An often-heard complaint is that most people seem to know so little history. The chattering classes, who get their history from the latest Socially Correct book, bemoan the crass ignorance of the great unwashed masses. But there is something to it, since current events are inextricably linked to the past, and not knowing the past makes assessing the present impossible. How much history is enough? There comes a point where individuals get caught up in history, indeed become completely obsessed by it. The harmless form are the history buffs who re-enact historical battles and dress up in period costumes. The not-so-harmless form of History Overload is the fanatic, who's latched onto some cause from the past and sets out on a crusade to puts things right. The History Overload Fanatic comes in various shapes and sizes. A relatively widespread variety in the United States are the Southern revisionists, who claim that the Civil War was not about slavery at all, but about states' rights or tarriffs. They've popped up at Sgt. Stryker's place in response to his rant about the Civil War.

On the grand scale of things, the Southern revisionists are not that widespread. By and large, the American population is singularly unobsessed with the past. In fact, the same can be said of many European countries too. Ask a Dutchmen about the last war with Spain, and he might be able to get the century right. Approximately. This is a good thing. People who obsess about the past have trouble coming to terms with the present, because the present (in their worldview) is a result of the injustices that have been done to them or their cause. The present is therefore a place to seek revenge, turn things around, subvert. Fortunately, most of the time they don't really do much about it, but brood and rage and feel hard done by because nobody else understands them.

If this psychosis becomes widespread, it can infect the consciousness of an entire nation or culture. One such example is Hungary. The average Hungarian will be able to recite dates and places from a distant past, recounting the struggle of the Magyars since the honfoglalás ("taking of the homeland") until recent times. And the problem is, they see themselves as the perennial victims of history. Especially the loss of territories with large ethnic Hungarian populations in Slovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia inflames passions. Cars in Hungary are often adorned with a sticker of the map of Greater Hungary with the foreign territories safely back in the homeland. (Did I mention I hate the word homeland? Why did it have to infect the American language? Peggy Noonan said it best: Homeland ain't no American word. The reason I am using it in this context is exactly because it has that pejorative connotation.)

Beware of people who know too much history (including historians, but for other reasons). Still on my plane ride last night, I chanced upon the opinion page in the Corriere della Sera, where I saw the headline "Arafat and this lapse by Mrs. Barghouti." Now, if anybody has ever been obsessed with history, it must be the Arabs. They've been on this wrong side of it for so long that the past festers within their souls, leaving them incapable of dealing rationally with the present. But the interesting bit in this opinion piece regards Mrs. Fadwa Barghouti, who's the wife of Arafat's crony Marwan Barghouti, who was in charge of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. He is responsible for the cold-blooded murder of many Israelis in so-called suicide bombings. A true piece of terrorist scum. Or rather, alleged terrorist scum, because he's on trial and has not been found guilty yet. That's because Israel has an actual independent judiciary, unlike the Palestinian Authority where the mere suspicion of collaboration with Isreal gets you lynched. But that aside. Back to the lovely wife of alleged terrorist scum. She said: "I am opposed to the bombings, but I can understand the motives of the bombers after 54 years of Israeli occupation."

Paolo Mieli, the columnist, then delves into the true significance of this statement, aside from its moral vacuity. You see, she said 54 years. With a history-obsessed culture, that number is delibately chosen. But what does it mean? It can't refer to the 35 years since the Six Day war (June 1967), at the end of which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai). Nor is she referring to the aftermath of the Arabs' first attempt to wipe out Israel in 1949, as that is 53 years ago. So what did happen 54 years ago? The state of Israel was founded, in May of 1948. Setting up a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza is not the PLO's agenda. The destruction of Israel is. And this pipedream of wiping out the "zionist entity" pervades Arab and Palestinian culture to the point where a reasonable compromises are rejected. Arafat would have gotten almost all that he says he wanted (to the West anyway) in the famous summit with Barak a few years ago. He declined the offer and started up the terrorist machine once again. As long as the morbid dream of destroying Israel still exists in the Arab world, there is not going to be peace in the region, because we cannot allow the only free and democratic country in the Middle East be destroyed; that would just be another step in the islamists' campaign to cleanse of world of Western civilization.