One has to wonder, both quizzically and fearfully, how far back the “make this country great again” enthusiasts want to take the national ship of state. Astute historians of our brief American governmental experiment may locate those alleged “good old days” in that pre-Civil War utopian time of plantations and church pews. Those pews were filled with good Christian light-skinned ladies dressed, groomed and driven by happy employees of good old “black jobs.” It was a happy time of no racial ambiguity except for the occasional offspring of rape by the “master.”

But it seems that maybe the real pole star of desire for the Heritage Foundation is a return to the time of Emperor Theodosius in the late 300s CE. Soon after he declared the Roman Empire to be “Christian” all hell broke loose. The institutionalization of a self-confessed “jealous god,” intolerant of any challenges to a despotic theocracy, produced the sure and tidy suppression of such vile threats as science and knowledge — radical stuff from sources other than the approved prophets who had a direct line to the ultimate autocrat in the sky.

Going still further back, the Project 2025 writers could argue that the “Top Down, One Boss” model worked well for the Babylonians, Sumerians and Egyptians for all those great millennia when women knew their place well (with their cats in the case of widows). That was the glorious old time when literacy was a dangerous proposition, guarded exclusively by the priestly caste. Literary knowledge was so dangerous, in fact, that it was in the state/church’s best interest to burn the centuries of accumulated knowledge residing in the great Library of Alexandria. Books were burned and murder was delivered to their educated defenders, like the charismatic mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia. But then where should those “restorers of America” locate Socrates, condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by actually educating them? Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court could be dragged out for months for such a Toga Titan, but in the end, he would have to swallow the present-day poison of suppression.

So, we really must inquire of these 21st-century library centurions and cultural revivalists: How far back would be far enough? Surely, before Fox News and Truth Social! Given the clear threat of science, certainly before any of the daily benefits of nonreligious industrial progress? Would they take us back to the good old days before sliced bread and the internal combustion engine? The latter has so grandly (and grimly) set in motion the prospect of cleaning up the human gene pool — to extinction — by heating up the atmosphere beyond the livable Eden of the DJT-signed $60 Holy Book. That far back? To the very resetting of life to the sulfur-eating microbes on this watery space rock which is decidedly not flat — although that might be disputed on Truth Social? Perhaps the 2025ers are debating those very important questions over a case of single-use plastic water bottles.

Christopher Schweitzer lives in Boulder.