Everything is not a matter of nuance: everything is not up for grabs. It is simply true, for example, that the South seceded from the Union because of slavery, and not because of states’ rights. We know this to be true, and an alternative version of history that denies this is a lie. Period. [...]
I think a lot of them don’t even know they’re filled with lies. Many of them, it turns out, aren’t historians and haven’t taken a single course in US history in college. And yet here they are, teaching US history at the K-12 level. [...]
That gets back to the point about progress. I think that textbooks fail to teach what causes what. Everything is just one damn thing after another. You need to learn all those little facts. Therefore, they fail to impart the idea that we, as people, should be trying to achieve things, things that won’t happen without our efforts. [...]
I actually think our situation is far worse than it was in the past. For example, our federal government, under Nixon and Johnson, lied to us about the Vietnam War, but they never made the case that facts don’t matter or that my facts are as good as your facts.
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