We don't forget the lessons of history. We ignore them.

I've come to believe that societies don't degenerate because humans "forget" the lessons of history.

Societies degenerate because people tell themselves the lessons of history do not apply to their situation.

People think that their situation is different - which it always is, usually in some trivial way - and therefore use this insignificant difference as a pretext to waive away said lessons.

For example: Nazis referred to Jews as vermin. Hutus referred to Tutsis as cockroaches. Trump referred to immigrants as an infestation. Not exactly identical so therefore lessons of history don't apply. Or so goes the self-delusion.

Except history never repeats itself exactly. The lessons of history are intended to be broad, not narrow. They are meant to be a deterrent, not to describe an exact replication.

This is related to exceptionalism. Humans tend to view themselves as exceptionally altruistic. This permits them to dismiss any negative warnings.

I think part of it also has to do with how history is taught. We learn quite a bit about the bad things in history. We're taught quite a bit about the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazis. We learn about the failures and actions that led to the rise of totalitarian regimes.

But how much do we learn about historical examples in which movements with totalitarian and/or racial/nationalistic bents, etc. were thwarted by actions of civil society?

We're often presented with negative blueprints but rarely affirmative ones that can be acted upon.

Historical revisionism in action

"There's nothing more dangerous than ignorance in action." -Tom Smothers.

The New York Times had an interesting piece on the successful efforts of conservative ideologues in Texas to warp the state's history textbooks. It's not just the usual liberal suspects that get these revisionist 'historians' all hot and bothered. The Crusaders succeeded in minimizing the influence attributed to Thomas Jefferson, despite his status as a fierce advocate for a limited role for the federal government. It seems they don't like that the Founding Father had the audacity to coin the phrase "separation between church and state."

Revisionist historians: just doing their job

My friend Jim over at The Critical Bookworm blog wrote a recent entry which began: I was reading through a few articles on the death of revisionist 'historian' and wannabe polemicist, Howard Zinn.

Jim's piece wasn't really about Zinn but it got me onto a topic that's often got me going. Leaving aside the specifics of Zinn, who did a great job of expanding the narrow, sanitized conventional history to tell a much fuller truth, the scorn with which the phrase 'revisionist historian' is typically used has always amused me because it seems to miss the point.

The very job of all historians is to continually look at the 'standard' narrative of historical events and see if they hold water. They are constantly investigating to see if there are documents, perspectives and what not that haven't entered the historical record or, quite often, that have been deliberately ignored for political and propaganda reasons.

In other words, their job is to REVISE. The JOB of historians is to be revisionist.

Authors don't write a single draft of fiction and move forward without at least looking back at it, tweaking it, REVISING it and, nearly always, showing it to those with other points of view to get their feedback. Nor do you write a single draft of history (which, as the saying goes, is journalism) without doing those things.

Can you imagine if the only historical record of the run-up to the Iraq Aggression were the now-discredited Judith Miller New York Times reports on Saddam Hussein's mythical weapons of mass destruction? Thank goodness some historians and others REVISED this record.

History is not like math where two plus two always equals four always and everywhere. It's this precisely clash of ideas and points of view that makes history so compelling and dynamic. Countries which refuse to examine and discuss its standard historical narrative (written by the winners, as another saying goes) are invariably sclerotic societies in decline and, quite often, ones extremely prone to civil war and violence. Think the Balkans or the Middle East . Would American society really benefit from a rigid, Soviet-style official history revised (without discussion of course) only when political leaders felt it expedient? I think not.

All historians are revisionist. It's their job.