Raking over the past, whether it's the 1640s or the 1970s, isn't really too helpful.

True enough, to understand what happens today we need to have some understanding of what happened before, and of the stories about what hapened before - which aren't always exactly the same thing.

But too often, rather than being about exploring the roots of what is happening today, the past is used as a way of allowing us to turn away from actually thinking about what's happening today.