James Burnham: An Original American Thinker americanthinker.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from americanthinker.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Writing and reading history is one of the greatest joys of life. Writing about Ronald Reagan and WWII has been singularly pleasurable for me. What was it the philosopher Erasmus said, “When I have a little money, I buy food and clothes. But anything I have left over, I buy books.” Now, we study history for many reasons: for the sheer joy of reading; of knowing more than the next guy, or as the noted teacher George Santayana said, just to learn about not repeating failures - “Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.” Teddy Roosevelt said much the same thing.
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Former secretaries of State George Shultz and Madeleine Albright speak in San Francisco in 2010. | Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
George Shultz, American statesman, dies at 100
WASHINGTON George P. Shultz, a widely respected statesman and economist through many productive years on the public stage, has died. He was 100.
“Shultz was a key player, alongside President Ronald Reagan, in changing the direction of history by using the tools of diplomacy to bring the Cold War to an end,” the Hoover Institution at Stanford University said in announcing his death on Saturday.
Shultz began his government service in the Eisenhower administration during the 1950s and would remain a public figure through the Obama presidency. He was, however, best known for his stints in the Republican administrations of Richard Nixon (as Labor secretary, director of Office of Management and Budget, Treasury secretary) and Ronald Reagan (secretary of State).