False Assumption Registry

Wrong Side of History

False Assumption: Traditionalist views are on the wrong side of history and destined for moral condemnation by future generations.

Summaries Written by FARAgent (AI) on February 16, 2026 · Pending Verification

For years, a great many politicians, activists, and commentators spoke as if history had a built-in direction, and that direction favored progressive causes. To be on the "wrong side of history" was not just to lose an argument, but to stand with the doomed, the backward, the soon-to-be-shamed. The phrase spread through human-rights campaigns in the 1990s and became common political currency in the Obama years, when liberal democracy was often described as the natural destination of modern societies. Obama himself paired this moral confidence with the language of pluralism and grace, even while talking about voters who "cling to guns or religion," and allies treated demographic change, secularization, and expanding rights claims as signs that traditionalist resistance was living on borrowed time.

Then politics refused to follow the script. Traditionalist and nationalist movements did not fade; they won elections, shaped courts, tightened immigration policy, rolled back abortion rights, and kept large constituencies in the United States and Europe. The old line, that opponents were merely delaying the inevitable, began to look less like analysis than wishful thinking. It also carried a cost: if your adversaries are not fellow citizens but relics awaiting moral disposal, contempt comes easily and persuasion does not. A substantial body of experts now rejects the "wrong side of history" formula as a Whiggish fable, one that mistakes temporary victories for destiny and turns political disagreement into a sermon about the future.

The broader record has made the claim harder to sustain. History has not moved in one moral direction, and modernity itself has produced imperialism, total war, communism, and eugenics along with civil rights and liberal reforms. Even Martin Luther King Jr.'s line about the arc of the moral universe, often pressed into service as a guarantee of progress, was originally a statement of faith and struggle, not a law of motion. Significant evidence now challenges the idea that future generations reliably ratify today's progressive certainties. The debate is still live, but the old confidence, that traditionalists were simply waiting for history's verdict, no longer looks as solid as it once did.

