In North Korea, history textbooks used in schools teach that Kim Il-Sung, longtime Communist dictator of North Korea, single-handedly wiped out an entire battalion of Japanese soldiers during World War II. It is clear that the United States of America does not wish to create such a national mythology. Or is it?
Our history is often ugly. In the history of American race relations, one in which slavery, lynchings, "Jim Crow" laws, and white supremacist ideology have all figured prominently. America invented a new form of imperialism to replace old European-style colonialism, one that centered primarily on economic subjugation rather than actual political sovereignty and practiced it around the world, particularly in Latin America. Even into the 20th century the United States practiced genocide on the indigenous peoples of North America.
But America has done well in some aspects. First, America has managed to create a system of government that is the envy of the world -- the United States Constitution is the blueprint of many other nations' constitutions. Following America's example, most of Europe eventually adopted democratic republican government of one form or another. Secondly, long before "multiculturalism" became a buzzword, America had been developing a multicultural society. And thirdly, there is, at least among some Americans, a remarkable degree of self-awareness of American history, with its triumphs and tragedies. Those who study American history to a reasonable extent realize most of the picture, warts and all. Comparatively little is hidden as long as someone is willing to look. And with the coming of the "information age," one could conclude that this open-mindedness would inevitably expand, and that America may be willing to learn from its mistakes, finally repudiating the famous words of George Hegel: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Or perhaps not.
In this country there is an insidious movement away from this ideal, led by people who would attempt to bring back "the good old days," which in fact never existed. For instance, Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, if elected president, would demand that "all federally funded institutions, from the Smithsonian to the National Endowment for the Arts, will manifest a respect for America's history and values." In practice, such principles lead inevitably to censorship and the sugarcoating of history, as demonstrated by the Enola Gay exhibit. An analysis of the decisions employed by the government to use atomic weaponry and the casualties projected and the geopolitical implications as calculated at the time do not obviously determine the moral wrongness or rightness of the fateful decision, and yet there is not even a dialogue on the issue. And attempts to stifle that sort of debate are by no means limited to a political fringe; only one senator had the courage to oppose a Senate resolution with language similar to Buchanan's rhetoric. Anyone looking to dismiss conservative complaints about "political correctness" as hypocritical need look no further.
Buchanan and others don't stop there. "When many of us were young, we were taught about the greatness and goodness of this land we call God's country, in which we are all so fortunate to live." Today, however, Buchanan declaims that children's minds "are being poisoned ... against America's heroes and against American history, against the values of faith and family and country."
First off, blind faith in anything -- be it church, state, or otherwise -- is not a value worth preserving. Neither is hero worship. Nor is strident conformity. And anyone who knows American history knows that Buchanan's idealized past is a fantasy. The United States government was deliberately set up separate from all questions of religion and theology.
Of course, such a clear truth doesn't stop Buchanan from saying that "Eternal truths that do not change from the [Bible] have been expelled from our public schools, and our children are being indoctrinated in moral relativism ... and anti-Western ideology."
Well, first of all, if the notion that other cultures are actually worth studying constitutes "anti-Western ideology," then we could all use a dose of anti-Western ideology. And if Buchanan wishes to live in a theocracy, he could try the Islamic Republic of Iran, where they teach strident conformity, hero worship, and blind faith, values Buchanan seems to hold dear. (If he were indeed to travel to Iran, he might find out that religion-driven government leads to a disrespect for religion as well as of government and thus learn that a church-state separation is actually as beneficial to church as it is to state.) After all, North Korea is just another kind of theocracy -- the sacred texts are from Marx and Lenin rather than Scripture, but there is no real practical difference.
If the far right wants to mythologize our past, they should simply declare that "we want to model our national cultural institutions after those of North Korea!" It would certainly be more honest than what they are doing now.
