A Patriot's History of the Modern World: From America's Exceptional Ascent to the Atomic Bomb: 1898-1945

by Larry Schweikart, Dave Dougherty

“America’s story from 1898 to 1945 is nothing less than the triumph of American exceptionalism over liberal progressivism, despite a few temporary victories by the latter.” Conservative historian Larry Schweikart has won wide acclaim for his number one New York Times bestseller, A Patriot’s History of the United States . It proved that, contrary to the liberal biases in countless other his­tory books, America had not really been founded on racism, sexism, greed, and oppression. Schweikart and coauthor Michael Allen restored the truly great achievements of America’s patriots, founders, and heroes to their rightful place of honor. Now Schweikart and coauthor Dave Dougherty are back with a new perspective on America’s half-century rise to the center of the world stage. This all-new volume corrects many of the biases that cloud the way people view the Treaty of Versailles, the Roaring Twenties, the Crash of 1929, the deployment of the atomic bomb, and other critical events in global history. Beginning with the Spanish-American War— which introduced the United States as a global military power that could no longer be ignored—and con­tinuing through the end of World War II, this book shows how a free, capitalist nation could thrive when put face-to-face with tyrannical and socialist powers. Schweikart and Dougherty narrate the many times America proved its dominance by upholding the prin­ciples on which it was founded—and struggled on the rare occasions when it strayed from those principles. The authors make a convincing case that America has constantly been a force for good in the world, improving standards of living, introducing innova­tions, guaranteeing liberty, and offering opportunities to those who had none elsewhere. They also illustrate how the country ascended to superpower status at the same time it was figuring out its own identity. While American ideals were defeating tyrants abroad, a con­stant struggle against progressivism was being waged at home, leading to the stumbles of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite this rocky entrance on the world stage, it was during this half century that the world came to embrace all things American, from its innovations and businesses to its political system and popular culture. The United States began to define what the rest of the world could emulate as the new global ideal.   A Patriot’s History of the Modern World provides a new perspective on our extraordinary past—and offers lessons we can apply to preserve American exceptional­ism today and tomorrow.

Genres: History, American History, Military Fiction

496 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2012

Reviews

[Jim Gallen · Rating 5 out of 5]

So often, history is written in a way that we really do not notice its bias or slant. Perhaps that is because so many of the books share a common viewpoint. Occasionally one comes along that is different, that enables us see history from different perspectives and to pick out the biases in other works. One such, “different” work is “A Patriot’s History Of The Modern World-From America’s Exceptional Ascent To the Atomic Bomb: 1898-1945”.

The lens through which this work views history is the Four Pillars of American Exceptionalism: 1) a heritage of common law; 2) a Christian and predominantly Protestant religious tradition; 3) a free-market economy; and 4) property rights, especially land rights. Its pervasive theme is that progressivism/liberalism has been detrimental to American and world progress whereas free markets and individual freedom have been the driving forces for peace and prosperity.

The story begins with America’s emergence as a world power after its victory in the Spanish American War. It proceeds to study the role of empires and Imperialism in the march of toward World War I. That war brings destruction to Europe followed by the disillusion of the inter-war period. The rise of totalitarianism and World War II are well documented.

Much of this book deals with wars: Spanish American, Spanish Civil, and the two world conflagrations. Authors Larry Schweikart and Dave Dougherty take on the prevailing historical trends by highlighting American exceptionalism rather than glorifying left wing failures. Throughout the chapters they bring up facts of history that liberals would like to over look. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, is recorded as labeling abortion as “barbaric” and favoring eugenics to prevent the growth of “lower races” while keeping the “higher races” in power. Critical evaluations of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive movement make the reader question generally accepted tenets. Herbert Hoover is portrayed as a dangerous liberal and the New Deal as a disaster. The authors ask “what chance have commoners” when King George V was euthanized? While going through World War II the contributions of American individual initiative and American productivity to victory are stressed.

