“The citizens of the United States do not stand apart from history. We are in it and of it. Many of our ancestors came here hoping to escape it, but history is a pack of bloodhounds. Desperate to put those persistent dogs off the scent, we embrace fantasies in preference to facts. When the baying grows too near, we succumb to superstitious rituals, chanting that peace is the natural order of things and behaving as if violence were a spook we might drive away with Ivy-League fetishes and bouts of self-flagellation.”
The opening paragraph of Endless Wars by Ralph Peters
Recent Comments