The Age of Hillary?

At a recent luncheon, an engineer asked me what history would likely say about the period we live in and what it would be called. He had read about the Cold War and post-Cold War eras and wondered what label the Clinton-Bush years would wear. When I replied, “The Age of Hillary,” several around the table laughed, and several groaned. And I left it at that, thinking that a serious reply would be out of place in the light-hearted banter that floated above the delicious cooking. But my friend raised an interesting question, one that deserved a more thoughtful reply.

In the first place, who or what is the “history” that provides the judgments and labels? I often read and hear that “history” proves and teaches this and that, without a definition or description of who or what it is doing the proving and teaching.

Historical facts become history only when they are collected, organized, and interpreted by historians. Over the last century, historians of major people and events have tended to be professionally trained scholars, usually the holders of a Ph.D. working in a college or university. (Many journalists have been historians, but for a variety of reasons their books tend to be forgotten rather quickly by the professionals.) They have also tended to be on the Left. At the turn of the century, historians in this country frequently admired the Progressives. The next generation raved about FDR, Truman and JFK. Eisenhower, a Republican, was by default an ignoramus and the country suffered. The villains during these years included Big Business, conservatives of all kinds, McCarthyites, and, for most, the Communists.

In the “Dreadful Decade,” a label of my own to describe the period 1965-75, the intellectual bent of the country moved sharply leftward. The great majority of scholars in the humanities and social sciences have remained in that mental posture. (The public, on the other hand, is not so concentrated on one end of the political and cultural scale: 21 percent call themselves liberal, 43 percent say they are moderates, and 33 percent tilt to the Right.) That means, as I should have told my friend, that when he is speaking of “history,” he really means professional historians who reach a general consensus that is almost inevitably slanted. In general, those people on the Left are good, wise, and “in tune with change,” and those on the Right are backward and stupid. Labels follow.

So, despite his impeachment and his status as an endless butt of jokes by comedians, “history” will applaud Bill Clinton. Just as certainly, it will give thumbs down to Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidencies. Er, didn’t Reagan end the Cold War? Well, he didn’t have that much to do with it, “history” will contend. Besides, many would say, we aren’t certain yet that the demise of the Soviet Union was a good thing. The War On Terror? If it’s from Bush, it’s a blunder, even though Muslim extremists wish to crush Israel and Western Civilization itself. Killing the terrorists just breeds more of them; we should have listened to the United Nations and France, etc. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war? Some 1,200 historians have signed a petition opposing it, some 200 at the recent meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Alas, the judgments of “history” are usually quite predictable. For the vast majority of academic historians throughout the West, there is no enemy to the left.

So what do you think “history” will say about the blockbuster movie The Passion of the Christ? It is the creation of a serious Catholic and is admired by Christians all over the world. Therefore, it is bad. Leftist critics say that if the film isn’t anti-Semitic, it’s pornographic. One can already predict what the leading textbooks will say about the movie, if it is mentioned at all.

And what will “history” say about legalized abortion, which has killed 40 million in this country since 1973 and continues at the rate of 1.2 million a year? And school choice? And same-sex marriage? Take a guess. The real problem, “history” says, is the Religious Right, which threatens to destroy our freedoms. Today’s Difficult Question: Will the historians back Hillary Clinton for president when she makes her bid?

Observe the recent accolades paid by the Organization of American Historians to radical historian Howard Zinn. The tribute is predictable. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, 1492—Present, has sold more than a million copies and has been used in thousands of college courses. The able historian Michael Kazin has recently written a solid critique of A People’s History, noting its consistently slanted thesis, (reducing “the past to a Manichean fable” pitting common folk against predator elites), its denigration of conservatism and Christianity, and its failure to explain why most Americans love the capitalist republic in which they live. But the OAH dinner honored Zinn, not Kazin.

So I would tell my engineer friend not to worry about what “history” says. He should read and think for himself. And, as a general rule, he ought to seek out books written by reputable historians prior to the Age of Aquarius. Yes, bias is probably there in the earlier works, but ideology had not yet closed scholarly minds.

Still, there are pockets of resistance against the ideological stranglehold. And dogmas have been known to fade over time. Let us hope that one day when “history” speaks it will reflect fairness and objectivity and again command the respect of those seeking truth.