Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Huckabee on the fly
Mike Huckabee may be a great speaker, but apparently he could stand to brush up on his founding father lore.
Sigh. If the Republican candidates do not understand our history, who will?
CWCID: Lawyers, Guns, and Money.
5 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Wed Oct 24, 08:07:00 AM:
People uninterested in politics, like historians.
The Founding Fathers aren't really part of American history anyway; rather, I consider them part of an American mythology. We all have our vague ideas about what they did and thought and believed, and we mention parables and stories (many of which are completely without merit; ref: Washington's cherry tree) all the time out of context to try to support our points as if the phrase "Thomas Jefferson would have agreed with me!" is the be all end all of political rhetoric.
They're no longer people, to us, with foibles and petty vices. They're a collection of demi-gods, who warrant no more serious study than the myths of Hercules and Apollo.
By Purple Avenger, at
Wed Oct 24, 08:41:00 AM:
The level of preposterous BS one spouts corresponds directly to how highly focused the group one is pandering to.
By GreenmanTim, at
Wed Oct 24, 09:51:00 AM:
Dawnfire88's observation is worth pursuing further, I think. The national mythology of America's founding and the near deification of Washington do make for tangled history, but also influence the shape of our history. Look no further than "original intent" judicial theory for a ready example of this impact.
A "Great Men" approach to history is deeply ingrained in the American story, just as hard work and individual opportunity are bulwarks of the "American Dream". We explain American greatness as - above all else - the product of the enabling legislation that our enlightened Founders produced. Never mind that a couple of them were former churchmen, far more were philanderers , and all of them were quite human with human strengths and frailties. And indeed we can debate whether that knowledge adds to or detracts from our understanding of their accomplishments and its impacts.
By Viking Kaj, at
Wed Oct 24, 12:38:00 PM:
"Lawyers, Guns and Money" is my absolute favorite Warren Zeavon song! I think he wrote it on a Spanish vacation with an ex-pat American merc who was running an Irish pub in Spain at the time.
Great song!
By Cassandra, at
Wed Oct 24, 06:15:00 PM:
Oh... pooh.
Why bother to learn about history?
When you get to Capitol Hill the first thing you find is that history is an infinitely elastic concept and everyone is quite busily engaged at re-writing it.
It is, what you say it is. Huckabee will learn.
