Editor, Commonwealth:
Gov. Tate Reeves recently announced that he wants to create a special fund so that the revisionists could be prevented from retelling history and destroying the minds of the youth.
Revisionist history, according to Contingent Magazine, “refers to the conscious, intentional misrepresentation of historical events, whether distant or recent.” The goal of the revisionist historian is to take historical facts and use them for political or cultural purposes. Those who accuse others of revisionist practices are saying that there is proof that there are individuals who are framing historical figures or events with the sole purpose of advancing a particular social or political agenda.
However, if the facts are the facts and one does not like the way they appear and wishes to retell the story in a way that is desirable to them, they are being the revisionists.
History is no more than the facts the way they occurred — the good, bad, ugly and indifferent. To believe that any nations can be great by hiding some of the awful things some of their citizens have done would be absurd.
To believe Hollywood’s version on “How the West Was Won” is not history; that is pure ignorance. To fail to recognize that some of America’s Founding Fathers were slave owners and to leave out the fact that Africans sold their own people into slavery and some owned slaves themselves would not be historically correct.
We study history not to judge but to do all that we can to keep from repeating the mistakes of the past with our present course of action. Without a doubt, the biggest mistake we could make is failing to bring into light the events that have been a part of our dark past.
Finally, to take $3 million to tell a romantic version of American history would be a very bad idea. The men and women who built this nation were human beings, full of faults and quite fragile. To judge their behaviors by looking back at mistakes they made reduces us to being no more than Monday morning quarterbacks and hypocrites.
We must teach the truth and give our kids the critical thinking skills to see through the politics and the bull. History must be presented as just the facts or it becomes propaganda, biased and misleading.
Charles Brady
Greenville
