2+2=4, History With Eyes Open-Introduction

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the men and women of simple faith, who have gone unnoticed by history but are the ever-shining lights in His story,

and to all those dissatisfied souls who fight back the desire to stand up whenever they are told to sit down.

Table of Contents
Intro ‑ Thoughts, reasons, and inspirations	6
Part I: Two Plus Two Equals Five	10
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Truth Is an Illusion	11
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Babylonian Style	16
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Greek Style	19
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Roman Style	34
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Feudal Style	52
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Renaissance Style	62
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Reformation Style	71
Reflections on Freedom	86
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  Revolutions:  Freedom,         Equality, Hidden Hand	96
A Perspective on the Founding Fathers and a Defense	111
Two plus Two Equals Five:  Enlightenment and Its Deconstructionist Offspring	131
Darwinism:  Creating the Eyeless	148
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  The Civil War	161
Afterthoughts: Christian Freedom vs. Two plus Two Part II: Two Plus Two Equals Five:  World War I	170
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  The Great Depression	186
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  World War II	202
Two Plus Two Equals Five:  The Cold War	228
A note on McCarthy(ism)	255
Religious?  I know they are but what am I?	258
Appendix #1 “Logos”	285
Appendix #2 The Treaty of Paris 1783	286
Appendix #3 The Balfour Declaration	293
Appendix #4 Public school discipline policy and political correctness	294

*A short bibliography of great authors and books I recommend                                                    295 

Intro ‑ thoughts, reasons, and inspirations

I was inspired to write this because I have studied history and taught it for many years.  What I found was that what I was teaching and what I discovered through my own research did not always line up.  The history curriculum and the lessons we were supposed to be learning from it were in some cases out‑and‑out lies and, when considered in its entirety, purposely deceptive.

