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     I am quite prepared to admit that the factual data
concerning Victorian England, or for that matter, concerning
19th Century Europe and America that I am able to recite is
meagre indeed; and that if opinions are justifiable only to
the extent that they are supported by factual data I have no
right to an opinion of my own.  The opinions that I hold, the
judgments that I must make, however, can be addressed, in the
final instance, only to the present time in which I am
living, more specifically to the present time within which I
am acting, addressed to that temporal space for which I have
moral and political responsibility.  My opinion (judgment)
concerning the Victorian past is but a projection of my
experience of the present. The same is true of my opinion
(judgment) concerning the Nazi past.  My opinion (judgment)
concerning the Victorian past is but a projection of my
experience of the present. The same is true of my opinion
(judgment) concerning the Nazi past.

     I entertain two salient concerns with regard to the
present: 1) its mendacity and hypocrisy, and 2) its
insensitivity or cruelty.  The first of these I find it
useful to project onto the Victorian past; the second, to
project onto the Nazi German past. I understand the arguments
that hypocrisy under Victoria was not without exception; and
that cruelty was not universal among Germans in the twelve
years of Nazi hegemony. These arguments, however, do not
vitiate the utility of the historical myths on which I rely
to orient present conduct.  It is surely correct, that myths
composed with more scholarly care would be different; but
they could never lay claim to unconditional validity. It is
correspondence to the imperatives of the present rather than
correspondence to an hypothetical reality in the past that
determines the ultimate value of my understanding and
judgment of history.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
