Nope, Patrick Henry didn’t say that

More misquoting of “the Founders”:

For America’s poster featuring a quote falsely claimed to be from Patrick Henry.  The racial right wingers won’t tell you, but the painting is a portrait by George Bagby Matthews c. 1891, after an original by Thomas Sully.

It’s baseball season.  I love a pitch into the wheelhouse.

The radical right-wing political group For America — a sort of latter-day Redneck Panther group — invented this one, and pasted it up on their Facebook site this morning.

You know where this is going, of course.  Patrick Henry didn’t say that.  The poster is a hoax.

Your Hemingway [Excrement] Detector probably clanged as soon as you pulled the poster up.  Patrick Henry was a powerful opponent to the Constitution.

Opposed to the Constitution?  Oh, yes.  It helps to know a bit of history.

Henry was at best suspicious of the drive to get a working, central government after the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution. While George Washington needed an interstate authority, at least to resolve disputes between the states, in order to create a commercial entity to build a path into the Ohio Valley, Henry was opposed.  To be sure, Washington was scheming a bit, with his dreaming:  Washington held title to more than 15,000 acres of land in the Ohio Valley, his fee for having surveyed the land for Lord Fairfax many years earlier.  Washington stood to get wealthy from the sale of the land — if a path into and out of the Ohio could be devised.  Washington struggled for years to get a canal through — seen today in the remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from Washington, D.C., up along the Potomac River.

Henry was so opposed to the states’ working together that he refused to notify Virginia’s commissioners appointed to a commission to settle the fishing and title dispute to the Chesapeake Bay, between Maryland and Virginia especially, and including Delaware.  When Maryland’s commissioners showed up in Fairfax for the first round of negotiations, they could not find the Virginia commissioners at all.  So they called on Gen. Washington at his Mt. Vernon estate (as about a thousand people a year did in those years).  Washington recognized immediately how this collaboration could aid getting a path through Maryland to the Ohio.

Perplexed at the abject failure of Virginia’s government, Washington dispatched messages to the Virginia commissioners, including a young man Washington did not know, James Madison.  Washington was shocked and disappointed to learn the Virginians did not know they had been appointed.  He suggested the Marylanders return home, and immediately began working with Madison to make the commission work.  When this group settled the Chesapeake Bay boundaries and fishing issues, and Washington’s war aide Alexander Hamilton was entangled in a separate but similar dispute between New York and New Jersey over New York Harbor, Washington introduced Hamilton and Madison to each other, and suggested they broaden their work.  Ultimately this effort produced the Annapolis Convention among five colonies, which called for a convention to amend the Articles of Confederation.  The Second Continental Congress agreed to the proposal.

When the delegates met at Philadelphia, they determined the Articles of Confederation irreparably flawed.  Instead, they wrote what we now know as the Constitution.

Patrick Henry opposed each step.  Appointed delegate to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, he refused to serve.  Instead, he was elected Governor of Virginia, and proceeded to organize opposition to ratification of the Constitution.  Madison’s unique ratification process, sending the Constitution to conventions of the people in each state, instead of to the state legislatures, was designed to get around Henry’s having locked up opposition to ratification in the Virginia Assembly.

Henry led opposition to ratification at the Virginia convention.  Outflanked by Madison, Henry was enraged by Virginia’s ratification.  Virginia had called for the addition of a bill of rights to the document, and the ratification campaign was carried partly on Madison’s promise that he would propose a bill of rights as amendments, as soon as the new federal government got up and running.  Henry sought to thwart Madison, blocking Madison’s appointment as U.S. senator, in the state legislature.  When Madison fell back to run for the House of Representatives, Henry found the best candidate to oppose Madison in the Tidewater area and threw all his support behind that candidate. (James Monroe was that candidate; in one of the more fitting ironies of history, during the campaign Monroe was persuaded to Madison’s side; Madison won the election, and the lifelong friendship and help of Monroe.)

When the new federal government organized, Henry refused George Washington’s invitation to join it in any capacity.  Henry continued to oppose the Constitution and its government to his death.

Consequently, it is extremely unlikely Henry would have ever suggested that the Constitution was a useful tool in any way, especially as a defense of freedom; Henry saw the Constitution as a threat to freedom.

There are good records of some of the things Henry really did say about the Constitution.  Henry regarded the Constitution as tyranny, and said exactly that in his speech against the Constitution on June 5, 1788:

It is said eight states have adopted this plan. I declare that if twelve states and a half had adopted it, I would, with manly firmness, and in spite of an erring world, reject it. You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.

In the same speech, Henry challenged the right of the people even to consider creating  a Constitution:

The assent of the people, in their collective capacity, is not necessary to the formation of a federal government. The people have no right to enter into leagues, alliances, or confederations; they are not the proper agents for this purpose. States and foreign powers are the only proper agents for this kind of government.

Probably diving into hyperbole, Henry portrayed the Constitution itself as a threat to liberty, not a protection from government:

When I thus profess myself an advocate for the liberty of the people, I shall be told I am a designing man, that I am to be a great man, that I am to be a demagogue; and many similar illiberal insinuations will be thrown out: but, sir, conscious rectitude outweighs those things with me.

I see great jeopardy in this new government. I see none from our present one. I hope some gentleman or other will bring forth, in full array, those dangers, if there be any, that we may see and touch them.

Anyone familiar with the history, with the story of Patrick Henry and the conflicting, often perpendicular story of the creation of the Constitution, would be alarmed at a quote in which Henry appears to claim the Constitution a protector of rights of citizens — it’s absolutely contrary to almost everything he ever said.

