RALPH LUKER: NOTED HERE AND THERE ... 12-06-03

What ‘Ivory Tower'? Some of academe's critics like to dismiss it as a safe haven for the academically detached. Try living the last month at Emory University. A month ago, I blogged about Professor Paul B. Courtright's story here. The Emory Wheel has the latest update on the death threats that he's been getting from offended Hindus. The University community at large has been in continuing discussion about anthropology professor Carol Worthman's off-hand use of the phrase"a nigger in the woodpile." I have blogged about the historical origins of the phrase and another controversy over its contemporary use. The Wheel's two lead articles, its editorial, and several op-eds offer excellent coverage of the developing controversy at Emory. Some of the University's African American faculty members say that the investigation of the initial complaint was inadequate and believe that it points to systemic problems in race relations at Emory, but the University administration is resisting mandatory sensitivity training. Some"ivory tower"!

This is fun. Try "Which Historical Lunatic Are You?" In case you're wondering, I am Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad or Charles the Well-Beloved. So is Sasha Volokh. It's slightly embarrassing, but the company is good.

Radical historian Howard Zinn, radical linguist Noam Chomsky, and conservative political scientist Harvey Mansfield have been exercising their free speech rights on controversial issues in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Long live free speech in academic communities! Of course, if you are Chomsky, you may have David Bernstein, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Pejman Yousefzedah to answer to what you say.

The University of Chicago's Edward Cohn has been blogging up a storm at Mildly Malevolent. His blog is consistently good reading. Just scroll down.

Posted by Ralph 3:00 a.m. EST

RALPH LUKER:"TRANSBLOGRIFICATION" ... 12-03-03

It isn't that you are no longer"Welcome To My World ...," but I knew others who could spread a more generous banquet for us. So, "Welcome To My World ..." is transblogrifying into"Cliopatria". Please adjust your blogrolls and browsers accordingly. Our name, with its allusions, is found in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. As with much else in Finnegans Wake, however, I'm not sure what it is doing there.

Our name vaguely recalls the memory of Cleopatra, her beauty, her mystery, and her contingent power. More directly, it invokes the name of Clio, one of the nine muses in Greek mythology. Clio the Proclaimer was the muse of history, who was credited with bringing the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. She is often depicted in western art with a scroll and a small library of books. In his work for the Spectator, Joseph Addison, who perfected the essay and pioneered the novel as English literary forms, used her name as a pseudonym. The Latinate"patria" would refer to one's place of origin, a father's home or a native land. We speak from and of history as our place of beginnings, in which we act, through which we move, and to which we owe some allegiance. As a word of both Greek and Latin roots, to say nothing of the Egyptian allusion,"Cliopatria" is also a barbaric hybrid. It suggests the plurality of our origins and degrees of alienation. We are not obliged to agree with, only to listen carefully and respectfully to, each other.

I am delighted with the group of historians who will join me at"Cliopatria."

Timothy Burke won my attention with thoughtful critiques of my work, here and here. I was intrigued to learn that he is a historian of Africa who teaches cultural studies at Swarthmore. Subsequently, I became a fan of his thoughtful blog, Easily Distracted. Tim's contributions enliven discussions at Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass, Crooked Timber, Invisible Adjunct, and elsewhere. He has published Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, a monograph with remarkably wide-ranging implications, and with his brother, Kevin, Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up With Cartoon Culture, a study of the Saturday morning cartoons and Generation X.

Oscar Chamberlain is best known to readers at History News Network for his many intelligent contributions on a broad range of issues on the HNN comment boards. At the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and UW, Barron County, he lectures on the history of science and American ante-bellum and constitutional history. Oscar has contributed poetry and a personal essay to The Red Cedar Review. A member of the City of Rice Lake Plan Commission, he hosted Jazz and New Age music programs from 1995-2000 at WOJB, the radio station of the Lac Courte Oreilles band of the Ojibwe.

HNN regulars will remember Ken Heineman from his blog which appeared too briefly here about a year ago. He is a professor of history at Ohio University at Lancaster and the author of four books: Campus Wars: The American Peace Movement at State Universities in the Viet Nam Era, God is a Conservative: Religion, Politics, and Morality in Contemporary America, A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh, and Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels: Student Revolt in the 1960s.

Through no fault of his own, Robert"KC" Johnson needs no introduction to historians or readers at HNN. His struggle for tenure at Brooklyn College, summarized here and here, is near legendary. KC's impressive scholarship in 20th century American diplomatic and political history is more important to us. Already, it includes many articles and four books, Washington. 20. Januar 1961, Ernest Gruening and the American Dissenting Tradition, The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations, and On Cultural Ground: Essays in International History. He expects to publish four more books in the next three years.

I introduced myself, here, six months ago. So, welcome to our world ...,"Cliopatria," and its bountiful feast.

Posted by Ralph 12:15 a.m. EST

]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1883 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1883 0

ARTHUR SILBER: THE UNITED STATES AS BRUTAL, VIOLENT -- AND HATED -- PARENT, 12-07-03

I have argued, as have many others (including Friedrich Hayek, and historian Barbara Tuchman) that the idea of centrally-planned"nation-building" is a delusion doomed to failure, and that history conclusively demonstrates that not everyone in the world wants freedom in precisely the form in which it has manifested itself in the West, and particularly in the United States. This is simply a recognition of the inescapable fact that history and culture matter -- that it is not possible to graft a political system onto a country which has no social or, more importantly, intellectual traditions to support it.

There is nothing remotely racist about any of this. As I said, this is simply a recognition of the fact that the history of any given country is obviously crucial to what may be reasonably expected of that country in the future. Nonetheless, for stating these obvious truths, many hawks have irresponsibly accused people of viewing Arabs and/or Muslims as somehow innately"inferior," as being"unworthy" of"democracy." Such an accusation, at least insofar as it relates to the kind of argument I have been making over the last many months, is simply wrong and without foundation.

But now, in connection with our new"get tough" policy in Iraq -- a policy which involves surrounding entire towns with barbed wire among other delightful"innovations" (as if brutal dictatorial regimes in Iraq's recent past hadn't employed similar methods) -- we have American military commanders making statements like the following:

"Underlying the new strategy, the Americans say, is the conviction that only a tougher approach will quell the insurgency and that the new strategy must punish not only the guerrillas but also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating.

"'You have to understand the Arab mind,' Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. 'The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face.'"

"You have to understand the Arab mind." If a well-known antiwar activist had made such a statement, imagine the howls of protest that would ensue from many self-righteous hawks."Why, he thinks Arabs are sub-human! He doesn't think they deserve democracy! Why, it's positively ... unAmerican!!"

And our military commanders inform us that"[t]he only thing [the Arabs] understand is force." Well, that doesn't bode too well for the prospects for democracy, does it?

The Times story also contains a significantly misleading sentence near its opening:

"In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in."

But toward the end of the story, we learn the following:

"In Abu Hishma, residents complain that the village is locked down for 15 hours a day, meaning that they are unable to go to the mosque for morning and evening prayers. They say the curfew does not allow them time to stand in the daylong lines for gasoline and get home before the gate closes for the night.

"But mostly, it is a loss of dignity that the villagers talk about. For each identification card, every Iraqi man is assigned a number, which he must hold up when he poses for his mug shot. The card identifies his age and type of car. It is all in English.

"'This is absolutely humiliating,' said Yasin Mustafa, a 39-year-old primary school teacher. 'We are like birds in a cage.'

"Colonel Sassaman said he would maintain the wire enclosure until the villagers turned over the six men who killed Sergeant Panchot, though he acknowledged they may have slipped far away."

Abu Hishma is a town of 7,000 people. We are therefore holding 7,000 people hostage -- not merely"the relatives of suspected guerrillas" -- in hopes that the villages will turn over six men, who may have slipped far away in the meantime.

And here, in a disturbingly accurate admission, is the key to the psychology behind all this:

"'With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them,' Colonel Sassaman said."

This is nothing less than insane. There is a well-recognized syndrome in psychology -- a syndrome which leads to a never-ending intergenerational cycle of violence. A parent beats a child, constantly repeating:"But why don't you understand that I love you? Why don't you see that I'm just doing this for your own good?" And all the while, the parent physically brutalizes the child, who then grows up and does the same to his child.

And one of the notable results of this behavior is hardly surprising: the child fears -- and hates -- the parent. Yet this is now how we propose to win over the Iraqis, and prepare them for democracy:"a heavy dose of fear and violence" -- and monetary bribes -- will" convince these people that we are here to help them."

This is the same road the British traveled down in Iraq -- and after 40 years, the British finally gave up, recognizing the hopelessness and self-defeating futility of their task. But in close to record time, we have crossed over into very dangerous territory: this is the kind of occupier psychology that could easily lead to the killing of large numbers of Iraqis, a massacre or massacres which could unleash a horrific wave of violence directed at Americans, and possibly also directed at other Iraqis.

It is time for some very harsh truth-telling, and it is time to strip away the comforting and false self-delusions in which many hawks wrap themselves. There is nothing loving or kind about a parent who beats his child, while claiming that he does it out of love and concern for the child's well-being. And there is nothing kind or benevolent about forcing Iraqis to adopt a form of government or a way of life which they may not want -- and which they certainly do not want if it comes at the ends of the guns wielded by an occupation force.

We have invaded a country which posed no serious threat to us, and we still maintain we are intent on bringing the blessings of liberty to the Iraqis -- but we will do it using force, fear and violence. This is a fatal contradiction that was doomed to fail. But in the process of attempting to make a contradiction true -- which can never be done, and which must end in the destruction of the one who attempts it -- we are turning ourselves as a nation into monsters. And we are also planting innumerable seeds of hatred against the United States, which may well grow into future terrorist attacks on the U.S., just as they are now causing the deaths of American soldiers on a daily basis.

The Bush administration, by means of this insanely destructive foreign policy, is now achieving one objective for which I truly cannot forgive them: they are making me ashamed to be an American.

Cross-posted at The Light of Reason.

Posted by Arthur Silber at 09:45 p.m. EST

RODERICK T. LONG:MODERNITY MODERNISED, 12-07-03

An improved-format version of my article Two Cheers for Modernity is up at SOLO, along with some reader responses.

Posted by Roderick T. Long at 07:19 p.m. EST

Posted by R. Reid McKee at 3:55 p.m. CST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: A QUESTION OF LOYALTY, 12-07-03

Lindsay Perigo, editor of The Free Radical, a New Zealand-based libertarian and Objectivist magazine, wrote a piece condemning"Saddam's Succours" to which I respond in the current issue. In" A Question of Loyalty: A 'Saddamite' Responds to Perigo," I reply to Perigo's criticisms of many who opposed the war in Iraq. Lindsay is a great pal and colleague of mine—I'm even Assistant Editor to the magazine (and you can start here for pics of his recent visit to Brooklyn)—but it doesn't stop us from disagreeing on so many issues. Here's some of what I have to say:

The long-term consequences of the Iraq war are slowly coming into focus. The most recent Bush request for another $87 billion—on top of the $45 billion already spent for military preparation and invasion—is more than double what the US is spending on “homeland security.” The war has contributed to a ballooning deficit that will be in excess of $500 billion next year, “but could reach a cumulative total of $5.8 trillion by 2013” ... The federal debt increases exponentially, even as the US aims to pay off Iraq’s $350 billion foreign debt, not to mention resettlement and reconstruction costs, estimated at another $200 billion over the next decade. And for those who thought Iraqi oil reserves would pay for this: Nice try. Oil revenues from a devastated Iraqi oil industry might rise to $20 billion annually by 2006. ...

Meanwhile, the threat to domestic liberties from a variety of euphemistically named “Patriot Acts” is growing too, as the Bush administration uses the provisions of these acts in criminal investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism—prosecuting everyone from drug traffickers to suspect Internet users ... And while the thousands of wounded are nowhere near the number of casualties from previous wars, the US has now lost more troops in the occupation—an occupation with no end in sight, costing an additional billion dollars per week—than in all of its combat operations. Worse yet, if Iraq actually had WMDs—they were not used in the war and they have not yet been found—then the invasion has most likely brought about the very condition the US feared: their dispersal in chaotic social conditions among hostile terrorist groups. Fanatics are picking off US troops daily, as Iraq becomes a magnet for terrorists from all over the Muslim world.

Moreover, the US is facing massive ethnic conflict within Iraq, as each group vies for a different part of the “democratic” pie, with no history of knowing how to “share” the pie, let alone eat of it. This is not unusual in the period after the fall of a despotic regime. When the Soviet Union fell, many were astonished at how ethnic warfare re-emerged as if unaltered from 70+ years of Communism. Democratic nation-building presupposes that there is a nation upon which to build democracy. But as columnist George Will has observed, Iraq—like the Soviet Union—is not a nation. Iraq was a makeshift by-product of British colonialism. So if the US is trying to bring “democracy” to Iraq, the question remains: Which Iraq? Sunni Iraq? Kurdish Iraq? Shiite Iraq? (Which Shiites?)

This is not to say that the world was better off with the Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein in place. Good riddance! Those regimes exercised monopoly control over the instruments of oppression in brutalizing their populations. In the absence of a monopoly terrorist regime, however, and in the absence of any culture of individualism, the only “democracy” that is emerging in Iraq is an anarchic “democratization” of the means of terror: a war of all against all, instead of one against all. Not quite the Wilsonian democracy envisioned by US policy-makers. ...

And throughout this whole “War on Terror,” the poisonous soil from which Bin Laden emerged—Saudi Arabia—remains untouched. While the US is busy fighting in Iraq, it sleeps with the Saudis, continuing a 60+ year-affair that most likely led the Bush administration to blot out 28 pages from a report on the failure of 9/11 intelligence, which might have embarrassed its Saudi “allies.” US corporations engage in joint business ventures with the Saudi government—from petroleum to arms deals—utilizing a whole panoply of statist mechanisms, including the Export-Import Bank. The US is Saudi Arabia’s largest investor and trading partner. Historically, the House of Sa’ud’s alliance with—and exportation of—intolerant, fanatical Wahhabism has been strengthened by the US-Saudi government partnership with Western oil companies, especially the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), a merger of Esso, Texaco, and Mobil. This is precisely the kind of “pull-peddling” that Rand condemned as “the New Fascism”—a US-Saudi-Big Oil Unholy Trinity that sustains the undemocratic Saudi regime.

And so, it is unlikely that Saudi Arabia will ever be touched significantly in the “War on Terror,” even if 15 of the 19 people who rammed those planes into US targets were Saudi. So close is the US-Saudi relationship that the US government worked with the Saudi embassy to facilitate, by private jet, the evacuation from the US of 140 prominent Saudis, among them members of the Bin Laden family, in the days after 9/11.

Within the Saudi cultural climate, however, anti-US sentiment is on the rise. Some terrorists gain the sanction of Saudi government officials, who talk out of both sides of their duplicitous mouths. Other terrorists flourish in reaction to the despotism of the Saudi regime and to its US alliance. It is a regime that depends upon a barbaric network of secret police and sub-human prisons, using the kinds of torture tactics that would have made Saddam proud: routine floggings, rotisserie hangings, amputations, penis blocking, and anal molestations. Such is the “pragmatic” nature of official US government policy, which goes to war for “human rights” in Iraq, while tacitly sanctioning their eradication in Saudi Arabia.

It’s this kind of pragmatism that has been the midwife to anti-American terrorism—from US support of the Shah of Iran that led to the establishment of an anti-American Islamic theocracy to US support of the Afghani mujahideen that led to the establishment of an anti-American Taliban. It is not a question of loyalty to one’s “friend,” therefore, when that “friend”—the US government—appears to be more loyal to its autocratic allies than to its own citizens.

Dante may have reserved the Ninth Circle of Hell for those who, like Satan, Judas, Brutus and Cassius, are treacherous to kindred, country, party, lords, superiors, and benefactors. But loyalty is of no ethical import unless it is loyalty to an idea. And, in this instance, it is the idea of America to which I owe my loyalty. It is to the rational individualist and libertarian ideas of Western civilization to which I owe my loyalty—ideas that the United States of America embraced in its infancy, and that have faced extinction over the past two centuries.

As Ayn Rand once wrote: “Loyalty can be maintained in only one of two ways: by terrorism—or by dedication to ideas," ... by fear or by conviction. I owe no loyalty to any group, party, class, or Commander-in-Chief, when such adherence undermines loyalty to moral principles. And it is only those principles that will save my country—and the rest of the world—from utter destruction.

Again, read the whole essay here.

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 12:20 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: AL SHARPTON, COMEDIAN, 12-07-03

I have never been a fan of Al Sharpton, but he did a pretty good James Brown imitation during his monologue last night on"Saturday Night Live." On the campaign trail, Sharpton has been resident comedian of the Democratic Party. On hearing that President Bush wanted $87 billion for his new Great Society program in Iraq, Sharpton said:"Why doesn't Bush just run for president of Iraq?" But he's been no kinder to his Democratic foes. Asked if Democratic candidates should have more time to respond to questions during the umpteen debates that have been scheduled on the primary trail, Sharpton answered:"What are we really talking about? A minute or two? It's not like some of them were on the verge of brilliance and somebody cut them off!" Stay tuned. This guy won't be President, but he does have a future as a comedian.

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 12:15 p.m. EST

ARTHUR SILBER: REQUIRED VIEWING: TONY KUSHNER ON"ANGELS," LIFE, POLITICS, LIFE, WHATSISNAME — AND MORE LIFE

I just posted some thoughts about Tony Kushner's extraordinary play,"Angels in America," which will be shown on HBO beginning tomorrow night. And I've offered some ideas about why, even though I disagree with all of Kushner's explicit political beliefs (he's a committed socialist), I find the play to be marvelously rewarding. Here is part of what I said:

The play is set in the mid-1980s, but I doubt that you'll find it dated at all. Even though a lot of the specific subject matter is about politics and AIDS, it's about many other things as well: about the nature of religion and religious beliefs, about the myths we seem to need in order to live (including founding myths, especially), about"[t]he space between what we'd like to be and what we actually are," about desire, about the connections that occur between the most unlikely people, about fantasy and delusion (including the self-deceptions so many of us also seem to need), and even more. One of the characters in the play remarks that"History is about to crack wide open"—a statement that seems remarkably prescient, given events of the last few years.

And to grasp just how damning Kushner's portrayal of conservatism is, consider this: one of the main characters is a young Mormon Republican (Mormons, and Mormon mythology figure very prominently in the play, in a variety of fascinating ways). This young man, Joe Pitt, is about to go to work for the Reagan Justice Department, with the help of Roy Cohn. Joe is an ardent devotee of the Reagan Revolution, and says at one point:"The truth restored, law restored—that's what President Reagan's done. ... He says truth exists and can be spoken proudly."

But it turns out that Joe, whose marriage is rapidly deteriorating, is, like Cohn, a closeted gay man. So much for speaking the truth"proudly." And yet, Joe is a tremendously engaging—and sympathetic—character. All of this goes, of course, to Kushner's point about those spaces between what we hope to be and what we actually are—a dilemma that affects almost all of us to one degree or another in the course of our lives. But again, if you're just going down a checklist of what you think constitutes"good conservative writing," you will miss all of this—which means you will miss the complexity, richness and rewards that life, and superb writing, have to offer.

The entire entry can be found here.

Posted by Arthur Silber at 08:30 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: AYN RAND'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, 12-06-03

I've gotten a number of inquiries about my recent dialogue on the Atlantis II discussion list. As follow-up, I'd like to post a few links here that include excerpts from my book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Here, I outline Rand's philosophy of history and compare it to Marxist historiography; I follow-up with a postscript on the historiography of Rand, Marx, and the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Enjoy!

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 11:30 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: BEWARE NATIONAL GOALS, 12-05-03

Oh great. The Bush people are looking for “unifying national goals” for the second term. Ideas being kicked around include going to the moon (again?), extending life spans, and eradicating childhood illnesses. According to the Washington Post, “One person consulted by the White House said some aides appear to relish the idea of a ‘Kennedy moment’ for Bush, referring to the 1962 call by President John F. Kennedy for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.” (Groan.) An administration official “said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics. ‘Iraq was big. AIDS is big,’ the official said. ‘Big works. Big grabs attention.’”

This puts Bush squarely in the neocon “national greatest conservatism” camp. As he says on the campaign trail, he wants “great goals worthy of a great nation.”

As a libertarian I know likes to say, Are we to be spared nothing? ]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1865 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1865 0

ARTHUR SILBER: OH, THE INCIVILITY! 10-31-03

A lot of discussion in the blogosphere today about the deplorable lack of civility in modern discourse. All of which put me in mind of certain famous commentators from the past... Some wit from writers of a kind we could sorely use today, to enliven your Friday evening. Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Posted by Arthur Silber at 08:10 p.m. EST

ARTHUR SILBER: FOR GOD'S SAKE 10-31-03

This time, I mean the headline literally:

"Religious organizations can, in fact, discriminate according to religion under federal law. But until now they haven't been able to take money from the federal government if they do.

"President George W. Bush is changing that. Thanks to new regulations he is pushing, groups can get Uncle Sam to pay for jobs barred to Jews, Catholics, Muslims or anyone of a disfavored faith. A constitutional court fight may be inevitable."

For example:

"To get a job at the Orange County Rescue Mission near Los Angeles, you must sign a statement declaring, 'I have received the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior' and that you believe those who haven't will suffer 'eternal separation from God,' according to the form provided by the mission.

"The mission's aim is to 'reconstruct' each homeless man and woman it shelters into a 'productive Christian member of society.' To treat addicts, the mission uses 'the actual words of Jesus,' according to the mission's Web site.

"Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly said they find it just plain wrong that under the old rules the Orange County Rescue Mission was denied federal Housing and Urban Development funds because it refused to secularize.

"'Government action like this is pure discrimination,' Bush said in a speech this week in Dallas, again singling out the Orange County mission.

"Ah, but things are changing. ...

"'After the regulations are finalized, groups like Orange County Rescue Mission will be able to apply for HUD funds while maintaining their religious identity,' says a statement posted on the White House Web site."

I disagree with this writer about only one issue, when she says:

"The peculiar thing is that Bush pitches the new rules as if he is curbing religious discrimination instead of rewarding it.

"Regulations that went into effect last month eliminate 'barriers that discriminated against faith-based groups,' asserts the White House Web site. In fact, the barrier the new regulations remove is the one that kept tax dollars away from groups that discriminate against people of other faiths."

What's"peculiar" about this? When Bush tells us that"rising violence in Iraq" directly correlates to"U.S. progress being made there"? Up is down, black is white, A is non-A. Some people just aren't up to date with their PoMo studies. We thus proceed still a bit further into Orwell's world.

Some people may have thought I was exaggerating when I said that those now leading the Republican Party want a theocracy. I wasn't, as this story and others like it demonstrate.

(Cross-posted at The Light of Reason.)

Posted by Arthur Silber at 04:30 p.m. EST

ARTHUR SILBER: WILSON AND BUSH -- TWO CRUSADERS MORE ALIKE THAN NOT 10-31-03

The talents of two notable writers are on display in Wilson's Crusade and Bush's Crusade by James Bovard. I have highlighted some of Bovard's own very important work in defense of individual rights and freedom in this post, among others.

In the current piece, Bovard reviews a new and very important book by our colleague here, Thomas Fleming: The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. Here is the opening of Bovard's piece:

"George Bush’s promise to 'rid the world of evil' — which he made in the opening weeks of his war on terrorism — is reminiscent of the 1917 promises of President Woodrow Wilson to 'make the world safe for democracy.' Wilson, like Bush, was leading the nation into war and sought to push the hot buttons in Americans’ idealism. Unfortunately, for both Bush and Wilson, the loftier their promises soared, the deeper the hooey became. Wilson portrayed World War I as a moral absolute. And because the United States was involved in a crusade to do absolute good, any criticism or opposition to government policies quickly became perceived as evil. In his superb new book, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, historian Thomas Fleming recreates the political and moral atmosphere of the period when America entered World War I. The parallels to the current war on terrorism are breathtaking. Fleming concludes, 'Worst of all was Wilson’s tendency to utopianism — the truly fatal flaw in his dream of flexing America’s idealized muscles in the name of peace.'"

Friedrich Hayek, of course, had a great deal to say about the fatal dangers in such utopianism, and I discussed some of his observations (as elucidated by another colleague, Chris Sciabarra) in this LOR post. Bovard notes yet another phenomenon which is very similar to the atmosphere that has been created in the"war on terrorism":"Wilson twisted the facts to portray a U.S. war against Germany as a battle of good versus evil. In the same way that Bush portrays terrorists as the worst and most implacable enemies of freedom, Wilson denounced the German government as 'the natural foe to liberty.'" I discussed some additional aspects of this striking parallel here.

Here is one more noteworthy excerpt from Bovard's review:

"Fleming drives home how the war hysteria and hatred of Germans that Wilson and his team whipped up quickly led to the suppression of free speech. ...'[L]iberal Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes affirmed the legality of the Espionage Act under the doctrine that in time of war, antigovernment critics can be"a clear and present danger" to victory.' The fans of Justice Holmes — who like to portray him as a hero of civil liberties — usually choose to ignore his role in sanctifying the Wilson administration’s crushing of dissent. Vice President Marshall said every American '"not heartily of the government" should have his citizenship revoked and his property confiscated.'”

More details of this history of suppression can be found here -- and I have also discussed how the intensification of today's atmosphere, where antigovernment critics are also often regarded as"a clear and present danger," can lead to censorship.

One other caution should be kept in mind. As Bovard states:

"Wilson saw the League of Nations as his legacy to America and humanity. During the 1920 presidential election, Wilson urged voters to judge every candidate by one simple standard: 'Shall we or shall we not redeem the great moral obligations of the United States?' After all the bogus moralizing of the war years, Americans rejected Wilson’s scheme for world salvation."

I strongly recommend you read Bovard's entire review, for additional parallels between Wilson's crusade and Bush's war on terror. And Fleming's book is a very worthwhile investment, and deserving of careful study.

Posted by Arthur Silber at 02:00 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: FEDERALISM, PRIVACY, AND CIVILIZATION 10-31-03

I know that there are lots of libertarians out there who swear by the principle of federalism as a means of controlling the growth of government in Washington, DC. But no matter how I try, I just don't understand the logic of those who advocate federalism at the expense of individual rights, including any"right of privacy." Ayn Rand once said:"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy." For one Rand-influenced discussion of the meaning of privacy, see my Free Radical article "Privacy and Civilization".

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 12:20 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: BASEBALL DE-TOX 10-31-03

Well, it's been just about a week since my New York Yankees lost the 2003 World Series to the Florida Marlins. It's taken a while to shake off this tough Game 6 loss after such an intense post-season. And it's simply not true that the Yanks win every year; from the time I started rooting for the team as a 5-year old child, I had to deal with a 12-year post-season drought (until 1976), and then, an 18-year championship drought (from 1978 to 1996), as I explain here.

But one thing seems to be a perennial baseball fact: The Boston Red Sox always lose. The Yanks may have lost this series, but they still beat Boston to get there. And even when the Red Sox go to the World Series, they still lose. Some blame it on the Curse of the Bambino. Some blame it on the fact that the Beantown crowd just expects to lose. And still others blame it on the fact that Bostonians define themselves not in terms of a positive---that is, their love of the Sox---but on a negative: their hatred of all things New York.

Now I know that the Boston crowd broke out into"New York, New York" at Fenway Park in the aftermath of 9/11/01, a very touching display of solidarity. But this amusing little anecdote, which has made its rounds throughout the Internet, is much more in keeping with the Bostonian spirit:

Two boys are playing hockey on the pond on Boston Common when one is attacked by a vicious Rottweiler. Thinking quickly, the other boy took his hockey stick and managed to wedge it down the dog's collar and twist, luckily breaking the dog's neck and stopping its attack.

A reporter who was strolling by sees the incident, and rushes over to interview the boy."Young Bruins Fan Saves friend from Vicious Animal..." he starts writing in his notebook."But, I'm not a Bruins fan," the little hero replied."Sorry, since we're in Boston, I just assumed you were," said the reporter and starts again.

"Red Sox Fan Rescues Friend from Horrific attack..." he continued writing in his notebook."I'm not a Red Sox fan either!," the boy said."I assumed everyone in Boston was either for the Bruins or the Red Sox. So, what team do you root for?," the reporter asked."I'm a Yankees fan!," the child beamed.

The reporter starts a new sheet in his notebook and writes:"Little Bastard from New York Kills Beloved Family Pet."

I know, I know,"Wait til' next year!" At least that's one attitude this Yankees fan shares with his Beantown rivals.

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 12:15 p.m. EST

WENDY McELROY: MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR OIL PROFITS 10-31-03

This just in on Halliburton: The U.S. government is paying Vice President Dick Cheney's former firm Halliburton 'enormous sums' -- $2.65 a gallon -- for gasoline imported into Iraq from Kuwait....Democrats Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan said this gross overpayment was made worse by the fact that the U.S. government was turning around and reselling the gasoline in Iraq for four to 15 cents a gallon....The Iraqi oil company SOMO is paying only 97 cents a gallon to import gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq, they said." News of Halliburton's huge war profits on a"no bid" contract come in the wake of a request from the military contractor's President for"employees to join a 'Defending Our Company'' campaign by writing to newspapers and lawmakers to counter criticism of the firm....Dave Lesar said in the Oct. 17 memo that he is offended by 'those who are distorting our efforts' to restore Iraq's oil industry and provide other services to the U.S. military there." Halliburton is doing such a fine job in Iraq that there was an announcement this Wednesday re: Halliburton, who still pays Cheney deferred salary -- what one paper called "oodles of boodle". It seems that the company needs to have its hitherto $1.5 billion contract extended for some undefined number of months and more money! rather than allow the contract to expire and be put out to bid. Thus -- poof! -- Halliburton's contract extended. What a sugar daddy/good fairy Lesar has in Cheney, who knows which side his bread is oiled. Even the mainstream media is beginning to use the word 'cronyism.' The Houston Chronicle comments,"Major U.S. companies, including Houston's Halliburton subsidiary KBR, have used insider contacts and political donations to help snag more than $8 billion in contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a watchdog group said Thursday. 'There is a stench of political favoritism and cronyism surrounding the contracting process in both Iraq and Afghanistan,' said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, which released a study on wartime contracting. 'These two wars ... have brought out the Beltway Bandit companies in full force'."

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 10:45 a.m. EST. Check McBlog for more commentary.

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX: FDR AS “CAPITALISM’S SAVIOR?” 10-31-03

In the Wall Street Journal on October 29, Conrad Black struggles to save FDR from revisionist historians. He fails.

He says that “most would accept” that FDR’s farm policies – which featured the destruction of crops and livestock, paying farmers to reduce output, and cartelizing sales – were successful. Hogwash. The only people who would “accept” these policies as successful are dole-dependent farmers and their commissars in Washington.

Most incredibly, Black claims to “know of no serious criticism” of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Social Security, unemployment insurance, workfare schemes, and other New Deal measures. If Black’s claim is true, he has no business writing for your newspaper, much less a book about FDR. These policies have been subjected to withering criticisms for decades. He can e-mail me at dboudrea@gmu.edu for a pages-long list of scholarly books and articles that seriously challenge the unfounded belief that the New Deal was something more than a raw deal.

Posted by Donald J. Boudreaux at 10:15 a.m. EST

KEITH HALDERMAN: GOOD ADVICE FOR JAMAICAN PARLIAMENT 10-31-03

The following is from an e-mail I received from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). What they are rather eloquently saying to the Jamaican Parliament also applies in the United States Congress and the legislatures of the various states.

NORML submitted written testimony this week in response to a Jamaican Joint Select Committee's request for public comments regarding the findings of a 2001 federally commissioned report endorsing the decriminalization of marijuana.

"Responsible adult marijuana smokers present no legitimate threat or danger to society, and must not be treated as criminals," NORML wrote."By stubbornly defining all marijuana smoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking within the privacy of their own homes, Jamaica is wasting precious police and prosecutorial resources; clogging the courts; filling costly and scarce jail and prison space that would otherwise house violent offenders; undermining drug education efforts; acting against the best interests of public health and safety; engendering disrespect for the rule of law; and needlessly wrecking the lives and careers of tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens every year."

Government commissioned reports in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have all recommended decriminalizing marijuana for recreational purposes. The Jamaican National Commission on Ganja concluded:"The criminal status of ganja poses a serious danger to society. By alienating and criminalizing hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens, and by making the State in their view an instrument of their oppression rather than their protection, the law and its prosecution create in them disrespect for the rule of law."

The Commission recommended that Parliament amend federal law to decriminalize"small quantities" of marijuana for"personal use by adults" and also for"religious purposes."

NORML Executive Director Keith Stroup said,"It is our hope that Parliament approaches this issue as thoughtfully and as diligently as did the Commission, and adopts their recommendation to decriminalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults."

Posted by Keith Halderman at 12:10 a.m. EST

ARTHUR SILBER: INTERCESSION RESPECTFULLY REQUESTED 10-30-03

Since I feel that I, like many others, have been falsely accused during the often contentious debates about foreign policy matters, I have decided to ask for the intercession of St. Raymond Nonnotus. All is explained here. However, since it is evening now, you might prefer cultural fare instead. I wrote this entry today about the sad passing of tenor Franco Corelli, and reflected on some of my memories of the many performances I saw with Corelli and other operatic legends from the 1960s.

