By Stan Gudmundson
Peterson, MN
I absolutely despise what the radical left is doing to America and the world today. Tearing down statues, monuments, and trying to destroy history, good and bad, is much like Mao Tse-Tung’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ in its destruction of the old. As if history can be changed.
Their beliefs about and attitudes toward the past are silly. And infuriating. It’s as if sanctimonious self-righteous 21st century ‘purity’ could produce retroactive historical change.
Leftists seem to think that, were they able to change places with our ancestors, they would have believed and behaved differently. That’s fantasy. A case can also be made that revisionist historians suffer from the same delusional malady.
Were they able to do so, they would have had to do exactly the same things they did. Nothing would have been different. Time and circumstances have changed but human nature has not.
When Columbus came to the Americas, he launched an inevitable cultural clash that had to occur sooner or later. He just happened to be first. Moreover, it wasn’t just a cultural clash. It was also an ecological clash that continues today as “invasive” species show us.
We don’t exactly know what it was like here before Europeans arrived because the diseases they brought obliterated native American populations. And much of their cultures.
Now, imagine that you are a male child of a couple living in Norway or Sweden in the 1800s. By law, the farm you are grew up on will pass from your parents to your oldest brother. You will have to work for him or someone else’s older brother or find other work in a time and place where there wasn’t much other work. Going to sea was an option but it was a dangerous way to make a living. To make matters worse, a famine hits, something that periodically strikes Scandinavia. And the rest of the world. About 350,000 people starve to death this time.
Like many, many others you are desperate but have a chance to move to America and start a new life, free of primogeniture and Norway’s other limitations. You take it. When you arrive you learn English and stop speaking Norwegian. You are never, ever going back to the awful life in the old country.
If you were to be from the United Kingdom, your children will have a chance to grow taller than you because of an improved diet. Like the diet that historically allowed the British royalty to be four or five inches taller than peasants.
Because of the incredible mortality rate, in some parts of the world, children weren’t named until they were five years old. America offers hope. Maybe you can begin naming your children at birth.
You are joining people confronting stone age cultures now modified by the introduction of European horses and cattle. Moreover, Indian “homes” weren’t always static. Many moved often, fleeing from the predations of other tribes. Inter-tribal warfare and conquest is extremely brutal and, many kept slaves. When tribes in the southeast were relocated to “Indian” territory in Oklahoma, they brought with them at least 3,000 black slaves.
Pekka Hamalainen, in the book Comanche Empire, points out that Indian slave traders even captured Indians and Spaniards sending them to the horrible Caribbean sugar plantations. When the Spaniards once decided to stop trading for slaves, the Comanches killed their captives in front of the Spaniards. They publicly raped the women first as they continued to do after the Spaniards relented and began again trading for the slaves to save lives.
The Comanche tribe, establishing a way of life dominated by horses, controlled the southwest for upwards of 200 years. They could have easily wiped out European settlements in all of Texas, New Mexico, and areas to the north. To an extent, they tolerated them because they needed European trade goods. Especially guns.
Some Indian tribes, anxious to save themselves from Comanches and others came to missions begging to keep them safe. If they could. In exchange, many promised to become and did become Christians.
History is really grim and a mess. The left should stop pretending they are better than and would have behaved differently than our ancestors. They couldn’t and wouldn’t have.
David R Webb MD says
I am not a proponent either of “political correctness” or “historical revisionism.” But I think there is an important distinction between remembering and commemorating the past.
“Were they able to do so, they would have had to do exactly the same things they did? Nothing would have been different?” You do great disservice to the integrity of the best of our ancestors.
Consider slavery which you brought up. In 1850, Democratic US Senator John C. Calhoun asserted that slavery was “a positive good.” In 2020, Republican US Senator Thomas Cotton, echoing some antebellum slaveholders, asserted that slavery was “a necessary evil.” Such remarks shocked the conscience of many of our ancestors, just as they ought to shock ours now. Abhorrence of human bondage is certainly not a unique twenty first century phenomenon.
