Historic lessons are bunk.

More often than not true lessons cannot be learned as the history is rather one sided and glossed over. Certain facts are trumpted as the reasons bad things happened, and other less palatable reasons are over looked.

Even if were to assume a historic account was the whole truth, it can be misleading. It tells us that by doing X bad stuff happened. But for all we know doing Y would have made X look like a picnic on a summers day.

Just because we are really fucking bad at learning from the past doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

I know a lot more about how the world works because I know some history than I would ever if I didn't.

For instance - I know that war is hell. If we didn't teach history... would we still remember that?

I also know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. I also know that people invariably oppress and use each other given the chance. And I also know that we are really pretty much the same in that regard. If I didn't know history I might just think it was people from Texas or something.

OMG, Santa Claus is a teacher.
Put his face on a poster as concrete proof of the necessity of school vouchers to let parents escape such incompetence.

Santa Claus, let's look at some economic history. The history of Keynesian stimulus.
During the New Deal Keynesian stimulus didn't end the Great Depression and led to deficits.
During the Great Society and War on Poverty that LBJ started in the late 60's and that dominated government domestic policy in the 1970's. Keynesian stimulus did not end the economic malaise.
The Obama stimulus didn't work in 2009-11, yet we still have liberal economists who say that we need another stimulus.
There are true lessons of the past, but they are selectively ignored by statists.

The argument that the Munich Syndrome led to Vietnam has a lot of problems.
Certainly the United States, under Eisenhower especially, saw that appeasing the Soviet Union as Chamberlain did with Hitler would reap the same tragic results.
Ike laid out this in his "Atoms for Peace" speech in 1953.
Eisenhower had no war in Vietnam though.
Under Ike American involvement was strictly limited. He refused to bail out the French at Dien Bien Phu.
The "Vietnam War" was LBJ's war and his policy had nothing to do with Munich or appeasement at all.
LBJ had to be the single greatest foreign policy failure in the White House in the 20th century.
They Vietman War and Stagflation, the headstone's on the grave of the 2nd worst president of the 20th century, LBJ.
LBJ is lucky America elected Nixon to get him off the hook.

You know nothing about anything. Eisenhower created the Vietnam crisis by refusing to abide by the Geneva Accords in which unified elections would be held in 1956. Vietnam's division was supposed to be temporary until elections were held. The temporary division was agreed to as a generous concession to the French colonialists by the Communists so as not to humiliate the French. The US backed Diem in a ridiculous plebliscite and Diem refused to abide by the Geneva agreement. Diem was backed by huge amounts of military and economic aid by Eisenhower even as he was rounding up anybody who opposed him without charges.

Furthermore, Johnson was in close contact with Eisenhower throughout his term, and Eisenhower vehemently supported Johnson's Vietnam policy. Johnson thought Vietnam was a distraction from his domestic agenda. But he deferred to Eisenhower's "wisdom" on foreign affairs, as did Kennedy. It was Eisenhower who insisted that Kennedy not recognize the PRC.

http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-dwight-eisenhower-johnson-and-eisenhower-vietnam

"Eisenhower had no war in Vietnam though. "

Except he funded the French War in Indochina, and "the lessons of Munich" were directly behind the containment and domino theory doctrines that were cited to support increased American involvement.

"OMG, Santa Claus is a teacher.
Put his face on a poster as concrete proof of the necessity of school vouchers to let parents escape such incompetence. "

On the front lines against revisionists like you. An award winning historian as well I might add.

"During the New Deal Keynesian stimulus didn't end the Great Depression and led to deficits.
During the Great Society and War on Poverty that LBJ started in the late 60's and that dominated government domestic policy in the 1970's. Keynesian stimulus did not end the economic malaise.
The Obama stimulus didn't work in 2009-11, yet we still have liberal economists who say that we need another stimulus.
There are true lessons of the past, but they are selectively ignored by statists. "

I get it. THE TRUE LESSONS. THE TRUTH. TC is godlike in his ability to decifer the true lessons from the not true ones! Awesome.

