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Jim Guleke's avatar

“The rule I’ve devised for answering such questions is this: The closer the historical subject is to the present, the more confidence I have in drawing inferences. The farther into the past I go, the more cautious I am in conjecturing.”

Is this one of Brand’s 9 Rules of History that Jake Peterson wrote about in his Comment to your April 7 essay ”Support your local sheriff”?

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H. W. Brands's avatar

It's not a law itself. But it's implicit in several of them.

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Anne Schwartz's avatar

Amazing. "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Letter from child to parent: Dear Mom and Dad, Send money! Your son/daughter

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