Tag Archives: Those who don’t know history

Those Who Don’t Know History—

Margaret MacMillan has studied the lessons of world history from the 1930’s to the present. In a sober assessment of our current times. (“Which Past is Prologue?” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

MacMillan, a professor of history at Oxford University, writes: “The promise of the 1920’s was cut short by the Great Depression. . . . The result was the growth of extremist parties on both the right and the left.”

Then, she wrote, World War II followed because of “powerful leaders deliberately seeking confrontation.”

U.S. President Trump, MacMillan indicates, is a poor student of history and under him, “the United States has lost much of its moral authority.”

He has renounced arms control, pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, flattered dictators, and weakened alliances that have benefitted the U.S. since the end of World War II. He attacks the free press and attempts to demean anyone who criticizes him.

Could his dance with dictators mirror the appeasement of Hitler by world leaders, leading eventually to the war?

At the end of her article, MacMillan writes of leaders at a crossroads: “Wise and brave ones may guide the world through the storms. Let us hope the last group has read some history.”

Why Do We Save Reminders of Past Events?

In cleaning out some shelves the other day, I found a copy of Newsweek, December 2, 1963. The issue was dedicated to articles about John F. Kennedy’s assassination the previous November.

Next I found a relative’s high school annual, published in 1918, the last year of World War I. The annual was dedicated to the first of the high school’s alumni to die in that war, on September 15, 1917, in France. His picture stares hopefully from the dedication page.

In my own files, I’ve saved clippings about the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001. What might they mean to later generations? How close will they come to knowing the horror I felt as I watched the buildings fall?

How do we pass down our meaningful experiences? How do we help those who come after us to know, if only for an instant, what we feel now? For what reason? To learn from them? To ponder the results of our choices, wise and unwise?

We engage with our current communities. We also are a part of past communities. We make decisions that impact future communities. If we live only in the present, we may be swayed by current emotions to forget the lessons of the past. Studying the past, we may decide more wisely for the future.

“They who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”