{"id":2240552,"date":"2024-05-08T21:11:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-09T01:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-11-leftist-myths-about-american-history\/"},"modified":"2024-05-08T21:31:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T01:31:35","slug":"shapiro-11-leftist-myths-about-american-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-11-leftist-myths-about-american-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking 11 Leftist Myths in U.S. History"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fshapiro-11-leftist-myths-about-american-history%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2240552&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Since 1961, Democratic \u2062presidents added 42 million jobs compared to Republicans&#8217; 24 million. \u200cHowever, attributing job creation solely to presidents is misleading. The \u2064private sector drives\u2064 job growth with external factors and policy continuity playing vital roles. The myth that presidents directly impact job creation is oversimplified and doesn&#8217;t reflect the complex economic reality. Democratic presidents added 42 million jobs\u200d since 1961, surpassing\u2064 Republicans&#8217; contribution of \u200d24 million. Job creation is primarily driven by the \u200cprivate\u2063 sector, influenced by external factors and policy continuity.\u200b The common belief that presidents alone determine job growth oversimplifies the intricate economic landscape.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p>The Left tells a story about America. It goes something like this: Once upon a time, a group of brutal white colonial Christians arrived in North America from a far-off land. They brought with them disease, murder, and rape. They savaged the natives, enslaved people across the earth, and founded a country based on racism and sexism. That country\u2019s founding document\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the United States Constitution\u00a0\u2014\u00a0was an ode to the propertied class, to sexism and racism, to slavery itself. America has never been able to escape those sins, and only the growth in power of the federal government controlled by people of the Left has been able to carve away at that dark legacy over time\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but that legacy will never be erased, except by a complete reshaping of American society and politics.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives tell a different story. European colonists arrived in America in order to establish a country founded on principles of liberty and religious toleration. America is guilty of many sins in its past\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but the principles enshrined in the Constitution are eternal and good. The Constitution\u2019s central natural law principles laid forth the notions of individual liberty and rights to one\u2019s own labor\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and over time, those rights would be perfected in the United States, not through centralized government, but through good people struggling to bring about change through blood and sacrifice and persuasion. The growth of an overreaching federal government now threatens those very liberties in the name of tearing away at the system upon which our freedoms and prosperity is based.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s an enormous difference between these stories. It would be foolish not to acknowledge the sins of the past. But it would be far more foolish to throw away America\u2019s glorious history in the name of wiping away the greatest system of government ever devised by man, and crippling the freest philosophy ever implemented in governmental form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 1: The U.S. Constitution is no longer relevant.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: The U.S. Constitution is a timeless document.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On June 24, 2016, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals \u2014 an appointee of Ronald Reagan \u2014 announced that he no longer thought studying the Constitution was worthwhile. After lamenting the encomia for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Posner wrote, \u201cI see absolutely no value to a judge\u00a0of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries \u2014 well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments). Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21<sup>st<\/sup>century. Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post\u2013Civil War amendments (including the 14<sup>th<\/sup>), do not speak to today.\u201d<sup>1<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t rare in the legal world of\u00a0the Left.\u00a0Leftists who speak of a \u201cliving Constitution\u201d generally mean that the Constitution itself is irrelevant, dated, a vestige of a different time and place.\u00a0The founders, they suggest, would never have structured our government the way it is if they had only known about iPhones and wireless internet. In 2001, then-State Senator Barack Obama told public radio that it was vital for Americans to \u201cbreak free\u201d of the Constitution in order to promote government-created \u201ceconomic justice.\u201d Obama explicitly stated, \u201cWe still suffer from not having a Constitution that guarantees its citizens economic rights.\u201d By this, Obama meant that the government was not empowered under the Constitution to do much beyond ensuring so-called negative rights: rights that exist because no one can violate them. He wanted so-called positive rights: rights to goods and services provided by others via the government.<sup>2<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Leftists on the Supreme Court agree with Obama and Posner. