The False God Of History
By ROD DREHER
In the April issue of New Criterion, James Bowman batted around the progressive notion that there is such a thing as the “right side of history,” which liberals love to invoke as assurance that whatever innovation they favor at the moment is somehow fated and blessed by the God of History. Bowman’s piece is subscriber-only, but Maclin Horton has quoted a portion of it at length. Read Maclin’s entire post for the full Bowman quote, which is worthwhile. Here’s an excerpt:
Mr. Kerry, when interviewed on Face the Nation about Russia’s “incredible act of aggression,” found his credulity taxed. It was because “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on [a] completely trumped up pretext.” Well, you don’t. Other people, who haven’t got the memo about history’s changeover from nineteenth- to twenty-first-century international norms, might still behave differently—“incredible” as that may seem to someone grown, as so many progressives have grown these days, accustomed to regarding “history” as a compliant imaginary friend. A wiser man than Mr. Kerry might have taken the Russian démarche as a sign that “history” is not what he thought it was. He might even see one or two other signs that the twenty-first century is going to look a lot more like the nineteenth century—or even the eighteenth century—than anyone might have supposed only a few years ago. My own darkest suspicion is that it is likely to be the seventeenth century, with its religious wars, that will provide the better model for our future.Bowman goes on to point out instances in which President Obama has cited “the right side of history,” but has been wrong. It’s a Whiggish illusion to think that history unfolds according to the wishes and expectations of contemporary progressives.
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