Repudiating History's Teaching

Peggy Noonan: [bold added]

(Babylon Bee satire)

In the past, whether you were racist could be judged by your actions. You held ugly biases, you said or did things that were definitionally discriminatory. The bad news is that you were this way, but the good news is that you could change. You could widen your lens, let some love in, say, think or do better things. You could improve....

Now the idea has taken hold that the charge of racism doesn’t derive from thoughts and actions, from what people say and do, but from who they are. If you are white that accident of birth left you racist, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ve got white privilege. You are unconsciously favored, and unconsciously assign disfavor. Either way you’re guilty. No action or word can turn this around.

As American society retreats from Judeo-Christianity due to its failings and supposed irrelevance, religion's precepts are disowned as well, precepts such as:

1) Sons should not be punished for the sins of their fathers; under the new rules the great-great-great grandchildren should be excoriated for the sins of their slaveowner ancestors;

2) Everyone is a sinner, and may God who sits in Judgment have mercy on us all; under the new rules whites are the only ones guilty of America's Original Sin, and good luck trying to obtain mercy from the latter-day Puritans who sit in judgment.

Unlike their science and technology counterparts, the culture vanguards don't seem to be intent on building upon history's teaching but repudiating it.