Erasing America: A Book Review

James S. Robbins’s survey of cancel culture pre COVID, aptly subtitled, Erasing Our Future by Destroying Our Past.

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I finished Mr. Robbins’s work last night, which I bought last summer, when the cancel culture/statues/history movement was in full vogue. Written long before the peak last summer, he published it on August 21, 2018, when the fad of statue toppling was just beginning.

While an easy read, it is somewhat emotionally painful to get thru because it is essentially a survey of all the stupidity, that the socialist left has pushed, and the conservative right has acquiesced to, over the last ten years or so, albeit before COVID. Much of the book focuses on events during the first 18 months or so of Trump’s administration. However, the seeds of destruction were sown by those of ill intent long before that. Robbins delves into that throughout, but most pointedly, I think, in chapter two, “Driving Down Old Dixie.” From “Killing the Dead White Men,” to “Taking a Knee,” and the amazing ignorance of actual U.S. history, he covers a wide range of ills.

Taking aim at the bitter, divisive, and uncompromising political atmosphere that has developed, and socialist insistence on Utopia, the author wisely refers to the Founding Fathers,

The genius of the Founders was their insistence that many interests be balanced in the course of governing. They had little faith in universal theories of public good and even less in the power of flawed human beings to construct flawless societies. The more the utopian spirit dominates politics, the less will get done and the more problems will accumulate.

As saddening as most of the book was for me, interesting tidbits abound throughout. Two in particular caught my eye. The first was a discussion of the Al Qaeda connection to the song, Baby Its Cold Outside on page 165. The second, at the beginning of chapter nine, “Erasing the Border,” was the eight-point Plan to Destroy America articulated in 2003 by a former Democratic Governor of Colorado. It is not as if the communists, Muslims, or the Left ever hide their intentions. Those paying attention know all too well what their aim is. Still, it is interesting to learn yet one more aspect of their heinous goal, which is often out there in plain sight.

Toward the end, Robbins discusses the potentialities of a dissolution of the states or Civil War II, both of which seem even more probably today given the events and covid games of the last 14 months or so. Indeed, my predication is that if tides do not turn, we will find ourselves in CW II, which will morph into WWIII. And wouldn’t that be an even more sad state of affairs than what we are in at the middle of April 2021? For those who do not know, or study our own history, the conclusion may be forgone; and keeping people ignorant of that history is one tactic those who aim to destroy this country use all too well.

Robbins ends on a hopeful not, pointing out that the future is not yet written. As he aptly puts near the end of the book,

At its simplest, this is a choice that every generation faces: to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

The choice is ours.

Namaste folks,

Mark

April 14, 2021