1. My Politico article critiquing liberal historians of conservatism provoked far more negative, ad hominem responses than anything I'd ever written. Prudence would dictate I not revisit the subject, but I can't help poking the bear, or at least asking... politico.com/magazine/story…
2. Did we learn anything from this? At the least I wish I had, titular provocations aside, more explicitly emphasized that our understanding of conservatism *has* been enhanced by many of those liberal histories, some of which I mentioned in this thread:
3. And although Twitter is a medium of anger, it has room for civil (and even educational) exchanges like the one I had with the distinguished NYU historian @TomSugrue, even when considerable disagreement remains:
4. Still, most reactions to my article from academic historians were, more or less, along the lines of NO NO NOOOOO THESE ARE ALL GOOD PERFECT BOOKS, YOU ARE SO VERY VERY WRONG TO CRITICIZE THEM, YOU ARE A BADTHINKER!!!
5. Why this defensive, wagon-circling response? After all, most wd agree that much academic historical scholarship is doomed to go uncited & is objectively poor for the usual reasons of thin primary research, inaccuracies, weak arguments, bad writing, etc. insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/1…
6. I didn't mention this in my article because I wanted to punch up, not down, and so critiqued only the most admired scholars in the field; the ideological blind spots of the best, I think, are more telling than the flaws of the worst
7. On a basic criticism of my article: Of course I agree that liberals can write about conservatives, just as women can write about men, minorities about whites, etc -- I welcome this liberal rejection of cultural appropriation! Still, there are some advantages to the inside view
8. The response of Nancy MacLean to my critique (& that of Steve Teles) was a classic example of poisoning the wells of discourse -- not addressing what was said but pointing toward presumed malignant (& disqualifying) motivations behind the argument: niskanencenter.org/blog/a-respons…
9. In fact much of the "debate" in recent scholarship (in history and political science) assumes the vileness of conservatives, then & now, in terms of their racism, sexism, antagonism to change, etc., & tars dissenters from this view with the same brush pnas.org/content/early/…
10. Some of the most thoughtful advocates of this view therefore tout the John Birch Society & other extreme groups as central to the modern GOP & claim they gave direction to the party from the mid-'60s on
11. There's some common ground here: I agree with @MaxBoot that conservatism's latent dark side has become dominant, pointing toward a failure of gatekeepers in GOP and the conservative movement at some historical point: washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-par…
12. But lib. historians locate the moment of dark-side dominance too far back in GOP history, largely because their conception of both mvmt & GOP is driven by ideology rather than an understanding of politics. Birchers for ex. were leading activists in Goldwater '64 campaign...
13. But too many historians fail to acknowledge that Goldwater almost lost the nomination in CA '64 GOP primary, where he beat ***liberal*** NY Gov. Nelson Rockefeller by only 59,000 votes -- hardly an indication of far-right dominance cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/19…
14. There are vanishingly few examples of Birch or even right-wing priorities translating into GOP legislation in the '60s & '70s -- which was why non-JBS right-wingers like William Rusher advocated abandoning the GOP to create a conservative 3rd party: amazon.com/Making-New-Maj…
15. It's true that Reagan, esp. in '76-'80, indulged the Birchers rhetorically; but then he also turned a sympathetic ear to the goldbugs in that period, & yet no one has claimed his administration made any real moves toward a return to the gold standard mining.com/republicans-re…
16. Often in lib. scholarship on conservatism there's a failure to distinguish con. intellectuals from con. grassroots activists from con. GOP politicians, & to recognize that the perspectives of these different groups were not aligned & sometimes were at odds with each other
17. The overarching point of my article was that even the best liberal scholarship on conservatism would be better if there were conservative scholars within the academy to combat the natural tendency toward confirmation bias: heterodoxacademy.org/professors-mov…
18. But this view was utterly rejected by my critics, who maintain that cons do not want to be profs, or should not be allowed to be (bc they are anti-intellectual & immoral), or further that "Academics are doing just fine as historians of conservatism": s-usih.org/2018/09/academ…
19. The view that liberal historians are "just fine" without dissenting views is, appropriately enough, an echo of one of the most famous passages from Irving Janis' writings on groupthink: 
20. I doubt anything can or will be done to bring viewpoint diversity into the ac. hist. guild, particularly given the decline in humanities enrollments -- even though this decline may itself be due to student distaste for left-wing ideological teachings insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/0…
21. One more canard to address: The desire to allow some room for con. historians in academia doesn't mean a rejection of race/class/gender/sexuality; I have yet to meet a con. historian who doesn't think the '64 Civil Rights Act was most important legislation of 20th century
22. And, as I wrote in 2012, Frank Kameny "is a figure who should be included in standard American history courses rather than relegated to gay studies departments": newrepublic.com/article/111153…
23. Let a hundred flowers bloom! But the tendency on the left is to stigmatize views that would have seemed traditionally liberal a decade ago; ad hominem is the default approach to dissent & the ACLU will soon be perceived as a conservative organization
24. For myself, I don't particularly enjoy culture war forays, so I expect most of my future writings will steer clear of this terrain & continue to concentrate on center-right criticism of GOP shortcomings: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
