On May 21, 2007, at 5:16 PM, Kevin Joel Berland wrote:

> There is much of concern in Lyle E. Browning's recent comment (see  
> below).  Of
> course it is not surprising to learn that some people still feel  
> the need to
> trivialize issues of justice and fairness in historical (and  
> current) eras by
> applying the reductive term "PC."
You are conflating unrelated and unstated (by me) ideas. I am rather  
perplexed, disheartened and to a certain extent amused by the amazing  
misinterpretation of my post by your response. Hard day at the salt  
mines? But permit me to expound by inline comments. Presentism rears  
its head nicely in your phraseology. Justice is never to be  
trivialized. Fair is a matter of popular belief. And truth is a  
consensus to finish the trifecta of the American Way.

> I'm not interested in promoting or
> participating in yet another round of discussion about the rift in  
> modern
> culture the PC quarrel represents.  Nor am I interested in rising  
> to the bait
> of Mr. Browning's comparison of the concerns of those Mr. Browning  
> dismisses as
> "PC" with the cartoonish analogy to Arafat.  Nor am I going to  
> question the
> notion of the so-called "emasculation" of modern culture, though  
> many other
> participants in this forum might be troubled or annoyed by the  
> assumption that
> good, strong culture is masculine and its supposed debasement is  
> feminizing.
And were you in a courtroom making those statements, opposing counsel  
would leap up and cry objection at each and your response would be  
"Withdrawn" after having made your supposedly non-point point. Yup.  
Now that you've loquaciously established what you're not interested  
in, perhaps we might move on to what you may be interested in, if you  
please.

You have wonderfully summed up all that is wrong with the relativism  
so prevalent in our society. The resort to the rhetorical "have you  
stopped beating your wife yet" is indicative as is the avowed  
disclaimer set. You are also wrong to infer gender from the  
statement. Emasculation is more evocative than "neutering" and was  
chosen for that reason. The purported gender argument is an  
irrelevant sidetrack in any event. You illustrate the PC argument  
brilliantly by castigating a choice of words in that unless it is  
absolutely unoffensive, it must be offensive and therefore forbidden.
>
> Rather, I would like to call attention to the historiographical  
> problem
> necessarily attendant upon one of Mr. Browning's comments about  
> history.  He
> apparently assumes that certain cultural struggles during the early  
> history of
> the European settlement of North America were necessary.
You assume incorrectly. When you have a European culture convinced of  
its own superiority both spiritual and technological that invades the  
territory of a Native American culture equally convinced of its own  
superiority but technologically inferior, it is hardly surprising  
that conflict happens that is not going to be making the NA  
contingent happy. Necessary? Now that's hardly the correct phrase.  
Inevitable is probably more the case. Two sides equally convinced of  
their innate superiority unwilling to give ground is the classic  
recipe for conflict. It's called Civil War when the factions are  
within a country and culture clash is probably the least emotive of  
terms for state to state conflicts of that sort. The outcome of  
conflict between two such cultures wherein one has a technological  
superiority over the other is also hardly ever in doubt.

>   He rightly notes that
> one party eventually dominated the other.  However, what follows  
> makes less
> sense: "To negate that also negates  what we became later as in the  
> United
> States of America. The end  result of had we been PC way back then  
> was that we
> don't now exist."  Implicit in this statement is the notion that  
> the present
> developed out of necessary past events.
Oh so terribly wrong. This nation developed out of all of our past  
events. Some were necessary, others were not. What doesn't kill us  
makes us stronger is the phrase that springs to mind. Very few of us  
have the power to change the broad events in our present and what  
went on yesterday is generally over for good. Those events were  
probably viewed as necessary by some who participated, but in the  
main I'd have to say that to most they just happened as a result of  
the typical choice regimen that we Americans have chosen as our means  
of deciding issues. We vote for prohibition, we see the consequences,  
we vote against prohibition, we still live with the unintended  
consequences of those actions. Zealots, and I am not one, see  
necessary events because they are blinkered. The herd follows and we  
all pay the price.

My point, unexpressed, was that we now criticize past actions from  
our current perspective without ever fully understanding what caused  
those events to take place. And by understanding, I mean seeing  
beyond the recording of events with a paragraph or two about root  
causes. How often does an incredible historical "wrong" take place  
that hinges upon a single event that in hindsight never should have  
been allowed, but due to current needs, was shunted aside? Wade  
Hampton's price for supporting Rutherford B. Hayes was "states  
rights" in the South. Necessary? To some perhaps, but the cost to all  
of us is still being paid as it allowed Jim Crow to flourish.

