Lynne Cheney wages a quiet war against knowledge: has Books Destroyed

Now, Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's wife and the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has placed herself in the company of dictators and slaveholders. At her urging, the Education Department destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed to help parents and children learn more about America's past. Cheney objected to the booklet's reference to the National Standards for History, guidelines for teaching history in secondary schools that were developed at the University of California, Los Angeles in the 1990s and that suggest that American history should be taught with an eye not only to America's successes but to its struggles and dark moments as well.  According to Cheney, the standards failed to recognize the achievements of America's traditional heroes and focused instead on the accomplishments of women, minorities and radicals such as Harriet Tubman, the former slave who helped found the Underground Railroad. As Cheney wrote in 1994, "We are a better people than the national standards indicate, and our children deserve to know it." [more ]