tS I CHRONICLESnthat a centralized bureaucratic state had grown in size whilencompeting sectors of the haute bourgeoisie struggled fornsocial dominance. His descriptions of the etat centralisateurnparallel those of Alexis de Tocqueville.nGenerally, great histories that combine literary excellencenand tragic sensitivity with extensive research are less likely toncome out of academic history departments than from mennof letters. I’m thinking, for example, of the popular historiesnof the Civil War by Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote. Thenreason is not simply the obvious one, that most academicnhistorians write badly. More to the point is that academicnhistorians, with some exceptions, lack historical vision. Whatnthey produce is not drama, but clumsy, unintended comedynin the sense in which Northrop Frye defines it: as ann”upward movement . . . from threatening complication to anhappy ending.” Today’s academic historians present the pastnand the present as preludes to a socially-reconstructednfuture.nTheir animus against the United States and its commercialnrepublican past makes sense only if we explore thisnfuturistic fantasy. In a recent and exhaustive investigation ofnsocial studies textbooks, the NYU psychology professor PaulnC. Vitz has found that textbook writers repeatedly reconstructnthe past in order to teach ideologically appropriatenlessons. Women, Native Americans, Hispanics, and blacksnare assigned importance in critical events and movementsnout of proportion to their actual accomplishments. Religionn— more specifically, the Judeo-Christian heritage — is eithernblamed for perceived injustices or else given short shrift evennin discussions of the Middle Ages or colonial New England.nVitz contends that militant secularism and a rejection ofntraditional sex roles are characteristic of those multitudinousntextbooks, written or updated since the 70’s, that he includesnin his study. Other critics of recent historiographical trendsncomplain about the persistent anti-Americanism and implicitnsympathy for Stalinist Russia in recent accounts of thenCold War. Such revisionist history is becoming orthodoxy.nThe American Historical Review published hysterical andnirrelevant responses to Robert Maddox’s The New Left andnthe Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, 1973). Maddox, anKennedy-Johnson Democrat, examined the sources closelynand concluded that Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperovitz, andnother Cold War revisionists had invented historical incidentsnand doctored incriminating texts. Maddox’s detractors, whonwere the only respondents the AHR printed, never gotnbeyond name-calling and accusations of “neo-McCarthyism.”nHistory has been turned into propaganda for a new socialnagenda. Industrialists and other members of the ruling classnare seen as reprobates; those who struggle — or can be madento appear to struggle — on behalf of approved minorities arenthe designated elect. This method of separating the goatsnand the sheep can be found in monographs, dissertations,nand in social studies textbooks now in use in our schools.nThe model against which academic historians judge thenWestern past and, to some extent, the present, defies evenncommon sense. It is unisex, collectivist, secularist, andnpacifist—unless faced by the moral duty to overthrownreactionary governments.nBecause all known societies that have left written recordsnfall short of the paradigm, academic histories have tried tonnnlocate their impossible dream elsewhere. Some even resurrectnand refurbish Lewis Morgan’s and Friedrich Engels’nclaim (borrowed from the ultraconservative historian Karinvon Bachofen) that primitive nomadic society was matriarchal.nA recent attempt to do this (which Kirkus Reviewsncelebrates in superlatives) is Gerda Lerner’s Women andnHistory, Volume 1: The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford,n1986). Lerner’s only concession to the problem of provingnthe existence of a primitive matriarchy is to claim to find annequally problematic but today more fashionable equarchy innthe pre-Mesopotamian world. According to Lerner, it isnpossible to infer, from the fact that early Mesopotamiansnworshiped goddesses before gods, that women had held anhigher social position before the rise of military monarchies.nThough it is possible (and from Lerner’s point of viewndesirable) to believe this, there is no good reason why onenshould. Lerner’s premise is no more provable now than atnthe time Bachofen first proposed it in the 1830’s. (It is ironicnthat Bachofen put forth his theory of Mutterrecht not tonvalidate feminism, but to contrast the primitive and crudencharacter of matriarchal society and religion to the later,nhappier development of Christian patriarchy.) Despite thenfact that Lerner was entirely unqualified to undertake such anstudy — she knew none of the languages — her book hasnbeen very generally praised. (However, a few responsiblenfeminists, such as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, have spokennout.)nLerner, like other feminist historians who follow selectivelynin Bachofen’s tracks, commits what Michael Levin hasnreferred to as the “Jack and the beanstalk” fallacy. Likensomeone who unjustifiably infers the existence of Jack and angiant whenever he encounters a beanstalk, Lerner and othernfeminists who need proof for an unprovable dream assumenthat female power must have accompanied female gods. Ansimilar association was made for a while between matrilinearnsuccession and matriarchy, until evidence in this casenoverwhelmed the will to believe. (Male dominance is quitensecure in societies that trace inheritance from mother’snbrother to nephew.)nLooking for paradise closer to our time, RobertnMcElvaine in The Great Depression: America 1929-1934npraises the New Deal for the “feminization” of Americannsociety. Turning their backs temporarily on a masculine andnamoral capitalist culture, Americans of the mid-3 O’s lived inn”a time in which the values of compassion, sharing andnsocial justice became the most dominant that they have evernbeen in American history.” McElvaine’s New Deal was notnsimply about reining in big business or redistributing wealth.nBy striking against the spirit of capitalist enterprise, it workednto advance the goal of a feminist America.nMen — at least men per se — are not the only targets ofnattack. The animadversion by Michael Rosenthal, a dean atnColumbia College, that if “you look at our curriculum, it isnprobably fair to say that it is massively Euro-centered whitenmale,” reveals more than fashionable self-hatred. Rosenthalnis obviously affected by nostalgia for alien cultures viewed asnfree of the burden of Western (and perhaps all human)nhistory. It is this kind of nostalgia which the EnglishnCommunist Eric Hobsbawm criticizes as the persistentnhunger among some intellectuals for “revolutionaryn