"How about I Told You So, You F*cking Fools?"

From a wonderful (and unfortunately hilarious) article, Fools for Communism: still apologists after all these years:

The end of the Cold War has produced many such numbing silences. The speed with which the Soviet empire imploded and the economic ruin and popular revulsion that were revealed have made it clear that baby boomer intellectuals and journalists, viewing the world through the distorted lens of Vietnam, overwhelmingly got it wrong. Peasants ate less and were slaughtered more on the other side of the Iron Curtain; the jails were fuller; the KGB's list was a lot longer and a lot deadlier than Joe McCarthy's. A team of French historians calculated the worldwide death toll of communism during the 20th century at more than 93 million. When Hoover Institution historian Robert Conquest used newly available data from the Soviet Union to update The Great Terror, his account of Stalin's murderous purges of the 1930s, his publishers asked for a new title. "How about I Told You So, You Fucking Fools?" Conquest suggested.

And I'm happy to see nut-job Eric Foner coming in for his fair share of abuse:

Columbia's Eric Foner, a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, staking his bid as founder of what might be called the Smiley-Face School of History, denounces "the obsessive need to fill in the blank pages in the history of the Soviet era." He wasn't talking about pesky American historians using the Freedom of Information Act to ferret out new horror stories about J. Edgar Hoover but about a Moscow exhibition on the Soviet gulag. What possible good could come of learning the details of that?

Read on to the end. There's a response by Foner and a reply by the author.

The image is from the notebooks of Eufrosinia Kersnovskaya.

H/T Instapundit.

History: Who Needs Facts?

The other day, I commented on an excellent American history/civics quiz.

At Civil War Bookshelf, Dimitri has found an article on it: "Students Know Less After 4 College Years." Dimitri rightfully highlights the following blather from Eric Foner:

A professor of American history at Columbia University, Eric Foner, said that a multiple-choice exam testing factual knowledge of history could exaggerate student ignorance of American history.

"The study of history has changed enormously," Mr. Foner said. "It's become much more broad and diverse. The study of facts about particular battles has diminished, but maybe students are in a better position to answer questions about the abolition of slavery."

Somehow, I suspect that Donald Kagan would disagree.

I can't help but note, by the way, that Dimitri pointedly failed to reveal whether he took the quiz and, if so, how he did. What's the story, Dimitri? How'd you do?

Historians Acting Badly II

Perhaps this sheds some light. In an essay about 9/11, published less than a month after the event, Eric Foner began as follows:

"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. 'We will rid the world of evil-doers,' President Bush announces as he embarks on an open-ended 'crusade' (does he understand the historical freight this word carries?) against people who 'hate us because we are free'. This Manichean vision of the world, so deeply rooted in our Puritan past and evangelical present, is daily reinforced by the media as an emblem of national resolve."

Any questions?

Historians Acting Badly

Eric Foner has now joined Sean Wilentz in labelling President Bush (II) as the worst president in history. The purpose of this entry is not to explain why both articles are ludicrous -- if you don't know that, you're in the wrong place. Instead, I want to consider what they suggest about history and historical reasoning.

In his thoughtful post about the Foner article at the Alincoln blog, Brian Dirck expressed concern that it was inappropriate for historians to write such articles:

"As a practicing, professional historian, however, I have no business using my professional status to turn that perspective into an historical judgment concerning Bush's relative worth compared to other presidents in American history. To do so is impossible.

"Worse, I think it risks turning our profession into nothing more than a witting tool for the political exigencies of the moment. I know there are those in my profession who feel historians can and should use their training in our craft to involve themselves actively in the political controversies of our day. I respect that point of view, but I'm afraid I'd have to disagree. Professional historians are far more valuable as dispassionate, sober analysts who can use the tools of our craft to promote balanced, careful assessments of both the present and the past."

As I commented there, I have a related, but somewhat different, concern. I wonder whether articles such as these demonstrate that the reasons traditionally given for studying history are meaningless propaganda spread by our high school history teachers.

I am not a professional historian, practicing or otherwise. I read history simply because I find it interesting and often amazing. It's simply incredible to me that the Greeks defeated the Persians, that Socrates lived (but never wrote a word), that the conception of the role of the federal government 150 years ago bears no relationship to our current understanding of it, or that men charged from the trenches in World War I. You couldn't, as they say, make this stuff up. I read history looking for answers sometimes, but they are usually answers to historical questions. How did the Russians and Chinese come to be ruled by monsterous regimes? Why did white southern yeomen enthusiastically back secession?

But most historians, I think -- and certainly my high school history teacher -- would claim far more for the study of history, summed up in the adage, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." By studying history, the reasoning goes, one can learn lessons that can be applied to the present. I suppose the tendency to generalize is instinctive among humans, and I am guilty as everyone else, although I recognize that others may disagree with the conclusions I draw.

The most unfortunate corrolary of the Foner and Wilentz articles, I think, is that they tend to discredit the study of history and the generally accepted reason for studying history. If two such respected members of the academy can produce such silly partisan hit pieces cloaked in the objectivity of historically-based reasoning, does that not suggest that historically-based reasoning is an utter fraud -- something so malleable and manipulable that it is not worth the paper it is written on? The good professors seem bent on proving that the field of study to which they have devoted their lives wears no clothes.

Although my expectations are usually disappointed -- I do not recall historians condemning Professor Wilentz after his performance in The Rolling Stone -- I am hoping that Professor Foner's contribution may yet rouse historians (in addition to Professor Dirck) to express concern about the damage that such amateurish partisanship does to the study of history. I'm particularly hoping that historians such Don Kagan and Victor Davis Hanson will make their presence felt.

I'm going to watch for developments and will report any I encounter.