By the way, there’s a great poem by Kipling that I consider the “anthem of conservatism”. Truly brilliant.
It’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”.
See what you think.
https://www.poetry.com/poem/33442/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings
One day, for some sooner than others, we realize that what we have learned and will learn has been learned before but that the experience of that knowledge has died with those gone before. Solomon says it beautifully in Ecclesiastes 1. We heard their words as they tried to tell us but we did not understand their meaning or significance. We had to learn for ourselves. We also realize that we can know a thing by having the knowledge handed to us but that we may not understand it for quite some time, if ever.
There is a reason the "Fourth Turning" has the 80 and 20 year periods of Secula and Turning. They correspond to a long life for a very good reason. They also correspond to a generation for another very good but similar reason. They represent a cycle of experience, learning and understanding.
For each significant war we have had through time there is a despot who wants more than his share. Each time one rises good men who want only to live their lives peacefully but fairly and with equal opportunity have to rise from their comfort zone and slay the despot then return again to the cycle of growth, comfort, rebellion and war.
I do not think we can ever break this cycle or mistakes and learning because we are all too young, too foolish, too cocksure, too whatever not to make mistakes made before and to learn as we assume our days in the sun. Those that get it soon are not understood by those who don't. The too few and the too many. I am nearing the count down of my life. There are new generations in control and they do not seek our experience any more than most of us did in our take-over. I see them winging it and making mistakes they don't need to make again. Most people don't have the time or inclination to study history and so we repeat the mistakes of the past; over and over.
When I left my engineers I asked them what they wanted me to leave them. They asked for all of my experience. I laughed and said the time to absorb it and the situational connections would take nearly as long to learn as they did to accumulate. As I left I said what I always say, "Call if you need me and I'll do all I can to help." In my time training them I hope I left them with curiosity to know and the skills to solve problems.
We have left Milei long behind in this discussion, or have we?