Ron Radosh tears into Doris Kearns Goodwin for Gettysburg speech

Ron Radosh writes for PJ Media.

This week our nation remembers the battle that raged at Gettysburg 150 years ago. It was a carnage in which thousands were killed in three days of fierce fighting. Had the Union troops not won, an outcome that was not a sure thing when the fighting began, the future of our nation would have been quite different than it is today....

...My wife and I watched it [Doris Kearns Goodwin speaking at Gettysburg] two nights ago, and were stunned at what we heard. Goodwin barely mentioned Gettysburg, except for a perfunctory acknowledgement at the start of her comments.

Instead, those in attendance were forced to listen to a self-absorbed, narcissistic and politically correct bromide about how Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg was important as a precursor to  LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Bill, the fight for gay marriage, the  “women’s liberation” movement of the 70’s, and of course, the need for a female president, after numerous references to Hillary Clinton, Kearns Goodwin’s obvious choice.

Anyone who has heard Kearns Goodwin talk on interview programs, or read her essays, or seen previous speeches, heard it all before. A historian who was widely condemned some years back for proven plagiarism, an act that did not harm her career or standing one bit, she even plagiarized herself, taking segments almost verbatim from her 1998 Commencement address at Dartmouth College, and similar themes and words she used in her 2006 speech to the Abraham Lincoln Association....