Actually, they're taking a Marxist line now, led by James McPherson.
Democratic politics revolves around demonizing the South, in order to pick off Republican-leaning, conservative constituencies in the Upper Midwest and New England, thus recreating the divisions of the Civil War. These historians are undertaking this new round of revisionism as a service to the Democratic Party.
And Latschar was appointed in 1993 by Bill Clinton, and is a Clintonoid spawn that should have been broomed out in five minutes by Mr. Bush. -- "But that would be partisaaan", the journopolemicists of the Media Left would wail, overlooking the fact that Clinton fired every one of the United States Attorneys as one of his very first acts in office. (Of course, one of them was looking pretty hard at a little S&L scandal called Madison Guaranty......)
This new movement represents a politicization of the National Park Service. Of course, the Clintons worked on politicizing all the great agencies one way or another (affirmative action is the best example, and creating internal bureaucracies that basically functioned as political organs within bureaus whose employees were all Civil Service). But his political agenda with respect to the factionalization of the Park Service was the propagation of the Marxist, vanguardist model of society and government.
In terror of being called a racist by people who they would disdain on all other issues and since they no longer hold office, you see many on this forum who now are anxious to toss Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms over the side - in the fantasy of picking up a handful of black votes. I see it as possibly succeeding unless the Democrats overplay their hand. Plenty of hints of that too. Looks like pretty soon anyone who voted against anything even vaguely connected with civil rights and for whatever reason will be pitched over the side too, principle be damned. It's now almost totally forgotten that one of the reasons for white Southerners abandoning the Democratic Party in the'60s was the national party's strong anti-military stance.
The smart thing to do - and I doubt his handlers will allow it - is for Bush, as a regional transplant himself, to talk about the courage it took for Southerners like Trent Lott to change parties early in the realignment. This would point out that America is forward looking, that we play the game hard, then shake hands and move on. The 'R' word was a dirty word for generations of white Southerners. As rational actors, this generation acted in their own self-interest and gravitated to and influenced the Republican Party. Bush should seize the opportunity to invite rational blacks to do the same.
On the National Park Service: this article conveniently forgot to mention the names of the three "historians" on its advisory panel:
Eric Foner, known as 'Eric the Red.' His father and uncle were Communists as is he. You might have seen his name as part of the conspiracy to withhold relevant facts from the Bancroft Prize investigation.
James McPherson, another socialist. Here’s what McPherson said in an interview on the World Socialists Website (a venue he appeared on numerous times) about news coverage on the Bosnia situation: I get most of what I know out of the New York Times, and the Times is generally more balanced and recognizes more of the complexities of the situation probably more than some of the other popular media.
McPherson also stated the Clintomn impeachment was a personal vendetta.
Nina Silber received all three of her academic degrees from UC Berkeley. Virtually every one of her published works is along the lines of women's role in the Civil War.
And let's not forget that the Park Service was ordered to undertake this task - by a group with a Jessee Jackson, Jr. staffer riding herd. It was his office specifically insisting on this approach. Smells bad, huh, just by association. So, what do we have then, a committee composed of two socialists and a libber. Any surprise they would issue a report along the lines stated in the article? Not to me.
Wait until they "update" the Yorktown battlefield park. There they can demonstrate that since Britain abolished slavery early in the 19th Century, that we should have lost the Revolution since we were fighting for slavery.
On Gettysburg visitation - how many repeat visitors are interested in the military aspects rather than the social interpretation? How many blacks go to non-battle related national parks?
> Actually, they're taking a Marxist line now, led by James McPherson.
Dr. James Mcpherson of Princeton University is a Civil War scholar and Pulitzer Prize winning historian. He was appointed in 1991 by the United States Senate to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commision. He has written more than a dozen books about the Civil War. He is a serious and credible authority on the issues surrounding the Civil War.
Do you have any evidence to back up your claim (of marxist motivations) against Mcpherson?