Today’s American Heroes May Not Be Forever

The catalogue of cultural transformations is a long one.

Robert Weissberg | October 3, 2026

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

— George Orwell, 1984 

All nations need heroes and fortunately, American history abounded with them. It is also of the utmost importance that these heroes be publicly celebrated so people will learn the qualities—tenacity, sense of duty, and industriousness among other worthy traits—that define our greatness.  Youngsters must read about them in their textbooks, while schools display their pictures. We need museums and Halls of Fame that recount their accomplishments, postage stamps with their likenesses, and even naval ships and military bases named after our heroes. These celebrations help people to know “Who we are as a nation.”

The need for such remembrance may seem self-evident; but they are increasingly being challenged. This is a war on our heritage. San Francisco, for example, renamed 44 public schools to cleanse “racism” from the eyes of students. Among the banished figures were Francis Scott Key, who composed the “Star Spangled Banner.”

This banishment has often targeted statutes. For example, a New York City Council committee a few years back held a public hearing on whether to remove monuments to people who “owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery” or who “participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples.” Among those targeted for elimination were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Peter Stuyvesant, and Christopher Columbus. On January 20th, 2020, the city’s American Museum of Natural History removed President Theodore Roosevelt’s statue due to its “hierarchical implications.” In the South, where statutes honoring those who fought for the Confederacy are ubiquitous, their removal operates on an industrial scale.

The marginalization of heroic figures sometimes occurs on the sly, but more significant are the “new” heroes who replace them.

Events in New York City’s........

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