My historian friend Morty Horwitz of the Harvard Law School faculty is fond of saying that those who abuse history by using it selectively to prove a point, are “looking for their friends in history.” This sort of instrumental use of history is common, especially when it is by nations to falsify their pasts. This is why so many countries try to control the interpretation of history in school textbooks in an attempt to keep school children from learning about the misdeeds of earlier generations. An even more egregious state abuse of history occurs when nations manipulate history texts and teaching in order to promote desired values, ordinarily by portraying as heroes those who stand for the desired national values.
I was trained professionally as an historian, and although I have not formally taught history for a number of years, I cannot escape my commitment to what I understand to be the proper use of history. The conscious abuse of history offends me deeply, which is why I was so engaged by the controversy over the adoption of national standards for the teaching of American history in the early 1990s. One of the principal objections of conservatives at that time to the proposed new standards was that they were insufficiently attentive to the historical role of the “Founding Fathers.” Interpreting the role of the “heroes” of the early republic has long been a political touchstone in the politics of history in this country.
Both liberals and conservatives want to claim the allegiance of the founders in order to provide historical justification for their causes. But a trained historian should know that it is not so obvious just where Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams would come down on current questions (such as the war in Afghanistan, the Obama health plan, the TARP). But that does not stop both sides from claiming the authorization of history for their policy preferences.
I’ll come to what I consider conservative abuse in a moment, but as a liberal I am particularly distressed when the abusers are people I take to be on my side of current politics. The most recent example turned up in my e-mail inbox this morning, straight from Common Cause. The message led off by saying, “I, Thomas Jefferson, have re-joined my fellow American Patriots, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Betsy Ross, to help take our country back from the corporate interests controlling our political system.” And it went on to say that “it’s time to make sure our politicians are accountable to voters. We need a government of, by and for the people. So take a minute and answer our question: Where should the Founding Fathers go next?” The message is signed by “Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father”.
Please! Where should the Founders go next? I suppose the technically correct answer is “back to sleep, rest in peace.” This is just not an intelligent, intelligible, or responsible way to discuss urgent contemporary issues.
Ironically, what Common Cause is doing here is to mimic the most common form of abuse of history by conservatives. Last Sunday, the Washington Post ran a nicely written story by Amy Gardner on how Colonial Williamsburg (“CW” to early American history types) has been attracting large numbers of visitors who are supporters of the Tea Party. Apparently Glenn Beck has been promoting CW on Fox News. The Tea Party visitors apparently share the reaction of a fellow quoted by Gardner: “I want to get to know our Founding Fathers . . . I think we’ve forgotten them. It’s like we’ve almost erased them from history.”
That cannot be what he really means, of course, since our K-12 curriculum is replete with reference to the nation’s founding and to its founders. It’s the capital “F” that counts here—there is a difference in some minds (probably Beck’s) between a founder and a Founder. These people (just like Common Cause) are looking for their friends in history.
Their friends oppose strong central government and prefer both local self-determination and individual rights. But of course they also have some contemporary policy preferences they would be happy to have the central government regulate. Gardner quotes another CW visitor who asked the CW actor playing George Washington “to reflect on the role of prayer and religion in politics.” He was disappointed in the actor’s historically correct response: “Prayers, sir, are a man’s private concern. They are not a matter of public interest. And nor should they be.” The Washington actor also said, when asked about the Boston Tea Party, that it should never have taken place. “It’s hurt our cause, sir.” CW has got historical interpretation right, though it took them a good many years to do so. It will be much harder for our country as a whole to get it right.
I suppose the Common Cause message this morning is yet another attempt by liberals not to allow conservatives to take American history away from us by claiming ownership of certain ideas. But two wrongs don’t make a right.
The best-case scenario for getting right with history would be to improve the teaching of American history so that all of our compatriots would have a sophisticated appreciation of the uses, and limits, of historical understanding. Alas, however, even professional historians all too frequently use history for instrumental purposes.
I believe that the proper use of history is simply to enable us to contextualize knowledge in a sophisticated way. History in itself cannot and will not solve contemporary problems. But historical dispute, conducted in a well-informed, civilized manner, could indeed help an educated, democratic people, to conduct its affairs in a wiser and better way.
