Talk:James M. McPherson

McPherson and neo-confederates

The "gatekeeper" would like to see some references for these broad generalizations:

• 1 the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy ... are largely seen as benign heritage organizations... -Seen by whom?

Seen by their 100-year history. The only types who see the UDC and SCV as anything other than that are Ed Sebesta-type demagogues.

• 2 The UDC and SCV were similarly offended by these comments. -There's one reference to one UDC chapter.

And for source purposes that chapter is a representative link to the way the UDC and SCV responded. Digging up and linking each and every single individual SCV and UDC chapter would be an absurd exercise, even by your selectively stringent sourcing demands.

• 3 Can you provide a source for the "outrage" of the SCV?

Your selective source stringency is showing again, willmcw. McPherson's comments dominated the SCV and UDC chapter newsletters for several months after the incident, most of which are in print - not the web. Just because you didn't find it on google doesn't mean it never happened.

• 4 For any UDC chapter besides Virginia?

See above.Rangerdude 06:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• 5 McPherson the ire of many Civil War enthusiasts... -Does this refer to the Virginia UDC too? That's a lot of mileage to get out of one webpage.
• 6 Since when is Sebesta a "leftist" activist? Last week he was an "anti-neo-confederate" activist.

Thanks, -Willmcw 06:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

RD, I have no problem with including the information sourced on the Virginia UDC page, and any other information supported by specific, verifiable information. Many, most, some and related vaguenesses with no support should be avoided in an encyclopedia.

It's fine to reduce those terms and refine the language to something more precise, but demanding several links for each and every facet of a commonly known incident among the UDC and SCV when the existing one suffices is excessive and goes well beyond the elimination of vagueness.Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding point #1, lasting 100 years is no guarantee of goodness. If you want to say it is "generally regarded", you are asserting something that is virtually unprovable unless someone has taken a poll. Just omit it.

It may or may not be a guarantee of anything, but it is factually correct to note that the SCV and UDC have not encountered much of any criticism ala the Sebestas of the world until the last decade, and even then only from a small number of persons like Sebesta who are on the political fringe. Mainstream groups like their union veterans descendants counterparts and other geneological associations seem to have no problem with the SCV or UDC and often participate in activities together with them.Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

For #2 & #3: If the SCV as a whole has expressed outrage, then the press release should not be hard to find. The SCV has a national governing body. If it wants to be outraged, it is capable of passing a resolution or writing an essay. And if one chapter of one society has expressed outrage, then that should be what we write. Whatever the verifiable facts are. There is plenty of room for facts and citations. There is no room for unsupported generalizations.

A press release is not necessarily hard to find (and in fact there were several print articles in the SCV newsletters at the time discussing McPherson). Online electronic versiosn of press releases for a controversy that happened SIX YEARS AGO, on the other hand, are not easy to come by for the very obvious reasons of time and the fact that elderly geneologists aren't particularly known for posting their daily activities on the internet, an especially not 6 years ago when the internet was still relatively new to most people.Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

For #4: If you have a scanner or a good digital camera, and access to the newsletters, then you could scan in some of the articles or LTE's that you would like to use for citations. Otherwise they aren't verifiable. That's one of the Wiki tenets.

It is NOT a wiki tenet either that I have to dig up and scan a newsletter for you from half a decade ago to personally satisfy your selectively stringent citation demands on a matter that is already documented beyond any reasonable person's standards on the existing source link. Use a little common sense. It's not as if this controversy is being asserted out of the blue with nothing to back it up - there's a very detailed link that sources it through the UDC and details the progress of the controversy (including a quote where McPherson himself acknowledges his UDC *AND* SCV detractors and tries to respond to them).Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Regarding your other edits, you've basically reverted all of the editing that I did except for (some of) the new facts that I've added. I see that you wrote most of the previous article, but that doing so does not give an editor "ownership". The amount of space devoted to criticism is far in excess to the description of his many accomplishments, and it needs to be brought into balance.