Or consider genocide. US General Philip Sheridan once remarked, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” That shocked the conscience of many at the time and does so now. Abhorrence of genocide is certainly not a unique twenty first century phenomenon.
And now consider the several places around the state of Minnesota named for Calhoun and Sheridan. To rename them is neither to “destroy history” or to whitewash history. Rather, it is a cessation of the continuous “slap in the face” to the victims of the worst aspects of our history.
Grant says
Yes history is much different than the paragraph in a school book indicates. I don’t think any person could escape harsh criticism if there own life was put under a microscope for hypocrisy or immorality. I think this is the point to not judge, learn from this “history,” then improve and not repeat the same mistakes. Slavery was a severe blight in history but still today ghetto’s have continued all over the nation for a hundred years with no attempt to make a legitimate improvement for those communities. The most recent absurd moment in politics (one of many like Mayors encouraging destruction of statues or looting) was the bowing on the knees because of police violence. The idea that these people are unaware of the neglect in communities and the continual class divide which is ever growing sending more children and families into poverty is absurd. The very people that go along with corporate corruption on all levels bribed by corporate lobby groups in D.C. are pretending that they are unaware. This kind of obvious staged behavior is an insult to the American people yet some actually are ignorant enough to think that this act is real, that these people actually care. They do not whatsoever and will use the Covid scare to destroy small business while the Wall Street corporations reap the harvest of zero competition. It’s all one big diversion to distract the uneducated Americans or (ugly Americans as they say in Europe) to go along with status quo and allow more poverty with more neglect. A conflict of interest is always on the forefront of politics until the lobby (bribery) system is eradicated. The reason the statue behavior is encouraged is because they can continue to destroy the middle class and create a two tier system of top and bottom which will give the 1 percent more control. This ridiculous judgement of statues is the perfect diversion of focus for those that are frustrated so they “take there eye of the ball’ and forget about the cesspool of corruption in D.C. that continues especially in industrial military spending (55 percent federal budget) which is out of balance and big pharma who has done unspeakable levels of corruption allowing harm to children and adults for profit. A toppling statue keeps the sheep from noticing the enormous problems with Wall Street exploiting the country. This angry mob mentality keeps the majority under control distracting them from the real story class divide.
Greg Rendahl says
Stan, statues are erected as a sign of honor. The majority of the statues being taken down are of confederate generals who were American traitors and caused the death of over a half million Americans as they sought to continue the enslavement of blacks. As far as history is concerned, it’s best to view history factually and not mythologically. All nations try to put a positive light on their past while downplaying less honorable actions, yet if we don’t understand history, then we cannot learn from it. I’m surprised that you “absolutely despise” people who see evil honored and wish to finally set things right. The “left” is not “pretending they are better than…our ancestors.” You don’t seem to have the slightest understanding of liberals such as myself.
Stanley J Gudmundson says
Let’s see if I understand your logic. Sometime in the future, when everyone understands what a menace liberalism was, you will be okay when those generations destroy today’s liberal myths and monuments and change names of institutions and buildings and so on. In other words, henceforth, each generation can purge the politically current version of the unpopular, the wrong, and others for their villainous behavior or beliefs. And so ultimately, there will be no reminders of history, good or bad, from which we can learn any lessons. At best. And at the worst, appreciate the work of the craftsman who made these objects. That’s your opinion and you are sticking to it?
Thomas E.H. says
@ Stanley
First you ask to see if you understand his logic (5 points for you!). Then you make claims without any specific examples (minus 3 points. Then you create a statement saying that your “let me see if I understand your logic” was really a “this is how Stan the Man understands your logic” by claiming it’s his opinion and that he’s sticking to it. (Minus 50 points)
No, Stan. That’s not how it works. If you ask a question to understand how it works, it ends with a question mark. Not a series of claims based off what you clearly said you needed to be sure if you understand the logic first.
Do you even know how to have a conversation without strawmanning all the time?