In their war against racism, the SJWs of the world have fought for the destruction of historical statues and memorials, the removal of paintings and murals and the renaming of city streets and parks. Recently, they even managed to end the New York Yankee’s long standing tradition of playing Kate Smith’s version of “God Bless America” at their games. The reason? They learned she had recorded two racist songs in the 1930’s.

The idea that they can erase history or create change by any of these actions is preposterous. At one time, many Americans were racist. That sad state of affairs has changed dramatically and the opportunities for blacks in the U.S. today have never been greater. The differences can be attributed to genuine changes in the hearts and minds of the majority Americans. The symbolic, foolish actions mentioned above have had nothing to do with it. In fact, I would argue that they inhibit progress.

During an interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” South Bend Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was asked if he believed the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, an annual event for Indiana Democrats, should be renamed? Buttigieg replied:

Yeah, we’re doing that in Indiana. I think it’s the right thing to do. Over time, you develop and evolve on the things you choose to honor … Jefferson is more problematic.

There’s a lot, of course, to admire in his thinking and his philosophy, but then again if you plunge into his writings, especially the notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew slavery was wrong. We are all morally conflicted human beings.

But why do we have to “plunge into his writings” to look for something to disagree with. He lived 200 years ago when America was a very different place. Does Buttigieg doubt that his own worldview would be much different had he been born into similar circumstances?

C.S. Lewis coined the term “chronological snobbery.” It is defined as the belief that “the thinking, art, or science of an earlier time is inherently inferior to that of the present, simply by virtue of its temporal priority or the belief that since civilization has advanced in certain areas, people of earlier time periods were less intelligent.” If we add, “and therefore wrong and also racist” to this definition, we would have a perfect definition of today’s SJWs.

Historian Larry Taunton defines it as “imposing the mores of our own time on those who lived in another.”

Taunton discussed a recent column written by Case Western Reserve University Professor John Broich entitled, “Allied Leaders Were Anti-Nazi, But Not Anti-Racist. We’re Now Paying The Price For Their Failure.”

Broich argues that both FDR and Churchill “failed to comprehend the basic nature of German fascism. The leaders of the United States and Britain rarely attacked the core tenet of Nazism: the belief in a master race.”

He writes that the Allies “fought the war for the wrong reasons.” They fought Nazism for its “savagery and barbarism, but not for its racism.”

Taunton crushes this argument:

The implication here is that Churchill and Roosevelt, failing to deliver a detailed treatise denouncing Nazi racial policy, must have had no strong objections to it. Most inflammatory of all, Broich makes the continental leap in logic from this to “the alarming rise of white-power violence, from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh and now to Poway, California.” And that, of course, is what is meant by the assertion “we’re now paying the price for their failure.”

Failure? History demonstrates that the opposite is true.

I would remind Professor Broich that the Greatest Generation crushed Nazism under the tracks of tanks and at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives; they liberated the Death Camps; and, unique in history up to that time, they established an international tribunal where they tried, imprisoned, and executed many of those who ran them. They then set their sights on another evil empire and, before departing this world, they destroyed that, too, liberating millions more.

Taunton concludes by challenging SJWs with the following:

How would progressives — any of us, really — fare when measured against the standards of the generation that once saved the world? Would they have been ready to endure the same privations of the Great Depression? To live their lives without any meaningful social welfare net to catch them? To storm the beaches of Normandy? To liberate Europe and Japan and to rebuild both? To make great leaps forward in addressing social and racial inequality? And to do it all without whining?

Can you imagine CNN’s Brian Stelter or Fox News’ Chris Wallace fighting to defend St. Vith during the desperate days of the Battle of the Bulge or living through the London Blitz?

The Democrats in Indiana can change the name of their event to the Tubman-Douglass Dinner and SJWs can destroy every standing memorial to anyone who ever had a racist thought, but their silly symbolic actions and their condemnation of each perceived racial slight will not bring about change.

Americans’ move away from the racism of the past has occurred in spite of, rather than because of, the idiocy of SJWs.