The other day I publicly condemned the American Family Association as nithings on A Heathen’s Day – and that’s a very bad thing to say about somebody. It’s not a term I use lightly. For the record, a nithing (ON niðingr) is a villain, scoundrel, coward, vile wretch, and more, and a niðing deed (niðingsverk) is an ill deed, or villainy; a person guilty of this sort of behavior was held in contempt.
The nature of my complaint is the projection of ancient law codes into the present day. It is, after all, 2010, the Twenty First Century, a supposedly enlightened era, and many thousands of years have passed since the earliest law codes came into existence – far in advance of the oft-appealed to Decalogue of the Hebrew Bible.
Each ancient culture had its own religion – shaped by its environment – and its own law code – also shaped by its environment. And these religions and law codes did not necessarily have anything to do with each other. Roman law for example – the Twelve Tablets – were civil law, written by humans for humans, not handed down from on high or imposed by gods on mortals, just as was the Greek legal code of Solon of Athens, upon which the Romans claimed to base their laws.
My own Norse ancestors understood that, in the words of Robert Ferguson (The Vikings 2009:31), “ethics were the province of man and the law,” and it is significant that the word sin (“synd”) does not appear in any Viking Age literary source until circa 1030 C.E., and then in a Christian context. As Ferguson points out, “Viking Age ethics were based on the opposition of shame and honour.”
Witnesses were all important – business had to be done publicly so everyone would know what you had sworn to or promised or agreed to – and shame for your failures would do the rest. This legal system was then a sort of self-regulating affair (an especially workable plan in small self-contained communities), and at gatherings such as the regional Things, these laws would be enforced by the community. Despite swearing oaths on a gold ring sacred to Thor, the laws themselves were not divine in origin.
This paradigm of separation of law and divine is generally true of the ancient world. As Bart Ehrman observes, “Greco-Roman cults did not overly concern themselves with doctrines about the gods or with the moral behavior of their devotees” (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 2004:33-34).
It seems to me a preferable system in some respects. Nobody was demonized in the Judeo-Christian sense or held to be “turning away from god” because they stole something. It wasn’t a god’s wrath you had to fear but that of your neighbors; it was a civil matter. Religion doesn’t have to be used as a hammer to enforce narrow – often myopic – conceptions of morality.
Not that ancient secular punishments were any less draconian than those found in the Hebrew Bible. For example, Ferguson recounts (2009:32) how a thief who tried to steal from you could be legally killed, and that even a thief convicted of a “petty offense” could be made to run the gauntlet, in which the people – his neighbors – threw stones and turf at him.
I can’t speak for all Heathens, let alone all Pagans, but I think most would agree that bringing back the gauntlet is not the first best thing we could do. Roman law could be pretty brutal too, even before the heightened judicial savagery of the first Christian century and beyond. Crosses, anyone?
As Ferguson points out (2009:39), “northern Heathendom” did not lack a culture. “Viking Age Scandinavians had their own cosmology, their own astronomy, their own gods, their own social structure, their own form of government, and their own notions of how best to live and die.” The same could be said of any ancient culture. The same could be said of the Israelites: Different, unique and true for them.
So how is it that some fundamentalist Christians, the kind Mikey Weinstein spoke of in my interview with him last week, think that the peculiarities of ancient Jewish law supersede the Constitution and a long tradition of Western legal traditions? How does the Law of Moses trump the laws of the Heathen Norse, or the Law of Solon?
Well, for one thing, they claim it is divinely inspired, and that “god’s law” trumps “man’s law.” This conceit has come to light most recently in the demand made by the American Family Association (AFA) that the killer whale that killed its trainer at SeaWorld Orlando be stoned.
Yes, stone the whale. Oh, and stone the poor curator in charge as well.
Why? Well, because the Bible demands it:
“When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28)
And,
But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)
This is all well and fine for the seventh century B.C.E. but this is the year 2010. We don’t live in ancient Israel anymore than we live in Viking Age Norway; we live in the United States of America. By my reckoning, some three thousand years have gone by. We have the Constitution, based not on Biblical principles but on the principles of the European Enlightenment. We have a long tradition of secular law that now governs and regulates our diverse society.
