Can we learn from history? Mark Twain's thoughts

Amos_Umwhat

Many of us who participate in the Forum's political, um, discussions, frequently allude to historical precedents that would caution us not to follow some path that whichever current regime is suggesting. Those same of us will lament that the lesson was not learned, and that we are doomed to repeat it, and we repeat that message pretty much yearly, and certainly around election times.

It matters not whether Conservative or Liberal, these lessons, and cycles, go both ways.

I myself have often intimated that it matters not whether one likes the side with the Donkey, or the Elephant, these are just two sides of the same paddle with which The Elite spank our backsides, presumably to numb them so we won't know who's removing what from our wallets.

I stumbled across the following in Mark Twain's autobiography, 1-15-1907, and it seems the question of our ability to learn the lessons of history has been asked long before we arrived:


"The human race was always interesting, and we know, by its past, that it will always continue so...Its circumstances change from time to time, for better or worse, but the race's character is permanent, and never changes. In the course of the ages it has built up several great and worshipful civilizations, and has seen unlooked-for circumstances slyly emerge, bearing deadly gifts which looked like benefits, and were welcomed--whereupon the decay and destruction of each of these stately civilizations has followed. It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. Whenever man makes a large stride in material prosperity and progress, he is sure to think that he has progressed, whereas he has not advanced a inch; nothing has progressed but his circumstances. He stands where he stood before. He knows more than his forebears knew, but his intellect is no better than theirs, and never will be. He is richer than his forebears, but his character is no improvement on theirs. Riches and education are not a permanent possession; they will pass away, as in the case of Rome, and Greece, and Egypt, and Babylon; and a moral and mental midnight will follow--with a dull long sleep and a slow re-awakening. From time to time he makes what looks like a change in his character, but it is not a real change; and it is only transitory, anyway...

...For twenty-five or thirty years I have squandered a deal of my time--too much of it perhaps--in trying to guess what is going to be the process which will turn our republic into a monarchy, and how far off that event might be. Every man is a master and also a servant, a vassal. There is always some one who looks up to him and admires and envies him; there is always some one tho whom he looks up and admires and envies. This is his nature; this is his character; and it is unchangeable, indestructible; therefore Republics and Democracies are not for such as he; they cannot satisfy the requirements of his nature. The inspirations of his character will always breed circumstances and conditions which must in time furnish him a king and an aristocracy to look up to and worship. In a democracy he will try, and honestly, to keep the crown away, but Circumstance is a powerful master, and will eventually defeat him.

Republics have lived long, but monarchy lives forever. By our teaching, we learn that vast material prosperity always brings in its train conditions which debase the morals and enervate the manhood of a nation--then the country's liberties come into the market and are bought, sold, squandered, thrown away, and a popular idol is carried to the throne upon the shields or shoulders of the worshiping people, and planted there in permanency. We are always being taught--no, formerly we were always being taught--to look at Rome, and beware. The teacher pointed to Rome's stern virtue, incorruptibility, love of liberty, and all-sacrificing patriotism--this when she was young and poor; then he pointed to her later days, when her sun-bursts of material prosperity and spreading dominion came, and were exultingly welcomed by the people, they not suspecting that these were not fortunate glories, happy benefits, but were a disease, and freighted with death. The teacher reminded us that Rome's liberties were not auctioned off in a day, buit were bought slowly, gradually, furtively, little by little; first with a little corn and oil for the exceedingly poor and wretched; later with corn and oil for voters who were not quite so poor; later still with corn and oil for pretty much every man that had a vote to sell--exactly our history over again..."

Well, sounded familiar to me, anyway..
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roland_7707

Twain had some pretty good stuff.

jd50ae

I guess I will say the obvious......

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy) was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.

Or "“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.” ? Paul Christopher, The Lucifer Gospel

Or...“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” ? Edmund Burke

Amos_Umwhat

jd50ae:

I guess I will say the obvious......

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy) was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.

Or "“He who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.” ? Paul Christopher, The Lucifer Gospel

Or...“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” ? Edmund Burke

Yes, that is the premise, and those are men playing the role of the "teacher". The implication of their quotes is that we are capable of learning and changing, Twain's position is that we are incapable of doing so. That's the not so obvious he is trying to reveal. We're insatiable.

And we don't learn.

webmost

Amos Umwhat:

I myself have often intimated that it matters not whether one likes the side with the Donkey, or the Elephant, these are just two sides of the same paddle with which The Elite spank our backsides, presumably to numb them so we won't know who's removing what from our wallets.