Perhaps most ironic, for our right-wing friends:  The quote on the poster above was invented as a defense against abuses of the Constitution by the right.  Wikiquote tracked it back to its invention:

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

• As quoted in The Best Liberal Quotes Ever : Why the Left is Right (2004) by William P. Martin. Though widely attributed to Henry, this statement has not been sourced to any document before the 1990s and appears to be at odds with his beliefs as a strong opponent of the adoption of the US Constitution.

“History?” For America might say. “We don’t got no history. We don’t NEED NO STINKIN’ HISTORY!”

And so they trip merrily down the path to authoritarian dictatorship, denying their direction every step of the way to their ultimate end.

The rest of us can study history, and discover the truth.

More:

• Federalists and Anti-Federalists – What is the Difference? (hankeringforhistory.com)
• Northwest History dogged this one down earlier — wish I’d had it when I wrote the post (update April 10, 2013)
• Baylor Institute of Religion comment
• Yes, I covered this same bogus quote last year; conservatives claim not to like environmentalism, nor revisions of history, but they recycle the old prevarications with great alacrity

Millard Fillmore: Still dead, still misquoted, 139 years later

A wax likeness of Millard Fillmore’s head, appearing to be for sale for $950.00 back in 2007. Did anyone ever buy it? Yes, it does bear an unusual resemblance to Tom Peters.

March 8, 2013, is the 139th anniversary of Millard Fillmore’s death.  Famous lore claims Fillmore’s last words were, “The nourishment is palatable.”

What a crock!

Manus reprints the text from the New York Times obituary that appeared on March 9:

Buffalo, N.Y., March 8 — 12 o’clock, midnight. — Ex-President Millard Fillmore died at his residence in this city at 11:10 to-night. He was conscious up to the time. At 8 o’clock, in reply to a question by his physician, he said the nourishment was palatable; these were his last words. His death was painless.

First, I wonder how the devil the writer could possibly know whether Fillmore’s death was painless?

And second, accuracy obsessed as I am, I wonder whether this is the source of the often-attributed to Fillmore quote, “The nourishment is palatable.” Several sources that one might hope would be more careful attribute the quote to Fillmore as accurate — none with any citation that I can find. Thinkexist charges ahead full speed; Brainyquote removed the quote after I complained in 2007. Wikipedia lists it. Snopes.com says the quote is “alleged,” in a discussion thread.

I’ll wager no one can offer a citation for the quote. I’ll wager Fillmore didn’t say it.

Let’s be more stolid:  The quote alleged to be Fillmore’s last words, isn’t.  No one says “palatable” when they’re dying, not even the man about whom it is claimed that Queen Victoria pronounced him the hansomest man she ever met (just try tracking that one down), and whose strongest legacy is a hoax about a bathtub, started 43 years after he died.  No one calls soup “sustenance.”

The alleged quote, the misquote, the distortion of history, was stolen from the obituary in the New York Times.  Millard Fillmore did not say, “The sustenance is palatable.”

What were Millard Fillmore’s last words?  They may be buried in the notebook of one of his doctors.  They may be recorded in some odd notebook held in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, or in the Library of SUNY Buffalo, or in the New York State Library‘s dusty archives.

But the dying President Fillmore did not say, “The sustenance is palatable.”

Millard Fillmore: We’d protect his legacy, if only anyone could figure out what it is.

This is partly an encore post, based on a post from 2007.

More:

• Millard Fillmore’s links to March 8: Hurrah! and R.I.P. (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
• Quote of the moment: Should we reconsider Millard Fillmore? (timpanogos.wordpress.com)

Mermelstein: The man who forced us to remember

I first posted a version of this back in August 2006.  Since that time not much showed up on the internet to commemorate the story of Mel Mermelstein, nor to burn his deeds into the history books.  Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub had many fewer readers each day, then too.  This is a story that should not be forgotten about a story that must not be forgotten.

Mel Mermelstein, photo from Auschwitz Study Foundation

In early August 1985, Melvin Mermelstein struck a powerful blow against bogus history and historical hoaxes. Mel won a decision in a California court, in a contract case.

A group of Holocaust deniers had offered a $50,000 reward for anyone who could prove that the Holocaust actually happened. Mermelstein had watched his family marched to the gas chambers, and could testify. He offered his evidence. The Holocaust deniers, of course, had no intention of paying up. They dismissed any evidence offered as inadequate, and continued to claim no one could prove that the Holocaust actually occurred.

Mermelstein, however, was a businessman and he knew the law. He knew that the offer of the reward was a sweepstakes, a form of contract. He knew it was a contract enforceable in court.  He sued to collect the offered reward.  The reward was an offer, and Mel Mermelstein accepted the offer and, he said, he performed his part of the bargain. The issue in court would be, was Mermelstein’s evidence sufficient?

Mermelstein’s lawyer had a brilliant idea. He petitioned the court to take “judicial notice” of the fact of the Holocaust. Judicial note means that a fact is so well established that it doesn’t need to be evidenced when it is introduced in court — such as, 2+2=4, the freezing point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius, etc.

The court ruled that the evidence presented overwhelmingly established that the Holocaust had occurred — the court made judicial note of the Holocaust. That ruling meant that, by operation of law, Mermelstein won the case. The only thing for the judge to do beyond that was award the money, and expenses and damages.

You can read the case and other materials at the Nizkor Holocaust remembrance site.

Appalachian State University takes the Holocaust seriously — there is a program of study on the issue, reported by the Mountain Times (the school is in Boone, North Carolina — not sure where the newspaper is).

Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations

Mountain Times, August 17, 2006

As co-directors of Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, Rennie Brantz and Zohara Boyd are always eager to expand and improve the center’s methods of education. Seldom, though, does this involve airfare.

