Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution still has one of the better blogs around but it has declined substantially from its epistemic heyday two or three years ago. Less factual content, more indulgence of academic fads, more obfuscating jargon masquerading as wit ("solve for the equilibrium"), more head nods towards Critical Race Theory and Social Justice. It is almost as if he has been trying to reduce the probability of being targeted by the social media mobs.
He has a new piece in Bloomsberg, America the Beautiful, Revised Version.
He starts out with an apparent appeal to increase historical revisionism. An appeal to an activity which is usually understood to be a habit of totalitarian governments seeking to hide embarrassing information would seem an odd sentiment for an academic.
True patriotism, especially of the American variety, comes from questioning the history you were born into. As July 4 approaches, we should all keep this in mind as we question some of the fundamentals of the American story — and we should ask ourselves not whether these reconsiderations are justified, but why there aren’t more of them.
Revisionist history serves many useful purposes, and for the most part it should be encouraged — even though many particular revisionist claims turn out to be wrong. The natural human state of affairs is a kind of complacency and acceptance of the status quo. If historians sometimes write a bit too sharply or speculatively to capture the audience’s attention, it is a price worth paying. At any rate, the audience tends not to take them literally or to pay close attention to their more detailed claims.
But perhaps he is just being precious with wordplay. He follows the opening with some word salad about how little history is known by Americans, even by his fellow elite. There is this social signaling gem:
I was recently at a dinner party with a number of highly educated, well-known Washington pundits. Not even many of them had read through the entire New York Times 1619 Project — so how much attention might the broader American public be paying?
This self-flattery mixed with disparagement of fellow citizens is not a particularly attractive position.
The problem is that the revisionism isn’t diverse enough. A few issues — most of all those raised by Critical Race Theory — get caught up in the culture wars and are debated above all others. I agree that we should devote more time and attention to America’s disgraceful history of slavery and race relations, and I have incorporated that into my own teaching.
CRT is the blanket accusation absorbing so much of our Mandarin Class and Cowen uses the opportunity to endorse such ideological nonsense. But then he tries to redeem himself with his final paragraph:
America needs revisionism, more of it please, and on timely and controversial topics. But it also needs less politicized and more intellectually diverse interpretations of its history. On this Fourth of July, what America needs is not the promotion of some particular claim of historical hypocrisy, but the elevation of the historical itself.
Historical revisionism is a noxious invocation associated with totalitarian states. Cowen appears to be merely sporting with his nominally shocking argument. It is a sophomoric joke. But the sentiment of the final paragraph is fine up to a point.
The same point could have been made without tossing around volatile claims. "We need more openness to facts and insightful interpretations and that should apply to the study of history as well" would seem to fit the bill. There is something of a corollary as well - "We need to be more stringent in distinguishing between agreed fact, consensus interpretation, grounded interpretations, strained interpretations, nonsense, and outright falsehoods."
Much of the "revisionism" right now circles around strained interpretations, nonsense and outright falsehoods. There is limited value in those debates, especially given that in most instances they are merely fronts for totalitarian ideologies inimical to Age of Enlightenment values such human universalism, natural rights and freedom.
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