I attempted to incorporate what you added into the existing article. If I have missed something you added, by all means tell me what it is and we can put it back in. However you came along and completely reorganized the existing article without any sound reason offered and with an apparent goal of doing the exact same thing you did on the Sebesta and neo-confederate articles: propping up your side of the issue while downplaying and covering up anything and everything factual that potentially makes your side look bad. For example, others have made material critiques of both McPherson's politics AND his scholarship. One of the critiques of the latter was specified and linked to (i.e. McPherson's allegedly poor handling of economic issues). Yet your edit removed that critique from the discussion of his scholarship, stuck it in the bottom of the article with his political views, and added a positive quote about his scholarship in its place. I have no problem with that positive quote about his scholarship, but there's no reason to remove and relocate negative statements about his scholarship as well.Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please do not add ad hominem comments to the edit summaries; they are not necessary or helpful. I do not think that it is appropriate for you to be accusing me of pursuing a POV in editing this article. Please, let's focus on writing a fair, even-handed, verifiable biography of a history professor. Thanks. -Willmcw 07:01, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I accused you of a POV because you are pushing the same type of POV that caused us to go down this same path in the other articles. In all three articles where we've had these discussions they've been about your edits that try to weaken or remove any material that isn't favorable to your opinion. You now evidently have a favorable opinion of McPherson - which is fine in itself. But, in light of that opinion, you are conducting your edits in a way that minimizes discussion of and diminishes portrayal of facts, events, and critics who reflect unfavorably upon McPherson. As I have said many times, I have no problem if you want to load up the article with every friendly quote of praise for McPherson imaginable and talk about whatever good stuff you want to that he's done. But when you go through and cleanse out factually valid and adequately referenced material (and don't give me this garbage about scanning newsletter images for you from six years ago on a commonly known subject that can be directly inferred from the existing links I have given you) that reflects negatively on him, it IS pushing a POV. Rangerdude 07:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More vague asertions

1. McP is "very politically active". The only specifics given are a petition (signed mostly by professors) opposing the Clinton impeachment and two columns in a magazine for professional historians. That counts as "slightly political active", if anything. Is there any other political activity? Is he a party committeman? Alderman?

The point is that most historians who run historical organizations write about historical topics in their organization's magazine. McPherson has used it repeatedly to pontificate about modern political issues including twice on Bush and Iraq and another time on the Michigan affirmative action case. That isn't even a simple break from the routine of historical writing - its a consistent pattern. Nor is that the extent of his activism as discussed in the current article. He's also spoken out about modern confederate flag controversies such as South Carolina. There's also the Pacifica interview, which if you read the entire thing you'll find it was a political commentary show called Democracy Now! and the subject was George W. Bush. I'm certain there's plenty of other things he's done, but I don't think that list of repeated and constant modern political commentary is "slightly active" by any means.

1. McP "...is a supporter of many liberal causes...". Which ones? Opposition to the rhetoric that led to the war in Iraq is not an especially liberal issue. (Moderates and Paleoconseravatives are opposed to it as well.) Let's list the liberal causes that he supports. There's room.

You're straining at gnats to deny the obvious, will. Some paleo-conservatives may oppose the war in Iraq, but they don't typically speak out in favor of an Affirmative Action court case or sign petitions supporting Bill Clinton. It is also my understanding that McPherson himself is open about his liberal leanings. A quick google search immediately pulls up three favorable articles written about him by leftist organizations that identify his politics as "progressive" or "liberal" [1] [2] [3]

1. "McPherson has also espoused the removal of confederate flag imagery..." Cite please. I did a search and it didn't show up.

Did you simply not read the Pacifica interview despite all our discussions of it? [4] He says very plainly at the end of the interview that he opposes the contemporary use of the flags and criticizes Trent Lott for defending it.

"I do know that the issue of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and also in Georgia where the Confederate battle flag was incorporated into the state flag back in 1956, that those, that of those flags has a contemporary political agenda, and to the extent that any politician endorses that, I think Trent Lott did as well a couple of years ago, far more vigorously, I can't support them in doing that."

Rangerdude 08:22, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

1. "Others criticism of McPherson note that his work is known to exhibit marxist or revolutionary themes - a historiographical complaint that has also been made against Civil War historian Eric Foner." Cite please. I couldn't find this one either. Are you saying that Foner and McPherson are a marxist school of Civil War historians? How is Foner related to McPherson?

See the DiLorenzo article links for a criticism of his marxist themes. His marxist/revolutionary themes are also discussed in the favorable articles about him that I linked to above [5] [6]. Foner is related to McPherson in that both are well know Civil War historians and both have reputations for marxist-revolutionary themes in their approach to the war.Rangerdude 08:22, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

1. "His grasp of economic issues ... are described as poor quality by some, including ...DiLorenzo." Is there another critic who describes his grasp of economic issues as poor quality? If so, who? Otherwise we should drop the "some, including" because it implies additional critics. If DiLorenzo is the one critic then we shouldn't put his words into the mouths of others.

Please do not add this material back in until you can support these vague assertions. Thank you. -Willmcw 07:47, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes there are other critics, particularly at the Rockwell/Von Mises site. DiLorenzo is simply the most prominent of them and one of the best known academics to make this critique. Going through and naming each and every person who has ever blogged a critique of McPherson's economics though would be tedious and cluttery when DiLorenzo, who has a wiki article about him already, more than suffices.Rangerdude 08:22, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've added back some stuff you removed and modified others to include the specifics that you've filled in above. Thanks for providing that info. Regarding the AHA column, his predecessor is given the credit for setting the precedent of writing "president's columns" on politically-related issues. I've added a cite for that fact. Cheers, -Willmcw 09:55, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the "Rockford Institute" I'd fixed it to the correct Lewrockwell.com, but then somehow reverted myself in the next edit. I had used the description of Sebesta that the "Democracy Now" webpage uses for him. I don't know why it is important to say "self-described", when other people's terms can be be used to describe him. "Self-described" seems like a prejudicial formulation. NPOV please. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:20, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

