The War on History

The Ministry of Truth and the rewriting of history


The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past by Jarrett Stepman

https://www.amazon.com/War-History-Conspiracy-Rewrite-Americas-ebook/dp/B07PY4TSDM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NQURVDI2UQ40&keywords=The+War+on+History&qid=1696718593&s=digital-text&sprefix=the+war+on+history%2Cdigital-text%2C246&sr=1-1


Although Leftists have been rewriting history for decades, the project of anti-American historical revisionism burst into public awareness only recently, particularly with the 2020 race riots where statues of historical figures - initially Confederate statutes but later historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Father Junipero Serra – were attacked, vandalized, destroyed, or removed from public squares.

Leftist Orwellianism has sparked a reaction among historians. Many historians are fighting back by contesting the tendentious, fictional, reductionist, popular Orwellian revisionist history that has flooded the public mind by a host of Leftist institutes, think tanks, and academics. The sad part is that they might be shoveling against the tide. If history is a set of lies agreed upon, then the agreement is in the hands of the cultural elites who are not afraid to use their power to fire dissenters or suppress opposition. And, then, there is just the problem of getting people to read the defense when the Ministry of Truth merely has to repeat its lies over and over again until it becomes common sense.

The War on History by Jarrett Sepman falls into the Defending History genre. Sepman's book was written in 2019, before the War on History went truly asymptotic. Since 2020 acts as a kind of discontinuity when Leftist dysfunction really broke out into the public mind, this book is a reminder that things had been swirling down the toilet for a reasonable time before 2020.

Sepman organizes his book into chapters involving the various fronts in the Orwellian war on history. These are the wars on Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Robert Lee, and America's prosecution of World War II. I listened to this book as an audiobook and I found myself being inspired by a lot of what I heard. For example, I had never been particularly interested in Andrew Jackson but now I get – I understand – why he was important in transitioning America to a mass democracy and why he upset the powers that be that entrenched themselves in power during the “Era of Good Feelings.” I am an amateur historian, and I learned stuff. I can only imagine that others would benefit from this survey of American history without the hate for America.

Here are excerpts I found interesting.

Concerning the Pilgrims:

But although some on the far left have peddled a “National Day of Mourning”—a “holiday” based on racial grievance and animosity—in order to rebuke Thanksgiving as a kind of celebration of white supremacy, the original thanksgiving was actually more of an Indian celebration than an English one. “Countless Victorian-era engravings notwithstanding, the Pilgrims did not spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen cloth, clasping each other's hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on,” according to Nathaniel Philbrick. “Instead of an English affair, the First Thanksgiving soon became an overwhelmingly Native celebration when [Indian chief] Massasoit and a hundred Pokanokets (more than twice the entire English population of Plymouth) arrived at the settlement.”24 The Pilgrims have sometimes been portrayed as charity cases at the original Thanksgiving, being helped along by the good graces of local Indians. This is a misinterpretation. Both sides found that cooperation suited their interests. The Pokanokets saw the Pilgrims as a valuable ally to counterbalance the Narragansetts, a much larger and more powerful local tribe. And the Pilgrims needed local allies and tutors in survival in the New World. This joint celebration between very different kinds of Americans was appropriate, given the holiday's meaning to our E Pluribus Unum nation hundreds of years in the future.

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 48). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

This discussion of how Daniel Webster implanted the idea of the Pilgrims as a symbol for America made me want to look up this speech:

For an hour and a half, and mostly without notes, Webster delivered one of the greatest patriotic speeches in American history. He began by noting that the “Pilgrim Fathers” had left their descendants an incredible legacy, then called for his own generation to offer future ones “some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religion's liberty, in our regard for whatever advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.”46 Webster made the case for commemorating history: “Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history; and in the future, by hope and anticipation.”

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 61). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

This is depressing, but not surprising. (Although it makes me wonder why we are spending billions on public education.)

