Why ‘Right Side of History’ Is Often Wrong
1st August 2024
Unanticipated incidents, be they acts of God or assassination attempts, define themselves. Others, from proposed legislation to controversial court cases, are subject to the manipulation of their acolytes.
Claiming to be on “the right side of history” is a common tactic such people employ. The phrase, usually emanating from the Left, is used as a debate-stopper, an argument-ender, a moral cudgel, as if the one who invokes it has special insight into the ultimate judgment of things (which, ironically, implies an ultimate judge, an implication most of them are unwilling to accept).
But the judgments of man are notoriously fickle. As the eminent 20th-century journalist John Chamberlain said: “There is no compulsion on the decent human being to be ‘with history’ when history is driving headlong toward an abyss.”