Why can’t we just make the whale run the gauntlet? And maybe the curator too? Or maybe we should nail them both to crosses, or follow Assyrian law and impale them. After all, Moshe Weinfeld (“Deuteronomy: The Present State of Inquiry,” JBL 86 (1967), 253-256) demonstrates that a series of maledictions in Deuteronomy 28 “can be proved to have been transposed directly from Assyrian contemporary treaties into the book of Deuteronomy” (cf. idem, “Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formulae in Deuteronomy,” Biblica 46 (1965), 417-427).
Who knows, the curator may even be witch and the whale his familiar. Maybe we should start gathering wood…
The absurdity of each position enumerated above should be plain to all. The Constitution – not the Bible – not Heathen Norse Thing-law, governs our society. The Founding Fathers determined – whatever revisionist fundamentalist propagandists now assert – that God – any god – does not get a vote.
So to the AFA and the like-minded I say: The Constitution, the law of mortals, rules in the United States, not the Bronze Age vassal treaty known as the Decalogue.
Note:
The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, is nothing extraordinary or unique in the eastern Mediterranean basin of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. There are actually three versions of the Decalogue in the Bible, Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34:12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, though Exodus 20 is probably the most used and best known. In actuality, there are 19 commandments contained in the Decalogue but they are grouped so as to make just ten, as stated in Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13 and Deuteronomy 10:4.
Links:
Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/03/american-family-associati_n_484022.html
A Heathen’s Day: http://aheathensday.com/2010/03/nithing-of-the-week-4.html
“Those men whom Jewish and Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New.” – Thomas Paine, “The Age of Reason”
And folks like Glenn Beck like to pretend Paine never said such things (not to mention Beck’s proposed social welfare system). They’ve somehow turned Paine into a fundamentalist Christian.
Gods, obviously they’ve never read “The Age of Reason!” It’s one of the most ANTI-Christian books that I’ve ever read. Snarky, and pulls no punches. Here’s another good one, just for the Glenn Becks of the world:
“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”
Or this one:
“It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.”
I’ve been re-reading it lately, and feeling the urge to go make a bunch of “Christian Nationalists” cry with quotes from it.
Yes, I’ve read Age of Reason (*both parts) and all Paine’s writings front to back and like you, I don’t understand how he could have been any more clear about his feelings. I’ve also been soundly condemned for repeating what Paine said – or Madison for that matter – quotes and citations be damned. They couldn’t have said those things because “good conservative Christians” couldn’t have! Interesting logic, eh?
Though I have to admit…there is nothing more unsettling to me…nothing more Orwellian…frightening…(and dammit…it’s downright “evil”)…than when I see the Religious Right claiming that the USA was founded as a “Christian Nation,” and that all of those Founding Fathers were actually hardcore Dominionists. It’s really a case of that whole, “Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes true…” concept.
That Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, etc., are being painted as supportive of the idea of a “Christian Nation” is at a similar level as the Holocaust “revisionists,” and their goals are just as perverse.
I’m in full agreement, Bryon. This mythic America they’ve created for themselves, while in keeping with the pious “history as it should have been” of the Bible itself (see William G. Dever “Did God Have a Wife?” 2205), is a danger to the Constitution and to our way of life. Scary to think of all those kids growing up believing the lies, all those kids whose eyes need to be opened but who will blindly and steadfastly refuse to look at the facts because to do so would be seen as a betrayal of their god. Madness.
I would just like to add that I was brought up a Lutheran (in the then LCA – now ELCA) and that I felt the same way about Christian extremists then as a Lutheran as I do now as a Heathen 30 years later.
One of the things that had me baffled for a while is the adulation of the founders, which is running parallel with prideful ignorance of the fact that these men were the intellectual elite of their time. They were the sons of landholders who did not inherit estates, and who basically had two choices: join the military, or emigrate to establish their own fortunes. This is the origin of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant revolutionaries who became the founders.
