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Left vs Right Political Philosophy

Blogs > Biochemist
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1 2 Next All
Biochemist
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
United States1008 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-01-11 19:23:00
January 11 2010 19:22 GMT
#1
So I just finished reading/skimming the following two books, and I'm left very frustrated:

[image loading]

[image loading]


Both of them promise to deliver the real truth of american history that you didn't learn in school, but both of them are just extremely biased and very subjective rants from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Where do I have to go to get the truth? I would like to take an active interest in politics, but I'm tired of people trying to jerk me around with their irrational and COMPLETELY biased arguments.

Look up the reviews for either of these books. Almost every single one is either 5 stars or 1 star, with the reviewers claiming it's either an absolute must read or a useless pile of horseshit. Also, most people I try to have political discussions with seem to be completely on one bandwagon or the other. Shouldn't there be enough historical data on major sociological issues to come up with answers that don't need to rely on half-truths to be convincing?

As something of a scientist myself, I demand rational answers!

WheelOfTime
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
Canada331 Posts
January 11 2010 19:25 GMT
#2
All history books, including these, are mostly secondary sources. So...

Truth > First-hand experience > Primary source > secondary source

Since you can at best obtain first-hand experience, and in this case (American History) primary source information, you'll never know the "truth".
QuanticHawk
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
United States32051 Posts
January 11 2010 19:36 GMT
#3
Lies My Teacher Told Me is pretty solid, if you take it with a grain of salt. I didn't read the whole thing, but got through a chunk. I'm pretty sure the author says right up front that it's meant to be taken a supplementary work and not the one and only source you should use. He's more asking the reader to open their eyes than to fully accept his statements without thought. Something along hte lines of the winners always write the history books.
PROFESSIONAL GAMER - SEND ME OFFERS TO JOIN YOUR TEAM - USA USA USA
Mortality
Profile Blog Joined December 2005
United States4790 Posts
January 11 2010 19:37 GMT
#4
In politics, "truth" is written by those in power. If you want to understand politics, you need to understand that there is no good, only evil, and it's name is politics.
Even though this Proleague bullshit has been completely bogus, I really, really, really do not see how Khan can lose this. I swear I will kill myself if they do. - nesix before KHAN lost to eNature
Aesop
Profile Joined October 2007
Hungary11291 Posts
January 11 2010 20:29 GMT
#5
What's your rationale for thinking that the middle between the extremes is not biased while the extremes are?
ModeratorNon veritas sed auctoritas facit legem. | Liquipedia: Don't ask me, I'm retired.
Acies
Profile Joined September 2009
Australia196 Posts
January 11 2010 20:34 GMT
#6
Aren't conservatives and revolutionaries literaly opposites by thier very definitions?
AvalancheGaming.org - SC2 Tournament and LAN in Bunbury, Western Australia
Zurles
Profile Joined February 2009
United Kingdom1659 Posts
January 11 2010 20:46 GMT
#7
bottom one has a better cover, go for that imo.
spinesheath
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Germany8679 Posts
January 11 2010 21:06 GMT
#8
I'd suggest using sources that most likely don't have much of a relation with the US (probably the Northern American country that people have the most extreme opinions about). Like some European historian that at least doesn't seem to be very biased (however you are going to verify that). I don't know any such historians at all, but that would be the kind of sources I were looking for.

On January 12 2010 05:29 Aesop wrote:
What's your rationale for thinking that the middle between the extremes is not biased while the extremes are?

I don't think he is stating anything like that. But if it is obvious that the information is provided by biased sources you cannot trust it very much.
If you have a good reason to disagree with the above, please tell me. Thank you.
Biochemist
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
United States1008 Posts
January 11 2010 21:10 GMT
#9
On January 12 2010 05:29 Aesop wrote:
What's your rationale for thinking that the middle between the extremes is not biased while the extremes are?


