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The

10 Big Lies
About America
Combating Destructive
Distortions About Our Nation

Michael Medved
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For Sarah, Shayna, and Danny—

appreciative heirs to American truths
■ ■ ■

Copyright © 2008 by Michael Medved

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2008.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for the illustrations used in this book:
p. 1: The First Thanksgiving, 1621 by J. L. G. Ferris (reproduction of oil painting from series
“The Pageant of a Nation”), courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 11: Indian War Council,
provided by HistoryPicks.com; p. 46: Emancipation (detail), by Thomas Nast (c. 1865),
courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 72: Freedom of Religion, from the pamphlet “The Four
Freedoms” (Office of War Information, 1942), courtesy of the Library of Congress;
p. 95: The Great Bartholdi Statue, Liberty Enlightening the World—The Gift of France to
the American People (Currier & Ives, c. 1883), courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 119:
The Road to Dividends (c. 1913), courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 139: Work Pays
America! Prosperity (Works Progress Administration, 1936–1941), courtesy of the Library of
Congress; p. 162: Another Explosion at Hand (detail) by Udo J. Keppler (J. Ottmann Lith. Co.,
Puck Bldg., New York, NY, 1900), courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 189: “Nader/
Camejo 2004,” “Proud to be a Libertarian,” and “Vote Your Hopes, Not Your Fears—Vote
Third Party,” provided by PoliticalGifts.com; p. 209: Photo courtesy of the James D. Wilson
family; p. 232: Woman’s Holy War: Grand Charge on the Enemy’s Works (Currier & Ives,
c. 1874), courtesy of the Library of Congress; p. 257: Photo of President Reagan
(Endicott, NY, 9/12/84), courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Medved, Michael.
The 10 big lies about America / Michael Medved.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. United States—Civilization—Historiography. 2. National characteristics, American.
3. Culture conflict—United States. 4. Values—United States. 5. Anti-Americanism.
I. Title. II. Title: Ten big lies about America.
E169.12.M427 2008
973—dc22 2008034131

ISBN 978-0-307-39407-1
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Lauren Dong
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Paperback Edition

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Contents

A Tainted Legacy 1

“America Was Founded on Genocide Against

Big Lie #1
Native Americans” 11

“The United States Is Uniquely Guilty for the

Big Lie #2 Crime of Slavery, and Based Its Wealth on Stolen
African Labor” 46

“The Founders Intended a Secular, Not

Big Lie #3
Christian, Nation” 72

“America Has Always Been a Multicultural Society,

Big Lie #4
Strengthened by Diversity” 95

“The Power of Big Business Hurts the Country and

Big Lie #5
Oppresses the People” 119

“Government Programs Offer the Only Remedy for

Big Lie #6
Economic Downturns and Poverty” 139

“America Is an Imperialist Nation and a Constant

Big Lie #7
Threat to World Peace” 162

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vi Contents

“The Two-Party System Is Broken, and We Urgently

Big Lie #8
Need a Viable Third Party” 189

“A War on the Middle Class Means Less Comfort and

Big Lie #9
Opportunity for the Average American” 209

“America Is in the Midst of an Irreversible

Big Lie #10
Moral Decline” 232

Abnormal Nation 257

Resources 263
Thank You 271
Index 273

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What’s the matter with us anyhow? If America ever loses confi-

dence in herself, she will retain the confidence of no one, and she
will lose her chance to be free, because the fearful are never free.
—Adlai Stevenson, 1954

We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but

what’s important. . . . If we forget what we did, we won’t know
who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American
memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the Amer-
ican spirit.
—Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address,
January 11, 1989

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A Tainted Legacy

NO CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION

Why do so many Americans find it so difficult to celebrate their nation’s

achievements and blessings?
How did cherished occasions of joy and gratitude become the focus
of anguish and controversy?
I confronted these uncomfortable questions in my own backyard
when Seattle’s notorious “Thanksgiving Letter” became a brief, embar-
rassing media sensation.
On November 8, 2007, the stern missive went out to all teachers and
staff of the city’s public schools insisting that they should “struggle with
these complex issues” surrounding the yearly celebration and avoid, at all
costs, “teaching about Thanksgiving in traditional ways.” The bureaucrats
who signed the letter worried that without their timely intervention,
thoughtless educators might arrange precisely the sort of outmoded,

