Posted on 08/26/2017 2:43:15 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Fake News? That pales in comparison to Fake History. As committed socialist George Orwell once wrote:
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
There is an article in Vox yesterday which explains exactly why there need to be more conservative citizen historians so as to hold "the experts" accountable. Titled "“They have no allegiance to liberal democracy”: an expert on antifa explains the group", faux-historian Mark Bray accurately admits that Antifa terrorists have no interest in Freedom.
They have no allegiance to liberal democracy, which they believe has failed the marginalized communities they’re defending. They’re anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.
Now understand, the phrase "Liberal Democracy", that's not a nod to big government progressives like the Clintons. No, that's aimed squarely at so-called "Classical Liberalism" (The real, only liberalism), That's aimed at the Founding Fathers and any other small government group, effort, individual, or viewpoint. He openly admits that Antifa is communist. That means they want tyranny instead of small government Liberty.
Additionally, Fake Historian Bray also admits to the interviewer his own outlook. "He’s sympathetic to antifa’s cause and makes no effort to hide that."
Mark Bray is making the classic mistake: "This big government group over here is bad, so therefore I must join(or support) the other big government group over there because they are the good guys."
That has never, ever worked. The only time in human history where you see a long-lasting peace, freedom, etc, is with the American Revolution where both sides of the big government equation were rejected, and briefly during the Tea Party movement, which was not centered around one man or big government ideology. Small government was instead fostered. The Constitution was fostered. Republicanism(not the party) was promoted.
There's no question in my mind that Fake Historians and the falsehoods they promote is a bigger problem than Fake News, and this idea that Antifa is somehow the good guys is right up there. If historians told the truth, the Fake News about how great Antifa is couldn't stand. It couldn't possibly work.
Communism and Fascism are inherently evil. It's that simple. A real historian would recognize that.
They could easily put a significant barrier on all of the book burning aka monument crashing that is currently going on.
They could set the record straight about Communism, about a lot of ills in our society.
Instead, they do nothing. At best they do nothing and at worst, they pick sides. Both sides are wrong here and there's no honor in either one. Fascism is evil, communism is evil.
If you're sitting there watching the news and disapproving of what you see, don't blame the journalist. That's not to say that they aren't guilty, but the real problem is most likely a historian.
If you want real solutions to real problems, step one is diagnosing the actual problem. Chasing symptoms of problems just does not work.
Ping.....
I have such a lousy memory, I get facts confused and can't remember key elements of a subject/situation.
Which sort of leads into a theory I have;
When I learned "Old MacDonald", I learned to list each animal AS a list each time ..... Cat ..... cat, dog ..... cat, dog, cow ..... (etc.)
I attended my grand daughter's kindergarten graduation a few years ago and they sang three verses of "old MacDonald" and each verse was a stand alone verse.
I asked the teacher why and she said it was easier for the kids to remember that way.
I thought then as I think now ..... No, you eliminate a memory tool that can be planted only in childhood that will inhibit good memory later in life.
I don't know if that's really true or not, but I'm watching ....
Jump rope songs, engine, engine number nine and other childhood singsongs taught us so much and we didn't know it.
Without the childhood elements of learning that occur outside of school, school is the only place a child will get ANYTHING and if the school teaches nothing or teaches falsehoods, America is doomed.
That's pretty much what I'm saying.
As a trained historian, I loathe modern academic “history”. The 100 year philosophy is what I learned - “if it’s not 100 years old it’s not history”. But everybody had to get on the publishing train and write something, anything, even yesterday’s news as history. And when that train got full everybody had to get on the “Where’s Waldo” train and started writing history about “minority groups” in places where what the minority group did was not exciting in reality so the historians made stuff up.
I love the history of our Great Nation, and it is exceedingly frustrating to live at a time of so much deliberate ignorance.
” citizen historians so as to hold “the experts” accountable.”
One of the things that Bat-Sh*t crazy Glenn Beck was aware of, before he went off the rails.
He was obsessed with accumulating ORIGINAL documents, un-adulterated texts and books. Knowing full well the tyranny of revisionist history.
The article referred to “faux-historian” Mark Bray. I hope that this article will not lead Freepers into lumping historians like myself who have spent their lives as historians and who does my best to make sure that actual and not fake history is taught/spread.