7 Responses to Get Right With History
22074041 - August 4, 2010 at 9:26 am
Very good points, and only to add that sometimes the historical reference is also used as a code to refer to even larger “meta-issues” – sometimes having to do with race or religion or other broader beliefs that these terms stand for (e.g., that this is a Christian nation.)
ex_ag - August 4, 2010 at 9:59 am
I find it interesting that you are only now latching onto the cross-ideology “borrowing” that is at work here.Yes, liberals are now borrowing the strategy of appropriating history for their own ends just as conservatives appropriated it (along with patriotism) previously.But if we trail this tendency further back, we’d find that it’s conservatives who learned this trick from progressive educational models and took it to a dangerous and incorrect extreme.They sat in classes where teachers and professors gave up their certitude in their own knowledge because those teachers didn’t want to “infringe” upon their students’ rights to come to their own understanding of the material. They inferred from all of this feel-good “education” that facts don’t really matter. It’s our opinions that matter. (Of course, like most students, they neglect the unpleasant demand that those opinions should be backed with evidence).So, now, when conservatives need to make a case, they feel justified in resorting to their opinions and clothing them in the certainty of fact. Why not? They learned these tricks at our progressive feet.
goxewu - August 5, 2010 at 8:32 am
Whatever Common Cause’s biased borrowings from history…Dude, it’s the intro to a FUNDRAISING E-MAIL! It’s not a history textbook, or even an op-ed piece in a major daily. Look, we know Jefferson is long dead and can’t directly address us on the Internet, and if he could, probably wouldn’t say the words Common Cause puts in his mouth. Complaining that “this is just not an intelligent, intelligible, or responsible way to discuss urgent contemporary issues” is well, whatever the opposite of “He gets it” is.
maopa - August 5, 2010 at 9:36 am
You argue that “an even more egregious state abuse of history occurs when nations manipulate history texts and teaching in order to promote desired values.” This may sound jarring, but I must ask: What is wrong with founding myths? We want a democratic society in which all individuals are treated equally and we want our citizens to have a healthy degree of respect for our nation’s laws and institutions. Why shouldn’t we help our children to forge an attachment to equality, democracy, and our nation by smoothing out a few of the rough edges in our history? By this I don’t mean pretending slavery didn’t exist, but something more along the lines of focusing on the spirit of the Declaration of Independence rather than on the fact that Thomas Jefferson had illegitimate children. We don’t teach our school children that objective morality might not exist, but we teach them that there are clear rights and wrongs. Why shouldn’t history help in this endeavor?To pursue the “facts” of history without regard to the consequences of those facts is not unlike the nuclear scientist who pursues nuclear fission unconcerned about the practical applications of his work because his blind faith in the providence of science leads him to believe that his theoretical knowledge could never have damaging practical applications. Like this scientist, historians need to do a better job reflecting on the human condition, and for historians this includes the role of myths. I encourage you to read another person who has written about “The Use and Abuse of History” in order to learn that people need clouds of illusion to supply horizons and endow life, which would otherwise be meaningless, with splendor. And after you get done with Nietzsche, you might want to read some Plato and Cicero to see their reflections on founding myths. Now I know some historians are going to object to all this by invoking some vague rhetoric about “truth” or “the facts.” Too bad post-linguistic turn historians no longer have an epistemology or metaphysic that allows them to make such bold claims. If all narratives are subjective constructions, why shouldn’t we construct narratives that have a salutary influence on the society?
mbelvadi - August 5, 2010 at 11:26 am
Maopa, you may find that not everyone agrees with you that “we want our citizens to have a healthy degree of respect for our nation’s laws and institutions”. Ignoring the word “healthy” for a moment, which seems intended to guarantee that no one could disagree with the underlying concept, many of us think the purpose of education in a democracy is to give our citizens a healthy *understanding*, not respect. If after acquiring that understanding, respect develops, then it’s earned. If not, then the citizens are well positioned to do exactly what the Declaration of Independence encouraged, which is to change what’s wrong. By lying, umm, “smoothing out the rough edges”, you prevent them from seeing what needs to be changed to make a better future. That’s not a feature of a healthy democracy, it’s a feature of a totalitarian state.
