Education on past is key to future
(Charley Reese, syndicated columnist)

One of the problems with multiculturalism is that too many Americans
aren't educated about their own culture.

There's nothing wrong with learning about other cultures.

In fact, you should learn about other cultures after you have learned
about your own.  But there is plenty wrong in learning about other
cultures instead of your own.

All the institutions of American government are derived from our European
culture.  None comes from Africa or Asia or from American Indians.  The
ignorance of American and European culture was refleced recently in an
otherwise excellent Turner Broadcasting film about the Iroquois.  In it,
it was implied that our forefathers derived the idea of the U.S.
Constitution from the Iroquois Confederation.

This is one of those preposterous products of the pothead pseudo-
intellectuals of the 1960s.  It's not even worthy of comment except to
point out that only a person nearly 100 percent ignorant of American and
European history could make such a dumb statement.

Tribal alliances for the purpose of making war against other tribes are
as old as human history.  The superbly educated authors of the American
Revolution had nothing to learn from a primitive tribal alliance.  Try
Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Laws" instead. The American Revolution was
the culmination of a great intellectual ferment that began in Europe with
the Renaissance.

No one can be said to be educated about Western European culture who
hasn't read "Spirit of the Laws," "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, or
"The Social Contract" by Jean Jacques Rousseau. No one can be said to be
educated about American history who hasn't read "The Federalist Papers."

We are today - in the twilight of the 20th century - more illiterate and
generally less well-educated than Americans of the 18th and 19th
centuries.  The Frenchman Alexis DeToqueville remarked that in his
travels through America in the 1800's, almost every frontier cabin - no
matter how humble - contained two well-worn books:  The Bible and a
volume of Shakespeare.  A Frenchman touring today would find a television
set and Nintendo.

Thomas Jefferson spoke the truth when he said you need not expect to
remain free and ignorant.  Virtually all the problems tat beset us today
- including the deficit and public debt - are basically a result of our
general ignorance of our own history and of the philosophy and principles
of the American Revolution. Unless we educate ourselves and reverse the
process, our dwindling liberties soon will be nonexistent.

Liberty, pure and simple, is the freedom to make decisions. Laws, pure
and simple, are a restriction on the freedom to make decisions.
Americans have been somewhat beguiled because their freedom to make
decisions has been restricted over a period of time in little bits and
pieces, rather than in one fell swoop. But death by a thousand small cuts
is just as dead by one, forceful chop.

And the tendency is clearly obvious:  It is toward more restrictions and
less liberty, and we had better decide soon if we wish to be free or wish
to be serfs.

To be free involves risk, for it means we must assume responsibility for
our own lives.  The subtle siren call of the oligarchs is, "Relax, we'll
take care of you."  That's true: The slaveowner took care of his slaves
for the same reason he took care of his livestock.  He fed and sheltered
them, just as he did his livestock.  The question is, do you wish to be a
human being or livestock?  If you wish to be human, you must take care of
yourself.

The first step is to educate yourself about your own Revolution.

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