When the present judges the past
We are in a moment of historical reckoning, in which the social mores of today are being used to reevaluate people and ideas from the past. As a result of this, statues are coming down, buildings are being renamed, and sports teams are being rebranded. Much of this is long overdue—frankly, I’m fine with Christopher Columbus getting taken down a peg, and happy to see the Redskins lose their pejorative team name. There is real value in identifying and confronting the racism, sexism, and chauvinism of past eras; I think it is healthy for us to see historical figures in their full humanity, which includes their vices as well as their virtues, and to understand the complexity of previous ideologies, with their tangled webs of noble aspirations and crass self-interests. A more clear-eyed view of the past can teach us humility and warn us against assuming our own moral primacy; in studying the errors of our predecessors, we should be better able to identify our own hypocrisies and ethical blind spots.
Yet quite the opposite seems to be happening. The current revisionist movement, although born out of an understandable anger over the injustices and misrepresentations of the past, is rapidly devolving into a self-righteous smugness. Instead of thoughtfully reinterpreting historical figures and ideologies in a fair but frank manner, many people (more so on the left but with plenty on the right as well) are criticizing the racism, sexism, and other moral failings of yesteryear not because they wish to warn us against that kind of hypocrisy—pointing out that we ourselves might be committing similar sins (just in newer guises)—but because they want to show the world that they are better, that they have transcended the sins of the past and achieved a moral apex from which they can sit in judgment of not only our ancestors, but also those of us living imperfect moral lives here and now. (For this, one can easily point to the advent of trends like “cancel culture” and “de-platforming.”)
This mentality greatly troubles me. Again, I do not deny the validity of criticizing people and ideas from the past—of recognizing the ignorance of their words and actions and the shortcomings of their moral worldviews—but I strongly believe that the ideal result of such an exercise is not smugness but humility. Studying the prejudices and inequalities of the past should develop in us a greater capacity to recognize our own era’s biases so that we may strive to mitigate them. But I find that many of today’s loudest critics—those most eager to see statues torn down and names stripped from buildings—are instead firmly convinced of these two things: the undeniable sinfulness of our predecessors and the indisputable righteousness of themselves. Their efforts seem aimed not at learning from historical mistakes to create a more enlightened present, but rather at flogging our forebears as a way to exhibit and assert their own moral superiority.
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It’s so easy to view with scorn those who lived centuries or even decades ago. “How could they have been so ignorant and backwards?” we ask disdainfully. “Didn’t they know that men and women are equals, or that prejudice based on skin color or religion is wrong?” This is a common sentiment among us, if rather simplistic and largely unfair. But lately, it seems that it is not enough to accuse our predecessors of simple ignorance; instead, they are now regularly charged with intentional injustice. I’ve heard many critics (including some of my own friends) insist that those men and women of the past did indeed know that such beliefs were immoral, but that they chose to deliberately ignore any concerns out of selfish interest or just sheer stubbornness…or maybe even genuine wickedness.
For example, some will say that Thomas Jefferson obviously knew that racial equality was right and keeping slaves was wrong; there were plenty of abolitionists around at the time declaring the sinfulness of slavery, and even Jefferson’s war buddy Tadeusz Kościuszko urged him to free his slaves. The man who wrote that “all men are created equal” could surely not have been ignorant of the moral conundrum posed by slavery. Therefore, Jefferson must have deliberately suppressed his moral guilt so that he could continue to benefit from the slave system; this demonstrates his lack of ethics and undermines his reputation as a freedom fighter and democratic hero. We should, the critics say, no longer celebrate him, cite his words, or raise statues in his honor—he should be effectively “canceled.”
I find this view deeply disconcerting, for a couple reasons. The first is that demanding moral perfection is a fruitless exercise. Insisting that we should only celebrate people who have lived blameless lives—blameless, that is, according to our current 21st-century standards—is going to leave us with few (if any) moral archetypes. Abraham Lincoln, despite his role in ending slavery, certainly expressed his share of racist sentiments over the years, while Martin Luther King, Jr., despite being a man of God, was also a womanizer and an adulterer. Should we renounce these men and no longer celebrate their courageous deeds or quote their inspiring speeches? Winston Churchill, who stood up to fascism and helped save democracy in the West, was also an implacable opponent of Mahatma Gandhi and the struggle for Indian independence. Toussaint Louverture, who helped Haiti overthrow its European rulers and end plantation slavery, was himself a slave owner who happily allied with the colonial powers when it suited him. Human beings are extraordinarily complicated; each man or woman is both a unique individual and a product of their time and place. We gain nothing by trying to find moral paragons, especially given that each age assumes its own new set of ethical standards. So it can be simultaneously true that Jefferson was very politically progressive for his time, but was also heavily influenced by the prevailing race and class sentiments of that era.
