Form: Quote Commentary

Boost of @DrRicardoDuchesne

Diversity and rainbow flags are deeply rooted in the inherently progressivist foundational principles of the United States. That’s a major reason why it is so difficult for conservatives to mount an effective ideological challenge against wokeness. This can be shown in numerous ways. Here’s one way: go back to George Bancroft (1800-1891), the most influential American historian of the 19C. By the standards of today, this man would be considered a fascist for his acceptance of the basic moral norms of his day about marriage, Christianity, and for his view that America was an “Anglo-Saxon” nation. But if you examine his 10-volume History of the United States, it expresses the ideals that eventually culminated in the woke politics of today with its Neocon policies of spreading democratic rights to the world.

Bancroft says that America was created “for the advancement of the principles of everlasting peace and universal brotherhood.” With the spread of American values, the “ages of servitude” and “inequality” would end. The prime longing of all humans is liberty. While this love of liberty was Anglo-Saxon in origins, it had become in America the “breath of life to the people”. Americans “heard the glad tidings [of liberty] which promised the political regeneration of the world”. The Declaration of Independence was the “announcement of the birth of a people” dedicated to the spread of liberty to the world. Slavery, Bancroft correctly saw, was an institution that had originated outside the American ideal of liberty, and that’s why it was eventually abolished.

The “new progressive historians” of the early 20C who “rejected” Bancroft’s liberal conception for a “social” or “economic” historical approach focused on the role of the masses, workers, new immigrants, and women, were merely pointing out the persistent impediments to the actualization of the ideal of liberty, driven by a longing for a more democratic society, by advocating reforms to lift out the masses that had not benefitted from the limited liberties of the past due to lack of public education and exploitative working conditions. Bancroft was himself an advocate of public schools.

But who were the historians of “the education of mankind” before Bancroft who influenced him?