A Salute to History

As most students understand it today, history is just a bunch of old white guys who have subjugated women, enslaved “people of color”, and generally raped the environment without contributing very much to the world. We are led to believe that the entire concept of “Western Civilization” is nothing short of a manifestation of the arrogance and general ignorance of the (American) white males who refuse to recognize the major contributions of other countries and cultures. Of course anyone who has ever studied history is well aware of the falsity of that proposition so you wonder exactly what students are being taught. Then I remember that Stephen Ambrose – the alleged pre-eminent historian of the Twentieth Century admitted that he was taught a distorted view of American History and then (knowingly) continued to teach these distortions to his students throughout his career. To his credit he admitted this prior to his death and even attempted to rectify some of his more egregious comments in his last book, but even there he was unable to give up some of these distortions because left wing liberals cannot actually attribute anything noble or good to any white man.

For example Ambrose simply cannot get by the fact that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the founding fathers were slave owners. Now this is a historical fact but is that all there is to these men? Should the very carefully chosen facts selected by those who purport to be “historians” define these men? Perhaps the most egregious distortion is from Ambrose who acknowledges Jefferson’s authorship of the Declaration Of Independence but then dismisses Jefferson as a hypocrite for owning slaves. What is totally ignored are the writings and actions of Jefferson in opposition to slavery. He was opposed to it and attempted to have it ended but in the end he came to realize that it was too critical to the economy of the Southern States. Of course none of this is covered by Ambrose, which seems to be typical of what passes for scholarship today.

But what about the Indians? Of course they don’t even exist anymore because they have been replaced by Native Americans, which is another politically correct but factually inaccurate description. The Indians are not native to America and clearly are simply immigrants, possibly from Asia or South America, but being first doesn’t make them “Native”. But this is simply nitpicking and it really doesn’t matter if they are called Indians, Native Americans, or Ewoks because the focus for the historians is how the white man destroyed their culture in what is nothing short of genocide. These are very serious accusations if true but then some historians refer to this time period as the “Indian Wars”. A war is considerably different than genocide because in a war their are winners and losers and deaths on both sides. Genocide is a deliberate attempt to wipe out a culture and kill a specific group of largely defenseless people – e;g; the Jews.

The Indians allied themselves with the French, the British, and even the Americans for various reasons including pay. The Indians frequently came out on top and the Yaqui Apaches have never signed a peace treaty and are technically still at war with the United States. This is not to say that in the end the Americans treated the Indians fairly, because they didn’t but unfair treatment is a far cry from genocide. This of course brings us to Wounded Knee, which is not the greatest moment in American Military History. However, shouldn’t that be placed into perspective? Weren’t the Indians at war with the US? Hadn’t the Indians attacked the Americans and were in fact fleeing from the soldiers? In fact, when viewed from a military perspective the Indians were incapable of winning. There is no doubt that the Plains Indians were some of the finest cavalry in the world – possibly second only to the Mongols but in spite of Hollywood the actual Indian War was largely an infantry affair fought between a disciplined Army with central command and an a fragmented collection of warriors. But even so, the real issue was logistics and the Indians lost because of that. The Army had permanent bases supported by a logistical infrastructure while the Indians were nomadic and without a logistical base. Wounded Knee is a vivid example of this because the warriors that were fighting the Army were hampered by their dependents. The soldiers moved alone but the Indians had to take everything with them. Food was always an issue because they were nomadic and couldn’t stay in one spot long enough to grow crops. So while Wounded Knee wasn’t glorious in some ways it was inevitable due to the nature of the Indian’s logistical structure.

But in their drive to dismiss Western Civilization as anything meaningful, these new historians must show how other cultures are equivalent and have made equal or even greater contributions to the world. Of course foremost among these is China, because after all the Chinese invented practically everything. There is no doubt that the Chinese had a very advanced culture far in advance of the West but precisely what did they do with it? Was there any great influx of Chinese explorers into Europe, Africa, or the new World? The fact is that if it hadn’t been for Marco Polo most of the discoveries of the Chinese would have remained in China.

The Japanese have historically been xenophobic and entered the community of nations only because the United States insisted. To this day the Japanese are very insular and while they build a great many things the list of their inventions is very short and many of their inventions are in fact simply enhancements of inventions by others. Essentially we can dismiss Asia as a source of anything that underpins Western Civilization even though they may have thought of it first. So we can move on to Africa – well once you exclude Egypt there isn’t anything there. However the Egyptians did contribute a great deal to our culture and form one of the roots to Western Civilization or did they? Precisely what have we inherited from the Egyptians – ancient or otherwise? Well mostly history and a lot of interesting artifacts but very little in the form or culture, organization, or government. Mostly the Egyptians fed the west – mostly Romans – who were the actual foundation of Western Civilization. So we can conclude that Civilization as we know it is mostly Western in origin and while others may have invented things the actual builders were in the West and not in the East or in Africa and this brings us back to the contemporary view of history.

