Introduction

We are busy taking today’s idea of morals and correct principles and applying them to yesterday, rooting out anything that does not “fit.” There are no set rules, no committee and no governing body. No “civilian review board” has promulgated agreed-upon criteria by which to make judgments, a thumbs up or thumbs down on historical personalities, yesterday’s heroes and monuments. The crowd has become the Emperor in the Coliseum.

We cannot predict what the morals and concepts of correct behavior will be fifty to a hundred and fifty years from now, but very likely much will be different. Whose memories, whose statues, will be vilified and erased then? Perhaps the very people who are doing the vilifying and erasing now will be erased–cancelled–then. 

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

“Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.” No one threw a stone–or even a pebble. Everyone walked away, hopefully to contemplate their own faults, and not anyone else’s.

Imagine for a moment, the stunning and ongoing societal progress that would result if all of the energy that is being devoted to “correcting” the sins of the past were redirected with every involved person looking inward, focused on making changes in themselves. But that would involve hard work over time. Work like that never really stops. Protesting monuments and other people’s actions in the past is relatively easy, involves no self-correction, and allows for two of the most dangerous of all human emotions: self-righteousness and self-congratulations.

Let’s make another overall point here before we get to actual names. Every historical figure was deeply flawed. All human beings are deeply flawed. Why can’t we see the whole person, rather than either just the good parts, or just the bad parts, with the pendulum swinging wildly. You know, the holistic view. And looking at the whole person, the good, the bad and the ugly, will allow us to better understand the different, the good and bad, parts of ourselves. 

Growing up I was taught that historical figures like George Washington and Christopher Columbus were flawless heroes. George Washington was the Father of our Country who brilliantly defeated the British with a ragtag army and never told a lie. The cherry tree myth is the most well-known and longest enduring legend about https://www.mountvernon.org/research-collections/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington/ (George Washington). In the original story, when Washington was six years old he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree. When his father discovered what he had done, he became angry and confronted him. Young George bravely said, “I cannot tell a lie…I did cut it with my hatchet.” Washington’s father embraced him and rejoiced that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees. All a manufactured myth.

Today, the almost exclusive focus is on Washington the slaveholder. George Washington was indeed the Father of our Country, and miraculously defeated the British Empire with little more than a ragtag army. He lied like the rest of us, and he was a slaveholder. 

Columbus was once portrayed not only as a visionary in standing alone knowing that the world was not flat, but as tenacious and brave as well. Put all of that together, I was told, and here you have the man who discovered America. Today, all I hear about is his often brutal treatment of indigenous peoples. Columbus did not discover America, but he did open it up for European exploration. He was indeed brave and tenacious, else he would have failed in his historic adventures. And he was often guilty of brutal treatment of the people he found in the new lands. 

Robert E. Lee, along with other Confederate leaders, is much in the news, focusing on his role as a slaveholder. My issue with Lee, greater and far more damaging even than his being a slaveholder (and by all accounts not a kind one) was