[betty boop]

Thanks for reminding me, Genoa. Oren is preeminently an historian, long before he became an ambassador. And though I have not yet read it, I understand his Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present is a work that reviews the history of the United States in its historical relations with the Muslim world, which date back to our earliest national history. Such relations mostly have been "troublous."

But it seems we no longer want to learn anything from history. Very sad. For if you don't know the past, you can't understand the present — let alone the implications of present decisions for the future that evolves therefrom.

That is a conservative presupposition that transformative, left progressive ideologues wholly reject. Such folks have no "history" that reaches further back than their breakfast....

But that sort of thing, to my mind, is a total flight from Reality.

I very much relished reading Oren's Ally. It is extraordinarily informative. I will very likely read his Power, Faith, and Fantasy in consequence.

[Genoa]

Oren is a centrist, too (Kulanu party), not what Israelis would call right-wing. But with seasoned historical judgment he sees through the Obama crowd and their anti-Israel point of view, and he recognizes the existential threat.

[RobbyS]

The difference between Tom Paine and Edmund Burke, between a radical and a whig, was that Paine had no sense of history. His views were rooted in his own experience, in his self-education and Paine rejected everything that came before that.