History need not repeat
We must stand firm against attempts to rewrite our lineage
🎧 Listen: My Journal-Gazette op-ed and reflection
I recorded myself reading the full piece, along with the “Behind the Piece” reflection. I wanted to share it this way because sometimes tone and emotion come through best in voice.
(You can listen here, or keep scrolling to read.)
This week, The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette published my guest opinion piece on how Indiana’s political climate is reshaping our shared history.
I wrote this because we’re watching the past become a political tool, and truth deserves defenders.
Every nation builds its identity around a story, and symbols to go with it. Ours is no different.
From the beginning, leaders have used pivotal events to flatten complexity into legend, shaping a national narrative meant to hold us together when we were breaking apart.
We told ourselves a story of noble resistance when we were divided as colonies under British rule. We told ourselves a story of brotherhood and reconciliation after the Civil War, even as it left the wounds of slavery and racial terror unhealed.
And when the realities of Native genocide and human bondage became too painful to face (or when people propped up their power atop the corpses of others), we wrapped those truths in softer language: manifest destiny, states’ rights, heritage.
Myths, after all, are easier to carry than accountability. And every time we refuse to confront the truth, someone steps forward to tell us a simpler story, one that serves their power more than our progress.
And now we are living in a time, here in this Hoosier State, when leaders are reaching back to the oldest playbook in American politics: fear. They are using the same patterns that have shaped our past to control the present and decide the future.
Most recently, Gov. Mike Braun and Attorney General Todd Rokita have fixed their “Eyes on Education,” threatening to investigate or even strip teachers of their licenses over social media posts that cross their ideological lines.
It’s not unlike the Puritan ministers of Salem who mistook hysteria for holiness and believed accusation was proof enough. Let’s hope it doesn’t end the same way. Though in today’s world, a teacher’s warts and moles (or their neighbors’ poor harvest) have simply been replaced by Facebook comments and reposted memes.
Meanwhile, our self-appointed state pastor, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, offers a different form of fear wrapped in piety and revisionism.
Earlier this year, Beckwith called the Three-Fifths Compromise “a great move” that “helped root out slavery,” a claim that scholars and historians have deemed inaccurate and dangerous. In fact, the “compromise” gave enslavers even greater congressional representation and cemented a system that defined human beings as fractions.
Beckwith received criticism from religious and civic leaders. Even Braun distanced himself, saying he “definitely wouldn’t have used that characterization.”
But Beckwith had hardened his heart and stood firm, insisting he had “said exactly what needed to be said.” In his eyes, he replaces truth with his personal definition of virtue.
While Beckwith redefines history and faith on his so-called personal social media platform, Braun looks to Washington and his rich friends, and Rokita agrees to keep a public list of witches, our congressional representatives are practicing one of the most painful forms of control: avoidance.
Sen. Jim Banks and Rep. Marlin Stutzman have both avoided holding open town halls with constituents in recent months, a pattern that has become common across the country.
That avoidance is its own kind of control. When elected officials hide behind news releases and party-line talking points, they don’t just dodge hard questions, they weaken the habit of democracy itself.
Listening is the work of public service. When our leaders stop showing up, they leave an empty space that fear and myth are all too eager to fill.
And when they respond to concerns from their constituents during a government shutdown with propaganda, that is not leadership. It’s evasion, and that is problematic.
We, as Hoosiers, do not need to follow Salem’s story. History isn’t just what happened; it’s what people choose to remember. The same is true for democracy.
Both depend on memory, participation and choice. We can remember this as the moment Indiana gave in to fear, or as the one where we recognized it and turned back.
Either way, history will write the ending. I just hope we choose the better story.
Lindsay Winslow Brown is chair of the DeKalb County Democratic Party.
Originally published in The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette on October 12, 2025.
Republished here with attribution. You can also read the full piece on the JG site here.
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Behind the piece
When I wrote this, I had Indiana classrooms and communities in mind — the way legislation and political rhetoric are shaping not just who we are, but who young people are told we’re supposed to be.
This op-ed is part of a bigger question I keep coming back to on Rising from the Red:
Who gets to tell our story — and what happens when that story is rewritten for power instead of truth?
The framework of our democracy continues to be tested nationally, and Braun, Beckwith, Rokita, and Morales, with as much Hoosier hospitality as they can muster, have brought that test home to our state. It’s rolling downhill now: into town councils, county commissioners’ meetings, courtrooms, classrooms, school boards, even fire departments.
This is institutional erosion — the kind that doesn’t happen overnight, but slowly, piece by piece. Like Hemingway wrote, things fall apart “gradually, then suddenly.”
(Have we banned Hemingway yet?)
We may not feel the collapse all at once, but we’ll recognize it when it’s too late to stop, unless we start paying attention now.
Writing this for The Journal-Gazette reminded me why that question matters not just nationally, but right here at home.