Things They Know That Just Ain't So

Thought I'd do a "Reality Check"-type thing again, this time relating to people's mental associations and verbal shorthand.

• Despite TVTropes and others using them as a catchword for extremists, the Knights Templar were actually the first to formally decide that the Peace of God (which protected noncombatants) applied to infidels.


• Ever hear the phrase "sexist Neanderthal"? Turns out, part of why the Neanderthals were displaced was that they had males and females going on hunts, while Cro-Magnons had sex-role specialization in food gathering, improving their efficiency in acquiring nutrients.


• The Vichy government was not Fascist: they were the exact kind of corrupt Parliamentarians Fascism was a(n over)reaction against.


• Despite what right-wingers will tell you, the Founding Fathers were pretty much protectionists to a man; "Free Trade" is a mid-19th Century thing.


• Vichy might not have been Fascist, but FDR was—not a Socialist. Everything in the New Deal is cribbed from Mussolini. Okay maybe he was just a Corporativist in economics...but the Japanese-Americans might like a word about that.


• The French have surrendered fewer times, to anyone, than the Germans have surrendered to them. There's a reason everyone's military terminology—including the Germans'—is mostly from French.


• I know I've said this before, but the Middle Ages used less, and milder, torture than the Renaissance or even the so-called Enlightenment. One of the things the Renaissance brought back was the Roman penal code (executive summary: ouch).


• Far from having no concept of land ownership, most of the Western Indian tribes had land tenure as absolute as the Romans. Northeastern tribes didn't have land tenure—only use—because they were hunter-gatherers, while Plains Indians were nomads (mostly hunters); Western tribes are farmers.


• Scots are not Celts, they're Anglo-Saxons—Lowlanders are, anyway, and the Highlanders are almost totally assimilated.


• Far from being a triumph of rugged individualism, or a complete anarchy, the Old West only worked at all because communities banded together and wrought harsh penalties on miscreants. Yeah, kicking heels with your throat in a rope (Swinburne) because you slapped a saloon floozy is a little harsh (and yes, it really happened), but it's about the opposite of Sam Peckinpah, huh?