Brantz and Boyd recently visited Israel to participate in the Fifth International Conference for Education: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations. The four-day conference was held in late June at Yad Vashem, an institute and museum in Jerusalem that specializes in the Nazi Holocaust. [link added]

“Yad Vashem is an incredible institute,” Brantz said. “It was founded in the ’50s to remember and commemorate those who perished in the Holocaust, and has been the premier international research institute dealing with the Holocaust.”

As Santayana advises, we remember the past in order to prevent its recurring. Clearly, this is a past we need to work harder at remembering.

Despite having been ordered to acknowledge the Holocaust, pay up on their sweepstakes offer, and apologize to Mr. Mermelstein, Holocaust deniers continue to publish claims that Mr. Mermelstein’s account is not accurate, or that it is contradictory or in some other way fails to measure up to the most strict tests of historical accuracy.  So it is important that you remember the story of Mel Mermelstein, and that you spread it far and wide.

More:

• Thomas T. Johnson, the judge who ruled that Holocaust history is a fact, died in late 2011
• Leonard Nimoy played Mermelstein in a television move, “Never Forget”
  
• Dutch Holocaust hero to be honoured in Amsterdam (thejc.com)
• Why Raoul Wallenberg’s centennial matters (timesofisrael.com)
• The man who saved 900 Jewish boys INSIDE a death camp (timesofisrael.com)

If it’s an election year, it must be Bogus Quote Time! Patrick Henry on the Constitution

Keep your collections of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and “the founders” close to you, and right next to your Bartlett’s or Yale.  It’s an election year, and that means people are pulling out all the stops to get you to act against your interests and common sense, including making up stuff that they claim famous people said.

This quote attributed to Patrick Henry piqued my interest last night:

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”  ~ Patrick Henry

As the painter imagined it, Patrick Henry before the House of Burgesses, by Peter F. Rothermel. The painting was done in 1851, 52 years after Henry’s death. It commemorates his famous speech against the Stamp Act of 1775, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”  Henry was both fiery in oration and stubborn in policy; it is unlikely that he would have abandoned his staunch opposition to the U.S. Constitution, to praise its defenses of individual rights, the very thing he criticized it for failing to do.

Recall, you students of history, that Patrick Henry bitterly opposed the Constitution and its ratification.  He considered it too much government, too much intrusions of a centralized, federal government over the states and the citizens of Virginia in particular.  Henry refused to serve when elected delegate to the convention in Philadelphia in 1787.  Henry made it clear that he opposed any new charter of government that set up a real, workable, national government. Henry held considerable sway in Virginia — he was serving one of his six terms as governor, and he had the legislature wrapped around his finger, doing his bidding.  Because of that, James Madison devised a plan for ratification that excluded governors and state legislatures, but instead asked for ratification by the people of each state, in specially-called conventions.

Henry tried to stack the Virginia convention against ratification.  He did his best scuttle Madison’s attending.  Henry thundered against the Constitution from the floor of the convention, claiming that it would forever trample the rights of citizens.  Partly as a result, and partly to get the document approved, Madison pledged that he would create a bill of rights to clarify protections of citizens.  Madison thought that rights were already protected, but he conceded for political reasons.

Madison won in the convention, and Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution.  Henry was livid.

To prevent Madison from creating a bill of rights, Henry fixed the election of the new senators in the state legislature, excluding Madison.  If Madison were to carry out his promise, he’d have to get elected to the House of Representatives — but as a popular man in his home county, that should not have been a problem.  Henry persuaded the only man in the county more popular than Madison, James Monroe, to run against Madison.  It’s a great story, but for another time — Madison eked out the win.

Henry opposed ratification of any of the twelve amendments Madison proposed, which Congress approved.  Eventually ten of the amendments won ratification; we call those ten our Bill of Rights.

President-elect George Washington asked Henry to serve in the new government, perhaps in the president’s cabinet as Secretary of State.  Henry refused.  Supreme Court?  Henry refused.

Get the picture yet?  Patrick Henry was not a fan of the U.S. Constitution.  He complained that it fettered citizens of the states, and that it fettered the states.

How likely is it that he would then turn around and praise the document as a tool for restraining the state against the citizen?  Henry was a stubborn man.  It is not likely.

On history alone, then, we should regard that quote attributed to Henry as bogus.  It’s a fake, a sham, a blot on Henry’s legacy and a warping of history.  Heck, it covers up great stories about Henry fighting the Constitution — it’s not much fun, either.

The words offered most likely never crossed Patrick Henry’s mind, let alone his lips.  Of course, this quote shows up at many so-called patriotic sites — none with good attribution.  I was interested to find this very statement at Wikiquotes, listed under quotes misattributed to Henry:

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

• As quoted in The Best Liberal Quotes Ever : Why the Left is Right (2004) by William P. Martin. Though widely attributed to Henry, this statement has not been sourced to any document before the 1990s and appears to be at odds with his beliefs as a strong opponent of the adoption of the US Constitution.

More and Related Material:

• “I Smelt a Rat” (apologus.wordpress.com)
• Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots (apologus.wordpress.com)
• Sheesh!  It rolled around again in 2013, from “For America”

Sourcing Thomas Jefferson quotes: “A country with no border . . .”

A group calling itself “Patriotic Moms” claims to quote Thomas Jefferson:

Thomas Jefferson said a lot, and kept careful records of about 15,000 letters — but did he ever say a country without a border is not a country? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“A country with no Border is not a country.”

I can’t find that in Jefferson’s writings.  Anybody know if Jefferson said or wrote anything like that?  Got a citation?

Is this another fake Jefferson quote?

