On February 12, 2022, The Wall Street Journal featured a “Saturday essay” by Adam Kirsch, which discusses the “history wars” raging through American politics. Here is a link that circumvents the paywall. It is worth your time, but then come back here.
I thought the essay was fine as it went, but longstanding listeners to the History of the Americans Podcast know that I would have emphasized different points than Mr. Kirsch, or at least additional points. If you scroll though the comments you can find one from “John Henneman,” which is actually me in my persona as a subscriber to the Journal. In case it is buried under others with more “thumbs up,” here’s what I wrote:
There are perhaps two other problems with politicizing history. The first is that using history for political ends impairs the understanding of it. Have you ever known a religious person who mined scripture to find a line or verse to support some 21st century policy position? Well, you can do that with history, too. If you search the history of the Americans for evidence to support your partisan priors, you absolutely will find it, and you will also do nothing more than reinforce your own prejudices. The second problem is that weaponizing history makes history boring. If we can predict what we are going to read once we figure out the agenda of the writer, then there will be no surprises. Just reinforcement of priors, exactly as one might get every night on cable news, possibly the most tedious “entertainment” invented by humanity. The number of students majoring in history has declined by 75% since I was in college. At least some of that decline must be because the politicization of history makes it predictable and hectoring, rather than serendipitous and joyful. We need more of the latter.
Those of you who have heard my various diatribes on the topic (see, e.g., Episode 25 (“Sidebar: Taking Stock”)) won’t be surprised by any of it. The question is, what can you do?
Well, one thing you can do is object to weaponizing history, and its marginally less evil twin, presentism, when you encounter them. To do it right, though, you have to be principled. If you are on the right, you need to notice when a version of history diminishes things that you do not want emphasized. If you are on the left, it means acknowledging that some awesome things have happened in our history, some of them accomplished by people who also did things that we deplore today. Either way, if we are ever to agree that our national story has dignity — and you know I think that it does — we have to try not to use history to score political points today. We will, of course, try imperfectly, but it is the trying that matters.
By the way, that goes equally for The New York Times and the legislatures in the various states drafting statutes that ham-handedly circumscribe the teaching of history, magically thinking that they can fashion a law that can win a war of ideas.
