Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • July 13, 2011 the last American Indian leader with a chance to build a coalition that could withstand white incursion. Johnson also kept a mixed-blood African-American woman, Julia Chinn, as his slave concubine. He never married her (or anyone else), but insisted that those who called on his vice presidential household treat their two daughters like young ladies and not like kitchen help. Almost nobody knows about this guy today. Johnson thought about the presidency, but didn’t get much support from his party. Johnson has not been a lucky name in the White House. Andrew Johnson almost got impeached, and probably should have been, though John Kennedy and his ghost-writers felt otherwise. I was a soldier when Lyndon Johnson told our parents that we soldiers could have all the milk we wanted on the same day when the milk machines were cut back to one cup, white or chocolate. I never liked him afterwards. When some of the guys who enlisted for Officer Candidates School in 1967 with the signed contract that they would not be assigned to the infantry were told their contracts had been rescinded and they would go to Infantry OCS (the death ticket), they locked themselves in the zinc-lined Bread Room and wouldn’t come out, or let anyone in, until the non-infantry clause was reinstated. We’re talking guys from Texas and Tennessee, not pinkos from urban colleges. Getting shot for reasons nobody has been able to explain since – most NVA soldiers were Buddhist but not communist -- put a severe strain even on racists. I had had already copped an honorable discharge for medical reasons by the time my buddies had finished their tours, but the Bread Room guys also made it back alive. I think they did America more good than they would have stuffed into body bags. On to the Alamo. A professor who lives in Texas recently made himself a candidate for lynching when he wrote a book in which he documents, apparently with some plausible evidence, that a considerable number of Texans went over the back wall when the Mexicans came over the front wall, only to be caught in flight and killed by Mexican cavalry. Also of substance is the fact that the Alamo defenders believed in the right to own slaves, which was forbidden by the Mexican Constitution. The Alamo has already taken a heavy coat of whitewash for that slavery thing, but when the majority of Americans are either black of Mexican, it’s going to get chipped away very heavily. Closer to home, I must have read 20 books on Custer’s Last Stand, and I think two of them before my own may have mentioned that the battle of the Little Bighorn began with the incidental, but predictable killing of 10 to 20 Indian women and children. Instead of a lethal sneak attack in an attempt to round of hostages for coercion of warriors presumed to be elsewhere, we generally read about a battle by two factions of doomed heroes. Even Europeans see the Indians as the aggrieved party in American history. Americans who are not Caucasian concur entirely that the Indians were the good guys. People who try to justify slavery, the near-genocide of the Indians, and our bungled foreign policy in Asia don’t even have much of a supportive audience with educated Americans. If they try it a quarter-century down the road, their lives could be at risk. Letters to support McCullough’s views on the threat that poor teaching poses to the future were assembled under the collective headline: “An Uninformed Citizenry Will Be Fatal to Democracy.” The headline embodies the threat. The United States is not a democracy and was never meant to be one. The United States was meant to be “a republic, madame, if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin told a woman when he left the Constitutional Convention. We pledge allegiance to the flag “and to the republic for which it stands.” In fact, the whole thrust of American politics until well after the Civil War was to keep riffraff away from the ballot box because the authors of the Constitution knew enough about Roman history to know that mobs lead to demagogues and demagogues turn into tyrants. In early New Jersey, blacks and women who owned property were allowed to vote, and white men who didn’t weren’t. I agree. Among the Americans who didn’t believe in “majority rule” was Abraham Lincoln. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which won him the presidential nomination, Lincoln opposed the idea that white voters, if they were a majority, could make slavery a right thing. Lincoln said it was a wrong thing, and while he was not an extreme Abolitionist, he based his political platform on limiting the expansion of slavery to the territories, so slavery could eventually be voted out of existence and die an overdue death. Douglas, not Lincoln, was the demagogue. Lincoln said “right makes might.” Some things are true whether the majority supports them or not. Some things – slavery, genocide – are wrong even when they become national policy. People who need a dictionary for either “demagogue” or “genocide” should not be encouraged to vote. People who are self-sufficient generally vote for the least government and the lowest taxes. Those who aren’t generally support worthless entitlement programs or military adventures. The majority of Americans are finally realizing that Iraq didn’t attack the World Trade Center and are opposed to the continued American presence in Afghanistan. We’re still stuck there. Unless the Iraqi and Afghan peoples give up Islam for Coca-Cola and same-sex marriage, we just wasted 6,000 brave, worthwhile American lives on a political popularity contest as elected officials supported their corporate and foreign donors. I don’t think we would have been able to do that if the voting majority were non-white. Stick around. This could get interesting. A friend sent me an op-ed piece from The Wall Street Journal in which David McCullough laments some Americans’ ignorance of their own history. McCullough, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his own books on history, sees this