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking to Egypt\u2019s Al-Hayat TV, admitted that she didn\u2019t find the United States Constitution particularly inspiring. \u201cI would not look to the US Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,\u201d Ginsburg said. \u201cI might look at the Constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of\u00a0government that embraced human rights, had an independent judiciary\u2026\u00a0It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The South African Constitution, like most constitutions composed by the political left, guarantees certain rights to other people\u2019s property, services, and treatment. It vaguely guarantees a right to \u201cinherent dignity,\u201d whatever that means. It also guarantees a right to \u201caccess to adequate housing,\u201d as provided by the state, and a right to \u201chealth care services, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-expected-to-issue-opinions-monday-as-roe-v-wade-hangs-in-the-balance\/\" title=\"Supreme Court Expected To Issue Opinions Monday As Roe v. Wade Hangs In The Balance\">including reproductive health care<\/a>,\u201d among others. So, this should make South Africa a paradise, no? No, actually, the\u00a0murder rate in South Africa is 32 per 100,000 residents (in the United States, the murder rate is 4.6 per 100,000, by way of contrast); per capita GDP is $5,691.70 (in the United States, it\u2019s $53,041.98). A piece of paper can guarantee you the fruits of other people\u2019s work, but if people aren\u2019t willing to work, the paper isn\u2019t worth the paper it\u2019s printed on.<\/p>\n<p>The chief reason for that:\u00a0constitutions that guarantee positive rights demand labor from others. Involuntary servitude is the precondition to positive rights provided by the government.\u00a0Wealth must be confiscated; property must be taken; services must be forced. And government force invariably ends in societal breakdown: lack of social capital and trust, lack of innovation and drive.<\/p>\n<p>The founders recognized that, which is why the Constitution of the United States is a timeless document.\u00a0The Constitution was created to deal with flaws in human nature, not to cope with technological advancements: we may have better means of communication than we did in 1787, but we don\u2019t have better people.\u00a0People are the same as they ever were.<\/p>\n<p>The founders constructed the Constitution\u00a0on the basis of\u00a0three main realizations about human beings. First, they realized that human beings are imperfect, selfish, driven by self-interest. They will go to war with each other to assure the victory of that self-interest. The founders agreed with the central theory of Thomas Hobbes, that without government, man reverted to constant warfare: \u201cNo arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But they disagreed with Hobbes that the only way to solve this conundrum was a great and powerful ruler. They believed that such rulers were similarly capable of brutality in their own self-interest. They adopted this philosophy from John Locke, who wrote, \u201cThe end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people?\u201d In other words, if rulers invaded the rights of others, they ought to be curbed.<\/p>\n<p>So, how could society survive without an all-powerful ruler checking men? By a series of mutual checks and balances. As James Madison famously stated in <em>Federalist #51<\/em>: \u201cIf men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Checks and balances were designed to <em>prevent<\/em> government from overreaching its boundaries; only widespread agreement could overrule such checks and balances. The judiciary was therefore designed not to lord over the executive and legislative branches, but to interpret the law \u201cunder the Constitution\u201d; it was checked by its requirement of funding from Congress and execution from the executive branch. The legislative branch was designed to pass laws in concurrence with the Constitution; the president was given the power to veto laws. Congress itself was checked by distribution of power between the House, chosen by population, and the Senate, chosen by state. The executive branch was checked by the legislature; the executive couldn\u2019t create laws or self-fund, and the legislature could always impeach an incipient tyrant. The federal government\u00a0as a whole was\u00a0checked by state governments, all of which had their own checks and balances.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>structural<\/em><em> <\/em>Constitution, not the Bill of Rights, is the essence of American government. And it has <em>nothing to do<\/em><em> <\/em>with technological progress.\u00a0It relies on the same vision of human\u00a0nature held by the founders, and the same vision of human rights: that because you are a human being, you have inviolable rights that cannot be removed from you by majority vote.<\/p>\n<p>But\u00a0the Left\u00a0despises the Constitution because\u00a0the Left\u00a0believes that human nature <em>can<\/em><em> <\/em>change, if only people are granted material wealth. If people are given positive rights by government, they transform, almost magically, into better human beings: less selfish, more giving, altruistic about their time and labor. Marx infamously stated that while animals generated only enough to survive, humans generated excess \u2014 and, said Marx, this perverted them into lesser beings. Communism, by confiscating labor and providing for needs, would transform capitalistic people into better people. The state would solve man\u2019s spiritual ills.<\/p>\n<p>The American Constitution rejects this materialist notion. And\u00a0so\u00a0for well over a century,\u00a0the Left\u00a0has attempted to destroy the Constitution in the name of action.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 2: America was founded on slavery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: The Northern<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>Founders wanted to abolish<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>slavery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the most-uttered myths regarding the United States is that it was \u201cfounded on slavery.\u201d This statement is used to justify everything from affirmative action to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/star-parker-social-security-reform-about-principles-not-accounting\/\" title=\"Star Parker: Social Security Reform About Principles, Not Accounting\">federal transfer payments<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ny-post-editorial-board-americans-fed-up-with-crime-and-other-commentary\/\" title=\"NY Post Editorial Board: Americans Fed up With Crime and Other Commentary\">low-income minorities<\/a>; it\u2019s used as a scapegoat for elevated levels of black crime and for black educational underperformance. It\u2019s also a wild overstatement.