"Let the memorial speak for itself"

Jeff Jarvis reports on a press conference yesterday:

A coalition of 9/11 families' groups held a press conference at the World Trade Center today to call for exactly what I hoped they would when I spoke with Debra Burlingame last week: Do not build the International Freedom Center here. Do not distract from the 9/11 memorial and bring politics and polemics to this place. Let the memorial speak for itself. . .

The families, always with the pictures of their lost loved ones, began changing: "9/11 memorial only" and "take back the memorial." And then a few family members spoke.

One appealed to the American people to join with them and take back the memorial. Anther said that lessons of a freedom center would be fine, "but not here, not on sacred ground."

"Nobody is coming to this place to learn about Ukranian democracy and be inspired by the courage of Tibetan monks," he said.

Another spoke for many when he said that the remains of his family member were never found. "We have no place to go," he said, "we have no place to grieve" -- other than this place.

The sister of a firefighter pointed to her 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter and asked whether the lesson of what is to be built at the World Trade Center will be that "9/11 is something to be ashamed of."

"We will make sure this site is not violated a second, time," she said.

Another warned that the Freedom Center will make the site a "magnet for protesters."

"The IFC msut go elsewhere," he said.

Edie Lutnick, sister of the Cantor Fitzgerald heads, one of whom died, said she was not comfortable speaking and the first time she did so was at her brother's funeral. But she was most eloquent here, thanking Americans for their shows of support -- their children's letters, their flags, their quilts -- and said this was not the families' tragedy but our tragedy.

"Now we have another tragedy -- forgetfulness. 9/11 is being buried underground."

The event did what it was supposed to do: It brought out the press and made the International Freedom Center an issue.

The New York Post was also there.

[Debra] Burlingame, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, specifically charged that Tofel and others are planning to host exhibits at Ground Zero devoted to such wholly off-topic issues as the alleged "genocide" of Americans Indians, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag.

Worthy subjects for study, each and every one — but not at Ground Zero.

Tofel, for his part, insists that the controversy is all about nothing.

But when Cavuto asked, specifically, whether the museum would feature "atrocities Americans have committed," Tofel repeatedly refused a direct answer.

"Atrocities is such a loaded word," he stammered. . .

. . . Real Americans, after all, have no trouble recalling that Ground Zero is the site of an unspeakable atrocity committed against them. They'll wonder by what perverted logic is it appropriate to use the spot to dredge up shameful, painful episodes in American history that have nothing to do with 9/11.

Yet that is transparently Tofel's plan.

Slavery in America, for example, "probably" would be focused on, he said, because a key goal is to "inspire an end to hatred, ignorance and intolerance. . .

"The International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you — and I — will disagree," Tofel wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Debates?

Like, whether America is sufficiently sensitive to other cultures?

Whether Muslims — and non-Americans generally — need to protect themselves from U.S. "hegemony"?

The Post article is pretty heated, but the point is essentially the same as that made by many others, including me. Burlingame has set up a new website that proclaims:"Take back the Memorial Because a 'blame America' monument honors no one. No politics at Ground Zero. Period." Setting whether or not the IFC is going to be a "blame America" memorial or not (as a historian, I have more confidence--hopefully not misplaced--than Ms. Burlingame), I heartily agree with the "No politics at Ground Zero" line.

To me, this acute issue brings up a much larger one. What role should history play at a memorial? Has there been a conflation of memorial and history on this scale before? Gettysburg would count, I suppose as would various other battlefields. Yet, what they have in common is that the history presented is directly related to the event which is simultaneously being memorialized. I haven't seen many other historian/bloggers comment on this topic. I wonder why? I'm truly not implying anything, I'm just genuinely curious. Do any other history bloggers have any thoughts?

UPDATE

A commenter has pointed me to a video of a debate between Burlingame and Tofel that can be seen here.

Additionally, the Village Voice also reported on the rally.

. . . for some victims' relatives, what is ultimately exhibited in the museum is only one facet of the objection. "The first thing you need to ask," says Monica Iken, who lost her husband in the attacks, "is why it [the International Freedom Center] needs to be right there."

The presence of anything not directly related to 9-11 on their sacred site puzzles and offends some victims' kin. For them, it's the latest chapter of the saga over what a ground zero memorial should look like, in which family members have had to fight to preserve the footprints of the towers and to have access to the bedrock in which the buildings stood.

"The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corporation], Governor Pataki, and the Port Authority—they have made a concerted effort to make ground zero about everything else but what happened on 9-11," Sally Regenhard, the mother of a slain firefighter, tells the Voice. "This just puts the cap on the simmering, boiling issues we've had with the system from day one: Get your commercial interests down there, build over the footprints, make everybody forget what happened." The motive, she suspects, is money—the LMDC wants to attract visitors, and a site devoted solely to a tragedy just won't get the traffic. . .

Space for a museum building has been reserved since Daniel Libeskind's original master plan. The Freedom Center was selected to fill the space last June, its purpose "telling freedom's story, inspiring visitors to appreciate it on a personal level by looking at the countless individual women and men around the world who have made a difference." People associated with the Freedom Center say its aim is to derive something positive out of the grief and terror the site will always represent. That's why they plan seminars and debates (although the Freedom Center insists there'll be no discussion of rationalizing 9-11 itself) and will encourage visitors to volunteer for one of a range of nonprofit groups.

"I've always been supportive of having some form of what I would call a living memorial or something that engages people positively," says Tom Roger, whose daughter, Jean, was an attendant on American Airlines Flight 11. "After they've visited the site and paid their respects, to me it makes sense to take people in a sort of different direction." Roger says he thinks the planners of the Freedom Center are too ideologically diverse for the museum to espouse a left-wing agenda.

Some family members, however, are anxious that visitors will fail to grasp the linkages that the Freedom Center will make between 9-11 and struggles for freedom in other places and times. They are frightened by any attempt to introduce complexity to the site. Burlingame contends that people will be confused when they look down at the WTC site from the Freedom Center and, instead of seeing a crushed fire truck, view exhibits on Chilean refugees and Chinese dissidents who fought for freedom. "Americans do not want a sacred memorial to be about causes. They want it to be about people," Burlingame says. "September 11 was an atrocity in itself. Is American blood so cheap that that is not enough to tell the story of man's inhumanity to man?"

