“If you fail history you’re doomed to repeat it.” That was the daily joke of my history teacher last year, the double innuendo being that we would have to retake his class if we flunked it, and also that if we as a world didn’t learn from our mistakes history would continue to repeat itself. Looking around at everything that goes on in the world, and everything that has happened in my lifetime, I think that a truer statement was never spoken. The more we fail to learn, the more history does repeat itself.
History as a whole seems to be full of repeating events, slightly altered and changed based on the time period and the part of the world, but more or less pretty similar. There are wars, some based on religion, some on freedom, some on power. There are people enslaving other people and exploring new lands. There are increases in technology, society and culture that take place in different places at different times. Looking back on what I have learned of the world, it seems incredible both how far we have come, and how little we have changed. There are the lessons we have learned, and the ones that have been too easily forgotten.
We thought we learned from the Civil Rights Movement. From Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and from Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on the bus. The lessons were that white kids and black kids should both be able to go to the same schools, and that there should not be any separate drinking fountains. The ultimate lesson was that despite our differences, we are all people and should be treated equally. Where did those ideas go? Today we don’t have separate drinking fountains; we have separate public schools, which exclude kids based on whether or not they are gay. Racial discrimination still exists in the form of letting certain students into college over others based on the color of their skin. We remembered that discrimination is bad, as anyone will tell you, but we forgot the definition of the word, which is a showing of difference or favoritism in treatment. That still has a big place in this country when we really should have learned the first time.
If we look back on the way this country began we will find a group of religious men with a vision of freedom. They wrote the constitution saying that in the country there would be freedom of religion, and they based the other early laws on the Ten Commandments and other parts of the Bible. Now that part of our history has been conveniently forgotten in order to remove the statue of the Ten Commandments. Not only are the Ten Commandments a beautiful monument, but they illustrate an important and irreversible part of American history, the religion that has shaped our country. I think our founding fathers would be surprised by it’s removal, because this country was not founded by those weak-minded enough to consider a block of carved stone offensive to their own religion. Perhaps they would also be surprised that people have forgotten that, no matter what your religion, the Ten Commandments are part of United States history.
Something that has been continually proved both in the United States and overseas throughout the years is that an increase in gun ownership leads to a reduction in crime rates. The states in this country that have the highest violent crime rates all have the strictest regulations on gun ownership and concealed carry weapons permits. Outside of our borders, both Great Britain and Australia have seen crime rates skyrocket following the outlaw of firearms. All of the countries with the highest violent crime rate in the world have full gun registration. It has been shown that when guns are taken away, the people are at the mercy of a tyrannical government.
During the twentieth century people were exterminated soon after guns were taken away in the countries of Turkey, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala and Uganda. This resulted in the extermination of 56 million innocent people who were made defenseless victims by gun control. Hopefully the United States will always remember those facts, and learn that gun control takes lives.
If there is one thing this country should have learned from it was the Holocaust. That war taught us lessons that were hard to learn. It taught us how devastating an attack on US soil was. It taught us the frightening destruction that can be caused by a single evil dictator. Above all, we learned what is worth fighting for. We forgot those lessons rather quickly.
World War Two wasn’t that long ago, there are many still alive who remember the war. They probably remember the vow of the United States to never again allow genocide and the extermination of any people. Thirty years after WWII ended, when the Kurds became the first group of people to be exterminated by their own government based on their ethnic group since Hitler’s reign, the US didn’t remember their vow. We forgot how fast a dictator could rise to power, and how many innocent people he could kill. We forgot that it was worth it to save those lives. It took thirty more years before we were willing to go to war for those people against Saddam Hussein, and even then there were plenty who were against it. I can only hope, as we continue to uncover more mass graves in Iraq, that this war will not be forgotten so easily. I also hope it will be remembered a just war that freed many people.
From the Revolutionary War we learned what freedom is worth. I would hope that people today would remember that and still be willing to fight for it.
This country was started based on freedom, and it’s laws based on religion of Christianity. We shouldn’t try to make that fact disappear and we should not destroy a beautiful monument that celebrates part of our history. From the Civil Rights Movement we learned to begin to break down the lines between the races. Today affirmative action should be abolished so that they can disappear once and for all. Worldwide history taught us the necessity of the Second Amendment. From WWII we learned what horrors people are capable of and what is really worth fighting for. From the war in Iraq we learned that same lesson again, after realizing that inaction saves no lives. World War Two and Iraq also taught us our power and how much good can be accomplished by those that try. The trick is not to let those lessons be forgotten, or history will continue to repeat itself.
i think that gun control is a must because more guns means more deaths “”.
Thanks for putting together If you fail history you are doomed to repeat it. America is going down that path | America United I am enjoying your posts. Would you think about a guest post on a site I help run? Do you think that you could contribute? America is going down that path | America United is an interesting name for a blog, keep up the top effort, thanks, from Jamalia Shaffer
You got the part about History repeating itself correct, but from that point onward you seem to have veered off course.
There is still discrimination in America. As you pointed out for Gay people, but it is also still quite in force racially. You seem to infer, that reverse discrimination is some kind of fact. When in actuality, it is only an attempt at creating a balance. Right now, education is skewed toward the wealthy. Their children go to the best schools, go the best Universities. The poor are subject to inferior education. Black children suffer the worst. Scholarships help a little, but were never enough. The same goes for poor whites, and hispanics. They have little chance of advancement.
In your statement about Iraq and Afthanistan, you are once again very wrong. We invaded both these countries. Iraq was invaded, because of an outright lie by George W Bush, that they had WMD’s. Which they never had. There are many dictators in this world. Many who the United States has put into power! Saddam Hussein was simply a minor dictator, he was no huge threat to anyone but his own people. We invaded Afghanistan because we blamed them forr 9/11 again a fallacy. They may have inspired the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers, but they were not directly involved. They are a despicable group of fundamentalists, but they are no more despicable than their Christian counterparts.
The idea that somehow our founding fathers based our laws on the Ten Commandments, is yet another lie perpetrated by the right wing in this country. Our founding fathers, were actually very anti-religion. This is why they wrote into the constitution that no state religion could be established. They wanted to keep religion out of politics. The christian fundamentalists in this country have mixed religion with politics which is totally opposite of the founding fathers!
I think you have failed your history exam. You need to repeat your class! Just as America will repeat the errors of it’s own history.
Properly stated I couldn’t agree far more Well Stated!
Very awestome article. Too Correct