More, reference:

• Quote of the moment: Jefferson, on reason in a republic (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
• ‘Historian’ David Barton’s book on Thomas Jefferson pulled from stores (rawstory.com)
• Recalling Revisionist History (kennysideshow.blogspot.com)
• Kansas congressional candidate changes name to Thomas Jefferson (kansascity.com)
• “Misquoting Jefferson,” at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
• “Fake quotes in prize-winning essays,” at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

Crank history assault on Alabama Public Television

Highly disturbing news from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Alabama Public Television Apparently Heading Far Right

Posted in Extremist Propaganda

by Mark Potok on June 18, 2012

Lord help us. Alabama Public Television (APT), a voice of reason in a state that often seems to have very little, is apparently succumbing to the crazies.

Last week, the two top executives of the network were summarily fired by the Alabama Educational Television Commission, APT’s governing body, after they resisted an effort by a new commissioner to air DVDs produced by a far-right theocrat who has been roundly condemned by historians. In the days that followed, three members of a foundation set up to raise money for APT also resigned.

The videos were produced by David Barton, an evangelical propagandist who claims falsely that America was founded as a Christian nation and has also become Glenn Beck’s unofficial — and completely untrained — “historian.” The DVDs were suggested by commissioner Rodney Herring, an Opelika-based chiropractor who was appointed to the panel last year and elected its secretary in January.

Immediately after meeting in executive session June 12, commissioners ordered APT Executive Director Allan Pizzato and his deputy, Pauline Howland, to clear out their desks and leave APT’s Birmingham headquarters. Pizzato had been APT executive director for 12 years; Howland was his deputy director and the network’s chief financial officer.

Pizzato would not comment on the reasons for the firing, other than to say commissioners were seeking to go in “a new direction.” But Howland, in an interview with Current.org, a news service of the American University’s School of Communication, said that Pizzato and his staff had “grave concerns” about airing the videos, which strongly advocate a religious interpretation of the past that historians say is simply wrong. She said she was “baffled” by the firings but recalled Pizatto asking his staff for advice on how to respond to Herring’s proposal.

Commission Chairman Ferris Stephens disputed Current’s report in an interview with The Associated Press, but gave no specifics. Herring, for his part, claimed that disagreement over the Barton DVDs played an “at best minimal” role in the firings, which he described as part of an overall restructuring effort. “We believe it to be a positive change,” wrote another commissioner, conservative talk radio host J. Holland, in response to AP’s queries about the firings. “Simple as that.”

As simple as that? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t believe it.

Stephens told the AP that Barton’s videos had been discussed in the last meeting before the one that produced the firings last week. He said there was another item related to Barton’s organization, WallBuilders, on the agenda for last week’s meeting, but that the commission didn’t get to that item before adjourning. Herring, for his part, denied knowing that Pizzato and Howland had any opinion at all about the DVDs, although Howland told Current that Pizzato had made it clear that he thought the films were “inappropriate” for APT.

Why is it that Pizzato and Howland were fired just as the matter seemed to be coming to a head? Why won’t Stephens and the other commissioners cough up the real reason for the firings, if it wasn’t what seems obvious? When the AP story ran last week, Herring was quoted saying the station may indeed broadcast some of the Barton videos. In fact, he said the commission had consulted attorneys about that possibility. That’s a funny thing to do if you’re just deciding whether to show a film on public television, not making controversial personnel decisions.

The sad truth is, this kind of extremism is getting to be par for the course in Alabama. We passed the immigrant-bashing H.B. 56 and, when legal problems with it came up, our legislators responded by actually making the draconian bill even worse. Last month, the same legislature, after the John Birch Society warned hysterically about a United Nations global sustainability plan, actually passed a law saying that property here cannot be confiscated as part of Agenda 21 — even though that entirely voluntary plan does not and could not require that. One of our current congressmen even claimed a few years back that he knew of 17 “socialists” in the U.S. Congress — although, like Joe McCarthy, he declined to name them.

Why does Rodney Herring want to show Barton’s videos? He isn’t saying. But what Barton has to say should make Alabamians’ hair stand on end.

Barton doesn’t only not believe in global warming — he thinks reducing carbon dioxide emissions would actually devastate the planet. Barton fought to have the names of Martin Luther King Jr. and labor activist Cesar Chavez removed from public school textbooks. He says God set the borders of nations, so immigration reform is unnecessary. He argues that homosexuality should be regulated because gay people “die decades earlier than heterosexuals” and more than half of all gays have had more than 500 sex partners — both falsehoods.

It isn’t only liberals who dislike Barton. Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute on Church-State Studies at Baylor University, says “a lot of what he presents is a distortion of the truth.” J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, says his writings are “laced with exaggerations, half-truths and misstatements of fact.” Mark Lilla, a scholar who has taught at University of Chicago and Columbia University, says Barton’s work is “schlock history written by [a] religious propagandist” and uses “selective quotations out of context.”

But none of this apparently came up when the commissioners, in their great wisdom, decided to fire Allan Pizzato and Pauline Howland. Instead, it looks like Barton’s backers succeeded, by a reported 5-2 vote, in silencing their own eminently sensible executives, and then refusing to come clean with the public about their action.

Once again, Alabama will be the poorer. Lord help us.

Supporters of Alabama Public Television set up a website to provide information on the fight to save APT.

David Barton is, of course, the voodoo history promoter from Texas, former vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party who led the party into a variety of anti-education policies.  Barton’s organization to spread his bogus history claims is Wallbuilders.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Ellie.

