By REV. JIM PURCELL
I am distressed about the past. Not my past. The past of our United States, and how some people attempt to turn events that took place into a comic book, worse yet they sometimes try and turn it into a coloring book. American history can be 'dumbed down' to the point where it can be depicted in a few blocks of cartoons with some quotes placed in white bubbles over the heads of drawn characters.
When I was at
Georgian Court University, as a young man, I studied history. In time, I would go to seminary in New York and, certainly, there are great examinations of the past there as well. But, always, there was this fire to know what happened yesterday, and many yesterdays ago.
History is political, though. It serves as the motivation of actions for people today. Nations and people fight wars over the past. If everyone were to get collective amnesia tomorrow,
Jews and Arabs would have nothing left to fight over. Blacks and whites would get along throughout this and every other country. The Chinese might actually work in friendship with India, and maybe
India and Pakistan would operate together for a change. But, it is the past that binds people to it, like prisoners on a chain-gang. So, the mightiest person in that situation is the one who owns the chains, meaning the one who owns the history of what happened, when, with whom, for what reason, what purpose.
There are groups of people, with various political, industrial, business and religious viewpoints, that stand to profit if history suits their needs. It is for this reason that so many people attempt to, and sometimes successfully, re-write history. It is a fool who says, 'I don't care about history. It has nothing to do with me.' Well, I disagree. From the style and fabric of the clothes you wear on your back, to every morsel of food you put in your mouth, from where you work, to where and how you live and down to whomever you might go to bed with at night, history invades every fabric of our being. There is a lot of power at stake for the man, woman or group of people who control the edit function of history, people.
For example, there are
neo-Conservative political faction in the United States who would attempt to re-write the American revolution so as to have precedent for turning our once-loved republic into a theocracy, which is unlike any theological likeness the Founders would have known or understood. But, when a political party is able to point to the Founders and say, 'Look -- we're just like them! So, don't enact laws because of what we say. No, change your laws because we -- we Conservatives -- are only following what the Founders would have wanted.'
First, who are the Founders? Well, they are the
Class of 1775. They are the leaders, followers and people who founded this better-than-all-other United States of America behind their blood, sweat and tears -- and intractable optimism. "The Founders" are not just Gen.
George Washington or his aides, not
John Hancock nor just the
2nd Continental Congress, not just
Patrick Henry or
John Jay, or
Thomas Paine or
Benjamin Franklin. If you were to walk up to one of the leaders in that fine company and ask them who founded the country, they would not have forgotten to point to those muddied, bloodied, oil- and sweat-stained men pushing artillery through the middle of the night, fighting battles as half-trained volunteers, nor forgotten so many women who overnight became single-parents and sole-breadwinners for families while their men were busy moving artillery, fighting battles -- being all 'Revolutionary.'
You see, the Revolutionary Era, according to
Elise Wilson, was a movement during a century or so, which involved generations of people, who primed the
Revolutionary Generation, then there were the contributions of the Revolutionary Generation, and then finally there was interpreting the lofty ideals of the Revolutionary Generation within a governmental entity, which was the not insubstantial mission of the
Post-Revolutionary Generation (which, it could be argued, in my opinion, actually ended with the Civil War and not in 1800, as is commonly discussed).
The real "American Revolution" was the central theme of generations. Understanding what that meant, in all of its complexity and simplicity, cannot be easily done -- let alone in comic book form for Fox News viewers.It is neo-Conservatives today in
Texas who do not wish the specific contributions of Thomas Jefferson, the
third president of the United States, former consul to France and author of the Declaration of Independence to be taught to school children. How does one do that? The Declaration wrote itself, the French just gave us stuff because they were intuitive, the Louisiana Purchase was a fluke? However, in my opinion, by not involving the contradiction of who the public and private Jefferson was, slave-owner and revolutionary for the freedom of "all men" what is achieved? Well, for one, as a society, it makes it easier by having less pointed conversations about slavery. Yes, the hard questions about how Founders allowed slavery become easier to talk about if we do not examine, in any detail, the life of Thomas Jefferson.
Like African-Americans, by not being reminded in school about slavery, will forget about it? Like anyone cold or should forget about slavery, its causations and impact upon American history and in our news today.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, that intellectual heavyweight from South Carolina, will tell you, as his has publicly that "Moses wrote the Constitution." Well, Mr. Graham knows a lot better than that. It took the Founders between 1776 and 1786 to come up with a workable, compromised document that enough people could live with unhappily to vote for. Neither the
Whigs nor the
Democratic Republicans were all that happy with the result. However, it would do. It would be close enough for two very different political mindsets to be able to do business with. Moses was long to the earth when that document was forged. However, the 'short-hand' that Mr. Graham is attempted to overlay upon that entire convention that produced the Constitution was that it was somehow: A. Jewish, B. divinely inspired and C. part of Divine Providence, as it is accepted in many circles religiously. He is attempting to turn a secular political convention of ideas and thought by humans and place a religiosity upon it, and translate the decade-long effort of people who did not agree with each other's politics very much as the authors of a religious document.
Well, I am a Baptist. I have a hard enough time with the real Bible, without Sen. Graham and his cohorts over in
Fox News trying to create an annex to the Bible. Perhaps the only thing the Constitution and the Holy Bible have in common is that neither Sen. Graham, nor any of the cast of young, blond female commentators over at Fox, have ever read either of those documents. And, if they did, they couldn't understand a word of either. Mr. Graham was, as a matter of fact, a lawyer for the National Guard in South Carolina, who no doubt dealt with Constitutional issues somewhere along his tenure. However, as a professional, for Mr. Graham to try and pass along compromise political agreements as bona fide God-given law informs not only about his quality as a lawyer, but also his worth as a scholar, an American and an alleged leader of the people.
History should be a tool to learn from, not re-packaged to become a bumper sticker for the Grand Old Party.
