 Okay, May 40 here So I was just watching the first two episodes of the new HBO Documentary small town news So have you seen that? It's a documentary series on this small town news operation in Nevada and Here we go So it's called small town news colon KPVM per um So it's a reality TV show, but it's set in a real workplace In this small town 27,000 people town in Nevada perump Nevada and it's mainly focused around the the news department of key pvm and I'm watching this show and I read some reviews on it and They talk about how lovable the characters are and there's not so much the show's not laughing at people. It's laughing with people So lots of friendly humor And the show has an opportunity to mark its characters, but it doesn't there's no judgment coming from the soundtrack or the editing that The show enables us to laugh alongside the cast now I watched the show. I just found it really depressing Like now why the heck did I I find this depressing? I mean, there's no objective reason Why I should find small town news KPVM perump the depressing But I mean the whole idea of living in perump it just It seems depressing to me. So perump is a town in the state of Nevada all right, and It's on the southernmost tip of nigh county. So the most southern part of the state of Nevada It's 60 miles west of las vegas. It's adjacent to the california border And the town has a population of 36 000 people, but this small town tv station It reminded me of what i'm doing here. What i'm doing here is essentially, you know operating a small tv station And it's not watching it and thinking like would I be so desperate for attention or to get on tv? That I'd move to a town like perump to try to do the weather or news reporting or even anchoring the news from perump, Nevada And so it just made me think about oh How desperate have I been? Yeah, I'm operating the traveling salvation show. So Surely you've had the experience you're watching a live stream And they the the operators really want your attention and the more they want your attention the more uncomfortable you feel like the more Cringy it feels that they're so desperate for your approval and for your superchats and for your Subscribing like please like and subscribe You know hit that like button Punch that subscribe button that it just makes you uncomfortable. And so I'm watching this HBO documentary series on this small town in Nevada like this small town news operation And I'm thinking like to what lengths will people go to to get on tv and then how true is that for me? and how is that say distorted my life and then I came to the realization like when I'm doing a show that I think is useful Like when I'm doing a show that I think is contributing Then it doesn't feel cringy like if I go on here and it's just like Look at me Now just you know weird attention whoring or I stumble on a show like that It makes me feel uncomfortable like the harder people strive to to grab my attention on on youtube the more uncomfortable I get on the other hand some people Really has something to offer. I mean professor Casey. I was just watching his his latest video on On poetry and it was good. It's like he seemed like he was coming from a good place He had something to offer he had something to give and it's not depressing right when you encounter someone here on youtube and The the disturbing feeling you get is that they just really want your attention so that they can Hold things together for another day That's that's depressing right? That's that's cringe-making so so when If you want to be on tv or you want to be on youtube or you want to be on the radio or you want to do a podcast Or you want to write a blog or you want to write a twitter account As long as you have reason to believe that you're contributing All right, as long as it's just not hey look at me then I think you can feel good about what you're doing and One thing that's striking to me in this new show Is that there are people in the show who seem at ease with who they are there's this couple from fairbanks, alaska Who who moved to perump during the winter right? They flee nebraska in the winter moved to perump and they seem genuinely at ease and happy so Their ego is not depressed that they're doing small town local news. I mean they they just Events this ethos that they just want to help That they just want to contribute However they can and if they can contribute by doing the editing or by doing the weather Or by reporting or helping to anchor a show They're just happy to contribute and they seem to be like genuinely at ease and and happy with themselves And they have this attitude of like what can I do? How can I contribute? How can I be helpful there? So they're fun to watch and then And the owner of the station is really cringy. He talks about he's set up his antenna in las vegas And he talks about we've got no three million potential viewers But you know that they they're lucky to get, you know, 50 or 100 or 200 viewers so I mean i've got three million potential viewers right now I've got three actual viewers and three million potential viewers. So it's It's painful when you see someone Living in delusion about oh, you know, I've got these millions of potential viewers And then they've set up that channel They've set up seven different digital channels and they're trying to figure out how to fill up that space And so they're thinking about oh, maybe we'll do a marijuana themed channel And so I'm just thinking like how depressing would it be to be working on a