Posted by Arthur Silber at 09:00 p.m. EST

ARTHUR SILBER: IT'S YOUR GODDAMN MESS. YOU BE"CONSTRUCTIVE" 10-30-03

Here's an excerpt from a recent post of mine at my Light of Reason blog:

But there is one tactic the hawks ought to give up at this point. They should stop saying, as one of the commenters to my earlier post did, that none of those who opposed the war with Iraq are offering" constructive" proposals at this point. This is remarkably offensive for several reasons. First, it wasn't the opponents' policies that created this horrible dilemma. It was the hawks' policies. They are responsible for this nightmare, and no one else. They shouldn't expect -- and often demand -- others to offer solutions to the daunting problems that their policies have created. Where is the justice in that? Or even the common sense? They got us all here; they ought to show some intellectual responsibility and creativity of their own, and get us out.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted by Arthur Silber at 06:30 p.m. EST

CHARLES W. NUCKOLLS: ALABAMA CENSORSHIP AGAIN: THIS TIME AT SHELTON STATE, 10-30-03

Unqualified Offerings and SCSU Scholars have rallied in defense of academic freedom at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa. For more on this case, see this account.

Posted by Charles W. Nuckolls at 10:51 a.m. EST

WENDY McELROY: BUSH THE SPIN MEISTER 10-30-03

Two U.S. soldiers were reportedly killed in Iraq two days ago,"taking the combat death toll among U.S. troops in Iraq since the war higher than the wartime total." (Of course, Iraqi casualties are never widely reported by the American media. According to the UK Guardian,"As many as 15,000 Iraqis were killed in the *first* days of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq...Up to 4,300 of the dead were civilian noncombatants. And that number reflects only the first days.)"Bring 'em on" Bush sees nothing but cause for optimism in the rising death toll. The Washington Post (10/28/03) reports,"President Bush yesterday put the best face on a new surge of violence in Iraq as his top defense aides huddled to discuss additional ways of thwarting the anti-American rebellion there before it becomes more widespread. The president, speaking after attacks on police stations and a Red Cross facility in Iraq killed at least 35 people, said such attacks should be seen as a sign of progress ..." Apparently, the US *really* has the terrorists worried and on-the-run or else they wouldn't be hitting back so desperately. And, if the slant of the Bush reaction changes 180 degrees in the next few weeks, the White House has that contingency covered. As the Australian newspaper The Age explains,"The White House website effectively prevents search engines indexing and archiving material on the site related to Iraq. The directories on a site which can be searched by the bots sent out by search engines can be limited by means of a file called robots.txt, which resides in the root directory of a site. Adding a directory to robots.txt ensures that nothing in that folder will ever show up in a search and will never be archived by search sites....These changes were noticed and proved by readers because Google had archived them before the changes were made." As the DC spin-jocks work overtime -- sometimes spinning, other times deleting or editing former statements -- here's one of stories you *won't* be hearing from the mainstream US media. Robert Fisk in One, two, three, what are they fighting for? provides on-the-street reporting from Iraq:"No wonder morale is low. No wonder the American soldiers I meet on the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities don't mince their words about their own government. US troops have been given orders not to bad-mouth their President or Secretary of Defence in front of Iraqis or reporters (who have about the same status in the eyes of the occupation authorities). But when I suggested to a group of US military police near Abu Ghurayb they would be voting Republican at the next election, they fell about laughing. 'We shouldn't be here and we should never have been sent here,' one of them told me with astonishing candour. 'And maybe you can tell me: why were we sent here?'" Words like Halliburton come to my mind. Meanwhile, American soldiers are alienating the Iraqi public, e.g. by" confiscating" money from the Iraqi homes they search. The practice has become sufficiently common that"In one Iraqi city, for example, the 'Coalition Provisional Authority' - which is what the occupation authorities call themselves - have instructed local money changers not to give dollars for Iraqi dinars to occupation soldiers: too many Iraqi dinars had been stolen by troops during house raids." Another story you won't be hearing from mainstream USA, especially in the wake of the acute embarrassment the Bush administration experienced from its substandard treatment of injured soldiers returning from Iraq to a medical"holding center" at Fort Stewart, Georgia: UPI reports,"More than 400 sick and injured soldiers, including some who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, are stuck at Fort Knox, waiting weeks and sometimes months for medical treatment, a score of soldiers said in interviews. The delays appear to have demolished morale -- many said they had lost faith in the Army and would not serve again -- and could jeopardize some soldiers' health, the soldiers said.... [One soldier's] knee and wrist injuries were severe enough that he was evacuated to Germany at the end of July and then sent to Fort Knox. His medical records show doctor appointments around four weeks apart. He said it took him almost two months to get a cast for his wrist." Why won't you be hearing more on this and related story? One reason:"A UPI photographer working on this [the foregoing] story without first having cleared his presence with base public affairs officials was detained for several hours for questioning Tuesday and then released. He was told he would need an Army escort for any further visits to the base. He returned to the base accompanied by an Army escort on Wednesday.This reporter also was admonished that he had to be accompanied by an Army public affairs escort when on base. The interviews had been conducted without the presence of an escort." In other words, the media will be given no access to injured soldiers that is not severely controlled by authorities. Unlike WWII, when bedside interviews with wounded soldiers was commonplace, the voices and faces of those wounded in Iraq -- if seen or heard at all -- will be filter, sanitized, so that all you hear is the official line of"Go Team America!" I have only one first-hand story to contribute. In the course of writing my weekly column for FOX News, a few months ago, I received a letter from a woman serving in Iraq who was outraged at the sexual molestation scandal that was then hitting the Air Force Academy. She made some interesting points that cast the legitimacy of the claims of rape and other abuse made against"the system" into question. In short, she was defending the military and its treatment of women. Because her position was both informed and counter to everything else I was hearing in the media, I wanted to interview her for my column and -- given that FOX is well regarded by the military -- this prospect seemed bright. Two months later, I had jumped through hoops, talked to PR officers, been bumped up the ranks of people to" clear" me, etc., etc. Everything still seemed bright and in place for an eventual interview...except for me. How much bureaucracy and time delay did I have to go through to write one 850-word column which, arguably, cast the military in a good light? How much truth was likely to emerge from that kind of process? I just f*cking gave up. And, yes, my use of obscenity is appropriate.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 10:45 a.m. EST. Check McBlog for more commentary.

CHARLES W. NUCKOLLS: ALABAMA CENSORSHIP AGAIN: THIS TIME AT SHELTON STATE, 10-29-03

On Wednesday, October 29th, representatives of the Alabama Scholars Association visited John Trobaugh, whose art was recently censored by Shelton State Community College president Rick Rogers. Trobaugh is adjunct professor of art. His highly acclaimed work can be seen here.

Drawings and photographs by Trobaugh depict scenes that could be construed as homosexual in orientation or theme.

The exhibit had been approved by the chair of the Art Department for display in the entrance to the Bean Brown Theater at Shelton State. The day after the exhibit went on display, President Rogers personally contacted the department chair and told him that the art would have to be removed. He had received" complaints," he said. A day later, and under orders from the president, the art was taken down.

The ASA is deeply concerned by the decision of President Rogers to censor an already-approved display of drawings and photos simply because it might be controversial. It is the legal and ethical obligation of Shelton State, like any university, to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom. President Rogers' action violates that obligation.

The ASA calls on Rick Rogers to issue a formal apology to Professor Trobaugh and to restore his artwork to display exactly where it was when Rogers intervened.

We cannot help noting that Rogers justified his censorship by saying that theater-going families might be offended by Trobaugh's works. The play currently in production is"Arsenic and Old Lace," a play about serial homicide and poisoning.

For newspaper coverage of the case, see here

Posted by Charles W. Nuckolls at 6:21 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: ELAND AND WOLFIE, KAUFFMAN, WAR, AND FAMILY VALUES, 10-29-03

Our own Ivan Eland has a new piece on the attack which almost killed Wolfowitz. Meanwhile, Bill Kauffman, via Jesse Walker , has a provocative article on why pro-family conservatives should oppose the Iraq war.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:10 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: HATE FROM THE HEARTLAND 10-28-03

This New York Daily News article brings attention to a story that is getting a lot of play here in the NYC metropolitan area. Some high school football players from Bellmore, Long Island allegedly sodomized younger players with various objects at a preseason camp in Pennsylvania. This inspired a group of eight protestors from Kansas---including Margie Phelps---to descend on Bellmore to blame the crime on a general atmosphere of Godless immorality and rampant homosexuality. Young Kansan kids held up signs that boasted:"God Blew Up the Shuttle,""God Hates America,""God Hates Fag Enablers," and my personal favorite:"Thank God for Sept. 11th." As a libertarian, I'd defend anybody's right to speak their mind---especially if they do it on their own property. But the battle for a free society is as much about culture as it is about politics and economics; it is a battle, in my view, that can only be won when the intolerant fundamentalists of all stripes are relegated to the dustbin of history.

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 11:00 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: CLINT BOLICK DEFENDS JUDGE BROWN, 10-28-03

Clint Bolick makes a strong case for Judge Janice Brown. It won’t be easy, however. The long knives are already out.

Posted by David T. Beito at 12:41 p.m. EST

WENDY McELROY: QUESTIONING GOOGLE'S OBJECTIVITY, 10-28-03

Interesting email from a friend, who writes:"I've had news.google.com as my browser home page since it was first published. It was a fantastic thing for a busy professional to see headline events lumped and summed in a rational, and one supposed, value-neutral fashion. Over time, though, I have been seeing and hearing evidence that calls that assumption of objectivity into question. Over the past several months, I have noticed a pattern when comparing the articles making front page headlines (arranged by subject) with advanced Google News searches on key word or words describing that subject. One would expect that in the case of an objective distillation, the appearance of a main page headline group would reflect the number of recent stories on the subject, and that the headline selected to represent the group would reflect the majority"slant" of that group of stories. Google's methods for determining the presentation of this information is of course secret. My unscientific conclusion is that someone is manually manipulating selected items to satisfy some concealed agenda of their own, or of some person or group they hope to please. For example, at the beginning of the Iraq"postwar" period, a subject group would commonly appear under a headline that was counter to the Bushie neo-con take on the issues. On the next refresh of the main page, that headlined story would get buried in favor of one that was administration-friendly, and that set up would last for a day or two (the typical persistence of a subject group). On examination of the articles composing the group, however, it appeared that a large majority conformed with the viewpoint expressed in the original headline. I tracked this apparent phenomenon several times on both the Iraq war and the domestic totalitarian initiative popularly known as the Patriot Act. Each time the results were similar. Now I see indications that the very presence of subject groups on the main page are perhaps being screened. Between the weekend and Monday, I noticed that suddenly subject groups about Iraqi resistance to occupation were absent. That struck me as odd, since these had been a fairly constant feature for a month or more. This morning, wondering if the source media themselves had been cast under some kind of pall by Ashcroft & company, I went to the advanced page and did a search for articles published in the last 24 hours containing"iraq". There were 2870 hits. Could I be mistaken about Google? Sure. It is in my nature to be suspicious of those wielding power, whether they be agents of the State, or owners of popular services in an ubiquitous medium. But I am confident enough in my analysis to move my own web searches to another site."

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 6:15 a.m. EST. Check McBlog for more commentary.

DAVID T. BEITO: RALPH LUKER AND CENSORHIP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, 10-27-03

Many thanks to fellow HNN blogger Ralph Luker for his blog on the University of Alabama’s ongoing effort to close off the Alabama Scholars Association's access to campus mail via an arbitrary and selective"recognition policy" for faculty organizations. Ralph compares UA's stance to that pursued by Duke University against the youth branch of the NAACP in 1961.

On this matter, my colleague, Charles W. Nuckolls has finally completed the thankless task of organizing and posting the entire correspondence between ASA officials and various low-level UA functionaries. Charles also quotes from the Provost’s new proposed, loophole ridden and vague, “recognition” policy for campus organizations.

Posted by David T. Beito at 6:10 p.m. EST

McELROY ON PRINCIPLES AND VESTED INTEREST 10-27-03

Perhaps it is my cynicism speaking -- it *does* tend toward loquaciousness -- but I see stage-setting behind Sen. Joseph Lieberman's threat to take the Bush Administration"to court"...so to speak. The threat springs from the belief by members of both parties that the White House is"stonewalling the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by blocking its demands for documents despite threats of a subpoena." I do not doubt that Lieberman is extremely frustrated and sincerely outraged by attempts to block the investigation which he was instrumental in organizing. I also do not doubt that a major Bush scandal that happens to break open shortly before the Presidential election would make wonderful stage decoration for the Democratic Party platform. Lieberman declares,"If they continue to refuse [to turn over documents], I will urge the independent commission to take the administration to court," said Lieberman, who is running for president."And if the administration tries to run out the clock, John McCain and I will go to the floor of the Senate to extend the life of the commission." Let's see...that would continue the commission's investigation well into the active campaigning period. It is always nice when one's principled stands co-incide with one's vested political interests.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 9:30 a.m. EST. Check McBlog for more commentary.

DAVID T. BEITO: BERNSTEIN DEFENDS JANICE BROWN: A MODERN LOCHNERIAN? 10-27-03

My friend David E. Bernstein offers a spirited defense of Judge Janice Brown who was recently blasted by a New York Times editorial. While I don’t know much about Judge Brown, if she is truly the defender of Lochnerian jurisprudence that her critics allege, she would be a God-send to the federal bench. As Bernstein has pointed out in his book, Only One Place of Redress , Lochnerian jurisprudence provided much needed protection for the economic liberties of blacks and other oppressed groups.

HNN blogger Thomas Spencer, taking an all-too predictable partisan line, contends, on the other hand, that she is a reactionary nut.

Posted by David T. Beito at 8:55 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: TIENANMIN SQUARE IN TUSCALOOSA? 10-26-03

Check it out.

Posted by David T. Beito at 5:40 p.m. EST

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: IRAQ & THE CULTURE OF DEPENDENCY 10-26-03

I wanted to mention an article from last week's New York Times"Week in Review," John Tierney's essay,"Another Challenge in Iraq: Giving Up Food Rations," archived here. Tierney points out that in America, those on welfare"were defined as the underclass. In Iraq, they're the entire nation"---or, by some estimates,"60 percent of the population."

Saddam Hussein kept the" culture of dependency" alive for political purposes, since he was seen by the populace as the source of largesse. After sanctions were imposed on Iraq, he used"300 government warehouses and more than 60,000 workers to deliver a billion pounds of groceries every month---a basket of rations guaranteed to every citizen, rich or poor." The occupation seeks to replace"rations with cash payments or some version of food stamps," aiming to move Iraqis to the practice of"shopping for themselves." Barham Salih, prime minister among the Kurds in northern Iraq, states:"This culture has become one of the biggest obstacles to rebuilding Iraq."

One hopeful sign, perhaps, is that many who receive the rations engage in resale of the items they don't want, contributing to the proliferation of gray markets. But free markets are being resisted by those in power, and some argue that the transition to direct cash payments will have to be accompanied by price controls and central planning. It makes the introduction of market prices and personal decision-making that much more difficult.

Building a"nation" based on liberal democracy---on free markets, civil liberties, and procedural fairness---is not something that can be achieved by mere writ. It requires a fundamental cultural change. All of this brings to mind an important passage from volume 3 of Hayek's Law, Legislation and Libery. Most important in this passage is Hayek's emphasis on the tacit dimension, which is 'embedded', if you will, in traditions, beliefs, and cultural practices, a dimension that forever threatens the articulated designs of central planners of any sort---be they current socialists or former ones (e.g.,"neoconservatives"). Hayek writes:

"[V]ery few countries in the world are in the fortunate position of possessing a strong constitutional tradition. Indeed, outside the English-speaking world probably only the smaller countries of Northern Europe and Switzerland have such traditions. Most of the other countries have never preserved a constitution long enough to make it become a deeply entrenched tradition; and in many of them there is also lacking the background of traditions and beliefs which in the more fortunate countries have made constitutions work which did not explicitly state all that they presupposed, or which did not even exist in written form. This is even more true of those new countries which, without a tradition even remotely similar to the ideal of the Rule of Law which the nations of Europe have long held, have adopted from the latter the institutions of democracy without the foundations of beliefs and convictions presupposed by those institutions.

"If such attempts to transplant democracy are not to fail, much of that background of unwritten traditions and beliefs, which in the successful democracies had for a long time restrained the abuse of majority power, will have to be spelled out in such instruments of government for the new democracies. That most of such attempts have so far failed does not prove that the basic conceptions of democracy are inapplicable, but only that the particular institutions which for a time worked tolerably well in the West presuppose the tacit acceptance of certain other principles which were in some measure observed there but which, where they are not yet recognized, must be made as much a part of the written constitution as the rest. We have no right to assume that the particular forms of democracy which have worked with us must also work elsewhere. Experience seems to show that they do not. There is, therefore, every reason to ask how those conceptions which our kind of representative institutions tacitly presupposed can be explicitly put into such constitutions."

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 12:40 p.m. EST]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1815 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1815 0 MORE ON THE FAILURES OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE 10-23-03

You know I am not a great admirer of American intelligence. Here are some additional reasons WHY.

Posted by Judith at 5:00 P.M. EST

"MUSHARRAF'S GOOSE GETTING COOKED?" by B.RAMAN

I think this article is worth contemplating:

"Oct. 22, 2003 | Last Thursday, a senior White House official called Mariane Pearl and Paul Steiger, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to report a new, key development in the investigation into the death of Mariane's husband, Journal reporter Daniel Pearl."We have now established enough links and credible evidence to think that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed" -- the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks --"was involved in your husband's murder," the official told Mariane.

"What do you mean 'involved'?" Mariane asked.

"We think he committed the actual murder."

2. So says a sensational article A href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/10/22/pearl/index.html">on the kidnapping and murder of Danial Pearl, the US journalist, written by Asra Q. Nomani, the free-lance journalist, then living in Karachi, in whose house Pearl and his wife Mariane had stayed when he went on his ill-fated trip to Karachi from Mumbai last year to investigate a report that an E-Mail]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1777 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1777 0

CHRIS MATTHEW SCIABARRA: ISLAMIC RESURGENCE IN SYRIA 10-24-03

Some pro-war advocates would like us to believe that the Western world is at war with this anti-Christian monolith known as Islam. But neither the Western world nor Islam is a monolith. Not even twentieth-century Communism---with its Sino-Soviet conflicts---was a monolith. Because of the lethal opposition between secularist Pan-Arabists and Islamic fundamentalists of various stripes, tribal warfare among Islamic sects has led to the deaths of thousands in the Middle East. Just as Saddam Hussein warred against the fundamentalists in Iraq---making a Ba'ath-Al Qaeda strategic alliance virtually impossible---so too did Syria, among"secular" Arab states, war against militant Islam.

In 1982, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's troops murdered 10,000 people connected with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood. Now comes word from this NY Times story that Syria"is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence." The article suggests that with the US defeat of Hussein and its occupation of Iraq, Syria"seeks to forge nationalist sentiment with any means possible . . . including fostering the very brand of religious fundamentalism that it once pruned so mercilessly."

As I point out here, the scheme for a Pax Americana is fraught with endless possibilities for negative unintended consequences, however"noble" the intentions. Increased US intervention in the Middle East is slowly engendering unlikely alliances and the development of even more virulent forms of Islamic extremism. I can't think of many more effective ways to nourish the soil from which anti-US terrorism will grow.

Posted by Chris Matthew Sciabarra at 5:15 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: AMERICAN COMBAT DEATHS AND THE"LIBERAL MEDIA," 10-24-03

A favorite complaint of Panglossian pro-war bloggers is that the media has overplayed stories on American combat deaths in Iraq.

My complaint is just the opposite. Based on my listening, viewing, and reading habits, it has been my experience the media, liberal or otherwise, has given short shrift to this problem. On this morning’s NPR news roundup, for example, the combat death of yet another American soldier only ranked as the third story. It was right behind Bush's Palmer Raids on Walmart and the farewell journey of the Concord!

A story from Editor and Publisher provides confirmation for my suspicions by reporting statistics indicating that the media has greatly underreported casualty rates in Iraq.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:22 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,“PORK LADEN” SPENDING, AND IRAQ, 10-23-03

The Wall Street Journal deploys a variant of the"two wrongs make a right" theory to defend massive subsidies for Iraq. Gee, I thought only liberals used that kind of argument:

“Who do our Congresspersons think they’re fooling? As they ponder a pork-laden energy bill and a multi-trillion dollar Medicare prescription drug benefit, some have chosen President Bush’s Iraq reconstruction request as the place to make a stand for fiscal rectitude.”

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:37 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: MANIPULATING IRAQI PUBLIC OPINION POLLS, 10-22-03

James Zogby describes how administration officials, most especially Dick Cheney, and many pro-war bloggers have misinterpreted and/or “manipulated” the recent Zogby International poll data measuring Iraqi public opinion. Well worth reading.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:00 a.m. EST

IVAN ELAND: BUSH'S PYRRHIC VICTORIES ON IRAQ 10-21-03

President Bush is basking in the glory of getting unanimous U.N. Security Council approval for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Bush is also on the verge of getting the Congress to approve its request for $87 billion for its reconstruction. The president may regret those victories.

The president has painted himself into a corner, and his domestic and foreign opponents are applying the final coat of acrylic. Bush's triumph at the United Nations is only a symbolic victory, and one that could cause him future troubles. The back room dealing that enabled Bush to win unanimously at the United Nations is now obvious. The president, taking criticism from Congress and the American public over the exorbitant public funds being dumped into Iraq, is desperate to get foreign donors to defray the costs. Potential contributing countries, many of which opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq, know they have the president over a barrel. Before they pledge contributions at the upcoming donor conference, they insisted on the creation of new agency, run by the United Nations and World Bank and independent of the American occupation, to decide how to spend financial assistance to Iraq.

So in the long-term, getting the unanimous vote in the United Nations could be the worst of all worlds for the president. The United States and Britain are now formally responsible for Iraq's future, but some control over that future already has been informally relinquished to the United Nations. Even greater international control, however, does not ensure that the United States will be deluged with huge amounts of new foreign funds or offers to send in peacekeeping troops. In other words, the U.N. ratification of the American occupation symbolically highlights Bush's responsibility for ensuring a good outcome in Iraq, while at the same time eroding his control over the operation and improving only slightly the amount of help he'll get from other countries. The international community, perceiving the president to be arrogant and dangerously aggressive, will likely continue to let him sink in self-made Iraqi quicksand.

And the president's domestic enemies are also sharpening their knives. Reflecting constituent ire about the largesse being poured into Iraq, congressional criticism mounted over this year's $87 billion to"secure" and reconstruct Iraq. The Senate, in a token revolt, converted some of the reconstruction assistance from grants to loans, which the president opposes. But before Congress finishes, the loans will likely be reconverted to grants. After all, down the road, the president's opponents don't want him to blame the likely failure in Iraq on their stinginess in providing the resources needed to succeed.

With all of the efforts by Bush's opponents-virtually the whole world and increasing numbers even in the United States-to pin responsibility for the failings in Iraq solely on him, one would think that the president would be skillfully trying to parry that threat. Instead, he is helping his opponents. Bush recently removed the option of using Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz at the Department of Defense (DoD) as whipping boys for the continued mayhem in Iraq. The president authorized a transfer of authority over the occupation from DoD to the White House by putting Condoleeza Rice, his National Security Adviser, in charge of the new Iraq Stabilization Group.

Then the president's own words made matters worse. After public grumbling by Rumsfeld about the transfer of responsibilities and the not-so-veiled criticism by Senator Richard Lugar, the Republican Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, alluding to chaos in the administration over Iraq policy, the president put smiles on the faces of his critics by blurting out,"the person who is in charge is me." Not as catchy as Harry Truman's"the buck stops here," but equally entrapping.

So the president is on the hook to ensure peace, stability and prosperity for Iraq, as he should be. Counterintuitively, the best chance Bush has to achieve that outcome is to accelerate the process of turning Iraq back to the Iraqis. As occupation by a superpower turned to self-determination, anti-U.S. violence-which, ominously, is beginning to spread into the previously docile Shiite community--would likely diminish. Although the Pentagon made serious errors in post-war planning for Iraq, the most grievous blunder was made by the White House in thinking that the U.S. government, with no legitimacy in a faraway land, could socially engineer at gunpoint a large, devastated society back to health. Only the Iraqis themselves can credibly lead that effort.

Turning governance rapidly back to the Iraqis might not give the president what he originally wanted-a compliant government that would sell the West cheap oil and allow the U.S. to station military forces near the Persian Gulf. But Bush now has few choices because he has been tagged with sole responsibility for ensuring success in Iraq. If he wants to better his reelection chances, he needs a stable Iraq, not a puppet government.

Posted by Ivan Eland at 5:41 p.m. EST

KEITH HALDERMAN: SHORTSIGHTEDNESS IN ALABMA 10-21-03

Many of you are surely familiar with the on going dispute between the Alabama Scholars Association (ASA) and the administration at the University of Alabama (see second Blog below) and it is not surprising that retaliation would find its way to the door of an organization that brings up touchy subjects such as grade inflation. However, it seems to me that the University is being horribly shortsighted in this matter because I think in the future the elite institutions will be those that return to or hold on to the more demanding standards. What value does an A have when everybody gets one, none, and, contrary to the belief of many, people will always seek out and honor value. Instead of obstructing them, the administration should be thanking the ASA for pointing out the right path to a better institution.

Posted by Keith Halderman at 11:30 EST

DAVID T. BEITO: MICHIIGAN SUFFERS BLOWBACK FROM STEEL TARIFFS, 10-21-03

Via Karen DeCoster, the Detroit News we get a description of the unintended consequences of steel tariffs (Bush style):

“Michigan’s extensive network of auto parts suppliers has been particularly hard hit. The companies use steel as a basic building block for their products. They say the tariffs, which range from 8 to 20 percent, have had a devastating effective on their industry by raising their costs. They say they have laid off more workers than have been saved in the steel industry.”

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:00 a.m. EST

CHARLES W. NUCKOLLS AND DAVID T. BEITO: FACULTY SENATE “DISCUSSES” MAIL CENSORSHIP AT THE UNIVERISTY OF ALABAMA, 10-20-03

The Steering Committee of the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama "discussed" the recent denial of campus mail rights to the Alabama Scholars Association. For more, see here. Although the “discussion” of this issue is a step in the right direction, we are not optimistic that the Faculty Senate, which has tangled with the ASA on grade inflation, term limits for administrators, and other issues, will take action to correct this outrageous and selective censorship policy.

As has been discussed several times on Liberty and Power, the Alabama Scholars Association has used Campus Mail without incident for more than a year. Recently, however, Bill May of University Printing (in consultation with UA counsel, George S. Gordon) announced that he was revoking this right because his office had made a “mistake.” Apparently, he has not told groups like the Black Faculty and Staff Association and the UA chapter of the American Association of University Professors that their long-time rights to campus mail will be imperiled by this “mistake.” His office, as well as Campus Mail, have singled out one, and only one, organization: the ASA.

For a more detailed description, see here.

Posted by Charles W. Nuckolls and David T. Beito at 9:37 a.m. EST

HUNT TOOLEY: REPRISALS AMERICAN STYLE 10/17/03

Speaking of being on the receiving end, take a look at the kind of lessons we are dishing out and the Iraqis are receiving, discussed in an excellent column by Karen Kwiatkowski entitled ”Orchards and American Integrity” on LewRockwell.com. Hint: Our military has been burning down orchards in general reprisal against local outbreaks of terrorism and noncompliance.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 11:08 p.m. CST

DAVID T. BEITO: ON THE RECEIVING END OF WILSONIAN DO-GOODISM, 10-17-03

Via Matthew Bargainer, here are some pithy comments from an Alternet columnist on the more degrading aspects of the international American welfare state (conservative style):

“What can we, in America, know of how it feels to be a citizen of any country in the world. We do not have brigades of well-meaning volunteers from say, the Netherlands arriving in our neighborhoods with bold promises of teaching us how to run our schools. We do not have representatives from Singapore engaging in optimistic efforts to reform our legislature, or teams from France trying to develop our media. Scruffy Swedish twenty-somethings, fresh from college, do not take up residence in our midst and teach us about the importance of government-sponsored healthcare.

Though we pride ourselves on traveling the world to help solve its problems – charity or bust - we do not know how it feels to be always on the worse end of the expression, 'It is better to give than to receive.'"

Posted by David T. Beito at 5:37 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: FREE SPEECH FOLLOW-UP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, 10-17-03

Here is yet another story on the Alabama Scholars Association's apparently successful effort to defend free speech in residential halls at the University of Alabama. The University’s subsequent, and some would argue related, attempt to bar the ASA's literature from campus mail also continues to generate news coverage.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:47 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: LIMBAUGH IN LIMBO, 10-16-03

Rush Limbaugh is indeed a hypocrite. But hypocrisy is a victimless crime. In a free society one should not need permission from a state deputy (read: licensed physician) to engage in self-medication. Limbaugh until now has not understood that rather simple point; apparently it isn't covered at his Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. (There's a double oxymoron.) Maybe he will see the point now. But what good will it do the cause of liberty? It will look like mere self-serving expediency.

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 8:20 a.m. CDT

SHELDON RICHMAN: WHAT PRIVATE PROPERTY? 10-16-03

While the central government works overtime to keep us safe from international terrorism, its local affiliates are busy stealing our property right out from under us. It's becoming commonplace for states and localities to force people to sell their land at gunpoint so that it can be turned over to large commercial developers. Why? Because shopping centers anchored by Wal-Mart or Costco raise more tax revenue than lower middle-class two- or three-bedroom residences. Perfectly sound homes are condemned as"blight" for this cynical and criminal endeavor. The power of eminent domain (never justified, merely asserted) is bad enough when confined to"public uses." But the offense seems even more egregious when properties are simply transferred from one private citizen to another. Here are the details of the most recent case, from Alabaster, Alabama. To think the Founders revolted over a tiny tea tax...

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 7:20 a.m. CDT

HUNT TOOLEY: WHY DID THE U.S. ATTACK JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ? 10/15/03

In the face of the Bush regime’s current disinformation campaign, we should keep asking pertinent and specific questions about this war. Why did all those attacks by the U.S. military on “opposing” journalists occur at the same time? Who ordered armored attacks on civilian journalists in Baghdad? Why would these attacks not be called a crime? Why did Colin Powell say that the army found out only later that it was targeting locations containing journalists, when it is clear that this information was well known in advance?

A few links will help formulate at least an initial set of questions. A recent Guardian essay written by the widow of Al Jazeera journalist Tareq Ayyoub will help formulate an initial set of questions. Another pertinent link is Robert Fisk’s angry article, from the midst of the war in April, “Did the U.S. Murder These Journalists?” And the Democracy Now (Pacifica) site contains an interview which connects some important dots.

Like most of the stories that are emerging about the tactics of the current regime, this is a very ugly story.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 4:56 p.m. CST

DAVID T. BEITO: REPUBLICANS AS THE PARTY OF BIGGER GOVERNMENT, 10-15-03

Brought to via Jesse Walker:

"The economist Jeffrey Frankel has made a good case that within the executive branch, ‘The Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government, and failing-grade microeconomics. Surprisingly, Democratic presidents have – relatively speaking – become the agents of fiscal responsibility, free trade, competitive markets, and good textbook microeconomics.'"

Any thoughts Don?

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:07 a.m. EST

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX: BLAMING FOREIGN WORKERS, 10-14-03

Reading “Skilled Workers Sway Politicians With Fervor Against Free Trade” in the Wall Street Journal of October 10 reminded me why I teach my students to peer through the soupy fog of inessential facts that enshrouds almost every discussion of economic policy.

The workers and manufacturers featured in this story blame their loss of jobs and business on lower-cost foreign workers. This tactic is understandable: it’s easier to win government favors – “protection” – if your misfortune is thought to be the consequence of mysterious, malignant forces at work in distant lands. But the core reason American firms seek so doggedly to lower their costs – sometimes by outsourcing their operations to other countries – is that the American economy is intensely competitive. This competitiveness is a key reason for America's unrivaled economic success.

And in intensely competitive economies the shots are called by consumers. Whenever government protects firms or workers from competition, it harms consumers. It tells consumers “you cannot spend your money in ways that you think best.” I challenge anyone to explain how a nation’s long-run economic interests are promoted by policies that dampen competitiveness and constrict consumer choice.

Posted by Donald J. Boudreaux at 9:47 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: BOGUS PRO-WAR “LETTERS FROM IRAQ,” 10-13-03

Via Justin Raimondo , and LRC Blog , we learn from the Olympian , that many of the pro-war letters to home from soldiers that have been making the rounds on conservative blogs are bogus or, more precisely, duplicates of the same letter signed by different soldiers.

Posted by David T. Beito at 8:59 a.m. EST

JEFFREY R. HUMMEL: “NO SENSE OF GOVERNMENT” IN IRAQ, 10-12-03

Bay Fang, in her article on Iraq for U.S. News and World Report, quotes a U.S. civilian in Iraq who was sent out to the province to represent the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)."As long as we have the military here, there is no sense of government," he says."You just have a guy with a gun telling you what to do."

