History - We Should Remember

Ben Stein has a good piece "What You need to Know"!

Second, almost no one today knows anything about history. No one has context. But life without historical context is shallow and unsatisfactory. If you don't know how mankind suffered in World War II, if you don't know how your fellow Jews or Slavs suffered in the Holocaust, if you do not know what Communism did to fifty million good people, you cannot possibly know how blessed your life in the United States of America is in 2006. If you do not know how much your grandparents had to work to get you where you are, you cannot know how precious that car your parents gave you is, or how lucky it is that you can study without having to work at a part-time job. If you do not know how your fellow African Americans were treated in rural 1920s Mississippi, you cannot know how lucky you are to live in an America that has the opportunities this nation now affords men and women of every race.

Knowledge of history is context and context is everything.