As election season gets into full swing and everyone is posting about this or that that’s got their hackles up thanks to something “the other side” has done, I’ve been watching what people on both sides are saying. And while I think that both sides sometimes have good points, I’m alarmed by what I see. Even more so as I’ve been reading through 1984 by Orwell and waking up to just how many parallels there are between the world Orwell presents in the book and our own world right now. (If you see lots of quotes from Orwell’s 1984 in here, now you know why.)
Scrolling through the comments on political posts or my newsfeed on Facebook where both liberals and conservatives are posting, the thing I see most is an overwhelming proliferation of ignorance. Yes, you heard right. Ignorance. Sure, they’re well informed about what they can’t stand about the other side or what their side has done that they may or may not be super happy about (such as the newest things Trump has done to make the liberals angry or the fact that the right is pretty happy Sanders dropped out of the running). But they’re uninformed otherwise or they wouldn’t be sitting there arguing over two sides who are both going to destroy our nation.
Looking at history–and no, I don’t mean history textbooks because they’ve been changed often enough that you can’t even get them to match what the federally protected national parks say about the historic events in them–reveals a lot about how we ended up here. I understand, as Orwell said in 1984, the how, but I do not understand the why.
Bear with me here. Don’t shut me down right away because this isn’t really about politics or any one political party. That’s just the most recent outlet for the bigger problem I’ve been seeing for years in people of every political stripe and affiliation.
A bit of setup here to help you understand my background and where I’m coming from on this topic… Growing up, I was homeschooled from start to finish in a Christian home. Now, my more liberal readers may be tempted, in many cases, to assume that means I’m brainwashed and don’t know anything… Not saying you all do because that would be too great a generalization and therefore untrue, but I’ve heard it more than enough times to know that’s the general consensus about homeschoolers from the liberal crowd. I don’t even get a chance to say what I think before those of you in this crowd form an opinion of me, all because I said I was homeschooled and a Christian.
May I suggest to you a point of consideration? For those who grew up reading the firsthand accounts of history, it’s also easy to look at you, listen to the “facts” you rattle off from the history textbooks you were taught to believe, and shake our heads as we think exactly the same about you? We understand, of course, how you can believe something so strongly.
But don’t people on both sides of the argument understand that? I think most of us understand that it’s pretty typical for those who were taught a particular viewpoint (as opposed to being taught to think for themselves) to cling to whatever lies they were told even when presented with an alternative that’s supported by the facts. Both sides do it all the time. And we can respect a person who’s clearly intelligent and holds an opposing view even as we wonder how they could be so misled, can’t we? We do it all the time. Agree to disagree, right?
My point is this… You may look at the other side and shake your head thinking they’re idiots for holding onto something that’s so clearly “false” to your way of thinking, but they’re doing the same to you, and it gets no one anywhere. Express your disbelief in the “stupidity” of others if you must, but don’t forget… There are always two sides to every story.
I get that not every homeschooler has (or had) parents who really encourage them to think or make them sit down and read the accounts of those who literally lived history. Mine did. My parents had me read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, many of the classic authors (both fiction and non-fiction) who have been pulled from our public school curriculums, and countless autobiographies from various Presidents, Founding Fathers, and other important men and women. I learned to love history not because of a textbook but because I was able to practically live it in my mind as I read from those who had actually lived it.
My parents’ goal to teach me and my siblings (the youngest being 13 now) about a history our nation has all but forgotten involved a trip we all took from Illinois down to Texas. We drove, and along the way, we took the time to visit national park after national park. We read the plaques, walked the grounds where historic moments occurred, and read what the men and women from those days had to say about their stories, about why the things that occurred did.
And you know what? Time and again, those firsthand accounts of history don’t fit the narrative given in the textbooks used in public schools or, even, in the ones we used at home, which were sometimes more accurate than the public school textbooks and sometimes less. How have we ended up at a point where the accounts of the men and women who lived through the history we claim to know don’t match up with what we’re being told happened?
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, this isn’t an accident. People altered the records. How else could they change so that they don’t match what the people living in those times had to say about the events going on? Lies don’t self-propogate with no origin point. The victors write the history books, as they say, and they most certainly did in this case. We ought to stop worrying about what one side or the other is doing and start worrying about what has happened to us.
