Thus, Collingham argues, the war did not boost policies of planning and redistribution in America as it did in Europe, and it permitted the false lesson that laissez-faire is always enough.
An artful compromise was presented as an outright unilateral triumph, which taught Americans a false lesson about the invincibility of toughness, rather than one about the limits of power.
A false lesson drawn from 1989 involves a kind of shallow eschatology of totalitarianism: this is how it always happens — the people rise up, the regime withers and dies, peace and democracy reign.
And yet the fact that the nearest counterparts to the thinkers and activists of 1989 are to be found in a non-Western, Muslim country exposes another false lesson of that year: that such things are for Westerners only, that "they" don't want what "we" want.
The United States was especially prone to this false lesson during World War II and thereafter.
Reagan's words that night, and his stance in countless other public and private statements as president, contrast starkly with the false history lesson President Trump offered Friday in an early-morning tweet, hours before a potential government shutdown over funding for the president's border wall.
He is clearly right, and as an adult I'm able to see the editing and craft that makes these shows such an addictive pleasure to share with my family, but my fear is that my children are learning false and damaging lessons.
The contributors dissect mistakes, false starts, and lessons learned from the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq within the broader context of reconstruction efforts in other parts of the world, including Latin America, Japan, and the Balkans.
Why is his chapter, his book, written with this false certitude, these capitalized lessons?
