Dakota Beacon

Like many of you, the days between Christmas and New Years are for me days spent in rehearsal and reflection. Rehearsal as I think about what’s to come in 2024 and reflection as I think of what has passed in 2023.

Both are part of an exercise I’ve developed from the thoughts and musings of others much more intellectual than I.

One is a quote from Adlai Stevenson: “We can chart our course for the future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.”

Another is one originally stated by Plato: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Both come down to this thought in my mind: “History is important for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is learning lessons from past mistakes so as to become just a little wiser than I was the last time I faced a similar situation. Some parts of history call for attention so they are not repeated!” 

As I sit and reflect over the year, resolutions begin to take shape in my mind. Although I need to lose some significant poundage, somehow that’s not at the top of the list!

Instead, my thoughts go where my mind has been occupied lately - to the vast number of books on the shelves of the library my wife and I have built or accumulated in over 44 years of marriage. 

Since I am something of a history buff (quite limited to the ancient Greco-Roman era), I go to the 11-volume set of author Will Durant: "The Story of Civilization." Why this particular set of history books? Partially because they’re there on the bookshelf (We’ve probably owned them for over 20 years) and partially because of the way he describes his method of doing history.

He says it like this in the preface to the series: “I have long felt that our usual method of doing history in separate longitudinal sections – economic history, political history, religious history, the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of science, of music of art—does an injustice to the unity of the human life.”

He gives some analyses that are a bit too heady for me, but the gist of it amounts to this: Life happens to us as we go about our daily business and “we are affected by all these things at once and it is by these the total complex of a nation’s culture, institutions and ways it is shaped.”

The bottom line is this: My ultimate goal is to be more focused in my reading. Along with reading through the Bible, I have to decide how many pages of Will Durant I can manage. It will take me four years to read 13,549 pages if I read about 10 pages per day! I would really like to bring the context to the subject matter as I attempt to stay relevant and somewhat interesting.

Martin Luther has been quoted as saying, “Historians are the most useful people." I’m hoping he is right!

Emineth is a North Dakota native businessman and political activist. He is a former executive director and chairman of the North Dakota Republican Party. Emineth has served on the Republican National Committee and chaired numerous presidential campaigns in North Dakota. He is the host of “The Legislature Today” and “Open Range” daily TV shows on BEK. He is a serial entrepreneur and has 40-plus years of business experience with multi-national companies. He has traveled the world extensively and has served as CEO and president of mid-tier companies.