Sorry, a moral felon can’t be a good historian. The Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm has been the subject of a lot of fatuous eulogies since his death a few weeks ago. Ron Radosh asks whether an intellectual – a man of ideas — who dedicated his whole life to the defense of the most murderous regime on human record, and to lying in defense of that regime – can be a good historian. The question, if put right, is self-answering. Yet even worthy conservatives like Niall Ferguson apparently get it wrong. Hobsbawm may have been a brilliant writer and an intelligent man. Yet he was morally defective, and that particular flaw is fatal to a historian since in the end the reader must trust his judgments and depend on his integrity and respect for the truth. Here is a review I wrote more than a decade ago of Hobsbawm’s “history” of the 20th century, which is little more than a Stalinist political tract, written after the fact when an honest man would know better. .....In the climactic hours of the Communist fall, someone — Boris Yeltsin perhaps — remarked that it was a pity Marxists had not triumphed in a smaller country because “we would not have had to kill so many people to demonstrate that utopia does not work.” What more is there to say? To Read More…..
My Take - I love the thought behind the question; can a morally defective intellectual be a good historian? I intend to use this from now on when dealing with issues involving environmentalism, regulations and bureaucrats. Those who support the green movement must be morally defective. Why? Because we have as much history of the devastation they leave in their wake as we do about the socialist monsters of the 20th century. If, after knowing that and they continue to support these groups and their goals they are morally defective. Period! RK
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