Posted on 09/24/2023 7:03:05 AM PDT by karpov
n 2022, Jon Lauck published The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900. His book describes a wonderful range of things to love about the 19th-century Midwest: its democratic civic ethos, the enduring Midwestern commitment to antislavery that resulted from the Northwest Ordinance’s original prohibition of the practice, and the wildfire-spread of co-educational colleges in the region. Lauck also adorns his book with wonderful quotations, which illustrate points such as the Midwestern love of literature that made it the talk of every table. “When William Dean Howells was visiting Representative James A. Garfield in Hiram, Ohio, in the late 1860s,” Lauck writes, “Garfield ran around to all his neighbors yelling, ‘Come over here! He’s telling about Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell and Whittier!’” The Good Country provides chapter and verse on why Americans have cause to love the Midwest’s history.
The publication of a book like Lauck’s should not have been news. But it was news, startling news, because the American historical profession has been taken over by a body of professors animated by an extraordinary hostility toward America and Western civilization as a whole.
They don’t write books like Lauck’s anymore—not at Harvard, nor at the University of Wisconsin, nor at Denison College. Instead they complete projects with titles like The Children of Lincoln: White Paternalism and the Limits of Black Opportunity in Minnesota, 1860–1876 (2018) and Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest (2022). What’s happening to Midwestern history is happening to all of American history. The story of our wonderful country, and the civilizational tradition from which it came, is being memory-holed by our universities’ history departments.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
It is such a shame how American advanced degrees are filled with those that have been totally indoctrinated by leftists. History, like the similar fields, have agenda driven theories foisted upon the textual subjects and then orchestrated “proofs” corrupt the field.
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Unhappy people writing for an audience of other unhappy people.
Marxist switched from “class” to “race” since their brand of nonsense never caught on in America where they vast majority of people consider themselves middle class (even they technically aren’t)
Establishment historians of the last century may have had their biases, but they did not display them so blatantly.
“enduring Midwestern commitment to antislavery”
Except for a few minor problems in Missouri and Kansas over the slavery issue.
The RNC needs to buy some billboards covered with words from the founding fathers and some patriotic Americans like JFK.
ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU, ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY “
I’D CHIP IN FOR THAT.
There is probably nothing more dangerous to the American nation than women who have received OhDs in the humanities from IVY league universities. Real scholarship is dead in most fields at these places.
Les fleurs du mal
Problem is, the history that is taught is often not the history that happened. I suggest that’s a problem.
“Unhappy people writing for an audience of other unhappy people.”
Yes, except that all these evil, pernicious ideas coming out of universities find their way into our elementary and high school textbooks and our children learn to hate America. Just look at Zinn’s history book for high schoolers.
These evil bastards are creating the next generation of America-hating malcontents.
You do have to wonder what comes after the white-hatred and America-hatred has exhausted itself.
BTTT
Critical Theory = Critical Race Theory
The victors write the History.
It was more like an enduring commitment to the removal of non-whites. Those wonderfully humanitarian Midwesterners passed laws and amended state constitutions to make it very difficult for blacks to live there. The "underground railroad" wasn't a secret passage through the South to the North, it was a secret conduit THROUGH the North to Canada precisely because it was more dangerous to be black in the Midwest than either Canada or the South. As with all claims of Yankee virtue, the best policy is still "ask an Indian".
That’s why you should stick to original sources when studying history. The history departments are often the most left wing in the university.
From what I understand, one problem has a name. It's called postmodernism. After one realizes the adopted scientific ideal doesn't work for the study of history modernism comes to an end. For example, experiments in a lab can be replicated for materials, but historical events are actually altered somewhat by writing and speaking. That is a very serious problem for those who held out for scientific precision. Is this the problem you are thinking of?
Next after "postmodernism" there is a second problem. It's a bigger problem: if it's impossible to replicate the event, the truth of all historical events is considered unattainable and there is no such thing as truth. This invites an age of absurdity, where constructs of meaning for history are often self-referential or other-referential. No longer oriented toward truth, it can be oriented to whatever else. You get to say anything you want about it. You are permitted to be absurd. How does that turn out? Your view is quickly harnessed into a new orientation. Instead of truth, it will yield to sheer political power. For example, the global idea of "democracy" insists that the correct interpretation is whatever the most powerful say it is, not the majority of citizens. Some of thought of this as the divination of a powerful ruling class.
These problems are unnecessary if historical truth is something other than scientific materialism.
Right now, the very best history is being written outside faculties.
Ian Toll has a superb trilogy on the U.S. Navy in the Pacific in WW II.
Adam Zamoyski has produced the very best work on the Congress of Vienna. Non-academician.
ANY of Ron Chenow’s biographies are excellent.
Irwin Gellman’s books on Nixon are great. He used to be a prof., but I don’t see that he is affiliated with a university now.
Then there’s yours truly.
BTTT!
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