Completed … “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me,” by Wilfred Reilly.” Reilly does a good job at quick overviews of various strains of the Cultural Marxist DEI PC narrative that has the white people in this nation under its sway. The summ effect of Reilly’s book is to give white people especially the ability to easily disassemble some of the major myths that are used to make white people feel guilty for their past. Along the way Reilly, often using a statistical approach, reveals the lies that are sold as “everybody knows this is truth,” as inflicted by secondary Government school teachers to University Professors.
Many of the sources that Reilly cites are from books that deal uniquely with the issue being covered in a particular chapter – and are books that I myself have read in the past. For example, in Reilly’s chapter that overturns the lie that Sen. Joseph McCarthy created a witch hunt atmosphere which was completely manufactured, Reilly appeals a great deal to M. Stanton Evans’ book, “Blacklisted by History.” Another example is Reilly’s appeal to the book “White Cargo” in order to overturn the lie that teachers tell that somehow black slavery was a uniquely heinous crime committed by White Westerners against the sons of Africa. “White Cargo” was one book I read years ago that made Reilly’s argument easy to navigate through. Still, having all these resources referenced in one place in order to overthrow the lies of the cultural false narrative is quite helpful.
Along the way Reilly skewers other assorted lies besides the ones touched on above. Reilly deals with the common lie taught that the Indians were noble savages who were spoiled by the arrival of the white man. Reilly deals with the lie that the 1960s counterculture was an Aquarius Utopia that advanced the happiness of nubile women who freely gave themselves in multiple and random sexual encounters. Reilly pulls back the curtain and reveals a wee bit of the flotsam and jetsam that became of many in that generation because of the lie that the Sexual Revolution was great for women and Hippies were the good guys.
Next up Reilly exposes the nonsense that somehow white people need to be ashamed of themselves for the clause in the US Constitution that held that black slaves were only to be counted as 3/5ths of a person for taxing and representation purposes. In this chapter Reilly still presupposes that slavery was wrong (a view I do not share) and argues that the 3/5ths clause was a mercy pursued against slavery as pushed by opponents of slavery. Reilly argues that by insisting on a 3/5ths clause that the Northerners were insuring that the South would NOT get the upper hand in voting in the US House and in the Electoral College by having a greater population count that would swamp Northern numbers. By only counting each slave as 3/5ths a person Southern power was cut and so in Reilly’s reckoning that was a good thing.
The chapter I learned the most from was his chapter defending European Colonization as a net positive for those peoples who were colonized. Here Reilly argues that the advancements in technology, education, medicine and legal infrastructure has to be considered in the consideration of whether or not Colonialism was a good or bad thing. Reilly makes it clear that this lie that all Colonialism was only evil all the time is one of the main lynch pins of Marxist thought that is used against the White European. So contentious is this issue that Poli-Sci Professor, “Bruce Gilley” work supporting the positive good of Colonialism has caused a major uproar in this field of study with attempts to ruin Gilley merely because he dared suggest that colonialism was a positive good. Reilly, also, in this chapter notes that colonialism has been pursued throughout history and that the Western White man is hardly uniquely guilty (if guilt is to be assigned at all) of somehow being uniquely evil in his colonial work. This chapter, for me, was worth the price of the volume.
The chapter I disagree the most with was the chapter that defended dropping the Nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don’t think Reilly has done his research here. Reilly argues the traditional case that the dropping of the bombs saved American lives that would have been cost with an invasion of the Japanese homeland. However, other works suggest that the Japs had already agreed to the very same terms of surrender that were finally presented to them after the bombs had been dropped. In other words, we could have had the Jap surrender before the bombs being dropped on the same terms that were achieved before the bombs were dropped. So, this chapter left me unconvinced that the dropping of the Nukes on the Japs was not evil and unnecessary.
Next up is the lie that White flight in the 50s-70s was cause by racism. Reilly argues that this can not be sustained and that it was a matter of white flight being due to an uptick in the socio-economic status of White people during that period.
If you are new to these issues it would be a good book to get ahold of. I have a niece, for example, who I wish would read this volume but I suggest she is so far over the falls now that she can’t be rescued. This book is important because of people like my niece have bought into many of the lies that this volume unravels and have organized their lives consistent with those lies that they were told by their teachers.