self-described indicates that the description of Sebesta, "anti-neo-confederate," is a quote by Sebesta himself. Since Sebesta is a controversial figure who been described by any number of other sources in many different ways it presents a problem of how we identify him. Do we call him an "expert" as he is treated by Pacifica, a virulently left wing source? Or do we go to the other end and call him a "nutcase"? Or a "south hater" as the UDC calls him? The most neutral way around this problem is to quote Sebesta himself and note that he is the source of it. Another issue - the use of singular versus plural to refer to McPhersons critics is problematic. As was the case on the previous articles, using a specifically singular form is misleading because it implies that DiLorenzo is the SOLE person who holds that view, and that is inaccurate just as it is inaccurate to assume that only one UDC chapter was upset by McPherson's pacifica interview since their newsletter is the one on the web.Rangerdude 23:37, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I suppose we could go through the other mentions of groups and individuals, and change everybody to "self-described." The SCV is a "self-described genealogical society", "DiLorenizo is a self-described economist", etc. I think that it is fair and appropriate to give the guy the reference that he was given on the show since that is the context and the reason he's being mentioned. If you are afraid that it will be taken as a universally accepted description, we can say that he is "described by Goodman as a..." Regarding the number of critics, I'm open to including whatever number is shown to exist. So far, it's the VA UDC and DiLorenzo. Regarding non-web sources, what are they? do you have in your hands on an SCV newsletter expressing "outrage" over McPherson's statemetns? If so, what's the name and date and page number? What evidence, of any kind, do you have? -Willmcw 23:54, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No. The SCV is by its own structure a geneological society (as in you have to be a descendant of a soldier to join). DiLorenzo is an economist because he has a credentialed PhD in economics. McPherson is a historian because he has a credentialed PhD in history and so forth. Sebesta, however, has no special credentials in anything related to neo-confederate movements and nothing particular about him establishes any credibility he should have beyond the average guy off the street. Because of that he could be easily assigned any number of descriptions and has been called everything from an expert to a nutcase. You may prefer the former and I the latter, but both of those terms would connote a POV so calling him what he calls himself and noting that he is the source of that description is the most neutral way I can think of approaching it. Using Goodman's description of him also gives her very liberal POV undue credibility, as Goodman's view of Sebesta (she considers him an "expert") is NOT universally shared and would be disputed by many people who consider him a non-credible kook. If we let Sebesta speak for himself, however, we find that he describes himself (hence "self-described") as an "anti-neo-confederate" activist. If you remove wording that signifies it's what he calls himself then you leave the description unsourced and without context (aren't you the one who keeps demanding that every detail imaginable be sourced? Or is your selective citation stringency kicking in again?). As to critics being "shown to exist" your selective stringency is indeed kicking in again. Your "standard" - if it could even be called that - for showing something to exist is being able to dig it up on google, which for purposes of citations is a laughable methodology. Using your terminology suggests that DiLorenzo is the SOLE person to criticize McPherson's biases and one single UDC chapter is the SOLE membership of the UDC to be upset over the quote, and that is simply incorrect. A neutral terminology such as that I have offered leaves the issue of concurring voices open without imposing any artificial and factually inaccurate constraint. And quite frankly if you don't know that the SCV and other UDC chapters were upset at McPherson's quote, then you don't know anything about the SCV or UDC and thus you are unqualified to be writing encyclopedia articles about them.Rangerdude 01:03, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, as the article is put together now, I think that the source of the criticism is clear enough. As long as we do not add back assertions from unnamed critics or impute emotions to organizations, I am satisfied with the handling of the Democracy Now, Politics, and Criticism sections. Overall, I think that the article could use a bit more of a description of his books and a photo or dustjacket would be cool. Thanks for helping to make this a better article. Cheers, -Willmcw 01:03, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That is fine by me. If you know of a public domain photo of him by all means add it.Rangerdude 01:05, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Marxist" Eric Foner

If Eric Foner's "...marxist sympathies are well known and openly acknowledged by virtually all people who are familiar with him" then it should not be difficult to name one or two of those people. "unnamed critics" have no place in Wikipedia. Thanks, -Willmcw 02:06, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's no matter of "unnamed critics," will. One does not need a source to state that Ronald Reagan was a conservative, that Lyndon Johnson was a liberal, that Henry Wallace was a socialist, or that Eric Foner is a marxist. It is common knowledge to anybody possessing even the slightest familiarity with any of these figures. If you do not have enough familiarity to know this (and it is evident that you lack it on a great many of articles that you attempt to edit), you should not be trying to write an encyclopedia article on them in the first place.Rangerdude 02:13, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)