Londoner wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2017 4:21 pm
What do we learn?
To recognize a lie in the narrative that says Democrats are the part of minorities, and Republicans are a racist party.
By looking at the history, I could learn that the USA as a whole was founded by slave owners who saw nothing wrong with the institution of slavery. Does that knowledge help me understand current US policies?
Hugely. For one thing, it will tell you why the US has a persistent North-South difference, and that everywhere there are unresolved racial tensions to be faced. It also helps you understand why playing the "R" card around immigration policies is such a hot and divisive way to go, or why most inner cities are persistently desperate, poor and crime-ridden.
But it will also tell you, "Beware of smiling Democrats bearing gifts."
In the UK, the governing party has its roots in Episcopalian-ism and links to the deposed (1688) Stuart dynasty. But I can assure you these are really not issues in the current election and would be absolutely no help in understanding current party policies.
England is an old country. The wounds in the US are much, much fresher. They count for a lot more about the present. You have to remember that they were still imposing Segregation in the South in the 1960s. That's a great deal closer than the 1600s.
But even so, I think your view is unrealistic, even in respect to the Sceptered Isle. In many ways, England still lives in the detritus of High Anglicanism: look at the monarchy or the private schools. And Victorianism, it's so basic to the English way of thinking they can't even imagine it remains at all. But an outsider can see it in an instant -- if he knows what he's looking at.
Traditionalism, history, the English story, the National Trust...these things are so ubiquitous that many people in the UK don't even notice them anymore...it's just "the way things are done."
History always counts in the telling of how things are today. When things are the same, they're the same for historical reasons; and when they differ, they differ in rejection of a particular set of circumstances, movements and assumptions -- of a specific history.
That's how causality in sociological analysis works. We can ignore it if we wish: but it will be at the cost of failing to understand how we got to where we are now, and will tend to reify the present as inevitable, in our imagination.