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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...-learn-it.html
snippets
America is waging a war on history. They’re taking down statues, removing plaques, erasing the memory of a difficult past. This week President Trump asked where it will end.
Love him or loathe him, as a historian I have to concede that it’s a good question.
Say goodbye to George Washington — commander-in-chief of the army that freed America from the British, and first president of an independent United States, whose monument sits on the National Mall in Washington DC. When he was 11, Washington inherited ten slaves in his father’s will. By the end of his life, there were 123 on his estate at Mount Vernon.
Farewell, too, to Thomas Jefferson. He was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the U.S. — a hero to liberals for his clear-eyed defence of liberty. He owned slaves and fathered children by one of them. Given that consent is impossible within slavery, this was rape.
But everything will be on the table, including president Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Obama once identified himself as a fellow progressive. Roosevelt reportedly said: ‘I don’t go so far as to think the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are.’
Those put in charge of sifting through the past will find bad men doing good things and good men doing bad. History is like that: it defies every attempt to tell a simple story. And who will be in charge of sorting the good from the bad?
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