<\/p>\n<p>Slavery was a grave moral evil. It was also common at the time of the founding. The United States did indeed tolerate slavery, and the southern states fought for the continuation of slavery during the Civil War. But virtually all countries in human history also supported slavery during that time, including African countries shipping Africans to the Americas in chains. The first European country to ban import of slaves to its colonies was Denmark in 1803; Britain only outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1807; the United States passed legislation banning the new importation of slaves beginning in 1808.\u00a0Britain only passed gradual abolition of slavery in 1833; Denmark only abolished slavery in 1846, France in\u00a01848, Brazil in 1851; and the United States in 1862.\u00a0To pretend that the United States was unique\u00a0in regard to\u00a0its history with slavery would be historically ignorant.<sup>3<\/sup> That does not justify American slavery (nothing does), but it does provide\u00a0vital\u00a0historical context.<\/p>\n<p>From its founding, the United States attempted to come to grips with slavery and phase it out. The state of Vermont was the first sovereign state to abolish slavery, in 1777. During the debate over the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wanted to include a provision that would have condemned King George III for \u201cwag[ing] cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.\u201d Southern states demanded that this provision be removed in return for joining the revolution. Having no choice, Jefferson removed the clause.<\/p>\n<p>The Constitution of the United States is frequently seen as enshrining slavery, but the so-called three-fifths clause was an attempt to do the opposite.\u00a0The whole question of popular apportionment rested on whether to count slaves as full people for purposes of representation. To do so would have put the slaveholding south at a significant <em>advantage<\/em>: they would have counted slaves in their population, not allowed them to vote, then used their increased representation in order to re-enshrine slavery. As James Madison noted, the delegates from South Carolina fought for blacks to be counted as whole people\u00a0so as to\u00a0include them \u201cin the rule of representation, equally with the Whites.\u201d The three-fifths compromise was designed to curb the\u00a0South\u2019s expansionist tendencies\u00a0with regard to\u00a0slavery by preventing them from stacking the electoral deck. The Constitution also allowed slave importation to continue until 1808\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but Congress moved in 1807 to end it there.<\/p>\n<p>Then, of course, the United States fought a great and massive Civil War to free the slaves, in which over 620,000 Americans died, nearly half the total number of Americans to die in all wars combined.\u00a0The economy of the United States was not built on slavery\u00a0\u2014\u00a0in fact, the\u00a0South\u2019s economic power was dismal compared to that of the north, which is why the north was able to overcome the south during the Civil War.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 3: Segregation was imposed socially.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: Segregation was imposed governmentally.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Left\u00a0constantly repeats that government is necessary in order to stop discrimination between private parties. Government does intervene to stop uses of force between private parties, of course. But you have no right to my\u00a0services\u00a0and I have no right to your services. This argument leads leftists to say that if we don\u2019t allow government to intervene in order to <em>force<\/em> me to serve you, widespread, rampant discrimination will break out. They often cite Jim Crow in defense of this notion.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>Segregation was governmentally imposed, not socially imposed. The whole reason that government was necessary was so that those who would not abide by social racism were forced to do so.\u00a0As black economist Walter Williams states, \u201cwhenever there is a law on the books, one\u2019s immediate suspicion should be that the law is there because not everyone would behave according to the law\u2019s specifications.\u201d He continues by talking specifically about Jim Crow:<\/p>\n<p>From the 1880s into the 1960s, the majority of American states enforced some form of segregation through what were known as Jim Crow laws. . . .\u00a0The bottom line is that racists cannot trust free markets to racially discriminate\u2026\u00a0Racists need the force of government to have success.<sup>4<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Two famous examples show how true this is. In February 1960, four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at the counter at Woolworth\u2019s. This was four years before the Civil Rights Act. By July 1960, Woolworth\u2019s lunch counter desegregated itself, after losing $200,000. The market worked.<\/p>\n<p>Then there\u2019s the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1955, city ordinances required segregation on buses. Rosa Parks and the NAACP organized a massive boycott that resulted in 40,000 black people refusing to take the buses the day after Parks\u2019 famous refusal to move to the back of the bus. The only reason that the bus company refused to abide by the demands of\u00a0the boycotters is that they were in negotiations with the city, and the city ordinances prevented them from doing so.<sup>5<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t to claim that there aren\u2019t racists who would resist tolerance. But it <em>is<\/em> to say that the market is better at uprooting such discrimination than the government\u00a0is\u00a0without invading the rights of private business owners to choose their clientele.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 4: Hoover was a conservative.