What’s Next? Erasing History

Earlier this month, I explored the state of healthcare in the United States and how numbers alone cannot capture the deeper moral and civic questions beneath the surface. In April, I will turn to another topic where facts, memory, and meaning collide: the struggle over history itself.

Across the political spectrum, people accuse one another of rewriting or erasing the past. Confederate monuments come down. Military bases are renamed—sometimes more than once. Textbooks and school curricula are revised. Museums rethink their exhibits. Even state flags are redesigned. Each of these actions is framed by some as an assault on heritage and by others as an act of moral repair.

The central question of my upcoming lecture is simple but demanding: When do these actions erase history, and when do they represent an attempt to care for the nation’s soul?

The Soul of a Nation

The idea of a national soul is ancient. Around 375 BCE, Plato explored the soul of a city-state in The Republic, describing how a community’s character, justice, and shared ideals shape its political life. That idea has echoed across centuries of political thought: nations, like individuals, have an inner life.

A national soul can be understood as:

• The deep, animating collective spirit of a people
• The core identity that binds a nation together
• A shared set of ideals, values, and principles
• A collection of enduring, aspirational commitments
• The moral conscience that guides political, social, and economic life
• A living inheritance that grows out of a shared remembered past

A nation’s history—its triumphs and its traumas—forms the narrative through which people understand who they are, how they relate to one another, and what is good and important. That narrative is never static. It is shaped, revised, and sometimes contested as new generations reinterpret the past.

When Does Change Become Erasure?

The tension arises because caring for the national soul requires two things that can feel contradictory:

1. Honoring the past—even when it is painful, complicated, or uncomfortable.
2. Refusing to enshrine falsehoods—especially when they distort who we have been or who we aspire to be.

Removing a monument, renaming a base, or revising a textbook can be an act of erasure if it attempts to hide or sanitize history. But it can also be an act of moral clarity if it helps a nation confront the truth more honestly.

The difference lies in intention and outcome:

• Does the action obscure the past, or does it illuminate it?
• Does it narrow our understanding, or deepen it?
• Does it silence part of the story, or make room for voices long ignored?

A healthy national soul requires the courage to face both the good and the bad without flinching. It requires the discipline to distinguish fact from fiction, memory from myth, and heritage from nostalgia.

Caring for the National Soul

Caring for the national soul is not a passive act. It demands ongoing engagement with history—its achievements, its failures, and its unresolved tensions. It asks us to hold complexity rather than retreat into simplicity. It challenges us to build a shared narrative that is honest enough to heal and hopeful enough to inspire.

The debate over “erasing history” is really a debate about who we are and who we want to become. It is a struggle over memory, identity, and the moral responsibilities of citizenship.

As April approaches, I am looking forward to exploring this question: not to settle the debate, but to help us see it more clearly.

Erasing History—or Caring for our National Soul?

Tuesday, 4/21; 9:30 – 11:30 AM Pacific Time

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

California State University, East Bay

Register here (Must be a member to register)

 

More on Erasing History

Erasing History in Plain Sight

Who Really Writes History? The Winners, the Losers… or the Liars?

Erasing History in Plain Sight

 As I prepare for my upcoming lecture Erasing History—or Caring for Our National Soul? I keep circling back to a simple but unsettling truth: forgetting history is sometimes accidental – but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, history is curated and aestheticized. Sometimes history is written by the losing side of battles, or by the nostalgic, or by the people who desperately need the past to be something more flattering than it was. And sometimes, history is sold to us with a mint julep and a guided tour.

Suzannah Herbert’s new documentary film Natchez, which turns its lens on plantation tourism in Mississippi, captures this dynamic vividly.  The film is not just about a place; it’s about a performance — a carefully staged version of the past that comforts visitors while burying the truth beneath layers of charm and choreography.

Orwell’s Warning: Memory as a Battleground

George Orwell famously wrote that “who controls the past controls the future.” He understood that the past is contested terrain. In my earlier post on Orwell and erasing history, I explored how defeated movements — such as post‑WWI German nationalists and the architects of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy — often craft seductive counter‑historical narratives. These stories don’t triumph because they’re accurate. They triumph because they’re emotionally satisfying. Natchez shows this process unfolding in plantation tours that become a kind of soft‑focus propaganda where slavery is minimized or euphemized, violence is reframed as hardship, enslaved people are reduced to footnotes, and architectural beauty becomes a distraction from human brutality. This is not history. It is mythmaking. And it is exactly the kind of mythmaking Orwell warned us about.

