re: "Addendum on National Myths"

Joseph W. at Grim's Hall considered the necessity of the national myth.

Money quote(s):

"The highly successful (the Chinese have one of the most successful national myths in the world; and their beastly treatment of the Uighurs and Tibetans comes along with it), the once successful (for I can dimly remember a time when public schools in this country taught an American national myth, and I've read enough old things to know it was once very strong), and the decidedly troubled."

Consider the highly successful and millenia-long experiment in cultural imperialism, and assimilation, waged by the Han. It's truly remarkable.

(Although it's much harder to consider it dispassionately if you're the next target for assimilation.)

"(I)f I had to pick a single factor that really makes a recognizable "people," a national myth is that factor. A common language helps; a common government helps; a common religion helps; but it is the national myth (that may well be bound up with all these things) that really does the trick."

Calling something a myth doesn't necessarily mean it's untrue, per se, although the imputation is certainly there.

"Smith however concludes that the Palestinian myth is not "strong enough" because their leadership is unwilling to accept a limited state that coexists with its Israeli neighbors. But I think that is not a sign of the myth's weakness, but simply its character. For better or worse, and mainly for worse, the Palestinians have indeed become a people because they have got a national myth. It's just a barren and ugly one. It is of recent vintage - that is the kernel of truth in Mr. Gingrich's statement (which I used to agree with) - but that doesn't invalidate it. All national myths have got to start somewhere." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

These are indeed the key points to carry away from Mr W.'s analysis: the Palestinian national myth is a "barren and ugly" (indeed, it's genocidal) one; and, it's of very recent vintage.

"What makes our own myth remarkable is the way it rests on ideas and laws, more than any race or religion. The complaints that led to independence for certain grew out of the British constitution, and its common-law way of developing rights. Let colonists vote for the assemblies that tax them, as Britons vote for the Parliament that taxes them, and they'll pick up the idea that they have a right to it - not in the civil-law sense that someone formally granted it, but in the common-law way, that the unifying theory is to be discerned from the actual decisions made. And our myth certainly relies on the idea of these things as rights - yet is blessedly detached from any continued racial identity. Our national identity is not weakened if we admit that Anglo-Saxons can commit beastly atrocities - the document that started it all is filled with such accusations. More remarkably, if we admit that the ideas are noble, and the men who made them law were doing noble acts, we can admit much more wihtout weakening the myth at all - that they carried flaws with their nobility, as true heroes always do, and that Americans have done many awful things since by not living up to those ideas." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

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