  In the spring of 1966, Murray Rothbard’s Left and Right carried an urlLink editorial describing Cold War revisionism as the major historical task of the day.
Rothbard saw the struggle between the ‘official’ state-sponsored versions of history and revisionism to be one of the utmost importance. Today, the importance of revisionism is unchanged. The history taught to the nation’s students in the state’s schools is flat out wrong.
My generation is coming up ignorant of the history of this nation and the world. Nearly everyone simply accepts what he is taught without any thinking or analysis. Revisionism is important because it takes the ammunition from those who seek to enlarge the state. Around Memorial Day, we are bombarded by reminders from statist historians that those men who served their country during wartime were fighting to secure our freedom. They invoke the images of Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, and Reagan in an effort to support the state’s most recent war.
If we allow these propagandists to go unchallenged in their interpretation of our history, we doom ourselves to a defeat in the war of ideas. This Memorial Day, we see a perfect example of this invocation. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a urlLink column yesterday on the current war in Iraq and the War for Southern Independence. Steyn writes, You think Iraq's a quagmire? Lincoln's ''new birth of freedom'' bogged down into a centurylong quagmire of segregation, denial of civil rights, lynchings.
Does that mean the Civil War wasn't worth fighting? That, as Al Gore and other excitable types would say, Abe W. Lincoln lied to us? His version of history has been taught in schools for as long as public schooling has existed on a large scale. Because his is the orthodox view of history, this column will serve as a resounding reminder of our moral purpose to a majority of the public.
And this is precisely why revisionism is so important to the cause of liberty. Were the public educated on the causes, effects, and historical implications of the War for Southern Independence, this article would not resonate with anyone. It would likely be ridiculed and laughed at by most people if they knew the truth about that horrible war. Instead, it will re-affirm the belief in Bush’s war. We cannot allow this to continue if we hope to ever win the war of ideas 
