Revisionism Versus Reality
A Look at Revisionist History and How It Affects Us
Dr. Roger G. Ford, Ph.D., P.E.
November 2017

Introduction

Revision is our way of life. We all live in a world that constantly changes. It changes because of us, because of others, because of people we do not know or will ever meet. We all have free will coupled with sinful natures which make us selfish and introspective. With all of the free will going on even in this room, things are changing, minds are wondering, focus is elsewhere, and, perhaps, interest is peaked. Change is always, change is everywhere, and most of us do not like change. We like things the way they are. We are comfortable and do not want to become uncomfortable. But, a very large lesson in life is that things change and there are many of those things that you can do nothing about, but, there are some that you can do something about. But, the bottom line is that, even though we do not like change, it is firmly in place every single day.

Do you have any biases? Are you a free-thinking individual? Sure you are, God made you that way and that makes you unique with specific differences that set you apart from everyone else. Do you have opinions? Of course you do. Otherwise you would not be a unique creation of God. Have you defined exactly what your ideology is in relationship to what it should be, what God’s Word says it should be? Has your biblically-informed thinking opened up your understanding of just where your allegiances lie, what you really like and dislike, what you have as plans both in the immediate future and over the next horizon? We, as Christians, all continue along a road of sanctification regardless of age and education, ever learning, ever becoming more like what Jesus wants us to be, so change lives with us and revision continues to occur. You live in a world of revision. You cannot escape it.

Revision is defined as the act of revising or changing. If we revise something, it’s to make it better or to adapt something to our personality or opinion. That can be good or bad depending on the motivation. When we become Christians, we give the Lord control over our lives and strive to reduce our selfish natures so that the changes in our lives, hopefully, are good changes. But the rest of the fallen world is free to make changes that conform to their desires, opinions, biases, or theories. Those changes, based in selfishness, can result in poor relationships, disruption, and chaos, even in war and tyranny. So, we must be careful because our actions, if selfishly motivated, can affect others either in a good way or the opposite extreme.

What about revisionism? Revisionism is defined as the theory or practice of revising one’s attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view. This simply means that previously accepted morals or behavior or cultural atmospheres that we learn over time proceed into a process of change called revisionism, a very slow process that becomes the new normal. Sort of like the frog in the pot of cold water that is slowly brought to a boil killing the frog as opposed to dropping that frog into hot water and seeing him instantly jump out. For example, why are almost all of the national media constantly deriding President Trump? Their aim is to de-legitimize his victory over his opponent, and they will say and do outrageous things to accomplish their goal. President Trump does not fit the establishment definition of what a President is supposed to be. So, use illegitimate tactics to try to remove him. Try to slowly, over time with immense repetition, revise attitudes of the people against him with lies, innuendo, and fake stories. Ever heard of fake news? It really exists, we can see it every day, and it is our responsibility to weed out the lies and discern the truth. Not doing so will result in the water being slowly brought to a boil and our lives are fundamentally and negatively changed.

Consider the NFL. There are many of us that enjoyed watching certain games, watching our favorite teams, hoping for spectacular displays of athletic talent and team performance. But, recently, an invader has spoiled professional football for many. Actual approval or loyalty to the NFL is down over 30%. What used to be fun to watch is now not so enticing. Why? Because the invader that crept in does not belong in football, and that invader is so-called social justice. Whose social justice? Often, the social justice of perceptions rather than reality.

Another example of revisionism is what we hear about the removal of Confederate flags, civil war statues of Confederate as well as Union leaders, even renaming of schools from Washington, Jefferson, or Lee to something other than a white Founder or historical figure. Why do this? Social justice again because our country is being divided along racial lines, along gender lines, along political leanings, and, worst of all, along authority lines such as police, elected officials, courts, the military, and even constitutional lines. If dividing the country along these varied lines can be firmly established, and many of those lines already are, then anarchy can rise, the Constitution can be abolished, and the globalists can institute martial law resulting in total control of all of society from banks to industry, to schools, to state and local government.

There are many that think the Constitution is outdated and needs revision, but do not want to do that revision the way the Founders set up change clearly enumerated in the Constitution itself by amendment. The trend here is to go back into legitimate history and manipulate it in order to deceive to reach the desired goal of change from a biblically-based culture to a postmodern culture where there are no rules. This type of revisionism is referred to as historical revisionism.

Why Historical Revisionism?

