Trump: Miss Me Yet? A Continuing Series-37
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Matt Walsh says that as if that isn’t the goal.
“… that our culture wouldn’t find objectionable today.”
While I understand what Matt Walsh is trying to say, and I agree with him, I reject his assumption that the culture he’s referring to is “ours”.
This is the so-called ‘culture’ of a minority of people in this nation, a rancid stew of social media mean girls, left-wing ideologues, dumb kids and political opportunists. It’s the culture of the scum that’s floated to the top.
It’s not ‘our’ culture, it’s theirs.
Agreed that Walsh’s defense is not great. It cedes the idea that the past really is full of irredeemably evil people who deserve to be canceled, but then says that we shouldn’t cancel them. This will not convince most people, since they will just think “why shouldn’t we cancel them? Who cares if we have to cancel everything, if it’s all evil?”
More than that, it further slanders the past. For example, take the recently cancelled “And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street” (a favorite of my childhood). Why is it cancelled? Because the boy narrator imagines seeing (among many other sights) “a Chinaman who eats with sticks.” I honestly cannot imagine what is supposed to be negative or offensive about that depiction unless the idea that the term Chinaman (derived just like “Englishman” or “Frenchman”) is and always has been the most vile of slurs.
A better way to phrase the issue when this happens is to say the truth: they want to destroy great works of culture. Full stop, no qualifications.
I should add that I don’t think that Matt Walsh is malicious. The problem is that his statement is the type of statement that conservatives have made for decades when this type of thing happens, and in the end it always results in nothing being conserved.
Matt Who?
I think one problem with post-modern academics is their wrong-headed need to ascribe/shoe horn contemporary amoral mores on earlier period men and women.
One problem I have with Matt Walsh’s argument is that it can be used to justify the likes of Margaret Sanger. Some folks in the past really were evil, but Dr. Seuss wasn’t one of those people. We don’t need a blanket dispensation of the past, just an understanding that the good shouldn’t be the enemy of the perfect.
Dave G. beat me to it.
T.Shaw – Matt Walsh is one of the daily wire boys. Hosting a political talk show.
If it’s any comfort, he really gets under Mark Shea’s skin.
Examples: https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40chezami%20to%3A%40mattwalshblog&src=typed_query
Mark who?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/__trashed-11.php
While we’re at it, Scott Johnson has added his vote to the proposition that we reform the FBI this way.