Who Will Write Our History?

My children and I traveled to Shiloh National Military Park this weekend for a family getaway and history lesson. It was a wonderful and fun trip for the kids and for me, as I remembered similar trips to Shiloh when I was their age. In a time when so many of the defining elements which shape our culture are not being passed to the next generation, it was a joy for me to be able to build memories with them.

As we wandered the beautiful and meticulously kept grounds of the cemetery, John Henry and Lydia were full of questions. Among them were questions about who was buried there, and which side were the "good guys" fighting on? It is hard to explain to seven year olds the concept of a civil war, with brother fighting against brother. Nor did they ever grasp that everyone buried in the cemetery in individual graves fought for the Union, while the Confederate soldiers were buried by the thousands in huge burial trenches. Indeed, according to family lore, my own great great grandfather is buried in one of those trenches, having himself left behind a seven year old daughter who would grow up to become my great grandmother.

The epiphany hit me while we were wandering in the cemetery. History is written by the victors, so it has always been, and so will it always be. We who live generations later can have little real understanding of the milieu which led these ancestors of ours to make the choices they made. We can study and read and educate ourselves, but the truth remains that in a major conflict such as The War Between the States, where basic philosophies are at odds, the victor conquers more than people or land. He vanquishes the losers' ability to frame the debate. I hasten to add that I do not speak of racial matters here, for there can be no reasoned debate on race in today's America.

I speak, instead, of victory in a society's battle of ideas: The South's belief, for example, that their government was the true inheritor of the principles of the Founding Fathers. That the individual states did have a sovereignty that superseded that of the Union. That many who fought for the South fought not for slavery but to defend their homes from what they viewed as armed invaders. Yet none of these truths, as Southerners saw them, has survived to the national identity of today, because the South lost the war. The United States after the Civil War was a very different country from the looser organization of states that existed before the war, and the Southern cultural perspective is now relegated to a quaint footnote, or worse.

My point is not to comment on the consequence of the Civil War on today's America, but rather is to recognize that our society's views are a product of those battles of ideas that have preceded us. Further, we as a people are engaged today in a multitude of battles whose outcome will determine what kind of world our children and our children's children will live in. The victor will tell the story. If you are apathetic about these battles, you shouldn't be. The stakes are high.

We face, among numerous other challenges, an implacable Islamic terrorist foe who believes that women are second class citizens, who denies freedom of speech and religion, and who does not share the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the worth of the individual. If we as a society do not steel ourselves to recognize and fight this enemy, it is hardly an exaggeration to believe that our progeny might grow up under sharia law, with no understanding or appreciation for the freedoms we now take for granted. It does not matter whether we acknowledge the threat we face---the threat is before us and threatens our very existence. We ignore it at our children's peril.

Scripture tells us in the Book of Judges that the Hebrew people did such a poor job of teaching their children that, " ... a generation grew up which knew neither the Lord nor the things He had done for Israel." (Judges 2:10) It is incredible that after all God had done for the Hebrews--delivering them from Pharoah and slavery, parting the Red Sea, delivering The Ten Commandments, parting the Jordan River, and delivering Jericho--that God's people did not teach their children about Him. Let us not make the mistake that those Hebrews made. Let us recognize and engage our foes, and teach our children to appreciate and defend the blessings of Western civilization, so that they can carry those blessings forward for themselves and our children's children.