I hope that my Legal Insurrection friends are enjoying a turkey-filled day filled with mashed potato joy and pumpkin pie happiness.
As I reviewed what passes for the “news” today, I realized we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that the meal was the culmination of the joint efforts of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans who guided them on planting and harvesting on these shores, the racialists in the newsrooms generate headlines such as ‘The gooey overlay of sweetness over genocide’: the myth of the ‘first Thanksgiving’.
We have experienced in the past few years (especially in the wake of the Trump administration and COVID), the trifecta of glitterati entertainment, progressive educators, and Big Media joining together to demean American culture and our national traditions. And there are few days on the calendar days more American than today.
The bible for the toxic distortions of Thanksgiving and the rest of our county’s past A People’s History of the United States by radical professor Howard Zinn. As noted by author Mary Grabar in her book, Debunking Howard Zinn:
…Marxism clearly influenced Zinn’s portrayal of this nation’s history and its free market system. For example, every era had its oppressors (i.e., white men) and victims (i.e., people of color and women). Grabar tracks down Zinn’s sources and demonstrates how he essentially lifted large swaths of leftists’ criticisms of America while blatantly ignoring credible scholarship that negated his points. She also shows how Zinn uses selective quotation of sources to convey the exact opposite message intended by the various authors.
A more robust look at American history gives a much more complex dynamic between settlers and the Native American tribes. For example, unless explorers had hit the shores after germ theory was discovered, infectious disease was going to hit newly exposed populations hard.
It is estimated that 90% of Native Americans died of disease that swept through the two continents after Europeans began coming regularly. The land was “widowed” rather than “virgin.”
Furthermore,the relationship between settlers, Native Americans, and the concept of land rights needs to be apprised with a more discerning eye.
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, questions the assertion that Thanksgiving should be viewed as an “Indigenous Day of Morning.” In his review of the literature, Olson argues that, as today, the Deep State was at the crux of most of the problems (emphasis mine).
In 2005 a young UCLA law professor, Stuart Banner, published How the Indians Lost Their Land, an extensively researched work that does much to correct the portrayal of white-Indian relations as a mere catalog of thefts, conquests, and usurpations.As Banner demonstrates, the actions and attitudes of white Americans and their institutions have shown a full range of shadow and light, from extreme wickedness and ignorance to as much grace, goodwill, and foresight as could have been expected under the circumstances.Tracing the many twists and reverses of federal Indian policy, Banner notes that it was usually anything but obvious which proposed measures would truly serve the interests of aboriginal inhabitants, that nearly all major changes in policy enjoyed support among some Indians and Indian-friendly white reformers, and that most of the major disasters to afflict America’s Indian population were either unforeseen or not well controllable by the central government.
I would like to conclude on a positive note. I took several trips this fall, and I noted the number of school age children with their parents on nature hikes or at cultural centers (e.g., Dinosaur National Monument and Colonial Williamsburg). It is clear that Americans aren’t accepting the revisionist history, and are pulling their children out of what has evolved into Marxist conscription schools.
According to the most recent report by the state’s Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE), homeschooling numbers in North Carolina exploded during the pandemic.DNPE’s report for the 2020-21 school year reveals 19,294 new homeschools were established, blowing away 9,481 new homeschools established during 2019-20. That’s almost a 104% jump between the two years.
If this trend continues, it will be a testament to the enduring faith and will of the American people. God bless and keep all of you this holiday season.
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