The phrase itself is a meta-Catch-22:
If people learned from history, the phrase wouldn't have caught on.
People don't learn from history, therefore the phrase has caught on.
A catchy phrase is carried through history, therefore people do learn from history (well, parts of it). Self-meta-contradiction.
;-)
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
Learning from history isn't straightforward. The US learned after WWI that we should have stayed out of it. They tried to apply that lesson
20 years later but the lesson did not apply, even though it was only 20 years and the conflict was with the same country.
Exactly WRONG. Period.
"Tom Del Rosso" wrote in message news:nfpado$c9h$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...
In for a penny...
Some say WW2 was inevitable. Or more to the point, that the armistice was nothing more than a brief hiatus, and that both wars were really one in the same.
I suppose that works more for Europe than the US, but Japan was up to all kinds of bad things throughout the period. I don't know if that makes them "inevitable", but they were certainly at war somewhere.
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
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