Michael: What if the most patriotic-sounding phrases in American politics, like 'America First,' are actually codes for something much darker? And what if the 'free market' wasn't a discovery, but an invention—a PR campaign to protect the powerful? We're about to find out. Kevin: Okay, that’s a heavy-duty opening. You’re basically saying that some of the foundational ideas we hear about America are… well, fake. That’s a bold claim. Michael: It is, but it's all at the heart of a fantastic, and frankly, necessary book that just came out. It's called Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, edited by the Princeton historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer. Kevin: Kruse and Zelizer. I've seen their names. They're pretty big deals in the history world, right? Michael: Exactly. And they brought together an all-star team of historians for this. Their whole motivation was to combat what they call a 'crisis of bad history'—this tidal wave of disinformation that's making it impossible to have a real conversation about where the country is and where it's going. The book became a bestseller almost instantly, which tells you how hungry people are for this kind of clarity. Kevin: A crisis of bad history. That feels… accurate. So where do we even start with a book that big? Michael: Let's start with one of the biggest myths, a phrase we hear all the time: 'America First'.

Kevin: Right, 'America First.' It sounds so straightforward. A president should put their own country first. It feels like political common sense. Michael: And that's the genius of the myth. The book argues that this phrase is a perfect example of a divisive code camouflaged by its own harmlessness. To understand it, you have to go back way before Trump, even before the 1940s isolationists everyone thinks of. The book traces its first recorded use as a political slogan to 1855. Kevin: 1855? What was happening then? Michael: The rise of the American Party, better known as the "Know-Nothings." They were a nativist party, terrified by the influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. At a convention, a New York politician stood up and declared himself for "America first, last and always," arguing that he'd rather have rain than the reign of Roman Catholicism in the country. Kevin: Whoa. So its origin isn't in foreign policy, but in anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic bigotry. Michael: Precisely. It was never about America versus the world; it was about defining who counted as a "real" American inside America. And the book shows this pattern repeats itself over and over. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson used "America First" to question the loyalty of so-called "hyphenate Americans"—German-Americans, Irish-Americans—during World War I. He basically said you had to choose: is it America First, or not? Kevin: That’s chilling. It’s a demand for assimilation disguised as a patriotic slogan. Michael: It gets darker. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan adopted "America First" as one of its official slogans. A Klan leader in Texas declared, "I am for America, first, last and all the time, and we don't want any of the foreign element telling us what to do." It was explicitly tied to their ideology of white, Protestant supremacy. Kevin: Okay, but hold on. What about the most famous pre-Trump use, the America First Committee before World War II with Charles Lindbergh? Weren't they just isolationists who wanted to stay out of a European war? Michael: That's the popular memory, but the book digs deeper. Yes, they were isolationist, but their rhetoric was dripping with the same old poison. Lindbergh, their star spokesman, gave a speech where he blamed three groups for pushing America toward war: the British, the Roosevelt Administration, and "the Jewish." Kevin: Oh, wow. So he went full anti-Semite, publicly. Michael: He did. And it caused a massive public outcry. The committee fell apart almost overnight after Pearl Harbor, and the phrase "America First" became toxic for decades, synonymous with Nazism and sedition. The fact that it could be revived and mainstreamed in the 21st century is what's so stunning. Kevin: It’s like a political slogan with a 150-year-old rap sheet. The book is arguing that the history is the point. The phrase works because it sounds reasonable on the surface, but it carries all this historical baggage that resonates with a certain audience. Michael: That's exactly the argument. It's a dog whistle that's been finely tuned over generations. It’s a myth that it’s about patriotism; it’s a story about power and exclusion. Kevin: That idea of a camouflaged myth, something that sounds good but hides a power play, feels like a perfect bridge to the next big one you mentioned—the 'Magic of the Marketplace.'

Michael: It's a perfect bridge, because if 'America First' is a myth about national identity, the 'Magic of the Marketplace' is the great American myth about our economy. The idea that the free market is this natural, wise, self-correcting force, and that government is always the problem. Kevin: Right, you hear that constantly. "Get government out of the way and let the market work its magic." It’s treated like a law of physics. Michael: But one of the most explosive chapters in Myth America argues that this belief is not a timeless American value. It was invented. It was the result of a deliberate, decades-long, and massively funded propaganda campaign by corporate interests. Kevin: Wait, invented? You mean like a PR campaign? Michael: Exactly like a PR campaign. The story starts with the National Association of Manufacturers, or NAM, during the Great Depression. They were facing a crisis. The Depression was living proof that unregulated markets could fail catastrophically. People were demanding government solutions, like the New Deal. NAM's whole reason for being—fighting unions and regulation—was under threat. Kevin: So they were losing the argument. What did they do? Michael: They decided they couldn't just fight specific policies anymore. They had to change how Americans thought about business, government, and freedom itself. They launched a massive campaign to sell the idea of "free enterprise" as the cornerstone of American life. Their masterpiece was something called the "Tripod of Freedom." Kevin: The Tripod of Freedom? What’s that? Michael: It was a campaign arguing that American democracy rested on three inseparable legs: free speech, free press, and… free enterprise. They literally tried to elevate corporate freedom to the same level as the First Amendment. They pumped out pamphlets, sponsored radio shows, and created school curricula to push this idea. Kevin: So basically, the idea that regulating a corporation is as un-American as banning a book was a product sold to the public like soap? Michael: That's a perfect analogy. And to give their campaign intellectual firepower, they started promoting the ideas of a pair of obscure Austrian economists: Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. These guys argued that any government intervention in the economy, no matter how small, was the first step on "The Road to Serfdom"—a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Kevin: So when we hear politicians today talk about 'getting government out of the way,' they're essentially reciting lines from a 1940s corporate PR script, supercharged by some Austrian economists? Michael: You've nailed it. Business leaders like J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil Company saw Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, and realized it was the perfect weapon. It wasn't just them being greedy; it was a principled, philosophical defense of their interests. They funded these economists, got them positions at universities, and helped popularize their ideas. This culminated in Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, which the book calls the "bible of market fundamentalism." Kevin: It’s incredible. They didn't just fight the laws; they rewrote the country's core beliefs about economics. They created a myth so powerful that we stopped recognizing it as a myth. Michael: And the book's final punch is that the central premise of the myth is wrong. They claimed economic freedom was the only path to political freedom. But the authors point to Pinochet's Chile, where Milton Friedman's "Chicago Boys" implemented radical free-market policies under a brutal military dictatorship. You can have capitalism without democracy. Kevin: So the "magic" of the marketplace was really just the magic of marketing. That’s a deeply unsettling thought. It makes you wonder what other parts of our history have been given the same treatment. Michael: Exactly. It's a script. And just like they created a script for economics, there's a script for what a 'good' social movement looks like. This brings us to the myth of the 'good protest.'

