The Sunday Bulletin‘s editorial on Math 6, 1966 was carefully crafted.  Headlined “The Winds of Doctrine,” it introduced a ten-part series “The Left and The Right — A View from Within.”  New to the Philadelphia paper, my first assignment was to “join” the antiwar movement as an “undercover” reporter, while another reporter, also new to the Bulletin,  did the same on the Right, infiltrating the Klan, the John Birch Society and other like-minded groups.  The editorial defended the method, while noting “it has its pitfalls,” as providing an unvarnished inside view wherein the reporter’s presence does not influence events.

The series, ten articles each from me and my counterpart, with the unlikely byline of Charles Doe, was fairly anodyne.  A veteran rewriteman cleansed our copy of any color or adjectives that might reveal a point of view, so that the articles read more like a police blotter than an insightful report. A more interpretive piece, which I submitted to the paper’s Sunday “News and Views” section, failed to see the light of print.  But the Sunday editorial, which I probably dismissed at the time as too watered down to be relevant or meaningful, seems especially apt today.

“Political excesses most often breed their own cure,” it read, “for common sense will stand only so much abuse. But common sense is often not as organized. It requires ceaseless renewal by those who, above all, seek truth. Thus the importance of the often slighted (here italicized) phrase in Milton’s view of radicalism:

“‘Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?'”

The battle between Truth and Falsehood continues today, as an authoritarian president who seemingly lies with impunity moves at an alarming rate to dismantle the democracy and its government of, for and by the people.  We have for too long taken it all for granted.  I think the key words in the quoted comment from 17th century English poet and philosopher John Milton are “in a free and open encounter.”  And, as the editorial states, common sense requires ceaseless renewal by those who seek truth.

That is our challenge.    Let truth be in the field, and may we  meet the moment.

***

Following publication of  “A View from Within,” I covered the antiwar movement from the outside, walking alongside the marchers with my notebook and press pass, interviewing injured sailors and soldiers including amputees (story buried inside the paper), working on a series about the draft, and covering events with prominent politicians and others addressing the war in Vietnam.  I was drafted, passed a physical, sought to enlist, flunked a second physical, and was deferred from service.  I thought of myself as a “Cold War liberal,” not against the war until the 1968 Tet offensive that laid bare our failed policies. In November 1969, I was among half a dozen Bulletin reporters to join the massive March on Washington, with 250,000 attending, and getting tear-gassed on Pennsylvania Avenue as I was passed by the Justice Department. Newspaper reporters are repeatedly instructed to be observers, not participants, or “causists,” as my Washington Post Metro editor would later say, so this was a significant and singular line crossed.

Last Saturday, no longer bound by such rules, I waved a sign that said simply “Hell No!!” to passing motorists on a major artery near downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.

Mount Soledad National Veterans Memorial

Last month, we drove up to Mount Soledad, 823 feet above sea level, in San Diego County.  A huge cross towers over the Mount Soledad National Veterans Memorial, “honoring veterans by preserving their legacy.”  The site is owned by a non-profit organization and features 6,300 plaques and bricks , each a mini-biography of a service member dating back to the First World War.  Families donate to memorialize their loved ones, and the memorial’s website celebrates Black History Month and Women’s History Month.  Call if DEI, call it Truth versus Falsehood. Call it America. The memorial had 300,000 visitors last year, but on a balmy March day it was not crowded.  With sweeping views of San Diego, the Pacific and the coastal mountains, it was serene, but also solemn. Those pictured on plaques throughout the memorial did not serve and sometimes die for America to become what they fought so hard to defeat.

Revising History.  It’s all good.  Nothing to see here.

As many readers might know, I have devoted decades to writing about current events through the lens of history.  Notably, my book Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army features the largely forgotten five Black men who went with the fiery abolitionist to Harper’s Ferry in a failed attempt to incite a slave insurrection and topple the hated institution of chattel slavery. Brown, a polarizing figure then and in much of the historiography that followed, was unflinchingly dedicated to the cause of freedom for the country’s then 4 million humans held in bondage. Without Brown, there would have been no Five for Freedom, and, while his raid failed to achieve its immediate objective, it led inexorably to the Civil War, Emancipation and amendments to the Constitution that sought to enshrine the rights that could be won only through the bloodiest conflict in our history.

In many events where I’ve been privileged to talk about the book, I’ve quoted Ty Seidule, author of Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause: “We find it hard to confront our past because it is so ugly,” he writes “But the alternative to ignoring our racist history is creating a racist future.”  To which I add, “In order to overcome our past, we must do more than acknowledge it.  We must own it.  All of it…. and all of us.”

Now comes a report in The Washington Post, with this headline in the printed paper: Amid anti-DEI push, agency edits history exhibits. Subhead: National park Service websites have changed the way they describe subjects form slavery to Jim Crow.   The story, both in print and online, features a picture of Harriet Tubman, whose photograph is now gone from the National Park Service website.

But there is more: The DEI censors have scrubbed the Harpers Ferry NPS site as well.

Deep inside the story we learn that “a statement about the legacy of John Brown… was removed from a page on the website of Harpers Ferry National. Historical Park.”  Clicking on John Brown on the Harpers Ferry website led to this message: “This page is currently being worked on. Please check back later.” The Post article ends with Elizabeth Eckford, a surviving member of the Little Rock Nine who integrated the Arkansas high school in 1957.  “They’re trying to rewrite history,” she concludes. “We can never have true racial reconciliation until we honestly acknowledge our painful but shared past.”