Last year, I wrote a couple of posts defending historical presentism, that is, the view that we should examine events and actors in history (at least in modern history) in the light of our current concerns, rather than treating them as exempt from any standards except those that prevailed (in the dominant class) at the time.
Those posts referred to controversies within the history profession. Unsurprisingly, given the current state of the US, they have now been embroiled in the culture wars. Rightwing critics of wokeism have now added presentism to the list of evils against which they are fighting, along with critical race theory, cancel culture and so on.
This creates a dilemma for anti-presentists. Do they welcome political support, even if it comes from rightwing culture warriors? That’s a natural thing to do, but it implies a lot of baggage. Once you identify as “anti-woke”, you’re committed to racism, misogyny, science denial, book-banning and, ultimately, fascism.
The default response, dignified silence, is little better. If academic advocates of anti-presentism don’t define the term for the general public, the far-right will do it for them. Very soon, any negative reference to presentism by an academic historian will be the equivalent of coming to lectures wearing a MAGA hat.
So, is there room for a version of anti-presentism that is importantly different from Trumpism? In the US context, that’s going to be very difficult to find. It’s one thing for Herbert Butterfield to criticise historians taking sides in the disputes between Jacobites and Hanoverians on the basis that the Hanoverians were “historically progressive” as viewed from the 1930s. It’s quite another to say that historians should stay neutral with respect to the battles over slavery and racism that have been central to American history since well before the United States even existed.
Anti-presentism fails miserably on the issue of slavery. There was no time in modern history when slavery was generally accepted. Even an enslaver like John Locke used anti-slavery rhetoric against the advocates of monarchical power as applied to white male Britons. The enslavers who signed the Declaration of Independence stand condemned by their own words, written when they thought they would find a painless way of ending slavery. Most of them (Washington was an exception) failed even the most minimal test of freeing slaves in their wills. And earlier statements in favour of slavery, like those of famous theologian Jonathan Edwards (now the subject of some controversy in evangelical circles) were only made because other people condemned the institution. Finally, although the thoughts of the slaves themselves have been suppressed almost completely, they expressed them in revolts whenever they had a chance.
So, when academic opponents of wokeism/presentism say that current moral standards are being imposed on the past, what they mean is that racist views that are now deprecated were once dominant, and vice versa. So, they can pretend to oppose actually existing racism, while excusing that of their chosen period of study, whether it’s 1619, the Jim Crow South or, for that matter, the Trump Administration.
The real issue isn’t to do with time, it’s whether any moral standards at all apply to history. Rather than saying that (for example) Pol Pot was a man of his times and exempt from contemporary judgements, they should just say that it’s not their job to decide whether genocide is good or bad, just to report the facts. That’s a position that’s hard to refute, but one that, if accepted, will accelerate the demise of history as an academic example.
John Quiggin 
I sure hope these aren’t my only two choices!
It was my distinct impression back when I studied history that telling the truth – in the sense of *accuracy* – about what happened was the main task. Do we really need historians to tell us that slavery is wrong, and *was* wrong? I do not think so. (Even on the right there is no real “pro slavery” wing – where are you getting that? Unless you are getting it on Twitter, bc I don’t do that.)
Meanwhile, it seems to me to be quite true that, f.e., at the time of the Civil War, many participants did not in fact think that the war was being fought “over” slavery. What they thought back then is a legitimate question. (And I’m not saying all people then thought that – just that a decent chunk did. These days this idea seems out of favor. Yet I am pretty sure that that’s what Ken Burns said, for one. But I could still get my head handed to me if I put my full name on this, which is one reason why I don’t. There are real issues on the left about free speech and cancel culture – please be assured of that. It is a real problem.)
I think there are a lot of problems caused by progressives here too. It’s not just the right wing that is the problem.
My understanding is that the bulk of “progressives” want events of the past to be acknowledged and to be not hidden away. Those that believe that exposure to the facts of a past event could generate a biased moral judgment need to consider the role of days of remembrance eg Christmas, Easter and Anzac Day.
While I thing of it, woke is now being used as a racial pejorative.
This is part of the CRT issue, where conservatives believe that a presentation of facts of past events is bad for nationalism now and therefore unpatriotic.
