Arthur M. Schlesinger (1917 – 2007)
American historian and social critic whose work has explored the liberalism of American political leaders including Franklin D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, as well as the men who surrounded Andrew Jackson.
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Let us by all means teach black history, African history, women’s history, Hispanic history, Asian history. But let us teach them as history, not as filiopietistic commemoration. The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment, and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible.
The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.
Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.
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