Regions of Mind |
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Self-assured but self-questioning.
History, U.S. regionalism, foreign policy, politics, life. Geitner Simmons is an editorial writer with the Omaha World-Herald. This weblog expresses his personal views only. He is also a Midwesterner, a Southerner, a husband, a father, a son. And always a student.
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Tuesday, November 26
Does Canada have rednecks? I saw two cheap shots against Southerners today. First (as was pointed out by an e-mail correspondent of mine), Glenn Reynolds this morning quoted a Washington Post article by the father of a Marine describing the disapproval from other New England parents toward his son’s decision to go into the Marines:
“Terribly Southern” -- what is she trying to say? That the Southern mindset is reflexively uncouth, crude, backward, racist? Sure, the U.S. military subculture reflects values of a certain Southern traditionalism, such as “honor,” duty and bare-fisted machismo. But do you really think that’s all the woman was referring to? Then, this afternoon, I got a message from a diplomatic history listserv in which a Canadian slathered on the condescension in talking about neoconservatives. After defining what he claimed were the core principles of neoconservatives, he wrote:
First, it’s ironic to see a left-wing professor accusing people on the right of the very same sin Rush Limbaugh and countless bloggers claim is fundamental to liberals: that they let their hearts control their minds. Second, it’s interesting to hear a Canadian use the word “redneck.” Through what cultural filtering, I wonder, does a Canadian come to know the term “redneck”? I once heard a co-worker who had lived in various places around the United States say that every American region has its rednecks, in a broad cultural sense. I’m not well-traveled enough to make a judgment on that claim, but I’ve long found it fascinating. Here in Nebraska, the killers of Teena Brandon, whose murder was depicted in the movie “Boys Don’t Cry,” came from a gritty blue-collar subculture that could qualify as a prairie variant of redneckism. By the way: To be fair, I also heard a conservative Republican take a cheap shot at the blue states this week. From a Washington Post article Tuesday:
Lott is talking as if the “two coasts” are relatively insignificant demographically and politically -- as if the areas along the Atlantic and Pacific had been magically reduced in population to 17th century levels. It's legitimate to criticize the left-leaning blue-state mentality on honest policy grounds. But it's silly to act as if opposition from "only" the two coasts can be blithely dismissed as of little consequence. Monday, November 25
The colors This week I’m posting a series of items about the Confederate battle flag, given that The New Republic has an article this week about the role that public agitation over the flag played in this year’s gubernatorial contest in Georgia. I’m looking at various historical aspects of the flag; the lead-off post is here. My personal view is that displays of the flag on public property should be banned -- the flag is too divisive a symbol, irredeemably tainted by its association with white racism. That doesn’t mean, however, that study of the “Rebel flag,” and of the symbolic power of flags in general, is without value. As I noted in the lead-off post, for time in the 1950s, the Confederate battle flag was flown in many non-Southern states as an innocuous commercialized emblem, devoid of racist connotations. In 1995, I put together a newspaper project on the Confederate battle flag. To provide context about the importance of the flag in the military subculture for everyday Confederate soldiers, I interviewed Mickey Black, a North Carolinian with an intense devotion to studying American history across all periods. Black, who is a student of Civil War banners, ably explained how the Confederate battle flag fit into the military cultural context of its day. “In the middle of a battle you couldn’t hear,” Black said. “You could hear a drum. You could hear a fife. You probably couldn’t hear a man yell a command. But you could see the colors.” He continued: "When you put a thousand men shoulder to shoulder in private ranks, you have to be able to tell where you are. The point of reference has to be something -- the flag. If the flag advanced, so did you. Day in and day out, you’d go where the flag was." Each day commenced by lining up soldiers and parading the flag -- “the colors” -- before them. Each day ended with a repeat of the ritual. The battle flag, Black said, “was the first thing they saw in the morning, and the last thing they saw at night. ... To soldiers, it was as revered as much as the cause they fought for.” During the chaos and clamor of battle, few goals were more critical than maintaining control of the colors, and few were more exhilarating than capturing those of the enemy. The soldiers who were selected to hold the flag, the color guard, received a high honor -- and braved great danger. On the first day of Gettysburg, Black noted, the 26th North Carolina Regiment locked in combat with the 24th Michigan Regiment. Before the fighting ended, the regimental colors for the North Carolinians had fallen 14 times. Each time, a Confederate stepped forward to pick up the banner and raise it aloft. My father’s paternal grandfather was a private in Company E of the North Carolina 57th Regiment. In battle, I’ve read, Company E stood closest to the regimental colors. The Confederate battle flag was known officially as the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV) battle flag. Over the course of the war, it became the battle standard for most Confederate units. John Coski, a historian with the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, has written, “Someone gazing down the line of a Confederate army during any battle of the war was likely to see a variety of battle flag patterns and national flags employed as battle flags, but all drowned in a sea of ANVs.” Later this week: Confederate graves in Nebraska. Comments from Shelby Foote on Southerness. And the power of flag symbolism in countries around the globe. Symbol of backwardness, or a symbol of pride A consistently thoughtful e-mail correspondent of mine, responding to my Monday posts on the Confederate battle flag, noting the huge generational difference within his family as far as attitudes toward the flag:
