Trump wants triumphal history. But democracies remember their failures.

On March 27, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Railing against “improper partisan ideology” and the “false reconstruction of American history,” the president said he wanted “to restore solemn and uplifting public monuments” and would discourage programs and monuments that “degrade shared American values [or] divide Americans based on race” or “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”