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SS: Americans are rather ignorant about history. Moral reasoning by historical analogy is bad. Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions. These facts suggest that the utility of history courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.
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Notes -
It's a balance: "Great Men" don't do it on their own (without an army behind him, Bonaparte is just another young man from a Corsican family with more status than cash trying to get on in the world via a military career), but at times certainly a "Great Man" comes forward to inspire or guide or direct or simply seize the chance to get their hands on the tiller of the state. Would the Mongol Empire still have arisen without Genghis Khan? It's hard to say.
The vast, impersonal forces of time and circumstance do shape populations and events. But at the same time, there are influences from who is on the throne at the time, is the decision for war or peace, is the ruler weak or strong? Rome would always have fallen, but would the West have survived longer if the inherent instability of the Tetrarchy had been steadied? Could the East have been saved?
Napoleon singlehandedly did have a huge effect on European history. The Black Death was something outside of human control that swept over the continent.
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