THE MORNING RANT: Is the National World War II Museum Going Woke?

Can’t we have one museum that is not obsessed about vilifying this country? It sounds like the new Liberation Pavilion at the World War II Museum in New Orleans has taken a detour into the post-WWII era, seeking to become an all-encompassing museum of the post-war era. The detour appears to be a hard left turn.

It was a goal of mine to visit that museum, which I finally did about 10 years ago, spending an entire afternoon there by myself, taking it all in. It was magnificent. Separately, my wife contacted the museum and offered up some WWII-era items of her grandmother, which they accepted for their home front collection.

When I visited, I was already deeply sensitive to how so many great museums in America had been captured by activist, left-wing curators and educators who obsess endlessly about race, inequality, and what they perceive to be America’s shameful history. It struck me at the time how special it was that the WWII museum focused on so many aspects of the war effort, without letting the modern left-wing agenda infect the displays. I wondered if this could be sustained, fearing it couldn’t. It appears that my fears are now coming true.

While the new three-story Liberation Pavilion sounds like it has some impressive displays about the worst cruelties of the war, and the lights of humanity that somehow continued to shine amidst it all, it also has all-new displays covering the post-war era’s political turbulence, and assessing the legacy of the war through the prism of modern left-wing politics.

Let me start off by saying that discrimination and legal segregation were real and painful realities of this country’s history. But also never forget that Jim Crow was a command-and-control, big-government program administered by ruling-class southern Democrats, with the acquiescence of liberal northern Democrats who partnered with them to attain an electoral majority. I was not around then, and I bear no blame, but I will celebrate all of the good that came from the struggle to end legal discrimination. I will also argue that the spark of freedom unleashed with the Declaration of Independence led to this great country eventually fulfilling a promise of equality and opportunity for everyone that no other country can match.

With that said, a museum about a mighty war in the 1940s has no business addressing social issues of the 1950s and ‘60s. There are plenty of other forums for that. As far as segregation and discrimination during the war, of course that should be addressed, especially when discussing the gallantry of servicemen such as Doris Miller, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, etc.

With all that preface, here is AP’s report on the WWII Museum’s new wing.

“Grim yet hopeful addition to National WWII Museum addresses the conflict’s world-shaping legacy” [AP – 11/03/2023]

Underlying it all is the idea that almost 80 years later, the war’s social and geopolitical legacies endure — from the acceleration of civil rights and women’s equality movements in the U.S. to the formation of international alliances to protect democracy.

“Protecting democracy” is a buzz phrase of modern-day leftists who believe that any election or political movement that denies power to leftists is a ”threat to democracy.”

Aside from that, everything that happened before us is “history” and it all flowed from the history that preceded it. The changes that occurred in the 1950s and beyond have an immense number of cultural, historical, industrial, and other inputs. The war was a small subset of those inputs. Creating a display at the museum to highlight those other topics is politicized mission creep.

The pavilion’s second floor focuses in part on what those who served faced upon returning home — “the responsibilities at home and abroad to defend freedom, advance human rights, protect democracy,” said Michael Bell, a retired Army colonel and the executive director of the museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

“Protect democracy.” There it is again.

“Defending freedom” and “advancing human rights” sound great, and maybe they are, but the simple reality is that the priorities of the immediate post-war era were pacifying Japan and Germany, and containing the Soviet Union so we wouldn’t have to re-fight the war.

There are numerous museums to be found that focus on the Cold War, NATO, the American Civil Rights movement, etc. A museum devoted to the global war in the 1940s should not be one of them.

Black veterans came back to a homeland still marred by segregation and even violence against people of color. Women had filled non-traditional roles at home and abroad. Pavilion exhibits make the case that their experiences energized efforts to achieve equality.

Reading this saddens me, because I have seen so many institutions hijacked by zealots who can never forgive America for not achieving 21st century purity in 1776 or 1789.

Again, there are stories about segregation during the war that need to be told, and the WWII Museum is absolutely the place to do so. Knowing the discrimination they faced, it makes the service of those being discriminated against even more significant.

Doris Miller was a mess attendant aboard the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor. His role was determined by his race, and he was not trained in firing weapons. When his ship was hit by Japanese torpedoes, he first attended to the stricken captain, and then grabbed an unattended .50-caliber machine gun and started firing at Japanese planes. He also helped injured men get to shore from the sinking ship. For his heroics, he was awarded the Navy Cross.

Doris Miller was killed in action in 1943. Tell this story. Leave the 1960s to another museum.

“Civil rights is the fifties and women’s equality is more like the sixties,” Citino said. “But we think both of those seminal changes in American society can be traced back in a significant way to World War II.”

Yes, everything can be traced back in some way or another to the history that preceded it. But a museum display about 1960’s women’s lib belongs in another venue, not at the WWII Museum.

“We talk about NATO or the United Nations, but I don’t know that most people understand that these are creations, American-led creations, from the war,” said Bell. “What our goal is, at least I’d say my goal, is to give the visitor a frame of reference or a lens in which way they can look at things going on in the world.”

Does the museum mention that the United Nations is full of anti-semites who think of Hitler as a role model? If America is complicit in creating the UN, then maybe I should feel a little bit of guilt and shame.

Real simple, the National World War II Museum should focus on World War II, and nothing else. Those directors and benefactors who can influence exhibits, curators, and educators need to take a stand now to keep the woke rot in the Liberation Pavilion from infecting the rest of the museum.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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