Kenneth R Gregg - 9/5/2004

I am reminded of a comment by the great French classical liberal, Benjamin Constant, when I hear about the supposed wonders of Bush:
"It is a great evil when the men who hold in their hands the destiny of the world are mistaken about what is actually possible. Experience, then, instead of serving them, can only harm and confuse them. They read history and see what was done earlier, and do not stop to consider whether it can still be done now. They try to make use of old, broken tools. Their obstinacy, or, if you like, their genius, may give their efforts an ephemeral success. But since they are at odds with the moods, the interests, the entire moral existence of their contemporaries, these forces react against them. And, within a span of time all too long for their victims, but extremely short if we consider it historically, nothing is left of their enterprises but the crimes they have committed and the sufferings they have caused..."
"Woe betide those who, believing themselves invincible, throw down the gauntlet to the human reace, and claim to carry out through it, since they have no other instrument, upheavals of which it disapproves and miracles for which it has no wish."
--The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Their Relation to European Civilization, Forward to the fourth edition (1814)