PROGRESSIVES’ ACADEMIC INCEST
Academic Collectivism relies on the claims of “experts” rather than original documents as the standard for truth.
~ David Barton
The fifth and final sophism by the left that undermines realism, truth and historical accuracy, or what David Barton in his new book on Jefferson calls “the five malpractices of modern history,” is Academic Collectivism, “whereby writers and scholars quote each other and those from their peer group rather than consult original sources. This destructive and harmful tendency now dominates the modern academic world, with a heavy reliance on peer review as the almost exclusive standard for historical truth.”
I am presently working on a law review article on Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous 1918 Harvard Law Review article titled “Natural Law.” This work, along with perhaps his 1886 book, “The Common Law” and a handful of dissenting opinions he wrote in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a justice on the Supreme Court, are what we now view as Holmes’ most significant works. Nevertheless, his “Natural Law” article has zero footnotes even though it was published in the venerated Harvard Law Review.
Why? I theorize that Holmes had such contempt for America’s Judeo-Christian worldview and Natural Law, which integrated legality and morality in addition to being the primary legal philosophy of America’s constitutional framers, that he felt it beneath his vaunted and legendary intellect to deign any respect to this subject by citing original sources. In other words, the entire law review article is Holmes merely ranting and raving against America’s Judeo-Christian origins, making his “Natural Law” a most cynical, unremarkable and despicable treatment of the subject matter.
Barton offers an engaging but chilling case of this historical malpractice, citing a 2005 book called “The Godless Constitution.” In that work, Cornell professors Isaac Kramnick and Laurence Moore present the popular academic sophism that the Founding Fathers were nothing but a bunch of atheists, agnostics and deists who knowingly constructed a secular government, a democracy based on humanism. This phony theme has become a staple in most colleges and universities throughout America; law reviews, law journals, courts and other professors reflexively refer to this work as a trustworthy source to “prove” the Founding Fathers’ deficit of religious principle. After presenting such a radical view of history, one would expect to see numerous footnotes at the end of the book, but like my example of Holmes’ “Nature Law,” Kramnick and Moore arrogantly acknowledge that “we have dispensed with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes.”
This is an incredible admission by two so-called legal scholars with Ph.D.s! They offer not the slightest support defending their sweeping generalizations and radical claims regarding an alleged lack of faith among the framers of the Constitution, and like sock puppets their peers in academia seemingly in unison deem this book a grand scholarly triumph.
Click here to read the article at World Net Daily
Category: Uncategorized
Dear Mr. Washington,
Thank you for writing such insightful and direct articles. Progressives Academic Incest hit home. I had to bail on the PhD program at Chapel Hill thanks to far-left progressive departmental politics. As one of two female conservatives out of 150 history graduate students, I was constantly harangued about my pursuit of empirical vs. historiographical research. The facts and events were immaterial to the militant feminazi supervisors…for the majority of the faculty, it was all about quoting each other, eliminating the traditional western canon (who needs Aristotle and Plato, etc?) and revising history. As one professor stated to me, “teaching is a by-product, we’re here to get grants and publish”. When a male colleague “comes out” and says he’s gay to get an assistantship while openly living with his girlfriend – AND he gets it, you know it’s time to abandon ship.
Keep up the great work and thank you for your dedication to spreading the truth!
Keep the Faith!