Why History Repeats Itself

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semperfi71

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This was a news story I found on the internet. I have always felt a strong knowledge of history enables one to sometimes predict the "current" state of affairs and the future. Simply because regardless of the age people are the same. Their thought processes and passions never change regardless of the "age" or time. Only the "times" change.

by AWR Hawkins 1 Jun 2013, 3:41 PM PDT

At present, the United States is a house divided against itself. It is a nation falling into disarray as two groups of people--those who know our nation's history and those who don't--stare blankly into each other's eyes with no commonality of which to speak.
And these blank stares can be between the educated just as easily as they can be between the uneducated. In fact, when it comes to U.S. history, one couldn't be blamed for asking how the educated in this country became so ignorant.
This ignorance was birthed when radicals like Saul Alinsky, William Ayers, and their comrades struck out against our education system in the late 1960s and early 70s. As a result, it's now commonplace for a college freshman to know many ways to prove that all cultures are equal, but very few examples of what Thomas Jefferson or John Adams contributed to the founding of our nation.
The posterity of Alinsky and Ayers have carried this war against education into the 21st century, poisoning graduate studies with a bait and switch tactic; history students study the various methods of studying history but rarely study history itself.
In other words, a student pursuing a M.A. or a PhD in military history may spend the majority of his or her time studying the methodology of military history and even the historiography of certain military engagements, like the TET Offensive (1968), the U.S. POW experience in Japan (1945), or the War of 1812 (1812-14). Yet, they might never study the way the American forces turned TET back on itself, or the misery which U.S. POWs endured for our nation's sake, or the glorious morning after the Battle of Fort McHenry (1814) when Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" after seeing that our flag had survived the British bombardment.
It is the left's great ruse. A student can graduate with a 4.0 GPA in U.S. history and know less about history than the "uneducated" citizen who buys and reads good history books on his or her own time.
Because of this, we don't know ourselves, we don't know each other, and we don't know what it means to be an American.
When I was doing my M.A., I used to walk through the halls of the university talking with Dr. Bruce Brasington; he would say to me, "We have to know where we've been in order to know where we're going." As it stands right now, our nation appears largely comprised of citizens who have no idea where we have been and, consequently, not the least idea where we're going.
Didn't Thomas Jefferson write Common Sense? No wait, maybe that was Thomas Paine...
 
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That article is so true. I am pushing 66 and have started studying our country's history for the first time. It is amazing what I have learned and it all started with research on the Second Amendment to our Constitution. I fear that ignorance and apathy of our history is not going to bode well for our country.
 
I dont belive natural intelligence nor high education contribute to a persons political inclinations near as much as their basic moral values do. It`s "where you are comeing from".
 
right now I'm reading The Venona Secrets, as I know you know are the soviet espionage files from the 20's onward, released by Yeltzen in 1995. Two of FDR's friends, advisers, and very powerful government officials were Communists. Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins. I believe Hiss was 2nd top guy in the State Dept. right under the Sec. Of State. To show the power of Hopkins, that's like Obama's top advisor Vallerie Jarrett's position. Wild Bill Donovan who ran the OSS knew communists were in that agency but didn't take it seriously to worry about.
My point here is, things sure haven't changed much where it comes to taking those who want to annihlate us NOW seriously.
 
Alger Hiss was a dedicated Communist, but Harry Hopkins was a fellow traveler with Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Hopkins would be referred to as "useful idiots" by the likes of dedicated communists like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and the like. They would be more in the mold of Kerensky.

Roosevelt learned at the knee of Woodrow Wilson. At the turn of the 20th Century, the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and other Progressives, believed that there was no need for a constitution; that it had outlived its usefulness.

Progressives are among the most dangerous, because of their innate naivety.

Roosevelt failed to see how he was being used by Churchill, and the Europeans; and we ended up in WWII, a war which was regional, at worst, but turned global because of Roosevelt's ignorance of world politics.
 
Thucydides (old dead white guy) was for all practical purposes the first real historian. He wrote about the Greeks' Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Sparta and Athens went at it in what was, for the time and place, the equivalent of WWI in destruction. He said he did so to document what had actually happened in the hope that men would learn from it.

Needless to say, they (and we) didn't. But we COULD if we wanted to.

