里根的警告：不要忘记历史！（音频|视频）

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01 | 美国，不要忘记历史

总统告别中有一个非常悠久的警告传统，其实这个警告已经在我的脑海中很长时间了，但奇怪的是，它始于我在过去8年里最引以为傲的一件事: 民族自豪感的复兴，我称之为新的爱国主义。这种民族情绪很好，但并不重要，假如它不是建立在深思熟虑和了解的基础上，它就不会长久。

我们想要的是明智的爱国主义。我们在教育我们的孩子美国是什么，以及她在漫长的世界历史上代表着什么方面做得够好吗?

我们这些超过35岁的人是在一个不同的美国长大的。我们被非常直接地教导，作为一个美国人意味着什么。我们几乎在空气中吸收了对国家的热爱和对其制度的欣赏。如果你没有从家人那里得知这些，你会从邻居那里得到，从在朝鲜战争中参战的父亲那里得到，或者从在安齐奥阵亡的家庭那里得到。或者你可以从学校获得一种爱国主义的感觉。如果所有这些都失败了，你可以从流行文化中获得一种爱国主义的感觉，这些电影宣扬民主价值观，并含蓄地强化了美国的独特性。电视在整个60年代中期也是如此。

但是现在，我们即将进入90年代，有些事情已经改变了。年轻的父母们不确定，对美国毫不含糊的赞赏是否是教育现代孩子的正确之举。对于那些创造流行文化的人来说，根基深厚的爱国主义不再是他们的风格。我们的精神回来了，但我们还没有使它制度化。我们必须做得更好，让人们知道美国是自由的——言论自由、宗教自由、企业自由。自由是特殊而罕见的、脆弱的，它需要保护。

所以，我们必须要教历史，不是基于什么是流行的，而是基于什么是重要的——为什么清教徒来到这里，吉米·杜立德是谁，“东京上空30秒”是什么意思？你知道，4年前，在D-day的40周年纪念日，我读了一封年轻女子写给她在奥马哈海滩战斗过的已故父亲的信。她的名字是Lisa Zanatta Henn，她说：“我们将永远记住，我们永远不会忘记诺曼底的男孩们所做的。＂

好吧，让我们帮助她遵守诺言。如果我们忘记了自己做过什么，我们就不知道自己是谁。

我警告说，美国记忆的消失可能最终导致美国精神的削弱。

让我们从一些基础开始：更多地关注美国历史，更加重视公民仪式。

02 | 再见，美国

让我来谈谈关于美国的第一课：美国所有伟大的变革都始于餐桌。所以，孩子们，我希望明晚在厨房开始谈，如果你们的父母没有告诉你们作为一个美国人意味着什么，告诉他们并让他们牢牢记着，这才是美国最重要的事。

你还记得美国吗？如果你在历史教科书上读到美国，你可能会得知，这是块充满了压迫、种族主义、性别歧视，收入不平等，警察暴行和帝国战争的土地…除此之外，它还是不错的。这就是大多数美国高中和大学，美国媒体电影和有偏见的进步政治家对美国的描绘。

用电影制片人迈克尔·摩尔的话来说，美国是“建立在种族灭绝基础上的国家，建立在奴隶的背上，并通过将女性征服为二等公民身份和经济剥夺权而得以维持” 。

这是美国的历史吗？这是美国的过去和现在的历史吗？

乔治·奥威尔说过：“摧毁人类最有效的方式就是否认和抹杀他们自己对历史的理解。＂奥威尔明白历史不仅仅是整全事实，历史和我们对历史的理解告诉我们作为一个民族我们是谁，就像你的个人记忆和经历决定了你是谁一样。抹去你的记忆，就抹去了你的身份。如果你把一代美国人培养成轻视自己国家的过去，夸大美国的错误，无视美国的胜利，那么他们就不会尊重美国的制度和作为这个国家基础的信念。

但情况并非一直如此，直到最近几十年，自由派和保守派都对美国的起源有着共同的理解，它的历史及其在美国乃至全世界传播自由的使命，他们承认美国是詹姆斯敦清教徒的国家，承认《独立宣言》中不言而喻的真理，承认通过革命获得并通过美国宪法保障的个人权利，这是一个具有开拓精神的国家，几乎拥有无限的可能性，这个国家因奴隶制的罪而付出了内战大屠杀的代价。

如果这曾是个在20世纪打败过法西斯主义和共产主义，且充满了经济活力和无穷的个人机会，以至前几代人将这一切视为理所当然，并陶醉其中的国家的话，那么，到底是什么改变了？