When I put together a set of articles about the Confederate battle flag in 1995 for a North Carolina newspaper, I solicited reader comments to include in the project. Almost all the responses were generally favorable to the flag. This comment was one of the few critical ones, and also one of the most vivid:
Most of the reader comments were couched in terms of “Heritage, not hate,” a phrase frequently used by Southern Civil War antiquarians who attempt to distinguish between the flag’s symbolic connection to regional identity and its appropriation by racists as an emblem of white supremacy. Among those letters:
Pretty cushy job Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s catty Supreme Court reporter, claims that service on the nation’s high court isn’t so stressful:
The current court term involves such a bland set of cases, Lithwick argues, that it’s doubtful Rehnquist would retire this year. He would prefer to go out on a note of triumph, she says. Intellectual cross-pollination Robert Samuelson writes an op-ed column about the German economy. I write a post about it. Jim Bennett, a columnist for UPI, e-mails me some thoughts in response. I post them. Jim refines them and turns them into his column for this week. This blogosphere thing can be quite interesting. Since Friday For those who haven’t seen the site since Friday, there is a ton of new stuff. Today I kick off a set of posts on the Confederate flag; the posts on that topic will continue for several days. Among other topics addressed here over the weekend: tax cuts, asbestos litigation, two recent books I highly recommend, and Michael Jackson’s “children.” The surprising Confederate flag During the U.S. assault on Okinawa in the spring of 1945, American forces struggled for 30 days to dislodge the Japanese from Shuri Castle, a centuries-old stronghold on the island. When the castle finally fell in May, a U.S. Marines regiment rushed forward to mark the victory -- by raising the blazing red banner of the Confederate battle flag. The flag incident received considerable attention. The Marine captain in charge was later reprimanded. Not that the episode was unique during the war. During World War II, Southern communities sometimes sent Rebel flags to soldiers overseas. In 1948, Congress authorized National Guard units whose ancestor units had fought for the Confederacy to fly the Confederate flag above their regimental colors. Displays of the Confederate flag were also reported during the Korean War. In short, the Confederate battle flag -- the familiar, 13-starred blue cross on a red field -- has made appearances in several surprising venues -- on foreign battlefields, in European countries as a symbol of secession or just of rebellion in general, even for a time in the 1950s in many non-Southern states as part of a “flag fad” in which the banner was displayed as an innocuous commercialized emblem. I mention this historical side note in light of a new article in The New Republic about how the Confederate flag flap contributed to the defeat of the incumbent Democratic governor in Georgia. As I said in a post below, the Confederate battle flag, in my view, is now far too divisive a symbol to warrant inclusion in a state flag. The familiar “Rebel flag” I’m talking about here is officially known as the Army of Northern Virginia (AVN) battle flag. It was never the national flag of the Confederacy, nor was it called the “Stars and Bars.” The Confederacy had three national flags over the course of its existence. The first was jettisoned because it resembled the Stars and Stripes in several ways. The second was junked because it included such a large white field it gave the impression it was a flag of surrender. The third, adopted in March 1865 (only a few weeks before Lee’s surrender), featured the AVN flag symbol on a white field with a vertical red bar. The Confederate battle flag became associated with white supremacy during the civil rights battles of the 1950s and ’60s. As noted by a well-curated and critically praised exhibit at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond in the mid-1990s, “the flag was waved in the face of blacks at almost every major incident of the civil rights struggle.” One of the photos at the exhibit showed Martin Luther King Jr. at a civil rights protest in Selma, Ala., in February 1965. Standing beside him was a deputy sheriff with a Confederate flag emblem on his helmet. That historical exhibit was fittingly titled “Embattled Emblem.” After reading a review of the exhibit by historian Edward Ayers of the University of Virginia in 1995, I drove to Richmond to put together a newspaper project on the flag. (I was then working at a North Carolina newspaper.) Curiously, the flag was not always associated with such repulsive connotations. Consider this observation from the New York Times Magazine in October 1951:
