You can never be progressive enough

Over at The American Catholic, Donald McClarey looks at a recent example of modern liberalism eating its own.  A month or so ago, I was going to post something about this, but not confine it to just the US.  It was about some protesters at the University of Ghana objecting to a statue of Gandhi, since Gandhi was known to espouse some pretty white supremacist notions about Africans.  That’s Gandhi, in some ways the spiritual replacement for Jesus in our post-Christian world.  And yet, for those Africans, not so much.  And it wasn’t just those rascally Africans.

When we build a movement on brutally and mercilessly condemning the past, it doesn’t take long to realize that today will be someone else’s past.  And if the standard is to judge history based on the here and now, to do so without thought of anything other than the failings or sins of anything beginning with yesterday and extending backward, then it stands to reason future generations might repay the favor.

Will we pull up in time?  Or are we doomed to stand by while everything including the kitchen sink is thrown out in favor of whoever has the power and yells the loudest at the moment?  We’ll see.  If everything we hold dear is eventually reviled as despicable, including such quaint notions as liberty, freedom and equality, it would serve us right.  Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be us who would pay the price.  Just our legacies.