Guest Post by Victor Davis Hanson
The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past. But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.
Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.
Yet 21st-century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.
And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?
What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt – much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?
What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car jackings?
Was our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?
Was it actually moral to discard the “content of our character” and “equal opportunity” principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the “color of our skin” and “equality of result” superior?
Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only six in 10 Americans working? Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?
Are we proud that most standardized tests of student knowledge and achievement continue to decline, despite record investments in education?
Do we ever pause to consider that we enjoy our modern standard of living and security because we were once a meritocracy that quit judging our workforce by tribal affinities and ancient prejudices?
Our generation talks of infrastructure nonstop. But when was the last time it built anything comparable to the Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project – much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?
If prior generations were so toxic, why do we continue to take for granted the moral and material world they bequeathed to us, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to our airports, freeways, and power plants? Did we ever defeat anything comparable to the Axis powers or Soviet communism?
We know the symptoms of the current epidemic of hating the past.
One is Orwellian renaming and statue-toppling. Historical revision often responds to puritanical mob frenzies rather than to democratic discussion and votes of relevant elected officials.
Where is the pantheon of woke heroes who will replace the toppled or defaced Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt?
Whose morality and achievement should instead be immortalized? Were the public and private lives of Che Guevara, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Margaret Sanger, and Franklin D. Roosevelt without sin?
Racial fixations tend predictably in one direction. In good Confederate fashion, we lump all individuals who look alike into inexact collectives of “white,” “black,” or “brown” – often to stereotype the supposed evils of so-called white supremacy.
But if we go down that tribalist and simplistic road of caricatured oppressors and oppressed, will future generations tally up each group’s merits and demerits, to adjudicate the roles of millions of individuals in making America worse or better?
What standard would they use to judge our ignorant world of racial stereotyping – proportional representation in Nobel Prizes, philanthropy, scientific breakthroughs, or lasting art, music, and literature versus statistics on homicides, assault, divorce, and illegitimacy?
Immigration – when legal, diverse, measured, and often meritocratic – has been the great strength of America, as typified by industrious arrivals who chose to abandon their own homeland to risk new lives in a foreign United States.
But if America is so flawed and so irredeemable, why in fiscal year 2021 are nearly 2 million foreigners now crashing its borders – illegally, en masse, and intent on reaching a supposedly racist nation that is purportedly inferior to those they abandon?
According to the ancient brutal bargain, assimilation and integration grant the immigrant as much claim to America’s present and past as the native-born. But then shouldn’t the antithesis also be true?
Shouldn’t immigrants at least respect those of the past who created the very country they now so eagerly desire, and died in awful places from Valley Forge to Bastogne to preserve?
Never in history has such a mediocre, but self-important and ungracious generation owed so much, and yet expressed so little gratitude, to its now dead forebears.
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Amen.
But irrelevant as we careen over the cliff.
If you’ve never heard of the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, you need to do some research.
From one Hansen to another, amen to all you say. The men and women that risked and gave their lives to keep this the land of the free deserve at least all of our thanks and respect. Many of our countrymen are so self absorbed that they would probably not understand why they should be thankful to our forebears.
Canadians are doing the same thing to their past that Victor Davis Hanson argues Americans are doing to their history. It will result in national political suicide
Uh, newsflash:
Progressivism has declared history to be useless or worse, for over 100 years already… these are now only more visible manifestations.
Resets are not new. History- as we think we know it- is mostly lies and distortions.
Every time a new people or movement comes into power one of the first orders of business is to erase the history, culture, accomplishments and creations of the ones who have been overthrown.
Is there anything constructive the left has ever done or any idea they ever had that actually made life better in the United States?
That’s such a layered question, it passes as a Koan.
Especially so after reading Hanby’s essay.
Victor Davis Hanson is a tiresome, tedious old windbag. This “great historian” is forever preaching to us about our glorious past and tut-tutting over those who are methodically and with meticulous care, wrecking the country. He never seems to name the alien origins of the entire “Woke” and “Progressive” movements and denounce their followers as outright traitors and subversives who deserve a noose, tightly applied. He never points out the pathetic way black Americans are being used as unwitting pawns in this conspiracy.
As a Southerner, what irks me most about this California goofball is his crusade against the South and people like me. He never tires of smearing our ancestors as “traitors”. It appears that he is unable to understand that the reason they wanted out of the Union was because they saw what was coming if the Federal government became centralized and controlled by a small and fanatic minority, slavery or no slavery. Well, we know now what that looks like.
I find it amusing that some people hurl the word “traitor” at what was, at that time, a third of the country, and whose ancestors had helped create the country in the first place. Reminds me of Stalin rounding up the Old Bolsheviks and claiming they were Japanese spies!
I am not interested in re-fighting the Civil War, nor do I hold a grudge against my fellow Americans. That said, Southerners are getting fed up with being the national whipping boy so so-called “conservatives” like Hanson and Dinesh D’Souza (!) and others of their ilk can virtue signal about how “the liberals are the real racists”.
