Living History

This is an excellent little article about Bush and Churchill at the mid-war point facing political pressure from home. How amazing it is that history repeats itself. And as The Greatest Generation did before us, so too will we be victorious over tyranny.

Churchill is remembered in the popular imagination as someone who rallied a nation, vowed never to give up, and took his country to victory. Few remember that Churchill faced a crisis of confidence two-and-a-half years into the war, exploited by those “with lesser burdens to carry.”

And fewer still remember the names of the politicians and media critics who created a crisis of confidence in the midst of a war.

Commentary:
At about age 25 (10 yrs ago), I learned that the more history you have behind you, the more interesting history becomes. I think about what it must have been like “back then”. But you can never really know what it was like unless you were there. Then there is talk about re-writing history. History has to be re-written because to tell the whole story would take too long. I learned in school how FDR and Churchill stood up and defeated fascism. I like to think that George Bush and Tony Blair are doing the same against Islamofasciam. My interest in history has led me to believe that during pervious wars, there must have been opposition because there is opposition today. There must have been other perspectives. There must have been neigh-sayers. It must have been a struggle at home as it is today. But that’s not in the history books I had in school. Would I be a different person today, if history had not been re-written? Would our society be different today? How would it be different? Better? Worse? Or is it inevitable that history is to remembered for the betterment of the future?