by John Brant

Created on: March 18, 2010   Last Updated: April 25, 2010

Providing a society with a collective memory, history can fascinate and challenge the mind.  It can entertain, create bonds that hold society together, and perform any number of other functions.  History only matters when people apply it in the right direction. Although history studies the past, it becomes useful only if directed at the future.  For this reason, the experience of the United States provides the best example of why history matters.

To the people of the United States, it holds the society together in a common mission to fulfill the dream of our founders.   In a society that consists of a multitude of different ethnic groups and races, history provides the common thread that gives the nation unity today and a unity of purpose for the future. 

The Sioux shaman Sitting Bull said of history:  “a people without history are like wind upon the grass.”  A people without any concept of their past will leave no lasting mark upon the world, and have no true direction.  A people with a strong sense of history will change the world and determine the direction of the future. 

In the United States’ founding generation, the leaders of the Revolution and the writers of the Constitution had a great understanding of history—not only their own, but stretching back to ancient civilizations.  For example, James Madison spent an entire year preparing for the Constitutional Convention by studying the history of republics throughout the world’s history. 

Madison came to the convention with two understandings that shaped the final document.  First, he understood that no democracy or republic had met with success in the world’s history—all had resulted in tyranny.  Secondly, he knew (and all the founders would agree) that despite the past, the American experiment must succeed, or the chance to create a government of, by, and for the people may never again appear. 

The founders all knew the purpose of history.  They used it as a guide, replicating the parts of the past that would ensure their future success and creating new ideas to replace others that failed for their predecessors. 

History lit the path for the founders, but they did not wed themselves to the limitations of past traditions or ideas.  Instead they created a new government that would spread their ideas of a democratic government, with the will of the majority limited by individual rights.  Their model has since spread across the world, with nations in all continents adopting the values of democracy in some form.

Today, most writers of history either blindly extol the greatness of America’s past or they see the evils perpetuated on people, such as slavery or the corruption of democracy in the 1800s.  They misuse history as propaganda, not as a tool to better the nation and the world. 

Both sides have some truth. America has stood for liberty and justice, and at the same time has accepted hypocrisies such as slavery and the extermination of Native Americans.  We do not need to look at one extreme or the other to pass judgments on the nation’s past. 

We need to examine that history with objectivity to move the nation forward, doing as our founding fathers did.  We need to see where we succeeded and where we failed, so that we can preserve the positive and to use our failures to create ensure that they do not recur in the future, and so we continue to provide the light that guides the world to the betterment of the human condition.

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