Thomas Carlyle considered history writing the first example of man’s creative thought: “There is no tribe so rude that it has not attempted history.” The ancient Greeks thought so highly of history that they accorded it its own muse — Clio, one of Memory’s seven daughters. The displacement of traditional history by sociological progressivism is the subject of a new book by Saskatchewan historian Curtis R. McManus, titled Clio’s Bastards, or The wrecking of history and the perversion of our historical consciousness. The book describes the process in which sociological progressives (he calls them SocProgs, a wink to George Orwell) “thoroughly displaced” traditional history in Canadian history departments, virtually without protest (apart from historians Jack L. Granatstein and Michael Bliss). Traditional historians explored the past “with the aim of explaining the nation to its citizens.” The SocProg goal is twofold: to “give a voice” to those whom traditional historians “excluded” and to expose the “systemic” attitudes and beliefs that cause, enable and perpetrate the oppression of minorities. All this in the name of “progress.” McManus rejects out of hand the whole idea of “the right side of history” progressives speak about so confidently.

Source: National Post August 30, 2016 17:03 UTC