Flashbacks are invading America’s political dialogue. People of all political stripes, but mainly those on the right, seek to justify their current positions by referring to earlier, historical facts or opinions. There isn’t anything exceptionally wrong about this except for when those historical facts or opinions have since been corrupted by more modern usage.

We can take, for example, the recent (and loud) disagreements over the Confederate flag. Confederate flag defenders leapt into action as their sacred symbol was being taken down from public spaces based on accusations that it was, actually, a sacred symbol of racists. “But,” they shouted. “It’s a battle flag!” “It’s only a symbol of a proud American heritage.”  “It’s historical and racism shouldn’t be read into it!”

Here’s the problem with those claims. They should have been raised decades ago when Nazis, the Klans and other assorted hate groups were using the Confederate flag as a racist symbol. If the modern day traditionalists truly cared about the way their flag was being used, shouldn’t they have objected when American Nazis marched with it or when Klan members waved it around? Why did they wait to praise the historic nature of the flag until people of color and their supporters became effective at rallying against its public display? Why did they save their spitting ire for when the flag was being removed? Why, years ago, weren’t they tearing their precious symbol out from the hands of unapologetic racists? And how, now, can anyone claim that, whatever its original purpose, it is not a symbol of racist hatred?

Those who claim it isn’t a racist symbol have no validity to their arguments as they allowed the flag (again, whatever its original purpose was) to become a symbol of racism without objections from them. I call this a form of PreVisionism. PreVisionism is based on the word: revisionism. Revisionist history can be defined as rewriting the past with a political agenda in mind. Examples include holocaust denial or the recent trend in some southern states of editing history text books to diminish slavery as a cause for the American Civil War.

PreVisionism; however, chooses to focus on an earlier historical definition while completely ignoring more recent changes. It might ignore revisionist history, for example, and instead focus on a more ‘acceptable’ version of history. All while insisting that their audience do the same.

PreVisionism might help explain the conservative takeover of Christianity. Since the days of Jerry Falwell and his ‘Moral majority’ in the 1980s Christianity has become linked to right wing political dogma. I’ll leave it to conservative theologians to explain why Jesus would have opposed gun registration or increasing taxes on the rich.

Yet while some ‘liberal’ churches object to this transformation, results matter. And evidently they do not object loud or often enough to have much of an impact on the discussion. As the atheist population blossoms and Christianity loses any semblance of standing for peace and love, expect many liberal Christians to complain about the perception of their religion being warlike and greedy. These complaints will focus more on us, the audience, rather than on their conservative counterparts.

Another example is some of the arguments against ‘politically incorrect’ language. Take the word, ‘retard’. This is an objectionable, and hurtful, word to many – especially parents of children with disabilities. So when used as an insult it is offensive to anyone who cares about the intellectually disabled who are not able or available to defend themselves. But complain about its use and most often someone will leap up and express their umbrage by claiming it is a medical term with a real-live dictionary definition. Yet, have those same people ever corrected someone who used the word as a personal insult? Rarely, if ever, I will bet.

PreVisionism is often harder to debate against than revisionism because, in a Sci-Fi, time-warpy kind of way, it is true. Or was true. So defenders can promote their side with a straight face, while at the same time acknowledging the ‘bad guys’ they don’t really agree with but don’t care enough about to actually confront. They stand loud and firm after shirking their own responsibility for the perceptions that they allowed to thrive. They are not rewriting history as much as they are hiding behind it to mask their ignorance (at best) or agenda (most probably).