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.

It's History Now

About a month ago I watched a television show on the network Animal Planet with my teenage daughter.  She is generally an above average student, at least when she is interested.  She loves anything related to animals, especially dogs and cats.  The show we watched was a survival type show.  The subject of the episode was a young man who was exploring the Amazon with his dog.  His dog's name was Livingstone.  I made the comment to my wife that most kids today wouldn't know why an explorer would name his dog "Livingstone," as in, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."  I asked my daughter if she knew the story of Dr. Livingstone and Sir Stanley in Africa.  She had never heard of either.  That made me start to wonder about her knowledge of explorers in general.

I asked if she knew who Daniel Boone was.  No.  John Fremont?  No.  Lewis and Clarke?  Heard the names, but not sure, although I think she really does know their story if really pressed.  Sir Edmund Hillary?  Nope.  Admiral Peary?  Blank look.  I decided to explore her knowledge a little closer to present-day.  Know what John Glenn did?  Not a clue.  How about Neill Armstrong?  Finally the light came on!  "Yeah, I know him!  He sells those yellow bracelets!  He did something with bikes too, didn't he?"  Close.  That's Lance Armstrong.  He beat cancer and won the Tour de France bike race four straight times.  And started a foundation to raise money for cancer research with yellow (color of Tour d' France winner's jersey) bracelets.  Admirable, and one of the best athletes of my lifetime, but  I don't think his accomplishments quite reach the level of those of the first man to walk on the moon.

In school, I always enjoyed history, but didn't necessarily think it was one of the more important subjects taught.  What does a kid get out of history?  Nothing but a bunch of dates and names to memorize, right?  Now, I realize it is one of the more important subjects in school.  Not only do we need to know where we've been and where we came from, but we also need to know what we are capable of.  Both good and bad.  I've written before about how our view of history shapes our view of ourselves, and how changing history changes our present view.  Now, at least here in Colorado, history is not taught at all.  The upside to this discovery has been that it has renewed my interest in history.  The majority of the books on my Kindle are biographies, or historical novels.  My next posts will be history related, maybe with some views on why the subject is important, or why it is being changed.  Of course, as my wife will tell you, all, or at least the majority of the subjects will be from Texas or the American west.


By the way, in the Animal Planet show we watched, the explorer killed and ate his dog, Livingstone.  Made him sick.  Served him right.

Obama's Lemonade Stand

I remember a Dennis the Menace comic strip from my childhood.  It had Dennis at his lemonade stand, with a sign that advertised $5 a cup.  The caption said "I only need to sell one."

Price management is one of the most difficult and most important task of any business.  I've worked in the retail industry most of my career, so that's the example I'll use.  The business' number one task is to earn a profit for its shareholders.  It seems like a simple concept, sell your product for more than you paid for it.  The difficulty comes in trying to decide how much more.  At my book store, it was fairly simple.  I bought used books from customers for 25% of retail, and sold them for 50% of original retail.  It was a nice margin, and the store was in business for more than 25 years.

If you have read the Joseph Heller classic, Catch 22, you will remember the supply, clerk Milo, who bought cotton stock for 50c a share and sold it for 25c, "but we are making up for it in volume."

With the rental car company, I learned yield pricing management.  I had to look at reservation demand, car availability, and competition prices and set our prices to get the highest possible revenue from each rental, without running out of cars.  For example, on a Monday we would have high rates because that's the day most business travelers would arrive.  Tuesday's rates might be higher still because we would have fewer cars available, and so would our competition.  By Wednesday evening, rates would go down because we would have more cars returning than being rented.  By Friday, rates would be extremely low for cars that would be returned in time for the Sunday evening rush.  So, it's a little more complicated than "buy low, sell high."

In general, there's a curve graph of profitability.  Starting with a price of zero, where of course you lose money; to a price of, I guess, infinitely high, where you would still have a loss due to no sales.  Somewhere in between you have a maximum profit.  For example, at Stride Rite, a style might make the company a profit of $500,000 with a retail of $49.99.  Raise the retail price to $59.99 and you get more profit right?  No, because then the customer does not see the value of the shoe and chooses a cheaper competitor's merchandise.  So a higher retail price might earn a lower profit.

