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b'In the United States, questions of how we celebrate \\u2013 or condemn \\u2013 leaders in the past have never been more contentious. In 2017, a statue of Robert E. Lee was removed \\u2013 leading to a race riot and terrorist attack. But in 2020, statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, and even Ulysses S. Grant were defaced or toppled. All of this comes to the question of how we judge the past. When are the morals and ethics of people born centuries earlier excusable for the conditions of their birth, and when are they universally condemnable? What separates a Thomas Jefferson from an Emperor Nero?
To discuss this incredibly challenging topic is someone perhaps nobody better qualified: Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. He is an emeritus classics professor and author of books on the Peloponnesian War or assessing the ancient world\\u2019s best military leader. He was also awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 and was a presidential appointee in 2007\\u20132008 on the American Battle Monuments Commission.

We discuss the following:

\\u2022Times when American\\u2019s feared the removal of Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt statues in 2021 (or their toppling in riots). But we have also celebrated statue removal, such as the removal of Saddam Hussein\\u2019s statues after the fall of his regime in 2003 or the removal of Marx/Lenin Statues in Eastern Europe in 1991. What is the difference?
\\u2022The criteria for a community to remove a statue in a healthy way
\\u2022How we judge those of the past and determine that some character flaws are due to their times of birth, while other character flaws are universally condemnable \\u2013 Essentially, what makes a slave-owning Jefferson a product of his time while, say, a Nero, is universally understood as cruel
\\u2022The dangers of canceling anyone who doesn\\u2019t meet our 21st century standards; conversely, the dangers of slavish worship of them
\\u2022Who deserves more statues today'