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[edit] Patriotic Mythology

This article has been much improved since I first saw it. But it still contains large remnants of popular American patriotic mythology which need to be removed. The following sentences, for example, are out of place in a serious history article:

The most radical impact was the sense that all men have an equal voice in government and that inherited status carried no political weight in the new republic. Thus came the widespread assertion of liberty, individual rights and equality which would prove core values to Americans. The greatest challenge to the old order in Europe was the idea that government should be by consent of the governed and the delegation of power to the government through written constitutions.

The reality was less romantic. The new federal constitution enshrined slavery and led to its retention in the USA for over thirty years after it was abolished in Britain’s colonies.[1][2][3][4] Even free blacks were denied the vote in most states: By 1855, only five states allowed non-whites to vote, “and these states contained only 4 percent of the nation’s free black population. Notably, the federal government also prohibited blacks from voting in the territories it controlled.”[5] The extent of racial disenfranchisement in the United States is illustrated by the refusal of the federal government to grant citizenship to immigrants of oriental races until 1952[6] and, of course, by the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.[7] Among whites, the right to vote and to hold office was at first limited in most states by property qualifications, some severe (see Keyssar). There were also religious restrictions. Most of the original state constitutions banned non-Christians from holding government office and several extended that exclusion to Catholics.[8][9] Some, such as Texas, disallow non-believers to this day.[10]

The vast majority of women in the United States did not get the right to vote until 1920.[11]

Indians were not well treated, of course. They were barely viewed as humans and had effectively no rights at all. They were often hunted like animals. The Indian Removal Act of 1830[12] began the sad final chapter in the genocide of Native Americans in the United States.[13]

These facts, and many others, do not support the claim of “the widespread assertion of liberty, individual rights and equality which would prove core values to Americans” or “the idea that government should be by consent of the governed.”

We must also be careful not to be too insular in our viewpoint. The majority of North American colonists were of British descent, many very recent, and were proud of the British democratic system on which our colonial governments were based. It was widely regarded both in Britain and in the colonies as the finest system of democracy in the world at that time.[14] Much of what the current author might be implying we invented we really borrowed from Britain.[15] The idea that "government should be by consent of the governed" was by no means new to Europe.[16]

Wikipedia articles should document patriotic mythology much in the same way they should document religious belief such as creationism. But they should not misrepresent these beliefs, however popular, as fact. This remains a problem with many articles on American history, perhaps largely because of the nonsense put out by Hollywood but I suspect in part history is not well taught in our schools. - Kjb 23:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Slavery
  2. ^ Slavery in the United States
  3. ^ Blumrosen and Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution (2005), Source Books. ISBN: 1402204000
  4. ^ Dred Scott v. Sanford, U.S. Supreme Court, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
  5. ^ Aexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (2000), Basic Books. ISBN: 046502968X. p. 55
  6. ^ Naturalization
  7. ^ Japanese American Internment
  8. ^ Religious Oaths and Tests (in early constitutions)
  9. ^ Original State Constitutions
  10. ^ Religion in State Constitutions
  11. ^ Women's Suffage
  12. ^ Indian Removal Act
  13. ^ Population history of American indigenous peoples
  14. ^ For example, Benjamin Lewis Price, Nursing Fathers(1999), Lexington Books. ISBN: 0739100513
  15. ^ Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1998), Random House.ISBN: 0679779086
  16. ^ For one of many possible examples, see John Locke