Interest in the Confederate battle flag as a pop culture symbol began in 1947 in connection with a college football game. Fans of the University of Virginia football team had displayed the flag in large numbers during a home game against Harvard in which UVA triumphed by a score of 47-0. The next month, when the Virginia squad traveled north for a game against Penn, the ubiquitous appearance of the flag among the visiting UVA fans piqued the curiosity of the national press, and the flag fad soon took on a life of its own. The flag fad died out in the late 50s, as the intensity of Southern resistance to desegregation was making itself clear. Curiously, the fad had arisen despite the fact that the Dixiecrats had displayed the Confederate flag prominently in 1948 in nominating Strom Thurmond on a state’s rights/segregationist platform. The embrace of the Confederate symbol during the '50s flag fad was in marked contrast to the experience in 1997, when New York Gov. George Pataki, at the urging of two black state legislators, had the Georgia state flag removed from the State Capitol because it incorporated the Confederate battle flag. The flags of the states, including Georgia, that had been the 13 original colonies had been displayed in a Capitol corridor since the late 1970s. As for European interest in the flag, John Coski, the curator who oversaw the “Embattled Emblem” exhibit, explained it to me this way: “There’s the chic. It’s the popularity of things American as much as it is the Confederacy. It’s seen abroad as essentially American.” Irredentism is a part of life in much of the world, Coski added, so it’s understandable that people in parts of Europe and other areas affected by separatist movements would take an interest in the experience of the Confederacy as well as its symbols. The American Civil War, he said, was the kind of event “that nations of any age, in all eras, have gone through or are presently going through. Wars over secession and disputes over what is a nation are a continuing part of history.” A few years later after I interviewed Coski, the 135th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg was marked, in 1998. The Civil War re-enactors who participated in the event included more than just Americans. Some of the re-enactors had flown over from Europe -- from France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden. By the way: In looking through my files on things Southern, I came across a lot of noteworthy items about the Confederate flag -- items, such as the info above, that stand apart from the familiar debate in recent years over the display of the flag on public property. I plan to portion the items out over the course of this week. I’ll mention two more nuggets in the posts that immediately follow, then save the rest for later. Symbol of slavery The “Embattled Emblem” exhibit won praise in academic circles for its honesty and fair-mindedness. For example, the exhibit straightforwardly acknowledged that the Confederate battle flag is inextricably burdened by its association not just with present-day white supremacist movements but also with antebellum Southern slavery:
Those statements, remember, were made by the Museum of the Confederacy itself. Pretty significant. A big Confederate tent I talked in a post below about some of the dynamics affecting the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Tony Horwitz, a writer with The New Yorker who wrote the much-praised “Confederates in the Attic,” summed up the SCV well in a 1998 interview with the journal Southern Cultures:
Exactly. Elsewhere in the interview, Horwitz notes that the SCV tends to be very decentralized. Sunday, November 24
Grand compromise on new tax cuts? According to this AP story, some observers predict that Dems and GOPers in Congress may strike a compromise next year involving two key components: Not that those are the only possibilities, by any means. From the article:
By the way: Jane Galt explains the specifics for her own ambitious tax-revamping regime. Confederate flag and more I mentioned in a post below that I would try to find the set of articles I did in the '90s about historical and cultural aspects of the Confederate battle flag, in light of new articles in The New Republic and Salon on the flag flap in Georgia. The flag controversy played a role in the Republican victory in the Georgia gubernatorial contest. I found the articles this afternoon. I intend to blog on the topic late tonight. My files on things Southern had several things I'll mention here either tonight or later in the week. Among them: a good analysis by Tony Horwitz of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; comments from Shelby Foote about his Southern-centric view on the world, Confederate battle flags in Nebraska, and Civil War re-enactors from Canada. That only scratches the surface of the stuff in my files. And my files on the Midwest and West are growing in similar fashion these days. Definitely future fodder for blog posts. The asbestos lawsuit scandal With the GOP headed for control of both houses of Congress next year, discussion of tort reform is in the air. Robert Samuelson examines one of the main factors fueling the call for change: the recklessness displayed by asbestos litigation. It’s a familiar subject, but Samuelson provides useful observations:
Samuelson says such lawsuits amount to fraud -- strong words. And exactly on the mark. Privilege Parenthood is a privilege for which I'm grateful. (Sure, it can be exasperating, too.) Here is one of the reasons for my gratitude: About three years ago, when my son was 5, we were reading a book that included a picture of the Statue of Liberty. My son had heard of the statue, but he'd apparently never given thought to one aspect of it. He looked at me and asked, "What's liberty?" That's why parenthood is such a great privilege. Prairie landscapes, Irish settlement in the South I’m hearing and reading good things about two recent books, one relating to Nebraska and the other to the South. “Cold Snap as Yearning,” a collection of essays by playwright Robert Vivian, is winning praise for its evocations of exteriors -- Nebraska landscapes, including locales around Omaha -- as well as explorations of interiors -- intimate self-examinations, as well as considerations of the spiritually transcendent. Here is what my friend Hilda Raz, poet and editor of the literary journal Prairie Schooner, wrote about the book, which has earned critical praise as well as a regional book award:
