Territorial Bloggings

As usual, World Magazine has some good grist for the cogitation mill…

I like History. In elementary & high school, I always liked Social Studies, and in college I got my BA in History. History is cool, History is interesting, History is power (at least the writing of it…). Historiography (i.e., the methodology of History or the writing about, rather than of, History…) is quite interesting, as it lets us take a look at some of the more, shall we say, Sociological aspects of History.

This is all a way of introducing the recent OpEd piece by Marvin Olasky in the 12/03/05 issue of World Magazine, entitled The Good New Days, along with a recent entry at WorldMagBlog entitled History without Illusions. In short, both of these deal with the idea that maybe, just maybe, the “Good Old Days” weren’t so, well, good. That we have a tendency to view the past through the sepia tones of our memory, having forgotten the jaggedness of the past when it was the present, particularly when it’s a past that we didn’t live through.

It’s a valid observation. One that, at its heart, is nothing more than historical revisionism — sometimes more benign, sometimes more malignant — but still revisionism.

It’s something we need to be aware of, and to think about.

-ghp