The Past a Blessing and Curse

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, in one of today’s “On the Square” articles (today’s a bonus day), our senior editor R. R. Reno explains the ways in which a sense of history can humanize our lives. He writes, in Memory Redeemed , that while “A living past can be a blessing,” giving us “a legacy, a place in the world, a place to stand,”

a living past can be a curse as well. In his novels the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. It’s more than a biblical conceit; it’s a fact of cultural life. Just think of Rwanda, where the horrors of the genocide of 1994 remain very much alive in the memories of men and women who suffered through it. Or perhaps contemporary Germany, where the Nazi past continues to haunt the political imagination of the country. Memory can load us with a terrible burden; the weight of the past can as easily crush and cripple as enliven and ennoble.

Today’s bonus article is Hadley Arkes’ Vast Dangers—Confirmed . It also is not to be missed.