“History is a guide to apocalyptic predictions in only one way: all previous apocalyptic predictions have been wrong”

“History is a guide to state abuses of power in many ways, and most of them point in the same direction, that it is a very bad idea to invest powers like these with the state”

These are two separate arguments. I am sympathetic to the latter and endorse it essentially as written, which is why I didn’t criticise it. My criticism of the former is not a metonymic dismissal of every other argument in the piece.