[cycloon]

Quite. If the exercise finishes with 'and I think we all agree, collectivisation was a good thing', have at it. Otherwise you have actual history, as lived, or just moral judgements.

The two are bound, necessarily, but you can't do the former via the latter.

It also clearly states Stalin used propaganda and scapegoats.

[bluebellnutter]

As a historian myself, I can also confirm there is absolutely no harm in analysing why people did stuff and why they thought it was a good idea at the time. Dismissing it all as "coz them's evil, innit" is worth the square root of fuck all.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Hello - development of historical empathy?

Thought not.

[Andy McDandy]

Because in the current climate, to explain is to excuse.

When you've got Lucy Worsley in the opening of her current BBC4 series patiently explaining that in history you get multiple accounts and interpretations of the same event, you know we're in trouble.

Don't forget Gove's curriculum. Replace this discussion and analysis with Our Island Story and why we're Top Nation and throw your hat in the air and shout Huzzah.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Yes.
I did do the Nazi prison guard exercise with able Year 10s. They had to consider what features of German history 1919-1939 and what trends of thought would allow a person to justify what they were doing in Auschwitz. Non-judgemental analysis.
Then we did judgement - in how many ways were they wrong? Because you can never come to a sane decision about history without doing that.

But then, higher-order thinking isn't in the right wing's interests, is it?

[youngian]

Brexit; Saul Goodman

The economy stupid? blame Corbyn


Potential Irish crisis that won't happen


Dan also warns about airy fairy populism not written on the side of a bus

Hannan: Young Brits vote for free stuff
Labour's manifesto was a ridiculous list of public handouts. More money was promised for healthcare, schools, the police, public sector pay rises, pensions and free university tuition. All the extra cash was vaguely supposed to come from "big business" and "the rich." In the event, an awful lot of people liked the sound of goodies that someone else would pay for. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hanna ... le/2625488" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Corbyn doing his very best to help Dan with Brexit and this is all the thanks he gets

Two in five British people have voted for an unrepentant Communist, a man who has consistently sided with the West's enemies, a man who regrets the outcome of the Cold War.

I realize that these are big claims and, in a political climate where hyperbole is normal, you might think I'm exaggerating. I am not. But Jeremy Corbyn is not simply a left-wing populist in the mould of say, Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders is, as P.J. O'Rourke might put it, wrong within the normal parameters of wrong. Corbyn's politics do not resemble those of the old Vermont senator, so much as one of those early 20th-century American Communists: John Reed, say, or Eugene Dennis.

The bedrock of Corbyn's ideology is that the West is always and everywhere wrong. This belief has led him into some strange alliances. He supported the IRA when it was seeking to bomb Northern Ireland into submission. He backed Hamas and Hezbollah. He was a cheerleader for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hanna ... le/2625488" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[spoonman]

[youngian]

What's Hannan proposing; Send in the Black and Dans?

[MisterMuncher]

Getting the revenge in first. Painting the reasonable and legal objections to the imposition of a hard border as some kind of tacit support for the bon jovies.

We've seen this film before with NICRA. It ended poorly

[Big Arnold]

To see the extent of the rift between the tweeting classes and the rest of the country, consider their attitudes to British nationals who joined Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). The consensus in newspapers, on TV discussion programmes and on social media is that UK citizenship is an entitlement. Yet, by a margin of 78 per cent to 15, voters back Sajid Javid’s decision to remove citizenship from Shamima Begum, the jihadi bride now in Kurdish custody.

That because citizenship is an entitlement. It's the law. International law.



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... ion-widget

[The Rationalist]

Am thinking that enthusiasm for lobbing dual nationals into other countries and denying them rights to citizenship here might wane if other countries started tossing waifs and strays with dual nationalities in our direction.

[cycloon]

They couldn't do that!!!! How dare they!!!!! Etc

[Malcolm Armsteen]

So the law is now a matter of (uninformed) opinion?

We don't need no experts etc. etc.

[Boiler]

Am I right in thinking that this could be applied to Javid himself?

And my goodness, the Telegraph seems to be somewhat foam-flecked around the mouth, doesn't it?

[Bones McCoy]

So the law is now a matter of (uninformed) opinion?

We don't need no experts etc. etc.

The law has always been a matter of opinion as far as the media are concerned.

For example: Any discussion of 'cunning' tax schemes hosted by the BBC always concludes its introduction by reminding us that "What (usually a celeb) did was perfectly legal".
Often while discussing a scheme that has yet to be stress tested in a court of law.

See also: "I think you'll find that note is Legal Tender" - beloved of gobshites on the Bishopbriggs bus.