The book is from the University of Nebraska Press, which publishes more titles per year than any other U.S. university press except the University of California Press. NU Press is also in the top 10 among university presses in terms of annual sales volume. A few years ago, I drove down to Lincoln and spent an afternoon meeting and interviewing the editors at the NU Press -- a very stimulating day, and certainly among the most rewarding of my 17 years in journalism. The other book is “The Irish in the South, 1815-1877” by David T. Gleeson. Here are some of the comments in a review by Mark I. Greenberg, of the University of South Florida, Tampa:
Gleeson’s book is from the University of North Carolina Press, affiliated with my undergrad alma mater. One of the pleasures of my personal reading is that the wider my explorations of American history extend, the more I run into quality titles on that topic published by UNC Press. My hope is that Midwesterners would take a look at "Cold Snap as Yearning" and that Southerners would check out Gleeson's study of the Irish. My greater hope, though, is that people would nurture their intellectual curiosity by perusing a book about a U.S. region besides the one in which they live. Saturday, November 23
Michael Jackson’s children Michael Jackson was once an impressive pop music talent, but in the years since his 1980s heyday he’s gradually migrated into ever-deeper levels of peculiarity, with overtones of poorly concealed depravity. Jackson is such a lightweight and eccentric, it seems he should be beneath the consideration of any serious-minded person. The latest column from Michelle Malkin, however, uses bracing prose to explain why serious-minded people should be paying attention to Jackson’s disturbing personal life: He has legal custody, apparently, of three young “children” (whose faces he literally shrouds from public view), including the infant he dangled off a balcony in Germany. The children have been thrust into a family situation that is not merely cartoonish -- in its potential, it is quite troubling. A sidenote: Malkin is on a big roll right now with her fine investigative work on the bollixed work by the INS and other agencies in failing to keep the country safe from nefarious illegal immigrants. As for her writing style, her pieces stay in the same predictable groove -- scaldingly indignant, with the volume control always turned up to an ear-splitting maximum, heavy-metal-style. I’m not a big fan of that approach (it’s hard to take someone serious when they always sound outraged), but she can raise significant points. Her piece on Michael Jackson is a good case in point. In addition to pulling together various facts about Jackson (although I’m not keen that she includes mere rumors in the mix), she comes up with some striking phrases to sum up her points:
Exactly right. Her column jolted me out of my blase attitude, awakening me to the real issue: concern for the young lives Jackson has already begun to warp. Can anything be done legally? I assume not -- unless someone in Jackson's entourage has the moral fortitude to step forward if there is anything that authorities need to know. Should Michael Moore read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’? Chris Anderson is a Cincinnati-based, independent-minded blogger whose site, Queen City Soapbox, is worth checking out. Here is a recent post of his:
As much as I hate to seem ungrateful, the vision of Michael Moore “doing good” doesn’t put me at ease. Far from it. This put me in mind of a favorite passage from To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Scout is describing her across-the-street neighbor Miss Maudie Atkinson, who had been condemned by “foot-washing” Baptists as a sinner (because of her flowers!): My confidence in pulpit gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie stewing forever in various Protestant hells. True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She had never told on us, never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend. In three sentences, Harper Lee captures the difference between a leftist like Michael Moore and a genuine liberal. Too often, the one who consciously and conspicuously “does good” is infringing on the very people who are supposed to be benefited. Understandably, trust does not follow. Interestingly, in the book Miss Maudie is the character who most often (aside from Atticus Finch) gives voice to matters of conscience and rectitude. In constructing her character, I think that Harper Lee embodied in her a more universal precept. We have faith in those who trust us to make our own way and freely struggle to perfect our own lives. It’s the busybodies like Miss Stephanie and Michael Moore (and Jesse Helms, for that matter) who make us uneasy. By the way: Chris also has an interesting post titled “Conservatives against prison rape.” Friday, November 22
A long history of insults Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg and assorted bloggers have commented of late about the use of pork and pork fat as a tool for combating terrorism (using pork-fat-covered bullets, for example, or wrapping the bodies of terrorists in pigskin before burial). Such measures were used by the British in the Sudan in fighting the Mahdi and his supporters in the 19th century. The Russians are said to be using such tactics now against Chechen guerrillas. Which reminds me of another historical note: In the Middle Ages, Christian writers raised the topic of pigs in hurling fanciful, insulting accusations against Islam and its founder. The propagandistic chansons that spurred Christian support for the Crusades were replete with such anti-Islamic imaginings. A French writer from the 11th century, Hildebert of Tours, wrote a Latin poem titled “A History of Mohammed” that one modern historian has described as “probably the most widely read medieval poetic work dealing with Islam.” “It includes scurrilous narratives about the Prophet of Islam,” historian Jane I. Smith writes in “The Oxford History of Islam,” “such as his having returned home in a drunken stupor, fallen into a dunghill, and been eaten by pigs.” The medieval chansons ignored actual Islamic beliefs in many respects and claimed, for example, that Muslims worshiped multiple gods. In the “Song of Roland,” a group of Arabs angry over a military defeat smash the idol of one of