POLL: What was the worst media quote of the week? Authoritarian-minded regimes have always understood that there is both an material and an intellectual aspect of history. And if you can erase history in the material world, in the built world, you assert great power to actually erase narratives in places like the Smithsonian. And if you have that power, then, of course, you can control the present and the future.” You can celebrate the First Amendment without asking your opponent in that fight what he thinks.