By Dylan R.N. Crabb

One could say that I live and breath politics but I’d call that an exaggeration, I just like to be informed.  Some people have told me I think too much, I say they don’t think enough.  I would only consider myself a relative intellectual, meaning that most people are so ignorant that I seem like an intellectual by comparison; especially in the United States where most people still believe in mythical tales of creation and spiritual delusions of grandeur

If I have something to say, I will say it for the sole sake of telling the truth; there is very little I will keep from someone.  However; I have always believed in my ability to write over my ability to speak and have developed somewhat of a passion for written words (almost to a fault).  I often spend hours in a day staring at a blank screen replaying thesis statements over and over in my head because I can’t decide on how to begin a particular essay.  Despite this apparent writer’s block, I think it’s important for writers to set aside time every day to write something regardless of what comes out onto the page (if anything at all).  Inspiration isn’t a constant phenomenon and, if you are constantly waiting for inspiration, you’ll most likely never publish anything; it’s just a hobby at that point.  If you want to be a writer, you have force yourself to write when it’s hard.

I believe that writing is one the most important skills that a person can possess because it is the basis of written history, which allows a society to record events so people can reflect on the past.  It’s so important to know and understand human history, I would argue that it should be given the highest importance in a public school system.  The obvious benefit of a comprehensive understanding of history is being able to analyze the politics of a specific time period and placing today’s issues in a sensible historical context.  I think history as an academic discipline has the added benefits of pluralistic teaching, meaning that a person can learn about a multitude of human-based subjects through history – a history of governments, different forms of government, political theories, philosophy, human relations, a history of conflict in human societies, the politics of war, political trends in human history, biological connections to particular human relations or political theories, a history of military forces and military maneuvers, human nature and human creation, economics, motivations for major economic shifts in human societies – I could ramble on this for hours.  I’m fascinated with the social sciences, which is ironic considering how anti-social I am in real life.  Although, maybe it isn’t ironic – maybe I enjoy social science because I have sub-par social skills.  All I know is, if humanity is to survive, people need to be able to write down their own history so they can reflect on it and, ultimately, learn from it.

Politicians come and go, but journalism is forever.