Bullet Points

UNEDITING HISTORY

bY RIck WYaTT

Before I get started, I want to share something which some would say would be most appropriate in the Chaplin’s Corner, but you are stuck with it here anyhow. Ever since Christmas, I had been having some serious health problems. Being purely stubborn, I did not address them until I was nearly dead. To make a long story short, I had an echocardiogram that indicated I had mitral valve leakage, so they did a transthoracic echo which showed that the leakage was moderately severe and probably getting worse. Surgery was scheduled and they had me on the operating table getting ready to crack my chest when they did another transthoracic echo and discovered that the condition had reversed, and surgery was no longer necessary. The doctors can’t explain what happened, but I know it was the prayers of family and friends that brought me His favor. Did I deserve it? No, but I am not complaining and nobody will ever convince me that there is no God! As I write this, we have just passed Memorial Day and are headed toward Independence Day in July. According to revisionist history, America is an illegitimate nation founded by a bunch of rich white guys who built their fortunes on the backs of slaves. This view is taught in many universities and has crept into secondary education via rewritten history books used to reinforce the lies being used to tear our nation apart. This view of our founding was uttered on more than one occasion by none other than President Obama, his attorney general Eric Holder, and others in his administration. Some philosopher a long time ago lamented that history is dictated by the victors. That may be true, but without an understanding of where we come from, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes over again. Times and social morals change along with attitudes as we learn to become more civilized about how we look at human existence. At the time of our founding, slavery was an acceptable institution practiced literally all over the world, and while slavery is and always has been an abomination, only narrow-minded ideologues refuse to acknowledge historical truth before passing judgement on our nation and its founders. If you take the time to study our founding documents—beginning with the Declaration of Independence—you will see where men guided by the hand of their Creator established a government with the capacity to change and become more inclusive in the ways the people are governed. As for the founders themselves, they are often described as all being “men of means,” but I guess that would depend on how you define “means.” Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were working men who earned what they had, and the level of comfort that came along with it. History says they were lawyers, plantation owners, businessmen, and craftsmen; but remember we are talking about the 18th century and things were different. Lawyers didn’t have paralegals or stenographers, so they wrote everything out by hand with quill and ink because there were no formatted computer programs and laser printers; many of them worked other jobs or farmed to supplement their income. “Plantation owner” is also misleading because the men from the northern colonies involved in agriculture were farmers who worked their land with their families, and even the real plantation owners often worked in the fields beside the slave labor. Businessmen and craftsmen were at the mercy of the royal tax system to get their wares and materials and every one of them— from the lawyers to the farmers to the businessmen and craftsmen—were subject to the king’s army taking everything they had and putting them out of their homes and off their lands. The rebels all knew that the British would hang them for treason and that their loyalist neighbors would gladly hand them over and probably supply the rope, yet they all pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other , our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration, seventeen fought in the revolution, five were captured and imprisoned, two had their wives imprisoned with one dying in captivity, most had their property vandalized and tangible assets seized by crown loyalists, and eleven had their properties completely completed destroyed by the British. These were not men who were motivated by race, they were driven to realize the freedom that comes from divine providence. To insinuate that this nation was founded on racism is the product of a special kind of ignorance; the kind that drives us apart as a nation. I am getting sick and tired of the popular idea that if we disagree, or certain groups don’t get their way, it’s because the decisions were founded on race rather than merit. There are far too many people who find a racist under every rock they trip over. Racism is ugly; I know because I have seen it, have been a victim of it, and told by the race-haters that I could not be a victim because I am white. An old black gunnery sgt once told me that the people who scream racist the fastest and loudest usually are and the last fifty years have proven him right.