If you attended college, this is what you were likely taught.

America was founded through acts of genocide, accompanied by larceny on the grandest scale.

Columbus and the Europeans who followed him sailed to the new world with the intention of

exploiting whomever they found, and if necessary, enslaving or exterminating them.

Soon afterwards, they began importing black bodies from Africa.

They then built the world's richest country out of a combination of slave labor, stolen

land, and environmental destruction.

Did I miss anything?

As an historian, I can assure you this view is inaccurate in most particulars.

But getting the story wrong is only part of the problem.

The bigger problem is this.

If you teach generation after generation that their country, their society, and their history

are uniquely awful, they are likely to believe you.

This is a sure route to societal failure.

This has consequences not only for America, but the entire world.

Many in the US seem to have no clue just how much of a city on the hill the US is still

perceived to be, and how important that American beacon is to millions of people living under

autocratic regimes.

If the image of the US is fundamentally delogitimized, if its entire raison d'etre, its reason

for being is tainted, then increasing numbers of people will wonder whether democracy

itself is worth the trouble.

So let's correct the record before it's too late.

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