GateHouse Media
September 25, 2020
As the winds of war swirled in Europe in 1938, a back-bencher in the British House of Commons gave a fiery speech denouncing the closed minds of the burgeoning totalitarian regimes of central Europe.
During a session in Parliament, an aging politician
stood up and said, “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by
the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in
their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts.”
He exclaimed, “A little mouse of thought appears in
the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”
The words of that aging politician, Winston
Churchill, could easily be invoked today. As President Donald Trump campaigns
for reelection, he rails against any thoughts or words that examine his or the
nation’s failures. He paints protesters as un-American and educators who study
racial injustice as “Marxist” radicals who hate America and are revising
history.
On the stump Trump suggests any criticism of the
United States, even of slavery, is unpatriotic. According to the Washington
Post, Trump’s rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to American leaders such as
former President Barack Obama, who “spoke more frankly of the nation’s
shortcomings, painting it as a country constantly striving to perfect itself.”
According to TIME, most Americans concur with Obama.
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 71% of registered voters agreed
with the statement that “it makes the U.S. stronger when we acknowledge the
country’s historical flaws.”
Trump is fearful of that “little mouse of thought.”
On Constitution Day, according to the New York Times, the president focused
much of his speech on what he called “left-wing rioting and mayhem” which are,
according to Trump, the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in
our schools,” adding that “it’s gone on far too long.”
UCLA historian Gary Nash told TIME, revisionist
history is a sign of a healthy democracy. “Why in a democratic society
shouldn’t we be looking at history, warts and all? If we show only a
smiley-face history we’re just mimicking what kids learn in authoritarian
regimes,” he says. “As long as historical research is still valued, there will
always be revisions to history.”
Bill Moyers wrote on his blog Moyers on Democracy
that since Trump’s inauguration, “a handful of writers have urged Americans to
heed history’s lessons on resisting tyranny in all its forms.”
One such writer is Thomas Ricks. His book,
“Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom,” examines the writings of Winston
Churchill and George Orwell, tracing how both came to recognize and resist
abuses of power and political propaganda.
During an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh
Air in 2017, Gross read the last line of Ricks’ book, ”(T)he fundamental driver
of Western civilization is the agreement that objective reality exists, that
people of goodwill can perceive it and that other people will change their
views when presented with the facts of the matter.”
Ricks replied, ”(T)his is the essence of Western
society and, at its best, how Western society operates.” He continued, ”(Y)ou
can really reduce it to a formula. First of all, you need to have principles.
You need to stand by those principles and remember them. Second, you need to
look at reality to observe facts and not just have opinions and to say, what
are the facts of the matter? Third, you need to act upon those facts according
to your principles.”
Facts, principles and action are essentially absent
among today’s leaders - our nation is a ship without a captain, compass or
rudder.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was
released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino
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