Lies the Debunkers Told Me: How Bad History Books Win Us Over

[salvorhardin]

Earlier this month, George Mason University's History News Network asked readers to vote for the least credible history book in print . The top pick was David Barton's right-wing reimagining of our third president, Jefferson's Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson . But just nine votes behind was the late Howard Zinn's left-wing epic, A People's History of the United States . Bad history, it turns out, transcends political divides.

...

What exactly is it about Barton's and Zinn's versions of history that inspire such uncompromising, take-no-prisoners fervor? And how do they manage to wield so much influence, given the widespread skepticism about their accuracy?

Partisanship is the first answer that comes to mind.

...

But that's only part of the explanation. There's a more insidious mechanism that helps explain both the passionate support these authors inspire and the well-founded suspicion that they are fudging the record. In short, Barton and Zinn have each crafted a sort of Da Vinci Code history.

Full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/lies-the-debunkers-told-me-how-bad-history-books-win-us-over/260251

[cthulu2016]

1. This won't go well, but it is hard to read Zinn with

a critical mind without feeling one is reading an op-ed style attempt to persuade the reader, rather than inform.

The significance of TPHOTUS was that it was a punchy counter to a lot of mythology, and thus on balance a good thing, but unfortunately it is the only history book a lot have people have read.

[salvorhardin]

2. I completely agree

People's History is riddled with errors and exaggeration... but it's a highly useful counter narrative to the likes of Niall Ferguson et. al. If someone was going to read only one history book beyond what they might read in high school, I wouldn't mind too much if that was People's History (although I'd rather they read Hofstadter).

Also it should be noted that for all its faults, People's History is but a distant second to anything ever written by Barton. Zinn might obfuscate and manipulate, but Barton outright lies and distorts beyond recognition.

[The Magistrate]

3. The Article, Though, Sir, Is Still an exercise In False Equivalency

Barton's work is swill, swill spouted by a profoundly ignorant and foolish person.

Prof. Zinn's work is, as you say, a sort of corrective, and so exaggerate in parts, but it is a professional work of history, by a man who knows the trade.

If one could only read one book, and had to choose between one by Prof. Zinn and one by Barton, the person who chose the former would be much better and more accurately informed.

"Romney loves America like a tick loves a dog."

[cthulu2016]

5. agreed

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. Just finished reading the article, and was about to post this same point.

Creating a false equivalency between these two is the obvious goal in the first paragraph.

[arely staircase]

20. true and

the author of the atlantic piece didn't even bother to give an example of anything to prove his point about either person.

[Douglas Carpenter]

39. my thoughts exactly

When I was finishing up reading Zinn's "A People's History" I recall thinking to myself, "Oh come on Professor Zinn a couple of good things must of happened in America if only by accident." But, was he falsely reporting events? NO! He was going a bit overboard on subscribing moral judgment to complex events. And the late Dr. Zinn made no claim of neutrality. In fact his own words were, "To be neutral is to collaborate." Barton on the other hand is simply manufacturing a fake a history of America which he represents as the neutral truth while claiming very mainstream interpretations to be fackery. One should always assume bias from all historians. One should not have to assume the manufacture of a narrative completely removed from all reality.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. It's more polemic than history honestly

and it doesn't have a single source citation, no footnotes, no endnotes. As a work of history it is sloppy and just generally bad; as a POLITICAL and not historical work it is quite successful and perhaps brilliant.

[Nostradammit]

4. What a ridiculous article!

To equate Barton's work with Zinn's is farcical.

Nowhere in the piece does the author point to any historical inaccuracy on the part of Zinn.

I wonder why...

[cthulu2016]

8. The article is all blovation

The absence of examples makes it mysterious why the article is more than a paragraph. It just repeats its thesis 100 times.

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Zinn's sin is writing from the wrong perspective. n/t

[bhikkhu]

16. Writing from a single perspective is "polemic"

...which is distinct from history, at least ideally.

I find in my own reading that the experience of writing for college - where references are required and any unsupported statement is likely to be challenged - has led to much more critical reading. I can still read polemics and gain something, but in the back of my mind there is always the editor marking off point for exaggeration, unsupported statements, statements without factual basis, statements made without reference where reference is really needed, for narrative flights of fancy, etc...

