Learn from the past

Sat., July 15, 2017

As a historian, I regularly encounter interpretations of the past that are perhaps prescient. This from Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History, 1936):

“It seems possible to trace nearly all the woes of ancient near Eastern nations (and Rome) to wars of aggression. Each made militarism and conquest its gods and wrought such destruction upon itself that when it made its last heroic stand against its enemies, it was a mere ‘corpse in armor.’ Not death by foreign conquest but national suicide was the fate that befell it. This way of war brought racism, a love of ease and luxury, crime, and the crushing burdens of taxation. Expansion of empire brought a fictitious prosperity, and aroused envy among poorer nations to make them willing conspirators against a rich neighbor who could easily be portrayed as an oppressor.”

John B. Hagney

Spokane

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