The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 57 - Stop Trying To Erase The Past

00:00:00.000 On my show a couple of days ago, we discussed the effort to, that's been going on for quite

00:00:05.700 some time now, to erase our national history and to indict the heroic figures who built our

00:00:12.440 civilization. And I pointed out that while the pioneers, explorers, conquerors, settlers,

00:00:18.500 pilgrims, founders were not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, they still accomplished great

00:00:26.520 things. And many of them were great people. And so we should look to them, admire them, honor them,

00:00:32.720 and yes, build statues to them and everything. And I also pointed out that while we hold,

00:00:38.740 you know, these Western figures to this modern standard, we hold them to a modern standard,

00:00:46.780 especially on racial issues, and we spit on their graves if they don't live up to it. 1.00

00:00:52.900 While we do that, you don't find that in any other country, in any other culture. That's not going

00:00:59.740 on in any other country or culture. It's only in the West. They're not doing the same thing with

00:01:04.180 their own heritage and their own historic heroes, and we don't expect them to. So I went in on the

00:01:09.620 show, I went into extensive detail, just as an example, talking about how many Native American

00:01:15.500 tribes and civilizations were unspeakably brutal, murderous, in some cases cannibalistic. They

00:01:22.520 raped, enslaved, destroyed, you know, human sacrifices, so on and so forth. Yet nobody would

00:01:29.580 ever tell a Native American not to be proud of their heritage. Nobody would tell them not to honor

00:01:34.780 their historical heroes, their historical figures. That only happens in the West.

00:01:41.340 So I want to expand on that conversation now a little bit and talk about the real problem

00:01:48.720 that arises when we start to do this. When we go back and we censor the past and we condemn

00:01:56.820 our ancestors and the people who built this civilization, when we start doing that, a really

00:02:02.840 big problem happens. When we make essentially a cartoon of the past, when we make caricatures

00:02:09.020 of our historical figures, and we make them into these kind of villainous cartoons, there's a big

00:02:15.640 problem. I want to talk about what that problem is. And as an example of this phenomenon and of the

00:02:22.400 problem itself, let's talk about this situation with Laura Ingalls Wilder, who, of course, was a

00:02:28.040 famous author in the mid-19th century, early 20th century. She wrote The Little House on the Prairie

00:02:33.440 Books. But now, the American Library Association is dropping her name from a prestigious children's

00:02:40.640 award that they've been giving out for, I don't know, 50 or 60 years. They've had her name on it.

00:02:45.820 And they're taking her name off. And there's this process now of kind of banishing her from the

00:02:51.820 children's literature space because of her culturally insensitive writings. So I want to read quickly a

00:02:58.740 quote from Jim Neal, the president of the American Library Association. He's explaining this decision.

00:03:05.220 He says,

00:03:06.000 Wilder's books are a product of her life experiences and perspective as a settler in America's 1800s.

00:03:12.780 Her works reflect dated cultural attitudes toward indigenous people and people of color that

00:03:18.560 contradict modern acceptance, celebration, and understanding of diverse communities.

00:03:23.920 Well, geez, I mean, that's surprising, isn't it? That somebody who was writing in 1905 would have

00:03:32.120 a dated perspective on something. I mean, that's totally shocking, isn't it? And then if you're

00:03:37.400 wondering, well, what are these horrible things that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote? There's a New York

00:03:44.360 Times article that describes some of Wilder's offenses. I'll read a little bit of it. It says,

00:03:50.320 in the 1935 book Little House on the Prairie, for example, multiple characters espoused versions of

00:03:57.560 the view that, quote, the only good Indian was a dead Indian. In one scene, a character describes

00:04:03.160 Native Americans as wild animals, undeserving of the land they lived on. Little Town on the Prairie, 1.00

00:04:09.700 published in 1941, included a description of a minstrel show with, quote, five black-faced men

00:04:19.880 in raggedy-taggedy uniforms alongside a jolting illustration of the scene. Debbie Reese, a scholar

00:04:26.840 whose writing and research focuses on portrayals of American Indians in children's literature, says

00:04:32.080 there's this very subtle but very clear fear generated throughout the books. And she says it's

00:04:37.660 not appropriate for young students, maybe for high schoolers, but not for young students.

