How did an intellectual fraud like Howard Zinn become the go to guy for American history in our public schools?   It’s sort of outrageous.   I remember when I was of a different mindset and more open to his nonsense.  But, even then I would have never guessed his pseudo historical takes with it’s lack of documentation and absence of verification accompanied with failing to place morality within that of the particular time examined would ever become the things taught our nation’s children as our history.

On the Importance of True History
by Michael Doyle

The human soul searches out to know
All those things of so long ago
We seek to know ourselves in inquiry
Learning the paths sown in our history

Examining others and our very selves
In direct observation and from books on shelves
History shows us where we have been
And from there, where we might be and when

The present is taken in fuzzy snapshots
Easily manipulated and quickly forgot
But the past is somewhat more fixed in time
And often easier to think on being less sublime

Personal observation is limited in perspective
While studying the whole of things is more often reflective
Things remembered form then analysis that becomes mote
And is better than things skewed through personal wont

The present is filled with habits of deconstruction
But, plainly spoken, this is often the path of destruction
As too many pieces are seen out of their context
All of our social and cognitive distortions serve to vex

In seeking out the every bit of true and lasting man
We must take the illustrations as drawn when we can
History is often insightful guidance to the wise
Given as lesson learned through another's eyes

Imps like Howard Zinn do not try to understand
But rather reinterpret the history of our land
Issues, we once grappled with must be understood
If our future is to be more right and traveled as we should

In the long study of the good and the bloody
Tales dragged into battlefields are often muddy
We must not shirk from seeing the bad nor the greatness
That has transpired even unto our days lived as fate is

Life is often a choice of what maybe right,
And what is possible as decisions taken come to light
Deals made in the shaky face of circumstance
Sometimes leave us in regrettable happenstance

Events as they happen are hard to judge
Until the line on judgment's meter will no longer budge
Where records are rich we are provided much detail
Some are less known with deep secrets harder to reveal

But where events have com into their ebb and flow
Even God cannot change the outcome regardless of woe
Whether decisions once made were good or perhaps bad
These are the decisions and the outcomes once had

Hard in estimation, difficult in their fixity
It's important to know it best despite the complexity
Sometimes in paying the stiffest price against power
Mankind gives its all for moments that are our finest hours

Wars fought cause hands to eternally wring
Over the loss of treasure and blood these bring
But there are worse things like failing to fight at all
Without true history, this is difficult to recall

How does mankind in all of our fragility
Wrangle with the truths enmeshed in our reality
But than to face the question of our mortal needs
And to seek answers from others and in what we read

The past must be looked at with great sympathy
As we look at our own imperfect world with empathy
All the moments of certainty and those of hesitations
We still face many of the very same unanswered questions

America sought to build a new world out of old
Settling as we would on civilization to unfold
Into the hope for that shining something better
With freedom, consent of the governed in liberty together

For the first hundreds of years or so of difficult strife
We plowed together, earned and grew in our American life
Until we found ourselves in need of a little revolution
This was worked out to be and set out as a better solution

Life on this frontier was a meeting of Bible and gun
And the law books from which our republic was begun
Force versus law depends on more force to have law
A tale of civilization's struggle we are best to recall

Dependent on willingness to give our sacrifice
In this land of hope, nothing less will seemingly suffice
All ages have thought themselves the best
To understand this world, only time yields this true test

The twins of celebration and criticism are not enemy
Though at times their approach seems to bring enmity
Love is the foundation of the wisest criticism
And through it we might find our way to our best optimism

(c) March 20, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved