“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.”
― Chief Broom, in Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I started thinking about narrative as history last summer when I heard Sarah Palin riffing on Paul Revere’s ride - that he “warned the British that they weren’t going to be takin’ away our arms..." Huh? Then I realized what she was doing: creating her own narrative of American history.

What’s the difference? History is what happened. Narrative is the story we tell ourselves about what happened. Governor Palin was starting from “and the moral of the story is...” and working backward. In Sarah Palin’s narrative, an armed citizenry is important to maintaining our freedom. So the moral of the story morphed into historical fact in her narrative.

Sarah Palin was re-writing history, but many narratives are created by a very selective reading of the facts.

After Obama was elected, there was much fear in certain parts of America. Obama was compared to Hitler. A provision for providing end of life counseling for families in health care legislation was interpreted as ‘death panels’. Tea Party rallies showed Obama’s visage with a Hitlerian bottle brush moustache. Political Pundits talked about ACORN becoming his army of Brownshirts. The narrative being spun was that Obama was a fascist.

That the son of a mixed-race couple whose marriage would have been illegal in Nazi Germany would somehow be the heir to the Aryan Empire was an irony that evidently escaped some students of history.

Glenn Beck declared that this was part of “Liberal Fascism” in a continuum that reaches back to Woodrow Wilson.One of the ‘proofs’ given to substantiate this claim was the design of the Mercury Dime, originally minted in 1916, during the Wilson Presidency. On the back of the coin are the ‘fasces’, a bundle of sticks tied together. Roman Emperors used the fasces as an emblem of state power. (One stick can easily be broken. A bundle of sticks tied together cannot.) This symbol was adapted by Benito Mussolini as a symbol for Fascism.

Beck said on Fox News: “Who brought this dime in? It happened in 1916, Woodrow Wilson was the president. I didn’t even put this together. We’ve have been on the road to fascism for a while.”

What those who believed this ‘proof’ did not know (or chose to ignore) was that in 1916 Mussolini had not adopted the fasces as a symbol of his party. The Fascist Party that propelled Mussolini to power did not yet exist. There is no record of Woodrow Wilson ever having met the Adolf A. Weinman, designer of the Mercury Dime, nor is there any record that Wilson himself had any input into the design of the coin. Beck is one of the great purveyors of narrative as history. (His web page is modestly entitled ‘Entertainment meets Enlightenment’.)

Beck’s line of reasoning shows the slippery slope of narrative versus history. Even if you discount history and believe Beck's narrative, ask yourself: How many Americans know that a bundle of sticks are a symbol of fascism? How many people, consciously or unconsciously, are moved to the ideals of fascism by looking at a bundle of sticks on the back of a dime? And how many people were moved to pacifism by the coin’s olive branches that surround the fasces?

Also on the back of a Mercury Dime are the words 'E Pluribus Unum', Latin for 'Out of many, one.' The fasces is an apt visual metaphor for 'E Pluribus Unum'.

E Pluribus Unum was the motto proposed for the Great Seal of the United States in 1776. Is it logical to infer that the United States has ALWAYS been on the road to fascism?

I wonder how many millions of Mercury Dimes were given for U.S.O. drives or Savings Bonds used to fight fascism.

All of us - not just Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck - tend to filter out historical facts that don’t fit our narrative. Cable news and the internet have made it easier and easier to only hear those facts which amplify the points we wish to make in our narrative. Heaven forbid this country should be made up of people with good intentions on both sides of the aisle! That would make being right all the time so much harder!

I sometimes think Democrats and Republicans are watching two different movies about America: The Dems are watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and the GOP is watching "High Noon”.

One of my favorite epigrams comes from Isaac Asimov: “Never let a sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

In politics, never let narrative truth blind you to the facts, and never let an ideology constrict your understanding of reality.

Nice piece; thanks for sharing.

Woodrow Wilson is one of the if not thee most hated president in libertarian circles. He wouldn't escape my top three of worst all time, for what it is worth, and depending on the day I might argue he is the worst. This extends to pretty much every subculture of libertarians as the guy was the perfect storm for what libertarians hate. Neoconservatives are quite Wilsonian in their approach to governance and those paying attention will notice that libertarians and neoconservatives tend to be at one another's throat. Beck, as it happens, tends to be cozy with the conspiratorial, bircheresque, paleolibetarian influenced crowd. They hate Wilson too. Indeed, it's most intense there because disliking the Fed is one of their prime issues and the Wilson presidency is the origin of that. But all that gets filtered through the strange lens they see the world in. That's why you end up with conspiratorial tales filled with symbolism and malice.

Nicely done, MDO.

What was the objective of the British troops which were marching towards Lexington.

According to the website Paul Revere's House:

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren and instructed to ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were marching to arrest them.

So, if the British had conquered and re-established rule over the American colonies, its your contention that they would not have confiscated all guns and other military equipment?



No one with the slightest intelligence or historical literacy could possibly assume or argue otherwise. There is no historical precedent for any other view.



So the British then, would not have disarmed the rebellious colonies?



By a few extremeists unconnected to the Tea Party in any direct manner and not supported by them, here and there, and in no sense at the levels and consistency such as was done on a continual basis by the mainstream Left and anti-war movement during Bush's administration.



We know they exist, and the Obamacare legislation contains them. This is public knowledge.



CFR, and CFR that this was anything, when it ever actually occurred, but a few isolated extremists associating themselves with the Tea Party rallies (unlike countless leftist rallies since 2003 that prominently and consistently displayed signs with the star of David overlaid with a swastika).

