Historical Convenience By Left Costs Lives

History is not a convenience, to be contrived for whatever purpose, but is the invaluable record of what happened, why, how, by whom, necessary to understand the past and its part in our present and future. Accurate history, also, literally seals the fate, life or death, of millions of innocents around the world.

Historians debate the proper role and standards for revisions of prior understanding. New validated evidence often adds valuable facets, which enrich history, and should be carefully considered. However, when inadequately verified, or ignored, or used to deny all the other evidence there is an abuse of history, by those who do it and to whom it’s fed, usually to support some current polemical point.

The most egregious current instance is those who deny the holocaust, in order to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. Its relative is those whose one-sided or distorted accusations against Israel ignore the culpability and aggressions of the Palestinians and Arab states.

Another is the refusal of the major media to consider or investigate the testimony of over 60 witnesses to John Kerry’s exaggerations and lies about his Vietnam service and anti-Vietnam war activities, or to demand that Kerry reveal how he finagled a Purple Heart that those there and in command judged unjustified, or how his discharge from service was handled.

Another example is the crusade by a few diehards to reverse the many elements of and overwhelming evidence that entered into the conviction of Alger Hiss for perjury about his role as a Soviet mole, by citing the memory of a self-interested 10-year old and a minor and questionable quibble about additional corroborating evidence from the Soviet archives that only emerged decades after Hiss’ conviction. As the most noted historian of Hiss and his conviction commented:

G. Edward White said Hiss supporters use a "thread strategy," seizing on any "inconsistency" to unravel a scenario aiming to vindicate him of the spy charges.

White is author of Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy. White, also, happens to be the son-in-law of John F. Davis, who served as Alger Hiss's counsel during a 1948 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Contentions blog notes:

It’s hard to imagine how seriously even the most committed advocate of Hiss can pursue his cause now, in the face of the overwhelming evidence about who he was and what he did. Over the decades, COMMENTARY has published much material on the Hiss case and its implications; this weekend we offer a selection. [Several links to the Commentary archives are at the link, above.]

See Scott Johnson's superb summary of the literature about the Hiss case, and the case of retarded Leftist revisionists.

The effort to rewrite history in a mode convenient to the Left is all part and parcel of the Left’s agenda to undermine anything which reflects on its anti-America mission, and to excuse itself from responsibility for aid and fellow-traveling with the 20th Century’s mass murderers from Stalin to Mao to Ho, to today’s jihadists.

This infection pervades our schools and arts, and even contaminates the pillars of the Democrats’ establishment, in their zeal to unseat President Bush, as when former National Security Advisor to President Carter (of note, during Carter’s abysmal mishandling of the Iranian hostage taking of our embassy staff), Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently said:

"We expected that the U.S. leaving Vietnam would result in massive killings and genocide and so forth, and collapse of the dominoes in Southeast Asia," he said. "It didn't happen. How certain are we of the horror scenarios that have been mentioned in what will take place in Iraq?"

One might expect a little better knowledge of history from Brzezinski. Sometimes, too rarely, there are films that provide more history than even the major media or Democrat extremists can deny. The Killing Fields presents the slaughter of millions of Cambodians, who Brzezinski conveniently forgets. The Journey From The Fall, which the Washington Post notes “has been called a Vietnamese ‘Schindler’s List’,“ presents the fate of millions of Vietnamese, who Brzezinski conveniently forgets.

I offer to buy Brzezinski a ticket to the movies, and will even throw in a bag of popcorn -- if he can swallow history, he can comfortably eat popcorn while watching the atrocities he conveniently forgets.

Truth, eventually, will out. However, in the meantime, millions of innocents have paid the ultimate price to tyrannies. Those currently in the cross-hairs deserve better from those who care about more than convenient history from the Left.