> With hindsight, we can always see through the dubious “authority” of such historical sources. Few things look as unstable as the rock-solid certainties of previous ages. Since encyclopedias are supposed to be balanced and disinterested, the bias often seems even more naked.

Oh, he comes so so so close to what I wanted him to say, but he didn't say it! He was right there, but couldn't pull the trigger on, "...and our current sources are almost certainly as biased."

Actually, I'll go a step further - the official story of the present is almost certainly entirely false, but so is the "official story" of history. If you read primary sources, it quickly becomes obvious that the explanation behind most important events understood now is at best glaringly incomplete.

Here's a major example:

The United States was one of the closest allies of Japan for up to three years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. America supported the Meiji Side during the Meiji Restoration, which was Japan's civil war that switched from control by Shogun (head military and on-Earth leader) to control by Emperor (head of everything in the religion of the time, but had been not involved with earthly affairs for the 250 years prior to the Meiji Restoration). The post-Meiji Japanese government and American government got along really, really well and were great trading partners. As of 1939, Japan was importing 80% of its oil and more than half of its scrap metal from the United States, buying lots of arms and ships too. (America sold arms to all parties in WWII prior to 1940 - the English, French, Germans, Russians, Nationalist Chinese, Communist Chinese, Japanese, and a few more places)

Then... in 1941 the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. WTF?

Really, WTF? That'd be like the United States bombing one of Taiwan's military bases in 2014. That's four years from now. How the heck would that happen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Control_Act#.22Moral_emb...

Hmm...

Also not covered in that article - besides the embargo, the United States declared Japan "a hostile nation" and started moving troops, equipment, and weapons into Hawaii and the Philippines (the Philippine Islands were owned by the USA at the time).

To try to give you an example of the scope of this, this would be a lot like if Iran said that no OPEC countries could sell oil to the United States, declared the United States an enemy of Iran, and started moving tanks and soldiers to the Iran/Iraq border. The U.S. might not attack, but would anyone be surprised if they did?

Now, there's two points worth mentioning. First, is that whenever I tell people about this, the most frequent thing I hear is, "Yes, but Japan was doing evil things." Okay, sure, I agree with you. But the United States have had favorable relations with a lot of countries that did a lot of evil things in history, including the Soviets who were considerably more evil than the IJA, and including European powers when they were at war and committing genocide in various different times and places in history.

Second, enforcing that "moral embargo" cost the United States thousands of Americans dead and millions of dollars... and now it's not talked about any more. I think it's worth talking about and knowing about. The official story learned about WWII is that "Japan was evil and totally psycho, so despite the fact that they were already at war with a half dozen countries across multiple fronts, they attacked the largest neutral power in the world who was formerly their close ally." Which... doesn't add up. The "Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because they're totally crazy and psycho" angle was always wrong, but few people know it now. I mean, they'll know it in the year 2300 or whatever, just like we understand why Rome took out Carthage now, but I'd say modern knowledge and understanding about events is often biased, and it's worth comparing our understanding to an early primary or secondary whenever possible.