I want to start off with the solution to historical revisionism before we even define it properly. The solution to historical revisionism is revelation – not the book in the Bible, but personal revelation. By that I mean reading, studying, researching what you hear about a subject and not just accepting what you hear from so-called experts, the media, or even someone you know like teachers or professors, relatives or leaders, politicians or celebrities. It is our responsibility, every one of us, our duty to ourselves and those we love including our country to verify what we hear first with God’s Word, then with the facts that we trust, not just hearsay. Hearsay is what you hear someone say, and many times what you hear is not the truth. Most often, people repeat what they believe is the truth when, in fact, they really don’t know the truth because they have not researched what really is the truth about something. Mark Twain said, “A person who WON’T read has no advantage over a person who CAN’T read.”

Another topic to start with is proper hermeneutics or correct interpretation of God’s Word or of any writings. The term for good interpretation is exegesis meaning we interpret a text, biblical or otherwise, from the context of the writer, his culture, and what he meant when he wrote the text. In today’s world, there are those in academia, called Postmodernists, who teach that we should always interpret what we read in the context of today, what it means when applied to our present culture. That is called eisegesis or placing your own personal experiences and biases onto whatever text you are reading or studying. If we do that, we learn nothing. We just emphasize error without diagnosing if error is being committed. We should all know that good hermeneutics, good interpretation of God’s Word is essential to understand just what God is saying to us so that we can comply. Jeff Meyers wrote, “…the Bible’s authoritative revelation is about what God actually communicates, whether we feel good about it or not. Our part is learning to respond appropriately.” The same would also apply when we read the founding documents of our country – to not place current societal values onto the Founders’ writings, just accept them for what they say in the context of who and when they were written. We should never say, “What do you think it means?” Our opinions of a text, especially the Bible, are not relative. We need to understand what the writer was trying to convey to us through his culture, his perspective, not ours. Sounds logical and acceptable and reasonable, but many today, especially college professors, teach otherwise. They employ the technique, the insidious and deceitful method of historical revisionism to re-shape our founding documents and the words and lives of our Founders into archaic, flawed, and basically worthless history.

Historical revisionism is also called historical negationism or denialism. These are illegitimate distortions of the historical record. To quote Rush Limbaugh, “The future of our country as founded is in jeopardy because fewer and fewer people know the country’s past.” In attempting to revise the past, illegitimate historical revisionism may use techniques inadmissible in proper historical analysis, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine; inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents; attributing conclusions to books and sources that reverse what was really written; manipulating statistical data to support a given point of view; deliberately mistranslating or misinterpreting texts; or simply omitting important and explanatory sources.

Glaring Examples

There are literally hundreds of recognizable examples of historical revisionism in our country and around the world. These heinous efforts also have been accomplished over centuries, or, in other words, this is nothing new. Notable examples of revisionism include Holocaust denial (Hitler murdered 6 million Jews in WWII), Armenian Genocide denial (Muslim Turks killed 2 million Armenians in 1915 to 1920s), and Japanese war crime denial (6 million murdered from 1937 to 1945, mostly Asian but Western prisoners as well). In literature, the consequences of historical revisionism have been imaginatively depicted in some works of fiction, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. What Orwell had to say in 1949 is disturbingly accurate today, especially the concept of “Newspeak” which was deliberate distortion by the news media to manipulate the common man and the “Thought Police” which enforced the party line sounding much like political correctness today. It took over half a century for Orwell’s book to look like reality, but his book was eerily prophetic. Big Brother, as Orwell called an out of control government, is looming in our lives today known as the intelligence agencies, especially the NSA, the National Security Agency.

Internet Revisionism

In modern times, revisionism spreads via the Internet. Usually, the purpose of historical revision is to achieve a national, political aim, demonizing by attacking the character of an enemy, providing an illusion of victory, or preserving a political alliance. And, with today’s virtually universal use of cellular phones with unlimited data provisions, the social media apps, and everyone texting what they had for lunch, rumors, fake news, innuendo, and historical revisionism can spread across the nation in literally seconds. Sometimes the purpose of an internet-spread revised history is to sell more books or to attract attention with a newspaper headline. Revisionist history should be understood as a consciously-falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present. Just reading the true, original document will almost always change your interpretation of it because what you heard the document to mean from others is distorted based on their particular bias. Be very wary of everything you read on-line, including Wikipedia, or from unreliable or unknown sources. It may be hard or sad to realize that a majority of things read from the internet are at the very least biased, and often false or misleading. Google has been shown to distort search requests for certain areas of inquiry, mostly on social justice subjects like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, or even free speech.

