The historian Carl Becker wrote that history is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Historical monuments are, among other things, an expression of power — an indication of who has the power to choose how history is remembered in public places.Actually this is sort of a play off from the old saying that history is written by the victors.
Of course, I don't believe anyone ever believed this particular saying was suggesting a good thing and that anyone was actually advocating that the victors (or anyone else) "should" write history to their liking. I think most people would prefer an accurate telling of events.
I also suppose there are a ton of things about "history" that we would like to go back and change. But pretending that certain things didn't happen, does not really change the fact that they did.
President Trump’s Thursday morning tweet lamenting that the removal of Confederate statues tears apart “the history and culture of our great country” raises numerous questions, among them: Who is encompassed in that “our”?
(www.nytimes.comopinion/confederate-statues-american-history
Mr. Trump may not know it, but he has entered a debate that goes back to the founding of the republic. Should American nationality be based on shared values, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin, or should it rest on “blood and soil,” to quote the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., whom Trump has at least partly embraced.I have an idea... let's let history be history. If it happened, then it's history.
The reality is that our country is not all that old. Our history is well maintained, and that means it includes all of the warts that go along with an accurate history. Any suggestion in 2017 that we are not remembering it correctly is dubious. Any suggestion that history be tempered to somehow conflate with today's liberal ideals of how the world should be... is simply unreasonable and quite frankly openly dishonest.
Good, bad, or indifferent, we all learn from history. In fact, we probably learn more from the bad than we do from the good. To suggest that we just make a conscious choice as to what to remember and teach, seems like a bad idea. I believe it would be an even worse idea if we make a decision to allow "politics" to determine those "choices".
The civil war remains a significant part of our history, and in fact is considered by many to be one of the most influential events. For the states that made up the confederacy, the was a simple reality. Most of the power was wielded by white people, and most of your southern black people were slaves. Recognizing that is not an attempt to insult, humiliate, or otherwise oppress anyone today.
Declaring war on the truth is the true oppression folks. We (as a country) need to start advocating that we make all attempts to be "factually" correct rather than advocate that we be more "politically" correct.
Oh, and not necessarily just as it pertains to historical events.
44 comments:
An allegator of intellect....NOT!!!!!
Donald J Trump is the man that is leading the war against the truth. Telling the truth is not being politically correct it is telling the absolute truth Beyond any reasonable doubt. Donald J Trump thinks that anything that is contrary to his thoughts or call him out on his lies or any of the other things that he does not like he would love to censor it right now. He does not seek the truth and right now I'm not sure if you do anymore either because look at this. Look at that. I'm old enough to remember when George Wallace run for president okay I actually got on the radio talk show in Rapid City and talk to the representative there and I asked some tough questions and the guy didn't know how to answer some of them and talk to other people online after that praise my questions that was only 17 years old or something maybe 20 I don't know I have to look back at it I think that George Wallace was not much difference in his views as Donald J Trump. He just doesn't make it quite so obvious Wallace made it clear. Trump is smart enough to bounce around a little bit but the truth is he is a white supremacist and you should admit it for the first time in your life that you were wrong about their judgment of this man. He is unfit to be our president and that is a fact that is not fake news that is not an opinion it is a f****** truth absolutely truth not the cold hearted truth it is now a mess with the real life for real truth. Please remind yourself what you used to be a cold-hearted analyst instead of overly partisan advocate for one party over the other. declaring liberals as Hypocrites and all the other crap that you do and don't look at the mirror and see that guy who is a hypocrite, because you support the man that wants to hide the truth from the American people.
what in the hell does that say Roger?
This is a response to his comment read his post and take it from there. Unless I misread things he believes that Donald J Trump can Define what the truth is and that the Free Press is prejudiced against him because of whatever reason and they are suppression as he said the Free Press is against the country. The Free Press is perhaps the foundation of our freedom that has endured for 260 years.. And one other comment we are the longest sustained single version of government in the on the planet at this time. And unfortunately some of the deep divisions are still there but Donald Trump is not trying to heal those divisions he is using them to promote his views and in his anger because what that's what this is this is he was angry angry angry last night. His anger dominates his thought process in when he's speaks in public. If he doesn't have a speech written by somebody else because when he's not winging it on his own you can see what the result is if you watch that 75 minutes.
Donald Trump is not trying to heal those divisions he is using them to promote his views and in his anger because what that's what this is this is he was angry angry angry last night
that makes sense to you?
Take it from here and you will see what I'm saying.
"Declaring war on the truth is the true oppression folks. We (as a country) need to start advocating that we make all attempts to be "factually" correct rather than advocate that we be more "politically" correct."
