Napoleon and Cancel Culture

Legend has it that Napoleon Bonaparte was passing a synagogue on Tisha B’av. He saw the Jews sitting and mourning. He asked why this mourning? and was told that the Jews were mourning the destruction of the Temple destroyed some 1400 years before. Astonished, he commented that a people that does not forget its past has a future to look forward to.

This is a lost lesson in Western democracies. The witch’s brew of BLM/Antifa/Cancel Culture that has erupted in the US has become the catalyst for tearing down of all that made America great. This blindness has spread to the United Kingdom and other European countries.

The notion that great people such as Columbus, Washington, Grant, Churchill, Roosevelt, Jackson and Rhodes all need to be excised from history because of their colonialism or other perceived sins means that nothing is sacred and no achievement however difficult is considered worthy. Churchill had many personality warts, yet if not for his fortitude, his courage and his exceptional oratory the world would be living under the Nazi jackboot. Jefferson was a slave owner, yes, and yet his vision created a country that has managed to bury that ugly chapter. Even the great Abraham Lincoln who fought a bloody war against slavery is not exempted from the wrath of the mob.

And who will replace these greats? Statues of protesters whose greatest struggle are picking up lattes from Starbucks? Or maybe Bob Marley with a reefer?

And therein lies the crux of the matter, because the Mob is not about trying to fix the challenges that exist, it is all about tearing down the past and when the past is torn down, warts and all, then there is no future.

What is more insidious is the wholesale adoption of this nihilistic platform by Democratic leadership. Instead of standing up against the cancel culture and possibly providing a strong and healthy platform where dissent is welcomed and debate is enjoyed, all we get is safe talk and other spinelessness. Heinrich Heine said that where one burns books one ends up burning people. This is true of the cancel culture mob, first you tear down the greats, then you silence all dissent by forcing people who do not agree with you out of their jobs.

May I suggest you read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, he might not be a prophet, but he sure sounds like one.

I fear that Pax Americana is a thing of the past.

What will come next?