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Dick Armey, the former Congressman from Texas and current teabagger, actually grew up in North Dakota — but he certainly sounds like he was educated by the Texas School Board.
“Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow,” Armey reported in his luncheon address.
No. Jamestown was founded strictly as a business venture by a group of entrepreneurial English noblemen looking to find gold. And the Jamestown colonists’ “look out for #1″ philosophy got a lot of them killed.
Armey seems to be referring to the Plymouth Colony, whose idealistic founders did not want to repeat the mistakes of Jamestown, and thus signed the Mayflower Compact, which called for “submission” to the “general good.”
The problem for Armey is that the for-profit Jamestown was an epic fail and the “socialist” Plymouth was a big success.
Armey is also confused about Alexander Hamilton.
“The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers,” Armey explained. [...]
A member of the audience passed a question to the moderator, who read it to Armey: How can the Federalist Papers be an inspiration for the tea party, when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government”?
Historian Armey was flummoxed by this new information. “Widely regarded by whom?” he challenged, suspiciously. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”
Ahem. Notes Dana Milbank,
Hamilton favored a national bank, presidents and senators who served for life and state governors appointed by the president.
Yes. As any high school student should know.
It is an ongoing fascination of mine that the very same wingnuts who are constantly bragging about how much they love this country are so frequently pig-ignorant of its actual history.
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Count on a man named “Dick” to rise to the occasion.
That’s why they have to invent their own history.
I would think CA buys more textbooks that TX. Why is TX used as the barometer for textbooks? Mayhaps some small publishers will make some inroads with quality textbooks at half the price of the big boys this time around.
I think it’s revisionism in the service of their plans for empire.
Top news items today regarding the machinations of the Cult of Money:
“Private Equity’s Trojan Horse of Debt”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/business/14gret.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268759055-NHlzXOGPXXaDDQHzQNm7Bw
“Investigation Reveals Geithner Should Be in Prison”
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/03/16/the-f-word-credit-where-due-geithner/
“Goldman’s Great Greek Swindle and the American Blowback”
http://www.alternet.org/economy/145900/goldman%27s_great_greek_swindle_and_the_american_blowback
Bonus:
“US rage as Clinton opts for Swedish crystal”
http://www.thelocal.se/25552/20100316
And they often get that wrong, too.
Because the Texas state school board dictates the text that will be used in all districts for a given subject. In most states, the final decision is made at the district level, so the audience is divided. Texas provides a huge captive audience, and textbook publishers cater to that audience more than any other in the country.
Tremendous post, BT.
Heh, heh. Teabagging for a strong central government? These guys are just so entertaining, or at least would be if they didn’t have so many idiots ready to do their bidding.
A Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma.
Hamilton was repsonsible for bringing into our free and sovereign country, the same corrupt “National Bank” (Central Bank) scheme that was modeled after the crooked Rothschilds Bank of England in London. This is also the same model for the Federal Reserve System.
Thomas Jefferson killed it.
But then it was brought back again because of the War of 1812.
Then Andrew Jackson killed it.
At that time, Jackson also completely paid off the National debt and we were (temporarily) free from control by and Economic slavery to the Banking Elites.
Then, in 1913 Woodrow Wilson brought it back again (Federal Reserve).
We need to kill the Federal Reserve and reclaim independence from the Banking Elites and Wall Street.
Here’s a real good video summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USGSOViaulc
You’re in trouble now. I’m tell Dr. Dick you said that. If I stay up for Late Night. Hiya. *G*
Jamestown was funded and founded and later abandoned by people seeking gold in the New World. But the fact that a conservative distorts history to make his illegitimate point shouldn’t surprise anybody.
Hey there. Welcome to the day shift.
I’m hoping that this will be a bridge too far and many school districts will band together and demand accurate textbooks so the Texas prehistoric school board loses it’s ridiculous influence.
I’m waiting for them to say Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox.
Who? The stupid conservatives or the Texas school board? What am I saying? Like there’s a difference! Silly me!
OT, but did Jon Stewart do a bit about a politics-as-pro-wrestling analogy that was just like a seminal diary?
I show up from time to time. I was making calls early this am. Found out that when you call the toll free number for the congress switchboard, you get a political action message.
What I heard when I called:
Thank you for calling your representatives and your senators. Please urge them to vote yes on Health Insurance reform because the American people can no longer wait for more choices, lower costs and coverage we can count on.
