Another Version of the ‘Truth’

Lynne Cheney’s themes in her book “Telling the Truth,” and her attack on the National History Standards could easily be turned to attack her own position (“Seeking the Truth and Nothing but the Truth,” Oct. 25).

She complains, “In the name of group politics, students are taught fantasy rather than fact. . . . Journalists have come to disdain objectivity [and] public figures have felt less and less constrained by reality.”

Perhaps Cheney can explain how it came to be that until recently we have celebrated a prosperity rooted historically in free enterprise for the dominant male WASP population, ignoring its roots in the abduction and subjugation of millions of Africans as chattel slaves, the “ethnic cleansing” of the indigenous inhabitants of our territory and the global despoliation of our planet’s natural resources.

The proponents of the National History Standards have not invented the teaching of fantasy as fact; they only seek to modulate such fantasy by filling out history’s more egregious and self-destructive omissions.

Apparently the clear and present danger of self-destruction is not one that Cheney recognizes, but here in urban Los Angeles our experience has taught us differently.

IRVING LAWRENCE SELK

Los Angeles