According to Pat Buchanan, America was a virtuous and pacific, isolationist republic until she crossed the water to fight the Spanish for Cuba and the Philippines, entering fatefully upon the seas of empire and globalism.
More candid are those who reject the line he draws as arbitrary, between the centuries of westward expansion by means fair and foul and America's modern era.
Robert Kagan instead affirms continuity with the gusto and British-American tribalism of a smarter and less inhibited Newt Gingrich.
For Bill Kauffman, the affirmation is more a lament.
And for Howard Zinn, it is a Black Book of atrocity from beginning to end.
The right wing version is history written by shallow and corrupt, narrow-minded Pollyannas.
The left wing version is deeper but not more honest.
History is a nightmare from which no one can awake.
The dismal visions of the hard left are often fundamentally right but fundamentally corrupted by hate.
If we not only reject but refuse to credit their Utopianisms it emerges that Furet was wrong.
The primary motivation for the communist revolutions of the 20th Century was not mere hatred of the bourgeoisie but of mankind as a species, acted out with suitably destructive effect.
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