From historian Patrick Allitt of Emory University:
History is strange, it’s alien, and it won’t give us what we would like to have. If you hear a historical story and at the end you feel thoroughly satisfied by it and find that it perfectly coincides with your political inclinations, it probably means that you’re actually listening to ideology or mythology. History won’t oblige us, and much of its challenge and interest comes from its immovable differentness from us and our own world.
Sure sounds like someone is telling us more about their own ideology than history. Note the self-satisfied feeling Mr. Allitt gets from his own definition which he believes allows him to re-interpret any history he doesn’t like.
cant argue with aaron but i dont disagree with johns point of view either-truth is almost always skewed in favor of the observer…