Complicated answers rarely work well in public debates. In his classic Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that ‘a false but clear and precise idea always has more power in the world than one which is true but complex.’
If anything, the disparity he discerned nearly two centuries ago is greater in our own age of sound bites and tweets. Our society asks for easy lessons and uncomplicated truths, and if our primary reason for studying the past is to win arguments in the public square, we will be sorely tempted to provide them—to our detriment.
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