John Lewis Gaddis Quote
Well, no, if we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us wouldn’t, even in this more politically correct age. For satisfying the claims of justice in this instance would not only disrupt the present and future, but also the past: wouldn’t the Mexicans then have to give it all back to the Spanish, and then the Spanish to the indigenous populations they decimated, and then those peoples to the flora and fauna they displaced after crossing the land bridge from Siberia thousands of years earlier? The argument is absurd, but only because it rejects any coexistence of contradictions in time or space: it thereby confirms Berlin’s claim that not all praiseworthy things are simultaneously possible. And that learning to live within that condition—let’s call it history—requires adaptation to incompatibles.
Well, no, if we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us wouldn’t, even in this more politically correct age. For satisfying the claims of justice in this instance would not only disrupt the present and future, but also the past: wouldn’t the Mexicans then have to give it all back to the Spanish, and then the Spanish to the indigenous populations they decimated, and then those peoples to the flora and fauna they displaced after crossing the land bridge from Siberia thousands of years earlier? The argument is absurd, but only because it rejects any coexistence of contradictions in time or space: it thereby confirms Berlin’s claim that not all praiseworthy things are simultaneously possible. And that learning to live within that condition—let’s call it history—requires adaptation to incompatibles.
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