Writing in 1765 in the full swing ot the Enlightenment, an Oxford Don and Bachelor of Divinity Thomas Warton, began the Preface to his famous History of English Poetry (from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries) with the following lines:

While reading Herbert Butterfield's Christianity, Diplomacy and War recently, I was struck as much by some marginal notations a previous reader had left behind as by the masterful text itself (published in 1953). One notation was the word “Vietnam” scribbled in the margin next to Butterfield's treatment of the Korean War. I remembered suddenly an experience I'd had during the Korean War period. I was helping then to care for an elderly gentleman, and we used to listen regularly to radio broadcasts from the battlefield. The old man, whose capacity to differentiate between past and present had failed him, would ask for further news on the war: “And how are the Central Powers doing?” World War I and Korea had for him collapsed into a single struggle.

Writing about fascism can get one in trouble. "Fascist" is used to describe every nasty person—from Mussolini and his henchmen to ill-tempered policemen and professors who expect their students to complete assignments. No wonder that anyone using the term to analyze politics in the Third World is immediately suspected of being in the pay of the Israelis—or worse. (The present author can state categorically that he is in the pay of no government, Alas!) Nevertheless, many political scientists have concluded that fascism models are useful for coming to grips with the tumultuous politics of the underdeveloped world. This article explores some of the reasons for and implications of that conclusion

Revolution” belongs to that expanding list of English words whose multiple meanings make any precise usage elusive, if not impossible. The misuse and abuse of the term “revolution” in ordinary communication is enough of a problem, but the flexibility of the term in scholarly writings makes reasonable discourse across disciplinary lines a monumental task.

Humanists, social scientists, and natural scientists have contributed in various ways to the ambiguity of the word. Invite three theologians, let's say, to discuss “revolution in the modern world” and witness the use of the same grammatical substantive to describe ecclesiastical reform, or any given number of societal changes, or the violent overthrow of an established political regime. Under such circumstances communication is as difficult as it is for a trio of recent immigrants engaged in a conversation that includes the English word “rose,” each having reached the separate conclusion that the speaker is referring to a flower, or a color, or an action just performed.

Christians have been trying to convert Jews for two thousand years. And for two thousand years Jews have been resisting with notable resiliency. Judaism has lost more Jews to apathy or assimilation than it ever has—or probably ever will—to the blandishments of Christian missionaries. Jews unwilling to affirm the beliefs or practice the rites of Judaism are rarely ripe candidates for the ardent Christian proselytizer. As a matter of fact, these approaches have most often revolted even the most cynical Jew. In modern times proselytism has become a kind of chronic nuisance, having two main effects, both of them negative. It produced a deep-seated anti-Christian attitude within the bosom of the Jewish body, and it facilitated a defensive withdrawal by Jews from the larger “gentile world.” Jews sometimes justify this inwardness with words like “peoplehood.” Non-Jews have as often labeled it “clannishness.”

Not long ago we were quite confident about how to go about thinking. If we wanted to think about some fundamental value—say, justice—we charted the course of our exploration over the broad and silent ocean of historical and philosophical knowledge accumulated in libraries. Within the last few decades, however, we have discovered, to our dismay, that knowledge has burst the boundaries of print to attack not only eyes, but ears, touch—the whole sensorium. Ease of travel and the wonders of electronics have launched us into an informational universe of too many dimensions. We can be almost anywhere. We can watch space lift-offs and half-an-hour later watch magnified human sperm travel into the womb and beyond. We can "see" the color-coded temperature of Jupiter and look back from beyond the Earth. We can see and hear war happen.