Writing History

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There's nothing like reading a good book on history to make me wonder about the history my generation is writing. I just finished Blood and Thunder, a wonderful book about Kit Carson and the Indian wars of the 1800s. It's easy to second guess the decisions of presidents and generals and trappers and indian chiefs and other assorted characters. But they lived very real lives -- the kind that lead to great things, if sometimes only accidentally, and the kind that lead to great horrors, despite the best of intentions. It's insane to think we would have acted differently had we been in the place of those who came before us. We simply don't know. And when it comes down to it, we're better served figuring out how we should live our own lives than pretending we would have been more noble than our forefathers. Is abortion our slavery? Is global warming our manifest destiny? What will our grand-children's grand-children think when they read about us?