[salvorhardin]

10. That wasn't the purpose of the article

The author's purpose was not to discuss the specific inaccuracies of either Barton or Zinn, but the style of popular counter-histories which so effectively capture the public's attention.

If you're interested, this Reason article noted a few of Zinn's inaccuracies, and you can find more just by googling.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/03/the-peoples-historian

I also liked Michael Kazin's article in Dissent from 2004.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385

[The Magistrate]

18. Citing 'Reason', sir?

'Of Cuba, the reader of A People's History is told that upon taking power, "Castro moved to set up a nationwide system of education, of housing, of land distribution to landless peasants." Castro's vast network of gulags and the spasm of "revolutionary justice" that sent thousands to prison or the executioners wall is left unmentioned. This is unsurprising, I suppose, when one considers that Zinn recently told an interviewer "you have to admire Cuba for being undaunted by this colossus of the North and holding fast to its ideals and to Socialism....Cuba is one of those places in the world where we can see hope for the future. With its very meager resources Cuba gives free health care and free education to everybody. Cuba supports culture, supports dance and music and theatre."'

A People's History is full of praise for supposedly forgotten truth-tellers like "Dalton Trumbo and Pete Seeger, and W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson," all apologists for Stalinism. (Both Du Bois and Robeson were awarded the Stalin/Lenin Peace Prize by the Kremlin, and both enthusiastically accepted.) There is no accounting of communism's crimes, though plenty of lamentations that, after the Second World War, "young and old were taught that anti-Communism was heroic." Indeed, in the comic book version of A People's History, Zinn writes that the Cold War "would last for over 40 years" but "to keep it going required political and social repression on both sides" (emphasis in original).'

Whatever may be wrong with Prof. Zinn's works, the Reason article is tripe, and standard right-wing tripe at that.

[arely staircase]

21. reason magazine is great

for lining the bottom of my parakeet's cage

[Egalitarian Thug]

22. The purpose was quite plainly to draw a false equivalency, as others have pointed out.

There is no basis nor source for the article's premise other than to conflate the two and set up the "everybody does it" meme that is the authoritarian's best hope for the status quo. Zinn never made any claim to objectivity, he has stated this on many occasions. He says that he wrote it as some small counter to the highly sanitized and completely one-sided picture presented to us as fact for generations.

Let's be frank, everybody with a pulse knows the shit has begun to hit the fan and we're in for some real drama. The collapse of '08 was only the first big chunk to hit and the splatters continue and will grow in number over the next couple of years. If the groundwork is not laid now, there is a real chance that the inevitable changes will not go the way the winners want it to.

As we move closer to that edge of the unknown, the panic will continue to mount.

[Posteritatis]

11. HNN's gotten pretty vile in the last year

I used to follow the site religiously, then god-knows-what happened to them and they went absurdly right-wing all of a sudden.

It disappoints me; I loved what that site used to be.

[salvorhardin]

12. All of a sudden?

It has always been pretty slanted toward the right. In recent months though, they've been trying to be more accessible. The result is far less original content, and far more aggregation.

If you dig up the poll this article references here though, the historians commenting said pretty much what almost everyone here is saying -- Zinn might have issues, but Barton is poisonous.

[Posteritatis]

17. There's always been a bit of a slant, but I did see a sudden, very sharp swerve.

I'd been more or less ignoring it for awhile because of that so I haven't been too on top of what they've been like lately. I did see the article you mention in the OP around the time it came out and it was still, well, more or less what I'd come to expect of HNN ever since then.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Gosh, historians have their points of view?

Did anyone ever read Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius, Gibbon, Tuchman, McCullough, Hugh Thomas, Shelby Foote? Not to mention Churchill and the Bible.

Unless you want your history served up as a list of dates and names that never explore the "why" of history be prepared for opinions by the historians.

[salvorhardin]

14. There's historiography and then there's lying

Zinn doesn't lie (indeed, as Kazin has noted, he might effect something worse -- cynicism and hopelessness), but Barton does.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. One of my history profs said to History majors that studying history is a sure way to cynicism.

As a history major, I discovered that to be true.

But, the philosophy of Cynicism gets a bad rap in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism

Cynicism is one of the most striking of all the Hellenistic philosophies.[8] It offered people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty. Although there was never an official Cynic doctrine, the fundamental principles of Cynicism can be summarised as follows:[9][10]

The goal of life is happiness which is to live in agreement with Nature.
Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude.
Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of Arete.
The road to arete is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature.
Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.

