Saturday, February 25, 2006

Startlingly Ahistorical Quote for Today

As a future historian, one thing I am startled by is so many people's lack of historical sense. This quote relates to the gentlemanly disagreement between William F. Buckley and William Kristol about the war. Essentially, Buckley says that the US mission in Iraq has failed, Kristol says it's just going to take time, and this fellow says:

"Thank God for people like Kristol on the Right. What his crowd (derisively called “Neo-Cons”) has done has pushed conservatism past Buckley’s famous description of “Standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’”. Finally the right has a vision of the future, not simply a longing for the past (which is not a bad thing, but not all that is needed to advance thought). Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of what William F. Buckley says. I just don’t think he (and other conservatives like Robert Novak) have a plan for our current world, with America engaged with everyone else on the planet."

Because there are no disconcerting parallels through history of states using military power to engineer a universal "vision of the future", are there?

No comments: