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1. 1 Comment by David Bratton on 28 September 2007:

   History is bunk. – Henry Ford

2. 2 Comment by robert m. peters on 28 September 2007:

   Dr. Wilson,

   Thank you for marshaling this quotes. They create for the reflecting reader the pattern of an intricate dance of paradox and seeming contradiction. They invite one to ponder the topic for no little while; yet, what does peep through almost immediately even as one makes an initial reading is that history is not science. I am not sure how long history has been held captive – at least since WWII – in these departments of social studies and social sciences. Teachers in public schools are still burdened with one of those two “titles” and are still compelled, lest they find themselves in want of a paycheck, to teach the authorized, “scientific” version of history.

   I left public “higher” education in 1991 and public secondary education for years ago. Now, I am the adjunct instructor of German at a small private college and the sole teacher in a very tiny private school in the uplands of Louisiana. We are going to the “social studies” fair this year, hosted at the regional level by the “department of social sciences” at a local state university. I have nine secondary students, the only ones in our tiny school. Our “fair” topics are “Concurrent Majority: Yet Valid in the 21st Century? ,” “The Confederate Constitution: A Model for Reform?.” “The Dix: The Greenback’s Enemy?,” “General Henry Watkins Allen: Louisiana’s Last Instance of Integrity?,” and “Monet’s Ferry: Smith’s Folly and Lincoln’s Unwarranted Grace?”.

   All of these projects conspire to tell a story (history) that is alien to the version of the court historians and to the narrowness of the social sciences. Pray that these upland kids – children of loggers, propane gas deliverers, coal miners (yes, Louisiana has coal mines) and bulldozer operators – get it done. It is a story which they want to tell.

3. 3 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 28 September 2007:

   History is prescription. Those who have no love of their ancestors will give no thought to their posterity — Edmund Burke

   The [real] conservative approaches present problems and circumstances from behind. He has an almost spacial view of the past — the past’s presentness in the present. He looks not a blueprint but at a completed structure, which organically has grown and developed in time, and will continue to do so. He looks at the past and the present not in abstract “terms”, but as potent “seeds”. — Karl Mannheim, distilled.

   The historian is a backward looking prophet.– Friedrich Schlegel.

   The history of the west since the competition for the “Doors of Paradise” for the Florentine Baptistery is the dialectic between Athens and Jerusalem.

4. 4 Comment by robert reavis on 28 September 2007:

   “History is giving the great men of the past their due meed of praise.” ——— Herodotus, Father of History

   “History is whatever we say it is— everything else is calumny, character assasination or some form of unpatriotic, bigoted, anti — ism” —- American Duopolist

5. 5 Comment by Bob Sale on 28 September 2007:

   History is the class my daughter must get an A in so that she may go to the college we can’t afford.

6. 6 Comment by C Bowen on 28 September 2007:

   “And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

   CS Lewis

7. 7 Comment by robert m. peters on 28 September 2007:

   Mr. Bowen

   The proverbial nail you have hit well smack on the head with your quote from C.S. Lewis.

8. 8 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 28 September 2007:

   My own (private, and yet unpublished) definition: History is the only redemption and atonment of the world’s most wicked, once they managed to survive the Faustian bargain. (followed by): Après moi, le déluge.

   If I appear, bitter, sarcastic, antisocial, pesimistic, etc. it is only because – I am.

9. 9 Comment by Michael on 28 September 2007:

   From memory, closely if not verbatim:

   “The history of order is the order of history.” – Eric Voegelin

10. 10 Comment by Aldebanlohoperaldi Huffghaffson on 28 September 2007:

    History: HisStory or herStory? According to the feminists a woman is always ‘really’ in charge? So – Herstory… but She blames us. See, she must be in charge. ? She’s the oppressor or in charge [apparently...well, according to feminists] and yes to prove it, also the ‘victim’.

    Reminds me of Israel. Or my famous saying – There’s enormous power in the victim Role; no power in being the Actual victim.