Last night Donald Trump said that the Free Press is against the country. Unless I miss reading what he said and I don't think I am, he is agreeing with Donald J Trump and his belief that the Free Press is against the country. As I said and we all know perhaps the foundation of our freedom that is adored for all these years is the freedom of the press right wrong or indifferent the reason we have sustained our Democratic Republic for all those years is because of the Free Press.
I did not properly edit this I will show you what I meant it's not that difficult but I did screw up.
Donald Trump is not trying to heal those divisions, he is using them to promote his views, and in his anger he declared that the reporters and the Free Press in general is against the country basically accusing the free process of being treasonous. Listen to what he said read it if you have to. He's not stupid but he's crazy. But he's making The Freepress and Enemy of the State. That is contrary to the foundations from the founding fathers, you know better than that Paul.
Real life intrudes. Roger the advocate of the Free Press is going to take some food and take his medications and have a good life. And I'm going to have to sit at my computer and type it out instead of talking into the microphone and then trying to edit and edit it's a mess but later adios amigos buenos dias Para rrb
Wow Roger...
You believe that this Post was about Donald Trump?
You need serious help, friend.
I write a post about a NY Times reporter who advocates that somehow history is subjective, that we should remove statues that are somehow offensive, because that's not how history should be remembered...
I provide several paragraphs of observations and opinions...and I do not once even mentioning the President.
Roger tosses out four comments, all lambasting the President, claiming that I am advocating that History be written by Donald Trump, and otherwise telling us (for the 56,923rd time) why he doesn't like Trump...
but doesn't see himself as "obsessed" with the man?
Speaking a histrictal re-write, Hillary is attempting to do that in her book (25% discount on Amazon) "wtf happened".
GOOD OLE ROGER
You told this blog you wanted president Trump to be successful, what a lie.
Slope 2.0
Please remove any/all statues and monuments to explorers and cowboys who decimated the native Indians. In fact please remove all such referring to any white person in America or their descendants since they brought disease that pretty much wiped out all native people.
Also please have all descendants, direct or indirect, surrender all property they may have acquired, in any form since those are not really theirs. For that matter since America has been built on this please have all non-native Americans deported to Mars, future colonies of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos who are enjoying enormous tax benefits currently, and who should be granted homestead rights there...
I think all future statues should just be of Adam. In an appropriate color and changeable gender of course.
No indeed, it doesn't just pertain to historical events.
Science books are also being rewritten (or at least there is an attempt to do that) and make them fit in with right wing ideology.
The strange story of that ‘Blacks for Trump’ guy standing behind POTUS at his Phoenix rally
At a number of political rallies over the last two years, a character calling himself “Michael the Black Man” has appeared in the crowd directly behind Donald Trump, impossible to miss and possibly planted.
He holds signs that scream “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” and wears a T-shirt proclaiming with equal conviction that “TRUMP & Republicans Are Not Racist.”
Almost always, he plugs his wild website, Gods2.com, across his chest.
And so it was Tuesday night, before a crowd of Trump supporters in Phoenix who had come to watch another show. There was the president, whipping up the wildly cheering crowd, and then there was Michael the Black Man, chanting just beyond Trump’s right shoulder in that trademark T-shirt.
The presence of Michael the Black Man — variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel — has inspired not only trending Twitter hashtags but a great deal of curiosity and Google searches. Internet sleuths find the man’s bizarre URL, a easily-accessible gateway to his strange and checkered past.
The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama “The Beast” and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah, he says, is the devil.
Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders.
But Michael the Black Man loves President Trump. And President Trump’s campaign apparently loves him right back.
[This WaPo story continues...]
I do not even mentioning the president.(?)
President Trump’s Thursday morning tweet lamenting that the removal of Confederate statues tears apart “the history and culture of our great country” raises numerous questions, among them: Who is encompassed in that “our”?
Mr. Trump may not know it, but he has entered a debate that goes back to the founding of the republic. Should American nationality be based on shared values, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin, or should it rest on “blood and soil,” to quote the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., whom Trump has at least partly embraced.
I have an idea... let's let history be history. If it happened, then it's history.
Oh really. Of course by quoting the story by the New York fake News Post the president's name is mentioned twice so guess what you did mention the president and you were defending him again and again and again. You never find a fault in what he says you dodged that every damn post you make your now every time. You were obsessed about Obama. And you accuse me of being obsessed for protecting him. You are obsessed with defending Donald J Trump against the Free Press which of the foundation of our freedoms liberty and justice for all under the law. Give me a break grow up
You are intellectually weak Roger. There is a diffrence in being in an incidental quote and being central to the argument.
Whether history should either be rewritten or erase according to the current fashion.
CH's position is no, and I tend to agree.
BTW this is not new. The Egyptians tried it, so did the Romans.
It didn't work then or now and those civilizations eventually fell.
