Renegade History of the United States

"The cities of colonial and early republican America teemed with whores, homosexual pirates, and illegitimate children; slaves frequently labored less and enjoyed leisure more than free whites in the antebellum era; and the mob is responsible for far more of the freedoms that modern Americans enjoy than are the prudish leaders of the civil rights movement," argues Thaddeus Russell, author of a new history reviewed by The American Conservative's John Payne — View From the Gutter.

The book "defends the bad people of our history—prostitutes, juvenile delinquents, drunks, etc.—by showing how their refusal to conform to the expectations of mainstream citizens has enhanced the sphere of personal liberty over the years," the reviewer writes. "Social conservatives who look to the origins of the United States as a moral and political Eden will be shocked by the happily libertine portrait of colonial America that Russell paints."

Move (or roll) over, Howard Zinn, 1922-2010 (and rest in peace). This puts the "rum" into Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion, I say, which is to be the tagline to my next blogging endeavor — The Bourbon Democrat — should I return to America, which as of today has turned out to be within my reach, Deo gratias.