Don't know much about history--Historian edition

Douglas MacKinnon:

Recently, I read a piece in the left-of-center New York Times where a select group of “historians” were giving advice to former Vice President Dick Cheney regarding his forthcoming memoir. After reading the highly suspect advice, I naturally wondered what exactly is a historian?

Unfortunately for those who actually value the truth, it seems a great many “historians” -- like the majority of the mainstream media, those who “educate” our children, and those who “entertain” us -- fancy themselves as surrogates for the liberal wing of the democrat party, and of late, propagandists for the history making Barack Obama.

For a glaring and recent example of this unethical bias, one need look no further than this exchange between “historian” Michael Beschloss and radio host Don Imus:

Michael Beschloss: “…this is a guy (Barack Obama) whose IQ is off the charts…”
Imus: “Well. What is his IQ?”
Historian Michael Beschloss: “Pardon?”
Imus: “What is his IQ?”
Historian Michael Beschloss: “Uh. I would say it’s probably - he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.”

Really? The “unbiased” but clearly in-the-tank for Obama “historian” Beschloss thinks Obama is the “smartest guy ever to become president.” Okay. Based on what? The SAT scores Obama won’t release. The college transcripts from Occidental College that Obama won’t release. The transcripts from Columbia that Obama won’t release. Any existing IQ scores that Obama won’t release.

Based on that non-information alone, “historian” Beschloss believes that Barack Obama is smarter than Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. Great. I didn’t know a historian could operate without facts.

In 2003, “historian” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote that the Bush administration¹s foreign policy "is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor…today it is we Americans who live in infamy."

Not only was Schlesinger’s vile comparrison a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of Americans and Chinese who lost their lives at the hands of Japanese war criminals, but it’s possible that his words helped to motivate candidate and now President Obama to commence his “America is bad and I apologize” tour.

Beyond the examples of Beschloss and Schlesinger Jr., we have the likes of Bush-hating Ken Burns, Joseph (I lied about my service in Vietnam, my anti-war protests and my civil rights efforts) Ellis, Doris Kerns (whoops, did I plagerize?) Goodwin, Robert (“Do you read The New York Times?”) Dallek, and a host of “historians” so deep in the tank for the liberal cause that they haven’t seen daylight in decades.

...

I think Dick Cheney has a good sense of history and is more grounded in the facts than most of the left wing historians. They have this bias that Democrats, especially liberal ones, are smart and that if Republicans and conservatives were really smart they would be liberal Democrats. But comparing the facts of the Carter administration with the facts of the Reagan administration demonstrates whose policies were smarter.

But, liberals have a way of avoiding these facts by suggesting that Carter was unlucky and Reagan was lucky. It remind me of my days racing sailboats. It was astounding how often the winners were able to position their boats so they were inside a lifting wind shift. They were always there to get the "lucky" wind shift that put them ahead. Sometimes it was luck, but it was luck guided by experience.

As the Obama administration keeps adopting the policies they reviled, Cheney is looking smarter and smarter.