Jane the dummy
The Talib an and Isis and now the Obama radicalized Democrats are tearing down statues that they find Offensive.
So the trifecta Taliban, ISIS and The Democrat party tear them down.
Science books are also being rewritten (or at least there is an attempt to do that) and make them fit in with right wing ideology.
We look forward to your examples of this but we won't hold our breath.
I expect if there is any editing, it is of statements based in left-wing ideology with no scientific basis whatsoever.
Science books are also being rewritten (or at least there is an attempt to do that) and make them fit in with right wing ideology.
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newsflash, pederast...
going from two genders to 67 is not a right wing ideology.
Roger tosses out four comments, all lambasting the President, claiming that I am advocating that History be written by Donald Trump, and otherwise telling us (for the 56,923rd time) why he doesn't like Trump...
but doesn't see himself as "obsessed" with the man?
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and when the mentally ill alky isn't obsessing about trump he's obsessing about me.
there's more than TDS at work here. much more. and to think a perfectly good donor liver was spent on such a fucking lunatic asshole.
the donor's family needs to get a restraining order against him like yesterday.
James do you still need me to tell what and who you are?
I will if you need me to, you have in the past asked me to define you,sad.
Roger -
You realize that was a quote from the NY Times Reporter...
Who is also so equally obsessed with the President that somehow his existence on the planet justifies the removal of statues and the rewriting of history.
My comments had nothing to do with him...
So I am curious...
Question one:
How did the left as a people "suddenly" becomes so much more enlightened than anyone else who every lived in this country before them?
- Nobody believed that historical monuments needed to be politically correct or taken down five years ago?
- Nobody believed that historical monuments needed to be politically correct or taken down ten years ago?
- Nobody believed that historical monuments needed to be politically correct or taken down twenty years ago?
Question two:
How do we know if anyone five, ten, or twenty years from now will still believe that all historical monuments need to be politically correct or be taken down?
Question three:
Why is it that these same people believe that their opinions should rule the day, when they are outnumbered by over a two to one margin... by Americans who feel these historical monuments should remain (in spite of being seen by the enlightened as politically incorrect)?
What James "means"...
is that actual science (that has always existed) - like the biological fact that our species has two distinct genders...
is not just "going away" because it conflicts with liberal ideology as James believes it should.
You are obsessed with defending Donald J Trump against the Free Press which of the foundation of our freedoms liberty and justice for all under the law.
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rog,
i don't know about you, but i don't derive my freedoms and liberties from the press.
my freedoms and liberties are derived from the bill of rights and the constitution...
...neither of which gives the press a license to lie their fucking asses off as they are often wont to do.
and as far as trump is concerned - he won fair and square. you want him gone? fine. muster up a high crime or misdemeanor. at least one, which is one more than you have today...
...then impeach and convict his ass.
until you can satisfy those most basic requirements, why don't you just shut the fuck up about trump?.
but remember, it's donald trump who's crazy:
Former undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson is looking to crowdfund enough money to buy Twitter so President Donald Trump can't use it.
Wilson launched the fundraiser last week, tweeting, "If @Twitter executives won't shut down Trump's violence and hate, then it's up to us. #BuyTwitter #BanTrump." The GoFundMe page for the fundraiser says Trump's tweets "damage the country and put people in harm's way."
As of Wednesday morning, she had raised less than $6,000 of the billion-dollar goal.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/valerie-plame-wilson-buy-twitter-kick-trump-off-49375384
People vote with their dollars. She is a "Victim" of believing the liberal media. HB, when do you post your list of policies that your team is going to run on " Better Deal" is that really all you got?
No. Turkey is now rewriting science books in an attempt to kowtow to Islamic fundamentalism by doing away with the fact of evolution.
Fact, not theory. It happened. The fossil record is clear. Even the Popes admit that.
And HOW it happened becomes less theoretical with every scientific advance.
Sure jane
Turkey??
You're a fucking idiot
The right-wing nuts on the Texas Board of Education was out of control around 2009. Well, actually it's been going on for a long time there but it got even crazier when Rick Perry became the Governor.
In 1996 the wing-nut censors tried to get social studies textbooks thrown out if they had pictures of minorities and discussed slavery, and demanded that geology be replaced by biblical estimations for the age of the earth. Fortunately in that period, the Texas legislature by law limited the school board's powers to reject textbooks on ideological grounds. You can imagine the level of idiocy it would take to prompt conservative lawmakers to pass a law to reign in the State School board!
In '01 they were able to ban an environmental science book because it was "anti-free enterprise" in their warped world-view, and the eliminated all references to civilizations older than any mentioned in the Bible.