Functions of Revisionist History

The principal functions of revisionist history are the abilities to control ideological influence and to control political influence. Because historians are credited as people who single-mindedly pursue truth, by way of fact, revisionist historians capitalize on the historian’s professional credibility, and present their pseudohistory as true scholarship. By adding a measure of credibility to the work of revised history, the ideas of the revisionist historian are more readily accepted in the public mind. Extreme care in knowing just who is doing the interpretation of history is not only necessary but critical less we are deceived. Just accepting what a college professor says without personal investigation is irresponsible bordering on stupidity. Be sure of what you hear less you be deceived and thought a fool, basic principles found in the Book of Proverbs.

History provides insight into past political policies and consequences, and thus assists people in extrapolating political implications for contemporary society. Ever hear the old saying, “those who will not study history are doomed to repeat it”? Some today do not want students to learn from history on their own. If they did, they might just know the truth. Historical revisionism is applied to cultivate a specific political myth — sometimes with official consent from the government — whereby self-taught, amateur, and dissident academic historians either manipulate or misrepresent historical accounts to achieve political ends. Beware of group-think, peer pressure, and mob rule. Going along with the crowd almost always leads to disaster simply because it’s easy, requires almost no thought, is purely emotional, and, more often than not, participants do not even understand why they are even participating. Often, it’s hard to investigate a matter, sometimes easy to do so. Without looking into a matter, how can anyone really know if they support the basic premise or not? Investigation leads to truth, and the truth shall set you free, free to be correct and confident in your stance.

What Reputable and Professional Historians Do Not Do

As a document, the revised history is used to negate the validity of the factual, documentary record, and so reframe explanations and perceptions of the discussed historical event, in order to deceive the reader, the listener, and the viewer; therefore, historical revisionism functions as a technique of propaganda. Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account, and, if necessary, amend their own case. They do not present, as genuine, documents which they know to be forged, just because these forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious, but implausible, and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents, because these documents run counter to their arguments, they amend their arguments or abandon them. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources, which, in fact, on closer inspection, say the opposite. They do not manipulate and play with statistics to maximize the data in question, they assess all the available figures, as impartially as possible, in order to arrive at a number that will withstand the critical scrutiny of others. They do not knowingly mistranslate sources in foreign languages in order to make them more serviceable to themselves or misinterpret based on modern morals and cultural aspects rather than the thinking and culture and meaning at the time of writing. They do not willfully invent words, phrases, quotations, incidents and events, for which there is no historical evidence, in order to make their arguments more plausible.

Deception includes falsifying information, obscuring the truth, and lying in order to manipulate public opinion about the historical event discussed in the revised history. The revisionist historian applies the techniques of deception to achieve either a political or an ideological goal, or both. The field of history distinguishes among history books based upon credible, verifiable sources, and were peer-reviewed before publication; and deceptive history books, based upon non-credible sources, and which were not submitted for peer review. Accuracy and openness to criticism are central tenets of historical scholarship. When these techniques are sidestepped, the presented historical information might be deliberately deceptive, a “revised history”.

One of the most despicable and cruel methods of historical revisionism is omission. Simply leaving out historical and important occurrences or people can taint the understanding of major events in human history. The most glaring of such is holocaust denial, holocaust omission. If you mislead, that is one thing. But to simply ignore the deliberate deaths of ten million people, six million of which were Jews, is criminal. Another current example of omission is the trend of liberal colleges teaching the benefits of socialism where the government becomes the nanny state providing all the basic needs like food, education, housing, medical, and even monthly guaranteed income. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook is promoting the idea of a guaranteed income for every American. What is omitted from these theories is the implications of such nonsense. Young minds deprived of the history of socialism do not know what results from such a dangerous policy. History tells us that socialism leads to Marxism, Communism, Fascism, tyranny, dictatorship, and massive genocide. Millions and millions have died under the “socialist” regimes of Mao Tse-tung, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Idi Amin, and many others. Just omitting the terrible outcome of socialist thinking leads to repetition of the past.

There can be negative results from incomplete information about subjects also. This is another form of historical revisionism. The best example of this is minimum wage increases. We hear of protests to increase the minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour from the nationally, government set $7.25. What is not explained is that raising the minimum wage puts an increased burden on employers because of labor costing them twice as much. So, the result will inevitably be layoffs, reduced hours available for work, even business closures leading to massive job losses and increased unemployment. Wages artificially go up due to government decree and the opposite of what is expected by the ill-informed happens – layoffs and unemployment. This happened when the federal minimum wage was raised to its current level, but no one tells anyone about that.