Except...
"During the New Deal Keynesian stimulus didn't end the Great Depression and led to deficits."
Too bad there was NO KEYNSIAN STIMULOUS DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION. The adherence Keynesian theories didnt start until after WWII. Roosevelt created government programs to put people to work , not out of adherence to Keynes. Roosevelt from day one always strove for a balanced budget, to the point where it helped cause the second leg of the depression in the late thirties.

Thank god for teachers like me.

Anyway, for all those who care. Nixon was supporting the idea of sending troops to Vietnam as early as 1954. If Nixon had been elected in 1960 we would have seen escalation of that conflict much sooner.

http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-13-1960-debate-transcript
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860612,00.html

I was just reading this thread and scratching my head at some quoted excerpts (like SC being a teacher) until I realized that there must be some comments from someone I muted. Maybe mute isn't always such a good thing...

Say Santa, what kinda history do you teach?

American ;)

There was no Keynsian stimulus during the Great Depression?
The CCC, WPA, NYA, etc. etc. etc.
FDR used deficit spending by government to temporarily employ people in an attempt to stimulate aggregate demand.
That's the definition of Keynesian stimulus.
Roosevelt strove to balance the budget from day one?
You simply have no knowledge of history do you?
How can someone as incompetent as yourself be employed?
Amazing.

lol wtf, Tettleton's Chew.
Your words aren't going to be accepted if your being such a dick, and when your information is all messed up. Also, your grammar is horrible.

It must painful as a teacher, to not know the lessons of history yourself, when you are already so aware of the things behind many events.

nice "your being such a dick", furball, when criticizing his grammar ... otherwise points taken and scored

Look at the numbers, genius.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/hist.html

Look at 1938 in particular. The government had virtually no deficit whatsoever. The deficits throughout the depression period were insignificant compared to the wartime deficit spending. Taxes increased during throughout the period, except for 1938-1939 when both taxes and spending decreased. But in general taxes went up at the same rate as spending. That's not Keynesianism.

Furball, I never worry about what I can't control so I could give a shit what you think. I also could care less about getting accepted by individuals with their heads up their ass. Feel free to mute me if you are smart enough to figure it out on your own. If people can't take the truth fuck'em.

That is a very interesting approach.

Santa Claus, let's begin your education on the Great Depression.
Everyone of the articles I'm supplying a citation for is available on JStor.
If you are in education and you don't have access to Jstor then you need to find a new field to work in.

Great Expectations and the End of the Depression
Gauti B. Eggertsson
The American Economic Review
Vol. 98, No. 4 (Sep., 2008), pp. 1476-1516

Eggertsson is a devout Keynesian and supporter of FDR's New Deal and here is what he says about FDR and the deficit.

"The deficit during Roosevelt's first fiscal year is one of the highest in US history outside of wartime." Page 1481.

So Santa Claus your statement that "Roosevelt from day one always strove for a balanced budget" is completely inaccurate and indefensible.

Now as far as the Roosevelt recession of 1937-38 it's already obvious you are in way over your head there, but go ahead and post whatever fantasy you have about it so I know what facts you need to be made aware of.

Hoover set the peacetime deficit record prior to FDR coming to office.

Deficits (in millions)
FY 1932 -2,735
FY 1933 -2,602
FY 1934 -3,586
FY 1935 -2,803
FY 1936 -4,304
FY 1937 -2,193
FY 1938 -89
FY 1939 -2,846
FY 1940 - -2,920
FY 1941 -4,941
FY 1942 -20,503

Tax receipts for the same period
1,924
1,997
2,955
3,609
3,923
5,387
6,751
6,295
6,548
8,712
14,634

According to the chart I posted, which goes into specific years beginning in 1900. The previous "peacetime" deficit was 89 million dollars in 1909. That was eclipsed beginning in 1931 with a deficit of 462 million, followed by the deficits I posted above.

