Liberty is put at risk when Americans don’t understand why our forebears sought it and won’t remember what has been risked to keep it.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

2011 is the sesquicentennial of the start of the bloodiest and most divisive period that our country has ever faced. It is also the sesquicentennial of one of most egregious and illegitimate acts of our nation's government. Liberty is put at risk when Americans don’t understand why our forebears sought it and won’t remember what has been risked to keep it.

On a local radio program in Los Angeles, the host, who counted himself an "amateur historian", was interviewing a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Not long into the interview the host challenged the SCV spokesman that the Confederacy surely meant to destroy the United States by seceding from the union because they were breaking up the nation in violation of the Constitution.

The SCV spokesman rose to the challenge and rightly pointed out that the Confederacy didn’t seek to destroy the United States because it didn’t seek to overthrow and replace the government of the United States or any of the individual states in the Union. Rather, it was an exercise of their constitutionally protected State sovereignty when 11 States voluntarily disaffiliated themselves from the pact that was the United States of America to form another unification of States with common interests called the Confederate States of America.

The leaders of the 7 original seceding states (the other 4 seceded after the CSA was invaded by the USA) met in 1861 to draft the Constitution of the Confederate States of America which closely mirrored the Constitution of the U.S.A. They copied the U.S. Constitution because it was precisely the kind of agreement between the states that they wanted. They didn’t choose secession lightly. Many Revolutionary War battles had been fought in the south or by militia units from the south. They were not rebelling against the Constitution of the United States. They were rebelling against what they saw as the subverting of it by the federal government.

That exercise in State sovereignty led to the invasion of the Confederate States by the United States, four years of bloody war and the forced repatriation of the “rebel” States.

Were it not for the belligerence of the northern states of the United States, who would have to pay higher prices for goods and materials from the now foreign states of the Confederacy and face competition from them for overseas markets, it is quite possible that they would have become as good neighbors as the USA and Canada are today. It’s certain that, without some other initiation of armed conflict between the CSA and the USA, 1,030,000 people (3% of the total American population) needn’t have died. It is certain that 10 of the 11 secessionist states would not have had their legitimate governments ousted and replaced by an occupying army and a military government with the blessing of the states of the United States. It is also certain that, given the momentum of the anti-slavery movement worldwide and the opinions concerning slavery of southerners like Robert E. Lee, slavery would have died as an institution in the U.S. by the beginning of the 20th century.

But all of this is unknown in American education unless students do independent research and find it out for themselves or are fortunate enough to find one of the few teachers who truly teach American history in all of its vulgarity and all of its grandeur.

In 2006 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute published the first of a multi-part study on American civil literacy. The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions concluded that greater civic learning goes hand-in-hand with more active citizenship. Students who demonstrated greater learning of America's history and institutions were more engaged in citizenship activities such as voting, volunteer community service, and political campaigns.

In 2007 the ISI published Failing Our Students, Failing America: Holding Colleges Accountable for Teaching America’s History and Institutions which found that, among other things, inadequate college curriculum contributes to failure. The number of history, political science, and economics courses a student takes help to determine, together with the quality of these courses, whether he acquires knowledge about America during college. Students generally gain one point of civic knowledge for each civics course taken. The average senior, however, has taken only four such courses.

In 2008 the ISI published part three of the study, Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions which stated, among several key findings, that television, including TV news, dumbs America down. In contrast, the civic knowledge gained from the inexpensive combination of engaging in frequent conversations about public affairs, reading about current events and history, and participating in more involved civic activities is greater than the gain from an expensive bachelor’s degree alone.

The ISI's most recent contribution to the series is The Shaping of the American Mind: The Diverging Influences of the College Degree & Civic Learning on American Beliefs which found that civic knowledge increases a person’s regard for America’s ideals and free institutions. Gaining civic knowledge—as opposed to merely graduating from college—increases a person’s belief in American ideals and free institutions. If two people otherwise share the same basic characteristics, the one with greater civic knowledge will be more likely to support:

• America’s ideals: He or she will be less likely to agree that America corrupts otherwise good people.
• America’s Founding documents: He or she will be less likely to agree that the Founding documents are obsolete.
• American free enterprise: He or she will be more likely to agree that prosperity depends on entrepreneurs and free markets, and less likely to agree that global capitalism produces few winners and many losers.
• The Ten Commandments: He or she will be less likely to agree that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant today.

History is made up of the actions of people within the context of what was occurring at the time. To think there's only one road leading up to a given event is simplistic. To know that many roads from many varied sources lead people to the momentous choices gives history its complexity and flavor. A good knowledge of history tells us where we’ve been, why people did what they did. And a good knowledge of history can help to guide us in where we’re going. Without context, history conveys imprecise knowledge of those actions’ causes and effects which reinforces prejudices, impairs clear decision making and weakens liberty.

Learn our history. Save our liberty.