From Fathers for life, “Freedom, Equality, and Society’s Treatment of Men and Families”
One of the most poetic quotes I’ve seen in a long time~
Those who don’t learn from history will be condemned to repeat it.
History repeats itself because the current generation refuses to read the minutes of the last meeting.
History tells us from where we came and where we are going. It tells us about actions and consequences. It tells us not only whether we are making progress and how far we have come, it tells us whether we are going into the right direction.
History is therefore a threat to all totalitarian regimes, as it clearly shows all of their flaws and the consequences of every single wrong decision made by a given totalitarian regime. For that reason all totalitarian regimes prohibit the teaching of history or at best permit only the teaching of versions that are constantly tailored and manipulated so that they will show a given totalitarian regime to be on the right path.
History is no longer taught in the elementary and grammar schools of Canada or in those of many other nations in the “free” West.
Any nation that no longer teaches honest and true history forgets from where it came. It will therefore be on a random path to self-destruction and oblivion. That is because it will not be able to determine which change in direction that it takes in reacting to each event in the never-ending succession of unexpected catastrophes it tries to escape from will prove to be the best. The fatal end of that nation will come as a total surprise to the vast majority of its people who will bear the cost of their own destruction.
—WHS
This is why I rail against the revisionist historians who laugh at the Holocaust, Saddam’s mass graves and other important events in history that we should keep in front of our minds’ eye, lest we ever forget…
I have absolutely no problem with revisionist history…if it makes sense. We interpret history to meet our biases, we all have them. I think it would be sad if we refuse to look back at past events in order to better understand them because we are afraid of being labeled “revisionists.”
If you are speaking strictly in political/religious terms in your crusade against the left then I understand. Revisionism doesn’t only take place on the left. At my university, nearly everyone spent their waking hours to prove nearly every good event in our past was touched by the hand of God and evey bad thing was swept under the rug. I just chuckled at them…those revisionists.
Personally, I blame John Kerry.
That’s pretty funny…shows your complete lack of knowledge on a pretty vast subject…and it also shows a pretty breathtaking example of moral relativism.
I think the holocaust deniers are doing a lot more than revising history to meet their own biases…Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first president. Or in which the founding of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U.S. Congress is not.
Nash’s history standards (The History Standards project was conceived during Bush 41’s administration, and at that time National Endowment for the Humanities Chairwoman Lynne Cheney had been one its chief advocates.) are so “politically correct” that he excluded Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Jonas Salk, while making 22 references to the Ku Klux Klan and almost as many to Joseph McCarthy. You do not have to be a high school graduate to figure out what Nash was trying to accomplish. Fortunately the United States Senate has more appreciation of United States history than the historian Nash. The Senate voted 99 to 1 to revise the standards. The committee was organized and new standards were published in 1996.
Nash, who wanted to create a history book that barely mentioned George Washington at all, obsessed about the sleeping quarters of Washington’s slaves. This same dogmatic, minority-obsessed historian claimed that the Park Service was trying to whitewash the history of slavery. Acel Moore of the Philadelphia Inquirer and and Mayor Street joined the chorus in accusing the Park Service of racism. The Inquirer wrote:
“New historic research shows the presence of slaves at the heart of one of the nation’s most potent symbols of freedom.
The National Park Service says the Liberty Bell is its own story, and Washington’s slaves are a different one better told elsewhere.
However, some historians insist slavery is an integral part of this piece of ground.
They are irate that the Park Service has refused to halt construction and excavate the site, to hunt for artifacts that would give a more complete picture of the nation’s birth and slavery’s role in it.
Mayor Street has joined those critics.
“This is brand-new information to the city,” Street spokesman Frank Keel said Friday, referring to the relation of the new bell site to slave quarters.
“We think the issue is too important and too sensitive to ignore,” he said. “The city is not about to let this slide by.”
Street wants “to begin a very earnest dialogue with the Park Service” about how to address the issue of slavery on Independence Mall, Keel said.”
Moore went on to write: “The exact site and dimensions of Washington’s slave quarters have only recently been documented by historian Edward Lawler and others. The Park Service, whose domain includes the administration of historic sites like the Liberty Bell and Independence Mall, won’t halt construction to allow archeologists and historians to excavate and examine the old slave quarters. The specious argument: The Liberty Bell is its own story and Washington’s slaves somehow a different one better told elsewhere. Full knowledge of all of American history would benefit all citizens of this nation.â€
Reading this, one might think of these previously unsung ‘slave quarters’ as rivalling the Rosetta Stone in archaological importance. What kind of Philistine would want to desecrate such a national treasure? But, Martha B. Aiken, Superintendent of the Park Service and herself an African-American, noted: “… preliminary analysis found nothing related to African American distinctive cultural practices. Implications that “the old slave quarters” have been uncovered, or deliberately not excavated, as part of this process are incorrect.â€
Aikens was actually being circumspect. On June 12 in the Inquirer letters to the editors’ section, Edward Lawler Jr., the historian whose research was the genesis of these “protests†and who was referenced in Moore’s column wrote: “There is no conspiracy to hide things. There is nothing left of [the slave quarters].†Nash and other members of the PC syndicate, who couldn’be bothered about George Washington himself, had conjured up an archaeological treasure out of what was essentially nothing.
What makes this affair even more absurd is that a block away is the African-American History museum. Nash and Randall Miller, the History Department Chairman at Saint Joseph’s University, want some mention of the slave quarters in the exhibit. Could that not be accomplished at the African-American museum? Perhaps it could, but the PC historians want to purge the history of the Liberty Bell and include their own history.
