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Editing: The Real Causes of America's Wars: A Revisionist View

URL	/daily/5784/The-Real-Causes-of-Americas-Wars-A-Revisionist-View
ID: 5784	Published Featured on Homepage #1 Feature Date
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Intro Text	All too often, America's wars are presented as conflicts between the "good guys," us, and the "bad guys," our enemies.
Article Text Valid Tags: [product:0] [product:#] [course:0] [course:#] [image] [thumb] [AuthorName] [AuthorName2] [AuthorArchive] [AuthorArchive2] [RSSfeed] [RSSfeed2] [comment] [Embed:#] [bio] [LatestArticle] [AuthorPhoto] [AuthorPhoto] [bio2] [LatestArticle2] [AuthorPhoto2]	<div class="figure"><a href="http://academy.mises.org/courses/americas-wars/"><img src="http://images.mises.org/AcademyAds/Homepage/2011/fall/MAA_Gordon_AmericasWars_2011.jpg" alt="Mises Academy: David Gordon teaches The Real Causes of America's Wars: A Revisionist View" border="0" /></a></div> <p>"War is the health of the state."</p> <p>These famous words of Randolph Bourne have been confirmed throughout the course of American history. This course will examine the origins of a number of America's wars. In each case, we will study the real origins of the war and compare this with the officially circulated mythology.</p> <p>All too often, America's wars are presented as conflicts between the "good guys," us, and the "bad guys," our enemies. Propaganda to view the wars in this way played a key role in advancing the power of the state, and it is essential for libertarians to understand the issues involved.</p> <p>After World War I, a group of historians including Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Harry Elmer Barnes, and Charles Callan Tansill challenged the view of World War I popular during the war. These historians, called "revisionists" because they wanted to revise the war-guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles, denied that Germany bore exclusive responsibility for the onset of war. Tansill in particular exposed Wilson's unneutral conduct in leading America into war.</p> <p>In part as a result of these historians' research, American public opinion in the 1930s came to see America's entry into World War I as a mistake. Unfortunately, this shift in opinion did not prevent Franklin Roosevelt from maneuvering America into a new war.</p> <p>A similar revisionist movement arose during and after America's entry into World War II. Many of the World War I revisionists, including Barnes and Tansill, again joined battle against the official propaganda line. Murray Rothbard highly esteemed these writers and was himself a notable contributor to the movement.</p> <p>This course will emphasize the contributions of the revisionist historians and will consider extensions of their approach to other wars, along the lines set out by Rothbard.</p> <p>The course consists of six lectures, on the following wars:</p> <div class="book-ad" id="main-ad"><a href="http://academy.mises.org/courses/americas-wars/"><img src="http://images.mises.org/AcademyAds/2011/fall/MAA_Gordon_AmericasWars_2011.jpg" alt="Mises Academy: David Gordon teaches The Real Causes of America's Wars: A Revisionist View" border="0" /></a></div> <p>Week 1: The War Between the States</p> <p>Week 2; The Spanish-American War</p> <p>Week 3: World War I</p> <p>Week 4: World War II</p> <p>Week 5: The Onset of the Cold War and the Korean War</p> <p>Week 6: Vietnam</p> <div class="article-author"> <p>[bio] See [AuthorName]'s [AuthorArchive].</p> <p>You can subscribe to future articles by [AuthorName] via this [RSSfeed].</p> </div>
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Edited:	jtucker - 10/31/2011 6:51 AM
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