 Can I make 40 here? Now if you've spent five minutes on my channel, you know that there's nothing I hate more than ad hominem attacks. I don't think there's anyone who's done more to restore civility to America and to restore civility to the internet than I have done. For example, not only do I strive to keep every sentiment, every word like every expression, every deed, every creed, even our thinking within YouTube's terms of service, I then layer upon that an additional moral code derived from 4,000 years of the Jewish tradition. Like I not only maintain this livestream within all the edicts of a secular corporation like YouTube, but I then layer upon it all the edicts of 4,000 years of Judaism, from the revelation at Mount Sinai to all the details of the oral law, the ongoing rabbinic tradition, the Rishonim, the Akronim, the Mishneh Torah, the Yad, all right, the Yad HaZakha, I mean the the the response of literature, right, 4,000 years of Jewish tradition and Jewish law, thousands of Jewish laws, all right, I maintain this livestream within the Daladomos of the Torah way of life. All right, so I not only keep this according to secular law and according to the terms of service and the guidelines offered to us by YouTube, and then I then layer another moral code on top of that. I even have my own terms of service, all right, I even have my own ethical code for these livestreams, because you hear some people, they get around someone who's a little dicey and oh their attitude is, oh man I'm gonna have to double bag it. Well, when I step into the scary world of the internet, I don't just single bag it, I don't just double bag it, I triple bag it, three layers of protection when you turn into this show. Four layers, I abide by secular law, I abide by YouTube's terms of service, I abide by the dictates of God's immutable moral laws expressed in the ongoing Torah tradition, and then on top of that I add my own code of conduct. I mean I don't think there's any show either on the internet or off the internet that does more to elevate the human condition than this one, and if you have any doubt you should ask Andy Nowicki, all right, so when I invite someone to participate on this show, they know that they are within the circle of trust that this is a safe warm environment where I'm going to treat them like like a person of such infinite preciousness, like this is not a show where we beat people down, this is a show where we lift people up, all right, you could you could call this the Brother Luke Traveling Salvation Show, I mean already it's a hot August night somewhere and the leaves are hanging down and the grass on the ground smelling sweet, and if you move up the road to the outside of town, I mean this show exists where the buses don't run no more, right, you get the sound of that good old gospel beat when you tune into the 40 University Show, and here we we've pitched a ragged tent here on this outside of town where there ain't no trees, and I've got that gospel group here in the chat telling you and me it's love, all right, it's Brother 40's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, that's what we've got going on here, so pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, and everyone goes because everyone knows it's Brother Love's show, the room when I start to speak, right, the room gets suddenly still and when you'd almost bet you could hear yourself sweat, you know Brother Love walks in eyes black as coal and when he lifts his face every ear in the places on him, but I'm just another buzzer on the bus, you don't have to salute when you enter the 40's show, like it's not necessary that you say you know Commander 40 I'm reporting for duty, you know I 40 Brother Love, I don't stand on ceremony, like look if you want to give me a title where you can just say my moral leader, but I'm not someone who stands on titles or ceremonies, I mean look you've got yourself two good hands and when your brother is troubled you got to reach out one hand for him because that's what it's there for and when your heart is troubled you got to reach out your other hand, reach it out to the man up there because that's what he's there for, take my hand in yours, walk with me this day, in my heart I know I will never stray, so pack up the babies, grab the old ladies and everyone goes, right, this is the Traveling Salvation Show and if you've spent five minutes on this show, you know there's nothing I hate more than ad hominem attacks, like when I interview someone do you think like I try to delve into their psyche and try to try to make them uncomfortable or make them feel depressed, no when you come on the show it's an uplifting experience, like when you're troubled, like when Andy Nowicki is troubled I reach out one hand to him, I reach out my hand to him and I say Andy take my hand in yours, I say Andy walk with me this day because in my heart I know we will never stray, we're going to create a vessel, right, of safety and radical love and inclusion, so pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, everyone goes, it's time for the Traveling Salvation Show, so nobody's done more than me to destroy ad hominem argumentation on the internet, right, I've always dedicated myself to uplifting people, to supporting and encouraging people, to bringing out the best in people, not the worst, like I've always pitched this show at the finest aspects of human nature, right, it's so easy to do some kind of grubby blood sports where people are just you know calling each other traitor and you're not really Jewish and you're consorting with Nazis, like that's not what this show's all about, right, this show's about radical love and inclusion, but I just I just read this fantastic book, yeah 40 implied I was a drug abusing loser, but I know deep down he still loves me, so I just read this this fantastic book and I got to be honest with you, all I want to do, all I want to do is have some fun, how does it go, all I want to do is have some fun, hit it, this ain't no disco, it ain't no country club either, this is LA, all I want to do is have some fun, says the man next to me out of nowhere, it's half a pole of nothing, he says his name is William, but I'm sure it's Bill or Billy or Mark or Buddy, and he's playing ugly to me, oh disavow, that's ad hominem, and I wonder if he's ever had a day of fun in his whole life, look we don't need any more attacks on Andy