More:

• PBS employees fired after standing against bogus Religious Right history (secularnewsdaily.com)
• Alabama Public Television Executives Fired Because They Didn’t Want to Air Videos by Pseudo-Historian David Barton (patheos.com)
• Some Alabama Controversies (geekalabama.com)
• Alabama Public Television Executive Director Allan Pizzato & CFO Fired, Frog-Marched & Escorted Out Of Building (warmsouthernbreeze.wordpress.com)
• Here’s a post from Barton’s supporters:   SPLC’s Potok Again Lies about David Barton (americanclarion.com) (I cannot vouch for the odd and disturbing ads you may get when you click to that site, and afterward, nor can I adequately warn you.) (Also, if you insist on posting the facts, you’ll get banned there.  Fair warning.)
• Alabama Public Television Officials Fired After Opposing Anti-Gay Christian Right Programming (thinkprogress.org)
• Madison County Democrats call for resignation of Alabama Educational Television commissioners (al.com)
• Links 6/16/12 (mikethemadbiologist.com)
• Why David Barton won’t defend his inaccurate books (RightWingWatch.com)

One more time: Recognizing bogus history

2012 is an election year, a time when we make history together as a nation.  Potential turning points in history often get tarred with false interpretations of history to sway an election, or worse, a completely false recounting of history.  Especially in campaigns, we need to beware false claims of history, lest we be like the ignorants George Santayana warned about, doomed to repeat errors of history they do not know or understand.  How to tell that a purported piece of history is bogus?  This is mostly a repeat of a post that first appeared at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub six years ago.

Recognizing bogus history, 1

Robert Park provides a short e-mail newsletter every Friday, covering news in the world of physics. It’s called “What’s New.” Park makes an art of smoking out bogus science and frauds people try to perpetrate in the name of science, or for money. He wrote an opinion column for the Chronicle of Higher Education [now from Quack Watch; CHE put it behind a paywall] published January 31, 2003, in which he listed the “7 warning signs of bogus science.”

Please go read Park’s entire essay, it’s good.

And it got me thinking about whether there are similar warning signs for bogus history? Are there clues that a biography of Howard Hughes is false that should pop out at any disinterested observer? Are there clues that the claimed quote from James Madison saying the U.S. government is founded on the Ten Commandments is pure buncombe? Should Oliver Stone have been able to to more readily separate fact from fantasy about the Kennedy assassination (assuming he wasn’t just going for the dramatic elements)? Can we generalize for such hoaxes, to inoculate ourselves and our history texts against error?

Perhaps some of the detection methods Park suggests would work for history. He wrote his opinion piece after the Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in which the Court laid out some rules lower courts should use to smoke out and eliminate false science. As Park described it, “The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.” The Court said lower courts must act as gatekeepers against science buncombe — a difficult task for some judges who, in their training as attorneys, often spent little time studying science.

Some of the Daubert reasoning surfaced in another case recently, the opinion in Pennsylvania district federal court in which Federal District Judge John Jones struck down a school board’s order that intelligent design be introduced to high school biology students, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Can we generalize to history, too? I’m going to try, below the fold.

Here are Park’s seven warning signs, boiled down:

Park wrote:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate. [I have cut out the explanations. — E.D.]

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Voodoo history

Here, with thanks to Robert Park, is what I propose for the warning signs for bogus history, for voodoo history:

1. The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations of non-historians, sometimes for pay.
2. The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.  Bogus history relies more on invective than investigation; anyone with an opposing view is an “idiot,” or evil.
   
3. The sources that verify the new interpretation of history are obscure, or unavailable; if they involve a famous person, the sources are not those usually relied on by historians.
4. Evidence for the history is anecdotal.
5. The author says a belief is credible because it has endured for some time, or because many people believe it to be true.
6. The author has worked in isolation, and fails to incorporate or explain other, mainstream versions of the history of the incident, and especially the author fails to explain why they are in error.
   
7. The author must propose a new interpretation of history to explain an observation.

Any history account that shows one or more of those warning signs should be viewed skeptically.

In another post, I’ll flesh out the reasoning behind why they are warning signs.

If Stalin said America is “a healthy body,” why can’t anyone find the source?

Joseph Stalin would have to have been drunk to call the U.S. “healthy,” and to have complimented America’s patriotism, morality and spiritual life. Even then, it would be unlikely. Why does this quote keep circulating?

This has been floating around Tea Party and other shallow venues for a while, but I’ll wager Stalin did not say it:

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:  Its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life.  If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

I can’t find any source for it; it’s mostly quoted on right-wing sites where people marvel over what a prophet Stalin was.  All requests for a citation in five or six different forums I’ve checked, are unanswered.  Nothing like it appears at the often-checked Wikiquote.  The Stalin Archive holds nothing close to the claimed quote.

Perhaps more telling:  Is it likely that Joe Stalin ever would have called the U.S. “a healthy body?”  Stalin was of a school that claimed capitalism was diseased, and America was infested with a soon-to-be terminal case.  If he called America “diseased” by patriotism and religion, it would be consistent with other statements, but his calling America healthy for patriotism and spiritual life, it’s inconsistent with other claims he made, about America and about capitalism (see Stalin’s 1929 remonstrance to the U.S. Communist Party, for example).

So, Dear Readers, my request to you:  Can you offer the source of this quote, Joseph Stalin or not?

Why would a false claim from Stalin get such a life on the internet?

Update, March 15, 2012:  I’m calling this one:  It’s a bogus quote.  Joseph Stalin didn’t say it.  Not as many comments here as e-mails and comments on other discussion boards and Facebook — no one has come even close to anything like the line above from Stalin.  No source quoting the line even bothers to give a decade, let alone a year, a location, and a citation that would pass muster in a sophomore high school English class.  Tea Partiers, you’ve tried to twist history again — stop it.

Update March 1, 2013: If you’re checking in here studying for a DBQ for an AP class, please tell us in comments, which AP class, and what city you’re in.  Thanks.

Whenever she opens her mouth

After the Republican presidential candidates’ debate, observers of the pageant opined that Michelle Bachmann had little command of history (as usual, in her case), but a great command of turning phrases that telegraph to particular interest groups that she is one of them.  For example, somewhere in the debate Bachmann sneaked in a claim that “we are the head and not the tail.”  This was said to be a cryptic shout out to fundamentalist Christians, a reference to Deuteronomy 28.13.

