Napoleon once said "History is a set of lies agreed upon." I would amend that to say history is an account of past events interpreted through the political perspective of the historian.

I'm not saying they should be tortured, but it astounds me that so many people buy into the "religious persecution" argument when it comes to cults. Go to 10th & Arch in Philly. Most days there will be some old ladies there handing out newspapers printed by F.G. with lots of anti-commmunist articles. Or go to NYC and turn on the TV. Every night for a few hours they purchased airtime on one of the channels (25, 73, or something like that), and part of it is spent on, you guessed it, anti-communist "news"/commentary. Not to mention a couple of years ago they surrounded ZhongNanHai, the Chinese equivalent of the White House and Capitol Hill rolled into one. This is in Beijing, China.

Americans need to face up to the fact that there are lots of lying religions out there. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.

Umm...exactly which stories of the Holocaust have been debunked?

Just curious, the broadstrokes of the Holocauset have been based on the maticulous records kept of the event by the German Government at the time. If these records are in error, there are a lot of proud dead german soldiers whose accounting work you are calling into question.

If there is some annecdotal story that you claim has no basis in fact, I guess that's certainly possible. The feeding of prisoners other prisoners for example, is something I had heard from my parents from a survivor, so perhaps that kind of story is more hyperbole than fact. But among the facts of the holocaust, which have been debunked?

Just an obvious point, how is it that the author thinks "professional" historians are above injecting their own cultural and social ideas into hisotry?

There are certainly facts on the ground that can be cited, but once you seek to put those facts into a narative of history, you are going to see the coloration of the writer of that history, even among professionals.

So much of our modern professional historians have made their bones deconstructing and reimagining the work of previous professionals. Whether the intetion was to elevate nonwhites and nonmales into prominance in historical terms, or take a perspective of the defeated instead of the victor, countless professional historians have done the leg work, and dug up new and interesting views of history that other historians are busly working to debunk in favor of their view of history.

History is by it's nature a subjective field. There's just not a real way to confirm things that require broad cultural assent to occur. Certainly you can say that, white wedding gowns were first popularized when Queen so and so wore one at her Royal wedding, but that tells you little about a) why she wore it, or b) why everyone else started to.

When the cultural ascent required is greater than just those getting married, and includes all those who willingly die for a cause, the issues get muddier and muddier.

And since professors hate to tell the class, "I have no idea why all the nations of Europe suddenly decided that a long mechanized trench war was a good idea" they create theories based upon their own assumptions and presumptions about the people and events of the time.

It's easy to say that the problem is the amature historian, but one should realize that the professionals have added to the canon of fancy as much if not more than the dabbler.

Ms. Miller,

Some good points are raised in this article, though for me it's the implied back story, the undercurrent, that is important. By that I mean the deliberate manipulation, distortion, or avoidance of facts to manufacture a particular version of the past.

An earlier posting in Salon regarding our views-- our "conventional wisdom" regarding communism-- touched on the same issues. And as with that article, it's obvious the job of the historian is to perform two vital and contingent services.

First, the historian must use all available resources-- contemporary accounts, media references, memoirs, diaries, academic analysis-- from as many sources as possible in order to rough out the boundaries, the outer edges, of the inter-related events being studied. Historical "events", after all, are never singular, insulated, or isolated. We select a moment in a process and pronounce it crucial, pivotal. That event may be key from our perspective, and it's just that: our perspective. Without context and an awareness of contributing factors, the derived value of the event will ultimately prove useless.

Second, the historian must play the role of coroner as well as detective. One must ask, "Who benefits?" by a particular version of history. As shown in this article, democratization of education has had the effect of encouraging "stories", (rewritten or inaccurate accounts), to suit the desires of a particular group, as well as the passions of the moment. And in this role of coroner, one must ask, "Who killed the truth?". The historian is therefore duty-bound to winnow out the truth, and the motives behind those who avoid or distort it.

Like education, politics in 20th Century America became more democratized. Debates were driven less and less by an individual citizen's initiative, and more and more by PR efforts on behalf of a candidate or group. Flag-burning is a recent example of a totally manufactured crises, a straw man used to portray a candidate as undeserving or dangerous. Ronald Reagan's fraudulent allusions to a wholesome small-town America was targeted to an uneasy white electorate. John Kerry's presidential aspirations were sunk by a small, well-funded group who rewrote his war record.

As the 21st Century unfolds, the historian's job has become far tougher. With so many competing groups, (and with so much access granted so easily), arriving at a consensus-driven, accurate version of past events has become a monumental task.

I would say that you're a real sicko and that I hope you don't have access to weapons of any kind, but having read your previous screeds I now suspect you might be a paid agent of the Saudi/Wahhabi lobby, a 9/11 "Truther" or a member of the Taliban. Maybe you should fully disclose who you're fronting for and who's paying you to post these letters.