Thus a Cynic has no property and rejects all conventional values of money, fame, power or reputation.[9] A life lived according to nature requires only the bare necessities required for existence, and one can become free by unshackling oneself from any needs which are the result of convention.[11] The Cynics adopted Hercules as their hero, as epitomizing the ideal Cynic.[12] Hercules "was he who brought Cerberus, the hound of Hades, from the underworld, a point of special appeal to the dog-man, Diogenes."[13] According to Lucian, "Cerberus and Cynic are surely related through the dog."[14]

The Cynic way of life required continuous training, not just in exercising one's judgments and mental impressions, but a physical training as well:

[Diogenes] used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body; and that the latter of these created in the mind such quick and agile impressions at the time of its performance, as very much facilitated the practice of virtue; but that one was imperfect without the other, since the health and vigour necessary for the practice of what is good, depend equally on both mind and body.[15]

None of this meant that the Cynic would retreat from society. Cynics would in fact live in the full glare of the public's gaze and would be quite indifferent in the face of any insults which might result from their unconventional behaviour.[9] The Cynics are said to have invented the idea of cosmopolitanism: when he was asked where he came from, Diogenes replied that he was "a citizen of the world, (kosmopolitês)."[16]

The ideal Cynic would evangelise; as the watchdog of humanity, it was their job to hound people about the error of their ways.[9] The example of the Cynic's life (and the use of the Cynic's biting satire) would dig-up and expose the pretensions which lay at the root of everyday conventions.[9]

Although Cynicism concentrated solely on ethics, Cynic philosophy had a big impact on the Hellenistic world, ultimately becoming an important influence for Stoicism. The Stoic Apollodorus writing in the 2nd century BCE stated that "Cynicism is the short

path to virtue."

And, how about this?

Jesus as a Jewish Cynic

Some historians have noted the similarities between the life and teachings of Jesus and those of the Cynics. Some scholars have argued that the Q document, the hypothetical common source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke, has strong similarities with the teachings of the Cynics.[68][69] Scholars on the quest for the historical Jesus, such as Burton L. Mack and John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, have argued that 1st century CE Galilee was a world in which Hellenistic ideas collided with Jewish thought and traditions. The city of Gadara, only a day's walk from Nazareth, was particularly notable as a center of Cynic philosophy,[70] and Mack has described Jesus as a "rather normal Cynic-type figure."[71] For Crossan, Jesus was more like a Cynic sage from an Hellenistic Jewish tradition than either a Christ who would die as a substitute for sinners or a Messiah who wanted to establish an independent Jewish state of Israel.[72] Other scholars doubt that Jesus was deeply influenced by the Cynics, and see the Jewish prophetic tradition as of much greater importance.[73]
Cynic influences on early Christianity

Many of the ascetic practices of Cynicism may have been adopted by early Christians, and Christians often employed the same rhetorical methods as the Cynics.[74] Some Cynics were actually martyred for speaking out against the authorities.[75] One Cynic, Peregrinus Proteus, lived for a time as a Christian before converting to Cynicism,[76] whereas in the 4th century, Maximus of Alexandria, although a Christian, was also called a Cynic because of his ascetic lifestyle. Christian writers would often praise Cynic poverty,[77] although they scorned Cynic shamelessness: Augustine stating that they had, "in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs."[78] The ascetic orders of Christianity also had direct connection with the Cynics, as can be seen in the wandering mendicant monks of the early church who in outward appearance, and in many of their practices were little different from the Cynics of an earlier age.

[The Magistrate]

19. As the Man Said, Sir

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

[hfojvt]

24. I would say that his description of King Phillip's war, to cite one example

is a lie - or several lies. Some lies of commission, and some lies of omission.

Zinn - "The English found their excuse, a murder which they attributed to Metacom, and they began a war of conquest against the Wampanoags, a war to take their land."

So to read that, and only that about King Phillip's war is to imagine that the Wampanoags are there in present day Windham County, Connecticut. The English blame him for the death of Sassamon and proceed to invade Windham County so they can take that land.

Other than the details of Sassamon and Windham County (which I have made up to simplify the tale - the point is there is Wampanoag territory and the English invade it ("begin a war of conquest&quot , that is basically how Zinn describes it.

