Jeff Riggenbach, author of Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, discusses the role of Charles Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes in advancing revisionist U.S. history, court historians who fight to preserve a mythology of benevolent government actions, drastic changes in the meaning of politically descriptive terms like “liberal” and “conservative” and moving away from a war/presidential perspective of history to a focus on economic/social science issues.
MP3 here. (24:40)
Jeff Riggenbach is a member of the Organization of American Historians and a Senior Fellow of the Randolph Bourne Institute. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Times, Reason, Inquiry, and Liberty, among other publications.