There is no moral theorem prescribing presentism or its rejection – current people can be held responsible for the actions of their forebears or not. Morally both perspectives can be justified on different grounds. Presentism gives those who agonise over the terrible character of modern society one more avenue for ex post complaints and one more means for justifying general social guilt.There is a huge market for guilt among modern society’s radical bourgeoisie and this favours presentism and guilt-creation. There are also strong reasons for trying to address actual injustices as they appear in the world today and for ignoring sunk costs and regrets. The costs of adopting the latter perspective are mainly the losses the psychologically disturbed modern middle class feel in not being able to feel wretched about themselves. For some it is true that one needs a bit of inherently unresolvable guilt based on sunk costs to maintain your contemporary radical equilibrium. Modern social difficulties are just not enough.
Its good to know my views are being screened in advance of publication. Safer to retain the option to censor.
There are ancient and continuing traditions which show we have long known what is right and wrong in matters of oppression and exploitation; re slavery and much else. These traditions long predate modern history. Thus, any claim that humans did not or could not know better in any earlier period are fallacious. Leaders, administrators and the privileged in any period tended to be literate and well-versed in religious and ethical traditions as well as in political and technical traditions.
“That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”- Ancient Egypt, Late Period (c. 664–323 BCE) papyrus.
“One should never do something to others that one would regard as an injury to one’s own self. In brief, this is dharma. Anything else is succumbing to desire.” – Mahābhārata – 13.114.8 – 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than around 400 BCE.
“Do not do to others what you know has hurt yourself.” - Kural 316
Why does one hurt others knowing what it is to be hurt?” - Kural 318 – Book of Virtue of the Tirukkuṛaḷ (c. 1st century BCE to 5th century CE), Tamil tradition.
“Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.” – Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE)
“What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either.” – Sextus the Pythagorean.
“Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.” – Isocrates (436–338 BCE). – Ancient Greece.
“The Pahlavi Texts of Zoroastrianism (c. 300 BCE – 1000 CE) were an early source for the Golden Rule: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing to another whatsoever is not good for itself.” Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5, and “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself do not do unto others.” Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29″ – Wikipedia.
There are innumerable examples from, many other cultures too. We are have either failed to teach or learn ethics or we have failed to put what we were taught into practice. The failure is the same in every generation. The precepts were there fully formed for at least 3,000 years and probably much longer. My guess is the precept was there even 30,000 years ago in hunter-gatherer-nomad cultures. Ipso facto, all generations must be judged by the same standard in this regard.
Can’t find it now Ikon, but some smart writer wrote a scifi ish novel set 30,000 years in the future .Premise – free energy and all materials needs met for all, just to show we can solve all our problems except human nature.
I’ll try to find ref.
KT2,
Interesting thought and it may well be an interesting novel. Hope you find it again soon and let us know. I will come back to its premise or thesis. First though, all good novels, novellas and short stories have a premise or thesis, IMHO, except perhaps some surrealist or absurdist novels. They also have characters and narrative arcs, plus goals and obstacles. Epic poems can be novels in verse, for example Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. Lyrical, surrealist or absurdist poems might jettison one or more of thesis, narrative or character depending on their type but this is debatable. As an example, Wordsworth’s lyrical poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” has a character: an “I” who “wandered” and a thesis (joy from simple things and even simple unexpected things) but does it have a narrative arc? In a sense it does. The character’s state of mind is changed by a chance discovery from wandering in nature and finding, “A host, of golden daffodils”.
Part of my own aesthetic theory is that all stories and poems essentially involve agents, objects, energies and fields (of operation or action). This is if we strip them down to basics. This is me making the classic claim “I have a theory and it’s all mine” as in the “Anne Elk” Monty Python skit. I arrived at this theory from looking at games, mainly computer games but also board games, and then pondering what made the games comprehensible to and operable upon and by the human mind. I then compared the comprehensibility of games to the comprehensibility of narratives. Something like this happens in narrative game theory now taught at tertiary institutions in game programming courses but I have never learned that. Like Anne Elk I figured it out myself from all the hints in our culture and my general reading and thinking.
The key to me is the depiction in each case of agents, objects, energies and fields (of operation). Our senses and minds evolved to perceive (some) agents, objects, energies and fields and to perceive them and analyze them as categorially different precisely because (a) they exist and (b) perception of at least some of them and their relations is necessary for survival. Manipulation of at least some of them further for enhanced amenity of existence then becomes an option for a species which can manipulate models, induing ideational models, as well as manipulate real things.. Hence, when we create games and literature (literature or art is a kind of game too) we ineluctably must create them in a form understandable to the mind and manipulable by the mind. Surrealism and absurdism are the meta-game of not providing an understandable game but they do not work in extended fashion without some key nods to agents, objects, energies or fields.
But to get to your point, it does appear the problem is either human nature or else it is the failure to educate and school human nature properly, especially with regard to ethics. The issue to my mind is that economics has become a false religion. Note, I have not said economics, properly conceived, is a false religion. But it has been bowdlerized (or never properly developed) to become so. Unfettered or loosely regulated capitalism has become a kind of teleological, cornucopian, prosperity gospel ignoring real limits and human limits and human weaknesses. Re the latter, humans cannot continually ignore the almost endless temptation and tantilization which consumer capitalism puts at our fingers and in eyes and ears so constantly. We all succumb at junctures and there is enough succumbing going on to wreck individuals and the world, if I may put it that way.
The wise man or wise woman and the wise civilization would all realize that they are at least episodically weak. If we are wise, we do not and will not put too much temptation before ourselves. A good way to avoid temptation is to deny ourselves what we don’t really need (mere wants) and give at least some of those resources to be used by and for people who have real, unmet needs. We should talk much less about economics and much more about ethics and indeed about what we can learn from the (non-degenerate) arts, crafts and culture. For sure there is much in the way of degenerate art, crafts, games and culture. Much of contemporary art, games, amusement and culture is degenerate like the NFL Superbowl and its halftime entertainment as one example. What is “degenerate” in this context? That which extravagantly uses scarce resources for the entertainment of bored adults is certainly degenerate when it further damages the environment and happens while others sleep in tents or under paper or cardboard on the streets or on waste land.
Should I judge what I did last week by my standards of today ? Its OK to be wrong ,and its very important to acknowledge it .There is a fair bit of sympathy for slavery in far Right comments threads .It is commonly said that Africans freely sold other Africans to American slave traders .The extent of the contribution of slavery to the rise of civilisations is staggering and not well known .Thomas Piketty said it took a war to begin ending slavery in America because the value of slaves as property was higher than in other countries .The country simply couldnt afford to end it by paying off slave owners for their loss at rates used elsewhere. The British govt (taxpayer) only finished paying off the money it loaned to do so in 2018 after 182 years. Slaves did administrative work too ,one American president had two that ran a successful business for him – a nice little earner . Robots and AI might one day be for the capitalist class what slaves used to be .
Is there anything %90 of people do today without giving it a thought (ie; it’s normal ) that might one day be seen in this way ?
Maybe abortion – although most people dont have direct involvement and when they do it is normally a difficult and carefully considered decision .
Maybe market injustice – most people easily accept that suffering can be justified if it happens in the context of a market .
Maybe the way we treat farm animals – the scale is massive ,almost no one wants to think about it ,almost everyone does it .
Maybe climate destruction – although there now is a majority who are concerned, not many seem very willing to change unless its win – win.
JQ said “If academic advocates of anti-presentism don’t define the term for the general public, the far-right will do it for them. Very soon, any negative reference to presentism by an academic historian will be the equivalent of coming to lectures wearing a MAGA hat.”
Paul Goodman said:
“and the broadcasters tailor their programs to meet the requirements of their advertisers of the censorship, of their own slick and clique tastes, and of a broad common denominator of the audience, none of whom may be offended: they will then claim not only that the public wants the drivel that they give them, but indeed that nothing else is being created. Of course it is not! Not for these media”
If they ever knew. Anti/Presentism of zeitgeist delivered by monopoly media – still – and distorted via corporatisation of universities:
History – partly driven by economics & corporatisation of universities? As predicted! by Paul Goodman in Growng up Absurd. Linked below.
“One reason for the crisis in higher ed is the rise of the “corporate” university model”. From;
“The Rise of the Intellectual Influencer
FEB 13, 2023
BY MINDY CLEGG
…
“Much like art, there is no “pure” form of knowledge production, free of its historical context. Rather, knowledge production is shaped by the economic possibilities of the society in which it’s produced.
