Excellent example of historical complexity and its importance! I knew we were in trouble in my New England school district in the fall of 2021 when they removed the word Thanksgiving from all the calendars and the principal's email on the day before the national holiday wished everyone a good "long weekend." Similar to the complex history of Hawaii, the colonization of North America is not a simple good guys versus bad guys story, but the new Social Justice narrative allows no nuance. These new Puritans insist on confession and penitence for all whites who by their elaborate definitions (systemic white supremacyl) must have the sin of racism in their souls. A white teacher said to me recently in front of students that "all white people in the US are racist, we can't help it." A gross exaggeration which is taken as fact now due to the propaganda of DEI trainings. It's a disgusting lie that poisons our children's minds. The colonists of New England certainly had prejudices of all kinds, especially religious, and different groups of Native Americans played the Catholics against the Protestants in order to gain advantage over each other. As people do. Painting all of history as white versus BIPOC is the foundational myth of wokeness, and unfortunately its simplicity is appealing to the youthful online mob that has adopted it. We must push back with truth. Thank you for this example of our complex human story.
“That kind of teaching, that kind of critical, anti-racist education really challenges a [white] student’s sense of themselves as innocent and good,” explained St. Denis. “It enables white pre-service teachers to rethink who they think they are.”
Ah, yes: if you want to be able to think of yourself as a good person, you must first acknowledge that you are (almost irredeemably) BAD.
To compare the what happened in centuries past to today is like the difference between apples and oranges. The mindset of those in the 19 th century to those today are again completely different. Hopefully we evolve as time goes on with a greater understanding of what issues make each of us unique and it is my belief that we were doing a wonderful job of just that prior to the despot Trudeau entering our live as the most lying divisive cheating money grabbing prime minister ever.
We only need to take a step back and think of the changes he is personally responsible for setting Province against province and the absolute dislike he shows towards Alberta, pitting anti vaxers against those vaccinated, the sheer undeserved hatred and animosity towards the so called truckers convoy the very pointed investigation and removal of freedom from those selected personally by him out of sheer hate because they dared have the temerity to oppose his opinion.
He has pitted French against English, Black against white, immigrants against citizens, Liberals against everyone else, queers against straight, Natives against the rest of us, on and on his perfidy knows no bounds.
This is the type of person he is a nasty narcissistic evil communist bent on taking us back into the 18th century.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Presentism appears to be the order of the day, and it's not good. ""Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. This is not to say that any of these findings are irrelevant or that we should endorse an entirely relativist point of view. It is to say that we must question the stance of temporal superiority that is implicit in the Western (and now probably worldwide) historical discipline. In some ways, now that we have become very sensitive about Western interpretations of the non-Western past, this temporal feeling of superiority applies more to the Western past than it does to the non-Western one. " Lynn Hunt, AHA, 2002. And Trudeau has done all that you say. When he was elected he said Canada had no identity. Well, it did then. It might not now, thanks to him.
Alison, have you seen Bill Maher's spiel on presentism (New Rule: A Unified Theory of Wokeness)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=schuzjknjYE (Sept 2022). 8 mins. I got a kick out of a couple of the comments that followed, so I saved them:
"Man I wish we were back in the 90’s when Maher was widely viewed as 'far-left'. I never would’ve thought the decade where Hammer pants were cool would be my golden age."
Commenter Replying to the above commenter:
"Maher hasn’t changed since the 90s. The left has moved so far left that old school liberals like Maher now appear closer to the right simply because they have stayed the same instead of lurching to the left."
I've seen many of Maher's comments, but not that one. I'll watch. I totally agree with "the left has moved so far left that old school liberals like Maher now appear closer to the right..." That's exactly how I find myself.
I've long thought that "wokeness" makes non-whites basically non-human. The capacity to understand and choose between good and evil is a large part of what makes us human. Wokies want to make non-whites into kind of innocent "noble savages" who aren't ever capable of doing evil. Which makes them less than fully human.
Fascinating look at Hawaii’s past: imperialism, class division, human sacrifice, infanticide. I imagine that food was not abundant at all times. It is so true that history cannot be simplified, which is why the old British ensign is on today’s Hawaiian flag.
Thank you for this, Christopher Ferguson. It brought to mind this YouTube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0HJV5BE294 "Uncancelled history with Douglas Murray" (Nov 2022) where Murray interviews historian Bruce Gilley. About 60 minutes, and well worth watching.
A very articulate article with an important lesson of history regarding the universality of man. Reading this article also brought back a poignant memory of one of the most spectacular movies of it's time, "Hawaii, 1966". Featuring an all star cast with leads Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews, a true classic well ahead of its time.
