Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me

by Wilfred Reilly, Mirron Willis (reader)

A college professor debunks the false liberal narratives which define much of America’s school curricula. In 1995, James W. Loewen penned the classic work of criticism, Lies My Teacher Told Me , a left-leaning corrective that addressed much of what was sanitized and omitted from American history books. But in the more than two decades that followed, false leftist narratives—as wrong as those they supplanted—have come to dominate American academia and education. Now, in the spirit of that original book, Professor Wilfred Reilly demolishes the academic myths propagated by the left. In Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me , he offers fresh angles on “established” events, turning what we think we know about the nation’s history on its head. Reilly explains how there actually were communists in Hollywood; how the cultural stereotype of Native American culture as completely peace-loving is both untrue and patronizing; and how, while history was almost always bad for Black Americans, history was much worse for everyone than we realize. Smart, irreverent, and deeply researched, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me will revolutionize our understanding of America’s past while offering a refreshing way to teach and think about history.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Economics, Education, American History

1 pages, Audio CD

First published August 15, 2023

Reviews

[Beau · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is basically the right-wing propagandist response to the book Lies My History Teacher Told Me. It is chock full of bad faith arguments and it’s premise is based more on the lies Fox News and right-wing media tell their viewers about what is being taught in school than what is actually taught in any school in America. In short, this book is mostly seeking to fool the reader into believing that all teachers are liberal and that those teachers in turn are lying about numerous topics from communism to the genocide of native tribes in North America. The book is light on actual content and lacks historical context of any kind.

The author is a “political scientist”, not a historian. This book is a political book not a history book. Pretty much standard right-wing schlock that is meant to take up space on bookstore shelves than to offer any real discussion on the topics presented. Recommend skipping if you are into actual history.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As if the title was not a big clue, this author has an agenda. But I believe the book should be named, "Lies My Conservative Teacher Tells Me About Liberal Teachers."

The author suggests that (liberal) history teachers are telling all their students that, "America is bad, because America did bad things in history, and America is the only ones who has ever done these bad things."

This author thinks that a student of a liberal history teacher would be shocked to find out that there is modern slavery, and that the same would be shocked by learning that Africans sold slaves to westerners (Americans), as if we've not been taught these things.

He also suggests that we just have to accept that slavery is part of human nature, so get over it. It used to be normal, it's still happening, which makes it normal, so it's just normal, get over it.

As if the average history student isn't aware that slavery has probably been around longer than history had records for.

The author also goes on about how those countries that have not been colonized are not better off than those that have been, and just because colonizers were bad people, it's ok because the people in charge before the colonizers were bad or worse people.

In other words, the author is clearly a conservative who doesn't understand liberals, and I think it's trying to appeal to liberals with this book to change our minds.

Liberals, at least myself and all the ones I know of, are not stupid. We understand that the past cannot be changed. We don't feel guilty about what our ancestors did as individuals. We are indeed trying to repair damage that was done in the past, because we want to have a better and brighter future.

Understanding what causes us to end up where we are now, the good and the bad, is how we prepare for the future. We see that there are tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes, so we build our buildings to handle these events. We see that some people will try to enslave other people, we can't change the past, but we can recognize the methods used to help prevent it in the future. Or recognize the signs to stop it in the now.

Why do conservatives think we liberals prefer fair trade coffee, and chocolate, and other fair trade items? We're not paying extra for coffee because of slavery that happened generations ago. We buy fair trade to help prevent slavery today. Slavery that we know about.

Maybe the average person, liberal or conservative doesn't know about the Uyghurs in China, but you know who does? Right now as of when this is being written, Joe Biden, and he is breaking off trade with China. Not from fear of Chinese people, but because China is using slave labor and simultaneously trying to destroy other countries economies in the process. It's too much to get into here, and it's political, but this book is political.

The author isn't sharing anything I haven't learned about in College History (or sometimes sooner) and despite the title, the author is not debunking hostile taught in schools, he's debunking other books that attempt to debunk school history classes. He's attempting to debunk the people attempting to debunk. He's two steps removed.

I still recommend reading it if you can pick up a free copy and have time to waste being repulsed by someone sitting on top of the Dunning Krueger Mountain. I read it, as we liberals do, to broaden my perspective and hear arguments "from the other side."

I don't know why exactly, but I expected better. Instead, it's the same conservative misunderstanding liberals and attacking the wrong target because of it. He's attacking the image of liberals he and other conservatives have imagined. Straw men, if you will.

He mistakes our empathy and sympathy for weakness. Our wish and willingness to work towards a better future for shame from the past.

I think it is conservatives who actually feel shame for the slavery of the past while simultaneously wishing they could have slaves now. I mean, why else would their message constantly be, "Slavery is part of human nature, get over it."

Getting over it would mean doing nothing and it. Getting over it would mean allowing it to continue. We can't change the past, we want to make things better in the now and future. Because, for one thing, helping other people makes us feel good, and feeling good feels good. It's not a crime to feel good. Enlightened selfishness as opposed to short sighted selfishness.

Chapter 1: Who is dumb enough to think that America is the only place that had slaves and was brutal to slaves? Oh, wait, conservatives! Because no liberal person I know with an interest in history believes that.

Chapter 2: Who says no commies were caught? We were at war. We spied on them, they spied on us. There were communist in America then, and there are communists in America now. There is a communist political part in the open in America (no, not the DNC, I mean one that is literally named, "The Communist Party"). I believe they have a candidate for president every election, but I don't pay enough attention to them to be sure.

