The old cliché says that history is written by the victors. Liberals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries think they are the victors, and thus have the right to the spoils of war. Namely, the right to loot, steal, and burn historical facts, turning them into their own narrative.
That is why conservatives must protect conservative history, and why we must write it. It is a war for the truth.
Regnery Publishing some months ago announced they were pulling out of the New York Times bestselling list. It was a courageous move that immediately hit the airwaves, as they accused the New York Times of favoring liberal and left-wing books and deliberately omitting or demoting conservative books. Mark Levin recently accused them of this as well when his "Rediscovering Americanism" was kicked down the list despite an uptick in sales, and again was accused of the same by Dinesh D’Souza with his book on American liberalism. The Times did not protest, proof of their guilt.
Regnery’s decision will mean none of their writers can call themselves a New York Times bestselling author. But maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, as it’s becoming more apparent than ever before that liberals and Democrats can neither praise nor acknowledge the positivity of conservatism.
The Washington Post book review section is also notoriously corrupt and unblinkingly liberal. They only review liberal books, even if a book heavily plagiarizes a book by a conservative, as did pseudo-historian and full-time leftist Rick Perlstein. Even as every other respectable book reviewer denounced Perlstein’s serial plagiarism, the Post book editor slobbered over him ... twice. But the Post has never reviewed any of Levin’s books, or Laura Ingraham’s, or Newt Gingrich’s, or mine, for that matter. Censorship is not scholarship.
Take Ronald Reagan. Hundreds of books have been written about whom many – on both sides of the aisle – consider one of the greatest presidents of the United States, just behind or even parallel to the Founding Fathers or Abraham Lincoln. A recent survey by C-SPAN revealed that, of presidential experts from across the political spectrum, from libertarian to even left of Bernie Sanders, Ronald Reagan ranked #9 of all presidents. Particular placement aside, this was an increase from the #10 spot in 2009 and the #11 spot in 2000. The trend is moving upward; too bad many liberal historians don’t see it that way and want to change the trend of recognizing facts for facts. Take Perlstein, whose nearly-900 page plagiarism-laden "The Invisible Bridge" should have detailed the ambitious transition from a Republican disgraced failure like Richard Nixon to a Republican superhero like Reagan. The book should’ve dissected the fall and rise of 1970s America; instead, it became a hit-job against conservatism and against anything right of center. What history there was, and where Perlstein got his facts, you’d have to do some of your own research, as the book did not come with footnotes (they were instead hidden on his website). Why would someone be afraid to hide the facts or their sources? One reviewer of the book in the Atlantic called it “Soviet cryptology.”
Liberal history teaches that Mikhail Gorbachev “ended” the Cold War. Bull. Reagan won the Cold War. From 1917 to 1980, the Soviets gained ground against every American. Until Reagan. In 1980, the Soviets were winning the Cold War by every measurable standard. Name one Soviet leader who willingly gave up power. Reagan put the heel of his cowboy boot on the neck of the Soviet Union, applied pressure, and killed it. Liberals will never accept this fact.
Even Nancy Reagan, the heart and soulmate of President Reagan, is susceptible to rewriting. A woman who stayed and loved Ronald for decades, staying with him to the very bitter, heartbreaking end when he died of Alzheimer’s, is painted by many as insensitive and conniving by somehow mishandling the AIDS and drug crises. She’s painted as silly for her interest in horoscopes.
Kitty Kelley did real damage to Mrs. Reagan’s reputation with her trashy book. Chris Matthews got Reagan history wrong with his "Tip and the Gipper," getting the relationship entirely wrong, but bootstrapping himself into media coverage as he was a middling aide to O’Neill at the time. Now conservatives and Reaganites are extremely nervous over the planned book by liberal Post columnist Karen Tumulty about Mrs. Reagan. The same Post which trashed Reagan for the entire week of his funeral. The same Post which never reviewed John Patrick Diggins’s favorable book on Reagan and the same Post which, in eight years of the Reagan presidency, always editorially took the side of the evil Soviets over their own president’s foreign and defense policies. When Tumulty asked me for my help, I responded by asking her assurance she would not be writing another Kitty Kelley-type book. She never replied. Reaganites are prepared for the worst, as many of us have labored to help raise up Mrs. Reagan’s reputation, untruthfully smeared by liberals.
There are of course exceptions to the rule, as even Reagan was popular among many liberals who lived through those years. Diggins, who wrote such influential liberal tomes as "The Liberal Persuasion" and "The Lost Soul of American Politics," dedicated his last work to Reagan. In "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History," published in 2007, Diggins writes that Reagan’s reputation had been tarnished much like Lincoln’s: “Today’s liberals,” he writes, “convinced that the cold war was unnecessary, believe communism was contained and dying without the meddling of anticommunist conservatives.” Similar sentiment was echoed with slavery a century earlier. He notes that “Reagan did indeed accomplish a great deal, so much so that he may be, after Lincoln, one of the two or three truly great presidents in American history.”
Then there are others, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., whose 1973’s "The Imperial Presidency" argued, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, that the American presidency was a bastion of power and corruption, and had exceeded its limits. It’s no surprise that the book was published when many Americans were thinking that same thing – President Richard Nixon was imperial.
To protect conservatives and conservatism from the bastardization of liberal historians is one reason "Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative" is so important to the grand scheme of history. There are dozens of books written about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Most, if not all, are so liberally biased, you’d think that Gingrich was the fourth horseman of the apocalypse. They do Newt a great disservice, as it is impossible to deny his importance in American history and American politics, alongside Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Reagan. Yet some people – otherwise intelligent people, who are able to critically think on their own – will take any criticism of Newt as gospel truth, and any recognition as his importance as heresy worthy of anathema. They hate Newt for simply being Newt. That’s why "Citizen Newt" is so essential. It not only sets the record straight, but it corrects the record against the defamation that so many historians have tried to parrot.
This is what conservatives must jealously guard; the truth, our truth. And root out and eviscerate and disembowel liberals writing of our history.
Because their writing of our history will inevitably be a pack of lies.
Author's Note: This piece was co-written by Scott Mauer