Status: A significant portion of experts think this assumption was false
People Involved
  • Barack Obama was the assumption's most consequential political carrier. As president, he delivered speeches invoking pluralism and extending grace to those who needed time to 'catch up' to progressive positions, a formulation that managed to be simultaneously tolerant in tone and dismissive in substance. [1] In a May 2009 address at the National Archives, delivered before members of Congress and senior national security officials including CIA Director Leon Panetta and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, he announced the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the formal end of enhanced interrogation techniques, framing both decisions as matters of national values and historical judgment rather than contested empirical questions. [3] The speech was a masterclass in the rhetoric of inevitability: those who disagreed were not wrong on the merits but were simply behind the curve of moral history. His administration then pursued the Iran nuclear deal through a process that, as later reporting would reveal, involved significant manipulation of the public narrative about what the deal actually contained and what it was designed to achieve. [7]
  • Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, was the operational architect of the deal's public presentation. In a 2016 profile in The New York Times Magazine, Rhodes described enlisting journalists and outside experts to create what he called an 'echo chamber,' a network of voices that would amplify administration talking points about the deal's timeline and benefits as if they were independent assessments. [7] The deal was presented to the public as a verifiable nonproliferation agreement backed by snap-back sanctions, a claim that the deal's actual text did not support. It was implemented not as a signed treaty requiring Senate ratification but through a congressional review process specifically designed to lower the threshold for approval. [7] The gap between the public description and the document's contents was not a matter of spin at the margins; it was central to how the deal was sold.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy became, in the hands of the assumption's promoters, something he would likely have found uncomfortable. His radical critiques of capitalism and American imperialism were progressively softened in public memory into what one critic described as a palatable 'patron saint of white guilt,' a figure whose most challenging arguments were quietly set aside while his most quotable lines were deployed to validate the assumption that history moves toward justice on its own. [4] The irony is that King's own theology was explicitly skeptical of historical inevitability; he borrowed the arc phrase from the abolitionist Theodore Parker and consistently paired it with warnings that the arc required human effort to bend. The version of King that circulated in political speeches was a simplified, more convenient figure.
  • Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, found herself on the receiving end of the assumption's enforcement mechanisms in 2017. She and Larry Alexander, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, co-authored an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer arguing that the erosion of what they called bourgeois cultural norms, stable families, hard work, civic engagement, had contributed to social dysfunction across class and racial lines. [10] The response from Penn Law was swift. Dean Ted Ruger published a counter-op-ed, thirty-three Penn Law faculty signed an open letter condemning the piece, and Wax was eventually barred from teaching the mandatory first-year course after making additional comments about Black student performance. [10] The institutional message was clear: the question of whether some cultural arrangements produce better outcomes than others was not a legitimate empirical inquiry but a moral transgression.
  • Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as President of Mexico, pursued the assumption's logic into the realm of 16th-century history. In 2019, he wrote to King Felipe VI of Spain demanding that Spain formally recognize its historical responsibility for the conquest of the Aztec empire and offer an apology. [12] He promoted the demand through letters and daily press conferences, framing it as a matter of historical justice long overdue. His successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, echoed the demand upon taking office, and Mexico ultimately excluded the Spanish royal family from her inauguration ceremony. [12] Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rejected the demand and boycotted the inauguration, calling the exclusion unacceptable, while Spanish commentators noted, with some amusement, that López Obrador's own surnames were thoroughly Spanish. [12]
▶ Supporting Quotes (26)
“In an interview with the Bulwark’s Tim Miller, Jon Favreau, one of Barack Obama’s longtime speechwriters, related that Obama “…has been talking a lot over the last year or so about pluralism.””— The righteousness of history
“To make progress on the things we care about... we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots... Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”— The righteousness of history
“Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, has repeated the line, “We’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business!””— The righteousness of history
“Kamala Harris consistently rails against the Dobbs decision... and has promised that she will sign a bill that once again makes Roe the law of the land.”— The righteousness of history
“Martin Luther King Jr., who famously encouraged hope by saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” later offered a different approach.”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“The fifth-century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo railed against those Christians who sacralized the expansionist history of Rome as the steady progress of God’s plan”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more t”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America. [...] As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence. I bear the responsibility for keeping this country safe. And I categorically reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“But if the historical record was truly a concern for those in power, the president of the United States would not be taking questions about the genocidal carnage unfolding daily while chowing down on a double scoop of mint chip ice cream.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“Dr King’s legacy has been significantly diluted in the public arena to make it more palatable to the majority. A man, whose beliefs and philosophy were based in the radical anticapitalist and anti-imperialist tradition, has been reduced to a little more than the patron saint of white guilt.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“Instead of facing calls for accountability for war crimes during the so-called “war on terror”, Bush is now enjoying retirement, painting portraits, attending public events and commenting on news developments as a respected former official.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“Meanwhile, Reagan, whose atrocity portfolio stretches from funding death squads in Latin America to supporting the racist apartheid regime of South Africa, is celebrated by Democrats and Republicans alike for his moxie and past policies.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“"Under Nevada’s interpretation of the treaty, the United States will be joining hands with such countries as Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan in approving death sentences for children. I withhold my approval." Chief Justice Springer, Supreme Court of Nevada, 1998”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“But for some in the USA, this calculated and brutal response to violent juvenile crime is not enough. As the rest of the world withdraws from using the death penalty against its children, some politicians in the USA are calling for their state legislatures to lower the age for capital defendants even below the current minimum of 16 set by the US Supreme Court.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“"Under Nevada’s interpretation of the treaty, the United States will be joining hands with such countries as Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Pakistan in approving death sentences for children. I withhold my approval." Chief Justice Springer, Supreme Court of Nevada, 1998”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“not only were key promises in the deal’s favor knowingly fabricated for the purpose of persuasion; not only were the scope and ambitions of the deal, the timeline of when talks began, the internal dynamics of the regime in Iran, and the priorities driving the American side during each stage willfully distorted”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“Implementation of the president’s intentions was delegated, instead, to a staffer with the portentous title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications.”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, with co-author Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego School of Law, recently published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, with co-author Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego School of Law, recently published an op-ed”— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“8/14/17 op-ed from Dean Ted Ruger: “On Charlottesville, free speech and diversity””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, spells out the profound political and cultural consequences of a new reality—that America is no longer a majority white Christian nation.”— The End of White Christian America
“When Claudia Sheinbaum becomes Mexico’s first female president later today, Felipe VI, the King of Spain, will not be present. He has, very pointedly, not been invited to the swearing-in ceremony because he hasn’t apologised for Spain’s invasion and conquest of the Aztec empire 500 years ago.”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“His successor sings from the same hymn sheet. Shortly after becoming president-elect of Mexico in July, Sheinbaum declared that ‘Spain should ask for forgiveness.’”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“Hinting that Mexico’s politicians are using a confected confrontation with Spain as a distraction from their country’s real problems”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“Writing in 1994, he argued, American conservatism, in other words, is a failure... Virtually every cause to which conservatives have attached themselves for the past three generations has been lost... Julius Krein (echoing his colleague Gladden Pappin) complains that “contemporary conservatism” lacks “a serious approach to wielding political power.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
“Hillsdale College’s David Azerrad argues that conservatives must learn to be “manly,” “combative,” and “comfortable” using “the levers of state power…to reward friends and punish enemies.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
Organizations Involved

The Democratic Party promoted the assumption through its standard campaign infrastructure during the Obama and Biden years, but the gap between the pluralism rhetoric and the policy reality was considerable. Speeches at the Democratic National Convention framed traditionalists as people who needed to 'catch up,' while national policies on abortion and marriage were pursued through federal courts and executive action rather than democratic deliberation at the state level. [1] The implicit message was that some questions had already been settled by history and did not require further argument. The assumption was not merely a rhetorical posture; it shaped which policy instruments the party was willing to use and which objections it was willing to take seriously.

