Detroit's bankruptcy filing last week and the decades of decline that preceded it have been a predictable political and historical Rorschach test. The right blames the city's demise on moral failures and weak character -- the banana-republic-caliber corruption and fiscal fecklessness of its politicians, the greed of its unions, the spinelessness of automobile executives who gave into them. To the left -- more inclined to see history as the product of "great forces" than "great men" (or terrible ones) -- the Motor City was swamped by powerful tides: racism, sprawl, and unbridled capitalism.