A friend in California sent me this gentle reminder that age brings problems.
A nice old couple in their eighties are both having problems remembering things. During a checkup, the doctor tells them that they’re physically okay, but they might want to start writing things down to help them remember. Later that night, while watching TV, the old man gets up from his chair. ‘Want anything while I’m in the kitchen?’ he asks.
‘Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?’ ‘Sure’ ‘Don’t you think you should write it down so you can remember it?’ she asks. ‘No, I can remember it.’ ‘Well, I’d like some strawberries on top, too. Maybe you should write it down?’ He says, ‘I can remember that. You want a bowl of ice cream with strawberries.’ ‘I’d also like whipped cream. I’m certain you’ll forget that, write it down.’ she says. Irritated, he says, ‘I don’t need to write it down, I can remember it! Ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream – I got it, for goodness sake!’ Then he toddles into the kitchen. After about 20 minutes, he returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and eggs. She stares at the plate for a moment. ‘Where’s my toast?’
My own memory is still pretty good. In fact the tale above is actually a kind of bait and switch to get you to think about my new program, THE COLD WAR AND 9/11, that I hope to release in 2010 . This program will rely, in part that is, on my memory. Unlike many of my readers (not all I am sure) I have been lucky enough to have lived through the depression of the 1930s, the Second World War, the Cold War times of Truman, Stalin, Churchill, McCarthy, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Gorbachev, Reagan, etc. And I haven’t forgotten a thing.
This new script is still another link in my current chain of programs designed to teach “Education in Defense of a Free Society.” This phrase was coined by a former teacher of mine at NYU, the philosopher and staunch anti-communist democrat, Sidney Hook. For earlier programs in this chain see DEMOCRACY IN WORLD HISTORY.
Here is the opening section in THE COLD WAR AND 9/1. In another week or two I will post the entire working script on the Hawkhill web site.
The Cold War of the 20th century pitted the western free-market democracies against the communist dictatorships. The United States led the democracies. The Soviet Union led the dictatorships. The democracies won.
The war against Radical Muslim terror of the 21st century pits the western free-market democracies against Radical Islam theocracies. The United States is (by default) leading the democracies. A small terrorist group called Al Queda is leading the Radical Islamic theocracies. So far neither side has won.
This Cold War of the 20th century was the longest-lasting, most expensive and most deadly war of the 20th century, maybe of all human history if your criterion is the number of human casualties.
How long the war against terror will last is uncertain. It has already proved expensive and deadly however.
Most of the casualties due to the Cold War were not on the bloody battlefields of Korea or Vietnam (nor even of the Second World War itself, out of which the Cold War was born). Horrific as all of those battlefield and civilian bombing casualties were, most of the violent deaths in the 20th century came from totalitarian regimes murdering their own citizens! The atrocities of Hitler?s National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany are well known. The atrocities committed by totalitarian Communist regimes against there own people are not as widely known.
Like the 20th century Cold War, most of the casualties in the war against Radical Islam have not been soldiers on the battlefields of the Middle East and Afghanistan, nor even civilians in the US when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were bombed on 9/11. Like the communist tyrannies of the 20th century, the overwhelming number of casualties in the 21st century war on Islamic terror have been citizens of Muslim countries themselves, impoverished, humiliated, maimed and killed by their own brothers and sisters.
Let’s first look at the history of the cold war between communism and democracy, and then take a closer look at the current war against Islamic terror. We will find they have similarities as well as sharp differences.
Bill Stonebarger