The Obama White House institutionalized the assumption through executive action on two of the most contested national security questions of the era. The January 2009 executive order banning enhanced interrogation techniques and the subsequent order to close Guantanamo within a year were both framed publicly as corrections of historical errors, decisions that a future moral consensus would vindicate. [3] The administration's handling of the Iran deal extended this pattern further, with senior officials actively managing the information environment to ensure that the deal's critics appeared to be on the wrong side of a historical inevitability rather than raising substantive objections to a specific agreement with specific terms. [7]

The University of Pennsylvania Law School's response to Amy Wax's 2017 op-ed illustrated how academic institutions enforced the assumption's boundaries. The school did not engage the op-ed's empirical claims directly; it responded with a dean's counter-statement, a faculty open letter signed by thirty-three colleagues, and eventually a formal restriction on Wax's teaching duties. [10] The Public Religion Research Institute, led by Robert P. Jones, contributed a different kind of institutional weight: four decades of polling data documenting the demographic decline of white Christian America, published in book form in 2016, provided the empirical backbone for the claim that the traditionalist coalition was simply running out of people. [11] The data was real; the inference that demographic change translated automatically into moral progress was the assumption doing its work.

The Mexican government under López Obrador and Sheinbaum deployed state power in service of the assumption by converting a historical grievance into an active diplomatic instrument, excluding the Spanish royal family from a presidential inauguration and sustaining the demand across two administrations. [12] On the American right, outlets including The Federalist and The American Conservative hosted symposia and published essays arguing that conservatism had failed and that a new, more combative approach to state power was required, a conclusion that itself rested on a version of the wrong-side-of-history narrative applied in reverse: the assumption that the left had won everything and that only regime-level tactics could reverse it. [13]

▶ Supporting Quotes (14)
“Democrats claim to embrace pluralism and to tolerate disagreement, but many ultimately believe in an unforgiving and judgmental God, the God of history.”— The righteousness of history
“Let me just acknowledge the presence of some of my outstanding Cabinet members and advisors. We've got our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. We have our CIA Director Leon Panetta. We have our Secretary of Defense William Gates”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“And even under President Bush, there was recognition among members of his own administration -- including a Secretary of State, other senior officials, and many in the military and intelligence community -- that those who argued for these tactics were on the wrong side of the debate”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“In Florida, for example, local authorities changed teaching standards for Black history to the point that students are now taught that slavery brought “personal benefit” to Black people.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“The federal government has explicitly reserved the right to defy the international ban on the use of the death penalty against those who commit crimes when under 18 years old”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“state authorities pursue this practice apparently unconcerned about world opinion.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“The federal government has explicitly reserved the right to defy the international ban on the use of the death penalty against those who commit crimes when under 18 years old, and state authorities pursue this practice apparently unconcerned about world opinion.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“As a result, some 70 juvenile offenders await their deaths at the hands of US officials. Eight such prisoners have been executed in the USA in the 1990s.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“Members of the cabinet had little if any input. Indeed, in some cases their presence was entirely intended to misdirect the public’s understanding of the worldview behind the policy.”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“Compiled below are related commentaries and responses by Penn Law faculty members.”— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute”— The End of White Christian America
“By 2022 López Obrador was suggesting that Spain needed to learn to respect Mexico rather than regarding it as an ex-colony.”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“An author for The Federalist writes “the conservative project has largely failed, and it is time for a new approach.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
“In a recent symposium published by The American Conservative, editor of American Affairs Julius Krein... complains that “contemporary conservatism” lacks “a serious approach to wielding political power.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
The Foundation

The phrase 'wrong side of history' did not emerge from nowhere. It drew on a long tradition of Whig historiography, the belief, dominant in British and American intellectual life for centuries, that history moves in a single direction: from ignorance toward liberty, from superstition toward reason, from barbarism toward enlightened civilization. [2] Under this framework, traditionalist positions were not merely mistaken; they were anachronisms, holdovers from a lesser stage of human development that time itself would sweep away. The assumption seemed credible because it had a genuine prophet. Martin Luther King Jr.'s invocation of the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice gave the idea its most memorable formulation, and it was cited endlessly as evidence that history had a curative direction built into it. [2] What the citers rarely mentioned was that King himself later clarified that time was neutral, that it could be used destructively or constructively, and that the arc bent only when people bent it.

