Posted on 10/25/2005 6:01:50 AM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
I have started to write this article several times, and several times I have backed away, hoping that I did not see what I saw. The persistent reality, however, will not go away: ignorance – gross, patent and profound ignorance – is pandemic in modern society.
The gluttonous ignorance of the Left needs little elaboration. Howard Dean believed that, as president, he would be able to “order” states to adopt “Right to Work” laws – and this, after his only governmental experience was as a state governor! – and Dean referred repeatedly, in a question about the problem of a nuclear Iran to our need to include “the Soviet Union” in the process, oblivious to the fact that the salient geopolitical fact of the last fifty years has been the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Kerry spoke of taking counsel from “Pope Pious XXIII,” a person who has never lived, and making this as a way of showing off his knowledge of history. Before that, he spoke of his service in Vietnam when Richard Nixon was president, although a grade school child could - at least, a few decades ago - have pointed out that Lyndon Johnson, not Richard Nixon, was president during the years of which Kerry spoke.
Sometimes the ignorance of the Left reaches pinnacles which transcend the power of parody. Maxine Waters, for example, spoke several years ago of her desire that Bill Clinton run for a third term, citing the unconstitutionality of the Twenty-Second Amendment, blissfully unaware, apparently, that a constitutional amendment amends the Constitution, and that none of the few amendments after the Twenty-Second Amendment dealt with the term of a president. What, in the world, could the woman be thinking of? How can a sentient human counter such mental infirmity?
The penchant to lie, of course, is part of the problem. As General MacArthur famously quipped once about FDR “He never told the truth when a lie would do just as well.” The tangled web woven by the Left reflects a messiness, an indifference, a sloth which invites nonsense.
If the loss of facts was simply confined to the grim Bedlam of Leftism, then decent men and women could make sure that the inmates were given compassionate care, prayers could be offered to a Blessed Creator for their eventual cure, and the madhouse itself segregated from normal society for the good of all.
Sadly, however, the sewage of sloppy knowledge has leaked out. The History Channel, often the only thing worth watching on television, recently had a series on the evolution of the bomber. In noting an Italian engineer who left Italy for Soviet Russia, the documentary relates history something like this “When Mussolini came to power in 1923, he left for the Soviet Union.” Any student of history, however, knows that the March on Rome and the ascension of the Duce was on October 28, 1922 – it was not in 1923. Now, if this had been a pundit speaking at fast clip in an interview, that does not matter much; but this was a documentary with dates and facts. There was no need to mention when Mussolini formed his government at all, but if it is mentioned in a History Channel documentary, it should be right.
Mistakes like this pop up all the time in History Channel documentaries. Presentations about the First World War will show “Germany” in its current, constricted boundaries of West Germany and East Germany, sans East Prussia, Silesia, the Polish Corridor, Alsace-Lorraine and other pre-1914 territories. Programs dealing with Germany in one world war will have a map of Germany in the other world war.
One documentary, perhaps not on the History Channel but on that family of networks, in describing Admiral Canaris and the Holocaust, actually described the Abwehr as “an anti-Nazi organization.” Any modest student of the Second World War knows that Abwehr was the military intelligence organization of the German military in the Second World War, and that it was often very effective. Canaris and some Abwehr officers did secretly object to Hitler and then began to act on that opposition, but calling Abwehr an “anti-Nazi organization” would be like calling the KGB an “anti-Soviet organization” because some key KGB agents worked secretly for America.
What has happened is that the bias of Leftism to inventing history has contaminated otherwise innocent and serious people. The reason this has happened is because it is so much easier to guess than to study. Ignorance is strength…and all too easy.
Bruce Walker
Everything I know about history I learned on MTV...
In what context was this?
I have a History Channel videotape that claims seafaring began over 800,000 years ago.
Just another reason to homeschool. :)
If by "seafaring" they mean "clinging to a log", they might be right.
-ccm
There were two world wars? Yeah right...
I was always kind of disappointed that everything I have ever seen said the death of Nancy Spungen remains officially unsolved. Only to find the answer on a trivial pursuit card. Apparently Sid did, in fact, kill her and then committed suicide. It was not the accidental overdose that I had heard.
How can you have an article about democrat ignorance without a single mention of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee?
I share your distress. But at the same time, I secretly wonder whether this isn't in fact an economic optimization: Ricardo proved that a division of labor always enhances net prosperity. History bears this out, with increasing specialization. In some sense, then, isn't "dumbing down" about most things a natural result of specialization in a few things? Perhaps the ultimate achievement will be people who know nothing outside their jobs...
A'course, I would agree with your reply to that: even if so, such people will have ceased to be human.
To the left, and their media, history begins when they wake up in the morning, or at noon, which ever they decide.
Which is reflected in elections and polls, the majority public hasn't a clue.
They're wrong. Here's the exact quote:
"And yet the painstaking craftsmanship embodied in traditional methods still survives. It is a heritage that stretches back to the time when seafaring began, over 800000 years ago---when mariners first faced the daunting task of how to cross the often hostile domain of the world's oceans."
I wonder. Aren't specialization and general ignorance two different things? Some specialists keep up on the world in general and a few even know some history. Some ignoramuses don't know specialization, current events or history.
I wonder. Aren't specialization and general ignorance two different things? Some specialists keep up on the world in general and a few even know some history. Some ignoramuses don't know specialization, current events or history.
For God's sake... In 1996 Bob Dole made a reference to the Brooklyn Dodgers. It can happen to anyone.
;^)
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