"Roosevelt strove to balance the budget from day one?
You simply have no knowledge of history do you?
How can someone as incompetent as yourself be employed?
Amazing. :"

The irony is wonderful, Roosevelt always wanted to balance the budget and made solid moves to do so which helped cause the second leg of the great depression. TC you really make my day

in 1937 Roosevelt sided with his fiscally conservative advisors and sought to balance the budget, until that caused the economy to plumit and unemployment to soar, so they took another approach which led them toward Keynes by the outbreak of the war in Europe, but it wasnt until after the war that spending became seen as an end to itself. Roosevelt had no such intention and thus he was not following keynes for the vast majority of the depression and rejected his supporters on several occasions

book: The End of Reform by Alan Brinkley, knock yourself out, or shall i say educate yourself.

Santa Claus, Brinkley's book came out fifteen years ago. Update yourself dude.
The best of the latest scholarship is this book, The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes.
I'd tell you to go read the reviews on J-stor, but I guess high school teachers don't have access to J-stor.
Roosevelt is correctly portrayed as a pragmatist who began as an economic experimenter (1933-35) but then became a class warrior (1935-38) as his economic policies failed and he focused on the narrower goal of seeking to assemble a winning coalition for the 1936 presidential election.
The accent is on "his economic policies failed."

You know what strikes me the most, Tettleton? It's the fact that most people I know who have vast amounts of knowledge on any given subject are actually happy to exchange on it. What's more, the more knowledge the person has, the more they tend to be courteous and generous with their interlocutors. I guess they see such conversations as a chance to learn as much as a chance to teach. I also suppose that they've had the chance to see, in academic debates or other contexts, that mocking your interlocutor or diminishing him in any way makes the conversation impossible and, of course, any form of learning similarly impossible.
You constantly hold tight to your ideas as though they cast the only possible light on the subject you discuss, and you constantly mock (and insult) people who think differently. Maybe you do have vast amounts of knowledge. In fact, I'm willing to bet you do. But I'll gladly give away any knowledge I have for the chance to learn from people around me.

Don't forget: any single light pointed at an object will always, and necessarily, cast a shadow. There is no absolute understanding.

Santa Claus, you better not read the work Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian from UCLA's Economics department who argue that FDR's New Deal made the Great Depression much worse that it would have been without his policies.

Roosevelt's policies of trying to kept wages and prices up made this increased unemployment and made the depression worse and longer.

Here is a link if you decide to read current research on the Depression.
http://goo.gl/ei59I

Their conclusion. New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression, but instead the New Deal's policy of increasing the collective bargaining power of labor raised wages which increased unemployment which kept the Depression from ending in 1934 and extended in through 1939.

Update yourself Santa Claus. You are a teacher. Quit teaching archaic outdated and disproven ideas.

I don't see how the age of a work on the fiscal policies of FDR is relevant. It's not like his fiscal policies changed in the last 15 years.

As my favorite history professor said, "Buy any edition of the book you can, because the Roman Empire has not undergone significant changes in the last ten years."

I'm sorta kinda proud that Tettleton left my remark unanswered. I suppose that, for once, he didn't have the "truth" to reply with.
Also, Tettleton: you're kinda proving my point! The whole idea of getting newer books, published more recently, is because they actually engage with the literature before them. In other words, they've learned from other people and found out that they disagreed. But it's learning, actually making the effort to lend an ear to what others have said that made it possible for them to write and publish: in academia, if you can't enter and contribute to the debate (which again points to various positions being reasonable, and not just one), you don't get published.
So it brings us back to my initial amazement: you claim to know so much, and scream (in the midst of insulting) that you want to educate the hordes of dumbasses around here. Yet, you show absolutely no willingness to exchange with the others. You seemingly do not believe in dialogue as much as you do in insulting. That tells me that you either don't know as much as you pretend to, or don't know enough to know that you could still learn a thing or two. Either way, I guess that explains your lack of win on this site. See, diplomacy is all about dialogue...