Unlike Nash and his accomplices in the media, Americans do not want to purge these revisionists and their media lackeys. Americans just want to know of the misinformation they spread, and learn the true version of history–including slavery. And that’s why they won’t stand for the propaganda of the politically correct People’s Democratic History Committees.
Another example of this is Chomsky’s book “What Uncle Sam Really Wants”. One must give Chomsky credit here for at least finally coming out and saying what he has been insinuating and implying for most of his career: that the United States is Nazi Germany. Let us be as clear as possible here: Chomsky is not saying that the United States acts like Nazi Germany, or reminds him of Nazi Germany, or has Nazi-like aspects (and all of that would be ugly enough). He is saying, and not at all ambiguously, that that United States is Nazi Germany in the most literal sense: a Hitlerian monster which has slowly spread its tentacles (despite, apparently, the heroic efforts of the Soviet Union to present it with “anti-fascist” resistance) across the world, which it now dominates as a shadow Fourth Reich. This, for all intents and purposes, is the sum total of Chomsky’s worldview as expressed in this book.
It is a mistake to dismiss this out of hand. The US equals Nazi Germany trope has made considerable headway in leftwing, and even non-leftwing, circles in Europe and around the world, and reading this book it is not difficult to see how the comparison of president Bush to Hitler has come to seem not only acceptable, but reflexively obvious to the anti-war movement: it has been part and parcel of the ideology of their foremost guru for decades.
Besides indulging the leftist tendency towards conspiracism, it is fairly obvious what purpose is served by invoking such an identification: it is a moral justification, an intellectual granting of indulgences to engage in the worst kinds of antinomianism. Put simply, once this trope has been accepted, the moral fetters fall away, and one is not merely justified, but enjoined to commit acts which would otherwise be of the most appalling possible nature. For if one is facing Nazi Germany, if you are the citizen of a state so permeated with industrial evil, then one has no choice but to destroy that society by any means at your command. Even the considered betrayal of one’s own professed values becomes acceptable under the rubric of such an apocalyptic confrontation. Thus, through the original lie, a new truth is created; a truth by which, in the most classic Orwellian fashion imaginable, law becomes crime, truth becomes lie, love becomes hate, peace becomes war, war becomes peace, and treason, normally the most heinous of crimes against one’s country and community, becomes the highest of moral acts. As soon as one accepts the lie that somehow, someway, Hitler is still alive, and his spirit permeates the very fabric of one’s own society, then one is no longer betraying one’s friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, but saving them, liberating them even, from an evil only you are privileged to recognize and confront.
Personally, I blame leftist idiots who are willing to accept this trash, without even questioning it.
But thanks for the stupid troll comment, I always laugh when I see this stuff; the ultimate in denial, elitist superiority (to cover up your inferiority complex), all the while claiming you’re so well-educated. bwahahahaha! What a bunch of trash.
What in God’s name are you talking about? I said nothing about the Holocaust, George Washington, his slaves, the Sierra Club, the NAO or any other radical revisionist topic you cut and pasted in this vast rant of a reply.
I am not over educated. I’m not flaunting my education (I went to college…big deal). Nor do I claim to be an expert on anything, let alone everything. I do have an opinion on some things, which I don’t ram down anyone’s throat. I do like to debate from time to time but apparently it’s just a load of trash.
I don’t deny the holocaust (I have no idea where that came from). And in my experience, neo-Nazi’s and the far right are the ones who generally deny that horrible event. The Left loves to rub the bellies of any afflicted group with a museum here, a monument there. Thus the descendents of Washington’s slaves deserve quite a lot…they’re voters after all!
I made a comment about revisionism, not any particular revisionist topic. Before you rush off to find examples of another bastion of America’s past I’m apparently trying to tear down, please tell me your opinion on revisionism as a practice…not on any revisionist topic, but the nature of the practice. I still remain interested, but only a little.
Did you actually laugh like this (bwahahahaha!) as you wrote the reply? It’s just ironic because I actually said “Excellent!” in Mr. Burns style as I wrote mine.
What a smartass. You come here and talk to me like–you own the place.
I’ll type this real slow so you might have a chance of understanding it:
I’m talking about revisionist historians and how leftists like you are talking moral relativism when it comes to historical revisionism…and I’m giving you examples of what I’m talking about…since you can’t seem to put two coherent thoughts together.
Guess what? Right there you exhausted my already short attention span for idiots and my interest in you and your opinion, so beat it.
Yes, I think leftists are particularly at fault for revisionist history as I pointed out with specifics above.
As far as people on the other end of the scale being “revisionists” I think you’re skewing that for your own politics. My belief is–we’re training to conserve (the root of conservative which is also related to PRESERVE) the history that we know is true; and not allow people to re-write it to match their own political beliefs. The story of George Washington and the cherry tree isn’t even told anymore–he was a very honest and deeply religious man.
Leftists are trying to rewrite history (and we’re trying to preserve it) to fit the image they want to see-what they want to turn our society into—a secular society like France. As much as you try to bend it that way, that’s not the way it is.
Sorry.
“I am not over educated. I’m not flaunting my education (I went to college…big deal).”
For years, I’ve referred to people like you as Kolege-Edukated Morons — any type of education MINUS common sense, describes most Leftie-loving Communists perfectly.
Another hysterical lib is yelling from my moderation queue. The things they say, honestly. And they think they know what it is I’m trying to say! They want me to shut up so they can put words in my mouth.
This one is screaming racist in there. I don’t have patience for that adolescent bahavior, I’m putting them all in a “time out”.