You know the old saying: winners write the history books.
As a (wannabe) historian, I’ve often taken exception to that axiom. Not that I don’t believe it’s true. The evidence is substantial, especially when we expand “winners” to “powers that be.”
In Texas, that saying is quite literal. The Texas Board of Education–a.k.a. the powers that be–has a lot of power and control over what goes into the textbooks they choose to use. Authors and editors are quick to play along because there is big money involved. When Texas decides on a textbook, much of the rest of the country follows suit. Back in 2009/2010, the Board was perilously close to eliminating one Thurgood Marshall from the historical record. You know, the same Thurgood Marshall who argued for the plaintiffs in Brown vs. Board of Education to overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson and tore apart the government’s foundation for racist segregation practices, and who a decade later would become the first black Supreme Court justice.
Oh. Why are we even talking about him? No real history there. No need to have kids waste their time with that sort of stuff; especially black kids.
Last I heard, Thurgood Marshall survived the textbook cuts. He still exists. Brown v. Board of Education still happened.
But, winners and the powers that be don’t limit themselves to just writing textbooks. They know they can push their authority and control a little further by defining the words we use. When George W. Bush was President, there was a major controversy over the US torturing prisoners. The administration redefined torture to justify the acts they committed on their prisoners during the war on terror. (You can read over the approved “interrogation techniques” as laid out by the administration itself and judge for yourself what was and was not torture.) Even today, with President Obama using drones to bomb targets in Pakistan, Yemen, and various other nations, his administration avoids his attacks being labeled as war crimes because they are not official wars. By controlling definitions, the powers that be ensure they will continue to be the winners.
And it’s a funny thing how the words revolution and rebellion are no exception.
. . . even as late as 1775 John Adams denied that the Continental Congress was engaging in rebellion. “[T]he people of this continent have the utmost abhorrence of treason and rebellion,” he said.. . . [The Founding Fathers] associated the word revolution, derived from astronomy, with ordered and prescribed movement and considered themselves engaged in an orderly and legally justified endeavor. (Bogus, The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 395; article here)
Fascinating. Granted, the two terms are different, though at times wrongly interchanged. A revolution has to do with an overthrow or replacement of a government or political system. A rebellion is more the act of resistance or defiance to a government or ruler. Revolutions tend to be looked at favorably. Rebellions tend to have a negative vibe. Why is that exactly?
In general, the answer is far more simple than some make it out to be. A successful rebellion results in a revolution. If a group of rebels fails to achieve their goal, they are simply rebels. And because the revolution never happend, and there was no change in the powers, the powers brand the rebels treasonous, traitors, and work their magic to silence their dissent. But if the rebels are successful, they become revolutionaries. As the new powers, they decide who the revolutionaries are and who are, or were, the traitors.
If the outmanned, outclassed, and outgunned colonials would have failed against the British, their rebellion against the empire would have been just that: a squelched rebellion of a rabble group of traitors. Instead, because of the victory, we remember what that rabble did as the American Revolution, and those men as revolutionaries.
In the quote above, how John Adams characterized what the founders were doing–as revolution and not rebellion–falls in line with the winner’s attitude. As a leader, among the group of many leaders, he defined the parameters by which the history to come would be known. If they were merely rebels, then what they were doing and going to do to the British Empire was merely the misguided, whine-filled complaining of an angry band of subjects. But, as revolutionaries, they were the enlightened leaders, guiding their fellow oppressed peoples to liberty.
Makes a world of difference when you say it a certain way. Kind of like propaganda.
