A True History of the United States Quotes

“Today’s “liberals” are not seen as misguided although valued countrymen but as traitorous weaklings ready to sell out America. “Conservatives” aren’t folks standing for time-tested values but instead are fascist authoritarians bent on tyranny. It all seems so far off the rails. And it is dangerous. Through modern eyes, we are apt to see this division as a unique and exceptional feature of contemporary politics. But, oh no, it was always thus.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“As the eminent historian Gordon Wood has pointed out, we must understand that a majority of the Articles’ most famous critics — and the later constitutional framers — were basically aristocrats in the pre-industrial, pre-capitalist sense of the word. They feared inflation, paper money, and debt relief measures because they modeled their social and economic world on the systems and tendencies of the English gentry. Their entire societal and agrarian order was at risk during the 1780s — in fact it would later collapse in the increasingly commercial northern states, only to live on in the plantation life of the antebellum South. Much of their complaint about “excessive democracy” in the new American state governments may ring hollow to modern ears, but they believed in their position most emphatically.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“The fact that the most vulnerable populations of colonial America opposed revolution and eventually sided with the British most certainly challenges the triumphalist, egalitarian patriot narrative. Indeed, on the issues of slavery and native relations, the British appeared far more liberal than the colonists who were, themselves, seeking their own — in Jefferson’s phrase — “empire of liberty.” That empire would prove far more tyrannical for slaves and natives than what King George had offered.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“opposition to the presence of a standing British army.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“here in Massachusetts we find the genesis of American exceptionalism”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“The Puritans’ motivations and goals raise some salient questions. What does such colossal self-regard say about a society, and what are the implications for that society?”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“Not so the Puritans. They strove to settle, to put down roots and thrive in an idealized community.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“The motivations and origins of the two English colonies affected the social structure of each. Differing goals set the tone from the start. Virginians sought to exploit the land, mine its resources, compete with the Spanish, and turn a quick profit. Not so the Puritans. They strove to settle, to put down roots and thrive in an idealized community. Their”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“Why does the United States have income inequality rates equivalent to those of its Gilded Age more than a century earlier? Why didn’t its citizens insist upon, or achieve, universal public health care before — and especially after — the Second World War, when most of its Western allies and even adversaries did? Why was there, at least in comparative terms, never a viable socialist or serious labor party alternative in mainstream American politics? Why has an unprecedented class- and especially race-based mass incarceration regime developed in the nation that most loudly proclaims its dedication to freedom? And why is it the United States wages undeclared warfare across the planet’s entirety? Many of the answers actually lie in the past, in the historical development of US politics and society.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“To succeed, Hamilton believed, the government must primarily associate and concern itself with the wealthy, commercial elites. Hamilton held a strong belief that human nature was fundamentally selfish and thus there was no other course for a successful government than to fix its hopes on the affluent.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“However, the decisions first to draft the Articles of Confederation and then, later, to move toward a new constitution and a more centralized federal government — the key events of the 1780s — were actions that mostly benefited the elites.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“the Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history. It terrified the owner class and tightened an increasingly brutal slave system.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed…. This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“A popular Islamist tactic was to leave threatening notes on the doors of suspected Afghan collaborators who dared so much as to speak to the American invaders. We labeled them night letters, just another terror tactic, and reported their prevalence to our higher command. Few of my troopers, of course, knew that colonial patriots left the same sorts of threatening notes on the doors of alleged loyalists in Boston and Philadelphia. Is there really any difference?”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism

“Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence”
― Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism