… are doomed to repeat it.

The original version of this statement is attributed to George Santayana, an American philosopher. The exact quote is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” from his work, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense.

Sadly, it seems as those who are most able to apply this principle are the enemies of liberty, here in the Fifty States. (And around the world.)

We see this today or a regular basis. The so-called “uprising” on 6 January 2021, led by the evil monster in the White House, is a more important (nd feared) milestone in American history than… (take your pick) Bloody Tuesday (9-11), Pearl Harbor, or whatever. The enemies of freedom, of liberty, of decency can get away with this because the vast mass of the people have forgotten even recent history. Much less a century or two or three ago.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they have never been taught real history. (It is easy to “forget” what you never learned.) For years and years, less and less accurate history has been taught in primary and secondary educational institutions – and even less in the so-called institutions of higher learning. And what has been taught is denigrated as “history of dead while men” and condemned as elitist, exist, racist, colonialist, and more. More and more people believe the propaganda taught as “history.”

So we find ourselves, as communities and States and nations, taking that path of which Santayana warned: condemned or doomed to repeat our history – especially the mistakes.

This morning there was an example of how this works, from Montrose, Colorado.

Montrose, a small city in Southwestern Colorado, was for many years the home of one of the last Ute chiefs, Ouray (1833-1880, for whom the small and scenic city is named) and his wife Chipeta (1843-1924). Ouray, of the Tabeguache Ute Band, and Chipeta, a Kiowa Apache who married into the Ute nation, lived a few miles south of Montrose, in a house which is now a museum dedicated to their memory and that of their band of Ute – later forced by Colorado and the FedGov into northeastern Utah, today’s Uinta and Ouray (Northern) Ute Nation’s reservation.

The couple, especially Chipeta, were highly respected in the area. The local schools’ mascot, The Montrose Indians, was named that in their honor.

Now, Montrose schools must change the name of their sports teams from “The Indians” to something else.

Is it because Ouray and his wife are being cancelled? Were they slaveowners? Were they people who staged an uprising. Or attacked DC or Denver? Did their writings and speeches exhibit indications of racism? No, no, no.

Their memory is cherished. But that does not matter to the enemies of liberty – including free speech – and supporters of equity and political correctness in Denver. Including the thugs that control the General Assembly (Colorado’s legislature). And that narcissist, office-buying social justice warrior sitting in the governor’s office under the gold dome there in Denver.

These people (mostly Democrats, it is true) passed a law this year, that will fine schools who continue to use ANY name related to “Native Americans” will be punished. We are talking about names or words associated with AmerInd nations like the Ute, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, Comanche, etc. Names like Indians, Warriors, Chiefs, any tribal names, and presumably, anything which can be connected. (A Lakota-majority school in South Dakota uses the mascot name Thorpe (honoring Lakota Olympian athlete Jim Thorpe) – and has been condemned for doing so.)

Not just punished, but punished pretty big time. (At least in my eyes.) $25,000 PER MONTH if they continue to use names the politicians in Denver think are bad. Doesn’t matter what the Ute Nation, or the people of Montrose County, want. NO FREE SPEECH FOR YOU, PEONS!

Thus, another part of history, local and national, is pushed out of the government-run, tax-funded (GRTF) schools. Students left ignorant of history. Memories of past mistakes and accomplishments are dimming, and without knowing the lessons learned, the same mistakes will no doubt be repeated. It may not be Utes or Cheyenne that are the victims of such stupidity in the future: it may be Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) or Falun Gong, or Muslims that are abused and terrorized and even subject to ethnic or religious cleansing.

But that is what the enemies of liberty in DC and Denver (and London and Ottawa and Canberra and elsewhere) want:

Do you recall the “Colors” song from Les Misérables?

Red: the blood of angry men!
Black: the dark of ages past!
Red: a world about to dawn!
Black: the night that ends at last!

Black is what the revolutionaries WANT when it comes to the past: no memories, or memories so warped by their propaganda that they are meaningless. It is being done in the cities of the Fifty States when it comes to the War Between The States: not just Confederate but Union memorials are attacked, hidden, removed, destroyed. It is one of the techniques that Orwell described in his novel 1984. It is the method that Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao all used. Kim uses it in North Korea today. But the biggest target, perhaps in history, is the 350 million people of these States, today: true history is being erased.

And we will repeat the past. And embellish on it. The past of less and less liberty, of less and less opportunity. Of less free speech, less freedom of worship, less ability to defend ourselves and our families, less control of our lives.

Unless we can change and rebel against the social justice warriors, the controllers, the self-proclaimed elite.