00:04:42.060 So, in other words, the characters in her books had attitudes that the people in that time and in

00:04:53.100 that setting would have had. And that's a problem. You see, because we're not allowed to acknowledge

00:04:58.860 that anymore. We have to hide our children from it in shame. We have to shield them from it. You think

00:05:06.220 about all the things we don't bother shielding children from anymore? I mean, all the, it's like

00:05:10.680 you've got people, parents and particularly school administrators and teachers who think there's

00:05:17.580 nothing wrong with introducing children to the most depraved sexual ideas and sex acts imaginable

00:05:25.600 at very young ages. But, oh no, you know, an unflattering portrayal of Native Americans in a

00:05:32.080 children's book. Well, that, I mean, that is just, no, we can't do that. So, of course, all these books

00:05:37.580 have to be gotten rid of, and any person, well, any white person, we should say, who may have possessed 0.99

00:05:43.780 such attitudes back in the day must be posthumously exiled from polite society. That's what we're doing. 0.94

00:05:52.140 And it's complete madness. I mean, it is total madness to be doing this. And I'll explain why. First of all,

00:05:59.460 on the issue of historical racism, and I know this might be a little bit upsetting for people to hear,

00:06:05.760 because I'm going, yes, I'm going to make the case that for a, for a white settler in the 1800s,

00:06:13.540 or a pilgrim in the 1600s, or an explorer conquistador in the 1500s, for them to have racist

00:06:22.800 attitudes was not, that, that, those racist attitudes were not as bad as the racist attitudes

00:06:29.860 that you might find today. In other words, it is worse for you and I to be racist than it was for

00:06:36.960 them. Their, their, their moral guilt for their racism was, I think, severely mitigated by many

00:06:47.220 different circumstances. Because you, now, if you're watching this or listening to this right

00:06:52.600 now, and you're not racist, well then, I mean, good for you. Congratulations. If I had a cookie,

00:06:58.000 I would give it to you. I mean, you know, go get yourself a cookie for not being racist. Congrats.

00:07:02.920 You're, you're a wonderful person on the thumbs up on not being racist. Wonderful. Good for you.

00:07:08.600 Just, you should be so proud, but that's not an achievement. That is not a moral achievement on your part.

00:07:14.060 Being, for most of us, being racist was never even really like an option. We just, we grew up in a

00:07:20.720 world where, for, for a lot of us anyway, we grew up in an environment where it just never even came

00:07:25.920 up. It never even, I mean, it never even occurred to most. It never even occurred to me to, to be

00:07:30.300 racist. It just, it, I just, and, and if it ever did occur to anyone, you also grew up in a society

00:07:35.580 where racism is extremely socially unacceptable and it will be socially punished, maybe even legally

00:07:43.120 punished in some circumstances. So it was never really, never really occurred to anyone to be

00:07:48.780 racist. That's, that's not the world that we live in. So it means you, you deserve absolutely no credit

00:07:54.560 whatsoever for not being racist. That is just kind of a bare minimum thing in our society. So it doesn't

00:08:03.460 afford you the high moral position that you think it does. Okay. It doesn't give you the, the,

00:08:10.260 the position where you could stand up on your pedestal and look down on historical people and 0.72

00:08:16.680 say, well, tsk, tsk, tsk, look at those horrible people with their racist attitudes. I'm so much 0.88

00:08:22.140 better than them. No, it doesn't give you that. It doesn't give you that position because the fact is

00:08:29.180 this, almost everybody in the world up until about 1960 was racist by our definition of the term.

00:08:39.960 Almost everyone. I mean, they were all racist. The idea of universal racial equality is very new. It is

00:08:49.060 uniquely modern. It is uniquely Western. Even now today, currently, there are many places in the world

00:08:57.080 where that does not exist. There are many places in the world where racism is still mainstream. And most of

00:09:02.340 those places are non-Western places. Racism was and still is incredibly common in some non-Western, non-white 0.54

00:09:11.020 cultures. But let's look at this historically. Prior to the mid-20th century, racism was largely a given for

00:09:20.780 most people across the world, across the races. I mean, if you think for a minute that this was unique

00:09:28.200 to white people, then you really are just an incredible fool. And I don't mean that as an 1.00

00:09:34.120 insult. I just mean that you really are. I mean, some people are fools and you'd be a fool, a complete

00:09:37.900 total fool who's never read a book in your life if you actually think that. No, this was not just a 1.00

00:09:42.900 white person. Even the people that we credit with being reformers and progressives when it comes to

