Historian: Here's progressives' strategy to destroy America's heroes

George Washington

It's no secret the Founding Fathers and the first American presidents are under attack in the nation they created.

Schools are being renamed. Monuments are threatened with removal. And the men who built a nation on the ideas of liberty and equality are now stigmatized as racist bigots.

But historian David Barton, author of the New York Times bestseller "The Jefferson Lies," is pushing back against the progressive campaign to deconstruct America’s heroes by unveiling the ideological motivation behind what he says is a progressive campaign of lies and deception.

"History is key to the existence of a nation or what that nation becomes," said Barton. "I remember back in the 1980s, ABC News said the Iron Curtain is going to come down and we're going to see a different Europe. How did they know that? They said because we've been looking at the textbooks and they've been taking Stalin and Lenin and Marx out of the textbooks and as they do that that's going to break up the Soviet Union. And the walls did come down."

Don’t miss the book they don’t want you to read. Send a message and stand for America's real history by purchasing "The Jefferson Lies," now available at the WND Superstore.

Barton agrees with George Orwell – those who control the past control the future. He calls the story of how Soviet icons fell from favor a "negative example because those are negative heroes" but argues it proves the larger pattern.

"If you change how you present your history, you can change the direction your nation moves," Barton observes. He argues that's precisely what progressives are trying to do by removing men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington from the American pantheon of heroes.

"America has been solid for 200 years going with the Founding Fathers [as heroes], but progressives particularly have found a very good way to move things along," Barton said. "What they do is if you want to change an image of what the Founding Fathers were, what you have to do for a while is go silent on them."

For example, George Washington was universally viewed as a hero for hundreds of years. Children studied him in schools. The "Father Of Our Country," as Washington was known, was displayed as the model American. However, Barton charged a cartel of progressives deliberately sought to sabotage Washington's image in the 20th century.

"In 1926, a book comes out by W.E. Woodward called 'George Washington: The Image and the Man,'" explained Barton. "It says, 'Well, we always thought George Washington was this pretty cool guy but what if he's not? What if he wasn't religious? What if he really wasn't moral?'

"Now the next year a book came out that just smacked that book to pieces. The Naval Academy went through and said that stuff you said about Washington wasn't true, when you said he was here, here's the facts, etc. They just knocked it down. The problem was books came out in the 1930s that quoted the 1926 book that said, 'Well, maybe Washington wasn't that great after all.' Then books came out in 1935 quoting the 1930 book quoting the 1926 book, etc. In the 1940s it kept going."

Barton said the cumulative effect of all of this was a huge distortion of history when it comes to George Washington.

"Today, I can show you 100 books that you can cite that say Washington was immoral and he was irreligious, that he was a deist," said Barton. "None of those books predate 1926."

Describing the progressive strategy, Barton explained, "So what you have to do is you have to start whittling away and start raising doubts and start impugning their character and over a period of time you can completely turn the nation in a different direction."

Don’t miss the book they don’t want you to read. Send a message and stand for America's real history by purchasing "The Jefferson Lies," now available at the WND Superstore.

Barton charges that’s precisely what's happening with Thomas Jefferson.

"Jefferson is respected across the world," said Barton, describing Jefferson's importance. "In Tienanmen Square when the kids there were trying to get democracy, they were carrying copies of the Declaration of Independence and pictures of Thomas Jefferson. All across Europe as the wall came down, they had pictures of Jefferson, they were reading Jefferson's works. He's respected everywhere across the world except in America."

Barton argued the American Left is consciously trying to make Jefferson a "villain."

"It takes decades to do that and that's what they’ve been trying to do to Jefferson for at least 50 years," Barton said.

Bemoaning their success, he noted: "Now we're at the point where we're saying, 'Ah, let’s get Jefferson's face off Mt. Rushmore. Let's tear down the Jefferson Memorial. We've got to get his statue out of these public places.' He's such a heel, he's such a bad guy."

Barton said his own work is a way to counter this campaign of distortion. And the historian said Americans have a vital interest in making sure Thomas Jefferson is remembered as the hero he was; otherwise they will lose the principles he fought for.

"[The destruction of Jefferson] only happens if you don't know what the truth is," said Barton. "When you keep a hold of the truth, you keep a hold of those principles. If we lose Jefferson, we lose all of those principles that he articulated 200 years ago that have made us such a remarkable nation. The principles of individualism, or liberty, of free government, of religious conscience, all these things he gave us, they're out the door.

"And so the attack on Jefferson has to be stopped and has to be turned right now. And we have to go back and find out who he was so that we can respect the ideas he gave us that have made us different from every other nation."

See the comments: