Monday, October 11, 2010

Historians have Woodrow Wilson's Back

Historians respond to Glenn Beck's attacks on President Woodrow Wilson in today's New York Times.  Mark Attwood, Univ. of Texas begins:
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At first blush, conservative attacks on Woodrow Wilson seem bizarre. For most Americans, the 28th president of the United States is a half-remembered name from the distant past, hardly the stuff of TV talk shows or blogosphere diatribes.

But Wilson’s obscurity may be precisely the reason why Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg and other conservatives have dusted him off and offered him up as the embodiment of the liberalism allegedly ruining the United States by dangerously expanding the federal government.
More here.  Other contributors include:

Jill Lepore, Harvard historian
John Milton Cooper, historian and biographer
George H. Nash, historian and biographer
Michael Lind, New America Foundation
Thomas G. West, politics professor, University of Dallas