Chapter 3: Who thinks the only victims of Lynching were black people? Here goes the conservatives missing the point again. Just because white people where lynched too doesn't change the fact that black people where lynched simply for fun more often than white folks were. Yes, whites, yellows, reds, homosexuals, and anyone the xenophobes didn't like were lynched. The point is, xenophobia is bad. (And yeah, it's part of human nature to be afraid of the unknown, which is why people should learn that other people are just like them. Then they can be known, and you don't have to be afraid anymore.)

Chapter 4: The author is looking at the outcomes. A very, "Ends justify the means," attitude. But, the ends aren't justified when they weren't the goal and the means we're bad. If you shoot someone to try and murder them and the doctors find a cancer and remove it, saving that person's life, meaning your shooting them ultimately saved their life, doesn't mean we should go around shooting people in the hope that it will cure cancer, and also doesn't mean you should be allowed to walk around freely. Yes, anyone who has studied history is aware of both positives and negatives that colonization had. I wouldn't have been born if the US hadn't been colonized. Humans throughout history have colonized, raped, killed, stole, and enslaved. And unlike what conservatives seem to think about us liberals, I don't feel guilty about any of it and never have, nor have I ever felt anyone was trying to make me feel guilty about things that other people did. This idea that liberals want people to feel guilty over things they didn't do is a product of conservative media. Conservatives apparently feel guilty and assume them feeling guilty is the goal, but as the author says, "Feeling guilty for something you didn't do is stupid." Doesn't mean we can't try to make life better for those suffering from those past wrongs in the now, doesn't mean we can't try to make things better now, but we don't have to feel guilty and I sure don't.

Chapter 7: My liberal history teacher taught my class that more Americans would have died trying to take the well guarded and defended Japanese islands, and the war could have continued for months or even years if we didn't use the nukes. I think everyone agrees we needed to use the nukes. Maybe we could have chosen different targets. Maybe we could have won some other way. Using the nukes was horrible, but not much different than carpet bombing a city. It's not that we shouldn't have used them, but we have learned from using them that is not a good idea going forward. Especially since the US is not the only country with nukes and modern nukes can do a lot more damage and kill everyone on Earth when MAD happens, and so using nukes now is suicide. And, besides, since we have the ability to only fight fighters now, we shouldn't be harming civilians now. We had different tech back then and we're doing the best we could in desperate times. I don't know what history classes this author has been sitting in. Oh wait! He's responding to books that were written in response to history classes those authors may or may not have sat in on.

And that's my review, which is just my opinion.

[Bill Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished listening to the audio version and was pleasantly surprised. The author’s arguments are data-driven, and he gets DEEP down into the weeds with his data! He talks about - the American slavery issue, the American Native American issue, the American Communist issue, the Vietnam War, European Colonialism, the American use of nukes in WWII, and the current argument in America of racial oppression. And he knocks each one out of the park! The point isn’t whether he’s right or wrong but the importance of an open discussion of all points of view. I can’t wait to read more of Mr. Reilly’s work.

This book should be in all elementary/middle school libraries!

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Disappointing and Unoriginal Critique of Liberal Education. A hodgepodge of conservative talk radio talking points.

Reilly's "Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me" (2023) falls short of its promise to "uncover" and "debunk" liberal biases in education. Instead, it presents a disjointed and meandering collection of conservative talking points, lacking in rigorous citations and failing to engage with its central premise.

The book's title and approach echo the flaws of its left-leaning counterparts, such as Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." Specifically, calling out children's education for being insufficiently comprehensive is a bit of a red herring. In precisely the same way that the original "Lies My Teacher Told Me" or Zinn's risible "A People's History" did from a left/liberal perspective, Reilly's version suffers from the same conceit. History education for children cannot be as comprehensive as adult-level education, and Reilly's critique often feels like preaching to the choir.

Unless you stopped reading after high school, it's not exactly revelatory to learn that slavery was not unique to America or that Native tribes were also really violent, that there really WERE Communists in government during McCarthy's day (hi there Venona), that colonialism can be both oppressive AND productive ("What have the Romans ever done for us?!") or that dropping the bombs on Japan was a rather COMPLICATED decision.

As such, Reilly's fairly slapdash "Lies" never quite rises above its conservative talk radio trappings. Like his previous "Hate Crime Hoax," Reilly's sources and citations need some work. There are innumerable citations to random blog posts, podcasts, center-right articles and countless other secondary and tertiary sources all prefaced with "renowned," "well-regarded," or similar bolstering.

In his chapter purporting to debunk the "lie" that "Native Americans Were 'Peaceful People Who Spent All Day in Dancing" (seriously, that's the chapter title, the other chapters are similarly men made of straw) -- he cites "scholar" Michael Medved. Look, Michael Medved is a conservative talk radio host and former movie critic who has written some very generalized (though not entirely original) works of history. A generally smart and entertaining guy, but neither a scholar and certainly not an authority on the practices of Native tribes.

But that's what you get with "Lies" - a who's who of your AM dial or RedState contributor's page. As with his "Hate Crime Hoax" book, there was potential here. More could have been done exploring precisely how these "lies" are presented in education - i.e. with more detailed references to textbooks, lesson plans, curricula to really show how one-sided and ideologically driven primary education has become. But Reilly doesn't do that, nor really try.

It's easy to critique Zinn's educational foundation for putting out batshit radical lesson plans, but where are they employed and to what extent? Instead Reilly tends to take a generic (straw-mannish) left-wing talking point and "debunk" it. Though really he's just presenting the conservative counterargument, but rarely does he tie it to his central premise that THIS IS WHAT'S BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS.

Overall, "Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me" suffers from a lackluster structure, meandering chapters, and poor sourcing, making it neither useful nor interesting for readers familiar with historical debates.