the gods, Apollin, then throw Mohammed into a ditch where he is devoured by hogs and dogs. That is only a small sampling of the depths to which medieval Christian writers stooped in slandering Islam. In fact, the spirit of creative cruelty found in the chansons resembles that of modern anti-Semitic works such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (now being shown as a TV mini-series in Egypt). Not surprisingly, medieval Christian writers and theologians fixated on the sexual aspects of Islam -- Mohammed’s multiple wives, for example, as well as the pleasures of the garden of paradise. The Koran was first translated into English in its entirety (despite errors and omissions) in 1141. The translation was done by an English scholar, Robert of Ketton, at the request of a French monk, Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who had visited Cluniac monasteries in Spain. In line with the approach of most Christian theologians who took time to study Islam, Peter regarded Muslims as Christian heretics rather than as followers of a separate religious path. The study of Islam by Christian scholastics was normally pursued with the aim of combating it intellectually. A common approach was the creation of imagined Christian-Muslim dialogues in which the arguments for an Islamic viewpoint were invariably refuted. The hostility of Western Christian writings toward Islam stemmed in considerable measure from the fact that such writings tended to be influenced by the Byzantines, who often displayed a burning hatred of the Muslim world. In the end, of course, the Turks prevailed and Byzantium became absorbed into the Muslim community. Chinese hypocrisy The Chinese government is taking Western countries to task for their alleged disrespect toward Tibet, Best of the Web mentioned this week. Westerners, the Beijing government insists, should end their use of the name Mount Everest and start using the official Chinese name, Mount Qomolangma. Now that takes real nerve: China’s communist government posing as a defender of Tibetan cultural integrity. I doubt the Dalai Lama would be impressed. By one count, the Chinese occupation of Tibet cost some 1.2 million lives over the 20 years following the intervention of 1959. Many Tibetans were placed in prison or labor camps. The extension of Chinese control resulted in the calculated destruction of Tibetan monasteries, temples and other cultural or historical buildings -- in all, more than 6,000 structures. From a pro-Tibetan Web site:
It’s bad enough that the Chinese Community Party smashed Falun Gong, a movement intended merely for spiritualist and physical development, out of raw jealousy and paranoia over the movement's popularity. For the Chinese government to now pose as a guardian of Tibetan cultural traditions only provides new proof of Beijing's cynicism and arrogance. Thursday, November 21
Will the EU learn from Germany's currency problem? Jim Bennett e-mails me from time to time with keen analyses about European economic matters. That was the case the other day, when he reponded to my excerpting from a Robert Samuelson column. The column talked, among other things, about how the one-to-one currency transformation between eastern and western Germany in the early reunification period failed to bring about the hoped-for results for eastern Germany. Jim writes:
The German currency situation will become quite relevant, Jim says, when Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic join the EU:
Lots of good stuff Some quick mentions of interesting blog work I've happened upon this week:
That's not all. I'll mention more over the weekend. More on gays in the military Donald Sensing has a different take on the firing of the Army linguists than I do, but his post ably examines what specific sections of the legal code are involved. By the way: In a separate post, Don addresses the question: What would Jesus drive? The Kyoto debate in Canada A sharply written, Kyoto-related op-ed in the Calgary Herald by two Canadians was candid in describing how the Liberal government in Canada has a political incentive to oppose U.S. policy on the accord (via the Web site for the National Post):
The current debate in Canada over Kyoto involves crucial constitutional questions for the country, the op-ed writers argue:
Right. Kyoto is, among other things, an attempted power grab by overreaching regulators and their allies in the foreign-policy NGO community. China’s leadership struggle isn’t over I’ll have several posts on China in coming days. For now, a few observations by Kenneth Lieberthal, a professor at the University of Michigan, who oversaw Asia policy for the Clinton administration’s National Security Council from 1998 to 2000, writing in the Los Angeles Times about Jiang Zemin’s machinations at the just-completed Communist Party Congress: (to register to see the article, I just do what Matt Welch suggested a long time ago: use laexaminer for both my user name and the password):
Wednesday, November 20
Defending the neocons A post at a listserv I belong to used civil, measured language to defend the neoconservative foreign policy viewpoint against a glib attack that "neocons" are fired, above all else, by an obsession to safeguard Israel:
As Sidney Hook used to say (I'm paraphrasing from memory): Attack my arguments before you attack my character. The power of the truth A fine column from Austin Bay this week about the power of the BBC, and of truth-telling in general, in the developing world. A few excerpts:
Well-said. Hey, WSJ: Give credit where it's due David Hogberg not only introduced the blogosphere to the woman from Kalona, Iowa, who used grocery-cart-themed sloganeering to make an eccentric antiwar message; he even came up with a great little blog contest around the theme of consumer products as morally imbued objects. But when Best of the Web reported on the Kalona consumer-as-moralist, it made no mention of the role played by Dave's blog -- no fair, WSJ. Best of the Web usually does a good job in crediting bloggers, but in this case it fell down on the job, needlessly. Bird's-eye view John Pike's GlobalSecurity.com site has a lot of satellite images of presidential compounds and other sites in Iraq. Among the sites:
