History and Science Dim Bulbs

A minority of Americans engage in malpractice against the rest of us, who with even high school education understand something of how science operates and history enriches and informs us.

The loud-mouthed bullies shouting at school board meetings proclaim that nobody has the right to tell them to wear masks or get vaccinated. They howl about freedom, their freedom to do as they like with their own bodies. Apparently, they understand nothing about public health, laws designed to protect us all from disease and premature death.

Every school child is taught early that "your fist ends at my nose." Your rights do not override another?s rights. Yet these same loudmouths who care so much about their own body rights find nothing contradictory about howling that pregnant women should have no rights over their bodies.

They are so ignorant that they do not realize that they are alive and howling because scientists over the centuries have taught us to clean our drinking water; to bathe; to inoculate ourselves from historic killers such as smallpox, polio, and measles; and to legislate against sellers of tainted food and drugs. They are so ignorant that (with the encouragement of our bad-loser former president and the cynics of Fox News) they sneer at "science" and believe conspiracy theories that vaccines implant computer chips in them and prefer to ingest horse medicines instead.

Fortunately for the human gene pool, the unvaccinated are leaving us in droves as they spurn this easily avoided COVID hospitalization and death. But they continue to make many of us, even vaccinated, sick.

The history dim bulbs (ignoramuses) howl from both the far left and the far right. Neither group has ever learned about what history tells us and why we need to be informed before howling.

The current left-wing dim bulbs do not understand that many of the people we honor in history were people of their time: with behaviors and attitudes they did not invent but inherited. We do not honor George Washington and the Founding Fathers for owning slaves. We honor them for providing us with the unusual values that people around the world honor by wanting to come here. They have voted with their feet that our constitution is a treasure.

History dim bulbs impose current cultural values on our predecessors, while ignoring the reasons that we honor them. They even find fault with Abraham Lincoln, wanting to tear down his statues along with all the others they misunderstand. If they had their way, they would change the name of Washington, DC (because he was a slave owner) and even America (because Amerigo Vespucci lived in a time that the Inquisition raged.

The dim bulbs now studying at Cabrillo College want his name erased because his bravery as an explorer was blighted because he did what Europeans in his time did: enslave people. If they were really studying history, they would learn some fascinating things about Cabrillo.

Biographers have long noted that there is little known about his origins. Was he Spanish or Portuguese? The mystery is solved when we learn that his people were Spanish Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism and when even that didn?t protect them from the Inquisition, they moved to Portugal. The daring among them became explorers and some even pirates who got revenge against the Spanish by capturing their gold and silver fleets and bringing them to Amsterdam, gaining their religious freedom in exchange. Isn?t that history worth learning?

The dim bulbs on the right also abuse history. They howl at school board meetings that the young should not be taught about slavery, about the genocide of Native Americans, or about lynchings because "that will make children hate their country."

The dim bulbs on both ends of the political spectrum have nothing to offer. They have rejected learning and prefer instead to be permanently enraged. How pathetic they look in the glare of TV cameras as they try to bully the rest of us.

Proper understanding of science makes us live and prosper. Proper understanding of history makes us proud of how far we have come.




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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of "How Do You Know That? Contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.