May 10th marks the 88th anniversary of the infamous Nazi book burning of over 25,000 books considered “un-German” in Berlin’s Opera Square. Books labeled extreme and immoral burned as Hitler’s appointed “Minister of Propaganda,” Joseph Goebbels, the sole source for government information, news media and the arts, delivered his speech. As he well knew, in a tyranny, contrary ideas or alternate narratives cannot be allowed to circulate.

Libraries as knowledge systems are often targeted in wars, quite simply because the destruction of a people’s past is necessary to occupy and remake them. Quite naturally the revision or obliterating of history is the business of conquerors.

The Library of Louvain, Belgium was destroyed by German troops in 1914 to international outrage. An Irish newspaper reported it as a “calamity without parallel in history since the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.” The Louvain was rebuilt by Americans in 1922 but was again destroyed by the Germans in 1940. It has been reconstructed once again and stands today.

In the sack of Washington, D.C., in 1814, Royal Navy Admiral Sir George Coburn targeted the Library of Congress where America’s founding documents and history were kept. Thomas Jefferson called the attack an act of barbarism, and he offered his own library as a replacement. Congress purchased the library from Monticello of 6,500 volumes for $24,000. Unfortunately, that library was destroyed in an accidental fire in 1850, moving Congress to again reaffirm the importance of a national knowledge system by establishing funds for a permanent Library of Congress.

There are many other examples of enemy troops destroying library collections. The National Library of Bosnia, archives in Iraq, and many writings in China are examples. In our own lifetimes, Communist countries know to target a nation’s history in any conquest for domination:

As we reflect on the sobering consequences of socialists and communist forces bold enough to set their sights on America after spending last summer destroying statues, memorials, and historic artifacts, let us never forget. Reminded are we on this 88th anniversary of the Nazi’s knowledge purge that the books collected by families, who read about American liberty by hearth fires, have become a most valuable commodity to the future and freedom of the next generation.

In LaGrange, Kentucky just such a preservation effort is underway. The family book collection of a visionary man, Colonel Ron Ray, has been donated to a library effort. The Colonel spent the latter half of the 20th century collecting eyewitness accounts and early historic writings that explain the birth and miracle of the American’s Constitutional Republic to attempt to understand for himself and others the true casus belli in the battleground known as Vietnam.

Let us not foolishly relinquish America’s true history to the omnipotent power of “cancel culture” held solely by private big tech operatives. George Gilder reports in 2017 at Asilomar information-age luminaries secretly gathered to discuss how their inventions threaten to attain consciousness and reduce human beings to patronizing pets:

‘The Asilomar Statement of AI Principles, signed by eight thousand scientists, representing a 97 percent consensus-including a passel of Nobel laureates and Hawking-echoed the billowy affirmations of Google’s own “Do No Evil” precepts and statement of principles of Burning Man. ‘Superintelligence should only be developed in the service of widely shared ethical ideals, and for the benefit of humanity rather than one state or organization…An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided.’

Asilomar 2017Big Tech fully proclaims its alignment with a narrow globalist agenda and those outside the party “online” are canceled or subject to the “May 10th” treatment. We are living in a time as George Orwell warns in 1984, where we find “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, and the lie became truth.” Already targeted are conservatives, Christians, the 3 percent of dissenting scientists not aligned with the Asilomar agreement, and others, who suddenly find their storage terminated with no access to years of published work. One wonders where can one go to teach and succor those born into the prevailing lies of the future, who never knew the truth of history?

Finally, China’s communist party leader Xi Jinping has directed his regime to focus on controlling the global internet as a national strategy for world domination. Just as the Amorite, he understands the eternal power of media over the minds and hearts of humankind and the need to weaponize it. Can we trust that what has been is that which shall be? We know each generation must learn it anew. Thus all due haste is required to move forward with the Library of American History, where future generations can discover the trials and benefits of the great experiment that resulted in One Nation Under God, with the eternal organic utterance of “Liberty and Justice for All,” for the great battle is Who is Lord and Who will save us? The battle is won and the answer secure as many founders knew and many others since have reaffirmed: “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

God bless America.