marijuana themed channel? Like I I don't think I'd be into that or let's do an lgbt channel and so there's nothing inherently wrong about Doing a youtube livestream or being on tv But if you're just pumping out content that is perhaps destructive to people Then how on earth are you gonna feel feel good about that? So like sometimes there's this desperate urge to come up with content And that's fine. But if it skips the question of how does this contribute? How does this help? You know, how do I feel good about this? Right, how would this How would this play out if different sectors of my life happen to stumble across what I'm doing? Then I think you get into trouble if you if you don't if you don't go to that contributing question so I've been reading a wonderful book All right Talking to you about uh, yesterday that noble dream The objectivity question in the american historical profession is by by peter novick And just wonderful book and he talks about various trends in the history profession and so after I cannot be I couldn't be a respectable community member with a marijuana themed channel in my yeah, all right who Who like why would you feel good about say? Oh, let's do a stripper channel All right, so this the small town tv news station they report on the the closing or the opening of a local brothel and And the big like btsm dungeon room for people to play in I mean, that's fine. Like you do the do the odd report but But what kind of toll would it take on your soul if you're gonna be just focused like oh, let's just do a channel on btsm I agree with rabbi judas and what he said sunday that anyone whose identity is focused around their sexuality that that's disturbing All right, so whether you're gay or straight Whether you're you know into vanilla or whether you're into btsm if that's your identity Right by your sexual preferences. It is. It's somewhat disturbing. So after world war two In the history profession it kind of coalesced around this idea of being objective There were objective truths about history And that that we're all kind of in it together that there was this feeling of comedy meaning a common benefit right and Professional demeanors. So we're not going to tear each other to shreds. We're going to work together We're going to objectively seek out the truth. And that was the that was the consensus in the history profession and They they generally stayed away from stating right and wrong They generally stayed away from, you know, these huge overarching narratives with some exceptions. Guess what those exceptions are it was like universally agreed that Internationalism is good globalism is good. The united states should accept the responsibilities of world power and foreign policy that this is good and That we should have complete racial egalitarianism Particularly with regard to black-white relations, right? So those were the areas where it's totally cool to have opinions Right. These weren't even regarded as opinions. They're regarded as objective truths So any other demonstration of values like you're you're looked at scans upon but pushing for racial egalitarianism and for the united states to Accept the responsibilities of world power, right? Those those were objective truths that the That the history profession just kind of united around after world war two So there were these various pains to the liberal tradition, right? Racial egalitarianism globalism, right? That was cool as historians, right? But aside from that any overt Acknowledgement that you are writing history from some sort of overarching perspective that was completely shunned Restricted to just a handful of avowedly Christian historians Well, if we made it clear that it was their faith that they found the resolution of vexing problems with historical objectivity so I had a good show on sunday with uh With rabbi judas maccabeus going up against duvid. That was uh Some intense times judas versus duvid was interesting long time since i've watched jewish blood sports as Ricardo is dangerous for non-jews to participate in and around it. I've been thinking a lot about it. Yeah, so Well here all these pains to free speech So there was a I think there was an op-ed in either. I think in the new york times by susan wish nick wish nick Wish nicky the ceo of youtube about how youtube is dedicated to free speech They're dedicated to having a variety of voices, but of course Any non-jew who says anything remotely critical of jews in a public setting like it's not going to rebound too well on them But on the other hand For jews to critique non-jewish society. That's a wonderful thing But for members of non-jewish society to critique jews. Oh, that's off the table Right, you'll get your video removed from youtube for that. You'll be You'll be driven out of polite society if you do that. So, yeah, it's wonderful when blacks critique white society But when whites critique negatively black society, that's imper- impermissible. We cannot have that It's wonderful when homosexuals critique heterosexuals They're called them breeders like that's enlivening. That's uh, that's vibrant But if heterosexuals say anything negative about homosexuals. Well, we can't have that on youtube That's out of bounds So it's great when when jews critique non-jews, but when non-jews critique jews, that's impermissible We can't allow that so Yeah, jewish blood sports are quite dangerous for the well-being of non-jews to participate in so it was 1979 when I decided to become a journalist And this is in the aftermath