Were the Rosenbergs Guilty?

For the past 40 years, it has been an article of faith in intellectual circles that the “Red Scare” of the late 1940s was just that – a scare.  Text writers have gone to great lengths to “prove” that the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were completely unjustified  and that the investigations conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) constituted nothing more than a “witch hunt”.  Of course, McCarthyism is used as a pejorative term to describe unprincipled demagoguery.

There can be no clearer example of falsification on the part of textbook authors than the treatment of this period in American history.

In early 1992, a Russian man walked into the British embassy in a newly independent Baltic republic and asked to "speak to someone in authority."  Eight months later, the man, his family, and his enormous archive had been safely ex-filtrated to Britain.

Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin worked as chief archivist for the FCD, the foreign-intelligence arm of the KGB. He was responsible for checking and sealing approximately 300,000 files, allowing him unrestricted access to one of the world's most closely guarded archives.  Mitrokhin decided to compile a record of the foreign operations of the KGB.

Every day for 12 years, he smuggled notes out of the archive.  He started by hiding scraps of paper covered with miniscule handwriting in his shoes, but later wrote notes on ordinary office paper, which he took home in his pockets.  He hid the notes under his mattress, and on weekends took them to his dacha, where he typed them and hid them in containers buried under the floor.  When he escaped to Britain, his archive contained tens of thousands of pages of notes.

In 1995, Mitrokhin, by then a British citizen, contacted Christopher Andrew, head of the history faculty at Cambridge University and one of the world's foremost historians of international intelligence.  Andrew was allowed to examine the archive Mitrokhin created "to ensure that the truth was not forgotten, that posterity might some day come to know of it." 

This book, published in 1999, was the product of their collaboration.  It documents the actions of the KGB and its predecessors, the Cheka (Lenin’s Secret Police), and Stalin’s GPU and NKVD going all the way back to the Russian Revolution in 1917.

But, it was the publication of “Venona” in 2000 that provided the greatest insight on the depth of Communist infiltration of American society.   After the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin seized the property of the Communist party.  The archive was renamed the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History and was opened to Western researchers.

Of immense surprise to the authors, the staff of that facility asked if they would also like to see the archive of the American Communist party, the CPUSA.  They had no idea that any such record even existed.  It certainly does not exist in America.

It was during their research into these files that the authors stumbled across a reference to an obscure American code-breaking project.  The Venona Project was a long-running secret collaboration of the US and UK intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union as well as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, the authors were able to convince the American government that continued classification of the Venona files served no useful purpose and they were declassified and opened.

The revelations contained in the book “Venona” prompted the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan to say, “The full implications of Soviet espionage in the United States during and immediately after World War II are only now being realized”.

Those who remember Moynihan will undoubtedly recall that he resided “left of center” ideologically.  He was, however, a unique American intellectual in that he did not allow his ideology to completely subsume his recognition of truth.  Would that others, particularly textbook authors, were as intellectually honest.

Despite the fact that the scholarship has been available for 10 years or more, text authors publish edition after edition and continue to state the innocence of the Rosenbergs.

In his section entitled “The Anticommunist Crusade”, beginning on page 860 of “Give Me Liberty”, Eric Foner commits a number of historians’ fallacies in his effort to indoctrinate students into believing that this “crusade” was completely unwarranted.

In discussing President Truman’s loyalty review system, Foner states “The loyalty program failed to uncover any cases of espionage.  But the federal government dismissed several hundred persons from their jobs, and thousands resigned rather than submit to investigation”. [1]

According to "Venona", however, "by 1948, the accumulating evidence from other decoded Venona cables showed that the Soviets had recruited spies in virtually every major American government agency of military or diplomatic importance.  American authorities learned that since 1942, the United States had been the target of a Soviet espionage onslaught involving dozens of professional Soviet intelligence officers and hundreds of Americans, many of whom were members of the American Communist Party (CPUSA)".[2]

In this case, Foner has not committed so much a fallacy as he has simply omitted scholarship that refutes his argument.

Although Foner does mention Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss’ ultimate conviction, he completely fails to mention Elizabeth Bentley, who turned herself in to the FBI in 1945.  It was actually Bentley, rather than Chambers, who alerted the government to the extent of Communist infiltration of the American government at all levels, particularly Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Bentley did her undergraduate work at Vassar and went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University.  While at Columbia, she joined the American League Against War and Fascism, an organization secretly controlled by the CPUSA.  After she had demonstrated her worth and commitment to the league, they sponsored her for membership in the party in 1935.

