HELL NO...!!! let the RAT write about arugula maybe
Posted on 08/05/2010 1:54:30 PM PDT by neverdem
In his 2000 book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, then-Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles asserted that guns were actually rare in early America, and that the idea of widespread gun ownership before the Civil War was an "invented tradition." This provocative thesis charmed the academic world and netted Bellesiles the prestigious Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. But as it turned out, Bellesiles was the one doing the inventing. As Bentley College historian Joyce Lee Malcolm wrote in her definitive account of the Bellesiles affair for Reason:
The evidence he had presented for his groundbreaking theory was investigated first by experts from a range of disciplines and political viewpoints; then by a special symposium in a learned journal; and finally, as a result of the disturbing findings, by the professor's university and an outside panel of scholars that it appointed. The results are now in: Bellesiles' arguments are based on wholesale misuse of evidence and, in some cases, no evidence at all. The "invented tradition" is fact, the professor's version a folk tale.
The results were swift and severe: Bellesiles' publisher dropped the book and Columbia rescinded the prize, the first time that it had ever retracted a prize in the Bancroft's 50-year history. Bellesiles also lost his tenured job at Emory and basically disappeared from public life. But now he's back with a new book (from a new publisher) called 1877: America's Year of Living Violently. Does this discredited and disgraced author deserve a second chance?
The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to think so. Bellesiles is the subject of a new and mostly sympathetic portrait by Chronicle writer Tom Barlett, who concludes his piece like this:
In a sense, Michael Bellesiles will never get a second chance. The odds of his once more securing a tenure-track position are vanishingly small. He will never completely outrun the controversy over Arming America. He is aware of that, and his goals are more modest: "I would like to think that the scholarship I am producing will demonstrate that I am a competent, capable historian and I always have been."
He doesn't want to talk about Arming America. He doesn't want to talk about guns. He doesn't want to talk about Emory. Instead the historian wants to look forward. "Let's talk about the new book," he says. "And the book after that. And the book after that."
Of course Bellesiles doesn't want to talk about the fraudulent book that cost him his job and his reputation, but why should we pretend like it doesn't exist? Bellesiles' so-called scholarship has already demonstrated that he is an incompetent, incapable historian. What more is there to say?
HELL NO...!!! let the RAT write about arugula maybe
However, this is a free country. If there are enough lefty idiots who want to buy his books, then they are free to do so, and if there are enough of them, they'll secure his future as a freelance author mascarading as a historian.
That's one of the costs of freedom: you have to let people do stupid things. Sometimes, the stupid actions of some people bring financial gain to others who don't deserve it. But this is small cost relative to the tremendous benefits of freedom, so I'm certainly willing to live with it.
For the general FYI, I looked up some specifics about the charges against Bellesiles (courtesy of wikipedia). The short version is, this guy engaged in sloppy, disingenuous research that wouldn’t have passed muster in an undergrad’s senior thesis, much less a professor’s monograph. He deserves every lump he’s got coming to him.
The long version:
* purported to count guns in about a hundred wills from 17th- and 18th-century Providence, Rhode Island, but these did not exist because the decedents had died intestate (i.e., without wills);
* purported to count nineteenth-century San Francisco County probate inventories, but these had been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire;
* reported a national mean for gun ownership in 18th-century probate inventories that was mathematically impossible;
* misreported the condition of guns described in probate records in a way that accommodated his thesis;
* miscited the counts of guns in nineteenth-century Massachusetts censuses and militia reports,
* had more than a 60% error rate in finding guns listed as part of estates in Vermont records; and
* had a 100% error rate in the cited gun-related homicide cases of seventeenth-century Plymouth.
* Critics also identified problems with Bellesiles’s methods of citation. Cramer noted that Bellesiles had misrepresented a passage by George Washington about the quality of three poorly prepared militia units as if his criticism applied to the militia in general. (Washington had noted that the three units were exceptions to the rule.
Why, did he try to commit suicide and fail?
Thanks neverdem.
As far as gun ownership in yon olden days...there probably is some truth to the notion that it became more prevalent after the Civil War, due to the possibility of mass-production through industrialization. Greater supply, lower prices, and so on.
Bellesiles is still an idiot, however.
He’s still employed:
“Michael Bellesiles teaches history at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author of numerous books, including Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. He lives in Connecticut.”
His publisher calls him a “celebrated historian.”
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1763
And look who’s on the board of New Press! FRANCES FOX PIVEN of Cloward-Piven fame!
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=25
And it’s funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
One of Bellesiles biggest mistakes is NOT actually studying the "gun culture". If he had, he would have known that it is a LONG and honorable custom of aging gun owners to pass on many of their firearms to younger folks BEFORE they die. As a result of this, probably a majority of firearms never showed up in estate probate records, the objects in question having been transferred earlier,
Without reading this thread I would have to say that it seems he is looking for a third chance, and no, he doesn’t deserve it.
That’s a good point!
Are you kidding I am suspicious already!
The year of Living Violently??? How about 1860-1865?
You know, Harper's Ferry? The War Between the States? Gettysburg? Cold Harbor?
Best regards,
Cheers!
Thanks for a reminder of the particulars.
Piven & Soros, it figures. Thanks for the links.
Thanks for the ping!
They took a lot of heat for a long time before Emory booted him and Columbia rescinded his prize. There was a lot of screaming and kicking before they got with the program. It became obvious that they had been had, with irrefutable proof.
I read the first paragrph...
No... throw him to the wolves.
No.
Next question?
He can write all he wants, it’s a free country, still, kinda, a little. Just know it will be filed under “FICTION”.
Quite the historian-NOT!
My similar sentiments have been expressed about 50 odd times.
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