Why we must keep the Lincoln history alive

[Rob Wick]

Well, after a few hours sleep, I'm once again ready for action (as long as I get a cup of coffee too).

I listened to the Carl Sandburg radio biography last night and something that Dave Garroway said at the end made me think. He mentioned that long after that broadcast, people would remember Sandburg. I daresay, if you went up to 100 people on the street of any city in America and ask who Carl Sandburg was, you MIGHT get three or four who do. Our society is generally resistant to historical knowledge, which seems ironic given that history books sell so well. As someone who has loved history from the earliest age, I find it incomprehensible that people don't share the same love of it at that same level of detail that I do, but I guess just about everyone can say that about a particular field.

Where it really becomes a problem, though, is in our current life. Without a firm grasp of historical knowledge, people are capable of being logrolled by others who count on their lack of historical knowledge. Whether one is a liberal or a conservative makes no difference here. If you have a firm grasp of the past, you can tell someone "hold on just one minute, you're not telling the whole story." But when more people watch American Idol rather than presidential debates, we pretty well get the government we deserve.

I remember talking with a niece who is far sharper than her poor uncle will ever be (and who will actually make more money too). She told me that her high school history teacher skipped over BOTH the American Revolution and the Civil War because he said "you already know all that stuff." So I asked her "who was John Wilkes Booth?" She looked at me like I had asked her to recite the Phoneician alphabet backwards. She had no idea. I told her, "you don't know the guy that your uncle was on national television talking about?" She shook her head no.

Best
Rob