(As with Whittaker Chambers’ stating that he was introduced to Communism at Columbia, here we have another American Communist coming out of that institution of higher learning.  Eric Foner is a professor at Columbia).

At first, the FBI was highly skeptical of her story.  However, the Venona cables began confirming what she said.  There was an underground Communist cell called the Ware Group working in Washington, D.C.

The leader, Harold Ware, along with his mother and sister, was a founding member of the CPUSA and secured a position in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), one of the many New Deal agencies created in the 1930s.  Upon Ware’s death in an automobile accident, his group was taken over by Victor Perlo, 

who worked in Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration.  Among this group's members were:

Alger Hiss - State Department

John Abt - AAA

Lee Pressman - AAA

Another underground Communist group working in Washington, D.C. was headed by Nathan Silvermaster.  

Silvermaster's doctoral dissertation at Berkeley was entitled “Lenin’s Economic Thought Prior to the October Revolution”.  In the 30s, he served in a variety of positions in various New Deal agencies.

This Communist sympathizer in the government was Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury:

Although he never formally joined the CPUSA, White was what was termed a “fellow traveler”, a person who thoroughly accepted Communist ideology and who participated in espionage for the Soviets.

But, the highest placed Communist was Lauchlin Currie, Special Assistant to Franklin D. Roosevelt:

He used his influence with the President to intervene on behalf of individuals identified as subversive, allowing them to keep their jobs in the government.

Maurice Halperin was head of the research section of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.  He turned over hundreds of pages of secret documents to the KGB:

William Perl (no photo available) provided the Soviets with the results of highly secret tests and design experiments for American jet engines and aircraft.  Upon U.S. entry in the Korean War, American aviators were shocked when Soviet-built MIG-15 jet fighters flew rings around U.S. propeller-driven aircraft and were also superior to first generation American jets.  Perl was closely associated with the spy ring run by Julius Rosenberg:

It is in his discussion of the case against the Rosenbergs that Foner commits his greatest example of falsification.

He says, “The case against the Rosenbergs rested on highly secret documents that could not be revealed in court”. [3]

This part of Foner’s narrative is entirely true.  In fact, it was the Venona cables which proved the Rosenberg’s espionage activities.  Revealing their existence in open court would have alerted the Soviets to the entire project.  Foner knows this and yet he continues to argue that the case against the Rosenbergs was unjust.

In a parenthetical statement, Foner then says, “(When they were released many years later, the scientific information they contained seemed too crude to justify the government’s charge that Julius had passed along the ‘secret of the atomic bomb,’ although he may have helped the Soviets speed up their atomic program.)”

Here Foner commits the “fallacy of ambiguity”.    He first makes the claim that the information was too “crude” to have been of much use and then he says that it just might have helped the Soviets.  Well, which is it?

In the first case, he provides no source for the claim of “crudeness”.  In actual fact, the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, that was dropped on Hiroshima was a crude design.  One of the weapons on which I worked in the 1970s was the same technology as that weapon.  Whether the information was or was not crude is beside the point.  Any design assistance given the Soviets at that point was sure to accelerate their own atomic research.

“Joseph Stalin’s knowledge that espionage assured the Soviet Union of quickly breaking the American atomic monopoly emboldened his diplomatic strategy in his early Cold War clashes with the United States.  It is doubtful that Stalin, rarely a risk-taker, would have supplied the military wherewithal and authorized North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950 had the Soviet Union not exploded an atomic bomb in 1949.”[4]

Foner finishes by stating, “Controversy still surrounds the degree of guilt of both Hiss and the Rosenbergs, although almost no one today defends the Rosenbergs’ execution”.

This statement is unconscionable, given the existence of both the Mitrohkin and Venona material.  Just who constitutes “almost no one”?  The Columbia faculty? 

How about Morton Sobell? 

 He was a member of the Rosenberg spy ring.  In 1950, he tried to flee to the Soviet Union to escape prosecution for espionage.  He was detained in Mexico and returned to the United States.  He was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 30 years in prison.  In an interview with the New York Times on September 11, 2008, he finally admitted that he had, in fact, been a spy and implicated the Rosenbergs.

Professor Foner has had 10 years to get the story right.  The fact is that he published this 2^nd Edition in 2009 knowing full well that the historical record now proves the guilt of at least Julius Rosenberg.

Of course, he also knows full well that if he defies the “revealed wisdom” of academia regarding the Rosenberg case, he will become a pariah among his colleagues. 

This is an example of how "generalists" write history texts, as opposed to "specialists" who do the in-depth research and write such books as "Venona".  It is incumbent on the generalists to familiarize themselves with new scholarship and ensure that their texts are updated accordingly.

If we are to learn from history, then the lesson for Socialists, Communists, and fellow travelers today should be if you commit treason, you'll be executed.

Should parents and students lay out their hard-earned money to purchase a text that contains such blatant falsehoods?

Note:  My next article will deal specifically with Senator Joe McCarthy and the treatment he is given in the other text under consideration, “The American Nation”, by Carnes.  Both the Mitrohkin and Venona files shed considerable light on this subject also.

[1] Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History, 2^nd Ed., (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2009), p. 861

[2] John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona, (Hartford, Yale University Press, 2000), p. 9

[3] Foner, p. 862

[4] Venona, p.11

Communism in the Colonies

Even the most disinterested students probably know that the first English settlements in North America were at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, followed by the Plymouth Colony in 1620.  I provide the dates just for accuracy.  Most students don’t know them.

The first 104 settlers arrived in Jamestown in April, 1607 and chose a site for their settlement in May. Although the original site turned out to be less than ideal, in the surrounding area they found soil which was fertile beyond what they had seen in the lands which they had left. Fruits were abundant. Wild game such as deer and turkey were everywhere. There was no shortage of fish and other seafood.

In a letter dated June 22, 1607, the six councilors in Jamestown reported their arrival to the Virginia Company back in England and described the conditions they found:

" Within less than seven weeks we are fortified well against the Indians. We have sown good store of wheat - we have sent you a taste of clapboard - we have built some houses - we have spared some hands to a discovery and still as God shall enable us with strength we will better and better our proceedings...sturgion and other sweet fish as no man's fortune hath ever possessed the like.  The soil is most fruitfull, laden with Oake, Ashe, Walnut tree, Poplar, Pine, sweet woods, Cedar and other". (this and many other letters are found in The Genesis of the United States by Alexander Brown)

And yet within six months, 66 of the original Jamestown, Virginia settlers had died. Only 38 survived.

In April, 1608 a ship arrives containing another 40 settlers and supplies.

With the colony in near chaos, Captain John Smith, who had been a soldier, explorer, and adventurer, took over the government of the colony in 1608 and instituted a policy of rigid discipline and agricultural cultivation.  But, a gunpowder accident forces Smith to return to England in the spring of 1609.

In August 1609 a fleet of ships arrives (minus one caught in a storm and forced to land in Bermuda) with another 450 settlers.

The colonists then faced a disastrous winter known as the “starving time” in which 440 more people died.  When the “lost” ship arrived from Bermuda, with the remaining 150 settlers, they found Jamestown in ruins and only 60 gaunt survivors.

These 60 had decided to abandon the colony and set sail for England.  While still in the bay they are met by another ship coming from England, commanded by Lord de La Warr (after whom Delaware is named).  He convinces them to remain.

How could it be that there was such death and starvation amidst so much plenty of meat, fruits, and fish. According to the colonists, “It were too vile to say, and scarce to be believed, what we endured; but the occasion was our own for want of providence, industry, and government, and not the barrenness and defect of our country, as is generally supposed”.[1]

What caused this lack of ‘industry'?  Were the Virginian settlers lazy and indolent?

Well, according to the Carnes/Garraty text, it was because “the settlers lacked the skills pioneers need.  More than a third of them were “gentlemen” unused to manual labor, and many of the rest were the gentlemen’s servants, almost equally unequipped for the task of colony building”.[2]

The text then goes on to say “the merchant directors of the London Company, knowing little or nothing about Virginia, failed to provide the colony with effective guidance”…Instead of stressing farming and public improvements, they directed the energies of the colonists into such futile efforts as searching for gold…glassblowing, silk raising, winemaking, and exploring the local rivers in hopes of finding a water route to the Pacific and the riches of China”.[3]  

This passage, about being “directed …searching for gold”, certainly makes it appear that the colonists had absolutely no choice in the matter; that they were not permitted to take action to provide for their survival.  In actual fact, all the London Company did in the Virginia Charter was to state that the colonists “may” prospect for gold, silver, and copper and set forth what share they could keep if any was found.  There is certainly no such language in the first charter of Virginia that in any way "directs" them to search for gold at the expense of working to survive.

