Assume you have been assigned the task of writing your family, the Madeup's, history.  Since it was Joseph Madeup who came to shore a couple of generations ago, and scratched out a claim that evidential carried the rest of his family to their current life style, you would hardly consider leaving Joe's story out of your writing.  For that matter, you would probably not leave out his son, William Madeup; either given Bill took over Joe's claim and turned it into a thriving successful family farm.   You might wish to include the number of management boards William served on, the country water board, the soil conservation district, and county commission.  You might also wish to write about Ryan Madeup, the second son, who left the farm and with the money he was able to accumulate and along with some family backing, went on to law school.  After receiving his law degree went on to become the county state's attorney. 

          But then there is Max.  It seems that Max could never get off the ground.  He began college but for whatever reason never finished.  In fact he never finished much of anything.  Rumors had it Max was into drugs but was never arrested.  He moved into an industrial complex with a number of his peers downtown town and somehow gets by --- exactly how is unknown.  He liked writing poetry and paint portraits, none of which have been recognized at least yet.  Anyway --- if you are like most family history authors, there would not be much to say about Max --- at least yet.  That would change however if suddenly he became famous but that has not happened and given the success rate of most other artists and writers, it probably won't anyway.  Anyway, if he ever did become famous, like Lewis Sinclair's "Main Street," the history could be changed then.

          Lastly in the male line, we have Peter.  Peter, he was something of an after thought, much younger than the rest of his siblings.  Rumors have it Peter was not really one of the Joe's offspring at all.   At 15 years younger than his alleged sister, Sara, it has been suggested that Peter was really Sara's son raised by Joseph and Ann Madeup as their own.  The family seems quite sensitive to any discussion that might suggest Peter is anything other than Joseph's and Ann's son however --- so you make the call.  Is this skeleton in Madeup's closet something you want to bring out for public display having the knowledge that if you do, you might be shunned by the family?  Probably not - huh?   Most family historians would tend to avoid this controversy and please the family even if this missing detail could have huge implications somewhere down the road --- for example Peter being excluded from his real father's will assuming his real father ever gathered onto himself and his off spring a substantial bit of wealth.  Or --- it might turn out that his real father turned out to have Huntington's chorea or some other medical problem easily passed on to off-spring, particularly if by knowing that information, Peter might be spared a future life of horror. 

         At any rate, now you know something about history that you may or may not know already.  History tends to favor the views and actions of those who write it.  As Winston Churchill has been quoted as stating "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."¹   But there are some consequences for treating history with favoritism.  Nearly everyone has heard George Santayana often quoted "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."²  If the history studied is corrupt, how can that history be used to avoid repeating itself?  If the history that you think you know is incorrect, how can it be said that you know history?

          Maya Angelou once said "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."³ but the key to this is "faced with courage."  It takes courage to tell the truth no one wants to hear.  It takes courage to tell the truth unchanged to favor one side or the other however embarrassing to either side it may be.  To be of any value other than a tool of propaganda, if history is to have any intellectual value at all, history must be recorded as it happened, as accurate as possible, with as much attention paid to what we'd like to forget as remembered.  Only then will history be known. 

          But political forces within our nation are attempting to censor history.  In the week ending March 12th 2010,  the Texas Board of Education has approved a social studies curriculum which will stress the superiority of American capitalism and question the Founding Father's commitment to a purely secular government thereby shining a more positive light on the philosophies of the republican party.⁴  To reduce the impact of the Age of Enlightenment on religious and political thinking, Thomas Jefferson is to be removed from and replaced with John Calvin, a religious right icon.   No Church and state separation will be required learning.⁵

"We have been about conservatism versus liberalism," said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. "We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate."⁶

          Even more troubling is the assault on history being carried out by nation media conglomerates such as Fox News.  They are attempting to change history by twisting the word Fascism, historically a rightwing populist movement, claiming it has always been a leftwing movement.  Appearing on the Glenn Beck Show was Jonah Goldberg, author of "Liberal Fascism."  To quote his book: "fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all.  Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left."⁷  It is a mistake, claims Goldberg to assume fascism and communism are opposites, and claims such a belief is the result "a trick of intellectual history" and "a concerted propaganda effort on the part of the "Reds" to make the "Browns" appear objectively evil and "other"'⁸

