The Necessity To Defund The NEH

By Semperpapa

It has been a long time assertion of mine that the field of academia in the United States is indeed the nest of anti-Americanism dedicated to the destruction of America.

These are the docents of just about every university in the land, from Ivy League level to the smallest Community College. And the tentacles are spreading quickly to lower grades.

This is the scenario.

The National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored a workshop last July in Hawaii. The workshop was titled “History and Commemoration: The Legacy of the Pacific War.”

From the title of the conference, one would assume that the substance of the discussions would pivot on the analysis of a part of American History of such importance in the context of the history of our Nation and the 20th Century.

The NEH, which is funded by taxpayers’ money, was requested and had approved the grant necessary to make the conference a reality. Basically a request for funding of conferences like this is made to the NEH and, if approved, the American people’s money is used to cover all the expenses for the workshop.

Several American scholars had been invited to attend including Dr. Penelope Blake, a teacher of Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois.

And thankfully so, for if not for Dr. Blake, the truth about the conference would have never been known, as none of the other participants had the inclination nor the courage to stand up to the historical revisionism that the attendee were treated to.

Dr. Blake was so incensed by the travesty of the conference that she wrote a letter to her US Representative, Donald Manzullo, requesting that he would oppose the 2011 funding of the NEH when it will hit the House floor.

So what was that incensed Dr. Blake about the workshop?

Basically the short version is that throughout the conference, the basic meat of the discussion was an open attack against the United States and especially its Military. Historical revisionism on the part of some of those leading the conference was aimed at denigrating the efforts and significance of the events surrounding the American war efforts in the Pacific.

Here as some of the assertions, made by the workshop participants that Dr. Blake found to be highly questionable.

“The U.S. military and its veterans constitute an imperialistic, oppressive force which has created and perpetuated its own mythology of liberation and heroism, insisting on a "pristine collective memory" of the war.”

This is not just an attack against our current Military, but it is a repudiation of what the history of the second half of the 20^th century and of the WWII effort in the Pacific, has clearly shown.

It is doubtless that the defeat of Japan in WWII came at great human cost, both on the part of the US and of Japan, but such defeat, and the subsequent occupation of that country, ushered in an age of peace and collaboration between the two countries.

“The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should be seen from the perspective of Japan being a victim of western oppression.”

The basis of this assertion is pure revisionism, as it ignores the factual reasons behind the actions of the US Government in the late 1930s.

As the brutality of the Japanese occupation of parts of China and Korea became known in Washington, FDR ordered a naval blockade of the Japanese commercial routes. The blockade, initiated in 1938, was aimed at punishing the Japanese for their inhuman brutalities. The final straw had been the news of the behavior of occupying forces in Nanking, China, where the Japanese forces proceeded to slaughter between 200,000 and 300,000 Chinese civilians, including women and children, after the city capitulation. As the knowledge of such atrocities, things like bayonet practice and sword beheadings conducted against innocent civilians, the US government decided that one way to stop such activities, short of going to war, was to restrict the ability of Japan to have access to raw material they so desperately needed for their expansionist efforts.

Japan considered such action an act of war and the planning for the Pearl Harbor attack started to take shape, as taking out the US Naval forces in Pearl would clear the way for Tojo and company to pursue their goals of imperialistic expansion.

The obvious parallel between Pearl Harbor and the attacks of 9-11 were also drawn, according to Dr. Blake, as the workshop holders consider America to be, in both cases, victim and aggressor.

It is amply obvious that these people see America deserving of these events due to the imperialistic attitude of the US Military.

“War memorials, such as the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery (where many WWII dead are buried, including those executed by the Japanese on Wake Island and the beloved American journalist Ernie Pyle), are symbols of military aggression and brutality "that pacify death, sanitize war and enable future wars to be fought."”

