A RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY AND END OF HISTORY?

Two distorted philosophies have risen to attach themselves to the study of history. The first is called the “right side of history.” This philosophy is that history moves in a predetermined and relentless path towards progress. It speaks in a “Marxist twang” of the inevitable victory of liberal democracy and social enlightenment. (Jonah Goldberg) Liberal progressives place their opponents on the “wrong side” (and who really wants to be there?).

Even conservatives can go there. Ronald Reagan placed Soviet communism in the “dustbin” and the “ash heap of history.” Ben Shapiro hailed the western traditions of Greek reasoning and Judeo-Christian moral purpose as the “right side of history.”

Closely related is the notion of the moral arc is that the “moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The genesis of this assertion was with Theodore Parker, abolitionist minister, in the mid-1800s. About a century later Martin Luther King, Jr. popularized the assertion in a speech and as president, Barack Obama spoke of it.

As positive and reassuring it sounds, the “right side of history” is deficient in several ways:

1.    It assumes moral agency to history that does not exist. History is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral. It is the blank slate in which the mosaic of human life is painted. Our everyday decisions, some moral and some not quite so, are the fabric of history. (David Graham)

2.    It assumes progress is one directional. Progress of the human condition is not a straight line on a graph but rather a roller coaster often on a backward loop. For every American Revolution there is a French Revolution, for every Magna Carta there is an Edict of Nantes, and for every To Kill a Mockingbird there is a Communist Manifesto. Thus, it ignores the MCN theory of history- history is messy, contradictory, and nuanced. (Graham)

3.    It boosts the hubris of humans to think that we can bend history to our wills, whims, and desires. Reinhold Niebuhr critiques, “Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically fated by the fact that no group of idealists can move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.” Barack Obama echoes Niebuhr by asserting that evil, hardship, and pain exist in the world and that we should be humble and modest in our beliefs that we can eliminate those things.

4.    It ignores some basic lessons of history. For example, Alexander the Great did not conquer the Afghan tribes and neither did the British nor the Russians. So why did we Americans think we were different? After successfully defeating Al Qaeda terrorists in several weeks we stayed to also defeat the Taliban warlords and “rebuild” Afghanistan. This war has been the longest in our history. Another example is the colossal failure of US and UK intelligence agencies regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the resultant invasion and occupation. We ignored the fact that Iraq is not one nation but a group of tribes inhabiting a certain piece of land.

5.    It often results in unintended consequences. Robert Kaplan has several observations in the pursue of spreading democracy and promoting world peace. First, “Democracies do not always make societies more civil- but they do always mercilessly expose the health of the societies in which they operate.” Second, Kaplan agrees with Gaetano Mosca that universal would only occur through a single social order, a single religion, and total agreement on social betterment could be attained. “Even granting that such a world could be realized, it does not seem to us a desirable sort of world.”

6.    It enables the retrospective reading of history that encourages confirmation bias and revisionist history. For example, Geher praises the concept of the “right side” by asserting that in the Civil War Americans died fighting to maintain a certain way of life and a philosophy of being human. It is obvious from the context he is speaking of the Union side of the conflict. But Geher neglects to mention that Americans in the Confederacy were also dying for their way of life and their philosophy of being human. He continues by praising Alexander Hamilton as a person who changed the world permanently and helped to shape the foundation of our democracy. While certainly Hamilton was a brave Revolutionary officer and a brilliant secretary of the treasury, he was by no means a “democrat” in the classic meaning. Jefferson, Madison, and Burr (especially Burr!) considered him to be a dangerous reactionary. (It appears Geher may have researched Hamilton from the Broadway play rather than from any serious biography.)

Herbert Butterfield summarizes, “History is all things to all men. She is at the services of good causes and bad… Therefore, we must beware even of saying, ‘History says or History proves’ … as though indeed, once she spoken, had put the matter beyond the range of mere human inquiry.”

Yogi Berra is even more succinct- “It’s tough to make decisions, especially about the future.”

The second distorted philosophy is termed the “end of history” and it is related to the first. This distortion came to fore after the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Francis Fukuyama argued liberal democracy as exemplified by the United States prevailed because it lacks the fundamental contradictions of communism as represented by the Soviet Union. Thus, our desire for freedom and equality is satisfied. This marks the end of the evolution of ideology and the end of history. Sadly, within a decade after Fukuyama’s thesis the world was embroiled in a Global War on Terrorism as tribalism and fundamentalist ideologies emerged with renewed vigor.

In closing, President Obama is correct that despite our humbleness and modesty in the face of fighting evils in our world, there is no excuse for cynicism and inaction. As the Prophet Amos proclaims in the Hebrew Scriptures, “But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.” (Amos 5:24 CSB)