On the button.

And Sam Clemens, too.

webmost

Those dedicated statists on this forum who always insist that Government is wise and benevolent, who are eager for Government to take ever more responsibility over more and more of our lives, who worship the cult of the Leader, refute any of this, if you can. The eventual trend is inevitable. Why do you strive to hurry it so?

Do you hate America?

dickowitz

webmost:

Those dedicated statists on this forum who always insist that Government is wise and benevolent, who are eager for Government to take ever more responsibility over more and more of our lives, who worship the cult of the Leader, refute any of this, if you can. The eventual trend is inevitable. Why do you strive to hurry it so?



Do you hate America?

ME thinks Fox news has an opening that you would fit right into, Yous shoud apply that's way ou could spew your false conclusions and rhetoric there, instead of insulting our intelligince

raisindot

webmost:

Those dedicated statists on this forum who always insist that Government is wise and benevolent, who are eager for Government to take ever more responsibility over more and more of our lives, who worship the cult of the Leader, refute any of this, if you can. The eventual trend is inevitable. Why do you strive to hurry it so?

Do you hate America?

You had a good question until your "Do you hate America" statement.

As far as I'm concerned, the absence of government controls is the biggest risk to suppression of individual liberties, the health and well being of the citizens and greater chances of the nation falling into not a monarchy but a series of rural and urban fiefdoms controlled by heavily armed warlords. We already see this today in city centers where heavily armed gangs rule (and where cops fear to tread) and in rural areas of the country where white supremacists have repeated threatened to take control and terrorize minorities.

And there's plenty of historical evidence to support this. Through most of this country's history slavery, oppression of the poor by the wealthy, corporate monopolies, wanton environmental destruction, suppression of civil rights, local and regional lawlessness and corruption, institutional racism, unchecked exploitation of consumers, lack of access to good roads, no access to electricity, and restrictions on schools their children could attend and neighborhoods where they could buy a home existed. And all of these inequities existed BECAUSE corporations and state and local governments were in control, and there were no federal laws and enforcement agencies to prevent these inequities from occurring.

Frankly, if most reasonable people looked at what America was like in the late 1800s versus what it's like today, they'd probably appreciate the fact that their water, food and air are safer, their bank deposits are insured, their voting rights are largely protected, their access to public education is unfettered, their constitutional rights aren't being stamped on by local and state governments, their rights are workers are protected, their rights as consumers are protected, and, in spite of the NRAs hysteria, they can still buy as many guns as they want to.

If all of these federal laws and enforcement agencies were removed, America would quickly devolve to the way it was in the 18th and 19th centuries. Frankly, that scares me more than the totally unlikely possibility of the U.S. becoming a monarchy. Frankly, it's far more likely that we'd become a military dictatorship if a group of ambitious generals wanted to take charge (Alexander Haig tried to do it when Reagan was shot). But whether a coup occurs or not isn't dependent on how much power is given to the civil authorities. A coup could happen just as easily even if all the progressive federal laws of the past century were rolled. And all the guns in the world hoarded bv citizens wouldn't make a damn bit of difference when the army started bombing cilivian areas.

webmost

raisindot:

You had a good question until your "Do you hate America" statement.

I think it's a valid question, Raisindot. In this sense:

No one can blame Janay. They were in love. Sure, RayRay could get intense some times. But that's what made him successful, sexy, and RICH. You can't say she was asking for it. Until after he knocked her out cold in the elevator. Hold on... it was AFTER that she went ahead and married him! You can imagine Mama and her sisters, giving Janay that look, and asking "What? Do you want it to happen again?"

In that same way, you can't blame the old Romans. They had no way to know what would happen. It hadn't happened yet. When they clipped their coins and sucked the silver slowly out of the denarius, to fund bread and circuses, to palliate the masses and buy the Praetorian guard, how could they tell?

We don't have that excuse. We know. When we pile up trillions in debt to create a permanent dependent class funded today on the backs of future generations, we know exactly what that will bring. Scholars count 500 instances of fiat money in history. Each and every one imploded. We know this. Yet we print money to "monetize" our debt.

We know where we are headed. Why do you step on the throttle? Do you want it to happen again?

