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EDITORIAL: History
101 for everyone, please
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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