I have written before on the nature of my personal reading program. Since I published that post I have received email and blog comments (both at my personal blog, and at Chicago Boyz) from various people requesting a copy of my reading list.
History
VALKYRIE–Brief Review
Went to see the film last Tuesday, and I agree with Lex that it is well worth seeing. Cruise does a credible job as Stauffenberg, and most of the acting is well done, although the mix of accents…a lot of American English and various flavors of English-English, plus a bit of German…was slightly bizarre. I was particularly impressed with Halina Reijn’s portrayal of a minor character, Margarethe van Oven (secretary to the conspirators.) She had almost no speaking lines, but has a wonderfully expressive face, and uses it well to portray her character’s emotions.
One aspect of the film, though, seems to me to be unjust and historically inaccurate.
Lost Causes, Lost Effects
Jeremiah Wright was back in the pulpit Sunday, pontificating on the tragic December anniversary of the 1941 bombing of Hiroshima; this was shortly followed, he told his congregation, by the bombing of Nagasaki. Wright himself was born in 1941. Of course, as Leno’s untutored-man-in-the-street questions indicate, we are losing our understanding of events within our own lifetimes.
Losing dates, we lose our understanding of history for we are less likely to see that ideas have consequences and effects follow causes. We also lose gratitude for those that went before – whether for Shakespeare’s words or the bravery of Washington’s troops or the beauty of ideas that impelled the Puritans or gave the founders their wisdom. We don’t understand real courage nor how tolerance comes to us. Most of all, we lose the sense we only reach the heights we can because we stand on other’s shoulders. Such ignorance gives us a false pride.
Pearl Harbor – 67
Let’s not forget.
If you want information, the Naval Historical Center archive that we linked in last year’s post is as good a place to start as any.
Maybe it’s normal for cultures to lose their memories, or at least to roll them forward to more-recent events. By that logic, perhaps September 11, 2001 should serve as the current generation’s version of December 7, 1941. Does it? I don’t think so. I think we’re losing the memories, old and new, as we lose cultural self-awareness. We’re losing cultural self-awareness because we are losing cultural self-confidence. We are losing cultural self-confidence in large part because we allowed our educational system to be taken over by people who see cultural self-confidence as a crime.
From the Naval Historical Center:
By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan’s diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.
Change the details and this story becomes generic. The most important events tend to be unanticipated, and not for anyone’s lack of trying to anticipate them. We should remember this truth even if we fail to remember specific events, though I suspect that the forgetting of events begets the forgetting of principles.
Interesting times ahead.
UPDATE: Via David Foster, this excellent post from Neptunus Lex.