THAT SPOT'S OVER:

It's interesting, we're not an ethnically homogeneous society, but there is homogeneity in our adherence to a few key philosophic principles.

Precisely, that's the only thing we got holding us together. The belief in these certain things--life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, equality. All of the great notions that are part of the American Dream or American ideology come out of the Revolution. These are our highest aspirations, our noblest ideals. That's why the Revolution is the most important event in our history. It's too bad it's not being taught everywhere. [...]

Perhaps we are only temporarily in this spot? Do you view historical interpretation as cyclical?

Oh, definitely. For a while people who were disillusioned with Marxism and wanted a kind of communal ideology, so they picked up republicanism. Law professors in particular, picked this up. That went on for, I don't know, about 20 years. People began finding republicanism everywhere. It finally died in the early '90s and was replaced by race-class-gender issues. We are again top-heavy in some sense.

I also think that academic historians neglect history books for the general public, and it's being filled by a whole bunch of non-academics. When I came of age in the 1950s, people like Daniel J. Boorstin, C. Vann Woodward, and Richard Hofstadter wrote for two readerships simultaneously. They wrote for each other, which advanced the discipline, but they also wrote for the general public. Nowadays it's impossible for the general public to read the monographs that come out because they're so specialized, so quasi-scientific. You try to inject yourself into the conversation, but you don't know what's come before, you just don't know what they're talking about. It's like a layman trying to read a physics paper. We are cutting ourselves off from the general public and that's lamentable.

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