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning". –Albert Einstein
Excellent example of historical complexity and its importance! I knew we were in trouble in my New England school district in the fall of 2021 when they removed the word Thanksgiving from all the calendars and the principal's email on the day before the national holiday wished everyone a good "long weekend." Similar to the complex history of Hawaii, the colonization of North America is not a simple good guys versus bad guys story, but the new Social Justice narrative allows no nuance. These new Puritans insist on confession and penitence for all whites who by their elaborate definitions (systemic white supremacyl) must have the sin of racism in their souls. A white teacher said to me recently in front of students that "all white people in the US are racist, we can't help it." A gross exaggeration which is taken as fact now due to the propaganda of DEI trainings. It's a disgusting lie that poisons our children's minds. The colonists of New England certainly had prejudices of all kinds, especially religious, and different groups of Native Americans played the Catholics against the Protestants in order to gain advantage over each other. As people do. Painting all of history as white versus BIPOC is the foundational myth of wokeness, and unfortunately its simplicity is appealing to the youthful online mob that has adopted it. We must push back with truth. Thank you for this example of our complex human story.
A brief look at how we got here, from a recent alumni newsletter: https://news.usask.ca/articles/colleges/2023/st.-deniss-legacy-of-advocacy-and-anti-racist-scholarship-threaded-throughout-her-time-at-usask.php?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gwm&utm_content=mar3
“That kind of teaching, that kind of critical, anti-racist education really challenges a [white] student’s sense of themselves as innocent and good,” explained St. Denis. “It enables white pre-service teachers to rethink who they think they are.”
Ah, yes: if you want to be able to think of yourself as a good person, you must first acknowledge that you are (almost irredeemably) BAD.
To compare the what happened in centuries past to today is like the difference between apples and oranges. The mindset of those in the 19 th century to those today are again completely different. Hopefully we evolve as time goes on with a greater understanding of what issues make each of us unique and it is my belief that we were doing a wonderful job of just that prior to the despot Trudeau entering our live as the most lying divisive cheating money grabbing prime minister ever.
We only need to take a step back and think of the changes he is personally responsible for setting Province against province and the absolute dislike he shows towards Alberta, pitting anti vaxers against those vaccinated, the sheer undeserved hatred and animosity towards the so called truckers convoy the very pointed investigation and removal of freedom from those selected personally by him out of sheer hate because they dared have the temerity to oppose his opinion.
He has pitted French against English, Black against white, immigrants against citizens, Liberals against everyone else, queers against straight, Natives against the rest of us, on and on his perfidy knows no bounds.
This is the type of person he is a nasty narcissistic evil communist bent on taking us back into the 18th century.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Presentism appears to be the order of the day, and it's not good. ""Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. This is not to say that any of these findings are irrelevant or that we should endorse an entirely relativist point of view. It is to say that we must question the stance of temporal superiority that is implicit in the Western (and now probably worldwide) historical discipline. In some ways, now that we have become very sensitive about Western interpretations of the non-Western past, this temporal feeling of superiority applies more to the Western past than it does to the non-Western one. " Lynn Hunt, AHA, 2002. And Trudeau has done all that you say. When he was elected he said Canada had no identity. Well, it did then. It might not now, thanks to him.
Alison, have you seen Bill Maher's spiel on presentism (New Rule: A Unified Theory of Wokeness)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=schuzjknjYE (Sept 2022). 8 mins. I got a kick out of a couple of the comments that followed, so I saved them:
"Man I wish we were back in the 90’s when Maher was widely viewed as 'far-left'. I never would’ve thought the decade where Hammer pants were cool would be my golden age."
Commenter Replying to the above commenter:
"Maher hasn’t changed since the 90s. The left has moved so far left that old school liberals like Maher now appear closer to the right simply because they have stayed the same instead of lurching to the left."
I've seen many of Maher's comments, but not that one. I'll watch. I totally agree with "the left has moved so far left that old school liberals like Maher now appear closer to the right..." That's exactly how I find myself.
I've long thought that "wokeness" makes non-whites basically non-human. The capacity to understand and choose between good and evil is a large part of what makes us human. Wokies want to make non-whites into kind of innocent "noble savages" who aren't ever capable of doing evil. Which makes them less than fully human.
Fascinating look at Hawaii’s past: imperialism, class division, human sacrifice, infanticide. I imagine that food was not abundant at all times. It is so true that history cannot be simplified, which is why the old British ensign is on today’s Hawaiian flag.
Thank you for this, Christopher Ferguson. It brought to mind this YouTube interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0HJV5BE294 "Uncancelled history with Douglas Murray" (Nov 2022) where Murray interviews historian Bruce Gilley. About 60 minutes, and well worth watching.
A very articulate article with an important lesson of history regarding the universality of man. Reading this article also brought back a poignant memory of one of the most spectacular movies of it's time, "Hawaii, 1966". Featuring an all star cast with leads Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews, a true classic well ahead of its time.
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning". –Albert Einstein