My History Writing Was Based On What

The Different American Experience Of The 20th Century Is Crucial Because The Lesson Of The Century For Europe, Which Essentially Is That The Human Condition Is Tragic, Led It To Have A Build A Welfare System And A Set Of Laws And Social Arrangements That Are More Prophylactic Than Idealistic. It's Not About Building Perfect Futures; It's About Preventing Terrible Pasts. I Think That Is Something That Europeans In The Second Half Of The 20th Century Knew In Their Bones And Americans Never Did, And It's One Of The Big Differences Between The Two Western Cultures.

I Know Exactly How And Where I Am Going To Die. The Only Question Is When.

As Citizens Of A Free Society, We Have A Duty To Look Critically At Our World. But If We Think We Know What Is Wrong, We Must Act Upon That Knowledge.

The Rottenness Of Politics In Yugoslavia Didn't Come As A Surprise. The Main Lesson Is That This Is A War Which Could Have Easily Been Stopped By Europe. What Was Lacking Was Any Will To Do So. It's An Irony Of The Achievement Of Europe That It Had Lived For 40 Years Under The Assumption Of The Unimaginability Of Internal Wars, So It Didn't Know What To Do With It When It Was Confronted With One Close Up.

American Social Arrangements, Economic Arrangements, The Degree Of Inequality In American Life, The Relatively Small Role Played By The Government In American Public Life And So Forth, Compares To Exactly The Opposite Conditions In Most Of The European Societies.