So, if Bachmann is so thoughtful, so careful to send coded messages to her supporters, one may wonder:  What group is she giving a shout out to, here, in her appearance in Waterloo, Iowa:

Nominally, one might think she’s sending a note to all of us in the John Wayne fan club.  But some of us in the fan club remember that Marion Mitchell Morrison  (John Wayne’s non-screen name) was born — in Iowa, true — but in Winterset, in the southern part of the state.

Waterloo was the home of another man who was born with the name “John Wayne.”  But that was John Wayne Gacy, the serial murderer who moved to Waterloo, Iowa in the middle 1960s.

Oy.  Wrong John Wayne to affiliate with Waterloo, or even to remind Waterloo residents about.  History that is, regretfully, bogus.  Or voodoo history, depending on whether one thinks Bachmann is conscious, not on drugs, and meant what she said.

Bachmann told CBS News that she’s running because “People are tired of being told things that aren’t so.”  Practice what you preach, Ms. Bachmann?

• Washington Post blog story on the goof
• HuffPost with longer video
• Salon, on how to tell the difference

Sunday I watched Bachmann vs. CBS’s veteran report Bob Schieffer.  Schieffer asked her about her tendency to tell extremely tall tales — like her claim that the Obama administration had failed to approve any oil leases, when the total approved at that point was 270 leases.  Bachmann went off on a tangent.  Schieffer asked the question a second time.  She went on another tangent.  Schieffer asked a third time, a third tangent.

History challenged, veracity challenged: Every time Michelle Bachmann opens her mouth, it’s an adventure.

“When we’re telling whoppers about Obama and government, please don’t pester us with the facts” Department

First:  American Elephant, a blog that insults pachyderms with its mendacious ways, stretches for ways to complain about President Obama.  In a recent post, the author tried to poke ill-humored fun at Obama and companies he’s visited over the past couple of years.  It’s the headline that caught my attention:

“President Obama has never held a private job, but picks the winners and losers for the economy”

The premise is false, of course — it’s based on that Republican smear meme that Obama and his cabinet lack experience in the private sector, a smear that breaks down quickly if anyone looks at the biographies of the cabinet.  Obama also comes from the private sector, though when confronted with the facts the meme spreaders tend to make rash and foolish claims like “the Catholic church is public sector” and “lawyers all work for the government.”

Cartoon by Chris Madden, via TV Tropes

I left a response there, but don’t expect the blog owner to show the decency of allowing it through moderation:

President Obama worked for a private group providing services to people below the poverty line, and then he worked for a very large private law firm, while teaching at the privately-run University of Chicago.  He had never worked for government until his election to the Illinois State Senate (is that salaried?).

You should probably correct the headline.

As if.  Not only is the headline wrong, but the evidence doesn’t support the second premise, and there are other serious problems with the claims and arguments advanced there.  True American elephants probably take to drink to try to forget what’s being done under their name.

Second, and probably third:  There is the minor kerfuffle of the hoax report out of Pakistan that nuclear power plants in Nebraska are either near meltdown, or already melted down, and you don’t know about it because President Obama ordered a news blackout to avoid panic but at the same time condemning hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners to radiation poisoning deaths.  It’s an absurd story on several fronts and several levels — news of the flood plight of the power plants has been reported around the world, for example — but those bent on being suckered by every conspiracy claim to come down the pike, or bent on criticizing President Obama no matter how much they must twist the fact to do it, cannot be dissuaded.

Take for example this odd blog:  A discussion of the imagined meltdown quickly disintegrates into defense of holding on to birther views despite Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate (no good information goes un-urinated upon).  Then discussion veers off into all sorts of paranoia — UN “control” of U.S. lands, occupation of several states by rogue Transportation Security Agents (you didn’t hear about it due to the news blackout, most likely), Obama’s being controlled by or controlling GE (‘didn’t GE have something to do with the design of those nuclear reactors?’), Army Corps of Engineers plots to flood the Midwest (????), Obama’s overturning the Constitution through the use of executive orders (which no one there can find at the moment, but they’re sure they exist, somewhere . . .  gee, did we misplace it?) including a wholly imaginary order to take over all rural lands in the U.S. (why?), and complaints that the U.S. is not deporting U.S. soldiers or their families quickly enough.

Such a ball of delusional paranoia and errors of history, law, and other facts!  One might imagine these people so involved in tracking down misinformation and distorting real information that they forget to kick their dogs.  (Seriously, I’d tend to think these people could be helped by having a dog or a cat, except for the very real fear I have they’d forget to feed the creatures; like a drowning person, fighting all efforts to save them.)

Our nation has a collective inability to deal with the facts of too many situations, because too many people simply deny the facts in front of our collective national face.  Jonathan Kay’s recent book, Among the Truthers, gets at the problem — you can imagine how strongly any of these bloggers and commenters would resist even reading Kay’s book.  It’s not that they seek information to make good decisions on policy, but that they seek the misinformation to justify their paranoid claims that “we are all really, really screwed!“

As with the blogs noted above, we witness the birth of voodoo history, bogus history, and intentional ignorance.

There is a great danger from these cesspools of willful ignorance.  As more people refuse to grant credence to facts, to reality, it becomes more difficult to muster a consensus on what to do about any particular problem.  Wildfires and drought in Texas this year already wiped out more than three-fifths of the state’s wheat harvest; floods in the upper Midwest will surely do serious damage to wheat crops there.  We face a shortage of the surpluses of wheat the nation has used to bring peace and vanquish hunger around the world for the past 60 years — think of our “sale” of wheat to the old Soviet Union, stopping the starvation death toll under 10 million and indebting the USSR to the U.S. and the non-communist West — a debt the USSR never could pay off, and a debt which was the hammer to start the crumbling of the foundations of Soviet Communism.  In short, we have a wheat supply problem, caused in no small part by weather extremes that are, mostly likely, aggravated by global warming.

