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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1158099" data-attributes="member: 6533">I do not doubt that this is true, but, in the humanities at the very least, you should hold your views in communication, if not communion, with the views of those who have gone before.  This is particularly true in history where access to documents, lore, and techniques changes all the time.For instance, while states' rights seem to be an obvious civil war issue in the light of the development of government in the twentieth century there are still many documents, including those of earlier historians, that emphasize the importance of slavery and Southern life and power as distinct and central issues.  Even the debate over states' rights is clearly centered on slavery if events such as bloody Kansas and the Missouri compromise are to be at all considered in the narrative of American Civil War and disorder.  Certainly narratives purely of slavery and southern ambition do not serve the state of the South at this end of this history, but neither does denying those narratives for an alternate narrative focussing entirely on states' rights.    The fact is official histories have to rely on a certain amount of truth or they are never effective.  Particularly the 'official' histories put together by professional historians.  So my point is simply that you shouldn't ignore those factors.  A proper synthesis of  the entire discourse community is necessary to form an accurate and fair picture, one that could be deemed worthy of a professional, particularly in light of most histories' political ramifications.Mind you, that can be an incredibly difficult task given our human taste for clear cut ideas of how things worked and how large some discourse communities are, but noone said being professional was easy.I remember arguing the slavery vs. states' rights issue with a friend.  We argued a lot and, being a rhetorician, I generally took both sides against his monolothic stand on side and against the other.   He being, more or less, a preacher/poet could never countenance that and always saw me as supporting the side he hated.  Something I did too little to discourage since it added extra spice to the arguments.So as I was defending slavery as the major issue of the war he accused me of sounding just like his junior high teacher.And here I am thinking, "Maybe, just maybe, it would behoove the children of America to listen to their junior high teachers as opposed to merely holding them in contempt.  Might increase the percentage of kids who could find the lower 48 a wee little bit."</blockquote>

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