“The teaching of history is continuing to be transformed into indoctrination by illiberal, leftist propaganda,” writes historian Bruce Thornton in his pamphlet Why History Matters. The result, he notes, is that “the abandonment of belief in objective historical truth makes possible a politicized history that legitimizes tyrannical power.” George Orwell dramatized this in his novel 1984, a fictional scenario that, Thornton warns, “has traveled a long way to becoming fact” in America today.