Posted 9:11 PM by Robert

The Nine Billion Names of George Santayana

O, sure, it's there. Waiting. Hideous. Insipid.

How many college convocation speakers has it claimed?

How many media pundits have fallen into its maw, exhausted, welcoming - an intellectual liebestod!

How many history majors has it pushed past the line sketched by Dick Cavett on his 70s era talk show when he said that he lived in fear of saying something that would be so stupid he'd be too embarrassed to come out of his house for a year!

Of course, it's the urge to write: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And yet. And yet. When George W. Bush utters the hopelessly inappropriate and poisonously and pointlessly evocative "Department of Homeland Security" how can one NOT hear George H. W. Bush utter the hopelessly inappropriate and poisonously and pointlessly evocative "New World Order!!!"

Just asking. Really.