“One reason for the crisis in higher ed is the rise of the “corporate” university model. People have been discussing this shift for years now. One example is an article from 2012 in Dissent by Nicholaus Mills.”
…
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/02/the-rise-of-the-intellectual-influencer.html#more-228361
*
“A Chilling Paragraph from 1960
Sometimes people really can predict the future
By Ted Gioia
…
He [Goodman] writes:
“Let me give a couple of examples of how this [inability to imagine healthy alternatives] works. Suppose (as is the case) that a group of radio and TV broadcasters, competing in the Pickwickian fashion of semi-monopolies, control all the stations and channels in an area, amassing the capital and variously bribing Communications Commissioners in order to get them; and the broadcasters tailor their programs to meet the requirements of their advertisers of the censorship, of their own slick and clique tastes, and of a broad common denominator of the audience, none of whom may be offended: they will then claim not only that the public wants the drivel that they give them, but indeed that nothing else is being created. Of course it is not! Not for these media; why should a serious artist bother?”
“When I first read this, I was dumbstruck. Goodman wrote this during the winter of 1959 and 1960, when radio stations were independent and freewheeling. Back in my teen years, a single business was only allowed to control one AM station and one FM station. In 1985 this was increased to 12 stations on each band. And in 1994 this was raised again, this time to 20 AM stations and 20 FM stations.
…
“But we are only at the start of this visionary paragraph. Goodman now explains that the same thing will happen in universities.”
…
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/a-chilling-paragraph-from-1960
*
GROWING UP ABSURD
by Paul Goodman, foreword by Casey Nelson Blake, with an essay by Susan Sontag
…
Noam Chomsky has said, “Paul Goodman’s impact is all about us,” and certainly it can be felt in the powerful localism of today’s renascent left. A classic of anarchist thought, Growing Up Absurd not only offers a penetrating indictment of the human costs of corporate capitalism but points the way forward. It is a tale of yesterday’s youth that speaks directly to our common future.”
…
https://www.nyrb.com/products/growing-up-absurd-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Up_Absurd
I guess that is why it is perfectly acceptable to rewrite books to reflect exisiting prejudices (sorry present values). After they finish with Dahl, there are only a few billion books to get to. Thank god for chatGPT. It should not take long
Andrew said “there are only a few billion books to get to”.
Here are two.
(Not quite sure about “Thank god for chatGPT. It should not take long” Andrew? )
These books & articles rhyme with the OP, and we have known since “Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-education of the Negro” – “It’s striking how similar that feels and sounds to the contemporary moment,” the Harvard education historian Jarvis R. Givens told me.”(2.)
1. Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative – “But a problem arose when it began to seep into the general culture – or, as Brooks puts it, into ‘the orbit of political cant and corporate branding”
… “Life-giving fictions have yielded to noxious myths – myths, the book warns, ‘may kill us yet’.”
– … “”Self-authorship, an idea Shakespeare denounces in Coriolanus, is a fantasy of self-governance in a world where the markets decide who shall starve and who shall grow fat”.
– …”One reason we want to regard our life histories as all of a piece is a fear of loss and damage. To be self-contained, with no loose ends or rough edges, is to be less susceptible to death.”
2. “…a conversation about the continued relevance of Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-education of the Negro”
– Ibram X. Kendi: “So, those who are attacking what they call “critical race theory” characterize these omissions—that end up pacifying people—as “education.”
– Givens: “If anything, there is a very clear system of indoctrination that has always been embedded in the American curriculum. It’s called white supremacy.”
*
1.
“What’s your story?
Terry Eagleton
16 February 2023
Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative
by Peter Brooks.
“Forty years ago , Peter Brooks produced a pathbreaking study, Reading for the Plot, which was part of the so-called narrative turn in literary criticism. Narratology, as it became known, spread swiftly to other disciplines: law, psychology, philosophy, religion, anthropology and so on. But a problem arose when it began to seep into the general culture – or, as Brooks puts it, into ‘the orbit of political cant and corporate branding’.