The intellectual scaffolding went deeper than a single phrase. Enlightenment thinkers and European imperialists alike had promoted the idea that humanity's compounding scientific and economic knowledge translated directly into moral growth. [2] Technological progress seemed to confirm it: if we could cure smallpox and split the atom, surely we were also becoming better people. The 20th century then produced the Holocaust, the Gulag, and the Maoist famines, all of them products of modern states deploying modern techniques in the name of modern ideologies. The assumption absorbed this inconvenient data poorly. [2] Meanwhile, in American political life, the framework generated a specific sub-belief: that opposition to immigration, gay marriage, or progressive social norms was not a legitimate value position but a symptom of fear, bitterness, or cultural lag. Barack Obama's famous 2008 observation that economically struggling voters clung to guns or religion framed traditional attachments as pathologies of deprivation rather than genuine preferences. [1] The condescension was structural, not incidental.

The assumption also rested on a belief that history functions as a kind of karmic accounting system, automatically vindicating the oppressed and condemning the powerful through the public record. [4] This seemed plausible from cases like King's eventual canonization, but it ignored the degree to which power shapes memory. The same framework that promised future condemnation for today's wrongdoers had already absorbed the rehabilitation of figures whose records were, by any neutral accounting, damaging. On questions of specific policy, the assumption generated confident sub-beliefs that were often simply wrong on the facts: that Guantanamo's military commissions, having produced only three convictions in seven years while releasing over 525 detainees, proved the facility was a net creator of terrorists rather than a detention center; that enhanced interrogation techniques produced no valuable intelligence, a claim that went well beyond what the available evidence supported. [3] The certainty with which these sub-beliefs were held was itself a product of the framework: if you are on the right side of history, your empirical claims do not require the same scrutiny as those of your opponents.

▶ Supporting Quotes (18)
“pluralism rejects the whiggish view of history in which human society ascends from the darkness of ignorance and superstition to the light of wisdom and tolerance.”— The righteousness of history
“they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”— The righteousness of history
“the so-called Whig theory of British and American history as the ongoing natural progress toward liberty;”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“Martin Luther King Jr., who famously encouraged hope by saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,””— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“Humanity’s compounding scientific and economic knowledge simply doesn’t translate to similar growth in moral knowledge.”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral;”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“During that time, the system of military commissions that were in place at Guantanamo succeeded in convicting a grand total of three suspected terrorists. Let me repeat that: three convictions in over seven years. Meanwhile, over 525 detainees were released from Guantanamo under not my administration, under the previous administration. Let me repeat that: Two-thirds of the detainees were released before I took office”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“This idea is borne out of a need to soothe the Western conscience. [...] But what the “wrong side of history” narrative really does is undermine our ability to engage with the very real conditions of the present.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“there is now an almost global consensus that people who commit crimes when under 18 should not be subjected to the death penalty. This is not an attempt to excuse violent juvenile crime... but a recognition that children are not yet fully mature - hence not fully responsible for their actions - and that the possibilities for rehabilitation of a child or adolescent are greater than for adults.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“the current minimum of 16 set by the US Supreme Court.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“To top it all off, in key parts of the document—where the administration’s long-promised “snap-back sanctions” purportedly appeared—the text actually included the Iranians’ express rejection of the concept, declaring that the entire deal would be off if sanctions were restored.”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“The “deal” with Iran that was concluded in July 2015 was not even exactly a deal. The document, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was never actually signed... The version approved by the Iranian parliament, and the provisions described by Iran’s leaders, were different from those submitted to Congress”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“when everybody assumed history had ended and that the future would be nothing but an ever-advancing, ever self-perfecting Anglophone liberalism for all time.”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“8/20/17 op-ed from 5 Penn Law faculty members in The DP: “Notions of ‘bourgeois’ cultural superiority are based on bad history””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“For most of our nation’s history, White Christian America (WCA) set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals.”— The End of White Christian America
“Having described the conquest as ‘tremendously violent, painful and unjustifiable’, López Obrador said, ‘Mexico would like the Spanish state to recognise its historical responsibility for these offences and to offer the appropriate apologies or political reparations.’”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“One problem with these debates is they often aren’t exactly clear what is meant by the “right” or “left.” There is also a tendency to observe what is happening at too general of a level, since it’s possible for the right to win on certain issues and the left to win on others.”— Conservatives Win All the Time
How It Spread

The assumption spread most effectively through the rhetorical habits of mainstream political speech. Democratic convention addresses, presidential campaign ads, and White House statements all trafficked in the language of historical inevitability, framing progressive positions as the direction of time itself and traditionalist resistance as a rearguard action against the obvious. [1] The condescension was often dressed in the language of patience: those who disagreed were not enemies but people who simply needed more time to arrive at the correct position. This framing was psychologically useful because it allowed its users to feel simultaneously tolerant and certain, a combination that is difficult to sustain through ordinary argument but easy to sustain through appeals to history's verdict.

