If I say that Governor Clarence Morley was a no-good son of a bitch, is that a negative evaluation? Obviously. Is it inappropriately negative? No, because Morley, as a stooge of the KKK in the 1920s, was, in fact (and partly as metaphor), a no-good son of a bitch. He richly deserves our hatred and derision.
That Colorado voters elected a KKK stooge as governor is a black mark in our history and something we should learn from and strive to avoid in the future. We can’t fully appreciate what’s good about Colorado without recognizing what’s gone wrong. We can’t make Colorado better without knowing what needs fixing. This goes for the country as well.
A real patriot does not have the attitude, “My country, right or wrong.” A real patriot loves his country insofar as its people are good and strive to become better. A real patriot evaluates his country’s flaws fairly and squarely so that those flaws can be corrected and overcome.
Amache sign urges reports of negativity
A sign posted at Camp Amache National Historic Site, operated by the National Park Service, urges people to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.” See Kevin Simpson’s report.
Amache is the site of the World War II concentration camp for Japanese Americans near Granada, by Colorado’s eastern border. Its use is among the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. That Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered such camps should cause every American to think worse of him (not that I have a high opinion of him anyway).
The main purpose of maintaining the property as a National Historic Site is to remind Americans of the fact that the U.S. government acted in a shamefully immoral way. Is that a “negative” evaluation? Well, duh.
The main conclusion we can draw about the person who drafted the sign is that he is a complete moron. A key purpose of the site is to provide “information that is negative about past Americans” who set up the camp. If we didn’t want the site to provide such negative information, we’d have to completely destroy it. And then even its absence would indirectly provide a sort of negative information, made even worse by the attempt to hide it.
A game of telephone
My son loves playing the game of telephone, usually around a campfire. One person comes up with a phrase and whispers it to the next person, and the phrase continues around the circle. I have yet to witness a phrase making it around intact. In part, the Amache sign is the result of a game of telephone.
We can start with Donald Trump’s March 27 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” I agree with important aspects of this order. It states, “Under . . . historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” I think that’s basically a sound critique.
The problem is that Trump mistakes any discussion of bad parts of American history for a fundamental rejection of American founding ideals. For example, Trump complains that a Smithsonian exhibit taught that “societies including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” But that’s just obviously true. For example, the U.S. long enabled slavery. There’s nothing wrong or anti-American about exploring the ways that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism,” as the Smithsonian holds.
Trump’s order directs the Secretary of the Interior “to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, [etc.] do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Did you notice the word “inappropriately” there? Kind of a big qualifier!
When we turn to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s May 20 order, initially we find inclusion of the term “inappropriately.” But then we find the model text that was subsequently posted at Amache, the language that includes the term “negative” but omits the term “inappropriately.” Now we know who the moron is!
Don’t leave history in political hands
Thankfully, we are not reliant on government or moronic politicians to learn real history. You could, for example, read Robert Harvey’s Amache: The Story of Japanese Internment in Colorado During World War II. Or you could read Adam Schrager’s The Principled Politician: Governor Ralph Carr and the Fight against Japanese American Internment. If you’re looking for Colorado heroes and manifestations of American greatness, Carr should make your list.
Putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding which “negative” reports of history are “appropriate” and which “inappropriate” is inherently troublesome. One possibility is to turn the Amache site over to a private nonprofit, preferably one run by descendants of the victims of the camp, commissioned with maintaining the site in perpetuity.
It is a grave error to ignore the greatness of America. The thing is, America is great only insofar as we grapple with America’s flaws and seek to correct them. Real patriotism demands as much.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
