Preserving History

In this ongoing series of posts, I write (mostly) about our democracy from a perspective that prioritizes reason and sympathy. Some posts generate a lot of comments, some a few. My discipline has been and remains to preserve all my comments, and to create a comment highlighting my mistakes if I edit a post to correct a substantive error (this is, anything that is not a typo).

This forces a discipline on me that I'm always conscious of. Everything I write under those constraints needs to be something I can take some measure of pride in, even years down the road. I presume, for instance, that I will change my mind on at least a few topics I discuss. That is what reason and growth requires, and that is what I am committed to. And it if the expected result of learning from any conversations my posts facilitate. So this discipline requires writing with open mindedness even about topics my gut feels certain about - maybe especially about such topics. And it requires taking the time to find a courteous way to express points where my friends and I disagree.

This, to me, at a small scale, is a way of preserving history - we preserve facts with their blemishes, and learn to live with those histories.

On the other hand, our heros can still get replaced. When I was in high school, I loved the Electric Light Orchestra. As I got older, I was exposed to more musical ideas and ELO was moved off their pedestal. It still enjoy a good tune of theirs, but they no longer hold that same place of honor.

Removing statues that are primarily about glorifying the leaders who took half the country to war over the right to enslave others seems more like picking a new style of music to dance to and less like erasing history. Sometimes the old music is stale and needs to be replaced. Changing textbooks to suppress the central role of abolitionist movements in bringing about the Civil War - that is what erasing history looks like.