maopa - August 5, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Mbelvadi, I find it interesting that you don’t also object to a couple of my other contentious assertions: namely, that we want a democratic government and a society that respects the principle of equality.Like so many other facets of morality and ethics, it’s actually quite difficult to discover a foundation for equality. We certainly aren’t all equal in terms of physical prowess, or beauty, or intelligence. We live in a post-Christian culture, so both the biblical God and the God of nature seem to be out as a foundation for equality. Sure, we might be able to all kill each other, as Hobbes points out, but that seems to be a rather flimsy foundation on which to base our entire democratic ethos. We might envision what it would be like to be behind a veil of ignorance, but given that we aren’t in fact behind such a veil, I see no reason why such a thought experiment should convince anyone to give up the privileges that s/he actually has. I guess we could say that we really, really, really feel super-duper passionately that we are all equal, but that is a far cry from the ideal of honest inquiry that we all hope to instill in students.I offer this polemic against equality not to shake anyone’s adherence to the principle, but to illustrate my point about myths. We as a society don’t want people going around, pointing out that we all might not be equal because of the consequences that such an anti-egalitarian belief would have if a large portion of society adopted such a position. But we also don’t want a totalitarian state that silences those who have opinions different from the majority. So, instead, we marginalize such anti-egalitarians by teaching (dare I say “indoctrinating”?) our children about equality at a young age by offering our children some “myths” (I use that term broadly) to support equality. Then, as adults, those children scorn all of those who would challenge the principle of equality. So what does this mean practically? I would suggest, for example, that it would do no one much good to start teaching 6-year-olds that from the perspective of human history, a belief in the principle of equality is a minority position, something that many cultures today do not accept, and something that many great minds have not accepted (think Aristotle and is argument for natural slavery). Rather than relativize the concept of equality, we should teach our children that all people are created equal and to teach our children that our “noble Founders” risked their lives for principle, that Abraham Lincoln and the North made grave sacrifices for it, that Martin Luther King spent time in jail and ultimately give his life for the principle. Sure, many Founders had slaves, Lincoln initially didn’t want to end slavery and suspended the writ of habeus corpus, and MLK was a plagiarizer and philanderer. But what good would it do to point this out to kids if it would only make them despise the great proponents of equality and, perhaps by extension, question the principle of equality itself?Then, when the children are older, after they have thoroughly imbibed the democratic ethos to the point where they will never really doubt the principle equality except as a thought experiment, we can encourage honest inquiry and expose them to some of the rougher edges of history.
rbannist - August 5, 2010 at 11:15 pm
While my views would surely be considered conservative by most, this blog raises some great issues. The modern cults of the founding fathers (both the left-wing and right-wing varieties) are so out of touch with a clear, straight forward honest evaluation of American history that those who engage in the rally ’round the founding fathers seem to be elevating figures like Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Washington, Hamilton and company to the status of at least minor deities. Naturally, to some of the right-wingers, Jesus Christ himself, appeared to these gentlemen in their dreams and guided their hands in drafting our founding documents. In defining them as devine, of course, there can be no arguing what they supposedly stood for because if one accepts that kind of thinking and views those arguments accordingly, arguing against them would be some kind of blasphemy. (The Founding Father Cult refuses to accept the wide range of diverse points of view of the founders and that their religious faith varied from very traditional Christianity to Deism.) We have plenty of sources such as the Federalist Papers to assist our deeper understanding of wht the founders’ thinking was. And while this writer supports rather strict conformity to the literal text of the Constituion, the world of 2010 is so different from 1800. Within 70 years, slavery would be abolished. In the later 1800′s, the structure of American society would change substantially from a rural to more urban society and the industrial revolution substantially changed the nature of our society. The 20th century with modern modes of transportation and communication revolutionized the American way of life and forced us to accept we could no longer enjoy our splendid isolation in the world. Can we honestly infer how Jefferson or Franklin would weigh in on today’s issues? Probably the best inference we could make is that Jefferson might compose a Declaration of Independence on a BlackBerry if he were to do it today!!!Yet with all these remarkable changes, if only we could still be following the wisdom of Tommy, Benny, Jimmy, Georgie and the guys. It is laughable but equally frightening to hear Glenn Beck scream and holler how we must study history and let the founders guide us. He’s set up his vision of a vicious plot being hatched in the late 1800′s clearly intent on ruining us pulling everything together behind some mysyerious “progressive” movement, a monolithic dark force out of which modern radical politics has emerged, which owns both the Democrats and GOP, and is hell bent on making us a bunch of Godless hedonistic perverts.Yes, and then after screaming and having “blood spurting from his eyes” as he’d put it, Beck would then break into tears sobbing madly how we had it so good but disobeyed those great founders and today’s mess is the result. Everything has such stark apocalyptic consequences to this small little demogogue with the big ratings.I think it was Napolean who asked, what is history but a myth agreed upon. Clearly, the extreme left and right understand this and we saw that play out in the recent Texas textbook warfare. The casualty was good solid historic scholarship. I imagine I am not alone thinking that the current cult of the founding fathers has surely become the refuge of scoundrels. It serves so well to further polarize society.From my more-or-less conservative viewpoint, I think I can come up with better arguments for limited government than simply saying “that’s the way the founders wanted it — so that’s the way it must be.”Two hundred plus years of history, the consequences and lessons learned, careful examination of the facts, and some good clear logic should be the bedrock of discussing today’s compelling issues. Instead, both the news media and academia are looking more and more like the Jerry Springer Show.