[Michelle Bennington · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book and was surprised to discover Reilly lives right up the road from me. Well, about 45 minutes away. At any rate, I always enjoy reading works from fellow Kentuckians.

Basically the book boils down to this: history and current events are more complicated than victim - victimizer, oppressed - oppressor, black - white, poor - rich, colonizer - colonized. History and current events are more nuanced than the polarities that Marxist SJW activists like to laser-focus on.

This book is designed for the lay person with a full life who doesn't have time / money / energy to invest in in-depth research. Reilly hits the highlights of 10 BIG items that have been warped, twisted, or outright lied about. While there's not time / space to go into thorough analysis, he goes into enough explanation that at least brings a little more balance to the narratives parroted in our culture. One small issue I had with the book was the writing style. He had an odd way of phrasing things that sometimes gave me pause and forced me to re-read sections.

I know there are some reviewers on here who bark about "this is stuff everyone knows." Hm. Maybe if "everyone" were history majors. But most people aren't. And, increasingly revisionist history a la Howard Zinn and 1619 Project is muddying the waters for those who claim history majors. As a product of public education and left-leaning academia myself, I can tell you most assuredly, there is something here to surprise the average person. I have a bachelor's and a master's degree and NEVER heard of some of the things in this book.

Now, I'm sure there's even more for me to learn beyond this book. In no way do I think this is the whole story and my knowledge is now complete; so I'll keep reading and learning. But what I've learned here is enough to counteract things floating around as "truth" in mainstream culture.

On a personal note: I grew up in a generation where we were allowed to think for ourselves, have ideas different from our friends and STILL BE FRIENDS, and to even *gasp* change our minds about our beliefs. Perish the thought! We even, if you can imagine, had civil DISCUSSIONS about our differing ideas and remained friends! We didn't let our ego and pride get in the way of our discussions and found our relationships more important than politics. We were humble enough to admit we didn't know enough about a topic or even that we might be WRONG *gasp*. It was a Golden Age. I hope we can return to such a time. I think we can if we can recapture the key ingredient missing in today's discourse: humility.

[Caitlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the literary equivalent of a lobotomy. It opened with downplaying the brutality of slavery and went on to advocating for McCarthyism. From there it continued to get so much worse…

[Ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

First question: which liberal teacher is telling you these things? I went to an extremely liberal high school followed by an extremely conservative college. At no point did I encounter any of the arguments that Reilly claims are rampant. I did learn about some things he discusses in the *context* of social problems—for example, I learned about lynching in the context of anti-black racism, but I was never told it only happened to black people, nor did I assume that. This book is largely focused on refuting bizarre absolutisms that no reasonable person would believe.

Further, the scope is far too large for the length. He often makes points based on a few studies. For broad conclusions like “systemic racism doesn’t exist,” a much more thorough literature search is required. Worse, the issue Reilly is addressing is often lost as a result of this broad focus—does he care about the legitimacy of the Vietnam War or the legitimacy of the protests?

One of the strangest claims in the book is that ideology clouds our ability to see history clearly. Newsflash, buddy: learning history is not an exercise in recitation of facts. It’s building a narrative based on current conditions that assesses how we got here. This task is invariably guided by ideology. As one of your favorite thinkers may say, facts don’t care about your feelings. Based on some digs at neopronouns and “wokeness,” it’s abundantly clear that Reilly has a very strong neoconservative ideology guiding this writing that he refuses to admit. He also refuses to define the liberal ideology he’s claiming to debunk! He constantly conflates liberal, communist, and anarchist ideas, all of which are distinct. This becomes really evident in the Red Scare chapter, identifying all communist/socialist nations as sharing identical ideologies, all products of Soviet imperialism. This is patently false and could have been avoided with a hair of research.

I’m embarrassed to have wasted my time reading this book.

There are many, many better books to read about these issues than this one. They’re better researched and provide an actual thesis rather than attacking strawmen or pointing out exceptions to a rule as a “gotcha.” Here’s a few that I recommend:
Manufacturing Consent
An Indigenous People’s History of the US
Braiding Sweetgrass
Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution
The End of Policing
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents
Women, Race, and Class
Are Prisons Obsolete?
A People’s History of the US (which Reilly dunks on 😃)

[Cav · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble, youngster—it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so..."
—attributed to Mark Twain

I enjoyed Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me. I am generally a fan of well-done heterodox works, and this book is definitely a contrarian take. If you grew up in the Western education system, many foundational suppositions have been fed to you. Many people never question these supposed fundamental "truths." However, the author argues, many (of even most) of these foundational axiomatic views are incorrect, if not outright lies.

I have followed author Wilfred Reilly for a few years now, via his many podcast appearances and various media contributions. Reilly is an American political scientist. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Southern Illinois University and a law degree from the University of Illinois, according to his Wikipedia page.

Wilfred Reilly :


Reilly writes with a lively and engaging style, and this one shouldn't have trouble holding the finicky reader's attention. He gets the book off on a good foot with a high energy intro.

He drops the quote above at the start of the book, before writing:

"We often, bizarrely, hear the claim that American history is taught mostly from the political right—and that it presents our nation as bucolic.
In fact, many of the best-selling social science books of the past few decades focus on the idea that the “real” history of the United States was a virtually unending bloodbath. A short list of influential texts of this kind would have to include Marxist Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, the New York Times–originating recent bestseller The 1619 Project, and . . . well . . . James W. Loewen’s 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me. This entire body of work draws from and ties into the modern American obsession with racism."