This description of the type of individual sent, as well as the slight misrepresentation of what they were told to do, may have accounted for the deaths from the first group that landed in 1607.  It did not, however, apply to the next group.  Smith had instituted strict discipline during his time in charge. In 1608, the colony survived by reason of his military discipline.  But, by the winter of 1609, Smith is gone.   

How much “guidance” is needed to be industrious enough to feed yourself and your family?  Why should such guidance come from London?  And, why would the colonists lapse into indolence upon Smith’s departure?

The answer lies in the economic system established in Jamestown.  The first councilors in charge directed communal ownership as a means of avoiding the evils they left behind in England.  In point of fact, their experiences before leaving England actually suggested socialism/communism to the colonists.  They imported a preference for communism even though they had never tried it.

In the early 17^th century, English society separated its citizens into distinct classes.  The king, members of his court, and all the great landowners – archbishops and bishops of the church, earls, dukes and princes were at the top.

The church owned wealth in land that rivaled that of the king and his nobles.  For the most part, they had acquired their land holdings through force of arms or, in the case of the church, through confiscatory taxation or “tythes”.

The parish priests, the merchants, the craftsmen, and the gentry constituted a small middle class just below the lords.

At the base of the socioeconomic structure were the commoners, the great mass of people.  They were called such because they owned no land, but held a right of “commons”.  This was the right to grow vegetables and grain on acreage that was held in common.  They could tend sheep and cattle on the common pastures.  They could hunt small game and cut wood for their fires in the common forests.

Remembering that land ownership had been accomplished by confiscation, the commoners opposed private ownership of land.  So, they set up their colony to prohibit private property.  The only alternative system they knew was the “commons”, everything owned equally by everyone.

Communism, then, is the institution they brought with them, although a more apt description should be Socialism since everything was actually owned by the Company and administered by company officials, rather than being owned in “common” by the people themselves.

In any event, the problem was that they had no stake in what they produced. They were bound by contract to put all they produced into a common pool to be used to support the colony as a whole. Everyone was supposed to work according to ability and take according to need.

There is marginalia on page 31 of the Carnes/Garraty text directing the student to MyHistoryLab.com and a chapter resource purporting to be the text of “The Starving Time”, an account written by Captain Smith.  But, the excerpt is incomplete.  Referring to footnote #1 above, the excerpt provided to the students ends with the phrase “…It were too vile to say, and scarce to be believed, what we endured.”  It fails to include the further qualifying statement which indicates that any fault for what they endured was the colonists’ own:  “…but the occasion was our own for want of providence, industry, and government, and not the barrenness and defect of our country, as is generally supposed”.

Although there is a companion CD to this text entitled MyHistoryLab, the original source document is similarly truncated.

If the text author is going to direct students to original sources, then those sources should be provided in their entirety.  In this case, the colonist’s themselves recognized that their problems were caused by the economic system in place.  By selectively removing the very reason the colonists underwent those hardships, the students have no idea that it was socialism that caused the problem.

Why does the author choose to truncate the document?  It certainly can’t be due to space limitation in the text.  This original source is provided online.  Could the reason lie with the author’s idelology?

Next, we can take a look at how the author discusses the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.  It is in this part of the colonial saga that Carnes/Garraty deal in both half-truth and outright falsification. 

“Having landed on the bleak Massachusetts shore in December 1620 at a place they called Plymouth, the Pilgrims had to endure a winter of desperate hunger.  About half of them died.  But by great good luck there was an Indian in the area, named Squanto, who spoke English!  In addition to serving as an interpreter, he showed them the best places to fish and what to plant and how to cultivate it.  They, in turn, worked hard, got heir crops in the ground in good time, and after a bountiful harvest the following November, they treated themselves and their Indian neighbors to the first Thanksgiving feast.”[4]

Well, there certainly was an English speaking Indian there named Squanto.  And, he undoubtedly assisted the colonists.  And, about ½ of the original colonists did die that first winter.  However, the rest of the account is completely fictitious.  For this bit of the story, we have the account of William Bradford, who became Governor of the colony in 1621 and ruled for some 30 years thereafter.

