A Knowledge of the Past is Our Hope (And Dread) For the Future

Yes...and no...and...meh...

Nov 25, 2023

Hope everyone had a blessed and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday…this ain’t peaceful because ignorance is dangerous, not blissful.

History teaches us that men learn nothing from history.
Georg Hegel

I’ve argued this for over 100 Substack posts, for several hundred WordPress posts, and damn near everywhere else I can make myself heard. I’m not the only one, but I’m the one you’re reading now. Here’s a quiz: who said this about what country and when?

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest XXX becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.

The late PJ O'Rourke, in his Parliament of Whores, argued that easy (taxpayer) money and elected power turned people in public office into, well, whores for whatever they could get. Even he was guilty of it, in the end. He had no trouble at all voting for a new city hall, but improvements on an auditorium? Never! Cost too much. Then, he realized…yeah, he’d become exactly what he denounced.

The Roman philosopher Cicero said the above in 58 BC.

He was talking about Rome, only twenty-eight years before the Republic ended and the Empire began. Replace “XXX” with any other modern state. Have we learned anything since? Our politicians certainly haven’t. We’ve been seeing this kind of thing for centuries.

Now, here’s another one:

I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well because as long as the disease holds out, they have not only an easy means of making a living but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
Booker T. Washington

Did Booker T. Washington foresee, or already know, the modern “activists” who can only see skin? And what about…?

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King was certainly aware of Booker T. Washington’s sentiments. But, by modern lights, such sentiments don’t promote “equity.” But, then again…

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell

All of this, of course, has what to do with history? Well…

Keep people from their history, and they are easily controlled.
Karl Marx

I could quote Orwell again, but I think you’re getting the idea. When a school throws a kid out of class because the teacher wrongly connected a certain old flag with slavery and “racism,” they are the epitome of this disease of historical ignorance.

And they are teachers.

As I say at the top of every post, history is our only test for the consequences of ideas. Our ideal of a free republic depends on an informed citizenry. While politicians will always grub money, protest spending it for the common good (unless their cronies, family members, and supporters get the contracts), and generally waste time on stuff they don’t need to spend time on, they depend on your ignorance of the past, and especially of their past, to keep doing it. When the “activists” scold us because the outcomes are not as “equal” as they like, they’re playing a hustling game that they simply don’t want to win, and never will because they will suddenly discover some other “inequality” that will need to be addressed by some other “oppressors” or reparations and fits of pique must ensue.

Some things don’t change with time.

Our politicians, who steal our resources and the “activists” who scold us for being what we are and not what they want us to be, all rely on our ignorance and our desire to remain ignorant. Our ignorance of the past keeps the grubbing hustlers in office, keeps the screamers waving their signs and demanding reparations while abandoning our urban areas to their constituents because, well, insurance companies pay for all that. But “activists” don’t like to quote Booker T. Washington or Dr. King on race and racial equality because that would take away their power, not to mention their income. But they both like to keep you ignorant. One consequence of that ignorance has become…

Gays for Palestine! Chickens for KFC!

How could anyone who’s read a news story about the Middle East in the past decade not know that the “militants” who run the place would throw gay people off a roof as a group? And there’s those who chant “from the river to the sea,” and insist they’re not anti-Semitic. There’s those who point to a former president, while wearing Che t-shirts, and call him a “literal Hitler.” Then a failed presidential candidate claims her former opponent is a “threat to democracy,” but his supporters need to “reeducated,” The education system has either completely failed or has been completely perverted. Ah, the professor who thinks that zoophilia (sex with animals) is “perfectly natural…” Yes, the inmates are running that asylum and the teachers have abandoned their charge.

But you think that is bad?

The House of Representatives has joined cancel culture by making it easier to eject their Speaker. Say something that a majority doesn’t like? Off with your head! And the Senate…somehow they’ve decided that how someone dresses is more important than the business of the people. Now, Congress can’t make a budget, or improve border security, or agree on much more than the time of day, but they can pass all the commemorative bills you want!

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies of all good government…Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there not one vice you do not possess?...Gold is your God…Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You [who] were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed are yourselves become the greatest grievance…Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves, be gone!...IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!
Oliver Cromwell to the English Parliament, 20 Apr 1653

This is the Lord Protector of England finally tending the Rump, or Long Parliament. They had sat for over four decades and under their rules, a parliament would only dissolve if the members agreed. I think Cromwell had the right idea, only I’d extend the sentiment to the universities, the newsrooms, and even the teacher’s lounges. Maybe then we could have hope for the future, get rid of the blockheads that are supposed to represent us, keep us informed of what the blockheads are doing, and teach our children…but, hell, a fella can dream, right?

Are we going to have hope for the future soon?

The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas

Now, The Past Not Taken is about history, but not about learning from it. It’s about learning how what we know of the past is written…

My regular readers know that writing the books I pedal takes a certain amount of talent, some luck, but mostly judgement about what should be written. History students learn how the past worked; history scholars have to know how to show it. The Past Not Taken provides insights on how the writing process works, how decisions are made, and how some decisions are not made at all. At your favorite bookseller or from me if you want an autograph.

Coming Up…

Shiloh: A Requiem
Remember Pearl Harbor and Other Slogans

And Finally…

On 25 November:

1905: Electro Importing of New York advertises a radio set in Scientific American magazine. For only $8.50, a “Telimco” kit boasted a spark coil, antenna, key, batteries, and all the other required parts that would transmit and receive for up to a mile. It was the first ad for a consumer-level radio of any kind.

1941: Washington, DC sends a “war warning” to Army and Navy commanders in the Pacific. The warning is vague, does not require the contents to be shared with other services, and is generally the same in tone as the previous warnings sent for several months. It does not specify any targets.

And today is BLASE’ DAY, giving us permission to be unimpressed by anything and everything that does not impress us. Hope that does NOT mean this post…

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