Canceling History Doesn’t Erase It Or Change It
Having just finished yet another Christmas holiday it goes without saying that as we went about our festivities, a large part of those festivities; those celebrations and remembrances, were recollections of the past and people who have gone before us. While most of these memories were undoubtedly good, some were not, and whether we spoke of them at length or left them unspoken, the happenings of the past were not altered.
So, it is safe to say – and, more importantly, accurate to proclaim – that ignoring or trying to banish the past into obscurity doesn’t change the past. Once that second ticks off the clock it is burned into history for all time. And so it is that the sages of the ages state, generation after generation, that it is the wise who study and learn from history, both the good and the bad.
It Appears The Woke Are Not Wise
So, we really need to examine the wisdom of the woke cancel culture. What is actually achieved by the canceling of history in any form? What benefit do future societies glean in being denied an accurate history of actions past? The simple answers are these.
Nothing is achieved in the canceling of history. The canceling of history doesn’t change the past. It removes no scars. It rights no wrongs. And it certainly doesn’t facilitate an understanding of the past so that future errs in judgment can be avoided.
There is no benefit in attempting to erase the past, by removing monuments, artifacts, writings, or any other historical items from public access; from the public square. In fact, by removing historical pieces and writings from public view, the woke activism of today sets tomorrow’s society up to make the same errors of the past.
To be gentle about it, the cancel culture is hobbling future societies in their ability to learn from past events so they are free to chart their own course as mankind continues into the future. By denying them the ability to examine history of their own volition, woke activists are cheating current and future generations out of the freedom to make their own decisions and chart their own destinies. They are denying people their freedom to think for themselves.
Sanitizing History
Listening to a recent podcast by Megyn Kelly titled, Thomas Jefferson and the Founding of America, I was astonished to discover that the University of Virginia is taking a knee to the activism of children, sent there to be educated, in contemplating the removal of Jefferson’s name throughout the university for the sole fact that he was a slave owner.
Set aside for the moment that Jefferson himself founded the university. The idea that some loud but shallow, undereducated, inexperienced-in-life, and uncredentialed students would insist that any figure from the past be held to the societal norms of today is not only unreasonable, but it’s also preposterous.
Left unaddressed by these shallow thinkers is the fact that Jefferson created the very document that opened the door for slavery to be abolished. If it weren’t for the simple words affixed to history through his pen – “all men are created equal” – it is very possible that slavery wouldn’t have become the impetus for the US Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Like it or not, slavery was a societal norm in the days leading up to the creation of the United States. Britain, Spain, and the many tribes of the African continent saw slavery as an industry and freely participated in the trade. It wasn’t until Jefferson codified the idea of all men being created as equals that there was ever a shot across the bow on the matter.
In fact, the vast majority of the Founding Fathers were abolitionists yet the woke activists of today, who peddle their faux racial activism, ignore that it was the Founders and Framers who opened the door to the eradication of this evil from our country.
I won’t go into the fact that the United States is the only country on the face of the planet that went into the state of civil war to – in part – right this societal wrong. And please, let’s just ignore – for the sake of the feeeelings of the woke activists – that slavery is still prevalent in the world today, especially in the Middle East and Asia.
The Indignities Of Losing A War
It is said – and sadly it is true, that to the victors go the spoils. One of the most important spoils in the aftermath of war is the writing of history.
Imagine if the Nazis, the Japanese, and the whole of the Axis Powers (including those never held accountable for their war crimes from the Middle East) had won World War II. A good depiction of a world centered in this reality is delivered in the first seasons of Man in the High Castle.
The re-writing of history would have been monumental. As depicted in the series, the Nazis went so far as to destroy the Statue of Liberty in their quest to “re-write American history.” In the story’s narrative, “all men are created equal” was “canceled”. So, we must ask ourselves, how is the woke re-writing; the woke canceling of US history – both good and bad – any different than what the Nazis sought to do in this fictional series?
We see this every day. Statues coming down of soldiers and officers from the Confederate Army in the US Civil War. The Confederates lost and the Union survived. But the totalitarian ideologues among us today are seeking to expunge accurate US history in the elimination of commemorations to those who lost the war. To the victors go the spoils?
Today, the West Point US Military Academy is setting itself to re-writing and de-memorializing the accurate history of our country, all in the name of being sensitive to the woke activist and their addiction to narrative control.
As reported by AP via FOX News:
“Before turning against the US military to command the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee served as the superintendent of West Point, the hallowed military academy that produced patriots like Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower.
“But in the coming days, the storied academy will take down a portrait of Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform from its library, where it has been hanging since the 1950s, and place it in storage. It will also remove the stone bust of the Civil War's top southern general at Reconciliation Plaza. And Lee’s quote about honor will be stripped from the academy’s Honor Plaza.
“The moves are part of a Department of Defense directive issued in October ordering the academy to address racial injustice and do away with installations that ‘commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.’”
What our woke-infected Pentagon and the Biden administration are seeking to do is to deny West Point students the ability to accurately examine history for both actions to avoid and in which to engage. The erasure of anything related to history – especially military warfare at a military school – is short-sighted and emotionally based. Put succinctly, it’s stupid.
Did those who fought for the Confederacy die differently than the victorious Union soldiers? Were their families not affected just like northern families at their deaths? Were their generals and officers not just as committed to their beliefs as the northern generals and officers? Were they any less the tacticians and strategists of the Union Army?
The answers to each of these questions are obvious and to the last point, if it weren’t for the friendly fire death of Stonewall Jackson the outcome of the US Civil War would have been very different.
But that ignores the larger point.
The existence of commemoration of uncomfortable truths presents the most valuable of spoils to those who survive events and prevail in conflict and to the societies they claim to be righteous: Teachable moments.
Instead of expunging Confederate memorials and commemorations, a wise person – a person interested in educating rather than indoctrinating – would use those symbols as catalysts for teachable moments, both about the good and the bad. Honest discussions about slavery and the abolition movement in the fledgling United States would be valuable in the pursuit of truth.
Alas, the woke movement and their power-junky political class aren’t interested in truth or accurate history. They are only interested in power and the quasi-ethical acquisition of wealth that power affords. In fact, in their minds the less the American people understand about the nobility of their past the better, especially for profiteering, power-hungry, woke race-baiters like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo who elevate themselves over the dead of American history.
Will We Chose To Be Smart Going Forward
George Orwell, who foretold the future as we are living it today in his chillingly accurate novel 1984, is quoted as saying, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
Understanding that truth, how is it that we do nothing as woke, opportunistic power junkies and self-important manipulators of history rewrite our history – steal our history – right before our eyes by removing (read: erasing) memorials and commemorations that can effectively serve to facilitate teachable moments for our youth; so as to allow them the freedom to craft a future free of the mistakes of the past?
We are doing a lot of things that future generations will curse us for – the enormous amount of debt we are leaving them being just one unforgivable act. But cheating them out of knowledge, condemning them to make mistakes that could have been avoided through a simple examination of uncomfortable truths of the past? That earns us all a special circle at Dante’s place.
