Paul Johnson’s America “No other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.” by Lloyd Billingsley
https://www.frontpagemag.com/paul-johnsons-america/
“What is America? It is not a race but a cohesion of all the races of the world. It will soon be a nation of 300 million, 10 per cent of whom were not even born there. Its creation from Europe, Africa and Asia is a continuing process, as countless immigrants arrive each year and are quietly absorbed and prosper. Moreover, these citizens, whose parents, grandparents or ancestors came from all over the world, are given the chance to participate in democracy at all levels, which exists nowhere else on earth. More than 600,000 offices in the US are elected. The entire public ethos of America is fashioned to finding out what the voters want and constructing policy on their wishes. America is successful precisely because it is a working multiracial democracy. To be anti-American, therefore, is to be anti-humanity. For no other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.”
That is from “To hate America is to hate humanity,” an April 6, 2002 Spectator piece by historian Paul Johnson, who recently passed away at the age of 94. Five years earlier, Johnson published A History of the American People, a magisterial account that speaks to conditions at the time of the great author’s passing.
It’s hard to find any author, left or right, who devotes more attention to the issue of slavery, at the time of the American founding and leading up to the Civil War. In an 1855 election in Kansas, Johnson writes:
“Missourians crossed the border in thousands and swamped the polls. At all events the slavers swept the polls, expelled from the legislature the few anti-slavers who were elected, adopted a drastic slave-code, and made it a capital offense to help a slave escape or aid a fugitive. They even made orally questioning the legality of slavery a felony.” (emphasis added)
The demand for thought control and censorship derives from the people who kept human beings in subjugation and opposed all efforts to free them. This early version of the totalitarian mentality finds a counterpart in America under the Biden Junta.
The Department of Homeland Security, which the late P.J. O’Rourke said sounded like a failed savings and loan, proposed a “Disinformation Governance Board” to be headed by Nina Jankowicz. The would-be chanteuse was on record that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation” a “Trump campaign product and a “Russian influence op.”
Jankowicz is also a big fan of Christopher Steele, author of the eponymous dossier, a Clinton campaign product now exposed as pure disinformation. That faithful service doubtless played a role in her selection as the DHS disinformation boss, effectively the Biden Junta’s Minister of Propaganda. This was hardly the Junta’s only attempt at speech and thought control.
As Elon Musk is now revealing, the Junta outsourced censorship to social media platforms, which banned or restricted variations from the approved government position COVID, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci so forth. This attack on free speech was not limited to Twitter.
In a 2017 Senate hearing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he was cooperating with the Mueller investigation of President Trump, and he wanted that to be kept confidential. Zuckerberg also admitted that Facebook had taken down material at the request of the government. The Facebook boss didn’t reveal the content of the material, or the government official who made the demand but it is possible to guess. In California, meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom is leaving nothing to chance.
Last November, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2098 which designates “the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct.” This poses a direct threat to doctor’s medical license and violates their right to free speech.
“California’s new ‘misinformation’ law is the result of an increasingly censorious mentality that has gripped many lawmakers in this country,” explains Jenin Younes, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) representing several California doctors. “That this shocking bill passed through the state legislature and was signed into law by Governor Newsom demonstrates that far too many Americans do not understand the First Amendment. Our country has a strong historical commitment to free and open debate and to protect the ability of those who dissent from the government’s view to express their own opinions.”
The Democrats backing this bill are the moral, intellectual, and political heirs of those who wanted to make questioning slavery a felony. As Paul Johnson explained in A History of the American People:
“The anti-slavers and genuine settlers who wanted to remain neutral responded by holding a constitutional convention – elected unlawfully – drafted a constitution in Topeka which banned both slaves and freed blacks from Kansas, applied for admission to the US as a state, and elected another governor and legislature. Then the fighting began, a miniature Civil War of Kansas’ own.”
In the full Civil War that followed, the anti-slavers prevailed and the rest is history. With slavery abolished, America became, “a working multiracial democracy” like no other place on earth. “To be anti-American, therefore, is to be anti-humanity.”
For further reading on events in 1850s Kansas, Johnson recommends chapter 25 of Mark Twain’s Roughing It. Also worthy of attention is Harold Keith’s novel Rifles for Watie, about a Kansas farm boy who joins the Union army.
Worthy of attention for the history of the Jews, the history of Christianity, modern times, and countless other topics, is Paul Johnson, the historian who loved America. Johnson deserved his Presidential Medal Of Freedom, and his vast body of work lives on.
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