History Is Bunk

The BBC has a very illuminating and well-written look at modern American attitudes to history:

"Henry Ford said famously that history is more or less bunk, and I suspect that eight in ten Americans would agree with him - even if not all eight of them could tell you who Henry Ford was.

If you want to understand Americans, understand that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the past does not count for much...

The American politician and former ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once said that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

Once upon a time, he was right.

Now historical fact is just selected and snipped away and packaged into whatever form its manipulators want it to be - whether it is Oliver Stone's fanciful film about Richard Nixon, or the swift boat veterans' revisionism of John Kerry's service record, or the plain truth that the world, unlike a John Wayne movie, does not always wear the black and white costumes of villain and hero... "