From A Glimpse of the World blog:
Imagine a world where Germany denied the Holocaust, the United States denied the slaughter of Native Americans and Europe denied organizing its immensely profitable and centuries-long trans-Atlantic trade in African slaves.
Why would they bother? Presumably because they thought cleaning up these dark blots on their past would boost their self-esteem, enhance patriotism and raise their stock in the world.
Close your eyes, spin on your toes three times and reopen them to behold a world where precisely this sort of thing goes on: today’s East Asia.
In many respects, this region has been a guiding light for the rest of the world in the past three decades or so, building strong global economies, providing near-universal education for its people and lifting huge numbers of citizens out of poverty.
As we were reminded in the past week, however, a more honest and sophisticated attitude toward history has not been one of the bright spots. [Full Text]