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2 The 10 Big Lies About America

one-dimensional observance of Turkey Day that emphasized inappropri-

ate elements such as pride and reverence.
“With so many holidays approaching we want to again remind you
that Thanksgiving can be a particularly difficult time for many of our
Native students,” warned the officials (led by a school district honcho
who identified herself with the intimidating title of “director of equity,
race, and learning support”). To achieve a more appropriate perspective,
they directed all staff in the Seattle public schools to consult a list of
“Eleven Thanksgiving Myths” prepared by the radical “Native” Web site
Oyate.org. The letter urged the educators to “take a look . . . and begin
your own deconstruction,” specifically citing Myth #11:

Myth: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourn-
ing, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by
theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease
and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced
assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanks-
giving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for
friendship.

As soon as I read this alarming letter, I began to wonder how earnest

teachers might take its suggestions to heart and begin to commemorate
this festival of destruction and betrayal with, say, their kindergarten
charges. My own appallingly innocent 1950s childhood offered shame-
lessly sentimental Thanksgiving pageants, complete with tacky Pilgrim
and Indian costumes and, on one occasion, a live turkey. On my nation-
ally syndicated radio show I speculated on the way such sweet but silly ex-
travaganzas might be updated to accommodate the hip sensibility of
contemporary Seattle. Perhaps the nervous kiddies could now parade
onto the stage, appropriately costumed as little Pilgrims and Pilgrimettes,
and then, after enumerating the countless crimes of their forebears, they
could lash themselves (or each other) with miniature leather whips and
wail together in regretful agony. The proud parents would no doubt rise
and applaud in tearful, self-righteous appreciation.

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A Tainted Legacy 3

Much to the humiliation of those of us who choose to raise our chil-

dren in the Great Northwest, the story of Seattle’s idiotic effort to turn
Thanksgiving into a “day of mourning” became a subject for national de-
bate. After I discussed the issue on the air, the Fox News Channel con-
tacted me to provide a local perspective, and they also sent camera crews
to interview local Indian tribes. The Tulalips, who occupy a prosperous,
well-organized reservation about a half hour north of downtown (com-
plete with high-end shopping center, resort hotel, and, inevitably, casino),
emphatically affirmed their pride in the annual November holiday. Tribal
spokesman Daryl Williams explained that “most Native Americans cele-
brate Thanksgiving in the same way that many other Americans do—
as a way to be thankful for abundance and a chance to spend time
with families.” The Tulalips love to stage festive communal Thanksgiving
feasts at which, in a bow to regional traditions, they serve alder-smoked
salmon rather than turkey. Williams told the press: “The spirit of Thanks-
giving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think
that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very
divisive.”
He’s right, of course. The divisiveness, shame, and self-hatred have
spread far beyond the damp and moody precincts of Seattle. In fact, the
year before our “Emerald City” launched its controversial assault on
Thanksgiving, the Associated Press featured an account of an innovative
educator at an elementary school in San Francisco, yet another city
known for brain-dead trendiness:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black
Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up
pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the
items now belong to him because he “discovered” them. The reac-
tion is exactly what Morgan expects. The kids get angry and want
their things back.
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched
the traditional Thanksgiving lesson. . . . He has replaced it with a
more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and
white settlers.

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4 The 10 Big Lies About America