…
“”Self-authorship, an idea Shakespeare denounces in Coriolanus, is a fantasy of self-governance in a world where the markets decide who shall starve and who shall grow fat. Brooks’s complaint, however, isn’t only that the idea of narrative has been trivialised, but that some of the tales are malevolent and oppressive. If this is a bleaker, more disenchanted book than Reading for the Plot, it is largely because of Donald Trump, even though the former president isn’t granted the dignity of a mention. It begins with a quotation from Game of Thrones: ‘There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.’ One assumes that the story Brooks has in mind is a chronicle of America Lost and America Regained, a stolen election and a deep state, paedophile conspiracies and the storming of a citadel. Life-giving fictions have yielded to noxious myths – myths, the book warns, ‘may kill us yet’.
“The distinction between fiction and myth is discussed by Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending. Roughly speaking, myths are fictions that have forgotten their own fictional status and taken themselves as real. Liberals like Brooks fear being imprisoned by their own convictions, or oppressed by the convictions of others; the ideal is a cognitive dissonance in which one believes and disbelieves at the same time, rather as Othello thinks Desdemona is faithful to him and also thinks she is not. …”
…
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n04/terry-eagleton/what-s-your-story
*
2.
“The Book That Exposed Anti-Black Racism in the Classroom
“As African American studies faces resistance, a conversation about the continued relevance of Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The Mis-education of the Negro
By Ibram X. Kendi
…
“Givens: This is a really important question. We absolutely learn through omissions. We learn through things that are not included in curricula. It teaches us what’s deemed unworthy of inclusion, what’s deemed as lacking in “educational value” according to the state of Florida.
“And this is something that I think is very, very important, even when we think about the way Black history and culture have been included. You know, for so long, you could read the entire history of slavery and never know that Black people resisted, that they led rebellions, that they formed Maroon communities. Students could walk away thinking that slavery was just this benevolent institution, that Black people had to work hard but they benefited from being immersed in the West and the Christian world. They made all these beautiful songs and sang all these Negro spirituals. This is evidence that they were happy. The absence of narratives about Black people fighting back presents them as these apolitical subjects. It strips them of their agency.
“Kendi: So, those who are attacking what they call “critical race theory” characterize these omissions—that end up pacifying people—as “education.” And they classify anti-racist books (like, frankly, my own) and African American studies as “indoctrination.” What do you make of that?
“Givens: If anything, there is a very clear system of indoctrination that has always been embedded in the American curriculum. It’s called white supremacy. By engaging in African American studies, we are inviting students to help undo that.
“It’s also important to emphasize that there are diverse perspectives in African American studies. There is no one African American–studies perspective. We can have different kinds of intellectual projects and schools of thought. And the AP African American Studies course, from what I know of it, as someone who was part of the team of scholars and K–12 educators that developed it, is that we were all bringing the diversity of Black thought and debates to the table. The course represents a good model of the kind of plurality of thought that we might consider when we’re talking about reframing the larger structure of knowledge in American schools.
…
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/02/miseducation-of-negro-book-black-history-ap-african-american-studies/673045/
I read the originals to my child. Dahl would be turning in his grave.
Glad Rushdie survived and is quoted.
“Critics are accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s children’s books of censorship after it removed colourful language to make them more acceptable to modern readers.
“In the new edition of Witches, a supernatural female posing as an ordinary woman may be working as a “top scientist or running a business” instead of as a “cashier in a supermarket or typing letters for a businessman”.
“The word “black” has removed from the description of the terrible tractors in The Fabulous Mr. Fox, with the machines now described as “murderous, brutal-looking monsters”.
“Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie was among those who reacted angrily to the rewriting of Dahl’s words.
“Roald Dahl was no angel, but this is absurd censorship,” Rushdie said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-20/roald-dahl-books-changes-rejected-by-critics/101997882
So, just fyi, it is my impression that the field called “ethnic studies” contains a great deal more than just history. And it’s the other areas that seem to cause disputes, it seems to me (which isn’t necessarily a reason to not study them, but, these other fields are not necessarily what we call “fact based”).
I do not often hear anyone arguing against teaching history. We may sometimes argue over accuracy but that is an important feature, and not a bug at all.
As for CRT, do you-all know what it is? (I am guessing that you don’t.) If you did, you might not like it so much. (I support some but not all of it.)
Oh, also, we don’t need to teach CRT to young people. We can educate people such that they become responsible citizens by a combination of teaching history and basic civics with proper democratic values.
Young people have enough to deal with already – they really don’t need all this wooh-wooh theory that adults like to argue about.
