This time Henninger's villains are the so-called "teachers" who are doing the latest revision of the Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum for the College Board. (Apparently they revise the thing every couple of years. Parson Weems and the Pledge of Allegiance aren't good enough for these tenured radicals!)
"The people responsible for the new AP curriculum really, really hate it when anyone says what they are doing to U.S. history is tendentious and destructive," says Henninger. (And why might that be? Sounds like some little pinkos have a guilty conscience.) These pencil-necks are deaf to the "pushback" to the revise that has "emerged in Texas, Colorado, Tennessee, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia," the intellectual jewels of our nation, and to the 56 real "professors and historians" who have signed a petition against it. No, they bask instead in the approval of something called the American Historical Association, which sure sounds like a union to me. And New York magazine and "one liberal newspaper columnist" have had the audacity to make fun of these good Americans; why, that's double Orwell with a side of Alinsky!
There's more, including a quotation from a non-committal press release from the historians (to give Henninger's readers that got-'em-on-the-run feeling cultural warriors crave) and a tear for fallen comrade Lynn Cheney. But after all that, these are the examples from the actual revision plans Henninger picks to show us how Marxist is all is:
An example: “Native peoples and Africans in the Americas strove to maintain their political and cultural autonomy in the face of European challenges to their independence and core beliefs..."This is in direct contradiction to the "dancing darkies" and "funny drunken injun" view favored by conservative historians.
Or: “Explain how arguments about market capitalism, the growth of corporate power, and government policies influenced economic policies from the late 18th century through the early 20th century..."Market capitalism doesn't "influence," libtards -- it heals, it soothes, it liberates!
And inevitably: “Students should be able to explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities. Students should be able to explain how these subidentities have interacted with each other and with larger conceptions of American national identity.”Apparently, even worse than acknowledging that slaves and conquered Native Americans had it tough is acknowledging that they had feelings and human interactions at all.
Maybe as soon he wrote these down Henninger realized he had nothin', because immediately he goes for the bullshit totem of the hour:
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld got attention this week for saying he understood why other comics such as Chris Rock have stopped performing on campuses beset by political correctness...See, it all adds up! A pattern is emerging in all their P.C. hoo-hah: Their ideas fail, and they blame censorship rather than acknowledge that a growing number of people are figuring out they're full of shit.
UPDATE. In comments, whetstone points out that I missed Henninger's coup de horseshit:
At one point the curriculum’s authors say: “Debate and disagreement are central to the discipline of history, and thus to AP U.S. History as well.” This statement is phenomenally disingenuous.Try and guess how Henninger will prove their disingenuity. Give up? Here:
From Key Concept 1.3: “Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of Africans and American Indians, using several different rationales.” Pity the high-school or college student who puts up a hand to contest that anymore. They don’t. They know the Orwellian option now is to stay down.The history teachers are disingenuous, see, because they claim to believe in debate, yet who's going to debate their assertion that slaveowners and conquerors believed they were superior to their subjects? The only possible reason is Orwell! Perhaps Henninger and his buddies should publish a study guide to prepare students to contest this point of view; better still, a video; even better a Vine, showing Brad Pitt being nice to Chiwetel Ejiofor, then a card that says YEARS PASS, and then a clip of Ben Carson at CPAC.
