How Can a Country Learn from Its Erased Past?

I am reading a book about George Washington (Washington’s End) that is highly relevant today. Near the end of his first term, George decided he did not want to run for re-election. U.S. anarchists, inspired by the French revolution’s “reign of terror,” led Washington to conclude that Americans were unworthy of the government he and the other founders had created for them. Washington just wanted to get away from the rabble rousers and retire to his farm to enjoy his wealth. Then, as now, we were a country bitterly divided. Then, as now, large numbers of citizens wanted to cancel the culture of the American revolution. Jefferson convinced George that nobody else could hold our country together.

Today, Black Lives Matter and Antifa anarchists pose a similar test of citizen worthiness. Will we have the courage to stand up to those who threaten to “burn it all down” if we don’t give them what they want? Are we going to vote to sustain a government that gives us opportunity to care for ourselves or to exchange our freedom for a government that we hope will be our nanny?

Today’s voters are being tested for their worthiness. Their response seems to prefer a new “progressive” government to be our nanny. Our new government is spending money we don’t have to make life easier and better for everyone. The goal even includes providing public services to everyone outside our country if they will just come through our open borders. With that all that largess comes control, expressed in terms of cancel culture and political correctness.

Donald Trump, like Washington, could have just retired and enjoyed his wealth. But, like Washington, he sought an onerous second term in the hope he could save the country from destruction from within. Unlike Washington, Trump was rejected by the public. He faces great opposition from globalists who think it is wrong to put America first, that America is in fact a flawed and evil country.

We are supposed to learn from history, and this present generation has concluded that this history only shows all that was wrong with this country. By erasing this history, we eliminate the chance to appreciate how we have corrected so many of our past flaws. Canceled history prevents future generations from making the same mistakes. Canceled history prevents us from knowing what was good and right about our founding. We are told to begin anew. Will this fresh start prevent us from making new mistakes?

School systems throughout the U.S. have been negligent in teaching U.S. government philosophy and history. Students are being taught utopian Marxist ideas. Students are not being taught about the good things this country has done. I remember asking my grandson what he learned about WWII in his public high school. He said they only spent one class period on that. Most of the U.S. history instruction dealt with U.S. barbarism in the Vietnam war.

Decades ago, schools used to have civics courses that taught the philosophy and values of our founding and the God-given rights specified in the U.S. Constitution. Now, we have enemies of the Constitution. Freedom of speech is most obviously under attack. If you say things that are not politically correct, you may well be shunned and canceled. Book and magazine publishers are selectively rejecting manuscripts that express unpopular ideas. Conformism is the new standard not only for speech but general behavior as well. We are being herded like sheep into behaving the way our betters require. Communist China is becoming our new model for personal behavior.

The New York Times is sponsoring a new U.S. history curriculum called the 1619 project that asserts that the U.S. was founded as a systemically racist country. The evidence presented is that in 1619, a ship appeared near point comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia that carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, the Times says it is finally time to tell our story truthfully. Of course, the Times does not mention that this is not the whole truth of our history. The new curriculum aims to erase the whole truth of our history.

I just had a book published on truthfulness (Realville. How to Get Real in an Unreal World). We surely do live in an unreal world, dominated by lies, cheating, denial, delusion, deception, withholding, and pretense. All these forms of untruthfulness are being expressed by political activists who promote the agenda that all our history was bad and therefore needs to be erased. Worse yet, the cancellation has the hidden agenda of advancing control over us. It seems to be working as the activists intend.

 

Learning Stuff While Missing the Point

As a college professor for many decades, I am always amazed at how so many students pass exams while having so little understanding. If I taught math, it would probably be different, because the task in math is to solve problems, which you can't do if you don't understand how to construct and solve appropriate equations. But for most other subjects, it is amazing how much students can learn with so little understanding.

This problem also exists in the real world outside of academia. I have recently become engaged as a volunteer tutor in our community's citizenship preparation class for immigrants. This past week the topic was George Washington, and the two instructors spent a lot of time teaching trivial things, such as when he was born, where he was born, what he was (general, president), the name of his home. Nothing was presented about his philosophy about freedom and government. I had to remind the teachers and the class that after he had done such a good job in his two terms as President, many citizens pressed him to become king. He, of course, refused. I don't know what he said to the petitioners, but I can guess he thought to himself, "We just spent years fighting where many of our fellows died to create a new country based on freedom. You turkeys missed the whole point. You didn't learn a damn thing."

During that same class period, the instructors taught about our holidays, that is, what and when they were, but not why they were. For example, we talked about the President's day holiday. During the tutoring session, I asked the immigrants at my table why we celebrate all the Presidents, even though most of them had conspicuous human weaknesses, and many of whom had views and policies that the immigrants would not have supported or voted for. Blank stares encircled our table. I had to remind everybody that we honor Presidents we don't like because more than half the country did like them. If you understand anything about freedom, you have to respect every President, because otherwise you disrespect over half the country and worse yet, the principle of democratic government. Otherwise, you are leading the country down the jungle path of becoming a banana republic (which of course is what these Hispanic immigrants are used to).

There are real-world lessons today in the world of Trump. When you popularize the idea of his assassination and shout in rage "He is not my President," you are shouting at your fellow citizens who insist that he is their President and should be yours too. Dishonoring the man dishonors the office and the fundamental philosophy of our governing principles. This is vastly more important than knowing what was being taught about the holiday.

The right lessons about our government are apparently not being taught to citizens in our k-12 schools. Numerous polls uniformly have revealed that the typical high school graduate knows very little about U.S. history. School history textbooks are roundly criticized for inaccuracy, bias, and omissions. What little is learned is about the flaws in our past, such as treatment of Indians, slavery, and the Vietnam War. I have verified this in conversations with my grandchildren. The young people I talk to know nothing about the Federalist Papers. They have little appreciation for how creative the ideas in the Constitution were at the time and how they have had at least some impact everywhere in the world. They know very little about what our "greatest generation" did in World War II to save the world from despotism.

The larger point, of the need to understand the factoids you are learning, applies in all aspects in life: school, workplace training, and relationships with people of different backgrounds. In everything we learn we should get in the habit of asking ourselves certain questions:

·         Do I understand what this means?

·         How much can I learn from it, not just of it?

·         What are the limitations of this information? Where is it wrong or incomplete?

·         What are the implications of this information?

·         To what good purpose can I put this information?

Understanding is much more demanding and valuable than just knowing. I might add as the "Memory Medic" that this perspective on learning makes it easier to remember what you learn. The best way to remember factoids is the thinking required to understand them.

"Memory Medic" has four books 

on improving learning and memory:

For parents and teachers: The Learning Skills Cycle.

For students: Better Grades, Less Effort

For everyone's routine living: Memory Power 101

For seniors: Improve Your Memory for a Healthy Brain. Memory Is the Canary in Your Brain's Coal Mine

For details and reviews, see Memory Medic's web site: WRKlemm.com