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.