“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them.” - Santayana
“But if there are no prisms—no absolutes, no eternals, no truths, no ages past—then the present will appear only as nonsense.” And that is how the ruthless get ahead. Now they seek only to consolidate their power like parvenues in every age have.
After teaching in public schools and college for 45 years, this VDH essay needs to be sent to all 435 House Reps and 100 Senators. The USA is now an ignorant nation which allows such pacifist socialist views as expressed by the Kosites, the DNC, and the MSM to be inculcated without dispute. Perhaps the Second Coming is just around the Bend.
That is true, and I always, myself, try to distill some wisdom from pertinent history.
But, alas, I find Santayana's aphorism often encourages the morons (who are plentiful). Case in point, the recent immigration debate. How many times did you hear America's turn-of-the-century immigration experience invoked as precedent proving the wisdom of opening the border with a third-world country a century later under vastly different circumstances?
And, of course, the French famously built their Maginot Line to thwart Hitler, having "learned from history" how to protect themselves from German invasions.
History instructs, but, more often, it sends its students off half cocked, IMO.