Don't Know Much About History
Especially "progressives."
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This is a riff on a Jeff Davidson Townhall column from May 2024
It has become increasingly clear that ignorance is a key factor in being a “progressive.” Progressives can only know so much about the past. They have to be quite gullible to believe that the “mainstream media” has been presenting fair and accurate information for the past two or three decades, especially the past four years of White House coverage. Progressives also must think that the politicians you voted for have your best interests at heart and have the best interests of the nation at heart, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Progressives have perpetrated some of the great crimes that humankind has yet witnessed. A brief walk through recent world history reveals that what started as supposedly “socialist” movements proved to be anything but.
Off With Their Heads
The French Revolution in 1789 was a revolt by the bourgeoisie joined by commoners against the aristocracy. Their battle cry was liberty, equality, and fraternity. Yet, the regime that followed the French heuristic aristocracy was barbaric. The slightest transgression or suspicion that you were against “the people” meant death. Tens of thousands of people faced the guillotine in France between 1792 and 1977 (the last year France used the guillotine).
Socialism By Any Other Name
In 1917, as Vladimir Lenin returned from exile in Switzerland to Russia on a German-sponsored train, and the Bolsheviks took power, their claims of egalitarianism also proved to be hollow. These socialists showed some comrades were “more equal” than others. To be in the post-1917 Russian government was to be in the ruling class; all others were subservient. Lenin himself coined the term “useful idiots” regarding people who went along with the regime, not questioning the lies, subterfuge, bribes, cronyism, and outright theft of property, always for “the state” and never to be yours, no matter how hard you worked for it.
The Nazis Were Socialists, Too
In 1933, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, came to power. It was a socialist movement, not a conservative movement, as many would have you believe. These socialists were hell bent on eradicating the Jews, gypsies, intellectuals, and other undesirables wherever they were. National socialism held Europe under its yoke for twelve years, and in the end, was responsible for millions of deaths in the six years of war it took to stop them, besides the eleven million they killed in their Holocaust. Today, some voices proclaim that socialism, or, as multimillionaire-hating multimillionaire Senator Bernie Sanders calls it, Democratic socialism, is the only appropriate, moral, and effective way for human society to proceed.
“Progressives” Believe All People Are Altruistic Rational Actors.
The rest of us know better. While it sounds good in theory, in practice, socialism turns into a nightmare because of human nature. Most people are altruistic, rational actors. However, enough people are neither to turn every socialist experiment into a tyranny. Make it easy to take power and they will take it. Enable a powerful central state to “protect” the masses and it will take all the power it can to stay in power, regardless of what it might cost: lives, treasure, or freedom.
There is one kind of freedom that is inadmissible—the freedom to destroy freedom.
Arthur O. Lovejoy
If the right/wrong people get into the right/wrong positions, what was meant to be a heaven on Earth becomes an Orwellian dystopia. No one saw what the power of the French Revolution or the Soviet state or the Nazis would have, what they would do to individual liberty when they started. But because the right/wrong people gained power, they became hellscapes of unprecedented horrors.
Give The Wrong People The Power To Take Your Liberty And They Will.
But it is not OK. Progressives don't want you to know what the net result of socialist experiments around the world, over the ages, of those governments and peoples who have installed socialism. Many believe that Scandinavian countries , such as Sweden, to this day are socialists. While their states tried socialism for a while, they found it to be such a disaster that they abandoned the pretense.
Are the historical events and occurrences discussed above presented in high school history classes, or covered in college history classes? In college, depending on what course you take and where, it's possible. In high school, I have encountered no one who has covered this ground. High school history books and history teachers will talk about the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, but don’t mention that they were socialist-based movements. That’s how students remain ignorant of this historical reality.
And, the less you know about the past, the more likely you will become a “progressive.”
The Persistent Past: The Steele Diaries
The Persistent Past is another attempt to show how scholars write the histories you consume. It starts with a discovery, then more discoveries, then research, then…
While creating the story of how this intrepid researcher created Steele’s Battalion: The Great War Diaries, the past persistently reminds him of its return. Available from your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph sometime later this year.
Coming Up…
Choice or Destiny
American Revolution Reconsidered
And Finally...
On 8 February:
1735: The first opera performance in America, a version of Antonio Sartorio and Marcantonio Ziani’s Flora, is held at Shepheard's Tavern in Charleston, South Carolina. Although called a “ballad opera,” where songs tell the story, scholars have recreated the original score and lyrics from fragments; the originals lost.
1904: The siege/battle of Port Arthur on Manchuria’s Liaodong Peninsula begins with a Japanese torpedo attack on the Russian fleet, the first action of the first Russo-Japanese War. Though the Russian casualties were light, the attack immobilized the Russian fleet.
And today is OPERA DAY in the United States, commemorating that first opera performed in the US. Now, I’ve been to a few, but with my hearing, I didn’t quite understand what they were singing about, or was it because I don’t understand whatever language they were singing in?