I am astonished at what is being taught as history today. It neer ceases to amaze me and no wonder with this philosophy being used by our history teachers. This is a post I wrote for my old west reenactors list(No I do not reenact).

Here are some quotes from Today's historians. Judge for yourselves the truth.

You can find this one at: http://www.radcliffe.edu/quarterly/199804/rewriting_harvards.html

Many people assume that history is an unalterable set of facts. It is "what happened" in the long ago. Historians know that history is an account of what happened based on surviving evidence and the questions we bring to it. Every account of the past is limited not only by what we can know but by what we care to know. History is constantly rewritten not only because historians, archivists, and ordinary people discover new sources of information, but because the world around us forces us to bring new questions to old documents. History is not a fixed body of information. It is a powerful dialogue between present and past, which is why it is so controversial. Most people instinctively know that those powerful enough to control a community's understanding of its past are usually in a good position to control its future.

And here is a lovely link to a brief put together by lawyers and today's historians. http://www.saneguns.org/sources/misc/yassky_emerson.html Never mind that the amendment says "the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", we are going to spend our time worrying about what is meant by the word "Militia". Here are some things Thomas Paine says about the Militia in "The American Crisis", which you can read here by clicking on "documents" on the left, and then clicking on the dates "1776-1800", and then finding Thomas Paine's "An American Crisis". http://www.dit.is/usa/ This document was actually written during the Revolutionary War. Here are a few quotes.

"Howe's first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, "a peace which passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes."

". From an excess of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise an army, and trusted our cause to the temporary defence of a well-meaning militia. A summer's experience has now taught us better; yet with those troops, while they were collected, we were able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank God! they are again assembling. I always considered militia as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign. "

Here are a few more quotes which is only about one of many issues currently subject to revisionism.

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." - James Madison

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." - Richard Henry Lee Founding Father

To me the main problem is that today people are not being taught history, they are being taught what some man, convinced of his own intelligence says about history. History cannot be studied without studying the actual documents available from the time. Most college history books are simply overviews. If you are lucky you get a few pages in the appendix that are actual documents. I say don't tell me what they did and what they said. Show me what they did and what they said. I have sat through classes where history was taught without a single reference to historical documentation. History toady has become about tradition rather than fact. Many Historians use catch phrases like "Living Constitution" in order to try and make historical documentation about change rather than fact. I have no idea what the history professors teach at your college. they could be good, or like many in America they could be revisionists. I'll tell you this if you can sit in their classes for a half an hour and not reference a single foundational document from the time the purport to be teaching, then they had better go back to school. If their lectures are about a textbook reading rather than document reading then they had better go back to school. That is if they can find a school worth it's salt.

Little bit Farm

-- Little bit farm (littleBit@compworldnet.com), September 27, 2001

Answers

AMEN

Being armed is a no-brainer in my book. If we give up our arms we are totally at the mercy of the government or anybody else for that matter. I am always at a loss as to why others do not see this.

I am glad I kept my old college history texts. They are much more accurate than what is currently being presented to students. We made sure our kids knew what was in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc. Just another big reason to home school. Then you know what your kids are learning.

Talk to you later.

-- Bob in WI (bjwick@hotmail.com), September 27, 2001.

Couldn't agree with you more . . . revising history to make yourself look better to our children's eyes (who else?) doesn't wash with me. Better to tell the truth, let them see our mistakes and learn from ours (hopefully).

The right to bear arms shouldn't need repeating, as explicit as our Constitution reads. As much as the opponents of the second amendment want to believe, the right to bear arms is for the PEOPLE of this country, not the militia (army, navy, etc.).

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), September 28, 2001.

For what it's worth, I just heard on the radio this AM that gun sales in my county were up an average of 50% since the 9-11 atrocity. I doubt most of those increased sales are going to gang bangers but rather people like you and me.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), September 28, 2001.