I thought he said there was no sense of government.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel at 1:30 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: BERNSTEIN SPEECH, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA SPINNING ON MAIL CENSORSHIP POLICY, 10-10-03

David Bernstein’s well-delivered and forceful speech yesterday at the University of Alabama, ”How Anti-Discrimination Laws Are Being Used to Suppress Civil Liberties,” could not have come at a better time. The speech was sponsored by the Alabama Scholars Association and the Federalist Society. Bernstein discussed his new book , You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties.

The Tuscaloosa News not only covered the speech but used it as an opportunity to ask the University administration why it held up distribution of the flyer advertising the event until the last minute. The response indicates that the University has not seen the error of its ways. According to University spokeswoman, Cathy Andreen, “The issue is determining what qualifies as an actual UA faculty organization and what is really a national organization. There is an ongoing discussion of how the Alabama Scholars Association fits into that.”

Officials of the ASA have addressed each one of these points in emails to an endless parade of bureaucrats over the last month (correspondence available upon request). First, the UA Chapter of the ASA has been a recognized faculty organization for more than a year. In this capacity, it has reserved rooms on campus under its own name and has had Campus Mail and University Printing distribute its flyers for several events.

Second, by using this method to distribute its newsletter, the Alabama Observer, it has followed the long-standing precedent established by the UA Chapter of the Alabama Conference of the American Association of University Professors to distribute its newsletter, Alabama Academe, through Campus Mail.

The Conference, like the ASA, is the state chapter of a national organization, the American Association of University Professors. Like the ASA, it has chapters throughout the state including Auburn, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of South Alabama. Does the University intend to give the same treatment to Alabama Academe? It has not answered this question.

Sad to say the battle is not over. The next big test will come when the ASA brings the next issue of the Alabama Observer to Campus Mail and University Printing for delivery.

While we are on this subject, we would like to thank the other bloggers who rallied to our cause. Examples include Ralph Luker, the Volokh Conspiracy (to which Bernstein belongs), and InstaPundit.

We owe you one guys and unfortunately, we may need your help again!

Posted by David T. Beito and Charles W. Nuckolls at 8:45 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: FREE SPEECH VICTORY IN ALABAMA (BUT STILL INCOMPLETE) 10-09-03

This morning Campus Mail at the University of Alabama delivered flyers for events sponsored by the ASA at the standard 30 dollar rate per 1,000 for faculty organizations. This rescinded the last-minute decision yesterday of Mr. Mike Butts of Campus Mail to bar the flyers (as University Printing had done earlier before it reversed itself yesterday). Ironically, one of the flyers advertised a speech by David E. Bernstein of George Mason University entitled “How Anti-Discrimination Laws are Being Used to Suppress Civil Liberties."

Professor Bernstein kindly ]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1768 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1768 0

IVAN ELAND: SHORT COMMENT ON"AMERICA'S SPLENDID LITTLE WARS," BY PETER HUCHTHAUSEN, 9-30-03

I recently read"America's Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of U.S. Military Engagements: 1975-2000." The book was authored by Peter Huchthausen and published by Viking in 2003. Although the book gives good concise summaries of the many"little wars" the United States has fought from the Ford through the Clinton administrations, it seems to accept at face value the reasons each administration gave for particular interventions, particularly those of Republican administrations.

In addition, the book gives a short history leading up to each intervention but in many cases avoids telling us what happened after the intervention. Did conditions in the country go back to the way they were before the intervention--e.g., as they did in the U.S. interventions in Somalia and Lebanon. And so the author does not give us his overall assessment of the success of the intervention in political terms, but only in military terms. But for a quick summary of the facts in recent U.S. invasions and nation-building, the book is probably worth picking up as a reference book.

Posted by Ivan Eland at 1:30 pm EST

DAVID T. BEITO:"KRAUTS,” “GOOKS,” AND NOW “HAJJIS,” 09-30-03

Jay Price at the News and Observer reports, “World War II had its “krauts,” Vietnam had its “gooks,” and now, the War on Terrorism has its own dehumanizing name: “hajji.”....

Iraqis, friend or foe, are called hajjis. Kuwaitis are called hajjis. Even people brought in by civilian contractors to work in mess halls or drive buses are hajjis – despite the fact they might be from India, the Philippines or Pakistan, and might be Hindu or Christian.”

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:24 a.m. EST

KEITH HALDERMAN; DECEPTIVE TERMINOLOGY 09-29-03

The term “war on drugs “ is used on a daily basis in a plethora of venues. The federal government spends a billion dollars a month fighting it. However, it is an inherently deceptive term. I prefer the phrase “war on people who use certain kinds of drugs” because, after all, if the police find drugs in someone’s home they put that person in jail not the drugs. Also, as the New York Daily News reported yesterday the sales of legal antidepressants increased 73% from 1998 to 2002, while the sales of legal drugs that stimulate the central nervous system increased 167% during the same time period.

Posted by Keith Halderman at 6:30 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO PLAME/WILSON: REYNOLDS V. SPENCER, 09-29-03

Thomas Spencer criticizes (to put it mildly) Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for downplaying the Plame/Wilson story while the indefatigable Radley Balko writes:

“This administration has shown an astonishing lack of accountability. To my knowledge, no one was fired after September 11. No one was fired when the Nigerian uranium story made it into the State of Union. Now one has yet been fired for the bad intelligence about Iraq’s alleged WMDs.

If this story proves as alarming as it sounds, and no one gets fired, perhaps it's time to follow the buck to the top of the chain of command.”

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:11 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: CRONY CAPITALISM IN IRAQ 09-27-03

Radley Balko in the Agitator discusses the dangers of crony capitalism among American contractors in Iraq reconstruction.

Posted by David T. Beito at 11:32 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: FIRE FILES SUIT, CAL POLY IN SPIN MODE 09-26-03

The Steve Hinkle case is heating up with news that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has filed suit to defend his free speech rights.

Hinkle is a student at Cal Poly, who was hauled before a campus Star Chamber for posting flyers advertising a black conservative speaker. The charge against him was “disruption.”

For the latest update, including the utterly transparent efforts of Cal Poly to spin the facts, see Erin O’Connor.

Posted by David T. Beito at 3:27 p.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: EDWARD SAID, R.I.P. 09-26-03

I sadly note the passing the other day of Edward Said, the Columbia University professor and eloquent champion of the rights of wronged Palestinians. (See Blaming the Victims.) Said himself was a Palestinian who wrote prodigiously about the injustices committed against his people. I had philosophical, political, economic, and cultural disagreements with Professor Said, who was a contributor to that late great libertarian magazine, Inquiry, with which I was once associated. But I always admired his reasoned, scholarly, yet passionate devotion to justice.

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 8:45 a.m. CDT

WESLEY CLARK: NEOCON? 09-26-03

Wesley Clark’s speech at a Republican fundraiser in 2001, “Politics Has to Stop at the Water’s Edge,” is so hawkish and Wilsonian that it could easily have been delivered by Donald Rumsfeld or William Kristol.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:37 a.m. EST

IVAN ELAND: MY NEW PIECE ON THE HUSSEIN/SEPT. 11 LINK, 9-25-03

I recently wrote a piece on Bush's admission that no evidence existed linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. It is really the last pillar that the administration has to support its justification for war. Now that it has fallen, more people will question why U.S. military personnel have been put in harms way in Iraq. The article is entitled, U.S. Iraq Policy: The Day the Roof Caved In

Posted by Ivan Eland at 4:20 p.m. EST

PRIVATIZING THE GREEK SYSTEM, 09-25-03

President Robert Witt and other officials of the University of Alabama received much praise earlier this year when Gamma Phi Beta, a traditionally white sorority at the University of Alabama, admitted its first black member. Now, another member alleges that the admission rules were rigged as part of a Byzantine scheme.

If true, this story underlines once again the waste and downright silliness of the UA’s continuing unholy entanglement with the Greek system. Currently, the sororities and fraternities get massive subsidies (mostly in the form of low rents) and are subject to equally massive regulations from the central administration. What then is the solution?

The way out of this mess is for the Board of Trustees to implement the proposal of the Alabama Scholars Association to fully privatize the Greek system. Privatization will end the regulations and subsidies and thus create opportunities to cut, and reform, the bloated campus administration.

In a time of budget pressure and rampant grade distortion at UA it is an exercise in futility to continue this time-consuming and expensive entanglement. Even if full integregation occurs, the quagmire will only deepen as future social engineers in the administration and faculty senate inevitably attempt to micromanage other membership restrictions of the Greeks (black and white) related to class, dress, and family connections.

Posted by David T. Beito at 11:07 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: WHO'S THE OBSTACLE TO PEACE? 09-25-03

"The real obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is Ariel Sharon, not Yasser Arafat." So writes Avi Shlaim in Wednesday's International Herald Tribune. Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. More important, he's the author of The Politics of Partition, which documents that the leaders of the soon-to-be state of Israel and Jordan (then known as Transjordan) colluded to deprive the Palestinians of the state they were supposed to get under the 1947 UN partition plan. The book debunks the claim that there was universal Arab hostility to the fledging Jewish state. Shlaim was born in Baghdad and was raised in Israel, where he lived until 1966. He is one of Israel's"New Historians," who, using Israeli archives, have revised the flawed official David-and-Goliath story of Israel's founding and early relations with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. (For more see this letter to Foreign Policy.)

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 9:55 a.m. CDT

HUNT TOOLEY: SHOW ME THE WEAPONS! 09/24/03

WMD UPDATE: STILL no weapons of mass destruction. For a year, the administration has kept the ball in the air by a simple strategy of announcing, or having announced, that a big revelation is just around the corner, that the smoking gun has been found, that insider administration officials, as Rush Limbaugh put it time and again, had the evidence of various weapons of mass destruction and were just waiting for the right psychological moment to lay it all out.

Who can forget the performance of Colin Powell in describing evidence of WMDs, known in the international press to be thoroughly discredited at that time, and called so by none other than International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei? And Hans Blix said a month ago that U.S. officials had attempted to intimidate him before the war, urging him to"discover" WMDs, whether the evidence was there or not.

But that's OK. Now it seems that it never WAS the WMDs. (Though some of the readers of a piece I wrote last week for Mises.org wrote me to say that they STILL believe in the WMD hoax. I have since sold these individuals some very valuable cross-river real estate in a prominent northeastern city). So what WAS the cause of the war (alright, casus belli to the old-fashioned among you)? Well, it wasn’t terrorism, according to Rumsfeld. It wasn’t WMDs, according to the White House. It wasn’t The Spreading of Democracy, because, as much as we’d like to, you know, who could do THAT, really? It wasn’t last month’s tentative War Against Chaos, since it is pretty self-evident to anyone who reads the newspaper that we are the ones who have brought Chaos to that country (what else can you call gunning down our own Iraqi policemen, tanks firing on alocal hospitals, etc.?) Indeed, aren't nasty dicators like Sadaam Hussein known for Order? Anyway, from the latest pronouncements, it's hard to tell whether the current explanation of the origins of our war against Iraq was the goal of eradicating"those who celebrate suicide" or of improving Iraqi schools. At this point, it could go either way.

I'm beginning to feel like one of those Sovietologists in olden times. Did Brezhnev totter while dismounting the reviewing stand? Were the blinds left open at the Kremlin? Did the Moscow Philharmonic change its scheduled program? Do all three signs together mean that Production Quotas will be raised?

What to do now? Well, that is a big question. And the first step, one hinted at yesterday at Liberty & Power by Sheldon Richman, is a measure that is apparently beyond all the fabulous equippage and capabilities of the War Party:

Tell the Truth.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 1:57 p.m. CDT

IVAN ELAND: MY NEW PIECE ON THE HUSSEIN/SEPT. 11 LINK, 9-25-03

I recently wrote a piece on Bush's admission that no evidence existed linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. It is really the last pillar that the administration has to support its justification for war. Now that it has fallen, more people will question why U.S. military personnel have been put in harms way in Iraq. The article is entitled, U.S. Iraq Policy: The Day the Roof Caved In

Posted by Ivan Eland at 4:20 p.m. EST

PRIVATIZING THE GREEK SYSTEM, 09-25-03

President Robert Witt and other officials of the University of Alabama received much praise earlier this year when Gamma Phi Beta, a traditionally white sorority at the University of Alabama, admitted its first black member. Now, another member alleges that the admission rules were rigged as part of a Byzantine scheme.

If true, this story underlines once again the waste and downright silliness of the UA’s continuing unholy entanglement with the Greek system. Currently, the sororities and fraternities get massive subsidies (mostly in the form of low rents) and are subject to equally massive regulations from the central administration. What then is the solution?

The way out of this mess is for the Board of Trustees to implement the proposal of the Alabama Scholars Association to fully privatize the Greek system. Privatization will end the regulations and subsidies and thus create opportunities to cut, and reform, the bloated campus administration.

In a time of budget pressure and rampant grade distortion at UA it is an exercise in futility to continue this time-consuming and expensive entanglement. Even if full integregation occurs, the quagmire will only deepen as future social engineers in the administration and faculty senate inevitably attempt to micromanage other membership restrictions of the Greeks (black and white) related to class, dress, and family connections.

Posted by David T. Beito at 11:07 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: WHO'S THE OBSTACLE TO PEACE? 09-25-03

"The real obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is Ariel Sharon, not Yasser Arafat." So writes Avi Shlaim in Wednesday's International Herald Tribune. Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St. Antony's College, Oxford. More important, he's the author of The Politics of Partition, which documents that the leaders of the soon-to-be state of Israel and Jordan (then known as Transjordan) colluded to deprive the Palestinians of the state they were supposed to get under the 1947 UN partition plan. The book debunks the claim that there was universal Arab hostility to the fledging Jewish state. Shlaim was born in Baghdad and was raised in Israel, where he lived until 1966. He is one of Israel's"New Historians," who, using Israeli archives, have revised the flawed official David-and-Goliath story of Israel's founding and early relations with the Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. (For more see this letter to Foreign Policy.)

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 9:55 a.m. CDT

HUNT TOOLEY: SHOW ME THE WEAPONS! 09/24/03

WMD UPDATE: STILL no weapons of mass destruction. For a year, the administration has kept the ball in the air by a simple strategy of announcing, or having announced, that a big revelation is just around the corner, that the smoking gun has been found, that insider administration officials, as Rush Limbaugh put it time and again, had the evidence of various weapons of mass destruction and were just waiting for the right psychological moment to lay it all out.

Who can forget the performance of Colin Powell in describing evidence of WMDs, known in the international press to be thoroughly discredited at that time, and called so by none other than International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei? And Hans Blix said a month ago that U.S. officials had attempted to intimidate him before the war, urging him to"discover" WMDs, whether the evidence was there or not.

But that's OK. Now it seems that it never WAS the WMDs. (Though some of the readers of a piece I wrote last week for Mises.org wrote me to say that they STILL believe in the WMD hoax. I have since sold these individuals some very valuable cross-river real estate in a prominent northeastern city). So what WAS the cause of the war (alright, casus belli to the old-fashioned among you)? Well, it wasn’t terrorism, according to Rumsfeld. It wasn’t WMDs, according to the White House. It wasn’t The Spreading of Democracy, because, as much as we’d like to, you know, who could do THAT, really? It wasn’t last month’s tentative War Against Chaos, since it is pretty self-evident to anyone who reads the newspaper that we are the ones who have brought Chaos to that country (what else can you call gunning down our own Iraqi policemen, tanks firing on alocal hospitals, etc.?) Indeed, aren't nasty dicators like Sadaam Hussein known for Order? Anyway, from the latest pronouncements, it's hard to tell whether the current explanation of the origins of our war against Iraq was the goal of eradicating"those who celebrate suicide" or of improving Iraqi schools. At this point, it could go either way.

I'm beginning to feel like one of those Sovietologists in olden times. Did Brezhnev totter while dismounting the reviewing stand? Were the blinds left open at the Kremlin? Did the Moscow Philharmonic change its scheduled program? Do all three signs together mean that Production Quotas will be raised?

What to do now? Well, that is a big question. And the first step, one hinted at yesterday at Liberty & Power by Sheldon Richman, is a measure that is apparently beyond all the fabulous equippage and capabilities of the War Party:

Tell the Truth.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 1:57 p.m. CDT

DAVID T. BEITO: BLACK MARKET CIGARETTES IN NEW YORK CITY, 09-24-03

Via Karen De Coster, we get the following elementary lesson in underground economics and the unintended consequences of paternalistic government intervention. Because of high tobacco taxes and bans on smoking in bars and restaurants, former drug dealers in Harlem who “who were selling pot or heroin are now selling cigarettes.”

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:24 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: VICTORY FOR CAMPUS FREE SPEECH IN ALABAMA, 09-23-03

The Student Life Committee of the University of Alabama has backpedaled from a proposal pushed by elements in the administration to ban all window displays in residential housing at the University of Alabama.

Defenders of free speech showed up to fill the meeting room. They included students from the residence halls, members of the Alabama Scholars Association, and others who brought a variety of flags, including the U.S., Israeli, Italian, and Christian. The demonstration effectively showed the absurdity of the ban and illustrated the general threat that it posed to free speech.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:09 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: WHEN WORDS COME BACK TO HAUNT, 09-23-03

The Bush administration and its horde of empire cheerleaders pooh-pooh the Iraqi-WMD skeptics by claiming that until recently everybody conceded that Saddam Hussein had resumed development of the nasty weapons after the UN inspectors were"thrown out" in 1998. (Actually, they weren't thrown out. The UN pulled them out in anticipation of Bill Clinton's bombing for lack of Iraqi cooperation.) But it's not true that everyone conceded the existence of the weapons. John Pilger points out that early in 2001 both Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Hussein had been disarmed and remained so. Pilger writes:"In Cairo, on February 24 2001, Powell said: 'He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.' …On May 15 2001, Powell went further and said that Saddam Hussein had not been able to 'build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction' for 'the last 10 years'." And:"Two months later, Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. 'Saddam does not control the northern part of the country,' she said. 'We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.'"

When were they lying, then or last week?

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 8:10 a.m. CDT

WENDY McELROY: '70 PHREAKERS ONLINE 09-23-03

Yippie phreaks from the '70s are now online, courtesy of Blackened Flag. The site states,"The Youth International Party Line or YIPL, later known as TAP for Technological American Party or Technological Assistance Program, was the pioneer phreaker magazine started by Yippie founder Abbie Hoffman of the 'Chicago 7' and 'Al Bell', a phreaker from Long Island." First published in June 1971, the 'zine was also a voice of anti-Vietnam War activism. Only issues #1-10 are currently available but additional ones up to #82 will be posted in the future. What is a phreaking?"/freek'ing/ n. [from `phone phreak'] 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls)." In the '70s, phreaking was considered avante garde in left radical circles because of their widespread disrespect for the phone company and other corporations. TAP became legendary as a semi-underground connection between hackers and phreakers and student radicals.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 5:00 a.m. EST. For more commentary, please visit McBlog

WENDY McELROY: JETBLUE"EAT FLAMES!" 09-22-03

As a staunch privacy advocate, I was horrified that the NY-based JetBlue Airways provided 5 million passenger itineraries -- along with names, phone numbers, addresses, and credit card numbers -- to a defense contractor in Sept. '02 for a proof-of-concept test on a Pentagon project which was intended to identify"high risk" airline passengers; the defense contractor, Torch Concepts, was/is working with the Transportation Security Administration. Torch then augmented the data with Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling systems such as CAPPS II are feasible. Of course, in a September 15th 2003 interview with Wired, TSA spokesman Brian Turmail said that, to date, CAPPS II had been tested only on fake passenger data.

JetBlue's action violated its own stated privacy policy which, arguably, is an implied contract with ticket purchasers. I was relieved at the huge backlash of disapproval erupting from its customers, so huge that JetBlue took the unusual step of sending email apologies to them, claiming that the data JetBlue provided was not shared with any government agency and that Torch has destroyed the passenger records. (Yeah...as tho' Torch would have hesitated to share data with the agency that hired it or be candid about the records now that the word"lawyer" has entered the dialogue."At least one of JetBlue's customers has already spoken to lawyers and privacy groups to discuss a possible lawsuit against JetBlue." And what about that earlier bald lie from TSA Brian Turmail?) The Internet played a pivotal role in bringing this privacy and probable rights violation to light; privacy activist Bill Scannell broke the story on his Web site Don't Spy on Us.

Many people are arriving at the same conclusion as Bob Smith in his recommended blog"No Force, No Fraud": September 19th entry, entitled "Scratch one air traveller." Welcome aboard the airline boycott Bob...but what took you so long? On 08/13/02, my website McBlog declared, The result?"My husband and I will not fly whenever a viable alternative exists, even if the alternative adds a day onto each side of travelling, there and back. Or is more expensive. Our civil liberties are worth it. Our self-respect demands it. We are part of a silent, spreading boycott of air travel that is not motivated by fear of terrorism but anger at being man-handled, humiliated, and treated like criminals by airport personnel who function like the dull-eyed, unthinking lackeys of a police state. The boycott is not organized. Rather, it is grassroot...one by one, in every corner of North America, individuals are deciding for themselves that enough is enough. We are customers, not criminals." But, like I said, welcome aboard! And forgive the bloggish one-up(wo)manship. ;-)

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 5:00 p.m. EST. For more commentary, please visit McBlog

DAVID T. BEITO: IS CHRISTINE HEYRMAN ANOTHER BELLESILES? 09-21-03

HNN blogger Ralph Luker, continues to generate blog buzz because of his well-researched expose of possible academic misconduct by Christine Heyrman. Interestingly, Heyrman directed the dissertation committee of disgraced historian Michael Bellesiles, who went down in flames last year on similar charges.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:50 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: WHO CAME UP WITH THAT IDEA? 09-21-03

From the Associated Press:"In an apparent search for pointers on how to police a hostile population, the U.S. military that's trying to bring security to Iraq is showing interest in Israeli software instructing soldiers on how to behave in the West Bank and Gaza, an Israeli military official said Thursday." Considering how things are in the Occupied Territories, some might see Israel as a dubious model. As the AP notes,"Israeli troops have frequently faced criticism from Palestinian and human rights groups. Two weeks ago, Amnesty International said in a report that Israeli military checkpoints and curfews violate Palestinians' human rights."

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 2:15 p.m. CDT

SHELDON RICHMAN: BACKING DOWN FURTHER ON WMD 09-21-03

The Miami Herald reports that chief Iraq WMD searcher David Kay will soon issue a report that focuses"on Iraq's manufacture and use of chemical and biological agents before the [1991] Gulf War and its ability to reconstitute its weapons programs later in so-called 'dual-use' facilities, ones capable of making weapons as well as pesticides and other legitimate products." This is quite a back-down from what the Bush people and their boosters have been predicting. Next they'll tell us that the employment of chemistry and biology professors at the University of Baghdad constitutes proof of Saddam Hussein's determination to build those menacing weapons.

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 10:50 a.m. CDT

DAVID T. BEITO: INSTAPUNDIT AND LETTERS TO HOME FROM IRAQ 09-20-03

Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit (no permalink yet), a reliable supporter of the Iraq war and occupation, has often quoted soldiers who share this perspective.

Not all soldiers agree with Reynolds, of course. Tim Predmore, who is on active duty in Mosul, calls the occupation a failure and supports bringing home the troops. Which perspective better represents the majority of soldiers on the front lines? I don’t know but I don’t think Reynolds does either.

In fairness, Reynolds sensibly concedes the pitfalls of anecdotal evidence. Instead of leaving it at that, however, he indulges himself in a rather odd comparison. He juxtaposes the views of a pro-war returning soldier with those of an equally pro-war “musician” and “ Federal judge.” The point of this escapes me.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:20 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: WALKER VS. HOROWITZ 09-19-03

According to Jesse Walker, the chief problem with Horowitz’s proposal is not that it promotes ideological quotas but that it would impose a stifling academic fairness doctrine. See here and here.

Posted by David T. Beito at 1:20 p.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO: A BUM RAP FOR DAVID HOROWITZ? 09-19-03

I have often disagreed with David Horowitz but apparently he is getting a bum rap on the charge that he favors ideological special preferences in academic hiring. As readers of Liberty and Power know, I have criticized proposed schemes on this type.

If this article in the Rocky Mountain News is accurate, Horowitz’s recent proposals do not do this and, in fact, would serve to enhance academic freedom across the board, rather than diminish it.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:55 a.m. EST

SHELDON RICHMAN: CONFIDENCE OR JEALOUSY? 09-19-03

Attorney General John Ashcroft is trying to reassure the American people about the USA Patriot Act (ugh, that name) by pointing out that the government has never used its power to inquire into what library books we are borrowing. Even if true (and apparently it's not), that's not the point. It could use the power anytime. When a government official asks for faith in the state's honor, that's the time to worry. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Resolutions Relative to the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798):"it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism—free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 6:40 a.m. CDT

DAVID T. BEITO: MORE ON GRADE AND MONETARY INFLATION, 9-18-03

Charles Nuckolls' comparison of monetary and grade inflation is sparking 09/16/03

Joseph Wilson, an American diplomat with inside knowledge of both Gulf wars, has written an important piece in the San Jose Mercury News about his part in the WMD investigations. Along the way, his assessment gives much support to idea already brought up repeatedly on the Liberty & Power Blog: that among other disastrous consequences of this war is the creation of a whole new layer of terrorists.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 1:08 p.m. CDT

DAVID T. BEITO: IRAQ COSTS: THEN AND NOW, 9-16-03

Via The Agitator, Radley Balko provides the following eye-opening quotations:

Then: “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” -- Paul Wolfowitz to Congress, last March.

Now: “87 Billion may not be enough.” Dick Cheney

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:55 a.m. EST

WENDY McELROY: IN OVER THEIR HEADS IN IRAQ, 09-16-03

The lead story on the antiwar.com site today is "Iraqi police ready to turn guns on US troops." The article from the London Times opens,"Iraqi policemen declared themselves holy warriors yesterday and vowed to take revenge for the deaths of their comrades in the town where ten police and a security guard were killed on Friday in the worst"friendly fire" incident of the Iraq conflict." The establishment of a"native" police force has been one of the very few positive developments in Iraq to which the Bush administration has been able to point; now that achievement may become a source of regret, embarrassment, and casualties. The Americans in Iraq are in over their heads. I am not merely or even primarily referring to the ongoing guerilla warfare that they are woefully ill-equipped to fight -- approx. 15 attacks against troops each day, with 449 dead and 1478 wounded since the beginning of the invasion. The troops are in over their heads because too many of them are reservists who were never meant to function as replacements for regular army, let alone to pull down duties that take them away from their families and lives for as long as 16 months. And, yet, in the past two years, more than 212,000 reservists and National Guard troops have been mobilized both for overseas and domestic duty. The New York Times has a revealing story of one such reservist,"Mike Gorski thought he was done with active military duty when he left the Marines for civilian life more than a decade ago and signed on with the National Guard a few years later. A banker with a new wife, Kim, and a new house here, Mr. Gorski, 33, knew that he would have to spend one weekend a month in training and two weeks a year on active duty. There was always the possibility of being called up for perhaps one six-month deployment. But since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Gorski, a staff sergeant with the 870th Military Police Company of the California National Guard, has spent 16 months away from home, first at an Army base in Tacoma, Wash., and most recently in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. He is likely to spend eight more months in Iraq, and he has decided to leave the National Guard as soon as he can." The story about Gorski is revealing because he is leaving the National Guard, as I believe a large number of returning troops will do. Who can blame him/them? His family is probably living on savings in order to pay the mortgage. He signed up for a 6-month duty, at most, but he won't be home for over two years -- perhaps longer if his stay is abruptly, unilaterally extended once more. The bitter reality for many returning soldiers will be that their families have fallen apart during and due to those years of absence: many marriages will not survive the extraordinary stress and demands. Even for those soldiers who can walk back into arms held open...parents will have died, children will not know them, houses and cars may have been repossessed, savings depleted, careers ruined... The human devastation being wrought by the"Bring 'em on!" crowd is terrible. Recruitment into the National Guard must be at an all-time low. If so, what will happen when all the Gorskis in Iraq come home and there are no volunteers to throw back into that God-forsaken desert of a nation? That's the point at which the US will either be backing out of Iraq or instituting a draft. The only"upside" of the latter option is that I don't believe Bush could possibly win a second term if he introduced conscription before next November.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 8:00 a.m. EST. Please visit McBlog for more commentary.

HUNT TOOLEY: MORE ON OPEN RANGE 09/15/03

David Beito has commented briefly on the movie Open Range, and there is still more that can be said. I won't ruin the plot for anyone, but there is a short speech delivered (actually, part of it was in the previews) by Robert Duvall which goes a long way as a declaration of individual autonomy and the natural right to self-defense. Indeed, there is in the action an almost Lockean sense of carrying out all the functions of justice--that is, every man his own judge, jury, and executioner--in the state of nature. And I think that Locke would agree that whatever contractual"government" had existed in the context of the movie had long since been dissolved.

But I don't want to overintellectualize it. David Beito is right: this is a good movie. In fact, although I have just seen it once, I will call it a great movie.

Let the critics judge it how they will!

Actually, they have tended to be merciless to Costner in spite of his politics, but his movies have generally been better than the reviews, again, in spite of his politics. In this film, Costner really does a wonderful job of both acting and directing. Robert Duvall is...well, Robert Duvall. And Annette Bening plays a nuanced and independent-minded woman which is one of the best things about the movie.

Actually, it has an interesting texture in that its darkness is reminiscent of movies like Shane or The Searchers, but it has a bright side too. Some of the characterizations remind me of the real-life attitudes of Jeff Milton, the subject of J. Evetts Haley's wonderful biography, Jeff Milton: A Good Man With a Gun (published in 1948 and still a fantastic read).

And David is right: the attitude toward guns and self-defense is, at the very least, robust.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 10:38 p.m. CDT

SHELDON RICHMAN: CREATING TERRORISTS, 09-15-03

“Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centres of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.”

This was not written by Yasser Arafat or a leader of Hamas. It was written by Avraham Burg, a recent speaker of the Israeli Knesset and a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He adds, “We could kill a thousand ringleaders a day and nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below—from the wells of hatred and anger, from the 'infrastructures' of injustice and moral corruption.”

Posted by Sheldon Richman at 11:10 a.m. CDT

WENDY McELROY; THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HALLIBURTON, 09-15-03

David Firestone writes in the New York Times,"When President Bush informed the nation last Sunday night that remaining in Iraq next year will cost another $87 billion [on top of the $79 billion Congress already approved], many of those who will actually pay that bill were unable to watch. They had already been put to bed by their parents." (BTW, the passing of massive debt onto the shoulders of today's children is also the theme of Scott Carlson's latest cartoon"The Fantasy and the Reality.") So far, Afghanistan and Iraq have cost the US $166 billion -- and this is only the _unhidden_ cost, not the subtle ones like dislocation of the workforce now serving in Iraq and the impoverishment of their familiess, the loss of jobs domestically due to rising taxes and ensuing business bankruptcies... Today's children are being burdened with staggering debt, mind you, not in order to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of their own nation but to rebuild Iraq, with companies like Halliburton (Cheney's-former-corp.) receiving sweetheart contracts for which no competitive bids are taken, including a US Army Corps of Engineers contract worth nearly $950-million to rehabilitate Iraq's oil fields. At last count, Halliburton's"expenses" were up to $2 billion. For a broader perpective on how much Halliburton is swilling at the public trough, see Mother Jones' fascinating "The World According to Halliburton" which allows you to click on a globe to see precisely where Halliburton is spending tax money. Cheney claims that he severed all financial ties with Halliburton when he became VP but, according to the Guardian,"Halliburton...is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney. The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of"deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year."

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 11:45 a.m. EST. Please visit McBlog for more commentary.

DAVID T. BEITO: IMPERIAL OVER-STRETCH: U.S. DEMANDS ON JAPAN, 9-15-03

“The United States is demanding Japan send its troops to Iraq early to help rebuild the war-torn country.... See here for more.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:32 a.m. EST

DAVID T. BEITO:"OPEN RANGE," GUNS, AND THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS, 9-15-03

“Open Range]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1741 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1741 0 Click here for Judith Klinghoffer's latest blog entries.

THE SAD STATE OF THE ROADMAP 08-18-03

I could not have written this better.

Posted by Judith 6:06 p.m. EST

DAN PIPES AND PEACE INSTITUTE GRANTS

It seems that the Daniel Pipes controversy is reaching a peak and being the naive political amateur I am, I had to listen to Marty Moss-Cohen on NPR to figure out what the fuss is all about. Apparently, it is all about the grant money distributed by the Institute of Peace.

Without Daniel Pipes on the board, the money will continue to flow to the mainstream practitioners of Middle East Studies, those who argue that the terrorism emanating from radical Islam is a marginal though"understandable" response to Western"aggression" in the Third World as a whole and in the Middle East in particular. Their studies focus on the"sins" committed by the West against the Arab world with the creation of Israel as the most egregious symbol of this Western"aggression." Solve the Arab Israeli conflict, they have been teaching their students and telling American presidents and you have solved the problem of Middle east radicalism. No one followed this advice more religiously than President Clinton. Under no president did radical Islam enjoy greater growth than under the same president.

Consequently, when President Bush searched for a Middle east academic who could explain to him 9/11 he had to reach out to an eminent octogenarian named Bernard Lewis. For young Middle Eastern scholars who did not share the establishment's point of view had difficulty getting funded or finding a teaching position. Dan Pipes had to find private financing.

