Don'T Flood The Present Poem by gershon hepner

Democracy that’s for the dead
tradition never can bring back
fresh water to the riverbed
and flow within an ancient track.
Amnesia helps us to renew
what by tradition can’t be cast
in stone, for when forgetting you
don’t flood the present with the past.


Jonah Goldberg writes about tradition in an Op-Ed article in the LA Times, February 4,2008 (“Western civilization, and other fairy tales: “Traditions are nice, but we’ve gone too far when many think that Winston Churchill is no more real than Sherlock Holmes”) :

As a conservative, I'm a big believer in the importance of tradition, which writer G.K. Chesterton dubbed 'democracy for the dead.' But tradition can only be as strong as it is in the people who pass it on. And so when I read that 23% of Britons think Winston Churchill is no more real than Spider-Man, it makes me shudder at the voluntary amnesia of society, the wholesale abdication of parental responsibility that represents.

2/4/08