Loss of the Past

In “Loss of the Past” (Chalcedon Report No. 320), Rushdoony argues that modern society’s deliberate forgetting and moralizing distortion of history has severed us from reality, leaving us ignorant of both the past and present and therefore incapable of shaping a sound future. By erasing figures like Patrick Henry and Stephen Decatur, caricaturing European history, and indulging in shallow denunciations of men like Columbus, modern critics practice Pharisaical self-righteousness rooted in a loss of the Biblical doctrine of sin. Without recognizing human depravity, people demand moral perfection from past societies while excusing or ignoring present evils, turning history into a weapon for self-exaltation rather than understanding. Rushdoony insists that sin is fundamentally an offense against God, not merely against other people or the state, and that only through Christ’s atonement can guilt be resolved and history redeemed. When history is viewed under God’s sovereignty, even its failures become instructive and humbling, restoring perspective, gratitude, and wisdom; without this, modern man becomes a moral pygmy condemning giants, blind to his own corruption and drifting toward cultural collapse.

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