For fuck’s sake, it’s like they think people who take AP history never took and will never again take another history class . . .
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Let’s go full Godwin’s Law on this one, because the fellow with the lil’ moustache had a view of “we the people” and the working of history that perfectly matches the view of the Rightie Republicans today, with their revisionist history + a bumper sticker mentality = American exceptionalism:
[“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”
―Adolf Hitler]
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That’s the thing about conservatives: they want everything frozen in amber from when they were young, and they are too obtuse and/or willfully ignorant to grasp that their generation’s views are in fact different from those preceding them.
Man, I don’t like those guys.
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Among conservatives, many of them never did.
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What color is the sky in this guys world?
“Defenders of Liberty and Freedom”? Really?
Thats what the Confederates said they were.
Thats what the Kaiser’s troops said they were.
Thats what the Bolsheviks said they were.
Thats what the Nazis said they were.
Thats what the Soviets said they were.
Thats what Pol Pot’s troops said they were.
Liberty and Freedom for Who? Liberty and Freedom to do What?
“American Exceptionalism” is just Nationalistic Jingoism.
Remember: “When Fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the Flag and carrying a Cross”.
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I’m sure that Krieger is another Koch brothers disciple.
Krieger argued that teaching American exceptionalism is the “standard, traditional, widely accepted approach."
It might have been that 40 years ago in schools where the football coach doubled as a history teacher. I think you’d have a tough time proving it’s standard, traditional, and widely accepted among actual historians. If “exceptionalism” is the core idea, you’re basing your approach in chauvinism, not scholarship.
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Exceptionalism is like humility— if you have to brag on it,
you haven’t got it.
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Krieger is German for Warrior. Is this guy’s biography for real? Look, I get the fact that history is written by the victors. But making up mythologies that hide the underlying facts serves nothing but an authoritarian, nationalistic political agenda. Why can’t Republicans handle the truth about American history? What the fck is their beef? We stole the country, built it with slave labor, put women and children to working long hours in unsafe factories, fought every step of the way to keep women and minorities from voting, and then brought forth military technology that could wipe out all life on the planet. Hoorah for the USA. Ok, so we invented the cotton gin, Jazz, and the lightbulb. The Italians invented the Radio, and the Chinese, movable type. Big fcking deal. Learn to handle the truth, conservatives.
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Some of their stuff never was.
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Demanding the teaching of “American Exceptionalism” is by definition demanding the teaching of distorted history.
These people are upset that children are not being properly propagandized.
The United States of America has done some amazing and wonderful things. And some horrible and barbaric things. As have other countries.
We have things to be proud of and things to be deeply ashamed of.
We are NOT exceptional.
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“I had hoped that the College Board would be responsive to the growing outcry for changes.”
No, but they were responsive to the more overwhelming outcry TO the changes.
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The Gipper cannot be excused for anything. He was a grifter, pure and simple. A supreme confidence man playing the role he was hired by the oligarchy to play. It was all spectacle. Political theater. But he did manage to produce at least one decent child, so, he can’t be ALL bad.
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I don’t think the retired history teacher is all that political. Mostly he doesn’t want to rewrite his study aids. I can actually see both sides, and it is an interesting academic argument. This is probably a debate left to the historians, but the involvement of the conservatives is predictable. They seem to oppose anything that remotely sounds liberal.
American exceptional-ism should be taught in the same breath as German ethnocentrism since the tow a very much the same thing.
American exceptionalism is nothing short of brainwashing the general public into a Nationalistic frenzy and to allow a President like George W Bush to operate as a dictator and not as one of three branches of government.
Exceptionalism - ehtnocentrism.
Department of Homeland Security = protect the hinterland
Saluting the flag = sigh hile
We need to learn from history and teaching US exceptionalism as a good thing would be ignoring history and especially Hitler’s rise to power which could easily be repeated here in the US with the way the right wing Republicans are taking us. If they ever get the House, the Senate, and the White House…we will be a nation involved in a very big war. The Republican Party’s push for a huge military and nationalism is very worrisome.
Mr. Krieger admits that he wants to return to the test for which he has prepared so I have to assume his main criticism is that the new test will make him work more.
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This profile barely mentions that his whole livelihood is as a prolific test prep book author whose books have been made obsolete by the new AP course. Of course he hates it!
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“Consider for a moment, from the beginning to President Obama’s recent declaration of why we had to wipe out ISIS, why do we send American boys and women into harm’s way to pay any price, bear any burden? We do that because they are the defenders of liberty and freedom – in short, our core values,” he said of American exceptionalism. “And so to scrub that out of the American narrative is a real egregious injustice.”
So does he also teach the profiteering by US corporations on the back of these military exploits? Does he teach about the US funded private Mercenary armies in Iraq? Does he teach the connection between Dick Cheney and Haliburton and oil in Iraq? Does he teach why we did not go into Darfur or Burundi to stop massacre’s and ethnic cleansing? I’m sure he doesn’t. That is the true American exceptional ism. The ability to profit off the backs of our volunteer, mostly poor. army and to convince them that we are doing so because we are exceptional. Bullshit!
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That’s right, the “good old days” they’re talking about never really existed. Yes, the economy was much better in the 50s, but this was right off the heels of the German and Japanese industrial and manufacturing complex being bombed to pieces. In those days also women didn’t and couldn’t work, and classified ads said “whites only need apply.” Although, I suppose that’s part of the good old days they talk about.
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Teaching American exceptionalism to children instead of historical facts, is propaganda designed to indoctrinate false patriotism. How else can these war mongering pimps convince kids to volunteer to be blown to bits?