HISTORY

You cannot tell a book by its cover.
Beauty is more than skin deep.
Do as I do, not as I say.

Truisms, like stereotypes, are valuable.
To be good ones, they must contain at least grains of truth.

Sometimes, they contain considerably more than grains.

Kipling said “…Little do they know of England who only England know….”, or words to that effect.

I was struck by such ideas as these as I came across the article found in the link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304252704575156341965631892.html#printMode

An individual, a corporation, a nation, do not suddenly become what they are. They have histories , they are what they are because of what they have been.

And unless awareness at some level of the past of a person or a nation is kept alive in some way, it will cease to be the history of those persons or nations.
And the resultant person or nation will cease to be affected by that past.

We of The Study have never been to the South Pacific. But we have been to the American airfields in East Anglia in southeast England.
Like the islander in the article referenced above, we have met folks who remember what Americans did many years ago to change the course of history.

We have walked on the concrete runways which our engineers built to enable the 8th Air Force to carry out bombing missions over Europe.

We have experienced the miracle of the Alaskan Pipeline and have visited east, west, north, and south in our own great country and in Canada.

Travel, books, and lively imaginations have helped us to achieve a sense of the heritage which has coalesced to make the British and Americans the people they were and indeed are.

And it is easy to forget this heritage, this identity, if, in the words of another truism, you cannot “…see the forest for the trees.”

We are hearing a lot today, even from our own leaders, about the shortcomings and ‘evils’ of the American way.

It is good, no, it is essential, to keep the exceptionalism of the American Way very much in the consciousness of the American people as well.