The white settlers have no
> presumption of innocence in this general historical
> period. [CB]
>
>But don't you see Charles that you and I are wrong?
> The default assumption is that white Americans are
> innocent until proven guilty beyond any doubt, not
> just a reasonable one. That is one of the spoils for
> the
> victor. {JT}
What's this legalism here? The standards for a criminal trial are not appropriately imported into historical inquiry. We want to know what happened based on the evidence.
^^^^ CB: Sure they are. The historians already use legal analogies when they talk about evidence and proof of specific facts. I use legal evidence analogies all the time here, and to good purpose. People are familiar with the legal evidence framework, and it helps to critique and analyze non-legal contexts, such as academic standards of proof and evidence.
Of course, we want to know what happened based on evidence. What else would we be doing. And that's exactly what I have been doing in analyzing this whole thing - bringing to bear the tools of jurisprudence to help out these historians.
^^^^^
Moreover the idea that this group to whom these remarks are addressed presume that white Americans are innocent, etc., is so ludicrously false that it is hard to accept that it is put forward as something to be taken as true.
^^^^ CB: Au contraire, this whole episode has exposed the vigorous and aggressive effort of the academic establishment to silence Indians from accusing the Europeans settler society of not having accidently infected the Mandans. As John Thorn pointed out , they actually try to keep the whole thing in a sort of "unknowable" status. "We just don't know", so nobody can make the harshest accusation against white society. Oh, and heaven forbid that anybody accuse the U.S.Army of killing Indians without proof beyond a reasonable doubt ( a good use of the legal standard to make the analysis understanbable to the average American who has familiarity with U.S. legal evidence concepts).
The U.S. Army killed lots of Indians openly. Are we to believe they wouldn't do it stealthily, exactly in a manner by which it would be difficult to find the proof 160 years later ?
^^^^^^
This is not the National Association of Scholars here; this is the LBO list. Every one of us accepts the view stated by Doug, "the truth is awful enough," that is, the truth about what the white settlers did to the Native Americans. No one here thinks that Custer and Sheridan, etc. were "innocent."
^^^^^^ CB: And no reason to get so touchy about the cases that are not as clearcut as those, when somebody draws a definite and emphatic conclusions regarding them.
What exactly did Churchill make up ? He didn't make up that the small pox came from the whites. He didn't make up that whites spread small pox to Indians purposefully or recklessly. There are many known sources for that claim. He didn't make up that in this case the small pox was spread to Indians by blankets. There are written sources saying that.
About the only thing I can see he is accused of making up is that it was the U.S. Army that spread the small pox, as if this is a defamation of the U.S. Army.
Of all the white institutions there at that time, the main purpose of the U.S. Army was to kill Indians. The army was not there to protect from invading British or Mexicans or Russians. It was there to fight Indians. In fact, this is the main circumstantial basis for claiming that if anybody spread the small pox to Indians on purpose , the first suspect would be the Army , whose main job it was to do violence to Indians.
If Churchill is wrong, then all it means is not only the Army was killing Indians ( we know for sure the Army was doing it by others means than spreading small pox), but civilians were doing it. In other words, privatized Indian killing.
^^^^^^^
However, that does not answer the question about the intentional spreading of smallpox by means of using infected blankets.
, any transmission of deadly epidemic
> from
> whites to Indians might have been on purpose.
"Might have been," true. Now go out and prove it.
^^^^^^^ CB: No, the burden is on you to disprove it. That's my whole point in bringing in a modified burden of proof framework. There is evidence in the white accounts that the small pox was spread to Indians through infected blankets. As far as we are concerned, that shifts the burden to you to prove it wasn't on purpose. Because there is a whole lot of contextual and circumstantial evidence of ideology dominating whites justifying and promoting killing and exterminating Indians. That's the legal evidence, burden of proof frame we are using, as I outlined earlier, and fully justifying using legal evidence concepts as I have here and there.
^^^^^^^
Nor should you be
> able to say if someone says "the transmission of
> small pox was on purpose" they are "making up"
> facts or
> are to be brought up on charges. The evidence _as a
> whole_ discussed in the U of Col report does not
> support "accident" more than "on purpose".
What the evidence of the report supports does not go to what happened but to what WC did to support his claims.
