Tuesday, February 07, 2006

 

Because I'm changing the quote (see left)

and this deserves to be seen at least a while longer...

It is no longer fashionable or acceptable for historians to insist that the US is the center of the world and the source of all that is good, from freedom to motherhood to apple pie. It is, however, perfectly acceptable to insist with the same self-centered arrogance that the United States is the source of all evil. Only we make mistakes or commit crimes, because, by unstated implication, only we make decisions or cause events. The rest of the world is passive and inert, and its fate is determined by what we do. In this sense the currently fashionable, self-flagellatory school of history is, at the very least, as arrogant and self-serving as the more traditional kind of self-serving history. - Bernard Lewis, In Defense of History.


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