Toma nota.../Take note...

It is truly outrageous how the schools in the United States, and also in other countries, indoctrinate children with misrepresented arguments about slavery and racism. To top it all off, children's minds are filled with a sense of guilt and shame, while some others, depending on race, are flooded with an overwhelming resentment. As they grow-up, children and teenagers face new arguments at the level of higher education and, above all, at the university level, that undermine the truth about these scourges that humanity has suffered and still suffers.

What we are experiencing in the United States, in particular, is a teaching method whereby teachers and scholars do not teach history with the objectivity that this subject requires, but transforming it as a message to induce contempt for America. Therefore, students are “taught” the lies contained on The New York Times’ “1619 Project” where they argue that the United States was founded to preserve and protect slavery, and stuffing them with such works as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” DiAngelo is an education professor and —most prominently today— a diversity consultant who argues that whites in America must face the racist bias implanted in them by an extremely racist society. Their resistance to acknowledging this, she maintains, constitutes a “white fragility” that they must overcome.

Of course, the history student must know and delve into the events that marked the tragedies of slavery and racism throughout several centuries. And they must also analyze the influence that these events still have on human relationships nowadays. But the perspective of these tragic facts should encompass this and many other countries and regions of the World that were equally responsible for abuse, discrimination and cruel submission. In other words, if truth and moral clarity are to matter to teachers and academics, students must also learn that slavery was universal. They must learn that many slaves were sold to slave traders by Muslim-Arab groups in Africa and even by some black African tribes holding slaves from other tribes. In fact, slavery was a real and widespread fact as well among Native American Indians and Native South Americans who held captives from other tribes to do their dirtiest and heaviest works.

[Text adapted from a speech delivered on September 29, 2020,
in Rapid City, South Dakota, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.] 

We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that means to destroy us. The forces of globalism that have dominated our government (until recently) and our media for the better part of half a century have blinded too many Americans to the threat we face. If we do not wake up to the danger soon, we will find ourselves helpless.

That is a worst-case scenario. I do not think we Americans will let that happen. But the forces arrayed against us are many. We need to understand what we are up against and what steps must be taken to ensure our victory.

Our modern understanding of Communist China begins during the Cold War, with President Nixon’s strategic belief that China could serve as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. This belief seemed to carry with it two great benefits. First, the U.S. wouldn’t have to take on the Soviet Union by itself: Communist China was a populous country that bordered the Soviet Union and shared our interest, or so we thought, in checking its global ambitions. Second, by engaging with China—especially in terms of trade, but also by helping it develop technologically—we would help to end communism as a guiding force in China. This second notion might be called the China dream: economic liberalism would lead to political liberalism, and China’s communist dictatorship would fade away.

At the end of the Cold War, pursuing the China dream appeared a safe course of action, given that the U.S. was then the world’s preeminent military power. The 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks reinforced the notion that superpower conflict was a thing of the past—that our major enemy was now radical Islam, widely diffused but centered in the Middle East. Later that same year, China was granted “Most Favored Nation” trading status and membership in the World Trade Organization. Little changed when the Bush administration gave way to the Obama administration. The latter’s “pivot to Asia” was mostly rhetorical—a justification to degrade our military capabilities vis-à-vis China, integrate even further the U.S. and Chinese economies, and prioritize the Middle East above all else.

Hugo Grocio junto con el español Francisco de Vitoria
uno de los padres del derecho internacional.

Huigh van Groot, conocido en idioma español como Hugo Grocio nació en Delft, cerca de Rotterdam, Holanda, el 10 de abril de 1583.

A los 8 años componía versos latinos y desde muy joven se distinguió por sus estudios de las lenguas y literaturas clásicas conforme al espíritu del Renacimiento.

Jurista, embajador, escritor y poeta. Después de Erasmo de Rotterdam el mayor humanista de los Países Bajos. Tuvo influencias intelectuales greco-latinas de Aristóteles y Cicerón, pero también del francés Jean Bodin.

De religión era devoto del Arminianismo, fundado por Jacobo Arminio en la Holanda del siglo XVII como una variante de cristianismo evangélico con discrepancias respecto del calvinismo.

En 1594 a los 11 años empezó sus estudios de Derecho en la universidad de Leiden en Holanda dónde se graduó en 1598. En Orleans, Francia se doctoró en Jurisprudencia y estudió Filosofía y además aprobó los cursos de Astrología, Matemáticas y Teología.

Cuando José Martí (1853-1895) publicó su ensayo Nuestra América, en enero de 1891, llevaba una década viviendo en Nueva York, desde donde escribió para varios periódicos hispanoamericanos. Sus largos artículos sobre lo que acontecía en Estados Unidos le fueron dando un nombre y un prestigio al exiliado cubano entre cierto círculo de lectores y, para entonces, ostentaba las representaciones consulares de Argentina, Paraguay y Uruguay, país este último que lo nombró su representante ante la Conferencia Monetaria Internacional que sesionó en Washington en los primeros meses de ese año.

La conferencia tuvo por objeto explorar la creación de un sistema monetario continental, proyecto que Martí veía con recelo, por pensar que podía servirle de instrumento de dominación regional al país anfitrión —el cual empezaba a surgir como una gran potencia— frente a las naciones del sur. Estas, pese a compartir una herencia común de lengua y tradiciones, se mostraban segmentadas y, en muchos casos, sujetas a regímenes dictatoriales o a oligarquías criollas que tenían los ojos puestos en Estados Unidos y Europa como modelos a imitar, con menosprecio de las poblaciones y tradiciones autóctonas.

Aunque el apasionado interés del cubano en América Latina se encuentra en otros muchos textos de su vasta papelería, ningún otro trabajo suyo resume tan bien como Nuestra América su pensamiento sobre el carácter y destino de la región por la que siente un amor filial y un sentido de pertenencia y cuyos graves problemas atribuyó a la falta de fe de las clases pensantes y gobernantes en los recursos propios.

Más de cuarenta años antes, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (escritor y estadista argentino) había publicado su “Facundo, civilización y barbarie”, la obra por la que más se le conoce y en la cual identificaba la civilización con la vida urbana, frente al atraso del campo y sus habitantes, a los cuales era menester someter y civilizar.