

Politics
There is No Future Without Remembering Our Past
What kind of future do we have if we destroy our past?
We all watched in horror this past summer as radical leftists and anarchists tore down our statues, those monuments that help us remember our past and our history. They are also working overtime to remove true American history from our schools. Why would they do that? What are the ramifications? Simply put, they must destroy our actual past so they can create a fabricated past – one that allows them to use it as a foundation for a radical takeover of America.
PragerU recently released a video by social critic Douglas Murray and he explains what is happening and why in this thought-provoking video (transcript of the video is below). Watch here:
Trending on PolitiCrossing.com: Teaching Terrorists Everywhere that Taking Hostages Works
Transcript:
What kind of future do we have if we destroy our past?
Has anyone who has pulled down a statue of Churchill, Lincoln, or Columbus thought to ask themselves this question?
I doubt it.
The presumption that we can stand in perfect judgment over the lives of historical figures is not merely foolish and unfair, it’s dangerous.
Consider what the statue destroyers are, in effect, saying.
They are saying that people in history should have known what we know.
That’s tantamount to saying, they should have known the future.
This is, of course, absurd.
Yet more and more, people believe it.
Why?
Simple.
It’s what they are taught.
It is the fruit of an education system that long ago prioritized “empathy” over facts; that believes the ultimate point of history is not to learn lessons from it, but to judge it from the pre-ordained left-wing conclusions about such ill-defined concepts as social justice, equity, and tolerance.
Apart from breeding ignorance, this kind of education invites the student (the child, really) to be judge, jury, and executioner over issues that they (and increasingly their teachers) know little or nothing about.
Because no one has bothered to teach them the nuance, complexity, and context that is history.
It also breeds arrogance:
“I know things these people did not know. Therefore, I am better than they were. They have nothing to teach me. In fact, I must teach them.”
And down comes the statue.
A new, “better” history must take the place of the old one.
In America this impulse has culminated in The 1619 Project — an initiative started by The New York Times and now in schools everywhere — which attempts to make the arrival of the first African slaves into the American colonies the foundational date of the American republic.
1776? The American Revolution? In the new history that was just about protecting the Founders’ slave interests. These men — some of the most remarkable humans to have lived at any time — are to be understood simply by their attitude toward this one issue.
The 1619 Project seeks to portray America — the freest, most prosperous nation in world history — as exceptional only in one respect: insofar as being exceptionally bad.
This is a purposefully destructive view of history. It is one intended to pull down rather than build up.
A healthy, humane, and – in the truest sense – liberal mind does not view history as a mere playpen for our moral judgment. It recognizes that people in the past acted on the information they had, just as we do today.
Sure, it would have been nice if the Founders of America had abolished slavery in its Constitution. Some, in fact, tried very hard to do so. But had they been unwilling to compromise, there would be no Constitution and no United States. All the sacrifices of the Revolution would have been lost. So, a compromise balancing the interests of the northern states and the southern states was reached.
It would have been nice if the Japanese had surrendered before atom bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they didn’t. President Truman had to make his decision based on the information he had at the time — that an Allied invasion of the Japanese home island would cost at least a million lives, both American and Japanese.
Of course, the woke mind abhors these subtleties. It knows that it is right and that everybody before our current age — year zero — should have known better. Anyway, they were all bigots. Why should we give them any benefit of the doubt, let alone admire them or learn from them?
Well, maybe because, like everyone else, the great figures of the past did the best they could under the circumstances in which they found themselves. That their efforts largely succeeded is why we are here.
When someone tried to give Sir Isaac Newton credit for his world-changing discoveries in physics, the great man demurred. He said he was only able to achieve what he did by standing on the shoulders of the “giants” who went before him.
Today’s Left rejects Newton’s humility. It doesn’t believe that we stand on anyone’s shoulders. It imagines that if we could only liberate ourselves from the dusty, misguided, and misinformed ideas of the past then we might see further, fly still higher.
