Don’t take my word for it. Check out the rankings from the Seventh Annual Children’s Choice Book Awards. You’ll see that this group voted Rush Limbaugh their “author of the year” for his Rush Revere and The Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans.
What’s the book about? A substitute teacher and his talking time-traveling horse travel back to the Mayflower to travel with the Pilgrims. As Limbaugh introduces it to young readers, he wants “to try to help you understand what ‘American Exceptionalism’ and greatness is all about.” It does not mean that other countries aren’t just fine, too. But as Limbaugh puts it for his young readers, “American Exceptionalism and greatness means that America is special because it is different from all other countries in history. It is a land built on true freedom and individual liberty and it defends both around the world.”
Limbaugh has made efforts to introduce his vision of heroic history to schoolchildren everywhere. As of early 2014, Limbaugh claimed to have donated over 15,000 copies of his book to schools across America. As he told the conservative news site World Net Daily,
The mission is to connect with people that normally wouldn’t and don’t listen to a program like this but who someday will, and maybe their parents and grandparents do. I’m very proud of what I do, and I want as many people to be aware of it as possible. I’m very proud of what I believe. I’m very proud of my country. I want everybody to be. I really do. It may sound like pie-in-the-sky, but I want everybody to love this country as I do.
Academic historians might pooh-pooh this sort of thing. But America’s kids seem to like it. At the annual meeting of the Children’s Book Council, young attendees cast over 1,261,000 votes, and Limbaugh’s effort to introduce children to the wonders of America’s historical greatness came out on top.