Revising History for Our Destruction | Godfather Politics.

It’s been said that the victors write the textbooks. I supposed this is the way it should be. As a nation, if we want to know who has won the ideological war in America, take a look at the our textbooks and popular writing on historical subjects. Dr. Gary North writes:

When children are required by law to attend tax-funded schools and read state-approved textbooks, these textbooks establish the terms of discussion. History textbooks have long served as the State’s primary means of establishing public opinion. This was true in Prussia before it was true in the United States. The Prussian educational model, for kindergarten through graduate school, became the model for the American public schools, beginning as early as the 1840s. (The best study of the history of America’s public school philosophy is R. J. Rushdoony’s 1963 book, The Messianic Character of American Education.)

In addition to what is found in textbooks, certain historical revisionist claims worm their way through popular writing. You’ll find a snippet of historical revisionism here and a fragment there. In time, the new “truth” embeds itself in popular discussions.

For example, how many times have you heard the canard that for centuries prior to 1492 the majority of the religious world believed that the earth was flat until the intrepid Christopher Columbus put his reputation, career, and fortune on line to prove, contrary to what the religious leaders of his day believed, that the earth was round and not flat? This myth has been repeated so often in too many contexts to list here that it has become fact for millions of middle school students. The myth is continually used as a club to beat up on Christians who question the dogmatism of certain scientific theories – everything from spontaneous generation to man-made global warming. Here’s an example from the strident evolutionist Daniel C. Dennett:

If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods — that the Earth is flat, that “Man” is not a product of evolution by natural selection — then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being — the well-being of all of us on the planet — depends on the education of our descendants.[1]

For the longest tome, even the Encyclopedia Britannica perpetuated the myth: “Before Columbus proved the world was round, people thought the horizon marked its edge. Today we know better.” The people knew better in Columbus’s day. A 1983 textbook for fifth-graders reported that Columbus “felt he would eventually reach the Indies in the East. Many Europeans still believed that the world was flat. Columbus, they thought, would fall off the earth.”[2] A 1982 text for eighth-graders said that Europeans “believed . . . that a ship could sail out to sea just so far before it fell off the edge of the sea. . . . The people of Europe a thousand years ago knew little about the world.”[3] If a big enough lie is told, and if it is repeated often, people will eventually come to believe it.
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