The majority of immigrants of their day were ill educated, if at all. It seems that their offspring have learned little over the following generations… so ignorance continues not merely unabated, but in some ways increases exponentially.
People pick and choose their truths, taking what they like and ignoring the rest, just like each denomination picks and ignores from the Bible (and I suppose we modern Pagans to the same extent do the same with our available sources).
If anyone was a liberal elite it was the likes of Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, etc, and Paine, the radical liberal, is now being held up as a arch-conservative somehow and we’re being told there was no revolution at all, simply a rebellion! The status quo maintained!
You know, I kind of wish I had more to offer other than well said! But you said everything so well that I don’t have anything else to say in response.
Laura, thank you. As in so many cases, it’s the thought that counts. For me, this whole incident represents one of the pitfalls of runaway reconstructionism – of any religious system. Some things are best left in the past.
Speaking of which, do you know how my ancestors hung people? They bent the tree down, tethered it, tied the accused to a branch with a rope, then released the tethers so that the poor fellow went flying up. I don’t know how well it worked or how quickly the victim died but damn it sounds unpleasant.
“For me, this whole incident represents one of the pitfalls of runaway reconstructionism”
You know, as a reconstructionist (I’m Theodish), when I read stuff like this from you (here, and also at your Mos Maiorum site), I wonder if I should be taking it personally. While I haven’t seen you mention Theodism by name, quotes like the following (from your Paganism 101 article), certainly make it seem like you have it in for us, ideologically:
“I’ve always argued that some of the customs and traditions of our ancestors are no longer relevant. For better or worse, their world is gone. Still, there are Saxon Pagans who attempt to retreat into the past and honor kings and lords and who use an archaic language to communicate and for titles, much as does the Roman Catholic Church.”
Which, if it is directed at a specific Theodish group (the only one I know of which would remotely fit that description), shows a significant misunderstanding of Theodism, our ideas concerning “retreat[ing] into the past”, and our use of early Germanic languages for *liturgical* purposes.
And you’re certainly free to misunderstand Theodism, and other “hard” reconstructionism, if you like: that’s your right, I suppose, and you’re hardly the first. I just thought that you might want to know that the prejudices apparent in your writing detract from what seem to be otherwise very cogent points.
Also, based upon my Theodish, reconstructionist point of view, the problem with the AFA’s conjecture that the whale in question ought to be stoned has nothing to do with the fact that “this is the Twenty First Century, a supposedly enlightened era”; the idea that “time passed” = “Progress” is arbitrary, and ultimately of Judeo-Christian origin. No; stoning a whale for killing a human would have been a stupid idea at any point. For one thing, a whale is not an ox; the hubristic reduction of a wild predator to just another cog in the human economic machine notwithstanding. For another thing, stoning an ox to death and making it anathema was probably not the best idea either: it’s wasteful. Stoning the owner to death shows you just what sort of an authoritarian (tyrannically theocratic, perhaps?) society these laws came from.
Old ideas that are good ideas don’t have an expiration date, in my opinion. And bad ideas are rotten from the day they’re thought up.
I wasn’t thinking of the Theodish at all when I wrote this, Nick. Yes, I have made public my reservations about reconstructionism, just as I’ve made known my reservations about what I consider “fluffy” or “plung-n-play” forms of Paganism.
But to each his own. For the record, I have not said that reconstructionist Paganism is not Paganism, or that it is not a legitimate approach. While the idea of making a new “recruit” start as a thrall (a person completely without personhood or honor in ancient Heathenism) while abhorrent to me, is up to the group and individual involved.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with my approach and there is nothing wrong with this. It’s Paganism. By its very nature it’s diverse. That doesn’t mean we don’t all have opinions and express them.
