The War Over America’s Past
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
That was the slogan of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's "1984," where Winston Smith worked ceaselessly revising the past to conform to the latest party line of Big Brother.
And so we come to the battle over history books in the schools of Texas. Liberals are enraged that a Republican-dominated Board of Education is rewriting the texts. But is the rewrite being done to falsify history, or to undo a liberal bias embedded for decades?
Consider a few of the issues.
The new texts will emphasize that the separation of church and state was never written into the Constitution.
Is that not right? The First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion. But, in 1776, nine of the 13 colonies had state religions established in their constitutions.
Thomas Jefferson's words about a "separation of church and state" were not written until 1802, when he responded to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association. Not until after World War II did the Supreme Court begin the systematic purge of Christianity from American public life.
Barack Obama may have declared, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation." But Woodrow Wilson said, "America was born a Christian nation," and Harry Truman wrote Pius XII to affirm, "This is a Christian nation."
The Texas school board wants the U.S. economic system called "free enterprise" rather than the term Karl Marx used, "capitalism."
Anything wrong with that?
The Christian Science Monitor cites one professor Phillip VanFossen as appalled the new history texts will put a "more positive spin on Sen. Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunt."
Witch hunt?
The FDR and Truman administrations were shot through with treason. Alger Hiss, who was with FDR at Yalta and Truman in San Francisco when the U.N. was founded, was a Stalinist spy, exposed by Whittaker Chambers and Rep. Richard Nixon.
Harry Dexter White, Treasury's No. 2, who pushed the infamous Morgenthau Plan to turn Germany into a pastureland, was a Soviet agent, as was White House aide Laughlin Currie and State's Laurence Duggan, whose treason was confirmed by the VENONA decrypts of Soviet cables in 1995.
William Remington at Commerce was convicted of perjury for denying his ties to a spy ring. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for their role in betraying the secrets of the atom bomb.
The VENONA transcripts contained the names of scores of U.S. citizens assisting known Soviet agents during and after World War II.
By 1952, Truman, having been repudiated by his own party in New Hampshire, was down to 23 percent, and was the most unpopular president ever to leave office.
But Joe McCarthy's approval, four years into this crusade in January 1954, stood at 50 percent, with only 29 percent disapproving.
And was that really a time of anti-communist hysteria?
Why, then, does not a single Gallup poll from 1950 to 1954 show even 1 percent of Americans giving anti-communist extremism or witch hunts or Joe McCarthy as an issue of concern?
Not only did Joe Kennedy Sr. admire and support Joe McCarthy, Jack Kennedy befriended him, Bobby worked for him, Teddy played touch football with him at Hyannis Port and the Kennedy girls dated him.
When, at a Harvard reunion, Jack heard a speaker say he was proud the college never produced an Alger Hiss or Joe McCarthy, JFK roared, "How dare you couple the name of a great patriot with that of a traitor?" and stormed out.
That 1954 was a year of disaster for Joe, with the Army-McCarthy hearings and censure by the Senate, is undeniable. But Joe is hated today not for what he got wrong, but for what he got right.
What is the purpose of teaching America's children the history of their country? Few said it better than Ronald Reagan in his farewell address: "An informed patriotism is what we want. . . .
"So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important. . . . You know, four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing of her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word.
"If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit."
Teaching American history to America's children is done so that they will come to know and love their country. And while all nations have sins of scarlet, none has a greater, more glorious past than ours.
And if teaching that is what the Texas Board of Education is all about, ensuring that the children of Texas know both sides of every great American quarrel and come away loving their country all the more, then God bless 'em.
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Entries(RSS)
Americans have no history because we no longer have a country.
Pat, I heard you say on TV, I believe it was around the time of your 1996 campaign for president, that America was a post Christian country. As an example you cited the Empire State building as a monument to the god of money, as opposed to the great cahedrals of Europe. I remember a column written by Thomas Fleming ..you know the Chronicles guy...he said that in the Christian Era a Church building was at the center of a village. In today's "Christian" America, some aesthetically repugnant official building is at the center ..My point is, what is so Christian about America?? At least the Obama was being honest..I am not a fan of Obama, but how can you disagree with that statement?
Larry,
I don't think Obama meant that people who call themselves
Christian in America don't live up to Christ's teaching. He meant that other religions like Islam are as influential in American history as Christianity is.
#2., The repugnant official buildings are not the real center. They are just the front. The real center is the bank building.
Towns don't have centers any more - every town's center is Hollywood/NY.
The new church buildings are aesthetically repugnant too.
#4 "The real center is the bank building."
And I would add the funeral parlor.
every town’s center is Hollywood/NY.
