A real life answer to a little daughter's question!
As a father one of the hardest questions I ever faced came from my youngest daughter; "Why do we need to study history daddy?" by Mark Vogl
(conservative)
Thursday, June 23, 2011
About sixteen years ago my daughter Julie asked me why I supported Bob Dole? I started on a rant against Bill Clinton, about how bad he was. After about five minutes I stopped and said what do you think? Julie responded, "So why are you supporting Bob Dole?"
When I could not answer my daughter’s question I realized Dole could not win. Why? Bob Dole was an empty suit. He offered nothing in terms of policy or answers. I could have given plenty of reasons for supporting Elizabeth Dole or other Republican candidates. But, for Bob Dole, I could say nothing. He was the token candidate, like John McCain would be years later.
Julie proved that she had a mind which could search and identify the essential, key facts or issues of an event, and then remain focused on that no matter the distraction. Julie had proven years earlier as a young child to be a tough sell. I loved history, ever since elementary school. It fascinated me. I loved the stories, the personalities. I loved the heroics, the issues, the study of war. And by the time my young daughter asked my why kids had to study history I knew the answer. You study history to learn from the experience of humanity, to see the connection between decisions and actions and results. Julie knew of my love for history, and so she as a young student asked me why she had to study history? I told Julie why, but she didn't buy it. Whether she did that as a means to excite her father and then watch him rant, or whether she didn't buy it because she really didn't believe my answer I don't know. All I know is that from that time to this my daughter Julie and I still verbally fence about the value of history.
But God is providing a learning time for Julie, and for others who question the relevance of studying history. Well Julie, what you live in today is why we should study history, and the decline of our nation indicates that either we don't know history, or that the present historiography is tragically in error.
Historiography, there's a word I didn’t even know ‘til my early 50's. What does it mean? Well, to the best of my understanding historiography is the shaping of history...or the interpretation of history. Academicians, ( kinda like wizards of old) tell us what the stories mean. Instead of just giving us the facts, they select what facts we hear, and then use those selected facts to build their case for the relationships between actions and results. Or, they use this "modified" history to support their liberal social theories. But, like science, errors in historiography eventual reveal themselves in reality. In science, a scientist can pose a theory, but then it must be tested. Eventually the tests will tell whether the theory is correct. The same is true is of historiography. Though like global warming, wrong historiography is tough to undo. Liberals are tenacious in their adherence to wrong-headed philosophies or predictions. Historiography becomes an academic fashion, providing a common set of guideposts towards the interpretation of history. And once imbedded, like "slavery was the cause of secession and war," it may never be corrected. Jefferson Davis, as President of the Confederacy, understood historiography. Davis predicted that the winners would write the history of the ante bellum and Civil War era, and he was right.
But if you look at America today, at the problems we face, at the economic conditions which exist, and at the social issues which plague us, one can see the cause and effect as predicted by a study of history. President Obama's policies are obstacles to investment and economic growth. Recent reports by the Congressional Budget Office indicate a growing annual national deficit because of Obama - Care and other large government expenses. These expenses require either massive tax increases, or a reversal on policy. This “unknown” is lethal to business investment in the United States. Instead of investment funds flowing into the United States, they are flowing out of the US. With the devaluation of the dollar, it’s better for the very wealthy to trade US dollars to stronger foreign currencies.
President Obama and the Democrats are fighting both history and the laws of economics. The result is a stagnant economy. We could have prevented all these problems, problems caused by both parties since the end of the Cold War. Our nation never did gather itself and reassess its position in the new world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We are still the world policeman. But we are no longer the leader of the Free World. Instead, the world is in a chaotic economic free-for-all. Nations which do not carry a heavy social and environmental infrastructure, or world wide international commitments, or the cost of unions can do things infinitely cheaper than the US. And with our open borders, the rich American marketplace was open to the world. American jobs and dollars poured out of America like a bucket hit by buck shot from a 12 gauge shot gun!
Our release of technologies has allowed third world nations to rapidly tool themselves for the consumer wants of the early 21st Century. At a time when we are raising the costs of doing business in the US, other nations are operating below our costs. Simply put, we have not adjusted to the new world. US policy makers have not placed America first. There are answers to our situation. They are in history.
So me and Jules are going to sit on the front porch and do some reading. Maybe you should too.
PS. One of the commentators below says President Jefferson Davis wrote that slavery was the cause of Secessiona and War. That statement is an example of revisionist history! In President Davis' two volume work The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Davis writes " ... it (slavery) was far from being the cause of the conflict." Pg 66. In fact the entire chapter is about addressing "False statements of the Grounds for Separation." It is this revisionism articulated by the commentator below...actually the offering of made up history to fulfill, complete or sustain some social theory which has us in the probems we face today! The answer is to go back to the original writings, not interpretations or historiography!
