re: #4 Bob Levin

Perhaps historians are too quiet. If you speak up, then the debate changes from a political debate to a historical debate. When the debate becomes historical, the rules change—there is a standard of proof, there are supporting documents, there is rigor and logic.

The absence of those four pillars allows populism to grow. It’s a case of the good people doing nothing and possibly not caring about what grows in their silence.

Historians can’t complain about historical distortion because it’s the historians who are most capable of stopping it. When history is studied and discussed properly it is the antidote for this fetishism.

The problem doesn’t need to be explained, it needs to be stopped.

Well, yes. But then I caution you to look at the whole climate change debacle. In that case, we are looking at 50 years (at least my understanding) of hard scientific data that has been mindlessly refuted over the last 10 years.

History, on the other hand, is a social science. We can look at the letters, essays, documents and speeches of the “founding fathers” and interpret their intentions, but, honestly, when it’s subjected to popular interpretation, all bets are off. Up is down and left is right is common strategic offense. I remember at least 25 years ago talking to my Republican father about South Africa and his insistence on *revisionist history* (he’s a very bright man. it made it hard for me to dig into primary sources and understand context. I was young.) Historians step aside from politics for a very conscious reason—we aren’t able to do more than assert our interpretations of the past based on our historical interpretation and not our contemporary interpretation. And we don’t feel comfortable going beyond that. We don’t ascribe to a “truth” no matter what we believe. I’ve received scathing remarks about my insights because they were ahistorical, and rightly so. The gray areas are what they are and I’ll defend them.