Bryan Preston is the author of Hubble’s Revelations: The Amazing Time Machine and Its Most Important Discoveries. He’s a writer, producer, veteran, author, and Texan. Here, he offers a terrific review of my new book, Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster.
I’ve written here and there that we need to rediscover America and get to know our history better. Teachers need to return to teaching history without the woke Marxist critical theory lens, and just teach facts and stories. We need to know what people of the past did, and why, and in what context. What were their times like, and what did they think?
Robert Spencer, PJM contributor, longtime director of Jihad Watch, and author of numerous bestselling books about Islam and jihad, is back with his latest. This time he has gone in a different direction with the provocatively-titled Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster.
Spencer’s book is a work in rediscovering history. It asks a simple question: How can we know who was a great president and who wasn’t? Noting that historians tend to rate the same handful of presidents as great, and those historians tend to favor big government and presidents who made it bigger, Spencer judges the presidents of the United States by different criteria: Which ones were most successful at putting Americans’ interests first? Which ones most successfully upheld the Constitution? Which American presidents were best for Americans? That’s all supposed to be in the job description. So why don’t historians rate presidents along these lines?
It’s clear from Rating America’s Presidents that America has had more than a few presidents who thought they were the chief executives of the world more than they were the chief executives of the United States, and the American people suffered for it. Spencer has nothing but harsh words for the likes of Woodrow Wilson and the progressive internationalists who came after him. Historians tend to rate Wilson highly and overlook his blatant racism. They tend to rate him highly despite his disdain for the Constitution.
The 1776 Flag Isn’t the Problem. Anti-American Leftists Are.
Spencer shows that Wilson doesn’t deserve accolades. Wilson’s famous declaration that the U.S. was going to “make the world safe for democracy” comes in for particular criticism, as Spencer shows how it led to numerous overseas adventures, including George W. Bush’s forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, which neither made the countries involved safe for democracy nor made Americans themselves either safer or more prosperous.
There is much more. Read the rest here.
gravenimage says
Rating America’s Presidents: A Much-Needed Way to Rediscover America
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Good stuff from Bryan Preston.
Malcolm (South Afric) says
“Who is an absolute disaster?” No doubt, Joe Biden would be if elected. He epitomizes the three moral failures the Left suffer from, Lie, Steal, Cheat. Besides that he is insane.
vlparker says
The book just arrived in the mail. I thumbed through it just to see the ratings. I agree with almost all of them based on my limited knowledge but there were a couple of surprises. I didn’t expect Hayes to be rated so lowly or Harding to be so high. Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot about either presidency, so it will be interesting to see the reason for the ratings. The only one I disagree significantly with is Andrew Jackson.
On the plus side he fought the Bank of the US, but his unabashed support of slavery is problematic for me.
gravenimage says
+1
James Lincoln says
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