What I should have added is that I don’t believe any Heathen (however reconstructionist in bent) would suggest that running the gauntlet (even if they approved of it as a form of punishment) would recommend, let alone insist, that non-Heathens also follow this practice. And I think that is a clear dividing line between Pagans (then and now) and monotheism (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
Your last comment I agree with and I’ve never said otherwise, though we may differ with regards to what are good and bad ideas.
First, thanks for your prompt reply. Now, on to your comments:
“While the idea of making a new “recruit” start as a thrall (a person completely without personhood or honor in ancient Heathenism) while abhorrent to me, is up to the group and individual involved.”
You’re not the first to feel that way, and this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Theodism. I’m not going to try to change your opinion on it, certainly not on an online forum; years of experience has shown me that, while a public defense of our customs is sometimes necessary, it rarely changes anyone’s opinions. Let me just say that, having gone through thralldom myself, it’s not what you probably envision.
“What I should have added is that I don’t believe any Heathen (however reconstructionist in bent) would suggest that running the gauntlet (even if they approved of it as a form of punishment) would recommend, let alone insist, that non-Heathens also follow this practice.”
I can certainly agree with you there.
“Your last comment I agree with and I’ve never said otherwise, though we may differ with regards to what are good and bad ideas.”
Undoubtedly.
Say, not to derail the conversation concerning your essay, but I note that you’re from South St. Paul. The Theodish group that I got my start in was based around the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin. I wonder if we’ve crossed paths, but “Hrafnkell Haraldsson” is not a name I recognize.
Hey Nick, sorry I couldn’t get back to you last night but I didn’t see your post until right as I was going to bed. I’m certainly willing to have my eyes opened on the thrall issue if you wish to continue our discussion privately but I will plead in my defense that I spoke to one such gentleman (who at least claimed being a thrall) on the Northvegr Forums when I was the moderator/forum administrator and that encounter has largely informed my opinion on the matter.
If I’m wrong I’m wrong and I will admit it and apologize, as I have before on such occasions. I guess what I don’t understand is that if somebody is attempting to be accurate in a historical reconstruction of an ancient religion, why use the term “thrall” incorrectly? “Thrall” was an insult to our ancestors and it was never used of neophytes in Heathen religion.
Actually, I’m from the northern suburbs – Brooklyn Center – though I did live briefly in South Saint Paul after leaving Minnesota and then returning. But I was not active in any Heathen groups while I was there.
“I’m certainly willing to have my eyes opened on the thrall issue if you wish to continue our discussion privately”
Certainly, we could discuss this privately. Shall I leave a message on your blog, or…?
I used to live in Brooklyn Center. I’m in Austin, but will (probably) be moving to the S. St Paul area this summer. My husband is already living up in the Twin Cities in an apartment.
@Nick: you can write me at alheithinn.vinlander@gmail.com if you’d like.
@Cara: small world! I have family in Brooklyn Park, Bloomington and Prior Lake and elsewhere down in the Red Wing area – which is where my ancestors emigrated to from Norway and Sweden. Some of them still farm down there. My roots are deep in Minnesota.
The Islamic Taliban do not have to worry about gaining access to nuclear weapons. Soon enough, at the rate we are going, the AMERICAN Taliban will have access to the largest arsenal on the planet. This IS a democracy, after all, and the most extreme sects of fundamentalist Christianity are breeding like rabbits. God, Allah, it makes no difference, all of these monotheistic wingnuts are equally bloodthirsty. And they vote.
I’m in full agreement, Alex!
… and they vote… and they are disciplied followers…
Those of us who think are, by definition and mindset, curious, critical and questioning.
Those traits do not lend themselves to become rigidly organized, to follow blindly, and thus we probably will be overrun by those who follow such practices. It has happend over and again throughout history.
I fear for my offspring who adhere to the ancient teachings of “Love, Honor, Duty” without the
use of worship other than Universal Law and veneration of Nature.
But haven’t you read the First Amendment, which clearly says that. you are free to worship religion so long as its fundamentalist litteralism of the Christian bible? Paine and Franklin were good, bible believing, witch stoners…
Haha, that’s what those history revisionists would have you believe!