The question, though, is how that story would read, a point that divides even the people who oppose the Freedom Center. Like every argument about 9-11, the fight over the Freedom Center is about simplicity versus complexity—the big, intricate picture opposed to a broad-stroke portrait of horror and heroism.

Non-Natives, the Military and "Empire"

Max Boot wrote a column in which he proposed that illegal immigrants could acquire legal status by joining the armed forces. There's a bit more to it than that, so if you're interested in his acute proposal, read his column. What caught my eye was the portion of Boot's column that called upon 2 bits of history:

In the past, the U.S. military had many more foreigners than we do today. (During the Civil War, at least 20% were immigrants. Now it's 7%.) The British army, among many others, has also made good use of noncitizens. Nepalese Gurkhas still fight and die for the Union Jack despite not being 'culturally bonded' to it. No doubt they would do the same for the Stars and Stripes.

Some letter writers invoke the specter of mercenaries leading to the fall of the U.S. as they supposedly led to the fall of Rome. That's a misreading of Roman history. As classicist Victor Davis Hanson points out, by the 1st century AD, the legions 'were mostly non-Italian and mercenary, and the empire still endured for nearly another 500 years.' If only the Pax Americana were to last half as long!

I've done some research on French Canadians in the U.S. during the Civil War Era, including some on those who served in the Union army, and I'll be going a more in depth treatment on that topic in the future (so keep your eyes pealed). It was the second portion of Boot's piece, concerning mercenaries and the Fall of the Roman Empire, that caught my more immediate attention.

Boot, quoting Hanson, is essentially correct, in that the legions "were mostly non-Italian", but this seems to convey an oversimplification. I'd clarify that they were still "Roman." As the empire expanded, to Gaul for instance, the native populations got "Romanized" and gradually grasped onto the ideal of romanitas. They weren't "Italian" but they most definitely considered themselves to be "Roman." The Late Roman army was a bit different.

The historian Hugh Elton offers this explanation:

The birth of the Late Roman Army is usually taken to be the reforms of Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (305-337). Their reforms were not completely innovative and forerunners of all their changes can be seen in the institutions and practices of the army of the third century AD. From the early fourth century, the army was a remarkably stable institution with few changes in practice or structure. . .

The major development from the army of the principate was the formal division of the army into two parts, the field army (comitatenses) and the border troops (limitanei). The border troops were organized to defend provinces and were stationed around the edges of the Empire. . .

Many fortifications lined the borders of the empire, garrisoned by troops of the border forces (which included naval units). Many cities within the Empire also had defenses. . .

Individual soldiers served for twenty to twenty-five years and received a discharge bonus. Many of these recruits came from military families and many came from beyond the empire, a process misleadingly described as barbarization.

From the late fourth century onwards, the Romans made increasing short-term use of contingents of barbarian allies, a second process also known as barbarization. These were used to supplement Roman forces, but also as a military necessity. To take a Roman army away from an area containing recently settled barbarians was to invite disaster, especially in a civil war, where one's opponent would encourage them to revolt.

In another piece, Elton delves deeper into the common misconceptions surrounding "barbarization":

The term 'barbarization' is used to describe the use of soldiers whose origins were outside the Roman Empire in the late Roman army. . . . There were two types of this 'barbarization'.

The first type was the recruiting of individual 'barbarians'. Many of the army's recruits did come from beyond the empire, from Frankish, Alamannic or Gothic tribes in Europe, from Persia or Armenia in the east. Their non-Roman names usually make them stand out in our sources but some did change their names. No systematic opposition to recruiting or promoting such men existed and they could and did reach the highest ranks of the army, something which only occurred in the late Roman army. However, their presence in the army as private soldiers was not new and they had been a feature of the army since the first century BC. . . . In number, they may have made up as many as a third of the empire's troops. . .

The second type of barbarization was the short-term use of tribal groups of barbarian allies. These supplemented Roman forces, for the most part in civil wars. Again, this process was not innovative, but such contingents had usually been smaller. What was new was that it sometimes became a necessity. In 382 Theodosius I settled Goths in the Balkans. Then in 388 and 394 he was forced to incorporate them in his army to fight against Magnus Maximus and Eugenius respectively. If he had not, they would have taken advantage of the absence of Roman troops, even without encouragement from his enemies.

As Elton concludes in the first piece to which I linked, it was not the barbarization of the Roman army that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire (remember, the Eastern Empire, or the Byzantine, lasted for an additional millenia!)

The direct cause was not the loss of the battle of Adrianople in 378, but the failure after this to destroy the Goths who were in the Empire. After their settlement in 382, the external threats did not diminish, but the Goths created an additional internal threat. The second major problem was the loss of Africa to the Vandals, which reduced the financial basis of the western empire. Without money to pay for troops, the military capacity of the west decreased, though the eastern empire remained intact. Loss of territory and financial crises, not a failure in military effectiveness, led to the collapse of the Roman West.

So, while essentially correct, Boot (and Hanson) left a bit out.

Finally, apparently, Matt Welch at Reason's Hit and Run blog (via Chris Bray) took Boot's pithy remark: "If only the Pax Americana were to last half as long!" (in reference to Hanson's remark about the empire lasting 500 years) to be an embracing of the Roman Empire as an ideal to which the U.S. should aspire.

When war enthusiasts are no longer even defensive about comparisons to the Roman Empire, we have arguably crossed over into new territory. I had this exact same conversation over the weekend with a Marine Iraq War vet, and a civilian pro-war guy. They had me on the defensive for a half-hour -- "What's WRONG with being like the Roman Empire?? They lasted a thousand years, didn't they?" Silly me, I was hoping the United States would hold out a little longer than that....