Being concerned with racism has become a core tenet of the modern Western American "progressive" worldview. As such, there is an ongoing effort to judge the past by the same ethical standards we use today. Reilly says:

"...But this brings us to a key point, which serves as something of a central theme for this book.
Modern American morality is an aberration. If we don’t understand that, then history will be nothing but one long shock to our naive systems."

The 9 "lies" covered here are:
• Lie #1: “Brutal ‘True’ Slavery Was Virtually Unique to America and the West”
• Lie #2: “The ‘Red Scare’ Was a Moral Panic That Caught No Commies”
• Lie #3: “Native Americans Were ‘Peaceful People Who Spent All Day Dancing’”
• Lie #4: “Hippies Were the Good Guys, the Sexual Revolution Was Great for Women, and the Vietnam War Was Unpopular and Pointless”
• Lie #5: “The Founders Counted Slaves as ‘Three-Fifths of a Person’ and ‘the Only Victims of Lynchings’ Were Black”
• Lie #6: “European Colonialism Was—Empirically—a No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Thing”
• Lie #7: “American Use of Nukes to End World War Two Was ‘Evil’ and ‘Unjustified’”
• Lie #8: “Unprovoked ‘White Flight,’ Caused by Pure Racism, Ruined America’s Cities”
• Lie #9: “‘Southern Strategy’ Racism Turned the Solid South Republican”
• #10 Bonus Lie: The Continuing Oppression Narrative

The title of the book is provocative, and a cursory read of the top reviews here indicates that it has clearly ruffled some feathers. That's good. You take the most flak while you are directly over the target. Most of the people angry at this book are so not because of factual inaccuracies, but because this book is tearing down their cherished worldview. They are experiencing a cognitive dissonance, and the only way to reconcile that is to sling pejoratives at the author, since they can't provide properly evidenced rebuttals...

********************

Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me was an interesting contrarian book. The author did a great job putting it together.
I would definitely recommend this one.
5 stars.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

Most of the things here I already knew. Teachers told me a few of these lies in my day but they are more common now. The author quotes from many current textbooks and then sets the record straight.

The writing is a very engaging style and covers a lot of fascinating aspects of history. Basically, people are extraordinarily complex and so is history. Every event has an upside and a downside. Many leftists’ view of history is overly simplistic, reduced to a binary of oppressed vs oppressor. The lesson is, always get your history from multiple sources (and original sources where possible) and not from someone with a political agenda. (Because of the audiobook format, I was unable to highlight passages.)



Chapters/Myths/Lies: Slavery was unique to America – The Red Scare amounted to nothing (also covers media and academic bias) – Native Americans were completely peaceful and lived in harmony with nature – Hippies were universally loved, the Vietnam War was massively unpopular, and hookup culture is a great thing – Colonialism was horrible and had no positive side effects – The Constitution’s three-fifths compromise was racist; only blacks were ever lynched – Bombing Hiroshima was totally unjustified – White Flight was/is a racist phenomenon that ruined cities – The “Southern Strategy” was a Republican tool to turn the South red – (Bonus: the “continuing oppression” narrative)

Occasional strong language in quotes

[Ray Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the past 50 years there have been many books written that challenge the "great men" approach to history and the traditional U.S. History texts that exalt America's past without giving students the tools to question our past and learn lessons that will support a better future. Along the way, Reilly argues that we have lost sight of many valuable truths. In this short volume, Reilly presents many examples of false narratives that have developed in the name of setting the record right.

As a student of history, I always enjoy digging a little deeper and finding out that the sanitized, simplified version of history I learned as a child was, in many cases, not the whole story and in some cases, even false. However, history involves interpretation and presentation in context. Have we as a nation thrown out the truth in favor of a politically correct liberal agenda? Wilfred Reilly thinks so.

I found this little book interesting. There is little to argue with as far as his presentation of historical facts. However, his retelling of some of our nation's most shameful episodes lacked context and interpretation. In other words, what he explains in true, but he misses the point. Nevertheless, an interesting look and a wakeup call to remind us that history is an art and meaningless unless it informs where we are going. Curricula reflects the values and political climate of the time. We select episodes from history that teach what we need it to teach. If we do not constantly revise, we are indoctrinating and reducing the subject to legend rather than giving students the tools to develop useful understanding. I don't agree with Mr. Reilly's conclusion that liberals have perverted the curricula of American schools, but I appreciate his point of view and blunt presentation of some of what we might consider revisiting.

[Sherrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book. When Japan was in war with us, they would skin American soldiers alive, through them in a ditch to die. Once they were dead they would eat them. Also Japan would capture women, get them pregnant. Then do experiments on them like injecting syphilis into the mother and child.

[Scott Humphries · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilfred Reilly’s book is frustrating, because it is a constant stream of straw man arguments, false dichotomies, and other argumentative foibles and fallacies. The book seeks to answer its almost-namesake, "Lies My Teacher Told Me." That book tackled serious questions about the way history is taught in the United States. For example, the original "Lies My Teacher Told Me" deplores the euphemistic teaching of the causes of the civil war, namely that the South was up in arms about "states’ rights." Anyone who’s bothered to read the actual declarations of secession of the Southern states knows that the sine qua non of the South’s casus belli was the right to own slaves, not some esoteric desire for generic “states’ rights.”

"Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me" makes some good arguments, but they are scattered among so much chaff that they’re hard to find. For example, the first "lie" the book addresses is that "brutal true slavery was virtually unique to America." I’m not sure anyone seriously disputes that that’s wrong, so it’s a pretty lame start to a book designed to dispel supposedly widespread liberal lies.