The South is the only thing – the only thing! – that has so far kept this country from tipping over into the abyss. If it were not for the Southern members of Congress we would all be wearing Mao suits by now.
If you are an American patriot and you are not a Southerner, think before you blather on about slavery, rednecks, hillbillies, “liberals”, and the rest. AOC, Schiff, Lieu, and the rest of those lunatics were not elected in the South.
Separatist movements throughout history have been furiously attacked by those whose power and wealth they threatened. It is interesting to note that at the very time Lincoln was ravaging the South for wanting to leave a political union that – correctly or not – they saw as not to its benefit, the Russian czar was ruthlessly suppressing a similar attempt at secession in Poland. The czar and Lincoln were best buddies, of course. The Russian fleet even took refuge in the United States during the war, so it would not be trapped by the Royal Navy in the event of war.
I am not defending the hot-headed Southern decision to leave the union. Obviously, it did not turn out as expected. It is wise to remember, however, that there are always two sides to any great fight. It is invariably wrong to claim that one side is with the angels and the others with Satan. Mr. Hanson might want to ponder that.
Astute perspectives from a true southern sage.
He can’t and continue to publish publicly, you know that.
He has chosen the middle road.
Mealy mouthed psuedo-conservative. He always has been. Like his take on abortion:
“the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?”
This is pure lip-service paid to a portion of his readers, from someone who adheres to the “magic-vagina theory” — that nothing is alive until it has passed through the birth canal and can live and dance on its own.
A new life (genetically unique and distinct from parents for those scientismists here) begins at conception and therefore medical interventions to improve post-parturition viability is an irrelevancy, and a giveaway to Hansen’s true stance on the issue.
WEll stated, the liberal fucks are doing their BEST to destroy what’s left of the south. Look at Texas, Tennessee and now Georgia. That fat dyke Norwegian cunt will be the next GA Governor and Georgia will be LOST forever. If WE in SC don’t get rid of Lindsey Graham soon SC may well be the next!
Epic!
Can say I and millions are now inspired to see certain other monuments totally destroyed and ever more new, bigger and stronger built back better monuments to our Founding Fathers established; and anyone caught defacing them drawn and quartered. The Leftist have fired the first shot.
Nothing “ungracious” about debunking the past.
(Not that debunking applies to the re/otherbunking being promul-spewed now.)
Bunking the past, however, ain’t gracious nor graceful. And so is a very popular dance step among non-dancers. And non-dancers are legion.
Most history is more akin to an elevator pitch. Short, punchy, self-promoting. That last is confused with positivity, upbeatness, optimism, hope…all of which is “socially” promoted, i.e. arsonist accelerant. “America loves a winner!” (So do most other self-congrat places.)
Problem limned (problimned…I like it): maplines ain’t the geographic territory…& temporal ones are just as fake for the tenses.
Past & present are specialization (insects…) in distinctions that don’t actually exist (& that gives the way to bet as regards the future).
People are people. The condition is the condition. Past is present. Before is after. Now is then.
“I shoulda been born 150 years ago.” “I want to move to Galt’s Gulch.”
A different time & place ain’t a ticket to nowhere but now & you – not a shiny new then.
The only thing that moves the needle is getting it outta the haystack…& even that is just quantity weight reduction. Less is more.
Change Orwell’s bit to “Who draws lines around the past draws lines around the future. Who draws lines around the present draws lines around the past.” & you’ve got the sandline that disappears with each wave.
But the queue lines of polished pith-pitching in elevators ~ vertical cattlecars ~ muzak wafting, are forever.
Hansen cites self-absorption. Well, think on self-entitlement. How far back does that little engine that shouldn’t, but could, so did, go? I look around & see the say that if it weren’t for self-entitlement a lotta people would have no self-discipline at all. Think how self-disciplined sociopaths can be.
Hardscrabble says remember the number one pencil, drawing all those lines, has a number two eraser at its other business end. “Appropriating” & rebranding – is that erasing or redrawing? Some erasures are like drawing in/with lemon juice. The whole official-commercial, as opposed commercial-commercial, Christmas thing goes back. thru successive iterations, to at least ancient Egypt. Prolly further back than that. Faces & names are changed to feed the need & protect the guilty – which ain’t few. Like “he can’t & continue to publish….” Go along get along is little doggie guilty.
Southern Sage is right about the Southron•egation. But he also leaves a lot out. And cardinal states of mind are the thing, not cardinal directions. See the bit about the flick Far & Away I posted in farmers “Purpose” thread. It’s a moveable faustian feast, the world over. Beyond that just want to say I’ve been everywhere & know for a fact that necks compelled to have some of their red blood shed (in their compulsion to shed blood) are not confined to the geographic South. Shine UV light on country canvasses – or just look – & they are all Jackson Pollock masterpieces of drip & spatter. Would-be masters & would-be slaves paint a heluva mess. And then they hang it up in museums.