Book Review
Managing History: A Review of “To the Victor Go the Myths and Monuments”

Managing History: A Review of “To the Victor Go the Myths and Monuments”

History is not only “written by the victors,” but by “the ignorant,” “the biased,” and “the devious.” The book reviewed here fills in important missing pieces of American history. ...
Staff

To the Victor Go the Myths & Monuments: The History of the First 100 Years of the War Against God and the Constitution, 1776-1876, and Its Modern Impact, by Arthur R. Thompson, Appleton, Wisconsin: American Opinion Foundation Publishing, 2016, 492 pages, hardcover.

To the Victor Go the Myths & Monuments is a historical overview of the first 100 years of our country’s existence, as well as being much, much more. The author explains that those who study history soon discover that history books do not always contain the entire story, which often happens because of space constraints or because an author is unaware of certain facts. History can also be restricted to selected portions of the true story because of an author’s bias, his agenda, or because he is serving the agenda of others. A history in which facts are deliberately ignored or in which the author creates “facts” distorts the true picture of past events. Such distortions, built up over time, can have deadly effects on a people and on nations. As George Orwell (whom the author quotes on the title page) put it many years ago, “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

If, in addition to distortions of the historical record, one adds another factor — the intentional “dumbing down” of a people — then the disintegration of a country can be accomplished even more quickly. I refer here to the modern phenomenon of large numbers of high-school or even college graduates who are unable to find the Pacific Ocean on an unlabeled map of the world, or to arrange major events or historical personages in chronological order (i.e., that Washington lived before the Civil War and that John F. Kennedy was president a century after that conflict). Even the ability to use and understand the English language has fallen on hard times. The vocabulary of the average young person has dwindled alarmingly; a diminishing vocabulary means a diminishing ability to understand the lessons of history or to grasp today’s crucial issues. Thus, one can see why control of education has long been a major objective to those desiring revolutionary changes in America.

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