Examples of Historical Revisionism

Remember when I said we all have biases? Do we revise things we think or say according to our biases? YES! In the current or immediate past, you can alter reality. Someone overhears you tell your best friend that you have an appointment to get a tattoo. You are just kidding, just trying to get a reaction from your buddy, but the person hears just the innuendo (suggestive remark) on the appointment comment. He really thinks tattoos are wrong, so he is influenced negatively towards you because of his bias against tattoos. Then there is gossip which is idle talk or rumor. Gossip is an evil that invades all our lives: “He’s always in trouble”; “She never is friendly”; “I’ve never seen him do any homework on his own”; “She is constantly saying bad things….” When we spread stories we hear second-hand, we participate in revisionism of the worst kind – the kind that hurts our fellow man, the very people we are commanded to love by Jesus. So, right or wrong, we let our biases interfere with relationships.

But, there is a much more insidious practice, historical revisionism, that changes history to literally poison the truth to get a different response. There are many examples unfortunately, and most people do not take the time to investigate whether they are being told the truth or not. In some cases, the truth is just not being taught at all, like leaving out historical people, historical occurrences, and historical lessons. (I use David Barton with Wallbuilders.com as a very reliable source for American history. David is an expert in historical and constitutional issues and he serves as a consultant to state and federal legislators, and has participated in several cases at the Supreme Court.)

One example of historical revisionism is that Thomas Jefferson is credited with not only believing in “the separation of church and state”, but enforcing it. Today’s definition refers to this separation as keeping religion, especially Christianity, out of politics and government. The phrase “separation of church and state” comes from the 1500s, and was a product of the Reformation in Europe. In the fourth century A.D., the government took control of the church and began to establish specific doctrinal tenets by law, making the church an official organ of government and using coercion and brutal penalties against those who did not submit to government-established theology. That abhorrent practice predominated until some religious leaders began to oppose it in the 1300s. The first recorded usage of the separation phrase occurred during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. Henry had sought a divorce, but when the church rightly denied it, Henry established his own government-run church and awarded himself the divorce. The Parliament also passed laws decreeing who could and could not participate in the Lord’s Supper and other sacraments, even deciding who could and could not preach the Gospel. Those European leaders and their followers who objected to many of the unBiblical operations of both the state and the state-established and state-run church became known as “Dissenters”. Since those who came to America afterwards were largely Dissenters and generally held the same view as their Dissenting leaders in Europe, the separation phrase was widely used in America for the next century-and-a-half, especially in objecting to British attempts to establish official theology or British-run churches in America.

The “separation of church and state” phrase, that today has become so familiar, was taken from an exchange of letters between President Thomas Jefferson and the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, shortly after Jefferson became President in 1801. Jefferson’s reply to the Danbury Baptists clearly states that Jefferson believed that God, not government, was the Author and Source of our rights, and that the government, therefore, was to be prevented from interference with those rights. Jefferson assured them that because of “the wall of separation between church and state”, the government would not interfere with or inhibit their religious practices or expressions, whether occurring in private or public. Jefferson said, “In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government.” The “wall” of the Danbury letter was not to limit religious activities in public but rather to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions. Clearly historical revisionism.

Along the same lines, if you look into the reason that the Pilgrims came to America, it was to escape the tyranny of the English king and Parliament demanding that everyone had to attend the Church of England. The Pilgrims escaped that tyranny by the English government to dictate their religious beliefs because they wanted the freedom to believe according to what the Bible says, not the British government that controlled the Church of England. Our Declaration of Independence was written to ensure that our government would stay out of the church, NOT keep the church out of government! The modern application of this phase bears nearly no resemblance to either its historical or Biblical origins. See how the revisionists and those that deny the truth have warped the truth?

