Why is anonymity important in bitcoins?
Anonymity is part of the Bitcoin culture. It was created to circumvent the powers at be, and anonymity plays into that idea quite well. 

However the nature of the block chain is that every transaction is totally traceable. You can look at the block chain and determine where every bitcoin has ever been. This seems to contradice most peoples conception of bitcoin as being an anonymous currency. 

In some ways it is. If you mine your own bitcoins and generate your own wallet then, even if I can see every transaction, that particular bitcoin or wallet made, I can not know who is responsible for making it. 

But in the new age of bitcoin, where the average user does not know anything about encryption, and contracts third party services such as mt. gox to manage their bitcoins for them, anonymity is lost.