In the December, 2002 issue of Reader's Digest, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough sounds off about our need for a knowledge of the past in an article titled "Why History?"  Not surprisingly, he fails to make his case.

"We are losing our story," he writes, "forgetting who we are and what it's taken to come this far."  He then cites a 1995 Department of Education report which states that half of high school seniors don't know whether Ulysses S. Grant or George Washington showed up at the Battle of Yorktown.  Is this an indictment of American students -- or the state's monopoly on education?

People can graduate with honors from all but a handful of our most prestigious universities, McCullough points out, without having taken a single course in history.  The reason: History is over.  It's a done deal.  Smart people are future-oriented -- as if the future had no connection to the past.

McCullough argues that history "teaches and reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, and what we ought to be willing to stand up for."  Further, history "shows us what choices there are.  History teaches with specific examples the evils of injustice, ignorance or demagoguery, just as it shows how potent is plain courage . . . ."

In commenting on present world tensions, he says we "live in an era of momentous change . . . . But history shows that times of tumult are the times when we are most likely to learn.  This nation was founded on change."  Later, he adds that in "the aftermath of September 11, 2001, history can be a source of strength and of renewed commitment to the ideals upon which the nation was founded."

McCullough's remarks simply don't pass muster.  How can a man so thoroughly steeped in a knowledge of history maintain "we are most likely to learn" in times of crisis?  That is precisely the time our ignorance and our inability to learn from the past shines brightest.  Look at what people lunged at for explanations of 9-11: that it was the acts of fanatics who were willing to sacrifice their lives to vent an intolerable envy for our freedom and prosperity; that is was God's punishment for our sins, especially our avarice, for flaunting our wealth while most of the world scratches out a bare sustenance or worse; that it was unavoidable human error in detecting and preventing the attacks.

And what followed in the wake of these "explanations"?  An intensified commitment to religious faith and the state.  Where does history teach us that this is the path to prosperity and peace?  If there's blood in the news, religion or the state is usually behind it.  

As I reread McCullough's sentence about a "renewed commitment to the ideals upon which the nation was founded" for the tenth time, I'm still pondering what he must consider our founding ideals to be.  For the most part, the state's response to 9-11 amounts to another repudiation of our founding ideals.  We have been rejecting those ideals at least as far back as Lincoln's war against the Confederacy.

His cautious statement about change says nothing.   If he was eager to connect founding ideals to change, he might have said we fought a long war to live free of government interference in our lives.  We chose to change so we could live by that ideal.  Economically, we rejected mercantilism for free markets.  Politically, we rejected state sovereignty for individual sovereignty.  Those ideals had mostly proven themselves with colonists during the hands-off period of salutary neglect.  But the demagoguery McCullough warns us against has always been a potent force in politics, and people, as always and everywhere, failed to keep it in check.  So while only a handful noticed, the state grew, until it's become today's monster trying to run the world by threat and bribery.

The history McCullough calls on us to learn frightens the established powers.  For instance, does the government and the government-sponsored education monopoly really want us to learn about the Great Con of 1913, in which liberty took three major hits by way of the income tax, Federal Reserve, and popular election of senators?  Does the state want us to see "what choices there are" among competing theories regarding the cause of the Great Depression and why we entered World War II when the president repeatedly said we wouldn't?  Do the gun-control forces in and out of government want us to learn that every totalitarian regime of the Twentieth Century disarmed their citizens?  Does government want us to know that its bloody wars of the past 150 years could have been avoided?  Does the state want us to see that its politicizing of our monetary system has robbed us of an incalculable amount of wealth, destroyed lives, and is the root cause of our recessions and depressions?  Does the state want us to learn that laissez-faire capitalism is our benefactor and state intervention a slow trip to hell?

I don't think so.  I think the state prefers the curtains drawn rather than open.  That's one reason it wants education controlled through its monopoly.  The biggest threat to its survival is an informed populace.

I bought some history books recently that are not used in today's schools, books with titles drier than a cactus.  In glancing at the book covers, one of my twenty-year-old daughters expressed amazement that any sane person would ever want to read one willingly.  She was unaware that these books, though not the most entertaining of reads, were invaluable for their insights into how the state steals our freedom.

And this is the most important reason for studying history: how we lost our liberty and how we might get it back.  McCullough is right in saying that a knowledge of history is important.  Where he falls short is explaining why.