Kevin: The 'good protest.' I think I know what you mean. It’s the image of the Civil Rights Movement we all get in school—peaceful marches, singing "We Shall Overcome," everyone holding hands, and then Martin Luther King Jr. gives the "I Have a Dream" speech and racism is over. Michael: That's the sanitized version, and the book argues it's one of the most dangerous myths of all. Because it's used as a weapon against modern protesters. The argument goes: "Why can't you be like Martin Luther King? Why are you so angry? Why are you blocking traffic? That's not how you win people over." Kevin: Right, you hear that all the time about Black Lives Matter. "They're too divisive." Michael: The book demolishes this by revealing a shocking truth about the "good" protest. It presents data from a 1966 public opinion poll. At the height of his moral authority, after the Civil Rights Act had passed, what percentage of white Americans do you think had an unfavorable opinion of Martin Luther King Jr.? Kevin: I don't know... maybe 30%? 40%? Michael: Seventy-two percent. Kevin: Seventy-two? That's stunning. We celebrate him with a national holiday, but at the time, he was seen as a troublemaker by most white people? Michael: A dangerous radical. The same poll found that 85 percent of white Americans believed that civil rights demonstrations were hurting the cause. The "good protest" was, in its own time, considered a "bad protest" by the majority. The entire movement was disruptive, controversial, and deeply unpopular with the white mainstream. Kevin: So the myth of the 'good protest' is a complete historical fiction. It’s a memory that’s been deliberately cleaned up. Michael: Completely. The book argues this myth does three harmful things. First, it shortens history. It makes it seem like the struggle for civil rights began with Rosa Parks in 1955, ignoring decades of earlier, equally brave activism, like the Capitol Hill sit-ins of 1934. Second, it makes victory seem easy and inevitable, which it wasn't. And third, it creates this impossible, fictional standard that no modern movement can ever meet. Kevin: What does that say about how we judge protests today? It seems like the definition of a 'good protest' is one that happened 50 years ago and doesn't inconvenience anyone now. Michael: That's the core of it. The book quotes Ella Baker, a brilliant organizer from the Civil Rights Movement, who said in 1960, "The current sit-ins and other demonstrations are concerned with something much bigger than a hamburger." They were challenging the entire system of white supremacy. And today, when athletes kneel during the anthem or protesters call out systemic issues, they're doing the same thing—and they're being judged against a fantasy version of the past. Kevin: It’s like the myth gives people permission to ignore the message by critiquing the method. "I'd listen to you, if only you'd protest more politely." Michael: And that's how the myth works. It’s a tool for maintaining the status quo. It allows people to feel virtuous by praising a sanitized version of MLK while condemning the activists who are carrying on his actual work today. The book forces you to see that the struggle for justice has always been messy, unpopular, and disruptive. There's no other way.

Kevin: Wow. So we've got a political slogan rooted in bigotry, an economic philosophy born from a PR campaign, and a memory of a social movement that's been fictionalized to shut down modern activism. It’s a pretty bleak picture. Michael: It is, but it's also empowering. Because once you see the myths, you can't unsee them. So whether it's a political slogan, an economic theory, or the memory of a social movement, the book shows that these myths aren't just mistakes. They are tools. They are stories deliberately constructed to protect a certain version of America, a certain distribution of power. Kevin: It makes you question every 'common sense' idea you've ever heard about this country. The book is essentially asking us to be historical detectives in our own lives, to ask 'Who benefits from this story?' Michael: Exactly. It's a call to replace comfortable myths with uncomfortable, but more accurate, history. Because as the editors argue, a functioning democracy depends on a shared set of facts. When we're all operating from different, fictional histories, real conversation becomes impossible. Kevin: It’s a powerful reminder that history isn't just about the past. It's a battleground for the present and the future. Michael: And that’s why this book, Myth America, feels so urgent right now. It's not just an academic exercise; it's an intervention in that battle. Kevin: It really makes you think. We'd love to hear from our listeners. What's a historical myth you grew up believing that you later found out wasn't true? Let us know on our social channels. It’s a conversation worth having. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.