The Founding Fathers relied on their knowledge of history to get this country up and running, and of all subjects they wanted taught, history was miles ahead of the others. They knew that unless Americans knew what had gone before and why, we would eventually be goners. If we DID know history, then we would never be dumb enough follow some lying con artist (need I mention any names?) over a cliff.

Mostly thanks to my Depression era, high school drop out, WWII vet Dad who read books and listened to Paul Harvey, I was a curious kid in school. I got bad grades, but I read stuff that actually interested me on my own. The few history classes I took had no connection anything real. The one period in American history that had caught my imagination, WWII, was always ignored because we always "ran out of time" at the end of the school year. Hell, here we were only a few short years after the actual events, with a majority of grown men around us actual participants, and a resultant Cold War on, a whiff of gunpowder in the air, and we "ran out of time".

No wonder I knew in my 13 year old mind that something was "rotten in Denmark"...I'm a slow learner, but I do learn. Just not in school-- make that *especially* in school!) Half a century later, I have almost as many guns as I need, but not nearly enough history books yet. Nor am I as good or smart a man as my father was, either.

The best single thing I ever found, though, was this sleeper: History of Freedom (BTW, it's often on sale for much less!)

Every 16 year old kid in the country should know this stuff and carry it in his or her bones. And follow Walt Whitman's advice: "Resist much; obey little".
 
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The protocols of the elders of zion was highly controlversal writings that first appeared in russia in 1903. Its been proclaimed a hoax yet most of the problems we have today have come about the way it was wrote.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hoax or not, how do you explain the facts of today that it predicted a 110 years ago?
 
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I read and study history almost every day. I was watching the "American Revolution" series on TV recently (narrated by Charles Kuralt). I discovered a little known fact that cast new light on George Washington. Some battlefield deserters were rounded up, and as this was becoming a more common practice during the Revolution among the Continental soldiers, Washington sought to put an end to it in no uncertain terms. He had the deserters draw lots. Those with the "short straws" were lined up, and the rest of them were ordered to form a firing squad to execute them. This was done. One can only imagine the guilt of the executioners, something they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Washington could be a stern disciplinarian; this facet of him is not often understood today.

The Revolutionary War was an incredible struggle, often pitting brother against brother - loyalists and patriots. When Cornwallis finally surrendered at Yorktown, thousands of loyalists to the crown left the country for Nova Scotia and England, never to return. As now, there were two schools of thought, and divided loyalties.

Today, few know much about the Constitution or why it was crafted. Basically, it was to protect a free citizenry against a tyrannical government. It is still in force, but sadly, not complied with uniformly. The oath of office of most politicians and the U.S. military requires the preservation, protection and support of the Constitution. That few are true to their oath and forget our history is sad, truly sad. I do pray for the resurrection of the Founders' ideals, but I tremble to realize what it may take to do this now. It won't be pretty. We may reach the breaking point before too long.

John
 
Progressives are among the most dangerous, because of their innate naivety.

So very true, at least in my life history. Almost every liberal...(progressive is a term they resurrected because the term liberal has become too depicting of their goals and shortcomings)...I have ever met exhibited the mentality, and maturity, of a 10 to 14 year old child.
 
So very true, at least in my life history. Almost every liberal...(progressive is a term they resurrected because the term liberal has become too depicting of their goals and shortcomings)...I have ever met exhibited the mentality, and maturity, of a 10 to 14 year old child.
Do you know what Julius Rosenbergs's Soviet spy code name was? "Liberal".
 
That wasn't a "news story." it was a right wing editorial. The same points could have been made about conservatives, especially those of the anti-knowledge Teapublican variety,
 
Y'all were doing pretty good when you stayed focused on history.... made it all the way to post #12. :rolleyes:

http://smith-wessonforum.com/lounge/298001-politics-fair-warning.html

So very true, at least in my life history. Almost every liberal...(progressive is a term they resurrected because the term liberal has become too depicting of their goals and shortcomings)...I have ever met exhibited the mentality, and maturity, of a 10 to 14 year old child.

That wasn't a "news story." it was a right wing editorial. The same points could have been made about conservatives, especially those of the anti-knowledge Teapublican variety,
 
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