The assumption's deeper roots ran through centuries of intellectual tradition. Christian providentialist readings of history, secular Enlightenment progressivism, European imperial ideology, and early modern contempt for medieval 'darkness' all contributed to a cultural background assumption that the present is morally superior to the past and that the future will be morally superior to the present. [2] This background assumption gave the phrase 'wrong side of history' its intuitive force: it felt like a statement of the obvious rather than a contestable claim. The psychological appeal was considerable. Invoking historical inevitability allowed present-day actors to claim the authority of future moral consensus without having to argue for it, and it allowed them to dismiss dissenters not by refuting their arguments but by locating them on a timeline.

In academic settings, the assumption propagated through the social pressure mechanisms familiar to any university community. The response to Wax and Alexander's op-ed at Penn Law moved quickly from published disagreement to an open letter signed by thirty-three faculty members to institutional sanction, a sequence that demonstrated how the assumption could be enforced through professional consequences rather than intellectual engagement. [10] Campus media covered the controversy extensively, amplifying the signal that certain empirical questions about culture and outcomes were not legitimate subjects of inquiry. In German elite politics, the assumption took the form of a deliberate commitment to the post-Cold War liberal consensus, a choice described by one analyst as treating the fall of the Berlin Wall as the end of history, after which only cosmetic adjustments to a settled order were required. [9] The commitment persisted through mass migration, the war in Ukraine, and rising domestic discontent, sustained by what critics characterized as moral posturing rather than policy analysis.

▶ Supporting Quotes (17)
“Kamala Harris herself has claimed that her campaign is about choosing freedom over “chaos, fear, and hate” and has prominently featured Beyonce’s song Freedom on the campaign trail and in commercials.”— The righteousness of history
“The attitude here is of moral condescension coupled with an enlightened air of tolerance.”— The righteousness of history
“Christians went on sacralizing history, and left behind intellectual habits that believers in secular scientific progress have never shaken off. We see modern variations all around: the so-called Whig theory... the European imperialist doctrines... the contempt of the “barbaric” Middle Ages”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“They treat some group of us in the present as having clear moral knowledge that was unavailable to the past... to whom we then get to feel superior. They’re on the wrong side of history!... I understand the psychological roots of the superstition: not only a thirst for right answers to be revealed with certainty but also a smug pride in ourselves.”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“National Archives Washington, D.C. [...] I want to acknowledge several members of the House who have great interest in intelligence matters. I want to thank Congressman Reyes, Congressman Hoekstra, Congressman King, as well as Congressman Thompson, for being here today.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset -- in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“Many have denounced officials supporting Israel for being on the wrong side of history and actively being in favour of what will go down in the public record as a genocide.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“some politicians in the USA are calling for their state legislatures to lower the age for capital defendants even below the current minimum of 16 set by the US Supreme Court.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“state authorities pursue this practice apparently unconcerned about world opinion. As a result, some 70 juvenile offenders await their deaths at the hands of US officials. Eight such prisoners have been executed in the USA in the 1990s. In the same period, only five other countries - Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - are known to have executed juvenile offenders”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“not only were journalists and experts whose entire reputations should have been at stake enlisted in the government’s sorcery”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“Stuck politics in Germany will become an increasingly glaring and bizarre phenomenon as the progressive liberal consensus withers away everywhere else. Still worse, stuck politics render German politicians incapable of responding to contingencies”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“We will do all of this to set an example for others, to feel good about ourselves and to believe that we are on the Right Side of History.”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“8/13/17 article in The DP: “Campus is abuzz over Penn Law professor Amy Wax’s controversial op-ed, which called for return of ‘bourgeois’ cultural values””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“8/30/17 op-ed from 33 Penn Law faculty members in The DP: “Open letter to the University of Pennsylvania community””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“the visceral nature of today’s most heated issues—the vociferous arguments around same-sex marriage and religious and sexual liberty, the rise of the Tea Party following the election of our first black president”— The End of White Christian America
“This diplomatic stand-off began in 2019 when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then president of Mexico, wrote to King Felipe inviting him to express his regret... Then last Thursday at his daily press conference the out-going president read out the four-page letter he sent five years ago”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“modern writers echo his pessimistic understanding of the history of the movement. An author for The Federalist writes “the conservative project has largely failed... This understanding of why conservatism has failed is today associated with what David Brooks calls the “New Right.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
Resulting Policies

The most consequential American policies built on the assumption operated through the federal judiciary. The Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision imposed a national abortion framework that overrode state-level variation for nearly fifty years, until the Dobbs decision in 2022 returned the question to state legislatures. [1] The 2015 Obergefell decision similarly nationalized same-sex marriage over the objections of traditionalist communities that had, in many states, voted against it directly. [1] Both decisions were defended in the language of historical inevitability: the court was not making a political choice but recognizing a moral reality that history had already established. The assumption did not cause these decisions, but it shaped how they were justified and how their opponents were characterized.