Nothing is so dangerous to civilization as historical ignorance.
DeWayne, I don’t believe in burning books but if I did, my first choice would be those “Politically Incorrect Guide” books. They’re a danger to our society, masquerading as real history. Next thing you know, they’ll be using them as textbooks, if they don’t already. You can believe I keep a close eye on what they teach at my son’s school. I remember when the worst thing I had to worry about them teaching was that Andy Jackson “helped” his “Cherokee friends” by stealing their land.
American History as taught in the early sixties was the worst propaganda ever visited upon a generation of children. I was taught “cowboys and indians”, whereas indians were savage killers and cowboys were all John Wayne. Andrew Jackson was just another heroic President who helped tame the frontier. And, being in Mississippi, our Mississippi history approached the Civil war as a heroic effort by an oppressed people who really cared about their niggers, but who feared those niggers were going to rise up and rape all the white women. No, the nigger part was not actually “taught” in our text books; all that was supplied by our parents, who even up till then were still fighting a long lost war. I had to learn the truth about history by researching it myself over the years as I aged and started asking serious questions. If present day germany was like the deep South of the 60′s, there would be large bronze or marble monuments to Hitler in just about every town square, losing the war he thrust upon the world be damned.
Historians, not kings, rule the world.
If you control a cultures history you control their identity. I remember taking my “Meathods in Scocial Studies in Education” class (Read as “How to be a History Teacher) we were asked the question “What is History”. After a variety of responces our professor said “These are all good answers, most of you said something to the effect that history is the study of the past. I would put forward that history is the study of the past though the lens of the present.”
What I took away from that statement was that all history is revisionist, in some way, because every generation has its own cultural bias though which it attempts to interperet the past.
Any thoughts?
That IS true, Paul, in that history will be revised throughout the years following by those who might not accept blindly the interpretation of those who “record” it. Today I might “record” that Barack Obama, despite being a black man, was one of our best presidents, yet my grandchildren will challenge that assumption based on all the revelations that will come to light about his administration that we living these times might never see. Even now, I am forced to close my mind to all the crap being “dug up” on President Kennedy which can reduce him from the greatest President we ever had to a very flawed and morally corrupt individual who simply never got caught, i.e. President Clinton. Yes, unfortunately, even history in the end is “relative”.
Jus to link this to other conversations on this topic:
Given that history is relative and not “black and white”; Is is possible to definitivly state that the United States was founded, or not founded, as a “christian-nation”?
Our founders were a diverse group of people and did not think as one monolithic force.
There is a grain of truth in almost every statement; unfortunetly that grain is lost amid a beach of bullshit
It is actually quite easy to prove that a nation, such as ours, was NOT founded as a “Christian Nation.” It would be much harder to prove an affirmative in this case.
The mere fact that Jesus, Christ, Christian, etc., do not appear, while Deist terms like “Nature’s God” and “Creator” do…should have been enough to end the debate… It is BECAUSE of the fact that our founders were a fairly diverse group of people that they sought to create a gov’t not bound by any religious dogma.
(BTW, the book “The Faiths of the Founding Fathers,” by David L. Holmes, is a fairly impartial look at the Founders’ religious beliefs…or non-beliefs, as it were.)
In the words of the Founding Fathers themselves:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
1791, Treaty of Tripoli. Signed By John Adams, negotiated at least in part by Washington, ratified by unanimous consent by the Senate, many of whom were Founding Fathers themselves.
I’d say that is pretty clear.
Eran, I think that’s pretty clear too and that reference came up in my interview with Mikey Weinstein. Yet the fundamentalists try to wiggle out of that one too – I’ve run into their insistence that it means nothing on more than one occasion.
Yet the Constitution itself states that treaties entered into by the United States shall thereafter become a part of the Law of the Land.
Crazy isn’t it? A complete refusal to stare facts in the face.
