We all know about Carlyle's Great Man theory of history, but what about the Creepy Guy Behind the Curtain theory of history or the Meddlesome Housemaid Who Spikes the Punch theory or the Wife Who Whispers in the Great Man's Ear theory?
History is written by the victors, but what of those who called in sick that day? Or those who opted not to play? What of the individual who performed one small act that set in motion a great, grand tumult of actions that changed history?
Consider Gavrilo Princip.
He is the 19-year-old Serbian student who assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which ignited the conflagration of World War I, which yielded the Treaty of Versailles, which deeply embittered an Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler, who in response booted up the great horror of World War II, which yielded the Treaty at Yalta, which divided up Eastern Europe in such a way that another Serb named Slobodan Milosevic felt the need to ethnically cleanse Kosovo.
Gavrilo Princip, Trigger of the Century.
History belongs not only to the victors but also to the morally unambiguous. We tend to cite those individuals who divide most conveniently into black and white, good and evil, like characters in an old western. Those who are shades of gray, who are moral relativists, are relegated to a place outside the canon. This group includes those who may have the right idea but whose biography is dodgy, to say the least.
Heidegger was a towering philosopher but an odious man with Nazi sympathies. Whittaker Chambers was mostly right about communism and Alger Hiss, but he was a nasty piece of work and no one likes a snitch. Even Joe McCarthy may have been on to something, but he was a crude and cruel man who ruined people's lives for 48-point type. You might call this the When Bad People Spoil Good Things school of history.
Of course, there are those whose intentions were malign but not all that influential, whose perniciousness petered out. Father Coughlin's anti-Semitic rants on the wireless never really amounted to much. Preacher Billy Sunday swore that when Prohibition finally came, "Hell would be rent forever." Fat chance of that happening anytime soon. George Wallace's cry of "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" lasted only a decade before it was relegated to the dustbin of ugly 19th century prejudices. Call this the When Bad People Don't Do All That Much Damage theory of history.