of watergate when to be a journalist with suddenly Had some social prestige and a lot of people wanted to go into the journalism profession And there was a lot of talk in the journalistic profession that we should try to be objective and what Objectivity is usually meant for people is that you just simply report the things that you were told by The mayor by members of the city council by the public health officer by doctors by people in authority by What the bureaucrats say if you simply report what people in authority say what the heads of various bureaucratic agencies declare Then then you're being objective And there's there was a terrific essay in 1984 talking about the facts of el salvador according to objective versus new journalism so new journalism And ricotta says I think I was naive when I waited into the internet debates Yeah because it is such hot button issue and And it's a lot easier for me to get away with it because i'm not not married with kids And so i'm not as vulnerable as people who say married with kids established in it in a profession Have to have to earn a solid living and the more prestigious your profession the more vulnerable you are to getting cancelled So if you're a university professor or you're a news commentator If if you're Some kind of politician if you have some kind of authority if you're a professor I mentioned that yeah, then you're much more vulnerable to to getting cancelled For saying something where if you're a plumber or an electrician it wouldn't have any negative consequences So in in journalism and in the history profession We have a lot of discussion about Objectivity versus subjectivity and can we ever be objective? So objective journalists attack new journalists colleagues for distorting facts refusing to adhere to normal journalistic protocols And the participants in new journalism where you can even call them bloggers or live streamers say that The quote-unquote objective journalists are inevitably skewing facts because of biases built into the very procedures that objective journalists use so I don't think any of us right now have any doubt that the Ported objective journalists in the washington post new york times wall street journal inevitably skew things according to certain predictable biases And riccardo says duvet is right about adam green the negative reaction to honest inquiry creates hatred well I I don't see I don't see adam green as simply honest inquiry. I mean The guy is predictably Reflexively anti-jewish But uh So so for we we often tend to give people the benefit of the doubt Now people are so confusing. There are so many different, you know complexities to people that once we decide we like someone We tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and we kind of flatten everything that's that's disturbing About them and we just like make, you know one one image for them. So So people are much more varied and and often disturbing than we want to think about if we like them so we kind of flatten who they are and and You know ascribe a solidity and and a true self to them that they they don't don't really have so There are 50 million americans if they started talking on a live stream They would be considered, you know, completely outside the pale Like all sorts of conversations that take place uh In in certain settings such as a synagogue or a church or a strip club or a men's club or locker room or Where men are just talking with men and they feel comfortable and then you take that conversation out of that particular context and bring it to a wider context then Then you get into a lot of trouble So So, I mean, I think it's fair to say that adam green just, you know, reflexively does not like jews I mean, he could do what he does In a way that is not reflexively anti- jewish like if he if he would say, okay, let's compare Jewish attitude attitudes and beliefs about chosenness would say japanese attitudes and beliefs about chosenness and with chinese attitudes and beliefs about Choseness and these tribes in africa They also believe that they were chosen by by the universe to to play some kind of special role like let's give some kind of context so One one way of deciding whether or not someone is just reflexively anti- jewish is let's take the jewish Part of the equation out and say, okay, would they speak the same way About say the japanese or the chinese or some tribe in africa or or any other group who Who may be doing or saying the things that this person Disagrees that jews are doing and you can do the same thing with the jewish attitudes towards christians So often jews have a reflexively Antichristian bias there are some christians who reflexively have an anti- jewish bias So that's why compare and contrast Like what's your attitude towards other peoples Other groups who do similar things that you as appalled by them as you are at what christians are doing or what what jews are doing So back to objective truth so Both objective and new journalism and live streaming and history. We all depend upon understandings of fact And our modern understandings of fact depend on john lock So he published a very important essay in 1690 essay concerning human understanding And so he says facts are simply basic reflections of reality that are expressed in language so facts Are oral visual physical elements in a world shared with all different types of consciousness so So facts are linguistic products of the interaction of our consciousness with our environment So there there are four types