A second challenge is this: How can we possibly think that people 100 years from now will view us any more favorably? Are those who would today condemn someone like Theodore Roosevelt for expressing the racist and sexist sentiments of his time actually convinced that they themselves will not be similarly condemned by future generations? I can’t imagine that such will be the case—it presumes that some of us living now have achieved moral perfection and that no more progress can be made. It also ignores the aforementioned fact that morals and values evolve and change over time. There are behaviors and mentalities today, practiced even by our most “woke” virtue signalers, that will no doubt seem horrifying to our distant progeny.
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One example that stands out to me is our current attitude toward and treatment of animals. The vast majority of Americans today—even those who vocally decry racism, sexism, transphobia, etc.—are perfectly comfortable engaging in speciesism. It is estimated that only five to eight percent of Americans are vegetarians, which means that nearly everyone engages in carnism. And where do we get our meat, cheese, and eggs? Almost exclusively from factory farms, which are absolutely nightmarish places. Each year, billions of animals are born, raised, and slaughtered in these environments of abject suffering…and yet almost all Americans choose to blithely ignore such anguish so that they can continue happily eating their eggs, bacon, and chicken nuggets. Nor can it be claimed that the American people just don’t know that factory farms are terrible—for decades, writers like Peter Singer and action groups like PETA have made it abundantly clear that our modern food system is heinously exploitative and inflicts unimaginable suffering on other sentient creatures. If we feel justified in condemning a liberal like Thomas Jefferson for also being a man of his time—for following common racial practices instead of heeding the fringe voices decrying the marginalization of dark-skinned people—then future generations have every right to denounce modern-day feminists or civil rights advocates for being meat eaters. Clearly, these people are hypocritical speciesists: their calls for freedom and equality only apply to humans, while they ignore the plight of other intelligent animals.
But say you are a vegetarian or a vegan. Does that let you off the hook? Not likely. What if you own a pet? Is it right to keep another creature for your own pleasure, to treat them as property? Will this one day be seen as analogous to white masters keeping black slaves? “Oh, but I treat my pet like my own child,” you might say. “I spoil them and do everything I can to make them happy.” Well, in that case, can a slave-owner who is kind to his slaves claim exemption from criticism and be held free of wrongdoing? Of course not—even such benevolent paternalism would fail to neutralize our moral objections. Meanwhile, most of our dogs, cats, and rabbits are the product of eugenics-like breeding programs; we select traits that we find cute or useful, even if those traits are inherently detrimental to the animal. (For instance, dachshunds, bred to hunt in deep burrows, are notoriously prone to spinal problems due to their body type.) And what about those of us who make trips to zoos, or attend dolphin shows, or watch animal agility competitions—will others someday chastise us in the same way that we now chastise those who frequented minstrel shows in the early 1900s. These comparisons may seem ridiculous, but I don’t think they are. The majority of people a century ago were perfectly comfortable with at least some degree of racism or sexism; the ideas that blacks were inferior to whites, and women inferior to men, enjoyed wide acceptance. Meanwhile, homosexuality was generally recognized as a perversion, and the idea of “gay rights” was outlandish. Our ancestors were people of their time, and influenced by the dominant cultural norms. And it’s perfectly likely that some of today’s dominant cultural norms—e.g., it’s ok to eat animals or keep them as pets—will seem abhorrent to people decades in the future.
The point is that we don’t really know how morals and values will change and evolve in the years to come. But it is extremely likely that certain attitudes or behaviors that are widely practiced today and seen as perfectly “normal” will appear reprehensible to later generations. Even those who view themselves as moral paragons according to our current progressive ideals will one day seem backwards and bigoted. As such, I encourage all of us to offer a greater degree of empathy to those from the past whose views offend our modern sensibilities, and to use their failings not as a platform to elevate ourselves, but as a mirror in which to contemplate our own errors.