While I think Welch is reading way too much into Boot's aside, the details of his conversation with the Iraq vet and pro-war civilian (and the comments to his post) point out that many Americans, at different levels, embrace the idea of being like the Roman Empire. With a few exceptions, I think this is a very shallow analogy and that most who espouse such haven't exactly engaged in deep critical thinking about the prospect of America becoming something akin to the Roman Empire. I interpret such wishful (or wistful?) comparisons as those of relatively short-lived individuals hoping that their nation maintains its position as world leader (variously defined) for "a thousand years," which to them is essentially "eternity." So while I agree with Welch when he says that he hopes that "the United States would hold out a little longer than that...", I also would offer that this position is not ipso facto contrary to that of the supposed proponents of American Empire. Instead, both positions enunciate a hope that the U.S. continue as a world leader for the imagineable future. Mine and Welch's imaginations just happen to stretch a bit further than others.

Paul Johnson: "The Anti-Semitic Disease"

Paul Johnson traces the illogical persistance of anti-semitism over two millenia and than compares it to another "anti":

That anti-Americanism shares many structural characteristics with anti-Semitism is plain enough. In France, as we read in a new study, intellectuals muster as many contradictory reasons for attacking the U.S. as for attacking Jews.[2]. Americans are excessively religious; they are excessively materialistic. They are vulgar money-grubbers; they are vulgar spenders. They hate culture; they are pushy in promoting their own culture. They are aggressive and reckless; they are cowardly. They are stupid; they are exceptionally cunning. They are uneducated; they subordinate everything in life to the goal of sending their children to universities. They build soulless megalopolises; they are rural imbeciles. As with anti-Semitism, this litany of contradictory complaints is fleshed out with demonic caricatures of particular individuals like George W. Bush. Just as 14th-century Christians once held the Jews responsible for the Black Death, Americans are blamed for all the ills of today’s world, starting with (real or imaginary) global warming. Particularly among French intellectuals, such demonization has become almost a culture, a way of life, in itself.

History Carnival #10

Welcome to History Carnival #10, the "Aluminum and Tin" anniversary of this particular blog roundup in which we, your humble synthesists attempt to cobble together something roughly approximating a narrative by culling the nooks, crannies, pedestals and ditches of the internet for the best history blog posts we can find. There were a lot of politically tinged posts in this one, and I included every submission I received, so I attempted to balance out some of the more contentious debates. Hopefully, I was successful.

To quote an old Maine fisherman, "I don't know much, that's all I know." This salty paraphrase can also serve historians well. As such, I cast my net far and wide and hope that my bountiful harvest can add fuel to your intellectual fire. (Yes, the mixing of metaphor's was decidedly on purpose. I'm trying to have some some fun here...) The topics are roughly organized by some theme, though it may be discernable only to me, and it should also be obvious that many, if not most, of these posts could be cross-classified in any number of ways. Finally, it's tough following in the giant footsteps of "the Creator," but I shall try. Well then, off we go!

In the beginning...(at least relatively speaking)

Andy at Egyptology News is keeping tabs on the important and controversial archaelogist Zahi Hawass (1, 2, 3) while Jim Davila discusses pseudepigrapha. (Definition provided for those, like me, who have no idea what "pseudepigrapha" is.)

Welcome To...Medieval Times!

Alterior reminds us that there were some successful medieval businesswomen who managed to break through the stained-glass ceiling. Barista takes a look at the medieval diet. Paul at Country Reports offers a two-part (1,2) post on his favorite German castles while The Gray Monk offers a post on a historical church. Magistra et Mater compares medieval and modern emotions. Despite this wealth of interest in the era, Prof. Blogger is pessimistic about the job prospects for a medievalist.

People are People...

Melinama at Pratie Place digs for some historical treasure on the origins and background of the pirate Jean Lafitte and disovers that there really was no mystery after all.

Laura James investigates the true crimes of one Countess Tarnowska, "The Russian Enchantress."

The Little Professor boils down the "canon" of works all good Victorians must know and admits to guilt when an otherwise canonical author's lesser work simply doesn't measure up.

Kenneth R. Gregg writes about the classical liberal economist Harriet Martineau.

Barista expels a breath over some of the pioneers of hot air ballooning in Australia.

The Energizer Bunny of U.S. Historiography or Debating the American Founding and its Legacy

Ralph Luker hosted a symposium to discuss Barry Gewen's historiographical review article "Forget the Founding Fathers." He elicited a positive response from Gewen, too.

Callimachus observes that the old triumphalist history of the U.S. has been replaced by a different, more cynical triumphalism. Maybe he should talk to Tom Corrente, who, after correcting High School AP History exams, laments that students are parroting back "the usual mythological meta-narrative about the Revolution."

The Civil War Era (Minus Ken Burns!)

Multiple Mentality attempts to clear up a few "myths" about the Civil War while Dimitri Rotov remarks upon the centrality of numbers in Civil War history and how they are manipulated to make narratives more compelling.

Mark Grimsley delves deeper into the background of Emmett Till while Chris at Outside Report leads with Till's recent exhumation in a broader essay on Southern Reformation (past and present) and the people who he is "surprised" to find enabling it. Eric Muller and his commenters discuss the arguments for and against slavery reparations and Dr. History takes issue with an analogy in Freakonomics that compared the KKK with. . . real estate agents(?!).

War

Steve Feinstein quotes Winston Churchill on the inherent unpredictibility of war plans and uses a failed U.S. air raid on Romania in WWII to illustrate his point. Ironman at Political Calculations remembers the Korean War. Wretchard discusses John Keegan and the problem with contemporary applications of Just War Theory. Claudia's Last Defender of Bucharest is offered without comment.

"New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody's talking about pop" culture. . .

Nils Gilman thinks there are deeper historical and sociological reasons for the media's constant, breathless reporting on missing white girls. Derek Charles Catsam reviews the new movie Cinderella Man and finds it both good and (mostly) accurate, though a tad "treacly." Alex Soojung-Kim Pang discovers that the designers of the "new," retro-looking Ford Mustang took some inspiration from the past, including recreating the sound of a particular muffler, and wonders if a historical sound has been recreated for such a reason before. 100 Word Minimum took a picture, wondered about the history that lay behind it, and found out. Kudos!

