History Lesson On Economics

One of my most stimulating times in school was when I took four history courses the same term. It is not to be commended. Fitting the right characters with their contemporaries in the right era can get confusing. The study of history is to be commended.
Noah Webster, known as the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,”(1788) said, “Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”
One reason our nation is in the vortex of a destructive milieu is we are being lead by members who for all practical purposes opted out of the study of history.
Harry Truman said the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know.
Lord Bolingbroke, an 18th century political philosopher, noted that history is philosophy taught by examples. Every historical event was the outgrowth of a philosophy. By studying the events of an era the philosophy that fostered can be known. The outcome of the period reveals whether a good or and unproductive philosophy gave rise to it.
America is now embracing a basic philosophy that has been tried by a number of societies. History records the result of our current political philosophy. We are now taking baby steps tracking the former Soviet Union called Communism. We are not there but we are flirting with a precursor called socialism.
Many older members of our society lived through World War II, the Cold War and other major wars. In keeping with the statement by Bolingbroke we saw the result of the philosophies that gave rise to those totalitarian states. Their failure shouts loud and clear that the philosophy creating such governments doesn’t work.
It is amazing to listen to some leaders of congress in interviews evidence they have no sense of history as they espouse flawed philosophy that has inevitably led to failure. They evidently don’t know the lessons made graphic by history. Or, if they know them they opt to try to defy them.
We have a president enjoying a 65% popularity rating who gives evidence of little or no history of the virtues that created the greatest nation on earth. Are there errors in the fabric of our history? Lamentably there are tragic ones. Let’s acknowledge this and get over self-flagellation in order to distill from our own history the philosophy of government that gave us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
One brief history lesson form John Marshall (1819), “An unlimited power to tax involves, a power to destroy;   because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.” History reveals it has been tried and found wanting.
Daniel Boorstin, a historian and Librarian of Congress, postulated that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.