That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
Aldous Huxley

One of the people Jackie Kennedy asked to give a eulogy for her husband was Chief Justice Earl Warren. He tried to remain positive, even at the doorstep of tragedy: “It has been said that the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn. But surely we can learn, if we have the will to do so. Surely, there is a lesson to be learned from this tragic event.”

Given all that has happened since then, including the vilification of Warren for leading the commission that found no evidence of a conspiracy in the assassination, I cannot share his optimism. Yes, there were things to be learned from President Kennedy’s death, but they were largely discarded by the public in favor of the fake history and misconceptions of reality that charlatans and liars have to offer us.

So, why write a history blog, or books? Why make a documentary dismantling much of the conspiracy nonsense surrounding JFK’s death or highlighting the horrors of Nazi Germany through the lens of their own propaganda? Why go through the trouble to separate fact from fiction and pursue the truth, which is often elusive, incomplete, and unpopular?

Because the past is our best guide to the future—it tells us how real human beings behaved under real-world conditions, rather than imagining the way you think they “ought” to have behaved—and I enjoy thoughtfully considering what lessons history has to teach us. Even if its most important lesson is that we do not learn very much from history.

What is history?

History, like literacy, is not something we are born to do or automatically value. Each new generation must be taught how to read and write, just as they must be taught how to make sense of the past; of how they came to live in the man-made world their ancestors created for them. But unlike literacy, which is relatively easy to teach, history and the analytical skills necessary to benefit from it are neither taught nor valued at the level I believe is necessary to safeguard our future.

There are many cynical ways to dismiss history—it’s a lie we agree upon, it’s written by the victors, it’s just “his story”—each of which gives people an easy out. If there is no truth, then why make any real effort to find it? “My story is just as good, or bad, as everyone else’s, right? So I’ll just believe mine.”

But history is not just another story; just another myth or legend under a different name. The word has its origins in the Greek histōr: “knowing, expert; witness,” historia: “a learning or knowing by inquiry; an account of one’s inquiries; knowledge, account, historical account, record, narrative,” and histories: “be witness or expert; give testimony, recount; find out, search, inquire.” History is more akin to science than to literature. It presupposes that there are facts and we can gain genuine knowledge of them, and through them.

History, as a concept, has been around for far less time than agriculture, and typically its practitioners have not been all that rigorous about accuracy or accommodating in their scope. Ethnic, economic, religious, and political groups have tried to subvert history, and made up completely false versions of it, in order to make themselves look like the good guys or best people, and distort others in negative ways. But judging history by this alone is like citing previous misconceptions of reality—like the idea that the world is flat or that heavenly bodies were held in place by invisible crystal spheres—and concluding that we can never understand anything about outer space.

History, as a discipline with codes of conduct and peer-reviewed processes, has vastly increased the reliability of what we know. In a sad bit of irony, this has lessened many people’s respect for history, because they don’t understand why it changed, or why it continues to change as the facts and perspectives we have to work with grow.

Differing criteria will always play a role in how we understand the past, but that does not mean that every position is relatively true or equally valid. For example, if we ask, “Was President Kennedy a great President?” we need to define our understanding of greatness and how we prioritize the challenges his administration faced. How do we weigh Civil Rights vs. the Cold War, or overall economic growth vs. wealth distribution? Does his personal life play a role? His inspirational rhetoric, or only his actions? Depending on your measuring stick, a variety of answers could be reasonably correct and genuinely valuable.

On the other hand, the phony analysis of JFK’s assassination published by the John Birch Society—a well-funded conspiracy theorist organization founded two years before Kennedy was elected president—was not a reasonable alternative perspective. Their two-part article, “Marxmenship In Dallas,” from the 1964 February and March issues of American Opinion magazine, was nonsense wrapped in lies, inside a pile of garbage. The only thing we can learn from such a “history” is how absurd human beings can be.

The Birchers not only accused Moscow of masterminding the crime, they insisted that President Kennedy was actually a Soviet Agent all along. The plan, as the Birchers imagined it, was to use JFK’s death to justify a military crackdown on “right-wing extremists,” which the article defined as “the Bolshevik’s code-word for informed and loyal Americans.” Only when Oswald failed to escape to Mexico did the plan fall apart, necessitating the creation of the Warren Commission to cover up “the truth.”

Similarly, when today’s conspiracy theorists insist that JFK tried to warn us about the “Deep State,” or some other boogeyman, and that is why they took him out, there is no room for reasonable debate around their delusions. It’s like asking, “Why was the Holocaust faked?” You can’t glean anything from history by denying history.

The story behind the name…

I began the History Think Blog to explore the past and how we understand, or misunderstand it. Some posts are purely fact-based research, simply setting the record straight, particularly when it comes to conspiracy nonsense. Some are more speculative and exploratory, trying to apply the past to the present and future. They do not reflect my final word on anything, let alone The final word, but I do hope they give others a starting point to thoughtfully consider history.

While searching for a name, I was inspired by a piece I read in the New York Times, “China Took Her Husband. She Was Left to Uncover His Secret Cause,” from July of 2023. It told the story of Bei Zhenying, whose husband, Ruan Xiaohuan, went around China’s Internet firewall and started an illegal blog, Program Think, focusing originally on computer programming issues. As time progressed, Ruan increasingly talked about things you don’t talk about in China, like the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and how Chinese Communist officials have altered the public’s understanding of history. For this treasonous behavior, by Chinese standards, Ruan was arrested and held without explanation for many months. Later, he was given an unfair, typical communist show trial and sentenced for his “crimes.”

Ruan’s story is a good reminder of the threat that free thinking and provable facts pose to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, or anyone invested in lies. I greatly admire those who stand up against such bullying tactics, and I am grateful to live in the United States of America, where I do not need to make such a choice. At least, not yet.

