Thoughts from American historian Frederic L. Paxson 99 years ago

United States historian Frederic L. Paxson (1877-1948) researched and wrote some weighty volumes of history during his lifetime, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning History of the American Frontier, The Civil War and American Democracy and the World War.

In 1926, he penned a very short volume for the American Library Association's "Reading with a Purpose" series.

I wanted to briefly share some passages from Paxon's writing of 99 years ago during this volatile summer of 2025. I believe there is some insight for us today. (The underlining is mine.)

"It is not easy to be a good democrat. 

"It is easy to enjoy the privileges of democracy, for these are handed to the citizen as things to which he is entitled. But when it comes to duties that he owes because of the privileges, he is apt to find that the more seriously he takes them the heavier they become.

"We are bound as citizens to be honest. We need to be as intelligent as we can. And we we must have information. The complicated society that we live in will not run itself, and at every corner stands someone, able and aggressive, who knows what he wants and is quite willing to run things for his own advantage. It is not enough for democracy to take as its goal the abolition of special privileges; it must also undertake to provide a good government, adapted to the needs of the people, changing as the problems of life change, and always making its decisions in light of real knowledge of the essential facts.

"Whenever the citizen goes to the polls on election day he casts his vote on some question of fact in which both sides cannot be equally right. ... The citizen neglects his duty if he fails to take every opportunity to inform himself upon the facts of the world he lives in and helps to rule.

"History thus becomes one of the foundations of good citizenship. ... It is the historian's business to serve citizenship at this point, and to provide the orderly knowledge of important facts and conditions that is needed for the formation of sound judgment. He serves to light up the dark ages. But the darkest of all the ages of history is never in the remote past. It lies in the thirty years that ended last night, and that run back to the infancy of the present generation of middle-aged people.

"These are the hardest years in all history to study."

[skip to the end]

"Life and government are two matters in which change is the order of every day; and every moment is to be judged whether it is a fair or an unfair balance between the ideal and the possible. What one can aim at, and what one should, is to avoid the clumsy errors that have defaced the past, to see the present as a reality, fully and without passion, and to perform the duty of the citizen with understanding and sincerity."