Last week saw the dedication of theGeorge W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, situated on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The project is the result of one half billion dollars in fundraising. Its dedication was attended by every living president, from James Carter, through a wheelchair bound George H.W. Bush, to a spry, and comparatively young, Barack Obama. For a brief moment, it occupied national and international attention, with most major American news sources adding their particular take to a very well worn story. Here is a sampling of journalistic fare from theWashington Post,Foreign Policy,Mother Jones, theNew York Times, andThe Atlantic.

Reporters seem to have gravitated towards telling one of two stories. The first looked at the "Obama angle". Yes, the current POTUS was in attendance, and also was able to set aside ideological bickering across parties for a very brief moment. This story is favourable towards Obama, but rides on the idea that the Office of the President stands above the Washington fray. Bush escaped largely unscathed. The second story looked more closely at the content of the library and museum. The library and museum will house around 43,000 artifacts and millions of documents from the 43rd president's tenure. Reporters chomped at the bit of demand for journalistic objectivity to raise obvious questions about whether the history told the library and museum will in any way reflect reality. The Mother Jones article linked to above lists eight things you won't find in the new library and museum facilities--the eighth being evidence of the existence of WMDs of Saddam's Iraq. (Because there wasn't any.) In this second story, Bush assumes the form of an object of scorn.

在这两个故事中，我发现第二个故事本质上更有趣。首先，我们可以在一个高度控制的环境中观看伟大的比赛。政客们不是被允许明确地批评对手，而是必须通过表现得友好来得分。奥巴马和布什被塑造为美国社会更大趋势的象征性领袖。他们能够在短暂的时间内表现得很友好，这表明所有美国人对共同命运的记忆正在褪色。然而，与第一个故事的直接性相比，第二个故事的内在魅力在于它对温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)大胆言论的拙劣演绎:“历史会善待我，因为我打算写它。”丘吉尔在关于二战的六部系列书籍中，对自己在二战中扮演的角色进行了相当热烈的描述。考虑到布什在文学创作上投入的大量时间和他的成就，他已经开始画画了。布什请求富有的朋友们拿出数百万美元，让其他人来做只能用“洗白”这个词来形容的相当败坏的公众形象。智力上的懒惰只是开始描述这种现代复兴遗产的尝试。

My own take own the efforts of Bush and friends will be obvious from the tone of the preceding. The outrages of the GOP alumni against historical scholarship, however, interest me more as a illustration of larger problems associated with the interpretation of human history than they do as examples of individual failings. The default assumption, or what can best be described as the common sense way of thinking about things, is that the study of human history gets at something objectively out there waiting to be discovered, in the same way that the fundamental features of matter or new species of animals are out there waiting to be discovered. Hence Bush is confident that the 'facts', maturing with the passage of time, will reflect well on his tenure as president. Once all the facts are known, or have come to light, or what have you, they will show him in a much better light than his detractors are presently willing to admit. Not unsurprisingly, those detractors are convinced the same set of facts, in due course, will prove otherwise.

这就提出了一个问题，“事实”一词是什么意思?这座以杜比亚的超凡能力为主题的神庙的落成，引发了这样一个问题:人类历史或更普遍的人文学科的研究，是否与在何种意义上与自然科学(如物理、化学或生物)相媲美?历史学家的研究对象，比如布什的总统任期，是否就像自然科学家的研究对象一样，客观地可得?这不是学者和学者们花很多时间担心的事情。现代大学的建设不鼓励学科之间的比较(即使它鼓励所谓的“跨学科”)。两组人都可以在一天的工作中不去想他们相对于另一组人的位置。

The fundamental criteria for factuality are that the object in question be observable such that others can verify what was observed in order to confirm the success of a theoretical framework framework to account for what was observed. The theory of evolution one such framework, within which is organized the relationships between different species of animals--or 'the facts' derived from the observation of fossils and living organisms. On this definition of factuality, Bush's tenure as president fails one of the fundamental criteria of factuality. While there is initial observation of the object, there is no possibility of verification. Bush's tenure is a one-time unrepeatable affair--thankfully.

But so is the evolution of this or that species of organism, would seem to be the obvious objection. That's true; but there's a second consideration will further complicate the comparison The material evidence for evolution and the material evidence for Bush's tenure as president are fundamentally different. Scientists theorize about processes operating in biological materials independently of creative human input. Human beings don't guide the long process that lead to the evolution of human beings. The material evidences for the evolutionary process is there to be studied, theorized about, maybe even interfered with, tweaked, 'improved' upon--but that's all. The historian, on the other hand, studies a body of material evidence that could have no existence apart from creative human input. It is impossible to conceive of all those textual, audio, visual artifacts attesting to Bush's tenure as president arising through non-human agencies, which is what evolutionary processes are. The historian never escapes the circle of humanity.

所以我用莎士比亚的手法竖中指让他们的房子都遭殃。从长远来看，如何评价布什的任期不会归结于所谓的“事实”，无论它可能被广泛或狭义地解读。布什和他的朋友们需要明白，未来几代人不可避免地会根据儒家的剧本来评判你。后代将根据你们的人性而不是客观事实来评判你们的行为。如果，从极端的角度来说，你是一个暴君或纨绔子弟，不要期望得到赞许。如果在你的监督下，人类的苦难增加了，那就别指望得到赞美了。下一代不太可能认同你对自己的评价，这是解释人类历史的一个特点，尤其是如果它被夸大得不成比例的话。如果下一代不这样做，那么他们的下一代就会，或者他们的下一代，如此下去，如此下去。

我们从中得到的教训是，与客观标准或抽象目标相比，一个人在与他人进行自我衡量时做得最好。我们所有人，我们每一个人，都在一起。