M.C. Newberry

HISTORY TO SUIT

by M.C. Newberry

Sunday 12th July 2015 4:56 pm

In Oxford, home of the gleaming spire,

A wish to rewrite history abodes

The subject of this outraged ire:

An ancient statue of Cecil Rhodes.

"Take him down...remove the oppressor

He has no place in my view of things!"

We're told in this land of Edward the Confessor

And the shades of far more murderous kings.

The demand comes from a history student

Annie Teriba is her name

She needs to be a sight more prudent

If the past (PLUS politics!) is to be her game.

You cannot rewrite history

To suit your modern mode of thought

And it remains to me a mystery

That this common sense cannot be taught!

........................................................................

◄ FOOD FOR THOUGHT

WITH YOU ►

Comments

Tommy Carroll

Mon 13th Jul 2015 21:13

CBT he doesn't stir my pot, though I've dropped one a couple of times in his. Yours etc

M.C. Newberry

Mon 13th Jul 2015 17:01

Thanks to all those who took the time to contribute their
thoughts.
I doubt if there has ever been an age in the history of
mankind when some "empire" wasn't in place or being
created. The roll call is impressive - including, in no particular order - Greek, Persian, Roman, Mongol, Aztec,
Inca, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Russian, German
and, of course, the most frequent "target" of all modern revisionists, the British version.
Even the great US of A possesses a form of empire in
its insistence on extending its influence across the globe.
You don't have to own lands and people to be empirical,
but then they had already swept across three thousand
miles of land subjugating the indigenous peoples in their way before looking over the Pacific to the "Far East" and
its riches.
Man has always sought power, influence and control over
his fellows and perhaps it's a miracle that so much that
is worth having emerges from the murder and mayhem in
the ongoing story of our existence. There are always
victors and victims in this cycle of life and taking issue
with what has happened long ago is not going to change anything, unless it means we can learn from it to make
things better today and move forward.

Cynthia Buell Thomas

Mon 13th Jul 2015 12:21

There is never 'Greatness' without 'Atrocities', in any part of our globe, or in any historical era. Unbiased information is key to judgement, and who can decipher truly when or where such byword actually exists. Interpretation of events becomes increasingly difficult with the passage of time, IMO, always hindered by a preconceived plan to uphold or negate certain ideas.

I do not believe in changing 'facts' as nearly as we can be sure they are 'facts', or vocabulary in usage at the given time, however offensive we may find such vocabulary now. That is altering reliable 'truth' to suit our modern selves. How do we learn anything as a progressive human species if we deny how we used to be? We don't need to lambaste it into our psyche constantly, but we should never deny it, like children. We have to acknowledge how horrible we have been, are, and could still be, to each other.

I'm done. I realize it's a rerun of many good points already made.

Here's a thought: I truly believe every theologian of any religion should first have a PHD in World Histories.

Mr Newberry, you are having a grand time stirring up the WOL pot.

Tommy Carroll

Sun 12th Jul 2015 22:40

See below

The name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha should send shivers of terror through the Windsors for some reason.

raypool

Sun 12th Jul 2015 22:33

To all these above views I would simply add that youth is mostly extreme in its ideals which is how it should be, as that is like a graph of personal development and cannot be perceived as the ultimate good sense in a situation. I think the same applies in terms of the worship of music idols - which cynical businessmen have always exploited. Nobody seems to complain about that.

Tommy Carroll

Sun 12th Jul 2015 22:24

Rhodes was 10 x the murder than Shipman. However some people in these parts use the avoirdupois system or imperial weights and measures to ascertain the validity of homicidal verisimilitude. And we all know that scales don't lie.
. Keep the statue of him and other murdering b*****ds, just chisel around their likeness' a litany of their filthy deeds. Let us start with Rhodes then All the monarchy since Harold (poor Harold) were foreign (foreign swine).

Tommy Carroll

Sun 12th Jul 2015 22:00

How abt a Harold shipman statue in your doctor's surgery, as he is responsible for far less murdering, pain and loss than Mengler.

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