my essay on the importance of history

[The Wrath]

I'm no history expert, but I have recently been astounded by the ignorance of certain people that I know. People who can't tell me the two sides of the American Civil War, who the leader of the Nazi party was, or on what continent you can find France.

Some people say history doesn't matter. I think history is the most important subject that can be taught in school, yet so many major universities don't require it. Even middle and high schools only teach a ridiculously dumbed-down pseudo-history. They teach concrete facts..."this happend on such-and-such date," "this man invente this gizmo." No one teaches ideas anymore. School children are taught when the Declaration of Independence was signed and when the Constitution was drafted. How many college graduates can tell you the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence? How many can tell you what vital purposes are served by the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, a purpose that is completely ignored by our own government today?

History is the ultimate moral lesson. The morals of history are not written by an author with a good imagination, like the morals you find in a fictional book. They are brought about by real life and death decisions. History is philosophy teaching by example. It shows us the consequences of man's actions.

When people tell me that they don't need to know history, I am almost at a loss for words. I guess I accept it, almost axiomatically, that everyone recognizes it as important, but I think I've figured out why they don't. People in my generation of Americans have never had to live in fear of some foreign despot who has the desire and the ability to take over this nation and make life on earth a living hell for everyone. My generation was barely conscious at the end of the Cold War. They've never lived with the fear of Communism. Instead, all too many of them think that embracing Communism while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt is a good way to rebel against what they see as uptight authority figures, while knowing nothing about the atrocities committed by Communist regimes and Che Guevara himself.

The World War II generation used to cringe with fear at the very mention of the name "Adolf Hitler." Now, too many people don't even know who he was, or what the Nazis stood for. This is demonstrated all too well by the ease with which people call others "Nazis," nowadays. Radical leftists throw the term around as if there is no difference at all between a member of the US military and a member of Hitler's SS.

There are terrorists who want to kill us but they do not have the ability to overtake our government and subject us to Sharia law. By and large, Americans are not afraid of being attacked by terrorists, because it has happened so rarely on our own soil and is on a comparitively small scale. Most people can't see how the recent events in Israel and Lebanon have anything to do with them, apart from a temporary spike in gas prices.

As we approach the 5th anniversary of 9/11, I think to myself that the historical ignorance of the American population is what is leading to the downfall of a once great Republic. There are parallel's between our current troubles in the Middle East and World War II. Hitler was appeased at every step of the way, when countries like France and Britain could have single-handedly destroyed him. They didn't, and it led to a war that cost the lives of over 60 million people from almost every nation in the world.

Now we are fighting an enemy that is equally as determined. Instead of vanquishing that enemy, we give them concessions, as a means of temporarily preserving the peace. We hope that, by doing so, we can leave the real bloodshed to another generation. Western Europe let Hitler take the Rhineland. We let Khomeini take the American embassy. Western Europe gave Hitler Czechoslovakia, we let the Palestinians take the Gaza Strip. Western Europe sat idle while Hitler prepared to obliterate Poland, we (including Israel) sit idle while Hizballah, Syria, and Iran prepare to obliterate Israel.

We delude ourselves into thinking that we should pull out of the Middle East, because they'll leave us alone if we do. Russia thought the same about Hitler, despite the mounting evidence for a Nazi invasion of Russia, and despite the fact that Hitler specifically mentioned his plans for Russia in Mein Kampf. We ignore the explicit statements of Islamic clerics and the prophecies in the Koran which call for the whole world to be united under an Islamic theocracy.

We delude ourselves into thinking that our enemies would never challenge the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, since doing so is clearly suicide. Yet we ignore that they commit suicide on a regular basis, as a means of fighting the West. They blow themselves up. Fly planes into sky-scrapers. They have a promise of something better than life on earth, so they willingly give their lives to further the cause of Allah's kingdom on earth. We think that Mutually Assured Destruction will prevent Iran from launching nukes, once they have them, just because it stopped Russia. We ignore the fact that the Soviets, no matter how evil, still valued their own lives and did not want to become martyrs. We now fight a civilization in which death is worshipped.