Stealing backpacks and glue sticks provides a “realistic look” at a

“complex relationship”?
Across the country, too many Americans have developed a complex,
even tortured relationship with their own past. And like all deeply dys-
functional bonds, this frayed connection rests on a series of destructive
lies—sweeping distortions that poison our sense of who we are and what
our country means.
Consider, for example, the oddly apologetic May 2007 commemora-
tion of the four hundredth anniversary of the first permanent British set-
tlement in the New World. With both the queen of England and the
president of the United States journeying to Virginia to mark the occa-
sion, federal officials took grim pains to tamp down any sense of merri-
ment in the festivities. The National Park Service invested taxpayer
money in new exhibits at its “Historic Jamestowne” visitor center, and
these displays explicitly shunned the congratulatory messages of prior
tributes.“Past Jamestown anniversaries were referred to as ‘celebrations,’ ”
warned a prominently posted introduction to the Park Service exhibition.
“Because many facets of Jamestown’s history are not cause for celebra-
tion, like human bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians, the
Jamestown 400th Anniversary is referred to as the Jamestown 2007 Com-
memoration.”
Another display in the same facility struck Edward Rothstein of the
New York Times with its remarkably unbalanced approach: “The Indians,
we read, were ‘in harmony with the land that sustained them’ and formed
‘an advanced, complex society of families and tribes.’ English society—
the society that gave us the King James Bible and Shakespeare along with
the stirrings of democratic argument—is described as offering ‘limited
opportunity’ in which a ‘small elite’ were landowners; in London, we are
told, ‘life was difficult,’ with social dislocation, low wages, unemploy-
ment, etc.”
While official observances scrupulously avoided any overtly festive
messages, small crowds of protestors denounced even the subdued
themes of the “commemoration.” Demonstrators from groups such as
Black Lawyers for Justice and the New Black Panther Party announced
their intention to “crash this illegitimate party and pursue the overdue
case for Reparations and Justice for the victims of slavery, mass murder

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A Tainted Legacy 5

and genocide.” The protest leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, cited “crimes
committed at Jamestown which resulted in America being originated on
the corrupt foundation of racism, population removal, mass murder,
slavery and a litany of crimes against divine law and humanity.”
Mr. Shabazz not only rejects the long-cherished view that American
society arose in fulfillment of some powerful, providential purpose but
proudly advances the opposite perspective: that the nation’s origins in-
volved a “litany of crimes against divine law and humanity.”
“It’s not just Jamestown,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s what
started in Jamestown.”
And what started in Jamestown? Our distinctive civilization. Malik
Shabazz and other America haters view the nation itself as a vicious,
criminal enterprise that requires radical transformation if not outright
termination. In June 2006, Jake Irwin, a student at Evergreen State Col-
lege in Olympia, Washington, and an outspoken supporter of Venezuelan
demagogue Hugo Chávez, told the Wall Street Journal: “My political be-
lief is that the U.S. is a horrendous empire that needs to end.”

POISONING THE PRESENT

Though few of our fellow citizens share this overt hostility to our na-
tional project, the big lies about America still circulate so widely that
they feed an insecure and angry public mood. Grotesque distortions
about the nation’s origins and institutions poison our present and
threaten our future. But any attempt to challenge the prevalent slanders
will draw scorn as a sign of simple-minded jingoism, while those who
teach or preach the worst about America earn fulsome praise for their
“sophistication” or “courage.” As a result, our universities and public
schools eagerly endorse the cynical assumptions about the country, and
alarmist mass media recycle hysterical accounts of imminent doom and
corruption.
We worry over anti-Americanism abroad but parrot its primary
charges here at home. While objective indications identify residents of
the United States as among the most fortunate people in human his-
tory, much of the public refuses to acknowledge our blessings because,

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6 The 10 Big Lies About America

