There was no end to the problems, and there was never any certainty in the outcome. Some of the problems in the course of time would be solved, some persist to this day and will never be fully resolved. But what strikes one most forcefully in surveying the struggles and achievements of that distant generation is less what they failed to do than what they did do, and the problems that they did in fact solve. One comes away from encounters with that generation, not with a sense of their failings and hypocrisies -- they were imperfect people, bound by the limitations of their own world -- but with a sense of how alive with creative imaginings they were; how bold they were in transcending the world they had been born into -- a world in which the brutality of unlimited state power was normal -- and in conceiving of a state system in which power was limited, defined, and defensive, and whose force would liberate people, not confine them.
What is important, is what they did. And why.
He asks questions,
How did that happen? What accounts for their creative imagination? What conditions made it possible? Can such conditions and such achievements recur?
It's worth your while to see what he's come up with.
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