Most recently I had to explain, to inquiring MSM ‘minds,’ that General Pershing did not originate the burying of executed Moro rebels with pig carcasses, because that began with the US Army commander in the Philippines, General Bell, before Pershing took command. I also explained that General Pershing did NOT end the practice.
Also that the many US Army forts named after Confederate generals were done so in the spirit of reconciliation and referred to the service of those generals while they served in the US Army before they resigned their commissions and joined the Confederate Army.
"In republics alone the government is entrusted to private citizens, and to survive, the republic must be loved. Everything therefore depends on establishing this love in a republic; to inspire this love is the principle business of education."
Hat tip to Charles De Montesquieu.
Do you have a specific period of history that you focus on?
Or those former Confederate soldiers’ service after being accepted back into the U.S. Army and fighting in the Spanish American War, as a number did. Maybe not forts, but streets on forts and such.
Ping to a conservative pro in the space.
Mrs. Mad and I recently attended a lecture regarding the history of a specific region of our State. The speaker was a noted local historian that is a retired university professor. He had so many, easily verifiable, facts wrong I couldn’t sit still and had to challenge him in the open, yea I am that way. Long short I have been invited to give a talk in December regarding the history of another part of Nevada.
Most historians I have known were/are fantastic and I enjoy hearing their information. This guy couldn’t have been more wrong.
Yep, there are those. I’m curious, did he have an agenda in the wrong facts or just didn’t do proper research....or went with local tales that he didn’t bother to verify?
I can’t speak to the person in question, but as a historian reading other historians one thing I have noticed with some is that someone will come along, read one or a handful of books and then all of a sudden thinks they’re an expert. And when challenged by a clearly verifiable fact they spit venom instead of changing their opinions.
I’ve had this challenge myself(unknowingly) in my readings of progressive era documents and books, as the era isn’t fully documented. Most conservatives do not want to look at it, and progressives have a vested interest in covering it up and making it smell good. So what documentation does exist, the vast majority of it is wrong.
For example, so and so historical figure actually wrote 8 books, not the 6 he or she has become known for over the years. And those two less known books are really the ones that get to the meat of the matter. Or so and so was involved with some group and every single historian glosses over that fact even though it tells so much of the full story. Those sorts of things.
The issue is more compounded for me personally as I take the time to record audiobooks using the original source material, and put them on the internet for free download, because I want others around me to be more educated.
It slows me down but it needs to be done.
Liberals seem to have no idea there was reconciliation after the Civil War.
I guess they have and still do see the South as a separate country that fought and lost the Civil War. They seem to have not a clue how the people of the Confederate States became part of the United States again after the war.
No knowledge that former Confederate soldiers joined the United States Army after the Civil War and fought beside former Union soldiers.
I read the other day that there is a declining interest in history among young people. Part of that might be because the way history is taught in school. Part of it might be because there is little historical content in almost anything in the popular culture. When I was growing up, we had TV shows and movies about World War 2, the West, Daniel Boone and the frontier, even “The Untouchables.” While none of these were necessarily historical in the strictest sense (some of them took severe liberties) they at least made kids aware that something was going on in the world before they were born. Young people have little of that today, and some of them wouldn’t want it anyway because of their own narcissism.
Faux historians are particularly dangerous in an environment colored by that kind of ignorance.
Thanks for posting this. The Howard Zinn school is practically the norm in many schools and history departments. So sad. Would love for LS’s books to replace them but it’s a tough battle.
All I know is that as the only conservative teacher at an entirely left-wing high school, my students appreciated my lessons for their objectivity and search for truth as opposed to the conclusions delivered by their other teachers. It can be done.
Trained in Early American; currently studying the philosophy of history and researching slavery.
Howard Zinn is really pushed in homeschooling circles. No thank you!
Journalism calls itself “the first draft of history.” The trouble is that journalism is negative (“If it bleeds, it leads”), superficial ("always make your deadline”), and arrogant (“journalists are objective”).Journalists know that they are negative, and yet they claim objectivity. But the inevitable implication is that “negativity is objectivity” - a conceit which is IMHO the very definition of cynicism.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)This implies that skepticism toward society is the only justification for government - and therefore, that cynicism toward society does not correspond to cynicism toward government but to naiveté toward (or faith in) government. “Liberals” and journalists are both cynical toward society and naive toward government.IMHO no one can be a serious historian without taking that into account. Journalism must be evaluated on what it does not say as well as what it does.
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