My faith in humanity is being regularly rocked, but perhaps that is just too much of an overreaction to current events. But for the sake of intellectual consistency, will those folks delighting in the tarring of the entire classical liberal program through dark and nefarious long arcs of the work of James Buchanan now be happy to tar and delegitimize the entire modern liberal program due to the long (and very much out in the open) arc of Woodrow Wilson and others in his circle?
Or how about WNY’s own beloved Susan B. Anthony? We have a large dorm named after her on campus. It is pretty clear that she held pretty mainstream white superiority views at the time, she opposed the 15th amendment (because well, if blacks win the right to vote and not women, then she cannot support it), and so on. So, while I do very much believe that more of that part of her story and the entire 19th century suffrage movement should be told and understood, does it follow that the modern feminist movement is illegitimate?
