The Israeli politician, Abba Eban, once said, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.” A form of this is attributed to Churchill, but there is no evidence he ever said it. References to the apocryphal Churchill quote started appearing in the 1980’s. Like Twain and Voltaire, Churchill gets credit for a lot of pithy sayings, simply because people believe he would have said them. Regardless of the origin, the assertion is true. Men go to great lengths to avoid the right answer or wise course.
We see this with race. Three generations ago , when social reformers and political leaders looked at the condition of the black man, they were presented with three possible explanations. One was biology, the reason most people accepted for the differences between blacks and whites. The other was some form of magic, like God blessed the white race or cursed the black race. Few people thought that was right. The other choice was culture. The laws and institutions of the nation were rigged against the black man.
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