Post 45-Colonial Williamsburg's America...or Revisionism

On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 1:26 PM John wrote

Hey Dana    

            Here it is July 4^th, Independence Day all ready. Can you believe that we’re past the summer solstice? Some people refer to it as midsummer. It’s when the sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or south pole. I call it, winter’s-coming-day, and I can’t believe time is flying as fast as it is. Do you know it’s almost been a year since we started the blog? This is a cliché, but where’s the time gone?

            I received a disturbing email this past week. A total surprise. It was from Mitchell B. Reiss, President & CEO of  The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Reiss’s subject line was “An Open Letter to the Colonial Williamsburg Community and Donors.” Because Carol and I have been donors for many years, and have visited Colonial Williamsburg numerous times, and my daughter is a graduate of William and Mary College, and there’s a restaurant just of the main shopping street that makes the best shrimp and grits, the subject of the letter was a TOTAL surprise. 

            He wrote, “For a variety of reasons – business decisions made in years past, less American history being taught in schools, changing times and tastes that cause us to attract half the visitors we did 30 years ago – the Foundation loses significant amounts of money every year.  In fact, in 2014, we lost a total of $62 million, or $176,000 every day.  This is not acceptable, and it is not sustainable.”

            This was the first indication that I had that this was happening. Colonial Williamsburg is the 18^th Century in the flesh and the factual telling of what happened in America leading up to the Revolutionary War and the War itself. It is a  p e r f e c t  representation of that key, early American, colonial city. Everyday life of the colonists, from the pillory prisoner to the slave to the shop keeper to the militia man to the citizen politician to the English government official comes to life.

            Reiss wrote, “...less American history being taught in schools....” Is it any wonder that America is in trouble, let alone Colonial Williamsburg? Kids today are often not taught about the history of their state or of their country. They, usually, have no true heroes to look up to or emulate because history is being rewritten to fit into the views of the Liberals and other un-American groups. Just as the Revisionists are trying to rewrite the history of the European war in WWII to say that the Holocaust never happened and it’s a plot to win sympathy for the Jews, so is American history slowly being revised, changed to fit the personal views of some.

            Most school students today have no idea of, as Reiss writes, “The role of Williamsburg in America’s founding is nothing short of extraordinary. In the years leading up to the Revolution, this colonial capital city was a thriving center of culture, enterprise, education -- and revolutionary ideas. It was here -- in these homes, government halls and taverns -- that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and so many other Founders of our future United States wrestled with critical questions of independence, liberty, self-governance, and citizenship. Together with their fellow patriots across the colonies, they defied the odds to establish what had yet to be achieved anywhere: a functional, sustainable democracy.”

            If you were to do a Google search using these terms schools and colleges teaching rebellion, here is an example of what you’ll find happening in American schools and colleges. It is from a copyrighted paper written for The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal  published on March 8, 2017 by George Leef and titled The Middlebury Mob Shows How Thin the Veneer of Our Civilization Is (https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/03/middlebury-mob-shows-thin-veneer-civilization/   This paper is frightening, considering it is written about what is happening in America today, and not some European or Middle Eastern country.  I am reminded of the Athene TV Commercial, 'Panic,’ where at least several dozen businessmen, like ostriches, have buried their heads in the sand to not see what is happening. Americans and, unfortunately, many Christians are burying their heads in the sand in order to not know what is really happening here, now. Below are just snippets due to the copyright. It is worth reading the entire paper.)

     On March 2, there was one of those oh-so-revealing events that makes people realize that very bad trends are at work in America, trends that are corroding the essence of civilization.

 

     Middlebury College in Vermont is a liberal arts school. The...American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray was asked to speak at Middlebury and answer questions from faculty and audience members. He is used to confrontations, but could not have imagined how vicious things would get....

