One way or the other, if any nation is to do well, beneath and beyond the rhetoric and the fruitless slogans, the real work has to be done by ordinary people who do not indulge in the rhetoric and who do not shout the slogans. It was ever thus.
Human nature remains the same over the centuries. Hate and fear and prejudice fuel agonies and wars now as they did in the past. Stupidity is the same through the ages. Social engineers draw up their Utopian blue-prints, to no avail since all are based on the flawed assumption that man can be taught to be perfect. The good and the bad in man, though they shift a little in their proportions, do not really change. The saying attributed to the Frenchman Claude le Petit in the 17th Century is perhaps too cynical, but only just:
“The world is full of fools, and who will not
see it should live alone and smash his mirror.”
And because human nature does not change, when people are faced with problems they respond in ways which bear a marked resemblance over the ages. That, I suppose, is the origin of the phrase: “History repeats itself” and also of the observation “There is nothing new under the sun.”
