Roosevelts down, McCarthy up as conservatives spin history to right | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Roosevelts down, McCarthy up as conservatives spin history to right | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Roosevelts down, McCarthy up as conservatives spin history to right

BY STEVEN THOMMA
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

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WASHINGTON -- The right is rewriting history.

The most ballyhooed effort is in Texas, where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson, playing up conservatives and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.

The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Liberal professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

"We are adding balance," Texas school board member Don McLeroy said. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

Although even some conservatives say that some of the revisionist history is simply wrong, the effort reflects the ever-changing view of history.

Some of the new conservative versions of history:

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: He was long an icon of the Republican Party, a dynamic