They’re not just real good at sailin’ down that river in Egypt, they packed a big cooler and a change of underwear for a long trip.
LOL Thanks for the laugh, snoozepossum. Good way to start the day.
Considering the size of the stick up some of their butts, and how far it’s been shoved up, I’m amazed that they can even get underwear on.
Well, once you’ve hit Tonsil Application, there prolly ain’t much external material left . . . .
My view of history is this: History can never be entirely objective. It is not only the record of events past but also the interpretation of those events.
BUT,
I have a huge problem with revisionists and postmodernists who argue that no objectivity is possible, that there are no ancient facts to study. I argued against this thinking as a university student majoring in both history and philosophy. Revisionists say there is no objective world out there, that all which exists is our perceptions, which are always flawed. We can therefore never really know anything about the past. But this is nihilism.
Then too, ideology need not always be used in a negative way. Ideology need not be thought of in a Marxist sense as “false consciousness” or illusion. As William G. Dever argues, “we all have an ideology, in the sense of a set of ideas with which we approach any phenomenon or experience,” but as he says, this does not make most of us ideologues.
We can know something of the past. The evidence is there, epigraphical, archaeological, and literary. Our ideologies and our own circumstances and cultures will color our interpretations, certainly, but that does not render the past out of reach. And of course, for the same reason we have to be interested in the context of any object we study, literary or otherwise. Who wrote it? When? Why?
My own view as a Heathen is that the past is there – we can never know all of it to a certainty but what we know is what we know, good and bad. It doesn’t have to be pretty and we don’t have to like it (or even always understand it) but as Al Franken says, “we are not entitled to our own facts.” And that’s where, I think, the difference between ideology and fanaticism becomes apparent.
The model must be determined by the facts; the model must not determine the facts. Christian fundamentalists have constructed a mythic America. Now they are busily re-writing our Nation’s history (as well as world history) in order to provide the framework for their construction, and events, as they take place, are quickly spun in order to be plugged into the new framework. This is a classic example of facts being made to conform to the model.
I have a lot of problems with how history is taught in school (naturally) and it’s only gotten worse in recent years. Even my 5-year-old came home on Washington’s birthday with a construction paper tricorn hat with “cherry stems” on it. Seriously – they’re still teaching that old myth? There isn’t something factual and more useful they can teach about Washington? It’s almost enough to drive me to homeschooling. At the very least, I will have to correct and supplement his knowledge of history at home, and encourage him to understand that we won’t always like the facts of our past – some of them are pretty sad and embarrassing – but they happened.
The old cry, “those weren’t really Christians who did those things” is just plain bullshit. The people who say it don’t like what they read so since they can’t wish it away (like some conservative Catholics have tried to wish away the horrors of the Inquisitions and witch trials – “the protestants did it!”) they simply re-interpret it. It’s discouraging to say and not only conservatives do it – liberals do as well.
But how can we learn anything from the past if we pretend it never happened?
Short answer:
We can’t and we don’t. Its only natural for us, as modern humans, to assume that we are smarter then everyone who came before us.
Useing your example with the Inquistion; I like to beleive that we are “smarter” than 14th century european peasents and that the Inquistion could never happen again. But like you said; if we pretend it never happened or play the blame game I suppose anything is possible.
While facts may not necessarily be open to interpretation…it is often the way the facts are presented that creates the bias.
Take a look at modern news outlets, and their reporting of an issue. For example, take a look at the different ways that the same issues are reported on the different news channels. I won’t get into specific examples, (to avoid starting THAT debate right here) but it’s pretty obvious that anyone can spin just about any news story into a “win” for their own particular political cause.
And that’s with CURRENT events. Now imagine “spinning” something that happened hundreds of years ago, when your audience is largely composed of uneducated people who have no idea that there is another viewpoint. THAT is the problem with certain kinds of historical revisionism, and why books like that “Politically In(accurate)correct Guide to…” series are so disgusting. It’s taking advantage of uneducated people for propaganda purposes. Sick.