The ignorance of history will lead to less domestic freedom and greater foreign threats, as the people idiotically continue to vote for politicians who offer one of two things: a half-assed war or a white flag. The first may be the lesser of two evils, but in 100 years it won't matter. Fighting a half-assed war will not change the outcome. It will just delay it. We will lose freedom at home while our enemy continues to gain strength as a result of our refusal to act to save our own civilization. The lessons of history matter, and unless people begin to realize that, our days are numbered.

[JMeganSnow]

What do you consider to be knowledge of history?

[Shinokamen]

You're absolutely right! History repeats and if we are not aware of it, we cannot see our mistakes until it is too late.

[JMeganSnow]

You're absolutely right! History repeats and if we are not aware of it, we cannot see our mistakes until it is too late.

This is the sort of statement that appears sagacious but is actually a load of bull.

What does it mean, to know about history, if it doesn't mean names, dates, and battles? It means comprehending why men act in certain ways under certain circumstances. It means understanding freedom, tyrrany, war, economics, and love. It means, basically, using your reason and critical thinking faculty.

If you've trained both of those, you don't really need to worry about knowing Belisarius from Leonidas or van Buren from Polk, unless history happens to be one of your interests. Me, I'll stick with my layman's knowledge.

[Shinokamen]

Are you insinuating that we should forget what Hitler or Stalin did because they are gone? Knowing what they did and why they did it will make it easier to understand and identify situations that share the same characteristics before they reach the level of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

[JMeganSnow]

It depends on how you remember them. I know a lot of people that think the Holocaust was a freak incident with no deeper meaning, yet they still remember that it happened. Hitler wasn't as important as the ideas that put him into power and drove his destructive rampage.

History is, in my opinion, good for concrete examples of principles . . . that and it's frequently fascinating in its own right because it's weirder than you could imagine on your own. However, I don't think there's much importance in knowing absolutely everything about history, for everyone, than there is in knowing about nuclear physics.

[The Wrath]

Of course you don't need to know everything about history. But there is no excuse for a college student not knowing who fought in the Civil War or who the leader of the Nazi party was. You can't understand principles and abstract ideas until you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the concretes.

[~Sophia~]

Moose, I agree with you. Good essay.

[Ifat Glassman]

Of course you don't need to know everything about history. But there is no excuse for a college student not knowing who fought in the Civil War or who the leader of the Nazi party was. You can't understand principles and abstract ideas until you have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the concretes.

I agree with that completely.

Great essay. Thank you for that one.

I agree with almost everything in it (except the comment about letting the palestines own the Gaza strip as a bad thing).

I think I am your opportunity to answer your question of why people are ignorant of History.

All my years, except the last 4-5 years of my life or so, I was alergic to History.

Everything that started with the words "In 1879..." was automatically marked and deleted from my brains, and everything that would be said after those words would go in trough one ear and go out through the other.

History, for me, was the essence of boredom on earth, and the worst enemy of fun .

If you consider the fact that I grew up in Israel, it would tell you that even people who do grow up in an atmosphere of danger and constant life-threat can remain indiffrent to the need to know History, though, I think that the reson you gave for the lack of motivation is correct. In my case, the atmosphere of danger and life threat simply wouldn't go through. I never watched the news or read the newspapers, and treated any danger with a dismissing attitude and just ignored it.

After discussing this with a former friend, I realized that one of the reasons why I hated History so much is because it was taught in a very dry way (Dates, names etc') and without any guiding line, or something to connect to life today (I mean life back then).

For example, Instead of teaching us how the roots of the Arab Israeli conflict connect to the more recent History (like the Intifada's), we were just taught the basic facts of the British mandate and the immigration of Jews to Israel. I had to learn the important facts on my own, and I am still doing that.

It was only a while after I discovered Objectivism that I strated thinking about the meaning and significance of political systems, and begun to realize the importance of History.

It is very easy for people who's life are good to not see the need to think about problems of the past. "If everything is going good now, it must have always been like this and always remain like this. What reason can there be for things not to be good?". I guess this is what I was thinking to myself.