A second example of historical revisionism is that that the Constitution, in Article I, Section 2, demonstrates that the Founders considered one who was black to be only three-fifths of a person. This charge is yet another falsehood. Even though the issue of slavery is often raised as a discrediting charge against the Founding Fathers, the historical fact is that slavery was not the product of, nor was it an evil introduced by, the Founding Fathers; slavery had been introduced to America nearly two centuries before the Founders. Many of the Founders had never owned any slaves. For example, John Adams proclaimed, “[M]y opinion against it [slavery] has always been known . . . [N]ever in my life did I own a slave.” The truth is that it was the Founding Fathers who were responsible for planting and nurturing the first seeds for the recognition of black equality and for the eventual end of slavery. The three-fifths clause was not a measurement of human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery provision to limit the political power of slavery’s proponents when determining the number of Representative to be elected to the House of Representatives. By including only three-fifths of the total number of slaves in the congressional calculations, Southern States were actually being denied additional pro-slavery representatives in Congress. “It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the North or South.” Walter Williams

The founders did not just believe slavery was an evil that needed to be abolished, and they did not just speak against it, but they acted on their beliefs. During the Revolutionary War black slaves who fought won their freedom in every state except South Carolina and Georgia. Many of the founders started and served in anti-slavery societies. Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush founded the first such society in America in 1774. John Jay, first Supreme Court Chief Justice, was president of a similar society in New York. The overwhelming majority of early Americans and most of America’s leaders did not own slaves. Some did own slaves, which were often inherited (like George Washington at age eleven), but many of these people set them free after independence. Most Founders believed that slavery was wrong and that it should be abolished. Significantly, in 1814, Jefferson indicated why he did not free his slaves when he affirmed to Edward Coles that “the laws do not permit us to turn them loose . . .” Historical revisionists do not report such facts.

The last example of historical revisionism today is that America is not a Christian nation. In fact, our previous President stated such in one of his first speeches after becoming President. Modern claims that America is not a Christian nation are rarely noticed or refuted today because of the nation’s widespread lack of knowledge about America’s history and foundation. A Christian nation is not one in which all citizens are Christians, or the laws require everyone to adhere to Christian theology, or all leaders are Christians. A Christian nation as demonstrated by the American experience is a nation founded upon Christian and Biblical principles, whose values, society, and institutions have largely been shaped by those principles. This definition is widely ignored by today’s revisionists. John Adams, our second President, said, “The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…Those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.” Both John Hancock and John Adams were quoted as saying, “We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no king but Jesus.” Significantly, Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in establishing weekly Sunday worship services at the U. S. Capitol (a practice that continued through the 19th century) and was himself a regular and faithful attendant at those church services. The federal courts have repeatedly affirmed America to be a Christian nation – including the U. S. Supreme Court, which declared that America was “a Christian country,” filled with “Christian people,” and was indeed “a Christian nation.” Warren Earl Burger, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1969 to 1982, wrote that the First Amendment was not violated when the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House. The very men who approved the First Amendment would not forbid what they had just declared acceptable. Modern revisionists would have us all believe that religion has to stay out of government when just the opposite is true.

Aims and Goals of Historical Revisionists

So, why do revisionists do what they do? What are they trying to accomplish? Revisionism attempts to alter the way a people views its history and traditions in order to cause that people to accept a change in public policy or to alter their perceptions of history for purposes of getting legislation passed. A current example is the claim that guns kill people and that more laws restricting the use of guns or the ability to obtain guns will affect gun violence. First of all, people kill people, they might use guns or baseball bats or cars. Are we going to prohibit baseball bats and cars? Cars kill more people than guns do in many states and gun suicides outnumber gun homicides. Also, what criminal that you have heard of obeys laws of any kind? Why would passing more gun laws affect anyone except law-abiding citizens?

During the 150 years that textbooks described the Founding Fathers as being devout men and Christians who actively practiced their faith, civic policy embraced and welcomed public religious expressions. But in recent years as the same Founders have come to be portrayed as atheists, agnostics, and deists who were opposed to religious activities, public policies have similarly been reversed. 52 of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence regularly attended Christian denominations throughout their lives. How many times have you heard that the Founding Fathers were predominately deists or agnostics. Untrue!

Revisionists generally accomplish their goal of rewriting history by:

• Underemphasizing or ignoring the aspects of American history they deem to
be politically incorrect and overemphasizing those portions they find acceptable;
• Vilifying the historical figures who embraced a position they reject; and
• Concocting the appearance of widespread historical approval for the social
policy they are attempting to advance.

There are many means that are used by revisionists to accomplish these goals. The first is Patent Untruths.
Numerous history texts make claims such as: our “national government was secular from top to bottom,” or that the Founders “reared a national government on a secular basis.” Those who have studied the American Founding know that this is a patent untruth — proved by numbers of Founders, including John Adams, who declared: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.” (Even the text of the Declaration of Independence refutes any charges of government secularism.) This approach usually relies on a general lack of public knowledge about that untruth; consequently, such untruthful claims are rarely made in areas where citizens have broad general knowledge. Revisionism relies on a lack of citizen knowledge in specific areas.