Daniel Pipes views Radical Islam as radical political ideology which uses terror as a legitimate method to achieve its goal of world domination. He wants to confront this virulent ideology in the same manner the US confronted Nazism and Communism, i.e., ideologically, economically, politically and militarily. He can be expected to support funding for scholars who would look into the governance problems which retarded Middle east development and left it prey to the virulent ideology of radical Islam.

Such funding is the lifeline of Middle east studies at our universities. Ph. D. students consciously or unconsciously choose topics which can be funded. Universities seek scholars able to attract funding. So, though as a single board member Dan Pipe's voice would not be decisive, it would help widen the range of projects funded by the Institute. Campus Watch is proof of his commitment to encouraging such much needed reform in Middle Eastern Studies.

Therefore, it is absolutely vital not only to our country's long term national security but to world peace that he be appointed to the board to help insure that Americans would be in possession of more varied, and hopefully, more accurate, analysis. Mistaken academics fearful of losing their fiefdoms should not be allowed to stand in the way!

Posted by Judith 6:06 p.m. EST

I AM BACK 08-15-03

Sorry about the lengthy silence. I had hoped to continue to post from Western Canada but it did not work out. Sorry! To be honest, little new is happening in these dog days of summer except forest fires, heat waves and power cuts. But, thank God, no major terrorist success! This does not mean that all is well. The Palestinian Authority continues promote child sacrifice and leading Egyptian Islamic clerics call for Jihad Against U.S. Troops in Iraq.

It is a small wonder that Moslems feel humiliated. Given such religious and political leadership, how else can they feel? Still, they should be encouraged by the few courageous voices which refuse to be intimidated into silence and by the fact that their voices are varied. A Saudi call for reform follows a Syrian call for reform. Then, their is a Then there is a reminder that the Arabs, too, have occupied non Moslem lands.

"RED TAPE" IS THE ENEMY OF THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT

My friend just came back from a year in Turkey. He has been invited to revamp their English curriculum."How was it?" I asked."The country is wonderful. The people are wonderful. The bureaucracy is terrible." His words reminded me of the Anna Lanoszka's perceptive op-ed in the Canadian paper The Globe and Mail"A new kind of 'World power" by"doing a job the U.S. cannot: Nation-building". After visiting Chinatown, his criticism of the US sounds more hollow than ever.

DO NOT RELEASE AL AKZA PRISONERS 08-04-03

This is not a very nice post. But it is imperative that the punishment fit the crime.

In southern Jerusalem late Sunday, a 40-year-old woman was seriously wounded and her three children were also hurt as Palestinian gunmen fired on their car, Israeli emergency service officials said. The woman's daughter, nine, was shot in the leg, while the other children were only lightly hurt by shrapnel, public radio said.

The shooting comes exactly a month after the Israeli army pulled out of the nearby West Bank town of Bethlehem and surrounding villages, as part of a deal to transfer security responsibility to Palestinian security forces.

The Al Akza brigade took responsibility for the attack. Hence, their prisoners should not be released! And their Palestinian families should know who to hold accountable for their continued imprisonment.

Mistakes are unavoidable but let us not repeat the costly Oslo ones!

Posted by Judith 8p.m. Est.

NEWS FROM THE IRAQI WMD FRONT 08-02-03

It looks as if David Kay is going to deliver for Bush. At least this is what the Debka reports.

FRENCH VANDALIZE ANGLO-SAXON WAR GRAVES

First they vandalized Jewish graves, now its the turn of those who dared to kick the Nazis out.

INDIA TOO IS BUILDING A FENCE

For decades India has been consturcting a fence to prevent militants' infiltration between India and Pakistan. The Indian fence is made of a thick mud wall, topped by an 8-foot high, 30-tier maze of barbed wire, along with Israeli ground sensors, radars, and French thermal-imaging devices to detect movement. Some 900 miles of fence have been completed, and the intent is to cover the entire 1,800 miles of border with Pakistan. The fence is now pushing ahead in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan considers this area disputed territory and objects to the fence along the cease-fire line. Some 21 bulldozer drivers constructing the wall have been shot.

Maybe there too, good fences will make good neigbors.

CHINA BITES THE BULLET 08-01-03

Good news from Korea. America did nothing and in so not doing forced China to act. After all, the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is worse for China than it is for the US. Three cheers to the Bush administration. See my article on the subject.

SUICIDE BOMBING PAYS

That is the chilling message of this chilling article entitled THE GLOBALIZATION OF GAZA

GALBRAITH DOES NOT LIKE IRAQ

The NYT quotes Peter W. Galbraith wish to see Sadam judged by"the world" rather than by Iraqis. Of course, he works for Indict, a London based group vying for a piece of the action. This reminded me of Galbraith's keynote speech last spring in a Kurdish conference at American University (I think!). He told the audience not to settle for ANYTHING LESS THAT FULL KURDISH INDEPENDENCE. I thought that was a rather irresponsible recommendation (the Kurds with whom I discussed the matter seemed to agree) and I think his recommendation now is similarly irresponsible.

ISRAELI ARABS ARE IN DANGER

No, Israel is not the main danger facing the Israeli Arabs. The Palestinian leadership is. Having destroyed the Palestinians under their own authority, they are now turning their attention to those living in Israel. First, they recommended that they engage in fictious marriages with non-citizens and then began to train their children in blowing them selves up!

This from the Israel National News:

Police in the Galilee have arrested four summer camp organizers on charges of rebellion and incitement. The four have been running a camp they call Camp of Shahidim - Holy Martyrs - for Israeli-Arab children and youth. Channel 10 TV says the camp is designed to"erase from the children's heads the propaganda of the Zionist educational system."

The police who arrived at the camp yesterday were astonished to find that one of the organizers was a Jewish left-wing activist from Haifa, age 48, who has already been charged 150 times with incitement and rebellion. The police arrested him, as well as three others, and are pursuing a fifth.

The camp is geared for 6-15-year-olds, of which 200 attend. Education Minister Limor Livnat said she has no doubt that these camps"base their appalling content of incitement and hatred on the same material that we see in camps like this in the Palestinian Authority - funded partially by the United Nations." She stated, as an example,"The Shahids Boy Scout Camp."

MORE ON THE PRO-TERROR CONFERENCE AT RUTGERS

Well, I am NOT happy. Some Jewish organizations, including Hillel, made a tactical decision to not to challenge the conference but to use it for recruitment. Newspapers decided it is a"freespeech issue" and refuse to entertain all arguments to the contrary. Republicans to use McGreevey's support for the conference against him and so it goes. Read reprinted by frontpagemag.com.

CNN PLAYS GOD AGAIN

CNN editor admitted after the fall of Iraq that it had failed to broadcast the information it had showing the brutality of the regime. It is doing it again.> How sad!

Posted by Judith at 9 p.m.EST

SAY NO TO HATE IS THE NAME OF THE PETITION 07-22-03

I could not be more delighted. My friend, the father of an alumnus and a current Rutgers Univerity Student took the initiative and posted a petition asking University president and the state governor to cancel the three day pro-terrorist international conference tentatively planned to take place at Rutgers. I have just read and signed the petition asking"No sanction for promoting ethnic hatred and advocating violence at Rutgers University."

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself and forwarding it to your friends. Together we should be able to make a difference.

If you wish to know why there are few moderates speaking out in the Arab world, click here.>

Posted by Judith 8:00 p.m. EST

SAD TIMES AT RUTGERS AND NEW JERSEY 07-18-03

Rutgers University decided that the best way to inaugurate its next academic year is with a three day international conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. The Movement supports"any" measure Palestinians may choose to bring about the destruction of the state of Israel. That means it supports terror and suicide bombers.

The president of the university decided that"freedom of speech" equals providing the"deplorable" views of the groups public money and a location for their conference. The AAUP university leadership did not bother to ask their members' opinions and came out in support of the President. Our governor soon backed him. I beg to differ and have only just began to fight. Here are some letters I posted to my listserv:

1.Does anyone imagine President McCormick would have agreed to have a three day Ku Klas Klan conference on campus? Or that he would have had the guts to ask Black students not to let such a conference upset the campus harmony?

2.Well, now the AAUP stepped in to protect the right of a group of anti-Semitic terrorist advocates to use university funds and locale for a three day conference. See their press release bellow.

First let's be clear, this is NOT a free speech issue. Free speech means the right to express you opinion on street corners or even march in downtown New Brunswick. It does not include the right to public funds (extracted from students) to PAY for a major conference promoting terror and homicide bombing.

Second, the AAUP"leadership" is wrong. These days, holding a philo-Semitic, anti terrorist conference would help promote 'the mission of the University as promoting the free exchange of ideas and discourse on a variety of issues, including those that are controversial". Anti-Semitism is all the rage. Note our esteemed former New Jersey poet laureate.

Finally, to hold this kind of conference at the state university is an affront to all the New Jersey citizens who lost their lives on 9/11 to suicide bombers.

What can I say, some people never learn. They must wait until they themselves are hurt. The hurt of their fellow citizens does not seem to touch them.

As a member of a family who lost most of its members during the holocaust and as a friend of Israelis and Americans who lost their lives to suicide bombers both here and in Israel, I have vowed never to commit the crime of silence. I urge you to make the same commitment.

3. Once a philosopher. Twice a pervert. This is how this New Jersey voter feels about our spineless governor. I cannot imagine ever voting for McGreevey again. The man has done nothing but encourage ethnic conflict in New Jersey. He began by appointing a premier racist named Amir Baraka (ne LeRoi Jones) to the position of New Jersey poet laureate.

Here are some of the exalted verses that made him worthy of the honor:

"Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for

Who doo come out the Colon's mouth

Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza

Who pay Connelly to be a wooden Negro"

Then there is:

"nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers' throats. Black dada Nihilismus, choke my friends".

Then, came 9/11 and the New Jersey poet laureate responded to it with his infamous anti-Semitic blood libel.

Our governor proclaimed not to have known who he was dealing with and took long months to take away his official title. Baraka used the time to spread his racist message in schools and colleges all over the state.

Let me reiterate again: Neither the Baraka case nor the pro-terrorist"New Jersey Solidarity" conference have anything to do with the issue of free speech. Free speech means the right to express you opinion on street corners or even march in downtown Newark. It does not include the right to public funds (funds student are forced to pay to a state university are public funds) to PAY for an international conference promoting terror and homicide bombing. I suggest doubters read today's New York Times article on the subject Trenton Backs Rutgers U. on Conference along with the profile of Charlotte Kates, the group's self professed Communist leader Public Lives: A History of Left Turns

Note the following developments: At first McGreevey's spokesman said that"the governor has grave concern about whether this is going to be a balanced, open forum or a pro-scripted anti-Israeli rally and he intents to present them to President McCormick."We take this very seriously," the spokesman concluded. After he spoke to McCormick he no longer took those concerns seriously. Instead he fell back on the bogus free speech argument. Instead, he announced that there is no proof the organizers"espouse terrorism."

The governor must be the only person in the world who does not understand that"We unconditionally support Palestinians' human right to resist occupation and oppression by any means necessary" means we support terror and suicide bombings. (As Americans learned on 9/11 that any argument valid to murder Jews is valid to murder Americans, Australians, Russians, Philippines, Moroccans, etc..)

What are the governor's current concerns? Security for the racists and those protesting against them. McCormick assured him"that Rutgers will work with the conference organizers to provide adequate security for the event, while allowing attendees and protesters a chance to express their views".

So, additional public funds will be used to protect the participants in the ethnic clashes expected to accompany this conference.

BRAVO McGreevey - You really know how to bring us together!

I will keep you abreast of further developments.

Posted by Judith 12p.m. Est.

THE NOT TOO SPONTANEOUS GRAFFITI COMES DOWN - 07-15-03

Good news can come in funny packages. This one demonstrates that the hate messages were as centrally financed as the suicide bombers. Surprise, suprise!

BUT DO NOT PUT ON ROSE COLORED GLASSES YET

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY TV: MOHAMMED ORDERED MUSLIMS TO KILL JEWS

Palestinian Media Watch reports on yet another PLO TV broadcast presenting the murder of Jews as a religious obligation. Dr. Hassan Khader, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia, appeared on PA television on Sunday with the following quote from Mohammed:"The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!"

Although the basis for the current negotiations between Israel and the Arabs is that the conflict is not a religious dispute but rather a political one, PLO religious and academic leaders repeatedly cite Islamic sources demanding, in the name of Allah, that Jews be hated and even killed.

Yesterday's broadcast is but another example of the world-view propagated by the PA media according to which Redemption is dependent on Muslims' murder of Jews. Click here to view the broadcast, as well as a previous televised citation of the same source by a Muslim religious leader.

PMW also reports that yet another PA summer camp for children has been named for a terrorist. The most recent one is now named Shihad Al-Amarin, in memory of the founder of the suicide terror division of Fatah's Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade.

A report in Sunday's edition of the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida writes that 150 boys and girls aged 12 and 13 are taking part in the camp, and that"yesterday the camp's participants went to the home of the shahid Jihad Al-Amarin, where [they were greeted by] the shahid's wife, children and family. During the visit there were speeches praising the virtues of the shahid Jihad Al-Amarin, who was assassinated a year ago by the forces of the occupation.

Other schools and camps have been named for Dalal Mughrabi, who participated in the bus hijacking and murder of 37 Jews in Israel in 1978; for Ayyat al-Akhras, an Arab girl who killed two Israelis as she blew herself up in a supermarket in Jerusalem in March 2002; and others.

THE BATTLE IN IRAN GOES ON

Despite the deafening silence of the international media, the battle for democracy in Iran goes on.

350 Iranian dissidents demand regime reforms In an open letter to the Supreme Leader, they hit out at the judiciary and call for all political prisoners to be released Screams The Singapurian Strait Times

Khatami took to heart Abbas' example and threatened to resign. I hope he does not end up folding the way Abbas did. It would be revolutionary if Middle Eastern moderates will stop letting totalitarian rulers use them to legitimize their curropt regimes. In the meantime Blair demonstrates that he can stand up to Bush - He insists on maintaining his ties with Yassir Arafat!

Posted by Judith, 10p.m. Est.

THANK YOU BILL SAFIRE - 07-14-03-

The New York Times decided Truman's anti=Semitism and complete dismissal of the holocaust were not worth mentioning. Thank God for Bill Safire for saving the paper of record from itself. These is how he ends the beautifully nuanced piece:

This diary outburst reflected a longstanding judgment about the ungrateful nature of the oppressed; in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, he repeated that"Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath."

Did this deep-seated belief affect Truman's policy about taking immigrants into the U.S., or in failing to urge the British to allow the Exodus refugees haven in Palestine? Maybe; when the National Archives release was front-paged last week in The Washington Post, historians and other liberals hastened to remind us that the long-buried embarrassing entry was written when such talk was"acceptable." The director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum dismissed it as"typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time."

For decades, I have refused to make such excuses to defend President Nixon for his slurs about Jews on his tapes. This is more dismaying.

Lest we forget, Harry Truman overruled Secretary of State George Marshall and beat the Russians to be first to recognize the state of Israel. The private words of Truman and Nixon are far outweighed by their pro-Israel public actions.

But underdogs of every generation must disprove Truman's cynical theory and have a duty to speak up. I asked Robert Morgenthau, the great Manhattan D.A., about Truman's angry diary entry, and he said,"I'm glad my father made that call."

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TREATS RIGHT THOSE WHO ARE WITH US

that is the central message of T. Christian Miller's article in The Los Angeles Times I can only say - bravo!

Posted by Judith 6:30 p.m. Est.

IF IRANIAN STUDENTS BLEED, IT DOES NOT LEAD- 07-011-03 The inability of bleeding Iranian students to capture the attention of the international press is most astonishing. The emotionally charged NYT story decribe"three students, Ali Moghtaderi, Arash Hashemi and Reza Amerinassab, were thrown into three separate cars by about 15 armed men. Mr. Moghtaderi's face was covered with blood, after having been shoved to the ground by the men". It was placed on page 8.

The New York Times is not alone. Imagine if this had occurred in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Iraq or even in China. As my daughter would say, what gives?

Perhaps the correct explanation is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Iranian authorities are charter memebrs of Bush's axis of evil. Bush is the enemy of the"international press," hence the Iranian clerics are the friends of the media. Sorry, freedom seeking students!

THE REAL SAD STORY

A friend sent me the following description of this past week's events in Iran: Violent three-way clashes in Tehran marked the July 9 anniversary of the brutally suppressed student demonstrations of 1999, despite the Islamic regime's advance crackdown against the pro-democracy student movement. Hundreds of hard-line Islamic vigilantes, police and students milling about outside Tehran University got into running battles Wednesday night. Police clashed with students as well as with the Basiji vigilantes, who are fiercely loyal to Iran's radical spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, to prevent them from getting closer to the university. DowntownTehran was jammed with loudly hooting cars and Basijj motor-bikers.

In expectation of trouble, the authorities had banned gatherings and closed campuses. Riot police lined the streets around Tehran University. Earlier Wednesday, three student activists were hauled off by vigilantes after declaring President Mohammed Khatami's reforms a failure and declaring the intention of staging a sit-in opposite the UN.

Official preemptive actions included the arrest of the entire student leadership along with protest organizers after inciting them to demonstrate for ten nights in June in order to catch them off-balance a month before the anniversary. To make the student leaders show their hands, the pro-government Kayban and Jomhouri-e Eslami newspapers published inflammatory reports of government plans to privatize universities and force students to pay prohibitively steep tuition. The Basij were used as agents provocateurs to fan the flames of protest so as to mark out student activists for arrest or worse. Basij students are granted free tuition and exemptions from university entrance exams.

despite mass arrests - even official figures showed some 4,000 people had been detained - multitudes of non-students kept on joining the protests, keeping them on the front burner for days. They then moved on to hunger strikes that went on and off for about three weeks.

But they failed to make much of an impact on the domestic and international press and many gave in to exhaustion. By the time July 9 rolled around, most student leaders were behind bars or in hiding, with death threats being made covertly and openly against their families. A new wave of arrests and trials has begun. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, known political reformists have been targeted and at least seven newspapers belonging to the freedom camp will be closed.

Though cheered on from Washington and Iranian émigré communities around the world, the pro-democracy students and reformists have failed to shake the theocratic regime which has ruled Iran for a quarter century.

But demonstrators may get a second chance; more street protests are expected soon. The United States is also keeping Teheran under pressure with accusations of granting sanctuary to senior al-Qaeda operatives and demands that Iran throw all its nuclear sites open to closer and unannounced international inspections.

AN IRANIAN STUDENT ASKS: Are You Hearing Us?

Click here to hear his voice.

Posted by Judith 10p.m. EST

BAD NEWS ARE ALL AROUND US- 07-09-03

Sorry for having neglected the blog. But I trust most of you were busy enjoying the holiday. My daughter was visiting and I was also trying to put together a few words of"wisdom" about the mess in Iraq. You can read the results in the new issue of HNN. The Wall Street Journal is right we are in the midst of a guerrilla war in Iraq and the sooner we acknowledge it the better. I, as usual, believe that empowering Iraqis and sideling Mideast experts will go a long way towards solving the problem. To follow events in the Middle East, click on Debka in the list of my recommended sites. I hope you like them and you like the new format. More changes to come, promise!

AMERICAN DIPLOMAT IS NOT SURE IF LEBANON DESERVES TO BE A NATION-STATE

If you are interested in the efficient manner in which our diplomats make friends and influence people click here and find an apt description of Ambassador Battle's disasterous meeting with American-Lebanese. For example: The last and crowning surprise was that Mr. Battle talked a lot more than he listened. He was clearly annoyed at the questions, lashing out at his audience that he is not here to listen to their comments, but take their questions and answer them. Never mind that he consistently deflected the questions and never addressed the real concerns of his audience. To the question of whether he, as the self-proclaimed student of history, believed that Lebanon deserved to be a nation-state, Mr. Battle cited examples of numerous other countries that had become nation-states at the end of the 19th century and with the de-colonization process of the 20th century. He believed that Lebanon’s borders were drawn in an arbitrary way. At the end of the question-answer session, Mr. Battle bolted out of his chair, refusing to take more questions. The social, I thought, had turned into a great asocial disappointment and a bitter duel of nerves

So, Israel is not the only victim of Arabists!

BRAVO CORSICA

I love to post good news. Here is one from Corsica. The citizens of Corsica defeated a referendum supported by all powers that be in both the island and in the French mainland. It was eferendum was designed to set up a single executive body to run Corsican affairs. Why did the Corsican oppose it? Because reportedly they, unlike the French government, did not wish to cave in in to nationalists and violent tactics.

Posted by Judith at 12 A.M. EST

GREAT NEWS FROM THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY - 07-02-03

The new poll numbers are in, hidden on page 8 of the NYTimes in an article entitled"Skepticism Lives on Scarred Jerusalem Street." What do they show? They show that 61% of the Israelis and 56% of the Palestinians supported the"road map" leading to the establishment of a Palestinian State living side by side with Israel.

A couple of weeks ago History news Network published a letter I sent from Israel bemoaning the indefinite delay in of election in the PA. At the time, 80% of the Palestinians told pollsters they did not believe coexistence with a Jewish was possible. Commentators translated their answer to mean that given a chance, they would support the rejectionists. I begged to differ.

This is how I ended my letter: "Only election would make the Palestinian leaders dependent on their population. Citizens, unlike ideological elites, put their daily well being before their emotional demands for revenge. Many Palestinians may wish to see Israel destroyed just as many Israelis would love not to have them as neighbors. But both know this is merely wishful thinking and both will rather live together than continue to bleed".

When given a chance citizens moderate their ideological leaders. This is true in the Palestinian territories and this would be true in Iraq. (More about that in my next week posting). Don't be afraid to give them a chance. Our founders dared and look at the results!

SHOULD WE CANONIZE ANTI-ISRAELI ACTIVIST RACHEL CORRIE?

Oliver Kamm has the answer and the fact I wish I could write blogs as good as his. Do click Here

Happy Fourth of July.

Posted by Judith at 5:15 P.M. EST.

I DEMAND AN APPOLOGY FROM M. DOWD - 06-29-03

This Jewish woman demands an apology from a Catholic one. Writing about Scalia Dowd equates what she calls the"Old School" with the"Old Testament." Both representing an"era when military institutes did not have to accept women, and elite schools did not have to make special efforts with blacks, when a gay couple in their own bedroom in irons, when women were packed off to Our Lady of Perpetual Abstinence Home of Unwed Mothers."

First, let me remind her that the only thing the"Old School" had to do with the"Old Testament" is that those who believed in it were not only persecuted mercilessly by the followers of the"New Testament" but were persona non grata in them. Anti-Semitism celebrated in them. Dowd clearly has some"issues" with the Catholic Church but the facile manner in which she attributes everything she dislikes in it to my holy book is inexcusable most especially since it is factually wrong. My Tanach (which she calls the Old Testament) is the ultimate text of revolutionary liberation and that was the reason slave owners were not permitted to read much of it to their slaves. And do remember Deborah - our celebrated military leader. No, it was not Jews who conceived or advocated sending women to convent. In other words, stop using my holy book as a club.

MUST READ

For those of you not familiar with debka.com, here is a sample. Do take into account that at times their reach acceeds their grasp. On the other hand, it should be recalled that Syria is the only Arab country ruled by the Baath Party. Syria’s Pivotal Role in Iraqi Resistance Is Glossed over in Washington

Posted 4 p.m. EST

I AM BACK - 6-27-03

Six weeks is a long time to be away from home. Luckily, my daughter has kept this blog going. Now its time for me to get back to work. Let me start by sharing with you some of what susrprised me.

I have learned that Cambridge, England has a flourishing community of evangelist Anglicans; that Spain, like Ireland has been transformed from a country of emigrants to a country of immigrants and that those immigrants are often the descendents of former emigrants and, that Israelis, like their brethren elsewhere, are preoccupied with the fluctuation of the dollar, the misbehavior of politicians and the conflicting advice of health gurus. In other words, they remain normal, if a little weary.

SUICIDE BOMBERS IN ISRAEL KILL ARABS, TOO

"What does an Israeli Arab woman feel about the fact that her husband was murdered in a terrorist attack perpetrated by a Palestinian woman who blew herself up at the entrance to a shopping mall?" asks Haaretz correspondent Vered Levy-Barzilai ."What is the experience of an Arab in Israel whose beloved brother was killed in a suicide bombing? How does the family cope with this unexpected loss and bereavement? Where do they channel their rage and frustration? Where do they direct their outcry of grief?" Here is part of the answer:

Aeda Tuataha isn't yet capable of talking about it. Her brother-in-law, Hasan, 48, married and the father of four, the principal of an elementary school in Jisr al-Zarqa, says quietly,"What should I tell you, that I am starting to develop a hatred for the Palestinian people? That would not be true. That I now think that all the Palestinians are despicable murderers? No. I know there are all types. In the meantime, the pain is greater than any anger. Certain things keep going through my mind. The question that cuts through my heart is: How is it possible to come and murder innocent people, just like that, without any thought about what will happen to their families? It's such a barbaric deed that the mind can't take it in. I am in a state of shock. And I was in shock before this, too, when Jewish friends of mine from Hadera were killed in terrorist attacks. I have lost two friends to terrorist attacks.

ISRAELI ARAB DOCTORS TREAT THEM ALL

This is the inspiring, heart breaking message of the op-ed article written by Helen Schary Motro. I am posting it because it accurately describes the reality of the city where I grew up: Ghalab Tawil originally took a job as a cleaner in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital so he could spend time with his daughter Iwan, 13, who has leukemia. Tawil often slept by her side. But Iman is no longer hospitalized, so Tawil spent Saturday night at his home in Shuafat, north of Jerusalem. Early Sunday he boarded the first bus to work. He never arrived, because at 5:45 a.m. a Palestinian detonated a bomb that killed Tawil and six other passengers. Tawil, like his murderer, was a Palestinian.

The next day, when a 19-year-old Palestinian exploded her bomb at the entrance to a mall in Afula, three people were killed. One was Hassan Ismail Tawatha, 41. After 15 years as an employee he had dreamed of opening his own electronics business. Tawatha was not at the mall to shop. He was there as a student, attending a preparatory electronics course run by a local college. The next day his entire village of Jissr al Zarka turned up for the funeral. Tawatha, too, was an Arab.

And so the list goes on, of Arabs killed or wounded in attacks perpetrated by Palestinians who see themselves as heroes, and who are often perceived as martyrs in the communities they come from.

What would the suicide bombers' answer be if they knew that some of their victims would be Arabs? Would they call it collateral damage, worthwhile for the cause they believe they are serving? What would Iman Tawil say to that, now that she has no father left? She and the other orphans?

Of Israel's 6 million citizens, approximately a million are Arab. Although Israeli society is far from integrated, it is far from apartheid. In Haifa, Arabs and Jews live together in the same neighborhoods. On Jerusalem's streets the two peoples rub shoulders daily, their children play in the same parks and some attend the YMCA's binational kindergarten. In a northern town like Afula, or a southern one like Beersheba, Arabs and Jews ride beside each other on the escalators of the shopping mall.

When ambulances raced most of the 71 wounded in the blast Monday to Afula Hospital, they were received by Dr. Aziz Daroushe, the A]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1538 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1538 0 THE OIL LINE SABOTAGE AND OTHER TROUBLES IN IRAQ 08-17-03

Because many people I respect are bloggers at InstaPundit the Volokh Conspiracy , and Prestopundit, I would be interested in their collective thoughts about the recent setbacks in Iraq, most especially the sabotage of the oil pipeline. What impact do they think this will have, for example, on the the long-term prospects for nation-building and stabilization in Iraq?

Posted by David T. Beito at 11:14 am EST

THE FEDS DECLARE WAR ON CAMPUS SPEECH CODES 08-16-03

Liberty and Power Blogger Wendy McElroy is quoted in an article by George Archibald in the Washington Times. The article begins: “The Bush administration has notified college and university officials that federal civil rights regulations do not justify campus speech codes or other rules that inhibit free expression by students and faculty.”

As a professor at a public university that is now trying to quash free speech by a blanket ban on dorm window displays, I am watching this with great interest.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:04 EST

Gillette Backs Down on RFID 08-16-03

"W33dz" commented a few days ago on the high-tech SlashDot blog,"Retailers and manufacturers around the world are enamored with the new radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices. The problem? What about when a thief or the police want to find out what you have in your house? Oddly enough, according to a Wired magazine article, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win Dept of Homeland Security approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists. This will give them blanket immunity from all law suits related to the product." (The companies seeking immunity will undoubtedly argue that they have no control over the abuse of their RFID tags -- which last up to ten years -- to which critics will reply"then don't put them in without clearly telling people you are doing so.") One of the companies pioneering RFID in North America is -- or was -- Gillette. The"shaving company" intended to use a Massachusetts Wal-Mart to test product that had a tiny microchip embedded so that store managers could track stock and order more when supply ran low. But the technology could be used to literally track products from store shelves to homes. Gillette had gone so far as to order 500m chips, known as RFID tags, in January. Apparently privacy advocates were effective in their criticism of the company's plans because Gillette has abandoned its intention to embed chips in product and is now embedding them instead in e.g. the pallets that move stock from factories to storehouses, apparently as an inventory awareness measure. In commenting on Gillette's reversal of policy, the Financial Times observed,"One early test [of RFID] undertaken in Cambridge, in eastern England, by Tesco, the UK retailer, set off a storm of protest last month after it emerged that the store was automatically photographing consumers as they took Gillette razors from the shelf. Customers were secretly photographed again when they left the store with the RFID-tagged products." Although Gillette does not acknowledge the criticism of privacy advocates as playing a role in its shift of plans, Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) have been vigorously promoting a boycott and the company was coming under increased media scrutiny on the issue.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 8:00 a.m. Visit McBlog for more commentary

SLAVES AND THE COMMON LAW 8-15-03

I've recently started an interesting book: Jenny Bourne Wahl, The Bondman's Burden: An Economic Analyis of the Common Law of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) . It is a Posnerian analysis of antebellum common law as it related to slavery. It argues both that slave law was MORE efficient (excluding of course the welfare of the slaves) than other antebellum law and that slave law anticipated and provided the precedents for many subsequent developments in those other areas. I would appreciate the opinion of my fellow bloggers or others who have read this book.

Posted by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel at 9:07 a.m. EST

PHONE PROPAGANDA FROM STATE OFFICES FOR HIGHER TAXES 8-14-03

Instead of hearing the typical muzak or public service announcements while on hold, callers to state offices in Alabama are now subjected to a propaganda recording which touts Governor Riley's " courageous" massive 20 percent tax increase. How more shameless can they get? This heavy-handed tactic is already backfiring.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:26 a.m.

SCHWARZENEGGER PICKS WARREN BUFFETT AS HIS ECONOMIC ADVISOR 8-13-03

Bad news for friends of small government. Schwarzenegger has recruited statist, country club billionaire Warren Buffett to be his chief economic advisor. God save California!

A little known fact: Buffett's father, Howard Buffett, was a libertarian leaning congressman from Nebraska in the 1940s and 1950s who supported the early activities of the Institute for Humane Studies. Warren is not particularly proud of his father's past political record.

Posted by David T. Beito at 3:15 pm EST

THE ALABAMA TAX PLAN AND THE POLITICIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 8-13-03

Liberty and Power blogger, Charles W. Nuckolls, has condemned the shameless politicization of Alabama’s institutions of higher learning.

At the University of Alabama, deans and other administrators in their official capacities are organizing one-sided pep rallies to line up faculty support for Governor Riley’s massive and controversial tax increase (now well behind in the polls). These administrators (many merely following orders) have informed Nuckolls that they will not allow dissenting views to be expressed, or even permit questions, at these pep rallies. What happened to the tradition of free and open debate in higher education?

Forty years ago, historians and other scholars spoke out against a similar misuse of higher education for political purposes in Alabama and the rest of the South. Where are they now?

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:08 am EST

Wendy McElroy: Get Out of Iraq! 08-13-03

This Reuters story from AlertNet:"A group of about 600 U.S. military families, upset about the living conditions of soldiers in Iraq, are launching a campaign asking their relatives to urge members of Congress and President George W. Bush to bring the troops home. Susan Schuman, whose son Justin is in the Massachusetts National Guard deployed to Samarra, Iraq, said he shares a small room in a former Iraqi police barracks with five other men. 'They are rationed to 2 liters of water a day and it's 125 degrees (52 degrees C), they haven't had anything but MREs (Meals Ready to Eat),' she told Reuters, adding that uncertainty about when the troops would come home was 'most disheartening.'" I recommend the site Military Families Speak Out which is in the forefront of demanding"Bring Them Home!"

The situation for Iraqi civilians is not better -- indeed, far worse -- as illustrated by conditions in British-held Basra. No reliable electricity, fuel shortages (in Iraq!), food scarcity, no medical supplies, water shut-offs... The prospect of more civilian riots. Conditions in Basra -- Iraq's second largest city -- raise a terrible question. Consider the report on one female resident and her family:"An open sewer runs past their front door and rubbish is piled up on the street. In the small courtyard it is clean and tidy, but stiflingly hot. Since the day before they had not had electricity to power the ceiling fans, and no one in the household - from her 80-year-old father to her grandson of six months - had managed to sleep. She welcomed the arrival of the British with open arms and still values their presence. But she cannot disguise the disappointment at the fact that her life, and the life of her family, is now worse." If the Americans and British do not repair the infrastructure -- and now! -- then the daily life of the average Iraqi may prove to have been better under Saddam than under the so-called"freedom" imposed by occupation forces.

