Sat, Nov 19, 2011 page8

• EDITORIAL: History 101 for everyone, please

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  Both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have established “academies” to groom up-and-coming politicians and school them in the mores and operations of their respective parties. May we suggest that both add some intensive history courses?

  For the KMT a course in Taiwan’s history from 1895 to 2000 and one in modern world history from World War I to present day would do; for the DPP, just the modern history should suffice. Judging from this past week’s events, they are sorely needed, and this month must have set a new record for an outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease.

  There was President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wondering if he needed to apologize for “the sin” of being a Mainlander. Once again playing the old downtrodden, misunderstood Mainlander card, just like he did when he basically whitewashed Taipei’s 228 Memorial Museum when he was mayor, terminating the museum management contract with the Taiwan Peace Foundation to ensure that exhibitions were “more balanced” because Mainlanders had suffered too. Of course, he excelled at playing the “ethnic” card in the 2008 presidential election, largely by complaining about the pan-green camp doing the same thing.

  Then there was the whole kerfuffle over who out-Hakkas who, led by former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) stupid attack on DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inability to speak her “native” tongue. Wu appeared either ignorant of or oblivious to the role his party had played in trying to eradicate any language but Mandarin. It is hard to believe it was either, so his verbal outburst must have simply been a case of political stupidity.

  However, other Hakka leaders did not win any points by calling the KMT’s language-suppression efforts “Nazi-like” and the equivalent of “linguistic genocide.” There have been many cases throughout history and around the world of one culture trying to suppress the culture and/or language of another sharing the same territory.

  The English did it in Ireland for centuries, and when a national school system was introduced in 1831, children who spoke Irish in school would be beaten with a stick. And like in Taiwan, many Irish parents pushed their children to learn English to better their chances of getting ahead, even if it meant losing their native tongue. Turkey continues to do it today with the Kurdish language and the Basques in Spain have battled Madrid’s heavy-handed policies for decades.

  So there are many examples one could draw upon without resorting to Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists before and during World War II, especially given the misuse of Hitler’s image in commercial and political advertising in Taiwan in recent years.

  As a media organization, it has gotten downright painful to have to report on the historical fallacies reiterated ad nauseam by politicians of all camps. Society should be offended that men and women, many of whom were educated to the master’s or doctoral level by taxpayer money — either at home or abroad — continue to utter such inanities.

  With all this going on, a small story about Taipei may have been overlooked this week. The capital’s “total recycling, zero landfill” program won second place in this year’s Metropolis Awards, which are handed out for projects that improve the quality of urban life. Taipei residents should be proud of how well they have done in reducing the amount of garbage they produce — a program that was first launched, by the way, when former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was mayor, though Ma and Taipei’s current mayor, Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), like to claim most of the credit for themselves and the KMT.

  Why bring this up? Because if the politicians residing or working in Taipei could only limit the amount of verbal and written garbage they produce, the quality of life for the entire nation would vastly improve.
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