I like the quotes you’ve chosen, Jodi, to illustrate the misuse and abuse of history in the service of policy.
And I REALLY appreciate your point about the changing definition of “progressive”: what’s championed as progressive policy at one historical moment is later condemned by progressives of another historical moment. Of course, who gets to decide the meaning of progressive at any given time? My view: meanings are neither static nor are they uncontested; they always involve a contestation of power and beg the question, Whose interests are being served (political, economic, or moral) by a particular progressive discourse?
Which leads me to that familiar aphorism that history repeats itself. I grit my teeth when I hear that phrase. I find it interesting that Cullen Murphy uses it to suggest he’s concerned about the abuses of power. Yet it seems to me he’s using it in the service of power. How so? Because a comparison is never only about similarities. It’s also about differences. And tracing out differences, as any historian concerned with abuses of power will tell you, is important because they point to how historical outcomes are never inevitable. How convenient then that he elides difference with his simple conflation of disaffected protesters in 21st century America with barbarian “hordes.”
Thank you, Margaret, for the comment and your further thinking about it. You're right: we could just as easily decide that "progressive" means, say, a more flexible stance toward secession from a state if the majority of an area wish it. But they never do seem to go there, do they?
And you have pointed out with great precision what annoyed me about that Murphy article :)
I like the quotes you’ve chosen, Jodi, to illustrate the misuse and abuse of history in the service of policy.
And I REALLY appreciate your point about the changing definition of “progressive”: what’s championed as progressive policy at one historical moment is later condemned by progressives of another historical moment. Of course, who gets to decide the meaning of progressive at any given time? My view: meanings are neither static nor are they uncontested; they always involve a contestation of power and beg the question, Whose interests are being served (political, economic, or moral) by a particular progressive discourse?
Which leads me to that familiar aphorism that history repeats itself. I grit my teeth when I hear that phrase. I find it interesting that Cullen Murphy uses it to suggest he’s concerned about the abuses of power. Yet it seems to me he’s using it in the service of power. How so? Because a comparison is never only about similarities. It’s also about differences. And tracing out differences, as any historian concerned with abuses of power will tell you, is important because they point to how historical outcomes are never inevitable. How convenient then that he elides difference with his simple conflation of disaffected protesters in 21st century America with barbarian “hordes.”
Thank you, Margaret, for the comment and your further thinking about it. You're right: we could just as easily decide that "progressive" means, say, a more flexible stance toward secession from a state if the majority of an area wish it. But they never do seem to go there, do they?
And you have pointed out with great precision what annoyed me about that Murphy article :)