They say those who don’t know their history are condemned to repeat it. They say history repeats itself. I say, how would they know?

Political and social history is a sticky and often incoherent issue; facts and historical data often seem to depend on personal perception and how removed we are from any particular point in history, in both a geographic and chronological sense.

Earlier interpretations of history are later examined from different perspectives, often resulting in the “revision” of historical events and phenomena once considered indisputable.

If history is indeed a malleable entity that can change and shift with the times on a whim, how reliable can any interpretation of our past be? Being condemned to repeat the past may be an unavoidable fate of mankind, considering historical fact is often skewed, manipulated and sometimes ignored for one purpose of another.

The Republican party’s platform of “Restoring the American Dream” is based entirely on Bob Dole’s assertion that he once lived in golden age of Americana that has been eroded by the social morays of certain Americans.

Never mind the fact that the period to which Dole refers has always been unspecified, but couldn’t have existed, anyway. Since World War II we’ve endured the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyism and the “red scare,” the oppression of minorities that led to the Civil Rights Movement, and our current abuse of immigrants, the poor and homosexuals pretty much rules out a “golden age” having occurred at anytime in recent history.

Maybe it was “golden” for Dole, but not for many less fortunate Americans.

Even historical travesties that are acknowledged are viewed as a product of “less enlightened” times, not as the affronts to human decency that they are.

I don’t buy this “unenlightened” garbage that seems to keep plaguing our perception of history, and seems to be a major factor in the defense of allegations made against Carrie Chapman Catt.

I’m not going to get into the entire debate now, but I would like to focus specifically on the argument that the accusation that Catt was a racist is invalid because the time period in which she lived, people “didn’t know any better,” that as a result of social teaching or being a product of their times, we can’t fault our predecessors for being prejudiced.

What a load of crap.

There are certain things human beings should know. Rape is wrong. Beating a child is wrong. Slavery is wrong. Subjugation of a group of human beings is wrong.

I don’t need any type of social institution to tell me these things. To excuse the malicious, oppressive behavior of the past because it was “in style” is a moronic argument. The rights of human beings are not fashion accessories, to be in season one year and out the next. We are not talking about parachute pants and Menudo.

If we as a people need somebody else to dictate for us, “Hey, it’s not cool to call black people niggers anymore. That is so out, man. The buzzword is now African American,” then we are nowhere near as “enlightened” as we’d like to think. We’re slaves to social fashion, and our beliefs are not based on what is right, but what is popular.

There are universal truths that are not subject to the winds of change or the erosion of time. Equality of all peoples is one of those universal truths.

Most, if not all, social change, is not the result of people becoming “enlightened,” anyway.

It’s the result of a long, arduous struggle by a persecuted group of people who have become organized enough and politically powerful enough to demand respect and recognition from the powers that be.

The gains of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement and most every other movement that seeks to correct a historical wrong are due to the fact that they can no longer be ignored by the powers that be, not because of some new-found sense of communal morality.

We as a nation are often reluctant to admit the mistakes our predecessors, and we ourselves, have made. I honestly believe we as a nation will never be truly free until we acknowledge the injustices we have committed and stop excusing oppressive behavior as a mere fashion trend.

Slavery wasn’t an American institution because American slave-owners didn’t know any better. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, both instrumental in building the foundations of this nation, are often cited by historians as being slave-owners.

And they knew better. Jefferson debated with himself and other founding fathers the hypocrisy of their Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men were created equal” while they themselves made other human beings their slaves.

So if Catt’s alleged racism is inexcusable and we should indeed rename the building, the counter-argument goes, why don’t we just rip up all of our tributes to slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson, to compromisers like Lincoln, adulterers like Martin Luther King. Jr., and anybody else who wasn’t a completely decent and moral human being?

Maybe we should.

Maybe instead of honoring people we should be honoring what they stood for. Martin Luther King the man isn’t nearly as important as the cause he championed. Neither is any other historical figure, or any modern-day political and social activist.

Because we can’t trust the specific details of history, apparently. They say God is in the details, but maybe we should start checking out the broader strokes.

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Tim Davis is a senior in Theatre Studies from Carlisle. He is the editor of the Opinion Page.