Six Words: Accurate, Reinforce, Europe, Copy, Reliance, Tumble
As I started to write this article, I had a pretty good idea of what it would say, so I turned to thinking about a title. The first title that came to mind was: “May you live in interesting times”, which most of us know as an ancient Chinese curse, but I wondered if that was true. It is not true! There is no such Chinese curse. It appears that the curse is actually a paraphrase of a line from a speech by British politician Joseph Chamberlain in 1898! Neville Chamberlain, was his son. The “peace in our time” Neville Chamberlain! So it seems that famous, but inaccurate, sayings run in the family.
Having learned that bit of history, I continued my quest for a suitable title. Thomas Paine, on December 23, 1776, came to my rescue. He wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” That was almost the title of this essay, but it is a little long. Those words of Paine, though, are the opening sentence of an essay that he titled, simply: “The Crisis”. That, I think, would be an appropriate title for this essay too, and it is the name of this file on my computer. But for the title, I did go with: “Someday there will be a name for this time”.
Now, to finally get to the original challenge for today. . .
It is accurate to say that “we live in interesting times”. This is a time of crisis. A time of crisis in Europe. A time of crisis for American democracy. A time of crisis for our planet and the very air we breathe and the water we’re reliant on. Fortunately, most western countries are strong enough to reinforce Ukraine militarily at a slow but accelerating pace since Russian troops tumbled into Ukraine. The question now, is whether we will copy the mistakes of the beginning of World War 2 and the rise of European dictatorships, or whether we will stand united to reject invaders in Europe and whether we will preserve our Constitution and Democracy in America.