The second "lie" addressed is: the "Red Scare was a moral panic that caught no commies." Here the book really misses the point of criticisms of the Red Scare. Serious criticism of the Red Scare isn't that it was wholly without basis. It’s that the Red Scare was overblown as a political tool that abused the civil rights of countless innocent Americans under the guise of ferreting out spies. Just because the government caught a few communist spies does not justify rampant trouncing of other citizens' civil rights. This goes unaddressed by Reilly.

Next: "Native Americans were peaceful people who spent all day dancing." Reilly here shows his disdain for Native Americans. Yes, we all know the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. But what the fuck does that have to do with the Trail of Tears?

Others:

"The Only Victims of Lynchings Were Black." No serious person believes this anyway, but Reilly’s comparisons of the number of black versus white lynchings don’t account for the relative sizes of black versus white populations. And Reilly’s drawn-out recitation of all the states that don’t have recorded lynchings of blacks isn’t compelling, i.e. Maine, Wyoming, etc.

"Colonialism was Bad for the Natives." Again, contrary to Reilly’s refrain that the world is complicated and we shouldn’t oversimplify it, Reilly oversimplifies this. He admits that colonialism was in fact terrible for most native populations, but argues that good things came of colonialism, too. Completely absent from his analysis (of course) is any admission that he himself oversimplifies “colonialism,” basically ignoring the idea that the supposed benefits of "colonialism" (access to technology, trade) could easily have occurred without the subjugation of native populations.

"American Use of Nukes to End WW2 Was Evil and Unjustified." No intelligent person I know believes that the US should have refrained from using its atomic bombs if it meant saving the hundreds of thousands of US and other lives that would have been lost invading the Japanese home islands. Reilly focuses on that argument, and barely mentions what historians really argue about on this issue: could the US have dropped a demonstration bomb? Was Nagasaki necessary after Hiroshima? Reilly ignores these issues and continues just to pick the low-hanging fruit on his straw man arguments.

I’m sure Reilly sold a lot of books with his catchy title. I checked it out from the library to see if I was missing something. Turns out, no.

[Isaac · Rating 2 out of 5]

A better title for this book might have been "Snarkily raising the occasional interesting counterargument to questionable narratives found in a few of the most dubious textbooks the author could find"

I liked Reilly's first two books Taboo and Hate Crime Hoax, he is capable of skillfully wielding original data analysis to make forceful arguments and there is some of that here but it's buried deeply in partisan rancor and Thomas Sowell inspired snark.

He also chooses some odd targets like defending Joseph McCarthy and taking down Native Americans.

Reilly clearly sees himself as a pugilist out there, battling the woke hoards. He does lands some punches that got me thinking, but he spends most of the book dancing around the ring showboating.

[Sean Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite informative. It makes you wonder how many narratives we take for granted that don't bear the weight of objective scrutiny. At the very least, we would all do well to more research for ourselves. I think even those who disagree with the premise would benefit from reading this book to help them see their own biases and to understand that those who disagree might have good reasons for doing so.

[Hayley · Rating 1 out of 5]

BOOOOOOOOOOOO, this screams “I’m so edgy”

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book.

I read “Lies my Teacher Told Me“ several years back (although I don’t think I finished it). It corrected errors coming from one direction (although, as I recall, it made a few errors of its own). This new book is an excellent correction of errors coming from the other direction. I would recommend reading both.

[Leisha Camden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that absolutely everyone ought to read!!

[John Reis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I saw the author on a YouTube short. He was brash and seemed to be amusing in his takedown of a number of liberal narratives we have been force fed by our teachers over the past forty years.

I also downloaded the audiobook while I was driving. It is longer than the hardcover.

Reilly takes on ten subjects: slavery was a uniquely American institution; McCarthy was tilting at communist sympathizer windmills in the 1940s and 50s; Native Americans were peace-loving, stewards of this land; hippies and the hippie lifestyle was all positive; only blacks were lynched; European colonialism was an unalloyed evil; the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evil and several other matters.

Reilly is sympathetic to some of these narratives but says that evidence does not completely support, and in fact, disputes these narratives.

He covers some of the same ground that Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Heather MacDonald and others have written about.

The narrator made many mistakes: mispronunciations and wrong words.

[Wyatt Stringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Professor Reilly's works and this is no exception. It is amazing how many people still believe the lies that their liberal teachers told them!

[sum · Rating 1 out of 5]

straw-man arguments over and over again. nobody is saying the things this book is fighting against, it's so incredibly bad faith.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book. Wonderfully done.
History is complex and rarely comes from easy answers.