Behind the Green Door

The revelation that Mark Felt was the (in)famous "Deep Throat" has everyone talking, and Rob MacDougall has some "Deep Thoughts" of his own, which includes information on some other secrets that the Washington Post has been holding back. Sherman Dorn takes another tack and uses Mark Felt, George Wallace and Anakin Skywalker in a query as to whether redemption is conceptually an individual or a collective act.

Caleb McDaniel points out in his "crude version of the often romanticized history of jazz and drugs" that before sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, there was sex, drugs, and jazz. (And before that?) Meanwhile, Scott Kaufman takes a peek under Clio's blouse and finds what we'd expect.

"The corner of first and first. . . the nexus of the Universe" or where History, Religion and Science intersect

Mano Singham examines Intelligent Design theory through a historical microscope (or would it be a macroscope?) and thinks science has nothing to worry about. Yet, according to the study of Studi Galileiani, it was the scientists themselves who created the problem when they initially decided to use flawed rhetoric to refute creationism in the first place.

Brandon at Siris provides some contextual analysis concerning Pierre Duhem's "Physics of a Believer" in an attempt to better understand how Duhem could be both a positivist and a scientific realist. Sarah Elshazly posts a story by David Storobin on how DNA has linked Israelis and Palestinians, which calls into question some of the historical presumptions made by each.

History with a Religious "flavor"

Nate Oman sees links between Mormons, Greek Religion and immortality and Kirby at Christian Origins investigates the "little textual problem of Mark 2:26."

Tony at Storyteller's World is looking for advice on writing a particular church's history. Perhaps he can look to David Gleicher, who began blogging his institutional history of the early years of Chicago's Hebrew Theological College in May (he continues, with parts 2, 3 and 4).

Jonathan Dresner considers his own mixed emotions over the revelation that Pope John Paul II's personal papers weren't destroyed as had been ordered by the Pontiff.

Ahistoricality offers a strange-but-true story that couldn't have been made up...so to speak!

Historical Theories and Concepts

Rob at Detrimental Postulation pondered three formulations of "History's Dreams of the Future." Robbie Taylor's alternate histories make counterfactual dreams of the past, but Scott Eric Kaufman (deja vu) believes such alternate histories are based on a concept of oversimplified historical causation.

The Head Heeb opened a colloquy on the applicability of the term or concept of "apartheid" to various political systems throughout world history.

Chapati Mystery examines the concept of Empire and offers a bountiful buffet for comparative historians (aforelink is to a topic index that includes all six posts) while Seth Sanders has his own ideas about empire.

Lorraine Berry at Culture Kitchen asks, "What Is History Allowed to Teach Us?"

Final Historian warns that "the internationalization of the local" will lead to conflict throughout the next century.

Spinning Clio: History and Politics or a lame and obvious attempt to start a meme with a self-referential sub-heading

There was a big discussion over a conservative list of "bad" books with Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglasias, Ken Masugi and Joseph Knippenberg just some of those who joined in the ideological fray. It also served as a jumping off point for Eric at Classical Values who offered up his "Ten Most Harmful Musical Compositions of the 19th and 20th Centuries." (Personally, I take exception to the inclusion of G-N-R's Appetite for Destruction. Welcome to the Jungle, Eric!) Dave Beito was inspired and thought that a list of the ten worst Presidents would be worth compiling and offers his own nominee for #1. Hint: It's a big "Deal."

Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities theorized that everyone could be Hitler someday and offered a helpful list to prove his point. In response, Orac called for an end to using the "H-(Hitler) Bomb" as a rhetorical device, but some still didn't listen so he mentioned it again. (Besides, once the Fuhrer enters the room, the debate has probably "Jumped-the-Shark").

Michael L. Trent posts about the Senate's apology for not previously passing anti-lynching legislation and John Hinderaker offers one reason as to why the Senate was so tardy. The State of... offers a theory concerning the more contemporary political motivations behind the effort while Dave Niewart considers lynching a hate crime and calls for something other than this "appallingly hollow gesture." With all that said, David Hardy offers that it's the Supreme Court, not the Senate, that should be doing the apologizing.

Ray Girvan wondered about the political agendas behind historic "then-and-now" pictures of the British landscape and Razib examined old traditions that are actually relatively recent in their formulation. The CrankyProfessor remarked upon the apparent usefulness of a bad historical analogy.

Hugo Schwyzer recaps the history of the gay rights movement, Mark Schneider looks back at the 60's and says "radical leftist politics has always been essentially elitist and anti-democratic," and Chris Bray finds similarities between the rhetoric of some modern American conservatives and that of 20th century communism.

An op-ed by a relative of a 9/11 victim has caused Jeff Jarvis (and here and here) to be suspicious about the history that will be told at the tangentially affiliated International Freedom Center located near the World Trade Center Memorial at Ground Zero in New York City. Barbara O'Brien claims "sour grapes" are behind the same op-ed. Setting the prospective or suspected historical content of the IFC aside, I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to have a historical presentation so physically close to such an emotional memorial in the first place.

Sharing the Methodological Wealth

Kelly in Kansas passes along the idea of "real-time" blogging historical diaries, an idea that Samuel Pepys has taken up from beyond the grave. Exploratoria also regularly links to travelogues both historical and personal, such as the diary of Robert Whyte, an Irish immigrant to America c.1848. Sharon Howard is doing some deep digging in the archives (and part 2). Yes, I actually envy her. (Admit it, you do too!)

D.B. Light calls attention to the website of social anthropologist Alan McFarlane as an example of how academics can share their research with the broader public and Paula Petrik provides us with a method to use footnotes and endnotes within a blog and points to another resource, too. No more excuses!

From the Mouths of Babes

After digesting all of the above, I urge you to read and reflect upon what Hiram Hover's five-year old son thinks about historians. (A little humility would do us all some good).

