KINDER'S COMMENTARY: BRITISH HISTORIAN TAKES SWEEPING LOOK AT HISTORY OF AMERICANS

Paul Johnson, the internationally renowned British historian, is one of the great wonders of our time. Previous works by this amazing author include "History of Christianity," "A History of the Jews," "Intellectuals," "The Quest for God," "Modern Times," as well as "Enemies of Society," the 20-year-old work that introduced me to him during my student days.

Of Johnson, critic, editor and author Norman Podhoretz (no slouch as a scholar himself) observed, "I can understand his amazing production as a writer. What defies understanding is how he could possibly have read everything, all the diverse sources, which he cites so effortlessly, so authoritatively."

Podhoretz is right. And now comes Paul Johnson with his sweeping survey of American history: "A History of the American People." (HarperCollins, 976 pages, 1998).

"This work is a labor of love," Johnson writes in the book's preface. No anti-Americanism here. Slaves to the regime of thought-control known as Political Correctness will be disappointed.

Many have come to love Johnson not only for what might be called the Olympian certainty of his judgments, but also for his keen sense of humor. Here is Johnson, himself a Roman Catholic, describing the "northern push" into what became Vermont by:

"... Ulster Protestants provoked into seeking a new, transatlantic life by the enforced payment of tithes to Anglican churches. ... So here were hardy frontier farmers, after three generations of fighting and planting to defend the Protestant enclave against the Catholic-South of Ireland, moving to expand the new frontier in North America. They were first-class colonists: law-abiding, church-going, hardworking, democratic, anxious to acquire education and to take advantage of self-government." Then, his last line, which made me laugh out loud:

"We heard little of them: always a good sign."

Here is his vivid description of Old Hickory:

"Tall and thin (six feet one, 145 pounds) with an erect body crowned by an upstanding thatch of bright red hair, (Andrew) Jackson had a drawn, pain-lined face from which blue eyes blazed furiously, and his frame was chipped and scarred by the marks of a violent frontier existence. Dickinson's bullet broke two of Jackson's ribs, buried itself in his chest carrying bits of cloth with it, could never be extracted, and caused a lung abscess which caused him pain for decades. In the Boston duel he was hit in the shoulder, barely saved his arm and again, the ball couldn't be prized out, remaining embedded in the bone and provoking osteomyelitis. On top of these hideous scars and bits of metal in his anatomy, Jackson had endemic malaria compounded by dysentery, contracted on campaign. For the first ... he took sugar of lead ... a horrifyingly drastic remedy, and for the second, huge doses of calomel, which rotted his teeth. Jackson met these misfortunes with stoicism, even heroism. ... His acceptance of pain deepened his resolution and left further scars on his psyche ... His unforgettably fierce but frail figure thus became an embodiment of angry will, working for America's grand but ruthless purposes."

Here is Johnson, in the preface:

"I haven't bowed to current academic nostrums ... of Political Correctness. So I don't acknowledge the existence of hyphenated Americans, or Native Americans or any other qualified kind. They are all Americans to me: black, white, red, brown, yellow, thrown together by a fate in that swirling maelstrom of history which has produced the most remarkable people the world has ever seen. I love them and salute them, and this is their story."

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.