Once Upon a Time...

Knowledge of history may not predict the future but it might provide insights into the present

Jun 21, 2021

“A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future.” – Robert A. Heinlein

We are a nation not only ignorant of our own history but also given to holding completely erroneous ideas of what happened in our past. Many of us have no idea how our government is structured and how it functions. In 2000, the American Council for Trustees and Alumni released a study of the best and brightest recent college graduates from some of America’s elite colleges and universities. Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century documented the amazing lack of knowledge of basic American history among those tested. Example: Only 23% knew the principal author of the Constitution was James Madison*. A similar study in 2008 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which surveyed more than 2,500 Americans, found that only half of adults in the country could name the three branches of government. In 2010, the US Department of Education issued its quadrennial survey of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, The Nation’s Report Card: U.S. History 2010, which measures knowledge of the rudiments of US history among K-12 students. The results were dismal: 80% of fourth-graders, 83% of eighth-graders, and 88%of high school seniors did not achieve minimum proficiency.**

Perhaps there is much truth in the idea “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”, as Winston Churchill once quipped.

Of course, this lack of a grasp of the basic facts of the nation’s history is not limited to voters- it appears to be an endemic trait among some of our elected political leaders as well. Take Kyrsten Sinema, the moderate Democratic Senator from Arizona. Sinema is adamantly opposed to eliminating or even modifying the Senate’s filibuster rule, the arcane procedure by which the minority can keep the majority from passing legislation. This has angered the Progressives among Congressional Democrats and activists desiring the Democrats to use their slim majorities to push a bold agenda. Most infuriating are the rationales Sinema has offered for her refusal to change the rule:

Retaining the legislative filibuster is not meant to impede the things we want to get done. Rather, it’s meant to protect what the Senate was designed to be. I believe the Senate has a responsibility to put politics aside and fully consider, debate, and reach compromise on legislative issues that will affect all Americans… The filibuster was not created to accomplish one thing or another. It was created to bring together members of different parties to find compromise and coalition.

These statements fly in the face of the historical record. The Framers of the Constitution did not envision the Senate would be divided along party lines. Their understanding was that, while minority rights would be respected and a minority in either House would have opportunities to be heard, in the end, the fundamental principle of democracy is that the majority rules. The filibuster, which I wrote about several months ago, was not part of the design of the Senate. It came into sporadic use 60 years after the drafting of the Constitution. In the 20th Century, it became a favored tactic of segregationist southern Senators in order to block civil rights legislation. In keeping with the customs of the day, no journalist asked Ms. Sinema what Senate traditions she was referring to.

American Myths

With the nation facing myriad difficult issues these days, it is again useful to look to the past to gain a perspective. A few examples of how people lead themselves into ideological cul-de-sacs because they possess little or no knowledge of the relevant history are instructive. At the extreme, they will adopt inaccurate historical narratives to justify their current opinions or beliefs.

The Civil War was fought over state’s rights, not slavery.

By 1860, the transmuting of the United States from a primarily agrarian nation to a fledging industrial powerhouse was well-underway. The southern states, whose agriculture had made the region the center of wealth in the fledging nation, were being eclipsed economically by the North. Slave labor was the backbone of the South’s economy, the abolition of which was a pregnant possibility. It was after the Union victory and the end of Reconstruction (the military occupation of the former Confederate states) that the myth of The Lost Cause was created. This extreme revisionist retelling of the secession of the slave states emphasized that the war was fought for states’ right, for the preservation of the southern way of life. So persistent was the promulgation of this myth that it continues to color the view many people have of the war. The Confederate battle flag remains a popular symbol, belying the army it represented was an enemy of the United States.

This is all secondary to the role The Lost Cause mythology plays in promoting and sustaining the racist culture and politics which has permeated the South for 150 years. It gave us Jim Crow laws and segregation. It gave us lynching. It lives on in the voter suppression tactics of today’s Republican Party.

Progressives and liberals are the same people

That may be true today, as the liberals in the Democratic Party refer to themselves as Progressives. It would be inaccurate historically, however. The Progressive Era, dating from the late 1890s until the late 1920s, was a broad reform movement that was not politically ideological. The first Progressive President was a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. This was during the time when Southern Democrats were conservative and segregationist. The GOP was the party of business and northern, urban Democrats the party of labor. Reform took many forms: Roosevelt pursued the large business combinations, the monopolies and trusts, earning himself a reputation as a “trust-buster”. Republicans like Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette were also prominent Progressives. This was a period when government inserted itself into the economic life of the nation on a greater scale than it had done previously. From the Roosevelt Administration to that of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, both federal and state governments undertook sweeping reform initiatives- conservation, child labor laws, the implementation of the Federal income tax, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, and anti-corruption efforts. During the majority of the years between 1901 and 1920, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress when much of the Progressive agenda was enacted into law.

Speaking of the Republicans

Today’s Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln. It’s not even the party of Reagan. Today’s Republican Party is an admixture of former southern Democrats, business libertarians, religious zealots, and disgruntled working-class whites. What was once the Republican Party has melted away like the Wicked Witch, taking with it the influence of the intellectual traditions of American conservatism.

There are many more examples from this country’s history that may place the issues of today into some context. Are we in a crisis moment? Maybe, but this isn’t the Civil War, the Great Depression of the months after Pearl Harbor. This isn’t the Red Scare of the ’50s, the Cuban Missle Crisis, or the social turmoil of the ‘60s. It does not mean that we are not at an inflection point, but it does show us that there are paths forward.

There always are.

*Source: https://www.nas.org/

**Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/

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