I don't even feel qualified to comment on the sort of paranoid worldview that encourages Michael Barone to start an essay with this string of complaints:How much American history do young Americans learn today? Or—better question—what American history, if any, do they learn? The answer to the first question seems to be very little. The answer to the second question is too much of the wrong kind. They learn that America had slavery and treated women unequally and that colonists and settlers behaved in beastly ways toward "Native Americans." They learn that military units were racially segregated in World War II and Japanese Americans interned. They end up not knowing whether the Civil War came before or after the American Revolution or who attacked Pearl Harbor."Native Americans" in quotation marks? Really? And does he seriously believe that America's youth are familiar with Executive Order 9066 but ignorant of who bombed Pearl Harbor? I mean, Christ on a Klondike bar, Pearl Harbor just got made into a major motion picture! That's like getting inducted into the history hall of fame.Luckily, my lack of credentials does not mean the land is empty of qualified Barone experts. So if you haven't read Mark Schmitt's terrific analysis of Barone's accelerating descent into cultural paranoia and paleolithic conservatism, now's a good opportunity.
