[JViello]

Originally Posted by GrotonMan

The missing quotes around 'your' was my bad. By "your" history I meant things that pertain specifically to your life, whether personal experiences, or local, or even world, events that impacted your life. Many people I have interacted with have gotten offended and begun rattling off about how young people don't know anything about history or life because I didnt know all about the such and such that happened in 1974 that hardly holds any direct relevance to my life today. Is anybody debating that it actually happened? Unless it was a UFO, probably not. I'm not talking about historical revisionism, that is lying, I'm talking about hardly relevant events.

Thanks for clarifying, I understand what you are saying now. I would disagree with your statement in bold above very much so.

For instance, if you didn't know about the Vimar Republic and how their monetary and econmic system collapsed - a nation could very well start doing the same thing again to the ignorance of it's people.

Oh, wait...we ARE doing that again and printing billions and billion of fiat paper money without any assets to back it up...again, to the ignorance of the people.

Point in case.

Do you think if Ben Franklins words about poverty were taught in school, people would be so quick to approve social engineering projects to help the poor? Maybe not.

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Ben Franklin

Also, all you have to do is look at our recent scholastic "achievments" compared to the rest of the world and it's clear, we have a generation of lazy dummys coming up. There are exceptions, but it's not the rule.

Academic Failure - International Test Scores - Poor TIMSS Results

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by JViello

For instance, if you didn't know about the Vimar Republic and how their monetary and econmic system collapsed - a nation could very well start doing the same thing again to the ignorance of it's people.

Oh, wait...we ARE doing that again and printing billions and billion of fiat paper money without any assets to back it up...again, to the ignorance of the people.

Though a quick Google search turned up a couple of things on it (but just a couple and very obscure references) because I was curious, I think it was actually called the Weimar Republic (which I knew about) for those trying to look it up. But the story is true, the "reparations cost" after the war and what it did to Germany's budget deficit caused a massive printing of money and literally lead to something like 1,000% inflation (yes, 1 thousand percent, I may even have too few zeros there!). Many historians think this situation is what led to the Nazis being able to take over without much of a fight.

[GrotonMan]

Yeah guys, I wasn't talking about legitimately important and relevant events that do hold relevance, I'm talking about incidents like a political rally that happened in town 30 years ago, or how the price of coffee jumped twenty cents in a month 20 years ago, or the names and locations of the businesses and people that were on this one street back in the 70s. Those things rarely have any direct relevance to what is happening today. I don't dispute that many historical events are very relevant, and very important. The Wiemar Republic debacle is pretty well known, and yet even without knowing the story it wouldn't take a spare thought to realize that flooding a market with any currency devalues that currency. Again, I'm not talking about legitimately relevant issues, I'm talking about things that, while they might provide good anecdotes, really aren't useful.

[JViello]

Originally Posted by 7 Wishes

Though a quick Google search turned up a couple of things on it (but just a couple and very obscure references) because I was curious, I think it was actually called the Weimar Republic (which I knew about) for those trying to look it up.

It's pronounced "Vi Mar"...maybe it's the Jew in me.