1. Slavery-
Slavery was not uniquely American nor uniquely against black people. Every civilization throughout all of history has held slaves and been enslaved by another group. Slaves were common in history, and in fact the Atlantic slave trade wasn’t even the most brutal. The Arab slave trade saw ¼ of all slaves die before they even reached the Middle East. Where they got to perform their duties in 120-degree weather. Much like owning cars today, slavery was a form of prestige and wealth, and everybody had one. They were traded by Native Americans and had a standardized value system across tribes. In fact, the alternative to slavery was generally being massacred. Women were raped, children slaughtered, families and tribes all put into slavery. It was common everywhere in the world, and there are still slaves today. The only thing unique about Western Slavery is that we ended it. Western Culture finally saw the evil for what it was and ended the practice.
2. Red Scare-
McCarthyism of the 1950’s and the hunt for Communists was not a snipe hunt, where people simply tried to attack innocents with unsubstantiated claims. It turns out that most of the people accused of being communists, were in fact communists. Including the president’s top advisors while giving the president advice on dealing with the Soviet Union. Most academics, most journalists, and most of Hollywood was/is run by communists. This is why they never paint Communism in a bad light, and while they continue to push the idea that searching for communists was bad.
3. Native Americans-
Native Americans were not peaceful, did not really take care of their land, and committed just as many atrocities against whites as whites committed against them. Native tribes hated each other and were constantly at war with one another. They took slaves, sacrificed people by the thousands to their pagan gods, stole land from other tribes, and the word cannibal is from a Native American word. The only question being how much human flesh they needed to complete their diet. They wiped out huge swaths of animals (American Beaver) and controlled their land in ways to make life easier. When whites showed up on their shores, they found hell, not heaven (I loved that line). The primary killer of the natives was disease, and while tragic, was not a crime committed by the white settlers. However, there is no record of genocide against the Natives. Both sides killed each other with fair regularity. Two years before the Sand Creek Mass (considered one of the worst atrocities against natives) a band of natives killed around 380 whites mostly women and children too n the Minnesota/North Dakota area. Native Americans also sides with the south during the Civil War because they were so attached to their slaves.
4. Hippies were good, Vietnam was bad-
Hippies were gross drug addicts that destroyed everything they touched. They were incredibly unpopular, especially with the working class, and caused a cultural shift the people were not ready for and the repercussions of which are still being felt. Anywhere hippies gathered in mass basically became hell on earth. Free Love and Peace were quickly abandoned for hard drug use and sexual abuse. Lines between consent and appropriate ages were blurred if not abolished as girls as young as 12-13 were reported to have been partying with these people. With the victims came the predators as hippies (like the Manson Family) would often become violent and predatory. Women’s happiness was sacrificed on the alter of free love as hippies tried to separate sex and love, and the entire culture was unprepared for how perverted things were. Not ten years before Woman magazine was unable to print the words “bottom” or “wet.” An entire generation before this had gone their whole lives without talking about sex, now it was everywhere.
At the same time, the Vietnam War was incredibly popular with the people. It wasn’t until the very end of the war that people started to have a negative opinion. The final year of the war saw a bare majority (52%) thought that deploying troops was a bad idea. This was after ten years of being at war. By comparison, within 18 months of being in Afghanistan, a majority (60+%) believed it was a bad idea to deploy troops. The leaders who fought the Vietnam war were correct, once Vietnam fell, the other dominoes fell, which led to the horrors of Communist Regimes. Millions were killed because of the Communists, and the United States was trying to prevent that.
5. Founders saw blacks as 3/5 of a person, all lynchings were against blacks-
Anyone who has studied the founders knows they were deeply divided about slavery. James Madison, Benjamin Rush, and many others were fully against slavery. George Washington recognized it only as a necessary evil and freed all the slaves he could upon his death. In a strange reversal, it was the Southern (pro-slave) representatives that wanted slaves to count as a full person, while the northerners (abolitionists) didn’t want slaves to count at all. It was all political and determined how much representation the southern states would have had while never allowing a black person to vote. The 3/5ths compromise was just that, a compromise, neither side was happy, but it was needed to get the southern states to sign on. Without the 3/5ths the union is never formed. With an agreement that blacks count as population, the north never has enough voting power to end the practice in the 1860’s. It was a necessary evil.
Despite what many prominent leaders like to claim, lynching does not happen today. The last recorded lynching was in 1964, with the practice being considered “over” by 1968. In the years of prominent lynching (1880-1964) MORE blacks were killed than whites, but it was not just blacks, and the numbers are actually a little surprising, with the ratio being closer to 3:1 blacks to whites. Many states (especially in the west) saw more whites lynched than blacks, and some of the most famous lynchings were against other immigrants. One of the most famous occurred in New Orleans where a mob killed several Italians. While the practice was barbaric, it was not one sided. In fact, it appears to simply be a form of vigilante justice that continued into the 1960’s. Similarly, hanging was common practice. Most states used hanging as Capital Punishment, with the last hanging even happening the 1990’s. Whipping was also common, but more for military men than blacks. The navy allowed captains to whip men up to a dozen times, and more if there was a formal court marshal. Lewis and Clark even flogged men, with the Indians reporting that it would have been kinder to just put the man to death.
6. Colonialism
Colonialism is really more about trade-offs. Displacing any government for a different one is going to cause problems but are the people going to be better off with the new government or with the old one. The old governments tended to be power crazy dictators who kept their people in servitude, kept the country in poverty, and never built anything except their own palaces. Western Colonialists, while by no means altruistic, at least built infrastructure, introduced modern technologies and medicines, ended slave trades and eventually brought law and order to these countries. By all measurable statistics, people under colonial rule were in better shape than those under the rule of some power-hungry despot.
In fact, when the Western Colonialists left, most countries dissolved back into war and chaos. Despite liberal academics’ claims, this was a return to form, not a result of colonialism.
Colonialism is also not uniquely western. As has been a theme of the book, just about every major civilization conquered lands and subjugated other people. In fact, the largest colonialists were probably the Mongols, African Tribes conquered each other all the time, and the Aztecs conquered people so they could eat them. Western Colonialism really wasn’t all that bad by comparison. Colonialism also isn’t completely gone. It would appear as though China is taking over Africa, with the world so focused on the sins of the West, they are ignoring the sins being committed and going to be escalated in the not too distant future.
7. Dropping the Atomic Bombs during WWII was evil
The Atomic Bombs accomplished their goals. We may not like how it ended the war, but it ended the war and probably saved millions of lives. A full-scale invasion of Japan would have killed millions of US soldiers and Japanese citizens and could have taken decades. The Japanese had no intention of surrendering and to do so would have been disgraceful to them. The US would have had to kill every man, woman, and child in the nation to finally end the war. Those that lost their lives in the bombings were only a small taste of the numbers that would have died if the Americans had invaded.
One of the most prolific protestors for peace (Claude Eartherly) claimed to have played a significant role in dropping the bombs, and said he was wracked with guilt and ended up writing letters to the Japanese people begging for forgiveness. He also made all kinds of money, won all kinds of awards, lied about his involvement with the project, and used the defense to plead insanity on criminal charges. He flew a plane to observe the weather above Japan the day of the bombing (he told the Japanese people he “gave the go ahead”). Every other person who played a role in the bombing had no qualms over the issue.
