A Kinder, Gentler Book Burning

By Janet Phelan

If the eugenicists learned one thing from their experiment in Hitler’s Germany, it was to “go soft.” Be subtle, covert. Hide the unacceptable in mountains of chiffon and spin. As the nation’s attention turns to Texas and what is now called the “textbook controversy,” a comparison to the historical antecedent of Germany in the thirties becomes inescapable.

After 911, comparisons between Bush and Hitler began to surface, first as a murmur soon rising to a dull roar. The revelation of the First Family’s history as Nazi supporters began to pepper the airwaves in such diverse venues as the traditionally liberal Pacifica network and the self-styled “patriot” radio shows. Books, such as Webster Tarpley’s unauthorized biography of George W. Bush and Peter Levanda’s “Sinister Forces” began to bring this unpleasant reality to an increasingly uncomfortable and radicalized formerly mainstream audience.

The idea of a black man in the White House would seem possibly to quell the growing concern that the U.S. had fallen to a quiet, right-wing coup. One could easily be accused of succumbing to a “conspiracy theory” to suggest that Obama’s rapid ascension to the most powerful position in the world was precisely designed to quell such concerns. Riding in on the horse of Martin Luther King, Obama swept into office on a thunderous endorsement for “change.”

According to the watchdog agency, Center for Constitutional Rights, Obama earned an “F” for his first 100 days in office, as far as civil and human rights issues were concerned. In addition, his choice of Eric Holder as the chief justice officer has also generated alarm in some political circles. The mainstream press has largely ignored the indications that Eric Holder actually facilitated renditions to torture under President Clinton. And the day after graciously accepting the Nobel Peace Prize (for ….anyone have an answer for this one?), Obama sent off more troops to Afghanistan. Whatever change he rode in on, it is not on the horse he purported to mount.

In the latest affront to the American way, Texas has stepped into the history-tweaking business. Texas is the adopted home state of the Bush dynasty, the home of minute men border vigilantes and for over a decade has been convulsively spawning right wing patriot radio stations like little white rabbits. Now Texas wants to re-write U.S. history. Briefly, if you haven’t caught the wave yet, last Friday the conservative Texas Board of Education approved a massive overhaul of history and social studies textbooks, an action which may have nationwide fallout. The changes constitute a shift in both perspective and facts.

Here is a summary of the changes approved last Friday:

-- Reject the idea of the separation of church and state.

-- Remove Thomas Jefferson from a list of prominent Americans whose speeches and writings brought about social change, replacing him with religious leaders St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin and English jurist William Blackstone.

-- Replace the word “capitalism” with “free-enterprise system.”

-- Include a requirement for discussion on “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation.

-- Include a requirement for discussion on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, with emphasis on Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

-- Reject the idea that the Founding Fathers “protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

-- Excise references to Hispanic historic figures and events in the state.

The report also recommends removing the following requirements and focal points for high school students : analyze the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam and describe their domestic and international effects; the Holocaust; the battle of Midway; the invasion of Normandy; Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb; and describe the impact of the GI Bill, the election of 1948, McCarthyism, and Sputnik I among other redlined items.

Why should you care about what textbooks the Texans choose to purchase? The answer to this is simple: As far as textbook publishing is concerned, Texas holds the trump card. Texas and California are the two largest textbook markets in the nation. The textbooks they choose are often adopted nationwide.

Writing for True/Slant, Michael Preston points out that this action by the Texas Board of Education bespeaks a more serious divide in our culture. He believes the debate has changed, qualitatively, and is not only over policy now but over facts. That, in fact, history is being rewritten by the Texas Board of Education.

On a road trip across country a couple of years back, I noticed that small bookstores were closing down, in towns from Long Beach to St. Louis and beyond. Many of these bookstores were used bookstores and were thus repositories of older texts. Borders and Walden’s were popping up in malls and on Main Street and history was disappearing.

Back to the subtle rather than overt—the Nazis also attempted to reconstruct history. They did so by burning books. As stated on the webpage of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: "Book burning" refers to the ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.”

The Holocaust Museum site goes on: “Book burning has a long and dark history; and perhaps the most famous of these events, the burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933, had a precedent in nineteenth century Germany. In 1817, German student associations (Burschenschaften) chose the 300th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses to hold a festival at the Wartburg, a castle in Thuringia where Luther had sought sanctuary after his excommunication. The students, demonstrating for a unified country -- Germany was then a patchwork of states -- burned anti-national and reactionary texts and literature which the students viewed as “Un-German.”

Interestingly enough, the attempts by the Texas School Board to swerve away from the acknowledgement of separation of church and state, insisted upon by Thomas Jefferson, raise the spectre of a dark undercurrent moving towards homogenization and tilting towards theocracy.

Lately, the references to the U.S. as a ‘Christian nation’ have become too prevalent to ignore. Gone is the perspective that this is a nation of religious freedom. In the wake of 911, the anti-Muslim sentiment seems to be predominant. The Texas Board of Education is now also minimizing the contributions of Hispanics. Who is next on the chopping block?

The leaders have learned from their mistakes, it appears. The book burnings in Germany went down in history as infamy. America will never take that step. It is far more efficacious to simply ease the books out.

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Barbara Hartwell Percival
Legal Defense & Research Trust
PO Box 7487
Ocean Park, Maine 04063
Barbara Hartwell Vs. CIA 
http://www.barbarahartwellvscia.blogspot.com