According to this myth, America passed through the Depression and World War II to emerge not simply victorious, but purified. To be loyal to the postwar order was to stand with democracy against tyranny, openness against hatred, equality against hierarchy, and progress against barbarism. World War II did not create every idea later associated with the postwar order. The first is vulgar revisionism, which imagines that because the postwar myth is false, the Axis regimes must somehow become defensible. Rewriting HistoryIn time, if the postwar myth becomes calcified enough, the key political and philosophical question—“What is justice?