What never seems to occur to those who anathematize and seek to bury the past is that they in turn prepare the future for their own erasure.
The result is a sullen and solipsistic presentism in which, as Burke foresaw, men become nothing more than “the flies of a summer”.
4 Comments
I think this rather misunderstands the motivation of the left. Not only are many of them (rightly) not regarding colonial and antebellum US history as something other than their own, but most of those who HAVE a connection to that history completely embrace nihilism and self-erasure.
They are middle-aged and childless fops status signaling to their moral betters in various other ethnic groups that they fully support and embrace the eventual decapitation of the society built by people related to themselves. If there were a summer for their flourishing, it was decades ago. They are maggots in the rot of a civilization they despise for reasons they cannot understand, motivated by people who hate them.
There truly are no words to describe the pathology afoot in the left-leaning everyman.
Well, yes, of course it’s naive to expect those with no connection to a nation’s history to have any respect for it, or any sense of stewardship. (Yet another reason why multiculturalism is suicidal idiocy).
But among far too many of those who do have such a connection, the virus of Progressivism has so tainted the past that they engage it only to mock and despise it. What they don’t seem to understand is that the flattened and isolated present they have now reduced the world to will just as quickly vanish, and they will be stewards of nothing but ashes. The great chain of history is shattered in their hands.
As a first generation American, I really find the animosity towards colonial and antebellum historical figures rather puzzling. Sure, they may have had failings – who doesn’t? But they also had great achievements, to which these modern day scum couldn’t hold a candle. The same goes for Western civilization in general. Indeed, they are minuscule ants standing on the shoulders of giants, chewing their cultural inheritance to dust.
c matt,
Agreed.