As a teacher, I was given a curriculum, the essential knowledge and skills that students were expected to “master.”  The curriculum divided world history up in a monstrously jumbled manner.  Instead of a logical chronological order it was divided up under broad subject headings such as: History, geography, economics, government, citizenship, culture, science & technology and society, and social studies skills.  Under these categories they stuck the people, periods, nations, events, discoveries, wars, etc., in a marginally chronological order, jumbled slightly, “shaken not stirred.”   
            In addition, the explanations for what should actually be taught were written in vague and ambiguous terminology, leaving what was to be taught open ended and largely subject to personal interpretation.  Here is an example:  “Identify examples of religious influence in historic and contemporary world events.”  Any thinking person would immediately ask which ones, according to whose definition, and what standard should we measure these by?   The Politically Correct elements however, were highlighted with the utmost care.  (The subjects of environmentalism, tolerance, anti-Semitism, racism, elitism, and greed were woven into the fabric as its basic format and not as its detail work.)             
          We teachers in the history department were asked to come up with a school‑wide chronological curriculum which would be the outline of our own plan to cover the state's curriculum.  We divided up the units of the textbooks and incorporated the curriculum under those units.  One year I was appointed to work on a district‑wide alignment committee to plan the scope and sequence for the world history curriculum.  We worked together to decide what to exclude, what to include, how the units would be divided, and we included effective lessons for some units.  The meetings were called “cadre meetings.”  This speaks volumes.  If you do not know where the word “cadre” receives its modern and pungent definition, here it is. 
The Cultural Revolution in Communist China was the violent and cruel destruction of everything that did not fit into the Communist program.   Mao, in Communist China, appointed cadres to oversee his continual terrorizing of the poor Chinese people.  It was the cadres that oversaw the Cultural Revolution, using torture, murder, and public shame & humiliation, to destroy the “Four Olds” of Chinese culture.  The “Four Olds” were targeted for destruction and these were: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.  In the process, the cadres destroyed the achievements and culture that made China what it was.  I was on a committee, in the USA, named after this?  Should I teach my fellow cadre members, scream at them, or run from them screaming?  I just laughed about it and did my job.  They were oblivious to the irony and the similarity of what we were doing to what happened in, I love this, The People's Republic of China.  It's both hilarious and chilling.  It is what the song by Collective Soul, “The Word I know,” is all about.  “I had to laugh at myself, while the tears roll down, because it's the world I know.”  “Have we eyes to see?”
          This experience highlighted what I had been seeing all along.  We were only nominally educating students.  What we were doing with terrible efficiency was creating manageable consumers, worker bees, kids conditioned to feel like they were supposed to feel.  I had worked within the system and flown under the radar for 18 years.  I was a highly effective teacher.  I was given at‑risk students, problem students, kids who knew nothing and could barely read after ten years in the public schools.  I could still get almost all of them to pass the state test, and I could get kids, for the first time, to embrace their education.  Throughout my entire career, my results were better than the standards set for the state, for our school, and for our department.  I finally realized my experiences had given me things to say, things I wanted to say, about what I had been teaching. 
          I made an outline of periods and subjects that I knew I wanted to speak to.  I used George Orwell's 2+2=5 as a plumb‑line because it speaks on so many levels and it is an oft repeated theme in history, if you know what you're looking for.  I could call this book What I Wish I Could Have Said to My Students.  Once I got started the thing rolled under its own kinetic energy.  So here it is.
          I must introduce the two kinds of perspectives on history.  One is the accidentalist view of history.  The accidentalist view believes that what happens in history happens by accident, in a kind of a cause‑and‑effect pattern throughout time.  This view of history looks for planning and collusion only at the micro level of history.  This is the acceptable version of history in organized education.  The other view of history is the “conspiracy” view of history.  This view assumes the events of history are not a collection of accidental, this‑follows‑this series of events, but are a well‑organized series of events planned by collusion among certain segments of society.  They see history as making perfect sense if you understand what the goals of the conspirators are. 
          Mel Gibson did a great movie called Conspiracy Theory. This was a serious movie which poked clever fun at “conspiracy theorists,” but in the end it left you wondering if the “black helicopters” were real.  People who think there are conspiracies behind events are made to look like whakos.  Oh, no, another JFK assassination conspiracy book.  “Those people are crazy.”  Are they always?  Paranoids are right sometimes.  Can history not be seen as continual conspiracies?  The Founding Fathers conspired against King George.  Brutus conspired against Julius Caesar.  The Nazis conspired, the Congress conspired, Napoleon conspired, etc.  You get my drift? 
          Patrick Henry and his friends had no delusions about the conspiracy in Parliament to gain control of the wealth and substance of the American Thirteen Colonies.  There should be no doubt in any American's mind that a powerful collection of men conspired to cause the USA to foot a financial bailout so they could make incredible amounts of money disappear into their own private coffers. 
          The conspiracy theorist looks at the world's events with no delusion.  Things happen in history because someone planned it that way, just as FDR himself said.  When history is viewed in this way certain undeniable facts become clear and a predictable pattern emerges.  One historian said something to this effect ‑ once you have seen it, you cannot not see it.  I will leave it at that and relinquish the rest to the reading.
          There is an undeniable and obvious fact about history that speaks to lying about history and to why we are in denial about it.  History does not show progress, like we tell you in school, it shows regress.  With all man's achievements and accomplishments and reform movements, etc., etc., (puke, vomit) life on earth is more precarious, more dangerous, and more to be feared than ever.  The world, on the edge of WWI, was a peaceful place compared to the situation we are in today.  We teeter on the edge of WWIII, an economic collapse the likes of which is incomprehensible while the infrastructures we live under put us a hair's breadth away from societal starvation and anarchy.  Why?  If humans had wanted a better world they might have gotten it.  Because the world has marched inexorably down this path to where we are, what or who is to blame?  The history of the world with all of its scientific, medical, technological and political advances is not the history of progress.  America is a prime example.  We control the continent richest in resources and we have margins of protection on all sides.  We need nothing from any other nation.  Really!  How could we have come to the state we are in unless someone dismantled us purposely?  Something stinks, bad, and we‑all caught up in it (paraphrased from the film Glory).
          In order to try to reveal the wrong thinking that we have been fed, I have picked up on big questions and obvious facts that scream out that we have been fed a bill of goods.  I am loose with my discussion but concentrate on specific things that are instrumental in the shifting of the “reality” before our eyes.  I use facts that speak for themselves and throw in some surprising things to highlight these.  The rabbit trails you will take with me serve to follow up specific themes and make connections that are helpful and enlightening.  I want this to be a fun and eye‑opening read, rather than a scholarly, documented treatise on history. 
          Some of it may be enjoyable, but some of it will be disturbing in the extreme.  Yes, it is far worse than the average person can imagine and far worse than the things I have chosen to discuss.  It is true that truth is stranger than fiction.  Unless it is my observations, understand that all shocking facts are documented and verifiable by anyone interested to do his own research.  I use no information that doesn't bear the burden of proof.  I will admit I am not saying anything new.  I am saying things in a different way.  I hope you laugh sometimes while reading this.  If at first there are things you don't understand, stay with me.  I keep certain themes alive because they are constants.  Some themes are like submarines, either they will resurface or they may torpedo you by stealth.
          Please understand that my bottom line is Christ Jesus.  I am not a religionist.  I am not trying to convert anyone.  I just use Christ as the baseline to return to because the perennial themes of evil and our enslavement have no more articulate an answer than this man, who is also God.  If this will turn you from the read I am sorry.  I will say that you will find me nowhere telling you to do this or believe that or go here or convert to this or you must repent of that.  I will simply present Christianity in its primitive state as an answer and an antidote to the ills of humanity, none of which we have even begun to dent with our best efforts.