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: Hoover pursued the same policies FDR did.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the great myths of American economic history is that Republican President Herbert Hoover stymied a recovery from the Great Depression by pursuing conservative economic policies. That simply isn\u2019t true. Hoover\u00a0actually pursued\u00a0substantially the same policies FDR did after Hoover lost the 1932 election\u00a0\u2014\u00a0FDR just doubled down on them.<\/p>\n<p>In 1930, Hoover imposed the so-called Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which crippled global trade; global trade dropped to a small fraction of what it had been when Hoover took office thanks to his protectionist policies, which were designed to boost agricultural prices. He also blew out the federal budget\u00a0\u2014\u00a0in 1929, the federal budget was $3.1 billion; by 1932, he had increased it to $4.6 billion, a nearly 50 percent increase.\u00a0In real dollars, Hoover\u00a0actually doubled\u00a0the federal budget, since the Great Depression came along with deflation; his deficits actually ran higher than FDR\u2019s until World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Hoover also participated in subsidies to agriculture on a massive scale, tried to pressure firms not to cut workers and wages, and forced the government to pay above-market wages for federal projects. Hoover also pursued government-sponsored loans to states and banks. Hoover also pressed enormous tax increases.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s Hoover on his own agenda in 1932:\u00a0\u201cWe might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and\u00a0counter attack\u00a0ever evolved in the history of the Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s a member of FDR\u2019s own brain trust, according to Steven Horwitz: \u201cWhen we all burst into Washington . . . we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself.\u201d<sup>6<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 5: FDR saved the American economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: FDR made the Depression great.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>FDR is on the dime and was elected to four terms as president supposedly thanks to his legacy of single-handedly saving the American economy from the throes of the Great Depression. This is utter hogwash. In fact, FDR\u2019s policies greatly lengthened the\u00a0Depression and made it far worse than it otherwise had to be.<\/p>\n<p>FDR\u2019s own economic ignorance is legendary.\u00a0According to historian Amity\u00a0Shlaes, FDR used to tinker with the price of gold arbitrarily. At one point, he raised the price of gold by 21 cents because he said it was a \u201clucky number, because it\u2019s three times seven.\u201d\u00a0Henry Morgenthau, part of FDR\u2019s brain trust, said later, \u201cIf anybody knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened.\u201d\u00a0The true reason Democrats think of FDR as a hero is because he was a brutal class warrior who jabbered about \u201cheedless self-interest.\u201d<sup>7<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>But in reality, according\u00a0to Professors Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian of UCLA\u2019s Department of Economics, FDR\u2019s policies prolonged the depression by at least seven years. Cole explained:<\/p>\n<p>President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services.\u00a0So\u00a0he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy\u00a0was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, wages were 25 percent above market level, but unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been. Demand stalled because of artificial boosts in prices. Ohanian explains, \u201cBy artificially inflating both [prices and wages], the New Deal policies short-circuited the market\u2019s self-correcting forces.\u201d<sup>8<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 6: The Great Society made life better for black people.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: The Great Society<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>significantly slowed economic progress for black Americans.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While\u00a0the Left\u00a0likes to blame the stagnant rates of increase in black prosperity on slavery and Jim Crow, the truth is that government involvement is far more to blame. The Great Society programs of President Lyndon Johnson, touted as a sort of reparations-lite by Johnson allies,\u00a0actually harmed\u00a0the black community in significant ways that continue to play out today.\u00a0According to former Air Force One steward Ronald MacMillan, LBJ pushed the Great Society programs and civil rights bill out of desire to win black votes: \u201cI\u2019ll have them n*****s voting Democratic for two hundred years\u201d\u00a0he reportedly said.<sup>9<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>In essence, the\u00a0Great Society drove impoverished black people into dependency. In 1960, 22 percent of black children were born out of wedlock; today, that number is over 70 percent. The single greatest indicator of intergenerational poverty is single motherhood.\u00a0As Thomas Sowell writes, \u201cWhat about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s.\u201d<sup>10<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>According to the left-leaning Brookings Institute, \u201cFrom 1940 to 1970, black men cut the income gap [with white men] by about a third, and by 1970 they were earning (on average) roughly 60 percent of what white men took in.\u201d Such growth slowed after the implementation of the Great Society. According to economists John J. Donahue III and\u00a0James Heckman, black men saw \u201cvirtually no improvement\u201d in wages relative to white men outside the south from 1963 to 1987\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and those gains in the south weren\u2019t due to the Great Society, but to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/black-lives-matter-curriculum-is-bludgeoning-black-history-month\/\" title=\"Black Lives Matter Curriculum Is Bludgeoning Black History Month\">civil rights legislation<\/a>.