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False Lessons of History

Gene Callahan, in his essay ôThe Lessons of History,ö explains how false lessons can be derived from history. One way of doing this is by ôcherry-pick[ing] your examples,ö i.e., choosing only the ones that prove your point. Another is ôcontra-factual history,ö or assuming that something would certainly have occurred if events had gone another way (Callahan). An example of the latter is Patrick BuchananÆs contention in ôA Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming AmericaÆs Destinyö concerning the entry of the United States into World War I: "The War to make the world safe for democracy made the world safe for Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.ö This is a false lesson. As Michael Lind points out, ôThe greatest threats to world peace and liberal civilization have occurred in response, not to American military intervention, but to American absenceö (Lind). Another ôlessonö that was proven false was the premise that having the best-trained, most disciplined army would gain the victory. In fact, such well-trained men were ôrepeatedly flung into battle by commanders of iron resolve. The results were barren of strategic achievement. The human costs were immenseö (Bourne).

Adam Gopnik, however, proposes a more radical perspective:

History does not offer lessons; its unique constellations of contingencies never repeat. But life does offer the same points, over and over again. A lesson is many-edged; a point has only one, but that one sharp. And the point we might still take from the First World War is the old one that wars are always, in LincolnÆs perfectly chosen word, astounding. They produce results that we can hardly imagine when they start. It is not that wars are always wrong. It is that wars are always wars, good for destroying things that must be destroyed, as in 1864 or 1944, but useless for doing anything more, and no good at all for doing cultural work: saving the national honor, proving that w

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False Lessons of History. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712306.html