    Albeit that’s only in the too liberal West [so therein there's much wool to pull over eyes.] In China for example they’d laugh at that. There’s no victim ‘role’, therein. HaHaHaHa. Trying to observe us…they actually have to ‘figure that one out’ it’s so alien to them.

    No – history is always what has preceded…that we’re standing upon…whether we know it or not. Thus Cicero’s following remark is only valid at the very personal level if at all:

    “He who does not know what happened before he was born will remain perpetually a child. —Cicero” — sure if you’re a bastard… like me. But even if that’s true what C. said – which it’s not in my experience… Then you wouldn’t have to Become a child again… as Christ recommended. You could Stay there. I kid.

    Civilization is what matters as I’m sure Lukacs would agree… that’s the stuff of Actual life… the computers the food the roads the transportation the shelter the way it all works … then there’s also cultcha … what spoiled people say and Imgaine it all is…

    funny…

    But the most cult’chaed get rid of as much of it as possible … leaving only the diamonds in the rough and polished as well if so desired… And at its best that’s thanks to history too. But there’s those who reWrite history too (sadly) because he who controls the past, controls the future, and he who controls the future controls all that really matters where power is concerned – the present.

    Beware of those who reWrite His or Her Story. !!!!!

    _____________________________________________

11. 11 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 September 2007:

    In the Romance languages–in fact, if I remember correctly, most European languages besides English–the words for history and story are one and the same. History is a recollection and a recounting, not simply an archaeological “dig” to find the eternal shadows of the past “just as they were.” It has a beginning, action, climax and result.

12. 12 Comment by robert m. peters on 28 September 2007:

    Mr. Moses,

    I believe, if I correctly recall, that you are correct. “History” did not in English, however, again, If I correctly recall, take on the restricted meaning of “record of the past” until sometime in the 15th century.

    German has two distinct sets of words, particularly at the level of “intellectual,” “theological” and the “scientific.” One set is of Germanic origin and the other set is of Latin origin. For instance, the word for “pronoun” is “das Fuerwort” (Germanic) and “das Pronomen” (Latin).

    German has two words for “history,” both of which carry the meaning of either “story” or “record of the past,” i.e. “die Geschichte” (Germanic) and “die Historie” (Latin of Greek origin).

    Interestingly, there is a “Platonic” difference between the adjectival form of these nouns. The adjective “geschichtlich” is more “abstract” or “subjective” than the adjective “historisch.” Thus there was a work from the 1960’s entitled Der Historische Jesus und Der Geschichtliche Christus. I believe that the work was translated The Historic Jesus and The Historical Christ, although English does not convey the distinction which German does.

13. 13 Comment by Aldebanlohoperaldi Huffghaffson on 28 September 2007:

    In the Romance languages–in fact, if I remember correctly, most European languages besides English–the words for history and story are one and the same. History is a recollection and a recounting, not simply an archaeological “dig” to find the eternal shadows of the past “just as they were.” It has a beginning, action, climax and result. -Moses

    Correct. The most perfect result is what advances the human organism… – as When it perceives all that it has accomplished and now stands upon [history] and BELIEVES even more via the shady sinful imagination needing adjustment naturally always for its own good too – the chemo-biological processeses of the brain advance, physically… and one can infer – since God in myth or reality – [I stand and say REALITY] whichever You prefer said it was good – it’s Good. Hey, I’m here … ? I got to go with what i’ve got… -

    We’re good. Even the kids, God bless’Em in the absence now of any discernible culture today say things like in their confusion – “it’s all good.” They God bless them KNOW. I’m WITH them… always… always with my people. … Go from there…

14. 14 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 28 September 2007:

    From a well known source:
    noun men to be replaced by (wo)men to mean historians:

    First Murderer
    We are men, my liege.

    MACBETH
    Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
    As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
    Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept
    All by the name of dogs: the valued file
    Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
    The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
    According to the gift which bounteous nature
    Hath in him closed; whereby he does receive
    Particular addition. from the bill
    That writes them all alike: and so of men.
    Now, if you have a station in the file,
    Not i’ the worst rank of manhood, say ‘t;
    And I will put that business in your bosoms,
    Whose execution takes your enemy off,
    Grapples you to the heart and love of us,
    Who wear our health but sickly in his life,
    Which in his death were perfect.

