George Santayana said, “Wisdom comes by disillusionment.” How does that apply to your life? 
 
Is wisdom mostly a matter of retrospect? Many of us struggle when we are confronted by problems, and most of us fail to anticipate the consequences of some of our actions. In retrospect, we say to ourselves, “I should have….” Is wisdom in hindsight really wisdom?

​Wisdom lies in anticipation and not in hindsight.

It’s easy for anyone familiar with European civilization to remember the year 800. Charlemagne was crowned emperor of what was the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, one of those three 1,000-year empires that shaped Europe and the Near East (Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, and the aforementioned Holy Roman Empire). When Charlemagne, King of the Franks, died, the empire became a “nation divided.” But then, in the early part of the tenth century, Henry of Saxony took control of the part of the empire that lay west of the Rhine. 
 
Henry became king by request of the predecessor monarch, Conrad, Duke of Franconia. Conrad’s nobles weren’t generally fans, so his “kingdom” was rather weakly unified. It was also under attack by invading Magyars, whose cavalry were better warriors than the German foot soldiers. As Conrad lay dying, so the story goes, he told his brother that Henry, Duke of Saxony, would be a strong leader and that the nobles should choose him to be the next king. Within a few months, the nobles did, in fact, elect Henry and sent a messenger into the Hartz Mountains to inform him of his selection. Somewhat startled by the news, Henry, who was a falconer of some repute, accepted his new position. That, in short, is the story of how Henry the Fowler (Falconer) became king in 919, now a millennium ago. 
 
During Conrad’s reign, German nobles tried to ward off the invading Magyars, typically with no success. Under Henry, the Germans routed them and captured the Magyar king’s son. In negotiation for his return, the Magyar king agreed to withdraw from German lands, and Henry promised an annual payment of five thousand pieces of gold for nine years. So, for nine years Henry bought peace, and during that time, he built his own cavalry and trained his foot soldiers. At the end of the nine years, Henry refused to make any further payments, and within weeks, the Magyars sent two armies into Germany. Bad idea. Henry was prepared and defeated both armies, making Germany both peaceful and prosperous for the rest of his reign (till 936). From the time of Henry until 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was ruled by the “Emperor of the Romans,” as the German kings proclaimed themselves. 
 
Now, you’re probably wondering why I should bring up in the twenty-first century the history of Henry the Fowler and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire. Who cares about that old stuff? Well, here’s your chance to write this blog. I’ll give you three endings from which to choose. The one you prefer will be at least slightly indicative or your current state of mind with regard to current events. You might even reject all three as the kind of ending you would write. That’s fine. The purpose of this website is to get you thinking.
 
First Ending
 
Actually, there appears to be a parallel, if not a tight one, then maybe a loose one, between the history of Germany and Hungary under the former Holy Roman Empire and those two countries of the twenty-first century. That parallel lies in the invasion of the countries by large numbers of 21st-century migrants fleeing their homeland conditions. In a very short period, not only Germany, but also Hungary, the land of the Magyars, and other countries that were once part of the Holy Roman Empire have been invaded by people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Albania, Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Iran, and Ukraine. Most entered Hungary, a land that had once been a source of invaders. No, they haven’t invaded on horseback, but they have put stress on the social and economic resources of the Europeans.
 
You know that old expression about what goes around, don’t you? Hungarians once invaded Germany, and now they find themselves cooperating to solve an invasion problem. But isn’t that the way of the world? The reason that human neighbors living outside of Africa are more interrelated genetically than those living in the heart of Africa are related to their neighbors, is that with exception of the African continent, all other inhabited landmasses have been sites of invasions, migrations, and intermixed ethnicities. Europeans are less genetically diverse outside Africa than indigenous Africans are inside it. And, with our modern ability to travel, we’re far more likely to “invade” than we were when horses were our modes of transportation. The ultimate product of migrations and invasions is further genetic blending. That has its upside and its downside. On the upside is the biology that binds us and the diversity of thought that opens us up to creativity. On the downside is the biology that binds us and the lack of diversity that opens us up to biological pathogens and the potential to quash creative individualism. If we’re all the same, we’re all more likely to share a common susceptibility to diseases while at the same time falling into a commonness overseen by some Big Brother of Samethink.  
 
Second Ending
 
The Conquistadors were the Magyars of the sixteenth century. The Aztecs and Incas had no horses or wheels, no weapons of steel or guns. The invasion was not met by a ruler comparable to Henry the Fowler, but the king did wear colorful plumage. And so, a hemisphere changed its human composition. We know that invasions are not rare, and that they have more often than not led to subjugation, hardship, and even death by war and nonnative diseases like smallpox.
 
As in invasions of the past, an invaded homeland changes. Italy, for example, isn’t what it was when Etruscans and Greeks lived there, not the same when Romans ruled, not the same after invasions of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Lombards. The “good old days” never last very long. If Antarctica had an indigenous people, they, too, would eventually have experienced an invasion. Along history’s path, there have been many “Henrys,” such as Charles Martel, who won the famous battle at Tours in 832 that prevented an invasion of Europe. 
 
Third Ending
 
Angela Merkel is not Henry the Fowler. Apparently, she thought a million migrants could enter Germany and enhance the diversity of the country. Here’s a report from The Guardian:
 
            “The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has courted growing anti-immigrant opinion in Germany by claiming the country’s attempts to create a multicultural society have ‘utterly failed.’ Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily ‘side by side’ did not work. She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society. ‘This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,’ Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, west of Berlin, yesterday.”*
 
Odd, isn’t it, to have changed one’s mind so completely in a year or two of realities too obvious to ignore. Her heart was in the right place. After all, she does belong to the “Christian” Democratic Party: Love and Peace and Good Will. 
 
Here’s a reality. Those who welcome in the name of others and who offer the charity of tax money seem to miss the true nature of the Christian message, that it is the individual who must “love thy neighbor as thyself.” I say this in light of my having put by way of a charitable organization a Guatemalan child through school, from beginning to end. My effort wasn’t much financially speaking, but it was sufficient to pay for her schooling. How many of those in “sanctuary cities” are willing to put forth a personal effort to help the migrants coming from Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico? Is it an Angela Merkel scheme of charity? The “government” will do it. But the government is ultimately the tax dollar, spent by those to whom personal accountability is rarely attached. 
 
So, here’s my solution that bespeaks of a real charitable approach: Don’t meet the “caravan” at the border with border agents. Instead, meet the caravan with buses and then take them with love to a “sanctuary city,” maybe to the mayor’s house and neighborhood. Usher them into the homes of the individuals who seem to be outraged by the current government’s response to a mass migration pushed by the agenda of special interests and human traffickers. Those who have turned down asylum offered by Mexico obviously aren’t looking for asylum in general, only in “asylum” in the richest country on the planet. Or, offer the caravan passage to Canada or Germany, both of those countries having expressed charitable empathy for the plight of those in mass migrations. 
 
Last Word
 
So, there are three endings to this post. Which would you affix to the beginning? None? Then, write your own.
 
*The  Guardian  Online, US edition, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed
​