The Americans and British have shown some reluctance to call themselves"an occupation force"...and that's understandable. Here is a look at the main responsibilities of being an"occupier'' under the 1949 Geneva Conventions on humanitarian law, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Geneva.

An occupier must:

• Restore and ensure public order and safety. • Provide the population with food and medical supplies. • Cooperate with aid and relief operations, if needed. • Ensure public health and hygiene. • Faciliate work of schools. • Uphold criminal laws of occupied territory, unless they constitute a threat or contradict international humanitarian law.

An occupier cannot:

• Loot. • Compel residents to serve in its armed forces. • Forcibly transfer residents out of occupied territory to its own territory. • Exploit resources of occupied territory for own benefit.

No wonder the Americans and British wish to define themselves as"other" than occupiers. If they are an occupying army, then they might be liable for human rights violations for the extended denial to Iraqis of the basic human necessities of life, such as medicine. I do not suggest that the Americans and British extend/expand their stay in order to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure nor that hefty, politically-inspired contracts to the likes of Haliburton be continued. I suggest that troops GET OUT and allow what remains of a free market and of Iraqi ingenuity to rise. Let the communities organize and see to their own needs.

Posted by Wendy Mcelroy at 7:20 a.m. EST

KEITH HALDERMAN: MARIJUANA DECRIMINALIZATION 08-11-03

Quotations from the Shafer Commission

The thirtieth anniversary of the Shafer Commission Report occurred on March 22nd of 2002. Shafer Commission is the short hand name for the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. In order to get an omnibus drug act passed its proponents had to agree to a commission for the purpose of studying drug use. An amendment to the Public Health Service Act created the Shafer Commission on 27 October 1970. It took its name from its chairman Republican ex-governor of Pennsylvania, Raymond Shafer. The panel had on it two congressmen, one from each party, and two senators, one from each party, as well as, nine people appointed by Richard Nixon. These included such persons as the dean of a law school, the head of a mental health hospital, and a retired Chicago police captain.

They issued their report, after the most extensive and comprehensive investigation ever done by our government concerning the subject of marijuana use, on 22 March 1972. They recommended that personal use of marijuana be decriminalized.

The Commission had on it nine people who were put there because it was thought that they would reach a different conclusion than the one that they did. They were not supposed to find that it should be decriminalized. Now, why did they do that? Could it be that they were honest men who saw the truth and reported it?

Page numbers come from the white covered paperback edition of the commission report, titled Signal of Misunderstanding.

page 3"President Nixon has frequently expressed his personal and official commitment to providing a rational and equitable public response."

page 7"Isolated findings and incomplete information have automatically been presented to the public, with little attempt made to place such findings in a larger perspective or to analyze their meanings."

page 23"An accurate statement of the effects of the drug is obviously an important consideration, but it is conclusive only if the effects are extreme one way or the other."

page 29"We ask the reader to set his preconceptions aside as we have tried to do, and discriminate with us between marihuana, the drug and marihuana, the problem."

page 36"No valid stereotype of a marihuana user or non-user can be drawn."

page 41"The most notable statement that can be made about the vast majority of marihuana users - experimenters and intermittent users - is that they are essentially indistinguishable from their non-marihuana using peers by any fundamental criterion other than their marihuana use."

page 42"Young people who choose to experiment with marihuana are fundamentally the same people, socially and psychologically, as those who use alcohol and tobacco."

page 44"The most common explanation for discontinuing use is loss of interest."

page 61"No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking."

page 67"That some of these original fears were unfounded and that others were exaggerated has been clear for many years. Yet, many of these early beliefs continue to affect contemporary public attitudes and concerns."

page 73"In sum, the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or aggressive behavior; if anything marihuana serves to inhibit the expression of such behavior."

page 75"In short marihuana is not generally viewed by participants in the criminal justice community as a major contributing influence in the commission of delinquent or criminal acts."

page 77"Some users commit crimes more frequently than non-users not because they use marihuana but because they happen to be the kinds of people who would be expected to have a higher crime rate."

page 78"Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety."

page 79"The few driving simulator tests completed to date have generally revealed no significant correlation between marihuana use and driving disabilities."

page 79"Recent research has not yet proven that marihuana use significantly impairs driving ability or performance."

page 84"No reliable evidence exists indicating that marihuana causes genetic defects in man."

page 88"No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use."

page 92"Concerns about marihuana use expressed in the 1930s related primarily to a perceived inconsistency between the lifestyles and values of these individuals and the social and moral order."

page 93"Concerns posed by an alternate youthful lifestyle are extended to the drug itself."

page 96"Most users, young and old, demonstrate an average or above-average degree of social functioning, academic achievement, and job performance."

page 102"It is unlikely that marihuana will affect the future strength, stability, or vitality of our social and political institutions."

page 112"The salient feature of the present law has become the threat of arrest for indiscretion."

page 130"Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."

page 130"We suspect that the moral contempt in which some of our citizens hold the marihuana user is related to other behavior or other attitudes assumed to be associated with the drug."

page 151"In general, we recommend only a decriminalization of possession of marihuana for personal use on both the state and federal levels."

page 167"Recognizing the extensive degree of misinformation about marihuana as a drug we have tried to demythologize it. Viewing the use of marihuana in its wider social context, we have tried to desymbolize it."

page 167"We would de-emphasize marihuana as a problem."

Posted by Keith Halderman at 7:42PM EST

THE GRADE INFLATION EPIDEMIC IN BRITAIN 8-11-03

Alina Stefanescu has called my attention to a fascinating article on grade inflation in Britain. Because of a proliferation of A's, British employers are complaining that grades no longer provide a reliable means for weighing the relative qualifications of job applicants. Their American cousins should take note.

Posted by David T. Beito at 4:47 p.m. EST

WENDY McELROY: PLAYING DIRTY 8-11-03

As though in the belief that syllables define reality, the Bush Administration and its attendant agencies are playing word games...and playing dirty.

1) Sometimes they use Clintonesque tactics with language, reminiscent of"It depends what 'is' means." For example, the Pentagon's denial that napalm was used in Iraq. It seems that"napalm" is a brand name, like Kleenex, and the US military is not using that particular brand of fuel-gel mixture in its bombs but another fuel-gel mixture that does the same thing. In the light of confirmation of use by marine pilots and their commanders, the Pentagon has reversed its non-denial denial.

2) Sometimes they silence"unacceptable" words. In an article entitled"Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV", the San Francisco Chronicle commented,"soldiers of the Army's Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found [this] out after Good Morning America aired their complaints....The retaliation from Washington was swift." But the exhausted soldiers -- many of whom have had their tour of duty extended three times now -- keep speaking out. In an article entitled"We don't feel like heroes any more," Isaac Kindblade explains,"I am a private first class in the Army's 671st Engineer Company out of Portland. I just wanted to let you know a little bit of what we are up to, maybe so that you can have another opinion of what's going on over here in Iraq...The task is daunting, and the conditions are frightening. We can't help but think of 'Black Hawk Down' when we're in Baghdad surrounded by swarms of people. We are outnumbered. We are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The president says, 'Bring 'em on.' The generals say we don't need more troops. Well, they're not over here." The influential blog TomPaine observes,"Now that the Pentagon is limiting media access to troops in Iraq will the brass come down on Private First Class Isaac Kindblade?"

PR week reports,"After several troops made some highly publicized negative comments to the media about the war effort in Iraq, the Pentagon has taken steps to keep the frustrations of both soldiers and their families out of reports. According to a story in the July 25 edition of Stars and Stripes, the military appears to be curtailing its much-touted embedded-journalist program, which has allowed reporters almost unfettered access to military units throughout the war and occupation." The so-called"unfettered access" was always in exchange for Pentagon control of what was said and what was seen so that the military would look good to the home folk. If the Vietnam War taught the White House anything it was that truly unfettered journalism means the horrors of war and the brutality of American soldiers (who are no more brutal than any other military in an untenable situation) will spill out into the livingrooms of average Americans who are worried about the safety of their sons and daughters. The wrong descriptions will be read by average Americans who have good hearts and wince over innocent child killed in crossfire, maimed by bombs, orphaned... Journalists on the front lines of Vietnam played a key factor in changing the hearts and minds of Americans on the war. Americans at home watched the tragic debacle as they ate their TV dinners and the scroll of America dead that day became the way many news channels ended their broadcasts. The way many people ended their days before going to bed. I remember seeing one such scroll as a young child when my family was on vacation in the States. It terrified me and remains my most vivid memory of that trip. How many Americans with sons and other family in Vietnam leaned into the screen every night, biting their lips and holding their breath, just in case they saw a familiar name? The Bush administration was determined to prevent a replay of this journalistic role. In Iraq, the embedded (in-bed) journalists were"bought off" with access, prestige, and the ease of reporting. The problem is keeping journalists bought in the face of the overwhelming discontent of troops"in the field" and of the continuing death toll during this period of"peace."

3) When it is not possible to smooth the situation by making non-denial denials or by silencing dissent, the powers-that-be punish those who speak out as examples to the rest of us. Consider the case of Joseph Wilson, a State Department veteran who was was sent to Niger to check out the validity of the infamous uranium documents. Over a year ago, he reported that the evidence was not credible. When the scandal surrounding the faux documents eruptedsome weeks back, Wilson went public in the The New York Times and Washington Post and, so, stripped the Administration of the excuse that it didn't know the documents were forged at the time of Bush's State of the Union address which included reference to them. Now, in what appears to be a revenge move,"senior administration officials" have leaked the"fact" that Wilson's wife was an undercover operative for the CIA to the media -- specifically to Bob Novak Novak whose July 14, 2003, column included the sentences:"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the allegation." Journalist David Corn has pointed out that if she was an operative, then it would treason on the part of the White House to disclose the fact. The relevant statute states:"Sec. 421. - Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources (a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both." This morning, for the first time, I heard coverage of this scandal on CNN so it is not clear whether this act of potentially indictable"treason" by the White House can be hushed.

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 11:30 EST. For more commentary, visit McBlog

Visit my home page and blog at drop by ifeminists.com For photo (05/02/02)

WENDY McELROY: BRING US HOME 08/09/03

Bring Us Home!...these three words are replacing Bush's public taunt to Islamic militants -- "Bring 'em on" -- as the new mantra of"Iraq-Nam" -- a term that likens Iraq to a desert Vietnam. The theme"Bring Us Home" comes from the emails and Internet postings of soldiers who are in Iraq and who present a starkly different picture of conditions than is seen through the sanitized media accounts. One of the key transmission routes of the"Bring Us Home" message is David Hackworth, co-author of the"Vietnam Primer" which has been called"the fighting man's bible for guerrilla warfare in Vietnam." It was published by the Pentagon and used as a training manual during that War. Hackworth's site posts messages such as the following: a recent letter written by the Command Sergeant Major of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Airborne to Senator Warner explaining why he is retiring earlier than planned. It is a sombering and articulate accounting of the state of our military. The Sergeant Major writes, in part,"We are losing many of our very best in large numbers and potential recruits are not beating the doors down. This is not good and we can't afford it. I have a daughter serving in the Army and her mother and I have advised her to get out when her enlistment is up." Hackworth currently features an email from the front in which a solider complains,"I do know there are people living in areas with running water and A.C. That, of course, is not us... although my COL lives like that. I do believe he was shielded from the reality by his staff for a while. As we crammed 50 soldiers in to two medium frame tents near a pond of dead fish which was also infested with mosquitos and there was absolutely no field sanitation support for miles, he was living in his own room inside an air conditioned building, had his own king size bed, his own bathroom, his own refrigerator, and his cappuccino machine. It was two weeks before he came down to see where the soldiers were living and that was only after the S4 and CSM kept blowing me off... so, I had to get the Corps Surgeon involved for sanitation reasons." I do not advocate making the military presence more comfortable -- I think the US should get out of Iraq immediately and completely -- but it is a morbidly fascinately process to see George W. Bush actively alienating the troops upon which his success depends.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the morale-killing picture, passions have been heating up in Iraq with native Iraqis erupting in understandable anger against what has become an occupation army -- whether Armerican or British. In Basra, British troops have come under attack by protesters in Basra rioting over fuel and electricity shortages. Several thousand people burned tires and lobbed rocks at British troops, who responded by firing rubber bullets to disperse them. The riots continued into a second day. The US response to protests and potential danger has been a bit less muted than rubber bullets. The current (UK) Independent carries the story of a harmless family killed because US troops panicked and fired randomly. The story begins,"The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop. 'We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us,' the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. 'We were calling out to them Stop, stop, we are a family, but they kept on shooting'." To the message"Bring Us Home," I add my own voice:"Get Them Out of There."

Posted by Wendy McElroy at 11:30 EST, Visit my personal blog

Visit my home page and blog at drop by ifeminists.com For photo (05/02/02)

CHARLES W. NUCKOLLS: THE FIX IS IN: HOW UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS AVOID TAKING RESPONSIBILITY, 8-8-03

Does your university make available its grade distribution data, so that you can tell if there is inflation or not? Perhaps they pull tricks, like the one described below, to prevent access. One can only marvel at the endless capacity for artful dodges, cooked up by overpaid administrators to avoid accountability at all costs.

Here is the story: Administrators of the University of Alabama refused this summer to release grade distribution data, citing"workload issues."

Since 1990, the data has been collected and printed by the Office of Institutional Research (OIR), directed by William Fendley. Last year, members of the ASA consulted the OIR data to compile a report on grade distortion and grade inflation (at the bottom of this page.) Our report documented truly alarming statistics, revealing, for example, that some programs (e.g.,"Women's Studies,) routinely award 80% A's to their students. Our study was published in the Alabama media, including the Tuscaloosa News, the Birmingham News, The Strip, and The Crimson White. It also became the focus of discussions in the Alabama legislature.

Senior administrators did not like our report. Instead of taking steps to correct the problem, they chose to deny, conceal, and obfuscate. We attempted this summer to review data collected since our 2002 report, to see whether or not last year's discussion had any effect on grade inflation. Fendley and the OIR refused to supply the information. In fact, Fendley revealed that he terminated the 13 year-old program of data collection and publication. There is now no way to obtain it.

The message is clear. University adminstrators are embarassed by a problem they themselves have helped create. Under the Open Records Law, they are required to provide access, even to data that are embarassing. But here's the catch: If they refuse compile the data in the first place, then there is nothing to"open." We cannot force them to provide access to data that don't exist. And they know that. It is a deeply cynical ploy, and one we believe will backfire.

When the voters of Alabama are being asked to consider new taxation -- in return, we are told, for great accountability -- how will the university's action be received? Should the University be rewarded for a cover-up? Or should it be compelled to return to the practice of the last 13 years, and publish the grade data, even if it means revealing gross negligance in maintaining the value of its currency -- the grade transcript?

For more information, see the website of the Alabama Scholars Association.

Posted by Charles W. Nuckolls at 7:23 p.m. EST

STEVE DAVIES: THE SUDDEN REVIVAL OF IMPERIALISM AS AN IDEOLOGY, 8-06-03

One of the most noteworthy events of the last decade in general and the last two years in particular has been the sudden reappearance of ideological imperialism. In other words as well as the thing itself we now have an elaborate body of argument that seeks to justify and defend it. Until about the time of the bombing of Kossovo historical imperialism had almost no defenders or apologists among historians, and none among political commentators and journalists. To actually make the argument that it was a good thing today and a suitable policy for the United States to pursue would lead to a rapid appearance of the men in white coats.

How things have changed! Now you cannot open certain journals without coming across articles in praise of the British Empire or suggesting that it really is time for the U.S. to “take up the white man’s burden” that those enfeebled cousins let go all those years ago. (A particularly delicious variant is articles by Brits offering the advice of experienced empire-runners to those newbies in DC). The crucial point is this: these arguments are not only or even primarily made on pragmatic or prudential grounds. Instead they are defended on an ideological basis, specifically that an imperial hegemon (once the British, now the U.S.) is needed to provide international order and to take forward the process of modernization. In other words it is the responsibility and duty of certain powers to rule and govern other peoples on a tutelary basis, until they are fit to enjoy the benefits of civilization.

This all sounds very familiar to anyone acquainted with the debates over imperialism that raged in Britain and the U.S. in the 1890s and 1900s. Max Boot reads like J. L. Garvin reborn, but with a less elegant prose style. Another interesting similarity is the sudden appearance of “liberal” or “left” imperialists such as T. Blair. This should not surprise us. Most socialists and progressives from the earlier period were ardent imperialists and saw ‘benign’ imperialism abroad as the natural counterpart to the welfare state at home, just as Blair does now. The really interesting question is why so many libertarians are persuaded by this sanctimonious guff.

Posted by Steve Davies at 10.55 a.m. BST

Hunt Tooley: Peace in a Desert 08-05-03

We, the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness and the seclusion for which we are famed. We have enjoyed impressiveness of the unknown. But today the boundary of Britain is exposed; beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks and the Romans, more deadly still than they, for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude. Brigands of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder and now they ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their cupidity, his poverty their lust of power. East and West have failed to glut their maw. They are unique in being as violently tempted to attack the poor as the wealthy. Robbery, butchery, rapine, with false names they call Empire; and they make a desert and call it peace.

Calgacus, a chieftain of the Caledonians, as reported by Tacitus, in Agricola

I am fascinated lately by this passage from Tacitus, especially the line about the twin motivations of the Romans: both cupidity and lust for power. Calgacus (or Tacitus) means that no one is safe from such an imperial juggernaut--neither rich nor poor.

Though I am not suggesting that history somehow"repeats" itself, a popular song of a few years ago notwithstanding, these imperial patterns do recur. The only rational interpretation of American foreign policy these days is that we have used a position of power to make rapid strides in an imperial project which reaches back to the mid-nineteenth century. The immediate" cause" of the war, as given continuously in Orwellian fashion by the administration, has of course been discredited: at this writing, no weapons of mass destruction have beeen found or even fabricated.

The irony of the three separate wars against Iraq (1991, 2003, and the"Materialkrieg" against Iraqi civilians prosecuted by economic embargo and contant bombing from the"end" of one war to the"beginning" of the other) is really the irony pointed out by the Caledonian chieftain in Tacitus's telling. We have mounted this years-long assault on Iraq because Iraq was"rich" in mineral wealth and strategic position. But we have also done so because Iraq is poor.

More on this anon, as Natty Bumpo used to say, but one example should suffice. Up until the attack of the 101s Airborne on two men and a child gave us an intimate idea of what a dead Iraqi looks like, one of the few news photos of dead Iraqis reaching the United States tastefully showed only the shoes of the Iraqi KIA. The soldiers shown in this short series of photos were clad in old, worn-out loafers. Our magnificently equipped troops, with high-tech equipment and clothing, armed with weapons touted as the most advanced infantry weapons system ever seen, were fighting men wearing cheap loafers.

Whatever else contributed to the American victory against Iraq this spring, we possessed an overwhelming superiority of a kind described by Calgacus. It was a war of absolute disparity in the capabilities of the two sides, and we celebrated this disparity chiefly in marveling at the"fanaticism" of the Iraqi resistance and at the"arrogance" of the ruling regime.

Calgacus said that the Romans make a desert and call it peace. We have fought--and are fighting--a war for peace in a desert.

Posted by Hunt Tooley at 1:45 p.m. EST

TOM SPENCER GETS IT WRONG ON CLINTON 08-05-03

THE CALIFORNIA RECALL DUST-UP 08-03-03

There is one problem with this analysis. At least now, Gray Davis has to contend with truculent and reinvigorated Republicans in the legislature as he tries to raise taxes. If a Republican candidate for governor won, on the other hand, higher taxes would probably carry the day over only token opposition. In my own state of Alabama, for example, a conservative Republican might soon be able to do something a Democratic governor could have never accomplished: raise taxes by a bone-crushing 20 percent.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:27 p.m. EST

IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY: REACTIONS 08-01-03

Along these lines, I suspect that any sustained attempt over time to impose ideological diversity would actually tend to squeeze out classical liberals and libertarians, institutionalized or otherwise. The academic world would probably become a stale duopoly much like the current two-party system. Radicals of any stripe, right or left, would have little place in such a duopoly.

Posted by David T. Beito at 3:30 p.m. EST

]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1653 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1653 0 Click here for the current Liberty & Power blog.

THE PROBLEM WITH"IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY" 07-31-03

"....just as women and minorities are 'protected classes,' conservative college professors should be able to sue on account of discrimination.

After a decade of reform, the University of Michigan could have intellectual diversity to match its ethnic diversity. In academia, shouldn't ideas matter more than skin color?"

Critics of preferences should think twice before they go down this road. While I share their frustrations with the status quo, the"ideological diversity" approach is wrongheaded. If imposed, the actual result would be to foster a sanitized environment in higher education (much like we see today in many high schools) and thus further undermine academic freedom.

The solution to the evils posed by the diversity police is not to replace, or"supplement" them, with another social engineering agenda. Instead, in my view, the University of Michigan decision underlines the importance of reviving the older, but more noble and rewarding, values of merit and non-discrimination.

Posted by David T. Beito at 8:30 p.m. EST

THE MINARET OF FREEDOM 07-30-03

For more information, check out this Reason Magazine interview with Imad A. Ahmad, the director of The Minaret.

It is worthy of note that, despite his agenda, Ahmad has been a consistent critic of the war in Iraq.

Posted by David T. Beito at 4:33 p.m. EST

David M. Hart : FAILED ATTEMPTS AT FORCIBLE LIBERATION 07-30-03

Cobden's image of Imperial Britain as a harmless Don Quixote figure is a bit misleading. The consequences of "forcible liberation" are of course bloody destrcution of life and property. As I was thinking about this issue I came across an article in the Guardian by George Monbiot "America is a Religion: US Leaders see themselves as priests of a Divine Mission to Rid the World of its Demons" where the US intervention in Iraq is interpreted as an act by the "chosen people" to bring "liberty and democracy" to the world by force of arms. This is not a new phenomenon of course. Napoleon thought he could end "feudalism" and bring "liberty" to the people of Europe by force of arms. That is, until the Spanish people invented "guerrilla warfare" after the French invasion and occupation of Spain in 1808 and after the Russians refined it in 1812, thus undoing Napoleon's grand scheme of "forcible liberation". The British thought a similar strategy of liberating the world by force of arms could be used against the Russians after the failure of the 1848 Revolutions in Easter Europe. It was this foolish effort in the Crimea which prompted Cobden to call the Empire a "Don Quixote". The current US adminstration's desire to "liberate" and "nation build" in the middle east seems much more Napoleonic than Quixotic in my view, and just as likely to succeed as Napoleon's.

Posted by David M. Hart 1.00 PM Central Time.

David M. Hart : THE DON QUIXOTE OF THE GLOBE 07-30-03

As a fan of Richard Cobden I am repeatedly reminded of the following passage by the shennanigans of the U.S. government in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now it seems Liberia as well). The speech was given in December 1854 when the Crimean War against Russia was underway and more troops were needed on the ground and the other great powers of Europe were urging peace on the warring parties (sound familiar?). Cobden asked the pertinent question in Parliament whether the UK now saw itself as "the Don Quixotes of Europe, to go about fighting for every cause where we find that some one has been wronged." It looks like the US is set to become the Don Quixote of the entire globe, but where is our "Richard Cobden" in Parliament or Congress urging restraint or even abstention from the use of violence in international affairs?

From Cobden's Speeches, Vol. II, "Russian War", Speech 1 in paragraph II.1.8 (We have put Cobden's main speeches online at The Library of Economics and Liberty.)

But I want to know what is the advantage of having the vote of a people like that in your favour, if they are not inclined to join you in action? There is, indeed, a wide distinction between the existence of a certain opinion in the minds of a people and a determination to go to war in support of that opinion. I think we were rather too precipitate in transferring our opinion into acts; that we rushed to arms with too much rapidity; and that if we had abstained from war, continuing to occupy the same ground as Austria and Prussia, the result would have been, that Russia would have left the Principalities, and have crossed the Pruth; and that, without a single shot being fired, you would have accomplished the object for which you have gone to war. But what are the grounds on which we are to continue this war, when the Germans have acquiesced in the proposals of peace which have been made? Is it that war is a luxury? Is it that we are fighting—to use a cant phrase of Mr. Pitt's time—to secure indemnity for the past, and security for the future? Are we to be the Don Quixotes of Europe, to go about fighting for every cause where we find that some one has been wronged? In most quarrels there is generally a little wrong on both sides; and, if we make up our minds always to interfere when any one is being wronged, I do not see always how we are to choose between the two sides. It will not do always to assume that the weaker party is in the right, for little States, like little individuals, are often very quarrelsome, presuming on their weakness, and not unfrequently abusing the forbearance which their weakness procures them. But the question is, on what ground of honour or interest are we to continue to carry on this war, when we may have peace upon conditions which are satisfactory to the great countries of Europe who are near neighbours of this formidable Power? There is neither honour nor interest forfeited, I think, in accepting these terms, because we have already accomplished the object for which it was said this war was begun.

The Crimean War did however produce some unforeseen benefits: Cobden made some great anti-war speeches, an interesting poem was written on "The Charge of the Light Brigade", Florence Nightingale exposed the corruption and incompetence of the British Army's medical service, a young Russian officer by the name of Tolstoy started to become disillusioned with war, and the Russian defeat gave reform-minded bureaucrats an opportunity to urge the abolition of serfdom in Russia which came several months before Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation in the US.

Maybe there is an Iraqi "Tolstoy" somewhere in Baghdad gathering his or her thoughts for the next great anti-war novel...

Posted by David M. Hart 11.40 AM Central Time.

It is my pleasure to announce the birth of a new blog at HNN which will focus on (but not be limited to) the themes of liberty and power. A distinguished group of scholars have agreed to join our little group including Thomas Fleming, Stephen J. Davies, David M. Hart, Charles W. Nuckolls, Scott P. O'Bryan, and Jeff Hummel. Their biographies are shown above. Others will be added soon.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:23 a.m. EST

IN THESE TIMES ARTICLE ON"LIBERAL INTERVENTIONISM" 07-29-03

Signs of progress. John R. MacArthur in an article for In These Times has a dead-on critique of liberal foreign policy interventionism. For once, it comes from the left, not the right.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:23 a.m. EST

LISTEN LIBERTARIAN! 07-26-03

In the past 24 hours, five more Americans have been killed in Iraq.....yet many libertarian bloggers remain silent or preoccupied with other issues, such as the nuances of copyright law. C'mon on guys, speak up.

Posted by David T. Beito at 5:51 p.m. EST

PC ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA 07-25-03

My colleague, Charles W. Nuckolls, the director of the Alabama Scholars Association , is getting much local publicity lately (see here and here ) because of his stand defending free speech at the University of Alabama. University administrators have banned all exterior window displays in student residential halls, presumably including American flags, posters showing Malcolm X declare"By Any Means Necessary," or posters of rock stars. The ban does not include displays on hallway doors, however. Why the distinction?

In comments which show an amazing ignorance of the American heritage of free political expression Residential Life Director Lisa Skelton offered the following rationale:"In order to make [the university] more welcolming and in order for us not to be a censor at the same time, we had to say no to everything."

Get it? Ms. Skelton elaborates:

"A floor is a community, and what is displayed in the communty should be a community decision. If they put it on a Burke Hall window, it makes it look like it expressed the entire community's opinion rahter than an individuals."

The controversy became public when Byron Rush White, the professor-in-residence at a residential hall, refused to cooperate with the policy. Professor White deserves the applause of all defenders of academic freedom.

We might have a change to win this one. The most notable development is that the Foundation for Individual Rights has joined the fight against the ban. Stay tuned.

Posted by David T. Beito at 6:16 p.m. EST

JUSTIN RAIMONDO VERSUS RICK SHENKMAN AND THE HISTORY NEWS NETWORK 07-23-03

Justin Raimondo discusses his recent dust-up with the History News Network and our own Rick Shenkman. I have often enjoyed reading Raimondo's columns and gained much useful information from them. Raimondo's attack in this case strikes me, to say the least, as over the top. Both Rick and the folks at HNN have always gone out of their way to treat me fairly as I express my antiwar and anti-PC heresies.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:16 a.m. EST

CNN'S COVERAGE OF THE IRAN REVOLT 07-22-03

Iranian bloggers are criticizing CNN's decision to sit on a video showing an Iranian government attack on student dormatories. According to an article by Gary Metz at Iran va Jahan,"CNN is refusing to air the student's footage, claiming it would endanger the his life. But since they refused to air the footage the story has not received international attention and his life is now in grave danger."

The emerging Iranian revolution is one of the most encouraging developments in the last decade. The media should be far more aggressive in covering it.

It is unfortunate that critics of the Iraq war have been almost entirely MIA on this issue.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:59 a.m. EST

THE NAACP, GUN SUITS, THE SECOND AMENDMENT, AND MALCOLM X 07-22-03

The NAACP's frivilous law suit against the gun industry has been thrown out by a federal judge. It should have never gotten to that stage.

Of course, there is an irony. The historical literature provides overwhelming evidence that blacks have been the leading victims of gun control in American history. Gun control was a staple of such legislation as the slave codes, the black codes, and subsequent laws in the Jim Crow South restricting cheap handguns. Many black leaders, including Ida Wells and Ella Baker, recognized the supreme importance of the right of self-defense. Nearly forty years later, Malcolm X's words still ring true:

"I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a shotgun or a rifle." Malcolm X,"The Ballot or the Bullet," in Irving J. Rein, ed., The Relevant Rhetoric, New York: The Free Press, 1969), 67-68.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:59 a.m. EST

MORE ON THE"DIVERSITY" MYTH AND THE WORKPLACE 07-21-03

According to an article by Stephanie Armour in USA Today,"Diversity Programs are coming under intensified scrutiny amid a weak economy and new research showing that racial and gender diversity has virtually no impact on bottom-line performance."

The article also has some unflattering information about diversity indoctrination....err training....programs which now plague workplaces in corporate America and countless colleges and universities.

Posted by David T. Beito at 2:22 p.m. EST

MACARTHUR AND THE DANGER OF ASIAN LAND WARS 07-19-03

As the Iraqi guerrilla war grows in intensity, I can't help thinking of Douglas MacArthur's wise advice in 1949:"Anyone who commits the American Army in the Asian mainland should have his head examined."

Posted by David T. Beito at 2:45 p.m. EST

HARRY TRUMAN, H.L. MENCKEN AND ANTI-SEMITISM 07-17-03

About a decade ago, academics and journalists made much of H.L. Mencken's alleged anti-semitism. One late-night comedy show even gave the name"Mencken" to a pro-Nazi fictional character. When all was said and done, however, the case against Mencken was weak. His comments about Jews (while sometimes offensive by today's standards) were probably no worse than those he ascribed to other ethnic groups. Just as importantly, when others were silent, Mencken had a long history defending the rights of Jewish intellectuals who were victims of the early-twentieth century American thought police.

More provocatively, during the 1930s, he urged (see Marion Elizabeth Rogers, ed., The Impossible H.L. Mencken: A Selection of His Best Newspaper Stories(New York: Doubleday, 1991), 635-39) that we open our doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. Meanwhile, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who has usually been given a free pass for such actions, was turning them away. Most famously, of course, in 1939, FDR barred the St. Louis (filled with Jews fleeing Germany) from American ports.

Now, new evidence has been uncovered that Harry Truman, another liberal, and often conservative, icon, often made anti-semitic comments which were far more virulent than any uttered by Mencken. In an article for Front Page Magazine, for example, Jason Maoz quotes Truman as stating that when the Jews"have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty."

Bess Truman shared these views and acted on them by adopting a lifetime policy (with her husband's assent) of prohibiting all Jews from entering their home in Independence, Missouri.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:45 a.m. EST

CAL POLY FREE SPEECH CONTROVERSY CONTINUES TO BOIL OVER 07-15-03

Stuart Taylor Jr. has weighed into the controversy over the outrageous violation of Steve Hinkle's free speech rights by McCarthyesque PC administrators at California Polytechnic State University:

"The episode provides a window into the politically correct censorship that polluted so many of our nation's campuses. For seeking peacefully and politely to exercise his First Amendment rights, Hinkle was subjected to a seven-hour disciplinary hearing, from which his lawyer was barred."

As a result, Hinkle was found guilty of"disruption" and ordered to apologize. Fortunately, he has stood his ground and refused to do so. He deserves the enthusiastic support of believers in the First Amendment (left and right) everywhere.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:10 a.m. EST

NEW BOOK ON THE PC THREAT TO FREE SPEECH 07-13-03

During the last week, I have been greatly alarmed by an ongoing, and blatant, PC attempt to impose political censorship at the University of Alabama. It is yet more evidence that the greatest threat to the first amendment today comes from the left, not the right. For this reason, I especially look forward to reading David E. Bernstein's latest book, You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws.

Bernstein already has a fine track record as a researcher and writer. His other recent book, Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal, is one of the most provocative and compelling works in black history published during the last decade. A copy should be on the shelf of every specialist in the field.