Nowecki, we're drinking beer at noon on Tuesday in a bar that faces a giant car wash, the good people of the world are washing their cars on their lunch break, hosing and scrubbing as best they can in skirts and suits, they drive their shiny Dutson's and Buick's back to the phone company, the records do store too, well they're nothing like Billy and me, because all I want to do is have some fun, I got a feeling I'm not the only one till the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard, okay so I love this book by Peter Nowecki came out in 1988, that noble dream, the objectivity question and the American historical profession, now I don't know about you but does that not sound like the most fascinating book ever written, I love this book, it's called that noble dream, the objectivity question and the American historical profession, and you're saying 40 you're all over the place, you're completely lacking in coherence, like normally your thought is so rigorous, it's so Talmudic, all right, it's like everything is usually like carefully laid out where one thing leads to another and now, and now you've got me completely lost, I'm losing faith in your coherency, I'm losing faith in your sobriety, I'm questioning whether you should even be my moral leader, right, fear not, right, fear not, I've gone to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you may be also, look in my father's house there are many mansions, if it were not so I wouldn't have told you, right, so I'm reading this fantastic book by Peter Nowecki and frankly all I want to do is go aside from have some fun, is go through this book verse by verse and unpack it, unpack it, what else do the fancy people say they love to unpack, oh and interrogate, I want to interrogate the text and find the the all the passages that are problematic, okay so I'm reading Peter Noweck's book and he's got this fascinating point here that I hadn't thought of, and you're thinking 40 that's impossible, how could there be an intellectual idea that you have not thought of, but it's true, I found an intellectual idea that I had not thought of, okay so on the internet and maybe in daily discussions and debates in but principally like in internet debate is argumentum ad hominem, all right, so you've heard about coitus interruptus but that's nothing on argumentum ad hominem, is argumentum ad hominem, is it truly a fallacy when applied to internet discussions and debates or even many of your discussions and debates in daily life and you're saying to me 40 of course it's a fallacy, the only honorable grounds for discussion and debate are facts and logic and that's the way I always thought, that's why I've got this this very sturdy strong code of conduct for my live streams, so Peter Noweck says the origin of the phrase is obscure ad hominem arguments were not listed in classical or medieval taxonomies of fallacies, did you know that? So it's first use in English dates from, it dates from John Locke and he neither meant by it what it is commonly meant today nor did he regard his employment as necessarily fallacious oh my god do you mean that phrases and concepts and words that say first came about in the 18th century or the 17th century they didn't mean the exact same thing to people back then as they do today do you mean 40 that the Declaration of Independence which says that all men are created equal that this meant something completely different to people in the 18th century and what it means to people today and the answer is yes because I am historicist I understand words ideas concepts writings books essays pamphlets within their historical context I ask who wrote this to what were they reacting what were the incentives that they were facing who was benefited by this writing who was hurt by this writing all right what was the context who wrote it all right the set some labor that's what the Germans talk about the context for a piece of writing so so the first English usage of ad hominem dates to John Locke and he didn't regard it what we mean by it today he didn't think it was awful so he noted that men in their reasonings with others do ordinarily make use to prevail on their argument at least to all others into silence by argumentum ad hominem that means to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions so the phrase gradually transformed in meaning so argumentum ad hominem right it originally meant to press a man with the consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions all right so it originally meant a rhetorical device to convince an opponent by showing that certain conclusions that followed from his principles came to mean by the 19th century meant an attempt to discredit an opponent in the eyes of third parties by questioning the motives or the character of that opponent so there's no satisfactory account known to me writes Peter Novak precisely how this transformation was affected all right so so perhaps the latin ad personum would be more accurate to describe what in 20th century usage is called ad hominem anyway so in internet debates in daily debates is argumentum ad hominem arguing the person like playing the person not the ball is that necessarily logically fallacious so in 20th century usage we mean that argumentum ad hominem is a rhetorical device to divert attention from the critical examination of the substance of an argument looking at the facts and the logic of an argument and discredit that argument by dragging in irrelevant considerations having to do with the character or the motives of the author of the argument and this if you just talk to our social betters right if you talk to people who live the life of the mind this is a disreputable procedure so the impersonal ethos of science is based on the proposition that what science offers is public knowledge right that's what we're doing here we're we're sharing public knowledge subject to critical examination by the scientific community so you're saying 40 why did you call me here today to discuss argumentum ad sotum because you are my scientific community all right and i'm going to discuss an idea by offering it up to you my scientific community and everything that i say right everything that i contend everything that i offer to you it only has worth if it's replicable right we don't want to be proposing hypotheses and theses that are not replicable i'm just here to share with you that which is scientific