The Whites of Their Eyes

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Americans have long manipulated the past for political purposes, with various groups claiming to embody the true spirit of the nation's founding. This narrative explores the ongoing struggle over the meaning of the Revolution, highlighting the far-right's efforts to "take back America" through figures like the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker writer, offers a wry perspective on how the far right interprets American history, from the Tea Party's origins to the Texas School Board's revisionist social-studies curriculum, which posits the U.S. as a Christian nation. She delves into the eighteenth-century fight for independence, contrasting it with the far right's reactionary history that began during the 1970s bicentennial, a time of discord over the nation's narrative. Lepore argues that the Tea Party's vision is rooted in a nostalgic longing for a simplified past, free from the complexities of modern life—a longing for an America that never existed. The work reveals that the far right's narrative of America's founding is not only a myth but also a form of fundamentalism that is anti-intellectual, antihistorical, and dangerously antipluralist.