22-01-2014, 05:38 PM
James Norwood Wrote:I find a large number of positives in the scholarship of Robert Dallek:
He is a trenchant researcher in the area of Vietnam; his conclusion is that JFK would never have engaged our nation in the Vietnam War.
He was provided unique access to the medical records of JFK, and he concluded that the president's condition did not impair his performance in office, nor would it have prevented JFK from running for a second term.
He directly addressed the smut of authors who wish to besmirch the character of JFK by focusing on his sexual addiction. While Dallek did not condone the bad behavior, he nonetheless concluded that JFK's private life did not adversely affect his decision-making process as president.
On the negative side, Dallek is completely untutored on the JFK assassination, having failed to study the literature on the case. I too hope he will read Jim's detailed critique.
We can learn a great deal from assessing the profile of a career academician like Dallek and how he is one of the prime examples of the "silence of the historians" on the realities of the assassination of our thirty-fifth president. To borrow the image of James Douglass, this part of JFK research is "unspeakable" for the historians. Consequently, they issue the plea that they are "agnostics" or merely rehash the conclusions of the Warren Report. While this part of Dallek's research is disgraceful, it is important not to throw the baby out with bathwater. He has made important scholarly contributions as a presidential historian.
James
The problem is, James, that if you can't trust these "historians" on the assassination then how can you trust them on anything else? Obviously, if you are knowledgable about a subject then you know what is fact or fiction but if you are reading to learn how can you trust the author on anything? It's a sad state of affairs because it has made us distrustful of everything we read (and I mean more than a healthy mistrust)...