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Kerry’s History Lesson

In 1931, the English historian Herbert Butterfield published something in between a long essay and a short book, The Whig Interpretation of History. The spirit of the Whiggish historical narrative, Butterfield wrote, was “illustrated to perfection” by the words of a man he’d seen ranting on a street corner: “when the Pope ruled England them was called the Dark Ages.”

Perched comfortably atop some great pinnacle of civilization, the Whig historian looks back and sees the steady march of progress. The past was bad, the present is utterly magnificent, and all chronological points can be measured by their distance between the degraded old and the glorious new. Through this lens, 1910 was better than 1905, because it contains five more years of progress. And through this lens, history shows that all roads lead to us, and aren’t we wonderful? This type of historical interpretation asks, What roots of ourselves and our own stories can we see in—pick a point at random—the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, or the Battle of Salamis, or the invention of the cotton gin? Dear Bacon’s Rebellion, How did we get to be so awesome? History, please tell me more about me.

Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation to say a few dull things about the Russian invasion of Crimea. The Russians today, he announced, were acting like the past, which is bad. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped up pretext,” said Kerry.

Kerry’s right; Putin should get with the times. We’ve made so much progress in the past 200 years, and we’ve got so many more options available to us now. Instead of simply invading another country, he could kill them with nerve gas, say, or drop a couple nuclear bombs on some cities, or concentrate the Crimean population in strategic hamlets. This is the 21st century, and we kill people with flying killer robots! Get with the spirit of progress, Vlad.