January 18, 2026

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Milan Kundera (1929-2023) Czech-French novelist. Quoted in “Part One: Afterlives of the Shoah”, in The World After Gaza: A History, Pankaj Mishra (New York: 2025)

Assuming you are on the side of mankind against the unreasonable power of others, what good is memory? What is wrong with forgetting?

Among the most troubling features of the present day, particularly as observed in young people, is their appalling ignorance of history, of any sort. 

America’s founding fathers were not political geniuses, but they were students of ancient history. They knew how republics were brought down, both from without, but more importantly from within. So they created a government with checks and balances that have stood the country in, more or less, good stead—at least until recently. If we have little knowledge of historical practice, we will never appreciate what has been lost.