Unsettled History: The Useful Abuse of the "Holocaust"
Unsettled History: The Useful Abuse of the "Holocaust" ALAN SABROSKY Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana) Santayana’s maxim is probably one of the most widely quoted criticisms by scholars and practitioners alike of public policy – especially foreign policy – when it goes awry. This is especially true when the result is disaster at home or defeat abroad, the latter all too often producing the former. Sometimes leaders and their countries survive, other times one or both are ruined. Few out there even today are utterly devoid of a sense of history or driven lemming-like to court disaster, although I concede ever more these days come depressingly close. All forms of government have their weak points, and autocracies in the past have a decidedly mixed record of accomplishments. But it seems clear at least in the case of the United States, that the wider the franchise, the less competent the leaders, no matter what their ideology or pa...