Columbus day:A clash of myth and hi

(Blackfoot) writes:

********** snipped *************

The other day, I was watching "Politically Incorrect" and they
were talking about the values we instill in children. Coolio (the
rap star) made a comment that it's necessary to "take out the
bad" from history to preserve the legends of historical heroes.
He talked about a *great* African warrior who was regarded as a
hero but who in fact, allowed his armies to rape and torture
thousands of innocent people. But he felt that people,
especially children, should only hear the "good" things about
such historical figures. To my dismay, everyone on the show
heartily agreed with Coolio including Bill Marr (sp?) the host.

If we alter history for the sake of suiting public expectations,
can we even call it "history" anymore? Should we continue to
feed children lies and historical half-truths so they can grow
up to be mindless drones subject to propaganda and trained to
know only what politicians want them to know?

Half a century later, we remember what a great "monster" Hitler
was and the nazi concentration camps as one of the greatest atrocities of the modern era. But not too much longer before
that- did we not slaughter just as many if not more native
Americans (including villages comprised almost entirely of
women and children) and didn't we force them off their homes
and onto reservations where they died of disease?
Sound familiar?

[Earlier, I mentioned those cartoons. I wonder how long it'd
take the censors to become outraged if someone were to
make a cartoon in which the Jews were portrayed as a
bunch of mindless thugs killed off by the heroic Nazis?]

The facts stare at us plainly in the face, but historical fact will
always be obfuscated because people tend to only
listen to what they want to hear. So naturally, what do those
who want to stay in power tell them? Not too long ago,
I saw some guy post that the massacre of so many Indians
was just a part of *progress*. I took offense at that and actually
got flamed by every person on that forum as if I was the *bad
guy*. I got remarks such as "What are you #^%$^ about? Did
YOU kill and rob from the Indians?" and "The Indians were
killing each other off anyway- they owe us for civilizing them.
Now we've given them gambling, and they still can't make
anything of themselves."

What can you say to people who are ignorant beyond the
point of reason? And I'm certainly not aiming this at "white"
(for lack of a better term) people. I don't know what
ethnicity, race, or whatever those people were on the forum.
But it's something we all need to be educated about.
And education can't take place if we only tell the parts
that we're most comfortable with. Both my grandmother
and my great grandmother were murdered by their own
relatives in the name of communism. The kids who killed them
were raised from birth to believe without question to the point in
which they'd kill members of their own family to serve someone
who'd run them over if they had the chance. Here's
another issue- to this day, kids in Japanese schools are
taught that the slaughter of millions of Chinese at the hands
of the Japanese during WWII (NanKing) never happened,

It could happen anywhere and we're fools if we think it can't
happen here. When you here people talking about mass
genocide as being "progress", you have to start wondering.

Forgive my rant, but the moral of my story is?---- If
we want to save our nation- let's train the kids to think for
themselves. And that means telling them the whole story
behind such events. Because history is the springboard
for the future, and it should be treated as seriously as any
other subject in school. You can't just "take out the bad"
when convenient.

richi