^^^^^^ CB: Not for me. I am not primarily concerned with WC's scholarship. I am primarily concerned with the substanitive issue of whites spreading small pox to the Indians. The Univ of Col is not going to make me take my eye off of the ball. And just using the evidence that the Univ of Col investigative committee reports in attacking Churchill, I can make a serious case that some white's purposefully or recklessly spread it.
That's the important thing: to keep the focus on investigating the white settlers for their crimes, and not allow a diversion to the minor issue of Churchill's academic misdemeanors.
The main issue is European crimes against humanity ,not Churchill's academic misdemeanors ^^^^^^^
He misrepresented sources, He made up stuff. He cited as evidence things he ghostwrote himself. He did this for years.
^^^^^ CB; As I read more and more of the Univ of Col report , I find that there is some evidence to support your claims, but I also find errors and holes in some of the investigative committee's claims in this vein. For example, at one point they claim he has no reference for an assertion, then they turn around and say he must be referencing Thornton; and then they stick him with misrepresenting Thornton. But if their first claim is correct that he didn't give a reference for what he said, then he didn't intend the reference to Thornton as representing exactly what Churchill said, and so he didn't misreference Thornton either.
Makes me wonder if I continue to go through their indictment will I find more errors in logic in the investigative committee report.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If the Committee is going to hold Churchill to such a high logical standard, then I gotta hold the Committee to a high standard. And they just got one marked wrong. I have just lowered the Committee's grade.
^^^^^^^^^
>
> There are people , scholars, etc saying that the
> transmission was accidental, yet no one is bringing
> them up on charges for making a statement without enough
> evidence to support it, despite that the evidence
> is _not_ stronger for their claim than for the opposite
> claim of "on purpose". [CB]
Making claims without evidence is bad, but it's different from making up the evidence. Once is just bad scholarship. The other is a scholarly crime. If people are making claims of accidental transmission without evidence, they should be rapped on the knuckles in the journals. That is scholarly debate. If they fabricate evidence for their views, that's another story.
^^^^^^^ CB: What specific _evidence_ did Churchill make up ? Please point to some _evidence_ that Churchill fabricated.
^^^^^^
It's a fact that Charles and John are ignoring, maybe an unfair fact, but a fact nonetheless, that given that "the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of the age," that critics of the existing order have to assume the burden proof.
^^^^^^^^ CB: Uhh, no we don't. Especially for people like those on this list who supposedly realize that the ruling ideas of a time are the ideas of the ruling class, and include a lot of big and demogogic lies, we should not have the burden of proof. You of all people should shift the burden of proof to the "official" commentators.
^^^^^^^
Yes, the standards are higher for us.
^^^^^^ CB: Not among ourselves, like supposedly on this list.
^^^^^
To get any credibility, to survive the firestorm that comes from challenging the prevailing assumptions, we have to make sure that every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed. Surely this cannot be a surprise? Are we entitled to assume that our perspective is widely shared and argue from it as the null hypothesis? We are not. Even if we are as good as the average middle of the road scholar, like David Abraham, that is not good enough. They get slack we don't. Even if we are better than they are, we either need an independent basis that secures our positional institutionally (like Chomsky's linguistics), or a great deal of luck. Finkelstein's at DePaul --he's better than lots of people at prestige institutions, but frankly he's lucky to have the support of DePaul. Some of us, who like to think we did come up to the higher standards imposed on the left, got canned anyway, or never hired.
^^^^^^ CB: Exactly. As if the powersthatbe are going to play fair and say, "well,look at those radicals. They are adhering to standards higher than the norm. We will treat them fairly". NOT.
Those arguing that if Churchill had only adhered to that higher standard, the truth would have come to prevail in academia, are kidding themselves.
^^^^^^^^
WC's greatest crime, politically, is not that he lied about the evidence for his work -- that is only a scholarly crime -- it is that he took advantage of the tremendous luck of getting a tenured job at a decent school, and instead of using it to put our quality work that could withstand attack, lies, calumny, and misrepresentation the way Chomsky's or Finkelstein's can, he indulged himself in all those sins himself. I am really surprised that it is not totally obvious that he has done the cause of committed scholarship real harm and made it much more difficult for other scholars with more honesty and integrity who have critical perspectives to enjoy the opportunities he has squandered.
^^^^^^^^ CB: Why ? If other scholars do honest and integral work, how are the bad guys going to use Churchill to attack that work ?