00:09:48.540 racial issues. Even they would be, if you were to take those people and pluck them from their home 1.00

00:09:55.480 in, you know, the 19th century or the 18th century, whatever, if you were to take them and then put 0.95

00:10:01.140 them into 2018, they would be slobbering backwards, insane bigots by our standards today. Abraham Lincoln 0.91

00:10:08.520 is credited with freeing the slaves. Well, you know what? He also, he was also an avowed racist. He's on

00:10:15.580 the record saying he doesn't believe that blacks and whites are equal. He doesn't want to see social

00:10:20.120 and political, social or political equality. In fact, what he wanted to do is he wanted to ship

00:10:25.180 all the slaves back to Africa. Now, if you were to take that position and Abraham Lincoln is admired by

00:10:31.700 almost everyone as being this, you know, someone who believed in equality and so forth. But if you

00:10:38.640 were to take Abraham Lincoln and put him in 2018 and have him run a campaign on the, on the, in his,

00:10:46.660 one of his campaign platforms is, well, white and black people aren't, aren't equal. Let's ship all the 1.00

00:10:50.960 black people back to Africa. Well, that, no, I don't think it would be as, I don't think we'd be 1.00

00:10:55.680 celebrating him anymore, would we? By the way, Grant, General Grant was probably less racist than even

00:11:03.060 Abraham Lincoln, but he was also a, an anti-Semite. Famously, Grant issued an order expelling all the

00:11:11.000 Jews from, from the areas that he controlled in Western Tennessee. And again, he's looked at as a

00:11:17.400 figure of, you know, a basically progressive figure when it comes to race and as someone who helped to

00:11:23.540 liberate the slaves. But this is how ingrained this kind of bigotry was. That doesn't make it okay,

00:11:32.180 but it does put it into context. We have to see it in the context of the time. And so, no,

00:11:40.280 if everybody in the world is racist, and that's just how you looked at the world,

00:11:44.580 does that make racism okay? No, it doesn't. Does it severely mitigate your personal moral guilt for

00:11:52.460 being racist? Absolutely it does. I mean, is it really so shocking? Think about it today. You know,

00:12:00.240 we look at the, we have a very, we have a very global perspective of the world today. We look at

00:12:05.460 the world as a world. We see, and we, you know, the, there is no race, but the human race and so

00:12:11.780 forth. I mean, we're all one species. We're all one race and it's all one world. And that's how we see

00:12:17.100 things. And that's correct. That's the correct way to see things. We also have an understanding of

00:12:22.760 biology and science. We have an understanding that historical people didn't have. And we also have

00:12:30.480 a perspective that they didn't have. They didn't have a global perspective. They didn't think of

00:12:38.340 the world as the globe. They thought of the world as the area where they live. They thought of the

00:12:44.340 world as their civilization, their culture. So, you know, an ancient Roman who would have said that

00:12:51.620 Rome controls the entire world. Well, it never controlled anywhere close to the entire world,

00:12:57.060 but that's how they would have seen it. Like, that's the world. This is your civilization. It's

00:13:01.240 the world. So for them, and again, that's not a white, it's not how white people saw it. It's how 0.67

00:13:06.040 everybody saw it. So for them to come upon a new race or a new world, to stumble upon a new civilization,

00:13:16.100 well, for that process, that clashing of civilizations, that would be akin to modern people

00:13:23.760 traveling to another planet and encountering an alien species. It's comparable with that.

00:13:32.500 So when white pioneers met Indians, you can't compare that to you going to the supermarket and 0.99

00:13:39.980 being in line with someone of a different race. Okay, that's not what it was like. For them,

00:13:44.660 it was like for both, both sides, Indians, whites, it was more comparable to encountering a whole new

00:13:50.840 species, a whole new, it's like these people came from a different planet. That's what both of them

00:13:55.720 were thinking. And you know what? If that were to happen, and one of these days we do stumble upon

00:14:01.540 some other race on another planet, which won't ever happen, but if it did, and we saw that, you know, 0.93

00:14:06.960 they're like us in some ways, but they're also very different in others. And then we saw that perhaps

00:14:12.880 they engaged in practices that are to us horrifying and incomprehensible and brutal and savage,

00:14:21.680 which, you know, some of the pioneers and settlers and conquerors, they would have seen,

00:14:27.060 that's how they would have seen human sacrifices and scalping and cannibalism. But if we were to

00:14:31.840 encounter that with this, you know, with this hypothetical alien race, so again, you know,

00:14:35.360 they look a lot like us, but not, but they're also profoundly different in how they look.

