Words of Wisdom, Victor Davis Hanson edition

VDH, an erudite historian himself, offers up this word of caution on all of the history being bantied about today:

History is evoked more and more these days, even as fewer of us read it.

That apathy explains why when public figures turn to false historical analogies for political purposes, they're often given a free pass to exaggerate or distort. Take, for example, filmmaker Michael Moore who once compared terrorists in Iraq to our own minutemen, or Yasser Arafat who implied that the taking of Jenin was as brutal as the battles for Leningrad and Stalingrad. Even Sen. Dick Durbin recently likened the conditions found in Guantanamo Bay to those in Nazi death camps.

So, the next time someone quotes philosopher George Santayana for the umpteenth time that 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,' just assume that what follows will probably be wrong. Having a Rolodex of cocktail party quotes to beef-up an argument is not the same as the hard work of learning about the past." --Victor Davis Hanson

Well said by a well spoken historian. You can, of couse, trust the history you read here. I was President of my Future Historians of America club. Yes, I may have been my only member, but I still won a hard fought election.