Revisionist History for a Revisionist's Future
by Selwyn Duke
Imagine completing eight years of public education and never learning about the father of our
country, George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson or any of the other founding fathers. This
could become a reality if the newly revised New Jersey Department of Education curriculum
standards are approved. In what appears to be nothing but cowardly capitulation to the forces of
political-correctness, the N.J. Dept. of Education has decided to not include these historical
figures and other people and events that are culturally significant in the guidelines indicating
what schools must teach. Of course, bureaucrats in the department have an excuse for why
such giants of American history are conspicuously absent: they say that it's so obvious that
certain things must be taught, that they don't bear mentioning. Well, critics of the guidelines,
including this writer don't buy that, but whether or not they're telling the truth doesn't matter.
This is because this is not an anomaly in the American educational and social realm, rather, it is
emblematic of an ominous trend. This is the trend towards a revision of history that facilitates
the wholesale destruction of our traditions and institutions.
For about twenty years now, there has been a burgeoning movement that seeks to besmirch
the reputations of the founding fathers for the purposes of discrediting them. The foot soldiers in
this movement portray the founders as backward troglodytes who were too ignorant to enjoy the
state of enlightenment that these critics fancy themselves to embody. These people love to talk
about what ostensibly were the founders' faults, and they especially like to focus on slavery. In
their simplistic presentation of history, the founders were fatally flawed and should be dismissed
out of hand because many owned slaves, and that's that. It seems to elude them that many of the
founders agonized over slavery and that some opposed it - Thomas Jefferson himself said that it
was an issue that "would tear the nation apart." The fact is though, that it was not possible at the
time to outlaw the age-old practice anymore than it's possible today for those who oppose
abortion to criminalize that. Also, the founders, call me crazy, just might have been preoccupied
with a minor little distraction: a life or death struggle for independence and the founding of a
nation.
Now, as so often is the case, it's time for a little perspective here. If you want to demonize
something, be it a person place or thing, all you have to do is tell only half the story when giving
your presentation or him or it. For instance, let's say I were to tell your story, but I focused on all
you've done wrong to the exclusion of the good you've done - if I did this, I could convince
others that you were pure pondscum. After all, we all do wrong - we're human, and the good
cannot outweigh the bad in people's eyes if the former is never related to them. Well, this is
EXACTLY what the historical revisionists do when portraying the founding fathers. They in
essence condemn them for being human; they mercilessly score them for having had frailties,
while all the while ignoring the accomplishments and sacrifices of these men. And what were
those? Oh, just a few little things. For instance, they cultivated in themselves a rare grasp of
governance and an appreciation for freedom that spawned a great nation, the likes of which had
never before been seen on this earth. A nation that would become a beacon of freedom for the
world, and defeat in both hot and cold wars tyrannies such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and
the Communist Soviet Union. A nation that would not then colonize the vanquished, but, in
unprecedented fashion, liberate them by installing democratic regimes where despotism once
reigned. They laid the foundation for a government of, by and for the people that would
ultimately give every person a voice, regardless of status. And, despite the fact that the founders
were erudite, wealthy men who had comfortable lives, they were willing to risk it all and take
the chance of being hung by the neck in order to bequeath to us certain freedoms. Among them
is the freedom of speech - a freedom that these sorry excuses for educators now use to shoot their
mouths off telling everyone how bad it's authors were.
As bad as this is, what's worse is what it portends for the future, because we are sowing the
seeds of our own discontent. If we continue down this path, it will lead to nothing less than the
complete dissolution of what made America great and good, and perhaps ultimately of the
Constitution and the nation itself. This is because people instinctively believe that a bad tree
cannot bear good fruit; therefore, if you can convince them that the founders were bad trees,
people just might want to dispense with the greatest of the fruits of their labors: the US
Constitution. Oh, I'm not saying it will happen next year or even twenty years hence, but the
Constitution has already been compromised, so you only have to complete the progression to see
what the final act in this tragedy might be. After all, how could something that such narrow-
minded neanderthals created be beneficial to us?
The fact is, that America is becoming balkanized because of an unrelenting attack upon our
institutions and traditions, and this is one front in that war. We cannot be one people unless we
have a common thread that runs through us - we must have something to bind us together. That
something has to be a common culture, and that means that we need a common language [the
primacy of English is being challenged] and a sense of national identity, and to have the latter
we must have a common sense of what our history is. Revising our history and destroying our
national icons runs counter to this cultural imperative, and it must be stopped. If we're not
willing to, then we might as well cut to the chase and partition the country right now, because
we'll never be one people.
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