Wednesday, January 13, 2021

They Want To Steal Our History

 by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America


The Deep State and the radical left, globalists all, are trying to steal our history. They do not want us to know our history or understand where we came from and why. They realize, more than we do, that those that have no grasp of their history, culture, and heritage have no real future. They seek to control our history so they can control our future. If they control our future then they control  our destiny and then, like all idolaters, they can shape us in their own leftist image.

One way they do this is with false history, like this horrible 1619 Project that is currently used in many public schools now. Donald Trump became aware of this program and sought to deny funding to public schools that used it. I don't know how he made out with that and the recent election that was stolen from him will deny him and opportunity to pursue it further.

Interestingly enough, a writer of Western fiction seems to have had more of a grasp of the importance of real history than most people in our day do. I am referring to the late Elmer Kelton. He wrote mostly about West Texas. He grew up on a ranch in West Texas where his father was a ranch foreman so Kelton knew the history of his area. He was well acquainted with the kind of people and places he wrote about. He was part of it and it was part of him, which is as it should be.

His comments about history were insightful. In his autobiography Sandhills Boy he wrote: "South of the ranch headquarters, in the middle of an open pasture, was  the grave of a cowboy killed by horse thieves many years before. Riding by that solemn place, I was reminded of the old song, 'Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie.'  It certainly was lone and lonely.  That grave, and the stories the cowboys told, awakened a wonder that stayed with me. They made history come alive. They provided a living connection between past and present, a realization that events of a hundred years ago and more still affect our daily lives, our beliefs and attitudes.  They are part of who and what we are. The more we know about them, the better we know ourselves."

Whether we realize it or not, our history affects us because we are all a part of it. I remember, years ago now being told about a man in the South who said "the past is not dead. It is not even past." There is a certain sense in which he was right. The only time history is boring is when it is taught in school and is limited to dates and personalities whose history we do not know. General so and so fought a battle at such and such a place in 1864--period! That is boring history. To make history come alive we need to ask why he fought the battle and what did he believe. 

More and more as I have studied history, I have found that Elmer Kelton's view of it is accurate. Our history is part of all of us. I had a Confederate ancestor from North Carolina who was a captain in a North Carolina infantry regiment. Why did he fight? Did he go to war just so he could keep his slaves? I never read about him having any. Or did he go to war because his state was invaded? He lost part of one leg at Spotsylvania. Did he go through that particular hell so he could preserve slavery? I rather doubt that. The majority of the men that fought for the Confederacy did not own slaves and who in his right mind would be willing to endure four years of battle and death so his neighbor up the road apiece could keep his twenty slaves?  Yet this is the false narrative we are asked to believe because leftist "historians" so called continue to throw it in our faces and teach it to our children. It's balderdash, which is a nice way of saying it's bovine fertilizer, not history.

And this false narrative has shaped generations of our kids, both North and South. This fake history is used as an excuse to tear down our monuments and desecrate our flags and the Marxists among us love to have it so. As long as they can foist this claptrap on us we do not learn our real history or why our ancestors really fought. When we are taught accurate history that is reflected in how we think today. When we are lied to about our history and truth is denigrated, that affects us also, and not in a positive way.

So those closet leftists that crawl around among us teach us false history and that affects how we view our ancestors and our past and the culture they bequeathed to us. If the leftists can teach us skewed history then that affects how we view our past then they get to decide for us what our future will be because we will not understand our past.

History is not some dead thing that has no effect on us in our lives. History affects how we think and how we view life and what we will teach our kids about their past. If we let the Marxist element control our future via false history then neither we or our kids have any real future. Our future is really their future--a Marxist future.

Years ago when I was in a shop getting some printing done I inadvertently ended up in a conversation with a man that said to me "Communism liberates people." My reply to his foolishness was "May my children never live under the 'liberty' you promote." Now, with a Harris/Biden duo waiting in the political wings my children may yet end up living under some sort of communist "liberty"--something I have fought against most of my life. I sought to teach my kids accurate history. I guess we will have to wait and see who tries to teach their children history.