If you’ve read much of this blog, you probably can see what perspective I’m coming from. You might agree with me on any given point, or not. That’s OK. The question is, though, given that we might have differing opinions, presuppositions, and agendas, do we really have anything to say to one another? What can the darkness truly speak to the light?

The thing is this: whether we’re talking about history or the 6 o’clock news, whether we’re talking about literature or movies or music, or whether we’re talking about sex or love or whatever the topic… we all always have agendas. They’re not always strong agendas; there are some fights we just don’t have a dog in. But we still have them. Given this, it is amazing that any two human beings can ever ccommunicate about anything. Again, what can the darkness truly speak to the light?

Plenty.

There is an inherent curiosity that the student of history has. She wants to know about other people, long gone: what they did, how they lived, and what they believed. Implicit in this is a desire to know her neighbors down the street in the same context: what they do, how they live, what they believe. The student of history is, in many ways, simply a listener.

And that’s what makes History part of the Humanities, rather than the Social Sciences: History is, in large part, about listening, and about retelling. George McClellan tells me his story through his life and his writing. I listen to it, absorb it, try to understand it. Then, I retell the story to you.

So, regardless of the fact that James McPherson is a raving socialist, I can listen to him tell the story of Antietam. Sure, I’m going to strip away all of that extraneous stuff about class that I think is bunk; but his story is still valuable to me. And, I can enjoy the way he tells it. It’s rare that I find a historian who is so far out there, in terms of those basic ideas, that I can’t get at least something from it. If nothing else, I discover something about the historian, if not the historical subject itself.

So it should be with you and I. I’ve got stories to tell; you’re interested, at least mildly, or you wouldn’t be here. Listen to my stories. Strip away what you think is bunk; take the rest, and use it. Learn the lessons of the past. Listen to the warnings, the advice, the examples of ghosts long dead. Use them. Use me. Make a better life. Make a better world.

So, we all, engineers and politicians, fast food workers and stock brokers, math professors and history professors, have our own set of presuppositions and agendas.

I gave you some of mine, in regard to the Civil War. I’ve given you some of my agendas (or, rather, my bias against certain agendas) regarding history in general. Let me see if I can’t flesh it all out a little bit, give you the big picture, so you can see where it all is coming from.

Here, in a nutshell, are my agendas, biases, and presuppositions:

• All people are born free into this world, and that these freedoms ought to be guaranteed.
• I believe that the United States, throughout its history, has been a beacon for freedom, even during the rough times, and the times when we have missed some significant things in regard to freedom.
• There is real, undeniable, solid truth out there to be found. We can know truly, but not exhaustively. This applies to history as well as everything else in life.
• History makes us who we are as people. Beyond this, history serves to teach us lessons about life; about what works and what doesn’t, about what is good and about what is evil.
• Ideas have consequences. Nothing in history happens absent of an idea of one sort or another.
• Actions have consequences, as well. There are laws in the universe; gravity is one; sowing what you reap is another.
• There are other forces at work in history, beyond the actions of human beings, and beyond these laws. Pay your money and pick your term, whether it’s luck, Providence, karma, or whatever. I like Providence.
• History, if ignored, will result in the ultimate destruction of a civilization. Yeah, it’s that serious.
• Learning the “Grand Narrative” of history – dates, names, places, and events – is the first step in understanding history. However, if you stop there, you will never see the benefits of studying history.

So, there you have it. That’s where I start, whether I’m giving a lecture, writing a blog post, or doing research.

Today, I want to take a break today from the discussion historical topics and write little bit about history itself. I hope you’ll indulge me a day or two for this diversion, or at least come back later in the week if you’re not interested.

Before it can do that, however, I will need to tell you about a professor of mine in college. Glenn Martin was in his sixties when I first took his Western Intellectual and Social History course. He was a small man; standing about 5′6″ at the most. By the time I met Glenn, he was chair of the History department at Indiana Wesleyan University .

Dr. Martin lectured from Switzerland to Australia, and all over the United States. He was a figure that, at least on our little liberal arts campus, was larger than life. In fact, there were a whole subset of students at Indiana Wesleyan known as ” Martinites,” who followed Glenn Martin’s ideas and ideals.

I took the WISH course on a bit of a whim. I was majoring in Philosophy at the time, and the course was any easy way for me to earn my required credits in history, as well as add credits to my major. I didn’t go into the class expecting that I would come out the other side with a dual major in history, that I would be signing up for every course that Glenn taught, or that I would earn my own label of “Martinite.”

So, what was it about Glenn that made his courses so compelling? In retrospect, they think there were, essentially, two factors. First, Glenn was committed to his ideas. I recall one lecture, in particular, when Glenn was especially animated. He was known for his hand motions; how he would raise them up into the air and bring them down directly in front of his chest, letting students know that he believed what he was saying was important. In this particular lecture, Glenn brought his hands down, and when he did, his left hand caught the edge of the lectern. Glenn looked surprised, but he didn’t stop his lecture. He continued the lecture, for fifteen more minutes, holding his left hand directly in front of him at his chest. At the end of the lecture, he announced, “For those above you who are in my next hour class, we will not be meeting today. I believe I have broken my finger.” Sure enough, the next time I saw Glenn, his finger was splinted and bandaged.

I think the second reason that Glenn was so popular was that he was up front about what he believed. If he believed something, he would tell you, and he would tell you why. In the same respect, he would also tell you what he did not believe and why he did not believe it. He was honest about it, and he didn’t soften the blow by being politically correct or try to hide behind some false sense of objectivity. He’d tell you exactly what he thought about Lincoln, for example, and why, regardless of whether it made him sound unpatriotic, racist, or any other sort of label.

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In grad school, I had a similar experience. This time, the professor was name Steve. Steve held radically different views from Glenn. But, like Glenn, Steve was passionate, and he was honest about what he believed. Steve was, by his own admission, the “last purely Marxist historian on the campus.” He taught history from a Marxist point of view, and made sure you knew it. Steve was much less serious than Glenn, and didn’t have the same sort of following that Glenn did, but they were cut from the same cloth, even with opposed ideologies.

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I spend more time on Glenn because he’s gone, and because I know there are others who miss him as much. Steve is still out there, preaching his rhetoric to anyone who will listen. When he passes, I’m sure I’ll offer a longer eulogy, as I’ve done with Glenn.

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So, what does this have to do with history? I’m getting to that. I took you through Elf-land and Topsy-turvydom so that I could tell you something very simple about myself, and about how I view history:

I have an agenda. Fact is, ever historian I’ve ever met has had an agenda. No matter how objective we’ve tried to sound (or even honestly tried to be), we all come into this thing with out own biases, our own presuppositions and our own ideas about what makes history tick. So, what’s my agenda?

Come back next week and I’ll tell you.