as a threat. He also points out that many teachers major in education rather than history. About the same time that McCullough’s remarks were published, the Internet brought us a statistic of even greater significance: For the first time since the 1700s, the majority of live births in the United States were of babies who weren’t white. We should project, let us say, a quarter-century into the future and imagine how the public schools are going to present history to students who are not mostly white. How will the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution play to an audience which, if they read further, will discover that four our of the first five presidents were slave owners? John Adams wasn’t a slave owner, but he played the race card to spare the redcoats who shot Americans during the Boston Massacre by blaming the incident on “saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues, and outlandish jacktars.” (Teague is a derogatory term for an Irishman, and a jacktar is a foreign-born sailor.) McCullough, a fine and honest historian, quotes Adams playing the race card in a standard biography, and not with approval, but the fact is that Adams won his signal court case with a blatantly racist statement implying that the lives of Africans and Irishmen weren’t worth much. That should be remembered in the context of the coming majority of nonwhite Americans. Conversely, children today are taught that Crispus Attucks, the first to die for liberty in the Boston Massacre, was a black man. The first person to die in the Boston disturbances of 1770 was a German boy named Christopher Schneider (sometimes spelled Snyder) who was shot while chucking a rock at a British tax official. The protest leader who stopped two redcoat bullets, Crispus Attucks, was a Massachusetts Indian with some white and black ancestry. McCullough’s biography of Adams doesn’t mention either of them. That won’t fly a quarter-century down the road. Most non-whites don’t hate Germans, and esteem American Indians. Changes will be made in what we leave out. Northern opponents of Thomas Jefferson scattered rumors that he kept a teenage slave girl as his concubine. DNA tests at the end of the 20th century proved that the rumors were true. Sally Hemmings was 14. People go to jail for that. Will Jefferson still have his likeness on American currency? One has to wonder. Andrew Jackson owned slaves. Jackson also betrayed the Cherokees who helped him defeat the uprising of the Creek Indians and the invasion of the British with a death march from Georgia to Oklahoma many times worse than Bataan. Store up those $20 bills. They may become collector’s items. Jackson – a known adulterer who killed anybody who said so – was also a political sponsor of Dick Johnson, vice president of the United States under Martin Van Buren. Johnson ran for federal office bragging that he had killed Tecumseh, Americans in Technicolor Letters to the Editor Fundraiser’s success the work of many Dear Editor: The recent Basket Fundraiser held at Midland Park High School to offset expenses for Graduation Ball 2012 was extremely successful thanks to the support of many individuals and local businesses from Midland Park, Wyckoff, Ridgewood, and beyond. We received an exceptional amount of donations this year for which we are truly grateful. If you supported this event in any capacity, please know how much we appreciate your generosity! An event such as this requires a great deal of cooperation and teamwork. The parents of the 2012 graduating class are to be commended for the amount of time and energy that was dedicated to the successful outcome. The students who assisted throughout the evening are the cream of the crop! The attendees who enthusiastically supported us in buying record numbers of tickets are certainly appreciated. The staff members at the high school were helpful in a number of ways. We thank you all for caring and for sharing in whatever way you were able. Dolores Fernandez, Michele Walko, Karen Reilly Basket Committee Co-chairs Dear Editor: I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of volunteers and athletes who participated in the 29th Annual Wyckoff-Franklin Lakes Triathlon on June 18 at Indian Trail Club. Congratulations to Chris Gebhardt, Brian McDonnell, and Mike Llerandi, the top male finishers; and Lynn Frampton, Shannon Schlageter, and Jennifer Finotti, top female finishers. A mainstay of the athletic community, the WyckoffFranklin Lakes Triathlon appeals to people of all ages, participants and spectators alike. This year, over 1,000 athletes competed in the half-mile swim, 17-mile bike ride, and five-mile run. The exciting prospect of bringing an athletic event of this magnitude to the Wyckoff area was spearheaded by Rotarian James Cohen in 1982. His boundless enthusiasm was matched by the Wyckoff YMCA team of volunteers and staff, his fellow Rotarians, and the community-at-large. From “Day One” it was a go! After the first year, the event was carried to new heights through the generosity of the McBride family of Franklin Lakes. The Wyckoff/Franklin Lakes Triathlon had a new, and what would become permanent home: the Indian Trail Club. Through these past 29 years, it has been the kindness and support of the community that has kept this event so strong. I would like to recognize our generous sponsors: 3 Chicas Mexican Kitchen, Benzel-Busch Motor Car Corp., Boswell Engineering, Chiropractic Family and Sports Injury Center, Columbia Bank, Excel Orthopedic Rehabilitation, Indian Trail Club, Market Basket, Nicholas Markets/Super Foodtown, North Jersey Orthopaedic Clinic, Mindray North America, Railroad Construction Company, and Tri My Bags & Eagle Plastic Bags. Proceeds from the triathlon benefit the many outreach programs of the Wyckoff Family YMCA and the WyckoffMidland Park Rotary’s scholarship and charitable initiatives. Next year is the 30th anniversary of the Wyckoff-Franklin Lakes Triathlon and I look forward to seeing everyone on June 16, 2012! Joy Vottero, Executive Director Wyckoff Family YMCA Director extends appreciation