The Politics of Historical Revisionism

The American republic has been steadily degenerating in recent years - and it seems some want to resuscitate some lost patriotic zeal of the American dream with obscurity and contradictions. A deliberate false historic revisionism is happening; a 'rereading' of American history in an effort to make it fit with today's United States. This is the modern system that the founders envisioned, they argue, and we have to keep the status quo 'alive and well.' They are trying to put a square peg in a round hole and they have an entire rightist movement fooled. 

Thomas Jefferson, especially, has become a victim to this type of slander. He is portrayed, by the Tea Party and others, in cliché slogans of little to no historical significance. He is used falsely as a rallying call for free market-eteers; serving as an example that the United States was founded on the principles of "modern capitalism and democracy" and that this "still lives on today." In recent memory, he has been attributed to this false quote:

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not,"

Fits right into the right-wing anti-Obama agenda, seldom a surprise.

Thomas Paine's real reputation has also been ravaged and hijacked, even recently. The former conservative TV host Glenn Beck used to pride himself on being a scholar of the American founding fathers. He attempted to christen Thomas Paine as the new figure of conservatism - an obvious contradiction to anybody with a vague recollection of American revolutionary history. Thomas Paine was a radical leftist, an enemy of privilege and aristocracy, an anti-religious pamphleteer, a skeptic of capital accumulation, and a contrarian of his time. He died penniless and with little friends, a testament to his passion; in no alternate world would he ally himself with a wealthy Christian-conservative TV star. Not only that, he is diametrically opposed to the domestic conservative platform. He is credited as the precursor to the modern 'Social Security System,' in his work titled 'Agrarian Justice' he writes:

"In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period."

He goes on to advocate a 'National Fund' to guarantee such improvement:

"To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:
And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age."

He then goes into monetary details; breaking down costs in Britain at the time and how the system would be implemented. He also criticizes the institution the private property as being naturally restrictive and, if left to its own ends, would accumulate to a minority elite. He promoted his 'National Fund' idea to cure this malady of capitalism; and bear in mind this was formulated in a predominately pre-capitalist era. This was written over two centuries ahead of his time, remarkable in any respect.

Now, does this correspond with any right-wing rhetoric? This historical obscurity is a symptom of a broken political sphere where revisionism is deemed a valid strategy; this becoming the rule rather than the exception. Trying to push a ideology of 'American Exceptionalism' by disguising the historicity of American figures is dangerous in hindsight for it fools the public into believing that the modern status quo is what was intended at this nation's founding. It is this that perhaps, albeit subtly, discredits anybody questioning today's illusive 'American Dream.' The response has become "you're going against the American tradition." This is a kind of political religion, a type of dogma, and a false one at that.

And one just as the founders intended, surely - or so these modern 'patriots' claim.