Maggie's Farm

History, from a politically neutral standpoint, tells us of our origins, warns us of dangers, and teaches us what has worked in the past. A basic understanding of it, particularly American history, should be required.

But the teaching of history themed upon the downtrodden seeking justice is right out of the opening line of Marx's Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." It itself is a distorting lens, but when applied selectively to only some periods of time and only some areas, it becomes extremely distorting. It is how so many on the left are taught to hate Western and U.S. culture.

For instance, how many on the left condemn the U.S. for allowing slavery at its inception. Slavery in the U.S. is invariably taught in a vacuum. The reality is that slavery was the single most common economic model throughout recorded history. The ancient origin of the word "slavery" is from the word "slav," as in the Slavic peoples who were enslaved in such numbers over a millennium ago that their very name to denote the condition of slavery. Slavery did not begin with blacks out of Africa, it ended with them.

And in the same vein, the U.S. didn't invent slavery. The reality is that the U.S., along with England, ended the scourge of slavery as an accepted practice in the world. And when you get right down to it, the worst slavers in the world were the Africans themselves.

A little over 600,000 Africans were imported to the U.S. as part of the slave trade. These people were originally enslaved by Africans themselves, then sold off. Moreover, during the period of the active slave trade in the U.S., 1.2 million white Europeans - some of whom were from the colonies - were estimated to have been enslaved by North Africans.

I am not trying to argue that slavery was not evil, but that to condemn our nation for it uniquely is to take the whole issue of slavery wildly out of historical context. History becomes a Marxian weapon to be used to reshape evil Western civilization - while wholly ignoring the evils of the left's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings again, and students begin to rebel against being taught propaganda rather than history.

/ rant off - sorry