No Past, No Future

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PragerU

Non-profit, Self-improvement, Education, Business, History

4.7 • 6.8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2021

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can we judge the past by the standards of the present? Many seem intent on proving not only that we can, but that we must. Social critic Douglas Murray doesn’t agree, and he explains why in this thought-provoking video.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What kind of future do we have if we destroy our past?
0:05.3	Has anyone who has pulled down a statue of Churchill, Lincoln, or Columbus thought to ask
0:10.5	themselves this question?
0:12.5	I doubt it.
0:13.9	The presumption that we can stand in perfect judgment over the lives of historical figures
0:18.5	is not merely foolish and unfair.
0:21.2	It's dangerous.
0:23.4	Consider what the statue destroyers are in effect, saying.
0:27.5	They are saying that people in history should have known what we know.
0:31.4	That's tantamount to saying they should have known the future.
0:35.2	This is, of course, absurd.
0:37.3	Yet more and more people believe it.
0:40.6	Why?
0:41.6	Simple.
0:42.6	It's what they're taught.
0:44.0	It is the fruit of an education system that long ago prioritised empathy over facts.
0:49.5	That believes the ultimate point of history is not to learn lessons from it, but to judge
0:53.8	it from the preordained left-wing conclusions about such ill-defined concepts as social justice,
1:00.1	equity and tolerance.
1:02.4	Apart from breeding ignorance, this kind of education invites the student, the child
1:07.6	really, to be judged, jury and executioner over issues that they and increasingly their
1:13.1	teachers know little or nothing about.
	...

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