Past and present

Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, wrote George Santayana. And I say, history would be easier to learn from if we could keep our meddling hands off it.

Last month, the U.S. Treasury announced a redesign of the $10 bill, implying that Alexander Hamilton’s days are numbered (unless they decide to take an ax to Andrew Jackson instead). The following week, the governor of South Carolina announced that the Confederate battle flag would be removed from the state capitol in response to growing pressure after the Charleston church shooting. These events are related in that they tell us something of how difficult, if not impossible, it is to learn from the past if we don’t respect it.

Last spring we observed the 150th anniversary of the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, followed within days by Lincoln’s assassination. It seems impossibly long ago, but I remember people who remember people who remember that war. My father, growing up in Alabama in the early 1910s, had relatives still reeling from Sherman’s march. He inherited the “Lost Cause” mythology of noble Southerners fighting for their constitutional rights while loyal Negroes maintained the farm back home. That’s what the stars and bars meant to him, even though, as a WWII veteran, he also revered the stars and stripes.

All of us are grave robbers, seizing from the dead what our own cause demands.

But I grew up during the last days of the Jim Crow South, where blacks stayed in their own neighborhoods and went to their own schools and attended the State Fair on “colored days.” The Confederate flag waved behind countless demonstrations featuring screaming whites and stoic blacks—a clear and deliberate signal of “segregation then, segregation now, segregation forever.” I was proud of being a Southerner, loved Civil War lore and playing Yankees and Rebels in the backyard. But during those years, the symbolism of the Confederate flag became much more complex for me.

As societies change, history resembles a moving target, and every generation aims at it from a different angle. Conservatives point to the heroic to show our ancestors were wise and virtuous. Progressives latch on to the lurid and bizarre to prove our ancestors were bigoted nuts. All of us are grave robbers, seizing from the dead what our own cause demands. One cause is the elevation of women: We need a woman in the White House and on the currency, some say, so one of those white guys has to go.

And now the times (or at least the last couple of months) have recast the Confederacy as one gigantic “trigger warning” for the supersensitive. In a brief survey of this morning’s news, I’ve encountered motions to change the name of Robert E. Lee Park in Baltimore, suspend the Rebel mascot and singing of “Dixie” at an Arkansas high school, and clear Walmart shelves of anything bearing Confederate flag imagery. Is the goal to learn from the past or consign it to the memory hole?

If the latter, beware: Scrubbing history was Winston Smith’s job in 1984. He who controls the past controls the future, ran the Party slogan. What’s happening now is the result of hysteria, not government, but in a way that’s worse. If we ignore the origin and outworking of our sins, personal and national, they will overtake us again.

Learning from history requires careful attention, awareness of one’s own biases, and deep humility. For we are history too, as prone to foibles and blind spots as our ancestors. Imagine how future ages will judge our artifacts, such as:

History is not entirely our creation: It’s also God’s instrument. One day He Himself entered the ever-flowing stream and redirected it, showing us a new way forward. The Confederate flag, for instance, with its blood-red background, might also symbolize the immense cost of righting a great wrong. Instead of trying to erase history, we could accept it, repent, and forgive. What’s the alternative?

Email jcheaney@wng.org