Mason Gaffney wrote:  
>So, I suppose what happened in Japan in the 1930's was wiping out the memory  
>of the Meiji finance system. Orwell explained how this happens everywhere.  
>The mind-bending power of the establishment is, well, mind-bending. Thank  
>goodness for historians of economic thought to help check this tendency.  
  
  
Alas, how many economists are really familiar   
with the history of their discipline? The present   
moment arrives for them as a given, even as an   
immutable given, and the past, when it is viewed   
at all, is viewed through the lens of the   
present. This is a failure, since all economic   
data is historical and all economic systems are   
cultural artifacts. In my classes, I insist on an   
historical foundation for all study; the best   
argument that things can be otherwise is the fact   
that they have been otherwise, and the best way   
to understand the present moment is to understand the past that formed it.  
  
John C. Medaille