Complex CRT seems to me to have some fairly difficult concepts in it. I speak as a person not well informed about its details nor about what levels it is currently taught at. I would say it belongs at year 1 university and onwards.
However, basic and then intermediate ethics need to be taught at all levels of school, starting with concepts surrounding the “Golden Rule”, equality and respect for others. That can start from age 4 or 5, I would say, when couched in terms appropriate to the child’s language ability and understanding. Just my opinion. I am not a teacher nor a theorist of pedagogy. I did bring up children in a marriage though. I might know something. 😉
N, if Critical Theory sans race is not taught early and often, if and when would you expect people to be able to think critically? About power. Which kids in High school get in large doses. Or after they voted and realised effects of Brexit or Trump?
Wikipedia says of Critical Theory:
“A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures.[1].”
Sounds good so far.
“Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them”.[3]”
Even better!
“… Critical Theory is one of the major components of both modern and postmodern thought, and is widely applied in the humanities and social sciences today.[4][5][6]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
Adding race is the hangover from US’s poor race relations and delivers focus to ‘race’ – ( are there are ‘races’, or just constructs?).
N said “they really don’t need all this wooh-wooh theory that adults like to argue about.”.
JQ says: “Outside the academic circles from which it emerged, hardly anyone has the expertise to mount a coherent critique of CRT, or, for that matter, a coherent defence.”
Ikon said: “Complex CRT seems to me to have some fairly difficult concepts in it.”.
See above.
JQ article “Not CRT but critical thinking about race” June 30, 2021:
“Failing to discuss critical race theory, in schools and elsewhere, amounts to ignoring issues that are central to all kinds of social conflict, in the US and many other countries.The correct response to rightwing attacks on CRT is not to say that the critics don’t know what they are talking about. They know perfectly well what they are talking about, which is why they want to suppress it, and why they should be resisted head-on.”
…
https://johnquiggin.com/2021/06/30/not-crt-but-critical-thinking-about-race/
*
Or try my brain. I always see this – a network + 4D + serendipitous connections (sometimes a bug, sometimes a feature):
I need some thinking tools and theories to assist me.
“A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.” ~ Michel Foucault
I still haven’t learned to think critically! Properly. In an acceptable framework. System Dynamics (discovered by me 15yrs after leaving school) made me realise we need lots of wooh wooh – early and often.
As I do not have “the expertise to mount a coherent critique of CRT, or, for that matter, a coherent defence.”, any corrections welcome.
“If academic advocates of anti-presentism don’t define the term for the general public, the far-right will do it for them. Very soon, any negative reference to presentism by an academic historian will be the equivalent of coming to lectures wearing a MAGA hat.”
Too late.
“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage taken in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
“Excerpts of the footage will air on Fox News in the coming weeks, according to Axios’ Mike Allen, who was the first to report McCarthy shared the footage with Carlson. A Fox News spokesperson confirmed Axios’ report to HuffPost.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-mccarthy-tucker-carlson_n_63f3d2c9e4b0e2590d3edaa2
Maybe we need some Critical Theory but we will get Fox & T Carlson’s critical “of what they don’t like” “theories” – with cherry picked pictures for the masses. Disaster looms and division even more polarized.
Scary people with power using presentism, orignalism, bad statistics and conflation and correlation… Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule said;
“Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many eighteen or more murders for each execution” (^S&V below in Andrew Gelman’s article )
Is this Anti-presentism = anti-wokeism ? Bad faith? ???
Or just using a strawman to overturn:
“Blackstone’s ratio
“In criminal law, Blackstone’s ratio (also known as Blackstone’s formulation) is the idea that:
“Statue of William Blackstone
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.[1]
“as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.
“The idea subsequently became a staple of legal thinking in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions and continues to be a topic of debate. There is also a long pre-history of similar sentiments going back centuries in a variety of legal traditions. The message that government and the courts must err on the side of bringing in verdicts of innocence has remained constant.[citation needed]”
…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
“THE COGNITIVE INFILTRATION OF ADRIAN VERMEULE”
BY PAUL CAMPOS
“Here’s a truly fantastic discovery, courtesy of Andrew Gelman.” [Link below ]
…
“What interests me about all this is that in July of the Year of Our Lord 2022 a lot of liberal elites are still behaving as if a call to resist the rise of fascism in the United States is some sort of hysterical over-reaction by people who don’t understand that a tenured Harvard Law Professor who has been to The Best Schools and publishes articles in The Atlantic etc. must be treated as a serious and most of all respectable intellectual, whose ideas therefore deserve a respectful and prominent hearing. Failing to do so would apparently violate some sort of basic neutrality principle of academic life . . . OK I just can’t do this any longer.
