Ancient Great Deception

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. -- Galatians 5:1
In a conversation with a 32-year-old, recently, based on his words, I knew that he had been deceived.

He said, "I don't believe anything unless I am there to see it.  Besides, everyone knows, only the winners write history.  Always."

We have been deceived so much that we've gotten to the point that we do not believe anything.  Since there is an incredible amount of deception out there, we assume it's all deception, unless we verified it for ourselves with our own eyes.  And, even then, we've been convinced that even the truth is not the truth.  The truth is what the winners of conflicts tell us it is.

Seeking truth requires a complete understanding of history.  A complete understanding of history requires an extensive course of research that looks under every stone and inside every nook and cranny.  It is possible to sift the truth out of the noise, but true historians, if they want to locate the truth, must be more than historians. They must become investigators and puzzle solvers.

John L. Hancock, a friend of mine who has a presentation he calls The Distortion of History, tells a story about how during the mid-1970s:

A young but brilliant Alan MacFarlane had just finished earning a master's degree in history from Oxford and a doctorate degree in anthropology from the London University. As he was studying anthropology, he realized that the history he learned at Oxford had very little anthropological and historical evidence to support it.  As a project, he set out to correct that deficiency by using anthropological methods.  What he discovered is that the anthropological data did not support the revisionist history being taught.  In fact, it ran completely contrary to it!

This created a dilemma for the young MacFarlane. How could his research be contradictory to the history he had learned at Oxford? This quandary continued until he received a letter from the former headmaster of his prep school. The former master, who studied history at Oxford in the 1940s and was a recognized authority, compared MacFarlane's research to the history being taught. The master's observations are alarming: 

It seems to me that something has gone awry between 1950 and 1970.  It seems that in the 50s and 60s the field [of history] has been captured by (a) Marxists and (b) by “peasant-model-minded” scholars who have so often ignored the conclusions of their own findings and forced them into a preconceived pattern. - A. MacFarlane, The Culture of Capitalism, (Oxford and Cambridge, 1987)

The master went on the explain that MacFarlane had rediscovered history that was common knowledge up until the 1960s when it was replaced by a revisionism that attempts to show that Western (aka European) civilization as oppressive and exploitive. It does not matter if the historical evidence is contrary to the revisionism; truth is second to ideology. 

These were some very serious accusations and MacFarlane dedicated his life to setting the historical record straight. His revisionist colleagues criticized everything he published.  He replied with more research and data that supported his position.  He knew history was on his side; and so did his critics.  Not being able to match his research, they quickly resorted to the use mockery and name calling to discredit him.  Yet, against such opposition, MacFarlane would rise to the top of academia by becoming the Chair of the Anthropological Department at Cambridge. 

As David Coleman, a designer of the Common Core curriculum and current president of the College Board, recently stated, "History is not about facts, it is about narratives." MacFarlane's research just does not fit the revisionist narrative that they want to present to the unquestioning young minds that fill the classrooms each year. This is why the works of historical revisionists such as Howard Zinn is now common in the history curriculum of high schools. This has resulted in generations of people whose entire worldviews are based on an ideological revision of history that has no factual foundation.

For the last couple hundred years, history has not been told by the winners, but by an ideology that seeks to reconstruct history.

George Orwell, author of the books "1984" and "Animal Farm," whose cautionary tales of a dystopian socialist future have been considered to be both dire and taken very seriously as true warnings of what our world could become should we follow a path to socialism, recognized the importance of controlling history by those who seek to use it for their statist desires.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell

When the millennial told me only the winners write history, he shut down any response.  My words meant nothing to him.  He left no room for dissent, and there was no response I could be allowed to provide that would be accepted as a viable challenge.  He ended with "always" - a definitive capstone to an absolute concept.

To be honest, I can name a number of times the loser's history is what has percolated to the surface.  Once again borrowing from John L. Hancock's research, the Mexican-American War is one of those instances.

Everyone is convinced that the Mexican American War was a war of expansionism by the United States, and that somehow the U.S. is guilty of stealing the American Southwest from Mexico.  Even school textbooks teach the narrative as if it is proven fact.  The philosophy is also accepted as truth by groups like La Raza, and other Hispanic groups and organizations.