On national security, the Obama administration translated the assumption into executive action with unusual speed. The January 2009 executive order banning enhanced interrogation techniques was signed within days of the inauguration, and the order to close Guantanamo Bay within one year followed shortly after. [3] Both were framed as corrections of historical errors whose wrongness was self-evident. The Guantanamo closure order proved impossible to execute within its own timeline; the facility remained open, a fact that complicated the assumption's promise of clean historical resolution without generating much public acknowledgment of the complication.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, finalized in 2015, was implemented without Senate ratification as a treaty, using instead a congressional review process that required only a one-third minority to sustain a presidential veto of any disapproval resolution. [7] The administration suppressed side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency from congressional review. The deal was presented publicly as a verifiable agreement with automatic snap-back sanctions; the text did not support that description. In Germany, the policy consequences of the assumption were less dramatic but more pervasive: migration policy received cosmetic adjustments rather than structural reform, weapons continued flowing to Ukraine on a timeline critics found strategically incoherent, and energy policy proceeded on assumptions about renewable transition that required clearing forests for wind installations. [9] The common thread was a governing class that had decided the direction of history and was managing toward it rather than responding to evidence.

▶ Supporting Quotes (12)
“the Roe framework steamrolled diversity and imposed a top-down standard across the country that conflicted with the desires of many states.”— The righteousness of history
“imposing gay marriage across the country through the Supreme Court is not pluralistic, it’s imperialistic.”— The righteousness of history
“The second decision that I made was to order the closing of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“First, I banned the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the United States of America. [...] In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts -- they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.”— Remarks by the President On National Security, 5-21-09
“the current minimum of 16 set by the US Supreme Court.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“the current minimum of 16 set by the US Supreme Court. In mid-1998 they sent Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter to the same fate. Both were executed for crimes they committed when they were 17.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“We were assured that Congress would be given a say, but the nature of the say included a truncated process, suppression of side deals, and a vote in which two-thirds of members were required to override a veto and stop the implementation”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“we will address mass migration only in cosmetic ways, we will probably be the last country on earth still sending weapons to Ukraine, and perhaps even in two decades, after climatism has decayed to a ritualised pseudoreligious husk of its former self, we will still be cutting down forests to clear space for more windmills.”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“3/13/18 Daily Pennsylvanian coverage of Prof. Wax’s comments on student performance, being moved from mandatory 1L course, “After ‘disparaging’ comments on black students, Amy Wax barred from teaching first-year course”.”— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“White Christian America (WCA) set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals.”— The End of White Christian America
“He has, very pointedly, not been invited to the swearing-in ceremony... due to ‘the unacceptable and inexplicable exclusion [of King Felipe]… there will be no representatives of the Spanish government at the ceremony.’”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“This new approach usually involves being more willing to play tough in order to defeat the left... conservatives must learn to be “manly,” “combative,” and “comfortable” using “the levers of state power…to reward friends and punish enemies.””— Conservatives Win All the Time
Harm Caused

The most direct and measurable harm produced by a version of the assumption in American law involved juvenile capital punishment. During the 1990s, eight juvenile offenders were executed in the United States, and approximately seventy more sat on death row as of June 1998. [5] Among those executed were Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter, both seventeen at the time of their crimes, both products of severely abusive childhoods, both executed in Texas despite documented rehabilitation efforts during their imprisonment. [5] The case of Shareef Cousin in Louisiana added a further dimension: facing execution for a crime committed as a juvenile, with questions about the coercion of witnesses and the reliability of the evidence against him. [5] The United States stood, during this period, in a group of nations executing juvenile offenders that included Iran and Iraq, a comparison that Chief Justice Springer of the Nevada Supreme Court made explicit in dissent. [6] The assumption that American legal practice was on the right side of history was, on this specific question, contradicted by the near-universal position of every other developed nation.

The Iran nuclear deal's regional consequences were substantial and are still contested in their full scope. Critics argue that the agreement flooded Iran with money, legitimacy, and relief from sanctions, enabling the expansion of proxy forces in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. [7] The United States ceded influence in Iraq to Iran-backed militias, declined to press Hezbollah in Lebanon, and accepted Iranian proxy activity in Syria and Yemen as a background condition of the deal's maintenance. [7] Whether these outcomes were caused by the deal or were already underway is disputed, but the gap between the public description of the agreement and its actual terms was not.

