nusratt's Journal: historical prescience

On non-commercial channels in the US you may have seen an educational series called "The Western Tradition",
by Eugen Weber, a renowned history scholar from Romania with a fascinating verbal style and voice,
something like Jacob Bronowski.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/weber
"Western Tradition" was produced in 1988 but is still frequently broadcast.

Here's something he said in a segment about the decline and fall of the Roman empire...

"It has always been a problem, for a society faced by a serious challenge,
to decide just what measures it can take, and how far it can go,
in opposing and meeting that challenge.
If you argue that you can only preserve your way of life
by adopting certain means which *negate* that way of life --
that you can only preserve democracy or free speech by limiting them, for example --
or preserve liberty by regimentation, or moral order by inquisition --
then you run the risk of sacrificing exactly the things you say you are fighting for.
You run the risk of sacrificing precisely those things
that you used to justify the sacrifices in the first place.
And you risk becoming so like your enemy, that the differences matter very little."

Wonderful!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I watch this series on my local Community Colleges' public television station every week.
It's why I got an account on the APB website.