Do we HAVE to be perfect?

“Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.”
Winston Churchill

We are selling our house and moving. This process has consumed our summer. I have missed writing and I hope to get back to it. Following is my first effort for the summer.

If you have read many of my little submittals, you may have heard about how some of my ancestors were among the first in America, settling on the Charles River in Massachusetts in 1666 or how my great-grandfather was a heroic sea captain who valiantly went down with his ship fighting for the glory of his native land. (OK, actually he was the captain of a ship taking a load of peas from Friesland to England when the ship was lost in high seas, but let’s not quibble, he was still heroic.) But there is also a story in my family about one of my great uncles. By all accounts Uncle was an industrious and talented fellow who made (and lost) a lot of money over his lifetime, ultimately going to the promised land of California. But it was only when I was in my late teens that I actually learned that good old Uncle had a bit of a shady side to him. He loved women, very much and very many. He was allegedly married five times. And a bit more scandalously, he perished in his seventies at the wrong end of a pistol fired by the very angry husband of the woman he was living with. It seems he was a wee bit of a scoundrel, albeit a lovable one. As time has passed, I have learned that there were other various miscreants in the diverse branches of my family tree. This is a part of MY history.

There is a lot of discussion these days about “revisionist history” and the inclusion or exclusion of certain parts of our history. This has mostly manifested itself in discussions about our country’s record regarding human rights, especially the human rights of Black Americans and Native Americans. We are spending a lot of time talking about whether certain statues should be allowed to remain standing in the southern US and whether a lake in Minnesota should be named after John C. Calhoun. Taken to its more recent absurdities, the Florida Board of Education recently approved a new set of standards for teaching African American Studies which includes the concept of “the personal benefit” of slavery to Black people. The reasoning here is that slaves learned trades and skills which could be used for their own benefit. (Hard to see how this goes inasmuch as they were in fact SLAVES with absolutely no freedom for crying out loud!) This followed legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis referred to as the “Stop WOKE Act”. The goal was to push back against so called Critical Race Theory, but critics allege that it misrepresents our history, making our ancestors seem more righteous than they were. Some would argue that this really isn’t anything new – after all nobody in MY history classes ever talked to us about the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa.

I doubt that any recognized historian would deny that for the first seventy-five plus years that slavery existed in our country and was in fact enshrined in our laws. Nor would they fail to recognize that in our hunger for more land in the 1800’s that Native Americans were pushed from the lands that they had occupied for centuries and confined to “reservations” with little regard for any human rights. Refusing to talk about this won’t make it any less true.
I’m not proud of many parts of my history, but I also won’t deny that they happened either. No one has labeled me a philanderer just because my great uncle was. I didn’t take advantage of any distressed and vulnerable ladies, and no irate husband has ever sought me out with a weapon. Is it okay that some of the actions taken by our country in the past were not good?

It seems to me that this feeling that we need to minimize or even deny some parts of our history is related to the prevailing political wisdom that we can never “give an inch”. We, especially those of us who are politicians, can’t own the fact that we are fallible and that there are times in our past when we made mistakes. Today’s political advisors would NEVER tell their clients to do that. Nooo, today’s approach when confronted with an accusation is to “deny, deny, deny”. This seems like such an unsustainable response and an unnecessary response. Imputed guilt based on my history is not reasonable and I would argue goes against one of the core values of our country. This is a place where any of us can be great, no matter where we come from or who our parents were. And America is a place where we can pick ourselves up when we fail and ultimately succeed. I believe that Americans are totally willing to forgive those who own their failures and missteps. I DON’T think they are nearly so forgiving to those who continue to “deny, deny, deny”, when their errors have been discovered. I don’t hold Governor DeSantis responsible for the fact that slaves existed in the state of Florida until the Emancipation Proclamation. He wasn’t a part of the decisions that made that vile institution a part of our society. No one, even the descendants of slaves, should affix responsibility for this sad part of our history to him or any other present-day politician.

Our REAL history is a very complex blend of bravery, social consciousness, greed, love, hated and complacency. Our history contains some very sad and I would even say EVIL parts to it. Our nation has been so far from being perfect. But I would pose the question – does it have to be? And even more pertinent, does our HISTORY have to be perfect? When the founding fathers were struggling to formulate the new constitution in 1787 the issue of slavery was already being agonized over. There were already abolitionists who abhorred slavery. Yet the discussion of slaves at the Constitutional Convention revolved around how slaves would be counted in apportioning the number of representatives allotted to each state in the House of Representatives. The compromise was the absolutely absurd rule that each black human being would be counted as 3/5 of a human being!!! How could the founding fathers that we revere ever discuss human beings in this manner, to say nothing of accepting the rule as a part of the agreement to adopt the constitution? Because at that point in time, it was the ONLY WAY that the union would be maintained and the country would stay together. The founding fathers were NOT perfect, but they still did so much amazing GOOD work. Seventy-three years later we entered into the bloodiest war that the nation has ever been in – a war among ourselves. WHY???? Because at THAT point in time it was the only way to keep the nation together. Were either of these actions right or good? I would argue that they were both so far from “perfect” solutions. But they are a part of what has created the greatest nation the world has ever known. Why do we feel the need to deny that they happened? We don’t validate them simply by documenting that they occurred.

I would argue that more than any nation in the history of the world, we have advanced the overall welfare of our citizens, to the greatest extent that was possible at the time. Have we failed? MANY TIMES. Have we succeeded? MANY MORE TIMES. We shouldn’t deny EITHER of these truths. The more pertinent question is where on the road to perfection we are? Or perhaps even more importantly – are we going in the right direction?