Peter, here’s how I figure it in my own life.

When I was in college, I heard Alger Hiss give a talk.When Hiss was young, he clerked for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.When Holmes was a captain in the army, he told President Lincoln to get down when he looked over the parapet on a battlefield he was inspecting.When Lincoln served his one term in the House, one of his fellow congressmen was former president John Quincy Adams.When John Quincy Adams was a boy, he heard the cannon and saw the smoke of the Battle of Bunker Hill from his hometown in Braintree.

When I recited this chain to Paul Berman, the social democrat, he marveled, “And it runs via Stalin!”