"Peace, peace" - when there is no peace.

Theodore Roosevelt was an unabashed war monger. Perhaps the only war he ever found distasteful was the Russo-Japanese war of the early 2oth century. For his part in brokering an end to that war, TR received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Woodrow Wilson campaigned for re-election in 1916 with the slogan "he kept us out of the war" [i.e. WW I], while he was, in fact, maneuvering to get us into the war. Wilson jailed those who spoke against our entry into the war (eg. socialist Eugene Debs). At the end of the Great War, Wilson promoted the League of Nations, a world body from which he could presumably tyrannize other peoples the way he tyrannized Americans. For his efforts on behalf of the League, and for his other work at Versailles (which paved the way for WW II), Wilson, naturally also received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Finally, today, after ninety years, another sitting president receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Barack Obama is clearly the most deserving of the three presidents to be so honored.

Iconic Myths Worthy of Destruction

What do these nine statements have in common?

1. Republicans are fiscally conservative and believe in smaller government.

2. Democrats are staunch defenders of the first amendment.

3. Herbert Hoover responded to the stock market crash with laissez-faire economic policies.

4. FDR lifted the country out of the Great Depression.

5. Robert E. Lee fought for the South because he wanted to preserve slavery.

6. Ulysses Grant fought for the North because he wanted to end slavery.

7. The Puritans were teetotalers.

8. The Constitution's commerce clause was always understood to authorize federal regulation of all business activity.

9. The Constitution's general welfare clause shows that the founders favored central government primacy over states' rights.

Pose these assertions as true or false questions to several randomly selected college graduates, and each will be marked "true" by the majority.

The nine assertions have this in common: they are widely believed, and completely false.

Recommended reading: 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas E. Woods.