[Scootaloo]

27. Anyone who bases all their knowledge on one book is a lost cause

Zinn's not perfect, but People's History points in the right direction. Despite the title, nobody's going to fit every smidgeon of US history into a single book, at least not without glossing over an awful lot.

[hfojvt]

33. but in this incident, it is not the right direction

Suppose you come along a scene of two kids fighting. You break it up and ask them what happened. George says something like "Sam hit me for no reason, so I hit him back and the fight began." Sam says something like "George stole my milk so I hit him." Each kid is probably gonna gloss over their own culpability and try to make the other kid look like the aggressor, the guilty party. I would expect an obkjective observer, a truthful observer to give a balanced, honest account, and NOT simply take one side and present it as the truth. "The English began a war of conquest ..." is not an honest account of King Phillip's war. It does not even point in the right direction.

[Scootaloo]

35. I've got a quote here from a book you may be familair with...

We do not claim for this work that it is absolutely true history; no absolutely true history is possible on any subject.

That's from the preface to Ellis and Morris' "King Philips War."

it continues;

All the authors claim is that it is the result of a wide and discriminative study of the published and unpublished archives of the New England colonies, and the contemporary letters found in the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Historical Society collections

In other words, not only is your own source telling you that there's no objectivity in history, but they're also explaining to you that they are only presenting one side of the conflict's story, which is really about as subjective as you can get.

Also from the preface;

However much we must condemn the arbitrary aggressions which drove the indian tribes into revolt, the historic fact must be accepted that between peoples the fittest only survive, and that between races ethics rarely exist

Okay, it's written in 1906, I'm not expecting wonders of racial progress. But you're going to present a work that has that on the first page of text as being "objective," "truthful," "balanced," and "honest"?

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that your source actually agrees with Zinn (in fact it's likely his source as well.) Where Zinn points out "They (the Puritans) were clearly the aggressors, but they claimed they attacked for preventative purposes," that's actually true... of the Puritan's treatment of the Narrangansetts during the war. Zinn's problem is that he's covering more than five hundred years of history in a book only twice the size of Ellis and Morris', which is covering three years. Call it a Zinn of omission, if you like.

And the post of yours you link to... Uh... I dunno how to break it to you, but someone who gripes about "western civilization" being defamed, who bitches about white people being pointed at over the Indian wars, and who seems to ignore a lot of his own source in an effort to portray the Indians as savage monsters for, you know fighting back sets off a few alarms for me.

[hfojvt]

38. oh no, not the alarms

First of all, nobody was painted as savages.

The point of those quotes was to respond to Zinn's nonsense that the English just looked for an excuse and then happily went off on a war of conquest.

Also, since Zinn's statement was about the Wampanoags, it's kinda disingenuous to bring the Naragansetts into it.

Morris and Ellis only have sources from one side of the conflict, that is true, but it is hardly like they are presenting a biased and rah-rah Pilgrims account. Even the quote you gave, where they said

"...we must condemn the arbitrary aggressions which drove the indian tribes into revolt ..." hardly seems like a statement of "the white settlers are the good guys in this conflict."

Also, they write

"The Puritan was not of a character, either individually or collectively, with whom men of any other race could be expected to maintain harmonious relations. Amiability was not one of his characteristics, and he was totally lacking in that great gift of humor so essential to friendly association and broad understanding, and, lacking it, he remained devoid of that sympathetic temper necessary to live at peace with and to understand the nature of the savage, so closely akin to that of a child.

The French cherished the Indian and made the fierce hunting tribes of New France an instrument in the building up of French power; the English, failing to make an agricultural laborer out of the more pliable New England Indian, treated him with indifference or contempt and turned him into a sullen enemy." 23

"Well might the unfortunate Narragansetts as they contemplated the forceful invasion of their territory and the terms of this treaty extorted by force, which, signed by no sachem, would be held binding upon them, feel that the burden of past wrongs and present injuries was almost too great to be borne.

Of all the New England tribes they indeed were the most deserving of sympathy. The whole conduct of Massachusetts and Connecticut against the Narragansetts had from the first been often unjust, and always aggressive and high-handed. It had never been a wise policy, and now that the bold and warlike Canonchet had succeeded the pacific Canonicus the results were soon to be reaped." p. 73

So their account is certainly more balanced and truthful than Zinn's in that it is not given as a "rah, rah, hooray for our side" account.

