George Orwell once said, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.'” With the idiocies seen on college campuses all over the world, this warning is more current than ever.

I hope Israel completely and thoroughly destroys Hamas, but trying to explain why that outcome is desirable to miseducated youth, or to media dependent citizens, is daunting.

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed. -- Mark Twain

It is easy to lay the blame for the recent spate of anti-Israel sympathies on social media (and trust me, they do share a massive amount of the blame) but the respectable media is no less culpable.

People are absolutely devoid of any sense of history in depth.

This has been going on for decades to be sure, but it has gotten worse.

Decades ago, in school, I was taught that the main cause of the American Revolution was taxation without representation.

Left out were the thorough examinations of the Intolerable Acts among which were the Quebec Act (which went beyond tendering a reasonable religious freedom, but allowed the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec to collect tithes) -- along with expanding Quebec’s territorial claims, and the Currency Act (which caused an immediate depression).

A thorough examination of the royal insults show that the Patriots were patient beyond measure before taking up arms. In school, we were lead to believe the Revolution was a gentlemanly war, when, in fact, the British were rather vicious and ruthless.

But one cannot teach the children any of that, as it leads to embarrassing questions like: Is the Federal Government any better today?

So few know the real history of the Revolution.

But what astounds me is how so few know the real history of the British Isles. Consider Scotland.

Documentary after documentary treats Scotland as if it were one nation, which in fact, until the 18^th century, it was actually a least two nations quite different in every way.

Scotland was split between the Highlands and the Lowlands. Yes, there were also minor outliers, but even these usually affiliated with one side or the other.

The Lowlanders were chiefly of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Dane, and Norman descent, essentially North Germanic in ancestry. There was a quantum of Brythonic (Welsh) in them, but for all intents and purposes, the Lowlanders were culturally and linguistically English. And they often sided with England.

The Highlanders (Gaels/Scots) came from Ireland, and mixed with the Picts. But it goes deeper. Both the Highlanders and the Irish claimed descent from Scythia (Scot-ia). The Picts also claimed a Scythian ancestry, and asked the Irish Gaels (Scots) to give them Irish wives. Whether literal or a myth, it shows how closely related they all were.

The Picts had no wives and so asked the Scots [the Irish] for them; they would only give them on the condition that when any question of succession should arise, they should choose a king from the female royal line rather than from the male ... - Live Science

It was these Irish/Scots who Christianized and civilized the pagan Anglo-Saxons.

So the Highlanders -- the ones with the bagpipes and kilts -- were all but indistinguishable from the Irish, until the Reformation. They spoke Gaelic and were Celtic. And even after the Reformation, the Highlanders and Irish would often join forces against the English.

Why?

Because the wars in the British Isles were more than national wars, but were rather civilizational wars. Celtic vs. Anglo-Germanic.

After the Battle of Culloden, which the English side won, roughly three-quarters of the Highlanders (the real Scots) were hounded out of Scotland, to the Carolinas, to New York, to Nova Scotia, and other far flung parts of the world. Scotland had, for all intents and purposes, been de-Scoticized.

But Hollywood blurs this history, and what should be seen as two distinct peoples are thoroughly blended.

At that time, the British government lied and tried to frame the wars as religious: Catholic vs. Protestant – as a propaganda tool to the Anglican English populace. That lie is still believed. However, records show that the Highlanders were quite Presbyterian at the time of the Second Jacobite Uprising, even more Protestant than the English.

…95.66% of the Highlanders were Protestant, and 4.34% were Catholic. Of every 10,000 Highlanders, 9566 were Protestant. - HighlandClearances.net

The Lowlanders who are, for the most part, of Anglo-Germanic stock, later moved to Ulster where they got called Ulster-Scots, and then to America, where they got called Scots-Irish. Most of them resisted Irish independence. They usually sided with the Anglos not the Celts, and their ethnonym refers more to their residences than a Celtic ancestry. Remember, the real Scots were from Scythia, eventually moving to Ireland and, only later on, to Highland Scotland. But it was these Celts, not the Lowlanders, who created Scotland.

As for Celtic side, which lionized Charles Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charles, that was a lie, too. Stuart was no prize either. He was a wannabe tyrant, but the Celts were desperate to get rid of Anglo misrule.

So names were switched, and history was distorted. Few know it, and history books peddle old propaganda.

Religion was a factor in the wars of the British Isles, but not the chief factor. The Irish and the Highlanders often rose above denominational concerns to unite against a common enemy.

The wars were often civilizational. Celtic vs. Germanic.

In attitudes towards each other, the Highlanders considered the Lowlanders to be foreigners encroaching on true Scottish values, agents of the English, and a major threat to their heritage.

Lowlanders, in turn, considered Highlanders to be barbaric, backwards, wild, and derisively referred to them as the 'wild Irish.' -- The Highland Clearances

Until you understand that, the history of the British Isles is incomprehensible. It was more than mere clan warfare, as the English would have you believe. Civilizations were colliding.

So why is this important?

Half of America descends from the English, the Scots, or the Irish, and few know the real history of the area, or their ancestors. It was not England vs Ireland nor Scotland, but Celt vs. Anglo.

Likewise, in the Mideast, what is going on is not an ethnic, colonial, or national war, but a civilizational struggle. It runs far deeper than what can be conveyed by a social media post, or a nightly news report.

The lies are fast and furious.

The Celts, who were the more civilized group in the British Isles (Remember, they converted the Anglo-Saxons), lost. This is not unknown in history. Byzantine Rome fell to the Turks, and Coptic Egypt to Islam.

Let’s hope that the Jews who are the most civilized group in the Mideast do not.

But that is not conveyed in tweets or sound bytes, and that is why lies propagate. People have to study to find the truth. In this case, start with the Bible.

Image: Murray (R.R. MacIan)