15. 15 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 29 September 2007:

    Mr. Peters, thank you for all you do for our people.
    Writebackers, I am impressed with your broad and rare erudition.

16. 16 Comment by Philip Candido on 29 September 2007:

    In Italiano the word is storia, which is short for the Latin Historia, mean as a commenter noted above, story.

    What I always liked about Lord of the Rings for example, is that it presents the concept of story in the history. Men like Gandalf, and Aragorn, or Bilbo the hobbit are “versed in Lore” because they know the stories of the past.

    I might suggest Dr. Wilson, a much better quote from Hilaire Belloc:

    “History may be called the test of true philosophy, or it may be called in a very modern and not very dignified metaphor, the object-lesson of political science; or it may be called the great story whose interest is upon another plane from all other stories because its irony, its tragedy and its moral are real, were acted by real men, and were the manifestation of God.”
    -On knowing the Past
    from “This and That and the Other”, 1912

17. 17 Comment by Bede on 1 October 2007:

    Herodotus said that his purpose in writing history was to preserve the ‘kleos’ (fame) of deserving men and deeds. Today it’s the opposite: to chronicle the gripes and complaints of everyone against the Christian, white male.

    It seems to me that in order for the modernist project to succeed, historical consciousness must be erased. Marxists realized this and were the first to systematically try to deracinate man from his historical realities and limits. And many postmodernists have sought to further this project: erase the historical concept (e.g. male / female), and you can reshape the nature of Man.

    Just as guilty today are the managerial bureaucrats who have overtaken academia, politics, government etc. How many senators today do you think are historically literate? Robert Byrd? Is that it?

    Back in college when I was more of a mainstream conservative and involved with “Young Republicans” and nonsense like that, it always amazed me how these organizations primarily were comprised of individuals from the business departments, etc., primarily by individuals in no way concerned with history. And I would think to myself: If you do not care about history, how can you care about tradition? And if you don’t care about tradition, how can you be a traditionalist?

    And the libertarians are just as bad, believing that they operate in some historical vacuum devoid of the patterns and trends of history. I remember that Murray Rothbard once said that for him history started with 19th-century liberalism. Wow. No wonder they can postulate some idealist notion of pure, undiluted “free trade” (no, not managed trade!), which has never existed nor ever will.

18. 18 Comment by Bede on 1 October 2007:

    “History is prescription. Those who have no love of their ancestors will give no thought to their posterity” — Edmund Burke

    Sid, you had better watch out. You are approaching “the ancestral” there, which is a direct affront to the politically correct views you usually shovel out.

19. 19 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 1 October 2007:

    Bede more or less summarized all the angst of my thankfully concluded university career.

20. 20 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 1 October 2007:

    @Michael (9):

    Close: “The order of history emerges from the history of order.”

21. 21 Comment by Aldebanlohoperaldi Huffghaffson on 1 October 2007:

    Close: “The order of history emerges from the history of order.” -
    Richert

    Exactly… that’s Civilization… which we adults know is the sine qua non. [Actual & ... true.] Blesses.

22. 22 Comment by Karl Marx: on 2 October 2007:

    “History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.”

23. 23 Comment by C Bowen on 2 October 2007:

    If Rothbard said that, it would be odd, as he has a four-volume set on American Civilization, that commits fewer heresies than the “America was founded as a Christian Nation” pseudo-Constitutional nationalists. (He also has a 1000 pages on the history of economic thought through Adam Smith, who he more or less calls a phony supply sider, but I haven’t read it, dismal stuff that it is.)

    Liberty may or may not be the social goal of Western Man; Man might really not want liberty. So what are we left with and what do we do? The paleoconservatives have picked up the narrative here, but the odd man out is the nationalist, always the nationalist.

