Sublime

Even a philosopher, if he knows history, will admit that a long peace may fatally weaken the martial muscles of a nation.

History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses.

Destiny had now conferred upon Washington a pivotal place in colonial, and even global, affairs, for the Jumonville incident was recognized as the opening shot that precipitated the French and Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War. In the words of Sir Horace Walpole in London, “The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of

of these periods of equilibrium were marked by fluctuations of high complexity. None experienced long-term price-inflation.

“We are undertaking something of a quite desperate nature,” he wrote in his diary in early September. “In a way it is like the return of Napoleon from Elba—if the guess as to psychological reaction is correct, we may gain a tremendous advantage; if the guess is wrong, we will gain nothing and will lose a lot.… [W]e are sailing in a dangerous politi

His decision saved the United States from what would have been a military disaster.

“It is a trap of history to believe that eyewitnesses remember accurately what they have lived through.”

defenders of “God's chosen country,”