“But the latter problem just makes the uniquely right solution shine all the more brightly: a national museum of human rights.”

When I read this, I burst out laughing. Yes, absolutely right. How else can modern liberal society commemorate itself?

We should also remember Voegelin’s theme (which I’m stating crudely here) that each new epoch of civilization re-orders the past so that the current epoch becomes the culmination of everything that preceded it. Therefore modern, diverse, tolerant, liberal society must see all previous history as a saga of increasing tolerance and diversity reaching perfect fulfillment in itself. The problem in the present case is that, if the liberal saga contains no substance, but only ever-increasing openness to and equality of all substances, then who is the heroic subject of the saga? And if the saga has no heroic subject, how can it even be a saga? And if there is no heroic subject and no saga, then what are we commemorating, except the void?

On the changes in the European text books, it makes sense. These textbooks are designed to create the New European Person, a sort of Universal Hans Blix, the ideal type of citizen for a world in which there is no power, no sovereignty, no nations, indeed, no clear boundaries or definitions, but only an ongoing peace process based on the pursuit of consensus (a consensus between entities which themselves have no substance and no distinguishing features; think again of Hans Blix). As I said in my previous comment, since each epoch of history rewrites the past to make the entire past the prelude to itself, therefore, this new age being the Age of the Peace Process, it’s predictable that it would redefine the past in similar terms.

This new approach goes beyond multiculturalism. Multiculturalism says that all cultures are equally good and that only the dominant culture (which denies the equality of cultures) is nasty and oppressive. But this new approach takes the dominant culture, or rather the past history of the dominant culture, with its violence, conflicts, and wars, and portrays it as benign and peaceful. So political correctness is no longer a matter of celebrating the Third World and demonizing the West. Now that the former Western dominant culture has been largely destroyed and replaced by a new post-Western order, it’s no longer necessary to demonize the West.

An ironic side light is that when multiculturalists used to complaign about the supposedly derogatory views that Westerns held of of third-world cultures, Westerners could honestly reply, “Hey, we cheerfully describe our own ancestors (e.g. the Germanic tribesmen of Northern Europe) as BARBARIANS. So what’s wrong with calling people from other cultures barbarians?” These new textbooks would seem to remedy that flaw. Now there are no barbarians at all, so nobody can be called one.

However, how comprehensive is this change? Do these textbooks go so far as to portray the Nazis as peaceful reformers and the Crusaders as peaceful vacationers?

To clarify the above point:

Under multiculturalism, the past history of our civilization is seen as the forerunner of our evil dominant culture, and so it is portrayed as wicked, oppressive, and violent. But as this campaign of cultural subversion succeeds, and the former dominant culture is replaced by a new, leftist dominant culture, the history of our civilization is now seen as the forerunner of the current leftist dominant culture, and so it begins to be portrayed as benevolent, equal, and pacific.