President Reagan on History

[Weatherman2020]

“We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important — why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. . . . I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.”

-President Reagan in his Farewell Address

 

[whitehall]

I wonder if the video educated pop culture generation ever heard of Doolittle not to mention 30 seconds over Tokyo.

 

[Pellinore]

I'm totally with Reagan on the Pilgrims front. Every year I deliver the same prepared speech about how neither the colonists nor the Natives of the time were monoliths, and the genuine friendship between Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony and Massasoit of the Wampanoags resulted in a thirty-ish year golden age in European-Native relationships. It was the kind of relationship we wish the two ethnicities had, rather than the centuries-long nightmare that happened in other colonies and at other times.