Huck Finn and Thomas Jefferson

You may have heard about the controversy regarding removal of the n-word from Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It seems that NewSouth Books, based in Montgomery Alabama, wanted to replace “hurtful epithets” like nigger and injun with “less offensive words” like slave and native American. In other words we are no longer permitted by NewSouth Books to read Mark Twains’ original and now have to settle for something more politically correct. Don’t want to hurt our sensibilities.

This called to mind the story from last March about the Texas Board of Education (a bastion of stupidity if there ever was one) dropping Thomas Jefferson from a world history section of a school textbook devoted to great thinkers. According to David Knowles citing Texas Freedom Network “the board had chosen to embrace religious teachings over those of Jefferson, the man who coined the phrase ‘separation between church and state.’” I guess the Texas Board of Education didn’t like the religion of Jefferson who was decidedly not the Christian of Texas.

This raises the question about how much revisionism must take place and who decides how to write history. We all know, for example, that any history of the western world is decidedly euro-centric, white washing all the gory things those Europeans did in colonizing the Americas. It’s glossed over about how the Europeans literally committed genocide in America. Or how whites used blacks to build wealth in the south to the point of going to war in defense of slavery.

Not only are we seeing the beginnings of a white wash of history, we are also seeing the “Christianizing” of America. The Christian view is all sweetness and love, unless you are not Christian then watch out. See how many nice things they say about Muslims or Atheists. Think of how much of a good thing it was that the missionaries came over to “spread the gospel” to the savages. Where are those converted Christians today? Living hand to mouth on lands that no white person wants.

I think history should be told as accurately as possible so that those that come after us understand how things were back then, good and bad. To paraphrase the old saying, unless we learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Think about it.