Statements like this are not surprising when made by today’s leftist progressives. The only entity that is sacred for such crowd is the utopian image of a world without national pride and even borders. Memorializing those who paid the ultimate price for the freedoms we enjoy is mocked and maligned as building an altar to the beauty of war. These type of people are, for the most part, been insulated from the horrors of war and the sacrifice that those who fought them and their families have and continue to make. The horrors of Burma, Bataan, Manila, Corregidor, Nanking, Khe San, Hue, Auschwitz, Dachau, Ramadi, Felluja, are just ethereal concept when viewed from the comfort of a fancy university office.

Dr. Blake also addresses the true essence of the conference as she reports on one speaker statement:

“Conservatives are reactionary nationalists (no distinction was made between nationalism and patriotism), pro-military "tea baggers" who are incapable of "critical thinking."”

This is the very core of the message being portrayed by the speaker, Lisa Yoneyama, Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at UC San Diego, who, during the lecture, addressed those who watch Fox News as the crowd that is not interested in gaining knowledge of the truth, but instead cherishes the opportunity to engage in cheerleading for the Military and American Imperialism.

It is the pure elitism of these people that makes them even more intolerable than anything, because they stand on their pedestal of sacred ideological exchange while they absolutely reject the opinions of others. Dr. Blake did confront the speakers at some times and was lauded by other conference participants, who preferred the comfort of silence and the safety of non-challenge to intimidation.

And that is the attitude that has brought our country to the edge of a social abyss that must be reversed if we hope to safeguard our liberties.

According to the panel, the Arizona Memorial should be renamed as a peace memorial, to express greater sensitivity toward the visitors of the site, especially the Japanese visitors.

As the accusations of “sanitizing war” are leveled against Americans who feel a sense of patriotism toward their country, the progressive crowd is bent on sanitizing historical realities.

Not more evident of their actions is the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute. The controversy was that the exhibit was openly slanted in showing the Japanese people as victims, without any context reference to the historical realities of the time.

Here are some of those realities.

The Japanese leadership, which can be regarded as being in the person of Gen. Tojo, had bypassed even the Emperor to some degree. It was Tojo’s intention to see the Japanese race completely wiped out, if necessary, in order to achieve the survival of the Emperor and especially of Gen. Tojo. As much as the cultural component demanded that Japanese warriors never surrender to the enemy but die first, utmost on his mind was the conservation of the chain of command in Japan.

The outcome of the conflict at the beginning of 1945 was all but decided, as the American and Allied forces made their advance toward the Japanese islands. The only hope that Tojo could hold on to was to make such advance and the final invasion as costly as possible for the United States. In his opinion, the horrendous casualties suffered by the American would push the people to apply pressure on the US government to end the fight and sue for a conditional surrender.

With a new President in the White House, Harry Truman had succeeded the beloved FDR upon his death, Tojo saw his hopes increase.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Truman was made aware of the Manhattan Project in New Mexico and was also informed of the projected million and a half casualties that the conventional invasion of Japan could cost (and that figure did not include Japanese casualties).

President Truman was than faced with having to make the decision to choose between such catastrophic casualty prospects and the use of the new weapon. The hope was that the demonstration of the atomic bomb devastating power would convince the leadership in Tokyo that surrender was the best course of action to save countless lives.

One very important element the academic elitists and their followers seem to ignore, as they cry their self-righteous tears for Hiroshima, is that even after that city had been raised by the nuclear explosion, the Japanese leadership still refused to surrender. They remained steadfastly determined to sacrifice the Japanese civilians to the altar of their own glory.

It was only after the second bombing on Nagasaki that the Emperor finally stepped in and re-took the reins of the country, finally capitulating, and in the process saving an entire people and countless American generations.

Obviously the speakers of the conference in Hawaii missed these lessons during their studies. Most likely, historical revisionism is their forte especially when it comes to promote their visceral hate for America and its Military. And to think that travesties like the "History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War" workshop was funded with the same money paid by the taxes of Veterans, Military members and their family just adds an element of rage to the whole affair.

I commend Dr. Penelope Blake for her efforts in bringing this travesty to public scrutiny and I will also write my Congressman to exhort him to negate any additional funding to the NEH unless better scrutiny of contents is made for events like this.

Just my thoughts!