The 'Right' Side Of History: Every Knee Shall Bow

It's an idol worth examining. It's the idol of history.

Not long before the U.S. general election in 2008, a reader of this blog emailed me, in light of my opposition to Barack Obama, to ask if I was "afraid of being on the wrong side of history." Another email came shortly after the posting of my essay in which I confessed the election of Barack Obama did not FEEL all that special to me: "Time will prove you are on the wrong side of history," I was told (I could feel the finger wagging). 

A blogging friend, one who supported Mr. Obama, rebuked me at his/her website with similar censorious vigor: I, Bill Gnade, would be stuck on the wrong side of history voting against Mr. Obama (I wrote a poem that partially replied to that rebuke).

But such love of history's good side is not limited to my friends or readers of this blog. Such love reaches high places. For example, regarding Republican opposition to Democratic health care reform projects, U.S. Senator and Democrat Harry Reid had this to say last December:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.'

After it was revealed earlier this year in Game Change that Harry Reid had used racially-charged language in 2008 describing then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, Mr. Obama came to his defense:

[Reid] is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.

What is it about being on history's good side that is so important? What does being on the "right side of history" even mean?

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THE DEIFICATION OF HISTORY

In one sense, this adoration of history is about vanity, even envy. Certain people, Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not least among them, have an obvious existential need to be remembered in the history books: their apparent anxieties about death -- of being forgotten among the riff-raff -- clearly motivate them to get attention, to seek approval; to be remembered as special. After all, at least according to the old progressive adage, history is written by the victors. Mr. Obama and company need to be on the side of history's approving stenographers, not for political but spiritual and psychological reasons: they are desperate to be thought wonderful, good, consequential. This is about the limelight in perpetuity. It's about living an enviable life. It's about leaving an obituary that others will envy.

But it is more than vanity at play, it's religion. Atheist, agnostic, theist -- it matters not. In the secular arena there is the cult of history, where history is divinized and adored (as long as it flows according to progressive ideals). History is spiritual. History is a force, a will: time ALWAYS progresses towards a happy end. It has a plan; progress is God's goal, at least the goal of the idealist's god. Hegel comes to mind here, as do other idealists who believed that the universe was driven by an unfolding self-consciousness that moves ONLY in one purposive direction: more order, more justice, more approval of progressive golden calves in a cheery dialectic. Change, progress, an increase in justice -- these are irresistible and inevitable. To go with the tide of change, to flow with history's wondrous ends in mind, is the essence of being on history's "right side." To stand in the way, to walk against the tide; to deny that history is Spirit unfolding in blessed clarity, is to be on the wrong side of history, where the gods wag their fingers in your face, shaming you for recalcitrance. It's to where history's stenographers condemn you -- "YOU! You are on the wrong side of HISTORY! We are in charge of the narrative now." 

And note that the "right side of history," which is the only authentic side of history, is always infallible, inerrant. It is the place of the always correct idea, deed, policy. It is indeed the place where the gods reside, happily, given to great applause. 

But there is something odd, really, about it all. No doubt there is Darwin to consider. His genius was in seeing that things seemingly change without purpose, without a guiding hand from Spirit or the gods or history. But the heretics who adore him who've corrupted his vision with ideas of progress fail to see their mistake: they've imposed a meaning on the world the world does not provide. No one can say that the human species is more progressed or more advanced than an amoeba. Darwin surely can't. But the tendency toward narcissism, and the apotheosis of history, results in this religious idea that time and evolution and progress are all connected, and that the future is a land of undeniable bliss promised us by the mechanics of Darwin's theory. Humans are more advanced than an amoeba, or so the heretics declare, unaware that they've invented that value out of nothing but their own conceit. Evolution tells us nothing about worth, value, advancement, status -- or sophistication. 

But the odd thing is that no one knows exactly where we are going. We are on a journey toward some progressive end -- some telos -- that is apparently akin to perfection, nirvana. But no one knows what the end looks like, or where it lies. As G. K. Chesterton so wonderfully pointed out, the confidence in progress is thus insane. If we do not know where we are going, then how do we know we've gotten any closer to arriving at our destination? If we don't know our destination, how can we tell our travels are not leading us further from our goals? 

Undeniably and predictably, progressives will scoff at such talk. Of course we know where we are going, they will assert in question-begging confidence. 

We do? Who says? 

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY INDEBTEDNESS TO HERBERT SCHLOSSBERG, AUTHOR OF IDOLS FOR DESTRUCTION: THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN FAITH AND AMERICAN CULTURE  AND ROGER LUNDIN, AUTHOR OF BELIEVING AGAIN: DOUBT AND FAITH IN A SECULAR AGE. BOTH AUTHORS HAVE CRAFTED EXCELLENT CHAPTERS REGARDING THE IDOL OF HISTORY.