of the new journalism It's a genre that describes a reality that doesn't hold its shape So the new journalists and often the the live streamers and the bloggers they see a reality that's become discontinuous fragmented chaotic and fiction like It's like too bizarre for the the For its truth to be reflected in objective journalism of the new york times Then you've got arguments that new journalism is based on class that Is a new class that plays a charismatic religious role in in american society You can say the same thing about live streamers and then you could say new journalism is a response to mass communication technologies Or it's a way of grouping together a lot of good writers who happen to come along at the same time But essentially new journalism was tom wolf like when tom wolf stopped writing journalism new journalism was was done So his journalism depended upon a four-fold approach to creating compelling writing Close attention to status details seen by seeing construction Liberal use of realistic dialogue and multiple points of view so this essay compares the reportings of the new york times from el salvador with the new journalism approach of jern didion so starts with the the understanding that most breaking news in latin america has Very little significance to us in the united states if latin america fell off the map tomorrow United states of america would not be much affected If mississippi and arkansas fell off the map tomorrow united states would be not much affected If every seventh day ad venice in the world disappeared tomorrow The world would not be much affected So the news that we we tend to get is the results of bureaucratic procedures So we get we learn about the drawing up of a new constitution in latin america We learned about you know new political parties um, so we've got all these you know bureaucratic You know highly observed stories, but they don't really mirror the substance of life So you you may experience you pick up the la times new york times wastreet journal washington post and you read it And so this got nothing to do with my life Right i'm going to go to 40 because what 40 talks about that connects with my life But when i read the washington post or watch the mbc evening news it doesn't connect to my life So objective journalists like the new york times or mbc news They essentially follow government bureaucracies They collect official statements and then they translate them for their mass audience While people like adjourned idiot and the new journalists They they write from an individual's consciousness So she tries to put herself in as many different situations as possible And she tries to receive information from all of her senses, you know from what she smells what she sees what she hears She'll occasionally use official information sources, but they are not considered the most reliable so for mainstream journalism Sources like dr. Fauci the cdc the What the food and drug administration these are considered the most reliable sources Like the these big bureaucracies these these are the repositories of truth While while for for dissidents the things that you hear At the corner drug store or the things that you observe You know while you're out for a jog or when you're driving down the street these these are Just as true or more true than what you hear from Anthony Fauci or the cdc or the food and drug administration or the governor of california so traditionally journalism relies on news that that flows from the passage of bureaucratically Recognized events through administrative procedures. So the new york times and the mbc news they'd rather rely on The cdc says something the food and drug administration says something There was a court case that was decided today. The supreme court has ruled Right, so news depends upon the passage of bureaucratically recognized events through administrative procedures so I'm reading this terrific terrific Uh, peter novik book on on history at that noble At noble idea is the title of the book a noble dream the objectivity question and the american historical profession so After world war two until about the mid 1960s Historians kind of united around a universalist globalist racial egalitarian Uh, liberal approach to to history And any other expression of values Then that was generally shunned But once the 60s exploded then historians felt Court between a desire to be important in the world to count in the world and their desire to understand the world So generally speaking your desire to change the world and your ability to understand the world are going to be in tension Right the more you work at changing the world The more difficult it will be for you to understand the world and the more you divert yourself to understanding the world the less inclined you will be to be an activist so So for personalities like like mine, I really primarily want to just understand the world Right, I tend towards naturally to being detached to being neutral to trying to understand things in a critical way and Just kind of stand back observe But then we've got the terrible urgency of all our social and political and cultural problems And then that pushes me in a different direction, right? I have a pragmatic impulse as well so So for some of us we will be persuaded less by arguments and more by the dictates of our own temperaments so In the american temperament there's a powerful bias towards trying to change history, right history is bunk is kind of a of a very american attitude And and the urgency