24. 24 Comment by Allen Wilson on 2 October 2007:

    Perhaps one thing we can get from history is that nothing is inevitable. My own study of Byzantine history has taught me that, and others who have studied it have said the same thing. Anyone who learns about how the Byzantines avoided collapse against seemingly overwhelming odds time and time again, and then came back as good and powerful as ever, can be freed from Marxian notions of inevitable historical outcomes. When we turn what we have learnt from it to other historical periods, we can see that Southern defeat in the 1860’s wasn’t inevitable any more than American victory in the 1770’s was. Multiculturalism certainly is not inevitable either. The end of the West will never be inevitable no matter what.

    Dont view history through the moralistic modernist lense that judges everything in the past by whether it lives up to leftist standards. Reject all ideological thinking. Get rid of whatever blinders have been imposed upon you by the modernist non-culture we were raised in, and study history as the tale of personalities, geniuses, fools, fanatics, madmen, saints and sinners, wise men, blunderers, crowds and mobs, and lone individuals having profound influence, see the good and bad in all of them, and you can see and understand much about the world around us today because you will see that we are the same as those people you have studied (so much for utopias), and this will help you understand current events better.

25. 25 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 2 October 2007:

    Re: #24, I am told that the best-selling histories are still a) general volumes of particular nations, and b) character biographies. I would not place much stock in the qualities of such volumes and sketches, but it seems the need to know real history is omnipresent and cannot be eradicated in spite of the Marxists’ best efforts.

26. 26 Comment by Ethan on 2 October 2007:

    Isn’t historia Greek for inquiry?

27. 27 Comment by robert m. peters on 2 October 2007:

    Mr. Wilson,

    Your words:

    “Get rid of whatever blinders have been imposed upon you by the modernist non-culture we were raised in, and study history as the tale of personalities, geniuses, fools, fanatics, madmen, saints and sinners, wise men, blunderers, crowds and mobs, and lone individuals having profound influence, see the good and bad in all of them, and you can see and understand much about the world around us today because you will see that we are the same as those people you have studied (so much for utopias), and this will help you understand current events better.”

    A great example of this understanding of history is the 11th chapter of Hebrews. The pantheon of the faithful, that cloud of witnesses, as it is referred to in the first verse of Chapter 12 of the same book, spans from Enoch who walked to closely with God that he was “merely” taken to the utterly failed Samson, along with David, that man after God’s own heart, a man who was also an adulterer and a murderer. Yet, in God’s economy, all men and women of faith in That Which Was To Come and as such pilgrims who had earned a place in eternity as reflected in the accounting of them in the 11th chapter history.

    In post-modernity, man has been reduced to a Freudian ID with no past and no connection to eternity, even metaphorically-in short, man without a history, i.e. no story to tell and no story to be connected to, doomed to acting on and reacting to his impulses – a creature so enthralled with immediate gratification that gratification has begun to precede desire itself, taking away even the thrill of anticipation as man sinks into meaningless banality.

28. 28 Comment by G.S. on 3 October 2007:

    “Those who dare to talk to each other about the Book of Odes and the Book of History should be executed and their bodies exposed in the market place.

    Anyone referring to the past to criticize the present should, together with all members of his family, be put to death.”

    — Li Ssu
    Minister of the (short-lived) Qin Dynasty

29. 29 Comment by G.S. on 3 October 2007:

    Turns out that Confucius was an “unpatriotic conservative”.

30. 30 Comment by Sean on 3 October 2007:

    Great work, Clyde!

31. 31 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 3 October 2007:

    Thanks, Sean. There is lots more to come.

32. 32 Comment by PcH on 3 October 2007:

    History is the study of time.

    History is prophecy.

    History is the hub of all disciplines: religion, psychology, the arts, literature, philosophy, mathematics, technology, economics, politics…

    The most interesting history is the worst to live.

33. 33 Comment by :-) on 4 October 2007:

    “Great work, Clyde!”

    “Thanks, Sean. There is lots more to come.”

    How retarded …

34. 34 Comment by G.S. on 4 October 2007:

    Mr. Smiley-Face,

    Yeah — you’re like, right and stuff, y’know? You rock. You kick*ss.

