Tony Judt & Henry Adams: What have we learned, if anything?

[alice wellintown]

The twentieth century is hardly behind us but already its quarrels and
its achievements, its ideals and its fears are slipping into the
obscurity of mis-memory. In the West we have made haste to dispense
whenever possible with the economic, intellectual, and institutional
baggage of the twentieth century and encouraged others to do likewise.
In the wake of 1989, with boundless confidence and insufficient
reflection, we put the twentieth century behind us and strode boldly
into its successor swaddled in self-serving half-truths: the triumph
of the West, the end of History, the unipolar American moment, the
ineluctable march of globalization and the free market.



http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/judt-tony/