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  • From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] How the US Empire operates,
  • Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 16:07:51 -0700

At 5/18/2005, you wrote:
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present
controls the past." (_1984_ by George Orwell)

I don't remember the context of that statement. Taken at face value, it says that the past and the future are controlled by those currently in power. I don't find that compelling. History books are rarely rewritten with each power term. The future is only partially predictable from the present. As the actions of the current US president have shown, we can no longer depend on historical actions by a major political party to predict the immediate or near future actions by that party.

History is easily manipulated by those who wish it were something else. Witness the transformation of the Civil War from a war to remove the stain of human bondage. New history books have become so watered down by the competing demands of the left to include everyone no matter how insignificant and the right to make heros of the founding fathers. A certain dullness has settled over our text books that satisfies no one but at the same time upsets as few as possible. That dullness of history is then replaced by commercial interests that sell history as they sell laundry soap,

Television has done its part to make an independent study of history dull and replaced that with an entertaining version showing computer simulations and colorized film. Turn off the television, tell the preachers to stop telling you how to think, throw away the mostly fictionalized versions pushed by both the left and the right, and do some independent research to truly understand history.

Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up

My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

My present location is the star on the map in the link below
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=33.506083&longitude=-117.099019





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