"We're a republic, not a democracy." I've lost track of how often I hear a caller say that on CSPAN. The second essay in Myth America proves them wrong. The Founding Fathers created a democratic republic - one that valued democracy. They also valued a central government, putting to rest any claims that they highly valued states' rights. And the idea of American exceptionalism would have been foreign to them.
Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer have assembled 20 historians to take on popular myths of American history. It's weighted towards the 20th Century and toward social rather than "event" history and since those are among my interests, some of the material was familiar. I knew the Regan Revolution had roots 30 years earlier, that the party realignment took place not because conservative southern Democrats and liberal northern Republicans switched parties but because the old guard died off and was replaced with a new generation with different party ties, and that the lionization of MLK and the idea of 'good protest' glosses over the fact that he was hated in his day and much more radical than the modern view. Other essays discussed topics with which I only have a passing knowledge, and others put the pieces together for me. Feminism has been portrayed as anti-family, but it's been pro-family since its inception, sometimes to the point of disadvantaging the movement. I learned in high school that while the New Deal helped, the Depression didn't end until WWII - here, Eric Rauchway points out that the New Deal did pull the economy out of a tailspin and the problem was that it wasn't large enough (which echoed during the 2008 recession where more expansive programs could have brought the unemployment rate down faster). Myth America is enlightening, and as essentially a survey course left me wanting to know more.
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