Looking over the so-called 1776 commission, the thing I find most disappointing are the missed opportunities created by just how clownishly incompetent a document this is, from stem to stern. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
1/6
1/6
History is about evidence (which makes one question why this document lacks a bibliography or notes), but it is also about selection & interpretation. Two historians, working in good faith, may look at the same body of evidence &, because they look from a different angle... 2/6
...or at a different part, come up with different, but equally valid conclusions.
Consequently, I think there is good and valuable history to be written by people whose views and values differ greatly from mine. I want to welcome those people into the discipline. 3/6
Consequently, I think there is good and valuable history to be written by people whose views and values differ greatly from mine. I want to welcome those people into the discipline. 3/6
And it is a *discipline,* history.
Doing it makes demands on you to work with rigor, to work within a tradition of knowledge where evidence is painstakingly assembled and laid out by principles mostly proved and only occasionally experimental to support arguments. 4/6
Doing it makes demands on you to work with rigor, to work within a tradition of knowledge where evidence is painstakingly assembled and laid out by principles mostly proved and only occasionally experimental to support arguments. 4/6
But this '1776 Report' isn't that.
There is no rigor here, no painstaking practice of a difficult discipline that demands careful adherence to evidence carefully documented and open admission of uncertainty or controversy. 5/6
There is no rigor here, no painstaking practice of a difficult discipline that demands careful adherence to evidence carefully documented and open admission of uncertainty or controversy. 5/6
I hope everyone will pardon my frankness, but this report as I read it doesn't rise to being 'bad history' because it isn't history at all.
And that makes me sad, because no doubt the embarrassment of this thing will poison the well for other historical perspectives.
end/6
And that makes me sad, because no doubt the embarrassment of this thing will poison the well for other historical perspectives.
end/6
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