Monday, November 18
Welcoming the conquerors Trudy Rubin, in her latest column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, writes that when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, the local Shiites at first welcomed them. “The Shiites were happy to see the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization,” she writes. The Israelis wore out their welcome, however, through the military occupation that followed. Her point reminded me of something I read by historian Jane I. Smith about a much earlier time in the Middle East:
Other factors of course facilitated the spread of early Islam, including the weakness of the Byzantine and Persian Sasanian empires, Smith writes. She also points that “for a number of centuries Christians remained the majority in much of what was nominally Muslim territory.” The Wizard of Oz and genocide L. Frank Baum, author of the “Wizard of Oz” book series, indeed seems to have had many admirable qualities. As a review by Brooke Allen in the New York Times indicates, in his personal life, Baum appears to have been kind and generous. In his series of 14 Wizard of Oz books, Baum demonstrated thoughtfulness and perceptiveness. (The review looks at “L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz” by Katharine M. Rogers; St. Martin’s Press.) Among observations from Allen’s review:
It is strange that a review, in the New York Times of all places, would pass up a chance to strike a revisionist pose and mention a striking exception to Baum’s kindliness and good cheer. When he owned and edited a South Dakota newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, from 1888 to 1891, an instance arose in which Baum displayed a far different side of his personality than that depicted in Rogers’ new biography. (This was a decade before the first Oz book was published.) Baum’s transgression: He editorialized, twice, in favor of genocide against Native Americans. Shortly after Sitting Bull was killed by Indian police, Baum editorialized in the Dec. 15, 1890 edition of his paper:
After the Seventh Cavalry killed 250 men, women and children at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890, Baum again advocated the obliteration of the Indians:
Baum’s editorials, written at a time of widespread concern among the settler community and U.S. military about the Ghost Dance phenomenon, expressed a sentiment that was no doubt common among white settlers of the day. But among present-day Lakota Sioux, the words of Baum’s editorials continue to be cited and still provoke pain and anger. By the way: Allison’s review notes that Baum’s depiction of Oz essentially amounted to
The movie version of the original book took liberties in many ways, the review explains. In the book, the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t a thoroughly vile character -- she was afraid of the Cowardly Lion and even of the dark. And when Dorothy accidentally killed her with a dash of water, in the book Dorothy
Less praiseworthy is reviewer Allison’s knee-jerk contempt for what she calls “patriotic bombast” -- which, she claims, is “born from base provincialism.” Grrrr. (That’s me, imitating an angry Cowardly Lion.) On a roll Impressive feat by William Safire. He's written two back-to-back columns that have won widespread attention, justifiably, among the chattering classes and the blogosphere: first his shot at John Poindexter's grand surveillance schemes, and now his column about JFK's medical condition. Loved the title the NYT put on the latter: "Kennedy Agonistes." "Nixon Agonistes" was one of those books I heard about when I was a teen-ager, but I don't believe I've ever opened a copy of it, even at a used bookstore. Safire can be tiresome with the self-congratulatory references he sprinkles in his columns (" ... as Ariel Sharon told me in a phone conversation just as he exited the Cabinet conference room ... "). That JFK-related column, though, is one time when Safire can refer back to his now-ancient political operative days and have the reference be genuinely useful. Bean town boos Boos go out to a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat:
“Voodoo economics,” a call for a federal-urban “partnership“ -- Menino is stuck in the past, and pitifully so. He laments that we haven’t resurrected 1970s-style revenue sharing and resorts to tired, 1980s-vintage Democratic rhetoric about federal fiscal policy (originated, I know, by the elder George Bush). But the big-city mayors used to complain just as loudly about the Clinton administration’s reluctance to institute a grand “partnership” with urban America (meaning a massive infusion of federal cash so Democratic mayors can approve hefty bargaining packages with public-sector unions). I don’t question Menino’s Americaness. But I do question his scapegoating the federal government for urban fiscal woes that stem from something else entirely: a very weary national economy. Understanding art Kevin Drum has a terrific little post at CalPundit about modern art. An excerpt:
Yes, indeed. That sort of thing, incidentally, isn’t done at the art galleries included in my permalinks. (I’m serious.) I recommend checking out Kevin’s whole post. By the way: My appreciation to CalPundit for generously including what the peak time for the meteor shower will be here in Omaha. (My wife will be getting up and taking out our daughter. Our son is one of the soundest sleepers in the world; may be impossible to rouse him. Whether I get up depends on how late I stay up blogging tonight. Before turning in, I intend to write separately about Oz and Islam -- kind of sounds poetic.) If you check out Kevin's last graf in that post, you'll find a personal secret about myself. Time to break out the good stuff There have been way too few history-centric posts here of late -- my apologies. I'm going to rectify that this week. One post in the pipeline is titled "The Wizard of Oz and genocide." Another (and perhaps a third) will look at some historical aspects of Islam. Plus a post that will look at lynching among other things, and another that will take point to an interesting column about the 19th century business battle that pitted the proponents of AC electrical current against those supporting DC. Germany, the sick man of Europe It’s no great revelation, but Robert Samuelson’s newest column summarizes things well about Germany’s economic rigidities:
