Lately, the academic left has been hotly engaged in an Orwellian airbrushing of history – trying to cut the legs out from under great figures in history, based on a modern reading of their deeds, beliefs, ethics and morality.

Thus, Abraham Lincoln was a racist first _{and a bunch of other stuff way, way down the list}  

…provided they’re white and American, naturally; Gandhi’s racism and anti-semitism and Che Guevara’s sexism, racism and homophobia don’t rise to the level of retroactionable.

This is hardly a new phenomenon, of course; I remember having this argument with the PC warriors nearly thirty years ago; “I’d be interesting to see how people 100 years from how judge us”, I’d howl into the void.

Victor Davis Hanson says it better, naturally.  Here’s the conclusion…:

On campus, violations of the Bill of Rights, obsessions with race rather than character, inflated and puerile self-regard, adolescent self-indulgence and materialism, along with epidemic factual ignorance, inability to speak and write coherently, and the loss of inductive reasoning may ensure that the early 21st century will be judged as an era of anti-Enlightenment ignorance — with the twist that never have such pampered people so little deserved all that they inherited.

…but read the whole thing anyway.