Happy Reading!
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There you have it, History Carnival #10 is in the books. Thanks to all of the contributors and nominators, especially Sharon Howard, Ralph Luker and Jonathan Dresner. And don't be afraid to host one of these yourself!

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The next carnival will be on Friday, July 1 and will be hosted by Brandon Watson at Siris. Email submissions and nominations to him at branem2[at]branemrys[dot]org.

History Carnival #10 : Last Call!

Spinning Clio will be hosting History Carnival #10 tomorrow, June 15. If you haven't already, please get your submissions in to me via the email on the right!

Gaspee Days

The last few days, and particularly this weekend, are of particular historical importance where I live, in Warwick, RI. You see, it is during this time of year that we commemorate the burning of the HMS Gaspee on June 10, 1772 with a celebration called the Gaspee Days. Here's the quick version:

HMS Gaspee and her hated commander, Lt. William Dudingston, were sent by King George III to Rhode Island waters in March of 1772 to enforce the Stamp Act and prevent smuggling. They made no friends amongst the colonists in harassing shipping and delaying, often unjustly, ships that had properly passed custom inspection in Newport.

The latter was the case on June 9, 1772, when the packet sloop Hannah left Newport for Providence. When the Gaspee gave chase, Hannah's Captain Lindsey deliberately lured her across the shallows off Namquid Point (now Gaspee Point) and left the British ship hard aground on a sandbar, unable to move until the flood tide of the following day.

Upon arrival in Providence, Captain Lindsey reported the event to John Brown, one of the most prominent and respected merchants in Rhode Island, who sent out a town crier inviting all interested parties to meet at Sabin's Tavern to plan the Gaspee's destruction. Under the leadership of Abraham Whipple, the small band of patriots rowed eight longboats with muffled oars to the stranded ship. Lt. Dudingston and his crew were taken prisoner and removed to Pawtuxet Village.

Near daylight on June 10th, the Rhode Islanders set fire to the Gaspee, burning her to the waterline whereupon her powder magazine exploded. Efforts of the Crown to learn the names of the culprits were unsuccessful, although a sizable reward had been offered. Public sentiment was in accord with the venture; this spirit of unity soon spread to the other colonies with the formation of the Committees of Correspondence to prevent further threats. It was but a short step from here to the First Continental Congress and eventually the Declaration of Independence.

If you want to know more, take a trip into the Gaspee Virtual Archives. Maybe I'll see you at the parade!

Richard Tofel Responds to Critics of International Freedom Center

Richard J. Tofel, president of the International Freedom Center, has responded to the criticism of what it's exhibits will contain with a piece that extols the ideal of freedom, on which most would agree, but that addresses none of the particular concerns of those who doubt the motivation of some of those who are financing and developing the content for the Center's exhibits. Perhaps he should have offered the names of a few of the other individuals (who seem less controversial) who are advising the project, such as:

Fareed Zakaria
Editor of Newsweek International and author of a column that appears in the national and international editions of Newsweek.
Trained as an academic, he is the author of "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad", which is being translated into fifteen languages.
"Freedom is the most powerful idea in human history. It is the idea that human societies have been moving toward for hundreds of years, that more than any other concept has shaped the world we live in. And what better place for a museum dedicated to an exploration of that idea than New York City-the most open city in the most open society in the world."

Xu Wenli
Visiting senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute of International Studies, and exiled founder of the Chinese Democratic Party
"All mankind is searching for freedom. The freedom of 1.3 billion Chinese people is extremely important to the pursuit of freedom for the rest of the world. I believe the Freedom Center can definitely make great contributions to the Chinese people's struggle for freedom because the Freedom Center belongs to all mankind."

David Hackett Fischer
Professor at Brandeis University and author of "Liberty & Freedom"

Kenneth Jackson
President of the New-York Historical Society and the Jacques Barzun Professor of History and Social Sciences at Columbia University
"A museum at Ground Zero ought to deal with the issues that I think were attacked at the World Trade Center - tolerance and openness and aspiration. The challenge is can the Museum deal with issues honestly and allow for at least some of their complexity?"

Bob Kerrey
President of New School University in New York City and former Governor and Senator of Nebraska
"Freedom is an overused and even misused word that causes too many to turn up their cynical noses when they hear it used. The Freedom Museum will be a place where freedom's story is told and where no one can turn away from seeing how much we owe to those who risked and gave their lives to secure it."

Sara Bloomfield
Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

I don't have the time right now to try to dig into the ideological predispositions of all of the advisors, but it appears to me, upon first glance, that at least some can be trusted to present a balanced exposition. However, the question still remains: Is it proper to piggyback a museum that will purportedly attempt a historically fair and balanced presentation of the steps and missteps of freedom onto a memorial that will be as emotional as that commemorating 9/11?

There is a difference between remembrance and history. There is also a difference between memorializing and history. When people attend a funeral, they expect the eulogy to be full of admiration and fondness and even humor, they don't expect to hear a personal history that includes every facet, including "the bad." The emotions of those seeking to memorialize the victims of 9/11 may be jarred if exposed to a historical exhibition--tinged with even a small amount of controversial or tough-to-hear content--within the same proximate experience. To me, it just doesn't seem appropriate.

World Trade Center Memorial Take 2

In my previous post, I asked if anyone had any thoughts with the misplaced history of Freedom being memorialized at the World Trade Center Memorial. Well, it would seem that the type of history being showcased may be anti-American in flavor, to boot. In the Op-Ed I mentioned yesterday (now with a 7-day free link), Debra Burlingame, a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, listed the people behind the IFC, who are a veritable "who's who" of people who routinely seem to presume the worst of American motives.

[T]he IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the worldwide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

... the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born.

Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did.

The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million-dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

Jeff Jarvis adds

Oh, and by the way, when you build this center, will you include the atrocities of the Saudis and Saddam Hussein and the PLO and all the tyrants of the Middle East? Will have you have an exhibit about the women there who do not have the freedom to vote or even drive?