The same applies to our federal taxes.  Former Reagan adviser, Arthur Laffer devised the Laffer Curve.  His studies show an optimum tax rate, similar to the curve you see in retail pricing.  At its most basic, government provides services for a fee, your taxes.  While we still see some value in the service, Americans are willing to pay the fee, and revenues rise.  At some point, the fee becomes  too high for the perceived value and Americans become less productive, resulting in lower revenue.  For example during World War I, President Wilson's administration needed more and more revenue to fund the war and the explosion of federal programs instituted under Wilson.  They created more and higher taxes, targeting businesses and the wealthy.  The more taxes they imposed, the less revenue they collected.  So they raised and created taxes even more.  They peaked with an income tax of 77% on the wealthiest Americans.  And still revenue collected actually decreased.  It decreased because the wealth creators saw no value in the government's services.  They chose not to buy, or produce income that would only be taxed.  This led to a depression in 1920.  

Warren G. Harding became president in 1921 and one of his first and most important appointments went to Andrew Mellon as treasury secretary.  Mellon immediately proposed cuts to tax rates, especially Wilson's "excessive profit" taxes.  And like the Laffer Curve or retail pricing models show, revenues increased.  As Mellon said, "Any man of energy and initiative in this country can get what he wants out of life,” he wrote. “But when initiative is crippled by legislation or by a tax system which denies him the right to receive a reasonable share of his earnings, then he will no longer exert himself and the country will be deprived of the energy on which its continued greatness depends.”  

Seems pretty simple.  Who is going to work to their maximum capability when most of the rewards for their hard work is going to fund a federal government whose policies and practices they do not necessarily support?  As one scholar joked, "three presidents served under Mellon" during a prosperous time now celebrated as the "Roaring '20's." 

Here's a link to a history of income tax in the United States, that illustrates, albeit unintentionally, Laffer's Curve. Maybe our next president should have a business background, rather than a community organizing background.  Our present organizer-in-chief seems to have only learned economics from Dennis the Menace, and didn't even operate his own lemonade stand.

This Window is a Door

Ever hear of the Overton Window?  Joseph Overton was a researcher, author, and senior vice president of a public policy think tank.  His theory was that public opinion fits into a window on a scale.  If a policy does not fit into the opinion window, politicians will not support or push the policy, for the sake of job security.  So, if the politician or government knows  the policy in question is good for the people, how do you get politicians to support it?  You move the window.

It's kind of like negotiating for a raise.  You ask for 10%.  Your boss says he will give you a 20% cut in pay.  You say, no, I'll quit first.  Your boss says fine, we will compromise.  I'll only cut your salary 10%.  You win.  He didn't cut your pay 20%!

The health care takeover is another example.  Americans are screaming that they do not want the federal government running their health care.  The administration says it will provide public funding for abortions.  America screams absolutely no!! Obama says fine, we'll compromise, no public funding for abortion in the health care takeover.  America says great.  We won that one. Um, didn't we?  They moved the window.

Americans need to stick to our principles.  Move the window back our direction.  Once Americans know the game, we can play it too.  Education is the key.  Know our principles and our history.

Adobe Walls and Teaching History

How can educators make history boring?  A better question is why they would make it boring.  You would think that  someone who chooses to make a career of teaching history would have a passion for the subject and make it interesting for their students.  But that's generally not the case.  I had three years of history in Jr. High, three in high school, and 12 hours or four semesters of history in college.  Except for coach Bennett in seventh grade Texas history, I can't name one of my history teachers.  And coach Bennett was not a good history teacher, but he was a fun teacher.  And Texas history is interesting if you take it upon yourself to learn about it.

When I was in elementary school in Gruver in the Texas panhandle, my scout group went to Adobe Walls.  The scout leaders worked with the school to get us some background on Adobe Walls.  We were told it was the oldest adobe house in Texas.  So, that was kind of interesting.  We went out and looked and collected all kinds of old junk.  I came home with a cigar box (remember those?) full of rusty square nails and an old bedspring.  There was the remains of an adobe house, and spots that we could see where other buildings had once stood.  Interesting, but fairly quickly forgotten.

Then in about 1987, I read Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.   At one point in the novel, Gus and Lorena stay in an abandoned building at Adobe Walls on the banks of the Canadian River.  They play cards using buttons from soldier's coats as poker chips.  Gus tells Lorena that it had been the site of a great battle between Comanche warriors and Kit Carson's troops.  Since I knew that much of the novel was based on real events in Texas history, I decided to do some research.