<sup>11<\/sup> Here\u2019s Sowell again:<\/p>\n<p>Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the Civil Rights laws and\u00a0\u201cWar on Poverty\u201d\u00a0programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began. Over the next 20 years, the poverty rate among blacks fell another 18 percentage points, compared to the 40-point drop in the previous 20 years. This was the continuation of a previous economic trend, at a slower rate of progress, not the economic grand deliverance proclaimed by liberals and self-serving black\u00a0\u201cleaders.\u201d<sup>12<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>As for the Great Society itself, poverty rates in the United States have remained largely unchanged:\u00a0the government spends $9,000 per welfare recipient per year in the United States, and yet Americans had the same poverty rate in 2013 as they did in 1963.\u00a0Living standards have improved, but dependency has not decreased\u00a0\u2014\u00a0except when Republicans attempt to decrease it with acts like welfare reform.<sup>13<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 7: The Republican Party switched into the racist party.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: The Democratic Party remained the racist party.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the favorite refrains of the Democratic Party, attempting to escape its history of racism, slavery, and segregation, is that in the 1960s, the Republican Party hijacked racism and the Democratic Party abandoned it. Citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the turning point, Democrats point out that the formerly solid Democratic south moved gradually into the Republican camp, while the Republican north turned more Democratic over time. This, they say, was clearly the result of racism coming to the fore in the GOP.<\/p>\n<p>There is little evidence to support this contention.<\/p>\n<p>First, according to Professors Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin, \u201cthe shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth.\u201d\u00a0The movement toward\u00a0Republicanism in the south began in the 1950s as the south industrialized. Working-class whites and blacks remained Democrat until the 1990s. Here\u2019s <em>The New York Times<\/em><em> <\/em>reporting:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in\u00a0droves\u00a0but poorer ones didn\u2019t<\/em>.<sup>14<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sean\u00a0Trende\u00a0of <em>RealClearPolitics<\/em> agrees:\u00a0he says that the GOP gradually increased its support in the south from 1928 to 2010. As Dan McLaughlin summarizes, \u201cAs late as 2010, there were still states like Alabama and North Carolina that were voting in their first Republican legislative majorities since Reconstruction \u2014 something that would have happened overnight in the late 60s if the partisan realignment had been driven by lockstep white voting loyalties on racial lines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Second, it was southern Democrats fighting against the Civil Rights movement for the most part.\u00a0In 1948 and 1968, insurgent Democrats launched anti-civil rights presidential campaigns. Civil rights bills required more Republican than Democratic support.<sup>15<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Finally, the myth of the southern strategy also suggests that today\u2019s southerners vote for Republicans because they\u2019re more racist than northerners. There\u2019s no evidence to that effect, either. According to Gallup, \u201cSouthern Americans\u2019 ratings of race relations are currently about average when compared with those in other parts of the country.\u201d The most segregated areas of the south are in major metropolitan areas \u2014 which tend to vote more heavily Democratic than their surrounding areas.<sup>16<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 8: Americans lost the Vietnam War.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: Politicians lost<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>the Vietnam War.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In Vietnam, the United States beat the Viet Cong soundly militarily. Then, at the Paris Peace Accords, the Nixon administration determined that it no longer wished to participate in the\u00a0war, and\u00a0decided to pull troops. They pledged further military assistance in terms of hardware for the South Vietnamese. Nixon triumphantly announced, in terms rather reminiscent of President Obama\u2019s triumphant Iraq withdrawal announcement 38 years later, \u201cNow that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us, but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina.\u201d<sup>17<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Upon their election to a Congressional majority in 1974, leftist Democrats promptly decided it would be more palatable to destroy funding for the war than to guarantee the safety of our allies.\u00a0In 1974, President Richard Nixon requested $1.45 billion in aid to South Vietnam. Instead, Congress spent $700 million.\u00a0When Gerald Ford requested $300 million, Congress cut him off completely.<sup>18<\/sup> South Vietnam promptly disappeared, with Communists taking over the entire country as well as Cambodia and slaughtering their opponents by the hundreds of thousands, leaving tens of thousands of freedom-loving Vietnamese drifting out to sea to escape the regime.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 9: The economy is better because of Democratic presidents.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: It\u2019s difficult to credit<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>particular politicians<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>with economic benefits.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Democrats and leftists routinely state that they have a better record on the economy than Republicans. In 2016, Hillary Clinton\u00a0declared\u00a0that \u201cthe economy always does better when there\u2019s a Democrat in the White House.