 

     First, it tells us a lot about the instruction at Middlebury. A student who enters the college quickly becomes convinced that he used to be a “bigot” because he hadn’t grasped the leftist narrative that America is a bad country due to its various oppressive “systems of power.” That’s standard fare in an array of “studies” courses, but it’s evident that he heard nothing in his studies to challenge those easily debated notions.

            The paper tells how the speaker, Charles Murray, was not only shouted down as he tried to speak (college campuses—the bastion of free speech—I think not) and basically driven out of the speaking venue, but then was viciously attacked by a mob of students and who knows how many others out to destroy, rather than debate.

            Perhaps because this is the week of the Fourth of July, a number of television stations have been showing the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot, where events take place in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. According to some, it is based on historical characters and events (but it is a Hollywood film, none the less).  It gives an idea of the suffering and losses that many went through to give you and me and every other American what we have today—our freedoms. Perhaps this is the great loss of schools not teaching American history to students today. All they know is who they are what they have, not the foundations upon which those things were built. They have no touchstones to the unselfish sacrifices and human cost of historic America (up to the Korean War and beyond) so they can be grateful and thankful for what they have now. And they have no beneficial examples of how to change something if they don’t like it instead of wearing ISIS-like face masks and tearing it down.

            To revise American history is to remove the cornerstone of its foundation—God.  What happens next? Collapse. In a church service once, Carol and I saw a flow chart of what had happened to America after prayer was removed due to Maddeline Murray O’Hare in 1963. This is from an article titled “Prayer in School” by Carol Brooks,   http://www.inplainsite.org/what_happened_when_the_praying.html

The elimination of the fear of God, symbolized by the Supreme courts actions in the matter of school prayer, led to a dramatic increase in crime, venereal disease, premarital sex, illiteracy, suicide, drug use, public corruption, and other social ills. This (is) documented by Specialty Research Associates, under the direction of David Barton, that has released a report entitled America: To Pray or Not to Pray. Below are just a few of the examples featured in Barton's report.

Here is Barton’s report with the graphs http://www.whatyouknowmightnotbeso.com/graphs.html  

             I’m not a math major or a statistical analyst, but I have eyes. When one looks at the evidence, to deny that things got worse in America once prayer (and I would argue God, although He can never be removed from anything—Ps 24:1 NIV Of David. A psalm. The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it) was removed from the schools, is to be blind to the truth and driven by the devil. (2 Cor 4:4 AMPC, For the god of this world (the devil or Satan) has blinded the unbelievers’ minds [that they should not discern the truth], preventing them from seeing the illuminating light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ (the Messiah), Who is the Image and Likeness of God.)       

            I’m heading to the close. In the western suburbs of Philadelphia, where I live, for the past several months, a company has been building a gas pipeline. It stretches for miles cutting through pristine farm lands and people’s back and front yards. There must be hundreds of men and women working on this. Yesterday, in our local subdivision’s newsletter “Over the Garden Wall” was a small news article. There are a number of men in our neighborhood who are veterans who meet weekly at a nearby restaurant. Some of these veterans like to wear their military hats. (I’d like to wear my uniform to patriotic functions but I weigh over 70 pounds more than I did back in the late 60’s and I can only look at my uniform and remember how handsome I was back then.) On a recent Thursday, they were eating at the restaurant, in addition to a number of the pipeline workers, many of whom are up here from Texas, according to the article.

            The pipeline workers asked if they were veterans and thanked them for their service.  When the veterans finally got up to leave and pay their bill, the hostess informed them that the men from the pipeline company had paid for their food and left the waitress a generous tip. The article ends with this:

With our country in such turmoil, it is comforting to know that our military men and women are remembered and honored for their service to our country and to us in keeping us safe.

            Mitchell Riess also wrote in his email, “Today, the complex and courageous stories of our founders offer inspiration to all Americans – and indeed, all those who seek freedom and a better way of life. Now more than ever, it is critical that we ensure the future of Colonial Williamsburg, a unique national treasure that exists to preserve and to share America’s history with the world.” So far, Colonial Williamsburg has not succumbed to the increasing financial pressures that in this unfortunately changing America might cause it to bend the truth of the Founding Fathers and how and why America became what it did.

