The historian’s task to make sense of the past involves more than merely examining events and relaying the details. It involves interpretation. In practice, especially in an upside-down world where often facts are considered fiction and fiction considered fact, “history” is manipulated and used to advance a social agenda.  

For example, those who view history from a Neo-Marxist perspective look for the oppressors and the oppressed. They don’t look for those who actually committed acts of oppression or who were victims of it. Rather, having already grouped humanity into pre-determined categories, they know going in who the good guys and bad guys are. In this view, anyone with power is an oppressor, and therefore, evil, and all without power are marginalized and oppressed victims, and therefore, innocent and virtuous.  

This version of America begins in 1619 with the arrival of the first African slaves. Under this rubric, the story of America, like all of Western civilization, is a story racism and oppression of minorities. Even today, the story of the world is seen as little more than a set of evil and exploitive colonial powers dominating people of color. This ideology has been widely mainstreamed through education and also promoted by media, big tech, legal, and government voices. 

An equal but opposite ideology has emerged to combat this understanding of American and Western identity. Though not fully coherent as a narrative or as effective a crusade (it certainly hasn’t influenced the nation’s public school system), this response comes from the far Right and aims more at defeating the historical revisioning of the far Left than telling the truth. 

This version goes like this: Abraham Lincoln supposedly destroyed the federal system, states’ rights, and the Tenth Amendment, which centralized power in the national government; FDR, vastly expanded Washington’s power over the economy.