Neither predominant political faction is interested in an objective consideration of history.
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If I were to describe a conversation about political history, it’s like watching two blind people argue over their wack-a-mole score (or like watching Howard Zinn and Dinesh D’Souza argue about history).
On March 3rd, in response to the then-upcoming speech by President Trump, a woman on CNN said the following:
“President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore, where he’ll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans.”
Of course, many of the people who shared that clip left out the statement that followed:
“–where he will be focusing on the effort to ‘tear down our countries history.'”
That part shows the comment for what it was, a little quip at the expense of President Trump. We can argue if it’s appropriate for a so-called “objective” news network like CNN to use a line straight out of The Daily Show, but that is what CNN did.
However, I have to ask, what was wrong with CNN’s statement? The Supreme Court declared in 1980 that the method the federal government used to get the specific Native American tribe off the land in South Dakota where Mount Rushmore is located was not only unconstitutional but also worth compensation of over $1 billion!
Mind you, the Left is wrong when they claim this was an act of white nationalism. The reason the federal government took back the land (in 1868, the federal government signed a treaty promising this land to that specific Native American tribe) was because General Custer believed there was gold in the area.
Also, yes, the Left is selective when they pretend only European settlers engaged in conquest. While we do not have a complete history of Native Americans, all evidence suggests they were just as likely to conquer each other as were the Europeans.
However, it is undeniable that European settlers have a special arrogance compared to the rest of the conquerors of that era. Want evidence for that? Well, for one, no Native American tribe, to my knowledge, carved four of its different leaders on the side of a mountain that they promised to give to another Native American tribe.
History is not black and white, yet that is how we often love to portray it.
Here’s a good example: whenever a Supreme Court case comes up that Josh Hammer doesn’t like, he compares it to Dred Scott v. Stanford and says anyone who is against disobeying it is the same as Stephen Douglas, while he casts himself as brave as Lincoln. However, Lincoln followed the Dred Scott ruling, as the ruling was not overturned until the 13th Amendment passed shortly after Lincoln’s death.
One can remember the classic story of the textbook that spent eight pages on Thomas Jefferson and mentioned everything about him, including how we would not wear a wig, except for the fact that he owned slaves. James Lowen documented this, and many such other examples of erasing history, in his classic book Lies My Teacher Told Me.
Or how about a textbook used in Alabama up until the 1970s that called slavery “a form of social security”?
To be clear, the Left does this as well. Across the nation, many AP History classes only use Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History Of The United States. Zinn’s work is obviously biased against America (he has admitted this). Further, A People’s History was never meant to be a standalone book. Zinn directly wrote his work in response to the rampant pro-American bias in mainstream American history books at the time, choosing to write a book that goes in the exact opposite direction specifically to counteract then-current bias.
Basically, only reading A People’s History is like only watching the middle of a fight.
This is the actual “erasing of history” I’m concerned with. We can act like the removal of a statue is the end of the world, but most people don’t learn history through statues. I’m worried about lies by omission and anti-American bias being taught to children, especially when the work in question was never meant to just be taught to children.
Yes, removing a statue of Robert E. Lee is minor vandalism, but everyone who is ever going to know who Robert E. Lee is, already knows who Robert E. Lee is. However, teaching history to curious young people as a form of propaganda is much more damaging than taking down a statue of someone you either know or you don’t.
How about this, why don’t we talk about history in an objective neutral manner? Is that really so hard these days? Just teach people the truth and let them make their own judgements.