and replicable you're the scientific community and i am here to bring you replicable hypotheses find out you know on what basis are they falsifiable right so so better than any other criterion the public nature of knowledge which science offers us is its principle distinguishing feature replication but what about the things we talk about on this show we talk about history we talk about covid we talk about politics right is everything we discuss on this show is it really truly scientific is it really fully replicable so the historical profession wants to become scientific right wants to take historical knowledge and make it objective and scientific i mean surely we all agree with that right surely i don't know about you but i often fall asleep at night and have that noble dream about making history an objective profession right that noble dream the objectivity question and the american historical profession this is the fantastic book here i'm reading by peter novick so surely in the in the erudite and elevated discussions we have on this channel ad hominem arguments are surely an irrelevancy and should be scornfully dismissed right that was my assumption prior to reading this peter novick book but is this desire for replication this desire for objectivity and this scornful dismissal of argumentum ad hominem is this really a characteristic product of discussions like what we're having right now so i'm just taking this 1988 peter novick book and and making it cool and hip and relevant to 2021 live streams so the historian or the live streamer or just the bloke in the bar with whom you're arguing about covid all right we we've we're all you know very smart very erudite well-read people here right and so we've all seen a great mass of evidence some of it difficult to access some of it unpublished and so we bring an interpretation of the evidence that we've seen you know based upon our years of emotion in the material that we're discussing on this live stream right and we bring our interpretation with with our particular perceptual apparatus and and our particular assumptions that we we bring to our discussions right we use devices such as the footnote right whenever i do a show you're always seeing the footnote here or footnote there i always try to keep all my points time stamped and footnoted to make it scientific and replicable right so historians use footnotes to try to attain for their work something resembling replicability right and so i'm using time stamps and footnotes on these live streams to make them scientific and replicable but you're saying 40 you know appreciate your efforts but there's not really much resemblance between what you're doing on this live stream and that which is scientific objective and replicable so most historical writings and and most live streams are kind of semi-public so perhaps what we're doing here we're less the author of a logical demonstration perhaps we're more like a witness to what we found on a voyage of discovery so someone sees seven different people see a traffic accident and their recollections are going to vary wildly about what happened in the traffic accident so maybe we're more like witnesses on voyages of discovery and less like the author of logical demonstrations so arguments which are illegitimate when addressed to the author of a transparently followable syllogism perhaps are quite appropriate in the case of a witness you got that so i've always thought of what i do on these live streams that i'm simply the author of a transparently followable syllogism but now it's occurring to me maybe when i'm live streaming i'm maybe less of the author of a transparently followable syllogism and maybe i'm more like a witness to what i found on a voyage of discovery and if you're interrogating a witness you're going to use completely different techniques than when you're interrogating the author of a transparently followable syllogism is that shocking does that blow your mind i mean i thought that was a really good point so a standard logic textbook will advance the the common position that the individual motives of a writer or of a live streamer are just irrelevant in determining determining the logical force of his argument so i'm sure you probably thought that that when you when you get one of my logical syllogisms when you get one of those classic 40 arguments you think oh his motives are all together irrelevant in determining the logical force of 40s arguments so you know all you're wondering is you know whether the premises that i offer are sufficient to demonstrate the conclusion that i offer but maybe certain motives weaken the live streamer's competence or the historian's competence right so i'm sure you've often thought 40 there are so many similarities between the professional historian the guy with a phd in history from yale and the youtube live streamer just all the things they have common they the the way that they advance an argument just so similar but maybe there are certain motives that weaken our competence and our ability and our readiness to observe facts and to state them clearly all right so the the footnote has many functions some of them are rhetorical but the footnote says and this live stream i'm going to you know try to throw down some timestamps and footnotes the footnote says this is where you can find the document which i've cited so if you are skeptical of its its existence or of my interpretation well look for yourself right but footnotes only weekly assimilate historical scholarship or timestamps and and links to the scientific norm of replicability so maybe my live streams not so scientific and replicable as i thought maybe i'm not just advancing transparently followable syllogisms here right maybe these live streams aren't just primarily about the logical force of my arguments so let's say i list a link or a footnote and the material referred to let's say it is readily available which is almost never the case with respect to archival citations maybe a singular assertion can be checked maybe a handful of assertions but when citations like several thousand from among the million which might have been chosen and now illustrating some artificial interpretation arrived at through a deep immersion right i always undergo deep immersion before i live stream right this is like scientific replicable logical you know following advancing of a syllogism right that that's what i do here