Posted by David T. Beito at 8:54 p.m. EST

IS BUCKLEY LOSING HEART ON SUPPORT FOR THE IRAQ WAR/OCCUPATION? 07-11-03

In a well-argued op-ed piece opposing the deployment of U.S. troops to Liberia, William F. Buckley Jr. writes:"The nation-changing program in Iraq is going muddily, and it is good news that the Iraqi guerrillas don't have weapons of mass destruction at hand, but rifle fire and an occasional hand grenade serve their political purposes. They aren't enough to drive Coalition forces out of the country, but they are enough to give off a Chechnyan smell of perpetual armed resistance."

Posted by David T. Beito at 8:47 a.m. EST

BUSH: DEFENDER OF BIG GOVERNMENT, AN APPEAL TO MIA LIBERTARIANS ON IRAQ 07-10-03

Alina Stefanescu has called my attention to a new Cato Institute study by Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. which reveals that the Federal Register is now longer than ever. More proof (if any was needed) that Bush is just another big-government politician.

As American soldiers continue to die in Iraq , many, but by no means all, of the libertarian bloggers who I respect remain silent, or virtually silent, on the war. Why don't they speak out? I know from personal experience that their insights can shed much light on this issue.

IRAQ QUAGMIRE DEEPENS, HOWARD DEAN FUMBLES ON LIBERIA 07-03-03

Seven more American soldiers have been wounded in Iraq with no light at the end of the tunnel, yet Dubya contemplates sending in even more troops. Conservatives angrily dismiss the Q (quagmire) word but few terms can better describe this mess.

On a related world policing note, it is now apparent that thousands of troops will also go to Liberia. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has spoken out against this new commitment:"It is unsound strategically to send our military personnel in harm's way when there is no vital security interest at state. Even worse, it is is immoral to risk their lives in such ventures." Well said!

Meanwhile, Howard Dean reveals himself to be a hollow alternative to the foreign policy status quo by supporting the deployment of troops to Liberia as a means to"head off a human rights crisis." Dean lamely rationalizes his stand by arguing that the"situation in Liberia is significantly different from the situation in Iraq."

Through it all, American troops, already spread thin, are caught in the middle as home defense takes second place to endless bipartisan Wilsonian wars of"liberation."

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:42 a.m. EST

CAL POLY ATTACKS FREE SPEECH 07-01-03

Erin O'Connor is now publicizing the case of Mr. Steve Hinkle, an undergraduate and a member of the College Republicans, who was found guilty by the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) at San Luis Obispo on the charge of"disruption" of a" campus event."

Hinkle's crime was that he posted an ordinary flier in a public place advertising a talk by black conservative Mason Weaver, author of It's OK to Leave the Plantation. Some students, who unbenownst to Hinkle were holding an unauthorized meeting while he was posting the flier, found it"offensive" and complained to school administrators.

At a lengthy hearing, Cornel Morton, vice president of student affairs, condescended to offer the following pearls of wisdom to Mr. Hinkle:

"You are a white member of the CPCR. To students of color this may be a collision of experience...The chemistry has racial implications and you are naive not to acknowledge them." In less the forty years, California the state that struck a blow for liberty with the free speech movement, has become a place which empowers the likes of Morton to interpret our first amendment rights.

I am convinced after reading the available facts on the case at the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that it is Mr. Morton, not Mr. Hinkle, who most deserves investigation, though this time it should be on charges of"disrupting" the first amendment.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:38 a.m. EST

THE LANGUAGE POLICE AND TEST QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOLS 06-29-03

In his his article discussing Diane Ravitch's much needed book, The Language Police, John Leo asks the following:

"Which of the following stories would be too biased for schools to allow on tests? (1) Overcoming daunting obstacles, a blind man climbs Mount McKinley; (2) dinosaurs roam the Earth in prehistoric times; (3) an Asian-American girl, whose mother is a professor, plays checkers with her grandfather and brings him pizza. As you probably guessed, all three stories are deeply biased." For why, see here.

While I have not yet read Ravitch's book, somehow I doubt that the PC test writers encountered any protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and/or the National Education Association.

Posted by David T. Beito at 4:08 p.m. EST

JOHN MCWHORTER AND THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON PREFERENCES, DOWD FALL-OUT 06-27-03

My good friend Todd J. Olson has called my attention to a thoughtful piece by John McWhorter, "Blacks Should Feel Insulted," which deals with the Supreme Court decision on preferences. Here is a sample:

"The decision ratifies a practice that black Americans themselves overwhelmingly deplore. Too often lost is that while racial preference advocates coo about the importance of 'diverse' perspectives in classrooms, black students tend not to appreciate being singled out this way....The undergraduate-written Black Guide to Harvard insists:"We are not here to provide diversity training for Kate or Timmy before they go out to take over the world."

Meanwhile, as links provided by Ralph E. Luker show, the fall-out from Maureen Dowd's hate-mongering piece continues. In my blog on the subject, I neglected to include her most infamous line. According to Dowd, the GOP at its nominating convention"put on a minstrel show for the white fat cats in the audience." Can you imagine what would happen to a conservative, such as George Will, if he had used the same language to characterize a Democratic gathering which featured blacks?

The Republicans properly stepped up to the plate by distancing themselves from Trent Lott. Will the Democrats act accordingly and hold the likes of Maureen Dowd to, at least, minimal standards? I am not necessarily an enemy of the fine art of political invective but those who love to throw stones should be at least reasonably consistent, shouldn't they? Don't hold your breath.

Posted by David T. Beito at 10:08 a.m. EST

MAUREEN DOWD GETS UGLY 06-25-03

Maureen Dowd's columns usually deserve to be ignored but today she hit a new low in a mean-spirited screed against Clarence Thomas. I have mixed feelings about Thomas, especially on issues related to civil liberties, but he has not done anything to deserve this kind of shabby treatment, simply for expressing his views.

As someone who has researched the history of civil rights in Mississippi, I found Dowd's attack-dog style to be hauntingly familiar. Back in the 1950s, many Southern whites belittled black educators and others who had received Jim Crow privileges (such as official appointments to be administrators or teachers in segregated schools) as"ungrateful" for daring to question the status quo. Many of these educators, in fact, suffered personally after the abolition of these privileges....but, for them, the benefits of desegregation to society made the trade-off worth it.

Now, Dowd angrily lashes out at Thomas for stepping off the liberal plantation and biting the hands (including her hands, of course) that feed him by opposing preferences:"It's impossible not to be disgusted as someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder after himself. So maybe he is disgusted with his own great historic ingratitude."

There are two problems with this crude form of attack. First, Dowd's proposition that talented blacks (and, yes, Maureen he is talented) would have failed without preferences is by no means self-evident. As Stephen and Abiligal Thernstrom point out in America in Black and White , blacks were already breaking down barriers in law and the other professions the 1950s and 1960s, long before the rise of preferences. This trend would have probably continued with, or without, the introduction of preferences.

Let's assume that Dowd is right, however, and that Thomas did indeed benefit from preferences. Does this mean that he has lost his right to criticize such policies? This claim is nonsense on its face and even more so if taken to its logical conclusion. For Dowd to be consistent in her theory, she would have to also criticize all individuals who ever called for the abolition of any special privileges they had received in the past. In Dowd's world, this would mean, of course, that those brave whites in the 1950s and 1960s who fought Jim Crow, even though they had personally benefited from the privileges it gave, were just as"disgusting" as Thomas.

Posted by David T. Beito at 9:45 a.m. EST

NOVAK: THE STRAINS OF WORLD POLICING 06-23-03

Robert Novak has another perceptive article on how U.S. troops are increasin]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1541 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1541 0 Click here to return to the Liberty & Power blog.

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Home Truths from Unlikely Sources 03/21/03 11pm

Given the inability of the Democrats and the mainstream "liberal" media to offer the Bush imperium any significant criticism as a foreign capital is leveled -- I notice the Times dutifully refers to "Allied" troops and "coalition" forces as though the whole world was supporting us -- we will have to take what critical journalism we can get, even it if comes from really unlikely sources, such as comic book writers and conservative pundits.

The pundit is Paul Craig Roberts, a veteran or current denizen of numerous conservative think-tanks and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Writing in The Washington Times, the Moonie-funded conservative alternative to the Washington Post, remember, Roberts manages to compare the Shrubbers to both the Nazis and the Commies, and declares it not unreasonable that Bush might be tried as a war criminal himself someday. This is stuff that would most of us liberals a visit from the FBI, at least. The column ends thusly:

Mr. Bush and his advisers have forgotten that the power of an American president is temporary and relative. The U.S. is supposed to be the world's leader. For the Bush administration to pursue a policy that sets the U.S. government at odds with the world is to invite comparisons with recklessness that we have not seen in international politics since Nikita Khrushchev tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. Is Saddam Hussein worth this much grief? 

On to the comic book writer. Interviewed about his forthcoming book of anti-propaganda propaganda posters, Micah Ian Wright, a former Army Ranger and current author of the military-themed "sequential art" series Stormwatch: Team Achilles(and others), explains why he supports the troops but opposes the war they have been ordered to fight and the politicians who have given the orders: 

"There's a big difference between the President and America," Wright said."I support America. Long-term, this President is doing so much damage to America's interests overseas, our environment, our economy and to our government's budget that I consider it unconscionable not to speak out against him. It is a fallacy that to speak out against the President is Un-American... especially when I see him provoking wars with Third World Nations in order to silence the critics of his domestic failures. 

Wright also reveals that it was his actual military experience that cured him of his former hawkish conservatism (a problem from which so many members of the current administration do not suffer):

"I used to be a big-time Conservative... so what happened? I had what alcoholics call 'a moment of clarity' as I gazed out over Panama City burning to the ground during Christmas 1989. See, the US Army had just burned it to the ground. As I watched 80,000 people flee as we burned their homes to cinders, I resolved to learn about what had led me there and how to avoid that type of situation in the future." 

I have attempted to reproduce a few of Wright's scary/hilarious doctored propaganda posters here.

Accidental Critical Journalism? 03/21/03 1am

Change one word in a Times quotation used below and it could be talking about some entirely other country's leadership: ". . . their attitude has seemed redolent of an authoritarian cabal in denial, incapable of grasping reality, either about their external enemies or the mood of less powerful [citizens], because of years of listening only to echoes of themselves."

Media's Early IraqWar® Coverage Leaves Murrow Reputation Safely Unchallenged 03/21/03 12:30am

I know it must be stressful up there in the target zone, and probably a little slow, but I do wish the New York Times man in Baghdad (John F. Burns) would leave off the attempts at "literary journalism" evident in tonight's report. The piece is full of heavy-handed scene setting and polemical digressions that come close to depicting the American attack as the thunderbolts coming down to smite some foolish mortals who dared to challenge him. This is obviously meant to recall classic WWII journalism, but I think Edward R. Murrow and the boys are safe. They showed considerably more commitment to actual information and occasional shows of genuine emotion than the cheap rhetorical stylings of modern political journalism, which are chiefly designed to make individual figures look good or bad without substantively denouncing or praising them.

For instance, three paragraphs are spent critiquing Saddam's speaking style, including his use of "what looked like a large, grade- school exercise pad." This was apparently to convey the tiny bit of speculative pseudo-news that the first U.S. attacks must really have Mean Mr. Mustache quaking in his jackboots. Honestly, now that people are dying, what useful purpose is served by writing snide little stylistic pen portraits of the enemy's leader as if he were a "stumbling" American presidential candidate?

(Alternatively, Burns may have trying to make his own little contribution to the new war's first inane media controversy, over whether the first missile strike had killed Saddam, as if our "eerie" high-tech weaponry was so bitchin' it could lock in one guy's DNA patterns all the way from Fiji. Rummy seems to actually take seriously the idea that you can win a war with one missile to the head. The media for its part sounded a pack of little kids in the back seat: "Is he dead yet, Daddy? Is he dead yet?" I do pine for the days of yore, two or three years ago in the previous century, when the attempted assassination of a foreign dictator was a still shameful secret.)

But back to Burns, trying hard to project himself back to Berlin, 1945, or a bad screenplay ab]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1378 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1378 0 http://hnn.us/articles/913.html

5 December 2002

Broder Drubs the Shrub

Washington Post columnist David Broder is not an easy man to rile. His picture should be next to"phlegmatic" in the dictionary. He personifies the type of staid, serious-minded veteran reporter type who used to dominate the punditocracy before The McLaughlin group debuted, the cable networks proliferated, and political opinion became a popular bloodsport. Once upon a time, Eric Sevareid,"Washington Week in Review," and a handful of other soothing roundtable shows were the only punditry available on television, outside of the Sunday morning shows. The bone-dry stylings of William F. Buckley were about the only thing that passed for"attitude," and the earnest Broder was right at home. Not so much any more, in the world of Rush, Ann Coulter, and"Hardball."

It has taken the most plutocratic, callous, and deceptively political administration of my lifetime to get David Broder angry. Check out A Lump of Coal From the President for Broder's response to the president's disingenuous praise for servicemen and other government workers while slashing government services and cutting taxes for the rich. Broder is also sick of hearing about the need for wartime unity and sacrifice when so many private interests are fattening or preparing to fatten at the Bush administration trough:

"Almost everywhere you look, the element of shared sacrifice that should be expected in a nation at war is missing. A few people are being asked to give up a lot -- measured in time or money -- while others are being indulged in ways no one can claim are fair.""So spare me, please, the comparisons to Pearl Harbor." Another old-school pundit, liberal-hating but truth-telling Charley Reese, hits the mark with a column on the Department of Homeland Security, which, as I have pointed out before, is exactly what the pre-sainthood Jimmy Carter would have done in the same situation. Along with the appointment of blue-ribbon commissions headed by old political war horses (which Bush has also done, in the case of the 9/11 investigation) nothing smells of desperate politicians more than a bureaucratic reorganization. Some excerpts from Reese:

The new Department of Homeland Security will merge 22 federal agencies and 170,000 federal employees into one monstrous bureaucracy. It will not make America safer. . . .

It's bad enough they picked a name George Orwell might have thought of, but they are overselling this to the American public. It will take many months, probably even years, to actually put it together, and it is a rule of thumb in government that the bigger the bureaucracy, the harder it is to manage. . . .

Furthermore, you can count on the fact that in this long process of consolidation, the individual agencies will have their work disrupted. So under the most optimistic projections, the immediate effect will be less efficiency and effectiveness, not more.

3 December 2002

Back (but only just barely) from Thanksgiving break. . .

Annals of the Liberal Media: The DiIulio Non-Imbroglio

Once again, a story that would be dominating the media if had happened to Clinton or Gore or most other recent presidents has gotten little or no play even in the least conservative national media outlets. By typical media standards, it is quite a juicy tale that fits into an established genre: a former White House aide comes forward with stinging criticisms of the administration he worked for, revealing just how far reality differs from a carefully fostered image. This was followed by White House stonewalling and apparent efforts to silence the whistle blower. The story also qualifies under another of the typical standards for newsworthiness: it was an unusual event, a departure from the norm. As Reuters pointed out, DiIulio's remarks represented"a rare criticism by a one-time insider of a Bush White House that has placed a near-total lid on internal dissent."

The aide in question is John DiIulio, the Penn professor who was brought in to spearhead the administration's once-heralded Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. DiIulio was a major source for a story on Karl Rove that will be appearing in next month's Esquire. While defending Shrub's intentions and expressing optimism that things could change, DiIulio had some devastating things to say about the way that"policy" was made in the Bush White House, which he described as more fully ruled by raw partisan political considerations than any other modern presidency."Compassionate conservatism" and"no child left behind" are shams, DiIulio suggests, mere slogans backed with talking-point policies the effectiveness of which the White House actively avoids even seriously considering, much less thoroughly investigating.

Some quotations from DiIulio's letter to the Esquire reporter, which is posted in full on the magazine's web site:"There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism."

"Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but, on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking—discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue."

"This gave rise to what you might call Mayberry Machiavellis—staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible."

Perhaps even more disturbing, DiIulio suggests that the extreme rightward tilt of Bush's policies may not even be rooted in genuine beliefs. Instead, the former advisor argues, pandering to libertarian zealots and wingnut preachers is a political strategy based on a"shared fiction":"The Republican base constituencies, including beltway libertarian policy elites and religious right leaders, trust him to keep Bush '43' from behaving like Bush '41' and moving too far to the center or inching at all center-left. Their shared fiction, supported by zero empirical electoral studies, is that '41' lost in '92 because he lost these right-wing fans. There are not ten House districts in America where either the libertarian litany or the right-wing religious policy creed would draw majority popular approval, and, most studies suggest, Bush '43' could have done better versus Gore had he stayed more centrist, but, anyway, the fiction is enshrined as fact." And that fiction controls almost everything the Shrubbers do, policy-wise, with the occasional bit of compassionate visual and rhetorical frosting.

Stern, damning stuff. It had Ari Fleischer issuing denials based only on an Esquire press release. Yet the major national newspapers barely mentioned the story, and most of the rest of the media have not even done that much as far as I have seen.

The New York Times and Washington Post ran small stories on the Esquire revelations in their inside pages Monday, and rather than following up with stories of their own, today they carried short notices of DiIulio's sudden apology for his candor:"John DiIulio agrees that his criticisms were groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples. He sincerely apologizes and is deeply remorseful." The speed and abjectness of this statement, coming only a few weeks after the lengthy, well-written"Mayberry Machiavellis" letter, strongly suggests some sort of administration coercion of DiIulio or Penn. Yet that possibility, which is considerably more plausible and politically pertinent that many of the Clinton era scandals (the"murder" of Vince Foster and Troopergate spring to mind), appears to be of no interest to our journalistic watchdogs. Obviously the liberal media conspiracy was caught napping on this one.

25 November 2002

Aristocracy in America, part 1

Historians and political philosophers have long seen the key to understanding American life in our lack of a titled aristocracy or (apparently) any other permanently entrenched elite. This has always been the basis of our"exceptionalism," the unique qualities that have allegedly exempted us from the usual processes of history and made us the model that the rest of the world should follow. Almost every aspect of American exceptionalism, or the"American Dream" as most non-scholars would probably have it, depends to some degree on the conviction that no one group is permanently entrenched at the top: social mobility ("rags to riches"), democracy, equality,"the melting pot," you name it, they all rest on the premise that the American social hierarchy is infinitely flexible or non-existent.

Even left-leaning scholars prone to criticizing American exceptionalism and the" consensus" historians who promoted it have tended to indirectly endorse the no-aristocracy view, by celebrating the"agency" and power of ordinary people and highlighting cases where pretended elites were laid low or severely threatened.

I am not sure what I formerly thought about this question, but ever since my two years in Washington, DC between college and grad school, I have been convinced that the United States really does have an aristocracy, or at least has begun to develop one. Hanging around The New Republic and Capitol Hill was a sobering education in just how insular and incestuous the national elites really are, spanning the spectrum from politics to journalism to business, and, these days, extending over several generations as well. The rule I had to adopt was, if I met someone who shared last names with a famous or powerful person, assume this was a close relative until proven otherwise. Yes, that really was Warren Buffett's daughter, the DNC chairman's son, etc. Then I went to work for a second-generation senator whose presidential campaign was managed by the son of a famous former ambassador and advised by Thurgood Marshall, Jr.

It became apparent to me that, even though only the Kennedys are usually referred to as a dynasty, the phenomenon of multiple family members and generations finding their way into the halls of power was not just for Kennedys anymore.

In the 1990s, of course, this all came out in the open, with legacy presidents, legacy senators (including 3 sons holding down seats once held by their own fathers), and a whole slew of legacy governors. I got the idea that this was some kind of trend when a student in one of my classes introduced himself as the son of local state senator, and managed to announce that he planned to run for that seat or the lower house himself someday soon. The trend also extends to other lucrative areas of American life, notably sports (Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Moises Alou, and many others) and Hollywood (Gwyneth Paltrow, assorted Baldwin brothers, Phoenix siblings, and Coppola children). One look at all the little boys in the Giants dugout during the last World Series suggests that another generation of multigeneration ballplayers is on the way.

The born-again liberals Michael Kinsley and Paul Krugman have both written recent columns about the renewed prevalence of inherited wealth and power. Kinsley gives his piece a funny title,"Dad, Can I Borrow the Scepter?" and compares the election of familiar names to"'Brand extension,' . . . using the reputation of an established product to help peddle a new one."

This captures one force that seems to support the careers of legacy politicians, a celebrity-driven media culture that forces even politics to be presented strictly in terms of personalities and faces. A name that carries a high Q rating has already won most of the battle in a public arena where actual policies and coherent ideas seem to matter so little. And the media do not have to take all the blame. For various reasons, a stratified star system in which a few individuals make obscene amounts of money while the majority fall farther and farther behind has taken hold across the American scene, from entertainment to academia. The need to make seemingly safe bets because of inflated prices seems to drive some of this, along with reforms (like the end of baseball's reserve clause and the decline of the Hollywood studio system) that have given tremendous leverage to individual stars and their agents. Nepotism would seem to go hand in hand with immense power being placed in the hands of individuals.

On a more somber note, Kinsley concurs with me that"political inheritance mocks our pretenses to equal opportunity. Anyone can grow up to be President, but anyone named Bush (or Gore, for that matter) has a much better chance."

Krugman is even scarier, because he has actual data on the growing concentration and stratification of wealth in this country."If the United States stands out in comparison with other countries," Krugman quotes a colleague as writing,"it is in having a more static distribution of income across generations with fewer opportunities for advancement." Krugman also points out that, just as vast piles of wealth have been amassed by the new breed of star CEO, strong political efforts have been mounted to ensure that their families can keep as much of as they want. The redefinition of the inheritance tax as an illegitimate"death tax" is only one step in a larger process of stamping out whatever legal, ideological, and cultural impediments still exist to the creation of new dynasties complete with multiple landed estates.

I am no medievalist or archaeologist, so I have no idea how European feudalism or any other of the world's aristocracies got started. Yet it seems safe to assume that at some point a group of families gained control of the bulk of their society's economic resources, used those resources to build up political influence, and managed to bequeath all or most of the wealth and power they had acquired to their children. I am starting to wonder whether our lack of an aristocracy is not just some sort of historical accident, whether, now that money and power has begun to accumulate and stay in the hands of the same families, we are not starting to see our own nobility in its nascent stages.

The stated values of our country may still be down-home and democratic, but the material and (increasingly, the legal) basis for aristocratization is in place. As Krugman writes,"The official ideology of America's elite remains one of meritocracy, just as our political leadership pretends to be populist. But that won't last. Soon enough, our society will rediscover the importance of good breeding, and the vulgarity of talented upstarts."

17 November 2002

That was Then, This is Now:: in which Wilbur Mills and Condoleeza Rice make a surprising appearance in the same blog entry

This weekend, I happen to have been reading a very interesting book by SUNY-Albany historian Julian Zelizer on Rep. Wilbur Mills, the House Ways and Means chairman who was one of the preeminent architects of U.S. public policy from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Today, of course, Mills is remembered by most Americans, if at all, as the congressman who was ruined by an unfortunate scandal involving a stripper ("Fanne Fox, the Argentine Firecracker") who jumped out of his car near the Tidal Basin in October 1974. Coming only weeks after Nixon's resignation, at the very pinnacle of journalistic and public cynicism toward the nation's Cold War era political elites, the incident received intense publicity and reverberates to this day through American popular culture. It was sad and shallow legacy for a man who was clearly one of the more serious-minded and diligent public servants of his day.

I bring up Mills because of the striking juxtaposition between one of the quotations in Zelizer's book and something I just read in the New York Times on Friday. Though generally regarded as a southern conservative, Mills took a stubbornly dispassionate and analytical approach to policymaking:

"The area of public affairs is not like a Western on television. There are not a bunch of good or bad fellows threatening the fabric of our society on the left which is being defended by a bunch of good or bad fellows on the right."

While not lacking in the technocratic blindnesses of the 1960s power elite, this statement struck me as a mighty sensible attitude for people making decisions affecting millions to take. Note how Mills specifically cited the language and plot patterns of popular action stories as poorly suited to policymaking. Then contrast this with Condoleeza Rice's explanation of why IraqWar™ is key to the war on terrorism despite the lack of proven links between Saddam and Al Qaeda and the recent revelation of Osama bin Laden's disturbing lack of deadness more than a year after Marshal Bush put up the wanted posters:

"As for Saddam Hussein, whom she labeled 'a homicidal dictator,' Dr. Rice emphasized that no one is accusing the Iraqi leader of controlling Al Qaeda terrorists or having a role in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But, she said, 'We know one thing about bad guys: they tend to travel in packs.'"

What's scary is that this is not a politician talking. This is supposed to be the White House's chief professional analyst in the area of foreign affairs. Yet she not only employs popular action story language in a favorable way, but cites action story plot patterns as a scientific principle, or at least as a sufficient answer to a serious policy question. Lots of other factors involved here I know, between tax policy in the age of Wilbur Mills to foreign policy in the reign of George II the Vacant. But still, it hurts to consider how grossly brainless our public discourse has become in the past few decades.

14 November 2002

Garrison Keillor Redeemed

I have not been much of a Garrison Keillor fan since my New Republic period, when I received a nasty phone call and a threatening letter from the Minnesota bard for a mistake it turned out that I did not make in a"Diarist" column. I can now declare Keillor forgiven, for a darkly hilarious piece in Salon on the recent Minnesota Senate election, in which replacement candidate Walter Mondale fell to chameleonic ex-Democrat Norm Coleman. Channeling a side of his talent that his radio listeners don't usually get to experience, Keillor declares the election"a dreadful low moment for the Minnesota voters. . . one of those dumb low-rent mistakes, like going to a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich." Or the chicken fingers, a more likely choice in my experience.

Georgia"Redeemed" (Again)

Thanks to Buzzflash for the Keillor reference, and for a link to a considerably more disturbing piece about Georgia's Confederate flag-waving new governor, Sonny Perdue, who apparently quoted the famous section of Martin Luther King's"free at last" speech on election night, in reference to the belated GOP takeover of Georgia.

I guess the Second Reconstruction is well and truly over, since the South is now almost entirely ruled, once again, by neo-Confederate"redeemers." The Atlanta Constitution story has Georgians expressing puzzlement over what Perdue meant, but I think we historians don't have to be puzzled. Since the Civil War, conservative white southerners have always insisted that they were the real victims of the post-Civil War era and showed a tendency to wax apocalyptic at moments when elite white control was challenged and religiously ecstatic when their supremacy was re-established. What other region has given us such epic pieces of self-dramatization (in the name of exclusion, inequality, and oligarchy) as Redemption, Massive Resistance, the Stand at the School House Door, etc.? The original KKK came from the same part of the southern psyche: racial thuggery and terrorism recast as fantasy knighthood.

12 November 2002

Love, Money, and American History

Conservatives often claim to be great lovers of history and loudly advocate the idea that students should know more American history in particular. The Vice President's wife has been particularly vocal on this topic, and in September, the President himself announced a series of initiatives to"improve students' knowledge of American history, increase their civic involvement, and deepen their love for our great country."

Lovely sentiments, but the real impact of conservative public policy on the study and teaching of American history is quite different. Bush and Cheney would never personally get up and say let's cut these damn history programs to ribbons, but that has been the impact of the successive federal, state, and local budget crises brought about by conservative (and largely Republican) irresponsibility and intransigence on subject on government revenues. Few executive officials at any level of government can even broach the subject of raising more money without ferocious attacks from the Republicans, even if the money would go to needed programs that the Republicans tout their support of to their constituents. It takes an exceptionally brave and selfless Democrat to counter-act this behavior, and in many places, the Democrats don't have the votes to do so anyway, with the end result of devastating cuts to government services that large swaths of the population use and support. Since they don't actually feed anybody (except their employees and their families), history-related programs often became major targets during these induced budget crises, with absolutely shameful and devastating results.

One of the worst examples I have yet seen came to my attention this morning. In Virginia, of all places, one of most historically important and historically-minded states in the Union, the main state historical agency (and library agency), the Library of Virginia, has been dealt a 39% cut. This has meant not only layoffs and cutbacks in services to historians, but cuts in funding to local libraries, public outreach, and the apparently total"elimination of Educational Programs, including teacher workshops, tours for K through 12 students, and other activities that open the Library’s resources to a younger audience." If Bush, Cheney, and the Republicans really cared about American history, they would be working to reverse this kind of devastation, or trying to prevent it by ensuring that the necessary funding is available. But as we know, shifting the tax burden onto the middle class and further enriching wealthy Republican interest groups take precedence in their politics over any public institution or common enterprise, including American history.

One might add that if the self-appointed history lovers who worked themselves into such a lather over Michael Bellesiles spent a tenth as much time and effort lobbying their favorite Republican politicians about the need to protect the institutions that make historical teaching and research possible, we might see some changes in these anti-historical policies. Those who feel that academic historians and library professionals are a pack of left-wing revisionists should also keep in mind that institutions like the Library of Virginia are probably more vital to amateur historians than they are to those of us who do this for a living. The LoV's Internet programs have been obliterated, too.

11 November 2002

The Sick Man (and Woman) of American Politics

The sickness of the Democrats has been pretty well canvassed over the past week, and I tend to agree with the general consensus that the Democrats need to distinguish themselves much more clearly from the Republicans and fight them much harder and less cautiously in the future."Clintonism without Clinton," as Frank Rich put it this weekend, is clearly a losing strategy.

The exact nature of a winning strategy is harder to see. A leftward swing on some issues has been in order since Nader outflanked the Dems in 2000, and is now finally taking in place, at least in the House of Representatives. Of course, the new California-style Democratic congressional leadership is already getting intense flack from the conventional wisdom -- see the Times article from Saturday in which we are supposed to be given pause by the fact that various Republican capos plan to attack new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a San Francisco liberal. These are people who want to see the Democrats completely neutralized, of course, and it's high time (Freudian slip) we stopped looking to conservative Republicans for advice on how to run our party. It's just basic party politics to re-embrace and re-energize your base when temporizing leads to a string of defeats. Personally, I doubt Pelosi is too much of threat to the status quo, considering her heavy involvement in the Democratic side of current big-money politics and her penchant for the Clintonian locution"grow the economy."

A leftward shift doesn't mean that the Democrats are going to beat Bush in 2004 or even that trends will be looking up from here on out. Indeed, unless the economy keeps declining for two more years or the siege of Baghdad is still lingering in the fall of 2004, Bush seems likely to be reelected without the Supreme Court's help next time out. (Those are both real possibilities, of course, as is a ham-fisted right-wing attempt to put Social Security into a declining stock market.) Repeats of 1972 or 1984 are distinct possibilities, especially if the Democrats can't produce an attractive candidate.

But a real Democratic comeback can't even begin without restoring some of the party's coherence and fervor, and that is not going happen unless some of the people who stayed home or drifted Green in the last two elections feel that the Democrats are actually speaking for them. It took the humiliation of Barry Goldwater in 1964 to set the Republicans on their current highly effective if detestable path. Barry got creamed, but he also the first outright damn-the-New-Deal and to-hell-with-civil-rights Republican to win the hearts of many conservative Southerners and quasi-Southerners. (My own father was among them, I am told, and this was proven by the fact that The Conscience of a Conservative and A Texan Looks at Lyndon were among the only political books around the house when I was growing up.) It took another generation for many Southerners to start voting consistently Republican, but the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Goldwater campaign more or less mark the end of conservative southern confidence in the national Democratic party.

Note that while Nixon looks quite liberal today in many ways, partly because he was willing to acknowledge social needs and financial exigencies in ways that today's Republicans simply will not, he followed Goldwater's"extremist" southern strategy, even though it had seemingly been discredited in 1964. Rather than shunning Goldwater's conservatism as the Democrats did liberalism after their debacles in 1984 and 2000, Nixon deployed Goldwater's themes and insights more insidiously and with better timing:"Vote Like Your Whole World Depended On It." Probably the fiery liberal-leftism that many Democratic voters like me are longing for will not win back the presidency, but I do hope there is someone out there willing to be as bold, energetic, and crafty for good causes as the Republicans have been in serving their corporate benefactors and feeding the fears and mythologies of backlashing rural and suburban whites.

10 November 2002

Belated Black Tuesday Ruminations

Even in the new Republican South, for instance, I would have thought that being an actual wounded veteran would win more patriotism points than serving as one of Newt Gingrich's congressional footsoldiers, but the Georgia Senate race proved me wrong. I keep forgetting how few voters or politicians have actually served in the military anymore, throwing most of our political discourse on war and patriotism into the realm of rhetoric and symbolism and attitude. I see that in 1968, while defeated Democratic senator Max Cleland was getting his limbs blown off in Vietnam, victorious challenger Saxby Chambliss was patriotically getting his law degree from the University of Tennessee, doubtless damning the hippies and draft dodgers all the while. Same old same old, I know, but hardly the kind of thing to make one look more kindly on the intentions of the flag-waving blowhards who rule us.

Georgia and several of the other shocks are perhaps best explained not by general trends or 9/11 or the love of Shrub, but by incredible Republican turnout that seems to have resulted from a massive and expensive get-out-the-vote drive in the last three days before the election. Hey taxpayers: In a jet-setting update of 19th-century practices, the national GOP paid for some 1500 U.S. government employees to spread out over the country and help with this drive. And I'll bet not a single government phone or computer or hour of paid vacation time was used in that drive.