of our problems seems it seems to demand that we set aside detachment and court analysis and and Get started in in activism or get get started in trying to help so during the late 1960s early 1970s journalists often came under attack by people like Vice president spiral agnew chicago may reach it daily for not reporting objectively And what they meant was the journalists weren't simply accepting official versions of the actions and fortunes of american troops in vietnam So if I simply repeat to you What the world health organization says or what anthony fouchi says or what the cdc says or what the Food and drug administration says, right? Then i'm objective. I'm never going to be booted from youtube I'm simply relaying to you these authoritative sources of information So if I simply accept the official versions that are given to us by our social betters at the world whole thought organization or Simply repeat to you what I read in the new york times All right, then if I accept these official versions of reality Then my life's going to be a lot easier. All right. I'm not going to I'm not going to get kicked off of social media I'm not going to have my life turned upside down by By journalists intent on exposing misinformation disinformation All right, so often what is called objective Is simply meaning that you accept the official versions of events That and that means you are serving the interests of those in power You're serving the interests of the chinese communist party the world health organization democratic party Joe biden cdc Right. There's there's a lot of pressure by big tech And by those in power that only those who Support the status quo Right get to have power and influence and those who are dissidents, right? They're dangerous So on the one hand, there's objectivity, which means you accept official versions of events And then there's reality All right, and so often objectivity and reality are completely in contradiction So we saw this during the covid pandemic We got all sorts of contrasting and conflicting health advice that youtube Would legislate and so if you go against the health advice of Those who are officially in power then you're spreading misinformation But often that which is objectively stated by those in power. There's absolutely no resemblance to the truth There's no resemblance to reality So peter novick in this new book he talks quite a bit about wisconsin Right, so wisconsin's where kevin mcdonald did his phd in psychology And kevin mcdonald remembers a lot of left-wing members of a particular tribe He encountered them for the first time when he was at university and he saw how much energy And effectiveness they had So this is peter novick writing That wisconsin was a left-wing holdout against more conservative historiographical currents in the history profession So University of wisconsin's history faculty contained a number of historians Served as models of graduate students a significant portion of whom were new york jews of left-wing backgrounds And wisconsin served for them as an americanizing function so one student says To his uh professor at the university of wisconsin that he'd been an inspiration to him in becoming an american radical All right, not just a jewish radical not just someone in the midst of an internal immigration All right, not just another new york radical But by going to the university of wisconsin He'd learned how to become an american radical so paul brainis another graduate student in history at university of wisconsin at madison Said that left-wing jews who identified With william applehorn williams Left-wing historian were trying to submerge their jewishness into his very american socialism or even his socialist americanism so Peter novics very keen observer of to go discover america The real america so they left new york city. They went to wisconsin and they got an education in american approaches to leftism And so they could enable them to feel as though they were wholehearted for full americans not just radical new york intellectuals So peter novics book that noble dream the objectivity question in the american historical profession. It came out in 1988 One of his two most important books. The other one is the holocaust in american life So historical objectivity is not just a single idea Right, it's a sprawling collection of assumptions attitudes aspirations And antipathies things that you hate so objectivity is an essentially contested concept like social justice or leading a christian life the exact meaning of which will always in dispute so beliefs in objectivity Include a commitment to the reality of the past to the truth As correspondence to that reality to a sharp separation between the knower and the known So distinction between the observer and the data Between fact and value between history and fiction So this is the pursuit for historical objectivity. So historical facts are seen as prior to an independent of interpretation But the value of an interpretation is judged by how well it accounts for the facts And if an interpretation is Contradicted by the facts then it must be abandoned So from this perspective truth is one. It's not perfect perspectival So perspectival approach to truth says the truth looks different from different angles. All right, so if you're driving down the road And you're the passenger and you look over at the speedometer It will look different to you than if you're the driver because of the angle at which you're looking at the speedometer So when you're a