When I was in school in the early 1960s (long before the onslaught of "political correctness" so popular today), I did not learn anything very serious or substantial about the history of this country to which I had immigrated as a boy.
In some cases, the things my teachers taught me were probably even untrue. I was told, for example, by a history teacher that all I needed to know about Abraham Lincoln was that he was a racist. Nothing else needed to be known about him, he said.
When the Communists took control of Hungary in 1949, my parents' textile shop (and everything that was in it) was taken from them. They were considered the "bourgeoisie," and therefore dangerous.
That same year, 1949, my grandfather was sentenced to ten years hard labor by the Communists for having a small American flag in his possession (much like the kind we wave at July 4th celebrations or with which we decorate the graves of our fallen heroes). At my grandfather's "trial" they asked him why he had the flag. Was he a spy? He replied that it represented freedom better than any other symbol he knew and that he had a right to have it.
