| Abstract | Such misreadings become cherished myth. The civic value of "noble lies" is explained in Plato's Republic. For the general good, Socrates contrives "a poetic fairy story, a magnificent myth" that will make men "think of the land as their mother and protect her if she is attacked." Few would at first believe this fabrication, but it would "succeed with later generations."(11) Sacred origins sanction like myths today. You are asked if you "believe in the Monroe Doctrine," in Sumner's example. "You do not dare to say you do not know what it is, because every good American is bound to believe in" it.(12) "To tamper with the received story of any people's past is dangerous," notes a modern historian, "because it disturbs the sanctified version that makes the present bearable."(13)
The "real" America of patriotic dreams has long dominated school history texts. Shoing "national heroes in an uncomplimentary fashion [even] though factually accurate [is] offensive" to American school boards. Civic allegiance remains the main aim of most school history. Publishers expunge anything awkward or even debatable. "Are you going to tell kds that Thomas Jefferson didn't believe in Jesus?" a textbook editor asked a history teacher. "Not me!"(25) "If there's something that's controversial, it's better to take it out." To avoid any offense, one publisher would omit "controversial" past notables like Roosevelt and Nixon, along with any "living people who might possibly become infamous."(26) The dubious future is ditched along with the suspect past.
Blatant deceit is the raison d'être of Peter Shaffer's play Lettice and Lovage. His tour guide thrills visitors with flights of fancy that bring Fustian Hall to life as bald facts fail to do. "Enlarge -- enliven -- enlighten" is her maxim; "fantasy floods in where fact leaves a vacuum." We need fantasy. Gluttons for false facts, we bring to the most improbable past an "immense assumption of [sacred truths], of the general soundness of the legend," notes James; like Otto at Cologne and Irving at Stratford, we swallow the reliquary shell's "preposterous stuffing" almost whole. But not quite whole; we know we're being fed by partisans. As playwright Alan Bennett says, "scepticism about one's heritage is an essential part of that heritage."(46)
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