An Imperial Diadem

History never ends. But that doesn't mean it simply pushes ahead on a straight line into the future. History also pushes into the past as disruptions in the present ripple backwards to reveal new meanings in what came before. History has given us our understandings of the Second World War. The war saved Europe and the West from fascism. It established America as the leader of the Free World in the struggle against communism. It made explicit racism anathema. It idealized global government. It serves as a warning against appeasement. From a classical liberal perspective, the war also saved the institutions but buried the ideals of the Enlightenment. After three generations thus unmoored from their foundations, with a period of disruption upon us, the institutions, too, are in jeopardy. Might a classical liberal second look at the war find in its rubble the lost ideals needed to save the institutions?