The Importance of History
To Predict the Future, Look at The Past
History: an account of what has happened in the past, esp., in the life of a people or country; the branch of knowledge which deals systematically with the past. To the vast majority of people, when history is even mentioned, the almost instantaneous reaction is: "Oh no! More dates and names and places to memorize! How boring!"
That reaction is almost always a reaction to the manner in which those individuals were taught history in school. True, names and dates and places are important‑ but ONLY if they are related to an understanding of just how the PAST can be used to predict, with a great deal of accuracy, the FUTURE!
Most people would find that statement paradoxical and would not believe it. People ARE interested in the future‑ witness the continuing interest is astrology, numerology, Tarot Cards, etc. But they are looking in the wrong direction. If you want to know what will be happening in the future, look at the past!
I have drawn the ideas and information for this article from a number of sources: the Bible, a series of videos by Larry Abraham called "Common Sense Classroom," an old filmstrip produced by Knott’s Berry Farm back in the 1960s and miscellaneous other sources. (If you copy from one person it is called plagarism, if you copy from two or more sources, it is now called research!)
A great historian once said: "All that I know, all that I am, is what I have studied of my predecessors and what I have experienced in my own life." This is true because the one unchanging factor in all of mankind’s history is that the nature of man does not change! His surroundings change, his technological achievements change, his economic circumstances change, but the nature of men and women, in general, hasn’t changed in some six thousand years of man’s recorded history.
Those who are familiar with the Bible may remember that Solomon is reported to have said, "There is nothing new under the sun!" In other words, he thought that all that mankind could experience had already taken place.
The study of history, the proper study of history is really an account of what one person does to another, what one group does to another, what one nation or group of nations does to other nations. HOW people interact! If you don’t have that understanding, you can very easily be conned into backing a very bad candidate for public office, a very bad governmental policy, a disastrous treaty which could destroy your own freedoms.
In thinking about how to get readers to UNDERSTAND, to know, the importance of history, I tried to find a way to illustrate the point of just how short a period has freedom existed in the course of mankind’s recorded history. I believe I finally found a way.
Let’s imagine that today, any day, all 24 hours of it starting at midnight last night, represents the total 6000 years of mankind’s known history. If we assume that those 6000 years started at midnight last night, then right now, as I write this at about 11:30 A.M., we are only at 1125 B.C. and the Israelites have only recently escaped from Egypt.
Jesus Christ will not be born until 4:00 P.M. this afternoon. Europe will not begin to come out of the Dark Ages until 8:48 this evening. Columbus will discover the New World at two minutes till ten this evening. The United States will come into existence with the ratification of the Constitution at 9 minutes and 22 seconds after ELEVEN tonight and the Civil War will begin at about 8 minutes after that. Right now, in 2002, we are just past midnight in the start of a new day.
Looked at in this way, man has only established and enjoyed the concept of individual rights and freedoms, human dignity, in the last 50 MINUTES of the entire 24 hour period! Tragically, slavery, serfdom and servitude have been the NORMAL conditions of mankind throughout most of our history and the kind of men who kept people in bondage for the other 23 hours and 10 minutes are still around us today, working diligently to put mankind back into serfdom.
Over two hundred years ago, a man by the name of Johann Von Goethe said, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
For almost all of mankind’s history, people have believed that some authority must control their lives and be responsible for their welfare, in a word, collectivism. Always men continued to elevate some king, dictator, or other living authority to a position over his life. But, regardless of man’s acceptance of an external political force to control his life, there is one glorious FACT which has remained constant throughout those 6000 years of history: To the extent that man has relied on individual courage, faith and enterprise, his civilization rose and flourished; to the extent that man has surrendered his initiative, self‑reliance and reason to an external controlling force, his world has sunk into degradation, war and poverty.
Human history has been one long succession of super‑planners and fanatics‑ men who felt it was their destiny to remold human nature according to their pre‑conceived theories. Regardless of the system or the age or the nation, they all had one accomplishment in common: the ultimate ruthless suppression of individual man, a suppression always justified on the ground of the greatest good for the greatest number.
The new socialist revolution is a false revolution. It is simply a restructuring of the old collectivist ideas. Instead of the divine right of kings we have rule by all‑powerful political leaders and their appointed bureaucrats. Instead of serfdom under the yoke of medieval feudalism, we are being subjected to the new serfdom of the modern collectivist state. All of the old tyrannies remain intact, only the name and appearance have changed.
Our Revolution and every idea it stands for are, today, locked in a struggle for its very survival, survival against a rising false revolution of collectivism. Our enemies, foreign and domestic are relying on just two things: our abysmal ignorance of history, our history, and the apathy of Americans toward the attacks being made on their rights and freedoms.
If our revolution is to triumph, it must be born anew in the hearts and minds of each succeeding generation. Freedom is not our by simple inheritance, but ours by virtue of enough citizens being willing to constantly earn it, earn it by faith, by works, by exposing the lies and deceits of collectivism, by helping others to learn about the heritage of our true revolution.
Retired General George Van Horn Mosely stated: "Historians of the future will marvel most of all at the non‑resistance of those who had the most to lose." James Monroe said it this way: "There is a price tag on human liberty. That price is the willingness to assume the responsibilities of being free men. Payment of this price is a personal matter with each of us."