“Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past”, by Ray Raphael

 

331 pages, MJF Books, ISBN-13: 978-1567318869

I shoulda known that any book praised by Howard friggin’ Zinn would be suspect and, sure enough, Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past seeks to de-mythologize the tales and stories of our collective history. And oh, does he de-mythologize with a passion, as any book that claims to be a “People’s History” is wont to do, what with its pretensions to Marxism and what not (Raphael has also written something called A People’s History of the American Revolution; I can guess just what that thing is like). I have to say that, in all honesty, much of what Raphael uncovers is factual and should be exposed to a larger audience. There were more riders than Paul Revere; there was more than one Molly Pitcher; the camp at Valley Forge wasn’t that bad; the Declaration of Independence had several antecedents that Jefferson drew upon; and so on and so forth. Correcting history is as important to an historian as recording it.

But Raphael dislikes heroes and heroic effort, for heroism begets hero-worship which begets propaganda which begets militarism which begets ethnocentrism, which is bad – from Westerners; China is the modern-day leader in all of these things and we hear nary a peep of criticism for the Middle Kingdom reborn from the occupiers of the Ivory Towers. Raphael’s disdain for individual effort and his obsessive belief that only “communitarian” effort has value comes off as heavy-handed propaganda itself, and his insistence that the People’s Will is the only legitimate criteria to judge history by becomes tedious. Thus, Paul Revere did make that memorable ride to warn patriots that the British were coming; that it wasn’t all that renowned until Longfellow wrote his poem and romanticized the episode doesn’t take away from Revere’s heroism. We only hear of those instances of collective do-goodery that he approves of, such as Shay’s Rebellion; I would really like to see his opinion of latter-day collective actions, like the Tea Party rallies; I suspect they would not pass muster with him.