Agreed. It's not just that decisionmaking is done without reference to what's gone before. The larger problem is the poor state of history education, which leaves everyone scrambling for understanding, and often without having any sort of broader context in social and cultural history, as well as in the minutiae of much political history. Historian T.H. (Timothy) Breen is a great example of a historian (and an early Americanist) who shows why all of it matters, even the mundane and obscure. He also shows how ordinary people make history, in part through popular opinion. Thanks for all you do, Dan, to get people thinking and reading. It's not necessarily the obviously relevant or the obvious people who matter, so folks should feel free to gravitate to the history that resonates with them, so long as it also challenges them to think differently!
Well said. I tend to believe that we'll never cure the hyper-partisan divide in America until we agree on what happened in the past. And yet our interpretations of the past have changed greatly in the last half-century or more. https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/might-americans-agree-on-a-shared?s=w
This is going to be great, looking forward to getting out of the Twitter sphere and reading some longer form content.
Agreed. It's not just that decisionmaking is done without reference to what's gone before. The larger problem is the poor state of history education, which leaves everyone scrambling for understanding, and often without having any sort of broader context in social and cultural history, as well as in the minutiae of much political history. Historian T.H. (Timothy) Breen is a great example of a historian (and an early Americanist) who shows why all of it matters, even the mundane and obscure. He also shows how ordinary people make history, in part through popular opinion. Thanks for all you do, Dan, to get people thinking and reading. It's not necessarily the obviously relevant or the obvious people who matter, so folks should feel free to gravitate to the history that resonates with them, so long as it also challenges them to think differently!
Well said. I tend to believe that we'll never cure the hyper-partisan divide in America until we agree on what happened in the past. And yet our interpretations of the past have changed greatly in the last half-century or more. https://jimbuie.substack.com/p/might-americans-agree-on-a-shared?s=w