Particularly dangerous in terms of the “history” that fourth and twelfth graders are or will be reading is the political leader who has no interest in history and thus has no yardstick by which to estimate the extent to which current conditions converge and diverge from the past. Absent this insight, there could easily be an unnecessary, radicalized, abrupt reversal of existing policies and programs rather than more appropriate adaptations.
Americans generally lack a sense of history (as the NAEP scores attest). A contributing factor is the relatively short span of U.S. history and Washington’s rapid rise to pre-eminence on the world stage. This is not to say that leaders whose countries boast long pedigrees stretch into the mists of time are any more clearly or are more enlightened than leaders of countries in the “New World” and post-colonial countries in Asia and Africa. Indeed, ascribing wisdom to the elderly simply because of their age is equally absurd.
But there is a tendency in the U.S. to dismiss history completely, to regard the American hemisphere in general and the U.S. in particular as a tabula rasa on which it is still possible, even today, to renew the sense if not the reality of the “city on the hill.”
This general disregard of history – contempt seems a little too severe a judgment even for Bush– was on display at the May 17 joint press conference. In one of his extended replies to questions about Iraq and history, Bush said:
“This may not interest you, but I’ll tell you anyway – I read three histories on George Washington last year. It’s interesting to me that they’re still analyzing the presidency of our first President. And my attitude is, if they’re still analyzing 1, 43 doesn’t need to worry about it. (Laughter.) I’m not going to be around to see the final history written on my administration.”
Now either the press corps had completely turned over (UK media were present) and those present had no corporate memory; the press were being polite; or they ignored the fact that Bush had said the same thing on April 19 of this year and May 5, 2006. This repetition and the jocular manner Bush used would be puzzling had the president not already alluded to historical comparisons with that other George – not 1 (Washington) but 41 – Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush.
Of course, politicians are not the only ones who crave a place in, or failing that, try to downplay history. Henry Ford famously declared: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” Ford, like Bush, undervalued history. He could not grasp the point that history, as the collection of all the present moments, provides a people with the collective identity within which, individually, they develop their identity and moral compass – and passes this identity to their children through the study of their heritage.
In the summer of 2003, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Tony Blair addressed a joint session of Congress in terms of western principles as found in secular western philosophical history.
“Let us say one thing: if we are wrong, we will have
destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for
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