Historian Schama Makes Newsweek Debut Bashing Tea Partiers Over Respect for Founding Fathers

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2011/06/27/historian-simon-schama-makes-newsweek-debut-bashing-tea-partiers-over- ^

[cripplecreek]

I should have read the whole thread before posting.

I’m real glad that others are aware and exposing that filth.

When the new congress read the constitution I was wishing they would read the communist goals instead.

[rollo tomasi]

"But unlike you, a better understanding of the fallen nature of man and his fallen desire to rule over other men despotically."

[Qbert]

“We do the authors of American independence no favors by embalming them in infallibility, by treating the Constitution like a quasi-biblical revelation...”

Pretty precious considering that Newsweak’s old editor once referred to Obama as a “sort of God”, and that he moves, “[A]s he wishes to move, and the world bending itself to him’.

I guess we’re only supposed to worship backbencher state senators.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Cambridge, Oxford and Columbia.

Please refer to my tagline.

[torchthemummy]

I am familiar with Schama past idea of history. It is best described as a “fill-in-the-blanks” style where he has constantly felt comfortable with speculating what happened or who said what when there is no empirical facts available.

So for example when he wrote about the murder of Bostonian Brahmin George Parkman by Harvard Professor John Webster in 1849 (truly one of the trials of the century - look it up) he felt comfortable time and again to attribute conversations and actions as “very likely.”

He then takes one of his earlier presumptions and quotes it as fact in the course of trying to prove another “fact” that is once again speculation. He pretends to be upfront about it but then conveniently neglects to remind the reader that his making speculation based on speculations. It’s very dishonest but for a liberal it is very convenient and allows him to shape his narrative any way he pleases.

[Norm Lenhart]

I’m actually surprised that a lot of Freepers are unaware of it. I have posted it a few times in different related threads and am amazed by the responses that so many are seeing/hearing about it for the first time.

[cripplecreek]

I wonder if this “historian” is aware of what our most liberal founder did 224 years ago tomorrow?

(June 28, 1787, Benjamin Franklin Requests Prayer in the Constitutional Convention)

[cripplecreek]

Now that I’m aware of the goals, I see their results every day.

[Norm Lenhart]

One of these days I want to go through this list and collect a bunch of irrefutable examples of thiis list (the ones that still apply after the Soviet breakup) and put it in book form.

I remember showing this list to a batcrap crazy lib a few years ago and watched him tie himself in knots trying to deny the obvious. He advocated/believed in pretty much the whole list, but ‘HOW DARE I QUESTION HIS PATRIOTISM!!!”

Pretty easily I thought....

[SunkenCiv]

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[cripplecreek]

I’m quite happy to see my whole extended family taking a serious interest in history. In fact we had a family reunion yesterday and it was held at a “Farm heritage park and museum” that my grandmother has been involved with for years.

[Billthedrill]

Simon Schama is best known as a history popularizer, his best book, IMHO, being Citizens, a study of the French Revolution. Best to him, but history in this sense is not the proper arena of an educated elite, it belongs to those who embrace it and protect it, and if certain aspects of popular, i.e. "Tea Party" admiration trend toward the uncritical it is a far better thing than the relentlessly critical and even more superficial approach taken by, say, Howard Zinn, a popularizer even more successful than Schama himself.

What a detailed study of the men we label Founders has taught me is that they were remarkably admirable, unmistakably human, and imbued with a sense of political creativity that has not been seen since and very seldom prior. This is not worship, it is a candid assessment of worth. Would I stack Hamilton up against Pericles? Absolutely. Madison against Solon? You better believe it. Washington against any founder of any state in history? Yes. Franklin? No comparison anywhere, because Archimedes wasn't a statesman.

I'll happily listen to counterarguments should Schama decide to offer any. But the problem with equating undue reverence with undue disdain is that it cheapens reverence and accords disdain an undeserved virtue. All IMHO, of course.

[cripplecreek]

Some good stuff you might find a use for. Many of the links are dead but most can be found with minimal further searching.

Primary Source Documents Pertaining to Early American History

[Norm Lenhart]

Cool! Much appreciated!

[Godwin1]

Simon is a just another smelly leftist foreigner. OF COURSE he hates the Founders. They were so——AMERICAN.

[cripplecreek]

Our founders were very human as you can see from Franklins advice to a promiscuous friend.

http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/mistress.html

(Told him to find a widow and put a bag over her head if he really wasn’t ready to marry)

[Billthedrill]

Franklin is my favorite Founder by far. You have to remember that the paper bag wasn’t even invented at that point. ;-)

[bvw]

Yes, yes they were.

Not really. Yes, of course they were human, and all humans have all sorts of flaws.

But comparing the great men and women of the Founders and their generations to today's political class is like saying that Da Vinci made mistakes in his masterpieces just like Andres Serrano does in his works.

Andres Serrano is considered a great artist of out time by the elites of our era. Da Vinci was considered a great artist of his time by the elites of his era.

Of course many on FR will not immediately recognize the great artist Serrano. That's because we are flakes and illiterate troglodytes.

But we do know him by his famous masterpiece. Da Vinci's famous masterpieces include The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa, among others. Truly great!

And what then is the remarkable, extraordinary masterwork of our time's great artist Andres Serrano?

It is called "Piss Christ".

It's equally wrong, morally and historically, to compare the Founding generation to today's.

Do you agree?

[cripplecreek]

After reading again I see that Ben actually suggested putting a basket over the old girl’s head.

[bvw]

It doesn’t verge on sedition, it is sedition. Look up the word. The tolerance we allow under Free Speech precludes prosecution of all but direct actions of sedition. Words must be allowed, but still, such calumny is sedition.