Will you build a special wing for the special sickness that is suicide terrorism -- in Israel and in Iraq and at the World Trade Center? Or will you be afraid of offending Muslims?

Well, I'm offended.

The World Trade Center is a place for remembrance of the innocents and victims of that day and for a return to life.

That is the problem. Again, it seems like the memorial is being misappropriated to present a history that is, at best, tangentially related to the event. The stated goal of the IFC is to use the magnet of the WTC Memorial to present a version of history that, based upon the backgrounds of those listed by Burlingame, may be suspect in its even-handedness. However, I'm less concerned with the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the scholarship: that is a different debate. Instead, I believe that, while there is a time and place for such an exhibition, this isn't it.

World Trade Center Memorial: Correct History at the Wrong Place

According to the Wall Street Journal [subscriber only] (via NRO's Corner):

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary 'gateway' to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on 'a journey through the history of freedom' -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere -- anywhere -- else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

I've banged the drum about viewing historical events and people within the context of their time. Should we also present History within the proper context? I wouldn't expect to go to the Washington Memorial and be faced with a presentation on the Civil War. The WSJ is not saying that the history being presented at the IFC is "bad," only that it shouldn't be presented at this time and this place to a public that expects something entirely different. On one level, I understand that there is a difference between scholarly history and what the general public believes is history. As such, historians regularly "surprise" the public with history that they don't expect. But there is something to this. Perhaps the real problem is that more space at the site is being given to the IFC then to the Memorial itself. In time, I suppose the discerning public will be able to separate the two. Yet, in the more immediate years so close to 9/11, it would seem that the general desire to remember and memorialize would be greater than taking in a history of Freedom. In the long run the latter will probably appeal to the broader audience. So perhaps I've answered my own question. Any thoughts?

"Religion is the key to history"

Lord Acton wrote that "Religion is the key to history" and Os Guinness, writing for Wilson Quarterly (a book review of of Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart) repeats Acton's statement and notes that contemporary historians are simply not doing their due diligence with regard to religion.

Religion is the key to history, Lord Acton wrote. In today’s intellectual circles, however, it’s more like the skunk at the garden party. To many intellectuals, religion is a private matter at best, and most appropriately considered in terms of its functions rather than the significance of its beliefs, let alone its truth claims. At worst, it’s the main source of the world’s conflicts and violence—what Gore Vidal, in his Lowell Lecture at Harvard University in 1992, called “the great unmentionable evil” at the heart of our culture.

Such grim assessments are certainly debatable. It’s a simple fact, for example, that, contrary to the current scapegoating of religion, more people were slaughtered during the 20th century under secularist regimes, led by secularist intellectuals, and in the name of secularist ideologies, than in all the religious persecutions in Western history. But there is little point in bandying about charges and countercharges. If we hope to transcend the seemingly endless culture-warring over religion, we need detailed, objective data about the state of religion in today’s world, and wise, dispassionate discussion of what this evidence means for our common life.

Is religion central or peripheral? Is it disappearing, as Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and other proponents of the strong secularization thesis have claimed? Or is religion actually resurgent, as more recent observers such as Peter Berger, David Martin, Rodney Stark, and Philip Jenkins have claimed? Is it a positive force, as some have argued from the evidence of the “South African miracle,” the peaceful transition from apartheid to equality? Or is it pathological, as much of the post-9/11 commentary has assumed without argument?

Good questions all. I think most historians realize that we shouldn't summarily dismiss something because it doesn't jibe with our world view. We would do well to accept and acknowledge the sincerity in which historical subjects held their religion, political ideology or other ideas. Just because they may have been mis- less- or under-informed doesn't mitigate the genuineness of their belief. Their beliefs were held and reinforced for some reason, and it couldn't have all been due to negative reinforcement or playing to human vices, could it?

Selling Beads

From today's Providence Journal

Sometimes the path to commerce leads from a dirt road in Africa to America's highways and byways.

In the age of eBay and impersonal electronic global trade, Ebrima Kabba travels village to village across the African continent, buying beads to sell in America.

Beads made of brass, cow bone, coral and coins, as well as silver, amber and ostrich eggs. Trade beads, still used as currency in some corners of the African continent. Beads that signify status. Beads to denote marriage. Beads to calm a vomiting baby. Lucky beads. Very old beads.

Yesterday, the 48-year-old itinerant Gambian salesman arrived at the Beadworks shop on Thayer Street and unloaded black duffel bags bursting with color, texture and history.

'Really, the business of beads is so international,' says Gray Horan, a freelance writer who recently bought the shop with longtime friend Nancy Nygreen. 'The African bead salesmen, they come and peddle their beads in a very old-fashioned way.'

. . .Kabba's arrival provided a riot of color, from the turquoise sneakers with shimmering accents that he wore on his feet, to the piles of butter-yellow amber, royal blue, and grass green beads, to the "white-fired" brown and white cow bone, and shiny glass of every rainbow hue.

"I learned from our jewelry designers here what kinds of beads there are and how they can be used, and the African traders tell us the history," Horan said. "It's research, and I love it."

Horan said that Kabba, in particular, "has been very forthcoming" in sharing his knowledge of the history and origins of his merchandise. His beads will sell from $10 to more than $1,000, she and Nygreen said.

Traders from China and Japan also sell pearls to Horan and Nygreen.

I post this for no particular reason other than perhaps whimsy.

Echevarria: "The Trouble with History"

Antulio J. Echevarria, writing for PARAMETERS, (the US Army War College Quarterly), examines the value of history in military education and thinks it is being misused.

The distinguished historian Sir Michael Howard once admitted that the past, which he aptly referred to as an “inexhaustible storehouse of events,” could be used to “prove anything or its contrary.”1 Howard’s admission exposes an underlying problem with history that most historians prefer not to acknowledge. The past has indeed served many masters and conflicting purposes over time; its storehouse of events has been used to validate or discredit practically every major theory, precept, or principle. While historians are aware of this, few of them have actually taken the pains to examine what it is about history that permits the past to be used in such contradictory ways.