I’ve had a busy morning, already.
What’s the word on your interview demi? :-)
This opinion piece is perfect, except for two things:
1. Remove the picture of the horse’s ass.
2. Shorten the title to “Dick Armey Doesn’t Know Much”.
It’ll take more than banding together of districts. Either some of the other large states will have to adopt the Texas model (not my preference) or Texas will have to give up its position of excessive power (not likely). Frankly, I don’t anticipate any resolution to the problem any time soon.
Nada. Yet. Running in to work for a bit and then, I, oh, sigh, guess I will call them again. Fucking Musicians. *g*
On edit: How’d your tests go? Like it’s any of their freaking business what your bank account looks like. If you were independently wealthy, you probably wouldn’t have to go work for them anyway.
This is because you live in what people like Dick Armey call the “reality based community”. In the world of Teabaggers and Dickbaggers, history is whatever is convenient for you to utter at the moment and may be completely wrong as long as it obfuscates any fact and doesn’t answer a single question with a coherent point.
Yeah, when I said some districts I should have said other states’ school boards. My bad. I was hoping that several of them would get together and order their own books. Not a perfect solution as you point out but certainly better than the status quo.
Lotsa luck! :-)
Yeah, he doesn’t know much but then practically all Rep’s and Senators don’t know much.
You say you want a revolution. Then you must be loony congress kritter Rep Steve King. King threatened an insurgent uprising to his smaller than expected Tea Party audience. Someone alert the FBI about this Conspiracy. He is planning to shut down Washington DC.
Give’m time SouthernDragon, just give’m time.
But it’s nice to know that my kids won’t have much competition for getting into a real college or getting a job from someone “educated” in the TX school system.
Dick knows how to cash to fill out the direct deposit slips for his FreedomWorks paycheck. What else does he really need to know?
Once Armey sold his soul to the Bush family, the degree stopped mattering.
Priceless little tidbit. Ignorant AND shameless. What an embarrassment. I hope Rachel picks up the story.
Uhm, Blue Texan? Jamestown wasn’t a failure — it was the capitol of the Colony of Virginia for about 83 years, starting in 1619. “James Fort” was abandoned because the area had become settled enough that the fort was no longer deemed necessary for the settlers’ survival.
It is true that Jamestown went into a decline and eventually was abandoned after the government relocated to Williamsburg, but the only failure one can impute to the original colony, is that it failed to find gold…(pssst, guys, wrong coast!)
Just sign me, Born in Virginia
Enh. I don’t know, it wasn’t economically viable and had to be taken over by the crown. I wouldn’t call it a “success.”
Great post BT! But if we want to discuss reality, then there are more than just the r******d politicos that don’t know their history. Stop someone on the street anywhere and ask them even an easy history question. People are just not curious mammals and don’t care about what happened in history. Like Obama, they look forward. Besides, history takes reading, researching and thinking. People don’t want to do that.
King James II disolved the Virginia Company so that the revenues from the colony would flow into his coffers not those of the noblemen who founded it. He needed the money as most of England was upset with his Catholic leanings to the point that Parliment was refusing to pay him (IIRC, he later had to abdicate in favor of his daughter and her husband). The royal governor was appointed to make sure the revenue went to the appropriate destination.
Reigning monarchs do not acquire something out of the goodness of their hearts, to quote someone “follow the money.” Trust me, the tobacco trade from Virginia was as much of a money crop then as marijuana is now.
But…but…it was socialist!
What do you expect from a Dick?
(Giggle) Do I have to quote Disney at you?!
In Sixteen hundred Seven we sailed the ocean free,
For Glory, God and Gold, and the Virginia Company…
Actually, all of the English colonies were founded under either a Crown Grant and/or Charter, which the monarch was free to revoke at any time. Even the Mayflower had a charter, the terms of which would have left the colonists free to choose the colony’s form of government. That’s why the Plymouth colonists made the Mayflower Compact, which set out said forms. And yes, I guess those were socialist.
Speaking of history …
How many folks know the Underground Railroad went through Texas? One location still stands in Austin west of the Texas Capitol on West Lynn. A bit more here in “The Underground Railroad: A Study of the Routes From Texas to Mexico”
How many folks know the last emancipated African-American slave lived in Texas in the 1970s? She lived in Austin east of the French Legation and lived to a ripe old age to provide her oral history. Here are some of the oral histories of former slaves.
