“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
So said George Santanya. Yet the past is sometimes a chain we wear which prevents us from progressing. That word, those, means mankind in this context. Others in the world are tied with their own chains of memory. Santanya’s opinion is often cited as a bromide rather than viewed in its entire application. People like the sound of it. But like other quotations used as substantiation for an opinion, they are nothing more than opinion themselves.
Another opinion, written by Will and Ariel Durant in their book, The Lessons of History, is just as valid, and often more appropriate:
“Furthermore, an element of chance, perhaps of freedom, seems to enter into the conduct of metals and men. We are no longer confident that atoms, much less organisms, will respond in the future as we think they have responded in the past. The electrons, like Cowper’s God, move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform, and some quirk of character or circumstance may upset national equations, as when Alexander drank himself to death and let his empire fall apart (323 BC), or as when Frederick the Great was saved from disaster by the accession of a Czar infatuated with Prussian ways (1762).”
The Durants penned an excellent series on the history of civilization. I’ve owned several volumes of the 11-volume set, and read several others. I have not made it through all. Their writing style suffers, I think, from the limitations of any text co-authored. The long sentences, foreign phrases (I’m not conversant in French or Latin), and constant references to things I’m not familiar with make for difficult reading at times.
They did compile a quite comprehensive history, though, and is worth the effort. And I believe the opinion they share in the quote above is imminently valid in the world today. Whereas some have clung to Santanya’s view, expecting future events to be a continuum with the past, I believe President Bush has followed the logic of the Durants’ analysis.
The United States has generally dealt simply with aggressors, following the European model of buying off opponents when possible, and tossing a few bombs or missiles their way when not. Bush took a different tack. When the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden, he destroyed the Taliban. In his State of the Union Speech last year, he said:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late