In Bradford’s history Of Plymouth Plantation, the only event mentioned in November of 1621 is the arrival of a ship from England with an additional 35 settlers.  There is no mention of any “Thanksgiving”.  In fact, conditions at the beginning of that 2^nd winter were almost as bad as the first:

“The Gover and his assistante haveing disposed these late commers into severall families, as they best could, tooke an exacte accounte of all their provissions in store, and proportioned the same to the number of persons, and found that it would not hould out above 6. months at halfe alowance, and hardly that. And they could not well give less this winter time till fish came in againe. So they were presently put to half alowance, one as well as an other, which begane to be hard, but they bore it patiently under hope of supply.”[5]

Now, we’re into 1622 and Bradford describes the conditions this 2^nd year:

“Now the wellcome time of harvest aproached, in which all had their hungrie bellies filled. But it arose but to a litle, in comparison of a full years supplie; partly by reason they were not yet well aquainted with the manner of Indean torne, (and they had no other,) allso their many other imployments, but cheefly their weaknes for wante of food, to tend it as they should have done. Also much was stolne both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable, and much more after ward. And though -many were well whipt (when they were taken) for a few ears of torne, yet hunger made others (whom consciente did not restraine) to venture. So as it well appeared that famine must still insue the next year aliso, if not some way prevented, or supplie should faile, to which they durst not trust.”[6]

Finally, in 1623, a realization takes hold.  After describing how some of the colonists had taken to stealing from the Indians, Bradford then explains:

“All this while no supply was heard of…. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length … the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves…. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land … for that end, only for present use…. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's … that the taking away of property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing…. For this community … was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, objected that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong … had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…. As for men’s wifes who were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking, washing their clothes, etc., they considered it a kind of slavery, and many husbands would not brook it.  This feature of it would have been worse still if they had been men of an inferior class…Upon … all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought … one as good as another, and so … did … work diminish … the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst men…. Let none object this is due to human failing, rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself.  I answer, seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them….”[7]

Of course, it's the "common course and condition" that caused the trouble.  Thus, we finally become aware that the Pilgrims actually spent at least 3 years suffering under the burdens of communism and it was not until 1623 that a change was made to allot private property and encourage the colonists to work in their own, rational self-interest.

Even under these new economic conditions, the colonists continued to have a difficult time:

“I may not here omite how, notwithstand all their great paines and industrie, and the great hops of a large cropp, the Lord seemed to blast, and take away the same, and to threaten further and more sore famine unto them, by a great drought which continued from the 3. weeke in May, till about the midle of July, without any raine, and with great heat (for the most parte), insomuch as the come begane to wither away, though it was set with fishe, the moysture wherof helped it much. Yet at length it begane to languish sore, and some of the drier grounds were partched like withered hay, part wherof was never recovered. Upon which they sett a parte a solemne day of humilliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervente prayer, in this great distrese. And he was pleased to give them a gracious and speedy answer, both to thier owne and the Indeans admiration, that lived amongest them. For all the morning, and greatest part of the day, it was clear weather and very hotte, and not a cloud or any signe of raine I to be seen, yet toward evening it begane to overcast, and shortly after to raine, with shuch sweete and gentle showers, as gave them cause of rejoyceing, and blesing God… For which mercie (in time conveniente) they also sett aparte a day of thanksgiveing.”[1]

In his treatment of Plymouth Colony, Carnes/Garraty sets up the reader in two ways.  First, in placing the day of Thanksgiving at the end of the first year, the efforts of Squanto to assist the Pilgrims is magnified.  Thus, the later actions of these “evil” white men in their dealings with the Indians can be seen in even more sinister terms.  How DARE they treat those poor Indians that way after all the help Squanto gave them?

However, in failing to mention that the “starving time” in Virginia, as well as that the deaths from starvation in Plymouth were directly due to the communistic form of economy, the author fails to inform the students of still another example of the failure of collectivism.

One is led to ask, what is the author’s motivation for these omissions?  The historical record is there for all to see.

Perhaps if socialism and communism aren’t mentioned, their failures won’t be fully realized by another generation of American students until it’s too late.