Their reluctance stems, at least in part, from a fundamental concern that the rigorous scrutiny necessary to arrive at the root of the problem might, at the same time, reveal the limits of history—limits that might in turn undermine the purported value that history and, thus, historians bring to education, especially military education.

Despite this, he believes there is value in history because it teaches military leaders critical thinking skills.

Historians thus perform a valuable service in education in general, and professional military education in particular, by facilitating the development of critical and creative thinking skills, that is, by equipping students to examine historical interpretations rigorously and then by holding them to a high standard when developing their own, all the while stressing that definitive answers may forever remain out of reach. Taking the historian out of history amounts to taking interpretation out of the past, leaving the reader with little more than sterile chronicles of names, dates, and events—a solution that would likely please neither the person who chronicles the events nor the person who must read about them. For their part, historians are after what Jack Hexter, one of the more famous and controversial of historians, once called that “elusive entity—the Truth.” They want to understand what really happened, whether or not it is actually possible to do so, and then to explain why it happened. Institutions of higher learning need professionals possessed of just such a “determination to find things out,” whether they succeed or not. Thus, the most valuable contribution that history and historians can make—and why they should remain integral to higher education—is that they attempt to understand things that lie outside the realm of certainty. Their answers may be flawed, but it would be unsatisfactory for the human species to limit itself to knowing only those things that can be verified by the scientific method.

Similarly, professional military education must equip students to understand the difference between historical reality (which, like the reality of the present, we may never fully know) and attempts to describe it. It must refrain from reinforcing the tendency among military students to regard history as, in Liddell Hart’s term, a “sentimental treasure.” Military professionals are better served by learning to be critical of the history that historians write, by building a habit of rigorously scrutinizing facts and sources, and of detecting biases and specious arguments, and by developing an eye for penetrating the myths that surround the past. They should regard the history they read, as Gaddis advises, as something between art and science. They must learn that a prerequisite to building a strong argument is the ability to recognize a weak one.

To that, I'd add that all students would benefit from such an education. But then, I am biased.

Keeping History in Context: Look at the Past as a Different and Separate World

In a digression amidst a long but worthy piece on "World History," "Another Damned Medievalist" writes

My historical playground is one that assumes that our ancestors lived in a very different world. My colleagues and I study our subjects pretty much in- and of themselves, for what they were and in the context of their times. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, we are generally able to be objective and yet find great relevance, not by comparing events like VietNam and Iraq, which is frankly very superficial on most points and masks many important details, but by trying to look at a different big picture, e.g., the history of a country and people who once were world leaders in thought and art and how their position in the larger world changed over time. And of course, understanding Iraq's history would still do little to explain 9/11, because the people who flew the planes into the WTC weren't Iraqis. You see, we're trained to look at lots of details that make it much harder to tie events like those of September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq together into any big picture. That same attention to the small questions makes us much more aware of the myriad of events that might help to explain the long-term cultural interaction between Islam (in many forms and in many regional and historical varieties) and 'The West.' And, of course, to ask if that is the central question, or whether it's just the American version of Western culture that's the problem.

It is a point well-taken.

"Another Way to Think About Secular Humanism"

James Oakes original postand comments in reaction to it offer a nice little historiography all its own of the secular/religious history battle. For me, perhaps the most important point was made at the beginning.

When people argue about secular humanism and religion in American history they usually end up throwing quotations at each other. Jefferson called for a "wall of separation" between church and state, but Washington said he never made a decision without consulting his God, and so forth.

The fact is that most of the Founders were too complicated (and too wordy!) to easily pigeonhole and there is simply enough to selectively pull a needed backup quote for anyone. It's still fun though, isn't it?

History Carnival #9

Sharon Howard of Early Modern Notes is hosting History Carnival #9 over at the History News Network. Good stuff all around. [gulp] I'm up next. Email me submissions [PLEASE!] and I hope you all are gentle when I'm up. Sharon's will be tough to follow.

Minor Site Changes

For those who stop by regularly, you may have noticed a couple changes to the site layout. First, I made the main commentary and the sidebar boxes wider to facilitate better readability. Second, because this change would have also necessitated fiddling with the rounded corner *.gif's that were originally part of my blog template, I excised them out. Now I'm all square corners and sharp edges (some would say this would more accurately reflect me, anyway...) Finally, I added an image of Clio, the Muse of History, because, well, I just think she looks nice.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman with a Sword

An article on the historical swordplay group that meets in Worcester's Higginson Armory Museum had this interesting and gender-busting bit.

The sword guild isn't just about boys and their toys. Female fighters, while rare, can be found in the earliest surviving fight manual, the ''Walpurgis Fechtbuch,' which was written primarily in Latin in central Germany roughly 700 years ago. In that manual, a swordswoman named Walpurgis is depicted fighting a male opponent, and references in subsequent texts show women participating in judicial duels against men, Forgeng points out.

In fact, there's nothing in fencing ''that inherently favors the male over the female,' Pugliese says. ''It helps to be stronger, but I can find you any number of women who are stronger than I am.'

''I can't tell you how many times I've been at events where people say, Well, women didn't use swords,' and here we have evidence just blowing that out of the water,' says Holly Hunt, a Shrewsbury resident who is among the Guild's four long-term women members among its 20 regulars. She says that women historically studied fencing to defend themselves."

Makes sense to me.

Barbed Wire: Tool of Violence and Oppression?

Edward N. Luttwak, who owns a cattle ranch in Bolivia, reviewedBarbed Wire by Reviel Netz and summarized and commented upon some of the author's central arguments.

