An amicus brief in support of Washington D.C.'s handgun ban dealing with the historical issues in the case was filed by fifteen professional academic historians. One would expect such a brief to be historically accurate, address the Second Amendment in its proper Bill of Rights related context, and include the most relevant figures, statements, and actions for understanding any historical issues in the dispute. However, any such expectation is left largely unfulfilled in the historians' brief.
One would expect that, if one expected this particular group of agenda-driven manipulators to be more interested in truth than Marxist social engineering. We are told those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. When historians betray their trust and obscure and rewrite that past with present motives, it is a very special type of betrayal, an act of treason against all humanity.
David E. Young does a fine job deconstructing the deception, albeit he mostly treats it as error, omission and failure. Not being part of the "respectable" academic community, I'm under no restraints to conclude that no one, not even 15 professional academics, could be this obtuse. The only explanation is one of premeditated sleight of mind to promote their ideology, rather than solid scholarship to pursue the truth.
Incidentally, if you don't have Young's book, "The Origin of the Second Amendment," you're missing out on one of the finest, most comprehensive resources available. It is among the most highlighted and dog-eared tomes on my shelf.
[Via Of Arms and the Law]
No arguement. While working on my MA, half the books I read were more hit pieces on other historians than any useful bit of scholarship.
ReplyDeleteMost historians are not. They are advocates for a political agenda. There is a saying whose origin I don't know, but was in a very bad movie of the 1950's with Gerald Mohr starring.
ReplyDeleteThe quote was, "If we would change what we will become, we must first change what we are."
That is what most modern historians and history teachers are about. They cannot change history, but they can change what we know of it or our perception of it. They are applying the above saying, albeit with ill intent.
Many people call themselves historians just as many people call themselves Dr., usually undeservedly so. Most of them are instructors or teachers, not educators, because educators deal in truth. One can teach a falsehood, but cannot claim educator status without teaching truth.
These particular 'historians' fall in the Josef Goebbels school of thought.