          Aired on Fox News, January 25,2010, Beck in a vain attempt to link communism and fascism points to Ronald Reagan:

RONALD REAGAN, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT: Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

BECK: That's modern conservatism in a nutshell. Yet, we're always told that Nazi Germany, who controlled every aspect of its citizens' lives, was somehow right-wing. Is that true? Or is it an attempt to distract from other much more inconvenient similarities?

JONAH GOLDBERG, AUTHOR, "LIBERAL FASCISM": To say, you know, Hitler was a right-winger because of X, Y, Z, I say, what was Stalin's position on X, Y, and Z?  The common assumption is that the Nazis were a right-wing phenomena. They a right-wing party, that Hitler was a man of the right and all of the rest. And there are a lot of problems with this. His social agenda was for expanding universal access to health care, for expanding access to education. It was for cradle to grave welfare estate. It was for attacking big business and high finance.  People say, "Well, Hitler abolished labor unions, he was a right-wing then." Well, how did labor unions do under Stalin? How are labor unions doing under Fidel Castro? Almost anything you can find on a checklist that allegedly

proves Hitler was a right-winger, you can apply to almost any one of the communist dictators of the 20th century and the similarities are almost identical.⁹

          Attempting to move the term fascism to the left, Beck points out a bundle of sticks on the back of an American Dime: 

BECK: Oh, I think we've been on this road (fascism)  since Teddy Roosevelt. And — I mean, look, I want to show you something. This is — explain what this is. Do you have feedback? This is that — this is all the sticks bound together in the axis. It's the Roman symbol of fascism?

RICHMAN: This is what the fascists in Italy used as their symbol, which was this Roman depiction of a bundle of rods bound together with an ax coming out the top, which I assume is a symbol of a collective unity and force of power.

BECK: Right. OK, could you zoom in on this? Here it is — Harry, bring it forward a little bit. Zoom in right here.  This is — this is the Mercury Dime. On the back of the mercury dime — and Harry saw this earlier today. He works the gib camera that's zooming in right now. They look familiar? This is the symbol of fascism.

• Video: Watch Glenn Beck's interview

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3927363

Who brought this dime in? It happened in 1916, Woodrow Wilson was the president. I didn't even put this together. We've have been on the road to fascism for a while.¹⁰

         Beck and I do agree on one thing --- and that is fascism is at the door.  The differences between Beck and me however is that Beck claims the threat of fascism is coming from the left whereas I see the treat of fascism coming from the right.  Beck wants his listeners to believe Goldberg's claim that fascism is and always has been a left wing movement hidden from the public eye by some ingenious left-wing conspiracy of the government like some space alien looked away in some hanger somewhere that no one is allowed entrance to. 

          Personally, I believe in the more traditional definition of fascism, that fascism originates from the right.  I do not believe such a conspiracy has even been at work to shift fascism to the right from the left until the likes of Beck.  As most of these cold war conspiracy theories generated by wealthy business interests, Robert Welch's "The Patriot" for example which claims Eisenhower was under the thumb of Soviet bosses, I see the recent attempt to link fascism to the left, or even progressives, as an attempt to deny that fascism is indeed on the rise but even more importantly is coming from the conservative right. 

 1) http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1772

2) http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002322

3) http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002389    

4) Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards -        NYTimes.com

          http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.htm

5) Texas Textbook MASSACRE: 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical       Changes to State Education Curriculum

          http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/texas-textbook-     massacre-u_n_498003.html

6) Ibid

7) "Liberal Fascism, the Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of  Change" by Jonah Goldberg, Broadway Books. New York, 2007, 2009, pg 7

8) Ibid

9) 'The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free or Die'  January 25, 2010,     Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583732,00.html

10) Flirting With Fascism - Glenn Beck,  FOXNews.com - April 02,          2009           http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,512218,00