A Cocktail Party Conversation That Revealed Too Much

With the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence upon us, it is difficult not to think of the heroes of the American Revolution and the statesmen who gave us the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution, including, during the first Congress, the first 10 amendments known as the U.S. Bill of Rights.

But then, many school textbooks today ignore, gloss over, or bleed dry much of what men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Mason said and did, as what such men said and did often doesn’t fit into the narratives the mainstream media now prefers.

It is important to push back against this cancellation of the American pantheon of heroes—this is why I wrote Cool Heroes for Boys—20 True Tales of Adventure—but, to round this out, another question needs to be asked: Who are the left’s heroes?

If they want to cancel George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and more, then who do they want to replace them with?

Nations, especially big and diverse ones, need shared stories of heroes to bring them together. This is part of why the Ancient Greeks celebrated Homer’s Odysseus. It is why the Ancient Roman Emperor Augustus had Virgil write the Aeneid. It is why Christendom so celebrated Charlamagne and the Song of Roland. It is also a fundamental reason why Americans have long been taught to celebrate the attributes of George Washington—a man who refused to be made a king and who purposely, after winning the republic, guiding its constitutional convention, and after serving two terms as president, retired to his farm to allow a peaceful transition of power.

So then, as we celebrate 250 years since John Hancock boldly and with flamboyance was the first to sign the Declaration, who would the left rather celebrate?

I had the chance a few years back to ask a far-left college philosophy professor this question.

The SUNY Albany professor had an open-minded expression and a PhD from U.C. Berkley. He had carefully trimmed sideburns, a silver-stud earring, and clothes that fell out of style with Archie Bunker. He thought of himself as tolerant, worldly, and referred to himself as a “citizen of the world.” He was then teaching a course called “Marx’s Aesthetics,” which argued that communism could be beautiful if only the right people ran the experiment.

We had discussed Cicero’s stand against Antony and the fall of Rome and he seemed to think Cicero could still be a hero the left and right can celebrate today. I mentioned George Washington’s refusal to be made a king and how he disbanded his disgruntled officers in what became known as the Newburgh Conspiracy.

He thought that was okay, but Washington’s slaves cancelled him from the pantheon of American heroes as far as this professor was concerned.

“What about JFK?” I asked.

He frowned.

“I guess his policies would almost make him a conservative today,” I said. “JFK was even a member of the National Rifle Association. So, who then, FDR?”

“FDR tried price controls and so many other measures to level the playing field,” said the professor, “but the Supreme Court would not let him completely defeat American capitalism.”

“How about Martin Luther King Jr.?”

“His essence was helpful,” he said.

“His essence? I guess it is inconvenient to today’s left that King’s most-famous quote is: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’”

The professor looked deeply into his glass of chardonnay.

I knew that Harriet Tubman was likely too much of a Second Amendment advocate for this professor, so I asked, “Maybe Barack Obama?”

He brightened up. “Yes, Obama is definitely a hero of the left and for all of us.”

“I did too much reporting on the Operation Fast and Furious scandal—forcing American gun stores to allow criminals to run guns to Mexico was so crazy it sounds made up—to be much of a fan,” I said. “But Rosa Parks was heroic as were many others, including Charlton Heston, who both marched with King and stood up for our Second Amendment.”

“I don’t know about Heston,” he said, “but it is true that contemporary politicians are never agreeable to everyone. If you brought up Ronald Reagan, I’d have lots of things to pull him apart on.”

I nodded at this honest point and he launched into a soliloquy on the modern leftist activist as being worthy of hero worship, but “only in the general sense,” he said, “as any particular person would have human failings.”

So, there it was, pushing his preferred narrative took fiction; it took generalization and nonspecific propaganda to frame the person who throws rocks at ICE agents and who lights shops on fire in protest of something equally vague in order to somehow lionize them—that fits with how many of America’s historical heroes are treated in today’s school textbooks.

I said as much and he shrugged and looked over his wine glass at me and shifted the topic in a direction I never expected: “There is something about you I really don’t understand. You are clearly doing a lot of reading, but then you have a college degree, so people like me already taught you what you need to know. So then, why do you think you need to keep reading?”

That question was so completely on its head that I felt like Alice must have in Wonderland.

After a befuddled moment I managed to stutter, “Shouldn’t the liberal mind continue to question?”

“Ideas have consequences,” he said.

“Like your Marxist ideals,” I quipped, but then I tried to lower the temperature and to bring our cocktail-party discussion back to its central theme by asking, “On heroes, isn’t it important that we actually try to understand them—not just cancel them because they were not perfect by today’s standards. Shouldn’t we try to comprehend and perhaps even celebrate what they said and did that was good? Doesn’t that level of analysis teach through honest critical thinking?”

“Oh, we’ve been talking too long,” he said and quickly shuffled off into the crowd.

I was left disappointed. I really did want to get deeper into the questions of heroism with a person on the left who actually would have a good-faith discussion, as that is so rare today.