Gene Callahan favorably cites and David Sehat unfavorably cites a new article in the New York Review of Books by renowned historian Gordon Wood criticizing Jill Lepore's book The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History. It's hard to evaluate this because I still haven't gotten a chance to read Lepore's book. She could be as boorish and snobbish as Woods suggests, but the impression I got from earlier statements by her and discussions of her suggest to me that Woods is being a little unfair.
Lepore's argument, as I understand it, is simply that the Tea Party mischaracterizes a lot of the American Revolution and at the very least is guilty of what she calls a "historical fundamentalism" that embraces a single, ideologically convenient understanding of history that doesn't truly reflect not only the Revolution, but the fact that the revolutionaries were fighting fundamentally different battles at a fundamentally different time.
It's hard to tell what Wood has a problem with. Tone? Perhaps its harsh, but I didn't get the impression it was. Historical inaccuracy? I'm not really sure.
I don't think it's that debatable to suggest that the Tea Party has recreated the American Revolution in its own image. As Lepore points out, people do that all the time in America. It's an inaccurate thing to do, but it does say a lot about how we see ourselves. I'm receptive to that and I had gotten the impression that Lepore was too (she's said that Tea Partiers are genuinely interested in Revolutionary history). What bothers me is when Tea Partiers take that and start telling people that they are traitors to the founders, etc.
Anyway - enjoy the article, and if anyone has read Lepore's book I'm interested in what you thought.
I read Lepore's "Name of War" about ten years ago.
ReplyDeleteFantastic article, BTW. Wood really nails Lepore.
So you consider the Tea Party to be accurately portraying the Revolutionary period, or do you think Lepore is snobbish for suggesting they don't (or both?).
ReplyDeleteHave you read her new book?
Here's another question - would you call Tea Partiers snobbish for their suggestions that their political opponents have abandoned the principles of the founding era?
ReplyDeleteIt isn't an issue of snobbery; it is an issue of taking popular history at face value.
ReplyDeleteOne of the money quotes from the article:
Nora believed, as does the English historian David Lowenthal in his Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996), that this kind of collective memory is essential for any society. Memory, or what Lowenthal calls “heritage,” may be, like the Tea Party’s use of the Founding, a worthless sham, its credos fallacious, even perverse; but, wrote Lowenthal, “heritage, no less than history, is essential to knowing and acting.” It fosters community, identity, and continuity, and in the end makes possible history itself. “By means of it we tell ourselves who we are, where we came from, and to what we belong.”
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Nora's multi-volume work is well worth reading, BTW.
Right, I get that point Xenophon. I guess my question is that I wasn't under the impression that Lepore was making those sorts of criticisms. I thought (from what I gathered from reporting on the book - as I said, I haven't read it) her point was for one thing to set certain points of history straight, confront the "historical fundamentalism", but acknowledge the deep interest in and value derived from history that the Tea Party has.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't seem like something Wood should be faulting her for.
If you're saying Wood makes a good point I'll heartily agree with you. What I'm more curious about is why you think he "nails Lepore".
I like how Colonial Williamsburg has reacted to the influx of Tea Partiers - but then again, I have a bias for Williamsburg:
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/08/tea-party-happened-in-boston-but-its.html
They do an excellent job of addressing the "historical fundamentalism" that Lepore identifies.
That is exactly what he is faulting her for.
ReplyDeleteMemory and history are different things, and Lepore seems to have an expectation that they should serve the same purpose (which is sort of odd to me in light of the one work I have read of hers). Hell, I bemoan crappy historical narratives, take Braveheart as an example, but their purpose is not academic in nature and one shouldn't confuse the two.
BTW, it appears that the alleged Arizona shooter had a problem with the Congresswoman going back to 2007 when she didn't answer a question of his in what he considered a satisfactory way.
ReplyDeletehttp://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1
The more we know about this guy the more it will become clear that the "tone" of political rhetoric (or the music he listened to) had basically zero to do with this incident.
No, I think Lepore is suggesting that the Tea Party expects them to serve the same purpose and she's pointing out that they don't serve the same purpose.
ReplyDeleteThis speculation is probably useless until we read the book.
RE: "which is sort of odd to me in light of the one work I have read of hers"
And in light of everything that's been written about her knew book!!!