The idea that the United States of America is an imperialist invader that stole the American Southwest for the purpose of expansionism and greed is a narrative that benefits the anecdote being provided by certain circles in the hopes of feeding the concept that the Mexican people are victims of American aggression.  That's what the losers of that war want you to believe.  That is also what the Marxists want you to believe.

In reality, prior to the war, Mexico only had three settlements north of the current border between the United States and Mexico: Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and San Jose. The rest of the residents in the area were either former Mexicans who wanted nothing to do with Mexico, or Americans who had moved west in search of a new life in the western frontier.

In 1824 Mexico adopted a new constitution much like the American Constitution. Mexico saw our success, and wanted to be more like us. So, they set up a system of States, and wrote their Constitution to be like ours. A few years later a dictator named Antonio López de Santa Anna ripped up the  Mexican constitution and began to force an iron grip upon the Mexican population. Mexico was thrust into a civil war and the non-Mexican territories to the north rebelled as did some of the States inside Mexico.  Santa Anna mercilessly slaughtered all of those who dared to stand against him.  The rebels flew a flag calling attention to the 1824 Constitution, of which they were fighting against Santa Anna to defend.

The Tejanos of Texas, Californianos of California, and other residents north of Mexico's national borders sought liberation as Santa Anna's forces also targeted them, and the United States responded. The tyranny of Santa Anna was so brutal that even the Yucatan Peninsula wanted nothing to do with what the dictator had planned for Mexico, and the five states on the peninsula applied for Statehood to the United States in an attempt to get away from what Mexico was becoming. Only the presence of slavery in the United States at the time stopped the acceptance of the Yucatan Peninsula becoming a State. The representatives in Washington D.C. of the Southern Slave States, when the request reached Congress, demanded that all new States south of the line established by the Missouri Compromise be admitted as slave states, and the Yucatan rejected slavery.  Therefore, the Yucatan's application for statehood was rejected.

In short, the Mexican American War was not a war of expansionism, it was a war of liberation.  The authoritarians were not the people of the United States, but the leadership of Mexico under Santa Anna.  However, that tidbit of historical truth has been distorted.  Hidden.  Deconstructed, so that the statists may tell their own version of history so that the truth may not be known. The truth does not fit into their narrative that is calling for, and demands, the return of the American Southwest to Mexico.

In politics there is a left/right paradigm that has emerged.  The definitions surrounding that ideological tug-of-war have been manipulated, and are naturally deceptive by design as a result.  While the true political spectrum places systems closer to 100% governmental control to the left, 0% governmental control to the right, and the U.S. Constitution at dead-center (as opposed to the French Revolution spectrum that places agents of secular change to the left, and religious traditionalism to the right), the claims of who sits where on that political spectrum has been inconsistent with the established definitions and is manipulated at will by the whims of the political elite.  While Hitler's Nazism was steeped in socialism, for some reason fascism is said to be to the right.  The Constitution is also considered to be a right-leaning system.  Islam is also called "conservative," and to the right.  Nazism and Islamism, in reality, based on their philosophies regarding the percentage of power over the people by government, are both hard left.  The Constitution is neither right, nor left.

Ultimately, the whole deception and battle for the soul of humanity is not about right versus left as much as it is about right versus wrong.  Light versus darkness.  Up versus down.

Historical opposition to liberty has always been perpetrated by an antagonist that has emerged constantly throughout history.  He is the author of humanism and secularism.  From the very beginning he practiced a strategy steeped in lies and deception with the intent to convince humanity that not only is there not a God, but that humanity can be his own god.  From that belief has emerged communitarianism, utopianism, collectivism, socialism, Marxism, progressivism, liberalism, statism, and a whole litany of other "isms" that teach the "greatness" of humanity, and places the community of man above and beyond individualism and Faith in Christ.  However, to chase that narrative that we ourselves can become our own god here on Earth, it is necessary to reject all things that are godly as it pertains to the One and True God.  Man as god must be an anti-god.  He must form himself in such a manner that it is nothing like the God he seeks to deny, and ultimately to destroy.

In other words, to seek the ultimate prize of singularity, humanity must reject all things related to or supported by God, and be the opposite.  We must be disobedient to God, and then become a counterfeit of God, made in our own image of human nature.  We must celebrate all that is humanity, and reject all that reveals a Creator.  Sin must become moral, and morality must become the ultimate sin.