The assumption's political costs were less quantifiable but significant. The contempt for traditionalists embedded in the rhetoric of historical inevitability contributed to the political polarization that made Donald Trump's 2016 appeal comprehensible to voters who felt they were being managed rather than represented. [1] On the American right, a version of the assumption operating in reverse, the belief that conservatives had lost everything and that history was running against them, fostered what one analyst described as pessimism and self-pity that discouraged effective conventional political organizing and promoted more radical alternatives, even as the actual policy record on guns, abortion, taxes, and school choice showed significant conservative gains. [13] The assumption, in both its progressive and its reactive conservative forms, distorted the reading of political reality.

▶ Supporting Quotes (15)
“Democrats can’t placate traditionalists by pretending to care about their views or refraining from calling them bigots... Until then, Donald Trump will happily ta”— The righteousness of history
“the very idea that there is a wrong or right side of history has been the moral justification for a variety of historical horrors that were steeped in ideas of modernity and technological mastery... The Holocaust was new, not just a bigger pogrom. The atrocities of communism under Stalin and Mao were new; so was the trans-Atlantic chattel slave trade; so was the genocidal conquest of the Americas.”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“It is dangerous to perceive history as the ultimate equaliser not only because it is not but also because it dampens motivation to engage in real initiatives for change by giving an easy outlet to our feelings of helplessness and anxiety.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“Eight such prisoners have been executed in the USA in the 1990s... some 70 juvenile offenders await their deaths at the hands of US officials.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“In mid-1998 they sent Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter to the same fate. Both were executed for crimes they committed when they were 17. At the time of their crimes, both were emerging from profoundly abused and deprived childhoods. By the time they were executed, each had undergone substantial change in prison.”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“Wrong on all counts? - Shareef Cousin, Louisiana”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“Eight such prisoners have been executed in the USA in the 1990s... some 70 juvenile offenders await their deaths... At the time of their crimes, both were emerging from profoundly abused and deprived childhoods.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“By the time they were executed, each had undergone substantial change in prison. When their lives were extinguished by lethal injection, the hope raised by their efforts towards rehabilitation was killed too... Wrong on all counts? - Shareef Cousin, Louisiana”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“flooding a serial violator of nuclear treaties and international humanitarian law with money, power and legitimacy in exchange for a promise to hold off its nuclear work for a few years is a self-evidently bad idea”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“expressed in the gradual ceding of power in Iraq to Iran-backed Shiite militias... as well as turning a blind eye to Hezbollah’s increasing dominance of southern Lebanon and the deployment of Iranian troops and proxies in Syria and Yemen”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“The resources spent on keeping politics stuck – because stuck politics is a deliberate choice of our elite and not some bizarre Twilight Zone problem they’ve stumbled into – also mean that Germany will face ever poorer domestic circumstances and shittier governance.”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“The piece provoked intense debate, as well as strong reactions, across the ideological spectrum.”— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“stark disagreements between black and white Americans over the fairness of the criminal justice system—can only be understood against the backdrop of white Christians’ anxieties as America’s racial and religious topography shifts around them.”— The End of White Christian America
“Regretting that the relations between two ‘progressive’ governments have deteriorated to this point... ‘Spain,’ Sánchez explained, ‘regards Mexico as a brother country… We feel enormous frustration… that we cannot normalise our relations.’”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“On the right, there’s a self-pitying narrative that’s taken hold, in which democracy and conventional political activism are hopeless, and the conservative movement has been doing nothing but losing for decades.”— Conservatives Win All the Time
Downfall

Significant evidence challenges the assumption from multiple directions, though the debate is far from settled. The 20th century's catastrophes provided the earliest and most powerful counter-evidence: the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges, the Maoist famines, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade were all products of modern states, modern ideologies, and, in several cases, explicit claims to be on the right side of history. [2] Augustine of Hippo, writing in the fifth century as Rome collapsed, had already identified the error of sacralizing any particular civilization's expansion as moral progress; his critique anticipated by fifteen centuries the progressive version of the same mistake. [2] The 20th century's body count made the critique unavoidable, though it did not make it universally accepted.

