We Lost, but When?

I wrote over a year ago about how history is being changed.  Even as a kid, I realized it was happening with the history of Davy Crockett.  What many of us don't realize is how important our history is.  What we learn of our history basically provides the lens through which we see ourselves.  While so many of us were slow to realize the importance of history, others have known for years.  They planned to change history to fit their world view.  They haven't been very secretive in their plans, it's just that we don't pay attention, or don't take them seriously.  The Obama campaign in 2008 told us that they planned to change history.  Listen toMichelle Obama on the campaign trail, she doesn't speak of making history, she speaks of changing history.  That's not a mistake, that is exactly what they have planned.


So maybe the revision of the Davy Crockett story was a test run?  Just to see if we would buy it?  Well, our education system sure did.  Now, they are going big.  They are going after our founding fathers.  I have felt that Texas is one of our last hopes of regaining our country and our past.  But did you know that right now, today, the Boston Tea Party is being taught in Texas as an example of terrorism.  Now, reading the curriculum, it is possible that this lesson is being taught to teach students to reason, to read the information and see it from multiple angles.  From the British perspective at the time, the Boston Tea Party was terrorism.  Only through reading the causes of the revolution will a student learn that the American Revolution was justified.  But is it being taught that way?  Frankly I doubt it.  If it were, why are parents being denied access to the lessons?  The "Parent's Portal" to the online lesson plans offers information that differs greatly from the lesson plans being presented in class. If this is happening in Texas, what is happening in California?  In New York?  In Oregon?

Take a look at what is happening, and has been happening for over a decade with our knowledge of Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson did own slaves.  That is known.  It has been taught since the textbooks published in the 1880's.  What was taught before, but is no longer being taught is that he spent most of his life trying to abolish slavery.  The Virginia Constitution made it illegal for a slave owner to free his slaves.  After George Washington freed his slaves upon his death, Virginia even closed that loophole.  It was illegal for a citizen of Virginia to free his slaves.  Jefferson worked tirelessly to change that.  Unfortunately that was one of the few instances that Jefferson failed.  For a true view of Thomas Jefferson, through his own words and the words of people who actually knew him, who actually lived in Jefferson's time, read The Jefferson Lies, by David Barton.   Barton uses Jefferson's own words, the original documents to clear up the lies being told about him.  The interesting thing has been the response to the book.  David Barton has been attacked from every directions by scholars pointing out the "inaccuracies" in his book.  Their evidence of his inaccuracies comes from scholars writing more than 100 years after Jefferson's death.  These scholars use each other as references, completely ignoring the primary sources - Jefferson himself and his contemporaries.  One interesting chapter in Barton's book deals with Jefferson's supposed love child with his slave, Sally Hemings.  Remember in the late 1990's when a DNA test was done using genetic material from one of Hemings' known descendants that "proved" Jefferson's affair with his slave.  Interestingly enough this report came out just as the current president, William Jefferson Clinton was being impeached for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, making the point that infidelity in the White House was nothing new.  Coincidentally, a retraction was released a few weeks after the initial report that the DNA tests actually concluded that with a 97% certainty, Hemings' child was NOT Thomas Jefferson's.  The retraction did not receive the front page of Newsweek treatment that the original, erroneous report did.

Thanksgiving is a couple of days away.  While the Thanksgiving story that children from my generation were taught is a little simple and doesn't give the complete story of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, students are more likely today to learn the perspective of MSNBC commentator, Melissa Harris Perry who says that "European settlers brought violence, disease, and land theft to the indigenous peoples who were already in this land before it was discovered."
 
So why is it important to the president's backers to smear the reputation of our country's founders?  Their view of the United States is that it was founded by rich white men who were only interested in making themselves more wealthy.  The system is set up to benefit the rich white men.  It is stacked against black Americans, immigrants(whether legal or illegal), women, Native Americans, against anyone not white and rich.  The president himself says that rugged individualism, self reliance, and small government is "part of our DNA" obviously in reference to our founding principles.  But then he goes on, "but it doesn't work, it has never worked" to the applause of his audience.


