History Always Happens To Us And Nothing

The People Whose Necks Hurt When I Write About The Middle East Tend To Live In Brooklyn Or Boca Raton: The Kind Of Zionist Who Pays Another Man To Live In Israel For Him. I Have Nothing But Contempt For Such People.

I Don't Believe In An Afterlife. I Don't Believe In A Single Or Multiple Godhead. I Respect People Who Do, But I Don't Believe It Myself.

We Have Responsibilities For Others, Not Just Across Space But Across Time. We Have Responsibilities To People Who Came Before Us. They Left Us A World Of Institutions, Ideas Or Possibilities For Which We, In Turn, Owe Them Something. One Of The Things We Owe Them Is Not To Squander Them.

If We Have Learned Nothing Else From The 20th Century, We Should At Least Have Grasped That The More Perfect The Answer, The More Terrifying Its Consequences. Incremental Improvements Upon Unsatisfactory Circumstances Are The Best That We Can Hope For, And Probably All We Should Seek.

We Are Not Merely Historians But Also And Always Citizens.