The Democrats have been a very sick party for quite some time, as evidenced not only by the number of close elections they lost or too narrowly won in 2000 and 2002, and in this election, getting beat at their own turnout game. The latter is no surprise given how dispriting it has been for core Democratic voters to have their views shunted aside by most Democratic politicians in favor of simulated Republican ones. The Democrats' support of the upward-redistribution tax cut had to be a new low in this regard, followed by the secondary low of their weak resistance to the pre-emptive war resolution. In both cases, the lack of principled resistance combined with tactical foot-dragging and whining earned Democratic leaders the worst of both worlds: they disappointed their supporters without disarming their opponents in the slightest.

Then there is the Democrats' pattern of giving up before most battles are even fought. Look at the House elections if you doubt this. Even in a closely divided state like Missouri, the incumbent won every congressional seat by a lopsided margin. Dick Gephardt himself was the only winner to pull less than 60% of the vote, and he got 59. Computerized gerrymandering of oversized districts has something to do with this, but an explanation explanation is that the Democratic party here barely tries. (Even the Carnahan race seemed anemic, to be honest.) The 9th district where we live was a longtime Democratic seat that includes a liberal college town. There's no way it is a safe Republican seat, if the Democrats had anything going on at all. Yet our Republican incumbent, Kenny Hulshof, who squeaked into office in 1996, has not been offered serious opposition since we have lived here, despite the fact that he has no major accomplishments other than a right-wing voting record that is never, ever touted in his advertisements.

The Democrats have been saved until now only by the fact that the majority of Americans actually agree with them, when asked, on most specific issues. They've also been helped out, in national elections anyway, by the fact that the now fully southernized Republican party is increasingly anathema in the big West Coast, Great Lakes, and Northeastern states, as the southern-dominated national party has almost always been. Nothing much happened in this election to suggest that that trend is changing. Republican governors sometimes get elected in those places (pretty regularly in New York and Massachusetts), but they tend to be relatively non-ideological types who do not take their bearings from the Tom DeLays and John Ashcrofts and Trent Lotts.

5 November 2002

It's the Oil, Stupid, or

The Opium Wars in Modern Perspective 6pm CST

Despite or probably because of its obviousness, I had not been such a big fan of the"oil conspiracy" explanation for IraqWar™, preferring Cold War ghost pains (see Frances FitzGerald in the NY Review of Books from a few weeks ago*) or dynastic revanchism. Then the North Korea revelations arose, and the speed with which Shrubbers spun around on their evil axis, practically inviting the North Koreans to meet them in Munich, made the obvious answer look a lot better.

A recent American Prospect piece on the Shrubbers' Iraqi puppet-ruler-in-waiting, Ahmed Chalabi, more or less confirms the oil explanation as far as I am concerned. It seems that Chalabi, a close chum of administration hardliners like Paul Wolfowitz, has been quietly meeting with American oil company officials who look forward to the denationalization of Iraq's oil industry by a future Chalabi regime. The administration and the oil companies aren't talking about it, but Chalabi has told the Washington Post that"American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil" if he takes over from Saddam, and the greedy minds at the Heritage Foundation are preparing a full-scale plan for the privatization of Iraqi oil and the dismemberment of OPEC. Heritage scholars-for-hire Ariel Cohen and Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. put this naked bit of imperialism into easy-reading US business-speak:"The future of Iraq depends not only on the ouster of the repressive regime, but also on the ability of the new Iraqi leaders to reverse the damage through policies that will spur real economic growth." Translation: Iraq or some American and Iraqi elites are gonna strike it rich, Texas-style! Hoo-yah!

So, there is little mystery left in Shrub's obsession with Iraq. It's just a more deviously and histrionically presented version of most other U.S. and European pre-emptive interventions of the pre-Cold War era. We've want what they've got, and see what happens if they try to stop us. It's Guatemala all over again, and we couldn't even run our cars on bananas, so this prize is worth even more extreme measures than a few Marines.

*Extract from the FitzGerald piece documenting the"Cold War ghost pains" thesis, which is my term rather than hers:

"On one occasion during the campaign Bush junior confessed that he really didn't know who the enemy was. 'When I was coming up, with what was a dangerous world,' he said, 'we knew exactly who the they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who the them were. Today we're not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.' In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations this February Cheney admitted that before September 11 he had been similarly puzzled. 'When America's great enemy suddenly disappeared,' he said, 'many wondered what new direction our foreign policy would take. We spoke, as always, of long-term problems and regional crises throughout the world, but there was no single, immediate, global threat that any roomful of experts could agree upon.' He added, 'All of that changed five months ago. The threat is known and our role is clear now.'"

"What Cheney was saying, in a slightly more articulate fashion, was that the main purpose of American foreign policy was to confront an enemy—and that a worthy successor to the Soviet Union had finally emerged, in the form of international terrorism."

Paul Krugman for republican Virtue -- that is not a typo

Paul Krugman more or less says it all for me, as he often does, in today's column. Bush's supposedly overwhelming popularity is mostly a journalistic fiction at this point, he argues. The general sense that not much is at stake in the midterm elections, as evidenced by the likely low turnout and lack of competitiveness in most places, testifies eloquently"to the timidity of the Democrats, who are afraid to say what they really think, and the subterfuge of the Republicans, who show a disciplined willingness to pretend to hold positions they actually abhor." This is the election that could determine whether the current corporate-controlled, hard-right oligarchy gets to"determine the shape of America for decades to come." (If you want to see that shape, in my view, check out the economically stratified, oligarchically-ruled societies of Latin America or the late 19th-century United States.)

From a historian's point of view, the most fascinating thing about the column is the way that Krugman, the economist, invokes a concept very close to small-r"republican virtue," as set out by the 60s-70 republicanism school of Bailyn, Pocock, Banning and others, as the only force that might save us. I put the particular passage I am thinking of in bold below, but first, some dry histriographic exposition.

This is interesting because the rise of mass electoral democracy has often been linked, chronologically as well as philosophically, with the consolidation of free-market capitalism, the thing that modern economists (including Krugman) have mostly built their field around. That link was a major platform plank of the"liberalism" school of Joyce Appleby and others that pretty successfully countered the republicanism intepretation of early American political thought during the 1980s.

As the historians defined it, republicanism stressed the need for the electorate to possess and practice virtue, the ability to put aside narrow self-interest and act for the common good if republican government was to survive. Small-l liberalism, perhaps better understood today if we call it"liberal individualism," stressed the social and political good came from everyone pursuing their individual self-interests as aggressively as possible within the bounds of the law.

I have always felt that while the American political tradition may well be more liberal than republican, speaking in political thought rather than modern partisan terms, was an inadequate one if we expect democracy to produce or allow any sort of decent society. Though I suspect not too many of his fellow economists or national pundits will join him, Krugman seems to have realized that the (small-l) liberal approach to life and politics, the rational maximization of individual self-interest, contains no incentive or principle that automatically supports certain values most Americans would claim to hold dear: democracy, equal rights, or even liberty itself as it pertains to anything other than consumption choices.

Naturally, Krugman puts his admittedly irrationalistic, values-driven argument in as social scientific terms as possible. Specifically, he writes it as a gloss on the"free rider" problem:"In other words, even if the candidates in an election offer radically different programs, and you have a strong preference for one over the other, a narrow calculation of self-interest says that it's not worth taking the trouble to go to the polling booth. Yet democracy depends on your ability to rise above that calculation."

Perhaps even Krugman can't yet take the next step and suggest that Americans need to abandon narrow calculation while they are in the polling booth as well. Of course, if most of the small-town Republican voters out here in the Midwest were able to make a truly informed calculation about which party's policies would benefit them more, Shrub would have gotten about 20% of the vote. Naturally, the Republicans are working hard even as I write to see that that never, ever happens.

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ALL THAT JAZZ 1-10-03

Recently our humble branch campus played host to Kenny Bindas, an historian of American popular music at Kent State and an all-around decent guy. While Kenny’s books have received warm academic reviews, more impressive is that magazines devoted to jazz and blues have given him enthusiastic raves. Even more impressive, Kenny is an academic who can actually practice what he teaches. (As I political historian of contemporary social movements it is probably best that I don’t have such talents.)

After Kenny gave a lively lecture on the commercial underpinnings of blues, rock, and country, he performed on stage with three of my colleagues. One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching at a small campus is that you get to associate with interesting people well outside your own narrow disciplines and specialties. So there up on the stage performing a mixture of blues and rock we had: a drummer/mathematician who publishes on “ring theory” (don’t ask—I still haven’t a clue); a guitarist-singer/physicist and NASA researcher on “solar winds”; and another guitarist/singer who doubles as a prolific poet. Kenny played the mandolin beautifully—he had self-taught himself on that instrument just months before.

I am no musician but I know what I like. (Recall the learned U.S. Supreme Court Justice who observed that while he did not know what pornography was he knew it when he saw it.) Kenny and my colleagues played well together—their first jam session. I also learned that my drummer/mathematician friend, being Canadian, had learned jazz-style, as opposed to the rock-style of drumming taught in most American high schools. Honestly I was not aware there were such national distinctions—although I wonder what that says about Canadians when they differentiate themselves from us by learning different American styles of music. You just cannot find any music more fundamentally American than jazz. Europe gave us Mozart but we did better: America made Coltrane.

The performance I had the honor of attending was stimulating, enjoyable, and often unpredictable. In truth, it reminds me of the History News Network. Reading Ralph Luker—whether on HNN or viewing his vivid postings on Conservative.net—is like enjoying great 1940s swing. Never a dull moment. And then there is fellow HNN blogger Tom Spencer who truly rocks. I have never agreed with anything Tom has written but I admire his energy, wide reading, and verve. Fundamentally I suspect that the key difference between us is more Arrowsmith meets Getz than Left opposed to Right.

I have enjoyed blogging for HNN for the past few months. The constant pressure of trying to produce thoughtful essays with historical context twice weekly has certainly sharpened my writing skills. On the other hand with my long-awaited academic break now at an end, and with three different course preparations to cover, as well as professional obligations, I can no longer devote the time necessary to produce essays that satisfy my standards. I thank my friendly readers and I expect that I will meet up with you all again sometime.

THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS 12-21-02

In the December 23 issue of The Weekly Standard David Brooks paints an interesting portrait of elite college students. “Making It: Love and Success at America’s Finest Universities” paints a picture of bright students who have been on the fast track since birth. Along the way, however, it seems few ever became acquainted with the world of work and have little idea why they are pursuing degrees in the liberal arts. They are an immensely likeable and self-assured group, Brooks informs readers, but what will these privileged youths do if the class cocoon in which they have been encased were to ever be ripped open by depression and war?

As it happens, Margaret Engel in, “Sigh, Another Rite of Passage Fades in the Sun,” which appeared in the July 28, 2002 edition of The Washington Post, had written about the same kinds of elite youths. According to Engel, America’s middle- and upper-middle-class college and high school youths, in contrast to previous generations, eschewed summer jobs and part-time work. Their days were filled up with “enrichment camps” while youths from Eastern Europe waited tables and cleaned toilets at seaside resorts and amusement parks. Native-born white American teens, of course, could still be found behind the counters at 7-11, working alongside youths whose parents may have been born in Mexico. Although “enrichment camp” may look great to Harvard admissions’ officers concerned about “diversity of experience,” an argument could be made that the kid working at 7-11 sees more real diversity on any given day than his or her more privileged counterpart.

This essay, however, is not about diversity, but about obligation—a growing obsession of mine I confess. How will the youths Brooks and Engel describe respond when America is threatened? Hoover Institution Fellow David Davenport, in the December 16 issue of The Washington Times, seemingly provides a partial answer to that question. Davenport’s focus was on why the present antiwar movement on college campuses has, to date, not become more of a student, rather than a faculty, phenomenon. Among his points is one meriting great attention: there is no military draft to arouse privileged students and give the listless liberal arts majors Brooks talks about a sense of direction.

One of the lessons of the campus wars of the 1960s—one not lost on President Richard Nixon—was that students were anti-draft, not necessarily antiwar. The institution of the lottery did much to defuse campus unrest. Today, of course, we have a voluntary army largely composed of working-class youths and college and Academy-trained officers. Military service for many upper-middle-class youths is not even seen as an option.

Interestingly, within days of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the majority of Harvard students, according to an opinion poll published in the campus newspaper, The Crimson (September 24), supported a military response but only 38 percent said that they were willing to fight.

Now one could put a negative spin on this and conclude that Harvard students and other elite youths are willing to remain home safe and in comfort, snug in their “enrichment camps,” allowing the kids who work at the 7-11 to fight and possibly die for them. But perhaps, just perhaps, we are selling America’s young elite short. As President George W. Bush said in reference to poor inner-city public schools and the many minority youths left behind, practicing “the soft bigotry of low expectations” was not the answer. The poor need encouragement, support, and high standards.

I believe the young elite of America too should not be condemned by the soft bigotry of low expectations. Some way, some how, a generation pampered by their Boomer parents and ridiculed by their peers at the 7-11 and the community college, can produce its own George Washingtons, Clara Bartons, Paul Fussells, and John McCains. This may be misguided faith, but this is, after all, the season of faith, as we stand poised to face the challenges to come.

Peace on the Earth.

RESEARCH QUERY 12-18-02

Dear Readers:

I will be blogging up an extended essay soon but for now I have a request to make of you.

I am working on a book discussing contemporary debates over ideological diversity within liberal arts faculties—placing all this in a larger historical context of the evolution of American higher education. I welcome views from across the political spectrum on this topic as well as any thoughts you may have on students’ preparation for class work, public and legislative support for higher education, and what fears you have for your discipline or what you think your field does well. I am also particularly interested in hearing from current graduate liberal arts students and more recent PhD’s or grad school dropouts regarding their own experiences and what they enjoyed and disliked about their education. I can protect the identity of those who may not want to have their lamentations (if any) appear in print. You may contact me at: Ken

Thanks, Ken Heineman

LOTT GOES BACK TO THE FUTURE 12-14-02

Nineteen Sixty-Eight is often accorded special significance by political historians and commentators. By their lights, 1968 was the year the New Deal Democratic coalition came unglued and a partial conservative electoral realignment commenced. Although there is much merit to that point of view, there is a strong case to be made for reaching further back to the future—to 1948. Given Senate Majority Leader’ Trent Lott’s recent gaffes 1948 is certainly worth a closer look.

In 1948 President Harry Truman and the New Deal Democratic coalition appeared in peril. Faced with a changing electoral map in the North as southern black migrants made their way to the ballot boxes in Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Detroit, civil rights increasingly shifted from being a sectional to a national issue. At the same time America’s commitment to contain by diplomatic and military means the spread of Soviet Communism, moved foreign policy to the center of domestic politics. In reaction to these developments, two ideological strains entered the body politic and eventually mutated the Republican and Democratic parties.

On the Left, former Agricultural Secretary and Vice President Henry Wallace, the scion of a wealthy Iowa publisher, criticized Truman’s policy of Communist containment. To Wallace, the United States needed to recognize the legitimacy of Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe and, indeed, drew comparisons between Russian military domination in Eastern Europe and American economic influence in Latin America. It did not help Wallace’s candidacy for President on the Progressive Party ticket that he had surrounded himself in the 1930s with men such as Alger Hiss who were exposed as Soviet agents and that his campaign volunteers drew heavily from the ranks of the Communist Party USA. Even Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Interior and one of the most ardent New Deal Democrats, lamented that Wallace had no sense if one moved him more than several feet from a manure pile. It required little effort for Truman and organized labor to “red bait” Wallace.

Although Henry Wallace lost, his candidacy had enthralled a new generation of liberals, including a future history professor and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate named George McGovern. At the heart of the Wallace-McGovern critique of America’s Cold War foreign policy could be found a fear of, and revulsion against, the projection of U.S. military power abroad. Both men preferred negotiation with adversaries, which, to critics, looked like appeasement. Both Wallace and McGovern were critical of U.S. shortcomings, arguing that America could do better. To Cold War Democrats and conservative Republicans that stance looked anti-American. Both men also wanted to focus on domestic issues, leaving themselves open to charges of being naïve isolationists who left America open to sneak attack.

Of course, the interesting thing was that in 1948 Henry Wallace’s vision was marginalized and rejected by the Democratic Party. By 1972 much of Henry Wallace’s values were embraced by the insurgents who, led by McGovern, took over the Democratic Party. McGovern, of course, lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide, being the first Democratic presidential candidate since the era of the New Deal to loose Catholics, working-class whites, and southerners. Yet McGovern, as Wallace had, inspired a younger generation—especially a college antiwar protestor named Bill Clinton.

By 1992, Henry Wallace and his supporters—mainly secular Jews and white-collar public-sector professionals—were not the fringe of the Democratic Party, they were the Democratic Party. Indeed by 2002 it is safe to say that Cold War Democrats like Truman, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Washington senator Scoop Jackson were less a wing of the Wallace-McGovern-Clinton Democratic Party and more a windowless back-office operated by a lonely Dick Gephardt.

What makes 1948 so fascinating beyond the eventual triumph of Henry Wallace, was that the Democratic Party also confronted defections from the Right led by South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond. Unwilling to abide even a limited civil ranks plank put forward by Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention, Thurmond launched a presidential campaign on the States Rights or Dixiecrat ticket. Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Bull Connor joined Thurmond’s segregationist crusade while state representative George Wallace held fast for Truman. Thurmond, who mainly ran a sectional campaign, scored a few victories in the South but not enough to deny Truman his victory.

In 1968, of course, the Democratic Party, faced with a divisive war against Communism in Indochina and racial unrest, came apart precisely at the fault lines that had appeared twenty years earlier. George Wallace, who had come to see the political advantages of supporting segregation and calling for law and order, left the Democrats to mount an independent presidential campaign that cost nominee Humphrey dearly in the South. As historians such as Dan Carter have contended, Thurmond and George Wallace pointed the way to Republican Richard Nixon to mount a “Southern Strategy” to crack the New Deal coalition.

Some conservative revisionists have recently argued that Thurmond’s campaign was not just or really about racial segregation but about limiting federal bureaucratic power and fighting international Communism. In truth a convincing counterargument may be made that by embracing segregation and racial voting disfranchisement, Thurmond did more to promote Soviet propaganda overseas than Henry Wallace could have ever contemplated. So far as Thurmond being concerned about states’ rights, well at the heart of that cause in 1948 was a desire to avoid having the color-blind ideals of the U.S. Constitution apply to several southern states.

The question of the moment may be phrased thusly: are the heirs of Thurmond and George Wallace as deeply entrenched and as influential in the GOP as the grandchildren of Henry Wallace are in the Democratic Party? Does Trent Lott represent the GOP? Does he represent a wing of the GOP? Or is he preparing to find a windowless back office far down the hall from Gephardt? President George W. Bush’s recent comments on the politics and legacies of 1948 suggest that Lott had better pack up for a move. The congressional GOP would do well to give Tennessee senator Bill Frist the whole building—not just a wing.

REDEMPTION 12-10-02

Algis Valiunas wrote an excellent discussion of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the December 16 issue of The Weekly Standard. Marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Stowe’s masterpiece, Valiunas reminds readers of what a religious and political phenomenon Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been in the 1850s. Its first printing in 1852 generated 300,000 in American sales and 2.5 million worldwide. Adjusting her sales for a U.S. population of fewer than 31 million—and taking into account that this book was just not going to sell well in the South—Stowe appears more formidable than Danielle Steele.

As Valiunas reminds us, Stowe was a Christian moralist who wanted readers to understand that the institution of slavery estranged the entire nation—not just the South—from a just God. And as enslaved blacks were debased, so were whites—Yankee and southerner. Her Uncle Tom is not a “Tom,” but a Christ-like figure that died for the sins of others. As for Stowe’s political impact, even if Abraham Lincoln half in jest called her “the little lady who made this big war,” it was only half in jest.

I recall in graduate school, when I was seeking ways to avoid taking history courses, I happened into an English seminar entitled, “American Political Literature from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Hunter S. Thompson.” The literature graduate students were oh so sophisticated, constantly reciting in reverential tones—regardless of the topic of discussion—the great Trinity: Fish! Proust! Pompous French Intellectual of the Moment! (In history our sophisticates simply chanted: Wallerstein!)

It came to pass that at the end of the seminar our very tolerant—and truly brilliant--instructor asked us who our favorite authors had been. I said without hesitation, Stowe. The looks of disdain, scorn, and disbelief I received were disconcerting. (I have since gotten used to this kind of reaction in academe.) I liked Stowe because, this being a politics in literature course, Stowe made no modernist or post-modernist, or post-modernist post-colonialist pretense at serving up anything other than evangelical Protestant zeal in its most righteous incarnation.

Truth be told I ended up becoming pretty scornful of Hunter Thompson. Oh sure, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 has its share of hoots, but when it came down to brass tacks Thompson’s cause was Thompson. If that sounds harsh just re-read the sections on the 1972 Democratic primary in Ohio. Here is the hard-nosed reporter who informs readers that he wanted to believe in George McGovern but couldn’t—and then, he came to believe! All power to the youth, the black, the hippie.

But then in Cleveland black party bosses Carl and Louis Stokes delivered the African-American vote to Cold Warrior Hubert Humphrey. Blacks were misled, Thompson implies. They did not understand the issues and failed to see McGovern as their deliverer from Richard Nixon. It’s patronizing, it’s insulting, and it’s just plain goofy. Interestingly, by the end of the book, Thompson makes it pretty clear that even McGovern is not good enough to vote for McGovern. Only Thompson remains. Such self-absorption stands in stark contrast to the spirit of Stowe.

In this season of Nativity and war, I recommend Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an ideal Christmas present. If interested in sending this book to a man in sore need of Christian instruction, you may mail it to: Hon. Trent Lott, 487 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510.

KEEPING ACCOUNTS 12-07-02

Cold and flu season is upon the household so a short blog follows…

Robert Hormats, the vice chair of Goldman, Sachs and a former member of the National Security Council, wrote an excellent—and disturbing—opinion piece in the December 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal. In “The Cost of Fighting” Hormats cautions that federal spending priorities and overall dollar amounts must be adjusted to current security needs lest we repeat the budgetary mistakes of the Johnson Administration. For a detailed and well written assessment of what happened in the 1960s and 1970s to the American economy following bad budgeting practices, see, Louis Galambos, “Paying Up: The Price of the Vietnam War,” in The Journal of Policy History 8 (1996): 166-179.

Peace to the sailors, soldiers, and civilians of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/919 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/919 0 Click here for Mr. Heineman's latest blog entry.

DUTY & ENTITLEMENT 12-04-02

I recently read a few excerpts from a remarkable new work by author Frank Schaeffer and his son John. Their book, Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps, describes how his one son decided to enlist in the Marines after graduating from an upper-middle-class high school. As Frank Schaeffer observes, through much of American history it would have been unremarkable for the children of the elite to enlist in the Armed Forces, especially during a time of war. For the children of privilege, it was a matter of duty, obligation, honor, and leading by example.

Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, feeling a little guilty about his father skipping out on the Civil War, fought in the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt’s sons in turn served gallantly in World War I, with one son dying on the Western Front. Indeed, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., not only fought in World War I, he landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944—the oldest American combatant on shore. He too performed heroically even as his overexertion led to his own demise. His surviving family received the Congressional Medal Honor from distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt.

During World War II it was not unusual to see such wealthy citizen soldiers as John F. Kennedy and George Bush. So too the sons of the professional class, like Western Pennsylvania native Robert Bork, enlisted in the Marines with the sure knowledge that their destination was Hell in the Pacific.

What happened, of course, since World War II and the Korean War was Vietnam. College student draft deferments, even with the opening up of higher education after 1945, were largely an entitlement of the middle and upper middle classes. Just 17 percent of all college students in the 1960s came from working- and lower-middle-class backgrounds while 80 percent of those serving in Vietnam came from the working class.

Schaeffer notes that the class divisions between those who serve in the Armed Forces and those who go to Harvard persist today. His description of family acquaintances and their critical, disbelieving reaction to the enlistment of his son reveal much about the continuing class and cultural divide in America.

It was a matter of sheer coincidence that I read some of Schaeffer’s musings within days of the most recent Ohio State football victory riot. From local and some national media coverage it emerged that rioters at Ohio State torched at least nine cars and assaulted police officers. A few dozen arrests were made while Ohio State flaks, as they typically do after a beer-soaked riot, insisted that few actual students were involved.

Ohio State is not atypical. Washington State had its football riot on the same day as Ohio State. It seems as if some students believe that rioting is an entitlement of sorts—a rite of passage into permanent adolescence. I have a difficult time chalking their attitudes up to their tender ages since 19 year-old boys from far less privileged backgrounds liberated Afghanistan and continue to risk their lives in the fight against international terrorism.

What interesting times we live in.

GRATIFICATION 11-29-02

Numerous commentators have had no end of fun reacting to an anti-SUV campaign mounted by liberal clerics and laity. Taking a leaf from the ubiquitous bumper sticker, “What Would Jesus Do?” the question they have posed is, “What Would Jesus Drive?” Their answer to that question is more probably a Yugo than a Lincoln Navigator. In all fairness I wonder if the better question might be, “What Would the Money Changers in the Temple Drive?” It’s likely not a Yugo.

I have an old grad school friend who has followed this debate intently. He has become particularly heated about the discussion of “WWJD” on conservativenet—one of the best discussion lists on the Internet and ably edited by political historian Richard Jensen. I am including a snippet from a private discussion my friend and I had. He raises some interesting points:

”…My frustration with [conservatives] is that a good number of [them] seem to be stuck in [a] rut--it's as if they wait to see what the lefty liberals have to say on any given issue and then simply stake out a completely opposite position.”

”A case in point has been the recent flurry of [conservativenet] postings on whether SUVs are a good thing or a bad thing. Most of the conservatives were stepping all over themselves to mock the anti-SUV position without really thinking it through. It was as if, ‘Gee, anyone who opposes the idea of gas guzzling vehicles and the right of Americans to owe them must be some sort of liberal goof’--when, in fact, as [Ralph] Luker pointed out, profligate waste of fuel that such vehicles encourage should hardly be a ‘liberals only’" issue. I mean, if ‘conservatives’ are in the very least concerned with 1. Conservation in its most basic sense; 2. ‘Common decency’ as you describe it, or 3. More generally with the preservation of the old fashioned American ideal of self-reliance, SUVs, from whichever way you look at them, would represent the antithesis of conservatism as I define it and understand it.”

”SUVs, and the corporate world that sells and promotes them purely for the profits they generate, public safety and health be damned, represent all that middle Americans should find distasteful--a reliance on foreign oil, and worse still, corporate manipulation and collusion, which is at the heart of most noxious 20th century things in my mind.”

Although I do not agree with all my friend’s points, I have noticed some rather salient features about the values imparted in the selling of SUVs. Readers have no doubt seen the Lincoln Navigator commercials. The most recent one shows a BoBo bopping his Navigator back and forth, waggling his windows, and keeping time to the jazz music coming from an apartment above the street. (Having known a few jazz musicians, most seem to drive old, battered vehicles with--as we say in the Midwest-- “floorboard air conditioning.”) The young Bobo is interrupted by his mate who has brought him a latte from a nearby coffee shop. The look on his face during his “interlude” with the Navigator, and then when caught by his mate, cannot help but conjure up images of 13 year-old boys caught with their enthusiasm showing.

This Navigator commercial is actually an improvement on its predecessor. In the original Navigator spot we see two women, one a soccer mom and the other an Uberwoman Bobo. Both are leaving a specialty shop with groceries. Suddenly, a few raindrops fall. Who will make it to their vehicle before the downpour—-soccer mom in her minivan or Uberwoman with her Navigator? Uberwoman wins, of course, as she effortlessly zaps her remote control, causing the Navigator’s trunk to open and its side lift platforms to appear. Meanwhile the Untermenschen soccer mom is stuck in the downpour still trying to open her trunk. What a loser.

Granted these are just commercials. But don’t marketers conduct research, study consumer demographics, and interview prospective SUV buyers? Would Ford spend a fortune on such research and specifically targeted commercials if they did not think that themes of Social Darwinism and self-gratification resonated with the potential Navigator purchaser?

In the final analysis, of course, the free market, by virtue of being free, can appeal to consumers’ best angels or their most base desires. So I say to Navigator customers, enjoy your costly fuel pump bills and rejoice that your car—-whose cost would buy a house in some parts of the nation—-lost half its value when you drove it off the dealer’s lot. I will make sure not to be in the pedestrian crosswalk when you drive by.

PROFESSOR CONGENIALITY 11-24-02

The decision of the history department chair at Brooklyn College (CUNY) to deny tenure to Robert David Johnson continues to attract attention inside and outside academe. Professor Johnson alleges that he ran afoul of his department chair for insisting on hiring the best candidates for open positions—regardless of affirmative action considerations—and for criticizing the lack of balance in the school’s 9/11 (antiwar) commemorations. (For the record, Professor Johnson has insisted that he is no conservative, proudly wearing a Hillary for Senator button in 2000.) Johnson’s chair has in turn condemned one of his most accomplished junior scholars and popular teachers as collegially deficient.

Regardless of the facts in this particular case, I confess to being troubled by the abuses that can often flow from the notion of “collegiality.” My own experiences have led me to a few observations. First, who defines collegiality and exactly what is it? Second, stemming from the first point, there is a lot of room potentially given to senior faculty to abuse and intimidate junior faculty.

A few years ago at my own campus there was a situation in which some senior faculty were quick to affix the label “uncollegial” on probationary faculty who requested merit raises for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and campus/community service. This situation became progressively worse when a new Dean insisted that probationary faculty be engaged in their disciplines while an Old Guard dismissed professional growth as irrelevant to merit raises and tenure & promotion considerations. Probationary faculty were thus caught between two opposing forces, which had input on their tenure, promotion, and pay.

Although I was tenured and secure from attack, it was painful to watch some senior faculty scream at meetings that merit raises for scholarship and good teaching constituted “theft” from senior faculty. In turn, a few younger faculty would fire back demanding that some of the Old Guard reveal their publication records and teaching evaluation scores.

You can well imagine what a counterproductive, unpleasant campus environment grew from such confrontations. Ultimately, however, matters were resolved--the elevation of the Dean to overall administrative command of all regional campuses enshrining in principle that professional engagement would be rewarded, rather than cited as evidence of “uncollegial” behavior.

So what is collegiality? How about (as Jeff Foxworthy would say) you know you are collegial if: 1) you show up to committee meetings and help with the work load; 2) you do not denigrate colleagues in front of students; 3) you offer encouragement to co-workers in their teaching and scholarship; and 4) you never abuse the staff. If all else fails and you feel the need to vent with a friend, shut the office door. Once done venting, you let the matter drop.

If a probationary faculty member fails to do the above, does that mean he/she should be denied tenure? Rather than answer that question, allow me to shift the consequences to something a little more serious than academic unemployment. If you live a life of grudges and petty self-aggrandizement, you are only raising your blood pressure, undermining your immune system, and cutting short your retirement years. Does that help put collegiality in perspective?

UNDIRECTED READING 11-21-02

The Wall Street Journal for November 21, carried an interesting article by Robert Gavin entitled, “Fargo’s Unlikely Boom.” Gavin’s story dealt with the seemingly improbable success of Fargo, North Dakota, as a high-tech and manufacturing center. Fargo, Gavin reports, is the kind of place where the mayor proudly insists that the weather is not so bad and that, “We only get one week of 35 below.” The city’s resurrection, local businessmen contend, rests upon a well-educated, dedicated labor force. There is a lesson here for other communities far off the bi-coastal path.

Another Wall Street Journal article earlier this week also grabbed my attention. It seems that with worldwide coffee prices at the lowest levels in years, inferior beans from Vietnam and shoddy roasting processes are becoming the norm. The major thing to avoid—which I always have—is purchasing one’s coffee already ground up. It seems that twigs, burned beans, and gravel often makes its way into this brew. I am reminded of a lesson from my undergraduate nutrition class about the allowable levels of rat hair and fecal matter permitted in peanut butter. I usually recall that lesson after I have taken the first bite of a peanut butter sandwich.

In the aftermath of the midterm elections in Ohio—which I addressed in my November 7 Blog—an unidentified Democratic legislative staffer told Columbus’s alternative newspaper, The Other Paper , that his party had put forward as governor “Another sh—ty candidate from Cleveland.” It took me umpteen paragraphs to make the same point.

I have been catching up with John Patrick Diggins’s On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History (Yale, 2000). I was particularly hit by a passage on page 191:

”…narcissists like to read about themselves, and similarly, they like to write about themselves. When one examines the work of much of the new history, which deals with many nameless subjects, it is difficult to tell whether the historical subject is speaking or a politically frustrated generation is still chanting its own radical aspirations through the vanished voice of that subject, as though the historian ventriloquist observes his reflection in the mirror of history.”

Diggins spends a great deal of time debunking labor historians—a pastime I can appreciate but one which I am not sure is worth the effort. When was the last time anyone saw an advertisement posted for a labor historian? The field has been so cut up into racial and gender subcategories, and then deconstructed further, that I see labor history as less a professional vanguard and more as a Shaker remnant.

