Lies, Damned Lies and Barr's History

Kellyanne Conway believes in alternative facts, Donald J. Trump believes in alternative science, and Attorney General William Barr, we learned yesterday, believes in alternative history.

Alternative history is stuffed into the Justice Department brief that turned loose the tainted Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.  The brief — which  has the distinction of  not being signed by any of the career prosecutors involved in the case  — is woefully wrong on the facts as well as the law. You can read all that’s wrong at Lawfare.  I just want to say a few words about how Barr’s view of history expressed in his interview with CBS reporter Catherine Herridge.


 Herridge asked how Barr thought history would think of his historic decision. And Barr

“Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who's writing the history.”

That first sentence is usually attributed to Winston Churchill. But like Mark Twain, Churchill never said half of the things he is said to have said. “History is written by the winners” is an idea expressed many times in many places, as Matthew Phelan wrote in a witty article in Slate.

And it isn’t even true.

One great example of history witten by losers is the American Civil War. Defeat of the slave states was turned into the "Lost Cause," in which genteel but heroic southern gentlemen were assaulted by uncultured barbarians from the North, and, although they fought manfully to save their civilization (supported by devoted darkies) they were borne down to the hairy and unwashed hordes. That version became an American classic in Gone With the Wind and remains embedded in the hearts and minds of many who call the Confederate battle flag their "heritage."

I suppose I was brought up on "liberal history," although in those days isms were looked down upon as European hobbies. And some of our liberal historians were pretty conservative. It took William F. Buckley to convince us that there was a conservative ideology, which was better than the ideology we didn't know was ideological, i.e., liberalism. And it took awhile after that before there was a need for a Federalist Society to develop a conservative view of law to offset the American Bar Association, which had thought it was a trade group for lawyers, not an ideology.

So it eventually developed into the case that if you were a NRA member you were also expected to be anti-foreign countries in general, especially Russia until it became especially China. And you were against abortion, for the Constitution and against the liberal agenda and against socialized medicine.  Even if none of that other stuff had anything to do with shooting ducks.

So back in the1990s, when every governor was an "education governor" and the cry went up for "standards" in every subject, a committee of historians fell from the heavens and began to work on American history "standards." Even before they were finished, Lynn Cheney, wife of the Dark Baron, denounced them as "liberal." One of her famous complaints was that the Wright Brothers didn't get as much attention on the draft syllabus -- syllabus, not textbook -- as Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Mrs. Cheney was quite shrill.

And so it goes.

 So presumably, if his side keeps winning it shall become normative to a) excuse incoming government officials for lying about contacts with hostile foreign governments, and b) rehabilitate  them after the president has fired them for lying to the vice president* and after they have twice pleaded guilty in court to lying to the FBI. And if his side loses, such activities shall revert to being crimes and scandals again.
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* Last week, Mr. Pence said he is "more inclined" to think Flynn "unintentionally misled" him. Yeah. So Mike asked, "Did you tell a Russian diplomat to ignore the Obama sanctions because we are going to lift them anyway?" And Flynn thought Pence asked if he had voted for Hillary Clinton. Yes. Happens every day if the winners get to write the history.