In responding to the President Bill Clinton's call for a national dialogue on race, Luis J. Rodriguez, the author of an article "Stop the Lies", suggests that we need to give the people in different colors a proper recognition in our history; and points out that the industrial economy is the foundation of racism. In a question, the American automaker, Henry Ford suggests that "History is more or less bunk" and the only history that we need to care about is " the history we make today."We can see they have different attitude towards the history, and we may think the author would disagree with Ford's statement; but by examining both quotes closely, we may ask :"Does the author diagree with Ford's statement at all?"; in other words, the author may consider there is a valid aspect in Ford's statement.
Let us take a look what and why the author may disagree with Ford.
Portrait of Henry Ford (ca. 1919)
English: Ford Motor Company Headquarters, Dearborn...
author and listenerFord states that:" ...History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We want to live in the present..." From his statement, we can see that Ford despises the effect of history in our human development; and doesn't acknowledge how the history in past influenced our society in the present. As we know, "Rome is not built in one day." Our human development depends on the flow of history. We absorb knowledge from our history, remold our society, make new inventions and make progress. For example, the interaction of bursts of technological development First, appeared the steam power and drove the industrial revolution ; then introduced the railways; third , with the electrical power; fourth with cheap oil and the car. Not only are the history of innovation of technologies closely connected each other, but also are the political policies. This aspect is acknowledged by the...