Posted on 04/02/2010 1:06:39 PM PDT by Borges
The right is rewriting history.
The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas , where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.
The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.
In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.
The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton ? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.
Theodore Roosevelt ? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt ? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.
Joe McCarthy ? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
LLS
That is the sort of piece that would be met with cheers on Huffington Post or DU.
McClatchy marches off the beaten path of news ‘reporting’ and always has,, one of the true dinosaurs of the times,, Yahoo is actually becoming a “producer” of news and compete with teh wire services , etc.
There is significant money to be made in the news biz and what you can ‘sell’ as news.
call it a perspective piece. ;-)
Indeed they do. Sick, literally.
Well, SOMEONE has been re-writing history for a while now. Not the conservatives in my opinion.
Champions of civil rights? The Democrats.
Champions of women’s liberty? The feminists.
Imperialist overlord of the world? The United States.
Greatest president ever? JFK.
Communism? A valid and valuable political system?
Capitalism? A method for exploiting the poor.
Etc.
The colonists didn't import any slaves. The African captives arrived on a Dutch slave ship whose captain and crew were looking for fresh provisions. The colonists accepted the Africans in exchange for provisioning the ship and the Africans became indentured servants, allowed to earn their freedom through labor.
[. . .The other crucial event that would play a role in the development of America was the arrival of Africans to Jamestown. A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in 1619. The Africans became indentured servants, similar in legal position to many poor Englishmen who traded several years of labor in exchange for passage to America. The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 1680s.]
http://www.preservationvirginia.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=6
There were several states that had established State Churches, after the Constitution was ratified. Connecticut was the last state to disestablish their State Church, in 1833 I believe, but South Carolina, New Hampshire and perhaps others had a State Church up to the early 1790’s.
It’s sort of a feeble argument to make, that the 1st Amendment only applied to the nation-state and not to the several states that comprised it, imho. The disestablishment of State Churches by all but a few states tends to support the understanding that the 1st did in fact apply to the states.
Neither. It is propaganda.
Roosevelt “ended the great depression???” Typical from Yahoo! No need to read any further.
Someone alert me when someone in the media ever does a critical review of a Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn version of US history.
You mean critical as in fact checking and good old fashioned journalism?
ROFLMAO!
Did you go to the site and read the comments? I read as many as I could stomach. No wonder this country is so messed up and to think these people vote. Plain out scary.
The headrights system collapsed in the 1680’s. It meant the right to claim land in exchange for transporting a certain number of “heads” to the colony, hence “headrights.” Those indenturing themselves weren’t always poor, let alone criminal and indentured by force. They were sometimes younger sons of the merchant class or even minor nobility. Primogeniture laws prohibited inheritance to all but the eldest son, and so those with no inheritance indentured themselves to get over to America, worked off the term of their indenture, typically seven to ten years, and had land as a result, if they weren’t defrauded of it (which happened with some frequency).
The first owner of an African slave, as we understand slavery, was himself a black man, in Virginia. He, himself was a former indentured servant, who had worked off the term of his indenture. In the age of indentured servants from the British Isles or Europe, Africans were something of a status symbol and exotic, and were treated well by comparison, according to accounts that I’ve read.
After the slave trade began in earnest due to the collapse of this headrights system, this changed to a degree. But, the horror stories that paint the entire practice as having slaughtered Africans without conscience, and as having treated them very poorly as a rule, are exaggeration. They were expensive, they were necessary and they were treated better than is generally acknowledged, to the point of sharing living quarters and houses of worship in many rural settings.
Would I want to be “owned” by another, and worked like a farm animal? No, I wouldn’t, and I’d resent it. So, I’m not advocating so much as pointing out that some historical accounts are skewed through the lense of modern understanding. The institution of bondage, in it’s various forms, had always existed and was accepted or at least tolerated, at that point in time, and to act as if it wasn’t is to fall prey to odd, ahistoric conclusions.
“Yahoo is usually not this egregious.”
Show me ONE time Yahoo reprints anything from a conservative source.
How could ANY conservative downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson? Or think that Hamilton didn't advocate a strong central government?
Why the heck would ANYONE put Schaffly in a history book?
Over-zealous religious expression to the detriment of kids and society as a whole.
Here is another McClatchy News / Steven Thomma article:
Here’s The Truth: ‘Birther’ Claims Are Just Plain Nuts
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/07/30/72794/heres-the-truth-birther-claims.html
Here’s The Truth: ‘Birther’ Claims Are Just Plain Nuts [Consider The Source: McClatchy]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2304950/posts
Well, thanks, it’s just cumulative bits and pieces, through years of personal genealogy research.
If there’s one thing I’d like people to understand, it’s that there is no shame in having an ancestor who was transported. They often did it of their own volition, to get to America for the opportunity it represented, and had no other means due to the laws of the time.
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