Past & Present

He might call himself “The Slouch”, but sports columnist Norman Chad is doing my work as well as his own. Trying to tamp down the hype for CBS commentator Jim Nance and his “historic journey” through three major sports events, Slouch takes a swipe at the tendency to call things “historic” that probably are not. Chad compares Nance to Hannibal, among the protagonists of other actual historic journeys:

Hannibal: He marched over the Alps into Italy — over the Alps– in 218 B.C. with tens of thousands of infantrymen and war elephants. Elephants! Over mountains!!! Clearly, the No. 1 Carthaginian commander of all-time.

I guess the lesson is that even a self-described slouch needed at some point to learn him some history.

The proposal that the European Union develop a continent-wide history text makes me think of Benedict Anderson. The idea of a nation is essentially that, a social construction, which relies upon ritual, symbol, and a version of history. I am not saying there is anything sinister about this move. It is a mental part of the integration of Europe that has already begun as a legal and political process. This process runs parallel with a weakening of Europe’s nation-states.

The journalist Jeff Shear is mentioning President George Bush’s use of Neville Chamberlain and “appeasement” when Mr. Bush discusses Iraq. But it’s not just Mr. Bush, I’m afraid. The fact is, on any given day in Washington, some politician somewhere is lazily trotting out the term “appease” in order to slime an opposing view, no matter what the topic of discussion.

So, although his piece is interesting, Mr. Shear doesn’t decry the politicians’ overuse and misuse of the battered figure of poor old Neville, who of course granted Adolf Hitler’s wish to annex a chunk of Czechoslovakia, and thereby supposedly assure “peace in our time.” If Mr. Shear won’t, I will.

The Bush administration’s parallel between Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Adolf Hitler in 1938 is forced. Whatever you may think of President Bush and the Iraq War, you have to admit that the position of Saddam Hussein in relation to world leaders in 2003 was far different from the demanding, threatening posture of Adolf Hitler among the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy at Munich in 1938.

But “appeasement” — which in my view means the granting of an aggressor’s demand in the hopes it will stop aggression — has come to mean in common political usage any position on an issue that doesn’t itself exude aggression. Bringing up Chamberlain is supposed to make the mentioner seem not only manly, but also historically informed, I guess.