---

1 General Historie of Virginia, Annals of America, Vol. I, Encyclopedia Britannica 1976, pp. 26-27
2 The American Nation: A History of the United States by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, p. 30

3 ibid, p. 31

4 ibid, p. 36

5 History of Plymouth Plantation, 1606-1646. Ed. William T. Davis. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,    1908, p. 170

6 ibid, p. 203

7 ibid, pp. 216-217

8 ibid, p. 231

Textbook Bias

 In his 1952 autobiography “Witness”, Whittaker Chambers confessed to his betrayal of his country, and recounted how his student days prepared the way for his later behavior.  Chambers says, “no member of the Columbia faculty ever consciously guided me toward communism.  It was liberalism (the 20th century variety) I was about to encounter..., liberalism (both in the honest meaning of the word and in its current sense as a cover-name for socialism) that was about to work on my immature and patchwork beliefs”...Columbia did not teach me communism.  It taught me despair...it was a feeling of despair, not always explicit and seldom definite, but running like a theme through any view of life that was not merely practically ambitious.  It was the sense of historical sundown, the sense that man had reached one of the great jumping-off places  --- or what was worse, a place where it was impossible to jump because it was the end”...into this vacuum, sprang something which was waiting just around the corner  -- something what at first I had no way of identifying, but which I presently learned was Marxism”.

While no one on the Columbia faculty may have “taught” Chambers communism, the same cannot be said for the faculties of American colleges today. They are the inheritors of the anti-American, pro-Marxist intellectual doctrine of the 1920s.

This situation became more pronounced and vocal as the campus radicals of the late 1960s finished graduate school and entered academia.  In the words of Professor Jay Parini of Middlebury College in Vermont:

“After the Vietnam War, a lot of us didn’t just crawl back into our literary cubicles; we stepped into academic positions. With the war over, our visibility was lost, and it seemed for a while—to the unobservant—that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure, and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest. “

Annette Kolodny, a former 60s radical at Berkeley, is now professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona at Tucson.  She makes no bones about how she views her position:

"I see my scholarship as an extension of my political activism."

And, Andrew Ross, formerly on the faculty at Princeton and now a professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, once stated:

"I teach in the Ivy League in order to have direct access to the minds of the children of the ruling class.”

In their 2006 work entitled A Profile of American College Faculty: Political Beliefs and Behavior, Gary Tobin and Aryeh K. Weinberg found that:

“Faculty hold a certain number of beliefs that are pervasive, but not monolithic. They include:

• Criticism of many American foreign and domestic policies.

• Propensity to blame America for world problems.

• A tendency to strongly support international institutions such as the United Nations.

• Strong opposition to American unilateralism.

• Criticism of big business.

• Skepticism about capitalism’s ability to help address poverty in developing nations.”

The authors go on to state: “The majority of faculty are liberal and Democratic, and therefore the full spectrum of beliefs and political behavior of the American public is underrepresented on campus.”

What of those professors who write the history texts that are used in our colleges and universities, as well as in the public schools?  Do they share Dr. Kolodny’s ideology and activism?  Or, has the revisionist approach to history become so prevalent that misrepresenting history is simply the only way to avoid ostracism and censure by one’s peers? 

In this respect, I don’t see any great “conspiracy” in the sense of a central committee putting out memos directing how history will be revised.  Current revisionism is more diffused.  It is more the case of individual professors deciding how they can contribute to undermining the traditional consensus of America as a “beacon of liberty”.  They believe, along with such leading intellectuals as Noam Chomsky, Francis Fox Piven, William Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn that the only reason Marxism has never succeeded is that the right people weren’t in charge.

Of course, revisionism can make a valid contribution to the historical record if it is used to revise previously stated facts based on new scholarship.  Historians have been editing recorded history since the days of ancient Greek and Roman scholars, such as Plutarch and Tacitus.

Revisionist history flows from one of three major perspectives:

1.  A Social or Theoretical perspective to re-examine the past through different lenses

2.  A Fact-checking perspective to correct the record of past events

3.  And, finally, a Negative perspective that views revisionism as an intentional effort to falsify or skew past events for specific motives

Scholarly works often use the first perspective and the author will alert the reader to this in the Forward or Introduction.

However, in the particular case of texts chosen for high school and college freshman/ sophomore survey courses, many times the authors don’t update their work in later editions when new scholarship would lead them to follow the 2nd revisionist perspective of Fact-checking.

Instead, text authors completely ignore more recent scholarship and stick with the same half-truths edition after edition.  This cannot be inadvertent.  The scholarship is there and, in many cases, has been available for many years.  What other conclusion can there be than that they simply choose not to present a more balanced and accurate view?  