    Who’s the big cool winner?

    Why, you’re the big cool winner.

    Y’know, it’s like, how I was txt-msging to my friend the other day, about some — well, y’know, stuff — and he was, like, “THIS STUFF IS RETARDED!”

    And I was like, “YEH ITS RETARDED DUDE!”

    And he was like, “HOW RETARDED… LIKE DUH.”

    And I was like, “YEAH MAN SO RETARDED!”

    And he was like…… well, anyhow, it was pretty cool.

35. 35 Comment by :-) on 4 October 2007:

    “Un sot trouve tojours un plus sot qui l´admire!”

36. 36 Comment by G.S. on 4 October 2007:

    Slick,

    I think you meant “toujours”, not “tojours”.

37. 37 Comment by G.S. on 4 October 2007:

    But wow — you’re a total package: Cool, adept at the art of argumentation and rhetoric, *and* Euro-sophisticated!

    Can we hang out? I want to be your pal.

    No, really. I look up to you.

38. 38 Comment by History is on 4 October 2007:

    World celebrates 50th anniversary of first-ever man-made satellite Sputnik

    04.10.2007

    Engineers, military officials and former cosmonauts on Thursday celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, which marked the dawn of the Space Age and sparked the race to land a man on the moon.

    Ceremonies were held at the Russia’s cosmonaut training center, Star City, outside of Moscow and engineers were to gather at the Academy of Sciences to recall the events leading up to the Oct. 4, 1957, launch of the spikey, 184 pound (83-kilogram) metal ball that beeped as it circled the globe for some 22 days.

    Military officials held a small ceremony to lay flowers at the grave of the father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolyov, who was buried with honors at the foot of the Kremlin walls.

    The success of Soviet engineers in launching Sputnik stunned the world, and was followed just four years later by another historic achievement – the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

    Sputnik galvanized the U.S. government to pour money into space research and technology with the goal of landing a man on the moon – an event that occurred nearly 12 years later.

    “Of course speaking just for us specialists (the launch) sparked an unexpected furor around the world. No one expected this, even including our engineers,” Viktor Frusmon, a co-worker of Korolyov’s, said in a televised comments Thursday.

    The satellite was 58 cm (about 23 in) in diameter and weighed approximately 83.6 kg (about 183 lb). Each of its elliptical orbits around the Earth took about 96 minutes.

    Sputnik 2 was launched on November 3, 1957 and carried the first living passenger into orbit, a dog named Laika. The mission planners did not provide for the safe return of the spacecraft or its passenger, making Laika the first orbital casualty. This mission was promptly dubbed “Muttnick” by humorists.

    The first attempt to launch Sputnik 3, on February 3, 1958, failed, but the second on May 15 succeeded, and it carried a large array of instruments for geophysical research. Its tape recorder failed, however, making it unable to measure the Van Allen radiation belts.

    Sputnik 4 was launched two years later, on May 15, 1960.

    Sputnik 5 was launched on August 19, 1960 with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants on board. The spacecraft returned to earth the next day and all animals were recovered safely.

    PRAVDA

    http://english.pravda.ru/world/98177-sputnik-0

39. 39 Comment by GJ Tryon on 11 October 2007:

    These are Hegelian times we are living through, and just as space research has repeatedly confirmed the relativism of Einstein, so the presidency of Bush in America consistently confirms the historical method of Hegel. Consider these examples in the dialectic telescope: hillbilly protestants synthesized with cosmopolitan Jews to produce a new antithesis against the “terror” of Islam; Chinese communism merges with world capitalism to give birth to global statism arrayed against nationalist, themselves born out of a syncretic union of hippies and small business; and Bush himself, transformed into his opposite by an “enemy” attack which redeemed his presidency from stalemate. Who can doubt that, pace Einstein, “Absolute Right” must be just around the historical corner?

40. 40 Comment by Tom K on 23 October 2007:

    Speaking of Hegel, didn’t he offer: “History is a slaughterbench”?

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