For years, distopian writers have made the connection between controlling history as a means to help dictate the past. Even Plato's Republic was based on the Noble Lie, which created a false history to justify a segregated, oppressive utopia. Most, if not all, dictatorships and totalitarians construct some kind of mythology that elevates themselves to all knowing leader for the good of the people. Kim Jong Il is probably the best example of this today. The neat thing about this trick is if you can keep it going long enough, everyone who knows better will die or be executed. Then all your society has is the lie upon which tyranny flourishes.
The Political Correctness Police the United States is hard at work facilitating this process as we speak. NewSouth Books is planning on releasing an "updated" version of Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn where the many instances of the word n****r have been replaced with slave.
This is an atrocity. Only the PC, leftist cowards that populate good portions of the western world could look at Twain's honest portrayal of Southern culture in the 1850's, then look at themselves and decide that the book is what needs changing.
From a literary standpoint the change is ridiculous enough as the two words are not interchangeable. Slave is a specific condition in which a person could be in. It isn't tied to any race in particular and has universal meaning. N****r on the other hand is a social word that goes to portray the attitudes of Southern whites, whites in general maybe, towards African Americans. The word has a deeply rooted and debated history that continues today and applies uniquely to the situations depicted in the book. Replacing it with the super generic "slave" removes the depth and understanding of the mentality of America at that time.
Some dim witted media members have compared this to editing movies for television. This goes to show just how out of touch some people are. Historical books are really the only way we can get a clear picture of where this country was in the past. We need these accurate portrayals so we can accurately analyze the present and future. If all of the pasts classic books, and documents get sanitized so that they don't offend some 4th graders sissy parents, eventually people in this country will have no real scope about the trials and tribulations that this country has experienced in it's development. Hero's of past struggles will fade away into the homogeneity of a whitewashed history. American exceptionalism will cease to have any meaning at all and the Constitution, far older than Huck Finn, will be a curious historical writing instead of the greatest political document ever conceived. People will have no idea just how special their freedom is.
And to all of you talking heads comparing this to movie editing. You're right and wrong. It's much like editing movies for content but that doesn't make it ok. We shouldn't be censoring and chopping up movies either to dumb down and soften the reality of life to make it more palatable for 5 & 10 o'clock. The only reason it isn't as big a deal is that we have tons of digital content since the advent of film and video that will preserve for future generations. What do we have from the 17 & 1800's? Some books, some political documents and few pictures. That's it. TV shouldn't be censored either. The rarity that we see true 9/11 footage anymore is a crime. People see the smoke and they see the towers come down but that doesn't do that day any justice. The true horror in that day was the sights and sounds of people jumping from burning buildings to their deaths; the carnage strewn about Ground Zero when the buildings came down.
You don't hide things like this, you show them more. The world is a complicated and sometimes extremely violent place both now and in the past and certainly in the future. These PC crybaby's who claim to be doing this to save the innocent children are doing them the greatest disservice of their lives by pretending that the world isn't complex and evolving ecosystem that contains truly ugly times and people. You sheltering from the world just stunts their growth intellectually so that they become shocked when thrust into the cold light of reality. We as a people should have for more respect for our past and ourselves to let this kind of asinine historical modification take place. We're big boys and girls, we can handle the truth.
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