At this, point, you've convinced me that your knowledge of the Tea Party movement is a cartoon one culled primarily from Leftist (virtually all, in other words) mainstream media sources and that you have not the slightest idea what you're talking about, nor care that you don't. But, after all, this is the Trailerpark, isn't it? Let's continue:



Exactly what they've always been, in point of fact.



He's a transformational socialist, and has his policies have utilized both socialist and fascist approaches to governance and to destabilizing and crippling mediating institutions of society that stand between the individual and the state. Both fascism and socialism are manifestations of the Left and its general, overarching tendencies.



I'm sure you can find about a dozen people and photos at rallies of such. This is not what the Tea Party movement was about, however (and it does not take that much intelligence or observation to have figured that out).



As indeed, it is.



True. Mussolini was for much of his youth an ardent Italian socialist and then member of the Italian socialist party, which finally he left over the issue of WWI, later forming his own splinter socialist sect, which he called fascist.



The point is that the bundle of sticks is a metaphor to the nature of society - an organic collective - the sine qua non of all grand leftist ideological visions, and the nemesis of the classic liberal, and gospel vision.



Disagree. Cable news, talk radio, and especially the Internet have created a vast democratization of information that was unthinkable before the nineties, and this is what the Left mortally fears. Before that time, there were the three major networks and the major urban dailies, all uniformly liberal and all uniformly telling and retelling the same narratives across the same spectrum of news stories and issues in the same way. A homogenized cornucopia of formatted, predigested, carefully filtered opinion, history, and description of events.



You are correct. Conservatives (not always Republicans) are watching the American, classical liberal version. The Democrats, being the party of the Left, are watching a primarily Franco-Germanic, idealistic, Frankfurt School filtered narrative of the same history and processes

There was a supporter of Lyndon Larouche with an Obama/Hitler sign at a Chicago tea party protest.

The point of my post was people's narratives can distort their reading of history.

Sarah Palin said that Paul Revere "warned the British that they weren’t going to be takin’ away our arms.."

Paul Revere was riding to warn John Adams and John Hancock they they were about to be arrested. Warning the British that we were armed and knew of their plans would have been counter-productive.

My point was not that the principles that drive Sarah Palin's narrative were correct or incorrect. My point was that she let her narrative cloud her understanding of what actually happened. Paul Revere did not ride to warn the British that we were armed.



For the record, let me say that I do not believe the Tea Party Leadership believes that Obama is the reincarnation of Der Fuhrer. I should have said that "Signs at Tea Party rallies" rather than just "Tea Party Rallies".

But though you seem outraged that the image of the Tea Party would be tarnished by mentioning that there were Hitlerian posters of Obama at their rallies, you seem very comfortable with the idea that ACORN operates as Obama's Brown Shirts:"Exactly what they've always been, in point of fact.."

Webster's definition of Brownshirt:

: nazi; especially : storm trooper

So, it's offensive to assume the Tea Party is comparing Obama to Hitler, but ACORN has always been his Army of Brownshirts?

By the way, ACORN was formed in 1970. So they have been Obama's Army since he was nine? What a precocious, prescient little boy he must have been!

As for 'Death Panels', of which you say: We know they exist, and the Obamacare legislation contains them. This is public knowledge."

Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

This is a classic example of narrative versus history. "We know death panels exist"? in 2009 PolitiFact called 'Death Panels' the "Lie of the Year" and Factcheck.Org called it one of 2009's "Whoppers".

If you 'know' they exist, where is your documentation? Please, share it with the world. Otherwise, refer to the quote from Goebbels above.





I would give the same answer I gave ldsfaqs in a previous post, when he contended that "Maxism, Communism, Socialism, Facism all stem from the same ideological well of thought.":

Have you ever heard of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade? The Spanish Civil War? Investigate the relationship between Fritz Thyssen and Adolf Hitler. It may give you a warm fuzzy feeling about right-wing industrialists backing charismatic speakers, then again it may not.

Hitler DID promise to lower taxes, raise defense spending, abolish Trade Unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. Doesn't sound much like Obama, but I could have sworn I've heard something like that recently...

Yes, Communism and Fascism are similar in that they are not democratic and value the collective over the individual. And the Nation of Islam and the LDS Church are similar in that they are Abrahamic religions founded by Americans, and both have narratives where skin color plays a prominent role. I don't think that makes them blood brothers.

The nearly 20,000,000 Russians killed by Germans in World War II might not be so quick to poo-poo the differences between Fascism and Communism.



Again, I would point out the words 'E Pluribus Unum', meaning 'Out of many, one'. Out of many sticks you form one bundle. The fasces is a physical expression of 'E Pluriibus Unum', which was on the original Seal of the United States. Is your contention that the US has always been on the road to Fascism?

"Classic liberal and gospel vision"? Must admit, I hadn't heard that one before. I offer a quote from John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and author of the 'city on a hill' quote that Ronald Reagan continually misquoted as 'shining city on a hill':



Sounds more like a "Transitional Socialist" to me! Or, in the words of a hymn I was taught as a child:

No man is an Island
No man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own

In some circles it is now believed that ALL individualism is good and ALL collectivism is evil. I would argue that what is needed is balance.



I welcome the democratization of information. I think it is healthy to be exposed to different points of view. My point is that people tend to filter out information that doesn't conform to their worldview.

No kidding!

That's why I stopped watching FOX News and listening to Rush Limbaugh. It was more of a personal experiment. It was similar to what I did as an apologist years ago. I decided to challenge my own beliefs by applying them to the same level of scrutiny I expected of those holding opposing political/religious views.

What happened is that I discovered that I had been lied to, in both cases.

Droopy will never engage in such intellectual courage because he is too wedded to his presuppositions. He likes being an idiot and a bigot, and he believes God is on his side. Why would he threaten that by wandering off the reservation and reading other sources besides Mises or Heritage?