These authors fully understand that young students know so little that they are completely unaware of how they are being used to internalize the basic message of hostility toward their own country.  The subtle, underlying message is “See what a bad country America is.  Aren’t you ashamed to be an American?  Now, let’s “steer” you to a more worthwhile ideology.”

The pedagogical methods used in the public schools actually discourage students from questioning the "revealed wisdom" being espoused by both the text and their teacher.  If they argue, they are quickly put in their place.  In many cases, this is because the teachers themselves don't have the requisite historical knowledge to answers the students' questions, even if the students knew what questions to ask. 

This is especially true in Texas where the majority of the history teachers are coaches.  Their major course of study in college was Physical Education.  The common practice is to hire them as a coach and stick them in the history classroom. I would submit that even they aren’t aware of the flaws in the textbook.  If they are aware, they are still more concerned with X’s and O’s. This is intended as a criticism of the system rather than of the individuals themselves.  They are simply concentrating on their primary job.

The purpose of this blog is to expose concrete examples of this misuse of history in hopes that parents will more fully understand the way in which their children are being indoctrinated rather than educated. 

The specific texts I will use are those with which I am most familiar:

The American Nation: A History of the United States by Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty

Give Me Liberty: An American History by Eric Foner

American Government and Politics Today 2008-2009 by Steffen W. Schmidt, Mack C. Shelley, and Barbara A. Bardes

Hereinafter, these will be referred to as Garraty, Foner, and Schmidt.

A part of my basic methodology will be to use a book entitled Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historic Thought by David Hackett Fischer, Harper Torchbooks, 1970.  I was introduced to this book in a graduate Historiography seminar.

As its subtitle states, Fischer is searching for logic, rather than presenting history through an emotional or ideological prism.  According to Fischer:

"An event is understood as any past happening.  A fact is a true descriptive statement about past events. To explain is merely to make plain, clear, or understandable some problems about past events, so that resultant knowledge will be useful in dealing with future problems". 

He then points out that "A good deal of relevant and important work has recently been done, not by logicians or historians, but by epistemologists."

In this context, “a fallacy is not merely an error itself but a way of falling into error. It consists in false reasoning, often from true factual premises, so that false conclusions are generated.”

Using the 3^rd revisionist perspective mentioned, the historian not only provides selected facts, but also editorializes through use of carefully selected terminology or language.  This school of historiography attempts to force all historical thought into an idealist or moralistic model. Students are steered toward moral conclusions that have already been made by the author.

This is not the province of the historian, unless such purpose is fully stated in the Forward or Introduction of the work.  The texts mentioned above do not provide the student with any such warning.  Either the material is presented as completely factual or the author suggests to the student how he or she should "feel" about it, or both.

In my introductory lectures, I warn my students that a historian, like any other researcher, has a vested interest in answering his/her own questions.  Their job and reputation are at stake.  Their work, if it is to be published, must be peer reviewed.  When the reviewers themselves subscribe to the same ideological biases, the result becomes a foregone conclusion.

If my students learn nothing else, they begin learning to read and think critically and with a degree of skepticism.  This is the only way in which outmoded ideas and beliefs are changed.

In his book Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859-1900, (University of Illinois Press, 1971), John Haller writes:

“The period from Darwin to Mendel was one whose theories on race, both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, accepted only variations on the implicit assumption of racial inferiority.  Those who argued equality of the races – either biological or legal – effectively lost credence within the reigning science and social science paradigm.  This paradigm not only determined the relative value of the races but also helped to delineate social categories and justify the century’s efforts at social engineering” 

What if there had been no skeptics to question the “accepted science” of the day?

As Lincoln said, the ideals and values of America, "set up a standard maxim for a free society, which would be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augment­ing the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.  The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration of Independence not for that, but for future use".

Despite the obvious fact of imperfect attainment, no other country on Earth intentionally established anything resembling the ideals of America.  Most countries don't even attempt to try.  Those that do have done so as a direct result of either our example or our force of arms.  The miserable living conditions of citizens in countries that espouse Marxism, or any other collectivist ideology, are ample proof of the superiority of the ideal of individual liberty.

I welcome reasoned and rational comment and debate.  However, I also fully expect the use of Argumentum ad Hominem, as that seems to be the only way in which many today can argue.  They know their argument has no merit, so they resort to name calling or attacking someone’s character or belief. 

A demand that authors inform, rather than proselytize, should be a common objective.  It is hoped that this will ultimately reach and be of use to both parents and students.