That is why it is so important, in the president's view,  to change history.  It has worked.  When applied as our founders intended and as they stated in our Constitution, it always works.

We did lose the election earlier this month.  But that defeat actually started when we lost the battle of truth about our history.  To get back, we have to make truth matter again, and make history matter again.

Dumping Money On the Ground

When I worked for Avis, we were required to take a class on responding to fuel spills.  The district manager said that since I had worked in and been around the oilfield when I was younger, I probably didn't need to take the class.  I told him that unless the proper response to a spill was to throw some dirt on it, I'd better take the class.

When I visited my grandparents for the summer when I was about 7, I went to work with my Grandpa Tom in the oilfield.  When the tanks are full, he would have to hire a truck to come out and haul all the oil to his buyer.  Since the cost of having the truck come out is the same no matter how much oil they haul, you would of course want to have as much oil as possible be taken in a trip.  A tank could be full, but still have a lot of saltwater in with the oil.  Oil sits on top of the saltwater (think oil spill in the Gulf, the oil stays on top). So, there was a valve on the bottom of the tank.  Grandpa would open this valve and let the saltwater spray out onto the ground.  It was my job to sit beside this spraying valve and watch for the saltwater to turn into oil.  Grandpa would go do his maintenance on the pumpjack or whatever else he needed to do.  I didn't want to let any oil spray out, that would be just like throwing away money.  So I sat staring at the brownish saltwater spraying, waiting it for it to change from coffee with cream color to coffee with no cream color.  When oil started spraying out, I would yell for Grandpa and he would close the valve to let the well produce for a couple of more days to maximize the truck's load of oil.  It was a great practice economically, but probably not so great environmentally.  Oily saltwater leaves an ugly mess on the ground.  

I think even the most environmentally insensitive oilman sees this as a bad practice today.  So, to a degree regulations were needed.  But, as is usually the case with government involvement, they went too far the other direction.  And if the federal government is involved, they will go waaaaaaaaaaaay too far.  And then go further.  And take a minute's break and go a little further.  Eventually they go so far that the producers do not make enough money to stay in business.  The Democrat/Progressive side seems to forget that the reason oil companies exist is to make a profit.  And in most cases, they will do it the right way, both for their profit margin and for the environment.  

Eighteen governors, two of them Democrats, have asked Congress to clamp down on the EPA.  They say that the EPA doesn't take the economic impact of their rulings into consideration when they impose new restrictions.  They have reached the point in some cases, where it is no longer profitable to stay in business.  As I mentioned in yesterday's post about the Grand Junction area, trickle down works in both directions.  When business is booming for the oil company, it is booming for the construction industry, the fast food industry, grocery stores, retailers, and yes, the government through sales, income, and property taxes.  Ever notice all the new schools, libraries, and jails get built during the boom years?  Then the EPA steps in with new regulations, and end the boom.  For everyone.  Including the government.  

I don't know if the current Congress has the spine, or even the inclination to stand up to the President and his anti-business policies.  But it is nice to see that the states are starting to push back.  Over the past 100 plus years, the states have let the federal government take too many of the powers the Constitution relegated to the states.  It will be very hard to get those powers back.  But it sure is good to see the process start.  Not only in the case of the EPA, but Utah has filed suit to prevent the federal government from taking more land and to try to take back the area that President Clinton took by executive action in his last days in office (southern Utah, rich with uranium, imagine that).  Montana, Texas, and others have filed or threatened to file suit over federal gun control laws.  Texas, Virginia, and others have started the process of challenging federal takeover of healthcare.  And with the recent verbal jabs by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at the president, I think the Supreme Court is signaling that it is ready to reign in some of the federal power grabs.  

Maybe the Supreme Court is that seven year old watching money spray out onto the ground.  It's time to shut off the valve.