Aboard the SMS Von Der Tann on the afternoon of May 31st, 1916 was one really good gun grew. Nobody will ever know for certain which actual gun did it, but in one of her dual 11 inch gun turrets, the crew managed to hit HMS Indefatigable right into the top of her A turret causing an near-instant detonation of Indefatigable’s magazine, blowing the ship into literal pieces – so bad that only two of her 1,019 officers and men survived. Now, we don’t know the names of the men in Von Der Tann who did the actual deed, but suppose one of them was, say, Swahili. This would, aside from surprising the rest of the gun crew, be an utterly insignificant fact. In today’s world, though, we are told we have to concentrate on the odd man out. If we don’t, then we’re “erasing history”.

This is not to denigrate the effort of our odd man – in any human event, it is all the people who participate who matter. In the major human events – good and bad – it is the collective effort of many which makes the thing happen. And if the deed is honorable and the people involved did well, then we honor them – perhaps even to raising statues in their memory. But the individuals of the mass are not historically significant. What was going on that May day in 1916 wasn’t a man or a group of men laying a gun just the right way to totally destroy an enemy whip – the event was the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval engagement of World War One.

There are a host of things to consider about the Battle of Jutland. The commanders. The ships. The training. The equipment. The positions over time. Any student of history could spend a whole life time just studying this one engagement and still be pulling nuggets of useful and/or interesting information out of it. But what no historian needs to know is if any particular person aboard any ship was gay, or non-white, or any other thing. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what people did collectively under the leadership of the two fleets engaged. It is important for us to study deeply the life of John Jellicoe – the British commander – because that can give us insights into why he might have made this decision rather than that at a crucial moment. That Class II Stoker Nigel Farmsworth aboard the HMS Defense might have been secretly bisexual is entirely irrelevant.

I bring this up because we’re now in the run-up to America 250 and we’re getting demands that we stop paying attention to trivial things like George Washington and start paying attention to this or that odd person. What black people did. What Natives did. Yadda, yadda, yadda on and on. Just can’t stand this nonsense. It isn’t important that Prince Estabrook was a black man – what is important is that he and a bunch of other men stood up to Royal tyranny at Lexington and Concord. It mattered that Estabrook was there – as much as it mattered that the rest were there. But in the deep tides of history, that he was black simply does not matter. And if we’re going to study the Revolutionary War, our first task is to fully understand Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, etc…the people who led the way…the people who took the sublime heroism of Estabrook and his fellow patriots and forged a nation with it.

It is time to take our history back – to stop this looking for the DEI entry in every historical event. It probably just insults the memories of those who were there as they would be stunned that we even care about such trivial things. My bet is that if Estabrook could talk to us right now, he’s modestly say he was just doing his part…like all those who were there would say. Because that is what they were doing…not making a point for us in 2026. The American Revolution – the creation of the United States of America – is the most important purely human event in history. It created the freest, most powerful nation to ever be – and likely ever will be. It was a distillation of human history into its finest form – the end of all argument about what a civil society is supposed to be. The creation of the standard by which all over nations are to be judged. What is the skin color or gender of any participant compared with that? Nothing at all.

This great and glorious America is worth preserving – but it can only be preserved if people remember how it came to be and why. Who moved the world. Why did we decide on this form. That is what needs to be told…not some nonsense designed merely to please someone in 2026 who hates America anyways.