Cal Thomas - History’s lessons

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, September 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER ,HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. Charles Dickens might say we have a lot to learn from the best of times and the worst of times. But what about modern times?

Here’s commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: There once were summer times when the living was easy, as the song from Porgy and Bess goes. No one could say that about this summer, what with Covid-19 still spreading dangerously and the uncertainty over what happens next in Afghanistan.

Amid this summer’s flood of “breaking news,” I re-discovered a classic book by the English historian Paul Johnson. It’s titled Modern Times, and it’s more than just an account of the 20th century. It’s a chronicle of what can happen when people deliberately ignore history and thus doom themselves to repeat it.

In his chapter on the rise of Hitler in Germany, Johnson writes with profound implications for our day. He notes many Germans rejected “the Western liberal notion of freedom of choice and private provision based on high wages (preferring) the paternalistic alternative of compulsory and universal security. The state was nursemaid as well as sergeant-major. It was a towering shadow over the lives of ordinary people and their relationship toward it was one of dependency and docility.”

Think of America’s deepening debt and politicians from both parties trying to spend more. Who can deny that Americans increasingly rely on the government to take care of them? Relying on government used to be a last resort, not a first resource. But we no longer have a universal belief in the value of self-reliance.

Johnson quotes German sociologist Max Weber from an address in 1919: “The honour of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of superior authorities.” Johnson adds that Weber believed, “Only the politician had the right and duty to exercise personal responsibility. It would be difficult to conceive of worse advice to offer German mandarins. It was followed, right to the bitter end in 1945.”

This history should prove an eternal warning: People must always curb the power of the state lest it become a functional—or actual—dictatorship.

Carl Schmidt, Germany’s leading legal philosopher, argued “order could only be restored when the demands of the state were given over the quest for an illusionary freedom.” Such a position was the natural outcome of what was being taught in German schools and universities. Anyone else notice similarities between academic and political institutions in modern America?

Johnson also writes of the propensity for even wise and educated people to delude themselves. He recalls a lengthy letter written by Winston Churchill to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in which Churchill said Japan would not present a “menace in our lifetime.” He wrote that letter in December 1924. Seventeen years later, Japan would prove him very wrong.

There is so much more in this 800-page book, including the difficulty of imposing a moral code on people who wish to live immoral lives.

History is not just a collection of old names and dates to be memorized in school. It is full of lessons we never fully learn.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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