The differences were so obvious, we were told, that common sense would prevail. It was the triumph of hope over experience. Anyone who doesn’t line up with current progressive social mores is out. The war isn’t on history; it’s on anything that isn’t specifically leftist — now, today, subject to change tomorrow.

Example: The Cumberland Coun­ty school board in Fayetteville, NC, recently canceled an environmental program that used an image of the Marquis de Lafayette in its promotional materials. Why? Because Lafayette owned slaves.

Never mind that Lafayette had purchased the slaves in order to free them or that he was an avid abolitionist who had influenced George Washington to free his own slaves upon his death.