The reader is treated to a march through history that is rapid but surprisingly in depth. Backgrounds of many of the actors on the world stage reveal obscure but significant details. Facts that are overlooked in may works surface here. I usually keep a paper in books I read on which I make notes of bits I want to remember. This time I ended up having to squeeze entries into the margins. “The Patriot’s History of The World” introduces its readers to new facts and new ways of looking at history. Some you may question some of the facts and disagree with some of the conclusions but they will make you reflect. For that this book deserves five stars.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this and had a ton of fun reading it. It was not written with an ax to grind; it gave credit where it was due, and didn't shy away from hitting hard when it was needed. This was no-holds-barred history, giving you the background on friend and foe alike, with a few subtle touches of humor along the way. One of the best history books I've ever read. It felt like a conversation rather than a lecture, a gripping novel rather than a textbook. Can't recommend it highly enough!

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! I consider myself well read when it comes to history but I learned a few things! Also a nice refresher and a fantastic intro for those not inclined to regular readings of history. Highly recommended

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. It is written from a conservative viewpoint which I appreciate. Following is a quote from the book on the subject of American Exceptionalism.

At root, American exceptionalism is the confluence of four factors that collectively do not exist in any other country in the world. Some possess one or two; England possesses three and at one time had all four—but no longer. These are: 1) a heritage of common law; 2) a Christian and predominantly Protestant religious tradition; 3) a free-market economy; and 4) property rights, especially land rights. The common-law heritage held that the law was given to the people (later this was modified to include "by God") and that the ruler merely enforced the law that everyone observed and understood as divinely inspired. Thus, in common law, authority moved from the people upward, not the other way around, as with "Divine Right" and civil law, in which rights came from the monarch down. America inherited the common-law tradition from England, where it had migrated from Germany, but virtually the rest of the world adopted civil law, with its top-down, autocratic approach. By the mid-twentieth century, even England had started to drift from its common-law moorings. And at no time were
the American-style checks and balances present in the European social democracies. Prime ministers were usually part of the majority party, not an independent chief executive. Moreover, none of the civil-law countries had the same inherent respect for a written constitution so prominent in the U.S. system.
Much of Europe has had a Christian religious tradition, but only parts had a distinctly Protestant background (Holland, parts of Germany, England, Scandinavia), leaving the United States in a rather small community of Protestant nations. Even then, several of those nations had state churches, which never developed in America due to the First Amendment. But Protestantism brought with it a heavy dose of individuality. Calvinist teachings insisted that each man read and understand the Bible for himself; Puritans and Quakers in America practiced congregational church government, which was exceptionally democratic and local; and the entire tone of Protestantism was antiauthoritarian.
While much of Europe, England, and, after the Second World War, Asia and even Latin America have at one time or another had free-market economies (to one degree or another), few have been as unfettered as the capitalist system practiced in the United States. The American variant of capitalism, again with its Protestant overtones, relied heavily on individual entrepreneurship and eschewed state involvement. Failure was considered a learning tool, not a source of public embarrassment, and bankruptcy laws reflected that. Laws provided extreme ease with which to start, sell, or terminate businesses. And finally, American property rights, emerging from the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance, not only closely linked political rights to land ownership, but also established the principle that individual land ownership was a social goal to be advanced by government. Following Thomas Jefferson's model, the early United States made it easy and relatively inexpensive for anyone not only to acquire property but also to gain legal title deed to that property—a characteristic that was rare in Europe and is still unseen and not even understood in much of the rest of the world. Therefore, American exceptionalism was in fact unique, consisting of four "legs" not found anywhere else in the world by the mid-twentieth century.
What has often served as a source of confusion is that the Europeans claim some of the same heritage, but often use similar terms to mean entirely different things. Americans have often been guilty of failing to understand that Europeans do not see the world through American eyes—they
have their own perspective that firmly places Europe in the center of the universe even during periods of American military and economic dominance. Until World War I and even later, Europeans often looked upon the United States as a large country with great potential suffering from an excess of liberty leading to irresolution, naivete, and international impotence. European concepts of a "free market" have been from the late 1800s on dramatically different from those of Americans, integrating heavy regulation, socialized labor unions, and far more interference from government.
