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David Kennedy: Sean Wilentz and others complain about his negative review of Paul Krugman's book

To the Editor:

Your reviewer, the historian David Kennedy, trashes my friend and colleague Paul Krugman’s new book, “The Conscience of a Liberal” (Oct. 21), as “factually shaky” on the basis of two alleged humiliating mistakes. According to Kennedy, Krugman says that the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1964 and claims, contrary to what is “customarily” thought, that Kansas was the birthplace of Prohibition. The book does slip at one point — possibly mixing up the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the voting rights legislation of a year later — but Krugman later repeatedly reports correctly that voting rights passed in 1965. And although many places vie for the honor or ignominy of hatching Prohibition, in 1880 Kansas did become the first state to include a prohibition provision in its Constitution — which is certainly enough to justify Krugman’s passing comment on the matter.

Kennedy criticizes Krugman’s reliability by picking at nits and slamming plausible assertions. A reviewer shortchanges his readers when he blows up an error but ignores when the author gets the matter right. A reasonable person might conclude that Kennedy had his hatchet out for Krugman. His attack did not do us historians and reviewers proud.

Sean Wilentz
Princeton, N.J.


David Kennedy replies:

Kansas, the first state to ban alcohol in its Constitution, in 1880, is sometimes referred to as the place where the Prohibition movement was revived after the Civil War, but cannot claim to be its birthplace. Stronger candidates for that dubious honor are Boston, where the American Temperance Society was founded in 1826, or Maine, which passed the first law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in 1851, 10 years before Kansas even became a state. Thirteen states had such laws on the books by 1855, 25 years before the Kansas clause. The Prohibition Party was formed in 1869 and held its first national convention in Ohio in 1872, with representatives from nine states attending. Two years later Ohio was also the birthplace of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.



To the Editor:

David Kennedy seems to be as simplistic and partisan as he accuses Paul Krugman of being. Looking askance at Krugman for allegedly holding the Democratic Party blameless, Kennedy reveals his conservative heart. He speaks of Democratic “condescension” toward those who consider spiritual and moral commitments as important as (or more important than) the minimum wage and the Endangered Species Act. I guess there is more morality in fighting gay marriage and abortion than in fighting poverty and environmental degradation. He speaks of Democratic post-Vietnam “vulnerability” on national security. I guess our “strong” militaristic stance of the past seven years has rendered us less vulnerable. He speaks of Democratic “divisive identity politics.” I guess Rovian divisive politics is better. Finally, he lampoons Krugman’s evocation of the Rambo films as a major factor in the turn to “strong” Republican governance. To look slightly beyond Rambo, we live in a culture that idealizes violent solutions to problems with objectified, dehumanized enemies — witness the vast popularity of combat computer games. Krugman may be simplistic and counterproductively partisan in his finger-pointing, but I don’t see Kennedy doing much better.

Norman Decker
Houston



To the Editor:

Reading David Kennedy’s review reminded me of an experience I had 25 years ago as an undergraduate at Stanford, where Kennedy teaches. I took a class in which Professor Gordon Craig suggested that the Communists were to blame for the demise of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis, even though the Communists were the Nazis’ deadliest enemies, because the Communists didn’t support the Republic strongly enough. Similarly, Kennedy asserts that the takeover of the United States government by right-wing ideologues in the Republican Party was somehow the fault of the Democratic Party, which moved to the left in response to the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. As Hitler’s rise was the fault of Rosa Luxembourg, so Reagan’s was the fault of George McGovern. In order to teach history at Stanford, one apparently has to see every travesty of the right as the responsibility of the left.

Matthew Weseley
Portland, Me.
Read entire article at Letters to the Editor of the NYT Book Review