Did I imply that the middle ground was not biased? For many of these issues, there IS no middle ground. Take programs like welfare, for instance. Most democratically oriented individuals claim that the gap between rich and poor is growing wider and we can only fix that by taxing the rich and big business and using it to provide more opportunities for the less priviledged. The opposing argument is something like welfare programs enable people to live off the system, minimum wage only causes inflation which hurts everyone, and giving tax breaks to the big guys allows them to provide employment and cheap products for everyone. There is no middle ground here.
DeathSpank
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
United States1029 Posts
January 11 2010 21:44 GMT
#10
truth is different from facts
yes.
rushz0rz
Profile Blog Joined February 2006
Canada5300 Posts
January 11 2010 21:46 GMT
#11
On January 12 2010 06:10 Biochemist wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 12 2010 05:29 Aesop wrote:
What's your rationale for thinking that the middle between the extremes is not biased while the extremes are?


Did I imply that the middle ground was not biased? For many of these issues, there IS no middle ground. Take programs like welfare, for instance. Most democratically oriented individuals claim that the gap between rich and poor is growing wider and we can only fix that by taxing the rich and big business and using it to provide more opportunities for the less priviledged. The opposing argument is something like welfare programs enable people to live off the system, minimum wage only causes inflation which hurts everyone, and giving tax breaks to the big guys allows them to provide employment and cheap products for everyone. There is no middle ground here.


Actually,

we can only fix that by taxing the rich and big business and using it to provide more opportunities for the less priviledged


is the middle ground. Extreme would be giving everyone the same salary.
IntoTheRainBOw fan~
rei
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
United States3594 Posts
January 11 2010 21:51 GMT
#12
OP: there is no absolute truth of history. Take the physics theory of relativity as a metaphor, ppl see different things depend on different reference points. The best thing for someone who seeks the truth can do, is to look at all the different points of views and make his own judgment, and form his own opinion base on whatever evidences ( facts that are constant on all the different point of views) are available.

I know there is a book out there talk about history of America from all reference points of views. The author interviewed and gather information from every major immigrant in the united states, and tell their stories of what happened to each one of them.

The Author is name Ronald Takaki, and the book i am talking about is "1993 -- A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company"

You should treat this as just another approach, at the end of the day you have to form your own opinion base on facts and logic.
GET OUT OF MY BASE CHILL
Jibba
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States22883 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-01-11 21:56:20
January 11 2010 21:55 GMT
#13
There's a few interesting tidbits in Lies, but you're right about the bias. You shouldn't expect to find good historical material off the NY Times best seller list, especially when they have bright and flashy covers, and there's no way a single book can convey all the nuances or context of that span of history.

Even in more specific cases, you need to realize that the author can frame subject matter however they'd like, or more likely they're innately biased because of their upbringing/social background/etc. This is why historiography exists.

As an example, there's American history from the perspectives of white males, women, black people, immigrants, etc. and none of them are necessarily wrong - they just influence different aspects and see different causes/effects because of this. Furthermore, within each group, historians may influence aspects like politics/economics/culture. Sorry, but looking for an absolute truth is fruitless.

What are you specifically looking for? Here's the syllabus from one of David Blight's American History classes at Yale. His research focus is the Civil War, but he's one of the top American History professors in the country.