The Plantation as a Stage Set

One of the most striking insights in Natchez is how plantations function as theatrical spaces. The tours are scripted. The costumes are curated. The narratives are polished until they gleam. Visitors are invited to admire the chandeliers, the gardens, the gowns — everything except the system of racial terror that made those luxuries possible. The film exposes how this “heritage tourism” industry relies on a kind of emotional laundering. The past is cleaned up, softened, and made palatable. The result is a version of history that feels safe, even charming, but is fundamentally dishonest.

This is erasure by substitution. Not deleting the past but replacing it with something prettier.

Losers Writing History: The Lost Cause Lives On

What makes Natchez so powerful is that it reveals how the Confederacy — a defeated cause — still shapes American memory. The plantation fantasy is not a victor’s narrative. It is a loser’s narrative that has been elevated, repeated, and monetized until it feels authoritative.

The defeated can rewrite history just as effectively as the victorious, especially when their version of the past meets a psychological need. The plantation myth serves to ease guilt, evoke nostalgia, deflect responsibility, and craft a sellable narrative.

In this sense, Natchez is a case study in how societies choose comforting lies over difficult truths.

The Soft Erasure: How Forgetting Really Works

Sometimes erasing history is dramatic with book burning and censorship. Sometimes erasing history is much less than dramatic. It can be something quieter: selective omission; euphemism; aesthetic distraction; or narrative substitution. Natchez captures this soft erasure with painful clarity. The film shows how plantation tours don’t deny slavery; they simply bury it under magnolia blossoms and romanticized storytelling. This is how forgetting becomes a cultural habit.

Why This Matters Now

We are living through a moment when the past is being contested with new intensity. School curricula, public monuments, museum exhibits, and tourist attractions have become battlegrounds. The question is no longer what happened but whose version of what happened will define our collective memory.

Natchez forces us to confront the stakes of this struggle. It asks whether we are willing to face the truth — or whether we prefer the comfort of curated forgetting.

Reclaiming the Past Without Rewriting It

If we want a healthier relationship with history, we must resist both forms of distortion: the victor’s triumphalist rewriting and the loser’s sentimental rewriting. We must insist on a memory that is honest, unsparing, and humane. That means telling the full story of plantations — not as romantic estates, but as forced‑labor camps. It means centering the lives of the enslaved, not the fantasies of the nostalgic. It means recognizing that the struggle over history is not about the past at all. It is about the future we are willing to imagine.

Natchez reminds us that the past is not gone. And unless we challenge the myths, it will continue to shape us in ways we do not see.

Two Lectures in Early 2026

What a great time I had with my last lecture series Pilgrims and Puritans: A Theocracy in Colonial New England.  And it seems the participants really liked the experience.  As one of them emailed me:

Thank you for another WONDER-FULL presentation. Of course, YOU would go above and beyond what the title implied. Pilgrims and Puritans ain't all turkey when Dincher is the one talkin'!

I am doing something a little different in early 2026.  I'll be delivering two single-session presentations through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Cal State East Bay.

Beyond Economics: Healthcare Justice

Tuesday, March 3, 2026
9:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Register here

Medicine’s classical duty to “do no harm” has collided with a modern, market-driven healthcare system.  In today’s America, health care is no longer a simple exchange between doctor and patient. It’s a sprawling, high-stakes system involving providers, hospitals, clinics, labs, pharmaceuticals, cutting-edge technologies—and the ever-present insurance industry. The cost of accessing this system was the central flashpoint in the 43-day U.S. government shutdown of 2025.  But beyond economics lies a deeper concern: justice. When access to life-saving care depends on a person’s ability to pay, the problem becomes not only economic but ethical—a question of justice about who counts, who pays, and how a just society cares for the sick. Beyond Economics:  Healthcare Justice explores how values in medicine have evolved from Hippocrates’ timeless call to “do no harm” to today’s urgent debate over fairness and equity—and the intersections with theories of justice.

Erasing History—or Caring for our National Soul?

Tuesday, April 21, 2025
9:30 AM to 11:30 AM

Register here

Confederate statues topple from their pedestals. Military bases shed names that once honored rebellion. Government websites are scrubbed clean, museum exhibits closed, and school curricula rewritten.  Across the political divide, accusations fly—each side charging the other with “erasing history.” Yet beneath the noise lies a deeper question: when does such action distort the past, and when does it nurture the spirit of our nation? Erasing History—or Caring for the National Soul offers one perspective on the difference.