            But, “a better way of life” comes with a cost. Not too long after the era portrayed with such excellence in Colonial Williamsburg, another war for freedom and the American way was fought.  From the War of 1812 came our National Anthem, “The Stars Spangled Banner.” Numerous times I’ve stood before the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor that night as the British relentlessly bombarded it with naval cannon shot. It solemnly hangs on display in the Smithsonian Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. It is tattered and full of holes where shot and cannon fragments tore through it as the battle raged during the night. But it was still flying in the morning.

            Once again, America is in a battle for its very existence. Its enemies are more clever and insidious than anything imagined by past enemies, and more persistent. I’m sure many of them think America is on the ropes and heading for a final countdown. And it is too, but for God. As a country during this Fourth of July period, perhaps we should remember a few of the verses from the beginning of Psalm 91(AMP):

 

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
Will remain secure and rest in the shadow of the Almighty [whose power no enemy can withstand].
² I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
My God, in whom I trust [with great confidence, and on whom I rely]!”
³ For He will save you from the trap of the fowler,
And from the deadly pestilence.
⁴ He will cover you and completely protect you with His pinions,
And under His wings you will find refuge;
His faithfulness is a shield and a wall.

 

And finally,

 

Godliness exalts a nation,
    but sin is a reproach to any people. Pro 14:34 TLB

 

Your foxhole friend

John

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Dana responded on Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 7:57 AM

Hi John,

     You make some quite pertinent points.  It is said that “History is written by the conquerors.”  Our nation has almost been conquered by forces that are hostile to God, to our Constitution, to our quickly eroding Judeo-Christian way of life, and the abandonment of our history is the proof of said conquest.

     Today in schools, traditional American history has been replaced by a version destined to strip away any notions of pride in either the characters or the accomplishments of people heretofore considered heroes. Now students are taught to be ashamed of America; that we are a nation founded on bigotry, and the cruel exploitation of minority peoples, both at home and abroad. Almost every significant event in our nation's history is being portrayed as an act of oppression by rich, white, racist megalomaniacs. 

     Don’t get me wrong; America has done some terrible things, of which we should be ashamed and of which we should repent.  Our treatment of Native Peoples is a black mark on our record.  Some of the political shenanigans regarding regime changes to the downright murder of people in countries who ran afoul of us, all to advance our own agenda, have and will come back to haunt us for generations.  Nobody gets away with anything in the eyes of God.

     But our country has also done some amazing and generous things to help people, and to advance civilization around the world.  How quickly people forget that if it were not for US intervention in World War 2, we’d all be eating sushi and driving VW’s.  Had Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan prevailed, our world would be a much darker one.  And now revisionists want to say that the Holocaust against European Jews never happened. 

     My Uncle Bob, my mother’s brother, fought in World War Two in the European theater.  He was with Patton’s Army at the Battle of the Bulge, and the US Army group that liberated Dachau Concentration Camp in southern Germany.  After arriving at Dachau, he found a camera that belonged to a Nazi soldier who worked at the camp.  At the war’s end, and being back in the states, he had the film in the camera developed.  The photos are horrendous.  The starvation and murder of numerous Jews had been documented by this German soldier much the way we might document a scenic vacation.

     The photos were not taken by my uncle to advance some agenda against Germany. He didn’t know what was on the film until after the war was over.  For years he refused to show the photos to anyone because of their horrific nature.  Now the photos reside in the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.  One can say that there was no Holocaust during World War 2, but one cannot look at those pictures and say that if that wasn’t the Holocaust, it would certainly do until the real Holocaust arrives.  

