The National Interest
Spring 2001

A Slithy Tove

by George Walden

 

. . . Confronting new generations with dilemmas about interpreting the past is a worthy task, and, for all its inadequacies, I am glad this book was written. Much of it is informative, readable and sound, and will do no one any harm. Nor would I doubt its sincerity for a moment. But morality is a slithy tove of a subject, one that easily wriggles from one's grip and darts off in unintended directions. Ours is an age of ease and smarmy sanctimoniousness, in which the most challenging decision many people take in the course of a year is whether to repaint their sitting rooms stonewall gray or magnolia; an era in which historical novels, TV shows, films and plays have discovered that there are easy profits and cheap glory to be gleaned from retrospective moralizing to a public imperfectly acquainted with history, not least because moralizing rather than imparting knowledge now plays a large part in public education. . . .