When Victor Davis Hanson published"What Happened to History?" Washington Times, 7 May*, it seemed to challenge history bloggers to give it a fisk. Here's mine:

[Hanson's op-ed] is a conservative's apologia for what we do. On first reading, it seems moving; but on second reading it seems to have come from some op-ed generator. As a conservative, Hanson is clearly drawn to some of the"hooks," viz., 3, 5, 7, 9, that Tim Burke identified and suspicious of others, viz., 1, 4, 6, 8. There are the obligatory contemporary references. Here's one example:

We argue endlessly over the academic freedom of a Ward Churchill -- plagiarist and faker -- as he becomes famous for calling the 3,000 murdered on September 11, 2001,"little Eichmanns." Few in the debate pause, if just for a moment, to think of the thousands of now anonymous Americans blown apart over Berlin or on Okinawa to ensure we can freely embarrass ourselves over this charlatan.

I'm not one to argue that Churchill is no plagiarist or faker. But I look back at Hanson's opening line:"Our society suffers from the tyranny of the present." Hmm."... the tyranny of the present" is Ralph Waldo Emerson's phrase, but Hanson gives him no credit for it.** We are, indeed, the beneficiaries of a legacy we barely acknowledge. Isn't that right, Victor?

*He gave it as a lecture at Williams College on 19 April. It is circulated by Tribune Media Services and appears in the Jewish World Review and the San Jose Mercury-News.
**It also appears in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's diary, 31 December 1822. Goethe had a similar thought when he wrote that"The present moment is a powerful goddess." Emerson and Shelley's version of it is commonly traced back to Cicero.

But I'm not the only one. Reflecting on Hanson's theme of Americans' ignorance or indifference to their history, eb at No Great Matter suggests that those who are ignorant of the history of Americans' ignorance of their history seem bound to point it out repeatedly, each time as if it were some recent phenomenon or discovery. Over at Liberty & Power, David Beito finds Hanson's essay full of lofty prose, but lacking in substance. As evidence, he cites the same paragraph on Ward Churchill that I criticized. But Beito also challenges Hanson's reverence for state action as" critical" and his denigration of the social history of ordinary lives as"trivial.""The history of the pencil, girdle or cartoon offers us less wisdom about events, past and present," said Hanson,

than does knowledge of U.S. Grant, the causes of the Great Depression or the miracle of Normandy Beach. A society that cannot distinguish between the critical and the trivial of history predictably will also believe a Scott Peterson merits as much attention as the simultaneous siege of Fallujah, or that a presidential press conference should be pre-empted for Paris Hilton or Donald Trump.

"Statecraft" often leads us into monumental blunders, Beito points out. Citing Leonard E. Read's essay,"I, Pencil," he points to the contrasting simple genius of what Hanson calls"trivial."

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculous ness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Altogether, I'd say Victor Davis Hanson has some answering to do.