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Showing posts with label historical revisionism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical revisionism. Show all posts
In a new episode of "Real Time," set to air this Friday, Bill Maher says:
Don't censor Huckleberry Finn...hearing there are bad words in it is the only reason teenagers do read it.
The right wants 'political correctness, don't they. In Texas, they wanted Thomas Jefferson out of the text books because his legacy doesn't support the Christian nation myth. In Tennessee, the Tea Party wants to pull references about slavery from the colonial period so the reputations of The Founders aren't besmirched.
Now the right wants to censor Mark Twain. Watch for more book burnings. One right wing minister already wanted to burn the Koran.
Leave the text books to the scholars. We don't need historical revisionism in our classrooms.
The right wing has claimed for years they represent what the the Founders really wanted. Then came the Texas Board of Education who removed founders like Jefferson and Franklin form the text books who didn't fit conservative preconceptions.
Conservative Historical revisionism will never work because historians understand the importance of 'present mindedness.' Republican often attempt to judge the past with modern political concepts.
The earliest reference to socialism was in 1834 by Pierre Leroux. Marx and Engels didn't write 'The Communist Manifesto" until 1848. Fascist ideas started during World War 1 with the syndicalism of Georges Sorel and Mussolini was the first to advocate a corporate oligarchy in the 1920s.
Historians would say that any attempt to judge the past with modern political concepts is present minded. You really have to understand the thought process of the people who lived in that era by researching historical documents.
Here's Pat Robertson's account of how the diabolical deal went down, on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club":
Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, you know, Napoleon III and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' True story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal,' and … the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.
One detail we need to clear up right away. Haiti's bargain with the devil was supposedly struck in 1791. Napoleon III wasn't elected ruler of France until 1848, and Napoleon I didn't become France's leader until 1799. The Haitians were were ruled by the Constituent Assembly in 1791.
Robertson's "pact with the Devil" in Haiti refers to the ceremony of Bois Caïman, which took place in August, 1791. This event launched the Haitian revolution that brought independence and freed the slaves in that country. The higher power holding the franchise in the U.S. let slavery persist for another seventy years.
A houngan (Voodou or voodoo priest) named Dutty Boukman held a meeting of black slaves and runaways at Bois Caïman in the mountains of the north to prepare to rise up against their oppressors.
With the aid of an African-born priestess, they conducted a religious ceremony in which the group swore on the blood of a sacrificial pig, invoking the spirits of the forest and their ancestors, that they would live free or die.
According to tradition, this was the catalyst for the Haitian revolution. Though Boukman was captured and beheaded, the revolt continued.
After much strife Haiti became an independent republic in 1804. the Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave uprising in the new world and it shook the foundations of the slave states in the US. the US, in fact, launched an economic boycott of Haiti that did not stop until the end of the US Civil War.
Although the Bois Caïman ceremony is well known in Haiti, separating fact from legend is difficult. The first historical account wasn't published until 1814. Some historians claim the ceremony didn't happen at all, while others contend there were two meetings in August 1791, with the voodoo ritual occurring at one while the revolt was planned at the other.
Legend has it that Boukman offered a prayer at Bois Caïman in which he drew a distinction between the wicked god of the whites and the benevolent god of the blacks. Whether the prayer was actually uttered is debatable; nonetheless, it can be taken as a fair indication of the rebels' sentiments, namely, that they were aligning themselves with the forces of good.
Check out the video for the latest attempt of conservative historical revisionism.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 began under a Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, and after votes by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson.
LBJ predicted
that pushing civil rights legislation would result in the loss to the
Dems of its Southern Bloc for a generation. Disenfranchised from their
cherished racism, defecting Southern Dems subsequently formed the basis
of the “Reagan Democrats” that brought the Republicans to power in 1981.
LBJ was willing to sacrifice his own party’s political fortunes for
the greater good of the nation.
Rightardia has referred misinformed conservative historical revisionists to Wikipedia for a long time. In fact, the GOP is so alarmed by the truth, it created Conservapedia to counter Wikipedia. The latter is primarily written by scholars and subject matter experts who take an impartial view.
Some of the biggest conservative lies are:
1. The US was founded as a Christian nation. The Treaty of Tripoli makes it clear the US is secular.
2. The Civil War was fought over State's Rights. In fact, the CSA Constitution had the same federal supremacy clause as the US Constitution. The Civil War was fought over the expansion of slavery into new US territories.
3. The Great Depression was caused by Democrats. Three GOP presidents were in office prior to the Great Depression that started during the Herbert Hoover administration.
4. The Nazis were socialistic. Actually the Nazis were allied with the Italian fascists and Hitler got his start in politics by spying on liberals and socialists. There was a socialist wing in the Nazi party, but Hitler had the SA liquidated in the Night of the Long Knives and its leader, Ernst Röhm, assassinated.
5. Iraq had Weapons of Mass destruction, was importing yellow Cake uranium from the Niger for atomic weapons and was sponsoring al Qaeda. The right persisted with these myths during most the Bush administration.
Why does the right wing want to revise history? Well, history hasn't treated the GOP particularly well because they have been on the wrong side of most issues such as woman's suffrage, The Great Depression, World War 2, Social Security, Medicare and civil rights. History will not judge them kindly on their opposition to health care reform either.
The right wing has been distorting American history since the United States was founded. Let's take a look at some of the biggest lies.
1.The US was founded as a Christian nation. Most of the people who migrated here believed in God but not necessarily organized region. We call such people as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin 'deists. People who believe in organized religion are called theists.
The US Constitution does not mention God, Jesus or Christianity. The Establishment Clause or the First Amendment establishes barriers between church and state and does not allow a religious test for holding public office. In fact, the Treaty of Tripoli 1996-97 specially states the US is not a Christian nation.
2. The Founders were brilliant men who wanted static laws and courts that were strict constructionist. First of all the Founders were a diverse lot and Alexis de Tocqueville noted some startling differences between the people who settled the North and the South. De Tocqueville even predicted the people in the South might one day undermine the new nation.
Trying to make the founders into a collective noun is a mistake. There were great arguments when the Constitution was being written and sentries were placed around the hall in Philadelphia so no one could ease drop.
The Bill of Rights was an afterthought and two political parties: Jefferson's Democratic Republican party and and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party formed immediately after the nation was founded. If the Founders didn't allow for change, why did they create a House , a Senate and a judiciary? Why did the Founders allow the Constitution to be amended?
3. The Civil War was fought over State's Rights. The Abolitionist's in the North were certainly against slavery, but the real issue was the expansion of slavery into new US territories.
In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America had the same supremacy clause that is in the US Constitution. The Confederate States had some rights to regulate and tax commerce on waterways, but otherwise the Confederate government's laws superseded state laws.
4. The Depression was caused by the Democratic Party. This is a huge lie because three Republicans were president prior to the great Depression: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.
The Great Depression started when Hoover was president. Hoover actually started a lot of the public works programs, but his programs were conducted on too small of a scale. The Republicans also neglected traditional black Republican voters who defected to the Democratic Party after FDR was elected.
5.The Democratic party is fascist. Again, another huge lie. Many Republicans were openly sympathetic to Hitler on the onset of World War 2 and some even continued to do business with the Nazis during the war.
There was even a right wing Nazi movement called the Bund that was active in the US.
In 1934 retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional committee that a group of right wing men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a coup. The US entered World War 2 against Japanese militarists and European fascist nations such as Germany and Italy.
