I finally finished the 36 lectures in this Teaching Company course, and while I learned a lot of factual detail I didn't know before, the course was a little vague and judgmental for me. At the end of the first several courses, many of which dealt with Greek or other mythic events, which is hardly "history" from which you can draw lessons, I realized that I still didn't know what the "lessons" we were supposed to learn from history were.
I agreed with the concept that not everyone is interested in freedom, and that a primary motivation for leaders historically is power, but it was really difficult to determine without the benefit of hindsight what the "wisdom of history" would be? The professor really likes Winston Churchill, but as with most leaders he was only right part of the time, and it's impossible to gauge what alternative leaders might have done better or worse. It's easier to make a positive judgment on FDR's war leadership, but there are negatives there as well, and it's similarly impossible to gauge whether he could have done better butting up against the facts in 1945 vis a vis Stalin at Yalta. And what effect on all of this would the wisdom of history have?
In the end, I agree absolutely that knowing history is critical for leaders and the voters that put them there because it gives you a context for understanding what is happening, but it is very different to say that individual decisions would be aided by knowing the "widowm" of history, because every decision is different, and most importantly, the wisdom of history offering in every single case contradictory lessons. A simple example that comes up in every case is knowing when to continue fighting for something and when to give it up and move to something else. One lesson from history is not to give up on something that's important, but another is to know when to stop throwing good money and lives down the drain. It's easy to commend Lincoln for continuing the Civil War when times were darkest, but we would probably be making the opposite argument today if he had decided that enough was enough and agreed to let the Confederacy go. Certainly no one is arguing that George III should be faulted for deciding that enough was enough and that the American colonies should be given their freedom because keeping them was too expensive and difficult. Likewise it's easy to fault Hitler and Napolean for invading Russi abecause it didn't work out, but Hitler in particular came very, very close to succeeding in knocking Russia out of the war, and had he done so, the decision to invade would be seen as brilliant. Churchill's refusal to reach a separate peace with Germany in 1940 looks great now given how things turned out, but had Britain been invaded and subjugated, our judgment would probably be different.
Anyway, it was an interesting course, but I'm not sure how helpful the principle is. I don't feel like I am in any better shape to make decisions knowing this. I certainly don't feel that our nation's decisions would be any better informed if our leaders listened to this course. I think they'd still find themselves in the same spot, trying to decide what was a principle worth defending at all costs and what wasn't.
The one thing I did think was useful was the observation that not all peoples at all times are interested in freedom, and that there are different freedoms, and people may be interested more in national freedom, as a national or ethnic entity, than they are personal or political freedom. Because we have all three in America, we take them for granted and don't differentiate, but in many, many parts of the world, people are utterly disinterested in personal or even political freedom, and completely dedicated to the concept of national freedom, i.e. a state for their national or ethnic group. So I did learn that.