Posted on Jul 2, 2021
Air Force Academy distributes George Takei’s 'They Called Us Enemy' to cadets
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The U.S. Air Force Academy has distributed actor and activist George Takei's graphic memoir "They Called Us Enemy," which recounts his family's incarceration during World War II, to cadets as part of a new reading initiative.
In the bestselling book, Takei, known for playing Lt. Hikaru Sulu in the original "Star Trek" TV series, describes what it was like to be a 5 year old who was one of the approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were forcibly removed from their West Coast homes and put into concentration camps in the 1940s.
The academy's dean of the faculty, Brig. Gen. Linell Letendre, shared her excitement for the program's book selection this year as she welcomed the new class of cadets on social media.
In the bestselling book, Takei, known for playing Lt. Hikaru Sulu in the original "Star Trek" TV series, describes what it was like to be a 5 year old who was one of the approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent who were forcibly removed from their West Coast homes and put into concentration camps in the 1940s.
The academy's dean of the faculty, Brig. Gen. Linell Letendre, shared her excitement for the program's book selection this year as she welcomed the new class of cadets on social media.
Air Force Academy distributes George Takei’s 'They Called Us Enemy' to cadets
Posted from nbcnews.com
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Posted >1 y ago
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It seems that whatever reflects badly on America is currently in vogue. And Japanese internment was a terrible breach of constitutional rights...certainly earning it a place near the top of a list of American failings. The effort and expense the US went to, in rebuilding Japan, immediately after 4 years of brutal warfare with them, shows how America forgives and even helps its prior enemies. But positive affirmation of America never gets attention, in the new leftist propaganda world we live in.
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It's called historical negativism. Together with historical relativism, anti-nationalism, modernism, minimalism and rigid secularism, they form a set of six methodologies used to present an exclusively negative perspective on American history and achievements. It is done deliberately in order to present the hackneyed and useless failed socialist formula in a "good" light. It is also done as part of a process of "inadvertent ideological transference", which is designed to paint socialism as something "new" and "daring" and the "way forward". Many fools fall for it and even express "excitement" when talking about it.
But MOST of all, it's done to hide, minimize, and demean what America as a nation was able to do. For the first time in recorded human history, the Founding Fathers created a nation which, held, as part of its founding and constituting principles, that basic, unalienable rights belonged to individual men and not the "ruling class" or the state. And they implemented a system (capitalism) that allowed America to make a 5,000 year leap. When the pilgrims came here on the Mayflower, their level of agricultural technology was on a par with that of ancient Egypt in 3000 B.C. After the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, in less than 200 years, America had astronauts walking on the moon. In between, the system established by the Founders created a society that was unparalleled in the level of comfort and wealth available to the average "man on the street". Was it perfect? Of course not! Were there classes of people who were excluded? Of course! But the seeds the Founders embedded in the Constitution created the conditions for the process to be expanded and to include segments of the population initially excluded for different reasons. In a little over 200 years, the nation managed to start changing a trend that had been in place for over 5000 years: the ruling elite, the oppression of large segments of the population, the enslaving of people captured in battle or of segments of populations not considered "equals". As a nation we were definitely not perfect, but we improved our population's well being to levels where today, a "poor" American eats better and is more comfortable than a lot of the world's "middle class" equivalents.
Unfortunately, we started moving away from our principles. The racist, socialist democrat, Woodrow Wilson started the trend in 1913. LBJ and his clique, in 1965, set the stage for the devaluation of our currency and the economic debacle and massive debt that we have now. That was our official turn to socialism again. And today's mess is a direct consequence of that. This is how we ended up with today's socialist-fascist economic arrangement between government and corporate management. But the left insists on calling their formula and all its messed up results "capitalism", when it is nothing of the sort. It's a socialist-fascist mess.
So now we are back to the socialist model of a huge central government, the shutting down of citizen's rights and the use of the six methodologies mentioned above to present ONLY the negative side of American history. And all just to try to present a failed, pathetic socialism in a more favorable light, since it is incapable of standing on its own merits. It is also pathetic to see people who should know better paying lip service to this travesty.
So yes, you are right. The positive aspects are ignored. But they are ignored with a purpose and with full intent. Each of the points I've mentioned can be more fully elaborated and explained, with examples, but this is not really the place to do that.
But anyone who focuses only on the negative side of our history without taking into account the great contribution made by the new nation to the elevation of the standard of living of its population (which is the reason many people immigrated to this country - for the idea that regardless of who you were, if you worked hard you could achieve to the limit of your abilities) is playing into the hands of those who are selling a cheap, discredited ideology as if it were the greatest solution to everything. Ask the over 3 million Venezuelans who have left socialism in order to find something to eat, just to take a recent example.
But MOST of all, it's done to hide, minimize, and demean what America as a nation was able to do. For the first time in recorded human history, the Founding Fathers created a nation which, held, as part of its founding and constituting principles, that basic, unalienable rights belonged to individual men and not the "ruling class" or the state. And they implemented a system (capitalism) that allowed America to make a 5,000 year leap. When the pilgrims came here on the Mayflower, their level of agricultural technology was on a par with that of ancient Egypt in 3000 B.C. After the ratification of the Constitution in 1787, in less than 200 years, America had astronauts walking on the moon. In between, the system established by the Founders created a society that was unparalleled in the level of comfort and wealth available to the average "man on the street". Was it perfect? Of course not! Were there classes of people who were excluded? Of course! But the seeds the Founders embedded in the Constitution created the conditions for the process to be expanded and to include segments of the population initially excluded for different reasons. In a little over 200 years, the nation managed to start changing a trend that had been in place for over 5000 years: the ruling elite, the oppression of large segments of the population, the enslaving of people captured in battle or of segments of populations not considered "equals". As a nation we were definitely not perfect, but we improved our population's well being to levels where today, a "poor" American eats better and is more comfortable than a lot of the world's "middle class" equivalents.
Unfortunately, we started moving away from our principles. The racist, socialist democrat, Woodrow Wilson started the trend in 1913. LBJ and his clique, in 1965, set the stage for the devaluation of our currency and the economic debacle and massive debt that we have now. That was our official turn to socialism again. And today's mess is a direct consequence of that. This is how we ended up with today's socialist-fascist economic arrangement between government and corporate management. But the left insists on calling their formula and all its messed up results "capitalism", when it is nothing of the sort. It's a socialist-fascist mess.
So now we are back to the socialist model of a huge central government, the shutting down of citizen's rights and the use of the six methodologies mentioned above to present ONLY the negative side of American history. And all just to try to present a failed, pathetic socialism in a more favorable light, since it is incapable of standing on its own merits. It is also pathetic to see people who should know better paying lip service to this travesty.
So yes, you are right. The positive aspects are ignored. But they are ignored with a purpose and with full intent. Each of the points I've mentioned can be more fully elaborated and explained, with examples, but this is not really the place to do that.
But anyone who focuses only on the negative side of our history without taking into account the great contribution made by the new nation to the elevation of the standard of living of its population (which is the reason many people immigrated to this country - for the idea that regardless of who you were, if you worked hard you could achieve to the limit of your abilities) is playing into the hands of those who are selling a cheap, discredited ideology as if it were the greatest solution to everything. Ask the over 3 million Venezuelans who have left socialism in order to find something to eat, just to take a recent example.
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