{"id":1599464,"date":"2022-08-10T15:33:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T19:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1599464"},"modified":"2022-08-10T15:34:52","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T19:34:52","slug":"heres-why-beloved-historian-david-mccullough-was-a-national-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/heres-why-beloved-historian-david-mccullough-was-a-national-treasure\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s Why Beloved Historian David McCullough Was A National Treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fheres-why-beloved-historian-david-mccullough-was-a-national-treasure%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1599464&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><em>He was our most beloved national historian, but David McCullough minced no words for those who remain willfully ignorant of our past while clutching to a chic form of civic cynicism.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>For the next few days, every major print and online publication will give an account of David McCullough\u2019s extensive literary work, will note he won two National Books Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, and received the highest civilian award in the land, the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, critics will carp by noting he only wrote \u201cpopular\u201d histories, rarely made original contributions to his subject matter, and utilized a lively narrative style in order to maximize the appeal of his work to ordinary readers. There is a word for such carping, of course: jealousy.<\/p>\n<p>McCullough had too many gifts to name, but perhaps his most noble attribute as a popular historian was his capacity to write eloquently without sacrificing readability. His prose resonated across a broad spectrum of the reading public\u2014from teenagers just awakening to the magic of history to history buffs who wanted to hear a familiar story told in the august style of McCullough.<\/p>\n<p>He could take any historical subject or time period and make it hum with significance. He humanized <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Truman-David-McCullough\/dp\/0671869205\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2G6WJHRF48E0Y&#038;keywords=Truman+McCullough&#038;qid=1659999061&#038;sprefix=truman+mccullough%2Caps%2C263&#038;sr=8-1\">Harry Truman<\/a> and helped to burnish the reputation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/John-Adams-David-McCullough\/dp\/0743223136\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1SSQZMT3WBMBP&#038;keywords=John+Adams+McCullough&#038;qid=1659999093&#038;sprefix=john+adams+mccullough%2Caps%2C133&#038;sr=8-1\">John Adams<\/a> as a founder worthy of equal acclaim in the pantheon of America\u2019s Founding Fathers. Sometimes he wrote about a single year, as in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/1776-David-McCullough\/dp\/0743226720\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GT4QRS5KZY0Q&#038;keywords=1776+McCullough&#038;qid=1659999124&#038;sprefix=1776+mccullough%2Caps%2C127&#038;sr=8-1\">1776<\/a>. Sometimes he told the story behind a public works project such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Great-Bridge-Story-Building-Brooklyn-ebook\/dp\/B000QXDGL6\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2QSOS8JSTNCIO&#038;keywords=The+Great+Bridge+McCullough&#038;qid=1659999145&#038;sprefix=the+great+bridge+mccullough%2Caps%2C139&#038;sr=8-1\">The Great Bridge<\/a>, the story of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.<\/p>\n<p>In every project, he exuded an almost superhuman capacity to educate his readers without entering the realm of the banal. He always seemed to know which anecdotes, sidetracks, or facts would enrich the broader story he was telling, an under appreciated talent many long-winded and dry historians never mastered and would do anything to possess. It could certainly be argued that nobody did more to tell the story of America in the past three decades than David McCullough.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the most important thing David McCullough ever articulated wasn\u2019t in the form of writing; it was <a href=\"https:\/\/imprimis.hillsdale.edu\/knowing-history-and-knowing-who-we-are\/\">a speech he delivered to Hillsdale College<\/a> long before the world had ever heard of the 1619 Project or Critical Race Theory. His speech, entitled \u201cKnowing History and Knowing Who We Are,\u201d should be required reading for every high school senior in America. The speech brims with insight and wisdom.<\/p>\n<p>The speech\u2019s over-arching insight is that \u201cnothing ever had to happen the way it happened.\u201d For those of us who try to teach history to young Americans, there is a sophomoric tendency in young people\u2014and later in their historicist-spouting professors\u2014to assume the past is not only prologue, but predestined, ordained by fate or framed for a future in which individual action and agency play no role.<\/p>\n<p>When history is seen as a predestined sequence instead of a messy and protean scramble for specific ideals, it necessarily robs our historic heroes of their virtues. In such a cynical world-view, Washington\u2019s unimpeachable character during the Revolutionary War, Constitutional Convention, and first presidency weren\u2019t decisive for the nation. Adams\u2019s oratorical brilliance during the Second Continental Congress wasn\u2019t really important in making the case for independence. Jefferson\u2019s apotheosis of the American Mind in the Declaration of Independence was nice but not necessary.<\/p>\n<p>McCullough\u2019s books radiate with the historical rhythm of eternal contingency\u2014no human being, much less civilization\u2013can ever be entirely unmoored from the ties of the past. It is one of the great frustrations of our particular time in history that young Americans enjoy a standard of political freedom and justice, a level of commercial opportunity and economic wealth, while living in the most tolerant, pluralistic, egalitarian culture in the history of the planet, and yet somehow have a smug disgust with the men and women of the past who bequeathed such treasures to them.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech to Hillsdale, McCullough gives no quarter to such faux sophistication:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe laws we live by, the freedoms we enjoy, the institutions that we take for granted\u2014as we should never take for granted\u2014are all the work of other people who went before us. And to be indifferent to that isn\u2019t just to be ignorant, it\u2019s to be rude. And ingratitude is a shabby failing. How can we not want to know about the people who have made it possible for us to live as we live, to have the freedoms we have, to be citizens of this greatest of countries in all time? It\u2019s not just a birthright, it is something that others struggled for, strived for, often suffered for, often were defeated for and died for, for us, for the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIgnorant.\u201d \u201cRude.\u201d \u201cIngratitude.\u201d \u201cA Shabby failing.\u201d This is what students call a \u201ctruth bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If I were the Secretary of Education, I would find the funding to design<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He was our most beloved national historian, but David McCullough minced no words for those who remain willfully ignorant of our past while clutching to a chic form of civic cynicism.\u00a0 For the next few days, every major print and online publication will give an account of David McCullough\u2019s extensive literary work, will note he &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1599592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1599464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1599592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}