I think any study of history quickly reveals that a lot of people thought a lot of different things, even at the time - and the same people thought different things at different points in their life, and when they had the opportunity to reflect back. That doesn't eliminate the role of memory - it actually widens the scope for inspiration from history, so long as you don't rewrite history to be exclusively a confirmation of your views.
Right - they had mentioned that. He's been following her for a while.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a gaping chasm between "not the primary cause" and "zero to do with", and I'm really not seeing this connection you're trying to draw with the music.
I think the best statements so far that are the closest to what I think are (1.) Jon Stewart last night, and (2.) Andrew Sullivan when he addresses Brooks's dismissal here:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/the-politicized-mind-of-gabrielle-giffords.html
I really don't know how to say this sort of thing without people thinking I'm (1.) blaming the Tea Party, or (2.) "blaming society" - ie, Columbine and the music. I'm not doing either of those things. But I'm not the most skillful wordsmith out there, so see Stewart and Sullivan (who are quite skillful) for more or less my reaction at this point.
My reaction to the John Stewart piece is how this is being treated as the worst thing ever.
ReplyDeletePolitical opponents are enemies.
Anyway, as I have stated, it would be so nice if if John Stewart had made a similar statement about the death of Kathryn Johnston.
Loughner also has some of his own ideas about UFOs:
ReplyDeletehttp://dailycaller.com/2011/01/11/fellow-commenters-at-ufo-conspiracy-website-questioned-jared-lee-loughners-sanity-in-threads/#ixzz1AkIU8kSR
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On the Stewart thing, I always find calls to "change the discourse" to be rather bizarre. Change it to what exactly? Back to the boorish, atypical period of the 1950s and 1960s? From a historical perspective the political discourse is far more in line with most of American history and it presents some rather real ideological choices that didn't exist for a whole generation after the election of 1940.
I don't get this refrain that "it's not new that political discourse is this bad", as if anyone has been arguing that it is new. It's been building steadily for the last twenty years or so - I think people agree on that. But nobody is saying that this is a new phenomenon, Xenophon. I'm not sure why the fact that we've been here before provides any less reason to want an improvement.
ReplyDeleteThe state has killed innocents before too. Does that sound like a good reason to you to not care about Kathryn Johnston?
I think the state of political discourse is great myself; what was bad was what came before this. I come not condemn the current political discourse, but to praise it. It is far, far better than what came before it from roughly 1940-1980. People actually have real ideological differences from one another.
ReplyDeleteFrom George Will's latest column:
ReplyDelete"A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism."
Ya, that was a pretty sick column.
ReplyDeleteI put Will's column in with the gun control advocates for opportunistic or near-opportunistic response to all this. The thing, at least you can see why someone might go for the gun control schtick.
I'd really rather not talk about Will - I was not happy to see that this morning and it only served to lower my opinion of him, both because he would write that and because he demonstrates no concept of what he's talking about despite having been a columnist in Washington for years.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly do you disagree with George Will on? Sure not all progressives fall into the kind of crux he describes, but the ultimate purpose of using "clever social engineering" so that "society and people can be perfected" appears to be what progressives really strive for. He may have been a bit harsh to those on the left, but some of the opportunistic rhetoric by commentators such as Keith Olbermann has been rather pitiful considering the history of political rhetoric in this country. Though Will tends to be more pragmatic and logical than most conservative columnists, his repudiating of the left's reaction comes at no surprise.
I thought it was a rather brilliant piece of commentary actually.
ReplyDeleteJames - Social engineering can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I don't have anything wrong with the very idea of it. Everyone supports social engineering - it's not just progressives. Libertarians support social engineering on a massive scale. The ideal libertarian polity is certainly not a polity you'd get from natural or emergent processes, after all.
ReplyDeleteBut the idea of social engineering in general has - probably for good reason - become attached to progressives.
But that's not my concern with Will. What bothered me about this article was that concern over violent rhetoric is mocked as an attempt to engineer society - another opportunity for Will to make what always has been an overstated case. A lot of conservatives are on the defensive now. That's a little sensitive of them, but at the very least it's understandable (there have been some over the top liberal responses). Will is unique in his willingness to use the tragedy to attack the left, merely because of concerns raised about violent rhetoric.
