One need not look any further than protesters tearing down statues of Frederick Douglass and Hans Christian Heg, a Wisconsin abolitionist, to see that there was a deep sense of historical illiteracy guiding these protesters. What started as a movement to remove statues that symbolized America’s dark history of approving slavery quickly turned into a movement to remove statues that simply symbolized America’s history in general. But there is something uniquely frightening about the tearing down of statues that reflects a troubling reality, especially in regard to millennials. Government leaders who did nothing to protect the already financially-strained retailers have themselves to blame for these perverse acts. Of course, the five-finger discount that seemed to permeate every department store, all to apparently honor the legacy of George Floyd, was nothing short of disgusting. The latest civil unrest that has ravaged parts of the nation has included a particularly frightening form of civil disobedience: the tearing down of statues. We conservatives need to promote a society that understands that studying the past as it happened is vital to the success of a great nation. ![]() History in the 21st-century academy has been warped into “social studies,” where the past is studied through the lenses of sociology and psychology. A society beset with historical amnesia is a dangerous one.
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