Commentary In “Four Quartets,” one of the most celebrated poems of the last century, T.S. Eliot writes: “Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past. … A people without history/ Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments.” Eliot’s meditations on time are relevant to the theme of this article. The idea of “the democracy of the dead” originated with Edmund Burke. In his “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” published in 1790, more than a year before the revolution reached its height, with the streets of Paris flowing with blood, he wrote: “Society is indeed a contract. … It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it …