A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America
Richard Slotkin
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Publisher
Belknap Press
Date
March 5, 2024
The culture wars are pitting us against each other with a vitriol that is fueling violence. Slotkin looks to the foundational myths that have shaped American identity – the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War – and reveals why they are bringing the US to the brink of an existential crisis.
It is clear that in recent years competing mythologies have played out in rhetoric, activism and visions of government. But it’s less clear that these mythologies have the kind of explanatory force Slotkin hangs on them ... For Slotkin, the insurrection only reinforces the need for a new national mythology. But two powerful myths built on racial equality have already failed.
There may be value in an examination of our politics as a series of competing origin stories, but Mr. Slotkin’s history of postwar America is tendentious, predictable, repetitive and sloppy. His analysis often reads like a collection of left-wing canards ... The book is full of minor factual errors that, taken together, suggest a failure to engage seriously with any figure whom the author dislikes.
