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“Found this one last year, reading an I.F. Stone book on the forgotten war, in Korea. Doubt that I've ever read a better description of what it's like to ask questions about and be fascinated by history, in a country in which we're taught to wear patriotic blinders. "People with a built-in indifference to history are ill accustomed to retrospective digging, to lifting up rugs, to searching for subterranean forces and tendencies. Exploring the labyrinth of history is alien to the American soul, perhaps because an optimistic people find knowledge of the past too burdensome in the present." - Bruce Cumings, from the Preface of Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War ('88 edition)” — Bruce Cumings
Found this one last year, reading an I.F. Stone book on the forgotten war, in Korea. Doubt that I've ever read a better description of what it's like to ask questions about and be fascinated by history, in a country in which we're taught to wear patriotic blinders.
"People with a built-in indifference to history are ill accustomed to retrospective digging, to lifting up rugs, to searching for subterranean forces and tendencies. Exploring the labyrinth of history is alien to the American soul, perhaps because an optimistic people find knowledge of the past too burdensome in the present." - Bruce Cumings, from the Preface of Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War ('88 edition)