“Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.”
– Schopenhauer
I don’t blame the Tea Party Protesters for getting it wrong. They probably learned the same myths in school that you and I did. It most likely never occurred to them that they were being lied to at such a young age.
Normally the lies we are told are lies of omission. For instance, schools no longer teach the long history of labor struggles in America, or the dozens of times we invaded Latin American countries to defend the profits of American banks.
However, on occasion, the lies we are told are overt and intentional.
The tea party protesters are victims of both flavors of lies. It wasn’t by accident. As Saul Bellow once said, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”