This view is wrong.
Divorced from our past we would be utterly lost. We would not rise but plummet. We would be forced to start again with far less insight, and with far poorer examples as our guides.
Ironically, thanks to the statue destroyers, the great figures of the past have never looked greater.
I’m Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, for Prager University.
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Trending on PolitiCrossing.com: Teaching Terrorists Everywhere that Taking Hostages Works
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Terrorists understand the West. Founded on Judeo-Christian values, the West puts a premium on each human life. Our respect for the individual is one of our strengths, but it clearly can cost us in facing terrorists. One cannot fault the families of anyone held hostage for fighting for their release and pleading and praying for their safe return. In the same situation, would not most of us do the same? Terrorists know that.
With the slow and steady drip of more hostages being released every day, the ceasefire continues to be extended and Israel remains constrained from their goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza. With each passing day Israel is forced to face more restrictions in an effort to protect the innocent civilians. They are forced to deal with Hamas, give them supplies, and release dangerous captives back into Gaza.
As Hamas releases captives and the media covers the hostages’ heartwarming return home, Hamas is given the opportunity to present themselves as the “good guys,” releasing women and children to the appreciative eyes of the world. They inflate the numbers of Palestinian women and children already killed in Israel’s response. Hamas is finding that the repeated release will begin to soften the world’s view of their October 7th savagery,
While Israel is being forced to wait and watch the daily trickle of hostages being returned, they know full well that the supplies they’re bringing to Hamas will make their job to eliminate them more difficult. Weapons are being moved, fortifications are strengthened, forces are repositioned, and traps are being put in place to kill Israeli soldiers. Every day they delay their assault, their job is becoming more difficult.
The IDF and Israeli leaders are saying the right things. Getting the hostages returned is a welcome result. They know that having to release them by force would have put far more hostages and soldiers in danger. No doubt, many of the Israeli hostages now free might very well have died in the efforts to free them by force. Good has come, but at what cost to their ultimate aim?
What is rewarded gets replicated. In 2011, the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, also known in Arabic as Wafa al-Ahrar, “Faithful to the Free,” resulted in the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Hamas prisoners held by Israel. It took the release of a thousand terrorists to get one captured soldier. That was a deal Hamas loved. As Israel negotiates now, how many convicted terrorists will be returned to Gaza to release the remaining hostages held captive? Once again, taking hostages is paying off in the number of Hamas terrorists freed.
As the ceasefire is extended and only a few hostages are released per day, the exchange could easily take weeks. Hamas is counting on the international press and wavering Western allies to keep up the pressure on Israel. What they want is a permanent ceasefire, and if Israel caves in and agrees to this, the entire war will have been for nothing. Hamas will remain in power in Gaza, and Israel will be left with a military failure and the assurance that more attacks will continue.
Israel has promised to resume their goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza once the hostage negotiations have been completed. But the anti-Israel media will be ready to savage Israel for even considering to resume the assault.
But resume they must! Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a founding member of Hamas who went undercover as a spy for Israel, provides a warning the West should take to heart: “The danger is if Israel fails in their war in Gaza, which is a brutal war … it will inspire … savages [who will] blackmail superpowers and bring democracies to their knees. If Israel fails in Gaza, all will be next.”
Thankfully, Israel is used to being hated. They know what it is to go it alone if necessary. Netanyahu has promised to resume the assault and to take out Hamas leaders living in presumed safety abroad. Many of the Hamas fighters released in the hostage exchange will no doubt join the fight against Israel. Hopefully, many of them will die in their futile defense.
Terrorism must not win the day. Israel would be wise to put a time limit on when all hostages must be released. Provide a safe page for innocents until that deadline is reached. Some remaining hostages may die, but what assurance does Israel have that some hostages are not already dead. Israel must finish the job or an emboldened Hamas will be free to repeat their savage attacks. Evil must be defeated. God willing, it will be.
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