Another systemic factor inhibiting German economic performance is the magnitude of subsidies for the former East Germany:
A British economist quoted by Samuelson says Germany’s approach would be like the United States absorbing Mexico and trying to raise incomes there to U.S. levels within five years. Politically, it seems unavoidable that West Germany’s absorption of East Germany would have involved an energetic effort to boost incomes there. And, as Samuelson’s column says, Germans in the west seem quite willing to continue the subsidies. Samuelson concludes his column: “Germany is Europe's ‘sick man,’ just as Japan is Asia's. Only 15 years ago, these countries seemed poised to assume leadership of the world economy. Now they are dragging it down.” Unfortunately correct. Saturday, November 16
Arab intellectuals still snoozing Worthwhile article from the Chicago Tribune about how Arab leaders and intellectuals are struggling to come to terms -- or, in many cases, struggling not to come to terms -- with how their societies have become the source for catastrophic terrorism. An excerpt:
Doesn’t sound like there was much fresh thinking, regrettably. More:
It would be a pleasant surprise if Arab intellectuals came around to acknowledging that their countries’ stagnation comes not from U.S. oppression but from systemic failures, from educational mismanagement to governmental corruption to economic protectionism, that are holding their countries back in fundamental ways, as a U.N. report accurately noted not that long ago. Generational politics In his Slate point-counterpoint with Robert Reich this week, Joe Klein (an articulate political moderate -- see his post here) talked about the need for politicians to cultivate a new American generation:
To which Reich responded:
Klein is right about the irresponsibility of politicians in incessantly pandering to seniors. Reich is right that the boomers, notorious for their narcissism for three decades now, aren’t likely to change character as they cross into retirement. At age 43, I’m at the tail end of the boomer generation. I’ve never seen myself as belonging to the ’60s generation; that decade of separation in our ages is like a chasm, in terms of generational identity. I was a child of the mid- and late ’70s -- post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post-flower child. That makes me a fossil, of course, compared to today's twentysomethings. No placating the terrorists Another comment from Reich:
Wouldn’t assigning a NATO-style organization the main anti-terrorism duties mean that the decision-making authority for that mission would be shifted out of the hands of U.S. officials and given to a U.S.-Western European collaboration? Yes, it would seem so. Now, that arrangement would certainly make for quick decision-making and decisive action, wouldn’t it? As for Reich’s call to “fight terror with hope,” it’s true that many countries, jealous of our power and alienated from some of our values, regard the United States with wariness if not disdain. I’m skeptical of our practical ability in coming decades to go it alone in the international arena, despite, in the present era, the rightness of the administration's cause in rejecting the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto accords (neither of which would have won approval in the Senate anyway). Over time, furthering our interests will necessitate allies and a measure of international support, along many dimensions. Matt Welch touched on this topic in a column not long ago. How we build international support for U.S. policy and still remain true to crucial values -- support for free markets and for robust national sovereignty over foreign policy -- seems a monumental challenge, given the international community's eagerness to impose statist solutions and smother national sovereignty under new supranational arrangements. Reich is deceiving himself, though, when he argues that foreign aid and other U.S.-led social work initiatives will calm the anger of radical Islam. The Islamists are spurred by a warped understanding of world affairs -- they are at war with modernity -- and nothing this country will do, short of transforming itself into a Talibanic theocracy, will come close to placating them. Courage We’ve all read about how the Dutch, or the Danes or the Italians, hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II. Such moral assertiveness in the face of danger is inspiring. At the same time, it seems far removed from the everyday lives of comfortable middle-class Americans, myself included. Thursday night, I and a group of fellow Omahans had dinner with someone who demonstrated that kind of moral courage not long ago in Afghanistan: a 42-year-old teacher from Kabul. Before the liberation of her country last winter, she repeatedly defied the Taliban’s ban on female education by holding secret instructional sessions in her home. Girls and young women would leave their homes, bag in hand, as if they were going on a shopping trip to the bazaar. Instead, they went to this woman’s house, where they quietly studied math, science and grammar, freed, for a brief time, from the Taliban’s obsessive meddling. I met that remarkable women at a dinner honoring her and 12 other Afghan women -- all teachers -- who are visiting Omaha for a month. Their trip, sponsored by the State Department, was organized by the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. As I’ve mentioned here before, the center, under its energetic director, Tom Goutierre, is doing impressive work helping