No One Asked Me But… (March 10, 2021)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The philosopher Edmund Burke once stated: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

We are presently involved in an attempt to not only forget American history but to actually rewrite it.
While there may be some truth in Napoleon’s statement: “History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon,” it is also true that a country’s history is the base for the principles of its future.

This issue has come to play in the liberal Democrats attempt to distant their party from their traditional leading role in American racism. The actions of the Democrat proponents of the “cancel culture” may well be understood when one considered much of this historic racism was championed by their party.

This restructuring of history is one of the issues dealt with in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Big Brother, i.e. government, establishes the idea that history is mutable and that truth is what the governing body deems it to be. One of Big Brothers slogans was “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

Hitler’s sidekick Joseph Goebbels stated it this way: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such a time the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” In Russia, dictator Joseph Stalin championed this principle by re-writing people and events in and out of history and distorting historical facts to suit the Party’s purposes.

In 1949, when Orwell published his novel 1984, he was reflecting on a phenomena he saw developing in his own time. The novel explores the social and political attempt of the government to manipulate facts in order to control the populace. He believed if the leaders of a nation dictate the what, where, when, who, and how of history, lies will find their way into the history books. Those lies will be taught to school children, and those lies eventually become historical fact. Orwell states that people believe that which they can believe most conveniently.

If Orwell was upset that newspaper stories of his day were being manipulated, I am sure he would be horrified at the so call news reporting that permeates today’s 24 hour news cycle. This includes both liberal and conservative media as they rewrite events to fit their own agenda and sell it as news. The “cages for kids” at the border were decried by the liberal left while Republicans were in power. These same liberals now in power are using the same “cages for kids” but they are now “migrant facilities for children.” The point is not that children are being detained at the border. This issue is the slant one finds the liberal or conservative press puts on the issue by using non-specific or ambiguous language to shade or change the actual events to favor their candidates or their leaders’ position or ideology.

Folks, like it or not, at one time in American History this country had a large portion of the land run by a slave culture. Without a doubt there was and still is a great deal of racism in America. However, the attempt by the Democrat leadership to lay this evil at the sole doorstep of the Republican Party is hampered by the facts of history. To accept the present day attempt to paint the Democrat Party as the party of the champion of equal rights for all Americans, one must first erase the fact that the roots of racism in America is found in the soil of the Democrat garden. The slaveholders in America were Democrats. Those who attempted to overthrow the American government to preserved slavery in 1860 were Democrats.

Those states that maintain segregation from 1860 to the 1960’s were Democrat dominated. The governors who stood in doorways of schools to prevent integration were Democrats. The KKK was not established by a Republican, but a Democrat ex-Confederate General Bedford Forrest. Martin Luther King and his followers were attacked and jailed by a Democrat law officials in Selma, Alabama. It was a Democrat President, Lyndon Johnson, who instituted the “Great Society” that lead to the break-up of the black family by denying financial support to any black family that maintain a man in the house.

However, it is also true that President John Kennedy, a Democrat, was a champion of the destruction of segregation throughout the United States. President Harry Truman, a Democrat, integrated the American military.

Those who fought to end slavery were Republicans. In fact, the Republican Party was formed mainly by anti-slavers. This is not to say these men were of any great virtue as they had their own form of slavery by importing Irish, Chinese, and other immigrants and indenturing them. In many “free states,” the sign in business establishments “No Irish Need Apply” appeared quite regularly. Republicans who deployed the slavery of the South practiced wage slavery in the North. One should remember the “de-facto segregation” of the Republican Northerners as they decried the open segregation of the Democrat South.

The point being we need not change history, we need to know history, and by knowing not repeat history.

No one asked me but… On Friday March 12 and Saturday March 13, the Moapa Valley Art Guild will be hosting an arts and crafts festival at OLDSHACs in Logandale, Nevada. Since there was no Pomegranate Festival last year and the Clark County Fair has been cancelled for the second year in a row, this will be a chance to pick up your Pomegranate jelly and to purchase products from our local artists. I will be there with my books and my friemily from Utah will have her quilts and other homemade goods. Our Mesquite neighbors might like to join us. Saturday the 13th will include the valley wide yard sell. It should be a great day for all us old folks as what we seem to like to do is play cards, put puzzles together, and go to yard sells. Come join us.

Thought of the week… A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.
– Adlai E. Stevenson II