Tiptoeing Across Quicksand
13th Amendment, abolition, awareness, citizenship, civics, Civil War, conflict, conservatism, constitution, critical judgment, emancipation, Emancipation Proclamation, Executive Order, God, history, injustice, justice, law, self-serving, slavery, social justice, solidarity, Uncategorized
In a recent “Skeptic’s Collection” column I gave examples of beliefs that represent the principle that “A little learning is a dangerous thing”. The examples I cited were derived from physics, psychology, and literature. But history is no less susceptible to warped beliefs than other disciplines. A recent issue of the Washington Post Magazine contains such an example of warped history. Problem is that the Post writer, while doing a sterling job of debunking the beliefs of lovers of the Confederacy, fails to note that liberals and progressives, in their zeal to repudiate such atavisms, fail equally to take into account their own myopia, and end up with a view of history – Civil War history in particular – that is equally warped, just in the opposite direction.
The article compri