What is fallacious is to infer that if we had either done or not done  
some bit of history, and you take your pick, that the rest of our  
history would have resulted in us being who we are. How many of us  
would even exist if the CSA had successfully succeeded from the  
Union? Such arguments are best left to historical fiction writers. We  
can understand that wrongs were done and work to fix their  
consequences, as we have done. But taking that position to extremes  
logically and inevitably denies our existence, had different actions  
been taken back then. Playboy magazine had a bit of science fiction  
back in the 1960's or so that had a big game hunter able to use a  
time machine to go back to kill a T. Rex exactly at the moment it  
would have otherwise have croaked anyway. Very careful planning such  
that there was no other effect. There were anti-gravity pathways laid  
down hovering and one fellow stepped off the path and stepped on a  
butterfly. When the hunting party returned to the present, the word  
"be" was spelled "bee". It's a variant of the bit about the wind from  
a butterfly wing in Siberia causing a hurricane by a series of  
consecutive events. The point is that past actions are interpreted by  
historians, not foreseen as inevitable by those living them.

>   Had the indigenous cultures not been
> crushed and decimated (more accurate terms than "dominated"),
Decimated has been wrongly used. The literal meaning is 1/10th, not  
annihilation as popular meaning takes it.

> this argument
> suggests, the outcome would have been different and we would not  
> have the
> wonderful nation we now enjoy.  As I see it, such a claim is  
> fallacious on
> several accounts:
>
> First, it oversimplifies history into a clash between the  
> "civilization" of
> Europe and the primitivism of the indigenous people.
My goodness, when you're wrong, you really get on a roll there. I  
made no such assertion. I view the two sides as a conflict between  
two cultures, equally convinced the other was inferior. The Euros  
certainly thought the Native Americans inferior. It is also equally  
true that the Native Americans thought the Euros inferior. That was  
from Jamestown onward here in VA.

Powhatan was quite adept at playing the European balance of powers  
game at his local theater of operations. Meetings at state to state  
level did occur with John Smith as apparently the only one of the  
English able to understand the NA worldview and treat with them  
appropriately. The European irresistible force did not meet a NA  
immovable object. See above about techno superiority.

> In fact, there were not
> two cultures clashing--there were many cultures, on both sides.   
> Colonial
> Virginia, for instance, though sharing many customs and cultural  
> assumptions,
> was very different from colonial Pennsylvania or colonial  
> Massachusetts, and we
> are only beginning to understand the vast range of differences  
> between the many
> cultures of the First Nations.  To claim that "one" had to dominate  
> the "other"
> overlooks the complexities of the situation.
I'm wondering where your time machine exists wherein you have  
observed a different reality from that which is generally and broadly  
accepted about the diminishing of the Native Americans across what is  
now the United States? The point you have ignored is that both sides  
viewed the other as inferior and to each, the other was a virtual  
monolith carrying what each though were a set of nearly diametrically  
opposed worldviews. The side with the superior technology wins. It  
doesn't matter which of the two facets of the multi-cultural entities  
opposed each other, those with better technology win the day. Ask  
Custer. He went with his worldview against a technologically superior  
force with an entirely different worldview and had his arse kicked.  
Kathy Harbury's post with the letter from the NA's wonderfully states  
the case. Conflict is inevitable if neither side bends.
>
> Second, when such polar simplifications go along with the doctrine  
> of historical
> necessity, we wind up with the Jacksonian view that the resistance of
> indigenous people to assimilation places them outside the bounds of  
> that
> justice which officially lies at the heart of the new nation,  
> justifying the
> forcible evictions of hundreds of thousands from traditional and  
> treaty lands,
> and the Trail of Tears.  This happened, by the way.  It was not an  
> invention of
> 21st-century bleeding-heart PC historians.  Thus, to claim that  
> criticizing
> ("negating") actions or policies of the past denies the necessity  
> of such
> actions or policies--as Mr. Browning has done--is nothing more than  
> another
> version of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which I, for one, had  
> fondly
> imagined was gone for good.
Now you proceed to compound your misinterpretation by inventing out  
of whole cloth something I never said, implied, or felt. Sounds good  
on the whole, but in particular, fatally flawed. Excellent propaganda  
technique, by the way. Put a true statement in, warp it, another  
truth, another warp and you end up with an incorrect conclusion.
>
> Third, the necessitarian argument commits the logical fallacy known  
> as "post hoc
> ergo propter hoc."  That is, it assumes that chronological sequence  
> is the same
> as causation.
Ditto. I made no such assertion, nor did I propose a necessitarian  
argument. Events follow one upon another for an absurdly large number  
of reasons. The flow is called history. I make no relation between  
sequence and causation, none whatsoever. History is seldom logical.

