March 19, 2007
Who Blames America First? III Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:50 PM EST First let me say that I was paraphrasing Michael Barone, not stating my own opinion, on why the “tenured radicals” have created a generation of blame-America-firsters. I thought it might be part of the reason, but “hardly all of it.” Perhaps I should amend that to “hardly any of it.” As I wrote in the last paragraph of my post, I think the origins lie elsewhere and much further back than just one generation. I find my hypothesis an interesting one (of course, I usually do find my hypotheses interesting), but I guess Messrs. Burns and Zeitz do not, or perhaps they were too busy rushing to the defense of academia to notice it. However, Joshua Zeitz must live a weblife of nearly unremitting disappointment. He keeps going to blogs and being devastated that they are not written like peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, dense with subordinate clauses and abristle with footnotes and carefully gathered evidence. But he then commits the very sin for which he berates Michael Barone, who is, I believe I can safely say, one of the most respected commentators in Washington. Mr. Zeitz writes, “I have found no such bias in the teaching of history or literature. ‘Dead white men’ are still given more than a fair hearing, as is America. During my time at Brown in the 1990s, classes on American colonial and Revolutionary War–era history, nineteenth-century American intellectual history, and the Vietnam War were among the department’s most popular offerings. None of these classes betrayed any bias ‘for’ or ‘against’ America; they simply provided a balanced overview.” I have, of course, no knowledge of the particular courses to which he refers. He admits the evidence he presents is mere anecdote, but I suspect Mr. Zeitz and I might differ sometimes on exactly what constitutes a “balanced overview.” Mr. Zeitz writes, “If we followed Barone’s advice to the letter, students would still read William Dunning on the Civil War and Reconstruction, rather than James McPherson and Eric Foner.” That is a gross distortion. Mr. Zeitz says he doesn’t know much about Michael Barone. Obviously. For the record, Michael Barone, besides editing the indispensable Almanac of American Politics, is the author of several works of history himself. His current project is a history of England’s Glorious Revolution and its effect on America. He is not a historical know-nothing. Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about his most recent book, Hard America, Soft America. “In his latest book, Barone, a writer for U.S. News and World Report and a well-known political commentator, describes America as comprising two diametrically opposed characteristics: hard and soft. ‘Hard America’ is characterized by competition and accountability, while ‘Soft America’ attempts to protect its citizens through government regulation and other social safety nets. While Barone’s book is not without its political overtones—he identifies Hard America with the political right and Soft America with the left—his book should not be seen as the latest installment in the conservative-liberal cultural wars. Rather, Barone provides a deeper look at the way in which ordinary people live and work and the meaning behind the decisions they make. His concrete historical examples highlight the advantages and disadvantages of Hard and Soft America, creating a compelling picture of two very different ways of looking at the world, without degenerating into mudslinging or name-calling. Although Barone, a conservative, clearly favors Hard America, he appreciates the necessary difficulty that comes with balancing the two Americas. He concedes that a society without some softness would be a cruel one, but warns that “we have the luxury of keeping parts of our society Soft only if we keep enough of it Hard.” Despite his conservatism, Barone (The New Americans) writes with moderation and insight. Even those who do not agree with his normative conclusions can enjoy his thought-provoking and perceptive analysis.” Mr. Burns quotes several people of the Looney Tunes religious right blaming Hurricane Katrina on God’s wrath over New Orleans’ sinful ways. I must say that God certainly took his sweet time about teaching New Orleans a lesson, sin not being exactly a new concept there. But I don’t think such nonsense is what I and Barone were talking about. The Jerry Falwell types, finding sin in everything and ascribing everything bad that happens to the wages thereof, have been around since God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt. Sometimes the Jerry Falwells even get into power, such as the Puritans in mid-seventeenth-century England. (They made themselves so unpopular that they inoculated Britain against religious excess ever since.) Wahabi Islam today is another example. Let me give two examples of what Mr. Barone (I think) and I are talking about. First, after 1949, the American right kept asking “Who lost China?” as though what had happened in that vast and alien land must have been only because of something the United States had done or not done. I don’t doubt that we made mistakes, but the Communist takeover in China that year would have happened had the State Department been run by some combination of Talleyrand, Metternich, and Machiavelli. More recently, it has been a commonplace on the left that North Korea went nuclear (if just barely—I wonder how many scientists got shot for that fizzle) because somehow we screwed up the diplomacy (especially after George Bush took power, of course, the world having been created on January 20, 2001, at noon). Had we only handled the negotiations the right way, they would have behaved themselves. But if North Korea is now genuinely beginning to dismantle its nuclear facilities (a big if), I am pretty certain that the reason is that China, the one country with real leverage, quietly told them to do so or else.
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