This is called the Home Entertainment Center. It has replaced the hearth, the good book, board games and music. Although I suspect it will soon be replaced by the palm pilot, the black berry and the twitting I-phone. When the means of production determine the ends of a culture, it is not necessarily the end of that culture but the beginning of the end. We moderns live under the illusion that if we wanted to build Chartre again, we could. We could perhaps copy it but there is no way we could design it or build another like it.
"This is called the Home Entertainment Center. It has replaced the hearth, the good book, board games and music. Although I suspect it will soon be replaced by the palm pilot, the black berry and the twitting I-phone"
Spot on, Mr. Robert. This is how "values" are transmitted down the generations now - not from father to son, but from the liberal entertainment elite and the consumerist materialist corporatists who sponser them to everyone's children. That is why the "values" of the left are the default values of nearly all of America - including self-professed "conservative" Republicans.
I was visiting a friend in the hospital and heard the hyper ventilating, Chris Mathews, on the televison giving the "history" of tail-gunner Joe as a notorious drunk and witch hunter who never met a democrat he couldn't call a communist. I was thinking to myself, where is Pat Buchanan when his colleagues need him. And of course here he is the next day setting the little hyper-head straight. It's no wonder poor old Tip O'Neil was a heavy drinker once I learned that Mr. Mathews worked for him. That would drive any sane man to either attention deficit disorder or Tennessee whiskey. Thanks Pat.
#4, Dr. Wilson, wrote: "The real center is the bank building." And in its vaults are the Bush TARP money and the Obama bailout money stolen from us.
4 “The real center is the bank building.”
And I would add the funeral parlor.
Nay, nay, the tattoo parlor
To tito perdue: Women are so covered with tattoos today it is absolutly disgusting. I went to a wedding recently and all the bridesmaids all had large visible tattoos. I also was on a cruise over Easter and the ship was full of teachers from England. Did those women have a lot of tatoos. I am used to seeing men with them but this explosion among women is really a final sign about the collapse of our culture.
"this explosion among women( with tatoos) is really a final sign about the collapse of our culture."
John that is a perceptive observation but the final sign will be even more obvious to all of us when we arrive at the local nursing home that awaits us. Those barbed wire tatoos aroung the bicep will look like earth worms, the bible verses like reading sanskrit, and the birds on the breast will look like WWII war planes in a nose dive!! When you see these signs, know that the end is near or has already arrived!!
Of course if I was a young pagan man striking out in the world for the first time in search of finacial independence, I would consider opening a pay day loan co. in Mississippi (they still believe in hard work and paying debts -- even unjust debts) a tatoo parlor in Jersey, or a crematory in Kansas City. -- you can't scub that blue stuff off and vanity is everlasting, so closed caskets and burning the body should be big business for the future. Of course even Ceasar turned back when he saw his adersary painting their faces blue, so for the young Christian I would consider a location I liked, go there with five or six of my favorite books, then just look around and see what needed to be done that I could do.
Here in Annapolis, Maryland, they build a large block of commercial buildings outside of the center of town and call it a "Town Center." The local paper used a picture of a young boy with a heart tatoo on his bicep in their advertising for the paper itself.
In Front Royal VA a friend of mine described a classy woman as possessing three virtues; two years of high school, all of her teeth, and no visible tatoos.
@5 Mr Toddard
But the WallyWorld and Target stores anchoring each end of the bypass must count for some kind of center ... oh never mind!
Churches and parks and town center?! Who needs a town center when you can attend a super-church service from your own couch. If the timing of the broadcast from the stadium where it's being held doesn't suit you or the 45 minutes of therapy are too long for you, simply digitally record it and fast forward through it at a more convenient time. Added bonus: no confusing or divisive symbology either. The smartly dressed grinning preacher-woman in front of the United Nations display of flags won't bother you with the Cross or even the Bible, except for a couple of feel-good quotes inserted here or there between the sales pitch for her own book that she and the co-pastor husband "wrote".
As far as other communal spots...who needs 'em? Local bar? Forget it. Too much traffic; besides, you stopped making friends three moves ago. Just buy a few cases of booze from the warehouse club and park your butt in front of the Facebook and other online "communities" that now maintain your friendships.
Dinner with friends or family? Forget-about-it. Too expensive and family is a major yawn. Order meals on wheels and enjoy with the Tivo after you send your kids to eat their "just like home cooked ('cept it's not)" meal in front of the video game machine.
Hell, now the cute girl in her pajamas on TV tells us you can sit on the couch ungroomed and go to college too! Very convenient. Should work out well as you telecommute to work right after you earn that degree.
Mega-Church, Mega-Net, Mega-Stores, Mega-Job, Mega-Stupid.
I know I'm preachin' to the choir here....