The following needs to be emphasized. Charles Churchyard’s National Lies: The Truth About American Values is a work with a basic unity. Its overall purpose is to present an original and comprehensive theory that explains American values: First, how their unique configuration produced this country’s tremendous power and wealth. Second, why the fundamental contradiction that they contain is the source of present-day discontent.
The form of the book reflects its contents. Separate elements occupy their respective subordinate places and contribute to the whole. The strategy of exposition and the sequence of narration are deliberately cumulative: earlier arguments and conclusions form the basis for later arguments and conclusions. A reader would need to peruse the entire book in order to grasp the unity of its construction, but a glimpse of this may be obtained from the “Contents Page and Introduction”. Some examples of the specific topics which are addressed may be found at “Questions Answered”.
The author has prepared a number of excerpts for presentation on this web site. They deal with specific topics, and they can be read separately in any order. Their purpose is to provide a sufficient sample of the subjects covered and the way in which the author handles them, so that the reader may be able to decide whether to approach the book itself.
In making such a selection, the author was obliged to choose only material that could be fashioned into discrete, self-contained pieces, and in some cases he had to eliminate or alter connective tissue. As a result, these items do not form a synopsis or compendium of the entire work. Nor do they present a full or even an adequate exposition of all its larger themes and theories. Again, that is something only a reading of the actual book can provide.
Also absent from the items on this web site are bibliographical references, indicating the sources of quotations and facts. But the book itself has them in abundance.