"The world has changed . . ."

"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost. For none now lives who remembers it."

True in Tolkien's Middle Earth. Truer still in living history.

Think about this: when Ronald Reagan was seven years old, he read and heard in the news about Vladimir Lenin masterminding the Bolshevik Revolution. Reagan died only seven years ago.

Sometimes I now doubt that the change he smelled in the air in his day was much more sinister than that which I smell now.