Tom Marsland
Monday, Feb. 3, 2003

They're ... multicultural, diverse, humanist, evolutionist, advocates for gun control, politically correct in speech, tolerant, especially of homosexuality, steeped in revisionist history, green, anti-capitalist, anti-fossil-fuel, anti-West, pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, anti-military, anti-corporate-profits, pro-big-government, "pro-choice," pro-family planning, enlightened young citizens of our mother, the Earth.

They just can't add, or subtract, or read, or write, or speak the king's English. For spending more money on education than any other nation on Earth (yes, you read that right), we're not exactly producing rocket scientists or brain surgeons in our government schools.

The fault lies where? Though not 100 percent certain, I strongly suspect the "new age," P.C. language, and revisionist history movements. Their integration into our public systems is near total. It always shocks and disturbs those of us outside of that system. Revisionist education is nothing new, it's the scope and magnitude that's changed.

Until around three decades ago, government education's most egregious sin was telling our children dumb stories. Such as George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, or throwing a coin across the Potomac River. Such as embellishments of Honest Abe's boyhood travail, and even a sanitized retelling of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Rider charge "uphill" at the battle of San Juan Heights in Cuba. Even as a child, I pondered the veracity of these tales.

As in most all revisionism, these stories had elements of truth in them, inaccurate though not intellectually lethal. Something like your dad saying, "When I was a kid, I walked 5 miles each way to school ... uphill both ways ... even when it was 20 below zero ... in May."

I hate droning on about the "good ol' days," and would normally avoid it, were intellectual lethality not the order of today. All repressive regimes institute this, always have, always will. It's just that I falsely believed America more pristine than this. Yes, I am looking for a good 12-step group to deal with my former delusion.

Though government educators no longer mischaracterize Washington, with dull cherry-tree and coin-tossing stories, we're now really messing with our kids' minds.

They blame ...

1. the start of WWII on us (U.S.A.) and our allies, due to cessation of oil supplies to the Far East.

2. the start of the "first" Gulf War on earlier American support for Saddam.

3. pollution on the American industrial progress, not indigenous people's cooking fires.

4. Palestinian suicide bombings on Israel, because they're ... well, they are there!

5. racism on the party of Lincoln.

They tell ...

1. our children of Teddy Roosevelt's initiatives founding the national park system, but not of his military bravery, or his love of hunting, or his failed New Mexico game management initiative.

2. our children that George Washington was a philanderer, because of a single order of women's hosiery on a military requisition form. No longer mentioned is his daily one-hour prayer and Scripture-reading habit.

3. our children that Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was racist literature. What you don't hear is that the story's main character, Tom, is a metaphorical caricature of Jesus Christ. Given the power to be free, he voluntarily stands by his friend, costing him (Tom) his freedom, though leading his friend to a relationship with his Creator prior to his departure from this vale of tears.

4. our children about "Palestine's history." In reality, Palestine has no history. There has never been a nation known as Palestine. There is a group of unfortunately displaced people, largely from the former Trans-Jordan, that now identify themselves as Palestinians. I am OK with people identifying themselves by any proper noun of their choosing. I am not OK with rewriting history to indoctrinate schoolchildren.

For the record ...

1. George Washington actually did throw a piece of eight across the much narrower Rappahannock River.

2. Abe Lincoln did chop wood on the farm, live in a log house and read by candlelight ... as did all farm kids in Illinois at the turn of the 19th century.

3. Teddy Roosevelt actually was a brave man, facing enemy fire as a young man, and surviving an assassination attempt later in life. But, he never did fully recover from his first wife's death. He was forever a man of sorrows, able to survive battle, unable to overcome a single emotional event.

4. Yes, your lamenting dad probably really did walk a long way to school, even on very cold days.

I wonder if Histor, the Greek father of modern written history, is rolling in his grave ... along with a legion of our founding fathers.

Tom Marsland is the talk show host of "Tom's Place," heard Monday through Friday from 4-6 p.m. CST on the nationwide Salem Radio Network's AM 980 KKMS in Minneapolis. A noted speaker, one-time heavyweight wrestler and former corporate CEO, Tom writes cultural, political and religious commentary for Assist News Service, NewsMax.com, the MN Christian Chronicle and others. He's also the U.S. correspondent heard throughout New Zealand on Radio Rhema. E-mail Tom at: tom@kkms.com.

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