Orwell’s Home Country
The Guardian has a poignant piece about Europe rewriting its history:
In early editions of From Cavemen to Vikings (A and C Black), the Vikings are referred to as ‘fierce raiders [who] began to attack our coasts’. But in its 1994 edition, they are described as ‘Danes [who] besides being farmers, were much better at trading than Saxons. The Danes and Saxons settled down together and Saxon England became one rich and peaceful kingdom.’…In the 1994 edition of The French Revolution (Heinemann), Napoleon is depicted less as an invader and more as a reformer whose code of measurement was introduced throughout Europe.
The irony is that I was recently reading Ben Steil’s 1994 article ‘Social Correctness’ Is The New Protectionism. The substance of the article is spot on even though it was written nine years ago (in an era when I was more likely to peruse Foreign Affairs) the substance of the article is still spot on, but its introduction seems somewhat dated: “While American social trends generally wend their way across the Atlantic, the infamous doctrine of “political correctness” failed miserably in penetrating European common sense barriers.”