The Cancel Culture Will Be Cancelled

There is a movement afoot in our country to tear the fabric of our history from its foundation and erase both the failures and successes of our past. It is not pretty. The destruction of historic monuments, name-changes that fit in with contemporary times, the erasure of historic murals and paintings, and the hiding of the past as though they are today’s sins. For most Americans these things have served as reminders of what our nation has done to achieve its greatness. Most Americans do not need statues or monuments to remind us of the Revolutionary or Civil War. Most Americans rejected the tyrannical rule of George III, and reveled in Lincoln’s victory and the ending of slavery as a legal institution in America. Of course, there were those for whom these events were sorrowful. England had its loyalists and so too did the Civil War, with Democrats leading the way to segregation, Jim Crow, the KKK and other obstacles to keep a pseudo-slavery in place. It was almost 100 years before the 1965 Voting Rights Bill was passed, which eliminated all barriers, except citizenship, to voting. Without delving into a justification for every monument, painting, mural, building name and song, we should just come to terms and let history stand unaltered and focus on the kind of history we are making now. We must ask ourselves if we want a country in flames devoid of peaceful co-existence, or would we rather work to resolve our outstanding issues? Would we rather come to terms with our glorious, although sometimes tarnished, history or trade it in for some sterile dystopia where our past is forgotten and we fail to learn the lessons of history. The Pugh survey indicated there were 17,000 protestors nationwide in a recent poll. This amounts to .00005 (five 100,000ths, of one percent) of the population making mostly uninformed decisions for the rest of us. Our historic monuments recall the good and bad of our country’s history, from our first colony to our latest burning city. We cannot let the “Cancel Culture” hide or erase our historic past. We must strive to create a current history. One that reflects our desire for greatness, not destruction and revenge. One that says we take pride in what we are doing to make society better now. The past is done and cannot be cancelled, only learned from.