The second tool used by revisionists is Overly Broad Generalizations. This revisionist tool presents the exception as if it were the rule. For example, texts often name Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine as proof of the lack of religiosity among the Founders yet fail to mention the rest of the almost 200 Founding Fathers — including the dozens of Founders who not only received their education in schools specializing in the training of ministers of the Gospel but who also were active in Christian ministry and organizations (e.g., John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, and more). Similarly, when discussing religion in America, the Salem Witch trials, which only lasted about a month, are universally presented; but rarely mentioned are the positive societal changes produced by Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and dozens of other religious groups and organizations that worked for the abolition of slavery, secured religious freedoms for all, and fought to end societal abuses of all types.

The third tool is Omission. Notice the following three examples from American history works:

• We whose names are under-written . . . do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politick. MAYFLOWER COMPACT, 1620
• Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? . . . I know not what course others may take, but as for me give me liberty or give me death? PATRICK HENRY, 1775
• . . . ART. I.—His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States .. . PEACE TREATY TO END THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1783

What was omitted from these important historical quotes?

• We whose names are under-written having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick.
• Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death?
• In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts . . .ART. I.—His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States . . .

The omitted segments are those that indicate the strongly religious nature of American government documents and leaders. Also, regularly omitted from texts is the fact that gratitude to God was central to the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving
— and the fact that in 1782, the Congress of the United States was responsible for America’s first English-language Bible;
and that in 1800, Congress voted that on Sundays, the Capitol Building would serve as a church building and that by 1867, the largest protestant church in America was the one that met inside the U. S. Capitol.

And the last tool used by revisionists is a Lack of Primary Source References. The avoidance of primary-source documents is characteristic in revisionism. For example, the authors of the widely-used text The Godless Constitution
blatantly announce that they have “dispensed with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes” when discussing the documentation for their thesis that America’s government is built on a secular foundation. Similarly, the text The Search for Christian America purports to examine the Founding Era and finds a distinct lack of Christian influence. Yet 80 percent of the “historical sources” on which it relies to document its finding were published after 1950! That is, to determine what was occurring in the 1700s, they quote from works printed in the 1900s.

Conclusion

The term historical revisionism identifies the re-interpretation of the historical record. That re-interpretation can be positive and truthful, or it can be negative and deceptive. It can mean challenging the orthodox views held by professional scholars about a historical event, or introducing new evidence, or of restating the motivations and decisions of the participant people. The revision of the historical record reflects the new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation, which produce a revised history.

Historical revisionism is a common and not especially controversial process of developing and refining the writing of history. Much more controversial and much more prevalent today is the reversal of moral findings, which the heroes, good guys, or positive forces are depicted as villains, bad guys, or negative forces. This revisionism is quickly challenged by the supporters of the old view, often in heated terms. It becomes historical revisionism that presents a re-interpretation of the moral meaning of the historical record.

The purpose for this re-interpretation is to influence through lies and deception or twisting of the facts or manipulation of statistical data to produce a dramatic change in attitudes, political allegiance, or even voting trends. Often, the lies surface as lies, but it is too late to change the results of an election or of legislation or court proceedings. This is precisely why we must all keep active in investigating everything for the truth that may be hiding or is suppressed. History is filled with national deceptions that resulted in millions of lives being lost such as Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, and Germany under Hitler. America is heading down a slippery slope of deception and fake news designed to maintain a corrupt establishment in Washington, D.C.

It is up to you, the future leaders of this great country, to stand for the Word of God, to be an example of what Jesus taught, to be involved in local, state, and federal political thought and action all the while wearing your faith as a shield, to remove through the vote corrupt politicians, those who want to get rid of our founding documents and for government to control our lives, those who want a one-world government, those who are not interested in free speech and opinions counter to theirs, those who want anarchy to rule, and those who will not listen to reason and biblically-based morality.

We should have our senses attuned to the truth of God’s Word so we can spot historical revisionism immediately, research the facts behind bogus claims, and fight the righteous fight of defending the truth. Knowing the Truth allows us to easily discern error, falsehood, and deception in every aspect of life from personal, to familial, to political, to social, to biblical, so that we can have abundant life filled with peace and joy in all circumstances.