I sometimes get puzzled how it is people find it so easy to say "We" did this or "You" did that when they are talking about other people maybe hundreds of years ago.

But the truth is - and it's so obvious it shouldn't need to be said - it's never "we" or "you" - it's "they". No grounds for feeling either proud or ashamed. We can admire them or disdain them, but we can't be them. Americans of today have no more reason to be proud of the Declaration of Independence than they have to be ashamed of the slave trade. British have no more reason to be ashamed of Oliver Cromwell than they do to be proud of him.

All we can do with the past is learn from it. We don't own it and it doesn't own us. We're spectators, and taking sides is just a pretence, a game.