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{"id":1977,"date":"2015-05-18T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T00:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1977"},"modified":"2015-05-18T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T00:35:34","slug":"news-flash-history-doesnt-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/05\/news-flash-history-doesnt-care.html","title":{"rendered":"News flash: History doesn’t care"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

But you know you\u2019ve heard this \u2014 not just from Obama, that Russia or ISIS is on the \u201cwrong side of history,\u201d for example, but with respect to any sort of Bad Guy who seems to have an advantage.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s get this straight:<\/p>\n

Yes, Hitler\u2019s Thousand-Year Reich was defeated \u2014 but not without millions of deaths. \u00a0Yes, the Soviet Union is now in the dustbin of history, but, again, only after millions of deaths. \u00a0Sometimes the good guys win. \u00a0But sometimes they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Consider the Christians in Syria and Iraq: \u00a0do you believe that, sooner or later, things will work out, even if things look pretty dire right now because: \u00a0Right Side of History? \u00a0Tell that to the Algerian Christians \u2014 well, if you can find them. \u00a0Prior to the French colonialization in the 1800s and the arrival of (charitable) missionaries, the Christian Church in that area, which one numbered among its members St. Augustine of Hippo, had wholly disappeared in the late middle ages due to forcible conversion. \u00a0(See Wikipedia<\/a>) \u00a0Or how \u2019bout Tunisia or Morocco? \u00a0Libya and Egypt, at any rate, still have a certain population of Coptic Christians, but the Christian communities in the western half of North Africa vanished some centuries after the Muslim conquest.<\/p>\n

History doesn\u2019t care about right or wrong, or whose cause is more just. \u00a0History just happens.<\/p>\n

And in Syria and Iraq, the fact that ISIS is unspeakably monstrous \u2014 that doesn\u2019t mean that somehow, inevitably, they\u2019ll just fail all on their own, so we can sit on our thumbs.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"