>   The "domination" of indigenous culture(s) by Euro-American
> culture(s) did happen, and then along came other developments with  
> which most
> of us are well pleased.  But there is no logical proof that these  
> developments
> could not have happened without said "domination."
Oh, please, can you say Balkanization? or Italian Parliament? or  
Palestinian Parliament? or Paralysis by Analysis?

> Perhaps this is so, but it
> could be argued that had another approach been taken, the process  
> of arriving
> at--say--a democratic republic might have happened *sooner.*
One can certainly argue ad nauseum about other approaches and what-if  
scenarios. Check your local library under science fiction about the  
infinity of choices literature.
>
> Fourth, the necessitarian argument excludes the possibility that  
> some past
> choices, opinions, attitudes, and actions might have been mistaken,  
> or even
> wrong.  We can't discuss real history this way.  The early  
> colonists thought
> they were British. Over time the transatlantic realities shifted,  
> and they felt
> British but disenfranchised.  Then, eventually, they felt not- 
> British (i.e.,
> American).  At various stages of this progression, it could be  
> argued, they
> were mistaken.  Otherwise, we'd all be British.  Again, the  
> Founders had what
> later generations would consider a limited understanding of the  
> franchise.
> Democracy for them was an elite practice.  Gradually we've changed  
> our minds,
> allowing a wider, more egalitarian franchise, conforming to our  
> notions of the
> practical workings of liberty: questions of property, race, and  
> gender no
> longer limit voting.  The Founders did not *have* to be elitists  
> for us to
> become more democratic.  They were mistaken, at least in the  
> process if not the
> principle.
One wonders about that. The idea behind voting was a responsible  
expression of civic duty by "stakeholders" in the system. Landowners  
as such were those stakeholders. The system itself teaches  
appropriate behavior. It appears you hold the fallacious argument  
that we are a true/absolute democracy rather than a representative  
democracy. Clintonian rule by opinion poll isn't what the FF's did.

> If an idea is sound, it can survive criticism.  It is not
> "emasculated" thereby.
Yet more misinterpretation. Criticism is hardly ever wrong, in and of  
itself. Too much of it is tiresome, true. The PC worldview is narrow,  
circumscribed, agenda-ridden and intellectually stultifying. That  
emasculates, not criticism.

>
> Fifth, it is a fallacy to imply or assert that criticism of a part  
> (even a large
> part) of a nation's history is an attack on that nation as a  
> whole.  Without
> criticism, progress is impossible.  Remember the old saw, "Those  
> who do not
> learn from history are condemned to repeat it."  (Incidentally, I  
> think I've
> become sufficiently cynical to prefer the version that says "We  
> learn from
> history... that we don't learn from history.")
Still more misinterpretation. Hat trick, grand slam, well done, all  
misinterpreted. But at least there we agree, even though I never said  
or implied that.
>
> Perhaps I'm making too much of a casual personal statement here.
No kidding, rather like interpreting a hand grenade as a supernova.

> But I'm
> interested in sharing in the fascinating process of coming to  
> understand both
> historical events and the way historians frame and interpret and  
> explain them.
> Attacks on some historically-minded participants in this discussion  
> as "PC"
> undercut the free exchange of ideas.
Again, you drastically misinterpret what I said. Political  
correctness is in itself a form of censorship and as such undercuts  
the free exchange of ideas, unless phrased in such a way as to give  
no offense to anyone. That is just not possible, even in the most  
rarified of diplomatic circles wherein what are called "frank  
exchanges" are ritualized combat proceedings.

Response mode off.

Lyle Browning
>
> Rant mode off.
>
> Cheers -- KJB
>
>
>
> On Mon, 21 May 2007 12:52:34 -0400, Lyle E. Browning wrote
>> The end result of being overly PC, apart from cultural emasculation,
>>  seems to be a sort of acontextual Yassir Arafat variant of "Never
>>  missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" for fear of the
>> possibility of offenses real or imagined.
>>
>> Two cultures collided in VA. One dominated the other after years of
>> struggle and opportunity to do otherwise. To negate that also
>> negates  what we became later as in the United States of America.
>> The end  result of had we been PC way back then was that we don't
>> now exist.  Now that's a nice image and one I find to be rather  
>> pathetic.
>>