The importance of studying history

Over at Bolta’s, Andrew discusses an Op-Ed by New York Times columnist Frank Rich that accuses the McCain Campaign of pumping up “Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies”. Now, Bolta does a fair job of refuting these claims and then slips the quick ball on the inside to Michelle Malkin who storms through the middle and deals with the real Germany circa 1930’s campaign. Kae in the other hand is discussing the new Australian history curriculum over at Bloodnut Blog. How are these two issues related? In using the Weimar Republic to evoke an image of rampant hate fuelled rallies, Rich is demonstrating a poor understanding of what the Weimar Republic actually was and therefore invalidates his own point.

The Weimar Republic was the democratically elected government of post-war Germany. One of the new Republic’s first acts was to sign the Versailles Treaty, which accepted responsibility for the First World War, which led to the disarmament of Germany, and the acceptance of responsibility for the massive war reparations demanded by the allies. This led to the hyper-inflation and massive unemployment that gave the Nazi Party a fertile ground for their own rise to power which, coincidentally, saw the end of the Weimar Republic.

Rich has just used a cool sounding German word to push his point about the McCain/Palin rallies. This historical inaccuracy by a columnist for the New York Times proves how important a real understanding of history really is. History is all about cause and effect. To understand that there needs to be a chronological and fact based approach to teaching history. For students in the free west, that means a detailed and sequential study of the significant events and personalities that led to the society we enjoy today. That also means a significant European and specifically British bias, for the simple reason that the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and a host of other nations all owe their political freedoms to the evolution of British democracy and then the rise and fall of the British Empire.

For Australian students, that means studying British history from the fall of the Roman Empire, through the rise of the monarchy, the Magna Carta, the Reformation, the English Civil War, and the rise of the Empire. This leads straight into the American Revolution which created a need for another penal colony, hence New South Wales. At that point Australian history should be focussed on the opening of the Blue Mountains, exploration of the continent, the establishment of the colonies, the Gold Rush, the Shearer’s Strike, and the colonial wars abroad. None of this can be viewed in isolation though. The Royal Navy’s campaign against slavers, the American Civil War, and the Industrial Revolution all impacted on Australia’s development. When looking at the 20th Century, Australian students should study our involvement in both world wars, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency and Confrontation, the Vietnam War, East Timor and the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Whilst students should know what Australians did in these major events, they cannot be studied in isolation. International factors drove Australia’s involvement, and so should be studied. That would include the inter-war period in Germany, the Weimar Republic, and the rise of National Socialism.

Hopefully then, no Australian student would confuse the Weimar with whatever it was that Rich was trying to say.