\u201d She has claimed before that Republican presidents are responsible for more recessions, and her husband claimed that since 1961, Democratic presidents have produced 42 million jobs, to just 24 million under Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s some truth to these numbers, but they miss the central point: presidents <em>do not create jobs<\/em>. The private sector creates jobs. The government\u2019s impact on the private sector extends far beyond the executive branch \u2014 Congress played a major role, for example, in the fact that President Clinton\u2019s budgets were far more fiscally responsible than his predecessors\u2019 \u2014 and international conditions matter a great deal. So, too, do economic policies put in place before Democratic presidents take office \u2014 again, to use the Clinton example, the economy had been expanding under George H.W. Bush for 22 months before Bill Clinton even arrived in office.<\/p>\n<p>Pretending that the economy can be boiled down to the occupant of the White House is dictatorial thinking at odds with reality.\u00a0According to Princeton economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, factors outside the control of the president have far more weight on\u00a0economic matters than presidential policy. The claim that Democrat presidents are good for the economy is\u00a0a simplistic talking point.<sup>19<\/sup> And if Democrats disagree, ask them why President Trump\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/harris-glazes-over-cooling-jobs-report-americas-economy-is-strong\/\" title=\"Harris downplays weak jobs report, asserts strong US economy.\">job creation record<\/a> was so good in his first year. Will they give him credit, or rightly say that the economy is a bit more complicated than that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 10: George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: Intelligence agencies gave Bush flawed information.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The common wisdom now suggests that President George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This silliness has been parroted by members of\u00a0the Left\u00a0(Michael Moore) and\u00a0the Right\u00a0(Donald\u00a0Trump). The reality is more complicated:\u00a0The entire international intelligence community was convinced that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Hussein himself telegraphed such intentions;\u00a0there\u2019s even evidence that WMD were smuggled out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks leading up to war.<\/p>\n<p>First off, such a lie would presuppose a motive for the lie. If you wanted to invade a country with a serious record of human rights abuses and foreign invasions, would you really rely on shoddy arguments to do so, knowing they would immediately be debunked upon\u00a0conquering that country? Those who scream \u201cwar for oil\u201d never seem to acknowledge that the United States didn\u2019t get any oil out of the deal, or that Bush could have come up with a far more plausible reason to invade than phantom WMD.<\/p>\n<p>Second, everybody\u00a0\u2014 <em>everybody<\/em> \u2014\u00a0agreed about\u00a0WMD\u00a0in Iraq.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Here\u2019s Bill Clinton in February 1998: \u201cThe UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Here\u2019s Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in 1998: \u201cSaddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Here\u2019s a letter to Clinton signed by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and 25 others in October 1998: \u201cWe urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq\u2019s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>In 2004, a Senate Intelligence Committee report openly stated, \u201cThe Committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with Administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so.\u201d<sup>20<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Third,\u00a0weapons of mass destruction <em>were<\/em> found in Iraq. Here\u2019s <em>The New York Times<\/em> in October 2014:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein\u2019s rule.\u00a0In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation\u00a0bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under\u00a0the Freedom of Information Act<\/em>.<sup>21<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Fourth, Hussein acted as though he was developing weapons for years. According to former FBI Agent George Piro, who interviewed Hussein after his capture, Hussein wanted Iran to believe he had WMD so they wouldn\u2019t attack him; he believed that he had to deceive the West about WMD in order to deceive Iran.<sup>22<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Finally, there is credible evidence to suggest that Hussein smuggled certain WMD materials across the border into Syria.\u00a0David Kay, former head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said, \u201cThere is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war\u00a0\u2014\u00a0satellite\u00a0photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don\u2019t know what was moved.\u201d<sup>23<\/sup> That assessment was supported by Lt. Gen. James Clapper, later to be the Director of National Intelligence under President Obama.<sup>24<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Myth 11: Barack Obama presided over a massive economic recovery.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact: Obama<\/strong><strong> <\/strong><strong>presided over the weakest economic recovery in modern history.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Advocates for President Obama say that he inherited a rotten economy from George W. Bush, proceeded to save it, and then ushered in a massive boom in growth and prosperity. And while it is true that George W. Bush left Obama with a mess,\u00a0the main driver in alleviating that mess\u00a0\u2014\u00a0for good or ill\u00a0\u2014\u00a0was not Obama\u2019s stimulus package or auto bailouts, but the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) pushed by Bush into law in October 2008.