passenger the speedometer may well look as though it's five or ten miles faster Then it looks to the person who's driving So often your perspective will will completely Shape what what you're seeing so often what you are will shape what you're seeing All right, we we tend to see the world not as it is but as we are So from the objective historical approach, whatever patterns exist in history these patterns are found They're not created by our interpretations And so different Different generations of historians as their perspective shift may attribute different significance to different events in the past But the meaning of those events is unchanging so For those who believe in objective history the objective historians role is out of a neutral or disinterested judge They must never degenerate into that of an advocate or a propagandist And yet if you look around you and you're incredibly disturbed by social, cultural, political, religious changes Then you're going to be very tempted to give up your your disinterested clinical observer status and want to you know get right into the action and try to change things So from an objective point of view the historians conclusions are expected to display the standard judicial qualities Of balance and even handedness so yeah Topic of this dream is that noble dream the pursuit of objectivity So What does objectivity mean? So In the news objectivity usually means repeating and translating pronouncements from official sources From bureaucracies from governments from court rulings you take the pronouncements of the centers for disease control Or you take pronouncements from the president or the results of a court case Or the results of a bureaucratic ruling and then you you make it intelligible to people with the 100 IQ So that's traditionally what's called objective reporting where you're simply reflecting back official representations of reality Even though what's objective and what's real may be incredibly disconnected so An objective approach to driving down the freeway Says that you can just look at the speedometer and you can tell how fast you're going But a challenge to that is what you're going to see on the speedometer It's going to depend upon where you're sitting All right, if you're in the passenger seat the speedometer in all likelihood is going to read differently to you You're going to think that you're going five or ten miles faster because of your perspective on things so I'm amusing about objectivity So I had a background in journalism I I worked in local local news for a while and as a local news journalist What what it meant is I'd call the local police station a couple of times a day to find out what was happening So sometimes the police would say yeah five Mexican nationals died in in a car accident overnight and so I would report that news or sometimes I'd go cover the san francisco 49ers I'd give the score I'd go into the locker room. I'd get quotes from bill welch germantana You know various players and I wouldn't go into these stories in any depth because like two minutes was like way too long for a story And I became frustrated and I dropped out of that in August of 1987 To just start taking my academic seriously. So I got started becoming a straight-A student I got accepted into UCLA. I was determined to become an academic an economist. I wanted to pursue truth You know, I love truth and so I'm using on different perspectives on truth So is it is it what the cdc says? Is it what I experience? Is it what I learn down at the corner drugstore? How much does perspective matter when when some so if If truth is objective then ad hominem Arguments and arguments from authority have no place Right, if we're just talking here about objective truth then Then it's out of bounds to argue the person or to try to argue from authority, but Challenging that right. I've often said on on this show that the only honorable ways The only honorable topics for for an argument are facts and logic and anything that Strays from facts and logic is is dishonorable But then I'm thinking after reading this book by Peter Novick almost everything we know about the world We take from authority Right, we we have to appeal to authority for our understandings of reality and then What if I'm not just laying out logical syllogisms here on these live streams so it's not just using deductive or inductive Philosophical logic what if I am Simply more like an observer of events that you also are observing so if what if what we're doing here is talking about events where I'm observing events you're observing events Then Then ad hominem argument has a role to play because if I've got certain biases Okay, I want to protect my conversion to orthodox Judaism I don't want to create any trouble for myself within my orthodox Jewish community. Obviously, that's going to give me a bias All right, and so on the one hand you can say ah, that's an ad hominem argument but What I'm doing here is not generally speaking. I'm not just laying out philosophical syllogisms What I'm doing here is I am an observer on life and you're an observer on life and we're both Witnessing things and sharing what we witness and therefore what's going on with me and what's going on with you is probably going to have a profound effect on our ability to accurately witness reality and sometimes In in arguments that we have here We'll we'll get the dismissal world that what you're doing is a logical fallacy Because you're employing the logical fallacy of arguing from authority