No, I think Zinn's problem here is that accuracy gets thrown aside in order to craft a story with a main theme that says "western civilization sucks".


And "fighting back" is not the way I would describe these things, unless you are willing to give both parties the right to "fight back".

These people were doing nothing more than picking corn. Is it "fighting back" to ambush and kill them while they do it?

"Meeting, on their return, a party from the garrison going out with carts to bring in corn from the deserted and outlying houses, they warned them that the Indians were out in force and urged them not to proceed. Confiding in their numbers, however, the foragers continued on their way only to fall into an ambuscade, where, attacked and routed, they were driven back to the garrison with a loss of six killed.33 The settlement was abandoned the following week, the inhabitants seeking refuge on the island of Rhode Island." p. 59

As Martin Luther King wrote "To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe"

"Whoever adopted most repressive measures won popular approval, and the appeals of men like Major Gookin and Rev. John Eliot for humane treatment, and their representations as to the folly of estranging the friendly Indian, alike fell upon deaf ears. "The error of selling away such Indians unto the islands for perpetual slaves" wrote Eliot to the commissioners, "may produce we know not what evil consequences upon all the land, . . . this usage of them is worse than death. Christ hath said, Blessed be the merciful. . . . All men (of reading) condemn the Spaniards for cruelty . . . in destroying men and depopulating the land. Here is land enough for them and us too." p 133

Yet, people on both side chose to retaliate in kind. As Chief Big Eagle wrote:

"Wabasha, Wacouta, myself and others still talked for peace, but nobody would listen to us, and soon the cry was "Kill the whites and kill all these cut-hairs who will not join us." A council was held and war was declared. Parties formed and dashed away in the darkness to kill settlers. The women began to run bullets and the men to clean their guns."

And the beat goes on.

[Scootaloo]

40. Actually, Zinn's talking about the war

He mentions the Wampanoag at the beginning of the paragraph, but as you should know, the Wampanoag were not the only tribe involved.

His paragraph could stand to have some extra detail, sure. I'm sure that he could have found room for another sentence. I'm also sure that he could have done better research against his claim that there were only ten million people in North America at the time of contact. As I said, Zinn's not perfect.

As for "western civilization sucks," maybe you'd like to define first what "western civilization" is, in your estimation.

[raouldukelives]

34. Exactly. nt

[hfojvt]

23. I wrote this about Zinn's first chapter

if anyone is interested

http://election.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=473464

[salvorhardin]

25. Thanks for that

Good post.

[Scootaloo]

26. Interesting that the article plays off the name of James Loewen's book

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" - which does a pretty good job at explaining why people are hostile towards alternate viewpoints of history... Long story short, it's basically because high school history books are syndicated crap designed to instill a particular sense of culture and patriotism in a student, rather than useful information.

A lot of people have a tough time dealing with facts different from what they were presented in school. For instance, a lot of people still have it in their heads that the phases of the moon are caused by the shadow of the Earth because that's what their old science book - or science teacher - told them. Same thing with literature; it really IS okay to end a sentence with a preposition, but I've seen some really weird contortions to prevent it. And on and on.

basically people are hostile to new ideas. And when they've spent so many years memorizing the old ideas from people they're told are authority figures, it gets even worse. That's why university is such a good thing (...ideally) because it has all the books and professors, but teaches new ideas and concepts.

As for the rest of the article... Trying to draw an equivalency is just grotesque. And the writer obviously knows this, by pointing out that Barton's fairy tales are all lies, and then saying "And Zinn's is unpopular too." Yes, both are opinionated writers - welcome to writing The Atlantic, perspective is a huge part of it, try it sometime! - but Zinn's opinions also happen to be factual, a distinction Barton lacks.

[1-Old-Man]

28. I finally sat down to read Zinn about 10 years ago, threw it away after 3 chapters

The book was rubbish, suitable for the trash heap and nothing else.

[leveymg]

29. Consider the source of this squirt at Zinn. George Mason U is a nutter butter factory

The GMU campus has an overall reputation as a suburban bastion of stuffy, preformed concrete Republicanism. George Mason Law School is one of the most Right-wing in America. It is distinguished by having the only faculty seat funded by the the National Rifle Assoc. The National Review lauds the place:

A Law School with a Twist
At George Mason University, the Left doesn’t reign, believe it or not.
http://old.nationalreview.com/flashback/miller200603270620.asp

By John J. Miller

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the March 13, 2006, issue of National Review.