After passing out short quizzes to test the general knowledge of his students for over a decade, college professor Duke Pesta of the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh has observed a worrying trend. A growing majority of his students now believe that America invented slavery and that the institution had no history outside the United States. Worse, slave ownership seems to be just about the only thing students know about the Founders. “On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president,” according to a College Fix article about Pesta's quizzes. “Interestingly, more students—six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.”31

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 84). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

On the War of 1812:

The late-nineteenth-century American statesman and historian Carl Schurz explained that “if war is ever justified, there was ample provocation for it” in the actions of the British toward Americans on the world's oceans. “The legitimate interests of the United States had been trampled on by the belligerent powers, as if entitled to no respect. The American flag had been treated with a contempt scarcely conceivable now.” Americans had to ask themselves whether they should simply allow themselves to be wantonly abused by Old World superpowers—not only “robbed, and maltreated, and insulted,” but also “despised.” All this “for the privilege of picking up the poor crumbs of trade which the great powers of Europe would still let them have.” Ultimately, Schurz wrote, “When a nation knowingly and willingly accepts the contempt of others, it is in danger of losing also its respect for itself.”13 The United States had to go to war for the sake of its own dignity. Inconsequential nations lay down to take the abuse, but while America was outmatched by any objective assessment, it was not created to be an inconsequential nation. Failure on the battlefield would be far less destructive than the crisis that the fragile nation would face if it allowed transgressions to continue with no military response. Young patriotic Americans were having none of it. They would fight regardless of the disparity in power between Great Britain and the United States. They would take their lumps and defeats, for sure, but they would show that abusing the rights of their countrymen would come at a price. And no man personified the “Don't tread on me,” belligerent underdog ethos better than Andrew Jackson.

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 110). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.
This parallel to modern times was interesting:

When Jackson was swept into office in 1828, he stunned the American political establishment, which had dismissed him as an unserious ruffian at best, a dangerous proto-Caesar at worst, and likely some combination of the two. But they had been blind to some very serious problems that had taken root in Washington, D.C. Following the collapse of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812, one-party rule had developed into a cushy, back-scratching affair among those in power. This era has sometimes been called the “Era of Good Feelings,” but, as historian Robert Remini pointed out, it really deserves to be called the “first Era of Corruption.”

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 131). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

Robert E. Lee is vocally condemned, but his role in preventing America devolving into an endless round of hatred and reprisal, as we see in other countries, deserves to be remembered:

Though he was a general and not the president of the seceded states, late in the war, Lee was the Confederacy, the man who had the most power to sway the minds of the Southern people. And Lee's example to a defeated South was almost unique in human history. When some Southerners wanted to keep fighting a guerilla war, he urged them to accept defeat, reconcile with their fellow countrymen, and to abandon animosities and “make your sons Americans.”34 As one writer for the Atlantic Monthly wrote in 1911, “What finer sentence could be inscribed on Lee's statue than that?” Lincoln, too, was a proponent of reconciliation. He waged the war in a spirit of “malice toward none” and “charity for all,” in the moving words of his Second Inaugural Address.

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (pp. 161-162). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

Teddy Roosevelt was a mensch. People forget that 1915 was an era of anti-Catholicism as the Ku Klux Klan was in the middle of its 20th century revival. For Teddy to go to the KKK and give a speech tells you how much he was committed to America:

No speech better sums up Theodore Roosevelt's philosophy than one he delivered on October 12, 1915, to the Knights of Columbus. As we have seen, the Knights of Columbus was no ordinary fraternal organization. Because it was Catholic, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan frequently attacked it as un-American. Hostilities between Protestants and Catholics in that day were far more intense than our own. So it was noteworthy that former president Roosevelt, a fervent Protestant, would make an appearance before the group.29

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 195). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

In 1894, Teddy Roosevelt offered this observation on the “deal” offered to immigrants:

Roosevelt then quoted the German-born representative Richard Guenther, who had explained to his fellow immigrants, We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duties belong. We will work for our country in time of peace and fight for it in time of war, if a time of war should ever come. When I say our country, I mean, of course, our adopted country. I mean the United States of America. After passing through the crucible of naturalization, we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment we touch the American shore until we are laid in American graves. We will fight for America whenever necessary. America, first, last, and all the time. America against Germany, America against the world; America, right or wrong; always America. We are Americans.43

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (pp. 202-203). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

And how did we get here? Mario Cuomo offers an insight into the leftwing mindset which has metastasized into a cancer:

“We're not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on the campaign trail in late 2018 to an audience of mixed cheers and groans. “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged.” It was a revealing moment. Cuomo backtracked after making the comment, acknowledging that perhaps America was great but had failed to meet his laundry list of ideological demands. Despite his later flip-flopping, it's clear that Cuomo originally thought his line questioning American greatness would resonate with voters. And with some, it probably did.

Stepman, Jarrett. The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past (p. 237). Gateway Editions. Kindle Edition.

This should give the reader a sense of where this book is coming from.

I recommend it as a solid survey of history.

You should read it now before history disappears.