What I Learned in School and the Battle for Western Civilization, Part 1

This is the first in a series of articles detailing my journey of unlearning propaganda I picked up during my school years about the West. Occasionally rumors of its incredible impact on landscape of human progress would drift through discussions in class--the importance of the Classical World, the value of capitalism, the philosophy of freedom, the scientific revolution and the American Revolution--only to be sniped at and cast away contemptuously. There was always a good explanation why the West was evil and the bully on the world block.

What I Learned in School and the Battle for Western Civilization

When I was exposed to the real history, I learned the West was much, much different than the school-approved version presented to me. The intention of this series is to expose to those who, much like myself, have had this valuable information hidden from them.

Portrait of Thomas Paine, THE Founding Father of America

Part 1 - WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL

One of the first things I remember learning from first grade was about Thanksgiving. November is right around the corner from the beginning of the school year, and the first theme the teachers get to focus on is the history of the pilgrims, why we celebrate this thing called “Thanksgiving”, and 1st grade art projects involving tracing one's hand to create a turkey.

What is this bullshit? You call this a history lesson?

Among these hand-drawn turkeys and dorky Pilgrim cutouts (with their stupid hats, belt buckles, and shoes), we learned about the initial contact between the European settlers and the natives already living on the American continent. You see, we were told, at first the Pilgrims and natives got along and they held this Thanksgiving feast to celebrate their brotherhood. But the Pilgrims had a trick up their black sleeves: they knew the natives were likely to die from the common diseases they had brought from Europe, and so the Pilgrims would trade pox-infested blankets with these natives. The pox killed off the natives and allowed the Pilgrims to settle more easily.

Oh, we think we understand, we children in school said. These Pilgrims claimed they came for religious freedom, but what they really wanted was to conquer new lands through biological warfare. Wow. They sound mean.

"Y'all got any more of them blankets? lol" Source.

The rest of my schooling followed this vein.

Even though we were made to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance (written by a Christian socialist in the 1890s, if you weren't hip to that juicy bit of info) and stare off into patriotic space when someone was singing about a rocket's red glare, we were told that the US was really about something much different.

Americans, you see, really like to talk about “freedom” and “liberty” and “constitution” and “republic”, but what they actually like are things like slavery and Jim Crow laws, killing natives, oppressing women, stealing land, robbing the poor for the sake of the rich, putting Japanese people in internment camps, and bombing brown people. Additionally, they spend their spare time drinking cheap beer, watching football, and otherwise doing their best to imitate Homer Simpson. Even worse, these Americans descended from horrible people from Europe, like the Pilgrims, who spread omni-directionally like a virus to conquer and destroy other cultures simply minding their own business, peddling a hate-filled religion called Christianity, and converting them from their completely acceptable religious and cultural practices. These white people, particularly the American ones, were just plain nasty when you got right down to it.

What? You got a better role-model? Source.

I heard this all the way through university.

I took a political science class in community college where the teacher had three ideas he really wanted to get across: classical liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptive Americanism. He beat all three into our heads throughout the whole quarter.

If you weren't unfortunate enough to have to trudge through a political science class, classical liberalism and republicanism were two strains of thought originating from the American Revolution. Classical liberalism emphasized the importance of the individual, and republicanism paid more attention to the cohesiveness of the group (think anti-federalist vs. the federalist). Both would be considered conservative by any modern standard (though absolutely revolutionary at the time), but they still remain the bedrock of the ideas behind American society and culture.

Ascriptive Americanism, however, was a different animal. My teacher never came out and said it, but the class went a little something like this: the American colonists, who were so over-reactive and pugnacious that they held a war for a tiny tax on documents (the Stamp Act), really liked to pat themselves on the back for coming up with fancy ideas like “classical liberalism” and “republicanism”, but what they secretly preferred doing was owning slaves and killing Indians. This is referred to as ascriptive Americanism.

"Yes! Now we're free to own ALL the slaves!" Source.

By the time I got to university, I had to take one of these classes that goes on and on about something called multiculturalism. Now, not only were Americans just lording over the wealth of other impoverished cultures, they were just too darn white. They talk up and down about that all men are created equal or some blather, but they only apply it to white people! We've got people from all over the globe who darn tootin' deserve to be Americans, too, and the original white people won't let them.

Wait. Did I say white people? I meant white men. Definitely just the men.

By the time I was done with school, my opinion of America, of white people, of Western Civilization, was absolute shit. Colonialist nation-building racist bastards.

Fortunately for me, during my life I became excellent at challenging my own beliefs.

Turns out everything I learned was wrong. It changed everything I understood about the world, about history, and most importantly, it changed everything I knew about Western Civilization.

But just what is a civilization? Stay tuned for the next article for fascinating and practical exploration into the makeup of civilizations, and why the West stands out from all the rest.

Read Part 2: Deprogramming History, and Deprogramming Myself

-Dylan Lawrence Moore
@volsci

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