American Blood

Over at Crooked Timber, a lengthy thread has emerged over Fred Thompason's remark about Americans having shed more blood in defense of liberty than "any other combination of nations in the history of the world," which isn't just silly, it's appalling -- and calculated, of course, since it was part of a stump speech.

He's appealing to his far-Right base, those ill-educated home schooled crowd who have only been taught that America! Is! Great!, not any actual facts, or about anything anyone else in the world might have done. Those folks are quite ready to believe egregious nonsense like that, and like this, which was at World Views lately:

The American idea itself as well as great social changes -- the abolition of slavery and segregation, for example -- proceeded from a Christian worldview.

Which again -- no. But because these folk have been home-schooled and raised on Right-Wing lies, they swallow it. And when other posters point out that they're wrong -- no, those who founded America and wrote the Constitution were, in fact, deists and Enlightenment thinkers; no, in fact, they wanted America not to be a religious but a secular state; no, really, read Fredrick Douglas, it was slave holders who were Christians, well, that just can't be true, it was Christians who preached segregation, no, that's not the case.