\u00a0There is a good case to be made that TARP never should have been attempted by the feds, and that other institutions should have been allowed to buy up the assets destroyed by the recession. But there\u2019s no question that TARP was the key move made during the period of the crash. By the time Obama took office, the economy was already bottoming out. By the second quarter of 2009, the economy was already on the rebound, and moved into positive territory in terms of GDP growth by\u00a0Q3 of 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Obama then proceeded to place heavy restrictions on banks and other financial institutions, raise taxes, increase spending, and create a wildly unpredictable regulatory climate. The result: the weakest peacetime recovery in modern American history.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>From 2009 to July 2016, the economy grew at a mere 2.1 percent annual rate, the worst since 1949.<sup>25<\/sup>Before Obama, the average growth rate during a recovery was 4.3 percent.<\/li>\n<li>Americans dropped out of the work force at record rates, dumping the labor participation rate to a 40-year low.<\/li>\n<li>Obama acolytes said that his economy created 15 million jobs \u2014 but the working age population grew by 15.8 million during that same period.<\/li>\n<li>Entrepreneurial activity has tanked, dropping 14 percent in 2014 and 12 percent in 2015.<\/li>\n<li>Real household family income dropped from $57,000 in 2007 to $53,700 in 2014; homeownership also dropped.<\/li>\n<li>By the end of his presidency,over 43 million Americans\u00a0were\u00a0on food stamps.<sup>26<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Obama did oversee a massive stock market increase, but that\u2019s largely because companies\u00a0socked\u00a0away their profits in savings rather than hiring, which drives up stock prices; they\u2019d rather save or buy back stock than expend thanks to Obama\u2019s regulatory climate. As <em>The<\/em><em> <\/em><em>Atlantic<\/em> reported, \u201cOver the past decade, the companies that make up the S&#038;P 500 have spent an astounding\u202f54 percent of profits\u202fon stock buybacks. Last year alone, U.S. corporations spent about $700 billion, or roughly 4 percent of GDP, to prop up their share prices by repurchasing their own stock.\u201d<sup>27<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><strong>Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Richard A. Posner, \u201cSupreme Court Breakfast Table,\u201d Slate.com, June 24, 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/the_breakfast_table\/features\/2016\/su-preme_court_breakfast_table_for_june_2016\/law_school_professors_need_more_practi-cal_experience.html\">http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/the_breakfast_table\/features\/2016\/su-preme_court_breakfast_table_for_june_2016\/law_school_professors_need_more_practi-cal_experience.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Paul Roderick Gregory, \u201cWhy the Fuss? Obama Has Long Been On Record In Favor Of Redistribution,\u201d Forbes.com, September 23, 2012 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/paulroderickgregory\/2012\/09\/23\/why-the-fuss-obama-has-long-been-on-record-in-favor-of-redistribution\/#2aa890225db6\">http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/paulroderickgregory\/2012\/09\/23\/why-the-fuss-obama-has-long-been-on-record-in-favor-of-redistribution\/#2aa890225db6<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u201cCHRONOLOGY \u2013 Who banned slavery when?,\u201d Reuters.com, March 22, 2007 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/uk-slavery-idUSL1561464920070322\">http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/uk-slavery-idUSL1561464920070322<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Walter E. Williams, \u201cDiscrimination and Segregation,\u201d Creators.com, October 5, 2016 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.creators.com\/read\/walter-williams\/10\/16\/discrimination-and-segregation\">https:\/\/www.creators.com\/read\/walter-williams\/10\/16\/discrimination-and-segregation<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Mills Thorton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa: 2002), 68.<\/li>\n<li>Steven Horwitz, \u201cHoover\u2019s Economic Policies,\u201d The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics <a href=\"http:\/\/www.econlib.org\/library\/Enc\/HooversEconomicPolicies.html\">http:\/\/www.econlib.org\/library\/Enc\/HooversEconomicPolicies.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Ben Shapiro, \u201cThe Big Lie About The Great Depression,\u201d Creators.com, June 26, 2007 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.creators.com\/read\/ben-shapiro\/06\/07\/the-big-lie-about-the-great-depression\">https:\/\/www.creators.com\/read\/ben-shapiro\/06\/07\/the-big-lie-about-the-great-depression<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Meg Sullivan, \u201cFDR\u2019s policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate,\u201d UCLA.edu, August 10, 2004 <a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom.ucla.edu\/releases\/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409\">http:\/\/newsroom.ucla.edu\/releases\/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Kenneth T. Walsh, Air Force One (Hyperion Books, 2003)<\/li>\n<li>Thomas Sowell, \u201cThe Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community,\u201d NationalReview.com, July 7, 2015 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/420807\/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did\">http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/420807\/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, \u201cBlack Progress: how far we\u2019ve come, and how far we have to go,\u201d Brookings.edu, March 1, 1998 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/black-progress-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-we-have-to-go\/\">https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/black-progress-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-we-have-to-go\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Thomas Sowell, \u201cA Legacy of Liberalism,\u201d NationalReview.com, November 18, 2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/392842\/legacy-liberalism-thomas-sowell\">http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/392842\/legacy-liberalism-thomas-sowell<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Robert Rector, \u201cThe War on Poverty: 50 years of failure,\u201d Heritage.org, September 23, 2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/marriage-and-family\/commentary\/the-war-poverty-50-years-failure\">http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/marriage-and-family\/commentary\/the-war-poverty-50-years-failure<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Clay Risen, \u201cThe Myth of \u2018the Southern Strategy,\u2019\u201d NYTimes.com, December 10, 2006 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/10\/magazine\/10Section2b.t-4.html\">http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/10\/magazine\/10Section2b.t-4.