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Posted By: rwilymz
Date: June 23, 2011 11:34:26 AM
Good job, Mark. Really. An essay I can get behind.
There are many, many historical parallels to be found in current and recent US history, none from a comforting point in the narrative - regardless of who wrote the story.
Between 2003 and 2009, certain segments of our country were more interested in who was leading the foreign wars than whether we would or could win them; shades of Byzantine infighting around the Battle of Manzikert where the landed gentry of Anatolia prefered that the Empress's consort and consul and general lost face than protecting the empire from Turkish invasion and annexation. Anatolia was ceded to the Turks as a result.
For the last two generations we have become an increasingly lazy, self-indulgent, sedentary, luxury-seeking society. We have idle time to worry and fret about trivialities and believe that "someone else" is handling the big problems. ...and "someone else" doesn't need their help, participation or involvement. But god help "someone else" if he doesn't do it right...
"Let them eat cake" doesn't even begin to describe the detatchment from reality suffered by huge swaths of Americans. Pan-islamists have painted a target on the US and every American - they don't care what party you belong to. But god forbid we treat pan-islamists differently or rudely. They have "rights", US Civil Rights, sitting there in Yemen, or Abbotabad PK, or Somalia. But try being an American in an airport and exercising your own? No can do.
Our own rights? nay. Everyone else's under the sun? sure, why not. Immanent threat from foreign hooligans? trivial. Animal rights? environmental armageddon? seat belt usage? A crisis!!!
Self-indulgent navel-gazing plagued western Rome for 150 years until they fell to bands of migrating clod-hoppers who couldn't have felled a junior varsity girls field hockey team. ...and Rome couldn't field an army to fight them off because they spent all their money on self-indulgent excess.
No government is designed to turn a profit; it's not their job. They all lose money. But they cannot lose more money than its citizens can comfortably afford to provide it. And self-indulgent excess on non-structural luxuries is a contributing factor in virtually all large nation/kingdom/empire obliterations. Rome ... and monarchical France.
We are currently spending trillions on providing for the wilfully non-productive. We can't afford that. Even when we could, we couldn't. Not because we didn't have the money at the time, but because it trains people to be wilfully nonproductive and the problem simply grows over time until we reach a point where circumstances are such that we truly cannot afford it.
Any nation which wishes to survive must have this basic philosophy: work or starve. We don't. It's only a matter of time before we have to sell off the disagreeable parts of our country to foreign nations for the money to continue providing for those who don't produce. ...or lose those parts to invasion because we can't field an army.
Posted By: HistoryHappened
Date: June 23, 2011 01:01:13 PM
Mark,
You are exactly right -- we need history taught as it really was, not the sugar coated, slanted and distorted politically correct way. But be careful what you wish for Mark.
When you are reading with your daughter, pull out Jefferson Davis's own books. Jeff Davis HIMSELF said slavery was the cause of secession and the war. In his own book. See his book "Short History of The Confederacy" where Davis emphasizes what the "intolerable grievance" was -- SLAVERY was being rejected in the territories. Davis said the intolerable grievance was NOT any tariff, was NOT any personal liberty laws (laws that protected black children from bounty hunters -- Davis hated that law) no, Davis said the intolerable grievance was denying slavery's spread into the territories.
Davis was not the only one, of course. Toombs shouted to adoring crowds "EXPAND [SLAVERY] OR PERISH" The Southern leaders in Montgomery (Davis included) issued 5 Ultimatums, a few weeks before they attacked -- all five Ultimatums were about (guess what) the SPREAD of slavery. Slavery MUST be "accepted and respected" in the territories. Go see Southern newspaper headlines boasting about this, calling these Ultimatums "THE TRUE ISSUE".
It wasn't just Davis, and it wasn't just your own newspapers (you wanted history taught as it really happened, right?) it wasn't just your Ultimatums -- your own VICE president, Stephens, also said very clearly and emphatically that slavery was the cause of the war. Stephens gave his "cornerstone" speech repeatedly, bragging that the Founding Fathers were WRONG to put slavery on the road to extinction, that God intended slavery to spread all over the world, with the Southern Confederacy to lead the way! Oh -- they don't tell you that in your history books? Well, go read his speeches. He said other nations did slavery WRONG -- they didn't do it as God wanted. God wanted whites to enslave BLACKS, in perpetuity, but other nations had allowed slavery of other races too. This was an abomination, and ONLY the Southern God fearing nation was based on the "cornerstone" of slavery of BLACKS, and the spread of that throughout the world. He compared this "great truth" of slavery of blacks by whites as a religious AND scientific truth, like medicine and the planets.
