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Lessons Not Learned
written by: SAH
The following three quotes are from articles featured in The Atlantic (July/August 2006), taken from a field of articles devoted to the magazines 150-year history. The topic in this instance was American imperialism and nationalism. As with previous entries, I find these glimpses of the past to be as enlightening, if not more so, than the modern content of the magazine -- as I imagine people of 2106 may look back at the first decade of this century with a mix of nostalgia and irritation at the ceaseless repetition of history and the inevitability of that repetition.
Here lie great lessons to be learn for statesman and citizen alike. But we can be sure of only one thing, neither will learn those lessons and apply them to the present or future -- not, at least, until it becomes the past.
And as repetition and its annoying predictability have been weighing heavily on my mind recently, I figured these were appropriate to share.
And so...
"[No great power] can afford not to attend strictly to its own business and not make the welfare of its own people its primary object -- none can afford to regard itself as a sort of missionary nation charged with the rectification of errors and the redress of wrongs the world over. Were the United States to enter upon its new international role with the serious purpose of carrying out any such theory, it would not merely be laughed at but voted a nuisance by all other nations -- and treated accordingly." - Richard Olney (The Atlantic, March 1900).
"Let us put our leading characters at the front; let us pray that vision may come with power; let us ponder our duties like men of conscience and temper our ambitions like men who seek to serve, not to subdue, the world; let us lift our thoughts to the level of the great tasks that await us, and bring a great age in with the coming of our day of strength." - Woodrow Wilson (The Atlantic, December 1902)
"We make simple moral judgments, remain unconscious of the self-interest which colors them, support them with an enthusiasm which derives from our waning but still influential evangelical piety, and are surprised that our contemporaries will not accept us as saviors of the world." - Reinhold Niebuhr (The Atlantic, May 1930)
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