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Dan McLaughlin, \u201cThe Southern Strategy Myth And The Lost Majority,\u201d RedState.com, July 11, 2012 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redstate.com\/diary\/Dan_McLaughlin\/2012\/07\/11\/the-southern-strategy-myth-and-the-lost-majority\/\">http:\/\/www.redstate.com\/diary\/Dan_McLaughlin\/2012\/07\/11\/the-southern-strategy-myth-and-the-lost-majority\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u201cUS Race Relations by Region: The South,\u201d Gallup.com, November 19, 2002 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/7234\/us-race-relations-region-south.aspx\">http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/7234\/us-race-relations-region-south.aspx<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Larry Berman, \u201cNo Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam,\u201d WashingtonPost.com, July 27, 2001 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/style\/longterm\/books\/chap1\/nopeacenohonor.htm\">http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/style\/longterm\/books\/chap1\/nopeacenohonor.htm<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u201cKen Hughes: The Myth That Congress Cut Off Funding For South Vietnam,\u201d HistoryNewsNetwork.org, April 28, 2010 <a href=\"http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/126150\">http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/126150<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Anthony Cave, \u201cDoes the economy always do better under Democratic presidents?,\u201d PolitiFact.com, April 6, 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politifact.com\/arizona\/statements\/2016\/apr\/06\/hillary-clinton\/does-economy-always-do-better-under-democratic-pre\/\">http:\/\/www.PolitiFact.com\/arizona\/statements\/2016\/apr\/06\/hillary-clinton\/does-economy-always-do-better-under-democratic-pre\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>James Agresti, \u201cDid Bush Lie About Weapons of Mass Destruction?,\u201d CNSNews.com, February 18, 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnsnews.com\/commentary\/james-agresti\/did-bush-lie-about-weapons-mass-destruction\">http:\/\/www.cnsnews.com\/commentary\/james-agresti\/did-bush-lie-about-weapons-mass-destruction<\/a><\/li>\n<li>J. Chivers, \u201cThe Secret Casualties of Iraq\u2019s Abandoned Chemical Weapons,\u201d The New York Times, October 14, 2014, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/10\/14\/world\/middleeast\/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html\">https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2014\/10\/14\/world\/middleeast\/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Ronald Kessler, \u201cSaddam Hussein Admitted He Planned on Nuclear Weapons,\u201d Newsmax.com, September 7, 2010 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsmax.com\/RonaldKessler\/saddamhusseiniraqwmd\/2010\/09\/07\/id\/369348\/\">http:\/\/www.newsmax.com\/RonaldKessler\/saddamhusseiniraqwmd\/2010\/09\/07\/id\/369348\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\u201cKay: No evidence Iraq stockpiled WMDs,\u201d CNN.com, January 26, 2004 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/WORLD\/meast\/01\/25\/sprj.nirq.kay\/\">http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2004\/WORLD\/meast\/01\/25\/sprj.nirq.kay\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Bill Gertz, \u201cSyria Storing Iraq\u2019s WMDs,\u201d FrontPageMag.com, October 29, 2003 <<a href=\"http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/262694\/archives-syria-storing-iraqs-wmds-bill-gertz\">http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/fpm\/262694\/archives-syria-storing-iraqs-wmds-bill-gertz<\/a>><\/li>\n<li>Eric Morath, \u201cSeven Years Later, Recovery Remains the Weakest of the Post-World War II Era,\u201d Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2016\/07\/29\/seven-years-later-recovery-remains-the-weakest-of-the-post-world-war-ii-era\/\">http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2016\/07\/29\/seven-years-later-recovery-remains-the-weakest-of-the-post-world-war-ii-era\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Aaron Bandler, \u201c7 Facts That Show Obama\u2019s Economic Recovery Has Been AWFUL,\u201d DailyWire.com, August 1, 2016 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/7970\/7-facts-show-obamas-economic-recovery-has-been-aaron-bandler\">http:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/7970\/7-facts-show-obamas-economic-recovery-has-been-aaron-bandler<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Nick Hanauer, \u201cStock Buybacks Are Killing the American Economy,\u201d TheAtlantic.com, February 8, 2015 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/02\/kill-stock-buyback-to-save-the-american-economy\/385259\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2015\/02\/kill-stock-buyback-to-save-the-american-economy\/385259\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Left paints a narrative of America as a brutal colonial power fueled by racism and oppression. They tell of white settlers who brought disease, murder, and slavery to North America, tarnishing the land with their actions. This viewpoint challenges conventional beliefs about the country&#8217;s history and its founding principles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":2240553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2019\/11\/American-Flags.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2240552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2019\/11\/American-Flags.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2240553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}