{"id":13108,"date":"2021-04-08T06:29:17","date_gmt":"2021-04-08T13:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=13108"},"modified":"2021-04-10T07:21:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-10T14:21:21","slug":"laudator-temporis-acti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/laudator-temporis-acti\/","title":{"rendered":"Laudator Temporis Acti"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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History is not the melodrama of faceless collectives, but a tragedy of complexities.  We should not go quietly into the night and allow a current affluent, leisured and pampered generation to hijack the past, and damn it to perdition. Given the present’s own meager achievements, it has not earned the right to rename, cancel, and Trotskyize those of the past who won Gettysburg, or built the Hoover dam, or produced a Liberty ship every week (a “racist” society who named some of those ships the “SS Harriet Tubman”, the “SS Marian Anderson” and the “SS Booker T. Washington”.) 
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Today’s Pentagon (still the world largest office building, completed in just 16 wartime months) is not that of the likes of Leahy, Marshall, Arnold, or King in 1943-5. Today’s undergraduates would have real trouble with the 1965 curriculum of Harvard and Stanford. I doubt our geniuses could design\u2014or rather would be allowed to design\u2014and build our equivalent of a B-29 in three years. NASA of the 1960s and 1970s was not like that of the 21st-Century. Hollywood’s comic book movies are not the “Wizard of Oz”, much less “The Best Years of Our Lives”, or “How Green Was My Valley.” Al Sharpton is no Bayard Ruskin, just as Ta-Nehisi Coates is no Ralph Ellison, and Colin Kaepernick is no Jim Brown. I don’t think the 21st century has produced a group of novelists comparable to contemporaries like Faulkner, Fitzgerald , Hemingway, Wolfe, or Steinbeck. What is needed in these bleak times is a little humility, from a generation who will not necessarily age well and whose record will not be remembered by those to come as particular worthy of respect.
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Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem (Horace, Odes, III., 6, 46-8.)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

History is not the melodrama of faceless collectives, but a tragedy of complexities.  We should not go quietly into the night and allow a current affluent, leisured and pampered generation to hijack the past, and damn it to perdition. Given the present’s own meager achievements, it has not earned the right to rename, cancel, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3pq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8233,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-franklin-delano-obama-addresses-the-threat-of-1930s-violent-extremism\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":0},"title":"President Franklin Delano Obama Addresses the Threat of 1930s Violent Extremism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 23, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine Obama as an American president in 1939. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia \u201cThe United States has made significant gains [2] in our struggle against violent extremism in Europe. We are watching carefully aggressions in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and in Eastern Europe. My diplomatic team has made it very clear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/obama_fdr_fireside_chat_2-22-15-1-500x400.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1937,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-shalit-defining-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":1},"title":"The Shalit Defining Moment","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Palestinians have just shown the entire world their collective values \u2014 and the result is creepy beyond belief. Every once in a while a single incident crystallizes almost everything \u2014 all the cry-of-the-heart moral equivalence, all the special pleading, all the revisionism, all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Palestine"","block_context":{"text":"Palestine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/palestine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8239,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-to-empower-violent-extremism\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":2},"title":"How to Empower Violent Extremism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Every time Obama \u201ccontextualizes,\u201d Putin and ISIS grow bolder. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Not too long ago, most Russians were reportedly unhappy with Vladimir Putin. His crackdown on freedom and his kleptocratic economy were hardly popular. Most likely, given theirdruthers, Russians were not all that interested in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7223,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressive-insurance\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":3},"title":"Progressive Insurance","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The right ideological credentials mean never having to say you're sorry. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 How do you ensure that you won\u2019t be ostracized, denounced, or fired if you are a media celebrity, captain of industry, or high public official? For some, sexist banter is certainly no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4624,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/if-the-dead-could-talk\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":4},"title":"If the Dead Could Talk","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"They'd teach us a thing or two about war. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the H\u00fcrtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2004"","block_context":{"text":"August 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/august-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4629,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/if-the-dead-could-talk-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":13108,"position":5},"title":"If the Dead Could Talk","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"They's teach us a thing or two about war. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The last two weeks I have been following the route of the American Army's drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944-5. It is quite something to visit Aachen, Mainz, the H\u00fcrtzen forest, Bastogne, Omaha\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2004"","block_context":{"text":"July 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/july-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13132,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13108\/revisions\/13132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}