At a recent investment conference, a young man in the audience told me he lacked the confidence to invest in anything right now.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because our nation has never faced a more perilous future,” he said.

I disagree.

In the 1930s, for example, world trade contracted by two-thirds. Businesses failed in record numbers. One in four workers became unemployed. People lost their homes, their savings - often their dignity - and depended on charity to survive.

Stock prices plunged by 89% from peak to trough. Skilled workers and former business executives walked the streets selling apples, or shining shoes to earn money for bread.

Homeless people built shacks out of old crates and formed shantytowns called “Hoovervilles” out of bitterness toward President Herbert Hoover who refused government aid.

Farmers were hit particularly hard. Crop prices collapsed. Yet consumers still couldn’t afford them.

Nature piled on, too. Beginning in 1930, a severe drought spread across the Great Plains. Topsoil turned to dust that was carried away by strong winds, piling up in drifts against houses and barns.

The “Dust Bowl” covered large parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. The drought destroyed the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of small farmers.

Many set out in search of a better life in California… and lost everything along the way.

These were bleak times. But they were only a prelude to what lay just ahead.

By early 1942, Hitler’s armies were nearly to Moscow. German submarines were sinking our oil tankers off the coasts of New Jersey and Florida, within sight of the beaches. And there was not a thing we could do about it.

We had almost no Army and scarcely any Air Force. Half our Navy had been destroyed at Pearl Harbor. Army recruits were drilling with wooden rifles. Britain was badly bloodied. And there was no guarantee the Nazi war machine could be stopped.

Yet Americans rallied. And so did our allies. As Winston Churchill declared, “We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”

I’m not shrugging off the many political and economic struggles we face today. But a sense of history puts things in perspective.

The affluence and easy prosperity of the past couple decades was never the historical norm.

Yet Americans have always risen to meet the challenges we faced. History reminds us of the great sacrifices and amazing triumphs of those who came before us.

During the American Revolution, for example, General Washington’s ragtag volunteer army fought right through the winter, without warm clothes, with shoddy or no shoes, with little food and none of the comforts of home. Yet they persevered. And defeated the most powerful army on Earth.

“Posterity who are to reap the blessings,” wrote Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams, “will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.”

Americans should know this - and appreciate it. Historical illiteracy is not just ignorance. It’s a form of ingratitude.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, David McCullough, recently gave a lecture at an Ivy League college. He asked the audience, “Who knows who George Marshall was?”

Not a single hand in the audience went up. Not one.

We cheapen the lives of those who came before us when we can’t be bothered to learn about their sacrifices, when we take our liberties for granted, or imagine that Americans have never faced more trying circumstances than today.

True, many are now enduring the toughest economic times of their lives. Some - including my own family - also have loved ones away serving in the armed forces.

But, as a nation, we have faced far tougher times. As Harry Truman famously declared, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

The future is always fraught with uncertainty. But history gives us a sense of proportion. It tells us who we are and where we’ve been.

History enlarges our view. And while we have sometimes fallen short of our ideals, it reminds us how those ideals have guided us in the past… and should still lead us today.

Without history, we lose our story - and our bearings. We forget who we are and what it has taken to come this far.

A sense of history is a strong antidote to self-pity or self-importance. It inspires courage and humility.

History reinforces what we believe in, what we’re willing to stand up for.

It’s not that the Founding Fathers or heroes of other generations were godlike. They weren’t.

They were fallible human beings, just like us. Sometimes they made terrible mistakes and used shockingly poor judgment, just as we do.

But if we take the time to read and to listen, the wisest and bravest among them will reach through the past - and across the centuries - with voices that warn us, guide us and lift our spirits.

Their chief lesson - especially in times like these - is that courage and patience and determination matter. And that character matters most of all.

These qualities don’t guarantee success. But they do guarantee you deserve it.

Carpe Diem,

Alex