Instructions:
In academia today, and since the nineteen sixties, the United States and Western civilization in general are vilified in a revisionist history that critics claim has turned everything upside down. The West is portrayed as the source of all the world’s problems. Europeans and people of European descent are characterized as racist, sexist, and imperialistic. The environmental crisis, we are told, is due to the ravages of capitalism. We are led to believe that we face unprecedented crises which require radical, immediate solutions.
But as we are seeing, ideas from the Counter-Enlightenment, from Rousseau to Nietzsche to postmodernism, are deployed as weapons to tear down the West and replace it with, well, there’s the problem, for other than some vague platitudes about peace, love, and diversity, the purveyors of the radical mythos really have nothing to offer. Their critics warn that it is all about power. And indeed, historical precedent shows that the application of Marxist and Counter-Enlightenment ideas produces totalitarianism (the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution; Nazi Germany; Stalinism; Maoism; etc.).
Your task is to critique this anti-American narrative by exposing the lies and distortions in an effort to produce a fairer evaluation of our nation’s past.
Recall the video assignment on The Story of Ireland, when Fergal Keane visits a teacher from his schooldays, who mentions an assignment he had given his students. “Carson: Irish patriot,” was the topic given to these students who were from southern, not northern, Ireland. They had grown up being taught to think that to be Irish, one had to be Gaelic and Catholic, and here was their teacher asking them to identify with someone who was Protestant and who many undoubtedly saw as the enemy. Keane’s point was that Carson did what he thought was best for Ireland as did those who sought independence in the South. Go back and review the video if you like. Keane’s visit with his teacher is just before the five minute mark in episode one. You are being asked to do something similar. You are being asked to think and write from a perspective that you may not feel comfortable with.
Using at least ten of the required supplemental sources available in Canvas (including one of the primary sources, in addition to Bloom and class lectures, discuss how our nation’s history has been distorted. Write a brief paragraph about each one of the sources. In order to earn the grade, you must describe how the prevailing radical narrative of U.S. history is one-sided and has been constructed through the biased selection, distortion, and omission of facts. The student explains how each source contributes to refuting it. Students are encouraged to use facts from the lecture notes to support the sources, though these don’t count as part of your ten. Think of your paper this way: It should be a critique of the negative critique of American history.
Try to cover a range of issues and consider questions such as: What aspect of the narrative that denigrates and vilifies Western Civilization and American history does this source address? Which aspects of our telling of history have been contrived for therapeutic purposes or politically useful purposes? How has the truth been distorted? How have problems been exaggerated? What lies have been formulated to add support to claims of oppression? Has the self-criticism of the European been met with self-criticism from other groups?
Here are some more specific questions for you to consider: Was slavery really benign in Africa, and if not, then why do textbooks present it as such? Have women really been treated like slaves throughout history or have they not been fairly well treated and protected and provided for? Do we really live in a rape culture, or is it a political tactic to keep alive a sense of crisis? Does violence really distinguish Western Civilization from the others? Was there really genocide of Indians? Are such claims insulting to Euro-Americans? How has the Counter-Enlightenment influenced the French Revolution, the rise of the Nazis, and the sixties radicals and contributed to the myth of the evil West? Is socialism really democracy? Which is the greater threat to democracy: the bourgeois or the anti-bourgeois? What have been the consequences of the lines of thought stemming from Locke and Rousseau? Also think about what was positive in our nation’s founding. How did the founding principles of our nation contribute to world civilization, to liberty, equality, material abundance, peace, and justice?
Requirements:
Add brief introductory and conclusion paragraphs. The number of pages doesn’t matter as much as how well you stick to the topic and show how the source counters some aspect of the revisionist account. Your paper should be double spaced and include endnotes or footnotes formatted as best as you can according to the Chicago Manual of Style or Turabian. Any paper that does not have citations will not be read. Please include a title page. Page numbers bottom center should be provided. Spell-check and proof-read your paper before submitting it to check for grammatical and spelling errors.
Sources that NEED to be used:
1. edu/documentprovider/docs/684/9-Opportunists-or-SaintsAnne-Ulentin.pdf”>https://www.nsula.edu/documentprovider/docs/684/9-…
2. https://archive.org/details/BlackSlaveOwners
3. https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/vansert…
4. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mpu5j
5.
6. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/…
7. https://www.sott.net/article/361209-Liberal-educat…
8. com/opinion/opinion-columnist/weekly-opinion-columnist/2013-03-19/williams-blacks-face-liberal-obstacle”>https://www.amarillo.com/opinion/opinion-columnist…
9.
10. is the file attached
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