In fact, the Southern Constitution itself has slavery inherent in it. The territories MUST accept slavery, just like the Southern Ultimatums demanded. Never mind that people in Kansas had just rejected slavery 98% to 2%. Never mind that the territories were probably the most rabid ANTI slavery place in USA -- the South went to war to spread slavery there. And they said so.
They promised war if slavery was not spread -- and then they delivered the war. Southern newspaper editor Edward Pollard, of Richmond, wrote immediately after the war that they had "warned all through the canvass (election campaign) that if Lincoln was elected, because he was against the spread of slavery , the South would take that "as an act of WAR". He wasn't admitting that, he was bragging about it.
Southern leader John Mosbey wrote after the war, that OF COURSE slavery was the cause of the war. He said he had "never heard of any other reason but slavery" and that after the war, men made up "lofty excuses" for the war. But he made it very clear -- as did Davis, as did Toombs, as did Stephens, as did Southern newspapers, as did Southern documents, that slavery was the issue -- specifically the SPREAD of slavery.
Read the Florida Declaration of Causes -- written by the Florida governor. He wrote that the spread of slavery was a matter of life and death "just stopping the spread of slavery is like burning us to death slowly" and joined secession and the war because Lincoln was against the SPREAD of slavery.
What we do not teach, because it is an awful truth, is that the Southern slave owners, who essentially ran the South, were terrified about the rampant explosion in the number of slaves. Slaves "had become so numerous" that they represented a profound danger. Slavery was growing like a cancer, the force used to impregnate slaves, to make slave women produce 10-12 children for sale and work, had enriched families for decades, but ironically the SUCCESS of the slave breeding efforts, had flooded the South, in certain areas, with a dangerous number of slaves. Any criticism of slavery was dangerous -- according to the South So it became illegal to criticize slavery, to even question it. Even preachers could be, and were, arrested and subjected to torture, who dared to preach things the government did not approve of.
These are the facts, and there are plenty more. Read Southern books, Southern newspapers, Southern documents, from THAT TIME. Read Davis' own books and speeches. Read Stephens. Read the Declarations of Causes. Read the Cornerstone speeches. There are thousands of them that would astound anyone who thought slavery was not an issue. Not only AN issue, but the specific issue was the SPREAD of slavery, by FORCE, into the territories. The reality is that the Southern leaders went to war for one main reason -- to spread slavery, because slavery was growing like a cancer. This is not what I say, this is what the SOUTH said, at the time.
When Lincoln would not obey the Southern Ultimatums to spread slavery, the South attacked, as promised. Strange indeed that these Southern Ultimatums, announced with headlines and fanfare in the South at the time, are simply not even mentioned in our history books. In fact, our history books have been carefully written to keep these horrible parts of our history OUT. When you get into the details of what happened, it is sickening.
There may be good reason NOT to teach our children the horrible truth, at least until they are in high school or college. But let's not lie to them. If we can't teach the truth, don't teach it at all.
I totally agree that we should be shown history AS IT WAS - and the best place for that, regarding slavery, is from SOUTHERN documents, SOUTHERN history books, SOUTHERN newspapers, SOUTHERN speeches, SOUTHERN sermons at the time. But I am not sure I would tell my daughter these horrible things, until she is old enough to realize it was not because Southern leaders were evil. It's because Southern leaders had a tiger by the tail -- slavery - and slave numbers were fantastically high, and whites feared for their lives -- literally.
We all know power corrupts, and slavery was just too much power. The power to torture women, to sell babies, to burn men to death who resisted slavery, is just an evil power, that caused evil things to happen. Teach them that. Teach them truth matters, that men will do almost anything to get power and prestige, no matter how vile. Teach them that we need freedom of speech (which the South did NOT have) and equality of rights (which the South did not have).
You are wrong about one thing. The South has largely written the history of the Civil War.
However, there is one thing that your daughter will still not get the answer. Why does SHE HAS to study History? Emphasis on the word "SHE" and the word "HAS". See, in school SHE is FORCED to study History. Not just any History, she is FORCED to study the History as approved by the school's curriculum with whichever bias it comes with. Then she will be FORCED to study someone else's view of a past event in time and put in a test whatever the teacher thinks is the right answer. She is then FORCED to memorize certain events whether she finds them useful or not. If she puts the wrong date in the test SHE will be WRONG. If she puts her own opinion of what the reason, cause or effect of an event, SHE WILL BE WRONG. She will be forced to write in the tests from memory whatever the book tells her to write.
In a true free society, each individual will put their efforts to study the history that interests he or she the most, and will make his or her own conclusions on what happened in past historic events. We will never know for sure the true history.
There is a HUGE difference between studying History because you HAVE to and studying history because you WANT to.
So based on those ambiguities, you still haven't answered your daughter's questions and you never will be able to do so.