You'll have to expand on Olbermann - I only saw his statement immediately after the attack and I don't recall anything especially problematic (although he certainly has been problematic in the past - indeed he apologized for it in that segment).
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteTo expand on Olbermann, I was referring to his initial "special comment" after the shooting, and I have not heard anything by him since. Though I have not watched his show recently (its good for strict entertainment only) I am not aware if he has made any more "problematic" statements. Judging by this short summary of videos from his show:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/countdown/
I would venture to say he is sticking by the same message he stated on Saturday night.
When comparing progressive and libertarian social engineering, it seems that libertarians prefer social engineering done without government assistance or promotion. It would mainly come from parents, neighbors, and just people that are communicated with in general. Progressives seem to prefer social engineering through coercive public education, which libertarians do not all agree with.
Can you really blame conservatives for being on the defense now? Many on the left and mainstream media are placing the blame on "violent rhetoric" and Loughner's anti-government view, which automatically links him to the Tea Party even though they may not say it directly. ABC's Jake Tapper even blamed the incident on civil libertarians because some family member told him "it used to be he would have been locked up" or something to that accord. I didn't take Will's column as an attack on the left, just pointing out that violent political rhetoric is not new in this country and that there have been politically motivated shootings before.
Remember that Olbermann is the idiot who compared Citizens United to Plessy.
ReplyDeleteJames,
There has been a broad overreaction to this incident, which is exactly what we should expect. This is a one-off, isolated incident, and that is all that it is.
On social engineering - I think we have to think of social engineering as any attempt to deliberately change a naturally occuring organization of society. In this regard, libertarians advocate substantially more social engineering than most because of their views on downsizing the state. The mistake is in seeing the state as being different from any other emergent social institution. You say "done without government assistance or promotion", but you don't understand how oriented that very perspective is towards social engineering! Libertarians advocate a massive institutional deconstruction. That, it seems to me, is fraught with peril.
ReplyDeleteEverybody advocates social engineering in some form or another, of course - my macroeconomic policy preferences are "social engineering". But I think they're somewhat more modest than the libertarian social engineering project. Probably the people that are least interested in social engineering are good old fashioned George Bush Sr. type conservatives. Libertarians are social engineers par excellence.
I have more thoughts on this here: http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/05/danger-of-libertarian-social.html
No, I can't really blame conservatives for this which is why in the immediately prior post I said "it's understandable". It's still not exactly the right reaction. I don't blame people who reach for gun control after this either, but I still think its not the right approach.
re: "Many on the left and mainstream media are placing the blame on "violent rhetoric" and Loughner's anti-government view"
Well my whole point is that this seems to be a misreading of most of what has been said.
Not that I disagree with you on how social engineering is defined, I would just like an example of how the state isn't different from any other emerging social institution. What I mean to ask is, if some type of social institution arises that utilizes a monopoly on coercion and force, is it not a state? The only example I can really think of is a kind of cult-like religion that may encompass the whole of a society.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I follow, James.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say "isn't different from any other emergent [not "emerging" - there's a distinction] social institution" I'm not meaning to suggest there are no differences at all so much as I am suggesting that those differences do not change the fact that government is an "emergent social institution".
There are definitely differences. That's what allows us to identify states as states (as opposed to churches, families, clubs, etc.). The qualities that assist in defining an institution do make it "different" and a common definition for a state is a claim on the right to use coercive force (I'm not sure I agree that this is the best definition of a "state", but it's certainly out there).
That definition makes it somewhat different from other emergent social institutions, but I don't see an obvious reason to think that makes it not an emergent social institution - I don't see how that makes it artificial or alien in the way that a lot of libertarians implicitly treat it.
At the risk of feeding what appears to be a troll (particularly based on the recent HNN comments that walk the fine line of saying "I'm concerned about something xish. No one is saying that they are concerned about x."), what you seem to not be able to understand is the distinction (which Wood does a good job of laying out for the layman) of memory and history. Lepore has repeatedly worked in the realm of telling the scientific history and then relating how memory is more important. _The Name of War_ being her best at that. Now she dismisses memory as inferior to, or in need of correction by scientific history. She's attempted to have her cake, and eat it too, and Wood called her out on it.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little surprised Wood would take this vocal a stance after what Gingrich's praise did to him. I guess the old-school radical feels compelled to fight the fight no matter what. Maybe he's just upset to see what Harvard has become since he left.
