My brand of Toryism is built on a rejection of two modern beliefs: 1) the perfectability of human nature & 2) the Whig version of history, which posits that civilisation progresses on a straight line via which, on average, things get better and people become wiser...
The latter belief implies that societies learn lessons.
Every day offers new proof that they don't. In today's example, we have Canadians, most right-wing but many claiming to be "progressive", begging to jump on America's Yellow Peril Cold War II bandwagon....
Every day offers new proof that they don't. In today's example, we have Canadians, most right-wing but many claiming to be "progressive", begging to jump on America's Yellow Peril Cold War II bandwagon....
I guess they didn't learn (or can't learn) the lessons of the first Cold War. They seem unaware of the instructive power of the paranoid state repression & routine violations of basic civil liberties committed at home & the genocidal proxy wars waged abroad....
That must be it. The other explanations are unthinkable: They can't possibly be ignorant of Cold War history (which is relatively recent), nor are they likely to be so depraved as to wish additional Cold War calamities on the world. It's just an inability to learn...
...no matter how blood-drenched the lesson is.
It's like that idiot in a horror movie who's determined to descend into the dark basement. You scream "Don't go down into the basement!" at the screen. As they slowly descend into the dark basement.
It's like that idiot in a horror movie who's determined to descend into the dark basement. You scream "Don't go down into the basement!" at the screen. As they slowly descend into the dark basement.
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