从1960年代开始，一种新的所谓进步叙事开始流行起来；因此，不再以提振、激励和团结，而是釆用自我分裂和贬低，比如用耻辱取代对美国成就的骄傲方式。具有讽刺意味的是，这一切都是发生在美国民权方面取得巨大进步，尤其是在少数民族和妇女方面的时候。当然，世上没有完美，鉴于每个社会都是由有缺陷的人组成的，所以世上没有完美的东西存在，就因如此便被认定为彻底失败了。过去的受害者被推举来控告现在，一路走来，按照进步学说法，所有美国的经典都被破坏了。克里斯托弗·哥伦布（Christopher Columbus）发现美国只是为了掠夺，开国元勋制定宪法只是为了编纂自己对奴隶的所有权，工业巨头只靠剥削穷人来致富。

几年前还完全可以接受的美国传统——宣誓效忠美国国旗、唱国歌、甚至说“圣诞快乐”——遭到质疑、嘲笑，有时甚至被禁止。

那些蔑视美国及其历史的人与那些不否认其缺点、为美国欢呼雀跃的人之间的这场新的非暴力内战的结果将决定美国的未来——我们将创造的新历史。美国是一个建立在奴隶制基础上的国家吗？还是一个以60万人的生命为代价战胜并废除奴隶制的国家？美国是一个歧视泛滥的国家？还是一个接受积极追求更完美联邦的人的国家? 它是一个极度剥削的家园？还是一块充满无限机会的土地?

现在是选择的时候了，你们将如何记住美国？

我是詹姆斯·罗宾斯，《今日美国》的专栏作家，也是《抹去美国》的作者。代表Prager 大学的节目

America, Do Not Forget History

Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection.

So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important -- why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, ``we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.'' Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.

Good Bye America

And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'them know and nail 'them on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

Do you remember America? if you read about it in a history textbook，you probably learned about the land of oppression，racism，sexism，income inequality. police brutality and imperial wars，beside from that it was a great place. that is how America is portrayed in most American high schools and colleges，in America’s media films and biased progressive politicians.

In the words of filmmaker Michael Moore，America is "a nation founded on genocide，built on the backs of slaves，and maintained through the subjugation of women to second-class citizenship and economic disempowerment"．Is that America’s history？Is that who Americans were and are？

George Orwell said "the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." Orwell understood that history is much more than a collection of facts. history and our understanding of it tells us who we are as a people in the same way your personal memories and experiences define in shape who you are. Wipe out your memory and you wiped out your identity. When you raise a generation of Americans to hold their countries past in contempt by exaggerating America’s faults and ignoring it’s triumphs，then they will have no respect for American institutions or the beliefs in which the nation is based. It hasn’t always been that way. Until the last few decades liberals and conservatives alike shared a common understanding of America’s origins. It’s history and its mission spreading liberty within America and around the world. They recognized America as the country of the Pilgrims in Jamestown, of the self-evident truths of the declaration of independence, of the individual rights won through revolution and secured in the US Constitution . This was the country of the frontier spirit with almost unlimited possibilities. The country the paid for the sin of slavery with the carnage of its Civil War.

If economic dynamism, and endless invention of unparalleled individual opportunity in the country that defeated fascism and communism in the 20th century. Previous generations took all this for granted and reveled in it ! so what changed？

Starting in the 1960s, a new so-called progressive narrative took hold; so not to uplift and inspire and unite，but to demean to degrade and divide, such as replace the pride of American achievement with shame. Ironically this all happened while America was making extraordinary strides in civil rights, especially for minorities and women. But anything less than perfection, which can never exist given that every society is composed of flawed human beings, is now considered a total failure，and victims of the past are elevated as an indictment of the present. Along the way all the classic American touchstones have been undermined according to the progressive narrative.

Christopher Columbus discovered America only to despoil it. The founders wrote the constitution only to codify their ownership of slaves, The great captains of industry Enrich themselves only by exploiting the poor.

American traditions that were perfectly acceptable even a few years ago, pledging allegiance to the flag, singing the national anthem, even saying merry Christmas Have been called into question, mocked, and sometimes banned.

The outcome of this new nonviolent Civil War between those who hold America and its history in contempt and those who, without denying his flaws, revel America will determine the future of the American experiment the new history we will make. is America a country that was built by slavery? or a country that overcame and abolish slavery at the cost of 600,000 lives? Is America a country of rampant discrimination? or Accepting people in active pursuit of a more perfect union? is it a country of grinding exploitation or a land of limitless opportunity?

The time has come to choose, how will you remember America. I’m James Robbins ，columnist for USA today, and author of Erasing America, for Prager University.