I’m reading Simon Winchester’s new book, The Breath of the Gods, which is ostensibly a book about wind. This is exactly the kind of book I love: the kind that makes you stop every few pages to look something up, tell whoever happens to be nearby an interesting fact they absolutely did not ask for, or stare into the middle distance thinking about something only tangentially related to what you’re actually reading.
I now have an impressive collection of random talking points for my next dinner party. I’ve always said I’m the only member of my family without ADHD, but I’m beginning to wonder if that is actually true…
That’s how I found myself folding laundry and contemplating the moral judgment of historical figures…as one does. Something Winchester wrote in the introduction (that isn’t the central point of his book at all, lest I lead you to think the book isn’t actually about wind, because it very much is) got me thinking about this: When we discover that someone whose work we admire—or who contributed greatly to society and humanity—held deeply flawed beliefs, or did things we now find morally objectionable, what, if anything, does that mean?
Sometimes the moral failings were apparent in the person’s own lifetime and other times we’re looking backward through a modern moral lens at beliefs or behavior that were commonplace, accepted, or even celebrated in their time. I don’t even know how much this distinction should matter, but it seems at least somewhat important.
“Everyone believed that then” is almost never true. Regardless, I think there’s a difference between understanding someone’s beliefs in the context of their own time and simply excusing them because of it; context isn’t absolution, but surely it warrants consideration.
Does learning and knowing something troubling about the person diminish the value of what they created, discovered, or accomplished? Should we intertwine or separate a person’s actions from their contributions?
American history provides plenty of opportunities to wrestle with this, and our presidents alone could keep us busy for a very long time.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence while enslaving human beings and holding views about race that are indefensible. He wrote the words that would become foundational to the American experiment: that all men are created equal, that they possess unalienable rights, that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed while failing spectacularly to live according to those ideals. The cognitive dissonance was real.
He understood that slavery was morally wrong while continuing to enslave people himself, and he wrote about human equality while simultaneously holding racist beliefs about the very people excluded from that promise.
Yet, the words outlived the contradiction of the man who wrote them. Once Jefferson put those ideas into the world, they didn’t belong only to him anymore. Generations of Americans whom Jefferson himself did not regard as equal could point back to his own words and ask the obvious question: If all men are created equal, why doesn’t that include us?
Then there’s Woodrow Wilson. Oooof.
Wilson’s racism wasn’t incidental or merely a private character flaw; his racism was front facing and had serious consequences for Black Americans. His administration expanded segregation within the federal government.
He was also capable of thinking extraordinarily big. In January 1918, with the world still engulfed in a world war that had killed millions, Wilson laid out his Fourteen Points: a blueprint for a different international order after the war. He called for fewer secret agreements between nations, reduced armaments, greater consideration for the interests of colonized peoples (oh, the irony), national self-determination, and ultimately an international organization in which countries would work collectively to preserve peace.
Not all of it worked, for instance the United States never even joined the League of Nations, but these were nevertheless enormous ideas. Wilson was imagining a world in which great powers couldn’t simply move smaller nations and peoples around like pieces on a chessboard, and introduced the idea that there should be some kind of global collective responsibility for maintaining peace.
Humanity has benefited from a leader championing those ideas which is part of what makes Wilson such an uncomfortable example for me. The man capable of imagining greater self-determination for peoples around the world was also capable of denying equality and dignity to Black Americans in his own country. What do we do with that?
And what about John F. Kennedy? Oy.
The mythology surrounding him is understandably enormous, but so the gap between the public image and what we now know about his private behavior, particularly toward women, is also large.
He asked Americans to think bigger.
When Kennedy took office in 1961, the United States was losing the space race to the Soviet Union. That May, he committed the country to putting a man on the Moon before the decade was over. Like Babe Ruth pointing his bat toward center field to call his shot and then hitting a home run. It’s myth and legend and exactly the kind of kitschy American bravado I low-key love.
The audacity of that moment! The United States had sent exactly one American into space on a fifteen-minute flight, and Kennedy was asking the country to do something that had never been done and that no one knew with certainty could be done.
Eight years later, Neil Armstrong took those famous steps for man and mankind.
Kennedy made public service sexy. He established the Peace Corps and famously challenged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you,” inspiring a generation to believe they had a role in making their country better.
Then, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he faced down a powerful Soviet Union while resisting pressure to take military action that could have led to nuclear war. He understood that strength and restraint weren’t opposites.
Kennedy made Americans believe enormous things were possible if we were willing to pitch in, roll up our sleeves, and stay true to our values…but his values were, uhhhh, sometimes MIA.
What are we supposed to do with great contributions when the person who helped inspire or implement them turns out to be considerably flawed?
Accomplishments don’t erase failures, but neither do failures erase the accomplishments.
If Jefferson had been a better man, would the Declaration be a better document?
If Wilson had not been a racist, would the Federal Reserve work differently?
If Kennedy had been a faithful husband, would Neil Armstrong’s footprint on the Moon mean more?
Our daughter is taking philosophy this year and her English class began the year exploring identity and belonging, while her history class has been talking about how historical narratives are constructed and who gets to tell the story. As a result, we’ve had some interesting car ride and dinner conversations lately. I love watching her developing critical thinking muscles as she wrestles with complicated ideas!
Remember in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when Marc Antony said: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Was Shakespeare right about that?
For generations, we built uncomplicated heroes by leaving out the parts that didn’t fit the story we wanted to tell, and correcting those narratives matters. We should know the whole story, including the ugly parts.
Most of us won’t do things that are remembered outside of our families, but these principles still apply to our accomplishments and personal histories. Someday people will look backward at us, too. What do perfectly respectable, educated, well-intentioned people believe today that our great-grandchildren will find morally incomprehensible?
A person can be courageous about one thing and cowardly about another; capable of imagining a better world while failing in some ways to live up to that vision themselves. I will be the first to I admit I am inconvenient in that way and I’m pretty sure we all are so maybe Shakespeare got it half right?
The evil that men do should live after them. We should know it and talk openly about it, but I’m not sure we should inter the good with their bones, either.
The far more honest thing is to remember all of it.
Rachel, so true. I recommended your substack to my list. The balance sheets of so many public figures are hard to comprehend. I recently said nice things about Dick Cheney and Lindsey Graham. I was apparently so wrong to note that these complex figures actually did some unalloyed good things in their careers. Sad that today everything and everyone tends to be polarizing. I suppose the only right position comes from the late and great philosopher, Ricky Nelson: you can't please everyone, so you have to please yourself. Apologies for the paraphrase.
I do enjoyed this!