Teaching students there is nothing special about America

Last week, I suggested that it should come as no surprise that today’s high school and college students are not proud of their country.

I also suggested that the late Dr. Howard Zinn, the left-wing activist author of “A People’s History of the United States,” could be blamed for many of those feelings of disenchantment with the country and its founders.

Dr. Zinn’s book, which has sold somewhere near three million copies according to its publisher, has been used as part (and sometimes the entire) of the history course in high schools in the U.S. for decades.

Dr. Zinn’s follow-up textbook for elementary school students, “A Young People’s History of the United States,” has also become prevalent throughout the public education system. It is used in many private schools as well. gets any blame whatsoever.

And it’s worse than I thought. According to Dr. Zinn, there was never anything uplifting about the United States.

Nothing.

Ever.

Virtually all its presidents, senators, representatives, generals, Supreme Court Justices, law enforcement agencies, businessmen, inventors and entrepreneurs, were evil … men, virtually all white men out for themselves.

PURELY POLITICAL

For example: “The American government had set out to fight the slave states in 1861, not to end slavery,” Dr. Zinn proposes, “but to retain the enormous national territory and market and resources.” He could have at least mentioned that “the American government” was the anti-slavery Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln, and that the “slave states” were led by Democrats.

James Buckley

And what really galls is that, according to Dr. Zinn, “Republicans” are at fault nearly all the time. The Republican Party’s formation as an anti-slave party is ignored. The pro-slavery party — the Democratic Party — while not held up as a paragon of virtue, hardly

He goes on:

“Yet victory required a crusade, and the momentum of that crusade brought new forces into national politics: more blacks determined to make their freedom mean something: more whites — whether Freedmen’s Bureau officials, or teachers in the Sea Islands, or ‘carpetbaggers’ with various mixtures of humanitarianism and personal ambition — concerned with racial equality. There was also the powerful interest of the Republican party in maintaining control over the national government, with the prospect of southern black votes to accomplish this. Northern businessmen, seeing Republican policies as beneficial to them, went along for a while.”

What the Democratic Party cared about and “went along for” he doesn’t say.

After all, Andrew Johnson wasn’t just “Lincoln’s vice president.” He was Lincoln’s Democratic re-election fusion candidate nominated as vice president for the 1864 presidential campaign. Johnson came from South Carolina, though his family moved to Tennessee when he was in his teens. Johnson, like Lincoln, was born in a log cabin — dirt poor as it were — and never — ever — attended school. Johnson didn’t learn to read or write until he was 17 years old.

As a Democrat, Johnson was also in favor of slavery but, because he objected to the Southern states’ actions of seceding from the Union, he retained his U.S. Senate seat when Tennessee joined the Confederacy.

According to Dr. Zinn, “the southern white oligarchy used its economic power to organize the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups.” He excludes the information that the “southern white oligarchy” was made up entirely of Democratic Party members.

Following this, Dr. Zinn recounts a series of horrors perpetrated upon southern blacks, mostly

“The huge increases in our gas bill are due to the market cost of natural gas that SCG buys from various suppliers much like CA must do for electricity, of which over 70% comes from the national grid.

“The base usage rate for a thermal unit was $1.40 in November and $1.87 in December, is now $3.44 per thermal unit, which is almost triple what it was in November, and this cost is passed directly to us as users. The over-base rates have also gone from $1.88 in Nov. to $2.29 in Dec. and was $4.80 in January.”

He continued, “... This is primarily due to the availability and demand of natural gas through the public market for that commodity just as with the cost of gasoline.

This situation is driven by government energy policies relative to encouraging or discouraging the drilling and expansion of the supply, both domestically and globally.

“We are impacted by the change from the Trump energy policies to the now Biden energy policies with regard to fossil fuel-based energy, which Governor Newsom is following even more aggressively than other states. These huge, surprising increases from Nov. through Jan. are irresponsible, however. SCG has no control over these rates and again are passing the increases to the users.

“As seen, all too often, increases in taxes, the cost of permitting and of operation of utility companies, or any company, are passed on to the consumers. Hopefully somehow, soon the cost of oil and gas will normalize and be reflected in our utility costs. That, however, is going to require a change in our energy policies or the supply and demand.”

Another example of insane utility prices, posted on Nextdoor, is the dilemma of a 96-year-old who received a $900 gas bill. What will happen to that individual and other people in the same situation?

Another diligent and concerned citizen, Celeste Barber, sent letters addressing the gas hikes to our local elected officials — U.S. Rep.

Wendy McCaw Arthur von Wiesenberger Co-Publisher Co-Publisher