The end result of being overly PC, apart from cultural emasculation,  
seems to be a sort of acontextual Yassir Arafat variant of "Never  
missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" for fear of the  
possibility of offenses real or imagined.

Two cultures collided in VA. One dominated the other after years of  
struggle and opportunity to do otherwise. To negate that also negates  
what we became later as in the United States of America. The end  
result of had we been PC way back then was that we don't now exist.  
Now that's a nice image and one I find to be rather pathetic.

Lyle Browning


On May 21, 2007, at 12:13 PM, Heritage Society wrote:

> The Jamestown “commemoration” missed an opportunity to explain the
> “birthplace of the nation.” That was the motto on last year’s  
> publicity
> sail by the Godspeed. Somehow, the importance of Jamestown got lost  
> as the
> historic landing in 1607 became a metaphor for diversity (“Thank you
> Pocahontas”?).
>
> In a recent forum sponsored by the Historical Society, David  
> McCullough
> lamented the lack of historical knowledge among college students.  
> Several
> years ago, Virginia had to institute “standards of learning” because
> students were not getting the basic historical information which is  
> the
> foundation of our culture.
>
> Somewhere in the planning stages, it was decided that Jamestown was  
> a place
> where English settlers seeking gold and glory came and “inner- 
> acted” with
> the Indians that already occupied the land and with Africans that  
> later
> came as slaves. This concept will live on with the Jamestown  
> Settlement
> website and the lesson plans that are recommended for teaching about
> Jamestown.
>
> Jamestown was not a “ meeting” of three cultures. That implies
> assimilation, cooperation, a melting pot. That did not happen. And it
> minimizes the sacrifice and fortitude of those early Jamestown  
> settlers who
> were the beginning of a great migration that within 50 years had  
> peopled
> the east coast of America. To be sure, there were immigrants from  
> other
> European countries, but these colonies were English, united by a  
> common
> language and governed by English law and tradition, stretching back  
> 400
> years to the Magna Carta. That tradition landed at Jamestown, and   
> through
> the 17th and 18th centuries, the European Enlightenment continued  
> to inform
> the sense and sensibility of British America. When Parliament  
> attempted to
> tax and exert greater control over the colonies, Thomas Jefferson  
> countered
> in a “Summary View” that this violated their rights as Englishman.  
> It was
> the violation of these rights that formed the basis for the  
> Declaration of
> Independence. For decades after the Constitution, English common  
> law was
> the basis of the American judicial system.
>
> That is the real meaning of Jamestown and it is a shame that Virginia
> missed the opportunity to say so.
>
> Richard E. Dixon