Summary: Progressives have been attacking U.S. history for over 120 years.
Posted on 04/08/2024 8:14:25 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
There are a lot of people out there who think I have a lost my marbles for coming to the conclusion that a large percentage of books written prior to the 1900s are the only books you can trust when it comes to American History. What people fail to understand, is that the 1619 Project is actually not new. Sure, it's relatively "new" to use racial issues as the focal point, but manipulating U.S. history to advance progressivism goes back to the Progressive Era itself.
In his book "American inquisitors; a commentary on Dayton and Chicago", Walter Lippmann wrote the following: (page 67)
In 1917 the United States for the first time in its history became the associate of Great Britain in a great war. A part of the American people objected openly to this association. A still larger part, while they did their duty loyally, nevertheless detested the war, and believed in their hearts that the United States had been inveigled into it by the cleverness of British diplomats. The patriotic tradition which they had learned from their school textbooks disposed them to suspect all political contact with Great Britain.To offset this latent distrust of our associate in the war, a great corps of historians was mobilized, partly under government auspices, who proceeded then and there to revise the whole American historical tradition by obliterating and explaining away the memories of the Revolutionary War. This willingness on the part of well known historians to manufacture a new patriotic tradition to suit the political necessities of 1917 was resented. The prestige of scholarship was injured. It was made plain that history is something that can be cut and shaped to suit the purposes of the moment.
Nevertheless, in the wake of these propagandist historians there came a school of critical and honest historians. Once the authority of the patriotic legends had been dissolved, the opportunity of the critical historians presented itself. American school history, particularly in its bearing upon Anglo-American relations, began to be rewritten, first by those who wished to create a new, a pro-British legend, and then by those who wished to do away with all legends and to tell the truth which objective research had found.
After the war was over, after the peace treaty had been rejected, after the country had violently reverted to normalcy, the popular reaction against the revision of the patriotic legends got under way. No distinction was made, of course, between the revision carried out as propaganda in the interest of the Allies, and the revision carried out by scholars in the interest of the truth.
When I say that 100% of the people reading this were exposed to progressive propaganda while they were in schools, I'm not kidding. Unless you happen to be old enough that you were school age in the 1800s, which is at this point statistically impossible, these issues all go way back prior to the 1960s even. What you read when you were in school was 40% or 70% of the way toward the 1619 Project. It may not have all been a lie, but it was a lot of lies or even mostly lies. I can't tell you how many people I've met who think that "I went to school in the 1950s, I was taught the truth." No. You didn't. What was in the schools in the 1950s was a lie too.
It's important to understand, Walter Lippmann was a progressive. So when he writes "the revision carried out by scholars in the interest of the truth", he means "the revision carried out by scholars in the interest of the progressive truth." This quoted section refers to 3, that's three groups of historians. The original knowledge of the Founders, which he sneers his nose at as promoting "patriotic legends", then there's the government backed propagandists, then there's the new progressive truth tellers. That's three groups of historians. This is crucial to understand. When the progressives who wanted World War I used history to "make progress" were finished, they didn't just flip the switch and go back. No no, they continued to "make progress" and they said "here is the new truth". We progressives already "obliterated and explained away the memories of the Revolutionary War", so over the long term let's not give up our position. We now own this. Let's now tell our own truth. Back then it was only a distortion with subtle attacks, moreso than today's overt attacks, but that doesn't matter. The degree of attack is still an attack on our Founders knowing who progressives are and what they represent.
That's why we are where we are today. The Founding Fathers stink and the Founding Fathers are bad people and the Founding Fathers suck - because of over a century's worth of mud thrown at them by progressives who knew that even back in the 1920s, if there was ever going to be a truly "progressive" United States, those Founding Fathers must, MUST be abolished.
And here we are. The progressives have more patience to achieve their purpose than you or I could ever understand.
May I interest you in an audio book? I'll never charge you for it. I gladly hit these progressives for free.
Summary: Progressives have been attacking U.S. history for over 120 years.
It’s start when you decide to go really full retarded and start going to “lectures” by drunken or high “perfesers” at “college” instead of just hangin’ out at Panama City drinking beer.
This right here is what makes that book from Frothingham that you did so important, and I cannot thank you enough for doing it.
https://librivox.org/life-and-times-of-joseph-warren-by-richard-frothingham-jr/
Frothingham’s important work was written before the progressives took over history and made it their own. Just comparing the work of Frothingham to a progressive historian from the 1930s ought to be apparent, much less one of today’s race baiters.
It’s ‘not all the same’ - it’s worse now than it’s ever been.
I did want to make a side comment.
You can see in the pages that come after what I quoted, there was indeed a huge pushback from many against the new and more overtly progressive history. The second, more subtle progressive history written by the “truth tellers”, that one never went away.
You can see even here, progressives use science to cloak themselves and their true intent, and the blinding success they have with this because people never stop to think that the guy with the lab coat is arguing his cause through “objectivity” in extremely bad faith.
I have not the words to tell you how important our fight is in restoring the true American history which was lost 120+ years go.
I see mention of an audiobook but no link? I drive a lot, please let me know of there is one.
Item #30 details the thread topic: Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Americans showed themselves to be good little nazis with how quickly they embraced every .. single .. item.
Progressive patience is not hard to understand. For a century they got all the benefits of living in the freest, most prosperous country ever while taking their time undermining it. Way better than living in the Soviet Union at the time.
Woodrow Wilson.
How do we battle an education system that not only teaches Howard Zinn’s 1980 attack on America, but has teachers that actually believe it?
You barely beat me to mentioning Howard Zinn.
“Progressive” is the nice thing they like to call themselves to pretend they’re anything but death worshippers. They never look for the positive when it comes to their own country or culture. Always the negative, until freedom sounds worse than slavery (which they are supposedly against even though they don’t breathe a word of complaint about all the slavery present in the world today. It’s only American slavery 150 or more years ago they complain about as if it’s happening today).
Those who attack America can never answer this question - what county is superior to America in any way? What country has achieved more or sinned less?
bkmk
Large scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th Century provided a new crop of students uneducated in the traditions of America’s founding - and many of their parents were Marxists. A target rich environment.
The writer is wrong - the abolitionists in the antebellum period were the first - constantly and vociferously berating the founding and founders.
For revisionist American history of the Progressive stripe, see Charles and Mary Beard.
Bookmark.
I’d love a copy. Email me at Larry@wildworldofhistory.com
ADD to the ping list please
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