Orwell Understood History Was The Key

The recent approval of new Texas standards for the teaching of history helps highlight the dangers when an ideology (in this case, conservative ideology) gets to make up its own version of how things happened.

In "1984", George Orwell illustrated just how important it is for a Dictatorship to control history, and to instantly rewrite history when it gets inconvenient.

Here's a fresh example from Arizona - trying to justify the unconstitutional nature of all the wars we have fought since World War II. Orwell would have understood this is just a form of currying favor with the Imperial Executive, to the detriment of our Republic:

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), who is challenging Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary, said that the United States did not formally declare war on Germany in World War II -- at least, that's how it went in his history.

While speaking last week to a local GOP organization in Phoenix, Hayworth was asked by an attendee about America's failure to formally declare war in our modern conflicts. Hayworth defended the modern-day authorizations for the use of military force. "But I would also point out, that if we want to be sticklers, the war that Dwight Eisenhower led in Europe against the Third Reich was never declared by the United States Congress," said Hayworth. "Recall, the Congress passed a war resolution against Japan. Germany declared war on us two days later. We never formally declared war on Hitler's Germany, and yet we fought the war."
The questioner then responded that he thought the United States did declare on Germany, and he would check it. Hayworth responded: "I think we should check it. Perhaps we made the rationalization -- since there was the Axis alliance -- that the attack of Japan was tantamount to the attack of the Third Reich. But as I recall in my history, Germany declared war on the United States, not vice-versa."

In fact, the United states did declare war on Germany. The timeline goes as follows: Japan attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The United States declared war against Japan the next day, December 8, 1941. Then on December 11, 1941, Germany declared war against the United States -- to which the United States immediately reciprocated by declaring war against Germany that same day.