21st Century Book-Burning

So, Lynne Cheney has nothing better to do these days than enforce her own narrow-minded view of American history with such laudable tactics as destruction of free speech materials. Yesterday, my friend Dan suggested that Laura Bush makes a better first lady than Teresa Heinz-Kerry could, which I may or may not disagree with. However, the idea of giving Lynne Cheney any more control, or a popular mandate for her insanity, sends shivers down my spine. And not the good kind, definitely the kind that warn of impending doom.

At her urging, the Education Department destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed to help parents and children learn more about America's past.

Cheney objected to the booklet's reference to the National Standards for History, guidelines for teaching history in secondary schools that were developed at UCLA in the 1990s and that suggest that American history should be taught with an eye not only to America's successes but to its struggles and dark moments as well.

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What was so horrible about the National Standards for History that any reference to them would merit the mass destruction of several hundred thousand volumes of knowledge? According to Cheney, the standards failed to recognize the achievements of America's traditional heroes and focused instead on the accomplishments of women, minorities and radicals such as Harriet Tubman, the former slave who helped found the Underground Railroad. As Cheney wrote in 1994, "We are a better people than the national standards indicate, and our children deserve to know it."

What she's really afraid of, here, is the dissociation of heroism from social status... If I remember correctly, this has been known in the past as social darwinism, i.e. those who come out on top (a la Dick Cheney, George Bush, etc) belong on top and those who don't are in fact not worth learning about for the very reason that if they were so valuable to society, they would have made a lot more money. That theory is not only the foundation for classism (and racism) around the world, it is standard practice for dictators -- and others who control massive amounts of financial and political capital -- to embrace this idea (see the Aryan race, eugenics, etc).

It's simply unimaginable that the wife of the vice president is stooping to such lows as what the article refers to as "21st Century Book-Burning." Not only does this support the Re-Defeat Bush platform, but I think it really (and rightly) lays a lot of social blame on Cheney for her resistance to the multilateral ideal of history that should come along with our movement in to the future and towards a greater acceptance of everyone.