The cancel-culture crazies were just waiting for an opportunity – like George Floyd’s death – to destroy Western civilization with a national purge of every imperfection past and present. Topple statues of Christopher Columbus because New History 101 teaches conquest – not curiosity – inspired his voyage. Forgive all college loans because New Economics 101 teaches indebted servitude – not opportunity – is the big-bank motive. Disband all police departments because New Civics 101 teaches preserving white privilege – not law and order – is a cop’s wink-wink mission.
America is at a tipping point, where an Angry Mob insists common sense and perspective are the tools of fascists and racists. Rubbish! It is absurd for a nation of laws to dissolve the institutions (police and prosecutors) that enforce the laws. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin (D-WA) forgot the lessons of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and ordered the city’s East police precinct abandoned; thereby creating the free state of CHAZ. At a predictable stand-off, she reassured residents they “could have a summer of love.”
What frightens me most is the virtue signaling from heretofore proponents of truth, justice and the American way, who now echo the mad-liberal sophistry that US History is the study of America’s sins. Thus, a student’s “truth” is now that Thomas Jefferson’s ideals are hypocrisy because he owned slaves. Wrong! Philosopher George Santayana warned in 1905 those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
US history doesn’t exist for students to like or dislike, but for them to learn from the past. The truth is America was “discovered” by the Dutch, English, French and Spanish, who did infect native Americans and import African slaves. It is also true 15th century Europeans didn’t understand viral infections or herd immunity, and Aztecs, Mayans, and American Indians owned slaves before 1492.
In practice, American justice is the evolution of American ideals: the “arc of the moral universe bends toward justice” (MLK). So, what did HBO achieve by removing Gone With The Win? Not much, because GWTW is proof the moral universe arcs toward justice:
- The film is a point on the arc: from Georgian slaves in 1861 to caricature roles for Hattie McDanial (Mammy) and Butterfly McQueen (Prissy) in 1939, onto Oprah Winfrey producing films and Will Smith picking his projects in 2020.
- The film is an allegory of the Old South delusion. Worldly Rhett Butler tells Georgia bumpkins why the modern North will prevail. Party-on Atlanta becomes amputee-central and a Yankee bonfire. Black Big Sam is more heroic than white Ashley Wilkes. Aunt Pitty Pat is pitiful.
No enlightened society believes justice is advanced by banning films or burning books – when all majorities are fleeting and cannot be trusted to pick artistic winners and losers.
The vast majority (76%) in the US believe in the “American way” (source: Marist). This “way” is the synthesis of the best of earlier civilizations. The Egyptians created the art of writing and the calendar, the Greeks gave us democracy and trial by jury, the Romans left us urban planning and sanitation, the Vikings invented the keel and magnetic compass, and England is the motherland. They also engaged in slavery, sex-trafficking, and/or beheading spouses.
The American Way is an ideal – and statues of imperfect men are actually memorials to ideals. To wit, statues of Columbus represent the ideal of a man boldly sailing into the unknown. And what are the great ideals of today’s Cancel Culture? In Seattle, they include the “abolition – not reform” of the police and retrials of violent felons. This isn’t even Animal Farm. It’s Animal House!