Periodically, over the space of a few generations, societies have to revalidate the foundations bequeathed by tradition, and they do not do so until they go through the very same crises that led to the need for their establishment. The objective, to pacify understandings and avoid new crises, is achieved only until those who have kept it in their memory die, or not at all. History, in this respect, only demonstrates its failure to a few intellectuals.
Tag: history
This Thing of Attributing Heroism to Depraved Murderers…
This thing of attributing heroism to depraved murderers is something that really irritates in history books, and it is disgusting to see in them the naturalness with which the most astonishing perversities driven by the most despicable ambition are narrated and, worse, the innocuous effect of these on the historian’s opinions. Heroism is always detachment, never the other way around. The normalization of barbarity is the worst historical stain on the European character.
The Communist Experiment
Despite all the extensive documentation about the horror of the communist experiment on earth, a horror so absolute that it is almost impossible to carry out an extensive investigation into the subject, since to investigate it is to come across endless accounts of deprivation, misery, torture, moral corruption and annihilation as varied as the human imagination, it is unbelievable to note that the word communism not only fails to arouse the appropriate terror, but is innocuous to many and seductive to others. This fact is such a shattering exclamation that it must be evidence of a profound lesson. On a collective level, communism amounted to carnage that raised misery to an unprecedented level; on an individual level, it amounted to degradation. In this deplorable experiment, what we saw was the flowering of the most treacherous and savage things, the unbridled expansion of cruelty and oppression; the average individual was subjected to a life of misery and involuntary deprivation, booty, psychological torture at inconceivable levels, so that their very survival became conditional on submission. Incessant shootings, without reason or pity, but which, given the general scenario, seemed more like a release for those shot… And all this, although massively recorded, although alongside an endless obituary, seems pointless. There is only one lesson to be learned: man is absolutely incapable of learning.
Anyone Whose Dream Is the Establishment…
Anyone whose dream is the establishment of an ideological totalitarianism suffers first and foremost from historical ignorance. If a lack of haughtiness prevents him from looking a little beyond his immediate interest, a little judgment would recommend him not to challenge an unpredictable and uncontrollable reaction. But history will always make him pay, because it is infallible in pointing out totalitarianism as an aspiration restricted to scoundrels. The course of a lifetime is too short for the consequences that can befall it, and while historical ignorance may not sometimes compromise in the short term, a little patience shows that it always does.