How many folks know Isamu Taniguchi and his family were placed in a detainment camp for Japanese Americans in the American West during World War II, after the war eventually settled in Austin and gifted the city with an oriental garden he made from scratch?
How many folks know Chinese immigrants helped build the railroads in Texas?
I could go on and on … Pick another people, place or time. So, what’s my point? Real people’s lives and their histories tell nuanced, diverse picture of societies, leave a record of our individual and collective achievements and failures, and, therefore, a better picture of the collective reality. Corporatists, for one, would rather have us forget all that in Cultural Revolution style and have us jump down the memory hole for a flat-earth, dumbed-down, cookie-cutter construct of their convenient making for the purpose of our manipulation.
The power of our stories and the telling of them, an example …
(The poem here translated to the concept set represented by modern English …)
“Chinese Art and Greek Art”
The Chinese and the Greeks
Were arguing as to who were the better artists.
The king said,
“We’ll settle this matter with a debate.”
The Chinese began talking,
But the Greeks wouldn’t say anything.
They left.
The Chinese suggested then
That they each be given a room to work on
With their artistry, two rooms facing each other
And divided by a curtain.
The Chinese asked the king
For a few hundred colors, all the variations,
And each morning they came to where
The dyes were kept and took them all.
The Greeks took no colors.
“They’re not part of our work”
They went to their room
And began cleaning and polishing the walls. All day
Every day they made those walls as pure and clear
As an open sky.
There is a way that leads from all-colors
To colorlessness. Know that the magnificent variety
Of clouds and the weather comes from
The total simplicity of the sun and the moon.
The Chinese finished, and were so happy.
They beat the drums in the joy of completion.
The king entered their room,
Astonished by the gorgeous color and detail.
The Greeks then pulled the curtain dividing the rooms.
The Chinese figures and images shimmeringly reflected
On the clear Greek walls. They lived there,
Even more beautifully, and always
Changing in the light.
The Greek Art is the Sufi way.
They don’t study books of philosophical thought.
They make their loving clearer and clearer.
No wantings, no anger.
In that purity
They receive and reflect the images of every moment,
From here, from the stars, from the void.
They take them in
As though they were seeing
With the lighted clarity
That sees them.
(Note: don’t get freaked out by the “God” word. When Persians such as Rumi used it they were pointing at what many modern scientists call the concept of a “holographic universe”)
Now a excerpted commentary (by Muriel Maufroy) on the foregoing story in poetic form:
‘Our modern societies tend to despise stories, even though the sales of fiction books, the cinemas, the television and our newspapers are proof that people still love them. Unfortunately, they often do not realise how much those stories affect them, sometimes poisoning their minds, sometimes nourishing them.
[snip]
First, let’s examine how stories affect those who read or hear them.
I intentionally dismiss the telling of stories through television or the cinema for a precise reason. We all know that when we are told a story or when we read one in a book, our imagination fills the gap, adding colours, smells, sounds, etc… In short, the story unfolds and takes life in front of our inner eyes, something the radio still does, but that the television or a film does not allow since they give us, so to speak, a pre-digested image. The American scientist and lecturer Joseph Chilton Pearce stresses how important this faculty to create mental images is for the development of the human brain. This is what he says:
“Having no inner imagining capacity leaves most of the brain unemployed, and a child who can’t imagine not only can’t learn but has no hope in general: he or she can’t imagine an inner scenario to replace the outer one, so feels victimised by the environment.”
Even more importantly, the same scientist explains that the capacity to create mental images is essential for the brain to develop the ability to abstract and, consequently, to use concepts. So that a world without story-telling is an impoverished world, in short, a world devoid of true intelligence and, in the long term, a self-destructive world, as we can already observe.
Contrary to preaching in all its forms or to intellectual analysis, stories are entertaining; they take us out or our reality. This is certainly essential if you want to attract and affect people. Moreover the entertaining character of stories makes them easy to remember and, by the same token, easy to be passed on from people to people, from generation to generation, as it has always been the case in societies with an oral tradition. Rumi has certainly succeeded since, after eight centuries, his stories are reaching an ever increasing number of people.
But, apart from being entertaining, Rumi’s stories, like all Sufi stories, are vehicles of higher knowledge, a knowledge which reaches beyond the intellect and beyond the emotions. Such stories aim, first of all, at transmitting wisdom.
