Who writes the history books
Bookworm on Mar 18 2006 at 2:04 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
[I haven't yet gotten Don Quixote signed up at WordPress, but I wanted to make sure you got to read the last post he did at the old Blogger address.]
DQ here, and my shows are at it again. This time it’s Criminal Minds, who put forth an American Indian as a strawman. Of course the Indian turns out to be a hero, while the bad guy is a capitalist posing as a cult leader and his cult followers who are duped by him.
Along the way we are treated to a history class told from the perspective of the Indians. You can imagine what that sounded like. For example, the reservations were described as “internment camps.” But it brings to mind a question. The old saying is that the winners write the history books. This has the salutary effect of strengthening the culture and passing it on to subsequent generations in a positive light.
So what happens when the losers (and, whatever else may be said about American Indians, they were the losers) write the history books? This is more than an idle question, since the Left, who has taken over American education, presents history more from the standpoint of the losers than the winners. Our kids are learning to hate the society they are raised in. What long term effects will this have on our society? I find it hard to imagine the effects will be positive.
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6 Responses to “Who writes the history books”
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I tend to think that what happens is that unworkable philosophies tend to be repeated. As both communism and socialism are being repeated regardless of historical events.
We’ll eventually be caught in one of those Star Trek time pockets, condemned to repeat a specific philosophy and its problems over and over again, until enough people either die from it for it to be covered up or we get tired of it. Which might take awhile.
I personally think that what is wrong with Howard Zinn type history is NOT that it shows history from “the other side”. I think adults, and young people on the verge of adulthood, should be told the truth about history, with our side portrayed warts and all.
What is wrong with Zinn-history is that it is the inverse of jingoist history. Instead of saying, “Here is how human beings are. They do wicked things to each other. But notice how some of them have managed to claw their way up from the pit to build societies which are qualitatively less horrible than their predecessors”…. instead of saying this, they just reverse the Black and White, and make us look like the sole bad guys in the world.
Doug
Interesting point, Doug. Mr. Bookworm got on a binge of renting DVD’s from netflix that are produced by HBO. (He apparently saw one good one, and decided that it was a good production company.) What he and I have discovered it is they’re all agenda driven — and the agenda is always the same. At some point in history, evil white men oppressed . . . fill in the blank (women, children, Italians, blacks, gays, Asians, etc.) In other words, the free entertaiment HBO provides for its subscribers is intent on one thing: making American history a loathsome saga of oppression by horrible white people, a saga enlivened only by a free brave oppressed people, who are clearly still oppressed today by the same horrible white people (mostly white men). We started one last night — Vendetta — that was so cartoon-like in its depiction of evil whites, we just turned it off. I don’t care that it’s based on a true story; it was too silly as portrayed.
If he wants to watch something for entertainment, get him hooked on Japanese Anime.
Careful, anime is pretty much the same, only more extreme. (Sorry, there’s just no other word that applies.) The good stuff is far better than anything America has ever cranked out, while the bad stuff will give you seizures. No, really.
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