now even the demonstration that has several citations that are faulty you know maybe cast into doubt the thesis that they underpin maybe maybe having sign citations that are verifiable maybe not sufficient to sustain the thesis in the live stream so perhaps the contrast between history and science between live streaming and science maybe maybe the contrast you know is fairly fairly dramatic now many scientific experiments are replicable only with the greatest difficulty if you've got millions of dollars to spend right so in science as in history mere replication usually carries low payoff and it's rarely undertaken so in many cases scientific theories maintained even in the case of experimental falsification okay so the live streamer and the historian right maybe they're not so much demonstrating logical syllogisms as their witnesses to you know some voyage of discovery so maybe their motives weaken their competence their readiness to observe facts and to state them fairly so the existence of such motives that may may detract from the theses that are advanced by the live streamer or the historian maybe the existence of these motives if their existence can be shown is relevant to determine the credibility of a witness and maybe what i'm doing here is maybe i'm just a witness maybe i'm just a witness to events that are going down maybe i'm not nearly as as logical as i as i thought i was hmm so relativists within the live streaming community and the historical community have you changed your hair products looks fuller yeah i'm uh been letting my hair down like a lot of you thought 40 your shows like way too stuffy like you know we appreciate your every addition we appreciate how dedicated you are to bringing out the best in the human condition we appreciate how how consistently you elevate the the human condition but 40 your hair has been looking a bit thin and i can better assimilate the every addition that you bring to these live streams you just allow your hair to grow out a bit if you could just like let your hair down maybe don't don't address us in such a formal manner but like speak to me 40 like a friend who's letting his hair down and so that's what i'm doing here okay so think about the dilemmas of relativists within the live streaming profession and the historical profession so relativists thought that it was obvious that every live stream every historical account you know before it even saw the light of day like all the hours and hours of preparation i do before making a live stream uh or producing a history book maybe it inevitably paths through the filter of the preconceptions the interests the intentions of the historian so evaluating a live stream or evaluating historical account maybe it's obvious that it demands the closest examination of these preconceptions interests intentions motivations on the other hand like we all live in community like it takes a community to make a live stream this is not just something i i can do profitably and intellectually and contribute to to the wider body of knowledge just on my own like i need you and you need me like people who need people are the luckiest people in the world so we all live in a community and particularly in the blood sports community the live streaming community we we have these imperatives always for professional demeanor and comity i hope i pronounce that right comity comity comity means we all get along all right it's an association for mutual benefit all right that's the principle of comity that we all we all recognize each other all right we're all in it together we're all in it for our mutual benefit let me make sure make sure i've got the pronunciation right comity comity there's nothing like comedy comedy beats comedy okay comedy now now i sound intelligent brook a sham brook a sham okay so in our profession like we all share this live streaming profession right like we we we face the imperatives of professional demeanor and comedy so how can we criticize each other when we face these these professional imperatives of you know a kindly demeanor and and comedy and and these imperatives they're just as demanding they're just as exigent all right on the relativist as the non-relevantist so so all these imperatives for the live streamer all right like the codes of conduct for a live streamer is a certain professional demeanor and and comedy comedy right comedy comedy all right so very strong professional standards for live streamers that we always maintain a professional demeanor and and and comedy and we make sure we get our newer tropic stacks right before we start live streaming because if you don't stack your newer tropics right you can really go off the off the deep end all right so i have always been over backwards to avoid egregiously offensive content because i want to always maintain professional demeanor and comedy so problem is many anti relativists as a result of their fanatical faith in the objectivity of their conclusions the it just leads them to you know making really nasty nasty comments all right proposing procedures which relativist principles legitimate but now your sense of professional decorum makes you disparage all right so i know what you're thinking you think 40 what's the mirror image of argumentum ad hominem and i am so glad you are it's because the mirror image of argumentum ad hominem is argumentum ad vericudium right which is argument from authority right so there are four types of argument from authority there's experts in a particular field of knowledge so cognitive or epistemic authority prestigious or powerful individuals or institutions governmental legal or administrative officials or social family religious or ancestral heads so those are some some four types of argument from authority argumentum ad vericudium so let me let me time stand to make this scientific and replicable let me just throw down arguments from authority no don't don't let me give me any ads here i'm i'm trying to man argument from authority gotta gotta timestamp this this stream so that it's it's logical and scientific we can get free it's a forgiveness process look up the word in a dictionary forgiveness a decision to release them look at my hand okay you're ready to release i looked up the word forgiveness forgiveness to release ad hominem a decision to release them and when i decide to release them and i go through a process of amends that repair of the damage i am