WE SHOULD KNOW OUR HISTORY
Who’d have thought a day would come in America when George Washington would be nothing more than a caricature in a television commercial.
And that Abraham Lincoln would be his foil.
We used to honor these great men. Now we mock them. And worse, we ignore them.
Our understanding of American history has become so weak and distorted that we fail to comprehend and appreciate our heritage. Names and events sacred to us mean nothing.
And instead of grateful we are indifferent.
It’s hard to see this development as an accident. Instead, it is the result of a steady revision and repudiation of our history. Heroes have become villains, ancestors have become enemies, truth has become falsehood.
Our teachers have become liars.
Not just the teachers in the classrooms, but all the institutions and people of society whose role it would be to repeat and reinforce the stories and goodness of our country and birthright.
Heritage is transmitted from generation to generation in a methodical form. But somehow into American society has crept a hateful and anarchist spirit which seems intent on severing our ties for the past. Specifically our reverence and admiration for the past.
Instead of teaching what was good with America and its origins, we are bombarded with what was bad. Columbus was not an inspired explorer, he was a racist conquerer. Washington was not the father of his country, he was a slave owner. Lincoln was not the preserver of the Constitution and Union, he was a manipulating politician. We did not settle America, we genocided the Indians. We did not create a prosperity unequaled in the world, we oppressed the developing nations. We were not the seedbed of the purest liberties history has known, we were the land of Jim Crow.
It goes on and on.
The history which should inspire and unite us is mocked and belittled – precisely because it would inspire and unite us. There is an effort afoot to attack us by attacking our past, to weaken us by tarnishing the glory of our beginnings.
But we don’t have to take it.
We don’t have to surrender the history of the building of American to those who are intent on tearing America down.
We stood up in patriotic response to the attack of September 11, and we should stand up just the same to this more insidious attack against us and our past. We should reject the so-called historians and intellectuals whose dishonest arrogance so detests the goodness of America.
We can do it by learning the truth, by speaking of it often, and by teaching our children and families of the greatness of this country. Your children should learn American history in your home, to compensate for the bias and inadequacies they may encounter in the classroom and in the curriculum.
History is heritage, and you must never surrender the teaching of heritage, particularly to the government. That is your job. Teach your children – or discover for yourself – the glory of America and the blessing of being an American.
Here are some beginning principles.
First, the discovery of this continent and the founding of this country were directed by God and carried out by heroic and principled men, some of the greatest who have ever lived.
Columbus was a tool in the hand of God in opening up North and South America to civilization and development. George Washington was essential to the establishment of the United States. His service as the general of our Army and as the first president created and defined American liberty.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are inspired by God and the best political documents and philosophies in the history of humankind.
The conquest of the American continent – including the unfortunate displacement of Native Americans – was one of the most useful events ever. A raw expanse of waste was transformed by two or three generations of pioneers into a prosperous and vital nation which has benefited and fed the world as no other before or since.
The history of the United States – from 1776 to the present – is one of non-stop progress. No other nation has been freer or more prosperous. No other nation has done so much to help and inspire the rest of the world. No other nation has had a political or economic system as pure and free.
And no other nation has been home to so many great and good people. Some of them have been famous, but most of them have not. They have been the quiet, hard-working people whose names are in our family Bibles.
The people we should draw inspiration from, the ones we should try to live like.
The ones we must teach our children about.
Including Washington and Lincoln.
They weren’t comical figures to be exploited to sell cars and linens, they were men to whom we owe our freedom and admiration.
They were some of the greatest men ever to live. And today we’re supposed to remember them.
But we don’t.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2004