No one advocates dirty water. That's just you typically avoiding the issue. Don't be dense. We are far from removing all federal enforcement agencies. We are too busy multiplying acronyms of ever new and more expensive agencies, arming them with a billion hollow points and armored cars, and setting them loose on ourselves. Your dreaded corporate dominance and oppression of the working man has only multiplied with growth of the welfare state. Look at the widening gap in wealth. Nobody ever contemplated bailing out failed stock market swindlers until government central planners were entrusted with the responsibility to ensure prosperity for all. Ironic; but true. Look at your beloved fascist leader today and his henchmen. Who would have imagined a president appointing an attorney general from a law firm which specializes in defending banksters and stock swindlers, who then stands up on his hind feet and openly declares that banksters and stock swindlers are too rich to jail, at a time when the whole country is taking a swirly at the hands of precisely those banksters and stock swindlers?

Look: You want to steal from the poor and give to the rich? Borrow. Simple as that. Bankers will have their interest. It's what they do. Borrow. They get rich. The working man gets fleeced.

You want to enslave people? Make them dependent. It's a synonym. The American dream is Independence. The Liberal dream is Dependence.

So I ask you: Why do you want to do both if you don't hate America?

When is it enough, Raisindot? For once, stop dodging the issue. How big can government get before it gets too big? Answer the question and stop spluttering on about how surely we will all return to a brutal stone age if we ever once dare question the least limits. Government now admits to spending 40% of GDP. That doesn't include black budgets. More importantly, that doesn't include any of the vast expense of complying with regulation and taxation. Whole grand fleets of CPAs, lawyers, busy HR departments, everything from millions of clerks looking up medicare codes to, yes, seat belts and air bags. When do we get to the point we finally have to say "You know what? Maybe we can't afford to subsidize Big Bird. Maybe we have more important things to pay for."? Give us a number. Give us a fair percent of GDP. Stop ducking and dodging. Answer the question. How much is enough?

Do you want Big Government to destroy the American Dream?

raisindot

webmost:

raisindot:

You had a good question until your "Do you hate America" statement.

I think it's a valid question, Raisindot. In this sense....[good stuff edited out]

Webmost, just so you won't think I'm ducking the issue, I am going to respond in detail to the valid question lurking in your polemical rhetoric. But it's Friday, I'm tired, and it's been far too long since I've treated myself to a good stogie and a glass of fine Tennessee bourbon. First things first.

The3Stogies

One thing I have learned from history is that I want us to be the world power, the monarchy.
Mark Twain, great story teller, and made good points from time to time. This was written in 1907, before WW1 and WW2 which changed the world completely. Germany waged war the old fashioned way, defeated in WW1 but pissed at all the treaty sanctions placed on it. They wanted to be a monarchy. **** Germany arose not from being pissed but from no one paying attention until it was too late, history repeated itself. WW2 cost a lot of lives which possibly could have been prevented.

The US became one of the monarchies he spoke of, but a benevolent one, and Russia not so benevolent (Patton was right). Difference being we rebuilt the nations we flattened and became trading partners instead of occupying and taking their resources for ourselves. We left bases there, not occupy, to further protect our interests and theirs. Have to have a presence for a number of reason's really. The collapse of the Berlin Wall made us the leading world power, we had our moment. Slowly I see the balance shifting to Russia now. Crimea, Ukraine, shooting down airliners with no repercussions, choking Europe's oil supply. They can't compete with us economically so China is a good ally for them, and we keep letting businesses go there.

So old Mark may be onto something here, but I say we should be the monarchy, I hope it's not too late.

Amos_Umwhat

The3Stogies:

One thing I have learned from history is that I want us to be the world power, the monarchy.
Mark Twain, great story teller, and made good points from time to time. This was written in 1907, before WW1 and WW2 which changed the world completely. Germany waged war the old fashioned way, defeated in WW1 but pissed at all the treaty sanctions placed on it. They wanted to be a monarchy. **** Germany arose not from being pissed but from no one paying attention until it was too late, history repeated itself. WW2 cost a lot of lives which possibly could have been prevented.

The US became one of the monarchies he spoke of, but a benevolent one, and Russia not so benevolent (Patton was right). Difference being we rebuilt the nations we flattened and became trading partners instead of occupying and taking their resources for ourselves. We left bases there, not occupy, to further protect our interests and theirs. Have to have a presence for a number of reason's really. The collapse of the Berlin Wall made us the leading world power, we had our moment. Slowly I see the balance shifting to Russia now. Crimea, Ukraine, shooting down airliners with no repercussions, choking Europe's oil supply. They can't compete with us economically so China is a good ally for them, and we keep letting businesses go there.

Good points. So old Mark may be onto something here, but I say we should be the monarchy, I hope it's not too late.