Part of this is modern man holding people of the past to a “higher” moral code because International Laws were based in the 1970’s to try to stop wars like this from happening again. Part of this is from the people’s desire to ignore the war crimes committed by everyone during WWII. In fact, most people in 1945 understood that not only was this a necessary part of war, but the Japanese deserved it. They were Hitler’s greatest and most powerful ally.
Everybody bombed civilians, this was the first time true weapons of destruction were ever used and entire towns were obliterated. He Japanese were some of the worst offenders. ¼ of all Japanese POWs were killed, wit the number spiking to virtually all of their Chinese POWs. They performed sadistic scientific experiments on people, raped women to get them pregnant, then injected them with syphilis, then vivisected them at various points in the pregnancy to see what the disease did to the baby.
The Japanese ate POWs, sometimes for starvation, sometimes simply because they wanted to keep POW prisoners scared and in their place. They skinned them alive and then stir-fried them.
The Japanese found it disgraceful to surrender and had no intention of ever stopping fighting. Their men believed they were winning the war and luring the Americans into a trap on the main island, up until the day the bombs were dropped.
Because they refused to surrender, they would not agree to the US. The US was seeking a peace that would last by disarming the aggressive nations, demanding that the people responsible be taken to trial, including the Japanese Emperor, and that they give back the territory they had conquered during the war. This is all the stuff anyone would agree to after losing a war.
The bombs ended the war. You don’t have to like it, but they probably stopped the greatest evil the world had ever seen.
8. White flight was all based-on racism
This was, understandably, the most technical and complex issue covered so far. The 1960’s saw the decline of pretty much every major American Urban center. It wasn’t just white people that fled, but anyone who had the means to flee, got out of the cities as fast as they could. Primarily this was because of the construction of the Interstate and Highway systems, people could now live in the suburbs (which were also a new development) and commute to work in their cars (also now readily available). Suburban housing was plentiful and affordable, while urban housing remained expensive and limited. People with means also left because of the increasing crime rates. This statistic appears to have a reverse correlation than what is typically taught. Typically, what we are told is that people leave, poverty enters, and crime rises. In reality, crime enters, people leave, and poverty enters. Crime makes people leave, and the 60’s saw some of the worst riots in American History. Alongside this issue comes poor government policies, like forced integration bussing, which was grossly unpopular across the board. Forcing kids out of their neighborhood and into another, from one failing school into another failing school, so they could cause trouble and get in fights. All of this wraps back around into policing. As the amount of proactive, boots-on-the-ground policing, drops the crime rises. Again, liberal policies forced police to back off which increased the crime rates, which cause more white people to leave. When a city experiences a riot, those businesses don’t rebuild, those people don’t come back, the city loses population, tax money, construction and fees and everything else.
The truly sad part is that we are simply repeating history and seeing it all happen again. As liberal run cities/state are being abandoned for conservative areas. The problem is hardly racism, but a mix of social opportunities for a better lifestyle and to flee the crime being brought into our cities.
9. Racism turned the South Republican
This lie has to be the most head-scratching. The argument is that when the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Republicans decided to use encoded language to signal racists southern to join the Republican party. None of it makes any sense. Democrats have always been the party of racists. They opposed the abolition of slavery, opposed reconstruction, and opposed the Civil Rights Acts. Democrats only voted it out of the house by a 1/3 margin, and it only passed because of 100% Republican support. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican which was a party formed specifically to fight slavery. The KKK became the militant arm of the Democrats to keep minorities down. Even LBJ famously quipped that the only thing good to come out of the Civil Rights Act was that it’ll have the “n*****s voting Democrat for 200 years.” In fact, poor whites (assumed in the book to be racists) in the south continue to mostly vote democrat.
The south only recently became solid red (think 1990’s). It has far more to do with population shift and demographics. Most growth in the United States has been in the south, and most economic growth is coming from that area too. Consider Miami, which was a poor fishing village in 1900, and is now considered a world class city.
There is also no evidence for encoded racist language. Both political parties knew as early as 1970 that racism wouldn’t work to get someone elected, and the parties switched their platforms to the economy and military spending.
The fact that this Southern Strategy has not only been accepted, but then continues to gain traction and acceptance is downright head scratching.
10. Blacks and minorities continue to be oppressed
This lie is the most cynical and frustrating because it deals directly with today. Modern “thought” leaders have spread the lie that minorities are experiencing genocide, and the United States Government needs to step in and eliminate anything that is perceived as racist. The activists would have the government remove all Republicans from office, arrest their political opponents, and create a militarized wing of the government whose sole purpose is to sniff out racism and eradicate it.
There are several problems with this lie. First, it is incredibly technical and dense, filled with jargon and buzzwords designed to create guilt and then play on that guilt. The lies are designed to look at anything that might be an issue with our country. Our country is not perfect, but to look only on her flaws and then declare that we are still stuck in the 1850’s as far as race relations, is downright wrong.
This lie is also all about ideas and structures that are unintentionally hidden. The racism is baked into the cake of America, it’s not a bug, but a feature. This means you can’t specify anything that is overtly racist, in fact trying to do so is itself a form of racism. We just need to accept what we are told is racist and seek to fix a problem we can’t see, can’t explain, don’t understand, and only exists because we are told it exists. This also means that the entire structure of the United States needs to be torn down. If it is racist to the very core of it’s being, then it can’t be saved and needs to be torn down.
This lie also creates a false dichotomy. Black people struggle because: the system is built on racism, or there is something wrong with black people. Either option is assuming racism. Either you admit to a hidden secret racism, or you admit to overtly being a racist.
The issue, of course, is that this is all wrong. The author flatly states that none of these ideas hold up under any empirical data or objective rational thought
The book mainly looks at the accusations against the police. The idea that the police (and white vigilantes) are rampantly murdering young unarmed black men. None of the data supports this. From very credible sources, third party, no-stakes, have nothing to gain by lying sources, the data simply does not suggest that blacks are being killed rampantly by the police.
In fact, white people are far more likely to be shot by the police. Which makes sense when you consider that the population is majority white but stops making sense when the stats show that black people are far more likely to commit crime. The problem isn’t black people being stopped by the police the problem is that black people commit more crime.
Increased policing reduces crime.
Increased study increases education.
Black people can (and do) compete with whites at every level of society.
The lie was head scratching simply because it is built on nothing. The media pick up one story run with it for two-three months, and then everything thinks it is a pattern. There is no actual evidence that any of this even exists.
What the studies do show is that crime is almost exclusively intraracial meaning within the same racial group. Blacks commit crimes against blacks, whites against whites, so forth and so on. This has been known for decades. This has been discussed and analyzed, this has been mocked on Family Guy. Crime occurs within racial groups. This is why white women are the only ones featured on the news, because to discuss black women would be to discuss the crimes committed by black people.