according to the logic of widely accepted America-bashing lies, we don’t

deserve them.
Those who embrace the idea that the USA came into being through
vicious genocide against native populations, built its wealth on the
unique oppression of African slaves, promoted corporate exploitation of
powerless workers, and damaged countless other nations with its imperi-
alist policies will naturally assume that we’re paying the price for such
sins and abuses—viewing an allegedly dark present as the inevitable
product of a dark past. Bleak assumptions about our guilty ancestors
allow contemporary Americans to wallow in self-pity while blaming our
brutal forebears for our supposed sorry state.
In one typical aside, New York Times book reviewer William Grimes
laments that American success “came at a price . . . for the descendents of
the colonists, who have inherited a tainted legacy.”
This supposedly soiled and shameful heritage, this exhaustively ana-
lyzed burden of embarrassment and apology, now pollutes our most con-
tentious public debates. In the presidential campaign of 2008, Democratic
contender Barack Obama deflected attention from the anti-American
rants of his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright (“Not God bless America,
God damn America!”), by calling for a solemn reconsideration of “this
nation’s original sin of slavery”—invoking the familiar notion that Amer-
ica bears unique guilt for its monstrous oppression of African captives.
Whenever President George W. Bush spoke of spreading democracy
around the globe, his critics clamored that his visionary rhetoric actually
cloaked the latest chapter in a long, bitter history of reckless imperialism.
In addressing economic hardships for middle-class Americans, politicians
(of both parties) regularly demonize the very entrepreneurial energies
and corporate organizations that deliver a level of comfort and opportu-
nity inconceivable to prior generations. In any discussion of faith and
family, the Right bemoans and the Left often applauds the same phony
idea: that our society has abandoned its traditional unifying values and
entered a brave new world of chaotic relativism.
While we still speak wistfully of the American dream, our popular
culture prefers to peddle an assortment of American nightmares. For
more than a generation we’ve been bombarded with these charges and

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A Tainted Legacy 7

warnings about our “sick society” (in the loathsome phrase of the 1960s),
and the easiest way for hardworking people to respond to the scolding
has been to keep quiet and mind their own business. In place of the pic-
nics, parades, and brass bands of yesterday, we now celebrate both
Memorial Day and Veterans Day with a melancholy focus on the grim el-
egance of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the nation’s capital.
In fact, the Vietnam experience and the associated dislocation of the
1960s and ’70s helped to dissolve the patriotic consensus that had en-
dured for two centuries. The unprecedented U.S. failure in Indochina
gave credibility, if not confirmation, to those protestors who had decried
our “imperialist” foreign policy, and chose to identify their nation as
“Amerika”—the Germanic spelling meant to evoke the Nazis, while the
inserted k recalled our homegrown KKK. Once you’ve associated your
native soil with genocidal fascists and white supremacist thugs, it’s tough
to return to singing the praises of the land of the free and the home of the
brave—even after ultimate victory in the Cold War and the evanescent
surge of unity following the terror attacks of 9/11.
By that time the tribalism and identity politics of the 1960s had be-
come a well-established feature of our national life, with jostling interest
groups largely taking the place of homogenizing notions of Americanism.
African Americans, feminists, Latinos, gays, Asians, the disabled, hippies,
Native Americans—each aggrieved segment of society demanded justice
and redress, competing for recognition as the most victimized and
gypped. Amid this clamor of suffering subgroups, the old national motto
“E pluribus unum”—“Out of many, one”—sounded intolerant, disre-
spectful of difference and diversity, as the ideal of a melting pot gave way
to a “gorgeous multicultural mosaic.” The concept of an overarching,
non-ironic definition of American identity looked less and less plausible.
In 1904, Broadway giant George M. Cohan jauntily identified himself
as a “Yankee Doodle dandy” who had been “born on the Fourth of July.”
Eighty years later, Ron Kovic appropriated the latter phrase for a book
and movie about his shattering experience as a paralyzed, abused, deeply
disillusioned Vietnam vet. At the time of the film’s release in 1989, every-
one who encountered the title Born on the Fourth of July received it with
a snicker or smirk, understanding Cohan’s high-stepping glorification of

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8 The 10 Big Lies About America

flag and homeland as an embarrassing relic of ignorant and insular

nationalism.

