Everyone has heard the cliché that history repeats itself. Knowledge of the past can help us recognize what may be brewing in the future. But history also helps us figure out where we are right now. I was reminded of this when I read this Washington Post column on the Supreme Court’s consideration of the DC handgun ban. In their efforts to determine the constitutionality of the ban, the Justices discussed historical points from Madison’s hunting habits to suppression of Scots and Catholics and the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
This was not a purely academic discussion. The Justices were trying to determine what exactly is the right of the individual and the right of the government in regards to private gun ownership. These historical points are key to clarifying what you and I are able to do here and now, this very minute.
So much for history being irrelevant.
Lauren Prehoda
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It’s a good thing the Justices remembered all that from their tenth grade history class, or else they might never have been able to decide this case today.
Educators better act quick and require every high schooler to learn this stuff. Who knows what priceless nuggets of history the future justices of the Supreme Court aren’t learning about today in school that they should be learning!
Nothing less than the future of the Judicial Branch is at stake . . .
Lauren, an excellent example of history and how we all need it as citizens. Matt’s sarcasm aside, how much of this article could the average Ivy League recent grad really decipher?
What we’re really about here is not the justices–we’ll assume a President and Senate will choose those at least a bit familiar with history.
What we’re about is people like me–people who pass 20 years of formal education not knowing who Julius Caesar was or when he lived, no idea of the Magna Carta, couldn’t place the Byzantine empire before or after classical Greece, and are not sure whether Henry VIII had anything to do with the crusades.
And, I think, who should come to know Benjamin Banneker and George Washington as people, not caricatures.