Can we agree to take action?  Probably not, not so long as so many people deny that warming is happening and throw every roadblock in the path of action, in the name of “preventing government takeover.”

As a nation, we have problems with flood control, and emergency preparedness, and the management of undeveloped lands and farm lands — not to mention the many urban problems we face.  What are the odds we can get a consensus on any of those problems, at least enough of a consensus to take constructive action?

For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, begins the old saw.  We can’t even get agreement that horseshoes should be nailed to a horse’s hoof — how can we get the consensus to make sure there are enough nails to do the job?

• Perhaps related:  Jason Stanley at the online New York Times, explains how words can be used to unfairly silence others – the use of propaganda to distort the truth, mischaracterize and demonize good people and good views.

Nope: Lincoln didn’t say that

Delightful little feature at Arizona Central (azcentral.com), “AZ Fact Check ’11, Keeping Arizona honest” — Arizona Central is a feature of the Arizona Republic, as I recall (somebody correct me if I err).

I’ve noted before that Abraham Lincoln gets credit for a lot of things he didn’t say.  AZ Fact Check ’11 corrected an Arizona State Senator on attributing to Lincoln a quote against helping people do things they should be doing for themselves.  It’s another case of Twitter getting an elected official in trouble (not a lot of trouble, though, really).

The issue: Whether senator correctly quoted Lincoln

Who said it: Al Melvin, state senator

Arizona State Sen. Al Melvin, R-District 26

by Alia Beard Rau – June 22, 2011, 11:23 am

What we’re looking at
Sen. Al Melvin, R-Tucson, tweeted a quote that he credited to President Abraham Lincoln.

The comment
“Abe Lincoln: ‘You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.’ We need to learn from this.”

The forum
Posted on Melvin’s Twitter account June 21.

Analysis
Melvin on June 21 posted several quotes to his Twitter account relating to encouraging individuals to help themselves rather than giving them handouts. He attributed the quotes to Abraham Lincoln.

And Melvin isn’t alone. Others, including President Ronald Reagan, attributed these same quotes to Lincoln.

But according to several books, articles and the website Snopes that deals with debunking urban legends, Lincoln never said the quote.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger addressed the issue in a Washington Post column that ran Sept. 6, 1992.

“. . . in his Houston speech to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan fell for one of the great hoaxes of American history, surpassed in taking people in only by H.L. Mencken`s enchanting fable about Millard Fillmore’s installing the first bathtub in the White House,” Schlesinger wrote. “The author of the less than immortal words Lincoln never said was an ex-clergyman from Erie, Pa., named William J.H. Boetcker.”

Boetcker in 1916 and 1917 produced two booklets based on lectures he gave. The quotes, including the one Melvin cites, are in those booklets.

According to Schlesinger, a conservative group in 1942 put out a leaflet titled “Lincoln on Limitation.” It listed legitimate Lincoln quotes on one side and legitimate Boetcker quotes on the other. Some versions attributed Boetcker’s quotes to Boetcker while others did not, leaving some readers to assume all were from Lincoln.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the quotes were mentioned or printed by increasingly legitimate sources and credited to Lincoln.

“Ever since, Lincoln scholars have been busy swatting the fake quotes down,” Schlesinger wrote. “In the 1960s, the Republican National Committee even warned its speakers, ‘Do not use them as Lincoln’s words!’ but to no avail.”

Bottom line: Historians appear to agree that Lincoln never said the quote that Melvin attributed to Lincoln. The quote was from William J.H. Boetcker.

Sources

• “Great Hoax Of History: Words Lincoln Never Said,” Washington Post, Sept. 6, 1992
• “Prosperity Disparity,” Snopes.com
• “REPUBLICANS IN HOUSTON: For the Record; Reagan Put Words in Lincoln’s Mouth,” New York Times, Aug. 19, 1992
• “The Right’s Library of Fake Quotes: Putting words in dead people’s mouths,” FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Melvin’s tweet about Abraham Lincoln

They got me at that part where they listed sources with links. What a great little feature!

_____________

Nota bene:  I failed to see this notice at that site:  “Fact Check is a service of The Arizona Republic, 12 News and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. It is not affiliated with www.FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.”

The Sarah Palin History Network 06/07/11

The Sarah Palin History Network explains the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Sarah Palin History Network 06/07/11, posted with vodpod

Is any comment really necessary?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Joan Samuels Kaiser.

What sort of crazy is the warming denialist?

I’ve got to stop looking over there.

Goddard’s got a post up showing the great disregard he has for the facts, and the law, and history, etc., etc., etc.  It may be an unintentional showing, but there it sits, “like a mackerel in the moonlight, both shining and stinking.”

Jerome Corsi, that serial fictionalizer of vital issues, has a book out promoting his slimy schemes besmirch President Obama.  Goddard urges people to buy it.

But they really pile on in the comments.  It’s almost as if Casey Luskin had a whole family just like himself, and they got together to whine about Judge Roberts again.

Warming denialism, creationism and birthers — is it all just three minor variations on the same brain-sucking virus?  Or could three different diseases produce the same sort of crazy on so many different issues?

I’m reminded of the old saw that you cannot reason a person out of a position he didn’t reach by reason.  These guys will never see the light.  Heaven knows, it ain’t evidence that gets ‘em where they are now.

