The National WWII Museum in New Orleans tells the story of the American experience in the war that made our world today but, strange to say, isn’t much dissected or weighed in history classes, at least as young people learn history. The Second World War is the stuff of buffs, lovers of military history, students of the Holocaust, and geezers — or, now, the children of geezers, and we ourselves are the geezers. The museum is New Orleans’s biggest cultural attraction, it says, though that’s in measurable numbers. Mardi Gras and jazz define the city’s cultural draw and impact, but that’s hard to quantify. Still, the museum is big and well done. I sometimes write about history museums, and this one’s always timely.
In interpreting the Second World War, the museum emphasizes dedication to freedom, courage, optimism, teamwork, determination, sacrifice, volunteerism, and generosity. These themes are invisible and irrelevant in the vengeful, twisted woke history that’s pushed in our schools, faddish among our scholars in colleges and universities, and popular among many journalists. So, the museum is a tonic. It’s fact-based but also driven by constant, universal human values. The war was like no other, more violent, toxic, pervasive, consequential, and, of course, avoidable, and it’s still alive. It’s not the Crusades, the Napoleonic Wars, or the Civil War but the stuff of today’s world. It made the way we live now, so it’s essential now, not boutique history or snippet history for little minds.
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