Posted on 10/18/2019 7:09:14 AM PDT by Heartlander
Another Columbus Day is behind us. Again it is obvious that Columbus, a former hero, has been vilified. It’s primarily because of terrible things that came after he opened up the new world to the old.
Our culture has turned Columbus the hero into Columbus the villain. It’s one of many examples of the ongoing “war on history” of our times.
Columbus Day is no longer celebrated in the “District of Columbia” (named after him), noted Jarrett Stepman. Stepman writes for The Daily Signal (Heritage Foundation). He’s just written a book, entitled, The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past (Regnery, 2019).
The book includes this quote from Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Columbus Day speech: “Christopher Columbus … is justly admired as a brilliant navigator, a fearless man of action, a visionary who opened the eyes of an older world to an entirely new one.” It would be hard to imagine hearing a politician today pay such a tribute.
Stepman writes, “Columbus was the unwitting conduit for the creation of a future American Republic, and for that, he deserves our respect and veneration.”
I had the privilege of doing a TV interview with Stepman not long ago. We talked about the “war on history” and the “cancel culture.”
The “cancel culture” views yesterday’s heroes by today’s criteria, then writes them off as unredeemable villains.
Virtually no hero of yesterday is worthy by today’s standards. And, of course, today’s heroes will likewise be canceled one day. The revolution always consumes its own.
Stepman has been writing on this theme of modern iconoclasm toward our heroes for a while. A few years ago, he wrote about how radicals wanted to tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln … the slaveholder. What?!?
A group of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demanded that the on-campus statue of Lincoln be torn down. The reason? Supposedly he owned slaves. The protester-in-chief, a native American, was quoted as saying: “Everyone thinks of Lincoln as the great, you know, freer of slaves, but let’s be real: He owned slaves, and as natives, we want people to know that he ordered the execution of native men. … Just to have him here at the top of Bascom is just really belittling.”
Lincoln, of course, owned no slaves; his presidency freed the slaves. As for the claim of “execution of native men,” yes, Lincoln did order the death of 38 Dakota leaders. But it was only after they’d committed criminal atrocities, massacring 490 settlers, including women and children.
I see this attack on Lincoln as part of the “cancel culture.” So I asked Jarrett, “What’s the purpose of the cancel culture?”
He replied, “In an era in which ‘my truth,’ is prioritized over ‘the truth,’ cancel culture is used to silence those who disagree. It is based on a movement with much fervor and no forgiveness, intolerance in the name of tolerance.”
I then asked him, “If we continue down this road of ‘cancel culture,’ where will it all end?”
“History matters because it puts our lives and times in context, it teaches us how other human beings dealt with the flawed and imperfect world they lived in.”
Stepman answered, “It doesn’t end if we don’t reverse course. Cancel culture is meant to silence anyone who disagrees, who is on the ‘wrong side of history,’ as they perpetually redefine that. That mentality, if it becomes the norm, can’t exist side by side with a culture that supports free speech.”
I also asked him, “Why does history matter?” He said, “History matters because it puts our lives and times in context. It teaches us how other human beings dealt with the flawed and imperfect world they lived in. It teaches us about human nature. If we erase our history we will soon have no past and no future.”
I also spoke recently with Dennis Prager on this same theme of why history matters. He told me,
The American past is [being] erased, except for the isolated awful moments. Kids today are learning how bad America was, but they’re not learning that every country had slavery, every country killed indigenous people, because everybody who made a country often killed the people who were living there. I’m not excusing it, I’m just noting a fact. Where America differed is in its goodness. Badness is universal, goodness is relatively unique.
Stepman concludes in his book on the war against history, “If our country cherishes its past as it looks to its future, it will produce more Americans who deserve to be celebrated as greats. … But if our country foolishly commits to erasing its history, it will have no future worthy of its past.”
I think Christopher Columbus would agree.
Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is an on-air host/senior producer for D. James Kennedy Ministries. He has written or co-written 31 books, such as The Unstoppable Jesus Christ, American Amnesia: Is American Paying the Price for Forgetting God?, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy) and the bestseller, George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Peter Lillback). Learn more at www.jerrynewcombe.com and follow him on Twitter @newcombejerry.
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Finally noticing now that it’s not a Southerner huh?
I will always remember that it was Nikki Haley, daughter of Indian nationals and born an Indian national herself with no respect for our history, that started this spasm of history erasing.
Don’t let the left wing’s hatred of America change our history.
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” George Orwell, 1984
“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished?”
1984 by George Orwell
Home Literature 1984 Characters Winston Smith
“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution.
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, and every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day-by-day and minute-by-minute. History has stopped.
Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.
Just in that one instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual concrete evidence after the event – years after it.” (2.5.14, Winston to Julia)
https://www.shmoop.com/1984/winston-smith-quotes-2.html
Political correctness = fraud
Reminds me so much of the USSR!
This is the exact pattern the communists and Marxists and Islamiwts follow destroy all of history and there is only today
I am always amused at how the left attack our history without offering a better solution or better ideas. They gripe about “the founders” and yet when pressed about communist leaders and the genocide of their own people, they hem and haw.
I believe that most leftists complain for the sake of complaining and really don’t believe the snake oil that they are selling. Or maybe they have never been pressed by their fellow cohorts. Oh, if you ask questions about their beliefs, they get angry and start calling you Nazi and racist and even get angry and violent. They don’t want to hear the truth.
No one remembers Amerigo Vespucci after whom America was named.
Political correctness is caused by people who hate everything and love to whine about it,basement dwellers.
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