Week of April 2, 2007

Radicals and hotheads are almost always a small fraction of the body politic in any political or social upheaval. They just make more noise, have an instinct to capitalize on general fears, prejudices, and resentments, and are allowed by the lethargy of the many to exert an influence far beyond their numbers. It happened in the days leading up to our Revolution, during which most estimates put the number of those actually committed to insurrection at about one-third of the population. It happened during the run up to Prohibition, when a nation of casual tipplers suddenly found that they had corked their own bottles. It happened in Germany in the 1930s when the mass of decent people gradually gave away their rights and freedoms a bit at a time into the hands of a frightening minority.

In our own history the benchmark of radical triumph is secession, the dark days December 1860-June 1861 when 11 states that had never individually come even close to leaving the Union before, played follow the leader into disaster. Their pied pipers were the so-called Fire-eaters, men like William L. Yancey, Louis T. Wigfall, and most of all Robert Barnwell Rhett. Their techniques were demagoguery, fear-mongering, lies and half-truths, and playing on the sectional and racial prejudices of otherwise normal citizens.

Neglect is not always benign. The idea that things have to get worse before they get better is not always the case. In the Middle East, history suggests that things get worse before they get even worse.

Should history lessons really be about stifling unpleasant truths? An astonishing study for the Government by the History Association admits that schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons – such as the Holocaust and the Crusades – because teachers do not want to cause offence.

Some teachers are dropping the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions.

Teaching history is not about considering “sensibilities’’. It is about facts, reasoning and analysis.

... this newspaper now has been sold twice in five years, to accomplish the impossible — satiating the Chandlers' greed.

Take it from somebody who spent a lot of years working for them: If these people thought there was another nickel to be made off the Los Angeles Times by selling it to the North Koreans, Kim Jong Il would be running this newspaper's editorial policy the next day.