[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: AMERICA THROUGH THE EYES OF THE SMITHSONIAN

                                 ______


                        HON. GERALD B.H. SOLOMON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 6, 1994

  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, did you know that the United States is 
under constant oppression by the narrow, exclusionary and overly 
rational dominant culture? Well, many college campuses have been 
spewing forth this unfounded rhetoric for years, but now the Federal 
Government has joined them through the sponsorship of a plethora of 
historical and scientific exhibits in Smithsonian museums.
  Yes, an American family from my rural, farming district in upstate 
New York can come to Washington, DC, to visit our wonderful Smithsonian 
museums. However, this visit will be only to learn that their dear 
grandfather who was an American fighter pilot in World War I was 
responsible for the vast slaughter of civilians and soldiers because he 
used stealth and surprise rather than dramatic dogfights to shoot down 
enemy planes. The Air and Space Museum portrays these beloved relatives 
as unfair, imperialistic warmongers who slaughtered innocent civilians 
rather than the heroic defenders of democracy fighting the 
expansionist, totalitarian and anti-democratic regimes of Central and 
Eastern Europe.
  This World War I exhibit is not a solitary incident, but a shining 
example of the type of politically correct and inaccurate messages that 
the Smithsonian sends to tens of millions of people every year. 
Fortunately, veterans of World War II were able to thwart the 
Smithsonian's most recent attempt to broadcast revisionist history 
through the Enola Gay Exhibit. Living participants of this event were 
able to correct the grave misstatements and gross inaccuracies by our 
national science museum. I fear these museums' interpretation of those 
events for which there are no living participants to plead their case. 
The results of such circumstances can already be seen in many existing 
Smithsonian programs and exhibits.
  I commend to your concerted attention the following article by John 
Leo, entitled ``The National Museums of PC'' in the October 10, 1994 
issue of U.S. News and World Report, which further details the flood of 
political correctness through our national museums.
  Congress possesses the power of the purse. Perhaps this power must be 
utilized as Congress reauthorizes and appropriates funding for the 
Smithsonian during the 104th Congress. I know that I will be following 
this issue closely and will act accordingly.

            [From U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 10, 1994]

                       The National Museums of PC

                              By John Leo

       The Enola Gay controversy at the National Air and Space 
     Museum in Washington is no isolated incident, just the most 
     publicized example so far of the politically correct make-
     over underway at the various museums of the Smithsonian 
     Institution.
       The folks at Air and Space went way too far with plans for 
     next year's exhibition on the end of World War II and the 
     atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that 
     America was conducting a racist war of vengeance against 
     Japan, while ``for most Japanese, it was a war to defend 
     their unique culture against Western imperialism.''
       That perverse view of the war and American motives, running 
     through hundreds of pages of early draft versions of the 
     show, was bound to attract attention from veterans and 
     historians who know better. But the same dark vision of 
     America as arrogant, oppressive, racist and destructive 
     increasingly runs through the Smithsonian complex.
       Part of the new Smithsonian strategy is to keep stressing 
     the negatives. The end of America's most honorable and 
     successful war is celebrated by focusing on the morally 
     ambiguous act of bombing Japanese cities. At the National 
     Museum of American History, the 200th anniversary of the 
     Constitution was celebrated by an exhibition on the 
     document's most spectacular violation--the interment of 
     Japanese-Americans during World War II. It's a good show and 
     Americans ought to know about the internments, but that was 
     it--nothing else from the Smithsonian on the bicentennial of 
     a stupendous political achievement.
       The current ``Science in American Life exhibit at the 
     Smithsonian's Museum of American History is another exercise 
     in accentuating the negative. It's a disparaging, politically 
     loaded look at American science, concentrating single-
     mindedly on failures and dangers: DDT, Three Mile Island, the 
     ozone hole, acid rain, the explosion of the Challenger, Love 
     Canal, nonbiodegradable plastics, possible threats in 
     genetically altered foods.


                             weird science

       A reconstruction of an 1876 chemistry lab features two 
     chemists arguing bitterly over who deserves credit for the 
     discovery of saccharin. One of the few scientific 
     achievements the show praises is the birth control pill, but 
     even here a sign says: ``Some African Americans . . . 
     believed there were two kinds of pills: one for white women 
     and one for us, and the one for us causes sterilization.'' 
     This notion, that sterilization pills were secretly 
     distributed to blacks, is left unrebutted.
       An ``Avenge Pearl Harbor'' poster at the science exhibit 
     makes the same point that the Enola Gay text does: that the 
     dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was an irrational act of 
     vengeance. The exhibition veers well away from science to 
     remind us that armed forces were still segregated in World 
     War II, with a black soldier decrying America as a ``so-
     called democracy.'' IQ tests, discussed in the same 
     sentence as phrenology, presumably to disparage IQ 
     testing, were sometimes ``used to rationalize racism.''
       At the Air and Space Museum, a show on World War I is 
     essentially used to indict the airplane and technology in 
     general for the vast slaughter of civilians and soldiers over 
     the past 75 years. The show is impatient with the idea of 
     military valor: Famous fighter pilots should not be 
     considered heroes or ``knights of the air''--even Germany's 
     famous ``Red Baron'' downed many pilots by ``stealth and 
     surprise,'' not in dramatic dogfights as many imagine.
       Up in the Air and Space planetarium, a film on Exploring 
     New Worlds, recently closed, was even more heavily 
     politicized. Exploring the heavens was linked to ``the 
     frantic exploration and exploitation'' conducted on Earth by 
     Columbus and Europeans in general. A walk-through exhibit--
     ``Where Next, Columbus?''--raises the question of whether the 
     West will repeat this alleged exploitation in space. A 
     lighted display asks the vexing question, ``Does Mars Have 
     Rights?'' Below, the display says: ``Historically, the 
     arrival of explorers has not always been benign.''
       Large sections of the Museum of Natural History are closed 
     to the public, presumably for renovation. Meanwhile ``dilemma 
     labels'' on the walls apologize for older, unreformed 
     exhibits. One dilemma label complains that in these displays, 
     ``Humans are treated as more important than other mammals,'' 
     which is obviously incorrect.
       Over at the Museum of American History, a highly 
     multiculturalized exhibition on America from 1780 to 1800 
     treats Indians, blacks and Europeans as three equally 
     excellent cultures, with Indians and blacks perhaps a bit 
     more excellent because they ``studied nature in order to work 
     in harmony with it--not to control it'' and they ``developed 
     sophisticated methods of systematizing their knowledge . . . 
     and elaborate technologies.''
       On a recent two-hour trek through the history museum, I 
     noticed very little celebrating American achievement, nothing 
     about the Founding Fathers, the idea of America or what 
     Americans have in common.
       Instead, the emphasis is on separateness and the alleged 
     need to resist the constant oppression by the narrow, 
     exclusionary and overly rational dominant culture. This is 
     the familiar ideology of campus political correctness, 
     imported whole into our national museum structure. Your tax 
     dollars at work.

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