The Other Half of History Blog
The Iraq War from Both Sides
“We know that (Saddam Hussein) has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.” Senator Al Gore, 2002
On March 20 of 2003 the United States and its allies invaded Iraq. Six weeks later they captured the nation’s capital and drove dictator Saddam Hussein from power. The war was politically controversial; conservatives supported the war effort, and liberals vociferously opposed it. Initially a majority of Americans joined with conservatives in supporting the war, as shown by polling data from the period.
Since 2003 liberals in the media and academia have worked tirelessly to win the American people over to their side. As early as 2006, college history textbooks were being updated to include sections about the Iraq war, with most portraying it as an immoral exercise in imperialism. According to the leftists who make up most universities’ history faculties, the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had nothing to do with protecting Americans from terrorism, and everything to do with the personal ambitions of US President George W. Bush.
The Treaty Trap
“Despite the ceremony and dignity with which men sign and have signed treaties back through history, most treaties are broken the first time it interferes with the national interest of either of the signatories.” Ronald Reagan
International peace treaties are like many other things liberals cherish; they are beautiful in theory, useless in practice, and a dangerous trap to anyone who puts faith in them. An accurate knowledge of the history of treaties would undermine the belief in them that leftist professors are trying to promote, so college profs (and the textbooks they write) tend not to cover the subject very well.
The leftist culture of most college history faculties requires professors to cover up a lot of politically embarrassing data, and the history of international peace treaties is just one example of that. Positive examples of the results of peace treaties are hard to come by, and negative ones abound, so professors who want to indoctrinate their students are forced to suppress a lot of actual history while claiming to teach history.
The United Nations: A Democracy of Dictators
The liberal stranglehold on college textbooks and curricula clearly has at least some influence on the thinking of college students and graduates, and this influence shows itself in the attitudes younger Americans have toward important political issues. A typical college student in the United States spends four or more years listening to information and arguments that support a leftist agenda, while being sheltered from data and arguments that might militate in favor of more conservative positions. Since people quite naturally base their beliefs on the available information, a four year diet of information hand-picked by leftists will inevitably have some effect.
This liberal monopoly on the flow of information allows college faculties to promote all kinds of politically correct beliefs, including some that don’t stand up well to actual scrutiny. The gospel of man-made global warming is one such belief. The best way to convince students of the truth of the theory is to “protect” them from all the evidence that undermines it.
Similarly, positive attitudes toward the United Nations are best encouraged by the suppression of information. University professors, like most liberals, are eager to portray the UN as a force for Good; and the best way to do that is by concealing a lot of embarrassing data.
The Global Warming Agenda
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken
If there is one thing that unifies liberals, it is the belief that “government is the answer.” From the Progressives of the early twentieth century, to Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” of the 1930’s, to the college campus liberals of today; leftists have always believed that Government is society’s best hope. Only Government can do good things, according to this view, and it must always grow bigger and more powerful so it can do more good.
To this end, leftists are always promoting public belief in some crisis or other that only Government, supposedly, can solve. There is no better example of this kind of faux crisis than the claim, accepted without question by too many schoolchildren and college students, that the use of fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up to unprecedented temperatures.
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The Original “Progressives”
“A well-meaning man may vaguely think of himself as a Progressive without having even the faintest conception of what a Progressive is.” Theodore Roosevelt
In recent years the word “progressive” has had a resurgence in popularity among American leftists (perhaps because the word “liberal” is too well understood by the American public). In 1991 the most liberal members of the United States Congress joined together to form the “Progressive Caucus.” Hosts on the now-defunct Air America radio network billed themselves as “The Aggressive Progressives.” Income tax structures that force high wage earners to pay taxes disproportionate to their income are called “progressive,” while tax structures that require everyone to pay in proportion to income are derided as “regressive.” Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter what name left wingers use for their agenda. The agenda never changes.
The word “progressive” comes to us from the early twentieth century, when leftists like US Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson used it to portray themselves as agents of progress. History textbooks refer to the period during which these three men ran the government (1901 to 1919), as the “Progressive Era.” Most modern textbooks reflect the leftist bias of their authors by framing this period as a time when enlightened leaders used the power of government to promote “social justice.”1 The other side of the story, generally downplayed by history professors and other leftists, is the way the original “Progressive” politicians trampled on the Constitutional principle of checks and balances, and ushered in an era of unprecedented government power.
