Maybe I was a really strange kid, but by the time I was in the third grade I thought that history was the most important subject in school.  I recall that this surprised my parents who wanted to know where I had gotten this notion, but to me it just seemed obvious.  In the mornings before school I read the Los Angeles Times front page most days (OK, maybe I was a really strange kid) and it was easy enough to figure out that the political news of those mid-sixties days always seemed to center on arguments about how things used to be, and how to change them.  The different sides of the arguments appeared to me to differ on their recollections of the past, therefore you must know about the past to figure out how to approach the future… duh!

In the half century since, this early perception of mine has really been bourne out.  Oh, how many times have I become irate when I found out what kind of “history” my kids were taught in school!  The funny thing was that the nonsense history that my kids were taught by their teachers seemed to have a pattern to it, a pattern that did not come from a mistake or a disagreement; it appeared to me to be a deliberate one.  The brand of history they were learning always seemed to coincide with contemporary political views from the extreme left.

Interesting; if you are familiar with (actual) history, you know that the extreme left has used this tactic for over a hundred years in dozens of countries…

This blog, of course, is not a blog about politics… even though I sometimes wonder why not… but a blog about “references.”  As a Christian, this trend concerns me, for the strategy of the left, as demonstrated in history, is to first change the history of a people, and then you can change the attitudes about everything else, and in the end, any person of faith will be seen by most people as some kind of an idiot, for Christianity is quite inconvenient for the left.

I wonder, dear reader… Does any of this sound familiar?  Isn’t this the way popular culture sees us?  Historically scientists saw science as a discovery of God’s creation; is that what they say now?

Take heart, Napoleon tried this, too and it didn’t work for long.  Another lesson from history is that sooner or later people tend to over-extend themselves and their little empires crash and burn.  In fact, doesn’t the Bible talk about this?

What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
    “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
    it was here before our time.
 No one remembers the former generations,
    and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
    by those who follow them.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

Yes, history really is the most important subject in school!