The movie "The Reader" is being shown around most of the world right now - and Kate Winslett having just won an Oscar for her role in the adaptation of the best-selling book.
The underlying theme of the book is guilt and how people react to and deal with evil.
In a timely piece "Obama please note: Those who fail to 'master the past' are guilty, too" in the Japan Times, Roger Pulvers reminds the new president that there is, in effect, unfinished business in relation to the Bush administration:
"What will be the world's collective view of post-Bush America? Americans should take a cold hard look at their past, as they so require of others. The world will forgive what is admitted to and atoned for. Without admittance and atonement, there is no moving forward. The positive example of Germany and the negative example of Japan should be ample testimony to that."
And:
"In "Guilt About the Past," based on guest lectures that Bernhard Schlink gave at Oxford University last year, the University of Berlin law professor describes the "long shadow" cast by the perpetrators of war crimes on their descendants.
"The act of not renouncing, not judging and not repudiating carries its own guilt with it," he states in the book published in January by University of Queensland Press.
Last week in this column I discussed issues of guilt and atonement as they relate to Germany and Japan. This week I will examine how concepts of responsibility and self-questioning apply to the United States of America.
U.S. presidents, secretaries of state and defense, and members of Congress are certainly quick to point out perceived human rights' abuses and political crimes committed in other nations. The assumption is always that the U.S. occupies the moral high ground of human dignity — so allowing Americans to believe in themselves as altruistic and selfless."
The underlying theme of the book is guilt and how people react to and deal with evil.
In a timely piece "Obama please note: Those who fail to 'master the past' are guilty, too" in the Japan Times, Roger Pulvers reminds the new president that there is, in effect, unfinished business in relation to the Bush administration:
"What will be the world's collective view of post-Bush America? Americans should take a cold hard look at their past, as they so require of others. The world will forgive what is admitted to and atoned for. Without admittance and atonement, there is no moving forward. The positive example of Germany and the negative example of Japan should be ample testimony to that."
And:
"In "Guilt About the Past," based on guest lectures that Bernhard Schlink gave at Oxford University last year, the University of Berlin law professor describes the "long shadow" cast by the perpetrators of war crimes on their descendants.
"The act of not renouncing, not judging and not repudiating carries its own guilt with it," he states in the book published in January by University of Queensland Press.
Last week in this column I discussed issues of guilt and atonement as they relate to Germany and Japan. This week I will examine how concepts of responsibility and self-questioning apply to the United States of America.
U.S. presidents, secretaries of state and defense, and members of Congress are certainly quick to point out perceived human rights' abuses and political crimes committed in other nations. The assumption is always that the U.S. occupies the moral high ground of human dignity — so allowing Americans to believe in themselves as altruistic and selfless."
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