We’ve elected officials, on both sides, who have supported changing the records of history as taught in our schools to our children. We’ve allowed our children to be taught lies as if they are truth, and we’ve done nothing. We’ve even participated actively in removing the influences that might undermine the social conditioning and the lies our government is encouraging, in some cases. As Orwell said in 1984, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” (Orwell, 1984.) He couldn’t be more right. And I think the most frightening part is the point we’ve reached.
People argue that we’ll never end up like Orwell’s society in 1984, altering every record to fit whatever the government’s chosen narrative is and controlling all information–even the very minds of our people–but we’re already well on the road to that. Maybe it hasn’t gotten that bad, but if we don’t wake up, it’s going to. We shouldn’t expect, friends, to walk the same road of destruction others did, refuse to turn around, and then not end up at the same disastrous end that they did at some point. We’re already doing the same things he warned us about on a small scale. The country we know today is not a country our Founding Fathers would be proud of. Our federal government has more power than it ever should’ve, and every day they take more. We don’t notice it because it seems insignificant to us at the time, but Orwell couldn’t have said it better when he stated, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end” (Orwell, 1984).
We’ve reached a point where we look at the warnings embedded into books like 1984 or Animal Farm, at the warnings in the non-fiction writings of so many who lived during the time when socialism, fascism, communism, and more were emerging, and think, that’s not ever going to happen to us. We can use those systems and not end up like them. Why do we think this? Because we don’t know history, people. We don’t.
Kids today aren’t taught history. They’re taught propaganda. I’m not blaming it on the teachers. They don’t decide the curriculum, and at this point, the ones who fight to keep the truth in our schools are viciously attacked and called ignorant for wanting to promote reality instead of this new reality that exists only in the minds of those buying into it. The ones who don’t often don’t even know the truth themselves because they too were taught a lie. The lesson I have learned from my time in a secular community college, a fundamental Christian college, and watching the opinions of both sides is this: those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes, and we do not know our history, so we are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
I know this isn’t a popular opinion. It isn’t a popular statement. No one wants to be told that they’ve willing chosen to be ignorant. But here’s the reality of it. If you choose to accept what your history textbook says without checking the “facts” presented against a primary source, you have chosen to rely on someone else’s word for your own heritage and your own country’s history. You have chosen, then, to remain ignorant of the voices of those who lived through it, which reach beyond the grave to dispense their warnings, wisdom, and truths. You chose that. And so, then, you are responsible in part for the current state of affairs where we squabble over things that are symptoms of a larger problem, not the real root of the problem.
To those who actually know what I’m talking about when I quote Orwell, it’s time to wake up. It’s time for you to face the music. I don’t care what side you’re on. If you keep refusing to turn to the past–the real past as it’s presented by those on both sides that lived through it–you’re responsible for what happens as a result. You are responsible for the decline and eventual destruction of your country as you know it. I can’t speak for how things are in other countries and whether or not their history in schools matches history as it’s told by the primary sources, but I can speak for America because I’ve seen it firsthand, and it’s horrifying.
In twenty years, how much more will history have changed? Will you even realize that it has changed? Did you pay enough attention to educating yourself and thinking for yourself–no matter what political party you belonged to or where you were schooled–to notice when those “facts” change yet again? For most people, the answer would be no. Do you even care?
We need to wake up and realize what’s going on. We need to turn back to educating ourselves and our children on the real history and how things happened. The national parks and museums are one place to start. The firsthand accounts of people like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other famous leaders and individuals in our country’s history are another place to start. It isn’t as though it’s really hard, though it will require mental exercise and purposeful intent to learn the truth from those who have spent a lifetime ignoring it and dismissing it as unimportant.
History has all kinds of important lessons. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Learn from them. Find ways to do better than those who went behind us. You might be surprised at how much you discover that doesn’t match with what the popular opinions of the day say about our history. Learn to be curious, to think, to aspire to know more, to understand the why not just the how.
If we want to preserve our freedom, we must do all of this and do it now before it’s too far gone. You don’t have to contribute to a further downward spiral of ignorance of your own heritage. Take responsibility for finding out the truth and holding onto it even if people mock you for it or call you crazy for doing so. After all, “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad” (Orwell, 1984).