The result was "New Deal or Raw Deal?," a scathing 300-page counter-narrative that has made Folsom a conservative hero and placed him squarely in the midst of a roiling debate over America's past, the nature of history and, some say, its manipulation for political ends.
It is an ancient debate spurred anew by the rise of the "tea party" movement, which treats the Constitution as both cudgel and sacred text; by TV commentators such as Glenn Beck, who wrap their ideology in selective scholarship; and by a current vogue among conservatives eager not just to revisit the past but to rewrite it.
Many tea partyers, for instance, speak as though the Founders favored a small, circumscribed federal government, when in fact some wanted a more powerful Washington than we have today. (James Madison proposed a national veto over state laws.) In a recent speech, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) extolled the Founding Fathers' efforts to end slavery, when they actually made inequality the law, passing legislation counting blacks as three-fifths of a person.
Misleading or not, the revisionism represents a scramble for the high ground; in a country that reveres its history — even as we endlessly fight over its meaning — there are few more powerful arguments than precedent.
"We're not discussing how many economic-stimulus plans we can balance on the head of a pin," said the University of New Mexico's Jason Scott Smith. "There can be real-world consequences to the lessons we attempt to take from history."
Some scholars, however, worry the debate has been poisoned by the same attitude afflicting political discourse: the notion that truth and virtue reside on one side, and those who disagree are not just wrong but un-American. In a new book, Harvard's Jill Lepore condemns what she calls "historical fundamentalism," a belief that "a particular and quite narrowly defined past" should be worshiped, unquestioned, above all others.
I know. I read it. I just thought (as did Burt) that for a drive-by journalist, it was as good as you’ll get.