One of the reasons our children do not measure up academically to children in other countries is
that so much time is spent in American classrooms twisting our history for ideological purposes.
“How would you feel if you were a Native American who saw the European invaders taking away your
land?” is the kind of question our children are likely to be confronted with in our schools.
It is a classic example of trying to look at the past with the assumptions—and
the ignorance—of the present. One of the things we take for granted today is that it is wrong to take
other people’s land by force. Neither American Indians nor the European invaders believed that.
Both took other people’s land by force—as did Asians, Africans, Arabs, Polynesians, and others.
The Indians no doubt regretted losing so many battles. But that is wholly different from saying
that they thought battles were the wrong way to settle the question of who would control the land.
Today’s child cannot possibly put himself or herself in the mindset of Indians centuries ago,
without infinitely more knowledge of history than our schools have ever taught. Nor is understanding
history the purpose of such questions. The purpose is to score points against Western society.
In short, propaganda has replaced education as the goal of too many “educators.”
Schools are not the only institutions that twist history to score ideological points.
“Never Forget That They Owned Lots of Slaves” was the huge headline across
the front page of the New York Times’ book review section in its December 14, 2004 issue.
Inside was an indictment of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Of all the tragic facts about the history of slavery, the most astonishing to an
American today is that, although slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years,
nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. People of every
race and color were enslaved—and enslaved others. White people were still being bought
and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others.
Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders,
until the 18th century—and then it was an issue only in Western civilization.
Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of 18th century Africa
or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there.
But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.
Deciding that slavery was wrong was much easier than deciding what to do with millions of people
from another continent, of another race, and without any historical preparation for living
as free citizens in a society like that of the United States, where they were 20 percent
of the total population. It is clear from the private correspondence of Washington, Jefferson,
and many others that their moral rejection of slavery was unambiguous, but the practical
question of what to do now had them baffled. That would remain so for more than half a century.
In 1862, a ship carrying slaves from Africa to Cuba, in violation of a
ban on the international slave trade, was captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy.
The crew were imprisoned and the captain was hanged in the United States—despite the fact
that slavery itself was still legal at the time in Africa, in Cuba, and in the United States.
What does this tell us? That enslaving people was considered an abomination.
But what to do with millions of people who were already enslaved was not equally clear. That
question was finally answered by a war in which one life was lost for every six people freed.
Maybe that was the only answer. But don’t pretend today that it was an easy answer—or
that those who grappled with the dilemma in the 18th century were some special villains, when most
leaders and most people around the world at that time saw nothing wrong with slavery. Incidentally,
the September 2004 issue of National Geographic had an article about the millions of people
still enslaved around the world right now. But where was the moral indignation about that?