To the editor:

It seems to me, that we haven’t learned many of the lessons of history. Our current administration is focusing on the future while forgetting the past. Our memory loss distorts how we view everything: our country, its culture, our faith, our relationships and with our God.

Writer Angus Wootten says, “We no longer value self-sacrifice, hard work, individual responsibility, marital faithfulness or accountability.” John Eccles, 1963 Nobel Prize winner, wrote, “Without memory we are hollow persons, not only empty of a past, but lacking a foundation upon which to build the future. We are what we remember.”

Do our youths study history anymore? Some say we have dumbed-down our schools, ignored our history and no longer teach our founding documents. Why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving? Students by and large cannot write or think critically or read or articulate. Is the enemy us?

Do we hate ourselves and our history and our military’s sacrifices for freedom so much that we voted for this “change”? With the mortgage industry collapsing, housing prices in free fall, major industries failing, banking collapsing, credit card crisis, Social Security and Medicare nearly bankrupt, and the auto industry being taken over by big government, we are getting change. We have de-industrialized our economy. We now celebrate transience and worship the present to the exclusion of all other dimensions.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.