“What is wrong with these people? Look I get that firing Vermeule from his sinecure because he’s at best a fascist fellow traveler would be a tricky thing to do for all sorts of reasons. But you don’t have to give him and his ideas a megaphone!”
…
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/02/the-cognitive-infiltration-of-adrian-vermeule
Andrew Gelman link:
“Why I don’t trust “libertarian paternalism,” part 65”
Within the Donohue and Wolfers paper is a discussion of an article by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs,” in which those two law professors argued:
[^S&V]
“Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many eighteen or more murders for each execution. This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death. . . . a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid that form of punishment. “. . .
…
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/02/20/why-i-dont-trust-libertarian-paternalism-part-65/
Ikon, I agree – that sounds like what I was saying too. We need to teach young people not to judge people by the way they look, not to assume guilt before a fair trial – just *basics* like that.
If we at the same time are teaching history in an accurate yet age appropriate way, then I think we should be getting somewhere.
Further, I agree with KT2’s point that children already experience power dynamics in a direct way from a very early age in their peer groups, and of course also in their families – we also should be educating kids about what is and isn’t bullying, and what to do to prevent bullying. Fairness is a topic that comes up very early in life, unavoidably.
The reason I say CRT is too much for little kids is that it’s a) complicated and b) not necessary.
So to me, the Left here makes a mistake when they try to sneak it in (and some try to do this). It won’t fool anyone, and imo, it won’t help us as a society.
I strongly suspect that if we could even get people to follow Miss Manners, we could avoid some 95 to 99% of our interpersonal conflicts.
My guess is that most CRT proponents are mostly good people who just want to make the world more fair than it seems right now. From what I’ve heard about it though, I think it’s kind of the scenic route. Too many bells and whistles. Lots of ways to get lost. What’s the point? It’s fun for lawyers but that doesn’t make it a good idea for everyone.
Shorter me: read the Lani Guinier book. It’s really good.
N, thanks.
It seems, and judging by JQ’s opinions of C’R’T, only angels with “the expertise to mount a coherent critique of CRT, or, for that matter, a coherent defence.”, and fools, wield CRT.
As for your suggestion: “Shorter me: read the Lani Guinier book. It’s really good.”. Wow.
Lani Guinier it seems did need to be Assistant Attorney General but;
“Redesigning Democracy –
The New York Times
13 Mar 1994 ·
LANI GUINIER has put together a book assembling the law articles that torpedoed her nomination last year as Assistant Attorney General for”..
(archived + paywall)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Lani_Guinier
The Awards listed in her Wikipedia article show Lani Guiner needs a posthumous soecial something, to bring her into the current democracy debates.
My tsondoku knows no bounds.
One way in that may be effective (it was for me) is for kids to do an unconscious bias test .It is very important to be then told that the marginalised group also fails the test . Everyone is guilty , women are biased against women etc. It is society wide .Black cops can beat black people ,white people are not guilty simply because they are white – its the system .I think those tests would make an impression on kids that they would remember . Then you only need to get the white ,and/or male, kids to drop their defences by telling them everyone does it .Its the system ,not skin color or gender .
KT2 – thanks for the new word!! It’s a good one!
sunshine – I think there is a lot of truth in what you say. Just as a minor quibble, if it were up to me I would maybe not use the word “guilt” as it is a bit loaded and may tend to raise defenses. Words like “flawed” to me suggest the same idea but somehow, to me, seem more manageable.
And I think manageability is a key concept, bc it makes the whole thing less scary. I’m never going to be perfect, but I can probably learn ways to better manage all my many various character flaws, or at least, try to decrease their external consequences! That kind of thing.
The Guinier book really is good. I read it decades ago and still remember her example about school dances. “Fairness” is something people already think about a lot.
Tyranny of the Majority was the title, iirc which I hope I do. Btw there is a newer edition with a forward by Stephen L Carter, and I mention this because he happens to also write really well-paced thrillers as a sideline. I like a nice long book you can chew on.