Week of January 18, 2010

By 1980, significant problems could hardly be denied. American industry was losing its competitive edge. The American economy was becoming dependent on foreign oil. The dollar was no longer almighty. American society was torn by new conflicts, over race, over feminism, even over the American future, while abroad the American example was no longer uncritically followed.

Ronald Reagan’s response was denial. He proclaimed morning in America, and half the country applauded.

Waging war is never morally pure, but keeping religion out of it seems far more pragmatic than promoting Bible sword drills. At least in World War II our fighter pilots were far more likely to paint hot blondes on their plane fuselages than they were Bible verses.

How often have we heard the cliché"history repeats itself" or heard superficial likenesses drawn between past events and present?...

How often have we heard the causes of great events drawn tens or hundreds of years into the past or heard some linear framework imposed upon the past's complexities?... History is not simple. It is organic, it is always shifting and changing. The present is the nigh improbable result of an infinite number of decisions, past and present. It is unpredictable, not guaranteed... History is dangerous.

Ironically, it is one of history's great controversial figures, the accidental-emperor Claudius, who best understood the purpose of history... Claudius understood that history is active and organic, that it shifts and changes with every moment... He outlined an abstract public duty, a duty framed by the underlying currents of history, by his understanding of these currents, a duty that he as emperor was called to uphold. That, he believed, was history's only role and purpose. And so it is for us... That is why we do and must study it--to discover our own duty, our own purpose. History is personal.

When an American working in China met a Communist Party cadre recently, he was greeted by a backhanded compliment: “With our 5,000 years of history, we in China think you Americans are doing pretty well for your brief history of about 230 years.”

To which the American, alluding to the six decades of the People’s Republic, responded: “Well, we in the United States think China’s not doing badly for its mere 60 years of history!”

The remark did not do a lot for Chinese-American relations, but it has to be said that history is a malleable thing here. China finds comfort in a past whose immensity contains many dynasties that lasted longer than all U.S. history. Posters exalting the Communist Party show the Great Wall, the better to link its rule with immovable authority and nationalist grandeur.

At the same time, China’s modern rulers like nothing so much as reducing history to a blank sheet. Everywhere the past — temples, ancient walls, sinuous alleys — is being swept away. Disastrous periods of Mao’s rule, including the famine of 1959-61 and the Cultural Revolution, have been airbrushed from history. Like “June 4” — shorthand for the crushing of the Tiananmen uprising in 1989 — they are taboo.