made for writing impartial history, but most of what we call historyrnis a conflict of wills, between leaders and nations. Whorncould write an impartial account of the Crusades? Not a faithfulrnCatholic or Muslim, and certainly not an atheist who isrn”neutral” on the religious claims of the two parties: He, in fact,rnhas the biggest ax to grind. I prefer Hilaire Belloc or the Whigrnhistorians who never concealed their prejudices or theirrnagenda.rnIn MemoriamrnFrom Giuseppe Ungarettirntranslated by Thomas FlemingrnHis name,rnMohammed SheabrnDescendantrnof nomad emirsrnsuicidernbecause he no longer hadrna countryrnHe loved Francernand changed his namernBecame Marcelrnbut was not Frenchrnand no longer knewrnhow to livernin the tents of his peoplernwhere they sip coffeernand listen to the plainsongrnof the KoranrnAnd he did not knowrnhow to raise the strainrnof his desolation.rnI accompanied himrnalong with the landlady from the hotelrnwhere we livedrnin Parisrnat number 5 rue des Carmesrndecaying backstreetrnon the way downrnHe rests in the cemetery of Ivryrna suburb that always has the lookrnof a fairrnthe day it is breaking uprnAnd I may be the only onernwho still knowsrnthat he was ever alive.rnOnce upon a time, newspapers displayed a similar candor,rnidentifying themselves as Democratic or Republican, franklyrnacknowledging the prejudices that their readers would be ablernto discount. Today, when the overwhelming majority of journalistsrnvote for liberal and Democratic candidates, they persistrnin the fiction that there is no liberal bias in the media. Thernsmaller number of conservatives insist on the parallel fiction,rnthat conservatives are only interested in an objective evaluationrnof the facts. When Michael Kinsley was still at the New Republic,rnhe dismissed the whole idea of liberal bias, saying:rn”Since most journalists I know are reasonable, intelligent people,rnthe mystery to me is not why journalists tend to be liberalsrnbut why so many other reasonable, intelligent people are not.”rnIn other words, a difference of opinion, among otherwise intelligentrnpeople, is a mystery requiring explanation.rnG.K. Chesterton anticipated Kinsley when he described thern”new bigot” as the man who says, “I will not argue with you, becausernI know you agree with me.” In Heretics, Chesterton distinguishedrnbetween the fanaticism of true believers and genuinernbigotry, which he defined as “the anger of men who havernno opinions.” Impartiality, he once said, “means at best indifferencernto everything.”rnIndividuals have their own points of view, but so do groupsrnand traditions. The history of the past 500 years will be toldrnin quite different language and emphasis if the teller is, say, anrnIcelander, an Orthodox Serb, or an African-American. Ofrncourse such a history would be ver)’ partial —like the histor)- ofrnEurope from the Polish perspective written by NormanrnDavis? —but it would open up entire vistas that had beenrnveiled. Frequently, it is only by adopting a point of view (if onlyrntemporarily) that a scholar or journalist can catch a glimpsernof the truth that eludes all those whom impartiality has madernblind. The experience of religious faith, for example, educatesrnthe believer who lives with its scriptures and ceremonies andrncomes to understand the religion as no objective outsider can.rnMatters of faith lie beyond reason and scholarship, and thernonly objectivity possible is that of the non-believer who cannotrnbe objective at all because he rejects the phenomena underrnconsideration. Hundreds of books have been written by atheistrnscientists challenging the possibility of the miracles attributedrnto Christ—as if a miracle were not by definition something thatrntakes place outside the course of the laws of nature. This doesrnnot mean that the scholar or journalist cannot aim at therntruth—and not only in matters of fact. But for a Western Christianrnto discover something of the truth about the Crusades, hernmust be willing to enter into the mind of the other sides—thernOrthodox Byzantines and the Muslim Arabs, Saracens, andrnTurks. He must be willing, in his imagination at least, to dwellrnin the tents of the infidels, to sing their songs and hear their poems,rnto find out the story they tell of themselves.rnLike a fair-minded tiaveler who goes native, for a time, in foreignrnlands and comes back with an appreciation for the strangernthings he has witnessed and experienced, the historian or journalistrncan temporarily suspend his judgment on the aliens andrnenemies to whom he owes a fair and honest accounting. Hernmust play Homer to Hector, Walter Scott to Saladin.rnThis was the approach used by Rebecca West in her book,rnBlack Lamb and Grey Falcon, which depicts the three parties inrnBosnia—the Serbs, the Croats, and the Muslims—on the evernof the Yugoslav bloodbath of World War II. Fiftv’ years later,rnjournalists who donned the mantie of impartiality expressedrn12/CHRONICLESrnrnrn