Letters

Hume on Miracles

To the Editors:

In the September/October 2008 issue of Historically Speaking Brad Gregory writes:

Those still smitten with Hume's argument against the believability of any and all miracle claims would do well to read some of the devastating philosophical criticisms to which it has been recently subjected.

The statement is followed by a note referring the reader to some recent scholarship on Hume, written from 1994 to 2000. Someone on your staff likes this argument to authority so much that it is printed in large letters in the middle of page 21.

My first comment is a subsidiary one. Professor Gregory neglects to cite more recent scholarship on Hume, specifically Robert Fogelin's A Defense of Hume on Miracles (Princeton University Press, 2003), which takes issue with the books Gregory cites.

My second comment is far more important. Hume never makes an argument against the believability of all miracles. Interested readers, of whom I hope Gregory is one, should consult Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, "Of Miracles," especially paragraph 36.

Bruce Kuklick
University of Pennsylvania

Conspiracies in Recent American History

To the Editors:

Grigg opens his essay in the September/October 2008 issue of Historically Speaking by citing Richard Hofstadter's seminal essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Influenced heavily by the McCarthyism of the 1950s, Hofstadter argued that the ultra-Right in America confused conspiracy for history. Grigg argues that this paranoia fuels leftist conspiracy theories. He is especially disturbed by books written by academics that question the official government explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The idea that a paranoid style influences American political culture cannot be denied. But paranoia is a slippery concept that can be used indiscriminately to "pathologize" the opposition. There is nothing novel in Grigg's approach; it has been trotted out by legions of apologists for the Warren Commission. Grigg unabashedly (and maybe unintentionally) sets himself up as the unapologetic spear-carrier for Vincent Bugliosi and his ponderous and sophistic history of the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History. Apparently, "the continual trickle of pro-conspiracy works produced by scholars that receive further sanction by being published by academic presses"motivated Grigg to write this essay. In Grigg's worldview, "conspiracy theorists" like me and David Kaiser should be ridiculed and marginalized. It might shock Grigg, who I suspect is new to the extensive literature of the Kennedy assassination, to learn that the list of "conspiracy theorists" is both lengthy and impressive: President Lyndon Johnson (who on an off moment told his old friend and office aide, Marvin Watson, that JFK was a victim of a plot and the CIA was involved); President Richard Nixon (who called the Warren Commission "a hoax"); Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, and William Attwood (JFK's special adviser dealing with Cuba at the UN); Senators Richard Russell, Gary Hart, and Richard Schweiker (of the Senate Intelligence Committee); seven of the eight congressmen on the House Assassinations Committee and the Committee's chief counsel, Robert Blakey; JFK associates Joe Dolan, Fred Dutton, Richard Goodwin, Pete Hamill, Frank Mankiewicz, Larry O'Brien, Kenny O'Donnell, and Walter Sheridan; presidential physician Dr. George Burkley; CIA Director John McCone; and James Rowley, head of the Secret Service.

From The Work of the Open Court Company (Open Court Publishing Company, 1908).

Grigg's disdain and revulsion for professional scholars using the imprimatur, so to speak, of a university press to inflict conspiracy history on the reading public is odious and childish. Does he mean to imply that conspiracy does not have a place in the recorded history of the United States? Does he believe that despite the historical record, we really are the unsullied embodiment of John Winthrop's City on a Hill? A quick and incomplete (off the top of my head) survey of recent U.S. history makes clear that it is not all conspiracy. But conspiracies have occurred recently: Operation North Woods, the CIA "Executive Action Programs," the Tonkin Gulf disinformation, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Bush senior's Kuwaiti baby incubator hoax...