SEPARATING HISTORICAL FACT FROM FICTION:

COMMENTS ON THE BOOK, FOUNDING MYTHS, BY RAY RAPHAEL

by Edward J. Dodson

It is hardly a secret that much of what has been written on the European migration to and conquest of the Americas suffers the absence of objective perspective. The problem continues even to this day – and will never be resolved – because so much of human activity is subject to interpretation. For this

reason, the cautious student of history must look to numerous sources for a thorough understanding of the past and its meaning.

A few years ago there appeared a book written by Ray Raphael with the title, Founding Myths, Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (2004, New York:

The New Press). In this work, he reminds us that the truth of the past is often difficult to uncover, that contemporary and subsequent accounts of events

suffer the natural inclinations to embellish, rationalize and recast based on one’s roles and biases. “Stories of the American Revolution were first communicated

by word of mouth, and these folkloric renditions, infinitely malleable, provided fertile grounds for the invention of history,” observes Raphael.

Many of the myths he details are among those investigated and analyzed in books by prominent historians. Ray Raphael is standing on their shoulders,

bringing this information to a broader audience than scholarly treatments generally reach.

How many of our youth learn in school that:

Paul Revere was known only in local circles until 1861, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made him immortal by distorting every detail of his

now-famous ride. Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech first appeared in print, under mysterious circumstances, in 1817, forty-two years after he supposedly uttered those words. The "shot heard 'round the world" did not become known by that name until 1836, sixty-one years after it was fired. …Sam Adams, our most beloved rabble-rouser, languished in obscurity through the first half of the nineteenth century, only to be resurrected as the mastermind of the Revolution three-quarters of a century after the fact. Thomas Jefferson was not widely seen as the architect of American "equality"

until Abraham Lincoln assigned him that role, four score and seven years later. The winter at Valley Forge remained uncelebrated for thirty years. Textbooks did not begin featuring "Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes" until after the Civil War. Molly Pitcher, the Revolutionary heroine…

…is a complete fabrication.

Who among us would disagree with Raphael’s underlying concern over the fictionalization of history, often for reasons of political correctness or

to glorify what is less than glorious.

Perhaps if we examine more closely who we were, who we are, and who we want to be, we can do better than this. We do not have to be confined

to such a limiting self-portrait. Our nation was a collaborative creation, the work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated patriots—yet we exclude

most of these people from history by repeating the traditional tales. Worse yet, we distort the very nature of their monumental project. The United States was founded not by isolated acts of individual heroism but by the concerted revolutionary activities of people who had learned the power of working together.

He spends just a few paragraphs on the role played by Thomas Paine in the colonial uprising and war for independence, stopping only long enough

to dispute the number of copies of Common Sense reportedly printed and distributed and the extent to which this pamphlet ignited the flame of rebellion

within the colonial population. “If they [the historians] mention any widespread revolutionary feeling, they

credit yet one more autonomous perpetrator -- Thomas Paine,” asserts Raphael.

Tom Paine (as he is casually called) supposedly swayed the minds of a fickle public who could not have attained true revolutionary status without him.

In the reckless rush to commemorate Paine's mastery, several texts have recently listed the contemporary sales of Common Sense at an astounding

half-million, one for every free household in the thirteen colonies—even those with no literate individuals.…It was the fact of independence that shook

the world, not the words, later misconstrued, that one man used to describe it.

Paine never claimed what others claimed for him, although he certainly believed he had given all he had to give to the cause of independence. Exactly

how many printings of Common Sense were made will never be known. The pamphlet was printed in many different languages and distributed extensively throughout the Old World. What is far more important is that the writing of Common Sense ignited Paine’s thinking, directing his energies for the remainder

of his life. I, for one, do not consider my admiration for Paine’s contributions to political and social thought as hero worship. His life was remarkable, indeed, characterized as it was with instances of human frailty.

With each new biography of Paine, we are offered more evidence countering the many myths spread by Paine’s detractors and political enemies.

These are the myths that truly deserve to be swept from the historical record. EJD -- November 2006

…Talking with Thomas, from page 1

JAC: Then, the US began an unprovoked, totally aggressive war on another country in the region, which for some time had been on the neocon’s target list.