But, back to Lepore . . . . Given her advisor, and her scholarship, it's a little curious that she has suddenly become so enamored with "scientific history." That's probably one reason that the Wood review "nails it." Additionally, you may want to read some of her pre-Tea Party New Yorker pieces; she had one about the violence of early nineteenth-century elections that is good for making her later works head scratchers, and then there's the piece on Obama's inauguration address that is barely comprehensible, but glories in Obama's use of memory (in his selective plucking of quotations from "the father of our nation" whatever that means).
I'd be interested, given your recent attention to the problems for the republic posed by the Tea Party (of which I have 0 affinity) what your take on SDS is.
Non-anon: GS
"When I say "isn't different from any other emergent [not "emerging" - there's a distinction] social institution""
ReplyDeleteNow I'm fairly certain you're a troll.
e·merg·ing
[ih-mur-jing] –adjective
emergent ( def. 3 )
e·mer·gent
[ih-mur-juhnt]–adjective
1.
coming into view or notice; issuing.
2.
emerging; rising from a liquid or other surrounding medium.
3.
coming into existence, esp. with political independence: the emergent nations of Africa.
4.
arising casually or unexpectedly.
5.
calling for immediate action; urgent.
6.
Evolution . displaying emergence.
e·mer·gence
[ih-mur-juhns]–noun
1.
the act or process of emerging.
2.
an outgrowth, as a prickle, on the surface of a plant.
3.
Evolution . the appearance of new properties or species in the course of development or evolution.
Unless you're saying government calls for "immediate action" what distinction are you insisting there is? OR, are you using the term in its specific, evolutionary meaning? Protip: if you are relying on the last definition of a common word--particularly a definition from a specific discipline that most people do not engage with, you should consider a new word.
Do you mean evolving?
GinSlinger -
ReplyDeleteNot sure why you think my HNN comments were trolling exactly.
Anyway, I have nothing wrong with Wood's point about memory and history, which came up in an exchange with Xenophon above. My concern is that he seems to be accusing Lepore of something that - from all the impressions I've received - she's not guilty of. Indeed, I thought the whole point of Lepore's book was to make this distinction between memory and history. It seems odd for Wood to restate the obvious to her. That having been said, I appreciate Wood a lot and think he makes good points. I just get the sense he's trying to pick a fight.
One thing I've qualified throughout this post is that I haven't read Lepore's book yet and I'm admittedly not familiar with the rest of her work. But from what I do know from reading what she has written on the Tea Party, Wood's critiques seem to ring hollow. I'm not the only person that had this reaction. See Sehat's reaction to the Wood article too.
Are you refering to Students for a Democratic Society? I'm not well read on them, but I wouldn't say I have an especially positive view of them. My understanding is the Weathermen grew out of them, and certainly the Weathermen are worse than anything on the right today. My understanding was that earlier years were more just disruptive/civil disobedience protest - is that correct? Certainly I don't have an issue with that on the right or the left. I just don't know. It was kind of an umbrella group, wasn't it?
You get more specific and I'm more than happy to react - I'm just not familiar enough with it.
Flappy -
ReplyDelete"Emergent" is a specific term in the complex adaptive systems literature. It's also a term that's used a lot in the Austrian economics community to mean much the same thing as it does in the complexity literature. It's also used in the Austrian literature to be synonymous with "spontaneous order". It's very different from the common use of the verb "emerging", and the distinction was central to my point so I just made sure I clarified.
Most of my readers (well, at least most of my commenters) are either Austrians or they are familiar with the Austrian school. I'm not trolling on my own blog when I use a term that's extremely common in the circles we run in. And if anybody is confused about terminology I'm more than happy to clarify.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI don't think libertarians disagree that the state is an emerging social institution, but its the coercive use of force that makes it inherently wrong. Not that its alien, but that social order would be better kept without it. I think we agree for the most part on the same points, just disagree on whether the state may be necessary for social order.