Adobe Walls was actually the site of one of the first and most important trading posts on the old Sante Fe trail.  William Bent and Ceran St. Verain built a couple of adobe buildings, but mostly traded from tents.  They originally attempted to trade with the Kiowa and Comanche that roamed the area.  The Comanche and Kiowa were not willing trading partners though.  They were much more interested in taking what they wanted by force.  So Bent and St. Verain improved and fortified their settlement to trade with settlers migrating west on the Santa Fe trail.  Even with the fortifications, raiding Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache warriors made life so uncomfortable that the trading post was abandoned.  

In 1865, Kit Carson and his 335 troops took refuge in the abandoned buildings and held off an attack by an estimated 3,000 Kiowa and Comanche warriors.  Carson's troops suffered less than 10 casualties while killing or wounding several hundred Indians.  More recent historians have lowered the number of the warriors involved and killed or wounded.  As one historian said, if 3,000 Comanches ever followed a single leader on the warpath, they would have conquered all America, Mexico, and Canada.  So, I guess typical of Texans, the events were exaggerated, and probably greatly exaggerated.  Still a great story though.

About ten years later, an even more famous battle was fought at the site.  A group of buffalo hunters, skinners, and hunters, including soon-to-be famous lawman, Bat Masterson, used the site as a campsite during their travel.  Before sunrise, the hunters were awakened by a cracking roof timber.  While the buffalo hunters were repairing the ceiling, a group of about 700 Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes led by Quanah Parker attacked.  The hunters took shelter in the old adobe building and held off the attackers with their long-range buffalo guns for a full day.  One hunter, Billy Dixon, took a shot at one brave from almost a mile away.  And hit him.  Accounts differ as to who the brave was and whether he was killed.  But he was hit with Dixon's amazing shot.  And shortly afterward, the Indians retreated.

But we were taught that it was an old adobe house.

We received Raelynn's social studies (they choose not to teach history in middle school in Colorado) lesson plan a few weeks ago.  One of their planned lessons was "the Constitution and current events."  Wow, with the debate on health care going on at the time, this would be a perfect opportunity to show what amazing forethought was involved in the creation of our Constitution.  With the progressive mindset of many of our teachers, Cathy decided that this class would be very interesting to sit in on.  So, what was the focus of this very interesting class?  Mobiles.  You know, like you would hang above a crib.  Or maybe like you would make in kindergarten or first grade.  Did I mention that this was an eighth grade class?  The perfect opportunity to teach about what may be the most important and most expensive piece of legislation of our lifetime and its impact on their future.  And how our founding fathers felt about our government's role in our everyday life compared to the current administration's view.  And they got out the scissors, construction paper, paste, and yarn and made a mobile!

It has to be part of a plan.  No one could unintentionally make the past so irrelevant, could they? 

                  Read A Patriot's History of the United States                            

Patriots

I've always enjoyed American history.  I never have been able to get interested in world history too much.  I guess I just don't have the imagination to be able to identify with Charlemagne, the Russian czars, or King Louis I-XXXIV, or whatever.  But I love American history.  I am currently reading A Patriot's History of the United States. Unlike a lot of history books, it is very readable. And very informative.  Just a trivia note, I learned today where Cajun originated.  At the beginning of King George's War in 1755, a group of colonists took it upon themselves to take Acadia (Nova Scotia) from the French settlers.  At the end of the war, the British gave much of the conquered territories back to the French, but kept Acadia.  They were concerned about having French loyalists in their Nova Scotia, so they deported them.  A group of the deportees relocated in current Louisiana and were called Cajuns, a slurred version of Acadians.  That also explains the presence of their French influenced dialect.  Impress your friends at the bar with that little bit of trivia.  

One side note, I am reading this book on the Kindle Reader for PC.  It seems that as I am getting older more mature, those evil publishers are printing books with smaller type.  With the free Kindle Reader,I can download Kindle books to my laptop and read them in a slightly larger font.  I can also read in a poorly lit room (i.e. any room in our built in the 40's house).  Another advantage is that the Kindle version is generally cheaper than the hardback and I get it within seconds of ordering it.  There are also a lot of free books available for the Kindle.  The only downside is the fact that they aren't books.  As a former bookstore owner, I really like the smell, feel, and look of a book.  So I will probably end up buying hard copies of this one and a couple of others I have read on the Kindle.