National Review Online: "A Heroine for Our Times"

"The narrative of decline is one of a slow and silent accumulation of ills. Looking backwards, we don’t remember a special moment when the evil days came, or the years drew nigh when all would be changed, but only the painful contrast between the days of our youth and the decrepitude of age. So it is with countries. We fail to see sharp breaks where we can say: There, there is where it all happened."

And yet such moments do exist, the points of inflection where the curve changes from positive to negative. We might have thought little of the changes at the time, perhaps, but they made all the difference, and it is the task of the historian to bring them to light.

I am no historian, but I have one such moment in mind. It was when The New Republic’s senior editor Jonathan Chait wrote in 2003, “I hate President George W. Bush.” TNR was always a liberal journal, but under editors such as Andrew Sullivan (before he went mad) and the restraining hand of Martin Peretz, it prided itself on its reasonableness. The magazine might have been coma-inducing boring, but by God it was reasonable. (read more)

The reason why I chose to highlight the h word from the passage, is because shortly after reading the entire piece I thought of posting it, but I didn't, because I didn't have something to ad to it right away, nothing came readily to mind. But, apparently the crux of the piece stay with me, because hours later, the Nixon quote “Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them...” came to my mind. The quote comes towards the end of this video.

 

 

Do you remember other "such moments" when, now looking back on it, the toxicity levels where so high, alarm bells should have rung out, condemnations even.