In order to justify the second invasion and subsequent occupation, the Administration told the American people that the dictatorial leader of that

country had weapons of mass destruction, was somehow connected to the perpetrators of the original terrorist attack, and was an imminent threat

to the US. Those excuses were repeated over and over and broadcast throughout the news reporting so that the American people would be terrified

and would rally to support the war. But all those excuses were lies. The real reasons were to establish a base of US control in the Middle East and to

expropriate the resources of the region, all accomplished with taxpayer money.

TP: A continual circulation of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them contradicted, will in time pass for truth, and the crime lies

not in the believer but in the inventor.[8]

JAC: Yes, and…

TP: A country invaded is in the condition of a house broken into, and on no other principles than this, can a reflective mind at least such as mine, justify

war to itself.[9]

JAC: Yes, and…

TP: No human foresight can discern, no conclusion be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on foot by an invasion.[10]

JAC: Yes, and now after four years of this aggressive military campaign, over 3,000 US soldiers have been killed and many thousands injured, perhaps

a million people slaughtered in the two countries (many civilians, many children), land and infrastructure widely destroyed, and billions of dollars wasted.

Meanwhile, the munitions makers, the military support providers, and the so-called reconstruction companies are making out like bandits.

TP: That there are men in all countries to whom a state of war is a mine of wealth, is a fact never to be doubted. Characters like these naturally breed

in the putrification of distempered times, and after fattening on the disease they perish with it, or impregnated with the stench retreat into obscurity.[11]

JAC: We can only hope, but there has seemed to be no end in sight for bringing the troops home and ending the conflict.

TP: Flames once kindled are not always easily extinguished.[12]

JAC: And there are even other terrible consequences. The Bush Administration, with the acquiescence of a compliant Congress dominated for the last years

by the President’s political party, has instituted draconian domestic laws (PATRIOT Act I and II and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, among

them) that threaten basic liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. With his Executive Orders and “signing statements” and notions of a “unitary

executive,” Bush has undermined the Constitution’s sacred separation of powers.

TP: Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppression.[13]

JAC: Yes, just so. And the Bush Administration seems particularly focused on punishing peaceful dissent and other kinds of anti-war activity.

TP: An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It lends men to stretch, to misinterpret and to misapply even the best of laws.[14]

JAC: Further, the US military has, with Administration approval, violated international treaties and laws. Under Bush, the US has violated the Charter of

the United Nations (a global organization, which you envisioned, Thomas, and that was finally established in 1945) by launching an aggressive war.

The US has violated the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), as well, with barbarous acts of interrogation and detention. It has violated Geneva

Conventions, agreed to by countries around the globe after a devastating World War in the mid 20^th century. It has violated various other agreements

by using proscribed weapons—cluster bombs, and weapons containing phosphorous and depleted uranium.

TP: There is nothing sets the character of a nation in higher or lower light with others, then the faithfully fulfilling, or perfidiously breaking of treaties.

They are things not to be tampered with.[15]

JAC: Pictures and stories of the effects of the illegal treatment of prisoners have led the world to think of the United States, under Bush, as a rogue nation,

acting out state terrorism, which, in turn, creates more terrorists and more terrorism.

TP: There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides.[16]

A despotic government knows no principle but will. Whatever the sovereign wills to do, the government admits him the inherent right, and the

uncontrolled power of doing. He is restrained by no fixed rule of right and wrong.[17]

JAC: Opposition to the war has been growing, though, and now is supported only by less than a third of the US population, and even then mostly because

Bush is still feeding the news media his fear-and-war-mongering line.

TP: …if a man makes the press utter atrocious things he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth.[18]

JAC: Most people, now, are sickened by the war…

TP: Man, were he not corrupted by government, is naturally the friend of man.[19]

JAC: And want to bring the troops home—regardless of any losses to the corporate raiders.

TP: The longer it is delayed the harder it will be to accomplish.[20]

…continued on page 9, Talking with Thomas

8 The American Crisis, 1777 9 To the Marquess of Landsdowne, 1787 10 The American Crisis, 1780

11 The American Crisis, 1780 12 Prospects on the Rubicon, 1787 13 Common Sense, 1776

14 Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795 15 The American Crisis, 1782

16 The American Crisis, 1778 17 Dissertation on Government, 1786 18 Liberty of the Press, 1806

19 Rights of Man, II, 1792 20 Common Sense, 1776

8 Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, vol. 7, no. 4, December 2006