Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen


We’re all Historians Now!

July 17, 2020

With the killing of George Floyd and the resulting rage in the streets, this is a year like none other. Old reassuring myths are falling away. Statues are being ripped down. What is still worth preserving?  Can we use today’s moral standards to judge the past? What about the dangers of what our guest, historian Rick Shenkman calls “mobocracy” reminiscent of a “Maoist spirit of fanaticism?” How did we find ourselves with truly fringe groups becoming normalized? He explains how the army bases became named after Confederates. And that it was the right that initiated “cancel culture,” not the left. Author Shenkman suggests a moral accounting is in order , that while morals constantly change, some are actually universal.  He argues history will show that we can’t just be consumers, the meaning of America, the old narrative from the 1770s, remains a good one.