released and of course that's the prayer of st francis isn't it that's okay we're all ready to release and to forgive all right back to brother peter novix fantastic 1988 book that noble dream the objectivity question in the american historical profession okay so the opposite of argumentum ad hominem is argumentum ad vericudium or argument from authority so they're both logical fallacies so argumentum ad hominem says distrust is proposition it's offered by a wanker it's offered by a bad unreliable crazy person is you badly need to haircut all right so so then as we live in this community of live streamers where we always try to maintain the highest moral standards we always try to maintain comedy like you know we're all feeling an desire for mutual benefit and professional demeanor like we all venerate professional demeanor i don't know about you but when i get up in the morning it's like i first think second thing professional demeanor that's what 40 universities are all about okay so so our professional obligations as live streamers demands that we reject argumentum ad hominem so argument from authority that tends to elicit an overwhelmingly positive response among historians right since most of what historians and other people most of what all of us know you don't have to be a historian to use argument from authority so yeah you can say oh 40 argument from authority that doesn't stand up it's a logical fallacy but there's no alternative to it there is no alternative but to use argument from authority as you go through your day if you're arguing with a co-worker about a certain procedure you're going to generally solve that argument by appealing to authority all right it may be a logical fallacy but it's how we live our lives and when we argue here like i take what i think are the greatest latest authorities and you present your latest and greatest authorities and they fight right that's how that's how the world works like when your authorities look up in the sky they see the faces of my authorities looking down at them okay so you know apart from a very few things where we have expertise we have no alternative but to be constantly invoking argument from authority and you if you think you're above it if you think oh it's a logical fallacy i wash my hands i spit on logical fallacies 40 i say you're deluded we can't help but use argument from authority it's how the world works i win you lose that's how the world works i used to have a friend who used to always mock my little ears i only had one friend who did that he used to mock my little ears and then i only had one girlfriend one asian girlfriend she really appreciated my thick full lips she said she was glad that they weren't cold thin Caucasian lips so i got my thick lips from my aborigine heritage and i'm not ashamed to be to be the 132nd aborigine not ashamed all right so everything that we know with few exceptions is because we rely on some authority like you think oh 40 i'm above logical fallacies i am beyond logical fallacies there's no space in my discourse for logical fallacies i whenever i encounter a logical fallacy in my thinking i rip it out and replace it with something that's logically sturdy well i say to you you're fooling yourself there's no alternative but to use arguments from authority virtually everything we know is because we rely on some authority so the whole aim of establishing authority authoritative consensus is central to any profession the medical profession the historical profession the sociology profession the physics profession the live streaming profession right the acting profession right every profession depends upon establishing authority and authoritative consensus now aren't you aren't you thinking right now well where did argument from authority come from right and it came first of all from john lock john lock what a guy and our debts are forgiven we release them and we are released we bring healing to them and we are healed that's counterintuitive and paradoxical but that's the spiritual i've given us a decision to release them and the process in which we are released so john lock lived from 1632 to 1704 he's regarded as an influential enlightenment thinker and the father of liberalism and one of the first of the british empiricists and he was also the first person to use argument from authority the latin phrase but he meant something completely different by it than what we mean today so the root word is here for argumentum ad vericudium is shyness or modesty and it was first explained by john lock in the english language and he did not designate this as a logical fallacy so he said that this type of argument consisted of alleging the opinions of men whose parts learning eminence power has gained a name and settled their reputation in the common esteem with some kind of authority so when men are established in any kind of dignity it is thought a breach of modesty for others to derogate it and to question the authority of men who are in possession of such dignity this is apt to be censured as carrying with it too much pride and a man does not readily yield to the determination of approved authors which is one to be received with respect and submission by others and it just looked upon as insolence for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion against that of some learned doctor or otherwise approved writer okay so john lock gave us argumentum ad hominem and he also gave us argument from authority so every profession depends upon argument from authority and almost everything we know is because some authoritative source has told us so every profession wants wants interchanges that a consensual expert professional authority somehow a single reliable objective truth right we've got outside in the world we have a cacophony of competing truth claims right on all those other live streams on everything else in your life it's nothing but a cacophony of competing truth claims and you come here because you want an experience that is consensual expert professional authoritative producing a single reliable objective truth that's why you come to this live stream but what if authority ceases to be consensual have you even thought about that and what if there isn't a safe word we used to call those bumper lips you got 40 type of lips that can strip chrome off a bumper history will describe him look forward if you're a ruler of earth argument from authority is