00:14:38.940 They're very different in how they act, how they speak, their customs and everything. If that were

00:14:44.100 to happen for us, there would be a very real debate among us about whether or not these creatures are

00:14:51.460 equal to us. That would not be a given under any circumstance. When the astronauts came back from

00:14:58.380 planet X and they met the aliens, they told us about them, it would not be a given among all of us

00:15:04.340 that, oh yeah, well, they're just like us. There would be a real debate about the moral standing

00:15:09.520 of this alien species. And if we were to come to the conclusion that they're, you know, they're not

00:15:15.900 like us, they're, we may come to the conclusion that, oh, they're like animals. Or we may come to

00:15:20.520 the conclusion that, oh, they're actually like gods because they're technologically advanced.

00:15:25.500 We'd probably be, we would be wrong in those conclusions, but they're not crazy, irrational

00:15:31.440 conclusions. They're kind of understandable conclusions because of our lack of information.

00:15:38.120 Because we've encountered this mind boggling new race of creatures and we know nothing about them.

00:15:46.960 So we're coming to us, we, we, we form assumptions. Those assumptions might be wrong,

00:15:52.440 but considering our lack of information, they're also kind of understandable. So for people in history,

00:15:59.220 white, black, brown, all races, for them, when they met, that's what it was like. It was like

00:16:04.400 encountering an alien from outer space. It was not immediately obvious to these people, to them,

00:16:12.780 that the other people were equal. And you can sit there and you could say, well, that's unacceptable.

00:16:17.560 They should have known better. But that's the key. Known. They didn't know. They were ignorant.

00:16:23.940 They didn't have all the information. You have all the information. And you live in a society where 1.00

00:16:32.200 racism is totally unacceptable. They don't have the information. And they live in a society where

00:16:39.100 it's just a given. And you know what? Even though we have all the information and we have all the

00:16:45.400 science, we still get this wrong, don't we? We still, even now, we still make the same mistake

00:16:54.000 because half of the people who are shocked at Laura Ingalls Wilder for having unflattering views

00:16:58.800 of Native Americans, half of those people would look at unborn human beings and say, well, they're not

00:17:04.480 really people. And they have no excuse. They have all the information. They have the scientific

00:17:09.420 enlightenment. And they're still making the same mistake that they condemn Laura Ingalls Wilder for,

00:17:16.800 or they've condemned the pilgrims for. Well, guess what? The pilgrims had an excuse. You don't.

00:17:21.980 Second thing, the other really big problem with this attitude of erasing our past and turning

00:17:27.900 historical figures into cartoon villains and refusing to look at their sins in proper perspective,

00:17:33.220 the other problem is that we lose the opportunity to learn from the past and to learn from these

00:17:40.140 people. And I don't mean, well, learn from the past or you're doomed to repeat it. I don't mean

00:17:44.940 that. That's not what I'm talking about. You know, I don't really like that. I've never liked that

00:17:48.320 phrase, honestly, because it carries with it an implicit bias against the past. It assumes that,

00:17:56.560 number one, the only lessons we can learn from the past are negative lessons. And number two,

00:18:01.120 the worst thing that could ever happen is that we end up being like our ancestors were. I don't agree

00:18:08.080 with that. I think there are positive lessons to learn from the past. And I think that in a lot of

00:18:12.940 ways, we would be served very well if we were more like our ancestors. Not when it comes to racism,

00:18:18.840 but when it comes to many other things. You know, it's kind of like saying, well, learn from your

00:18:23.260 parents or you're doomed to be just like them, which, yeah, if your parents are bad, if you have bad,

00:18:29.100 awful parents, then that's good advice. Because if your parents are awful, then the only lessons 0.86

00:18:34.600 they ever taught you are negative lessons. And really the worst thing that could ever happen to

00:18:38.240 you is that you end up being like them. But the past doesn't need to be a bad parent. The past can

00:18:45.020 also be a good parent. And you know, if a man has a good father, then the advice you give him is

00:18:51.640 learn from your dad, or you won't turn out to be the same kind of man. So there were a lot of good

00:18:59.060 men and good women in the past, a lot of heroes. And we would do well to look at their positives

00:19:06.920 so that we can emulate them and hopefully turn out to be like them, or at least mostly like them,

00:19:13.580 minus things like racism. That's not to say that we should idolize the past. We shouldn't do that

00:19:18.220 either. But I don't think there's not much of a temptation these days to idolize the past.

