First Word

On a visit to Colonial Williamsburg I crossed the recently completed footbridge from the visitor’s center to the restored 18th century town.  Along the path there are numerous markers that try to get the visitor into the mind set of someone from an earlier period.  Walking in one reads the following:

1954 “You tolerate segregated schools”

1920 “You accept that women cannot vote”

1913 “You pay no income tax and receive no Social Security”

1865 “You know people who own other people”

My reaction to these and most of the others (there were probably ten in all), was, “yes, times have changed, and mostly for the worst.”  Mine was probably not the reaction anticipated by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF).

Far more distasteful than these are the markers that one reads when walking back over the bridge.  Below is a list of the “high points” of America history according to the CWF.

1786 Thomas Jefferson: “Made religion a matter of personal choice”

1805 Sacagawea: “Led Lewis and Clark to the American West”

1837 Horace Mann: “Inspired a universal thirst for public education”

1863 Abraham Lincoln: “Proclaimed freedom for 3 million Americans”

1879 Thomas Edison: “Turned night into day”

1908 Henry Ford: “Gave Americans the car keys to everywhere”

1928 Louis Armstrong: “Set America’s free spirit to music”

1955 Rosa Parks: “Moved civil rights to the front of the bus”

1961 John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”

Let’s take each one of these in turn.

There are at least two problems with the Jefferson marker.  First, there had been dissenters in English and colonial America history for well over 200 years. The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom did not give Virginians anything they did not already have except for relieving them of the burden of supporting the Anglican Church through taxes.   Second, by suggesting that Jefferson made religion a matter of personal choice, the marker suggests that religion is merely a private affair, not to be brought into the public arena.  Whether Jefferson intended this or not, this view of religion is the foundation of the modern secular state.

While Sacagawea accompanied Lewis and Clark and gave them some modest help, she in no sense of the word “led” them to the American west.  I have nothing against Sacagawea, but she deserves mention only in the footnotes of American history books; a piece of trivia fit for Jeopardy, but little more.  (“I’ll take Westward Ho for $800, Alex.”  “The squaw who accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific.” “Who is Pocahontas?”  “No, I’m sorry, the correct answer is, who is Sacagawea?”) But her relative insignificance was not an issue for the CWF since she has other things going for her: she was a she and she was not white.

On Horace Mann, the idea of public education was not original to him; he borrowed it from Prussia.  So the ‘universal’ is typical American exaggeration.  He did “inspire” a thirst for government schools and the statist propaganda that comes with it, but this killed most of the public’s thirst for genuine education process.

The Lincoln marker is perhaps the most insulting to intelligent men.  His Proclamation freed no slaves, but was rather a typically cunning political move by the master of spin.  And even if it had freed the slaves, it did not free “Americans,” but Negroes.  Only in one sense of the word American (namely, people that reside in America) would the Negro slaves be considered American, not in other more important senses.  The grossest absurdity of this marker is that in the process of “freeing” three million slaves, Lincoln turned every American into a slave of the Federal government.

As for Thomas Edison, I have nothing against the man personally and the invention of the light bulb was a watershed event in not only America, but the whole world.  The problem I have with this marker is that it glorifies a technology that has been a mixed blessing, at best.  Yes, in the modern world, night and day matter very little.  But is this a good thing?  We have lost the diurnal pattern that God imposed from the beginning giving a false sense that we can conquer time.  The incandescent light bulb also has contributed greatly to our loss of wonder at the heaven’s nightly display of God’s glory.  Among the many ramifications of this has been a deafening of our aesthetic sense.  Modern degenerate art would not be possible without the light bulb.

My view of the Henry Ford marker is the same as the Edison one.  Nothing against Ford personally.  Indeed, he took a brave stand against the poisoning of America by jews.  But as Edison gave us the illusion that we can conquer time, the automobile has helped give us the impression that we can conquer space.  In the process, it has helped destroy local communities and has created the noisy and ugly environment that we all must suffer with.

Louis Armstrong’s music did capture the spirit of his age, but the age was a fundamentally corrupt one.  He performed for the fathers and mothers of the “greatest generation;” a generation without roots, bereft of a past, transfixed on “progress” and everything modern.  The problem with Armstrong is not so much his music, but the type of culture that could make his music possible.  Given the era, he was quite good.  But it was era (the era of “free spirit” as the marker calls it) that was bad.

Like Sacagawea, Rosa Parks is a twofer (female, non-white).  Unlike Sacagawea, who was at least involved in a useful activity, Parks was a subversive.  But even that is giving her too much credit.  She was a pawn for some two-bit white commies and later became a propaganda tool for judaic commies.  Her canonization by Central Command is proof enough that what she stood for is fraudulent.

While not the worst president of modern times (he did have his good moments), JFK’s quote has been used to justify a good deal of evil.   As it stands, it is ambiguous.  Does country mean our nation, people and culture or does it my our government?  The latter is no doubt what the CWF has in mind.

Thus American history according to Colonial Williamsburg.  Everything glorified is either trivial or absurd or evil.  The good news is, if one can call it such, that most Americans are too blissfully ignorant to care much about their own history.  The bad news is that those who visit Colonial Williamsburg in order to gain some understanding of their heritage will learn nothing but the statist, multi-cultural, feminist revisionist version of America.