It is interesting to me to contemplate that all this pacific music which to most contemporary ears is foreign and boring, was a creative reaction to the virtually incessant warfare in Europe since time immemorial. You can say the Romans pacified it, but only parts of Europe, and there was always continual warfare on the boundaries, always “Scythians”, or Vandals, or Franks, or Germans, or Lombards, or Burgundians, or others causing mass violence. Most of the cities in Europe have been sacked at some point, their inhabitants sold into slavery, and their goods stolen, then in a great many cases been stolen back, or stolen a second time by someone else.
I will reiterate that one learns something about the human condition listening to Gibbon. Even the graduates of our allegedly best schools–I can’t honestly say “best educated”–know very little of history. They cannot place our current era of peace, judicial impartiality, human rights, freedom, and economic prosperity, into anything approaching a sane context. They repeat stupid things said by stupid people. Every time they open their mouths they subtract from the sum total of human knowledge (I borrowed that from an early 20th century Republican, whose name escapes me).
But listen. There is solace in war, refuge in conflict. There is a place for churches, or something like them. They have no ready substitute, certainly not arenas of political theater, which can only be satisfied with violence. There is nothing new in that. It is the oldest story we know. Perhaps there was a time before violence, but that was before people felt the need to record the deeds of war, which is more or less what history is.