SINGULAR SHORTCOMINGS

Ironically, the very provincialism that America bashers deplore ends up

helping them spread their fashionable slanders. The hardworking public
knows and cares so little about all the other imperfect nations of the
world that the USA’s shortcomings look singular, unprecedented, and
overwhelming. We tend to take our failures more seriously than do our
fellow members of the international community. Other nations manage
to cope with far more shameful histories of mass murder, backwardness,
and barbarity without feeling the need for apologies, handwringing, or
wrenching self-criticism.
For example, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee notes the overwhelm-
ing importance of unquestioning patriotism to all those who claim Chi-
nese identity: “Chinese patriotism is not supposed to be negotiable. To us
that’s a black-and-white thing. You sacrifice yourself—how can you let
China down?” Politicians and pundits in the People’s Republic don’t ago-
nize about thousands of years of conquest and colonialism over “lesser”
peoples at the edges of the Middle Kingdom.
Similarly, in France’s government-run schools “the very content of
education is discriminatory,” according to French journalist and author
Guy Sorman. “The history of colonization is taught as if it were a glori-
ous feature of French history. In Senegal, on his first official visit to
Africa, [President Nicolas] Sarkozy regretted the violence of colonization
but insisted on the good intentions of the French colonizers, out there to
bring civilization to the ‘African man’ who had ‘not entered history.’ ”
Our French cousins celebrate Bastille Day with unapologetic pride,
despite the ugly stains on the tricolor. For Mexicans and for Mexican im-
migrants in the United States, Cinco de Mayo doesn’t provide an occa-
sion for brooding meditation on the pain and injustice that’s always
characterized our turbulent neighbor to the south.
Some might explain this American penchant for harsh self-criticism
as a product of our higher ideals and more lofty aspirations. Through

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A Tainted Legacy 9

most of its long, glittering history as a major European power, no one

ever really expected Austria to serve as a “light to the nations” or a “shin-
ing city on a hill.” The United States, on the other hand, has long ex-
pected to remake the world in our image, and often succeeded in that
endeavor. The fact that we have attempted more shouldn’t obscure the
fact that we’ve also achieved more, and stumbled less, than other nations
with significant roles in world affairs.
The bitter lies about America undermine the ongoing aspirations that
alone can power the United States in its continued role as a mighty en-
gine of human betterment.

INSTINCTIVE RESISTANCE

Most Americans feel instinctive indignation over the false charges against
our country, but they lack the arguments or information to counteract
them.
This book hopes to fill that void. The ten big lies exposed here consti-
tute the most common and destructive distortions about the nation’s
past and present. My goal is to explode the most obvious lies and to arm
Americans with the information and approaches they need to answer
bitter indictments against our country.
In many corners of the continent, educators and psychologists fret
over the self-esteem of our young people, hoping to protect their tender
egos by encouraging them to declare “I’m a wonderful kid” or, on too
many occasions, “I’m part of a wonderful—though often victimized—
group.” Even more important to their sense of security and confidence
would be the recognition “I’m part of a wonderful country—a wonder-
ful and unprecedented national adventure. And I can most appropriately
express my gratitude for the gifts I’ve received by making the most of my
opportunities.”
The dreary alternative message of victimhood, powerlessness, guilt,
and decline undermines the possibility of progress for individual and so-
ciety alike.
An American Indian academic and musician named David A. Yeagley,
an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation, tells a sobering story

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10 The 10 Big Lies About America

about one of his students at Oklahoma State University—Oklahoma

City. A “tall and pretty” young woman he calls Rachel spoke out in a class
discussion about patriotism. “Look, Dr. Yeagley,” she declared, “I don’t
see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race is
just nothing. Look at your culture. Look at American Indian tradition.
Now I think that’s really great. You have something to be proud of. My
culture is nothing.”
Concerning this unforgettable interchange, Professor Yeagley observes:

The Cheyenne people have a saying: A nation is never conquered

until the hearts of its women are on the ground. . . . Who had con-
quered Rachel’s people? What had led her to disrespect them? Why
did she behave like a woman of a defeated tribe?
They say that a warrior is measured by the strength of his ene-
mies. As an Indian, I am proud of the fact that it took the mightiest
nation on earth to defeat me.
But I don’t feel so proud when I listen to Rachel. It gives me no
solace to see the white man self-destruct. If Rachel’s people are
“nothing,” what does that say about mine?

And what does it say about each of us if we see ourselves as heirs to

“nothing”—to only a tainted legacy and a birthright of shame?
A nation with no pride in its past won’t feel confidence in its future.
The big lies about America have transformed our heritage from a bless-
ing into a burden, promoting impotence and paralysis. Achieving an ac-
curate understanding of the privileged position we enjoy can replace
self-pity with pride, apology with affirmation. Only this sense of shared
gratitude will sustain our occasionally strained communal connections,
providing elusive common ground in this freakishly favored nation in
which every day brings occasion for thanksgiving.

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About America 
 

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