XPost: alt.war.civil.usa, alt.education, alt.politics.radical-left
XPost: sac.politics, alt.politics.socialism.democratic, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh From:
leroysoetoro@bho-rejected.com
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/09/20/why-lefts-war-on-history-will- fail.html
Monday was Constitution Day. This federal holiday commemorates the
drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and the 39 Founding Fathers who brought forth the charter of the world’s greatest democracy.
This celebration has taken on new relevance, thanks to the left’s
escalating war on history.
The protests began last August, when demonstrators filled the streets of Charlottesville, demanding removal of a bronze statue of Confederate
General Robert E. Lee. Since then, as President Trump and others
predicted, the madness has spread. The mob has since moved on from
attacking Confederate statues to targeting symbols of our American
democracy and traditions.
This week the city of Portland, Maine, became the latest city to do away
with Columbus Day – it will be celebrating Indigenous People’s Day
instead. City residents called the discoverer of the New World a
“murderer” and “enslaver” for his treatment of Native Americans. Los
Angeles, Seattle, Albuquerque, San Francisco and Denver, as well as the
states of Alaska and Vermont have also shed the holiday.
In 2016, anti-cop violence and other left-wing protests pushed many voters
to pull the lever for Donald Trump. The escalating war on history may
similarly help other candidates advocating public order.
Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, Confederate statues have now
been removed or are under dispute in more than 40 cities. Monument bashers
have also protested or defiled likenesses of, among others, Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, Christopher Columbus and Francis Scott Key,
the composer of the national anthem.
In Chicago, they even defaced a statue of Abraham Lincoln, the president
who ended slavery and who is a hero of Barack Obama, the nation’s first
black president.
There may be a sane discussion to be had about whether certain historical figures should be immortalized in our public spaces. But right now the conversation—and official responses —are being largely driven by public hysteria. It was reported this week that officials in the state of Texas
are even considering removing Ben Franklin’s name from a middle school
“because of his connection to the Confederacy.” Franklin had owned slaves
but eventually became an abolitionist.
Removing historical monuments and erasing national holidays will not
change the past or make us a better nation. It will only promote
historical ignorance. And to quote the famous aphorism, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
As the Lincoln and Franklin examples suggest, the war on history is not
really about race. Like their Antifa cousins who scream the r-word to shut
down conservative speech on college campuses, monument bashers are using similar tactics to discredit the principles of personal and economic
freedom that are the bedrock of our American traditions and identity.
The good news is they are likely to fail—for several reasons:
Activists are overplaying their hand. A reality that many on the left has
yet to fully appreciate: people of all political persuasions are
instinctively repelled by political violence. Regardless of the
historical merits of Confederate statues, the violent actions of monument bashers, like the riots of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, offend ordinary Americans who believe in the democratic process and the rule of law. Individuals of all beliefs and ethnicities don’t want their public spaces defaced. They don’t like driving through crowds of angry protesters. They
just want to go about their lives. The PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll showed
a majority (including black Americans) believe the monuments should be
left alone. As Esther Lee, who heads the NAACP Chapter in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, told a local TV reporter after Charlottesville, “You know
that’s history. That was in that point in time. You can’t eliminate what history is. So I disapprove with young people pulling down those statues."
In 2016, anti-cop violence and other left-wing protests pushed many voters
to pull the lever for Donald Trump. The escalating war on history may
similarly help other candidates advocating public order. A word of caution
to officials acceding to the demands of monument protesters: They are
enablers of a mob repellent to most Americans.
The war on history will increase momentum for education reform. Until now,
the public has been mainly amused by media reports of students who could
not name America’s first president or could not identify a picture of
Ronald Reagan. In 2017, such ignorance is no longer a laughing matter. Monument violence illustrates the dangers of a population untutored in the stories and traditions that bind us together as Americans.
The History Hysteria of 2017 should give new urgency to calls for
reforming school curricula long dominated by progressive narratives. Many monument protestors are acting on what they learned from texts like “A
People’s History of the United States,” the “progressive” history by 60s radical Howard Zinn that retells America’s story as a saga of unrelenting oppression. The acting out of young, misguided radicals should spur
concerned parents to lobby for programs to improve the quality of public education, like school choice. It will motivate citizens to press
harder—and get—more balance in our nation’s classrooms.
The controversy is igniting interest in the “dead white men” of our
history lessons. Monument bashers seeking to erase history are in fact
doing the opposite: They’re increasing curiosity about the real stories of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Christopher Columbus and other
“dead white men” known mainly from the dry pages of history books. People
who previously thought little about history are going online and self- educating. They’ll make discoveries that diverge from simplistic social justice narratives. For example, a subject of online discussion—on the
part of both blacks on whites—is the number of freed black men who owned slaves.
This self-examination will lead to a more nuanced understanding of our
past and who we are as a nation. Even if the digital refresher course
doesn’t extend far beyond Wikipedia, many self-educating Americans will recognize that the progressive take on history is as distorted as overly
rosy versions taught in the 1950s and 60s.
Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. He also penned the Declaration of
Independence and the words in that are the mantra of both right and left —
that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Founders were men of their time, and like all men they had flaws. But
their creation, the U.S. Constitution, enshrined the principles that made
it possible for slavery to be abolished. And it created our American
democracy, the model and inspiration for freedom- loving people around the world.
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party has run out of gas.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for ending the disaster of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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