4 minute read
The phrase “wrong side of history” gets a lot of usage these days. It means wrong, disapproved, unenlightened, out-of-date, or irrelevant from the presumed perspective of the future.1 I couldn’t disagree more with everything about that sentiment. At best it’s a thought-terminating cliché that kills important conversation; at worst it’s moralistic virtue signaling used to reinforce ingroup bias while shaming others. I’m critical of 1) the phrase itself, 2) the reasoning behind it, and 3) the underlying “ism” it represents. Each of these critiques will be addressed in turn.2
First the phrase itself. I like Matthew Schmitz’s insight in a 2014 article in First Things. In “How I Evolved on Gay Marriage” he writes, “Accusing someone of being on the wrong side of history says nothing about whether he is on the right side of the argument. It is a mere threat, and a somewhat hollow one. History is an arbitrary enforcer.” Nailed it. I don’t appreciate those who leverage moral and social pressure to coerce others into ideological conformity. Convince me of your perspective’s worth with thoughtful discourse, not a capricious rhetorical device.3
The reasoning is also flawed. Let’s play a game: never have I ever… heard an actual historian refer to the “wrong side of history.” It’s amateur bullshit from people who don’t know a thing about the historiographical methods of the modern academic discipline. History isn’t about deciding right and wrong, winners and losers. If that’s your mentality, you’re doing it wrong.4 History is about understanding what happened in the past.5 It uses archeological and primary source evidence to construct an accurate analytical narrative. History’s role isn’t to speculate about future morality.
As for the underlying “ism,” no one knows if the world will progress toward a Star Trekkian future of universal freedom, justice, prosperity, and dignity for all. I hope Dr. King is right that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Suppose the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation overtakes the West to create a new global order.6 Then we’d probably be headed toward a more authoritarian future. The point is, the Myth of progress, upon which is built all of progressivism and its “wrong side of history” view, is painfully naive.7
The original beatniks are often seen by contemporary progressives as countercultural archetypes of social change who largely stood on the right side of history. Yeah, no.8 I quite simply refuse to retroactively perceive the Beat Generation through that faux-historical lens, and certainly have no desire to cast beatnik Christianity in that self-righteous light. History is a tool that provides context to help us understand what happened before. It’s no courtroom for judging morality. As the historian, Mark Noll, put it, “Philosophers rush forth where historians fear to tread.”9
That is, policies or practices that are regarded as insufficiently progressive.↩
Here’s a summation of what’s coming:
1. I don’t like rhetorical devices that stop conversations on important issues. We should be having discussions and debates, not giving ultimatums.
2. I take objection to how the word “history” is being used. That’s not the meaning of the term. The phrase should be “the wrong side of future morality.”
3. The Myth of progress is a BS metanarrative that needs to be put to rest. It’s rather strange to me that so many progressives, who embrace postmodern thought and its incredulity towards metanarratives, still cling to this one.↩
Ever since elementary school I’ve had a habit of stubbornly digging in my heels whenever anyone tries to bully me with peer pressure.↩
That view of “history” is not, in fact, history. It’s ideology. More specifically, it’s philosophical speculation about what future ethical standards will be. If it’s forward looking, it ain’t history. History, by its very nature, is exclusively backwards looking.↩
This is a tad simplistic, but I’m summarizing for the sake of brevity.↩
Other reasonable possibilities: there’s a truly horrific pandemic, a full nuclear meltdown makes a large portion of a continent uninhabitable, a chemical disaster poisons the world’s fresh water supply, mass starvation after the full collapse of bee colonies, A.I. goes full SkyNet, there’s a permanent economic depression world-wide, or climate refugees threaten the geo-political stability and that results in rolling waves of genocide that make the Holocaust look tame by comparison.↩
I concur with N.T. Wright’s take:
“We, of all people, ought to know better. ‘Progress’ gave us modern medicine, liberal democracy, the internet. It also gave us the guillotine, the Gulag and the gas chambers. Western intelligentsia assumed in the 1920s that ‘history’ was moving away from the muddle and mess of democracy towards the brave new world of Russian communism. Many in 1930s Germany regarded Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends as on the wrong side of history. The strong point of postmodernity is that the big stories have let us down. And the biggest of all was the modernist myth of ‘progress’.”↩
They didn’t even like to be classified as liberal.↩
My unsolicited life advice here at the end:
Endeavor to live a good and just life that loves people and leaves the world a better place than you found it, but trying to be on “the right side of history” is a fool’s errand. Any of you drive a car with an internal combustion engine? Ever flown somewhere? Well, a century from now your grandchildren may find such behaviors morally repugnant. How could you be so completely evil… vile… wicked… that you selfishly contributed to global warming by doing that big, bad, terrible thing?!? There’s no way of predicting this shit.↩
