New York Times<\/em><\/a>, going on to assert the dubious proposition that students who experience greater familiarity with those who are different will find that \u201ctheir behavior changes for the better.\u201d Of course, actual experience suggests quite the opposite: that greater familiarity often breeds greater contempt. Schools and popular culture have worked mightily to stigmatize slurs against homosexuals, with the result that young people have simply turned \u201cgay\u201d into a homophobic slur. Just listen to a teenager say \u201cThat\u2019s so gay\u201d and you know that he means what L.A. Laker star Kobe Bryant did when he called a referee what our delicate media now calls the \u201cF-word.\u201d And if decades of popular culture\u2019s lobbying not just for acceptance of gay people, but their superiority, hasn\u2019t bred acceptance of homosexuals in young people, then it\u2019s doubtful that hectoring curricula in the schools will be any more successful than have been most safe-sex and anti-drug programs.<\/p>\nBut something more pernicious is at work here than the old debased Enlightenment idea that knowledge is virtue, that if you are taught what\u2019s good, you will do the good. This bill is really about identity politics: the notion that certain selected minorities are victims of prejudice, exclusion, and bigotry, and so are owed special group-considerations by government agencies. Getting the government to provide such reparations demonstrates the power of the group\u2019s lobby, which in turn makes it easier to extort even more privileges. The teaching of history is particularly important for this process, on the totalitarian principle George Orwell set out in\u00a01984<\/em>: \u201c\u2019Who controls the past\u2019 ran the Party slogan, \u2018controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.\u2019\u201d Hence for the last four decades we have seen more and more history curricula that are nothing more than ethnic or sex cheerleading passed off as history. Marginal figures who at best deserve a brief mention instead come to dominate the lesson, crowding out more important or significant material. Given that there are only so many hours in a school day, adding ever more groups to the conga-line of victimhood (see list above) means something else has to be left out. That\u2019s one reason why most students enter college with a woeful ignorance of history, even as they are experts on identity-group icons whose \u201cachievements\u201d and \u201ccontributions\u201d often amount to little more than their ethnicity or sex.<\/p>\nFinally, the correlative to the grievance politics victim is the victimizer. Hence these curricula finger the usual suspects \u2014 white males and their insidious \u201cinstitutional racism.\u201d The complexity of history and human nature is simplified into a melodrama of white evil and everybody else\u2019s righteous innocence. The victim is always right, always morally superior, and never to be given the full humanity that necessarily requires an acknowledgement that good and evil often reside in the same hearts, and that victims themselves can also be victimizers. Rather, those designated as \u201cvictims\u201d may never be criticized or subject to the same scrutiny of their actions as motives as are white Euro-Americans.<\/p>\n
Hence the bill\u2019s creepiest requirement: that nothing \u201creflecting adversely\u201d on any of the privileged victims be presented in the curriculum. Of course, \u201cadversely\u201d will often reflect nothing more than the subjective feelings of whoever claims to be insulted, no matter how thin-skinned or irrationally sensitive they may be \u2014 or pretend to be in order to flex some identity-politics muscle. So we can imagine a Mexican-American student complaining that a lesson on Pancho Villa\u2019s violent raids into the United States in 1916 reflects \u201cadversely\u201d on his race, or a Japanese-American student feeling the same about a unit covering the attack on Pearl Harbor and the origins of World War II in Imperial Japan\u2019s racist militarism. And don\u2019t even bother looking for any discussion of Islam\u2019s 14-centuries-long history of aggression, enslavement, conquest, and occupation. It has already been erased from the curriculum as thoroughly as Trotsky from an old Soviet May Day photograph.<\/p>\n
This hypersensitive vagueness means that most textbook writers will play it safe and simply write soothing melodrama and peppy puff-pieces rather than history, thus making sure they insult no one on the \u201cdo-not-reflect-adversely-on\u201d list. Obviously, whoever has made a significant contribution to history should be recognized regardless of race, sex, or sexual orientation. But by starting with the demand that representatives of those categories be included regardless of larger historical significance, we end up with feel-good micro-history that pushes out the great events and trends that help us understand history and its relevance to the present. So students learn all about women nurses in the Civil War, but nothing about the military strategy of Grant and Sherman. The end result of such therapeutic history will be more power for the grievance industry, and more ignorance for students whatever their \u201crace or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, sexual orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Just when you think California can\u2019t get any wackier, the state legislature steps up and proves you wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,16],"tags":[1014,221,62,620,1028,387,93],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-RE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1445,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/despicable-israel-libels-on-display-in-california-universities\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":0},"title":"Despicable Israel Libels on Display in California Universities","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The moral and intellectual corruption of American universities has recently manifested itself in the California State University system, the largest in the country. A group of faculty and administrators has sent a letter to Chancellor Charles Reed asking that he not approve the reinstatement\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2043,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-other-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":1},"title":"The Other California","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York after spending the summer bumming around Italy and Greece, the customs agent looked at my passport and said with a Bronx sneer, \u201cBruce Thornton, huh? Is that one of them Hollywood names?\u201d Hearing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4034,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/protesters-run-amok\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":2},"title":"Protesters Run Amok","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The backlash on immigration law may be yet to come. by Victor Davis Hanson Real Clear Politics [This article appeared as \u201cThe Protests \u2014 Whose Backlash?\u201d in\u00a0realclearpolitics.com] Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens, along with Mexican-Americans and Hispanics in general, hit the streets throughout the United States this past week\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2006"","block_context":{"text":"April 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/april-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6995,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/republicans-go-on-an-immigration-reform-bender\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":3},"title":"Republicans Go On an Immigration Reform Bender","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Rather than twisting the political knife in the gaping wound that is Obamacare, House Republicans are off on a \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d toot. The latest news has the Speaker putting off any action for now, and waiting until after the midterm elections in order\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/519px-Greatwall_large-259x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1946,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-moral-dimensions-of-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":4},"title":"The Moral Dimensions of Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The New Old Debate Over Illegal Immigration The debate over illegal immigration is mostly fossilized. We know the predictable contours. Despite different realities on the ground, they have not changed much from the 1960s. The narrative for half-a-century has gone something like this: a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3683,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mexifornia-five-years-later\/","url_meta":{"origin":3326,"position":5},"title":"Mexifornia, Five Years Later","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The flood of illegal immigrants into California has made things worse than I foresaw. by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal\u00a0(Winter 2007 Issue) In the Spring 2002 issue of\u00a0City Journal, I wrote an essay about growing up in the central San Joaquin Valley and witnessing firsthand, especially over the last 20\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2007"","block_context":{"text":"February 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/february-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3328,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions\/3328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}