only a fallacy when it's all you've got failure to even engage in discussion cause medical association says you're a bigot thank you don lemon this peter novik book is so good just blowing my mind i mean you want to know why i've got such full full hair is because this peter novik book just blew my mind oh our bell says youtube tip playing copyright stuff with your phone tilting it back and forth seems to fill the detection technology it's commonly used by the classic metal show our bell damn you're on top of things tilting it from the microphone excellent blessings mega blessings bell all right so in the late 19th century this anomaly of clearly conflicting versions of the same historical event it used to be attributed in the historical profession as pre-professional habits of untrained and thus unauthoritative emitters and when these anomalies appeared in the first decades of organized historical scholarship certain allowance was made for the for the vestigial presence of old habits but in the event the problems rarely arose because there were institutional and disciplinary mechanisms which made it different different perspectives unusual so the american historical associations registered register of dissertation topics averted confrontations kind of warded off confrontations so that transpersonal replicability which was the touchstone of objectivity in the natural sciences that's what the american historical association wanted to achieve so the nature of the historical discipline with its heavy emphasis on excavating new verified factual materials from archives process requiring years essentially discourage duplication so such duplication was likely to be unproductive for the individual's career and is likely to be unproductive for the efficient deployment of the resources of the historical profession as a whole so if various historians came out with different perspectives on the same event then this kind of showed that maybe history was not so scientific and not so verifiable and not so replicable maybe the whole historical scholarship and you can apply this to live streaming maybe not so scientific not so objective not so replicable so earlier in the historical profession when contradictions occurred between two works in successive generations on the same topic the differences would try to be attributed to newly discovered sources now in the early and mid 20s 1920s the scholarly community was frustrated by the absence of an authoritative definitive account of the causes of world war one by some acknowledged specialist in european diplomatic history so when such a work appeared it's like oh thank god there will be an end to vulgar polemics right i do this show to try to bring about an end to the vulgar polemics of blood sport and and to bring back an erudite and respectful dialogue without argumentum ad hominem and without any logical fallacies so in 1928 good old sydney b fei right we all respect sydney b fei like universally acknowledged to be a sober and meticulous scholar and he finally published his long awaited origins of world war one and it was a moderate revisionist statement so the dominant statement at the time was that germany caused world war one the revisionist school said no germany was not the prime cause of world war one so good old sydney b fei universally acknowledged to be a sober and meticulous scholar right his book the origins of world war it was enthusiastically recede because the desire for closure was so strong the scholars of very different views proclaimed themselves satisfied with good old sober sydney b fei's work so those who have fought for historical truth they could finally rest their case those who'd been on the fence what they can use this authoritative work as a stepping stone into the revisionist camp the germany was not primarily responsible for world war one so even you know preston slosson that dedicated anti-revisionist historian even he refused to classify the sober fei with the revisionist because he had separated fei from the unwelcome allies of the extreme left and fei did not accept the thesis of a franco- russian conspiracy as a primary cause of world war one and raymond turner what a what a historian what a guy we'd all love to have have a diet pepsi caffeine free with raymond turner he claimed that fei assigned germany a role second only to austrian causing the war now his assertion led sober fei to protest in the new york times about people who quote get out of a book what they are looking for rather than what's actually in it boy does that frustrate me so as fei's work near completion there was this uh other historian schmitt who followed the norms of priority and conflict avoidance within the profession he completely abandoned his own plans to produce a synthetic meaning uh artificial borrowed treatment of war origins but anti-revisionist like archibald kerry coolidge and james t shotwell convinced schmitt that it was his duty to combat the pernicious influence of fei's work because it's the most effective book i've ever read it's the big book it has precise instructions which i could not discern on my own i needed help i needed a step guide to shine the light on each page so that i could read the page and the sentences would crack open and their meaning would be revealed to me so we're talking schmitt his name's bernadette evilly schmitt based on what a guy digest version of what a guy you know i've read so the second book i've read is forgive for good by friend luskin l us k i n he's a clinical psychologist a professor it's okay decision to release all right let's go back to peter novick so so bernadette schmitt and it's a bloke's name all right he's he wasn't he wasn't lighting his loafers all right you know anything about bernadette evilly schmitt all right like sounds like he's really light in his loafers but he was a man's man all right there's nothing suss about good old bernadette evilly schmitt all right he was at the university of chicago very sober historian no he wasn't he wasn't trans all right so good old bernadette schmitt he came out with his two volume the coming of the war 1914 so this is two years after sober phase magnum opus appeared in 1928 about the origins of world war one so bernadette schmitt's two-volume work was respectfully received and in what may have been more a political than a literary or scholarly judgment he received the pullet surprise but even friendly