3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.’” 4 And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely shall not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate (Genesis 3:3-6).

People ask me, "When did the leftist war for our souls begin?" and I always respond, "It all began with a serpent."

During the many centuries journey from the first rebellion to today's attempt to establish the final rebellion, the opposition to godliness and liberty has realized that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.  Those who misunderstand history are doomed to misapply it.  Those who forget the lessons of liberty are doomed to fall into bondage under the iron fist of an authoritarian ruling elite.  Then, the rulers can mold society into their utopian image, and destroy God forever.

"It doesn't matter what happened in history, it matters what people think happened."

If we are convinced that only the winners write the history, and the history is socialist, then people will gladly side with who they think are the winners...the socialists.

Socialism is based on the concept of government control of the means of production, and then through that dynamic a "true equity" emerges.  In the utopian mind of socialists, everyone in such a society will be equal in all ways because they are to be nothing more than worker bees in a giant human hive.  Income redistribution is used to even out the living standards, and to tax the wealthy into poverty so that equality in misery can be achieved.  The workers must not be driven by any hope of more money or possessions, but by duty to the hive.  They are faceless, genderless, and offended by anything that reveals itself to be outside the establishment's narrative; a narrative that proclaims the safety, security, and operational standards of the community are more important than any individual.  Deviation from what is best for the community will be punished or removed, including individualism, which is considered selfish and greedy.

Star Trek's Spock would have made a great communist.  He proclaimed, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

"The Champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals , but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn fro dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."--- Ludwig von Mises

"The goal of socialism is communism." -- Vladimir Lenin

"Democracy is the road to socialism." -- Karl Marx

"The Theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property." -- Karl Marx

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." -- Adolf Hitler

"In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banner: from each according to his ability and each according to his needs." -- Karl Marx.

"What distinguished Nazism from other brands of socialism and communism was not so much that it included more aspects from the political right (though there were some). What distinguished Nazism was that it forthrightly included a worldview we now associate almost completely with the political left: identity politics. This was what distinguished Nazism from doctrinaire communism, and it seems hard to argue the marriage of one leftist vision to another can somehow produce right-wing progeny." -- Jonah Goldberg

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher

Samuel Adams, an American Revolutionary who supported the principles of limited government as prescribed by the United States Constitution, recognized the dangers of collectivism. Though socialism was not technically a concept unleashed upon the world by the name "socialism", it did exist under different names, such as "Utopianism." Schemes of Utopianism were present during the dawn of the New World, and the founding of America. The notion of the redistribution of wealth, a socialist tactic used to diminish the standing of the wealthy in a society by taking riches away from the producers by way of heavy taxation, or inflation, and distributing those funds by way of entitlement and welfare programs, or price controls, to the "less fortunate," was not a strategy unknown to the Founding Fathers. In a quote, Samuel Adams spoke of the action, calling it Schemes of Leveling. He said, "The Utopian schemes of leveling, and a community of goods (what we now call "Socialism"), are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional."

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

"A wise and frugal government .....shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4 1801

Benjamin Franklin wisely determined that “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensible supports.”

Samuel Adams told us, “The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. While, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, through the form of the Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves.”

Samuel Adams also stated, "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to liberty of his country who tries to promote its virtue, and who.....will not suffer a man chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man."

Final sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

In the Declaration of Independence, the term “Sacred Honor” was not used lightly. The word “Sacred” is a word that conveys the message that our Honor must be Godly. The word “Honor” reminds us that we must do the honorable thing because it is the right thing to do.

The Founding Fathers understood that if we are not a godly people, we are not capable of defending freedom, or enjoying American Liberty.

Psalms 1:1-3 – “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

Psalms 2:1-3 – “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”

I Peter 5:8-9 – “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about: seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world”

American Liberty is under attack, and by an enemy using a great deception.  Never forget, however, as we fight to defend liberty ----- The opposite of liberty is bondage.

"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it." -- Daniel Webster

“It does not take a majority to prevail. but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” -- Samuel Adams

“A Republic must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty.” -- John Witherspoon

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” -- Thomas Paine

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” -- Thomas Jefferson

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary