{"id":127101,"date":"2025-03-11T21:25:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/history-saves-us-from-ourselves\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T21:25:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:25:40","slug":"history-saves-us-from-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=127101","title":{"rendered":"History saves us from ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1140\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-1140x420.jpg\" class=\"singular-image entry-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-662x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-161853 lazyload\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"662\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-662x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-161853 lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-662x1024.jpg 662w, https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-768x1189.jpg 768w, https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History-992x1536.jpg 992w, https:\/\/currentpub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Why-Study-History.jpg 1292w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 662px) 100vw, 662px\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=John+Fea&amp;sca_esv=ee5d8c4bfe1d5392&amp;rlz=1C1JJTC_enUS1018US1019&amp;source=lnt&amp;tbs=qdr:d&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwin_7bH2eyLAxW4FVkFHUhuLvQQpwV6BAgHEAg&amp;biw=1920&amp;bih=911&amp;dpr=1\">piece <\/a>in yesterday\u2019s Sunday edition of<em> <\/em>the <em>Pittsburgh Post Gazette. <\/em> A taste:<\/p>\n<p><em>Today the study of history is used as a cudgel in the culture wars. Activists on both the left and the right cherry-pick from the past to advance political agendas. The late historian Bernard Bailyn called this \u201cindoctrination by historical example.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Donald Trump, who recently revived his \u201c1776 Commission,\u201d weaponizes the past to consolidate power. His goal is \u201cpromote patriotic education\u201d by teaching K-12 history students about \u201cAmerica\u2019s greatness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The president\u2019s recent executive order does not specify when America was \u201cgreat.\u201d Was it in 1776? The 19th century? The 1950s? \u201cGreat,\u201d you see, is not a historical category, it is a moral one. Greatness for some might be weakness for others.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But if Trump and his friends would identify when America was \u201cgreat,\u201d an opportunity to think historically about the American past might open. Historians could enter the conversation on American greatness by providing a full and complex examination of such a time. What was life really like for all Americans in the 19th century or the 1950s? Do we want to go back?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Based on their training, historians could provide people with the knowledge to make a more informed or nuanced decision on the question of American greatness.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Those on the left are just as guilty of manipulating the past to serve present-day ends. These historians often offer flat and binary narratives that lack nuance and complexity. As the comedian Bill Maher said recently, they go back in a magic moral time machine \u201cwhere you judge everybody against what you would have done in 1066 and you always win.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In her introduction to Adolph Reed\u2019s memoir \u201cThe South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives,\u201d historian Barbara Fields describes current scholarship and punditry on race in America as \u201ctoggling between a blurb and a melodrama.\u201d She argues that the \u201cdifficulty stems, in part, from what historian E.P. Thompson called \u2018the condescension of posterity.\u2019\u201d (The Christian writer C.S. Lewis called it \u201cchronological snobbery.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Indeed, too many historians, no matter the subject, often lack what Fields calls the \u201canalytics or imaginative wherewithal\u201d to understand the past as a \u201cdaily lived experience.\u201d To engage the past this way doesn\u2019t mean that we ignore big categories such as \u201cracism,\u201d \u201cpatriarchy\u201d or \u201cChristian nationalism.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the entire piece <a href=\"https:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/opinion\/insight\/2025\/03\/02\/fea-history-knowledge-context-education-understanding\/stories\/202502280048\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My piece in yesterday\u2019s Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. A taste: Today the study of history is used as a cudgel in the culture wars. Activists on both the left and the right cherry-pick from the past to advance political agendas. The late historian Bernard Bailyn called this \u201cindoctrination by historical example.\u201d Donald [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":127102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[55520,3734,19729,55521],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-127101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-historical-thinking","tag-history","tag-saves","tag-why-study-history"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>History saves us from ourselves - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=127101\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"History saves us from ourselves - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My piece in yesterday\u2019s Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. A taste: Today the study of history is used as a cudgel in the culture wars. Activists on both the left and the right cherry-pick from the past to advance political agendas. 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