The Disney Co's decision to open a theme park dedicated to American history is most welcome — not least because it proposes to build the park a 45-minute drive from my house.
But dealing with America's past is not, alas, the straightforward matter it might once have been.
One is reminded of the lament by a Soviet historian during the Gorbachev liberalizations.
"I know the present. I think I know the future. It's the past that keeps changing on me."
Ownership of America's past, or at least the definitive interpretation of it, is currently contended for by the agents of political correctness.
They easily dominate many leading universities, tutoring the very brightest American youngsters in the unredeemed evil of white, male, European civilization as well as the pristine perfection of native cultures - and now their attention is drawn to what Disney has in mind.
At the press conference announcing the new park, a Disney representative was asked, "Will 'Disney's America' include the issue of slavery?"
Now, this is a little like asking whether a program about skiing will include snow.
The question of slavery is the central drama of the first 100 years of this republic.
More Americans died obliter-ting it — and defending it - than for any other cause.
The existence of slavery was a standing rebuke to the principles spelled out in the founding documents of the nation - and that tension largely defined our history through the Civil War.
Of course Disney will include slavery in its theme park.
But let's hope it will include other truths as well, like the fact that some free blacks owned slaves themselves (so says American Heritage magazine) or that some white indentured servants lived as miserably as black slaves.
Let's hope that when the Disney people paint the history of slavery they give credit to the Christian churches that motivated and directed the abolitionist movement.
And let's further hope that they give some attention to the incredible contributions and accomplishments of free blacks after emancipation — instead of reproducing the politically correct version of black history, which paints a false picture of unrelieved degradation and backwardness.