I’d always thought that was a given that "One does not do that". That was then, this is now.
But of course, we’ve seen presentism all over the place in recent years. People who were heroes in their time, being torn down and retrospectively “cancelled” because they fail the morality test, by today’s standards. Presumably it’s an offshoot of woke ideology.
As many critics of woke and presentism have commented, no-one would come out of such a judgement very well. And how will we today be viewed in a century? In a millennium? Will we be judged as wanting because we eat meat? Kill animals? Drink alcohol?
Discussing this issue recently, James Sweet, President of the American Historical Association and Distinguished Professor of History, got himself into serious trouble. As another Distinguished professor of History, Jeffrey Herf, discusses in “Never apologise for trying to tell the truth”.
Herf says it’s Sweet’s apology -- demanded by the usual Twitter mob -- that’s caused more harm than his original essay.