+ Show Spoiler +
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1992).
* Bellion, Wendy. “‘Extend the Sphere’: Charles Willson Peale’s Panorama of Annapolis.” Art Bulletin (September 2004):
529-549.
Cott, Nancy. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (1977).
*Fliegelman, Jay. Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (1993).
Breen, T.H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004).
Ferguson, Robert. The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820 (1997).
Freeman, Joanne. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (2001).
*Looby, Christopher, “The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy as Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram,” Early American
Literature 22 (December 1987), 252-273.
Nash, Gary. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America
(2005).
Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1997).
Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997).
*Rigal, Laura. “Peale’s Mammoth,” in. American Iconology, David Miller, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Taylor, Alan. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996).
Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1993).
REFORM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE MARKETPLACE IN JACKSONIAN AMERICA
Abzug, Robert H. Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (1994).
*Casper, Scott, “Politics, Art and the Contradictions of a Market Culture: George Caleb Bingham’s Stump Speaking,”
American Art 5 (Summer 1991): 27-47.
Clark, Christopher. The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1789-1890 (1990).
Feller, Daniel. The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840 (1995).
James and Lois Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860
(1997).
Howe, Daniel Walker The Political Culture of the American Whigs (1979).
Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, Timothy McCarthy and John Stauffer, eds.
(2006).
*Miller, Angela. The Empire of the Eye: Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics, 1825-1875. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press (1993).
Sellers, Charles G. The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1848 (1991).
Watson, Harry L. Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (1990).
Wilentz, Sean R. Chants Democratic: NYC and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984).
________. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005).
THE OLD SOUTH, SLAVERY, AND THE RISE OF SECTIONALISM
Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: a History of African-American Slaves (2003).
Blassingame, John. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1979).
Clarke, Erskine. Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic. (2005).
avis, John. “Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South,” Art Bulletin (March 1998): 67-92.
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market (2001).
Fehrenbacher, Don. The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery (2001).
Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970).
Genovese, Eugene. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1976).
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619-1877 (1993)
McCurry, Stephanie. Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the
Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995).
Potter, David M.. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1977).
Sewell, Richard. Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States (1976).
* Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (2000).
CIVIL WAR, MEMORY, AND RECONSTRUCTION
Ayers, Edward. “Worrying about the Civil War” and “What Caused the Civil War?” in What Caused the Civil War?
Reflections on the South and Southern History, Edward Ayers, ed. (2005).
___________. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (2003).
Blight, David W.. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001).
Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (2006).
Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (2001).
Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008).
______________. Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (1996).
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (1988).
Frederickson, George M.. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (1965).
Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggle in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
(2003).
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988).
Richardson, Heather Cox. West from Appomattox: the Reconstruction of America After the Civil War (2007).
Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in 19th Century America (1997).
Stampp, Kenneth. The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (1980).

This stuff is probably long, difficult and maybe uninteresting unless you have someone (professor) to guide you through it. To get a good handle on history, you need to actually study it. Don't expect that you can get a good understanding of it just by reading a few books; you wouldn't expect that with economics, chemistry or physics, and social sciences are the same.

If you want a single collection, you're only going to get the juicy, extremely biased stuff like Zinn and so on. Still a very important read, but like Hawk said, take it with a grain of salt.
ModeratorNow I'm distant, dark in this anthrobeat
Husky
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States3362 Posts
January 11 2010 22:28 GMT
#14
I go to Fox News for all my unbiased coverage.
Commentaries: youtube.com/HuskyStarcraft
Trezeguet
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States2656 Posts
January 11 2010 22:35 GMT
#15
On January 12 2010 07:28 HuskyTheHusky wrote:
I go to Fox News for all my unbiased coverage.

Wish the other networks could figure this out.
jalstar
Profile Blog Joined September 2009
United States8198 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-01-11 22:40:42
January 11 2010 22:39 GMT
#16
first book has a conservative bias (obvious from the cover)

second book has a liberal bias (not so obvious, but look up reviews)

for history with a liberal bias i prefer howard zinn's "people's history", there's a good one with a conservative bias called "patriot's history" or whatever, but i forget the author.

basically everything is biased except primary sources, and even then you have first-hand bias (which is less bad though)

also "bias" is a noun, "biased" is an adjective, you can't say "that book is bias".
GGTeMpLaR
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
United States7226 Posts
January 11 2010 23:59 GMT
#17
On January 12 2010 05:34 Acies wrote:
Aren't conservatives and revolutionaries literaly opposites by thier very definitions?


not necessarily, especially in counter-revolutions (which are revolutionaries in essence)

it probably meant conservative by our modern-day standards though, which they were
ghostWriter
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States3302 Posts
January 12 2010 00:05 GMT
#18
The definitions for liberal and conservative have changed dramatically since the time of the Revolutionary War. iirc, I think they meant the exact opposite of what they mean right now. I could be wrong though.
Sullifam
MountainDewJunkie
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
United States10341 Posts
January 12 2010 00:22 GMT
#19
Never trust a book with a bullet list on its cover.
[21:07] <Shock710> whats wrong with her face [20:50] <dAPhREAk> i beat it the day after it came out | <BLinD-RawR> esports is a giant vagina
Durak
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Canada3684 Posts
January 12 2010 01:00 GMT
#20
On January 12 2010 09:05 ghostWriter wrote:
The definitions for liberal and conservative have changed dramatically since the time of the Revolutionary War. iirc, I think they meant the exact opposite of what they mean right now. I could be wrong though.


They're extremely vague. You can basically interpret whatever you want from the words. Since you want to be clear and logical in communication, they're poor choices to use.
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