By 2006, a new appointee to the board declared public schools to be "a tool for perversion" for liberals, and from that high note it went downhill with Perry's appointment of Don McLeroy to chairman. Creationism was then required in the science textbooks, as well as language attempting to discredit evolution. And the Big Bang theory of course.
Social studies was even worse. They had to eliminate Thomas Jefferson because the separation of church and state failed their ideological standard. In that vein also, Paine, Franklin and subsequent leaders with less right-wing-religious political ideas were relegated to the fringe or also eliminated.
Newton of course didn't need to be studied, since while a Christian he wasn't the right brand of Christian.
Governor Rick Perry was proud of all this! "a national example of how to best prepare our children for higher education and the workplace" he crowed.
Given this history of bat-shit crazy ideologues hacking the textbooks, can anyone reasonably doubt these people want to edit scientific and historical fact out of textbooks?
Given this history of bat-shit crazy ideologues hacking the textbooks, can anyone reasonably doubt these people want to edit scientific and historical fact out of textbooks?
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come up to NY and you'll see the exact opposite of what you describe. social studies books devote three to four pages to jimmy carter, while ronald reagan gets barely a half page.
and i fully expect to see science books up here with several dozen genders listed, and english books with a list of pronouns that looks like it was written by mork from the planet ork.
spare me your indignation, wp. there are whack jobs on both sides of the aisle who pull this shit.
The anger of losing has taken a toll on WP and his ilk. Look at the antifa/ blm/occupy/fake news.
You "fully expect to see"? Somehow that fails to impress, against several decades of history.
Face it, James is right on this one.
Confirming what WP posted....Texas text books are a joke....just like rathole''
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/12/proposed-texas-textbooks-are-inaccurate-biased-and-politicized-new-report-finds/?utm_term=.f8218c585b48
wphamilton said...
You "fully expect to see"? Somehow that fails to impress, against several decades of history.
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well wp, there are places in the northeast where one can be arrested and fined for using the incorrect pronoun to address someone.
so if it's codified in law, why would it not be taught in the classroom? in fact, it already is -
ROCKLIN (CBS13) — The Rocklin Academy school board is facing tough questions from parents concerned over a controversial incident involving transgender discussions inside a kindergarten class.
"These parents feel betrayed by the school district that they were not notified," said Karen England with the Capitol Resource Institute.
The incident happened earlier this summer during the last few days of the academic school year.
At Monday night's board meeting, the teacher at the center of the controversy spoke out. With emotions high, she addressed a packed house.
"I'm so proud of my students, it was never my intent to harm any students but to help them through a difficult situation," she said.
The teacher defended her actions to read two children's books about transgenderism including one titled "I am Jazz." She says the books were given to her by a transgender child going through a transition.
"The kindergartners came home very confused, about whether or not you can pick your gender, whether or not they really were a boy or a girl," said England.
Parents say besides the books, the transgender student at some point during class also changed clothes and was revealed as her true gender.
And many parents say they feel betrayed and blindsided.
"I want her to hear from me as a parent what her gender identity means to her and our family, not from a book that may be controversial," a parent said.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/08/22/rocklin-parents-grill-school-board-over-transgender-discussions-in-kindergarten/
you have to hand it to the left. when they go on a mission to brainwash a child, they start right at the level when the kid is most vulnerable and impressionable.
Confirming what WP posted....Texas text books are a joke...
Confirm what? The link doesn't work.
RRB, your lawmakers exhibit neurotic pathology.
"23. The term “gender” shall include actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, selfimage, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth. "
Some of my past acquaintances, should they visit your city, will likely claim a "gender" under this statute that requires abject worship, because their self-image demands it, and you shall have to address them as "Lord my God" or "Messiah". If you refuse, you could be charged with harassment. Count yourself lucky if you don't have to kneel.
If I ever visit NY, I'll spend some time coming up with something even more creative.
My son, who is going into the 9th grade... and his friends mock the very concept. They have determined that being a something like a "poptart" is actually a gender, and they find the whole thing quite amusing.
by amusing, I mean they mock the very concept of choosing gender.
While some of you are too close to see it... the simple ridiculousness of many of these arguments is helping foster a new generation of young adults who at this point, find the 2017 liberals to be generally people to "make fun of".
by amusing, I mean they mock the very concept of choosing gender.
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and if they continue you can expect to have a very uncomfortable run in with school administration.
Hmmm, I guess when you attend meet the teacher and curriculum night, you'd better ask each teacher what his/her/etc's gender is right at the start. Also find out what gender the Principal prefers. You wouldn't want to offend them (can we still say "them"?) by using the wrong pronoun.
What happens when you use Spanish and all the words have genders? Are those offensive to people with gender dysphoria? Do you change them up depending on the non-traditional "gender identity, self-image" of the person you're talking to?
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