Michael Farris. JD. Chancellor of Patrick Henry College, which teaches "a profound appreciation for our country and the liberty it provides in their history classes, Constitutional law classes, and government courses."
John Gibbs. Master of Public Administration. Who "has a history of making inflammatory remarks and spreading false conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed."
Victor Davis Hanson. Ph.D. in classics. That qualifies him, I suppose, as the first historian on the list. Though not a historian of the U.S. by any stretch of the imagination.
So here we are. The whole 1776 Commission, tasked with supposedly a hugely important historical task is amazingly devoid of… historians.
I hadn't come across one of them in any academic debates, or books I'd read or even heard of, or known of them existing as historians.
Sure, I don't read everything. And gatekeeping an academic discipline is always fraught: in any era, some of the most creative work comes from non-traditional researchers, so one shouldn't dismiss out of hand.
But there are literally NO academic historians working on the US—any era—on the list.
We get lawyers, political scientists, and a plethora of other professions, but NO historians on the list of people who supposedly put together this oh so important document on US history.
Perhaps some of the researchers or people credited lower on the page have qualifications.
But that's beside the point: they wouldn't be in a position of power to change the direction of the document.
Despite its claims, this is neither "historic" nor "scholarly."
It's a spectacularly tendentious fantasy story gesturing vaguely in the direction of actual American history.
Not even its high gloss design and title font copied from McCullough's "1776" book can change that.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
2: erst einmal gar nicht alle geimpft werden können.
Wenn geimpft-Status plötzlich doppelt freieres Leben (keine Angst mehr um die Krankheit plus Restaurantbesuche etc.) für einige aber nicht alle bedeutet ist das eine perfide gesellschaftliche Zweiteilung.
Für ggf. Monate, in denen es immer schwerer wird zu erklären warum der Nachbar grade aus der Kneipe kommt an der ich nur vorbeilaufen darf obwohl ich auch impfbereit bin.
Das strengt die für eine Mammutaufgabe wie die Pandemiebekämpfung nötige Solidarität über die Maßen an.
It will matter greatly what the news media calls the events of January 6 going forward.
Do we have a coup? A putsch? An insurrection? The storming of the Capitol? Trumpist terrorism? Will there be a pithy shorthand, and if so, will it be reasonably accurate and descriptive?
As a historian, what watching the attack unfold on television brought home to me is once again something basic but often forgotten in the mythologizations of public remembrance:
The people who did this are extremely normal. Despite their wild conspiracies.
There are millions like them. Millions who approve, millions who don't approve but don't not approve enough to care, millions who see this assault on democracy and order as something noble.
H/t to @manwithoutatan for pointing out the existence of this execrable piece of Confederate apologia plus random Lee "facts" of questionable truth value to me.
Normalize reading articles, not just headlines. From the NYT piece:
"I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet."
The main point AOC is making in the New York Times is about *how* to run a campaign, not *what* the message should be.
She's not shy about pushing her progressive brand of politics, but if that's your main takeaway from the criticism, you're misreading the interview.
"If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a full-fledged campaign."