A certain snobbishness by Europe remained well entrenched throughout the 1900s. Culture and refinement were often viewed on the Continent as strictly European attributes—recalling the French Abbe Raynal's comment in 1770 that "America has not produced a good poet, one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science"—and it was generally held that Americans understood little of politics and foreign affairs.4 American egalitarianism in politics and the lack of a large professional military caste led Europeans to think the United States was hopeless in prosecuting wars. Even as late as the 1960s, many Germans believed that the United States was controlled by women's clubs. These views were reinforced by the reports of European visitors who traveled past the East Coast cities, where they found a people who were simply good-hearted, but uncultured, and whom they looked upon as "childlike" in their trust of strangers, and easily misled or manipulated—even politically.'
Americans, on the other hand, hewed to the proposition that the United States was an exceptional nation, the shining city upon a hill, containing more virtue than all of Europe put together. Many of the Founders had disdained the European cities as cesspools and swamps, and therefore understood the longing by poorer immigrants to reach American shores. Americans generally welcomed waves of immigrants—with some backlash against the Catholic Irish—and absorbed them with relative ease and without conflict until the 1880s. Only then—when the majority of European immigrants began to come from southern Europe or the Balkans—did the influx of so many non-English-speakers who practiced religions other than Protestantism strain the American social fabric.
Exacerbating the difficulties of absorbing these immigrants was the problem that, contrary to the American mainstream, many arrived having internalized radical socialist and communist doctrines. Many failed to distinguish the difference between a tyrannical, autocratic European monarch and an American president. The reaction came in the form of nativism during the influx of Irish Catholics 1840-1860, which morphed into isolationism, and the persecution of Jews, Mexicans, and Asians occurring alongside Jim Crow-sanctioned separatism late in the nineteenth century. Yet this, too, was another element of America that virtually no other nation faced: a polyglot mix of people, ethnicities, religions, and cultures. For the first time, American exceptionalism had to be explained and taught, not merely taken for granted by those who had come from an English or Germanic background, and to be cherished as a foundational principle. However, the Progressive movement in the United States began to erode these principles and the value of an exceptional America, steering her to become a member of the international community and following Europe's lead.
European countries, with their oligarchic governments and more homogenous populations, never developed the concept of freedom as Americans lived it. To a large degree, even in democratic European countries, the notion of freedom was limited to "freedom to serve the state." This European failure to understand the American character—its definitions of liberty, its reliance on personal responsibility, and its emphasis on land ownership—constituted a difference in the definitions of freedom that proved profound.
America's ascent to power from 1898 to 1945 not only reflected the "exceptional" traits that made her distinct from the Europeans, it embodied those traits. From the failed attempt at Prohibition—and its repeal, admitting a major national mistake—to the G.I. "can-do" attitude in World War II, the United States dared greatly. Her projects such as the Panama Canal seemed daunting to the point of impossibility, yet they were built where others failed. Her heroes such as Teddy Roosevelt, Robert Peary, Sergeant Alvin York, Charles Lindbergh, and Babe Ruth all seemed giants whose exploits were incomparable. (Ruth's single-season home run record stood until 1961.) Her artistic, business, and intellectual titans such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ford, A. P. Giannini, and Walt Disney, often augmented by immigrants such as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, pushed America to world preeminence in architecture, industry, finance, film, and science. And by 1945, not only was it clear that the United States would be a superpower, but it seemed that her best years still lay well into the future.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well Written

An excellent account of little known facts and historical motives behind world war 2. Coverage of history prior to WW2 was a bit superficial though.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend this book. Especially in view of contemporary world events, the lessons that should have been learned from previous world wars are so applicable to the headlines today. History continues to repeat.

[Timm Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good summary of the past century, with emphasis on America's part in it all. A little tedious at times because of some of the war details, but overall well worth reading if you are at all interested in history.

[Sean McGowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative and comprehensive overview of the time period.