academic reviewers compared it unfavorably to phasework a verdict that schmitt attributed to the pro-german climate of opinion in the academic history profession they're even more disturbing to bernadette schmitt and his book's core reception were the epistemological and professional implications of the disagreement between fey and himself now this is important all right sydney b fey very sober scholar and then i know his name doesn't sound sober but bernadette evilly schmitt very sober scholar so how did two professionally trained sober historians come to completely different conclusions about the origins of world war one and does this mean the historical profession is not objective not scientific not replicable say it's not true 40 so bernadette schmitt says this this has always troubled me we meaning fey and himself had both taken advanced degrees at eminent universities we use the same documents we read the same biographies we read the same memoirs in preparing our respective voice and we came up with completely different interpretations like how did two professionally trained historians read the same documents come up with two completely different interpretations doesn't this deny that history is objective scientific and replicable is there something wrong with our methods of historical study and training when two scholars draw such conflicting conclusions from the same evidence i mean is there something wrong with the traditional assumptions that conflicting conclusions are an anomaly and that authoritative objective consensus could be expected on important historical issues well that's what i want to raise with you this afternoon were we naive to believe that authoritative objective consensus could be expected on important historical issues now the chat says history is gay disavow i mean sure history may be gay but that's a good thing right so controversies over the origins of world war one had mainly concerned scholars of europe and were carried out largely in the 1920s but the next set of controversies that we will examine those concerning slavery reconstruction and the origins of civil war were the province of not european europeanists but americanists scholars of america and these disputes took place for the most part in the 1930s so pre-world war one historiography meaning the story of history had been converging on these issues and this convergence had given pre-war historians confidence in the objective fruit of their labors now interwar historical thought was diverging which was troublesome for the program of demonstrating the objectivity replicability and scientific nature of professional historical scholarship so between world war one world war two southern regional consciousness remained high but these mutually incompatible interpretive frameworks of interwar historians did not necessarily follow regional lines so you had historians within both the north and the south differing sharply on issues which shaped historiography of mid-19th century struggles so you had charles beard and his girl which emphasized economic and class conflict from a marxist perspective so before 1914 we had growing agreement on racist premises and these racist premises were the foundation of a convergence of historical interpretations on issues surrounding the civil war but after world war one you had divergent attitudes on the issue of putative black inferiority it hurts me even to say this but people back then they were so racist and prejudiced and bigoted that some of them thought that some races were inferior to other races gosh i gotta disavow so these different attitudes on the purported inferiority of different races led to historiographical dissensus so what's dissensus it's the opposite of consensus so for a whole variety of reasons we have a growing number of white historians civil minority among historians they began to question all these racist assumptions that have previously been taken for granted well the explanation for my appearance is that people were pleading with me to let my head down so i'm letting my head down i'm creating an informal space where we can gather together with our professional demeanors and our comedy what's wrong with my eyes i mean i haven't been sleeping so i have not been sleeping just terrible terrible sleep last night because i've been concerned with whether or not the study of history is objective replicable and scientific so i just could not sleep you look like you got punched in the left eye well i just didn't sleep yeah i just ragged all and had a good time i am not aware of any sleep so i couldn't sleep so i was listening to hillary mantel's third book in her series on uh cromwell cromwell uh so i was listening to that and then at about 1 30 a.m i gave up and i said let me just watch this woman's soccer match between the united states and canada and canada mirror and the light yeah i was listening to that then i watched the us soccer match where canada defeated the us 1-0 and then i tried to go to sleep and i still couldn't fall asleep so i watched australia lose to sweden 1-0 and by the time that was over it's time to get up and out of so i did not sleep but i took my medafil at a big cup of coffee and then i also took some marcher green powder so and and i took what was the supplement i took altheanine helps to make the coffee high last twice as long so between world war one and world war two historians white historians stop being so racist against the black man still just a minority but we got the teachings of a new anti-racist anthropology and many historians are absolutely repelled by lynchings and other fruits of 20th century southern racism then for others leftist political commitments were the decisive element so historians from the south were more likely to be racist than their colleagues who were born in the north but these weren't the only factors all right yeah i got into a fight it was a misunderstanding and uh i don't want to talk about it i mean you think i look bad you should you should see the other guy i mean you think i'm verbally quick i mean you should see me with my fists but i disavow violence it's only a last resort last resort yeah i was defending a muslim migrant woman's honor against some nativist populist conservative patriarchal white men okay so often general ideological considerations or generational considerations are often more important than regional considerations so you have