. . .

For one thing, the faculty includes an unusually high number of Republicans. Several professors have moved in and out of the Bush administration, such as Timothy J. Muris, who was chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and William H. Lash III, who was an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department. Those who aren't Republicans are often Libertarians. "I knew things were different here when I saw a particular bumper sticker in the parking lot," says Ronald Rotunda, a professor who arrived from the University of Illinois in 2002. "It said: 'There's no government like no government.'" To be sure, there are Democrats on the faculty, including the guy who runs the school's legal-aid clinic. But rather than sue police departments and defend death-row inmates — the all-too-typical activities of groups like this — Joseph Zengerle's students provide help to members of the military and their families. And if that weren't enough, Mason is the only law school in America that has a chair endowed by the National Rifle Association (or, to be specific, an NRA foundation); Nelson Lund is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment. It is perhaps not too farfetched to think that GMU's law school will become to the early 21st century what the University of Chicago Law School was to the latter half of the 20th — a high-caliber bastion of conservative (or at least classic-liberal) legal thinking.

. . .

What's clear is that conservatives are increasingly coming to see Mason's law school as an important ally. Manne's Law and Economics Center continues to hold its seminars for judges, under the leadership of Prof. F. H. Buckley — and its enduring credibility is a major reason that Mason scores as well as it does among the judges polled by U.S. News. Moreover, GMU's faculty was instrumental in filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in defense of the Solomon amendment, a law that prohibits schools accepting public funding from banning military recruiters from campus. "Does this make us conservative?" asks Polsby, who organized the brief. "I don't think so. I think it exposes other schools that want to ban the military as truly radical."

GMU also operates the Koch-funded Right of Center Institute for Humane Studies, a conservative breeding ground for would-be academics, opinion-shapers, and policymakers, about which the Wiki says:

Each summer, IHS runs a series of free, week-long summer seminars for university students from around the world. Seminars are interdisciplinary and include lectures on history, economics, philosophy, law, and political science.[34][35][4] Seminar themes include the value of property rights, limited government, peace, natural rights, free trade, individual autonomy, and the morality of free enterprise.[9][10] There are introductory and advanced seminars, as well as seminars geared toward students planning careers in public policy, academia, and journalism.[34][35][4] IHS also runs weekend on-campus seminars during the academic year.[4] IHS and Liberty Fund co-sponsor the Advanced Topics in Liberty program, which is an invitation-only, discussion-based weekend conference series.[36] For graduate students pursuing academic careers, IHS sponsors invitation-only Career Development Seminars designed to help students "land a job in academia, gain tenure, and contribute to the academic and intellectual conversation."[4]

[melm00se]

30. This thread leads credence

to the Atlantic authors' statement from the article:

It's not just that Barton and Zinn have large constituencies. They also inspire a degree of passion that verges on the pugnacious.

[salvorhardin]

32. Sadly true

[bemildred]

31. This is babble.

There is no such thing as objective history, there is well supported historical interpretation and political drivel pulled out of some guy's ass. Zinn makes clear his slant, but he does not lie; Barton on the other hand pretends he is being "objective"; as do the writers of the OP who are grinding their own axe, the entire purpose of the OP seems to be to discredit Zinn using Barton as a bludgeon. It is an old political technique but it has nothing to do with history.

[Scootaloo]

36. It's safe to dismiss people who claim to be "objective" as liars

Humans are simply not objective beings. It's literally impossible for us to be objective. When someone marches up and thumps their chest about how objective they are, you can know for certain they are in fact extremely biased and are just trying to claim undeserved credibility.

You can take the same position towards people who roll their eyes over "emotional" statements, too. Humans have emotions. A lack of emotion in a statement is thus impossible. If they could at least criticize emotive statements, I would at least give them points for having a fucking vocabulary...

[bemildred]

37. Dumb liars.

The closest thing we have to "objective" is the "repeatable independent demonstration" standard of scientific endeavour, and even that isn't really "objective", it just means you have a hypothesis with some independently observable basis in facts.

But anyway, ever since Einstein showed that there is no absolute physical frame of reference, the notion of anything remotely like a semantic absolute frame of reference is clearly rubbish. The only absolutely known things we have are the tautologies of math and logic.