The assumption's promise of historical accountability for the powerful has faced mounting challenges from the observable behavior of power itself. George W. Bush, whose administration authorized practices that critics described as war crimes, underwent a public rehabilitation that accelerated after Trump's election, appearing at state funerals and cultural events as a respected elder statesman. [4] Ronald Reagan's record of funding Latin American paramilitary forces and maintaining relations with the apartheid South African government was progressively softened in public memory until his name attached to airports and federal buildings across the country, celebrated across party lines. [4] Florida's state education authorities, meanwhile, revised Black history curricula to include the claim that slavery had provided 'personal benefit' to enslaved people, a demonstration that the historical record is not a fixed accounting of moral facts but a contested terrain that power shapes actively. [4]

The political reversals of the mid-2020s provided a different kind of challenge to the assumption's directional confidence. Trump's return to the presidency in 2025, Justin Trudeau's resignation in Canada, Austria's shift to right-populist government, and the broader rightward movement in European elections left Germany's governing class, which had most explicitly committed to the post-Cold War liberal consensus as a permanent settlement, increasingly isolated. [9] Policy data on specific issues told a story that the assumption's promoters had difficulty incorporating: concealed carry had become the legal norm across most American states, abortion rates had declined and bans had passed in multiple states following Dobbs, homeschooling was legal everywhere, the top marginal income tax rate had been cut, and school choice programs had expanded. [13] A substantial body of critics now argues that the assumption of inevitable progressive victory was, on the policy evidence, simply wrong about who was winning.

The academic exposure of the assumption's specific claims came through journalism as much as scholarship. The 2016 Atlantic profile of Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg and the New York Times Magazine profile of Ben Rhodes by David Samuels documented the gap between the Iran deal's public presentation and its actual terms and philosophy, making the administration's information management visible in detail. [7] At Penn Law, Wax's responses in the Daily Pennsylvanian and the Wall Street Journal, supported by external commentary challenging the empirical basis of the faculty's counter-arguments, demonstrated that the institutional response to her op-ed had been more about enforcement than refutation. [10] Spain's refusal to apologize for the Aztec conquest, backed by public sentiment that treating 500-year-old events as live diplomatic grievances was, in the words of Spanish commentators, a form of emotional fraudulence, suggested that the assumption's reach had limits even among governments otherwise sympathetic to historical reckoning. [12] None of this settled the underlying question of whether traditionalist views are, in some meaningful sense, destined for moral condemnation. It did suggest that the confidence with which the question was answered had outrun the evidence available to answer it.

▶ Supporting Quotes (12)
“Instead, they would have to offer policy concessions and commit to real cultural compromise... Until then, Donald Trump will happily ta”— The righteousness of history
“But I don’t understand how unshakable it is, even after the 20th century... new technological prowess and new organizational capacity opens the door to new evils... MLK... offered a different approach... time itself is neutral... Augustine of Hippo railed against”— Why the idea of a “wrong side of history” existing is flawed
“The distortion of MLK’s legacy is just one example of how history can be twisted to make it more easily digestible or useful to white supremacist power structures.”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“It is not that the most powerful people among us do not care about their legacies when they make decisions. It is that they know they have the resources and sway to change public perception while they are alive or that the “civility” argument will be used to temper criticism after their death”— The fallacy of the ‘wrong side of history’ narrative
“It is agreed - 18 is the minimum age in capital cases”— On the Wrong Side of History: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“On 31 July 1998 Chief Justice Springer dissented from the majority opinion of the Supreme Court of Nevada when it confirmed the death sentence against Michael Domingues, convicted in 1994 for the murder... The crime took place when Michael Domingues was 16 years old. His appeal to the state Supreme Court had raised one issue: the illegality of his death sentence under international law.”— ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY: Children and the Death Penalty in the USA
“Two recent devastating profiles—one of President Barack Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic and the other of Obama’s communications chief Ben Rhodes by David Samuels in The New York Times Magazine—have revealed a kaleidoscope of mendacity”— The Mind of the President - The Tower
“Soon, Donald Trump will begin serving his second term as President of the United States, Justin Trudeau will resign in Canada and the right-populist Freedom Party under Herbert Kickl will form a government in Austria.”— Germany: The Land of Stuck Politics
“9/01/17 op-ed from Prof. Wax in The DP: “In response to “Open letter to the University of Pennsylvania community”; 9/3/2017 op-ed from Prof. Jonathan Klick on Heterodox Academy: “I Don’t Care if Amy Wax Is Politically Incorrect; I Do Care that She’s Empirically Incorrect””— Prof. Wax op-ed on “bourgeois culture” spurs intense debate, strong reactions
“Drawing on more than four decades of polling data, The End of White Christian America explains and analyzes the waning vitality of WCA... Today, America is no longer demographically or culturally a majority white, Christian nation.”— The End of White Christian America
“Spaniards are alert to the ‘emotional fraudulence’ of professing guilt for something that happened 20 generations ago... Juan Carlos’ reluctance to shoulder the blame for events that took place half a millennium ago is shared by many Spaniards.”— Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs
“The idea that “conservatives always lose” is falsifiable. One simply has to find a number of issues on which public policy has moved right in recent decades. Below, I show that such examples are not hard to find.”— Conservatives Win All the Time
Sources
Related False Assumptions
ID: FA-20260216-b8a98c62 · Created: 2026-02-16T04:54:26.400470 · Schema v3

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