It is worth noting that the protagonist in 1984 was charged with rewriting history, which at the time the book was published seemed ludicrous but that is precisely what academia and Hollywood are doing to day. We are being treated to the trashing of the heroes of western culture and the aggrandizement of the counter-culture heroes. Thus Che Guevara becomes a hero rather than the murdering terrorist that he was. The Sandinistas were not Marxists, even though they said they were (what did they know? They were simple peasants) but revolutionaries trying to throw off the yoke of America. Capitalism is bad and exploitive because it places responsibility on the individual so this makes America bad. Marxism and socialism is good because it ensures that everyone shares equally. Of course, these same people ignore George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” just as they ignore “1984”. The fact is Academia today is infested with a gaggle of PhD’s who have never had a job, people who have never had to pay their way or make a profit. These Professors have gone from kindergarten to PhD with out any break for a taste of reality. Stephen Ambrose was just the tip of the iceberg. At least he acknowledged before he died that he had knowingly and deliberately distorted the history that he taught in order to make some left leaning political points. Do you think that pseudo-historian and fake Indian Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado will ever admit that he is an left leaning ignoramus who is actually distorting facts? Not likely – so Academia like the New York Times is no longer credible and any ‘facts” coming from these sources should be taken with a very large grain of salt if not ignored altogether.

POLITICAL EXODUS

My comments are actually offered in rebuttal or at least in response to, the following article written Rick Lyman of the New York Times. With that pedigree we can assume the article is written in a totally objective fashion and with no hidden agenda of the author. So before proceeding you may want to read the article at

http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/06/news/refuge.html

But leave it he intends to do, and as soon as he can. His house is on the market, and he is busily seeking work across the border in Canada. For him, the re-election of George W. Bush was the last straw.

This is alleged to be an American who understands how America operates and a man who purports to be a solid citizen but the fact that he would leave the country over the election of a President with whom he disagrees indicates not only his shallowness as a person but his almost total lack of understanding about how the country operates. The ONLY President ever elected in this country who was universally popular was George Washington. EVERY other President has been opposed and vilified with Abraham Lincoln being one of the most vilified. Here we have a man old enough to know better who is pouting and stamping his little foot because he didn’t get his way. What we are seeing here is the result of years of pandering by the press and intelligentsia (?) to every minority, politically correct position, and spoiled child who cannot lose.

But America is turning into a country very different from the one I grew up believing in.

Notice that is lacking is any explanation as to what he believes in or what he thinks America was. I can tell you that the America I grew up in was an America where you either passed a class or you flunked it. You either learned enough to go to the next grade or you were held back. I went to movies where there were no curse words, no overt sex, no graphic violence, and there was a moral fabric to the films rather than the amoral one we see today. I grew up in a world where criminals were punished because they broke the law. I remember a world where if you jumped off of your bicycle and broke your leg you got punished at home for being a dumbbell rather than seeing it as an opportunity to sue the bicycle manufacturer. I grew up in an America where people were responsible for their actions and that if you lost you learned to play a better game. What America did he grow up in?

Yet immigration lawyers say that Americans are --- fed up with a country they see drifting persistently to the right and abandoning the principles of tolerance, compassion and peaceful idealism they felt once defined the nation

Let me see – America has always been forced into wars because the “peaceful” Europeans have never been able to take care of themselves. It has been America who has been the bastion of compassion and idealism not Europe or even Canada. Canada is hardly a nation devoted to helping anyone but instead are insular and isolationist. So the real issue is that the country is moving to the right – right of what I ask -- right of the immoral community who have abandoned God in favor of the reign of the individual? America is a country who has abandoned their compassion? Excuse me but did we just send more help in terms of money, equipment, and people to Asia than all of the other countries combined? Isn’t it the Americans who have driven out Hussein and freed a nation of 17 million people. Sorry but this entire statement has no validity at all.

Still, that is more than double the population of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. "For every one who reacts to the Bush victory by moving to a new country, how many others are there still in America, feeling similarly disaffected but not quite willing to take such a drastic step?" Cohen asked.Melanie Redman, 30, assistant director of the Epilepsy Foundation in Seattle, said she had put her Volvo up for sale and hopes to be living in Toronto by the summer. She and her Canadian boyfriend, a Web site designer for Canadian nonprofit companies, had been planning to move to New York, but after Nov.2, they decided on Canada instead."I'm doing it," she said. "I don't want to participate in what this administration is doing here and around the world. Under Bush, the U.S. seems to be leading the pack as the world spirals down."
First, I would guess there are quite a few “disaffected” people in the US but I think I would use the term spoiled instead. These are the people who have grown up expecting to be rewarded by just showing up. This is a group of people who have never learned how to lose. They expect to get their way and win every time and if they don’t it is some one else’s fault. Here we have a group of people who expect the government to take care of them regardless of their poor judgement. Well the country is truly better off without them so Bon Voyage.

