Ideally, history is synonymous with fact. But reality often thwarts such a vision. History is frequently misinterpreted, and facts themselves are twisted and confused.
Successful political leaders throughout the ages have understood, history is a very powerful tool for molding attitudes and behaviors. In today’s climate of general ignorance, retelling history is an especially effective and convenient weapon of persuasion. Given the easy success of blatantly erroneous historical accounts, politicians do not even have to trouble themselves with devising clever and slippery shadows of the truth nowadays. Politicians are simply following their natures, of course, and we ought not be surprised. After all, there is little motivation to adhere to a standard of truth when “we the people” are no longer dutiful or vigilant and much less educated, enough to enforce such a standard.
Among those who are deservedly held to a somewhat higher standard of history telling, that is historians, there is another method for obstructing the truth and that is the suppression of certain facts. I don’t, of course, mean to suggest that this suppression is necessarily willful or malicious; the omission of certain facts is frequently necessary to reduce history into manageable textbooks.
Suffice it to say that history is inevitably shaped and invented according to the set of facts which are introduced. And as these limitations affect recorded history, so they affect attitudes and behavior.
Consider for example what is probably the single most important episode in our nation’s history, our revolution. Here, many different versions of the truth compete for center stage due to the abundant political rewards that may be achieved by distorting and altering the story of our nation’s birth.
Mainstream history frequently incorporates many of these errors. Take the following statement: Colonial Americans revolted against the British crown in order to acquire liberty and certain associated rights. This is a widely accepted notion that would not arouse much argument if brought before a general, or even an educated, audience.
The tale that is often painted for students is one in which colonial Americans were beaten and badgered by the cruel British until, finally, the proverbial back was broken with one last monstrous offense which only the British could conceive, a tax on tea. But the historical reality, which records attest, is that the early Americans were fighting not to acquire, but rather to preserve and enlarge freedoms they already possessed.
This is not a minor difference of word choice. Our Revolution came as a momentous surprise to the world. Even prior to our revolt, we were quite possibly the freest people on the earth, freer by far than we are at present. While the Crown’s treatment was perhaps not always cordial, among all of her many colonies America was like a favored child.
The fact that a revolution did occur and that a quibble as slight as the tea tax could be interpreted as such an affront attests to an attitude among early Americans which is strikingly absent today. Early Americans were remarkably selfish and protective of their liberties; we, by contrast, can hardly recall those enumerated in our Bill of Rights.
I stress the contrast between the two historical interpretations for this reason. The prevailing interpretation is one which can (and is) easily be construed to support the notion that revolutions need not arise until a people feel properly poked, pinched and prodded. But, in many ways, the early Americans were in a far less servile and trodden state than we find ourselves in today. Unlike us, they were keenly aware of their liberties and attentive to even minor trespasses there against.
Ample justification exists for perpetuating the first historical interpretation. After all, if Americans today were aware of how relatively minor were the grievances that impelled their forefathers to rise in opposition to the world’s greatest power, how much more ready might we be to do the same today, having suffered multiple abuses of a much larger scale at the hands of our own government.
But such an understanding would greatly imperil our present emperors and would resultantly jeopardize the teaching positions of those historians who are in the emperors’ employ as part of our government created and supported education system, so don’t hold your breath.
Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate, the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.