Previous posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

• “Stubborn Birthers soldier on”
• California court tosses out the challenge
• “Birther Karma:  Hoaxers get hoaxed on alleged Kenya document”
• “Birther control“
• Birthers wallow in the gutter
• NBC on the issue (note links)
• Blogger indicted for threats against Obama
• Election certified
• “Fail repeated”
• “6 ways challenges to Obama’s citizenship fail”

Special kind of birther crazy:

• “Bush appointed judge smacks down Orly Taitz,” at Dispatches from the Culture Wars
• “Taitz appeals to UN for protection,” Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Quotes that will live in infamy: Michelle Bachmann, another history “F” (“shot heard ’round the world”)

In Concord, New Hampshire, on March 11 and 12, 2011, apparently testing to see whether that little state has bad enough education standards before announcing a presidential bid, Michelle Bachmann butchered history and geography once again, according to the conservative Minnesota Independent:

“You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” she said, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” an ode to the lives lost at the start of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.

How many bites at the apple does stupid get?  Has Ed Brayton picked up on this yet?

Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann

More:

• “Concord Hymn” read by Bill Clinton
• “Paul Revere’s Ride” 150 years old during National Poetry Month (2010)
• “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”
• Celebrating April 19:  Paul Revere and the shot heard ’round the world
• Remember why it is important to watchdog Tea Partiers as they savage U.S. history, from this article by Erik Christiansen and Jeremy Sullivan in Inside Higher Ed

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pat Carrithers.

Update:  Oh, yeah, others noticed:

• New American did its damnedest to explain it away as a slip of the tongue – either assuming Bachmann is too reckless not to use prepared remarks for her first foray into New Hampshire (maybe a more serious indictment), or not paying attention to her written remarks (Was it just one more in a long string of really stupid slips of the tongue?  Loose tongues sink as many ships as loose lips . . .); in another article New American falsely claimed a worldwide ban on DDT, falsely claiming the ban killed 30 million kids, and said that it disrupted food growing in America, though food crops hadn’t been sprayed with DDT for nearly a decade when its use was banned on agricultural crops in the U.S. alone.  Accuracy isn’t in that animal
• And that site for undiscriminating, miseducated people, American Elephants, thought Bachmann’s earlier distortions of history just lovely.
• Peter Fenn blogging at U.S. News and World Report asks, “Why does anyone take Michelle Bachmann seriously?”
• Politico notes the long history of Bachmann getting the facts wrong, and reveals that Bachmann repeated the error about the location of the Battle of Concord at least twice in that New Hampshire swing. Bachmann can’t hire competent aides, either?  Politico questions Bachmann’s basic governing competence, noting that, while she is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and should know better, she urged President Obama to follow the counsel of Gen. David Patraeus about intervention in Libya.  Petraeus isn’t in the chain of command on Libya since he took over the job in Afghanistan several months ago.
• The Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor took a hands-off approach, using the Associated Press story on the gaffe
• Cartoonist Jeff Danziger, one of America’s best, puts the event into pithy perspective (see below)
• Mike the Mad Biologist, who uses one of the greatest images for free speech as his avatar, lists Bachmann as “dumber than a sack of hammers”
• Even Little Green Footballs appears to take after Bachmann, but with an account that is, after all, just the facts

Jeff Danziger

Historians: ‘Stop the Texas SBOE evisceration of history and social studies’

In a series of articles at George Mason University’s History News Network, historians from Texas and across the nation make a powerful case against the changes in social studies standards proposed by the politicians at the Texas State Board of Education.

Together, this is a powerful indictment of the actions of the SBOE, and strong repudiation of the raw political purposes and tactics employed in the War on Education by the “conservative” faction, including especially lame duck, anti-education crusader/jihadist Don McLeroy.

Texas scholars

• “A Culturally Irrelevant History of Melodramatic Minutiae,” by Iliana Alanís, University of Texas at San Antonio
• “A Sanitized History,” by Roberto R. Calderón, University of North Texas
• “An Almost Impossibly Large Set of Standards Produced by a Problematic Process,” by Jesús F. de la Teja, Texas State University-San Marcos
• “An Overstuffed Laundry List that Treats Seniors Like Kindergartners,” by Keith A. Erekson, University of Texas at El Paso
• “Review of the TEKS,” John Fea, Messiah College
• “An Incomplete Version of the Past that Silences Important Struggles,” by Kirsten Gardner, University of Texas at San Antonio
• “Plagiarized Work,” by Michael Soto, Trinity University
• “Is Texas Messing with History?” David Upham, University of Dallas
• “A Pattern of Neglect and a Missed Opportunity,” by Emilio Zamora, University of Texas

Scholars outside of Texas

• “The Texas SBOE and History Standards: A Teacher’s Perspective,” by Ron Briley, Sandia Preparatory School
• “Texas School Board Whitewashes History,” by Daniel Czitrom, Mount Holyoke College
• “What Texans Aren’t Talking About—But Should Be,” Keith A. Erekson, University of Texas at El Paso
• “Twisting History in Texas,” Eric Foner, Columbia University
• “We Prefer a Shiny Image of America,” Steve Haycox, University of Alaska Anchorage
• “One Classroom, From Sea to Shining Sea,” Susan Jacoby, Independent Scholar
• “Comment,” James McPherson, Princeton University
• “The Historical ‘Narrative’ Has Changed,” Joseph A. Palermo, California State University Sacramento
• “‘T’ is for ‘Texas Textbooks’,” Diane Ravitch, New York University
• “Texas SBOE Tries to Dilute History of Women, Minorities,” John Willingham, Independent Scholar
• “American History — Right and Left,” Jonathan Zimmerman, New York University

Historians can sign a petition set up for the purpose at a site that offers links to the essays, too, An Open Letter from Historians to the Texas State Board of Education.

SBOE will take up the issue again in meetings in Austin this coming week.