northern born historians his intellectual formation took place during that cursed era of scientific racism and they remain firmly set in their attitudes disavow so you know milo m quayf q a i f e the iowa born editor of the mississippi valley historical review i got to disavow what he said shocking that he'd say something he published an editorial in that journal in 1926 which expressed alarm that men eminent in american life and scholarship had lent their support for the association for the study of negro life in history with its according to him this awful bigoted racist with its absurd doctrine of racial equality and this horrible man milo m quayf said it is proper that the i'll just say blank contribution to civilization whatever it may consist in should be accorded its due mead of recognition but the practical consequence of inculcating the rising generation with the idea that all the races of mankind occupy one common level of mediocrity seems to us as appalling as the teaching itself is unhistorical well got to disavow so those northern historians who made their commitment to racial equality clear were generally younger and on the left so we had socialists like friend shannon communists like james allen herbert apthika philip foner and herbert morris it's just makes me so sad and this is another reason why i could not sleep last night there's just a casual matter of fact racism in the writing of many into war northern historians not just southern historians but northern historians Arthur M. Schlesinger he served on the board of the association for the study of negro life in history for more than 20 years he believed that likely that high achievement among a certain racial group was the result of an infusion of white blood disavow wow so racist then paul h buck in the concluding paragraph of the road to reunion 1865 to 1900 published in 1937 he expressed satisfaction with the northern decision to accept white domination of blacks in the south gosh disavow he said the unchanging elements of the race problem had become apparent to most observers once the people admits the fact that a major problem is basically insoluble they have taken the first step in learning how to live with it gosh so racist and bigoted disavow really really bad makes me very upset to read this so we have the combination of generational and ideological factors and you can see these in the racial attitudes of southern born historians resident in the north so all rich be philips he became more conservative and more racist with the passing of the years though in his early years at university of wisconsin he'd been a passionate progressive and he attributed you know putative inferiority of one particular race to environmental factors and his writings on race were directed against reactionary southern extremists but in the course of the 1920s his target shifted to racial egalitarians who had scarcely existed when he began his career and he asserted the cardinal test of a southerner in the central theme of southern history was a common resolve indomitably maintained that it shall be and remain a white man's country gosh gotta disavow that racism bigotry when william b hezzeltine came up from virginia to study at ohio state in 1926 the thing he liked least he wrote his mother was the damned yankees all around on all sides another thing that he really disliked is the certain protected group who shall not be named he writes i'm beginning to get used to sitting in classes with them that have not gotten to the place where i welcome them one old member of the protected group is in my class the other day he spoke to me i was not thinking and said unconsciously how do uncle he has not spoken to me since i really didn't mean to offend the old fellow he looks to me as though he should be following a mule in arkansas instead of following history in a university gosh so racist that's horrible just imagine he thought that his fellow student should be following a mule in arkansas instead of following history at ohio state hezzeltine then became one of the most savage critics of reactionary and racist southern historiography so he said the real central theme of southern history was the maintenance of the planter class in control said that racism was the effective instrument for preventing unity among the exploited like depression born necessity brought tenant farmers of both races to stand shorter to shorter against their oppressors so so that was a brief exception during the days of populism so southern historians who remained in the south were not all racist though there was massive pressure for conformity the fall extent of their dissidents and matters of race did not always appear most southern historians had absorbed traditional racial attitudes in their youth and had them reinforced daily by their environment and their defense of racism became more strident the more that racism came under attack so frank l elsley he became president of the southern historical association in 1940 he was one of the vanderbilt agrarians who composed the 1930 manifesto i'll take my stand in defense of traditional southern values and culture so in his contribution to the volume he wrote of half savage protected group some of whom could still remember the taste of human flash and the bulk of them hardly three generations removed from cannibalism wow so racist and bigoted totally disavow before and after the civil war tranquil race relations in the south had been disturbed by northern troublemakers who had bamboozled the childish and naive protected group into believing that the white man was his oppressor so he proposed to robert penn warren that a secret organization be formed to bolster southern morale in combating the interlopers members would be required to read i'll take my stand and avery craver and craven's biography edmund ruffin now entates life of jessison davis and to visit confederate cemeteries and if that didn't work if smart lawyers meaning like so racist here he's talking about jewish lawyers if these smart lawyers continue to come to the south to stir up lax he threatened a revival of the klu klu klux klan wow that's not very it's not very professional i mean this is no way for a historian to speak so much bigotry yeah i was i was defending migrants from lauren southern and she got in like a real left talk and that's that's why my left eye is the way it is i will be back in three hours bye bye