Bunkum

What’s the connection between Henry Ford and Margaret Thatcher? Or between Henry Ford and Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?

For something I’ve been writing I’ve had a look at Henry Ford’s supposed saying ‘History’s bunk’. Did he just come out with it? Why? Or is it a misquote, like Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood’? In fact it was more like Mrs Thatcher’s ‘There’s no such thing as society’* – a truncated version giving a different impression..

Here’s the quote: ‘History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today’ which I think is rather good, for an industrialist, and relevant in 1916. In fact Ford was described as an anarchist by the Chicago Tribune and sued for libel. He was cross-examined for eight days but emerged victorious.

The word bunk, properly ‘bunkum’, dates back to 1820 when Congress were discussing the Missouri Question. The debate had gone on for some time and the congressmen wanted to proceed to the vote but the representative from N Carolina, who hailed from Buncombe County, insisted on putting across his views, however much they had already been heard from others, because he wanted ‘to make a speech for Buncombe’.

N Carolina, including Buncombe if it is still there, goes to the vote soon for the Democratic nomination. This blog prefers Obama to Clinton, but doesn’t think he can beat McCain, whereas she might. Good luck to them all.

*And the Thatcher quote: "I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

Which isn’t quite the same.