Approaching history with condescending arrogance, as the woke movement does, merely highlights the smallness of the examiners. //

Clearly, the political left has a significant problem with our national story. They don’t understand history, either the actual developments that made the United States or the field of study that seeks to make sense of that process.

Historians try to understand how and why human beings acted the way they did in the context of their circumstances and possibilities. But social justice warriors know better. For them, the past is a convenient arena in which to practice the latest exercise in cancel culture.

The shocking ignorance of the past many social justice warriors display is all too evident. The 1619 Project overflows with untruthful assertions and gross distortions, beginning with its ludicrous claim that the American Revolution was launched to protect slavery. A clueless woke mob in Madison, Wisconsin dismembered a statue of an outspoken abolitionist and pulled down another symbolizing the advance of women’s rights.

One of the most egregious errors committed in San Francisco concerned poor Paul Revere, who was unhorsed from his midnight ride because he participated in the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. The school board decried this as a campaign to capture American Indian land when, in fact, it was a failed assault on a British fort during the American Revolution.

While this disdain for historical facts is distressing, even more troubling, however is the woke movement’s profoundly wrongheaded approach to history itself. Sometimes, they simply seek to abolish it.

Leftist disciples shrewdly sense (and fear) that history tends to create a sense of attachment and perspective, qualities that blunt efforts to remake the world anew. Revolutionary zealots have always targeted historical symbols as a key enemy in their crusades for purification. In the French Revolution, Jacobins sought to erase the centuries-old influence of Christianity by installing the Cult of the Supreme Being to harness religious feeling without the danger of religious content. //

The awakened believe that the past is just like the present and its inhabitants should be judged by contemporary standards. This is mistaken. Early on, the student of history learns to beware of “presentism,” or judging the past by the standards of the present. If not, you end up condemning Charlemagne for not endorsing women’s rights or Susan B. Anthony for insensitivity to transgenderism. The awakened believe that the past is a pantheon of heroes and villains to be lionized or condemned. //

The awakened believe that the past is a morality tale to be ransacked for lessons illustrating good and evil. Yet even a cursory look at past events discloses a whirl of motivations, often conflicting or ambiguous, at work in shaping outcomes. Henry Ford’s adoption of the assembly line in 1911, for instance, a move that reshaped the modern world, combined idealism (lowering costs to make the automobile available to average people), interest (boosting profits from an increased volume of sales), and unforeseen developments (such as overly repetitious labor workers often resented or rejected).

The awakened, however, believe that an overarching theory — class conflict or modernization not long ago; whiteness, the patriarchy, heteronormativity, intersectionality currently — offers a tidy explanation for everything. This is mistaken. The incredible complexity of human history demands multicausal explanations and vigorous debate among competing interpretations, not a conga line of liberationist theorists sent snaking through the past shimmying and shaking to the rhythm of revolution.

‘Interrogate the Past, But Don’t Bully It’

Judicious students of the American experience steer clear of these mistakes and approach it cautiously, seeking wisdom, not weaponization. They understand that history does not repeat, but instead unfolds as a process that produces the present. They understand that historical facts matter to provide credible evidence in support of reasonable judgments along with all the facts, not just those cherry-picked for ideological reasons. //

Edmund Burke observed that human society is a contract between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born,” and urged citizens to beware those who “should act as if they were the entire master.” In that spirit we should ponder American history as a pursuit of political participation, individual equality, constitutional order, social opportunity, and economic freedom, however imperfectly realized and full of ambiguities it has been.

We should celebrate what is worthy in our past and chastise what is reprehensible. We should submit our history to rigorous, fair-minded analysis and see what it can tell us about the human condition and how we got where we are.

This important task demands thoughtful examination and nuanced judgments, not a frenzied kangaroo court convened by wokesters jacked up on ideological amphetamines and spouting slogans. Confronting the imperfections of the past — as well as the human beings who inhabited it — should heighten an awareness not of our superiority but our shortcomings. In the end, such a careful investigation of history can provide the key inspiration for us to overcome them.