00:19:21.840 There's much more of a temptation to idolize the present and the future, and to assume that whatever

00:19:26.300 is now must be better. And whatever happens tomorrow must be better still. Now that's an idol,

00:19:32.120 that is making an idol of the present and future. And I would submit that that's even worse in some

00:19:38.180 ways than ancestor worship. But I'm not talking about ancestor worship. I'm talking about looking at

00:19:43.080 our ancestors in context, in perspective, and accepting that there were great men and women

00:19:49.080 in the past, even if they had flaws, even if they were racist, there were still great men and women,

00:19:55.280 and we could learn quite a bit from them. We could learn positive lessons from them if we would look at

00:20:02.040 them and stop turning them into cartoons and say, oh, they were just all racist, so they were terrible,

00:20:06.760 and that's all they were. I mean, we're taking these complex people who did incredible things,

00:20:11.360 and we're boiling everything down to, oh, they were racist, not understanding that by that logic,

00:20:17.860 we have just dismissed everybody in history. Not just them, but everybody. If on that basis,

00:20:25.880 we can dismiss an entire person from the past, then we're dismissing basically everybody.

00:20:31.000 The Little House on the Prairie is a perfect example, because you could look at those books,

00:20:35.500 or a child could especially, and you could learn quite a bit about family values, hard work,

00:20:40.580 responsibility, self-sacrifice, yet we throw all those lessons away. We dump them down the drain,

00:20:47.140 because a child may also learn that people of that time had unflattering views about other races,

00:20:52.600 and I find that very foolish, because we're getting rid of all the positive lessons because of one bad

00:20:58.960 thing. And there, I mean, take a figure like someone I personally admire, Stonewall Jackson. He was a man of 0.58

00:21:05.380 incredible integrity, an intensely religious man, dedicated to his wife, to God, to his men.

00:21:12.280 He was a brilliant military commander, I think the best in the Civil War, one of the best in American

00:21:16.840 history, one of the best in Western history. And we could look to him, and we could learn quite a bit.

00:21:22.860 We could learn positive lessons from him. This country would be a better place if there were more

00:21:28.720 men like Stonewall Jackson in it. But there won't be, because we take Stonewall Jackson, we tear down

00:21:34.720 his statues, we look with contempt upon him, we make him into this ridiculous stereotype of a racist 0.93

00:21:41.560 Southerner, and all the positives that he could teach us, we just throw away. We just toss them 0.98

00:21:47.880 into garbage because of the racial issue, everything else. But also, we take that, that's what he becomes, 0.90

00:21:54.060 everything else, throw it in the incinerator. And we do this with almost every white historical figure. 0.95

00:22:00.760 We drain the value, the educational value, out of every historical figure, every era, every event,

00:22:08.420 by making them into easy villains. We lose the whole point of the history book when we erase everything

00:22:17.400 in the history book, and we replace it with sketches and crayon, which is essentially what we've done.

00:22:22.440 And most people now and most children are being raised to have this cartoonish, drawn-in-crayon

00:22:31.320 perspective or view of guys like Stonewall Jackson or Laura Ingalls Wilder, or she wasn't a guy,

00:22:38.580 but you know what I'm saying, to have this sketched-in-crayon view of these historical figures.

00:22:44.700 And so we are cheating ourselves out of the opportunity to learn, and we're cheating them

00:22:52.920 out of the legacy that they have earned through the kind of people that they were and the achievement,

00:22:59.780 the things that they accomplished. And I think it's a terrible mistake. Well, I'm on vacation for the

00:23:04.040 next week, so have a good week, everybody, and I'll talk to you in a little while. Godspeed.

00:23:09.360 Godspeed.

00:23:17.260 Godspeed.

00:23:18.240 Godspeed.

00:23:19.960 Godspeed.

00:23:26.140 Godspeed.

00:23:26.600 Godspeed.

00:23:28.840 Godspeed.

00:23:31.560 Godspeed.

00:23:35.600 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - June 29, 2018

Ep. 57 - Stop Trying To Erase The Past

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