but you're employing logical fallacy of a personal attack And I see that and I do enjoy discussions that are primarily just focused on facts and logic but Given that what we're doing here is not generally speaking Just spinning various philosophical syllogisms. What we're doing here is we're sure sharing our witness to reality And so just as when you have seven witnesses to a car accident their Their observations are going to frequently clash So two, you know your observations about coveted and my observations about coveted They're going to clash and some of that clash may be because of our own biases or filters or or incentives And so maybe arguments About the person and not Not as out of bounds as I I thought they were for a long time. So maybe what we're doing here We're just neutral disinterested judges All right, we're not advocating. We're not propagandizing We're just trying to exhibit standard judicial quality as a balanced and even handedness and I do strive for these things often And you know, maybe we all feel part of this wider community and we want to have Comedy, you know a sense of the the common good and we we want to display a professional demeanor So we don't kick off youtube or have real-life complications So if you value professional demeanor and comedy on the one hand, you're going to be much less likely to criticize and attack someone else So then you're going to let a lot more bs slide so Objectivity is going to be at great risk When we're relaying things for utilitarian purposes, like if I've got an agenda here I want to protect israel. I want to protect the jews. I want to protect the good name of the city of los angeles If if I've got an agenda then that makes you question, you know, how how objective I can be so so if I'm Trying to communicate with you that I'm just an objective student of the the truth Then then I'd have to purge myself of all external loyalties and I can't do that Like I feel great loyalty to the country I was raised in Australia where Much of my family lives. I feel great loyalty to my United States of America where I've lived 85 percent of my life and I have great loyalty to california where I've lived about 70 percent of my life I have great loyalty to los angeles where I've lived for about half of my life a great loyalty to orthodox jews Because I converted to orthodox judeism. I have loyalty to the jewish state of israel Because it is the the jewish state and I converted to judeism that that's part of the whole package. So How can I be objective? When I have all these external loyalties all right Shouldn't my primary allegiance here just be to objective truth? and to my colleagues who share a commitment towards cooperative cumulative efforts to advance towards that goal of objective truth I think about the the declaration of independence We hold these truths to be self-evident That all men are created equal They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men all right So this is this is peter novig's Commentary rarely have so many ambiguous terms and dubious propositions Being compressed into such a brief passage. So the problem is What these words meant to people in 1776 are completely different to the every major understanding of these words today So the same words have very different meanings in different times and places So as john lark who introduced into the english language the ad hominem Argument but to john lark ad hominem arguing about the person was not a logical fallacy And john lark also introduced us to a fact-based understanding of reality And he also introduced us to the argument from authority and to john lark in writing in the 17th century Arguing from authority was not a logical fallacy. So in the 17th century argumentum ad hominem and argumentum from authority neither of these were logical fallacies They meant something different in the 17th century than they mean to us today So by any kind of rigorous philosophical or logical criteria The the the statements from the Declaration of Independence are nonsense, but words just aren't Their literal meaning. They also connote things. They arouse feelings and they also serve as as A bond that we can we can bond over the constitution, bro We can bond over our our love of the Declaration of Independence So even if something's nonsense Right, it can still serve as a bond Like me getting absurdly excited about the english soccer team is objectively nonsense Or me getting absurdly excited about the fortunes of the Dallas Cowboys. Again, objectively nonsensical But uh, sometimes belief in these quote unquote self-evident truths You know may provide a bulwark of liberty and equality in the united states And Peter Novick says I don't know what it would mean if someone asked me whether I was for Or against the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence. I would have no idea how to respond so here's Something from sir isaia berlin who is a dawn at oxford university and he's developing on the thought of hegel here So he's describing the whole history of thought and culture As a changing pattern of great liberating ideas, which inevitably turn into suffocating straight jackets I just think that's such a blinding insight So many people with distant politics starts out as a great liberating idea And then the longer they stay in it and they start to feel the opprobrium And they they lose their jobs. They become alienated from their family. This these great liberating ideas Turn into suffocating straight jackets. And so sometimes people