    In a previous blog, I believe I mentioned that I recently started teaching a series on the book of Judges in my Sunday School class.  It is a dark book.  Perhaps it is the darkest period in Israel’s history, and if not, it’s certainly up there with the condition of Israel before the Babylonian captivity and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

     That portion of Israel’s history can certainly be best summed up by the last verse in the book:

 

     “ In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25 ESV)

 

     It is my conviction that we (America) are in that same downward spiral, and that Judges 21:25 aptly describes where we are today.  But what are we to make of the stories in Judges?  How could the people who came from Egypt with Moses, and who made such great strides in the conquest of the land under the leadership of Joshua have sunk to such abysmal depths?  Granted Israel’s Exodus and subsequent wonderings had not been without problems, some of which brought dire consequences, but again how…?

     In a message by the late Rev. William Still of Scotland, he makes a sobering assessment of what he determined to be the problem. Take a look at the following passage from Deuteronomy 31:

 

     ⁹ Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. ¹⁰ And Moses commanded them, “At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, ¹¹ when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law [the book of Deuteronomy] before all Israel in their hearing. ¹² Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, ¹³ and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

    

     But if you read the Old Testament (and you should!!!) from Genesis to Malachi, how often is that recorded as actually haven’t taken place? 2nd Chronicles 17:1-11 records (and pay close attention to verse 7 and following):

 

     Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his [Asa’s] place and strengthened himself against Israel. ² He placed forces in all the fortified cities of Judah and set garrisons in the land of Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim that Asa his father had captured. ³ The Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals, ⁴ but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the practices of Israel. ⁵ Therefore the Lord established the kingdom in his hand. And all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor. ⁶ His heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord. And furthermore, he took the high places and the Asherim out of Judah.⁷ In the third year of his reign he sent his officials, Ben-hail, Obadiah, Zechariah, Nethanel, and Micaiah, to teach in the cities of Judah; ⁸ and with them the Levites, Shemaiah, Nethaniah, Zebadiah, Asahel, Shemiramoth, Jehonathan, Adonijah, Tobijah, and Tobadonijah; and with these Levites, the priests Elishama and Jehoram. ⁹ And they taught in Judah, having the Book of the Law of the Lord with them. They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people.

¹⁰ And the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah, and they made no war against Jehoshaphat. ¹¹ Some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat presents and silver for tribute, and the Arabians also brought him 7,700 rams and 7,700 goats.  (ESV)

 

     As Rev. Still pointed out, this is the only recorded instance of Biblical teaching in the nation of Israel since Moses had commanded back in Deuteronomy.  If the practice was regularly observed, it was never recorded anywhere except for the just cited passage. 

     That being the case, I propose, might Israel’s apostasies, proclivities towards idol worship, faithlessness to God, failure to honor their end of God’s covenants with them, and the general wanton sinful behavior be linked to its failure to pursue regular Biblical teaching? I’m not trying to make doctrine here, but is there a correlation between the absence of Scriptural teaching and a nation’s decline—especially a nation that was given the Scriptures in the first place?

     If we answer “yes” to that question, might we also compare our own national decline (and all that entails) to the same cause?  We live in a time when it’s difficult to get Christians to seriously read and study their Bibles, and if the Scriptures are foreign to the Church, then how much effect can we expect them to exert in our society?

     I cannot say definitively that the lack of Scriptural influence is the sole cause of our national disintegration and all the ills that come with it, but also I cannot and will not say that it is not a factor.  I believe overwhelmingly it is.  As our nation struggles to “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die…” (Revelation 3:2a ESV) we will find it impossible without a firm commitment to immerse ourselves in God’s Word.  To not do so, will assure that America will continue to do “…what [is] right in [its] own eyes…,” and that like so many empires of old, we will end up only a footnote in world history, a nation blessed, prospered and protected by God, who failed in its commitment to its Lord, and who suffered the dire consequences of a nation who so does.

     The loss of our history is sad, to be sure, John, but it is only one of the symptoms of the [deliberate] loss of our God. Where is Babylon today?  Where is the Persian Empire? Where is Alexander’s Greece?  Where is the grandeur that was Rome?  How long before it is asked, “Where is America…?”

     Dana