Lessons from 1925: look to the past to see what this New Year foretells

Political and other prognosticators are busy as usual predicting the future.Never mind calculating how wrong they have been in the past, our desire to know what’s coming sometimes overcomes sound thinking, ignorance of history and an understanding of human nature.Recall the number of times climate alarmists predicted we would either freeze or burn to death by certain dates, and religious mouthpieces forecasting the end of the world on dates that failed to materialize.Cars and electricity were declared a “fad” when they first appeared.The list of outlandish predictions is long.More can be learned from the past than by trying to predict the future.As Doris Day sang in the film “The Man Who Knew Too Much”: “Whatever will be will be.

The future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera.”In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge was elected to a full term after serving out the term of Warren Harding, who had died in office.Coolidge’s good character should serve as an example to modern politicians at a time when sex scandals and other violations seem to have evaporated what once were called moral norms.Coolidge believed in small government, low taxes, balanced budgets (he left office with a smaller federal government than when he arrived and was wrongly blamed for the Great Depression) and personal responsibility.Sound economic and moral principles were taught in schools in 1925, but not so much today and many feign surprise at the inevitable results.Who decided right and wrong are individually determined?Some future events were predictable in 1925, if only people had paid attention.The “Roaring ‘20s” focused on profit and pleasure, overlooking the rise to power of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the coming German dictator Adolf Hitler, whose book “Mein Kampf,” published that year, should have warned the world about his goals.

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