In the West, we are on vacation from history.
That’s because we are living on the interest earned by our parents and grandparents. The European continent, until the war in Ukraine, had never experienced a more peaceful respite from history than since the end of the Cold War.
America has enjoyed its own peace dividend, with spending ballooning to unprecedented levels and our wars fought in distant lands.
When you are on vacation from history, you tend to engage in foolish fallacies. Fallacies like the idea that evil doesn’t exist; that negotiation solves all conflict, and that weakness brings with it peace instead of war; that apologizing for Western civilization is a corrective to past injustice, rather than an incentive for future violence.
On Oct. 7, 2023, history returned with a vengeance.
On that day, Hamas—an evil terrorist group—invaded Israel and…