I also appreciate how the title of Ruan’s blog was so deceptively simple. It suggests that it is a forum for thoughts about computer programming, but also the ways we are all programmed to think. And it goes deeper still, implying the question: How do we deprogram ourselves?

The Chinese characters above translate to Historical Thoughts Blog, if Google Translate is to be believed. This is similar to the Chinese characters in the header of Ruan’s site, which translates more literally as “Blog of Programming Thoughts.”

History Think blog posts are divided into seven categories:

Everyone Calls It Conspiracy

In 1971, the year I was born, Gary Allen introduced many people to the make-believe world of “what is really going on” with his book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Conspiracy pusher Alex Jones credits Allen’s work as an early influence on his own brand of paranoid myth-making.

Allen was a Bircher, a member of the extremist organization mentioned above, The John Birch Society, and like other Birchers, he framed things in a very disingenuous way. Far from being afraid to “call it conspiracy,” there has never been a shortage of people who are ready to misidentify everything as a conspiracy and “do their own research” to “prove it.”

Posts in this section expose the false facts, flawed logic, and misdirection that always accompany conspiracy “theorizing.” My work is not just about debunking particular lies. I stand against the conspiracy theorist (CTer) mindset in all its forms. Setting out to find a conspiracy is not a roadmap to the truth. It’s a witch hunt.

The men who carried out witch hunts, from the formal inquisitions to more impromptu crimes like Salem, went looking for witches and—guess what?—they found them. Tens of thousands of people, the vast majority of them women, were tortured, drowned, burned alive, abused, and violated over the course of a couple hundred years.

Make no mistake about it, the witch hunters were conspiracy theorists, and typically some of the most well-educated men of their time. They weren’t just accusing some random woman of casting a spell or doing something on her own. They were accusing her, typically along with many others in the same area, of cavorting with the devil—often with elaborate stories about orgies that involved women, men, the devil, and a host of demons, all pledging themselves to breaking every taboo imaginable and destroying society.

It sounds fantastical and nonsensical in hindsight, but that is the nature of conspiracy theories. They rile people up in the moment, then future generations think, “How could they have been so stupid?” while finding their own stupid conspiracy stories to believe.

The conspiracy theorist mindset is a dangerous mindset; that is why it repeatedly leads to great horrors when CTers are given power. As the philosopher Karl Popper observed in his best-known work, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), both the extreme right—the fascists—and the extreme left—the communists—bought into their own versions of the nonexistent global conspiracy that they alone could stop. And both killed millions to “prove” they were correct.

This is the reality that I try to hammer home with my Everyone Calls It Conspiracy pieces, because it needs to be said. CTers are not good or benign figures. Do not allow them to pretend otherwise.

Print the Legend

Historical figures and events often become distorted through repeated retellings that morph into commonly accepted “facts” which “everyone knows.” These stories can easily overshadow the truth.

Print the Legend pieces delve into these myths and misconceptions, questioning our perceptions and uncovering largely overlooked facts. Things like the misnamed Eisenhower Matrix, that has nothing to do with Eisenhower, and other widely accepted inaccuracies, big and small.

The name of this section comes from the great John Ford Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Near the end, after learning the real story behind the story everyone thinks they know, a newspaper decides not to tell the truth because: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

It is unclear what Ford was telling us, because he was famous for not explaining his work. Was this an endorsement of the way we should act, a condemnation of the way we behave, or simply an acknowledgment of what we tend to do? While I enjoy setting the record straight to the degree I am able, I also recognize that understanding tends to flatten out over time into something easy to remember and comprehend. Sometimes what crosses into legend has a meaningful element of truth to it, but often it does not. Either way, these things are worth exploring.

Read All About It

The adage is true: History does not repeat, but it does rhyme (the claim that this is a Mark Twain quote is not true; that’s just a legend). Read All About It articles attempt to bridge the gap between historical behavior and current events, offering insights into how historical context does, and does not, illuminate contemporary issues.

Gutenberg’s Children

Books have long been a useful window into the past, offering insights and perspectives into how and why the world developed as it did. Pieces in the Gutenberg’s Children category celebrate the written word, exploring significant and noteworthy books, assessing their impact, looking at the lessons they have to offer, and analyzing the harm they have done or the dangers they still pose.

Visions of Light

Film and visual media offer unique perspectives on historical events, bringing the past to life—or gravely distorting it—in vivid detail. As someone who went to film school and spent many years teaching about both fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, I envisioned Visions of Light to be an important part of the History Think Blog. So far, that has not proved to be the case, as my attention has been pulled in other directions.

In the future, I still intend to examine the role that moving pictures have played in shaping, and misshaping, our understanding of history. I also hope to find the time for more fun pieces that show new generations why the movies were such a powerful force in the twentieth century and some of the films you really should see.

Human Error

Like many others, I have become fascinated by AI and the brave new world it might usher in. I have been using it to help me make the imaginary statues in my Thinkers Gallery, to research topics, and to proof my writing, among other things, for years now.

Many people will tell you that they know what that world will be like—for good and for ill—but they don’t. There are too many variables, many of which are completely unknowable at present. No matter what your expertise is today, even if you are an AI researcher, you lack the knowledge necessary to evaluate the future, where your knowledge may soon be obsolete.

Nonetheless, I have some thoughts on AI that I believe are worth sharing—how it is like and unlike previous technological changes, and some of the potential benefits and drawbacks it might hold.

The title of this section is from a line in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), spoken by the HAL 9000—the ship’s onboard AI—who has just been called out for making a mistake. His answer:

“It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has occurred before, and in every case, it was due to human error.”

This is not to suggest that AI is great and free from errors, or that all problems are due to human misperceptions. I like the name because it works on several levels.

HTB News

Updates and developments directly related to the History Think Blog.