For Netz, the raising of cattle is not about producing meat and hides from lands usually too marginal to yield arable crops, but rather an expression of the urge to exercise power: “What is control over animals? This has two senses, a human gain, and an animal deprivation”. To tell the truth, I had never even pondered this grave question, let alone imagined how profound the answer could be. While that is the acquisitive purpose of barbed wire, for Professor Netz it is equally – and perhaps even more – a perversely disinterested expression of the urge to inflict pain, “the simple and unchanging equation of flesh and iron”, another majestic phrase, though I am not sure if equation is quite the right word. But if that is our ulterior motive, then those of us who rely on barbed- wire fencing for our jollies are condemned to be disappointed, because cattle does not keep running into it, suffering bloody injury and pain for us to gloat over, but instead invisibly learns at the youngest age to avoid the barbs by simply staying clear of the fence. Fortunately we still have branding, “a major component of the culture of the West” and of the South too, because in Bolivia we also brand our cattle. Until Netz explained why we do it – to enjoy the pain of “applying the iron until – and well after – the flesh of the animal literally burns”, I had always thought that we brand our cattle because they cannot carry notarized title deeds anymore than they can read off-limits signs. Incidentally, I have never myself encountered a rancher who expensively indulges in the sadistic pleasure of deeply burning the flesh of his own hoofed capital, opening the way for deadly infection; the branding I know is a quick thrust of the hot iron onto the skin, which is not penetrated at all, and no flesh burns.

We finally learn who is really behind all these perversities, when branding is “usefully compared with the Indian correlate”: Euro-American men, of course, as Professor Netz calls us. “Indians marked bison by tail-tying: that is, the tails of killed bison were tied to make a claim to their carcass. Crucially, we see that for the Indians, the bison became property only after its killing.”

We on the other hand commodify cattle “even while alive”. There you have it, and Netz smoothly takes us to the inevitable next step:

“Once again a comparison is called for: we are reminded of the practice of branding runaway slaves, as punishment and as a practical measure of making sure that slaves – that particular kind of commodity – would not revert to their natural free state. In short, in the late 1860s, as Texans finally desisted from the branding of slaves, they applied themselves with ever greater enthusiasm to the branding of cows.”

Texans? Why introduce Texans all of a sudden, instead of cowboys or cattlemen? It seems that for Professor Netz in the epoch of Bush II, Texans are an even more cruel sub-species of the sadistic race of Euro-American men (and it is men, of course).

The only additional commentary I can offer is my previous post.

History and Politics

A year ago, Robert McElvaine did a study and analysis of why so many historians are against George W. Bush. That would have been fine and, as it was, predictable in its outcome. However, they larger story from a historical perspective was that so many historians had already deemed the Bush Presidency a failure. This even while still in the first term. I'd be interested to see this story updated given that a year has passed since the heat of the election.

But that really isn't my concern. I think that we historians have to be careful about offering such analysis too close to the history of the given event, so to speak. Especially if, say twenty or fifty years from now most historians come to a different conclusion. Could these "future peers" look at such data and wonder whether a group of historians that were so universally wrong in their too-instant "historical analysis" of a president may have also been wrong in other areas. If ideology so colored the contemporary analysis of so many historians, to what degree did it color their historical analysis?

This will be exacerbated, in my opinion, by the obvious belief held by many current historians that, because they are knowledgable of the past they are more qualified than most to comment on the present. I always thought that most historians rejected determinism. Sometimes it seems that we don't if it can support our politics. (Iraq=Vietnam, America=Rome, Bush=Hitler, etc.) I'm not saying that historians should exclude themselves from politics, but perhaps a bit more care should be taken before using one's own historical credentials as proof of expertise and the incontrovertible proof of one's own proclamations.

Kagan and History as Moral Teacher

After reading Phillip Kennicott's pretty derogatory remarks regarding Donald Kagan's "In Defense of History" (the 34th Annual Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities), I got the impression that Kennicott was being unnecessarily critical and rather hyperbolic in his criticism. This was primarily because there was no access to the text of the speech and, as such, I only could read the snippett's quoted by Kennicott. I also wondered what others would have to say. Well, the wait is over. The speech is now available (see above link) and others (George Will and Suzanne Fields, for instance) have weighed in. Now I realize why Kennicott was so critical. I won't parrot Will or Fields, you can read them yourself, but in essence Kagan championed History as a method by which morality can be taught through its own chronicled examples. This has actually caused a debate among the conservatives at The National Review's "The Corner" blog. Ramesh Ponurru has taken umbrage with George Will's characterization of Kagan's downplaying of religion's role in being a moral guidpost while Johah Goldberg asks Ponurru

But what exactly is your problem with the Will column? I didn't love it, but it seems to me one can derive some moral lessons from the history of humanity. I don't think history will ever convince a large number of atheists that God exists -- or vice versa -- but surely your inner Hayek or Burke sees some use for history in moral argumentation?

To this, Ponurru responded

Well, sure, I see some use for history. But I wouldn't argue, as Will does, for history at the expense of philosophy, religion, and poetry. You need to bring philosophy to bear on history to generate moral conclusions. Nor would I argue for history over philosophy, as Will does, on the basis of philosophy's capacity to generate disagreement.

I think what Ponurru is not willing to concede that Kagan and Will already believe is that there are some philosophical truths that have been mutually arrived at that are (seemingly) incontrovertably juxtaposed. As a result, Kagan and Will have turned to the "practicallity" of history instead of the idealistic realm of philosophy that, as Kagan put it, "inevitably leads to metaphysics, the investigation of first principles and the problem of ultimate reality, which over the millennia has led to massive disagreement, no progress, cynicism and rejection." Will and Kagan fail to see anything that can be taken out of the "black box" of modern day philosophy that can be applied pragmatically. Ponurru thinks that they mean that philosophy is not as practical because it doesn't generate disagreement. I think it would be better to say that the disagreement's generated by philosophy are particularly tough to resolve.

But back to the original point. It must be accepted that not all Americans will adhere to a religious basis for their morality. Lacking that, only tradition informed by history can perform a similar function. Thus, to me, it is important to ensure that the ideals held by those that came before us not be characterized as without value because of misplaced revisionism based on the "hypocrisy" of the dead white guys. Inherent in this is that we don't downplay or forget from whence these individuals derived their morality. (Please, no comments on the benefits of revision. I agree, I'm only talking about revsion in the sense that it is overplayed for political or polemical reasons).