Shadows

First of all, I am returning to academia this fall, teaching a couple of sections of U.S. history at the local college. Pity the youth of America!

While dusting off the bookshelf to get ready for the fall (I haven't taught since 1998), I came across an oldie but a goody--Viet Nam and the United States by Hans Morgenthau that I picked off the used shelf 25 years ago. Dr. M died in 1980. This monograph was published in 1965, and is an amazing time capsule, as he wrote this without knowing what happened in Viet Nam--or today. Dr. Morgenthau wrote that

we have consistently confounded the shadow of national power with its substance, the prestige of the nation with the actuality of its power, ephemeral public relations with the stability of the national prestige, the prestige of the policy-makers with the prestige of the nation.

1965--the more things change....