How things have changed … how political correctness, which, in fact, is nothing more than Social Marxism reminding you all that the first person to use the term “we must be politically correct” was Trotsky in the Thoughts of Lenin.
Thomas Jefferson’s statue was pushed into the mud outside a high school in Portland, Oregon, named for the former President. The statue had been spray painted with the phrase “slave owner.” The group behind that act, Rose City Justice, is just one of many organizations demonstrating over the tragic killing of George Floyd. Many of these organizations are calling for an ever increasing number of statues to be torn down and destroyed.
Regarding Jefferson, I take you to April 29, 1962, when President Jack Kennedy was making remarks at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners from the entire western hemisphere. Jack Kennedy told that extraordinary tale when he said, “I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, human knowledge that has ever been gathered together in the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” Wow.
Note: the dinner was held in the State Dining Room and in the Blue Room as well. Nobel Prize winners were throughout the rooms and following the dinner that was emceed by Fredric March, winner of the Oscar twice, reading excerpts from Sinclair Lewis, George Marshall and Ernest Hemingway. How would any of those three men fare today?
I have used George Orwell so many times in my life and on the radio and in this award-winning column. We have spoken about Orwell before. You remember Winston Smith, the protagonist of the novel 1984. Do you remember what Winston Smith’s job was? Winston Smith’s job, while working at the Ministry of Truth, was to rewrite history every day. Remember also what the people of the Soviet Union would say — how they were sure of today and the drudgery and sure tomorrow the drudgery would continue. The problem they really had was the past because it changed from time to time to suit Stalin or Khrushchev.
Thomas Jefferson was brilliant. Roosevelt used Thomas Jefferson as a symbol to fight European fascists and in the famous Four Freedoms speech. Every time any politician begins with “We the People” he is stealing from Thomas Jefferson. And now Jefferson lays face down in the mud.
I think all of us understand how intense a time it is. And how on edge we all are and how many lessons from the past we must study and learn from, and please God, not repeat.
But Orwell says it best. The Orwell quote, writing about Winston Smith: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified. Every book has been rewritten. Every picture has been repainted. Every statue and street building has been renamed. Every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History HAS stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party and Big Brother are always right.”
So what do we learn? To teach my grandson that Jefferson was a slaver and white supremacist and a crypto fascist? Or, that because of the brilliant man that Jack Kennedy wrote about, I’m allowed to write this, the Chronicle to publish it, and you to read it.
Take care everybody.
— Peter Boyles