[Douglas Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

That was painful. I intended to write an extensive chapter by chapter breakdown, but it doesn’t deserve my time. Suffice to say, the principal theme of this book is everyone else was doing it so we have no need to repent. Reilly makes a point about ignoring variables, but repeatedly does so himself.

His next book should be called Lies My Math Teacher Told Me. He can start with how 80,000-100,000 Greek slaves out of a population of 2.5 million is “one in four of the people,” and not 4%.

PS - we don’t have “frantic guilt”

[Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no more overused / misused term in book reviews than "required reading," but I sincerely believe that this book falls into that category. I went to high school in the late 80s and college in the early 90s - right as instructors were beginning to allow their liberal bias to come blasting out of hiding with absolutely no restraint needed. Even my supposed Catholic grade school education in the early to mid 80s wasn't much better. So, this book most assuredly struck a nerve with me because I have first-hand experience of the false narratives the Mr. Reilly so expertly exposes and debunks.

The premise of the book is simple - your teachers lied to you and I'm going to prove it. The format of the book is equally simple - each chapter focusses on a nearly universally accepted lie, and then Mr. Reilly completely obliterates the lie with verifiable facts. There is no emotion involved, it's simply presented as "here's what you were told, and here are half dozen fact-based proofs that you were lied to."

I've spent the 30-plus years since I graduated from college trying to cleanse my mind of the blatant lies I was taught. After reading this book I can now hope that finally no more of the educational liberal agenda (aka lies) remains in my brain.

I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anymore who's been subjected to the brainwashing liberal agenda of the hippy generation.

[Jeff Cherpeski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent companion to Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America

[Bob Lyons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of this book is excellent. Other parts are awful. I want to hear every side of an argument because I want to know the truth and I want to see the big picture. A chapter on the history of slavery is great. So is the one on Native Americans. Very informative and very interesting. Obviously, from the title, the author has an agenda. But the chapter on how Joseph McCarthy was right, or that the Vietnam War was a good idea are truly ridiculous. Or when he proved that all newspapers are liberal because "90% endorsed the scandal-plagued Clinton instead of Trump"! Hilary was the one with all the scandals? Not the career criminal? Anyway, I read every book he references throughout so I was glad to hear another take on these issues. I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Two stars for the two good chapters. Unfortunately, half the book is crap.
P.S.: there's a chapter on the three fifths compromise that is one of the dumbest things I've suffered through. Either the author is a moron or he assumes the reader is!

[mark propp · Rating 4 out of 5]

slightly underwhelming for someone who somewhat travels in heterodox waters, in that none of this was particularly new to me. if you listen to the 5th column or read thomas sowell, you're gonna know this stuff.

but it's a tidy little primer & mostly a decent read. i did find a few chapters to be a bit of a slog to get through - particularly the slavery & native american chapters, but that's probably a straight reflection on where my own interests mainly reside.

i did find myself wishing he'd done more on the kendi/diangelo racial grievance industry & the fryer style countering data, but i suppose there are already lots of people & books making that case already.

[Richard Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes, bias is easily displayed by what you omitted.
I’ve read “lies my history teacher told me” and Zinn. Both were bias, on purpose. Meant to counteract what they saw as bias.
This book is bias also… However, it is well researched and contains points of view/data that is often omitted for political/messaging reasons.
Why not have information from all sides to make informed opinions?

[Mark McElreath · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could stand as a single-volume primer concerning many of the social issues found in America today. Reilly's decidedly conservative and academic approach is helpful for discussing these issues and getting to the root of many of the problems. In the end, most issues are more complicated than you might think.

[Justin Reeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific Analysis of the Issues (Myths) In Education

Great, quick read! The writing style took a couple chapters to get used to, but once I did, the work flowed well. Crazy how lies, myths and half-truths are maintained and perpetuated over time. Important work to call this out and to be aware of if you are involved in learning/education. Well done Mr.Reilly!!

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. Those damn liberals and all their DAMNED lies!