Posted on 10/10/2009 5:46:51 AM PDT by HorowitzianConservative
Last Wednesday, to great applause and accolades from the politicians and dignitaries in attendance, a bronze statue of Helen Keller was unveiled at the U.S. Capitol. “The story of Helen Keller inspires us all,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added that: “Helen Keller ignited a century marked by progress for people with disabilities.”
Most of us think we know her story:
Born in 1880, Helen Keller lost her eyesight and hearing before the age of two after contracting an illness. Shut off from the world because of her disabilities and unable to communicate even with her parents, she was doomed to lead a lonely, institutionalized existence.
Everything changed, however, when she met Annie Sullivan. Sullivan became her teacher, eventually showing her how to spell words by tapping them into her hand. She became an accomplished author and speaker, and travelled the world inspiring others everywhere she went. She lived to be 87, and Patty Duke played her in a movie.
This is, more or less, the bowdlerized version of her life that we all learned as children in school, and it is a truly remarkable story.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Yes, but was it her, or Anne Sullivan? She had a very limited access to information.
Ironically, she may have been disposed of in the society she thought to be a utopia. Sad she never learned to appreciate her country.
I remember hearing that she was a bitter and hateful woman and this came across in her speeches. FIgures.
Ironic indeed.
That's a very interesting, generally unknown history about her.
She could have been heavily influenced by Anne Sullivan, that’s true.
However, she was by all accounts a very bright woman and had a mind of her own.
That’s my thinking as well. Might be just making excuses for her, but someone like that was probably not as independent as she may have been celebrated for being.
To take the thinking of a person in Helen Keller’s position at all seriously is a mistake. She was a celebrity disabled person and was used by those who found her useful for their own purposes.
She simply could not have the kind of experiences that would have allowed her to understand world, and naturally she automatically identified with the “underdog”.
I had no idea that she helped to found two organizations that are morally bankrupting America. Amazing....
That's the key. She couldn't see the effects of socialism, she could run to a newstand and pickup a variety of magazines and learn other viewpoints. She couldn't overhear conversations on the subway that would show her another way to view the world.
I know she was bright -- but all of the information was spoonfed to her by people with a certain viewpoint. Also, left to her own devices, she could not have survived. I'm sure the notion that "we all need cradle to the grave assistance from others" seemed pretty natural to her. Rugged independence, self-reliance and that pioneer spirit was not part of her experience.
My feeling is that she was a bright woman who was exploited by others.
To me, it’s a great metaphor for the great American electorate being led around by the elites of the MSM. What else explains the self-destructive mindset of your neighbors there in New England?
Good point!
Her physical resemblance to Hillary is remarkable as are her political leanings.
Radcliffe will do that to a girl.
Blind, deaf and socialistic is no way to go through life!
And this article and everything I’ve seen takes off on a tangent unrelated to the reason there is now a statue of her in the Capitol Rotunda.
Helen Keller was born in Alabama, and all the miracles of her childhood breakthroughs to learning in spite of her handicaps took place in Alabama. AFAIK, each state has a statue in the Capitol Rotunda of an outstanding native citizen of their state. For years, the statue that represented Alabama was of some virtual unknown from the past whose name escapes me. It was a decision by the Governor and I suppose the legislature to change the Alabama statue in the Rotunda to Helen Keller.
The decision had nothing to do with politics, but with her remarkable life and breakthroughs she achieved with all the obstacles she had to overcome. Of course, DC politicians are exploiting the even shamelessly for their personal political purposes.
Wonder who represented Alabama at the ceremony?
“Gov. Bob Riley, on a trip to Utah to inspect the progress, personally helped shape Keller’s face, which shows Keller’s breakthrough when she learned to connect the words she was learning with the things around her. In the scene, her teacher spelled the word “water” into Keller’s palm as the cool water fell over it.”
http://blog.al.com/sweethome/2009/10/new_details_about_the_helen_ke.html
•She was a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
•She was a pacifist and a proponent of universal disarmament.
•She was the author of the essay “Why I am a Socialist.”
•She was a member of the Socialist Party and a communist sympathizer, who actively campaigned for Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debbs.
•She was an admirer of Vladimir Lenin.
•She was a personal friend and strong admirer of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country.
•She was strong advocate of birth control and sterilization.
•She was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a group founded in Chicago (where else?) by socialists, anarchists and radical trade unionists whose goal was “to promote worker solidarity in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the employing class.”
•She was a supporter of the eugenics movement, once declaring, in an ironic twist, that: “Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.”
Your post deserves 4 STARS.
You sound like the kind of person I would love to have living next door.
Kind regards,
TL
My guess is that nobody ever did.
She was a real bitch to her teacher, even after she started learning. She had been so pampered by her parents she thought she could do anything and get away with it.
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