There was a discussion a few years back about the idea of creating a Cabinet post for secretary of the arts. I have a different idea: I suggest we create a Secretary of History.
The role of the Secretary of History would be to inform the president and the Congress of any and all historical events that seem relative to current legislation and other government actions.
The current economic mess we are in now occurred largely because of a lack of, shall we say, historacy (i.e. literacy in history). Way back in 1906, Congress had passed banking regulations to stop certain kinds of casino-like actions on the part of banks. In the 90's, the banking industry lobbied heavily to have those laws repealed. If we had had a Secretary of history, perhaps Congress would have been a little more informed as to the potential pitfalls. As it was, we didn’t know history, therefore we were doomed to repeat it. Faced with the same temptations, the banks did the exact same thing in the past decade that they did in the 1900's. And now congress is doing the exact same thing in response that it did in 1906.
When Chairman Bernanke appeared on 60 minutes, he talked at great length about his study of the history of the Great Depression. I was very happy to hear about his historical knowledge of failed government fix attempts back then, as that kept him from making the same mistakes twice. We were lucky we had someone in office who was “historate.” Next time we may not be so lucky.
There is a fabulous book by Cullen Murphy called “Are we Rome?”, in which he compares the ups and downs of the Roman empire with what the American empire is going through right now. The parallels are astonishing, and occasionally sobering.
The way we teach history in high school is more propaganda than history. Real history is actually macro psychology. Real history shows you what human beings who will do in certain situations. Even us.
Back in 1985, I was giving a talk to a bunch of fifth-graders about some legal issue that grew out of a draft protest case in the Vietnam War. I’ll never forget what one kid said to me: “next time, could you talk about something that’s a little more recent?” I could see how it was hard for them to see the relevance. It’s easy to think that things that happened before we were born–or in ancient Rome–can’t possibly happen to us. “That was then, this is now.” All too often, history is presented as a series of dates to be memorized, with little apparent relevance to day-to-day life. But there are essential truths about human nature that can be learned by studying history, whether it happened last week or 2000 years ago.
I think it’s important that, even if we didn’t live through it ourselves, that we have a collective understanding of our country’s history, and how history relates to what we are doing here and now. It would be the job of the Secretary of history to provide that. Obviously, some of it wouldn’t be very pleasant, but I would rather deal with something unpleasant in the past than something unpleasant in the present.
© Justin Locke
2 Responses to A New Cabinet Post: Secretary of History