Sometimes Sufi stories are compared to parables or expected to have moral endings. But their function is more subtle. Those stories are generally not moralistic; instead, they surprise us or even shock us. And they are meant to.
The shock to the mind is meant to expose our assumptions and as a result, to allow us to question them. It is as if the carpet had been pulled from under our feet, and in the gap suddenly opened, a touch of real knowledge can enter, often without us being even aware of it. Sometimes the shock also comes as laughter. For teaching and humour are not mutually exclusive; stories can be fun and teach, all at the same time, and humour is another important aspect of Sufi stories. (The whole lore of the Nasruddin stories is a good example of this).
[snip]
So, how can stories re-instil wisdom in the world?
Those who pride themselves on their intellect may dismiss Sufi stories as being too simple. They may even enjoy them while missing their real value, for such stories, as I have already indicated, are not addressed to the intellect nor are they addressed to the emotions. But the fact that some people are not aware of the value of stories does not mean stories do not affect them.
It is often believed that understanding is knowledge, though true knowledge only comes with integration, that is, assimilation of the nourishment a story offers. Understanding is not enough and it is not even necessary at the time of hearing the story.
[snip]
An American psychiatrist gives a very good definition of the moment of integration; she calls those moments “moments of Aha.” [snip] And this is very much how Sufi stories work and why they need to be read and read again, so that when a situation occurs, they jump to mind and then, the “Aha” moment happens. This is the opposite of indoctrination.’
Vive la différence!
We can discuss/dispute whether Jamestown was a success or failure, but BT is correct that Jamestown was an entrepenuerial venture which nearly failed due to the “look out for number one” philosophy, I believe esp during the first or second winter. And yes, Plymouth colony did better by learning from those mistakes and becoming, GASP HORROR, more socialized in their approach.
That Dickhead Armey would rewrite history in order to pump out bullshit lying propoganda is not “news” (albeit I like the post). It’s more like a “dog bites man” story; this is Dick’s raison d’etre. Dick does what he’s good at, which is either making up crap out of whole cloth or rewriting history for the sake of propoganda, which teabaggers are eager to enjoy. sigh… and this is why, class, the Republics don’t want to fund public education. The dumber and less educated they are, the less likely they are to THINK, reason, do research, much less question their masters.
Ugh. Good post. Good to bring attention to these lies.
No, Grant surrendered in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana when he allowed Reconstruction to be destroyed by refusing to allow federal troops be sent to police elections and prevent violence. They were to be used only to end violence, not to preclude it.
Besides, what the hell does history have to teach us anyway, right?
“It is an ongoing fascination of mine that the very same wingnuts who are constantly bragging about how much they love this country are so frequently pig-ignorant of its actual history.”
I’m pretty sure they aren’t pig-ignorant. All of their falsehoods contribute to whatever it is these people are trying to achieve. They are propagandists spewing black as well as white propaganda at every opportunity. When they are caught just making this shit up, they just deny the facts. As in this case, none of their supporters will ever read the Federalist papers to see for themselves. (And I don’t recommend reading the Federalist papers except to fact-check. These contain some very poor writing, mostly of the opaque variety.)
From my experience in American public schools, students learn to dislike “History” because of the way it is taught. Name of thing, names of people, date, place, and a phrase, perhaps, of significance. There was no story, no narrative, showing how issues affected all of the people/groups, what they did, how they coped, to capture student attention making the subject meaningful. What was emphasized, of course, was the propaganda that white people were wonderful unless they owned slaves or that business was wonderful and made life better for everyone, and finally if the U.S. engaged in warfare it was only to make the world a better place and it was always, always justified and honorable.
Now the textbooks in Texas will be re-written to show that all of this happened according to God’s will and further that the bestest most wonderful political/economic system evah was devised by God and is called capitalism.
So in summary :-) students here don’t learn history because of textbooks and people who teach from them.
Would you like a little cyanide with your tea?
It’s not the ones who are “catapulting the propaganda” that are disconnected from reality – they know damned well what they are doing – it’s all those pathetic white people who are swallowing this garbage whole! And let’s face some sobering truths, shall we? Other than a small handful of blubbering Uncle Toms, they’re almost entirely white. The disconnect between reality and delusion in this country is widespread and appalling. That would partially explain the political careers of people like Jeff Sessions and Michele Bachmann. People like them are only able to advance because of the stampeding ignorance of their constituents. In the land of the brain-dead, the half-wit is king.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen NY