George Santayana’s quote, “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it,” comes to mind more and more often these days.  We live in a political climate in which the masterminds of the Left are in the process of erasing history.  There are demands in Maryland to remove statues and busts of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision.  Statues of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee have been pulled down in New Orleans.  Simple-minded college students, whose parents are paying $60,000 a year supposedly to educate them, have toppled statues they deemed “racist” in displays of self-righteous zeal that would have made the Nazi Brown Shirts proud.  Author Tony Parsons,  has argued in GQ Magazine that the statue removals are shortsighted at best, censorial, and “a monumental mistake” at worst.  Parsons argues that once statues and monuments are torn down, who is to say the documents and textbooks that tell the true story of a nation’s history won’t soon follow?  That’s already underway.  Parsons’ conclusion is that historical correctness does not change the past, and it does not improve the present.  It’s really hard to blame the students for their follies though.  Having been educated in American schools in recent years, they simply know not what they do.  In the schools where history is still taught many were forced to read Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States.  Zinn, an avowed Marxist, took a dim view of the United States.  The premise of his history text is that U.S. history is “a history of genocide,” brutally and purposefully waged by our rulers in the name of progress.  Zinn’s textbook is used in the majority of our public schools, so what chance do the students have?  The irony of the push by progressives to remove uncomfortable history, is that by doing so, they already are repeating the history that they never learned.  Consider historian Victor Davis Hanson’s 2017 National Review article, Our War Against Memory.  In it, Hanson reminds us that the ancient Romans had a practice of removing all traces of the statues and monuments dedicated to deposed despotic emperors.  The Roman Senate would proclaim a damnatio memoriae (a “damnation of memory”).  “All prior commemoration was wiped away, thereby robbing the posthumous ogre of any legacy and hence any existence for eternity.”  However, the destruction of  Roman statues did not cause succeeding emperors to be “kinder or gentler,” to coin a phrase.  Piling irony upon irony, today’s progressive social justice warriors, who like to call any dissenters “fascists,” are themselves mimicking the practices of the worst totalitarian dictators and murderers the world has ever known.  The Nazis burned books that were declared “un-Aryan.” Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that Josef Stalin came to power with the help of Leon Trotsky, then obliterated every word, every photo, and every memory of Trotsky.  More recently, ISIS members burned and destroyed documents, monuments and artifacts that date back thousands of years because they offended fundamentalist Muslim values.  ISIS blew up historical sites, such as the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria, which had stood for more than 2,000 years before being erased in the name of God.  Not satisfied with simply blowing up the Temple, ISIS thugs also beheaded the 81 year old archeologist who maintained the site.  Anybody think that murders and desecrations by these Islamic crazies will usher in a world dedicated to social justice?  The real and present danger is that, once begun, there’s no telling where the abolition of our history will end.  George Washington and his subordinate, Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee, were slave owners, as were five of our first seven presidents.  Should we simply erase them, and renumber our chief executives, making President Trump president 40?  No, that would only confuse Maxine Waters, who would have to learn to chant, “Impeach 40!” instead of 45.  Then again 40 was Ronald Reagan, so she probably wouldn’t miss a beat.  And if all segregationists must be erased, what about out-and- out racist Woodrow Wilson?  Princteon’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs might have to be renamed.  Maybe we should just remove the Woodrow and keep the Wilson.  That would avoid the expense of changing all the signs.  How about the Flip Wilson School of Public and International Affairs?  He was a lot more entertaining than Woodrow ever was.  Maybe we’re on to something.  That would solve the problem of Washington & Lee University in Virginia.  George Washington owned slaves, and Robert E. Lee fought to preserve slavery.  I’m surprised the school’s name has lasted this long.  I mean, if we have to remove the statue of Kate Smith, and ban her rendition of God Bless America from Yankee Stadium because of supposed racist lyrics in a song she didn’t write, but had the temerity to sing 80 years ago, then Washington and Lee clearly have to go. We could still call it Washington & Lee though.  Let’s just rename the school for Denzel Washington and Stan Lee.  This will appease both Black Lives Matter and the Super Hero-loving students who surely know more about the life of Stan Lee than that of old Robert E.  The real danger of historical cleansing is that the removal of all traces of of the past that are offensive to snowflakes takes away the distant warning system that serves to remind us of the path to which zealotry leads.  Victor Davis Hanson warns that, contrary to progressive orthodoxy, the arc of history doesn’t bend toward our own perceptions of moral justice.  Instead, human advancement tends to be circular.  What happened before happens again, and contrary to expectations, the world is not becoming more civilized as time goes by.  The march of history has resulted in ever more devastating genocides, not in a reduction in violence.  Hanson warns progressives that future generations may disapprove of progressive “advancements” such as late-term and genetically driven abortion, euthanasia, and racially segregated dorms and “safe spaces,” finding them as immoral as they find Robert E. Lee.  They could well find themselves erased.  Not a bad idea at that.