Revisions and Dissents

Paul Gottfried's critical engagement with political correctness is well known. The essays in Revisions and Dissents focus on a range of topics in European intellectual and political history, social theory, and the history of modern political movements. With subjects as varied as Robert Nisbet, Whig history, the European Union election of 2014, and Donald Trump, the essays are tied together by their strenuous confrontation with historians and journalists whose claims about the past no longer receive critical scrutiny. According to Gottfried, successful writers on historical topics take advantage of political orthodoxy and/or widespread ignorance to present questionable platitudes as self-evident historical judgments. New research ceases to be of importance in determining accepted interpretations. What remains decisive, Gottfried maintains, is whether the favored view fits the political and emotional needs of what he calls "verbalizing elites." In this highly politicized age, Gottfried argues, it is necessary to re-examine these prevalent interpretations of the past. He does so in this engaging volume, which will appeal to general readers interested in political and intellectual history.

Paul E. Gottfried is the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College and a Guggenheim recipient. He has authored twelve books, including Fascism, and scholarly articles on European intellectual and social history, ancient historiography, and European and American political movements. He also writes for several websites and has always been a fan of boxing, the Dodgers, and Notre Dame football.

Revisions and Dissents is shaped by Gottfried's revisionist approach to the past, his criticism of both the cultural left and what he calls the 'Fox News right,' and his determination to define and defend what he sees as the authentic American right. Gottfried forces careful readers to review what they know or think they know about how ideas, politics, and culture are manufactured in our society. This is a real contribution to the field of intellectual history, as well as to our culture's ongoing discussion about what constitutes the European and American left and right.

Thomas Woods, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History:

Paul Gottfried, in his characteristically engaging style, shows that the accepted view of important historical episodes often owes more to ideological bias or political correctness than to scholarly rigor and honesty. His takedown of what we laughingly call the conservative movement is especially satisfying: as a movement dedicated to global democracy and human rights, he explains, it has more in common with the anti-conservative Thomas Paine than with Edmund Burke. Gottfried is everything the conservative movement should have been, had it not been so eager to swallow the received line on just about everything.