Cheap, politicized moralizing

At Investors Business Daily historian Victor Davis Hanson tells us that

There are lots of strange paradoxes in the current frenzied liberal dissection of past sins.

One, a historic figure must be near-perfect in all dimensions of his or her complex life to now pass progressive muster. That Jefferson is responsible for helping to establish many of the cherished human rights now enshrined in American life apparently cannot offset the transgression of having owned slaves.

Two, today's moral standards are always considered superior to those of the past. Ethical sense supposedly always improves with time.

However, would American society of 1915 have allowed a federally supported agency such as Planned Parenthood to cut apart aborted fetuses to sell infant body parts?

Ivy League enrollment figures suggest some of these universities have capped the number of Asian students. Is this really much different than the effort to curtail Jewish enrollment at Ivy League schools in the 1920s?

Three, the sins of the past were hardly all committed by racist, sexist, conservative white men.

...Applying the morality of the present in crude political fashion to ferret out the supposed race, class and gender immorality of the past is a tricky thing. Picking saints and sinners can boomerang in unexpected ways.

Will Democrats now also damn America's most openly racist president since the pre-Civil War era — the liberal saint Woodrow Wilson?

...The architect of Planned Parenthood was the feminist family planner Margaret Sanger. Shouldn't Planned Parenthood denounce Sanger's legacy, given her eugenics agenda that deliberately sought to focus abortions on minority communities?

...The past is not simplistic "gotcha" melodrama in which we convict figures of history by tabulating their sins on today's moral scorecards. Instead, history is tragedy. It is complex. Moral assessments are dicey. With some humility, we must balance past and current ethical standards, as well as the elements of the good and the bad present in every life.

We must avoid cheap, politicized moralizing that often tells more about the ethics and ignorance of today's grand inquisitors than their targets.

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