The nation’s observed birthday – July 4th – always brings forth what
passes for modern day “patriotism”: prominent displays of the flag
everywhere, celebration of the military, picnics, backyard barbecues, and of
course fireworks. There is even an occasional tribute to the nation’s “founders,”
those men who supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence on that date,
and the genius of Thomas Jefferson who purportedly masterminded and wrote the
document. Yet Americans, although a great people, are usually vacant on their
history, and many really admit it, because history seems a like a dusty little
hobby that is irrelevant to the “here and now,” which self-help gurus
on TV tell us we need to focus on. However, comparatively, people in other countries
usually pay more attention to their own history and those of at least their
region of the world.
Because many people in the United States don’t value history very much, they
tend to allow politicians to be selective in their remembering of historical
events – usually to manipulate public nationalism (which now passes for patriotism)
for their own dubious policy goals. For example, if Americans had focused more
on the fact that historically, the Vietnamese had been fighting fiercely over
the centuries to throw out foreign invaders – such as the Japanese, the Chinese,
and recently the French – perhaps they would have demanded that their politicians
think twice, even three times, about invading that country. And if Americans
had known that the historically fractious Iraq, an artificial country that had
been created by the greedy colonial powers after World War I to exploit the
country’s oil reserves, they might have wisely rejected George W. Bush’s attempt
at military social work in one of the most unlikely places in the Middle East
for democracy to flourish.
Similarly, if most of American public had been more aware that the mighty British
Empire had failed three times to subdue Afghanistan in the 1800s and early 1900s,
and that the Soviets had ignominiously withdrew in defeat from that country
just over a decade before, perhaps they would have pressured George W. Bush
to be more selective in his military response to 9/11, thus avoiding the current
quagmire in that warlike and xenophobic country, which especially hates foreign
invaders.
In fact, the vast majority of Americans would scratch their heads when asked
about the causes of even traumatic events in the nation’s history. For example,
they wouldn’t be able to tell you what motivated the British to burn Washington,
DC in the War of 1812, the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor to begin World War
II, or Osama bin Laden to launch his terror attacks on the Pentagon and World
Trade Centers on September 11, 2001. Yet only in the new physics can we have
…