he said, before adding that America’s history has been punctuated by awakenings and revivals.
He will remain an optimist, he said, “even at the dawn of the era of Obama.”
Lies, he said, undermine fundamental knowledge of America which he maintained is “the greatest nation on God’s earth.” America, he argued, is incomprehensible unless you believe in God, owing to its many “accidents and coincidences.”
Jesse Masai is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