The US is leading the pack as the world spirals downward – hmmmm --- have I missed something here. It seems to me that it is the Muslims who have pioneered the murder of innocent children as a political statement. It seems to me that it was the Muslims who have stated that they consider anyone who disagrees with them as legitimate targets. Wasn’t it the Americans who put a stop to the genocide in Bosnia? Isn’t it America who is pouring huge amounts of money into Africa to fight AIDS? So exactly what is America doing that is so wrong – well for starters they elected a President who puts America first. President Bush is a quintessential American who is unashamed of being an American. He is a man who says what he means and means what he says. He is doing what the Europeans can’t do and once again cleaning up the mess they made. So if this person wants to leave America to go to a better place – good – the country is better off. I’ll be willing to bet that after a good dose of socialism they will slink back across the border.

Facts and Beliefs

There is a very large group of people in this country who are labeled as “Liberals” who are actually a collection of pseudo-intellectuals that are convinced they are much smarter than the average bear and thus are the self-appointed nannies that we all obviously need. These are the people who have substituted their beliefs for empirical data and are determined to act on their beliefs regardless of the cost to the rest of us because those who disagree with them are too stupid to understand and the stupidity of this mass of ignoramuses is demonstrated by the election of that moron – George Bush. So those whom we view as “Liberals” are in fact wine-sipping, latte drinking, self-appointed nannies who feel rather than think and who are determined to take of us and to this end I submit the following:

Global Warming
The glaciers are shrinking, the temperature is rising, the world as we know it is ending and it is all because of the Industrialized Nations, especially the United States. The only solution is to sign the Kyoto Treaty and allow all of those third world nations to rape the United States and to destroy the techno-terrorism practiced by the Neo-imperialistic United States. This is the belief – Global Warming exists – when there is actually no empirical proof and dozens of reputable scientists say it is hogwash. Furthermore, the global climate has shifted and changed, waxed and waned throughout geological time.

Evolution
When I was in college (studying Earth Science) evolution was viewed as a “Theory” that grew out of the Theory of Uniformitarianism as stated by Charles Lyell. While it is a plausible theory it really hasn’t been demonstrated. The examples offered are always the same but these are actually illustrations of adaptation rather than evolution. So the belief is that Evolution is real and thus the belief is now taught in schools as fact when in fact it isn’t proven. There has never been an example of one species becoming another. Apes are apes and cannot mate with dogs and men are men and cannot mate with apes. While the Nannies would like for us to believe we have evolved from apes they cannot demonstrate that with any empirical evidence whatsoever and to point to a bone fragment and state that this is an early ancestor of man is a belief and not a fact.

Man is Slime Derived
There is no God and humans evolved from some primordial slime. – that is the belief and this is what is being taught in schools even though there is no proof. The fact is everything in the universe is made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Each and every one of these is identical to every other one and everything in the universe is made up of some combination of these – from microbes to man -- so if this is true then why does some combination of these universal particles think and move and some don’t? The fact is that what causes life is unknown so the schools are teaching a belief rather than a fact.

Gender is Irrelevant
The belief of the Nannies is that little girls can grow up to be fierce warriors and boys can grow up to be sensitive nurturing stay-at-home dads. Armed with this belief the Nannies are now determined to confuse everyone by insisting that the schools show boys as weak and ineffectual and girls as strong and capable. The facts here aren’t quite that clear. Anyone who has ever had children knows that from the outset boys and girls are different. Anyone who observes nature knows that gender roles are specific and inbred. Females nurture and males protect – this is the way it is. Females in nature will always select the strongest, biggest, and fiercest male as their mate, ignoring the weaker ones. The feminist movement can try to reverse this and they can insist their belief in gender neutrality is taught in school but when women decide to choose a husband they do not select the weak, weeping, limp-wristed, males – they look for men who are strong, capable, intelligent, and able to protect them and their children. That is the fact.

And of course the list goes on and on and includes foods, smoking, cholesterol, poverty, crime, and virtually anything else that the Nannies feel they need to do to protect the ignorant from making bad choices. Everyone is a victim and no one is responsible – feelings are more important than facts. We can no longer keep score for fear some one will lose and in losing they will lose their self-esteem. The fact that self-esteem is created by winning totally escapes the Nannies, they focus on the feelings of the losers.

So as a society we think we are seeing political liberals but what we are actually seeing is a bunch of self-anointed Nannies determined to take care of us.