Current politicians' dishonorable commitment to fake news, false accusations, and fraudulent posturing for the cameras is a fulfillment of Orwell's fiction of decades ago.  George Orwell's declaration in his 1949 classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was, "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

That attack on truth has been considered fiction, but distorting history is a fact that is accelerating daily.

Ashamed of the past and fearful of the future, desperate, duplicitous, and disgusting politicians have destroyed the historical record to make them look less unscrupulous and to confuse, corrupt, and control each generation.  A rewrite of history is in the making as I write.

It has happened and has been accelerating since the beginning of time.

Ancient kings glorified their successes in battle, often neglecting major disasters, all to preserve their position in history.  They profusely bragged about their elaborate building programs but refused to reveal their warring tendencies that destroyed their cities.  Sennacherib was the son of Sargon and ruler of the Assyrian Empire in the eighth century B.C.  Assyrian inscriptions reveal that Sennacherib made astoundingly vainglorious boasts about his accomplishments of shutting up Hezekiah in his Jerusalem capital "as a bird in a cage."  Everyone now realizes that Sennacherib took 46 Jewish cities but failed to conquer Jerusalem (after the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 of his troops in one night), and Sennacherib left in defeat for his Nineveh palace only to be eventually killed by his son.

If anyone offended a tyrannical king, not only was that individual killed, but often any mention of him was removed from all public records.

I revealed in my book, The God Haters, an example of politicians manipulating history when Caesar tried to obliterate the memory of Pilate because he had offended Caesar.  Pilate therefore did not exist since Caesar said so, and officials and historians willingly obeyed by removing Pilate's name from all records.

For many years, Bible critics declared that the Bible is unreliable because Pilate could not be found in any historical record.  Then archeologists, digging in the rubble of Caesarea by the Sea, found a five-inch-thick stone that referred to Pilate and had been used in the famous theater ruins where I have preached a few times.  The stone had been used because it was exactly the size needed and was used with the forbidden information about Pilate underneath!  It is on display in Caesarea today.

Mark Antony had a similar experience, with his memory being formally expunged from Rome's official records after his affair with Cleopatra.  "His name was obliterated from the ... state registers of official events.  His statues were removed.  It was to be as if he had never existed.  The Senate ... voted that no member of the Antonius clan should be named Marcus[.] ... His birthday was made ... an unlucky day, on which public business could not be conducted."

Roman Emperor Caracalla murdered his brother and co-emperor Geta and had statues of Geta removed and his image chiseled off coins.  Geta's image was removed from all paintings, his statues were destroyed, his name was struck from all records, and it became a capital offense to speak or write Geta's name.  An estimated 20,000 people were massacred as a result. 

Soviet despot Joseph Stalin sent Leon Trotsky into exile and airbrushed him out of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and then, to finish the matter, had him assassinated in Mexico.  For decades, when a Soviet official fell out of favor with the sitting tyrant, the offender was painted out of the official photos of the most recent May Day Parade in Moscow.

Politicians never change, and modern politicians continue in the same way: they exaggerate their successes, excuse their shortcomings, and excise their sins.  Similarly today, politicians and their zealot followers seek to rewrite history and remove any photos or statues that might not meet their modern views of morality.

Some U.S. textbooks don't deal with major American founders, and liberal censors insist that Huckleberry Finn be removed from libraries because it is politically incorrect.

Notre Dame is a Catholic university, and the president cowardly responded to student complaints about paintings of Christopher Columbus, so they are being concealed.  Columbus was a dedicated Catholic, now repudiated by a Catholic university. 

Usually, at the first demand of self-appointed protesters, whimpering university presidents cower under their desk as they immediately capitulate to the foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics.

Officials at the University of Pennsylvania have quickly surrendered without a fight to the fanatics by removing a portrait of William Shakespeare and replacing it with a black lesbian writer.  New York governor Andrew Cuomo removed the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from a public place.  Calhoun College has been changed to Grace Hopper College since Calhoun was pro-slavery, you know.  Also, stained glass windows depicting slavery were removed from college buildings.  New Orleans removed its famous 20-foot statue of Robert E. Lee, the last of four to be removed.

Baltimore removed its offensive statues overnight including one of Supreme Court justice Roger B. Taney, author of the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case that decided that former slaves could not become U.S. citizens.  In rewriting history, they are going after dead judges for their judicial decisions.

It is going to get confusing (and expensive) when the fanatics start removing and changing all streets, buildings, etc. with the names of slave-holders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and almost all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Even Mount Rushmore is in the sights of the history-haters, since two of the four faces were racists — Washington and Jefferson — and Theodore Roosevelt an imperialist.  Only Lincoln is safe, and if his statements on blacks were well known, he would be in danger.  Roosevelt is considered an imperialist and is often ridiculed rather than respected for his part in the Spanish-American War.  Roosevelt's statue in front of the museum on Central Park West is a tribute to his status as the nation's greatest environmentalist.  His statue is also in front of the Museum of Natural History.  Will the zealots determine to destroy Rushmore?

Statues, paintings, etc. of difficult and embarrassing times in our nation's past are still a part of our past, and their presence could be a reminder that we don't want to make the same mistakes again.  That goes for mistakes made in the North as well as the South.  Would these dedicated progressives demand the destruction of the Roman Coliseum, where thousands were brutally slaughtered?  How about the Pyramids, since they were built by slaves?

Such nonsense is an attack upon the past that won't change reality and will only confuse the present.  We should learn from history, not defile, distort, or destroy it.

Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for eight years.  Boys's book, Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! is available here.  Follow Dr. Boys on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D. and TheGodHaters, Twitter, and visit his blog.

Image: Tyler Menezes via Flickr.