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL 11-17-02

With all the ink recently spilt on accessing the 2002 mid-term elections and the return of the U.S. Senate to the GOP, it would be well to remember that what happens locally may eventually appear on the national stage.

I spent three years on the Village Council of Sugar Grove, Ohio, population 498. Now with a village of 180 households you may well ask what could possibly agitate folks politically? This is the kind of place where the local high school band, after winning a competition, or in honor of a victorious football team, assembles on Main Street (in front of my house) for a rousing marching session. These celebrations inevitably take place at 1 in the morning, but we have never complained since this is the sort of ritual one expected of small towns a generation ago.

In the Village, upon June graduation, the local police chief cheerfully watches as the senior class spreads toilet paper across the massive sugar maple trees lining Main Street. Better to supervise the kids and then do the clean up, than have them off drinking booze and getting into real trouble. Now this ritual does take some getting used to and I am always reminded of an episode of the original “Star Trek” series when Captain Kirk discovered a Puritan-like planet where, one day of the year, the people went berserk screaming, “Festival! Festival!”

What agitates folks and drives politics in Sugar Grove are: demographic change and aging infrastructure. It is a tribute to the long reach of the New Deal that the WPA discovered Sugar Grove in 1938. This was a real feat since before 1938 it was probable that not a single Ohio governor living forty miles away in Columbus could have located the Village on a map. So Sugar Grove got running water and state-of-the-art sewers. State-of-the-art 1938.

If central Ohio has a deep freeze in January, our sewer lines break. If someone goes through a closed off alley with a large truck, the sewer lines break. If everyone flushes their toilets or does their laundry at the same time… To complicate matters, though our sewer pipes never change, environmental law does. Several years ago the Village, in order to comply with state and federal EPA guidelines, had to build an entire new water treatment facility that would not reach capacity for at least a decade. Of course, almost as soon as the new facility went on line, it was operating at 95 percent of capacity. This is not magic. It is demographics. As soon as senior citizens, who in 1990 were more than half our population, departed, they were replaced by younger couples with children. Water demand soared well beyond EPA estimates.

And here is where this gets politicized. By the time I entered the Council the bills had come due. There had not been a fee adjustment for nine years, meaning that even given a modest 2 percent annual cost of living increase, we were running 18 percent behind actual operation costs—not including the additional expense of hiring someone to monitor the rather sophisticated water treatment facility. Put this together and the answer is: rate hike.

Normally two or three Village people might show up for a council meeting. On the evening we were to discuss the rate hike nearly 100 seniors turned out. The floor bracings of our 19th century council house groaned, though I hoped all the hot air I was seeing expended would keep us from crashing. Every now and then, between furious cries of “get grant money!” and “you thieves!”, I would look up at the oak-trimmed portrait of William Jennings Bryan hanging on the wall and think, “so much for populism.”

It was during this hour that I realized I had made the transition from a Jeffersonian to a Hamiltonian. Democracy requires, even demands, citizen participation. But what if the citizens are unwilling to inform themselves of the issues? What if they only become mobilized when they think it will require them to pay their fair share? (Especially if one considers all the tax abatements many seniors already receive.) Where do people get the idea that grant money grows on trees, not understanding that what goes into one pot must often be taken from another? Darth Vader, I am now convinced, turned to the Dark Side once he realized that the Jedi Council was not going to pay its utility bills.

OK. I have since re-affirmed my belief in democracy for all its messes, stalemates, and idiocies. You just have to be patient and work with people until they eventually realize that you cannot get something for nothing—unless you have enormous political clout, and we don’t. What we have are a couple of hundred voters, a $70,000 annual budget, and $2 million worth of needed infrastructure upgrades.

Other communities have resolved their infrastructure and income needs through annexation into the cornfields. In this area, every new dwelling is accessed a $2,000 “tapping fee” and a two-tier water rate is created. In reality, the tapping fee does not pay for the extension of water services to the new dwelling. That money goes back to the utility budget to pay for the upgrades required to extend the lines past the old city limits and to treat waste water coming from the additional households. The only way to stay ahead of this curve is to continue annexation and home building. If this sounds like a pyramid scheme, well most con men do not pay the salaries of their local police departments. As for the two-tiered system, one fast growing community in the county just voted to cease discriminating against newer residents. The problem with letting all those new rate and taxpayers in was that they could ultimately out-vote the original residents.

What I am describing here is, I believe, the current crisis of American public policy. Are voters mature enough to realize that everything they take for granted in terms of fire, police, water, and education come with a price tag? Do voters understand that if Sugar Grove gets a grant then some other town with even more pressing needs will likely go without? Can some subsets of people be given tax exemptions and rate breaks without thereby substantially increasing the financial burden on everyone else? Are there some services that we are just going to have to do without?

If all this seems remote, try substituting the term “Social Security,” or your pet peeve, in a few places above. It is time to make choices and live with the consequences--whether that means higher taxes or fewer services.

EPOCH 11-12-02

I read a few years ago that the “G.I. Generation” would soon be dying at rates not seen since the battles of Saipan and Anzio. Historians often speak of “the passing of an era.” This is cold phrasing. After all, an historical epoch is far more than an aggregation of statistics and events. The men and women who fought in World War II were ordinary people who struggled for their daily bread with varying degrees of success. And then, in one defining moment of their lives, they became quite extraordinary.

The landscape of the Toledo, Ohio, area has largely remained unchanged since 1919 when my father arrived as the last of 11 children born to an impoverished 60 year-old farmer and a German-immigrant mother. Eleven children and 20 acres of hardpan clay that had to be broken by pick, shovel, and, sometimes, sledge hammer. Grandfather Heineman, who died nearly 20 years before I was born, used to chide his children not to be so extravagant as to put both butter and jam on their sandwiches since they did not “own two farms.”

Standing in the farm fields of northern Ohio in the winter and early spring you can see forever, though forever is just another field ready for corn, sugar beets, or tomatoes. The larger landowners, having not yet learned that there was really, really cheap stoop labor to be found in Mexico, employed children like my father from sun-up to sunset. It was backbreaking labor but the pennies one earned were valued.

Sometimes the outside world intruded upon the farm. There was the “nutty” neighbor who had left Germany decades before. He never hesitated to warn my father that Hitler was going to cause trouble and that their tribal kinsman would have to be severely thrashed since they were a danger to the world. My father in his old age could still recall that crazy immigrant farmer ranting, “the writs ver on der vall!”

There was my father’s school principal, a veteran of the Great War. So shell-shocked was this gentlemen that whenever the class bells rang he would shout “incoming!” grab the first child within reach and leap into a storage closet. Sooner than later my father learned all too well what kinds of experiences led to this behavior.

Of course there was my father’s first experience at seeing a great deal of blood on the ground. Hitching up the horse and wagon for the monthly trip into Toledo, my father saw the aftermath of the 1934 Auto-Light Strike. Toledo officials seemed in no hurry to clean up the carnage--perhaps sending a message to labor organizers.

After dropping out of high school to support his parents—especially his father who was still waiting for Dr. Townsend to mail him his $200 pension check—my father discovered the Ohio National Guard. He did not give any thought as to what purpose the Guard had been put to in the 1930s labor struggles. Three meals a day, a pair of boots, and mechanical training were cards hard to trump. It was 1939.

After the fall of France in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt declared a state of emergency and Guard units were federalized. The Ohio National Guard became the 37th Division, Army combat infantry. It is doubtful that any man there, whether from cosmopolitan Cleveland or boondocks Toledo, whether “Hunkie” or German, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, anticipated their destiny.

English professor Paul Fussell, himself a World War II combat veteran, observed with no little grouchiness that the armed forces of the United States were 200,000 guys assigned to combat and 11 million others in logistical support positions. This was not the case for the Ohio National Guard. The men of the 37th Division did not, in General George Patton’s memorable phrasing, “shovel shit in Louisiana.”

Guadalcanal, Bougainville, New Georgia, the Philippines. The 37th spent their first two years in the Solomon Islands fighting alongside the Marines. They regarded the Marines as arrogant “glory hogs.” The Marines, among themselves, insisted that the only Guard unit they would ever trust to fight alongside them were the Buckeyes. Some Guard units broke in panic when the Japanese led attack after attack. Ohio did not retreat any more than Pennsylvania and Texas did in the European Theater of Operations.

My father talked little of what transpired in the Solomons. Years later I discovered why he persisted for over 50 years in judo flipping himself out of his bed at night. Sometimes it seems as if an entire lifetime can be encapsulated in a matter of weeks or even hours. For my father it was three days.

In those three days his company, foolishly ordered by an incompetent colonel to push deeper into the jungle, was cut off and besieged. For three days, badly out-numbered, with artillery and air support seemingly impossible given the thickness of the vegetation, my father’s company fought for their lives. Their water ran out and they drank coolant from their heavy caliber machine guns. Their food ran out and it was worth a man’s life to crawl out of a foxhole to forage for a coconut. And there were the attacks. Hand-to-hand fighting. Bayonet. Knife. At day, at night, unrelenting.

On the third day the United States Navy intervened. Their message to the radioman was simple: hunker down. From 10 miles offshore the Navy guns thundered, shells coming within yards of the encircled, depleted ranks of Ohio. And then there was silence. Where there was a jungle there were now vacant fields. Where there were the warriors of the Empire of Japan, there were guts, pink mist, and not a whole hell of a lot of anything else. When I was little I never understood why my father disliked Fourth of July fireworks displays but always seemed compelled to watch them nonetheless. I later understood.

By the end of the Solomons campaign the fighting effectiveness of the 37th Division had been greatly diminished. Most of the men were shipped to hospitals stateside. My father passed the fall of 1944 listening to “that senile idiot Franklin Roosevelt natter on the radio about his damn dog.” Historians rank Roosevelt’s campaign speech in which he ridiculed Republicans and mocked them with a story about his dog Fala as a classic in political tactics. So far as my father was concerned FDR did not pass muster.

My father was not in the greatest of moods in 1944 but he was lucky. Ohio’s remnant went to the Philippines and discovered that the soldiers of the Empire of Japan had still not learned the concept of surrender. Ohio liberated a POW camp populated with the survivors of Bataan. Ohio dodged snipers in Manilla and blasted their way to city hall one house at a time. There was the battle of the soccer stadium. And then there was Captain Sylvester Del Corso who presided over the greatest day in the history of the Ohio National Guard when he raised the American flag over the Governor-General’s residence. Twenty-five years later Del Corso, as Commandant-General, presided over the worst day in the history of the Ohio National Guard—at Kent State.

I never understood if my father felt grateful for missing the Philippine campaign, or if he felt guilty. Or if he felt grateful and guilty. He was not one to express too many emotions. What I know of his World War II experiences came from short snatches of conversation dribbled out over the years and from contemporary newspaper accounts and histories.

For what it’s worth, dad, I can understand that guilt, relief, joy, and more guilt are not so strange companions.

Gilbert D. Heineman, 1919-2002.

Dixie North? 11-07-02

While political analysts read the tealeaves of the 2002 midterm elections, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the South has solidified its position as the base of the Republican Party. Although the 1998 midterm elections, according to New York Times reporters David Halbfinger and Jim Yardley, had given Democrats great expectations that the GOP domination of Dixie might be reversed, upset senatorial and gubernatorial victories in Georgia and the rout of the Democrats in Texas brought a “crash of ruin.”

Several years ago journalist John Judis had predicted, with great horror, that what he saw as the retrograde conservatism and purported racism of the Republican South would infect the North. Judis’ fear was not all that novel since Wilbur Cash had warned of the Dixie-cation of the North back in the 1930s. Even though southerners of the New Deal era were ardent Democrats, their racial conservatism and hostility to organized labor were the nightmares of so-called northern progressives.

In all these discussions of the Dixie, whether recent or of an older vintage, I have been waiting for someone to discuss my favorite southern state: Ohio. Yes, Ohio. And I recommend a little more attention to this state not just because I live here, but also for what the developments over the past decade say about the future of the national GOP.

Why do I say Ohio is southern, other than the fact that if you were to extend the Mason-Dixon line westward a good chunk of the state would fall below it? For starters, Virginians settled southern Ohio and its founding political, commercial, and military leaders were southern. A Virginian founded Lancaster, Ohio, home of General William Sherman, in 1800. Lancaster’s state representative during the Civil War was an ardent antiwar Democrat who ended up in a federal prison for preaching draft resistance and opposition to the emancipation of slaves. During the 1863 gubernatorial election, the pro-southern Democratic candidate, Clement Vallandigham, who had been imprisoned and then exiled, carried Sherman’s home county and scored well in the southern tier of the state.

If one wanted to find abolitionist Republicans then a trip to northern Ohio and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was necessary. Beyond abolitionists who thought Sherman was a wimp, visitors would have also discovered neatly laid out communities created by Yankees in New England style.

Although party allegiances between northern and southern Ohio switched by the era of the New Deal, the fundamental demographic, cultural, and ideological cleavages remained unchanged. Ohio’s New Deal Democrats built a bare majority largely on the basis of minorities in northern tier industrial centers.

At the very center of the Democratic Party stood Cuyahoga County and a population of working-class Roman Catholics, blacks, Jews, and union (CIO) stalwarts. To carry Ohio, Democratic statewide and presidential candidates usually had to capture at least 60 percent of Cleveland and pick up a few additional votes in Akron, Toledo, and Youngstown.

The Ohio Republican Party remained competitive throughout the 1930s and returned to statewide power by 1938, as symbolized by the elevation of “Mr. Republican,” Robert A. Taft of Cincinnati, to the U.S. Senate. Columbus, the state capital, was a growing city with a Republican majority overseen by Mayor (later Governor) James Rhodes. Columbus and Franklin County were not CIO bastions.

Moreover, Columbus, again in contrast to Cleveland, had not attracted a large Catholic, Jewish, and black population. Its residents came from the small towns of the state’s southern tier and from the conservative Protestant hamlets of Kentucky and West Virginia. Indeed, so strong were Franklin County’s ties to its southern neighbors, that Kentucky-born, Columbus-bred, singer Dwight Yokum wrote a ballad about this often overlooked internal migration to the Buckeye capital.

Being a majority made up of minorities, Ohio Democrats could not afford any voter defections in Cuyahoga County. If 40,000 Cleveland blacks failed to vote, Democrats risked losing U.S. Senate seats and the gubernatorial chair, and their presidential candidates might then fall short of the White House. Cleveland and its hinterland were all.

This longwinded back-story takes me to the present. In the decade of the 1990s something dramatic and mainly unnoticed happened in Ohio. Metro Cleveland lost hundreds of thousands of people and metro Columbus gained in equal proportion. The population gap between the two counties narrowed and the prospects of the state Democratic Party worsened.

What did Ohio Democrats do about the growing clout of central-southern Ohio? Instead of trying to reach out beyond the northern tier of the state and build upon a shrinking cadre of conservative southern Democrats, they attached themselves ever more tightly to their crumbling northern base. The past three unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidates have been men of the north.

Their most recent sacrifice—what with the lack of candidates holding state office--was a former Cuyahoga County commissioner, Tim Hagan. It was thought that Hagan’s chief asset was his wife, actress Kate Mulgrew, who starred in the least successful of the “Star Trek” television franchises. Surely she could bring in Hollywood money for her husband’s campaign. And yet, even running against one of the most colorless Republican politicians in decades, the Democrats could only score 39 percent of the gubernatorial vote against Bob Taft. (The grandson of Senator Robert Taft, Governor Taft does not use his given name. An old joke that might explain why this is goes like this: in an era when politicians became known by their initials—FDR, JFK, LBJ—no one named Robert A. Taft was going to win the White House.)

If this sounds incredible, it is not without precedent. The Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000 spent little time in Columbus. I recalled Joseph Lieberman spending 45 minutes in Franklin County at a fundraiser. Some Central Ohio Democratic volunteers—a few of my students--complained that Gore was spending too much time in Cleveland. They understood that the locus of electoral power in Ohio had shifted. Gore narrowly lost Ohio. I expect a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 will lose Ohio by a much wider margin. (But then, a lot could happen to wreck that prediction.)

Who are the Ohio Republicans? Of course, there is the base of Appalachian Protestants who remain suspicious of organized labor, resent welfare, and oppose tax hikes. But there is more at work here than just that. Ohio on closer inspection is not quite Dixie.

At one point in the mid-1990s if you looked around Columbus you could have found a Republican governor (from Cleveland!), a mayor, and a nationally known U.S. Representative (John Kasich), with glaringly Eastern European surnames and blue-collar origins that would have made them genetically Democratic 60 years ago. The Democratic base, even in its Cleveland bastion, was experiencing painful defections.

In 2002, Ohio Republicans marked their tenth year of control over the governor’s office, the state house, and the state senate. This year the GOP solidified its control of state’s congressional delegation 12 to 6 and the Ohio Supreme Court became Republican. (Youngstown Democratic congressman James Traficant is no longer with us. He was the last Democratic office holder in Ohio who had statewide name recognition. Bless him; it appears that even from an out-of-state prison Traficant still won 15 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate.)

Although feminists elsewhere might cheer that the majority of the state court’s members are women, they would be less joyful to hear that at least two of the new female judges are not “progressives.” Newly elected justice Maureen O’Connor, who had been the lieutenant governor, pledged that the era of “judicial activism” in the state was over. She was undoubtedly in part referring to an earlier state supreme court ruling that had thrown out the property tax funding basis of public schools and had mandated hundreds of millions of dollars in additional spending. While the court had backed down a little from its ruling, I expect even the watered-down ruling to become a dead letter, especially with the state facing a $4 billion deficit.

I have not seen the bi-coastal media note that Ohio’s new Republican lieutenant governor is a black woman or that the black secretary of state, Ken Blackwell, is a GOP “movement activist” and protégé of Jack Kemp. Blackwell is well positioned to claim higher elective, though with complete domination of every single state office by Republicans, there are no shortage of rival claimants. And by the way, one of the nice things about Ohio is that no one made an issue about Lt. Governor-elect Jennette Bradley being black. I am thinking, of course, of what happened in Maryland where Democratic activists followed the black Republican lieutenant gubernatorial candidate around passing out Oreo cookies.

So, is Ohio southern? Yes, to the extent that the state has southern demographics and beliefs that certainly differentiates it from Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois where the Democrats recaptured their governorships. But there are also enough indications that Ohio Republicans have made serious inroads into the “northern” Democratic base.

Is Ohio a potential model for George W. Bush and a national GOP seeking a sturdy majority? Yes, and, no one pays me to make political strategy. My only concern is that whether on the state or national level, Republicans not forget those left behind by a changing economy. Very little news from the northern tier of Ohio penetrates into the central and southern portions of the state. Complaints about job-destroying steel imports and urban decay from Cleveland country seem otherworldly in this land of milk and honey. Some central Ohioans might rightly note that such complaints have been heard for the past 25 years; it is time for them to move on. Moving on, though, is not always as easy as it sounds. Northern Ohio Democrats need “compassionate conservative” intervention. Perhaps in that Ohio could become a model for the national and Dixie GOP.

SOMETHING ABOUT GEORGE 11-05-02

If nothing else about the 2002 midterm elections, a solid majority of the television and print media outlets are being more careful than the last time around in stressing the term “margin of error” in their poll reporting. What with the growing number of people refusing to be polled, the non-response rate is inevitably going to distort results—as was glaringly evident in 2000. I have, however, longed for the TV talking heads to look viewers straight in the eye and, after reporting a poll with a margin of error of 5+/- percent, say, “In other words, this is garbage that we’re using to fill up air time.”

My personal brush with national polling came in 1988 when I was in graduate school in Pittsburgh. It seemed that as a doctoral candidate holding down three jobs while earning $5,400 a year and eating one can of generic tuna fish daily—when not probing the couch cushions for beer money—I was a prime interview demographic.

In addition to the standard “who are you going to vote for questions,” I got to participate in the priceless feelings thermometer. The pollster wasted little time cutting to the chase: “Using of scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the coldest and 10 being the warmest, how would gauge your temperature regarding Michael Dukakis?”

I gave Dukakis a zero. “Can you explain why?” the earnest pollster asked. “Well,” I replied, “I believe that he represents all that is wrong with the Democratic Party. I’m dismayed at his stances on social issues and defense and resent his kow-towing to the most far-left constituencies of the Party.” Satisfied with that answer, the chirpy pollster than asked, “So you have warm feelings toward Vice President George Bush?” I responded, “Oh no, I wouldn’t vote for him—I’m supporting Dukakis.” There was dead silence on the other end of the phone though I thought I could hear her mental gears grinding violently.

Finally, ”Um, what temperature do you feel toward Bush?”

”Oh, probably about 3.”

”You’re marginally warmer toward Bush but you’re voting for Dukakis?”

”Yes.”

”Um, why?”

”There is something about George Bush…”

Our interview ended for the day. Remarkably, she kept making return calls for the next few weeks hoping to chart any change in my temperature as the election grew closer. She was destined to be disappointed and in November I maintained my eight-year long presidential voting losing streak.

I should have asked for her phone number.

REVOLUTIONARY TELEVISION 10-31-02

Even the most dedicated parents discover that there are only so many children books they can read, so many play “classes” they can teach, and walking tours of historic districts and art galleries they can conduct, before relief is sought through television or video. Exhaustion inevitably overcomes guilt.

Fortunately my children never found much interesting about the Cloying Purple One and, so far as Big Bird is concerned, I always thought he should get off the public dole and find a job. That shouldn’t be too difficult for him given that Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

Recently we came across a new cartoon series on PBS, “Liberty’s Kids.” Although I am no fan of PBS, this show is truly educational and entertaining. Set during the American Revolution, “Liberty’s Kids” introduces young viewers to the great events and historical figures of the era. The attention to historical detail, whether in the drawings or the dialogue, is excellent and the plots never dull.

My kindergartner was so enthralled with a recent episode that when the British flanked Washington at Philadelphia, she cried in righteous indignation, “That’s not fair! The British brought in more troops and came in from the side! That’s cheating!”

”Liberty’s Kids” has an enormous amount of star power behind it as well: Annette Bening portrays Abigail Adams, Michael Douglas plays Patrick Henry, and Dustin Hoffman—even in animated, disembodied form—eats considerable scenery as the flawed-hero-turned traitor, Benedict Arnold. General Norman Schwarzkopf is also featured and the “Terminator” shows up at Valley Forge as—well, you can guess that one.

Perhaps the only grating features of this otherwise fine series are the Liberty News Network (LNN) news broadcasts given by Benjamin Franklin (the sonorous-at-any-age Walter Cronkite). Rather than the CNN rip-off, I would have preferred the Fox News Channel—perhaps The O’Reilly Factor.

O’Reilly: “General Washington, let’s be blunt; when are you going to actually win a battle?”

Washington: “We have to build an army of disparate colonists, feed, arm, and train them to take on the greatest military in the world. As for your impertinence, sir—“

O’Reilly, “Now, general, this is a no-spin zone.”

RANDOM THOUGHTS AS ONE PASSES THROUGH AIRPORTS 10-28-02

Sea-Tac (Seattle-Tacoma). Port Columbus (Ohio) featured the gentle Muzak tune “Happy Together.” The Great Pacific Northwest greeted sojourners with a full-throated rendition of “Purple Haze.” It was an apt selection given the cultural, political, and actual climate of the Puget Sound. There really was a Starbucks every five feet in the airport. After sampling the region’s varied coffee creations (like taste tasting quality motor oil), I figured everyone out here must be hyped up. I soon discovered they need that much bean-induced stimulation just to get out of bed and face the overcast day.

Atlanta. The local newspapers carry the story of historian Michael Bellesiles’ resignation from Emory University. The articles briefly state the charges—including that he had invented primary sources—but give over most of the ink to Bellesiles himself. He maintained his innocence and insisted that he was being unfairly condemned for omitting some irrelevant data from a single table in his award-winning book on American gun ownership. I predict he will land a fine tenured position, possibly as the Henry David Thoreau Chair of Military Studies at Swarthmore.

Port Columbus. Modern medicine has given even small, isolated county hospitals the ability to bring an 83 year-old stroke victim back from the brink of death. Unfortunately in the bargain the ability to go to the bathroom and eat without assistance is lost, along with two-thirds of the functioning brain. A very hard bargain. Bellesiles should count his blessings.

HISTORY RIP 10-18-02

The recent passing of Stephen Ambrose has occasioned much commentary—quite a bit of it venomous and dripping with envy. Many criticized Ambrose’s copyediting skills when it came to quoting other books, trying without much success to link his failings to the far more serious affronts committed by Doris Goodwin and Michael Bellesiles. As for the venom, well, really, that has been a constant over the past decade. How many American historians achieve top placement after placement on the national bestsellers’ lists and still get contemptuously dismissed in the Journal of American History? In death as in life…

In the October 17 issue of the Wall Street Journal writer Max Boot contends that Ambrose was resented precisely because he was able to reach an audience far beyond the few hundred students and specialists who read academic monographs. Boot, who has written a popular military history and who also comes across on television as extremely engaging, serves up a damning irony. Describing the lament of an Ivy League professor who told him even his bright students are historically ignorant, concludes, “This accords with the finding of surveys which show that college students can’t place the Civil War in the correct century. All this ignorance—at a time when we have more professional historians than ever before.”

Boot believes that many academic historians are boring and that students, lacking proper inspiration, remain uniformed—unless they stumble across the likes of Stephen Ambrose, Paul Johnson, and David McCullough on their own. I can’t argue with that observation, especially since I assign Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers in my upper-level course on Great Depression-World War II America. Ambrose had a flair for the gripping, fact-filled narrative.

As for McCullough, while I did not especially want to know Bess Truman’s selection of draperies for the White House, his Truman biography was a fine, otherwise useful, read. I cannot make the same observation about some other academic biographies of Truman.

I can even say a few kind words about Paul Johnson who is breathtaking in the scope of his historical vision. (And his book sales ain’t nothing to sneeze at either.) Of course, I may not care for Johnson’s contention that the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt turned a recession into a Great Depression—he was at it again in the October 17 issue of the Wall Street Journal--but the man knows how to set a scene. Johnson was also one of the few conservatives several years ago who argued that Tony Blair had a moral center and, if there were ever a great threat to civilization, he would stand resolute. That observation alone makes Johnson the most perceptive political historian of our time. Will either Johnson or Ambrose be receiving a Bancroft any time soon?

AMERICA OFF THE TURNPIKE 10-13-02

This weekend as we headed home from a research trip to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I had promised my children that we would get off the turnpike at Ligonier. Ten years ago B.K.—Before Kids—my wife and I had come across a wonderful Ligonier shop called The Toy Box. This was a real toy store, filled with puppets, handcrafted stuffed animals, and wooden games.

I had thought we would make a quick entrance and exit but, as we soon discovered, we had accidentally stumbled into the “Fort Ligonier Days” festival. Traffic was bumper to bumper, parking nearly impossible, and the MPs from the Pennsylvania National Guard seemingly did not want us to leave.

As we walked around picturesque Ligonier I at first thought we had stumbled into a sequel of Bill Murray’s “Ground Hog Day.” It just doesn’t get any more Western Pennsylvania than a mobile polka orchestra, hunters astride their steeds as they rode with the hounds, and enough Slavic food and Methodist chicken noodles to subdue hoards of Huns and Baptists.

While the saga of the battle of Fort Ligonier during the French and Indian War excites local Colonial Dames and Daughters of the American Revolution, the more interesting story I felt went parading by us.

Originally a bastion of Scotch-Irish settlement and, eventually, the pleasant residence of Richard King Mellon—the Pittsburgh baron of Mellon National Bank & Trust, Gulf Oil, ALCOA, to mention a few components of the family business—Ligonier and its environs had become the proverbial American melting pot. Fox hunters and polka players side by side? Four of the nine Quecreek coal miner survivors and kilt-clad bagpipers joining hands? A local high school “royal court” whose surnames originated from Poland, Italy, and Ulster?

And then there were the aging veterans of Vietnam, Korea, and World War II—applauded loudly and proceeded by the U.S. Marine Corps Marching Band. Why the U.S. Marines made the trip from Quantico, Virginia, to Ligonier became pretty obvious as Western Pennsylvania’s veterans strode—or rode—by. When the Japanese high command lamented after the fall of Saipan that “Hell is upon us,” the generals must have meant that the sons of Western Pennsylvania were going to be dropping by in their Marine uniforms.

Rich man, poor man, Scotch-Irish and Polish, accountant and coal miner, Harvard and Hard Knocks—they all were marching to the same tune in 1944. They were marching again in 2002. Semper Fi, yinz. ]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1169 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1169 0 Click here for Mr. Heineman's latest blog entry.

A FEW GOOD HISTORIANS

The historical profession—its massive membership notwithstanding—is pretty small when the time comes to air each other’s dirty linens. In the 20th century we were concerned with small things like revisionists, deconstructionists, and signing petitions to save Bill Clinton from impeachment. But having entered the 21st century our profession has much more interesting matters to contemplate: namely Doris Goodwin and Michael Bellesiles.

By now the public at large has heard many of the charges regarding Goodwin’s and Bellesiles’s problems—the former alleged to have committed plagiarism and the latter alleged to have invented primary sources and data. All of this reminds me of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who complained that Carter White House staffers “think we’re just a pack of crooked whores.” Lest the public think of the historical profession in similar Carteresque terms, I would like to talk about a few good historians currently at work, notably Vincent Cannato and Matthew Dallek.

In Cannato’s The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New Yorkamazon.com, readers receive a deeply engaging view of the self-destruction of Great Society liberalism in the 1960s.

For many members of my generation, our only memory of John Lindsay comes from the 1960s television series “Batman” in which a clueless and irrelevant Mayor Linseed watched helplessly as the forces of anarchy ravished Gotham City. Unfortunately, the real-life Lindsay had no “Batman” to save him. Indeed, the next best thing was police officer Frank Serpico, who was not particularly helpful to the mayor.

Cannato, with impressive detail and research, and blessed with a tremendous gift for story telling, carries the reader through the 1960s and 1970s New York, introducing a variety of compelling actors—from Mario Cuomo to Abbie Hoffman, and Nelson Rockefeller to the ordinary man on the street.

Matthew Dallek, like Cannato, a recent Columbia history Ph.D recipient, has also written a crackling political tale with, The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics. amazon.com

Drawing upon a wealth of research, and employing a finely tuned narrative style, Dallek explains how a former Hollywood actor was able to defeat political pro and incumbent Pat Brown in the 1966 California gubernatorial race. With Brown’s fall, and the tearing apart of the New Deal electoral coalition over campus unrest, urban crime, and the Vietnam War, Reagan embarked on a course for the White House.

Fear not for the future of the historical profession so long as we make sure that the public sees more of Cannato and Dallek and far less of Goodwin and Bellesiles.

COFFEE WITH SHERMAN

I often grade student papers at a coffee shop in downtown Lancaster, Ohio. While the people who work there are nice and the coffee is reasonably priced—this ain’t Starbucks—I like to come here to contemplate the enormous mural of General William T. Sherman on the other side of Main Street. It is the classic Sherman one views in history texts: angry and haunted by the knowledge that war taxes the victor as well as the vanquished. This summer, as the United States prepares to launch the Iraqi stage in the War on Terror, I look at Sherman—as have others, notably columnist George Will and historian Michael Taylor--even more intently.

The esteemed classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed that Americans, as has been true in other times and with other democratic people, often have a difficult time embracing their gritty warriors once they are seemingly no longer needed. While I believe Hanson is correct, this is not the case in Sherman’s hometown of Lancaster.

For years the local, privately funded historical society has operated Sherman’s former home on Main Street as a shrine to one of the Civil War’s most innovative and destructive generals. Parishioners at St. Mary’s Church, where Sherman’s wife, Ellen Ewing worshiped, are very quick to claim the vaguely Protestant Sherman as one of their own. It is also the case that every Fourth of July, during the fireworks display at the county fairgrounds, “Marching Through Georgia” blares over the loudspeakers. Many locals may not recognize that particular tune, but tradition, or force of habit, has kept President Jimmy Carter’s least favorite song alive in Lancaster. (At the Naval Academy, Carter chose severe hazing from upperclassmen rather than comply with demands to sing that hated song.)

A little more than 140 years ago, within blocks of where I sip my coffee, Lancaster men signed up to follow Sherman to hell. As it turned out, hell had many names: Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Atlanta. What has intrigued many historians about our local hero is how “modern” Sherman was. Having taken Atlanta in the weeks prior to the 1864 election, and thereby securing Abraham Lincoln’s presidency from rebuke by war-weary voters, Sherman wisely chose to target Dixie’s commercial assets as well as her morale. As a social historian, I have to admire someone who took the time to consult the 1860 U.S. Census in order to help determine which Georgian and Carolinian plantations were in need of destruction.

Sherman knew that “containment” of the Confederacy was not enough. Both Sherman and U.S. Grant understood that to save the Union they would have to take the war to the enemy and gut him. In those days America did not have “smart munitions,” we had smart soldiers. Certainly white southerners greeted Sherman with loathing but do recall, that to thousands of blacks he was “Moses” leading them out of bondage. Of course, Sherman’s “regime change” was not perfect and Jim Crow emerged after the war. However, the United States was preserved, formal slavery was abolished, and the promise of a better day beckoned to all, including those who had fought and lost. All in all, not a bad legacy for a small-town Ohio boy.]]> Fri, 26 Apr 2024 04:03:07 +0000 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/951 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/951 0