will Convert to a religion and it begins as like some great liberating experience and then over time it turns into a suffocating straight jacket or people enter into a particular line of work And it starts off as a great liberation from what they were doing previously But over time it turns into a suffocating straight jacket So peter novick wrote this whole book essentially on the american historical association on the american profession of of historian And so this is a book about the development of the of the specific academic community And the development of a particular body of organized knowledge And so there's often a distinction between disciplinary histories written by practitioners meaning people inside the profession And then histories of disciplines produced by historians, so anytime you're in a profession Generally speaking it is highly shunned upon And heavily sanctioned if you ever publicly speak out against anyone else in the profession So disciplinary histories written by practitioners tend to suffer from presentism Usually they're of this laboratory how we got to be so wonderful variety And then occasional denunciation settling scores with the dominant school of thought or even the discipline as a whole Now histories of disciplines by detached outsiders Are in principle free of these disfiguring characteristics So sociologists writing the history of sociology remains from the historian's point of view an amateur It'd be like an untrained Mormon writing the history of Mormonism So when you belong to a particular intellectual community or religious community Or you have you know these great external loyalties above and beyond the pursuit of truth tends to inhibit The the balanced clarity of vision So in 1884 That's the year of the founding of the american historical association the united states had a favorable balance of trade So exports exceeded imports by over 100 million Annually and this gap widened to 500 million by the turn of the century But in the realm of ideas the united states very much A net importer of ideas from europe So as american historians were constructing their system of professional norms And particularly the central norm of objectivity they drew heavily on various european currents of thought and the unavoidable Model was german historical scholarship The the greatest universities in the 19th century were in germany And the greatest historical work by and large was done in germany by germans so The germans developed much of the scientific method And anything that was scientific By by the time the 19th century rolls along is considered the hallmark of what is modern and what is authoritative So german historians those who imitated them Tended to opt for an austere style to try to distinguish Their professional historical work from the florid effusions of the amateur historians Whom the professionals despised and sought to displace So here's a very typical american reaction that germany possessed a sole secret of scholarship There's no more doubted by us young fellows in the 1880s Than it had been doubted by our predecessors Travelling to germany in earlier in the century so during the course of the 19th century thousands of young americans In search of advanced professional or academic training travel to the great german universities Because graduate and professional training whether your name did not really exist in the united states in the 19th century So english universities were primarily concerned with turning out gentlemen not scholars And until 1871 to graduate from oxford or cambridge you had to sign off on the 39 articles of faith of the anglican church French universities didn't offer professional degrees And to even contemplate studying at the Sorbonne was to face perils of the flesh and the vice dens of paris And also your soul would have to brave the twin wrists of Infidelism and popery as friends of course as rome catholic Study in germany was inexpensive So a year in germany would cost about a third of what it would cost you at a leading american university so in germany young american students of history found institutions of higher education Whose structure and values were totally unlike anything they'd known at home So the colleges they'd attended in america at that time were still primarily moral academies the inculcation of discipline mental behavioral religious And and student life in american colleges was essentially strangled In these meticulously arrayed and rigidly enforced regulations. So classroom work consisted largely of mechanical recitation And any kind of intellectual innovation was viewed as a threat to protestant piety but in germany Americans found models that were to inspire a revolution in american higher education So we got the creation of new american universities inspired by germany such as johns hopkins clark University of chicago and the transformation of order american universities like columbia harvard michigan and wisconsin so The german perspective was the proper university was a community of investigators Concerned with pursuing their research training the next generation rigorous scholarship rather than religious or philosophical orthodoxy. That's what composed academic excellence And americans in germany tended to find intoxicating personal role models. So they had a professor In germany, it's not the shabby figure of fun. They'd known in the united states But the head or professor in germany tended to be a person of substantial wealth and even greater status To be continued