In defense of learning history
As a college freshman, I was required to take world history as a foundational course for later political science classes. Interestingly, all these many years later (I won’t say how many) I still remember the first words spoken by the professor. He said: “If you don’t know where you have been, you cannot know where you are, or where you are going.”
Those are words all of America should hear today. Largely due to the media echo chamber, we coddle those who are triggered by history, promote inaccuracies and revisions through the teaching of the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, and attempt to erase the past through the destruction of statues and historic sites.
All of this defeats the purpose of history. As my professor said, you must first know where you have been. And some of where we have been is tragic. But, as observed by Sir Winston Churchill: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” That is why it is so important to stand up to current efforts to sanitize history and to re-write it through the filter of contemporary social movements.
During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I had the opportunity to visit the famous Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park near Capitol Hill. The statue was nearly torn down during last summer’s riots but was saved from destruction by law enforcement. The statue depicts President Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing a male slave who is rising up from bended knees with fist clenched and broken shackles.
It is a powerful portrayal of a man rising up from bondage and into freedom. According to the National Park Service funds to cast the statue were raised solely by former slaves. Keynote speaker at the statue’s dedication was the celebrated abolitionist Frederick Douglass who was one of, if not the, most prominent AfricanAmerican of his time. It is in fact a celebration of freedom by those who had been denied but then gained that most basic of human rights.
Those ignorant of history attempted to tear down the statue, and those politicians seeking to capitalize on the passions of the moment joined in demanding its removal. Hopefully, it remains standing to remind future generations of the pain inflicted through the horrible institution of slavery.
When the Left cannot destroy history it seeks to silence those who speak of its lessons. I witnessed that firsthand recently when a certain group attempted to muzzle an elected official who correctly had pointed out that the same tactics used by the National Socialists in Nazi Germany were unfolding in America today.
The official was told such comparisons brought emotional pain to some folks and thus should not be made. However, remembrance of the Holocaust should evoke pain. It was one of the most tragic episodes in all of human history. Further, understanding the tactics and psychology of the era that allowed it to happen is vital to making sure such a thing never happens again.
Relatively recent world history is replete with the rise of movements and men who slaughtered millions: Hitler in Germany, Stalin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China. Could it happen here? Yes, it could if we erase their evil deeds from the history books and fail to learn from the social and political movements that lead to such atrocities.
We as a nation are in peril
“If you don’t know where you have been, you cannot know where you are, or where you are going.”
of losing our history. Removing a statue of Robert E. Lee, rather than leaving it stand as a reminder of the nation’s purging the stain of slavery from its fabric plays well on the nightly news, but it deprives us of the opportunity to learn from history.
It is vital that we fight to preserve history — the good, the bad, and the tragic — and not cave into speech codes, allow woke revisionism to be taught in our public schools, or permit mob rule to determine what is and is not allowed to stand.
If we fail to do so we will be doomed to repeat the past.