Afghanistan right itself after the tumult of the Taliban years. The more than 3 million new textbooks issued this year in all Afghan schools, for example, were developed and prepared by the Nebraska center. At the event Thursday night, the discussion at our particular table turned at one point to how marriage arrangements in Afghanistan differ from those in America. In Afghanistan, custom, influenced by Muslim tenets, dictates that marriages are arranged -- parents choose the bride and groom. Such an approach is looked on as backward in this country, said our Afghan visitor (a confident, wise-eyed woman dressed in black, her hair partially draped in a dark scarf). Yet in America, where men and women choose their mates freely, divorce is strikingly common. Why, she asked, do husbands and wives go their separate ways in such large numbers in this country? Several of us said that men and women in America place so much emphasis on individual freedom that they sometimes neglect to accept that a marriage involves compromises on that freedom. I added that one reason divorce was made more accessible was to give women trapped in abusive relationships a chance to legally escape. In Afghanistan, our guest from Kabul said, it is up to the husband alone to determine whether a marriage remains intact or not. She turned to me and asked: Did I intend for my marriage to remain whole? The question was asked in a friendly way, and her dark eyes scrutinized me closely as she waited for my answer. Yes, I said. That is one of my strongest intentions in life. Our discussion covered many other topics: her home life (with six children, she and her husband have little time for relaxation), the state of agriculture in her country (the Taliban’s destruction of irrigation canals in the ’90s still plagues the farm economy), her school (quite modest) and Afghan television (more modest, still). As the evening neared its end, several of the Afghan women went to the front and sang a patriotic song in one of the native languages -- Dari or Pashto, I’m not sure which. Several times, one of the women sang a verse by herself, each time putting emotional inflection on the end of a particular line. Then, the others joined in for the chorus. Tom explained the words. They express a love of country, he said, and the willingness to sacrifice for the future. The Afghans I met this week deserve our admiration and help. Their courage needs to be rewarded. Update: When my wife took our son for art lessons this morning at Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum, she saw the Afghan women being given a tour of the museum. I was unable to find some notes when I wrote the post above. I've since found them and want to add here that the name of the Afghan teacher who sat at my table was Baizaa -- no last name. A Dari speaker, she lives in Kabul and is a native of Mazari Shareef in the northern province of Balkh. Friday, November 15
Islam and democracy Donald Sensing has put up some great analytical posts this week on various military tangents relating to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Glenn Reynolds already linked a particular post of Don’s, but I’d like to mention it too. Although Don’s observations primarily related to civilian casualties, he also made a detour into discussing the nature of Islam:
This is a topic Don has addressed intelligently since the beginning of his venture into blogging. Posts like that are one more reason why One Hand Clapping is a worthwhile stop on the blogosphere tour. Back again tonight I didn't get around to blogging Thursday night because I was at a dinner honoring a delegation of 13 women from Afghanistan who are visiting Omaha for a month under the auspices of Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. A terrific event. I'll post some things about it tonight. By the way: Glenn Reynolds quoted an e-mail Thursday saying the election might have been affected had the public known that John Poindexter was heading a DoD effort for mass surveillance of Americans. News that Poindexter had been given the Pentagon post was reported in The New Republic early this year, however. In March, the Omaha World-Herald, bouncing off the TNR item, did a short editorial questioning Poindexter's selection. It's true, though, that the exact scope of the "Total Information Awareness" project wasn't publicly known until the New York Times did a story on it shortly after the election. Thursday, November 14
Al-Qaida and nuclear weapons What sort of nuclear weapons has al-Qaida shown the most interest in developing or acquiring, in light of documents obtained in Afghanistan? Two kinds: That conclusion is part of a new report from physicist David Albright, president of a D.C.-based think tank called the Institute for Science and International Security. One of his main conclusions: "The documents strongly suggest that al-Qaida was intensifying its long-term goal to acquire nuclear weapons and would have likely succeeded, if it had remained powerful in Afghanistan for several more years." Albright is not reassured by the claims of two Pakistani nuclear scientists who say they passed along no significant information when they met with al-Qaida officials in August 2001. He writes:
Indeed, outside help will be crucial if al-Qaida succeeds in creating a nuclear weapon, Albright says. The bin Laden organization benefited greatly from having facilities and other assets made possible by the Taliban. The quality of information on nuclear weapons in the recovered al-Qaida documents ranged widely. Some of the analysis was accurate and useful; some was grossly mistaken (as the blog community, responding to a particular Times of London report, noted at the time). In countering terrorist efforts to obtain such weapons, Albright writes, it is important to recognize that al-Qaida might try to build a bomb using an unconventional design that still might work. Such a consideration is relevant in anticipating what materials, equipment and expertise the terrorists might pursue. By the way: Albright cites a “senior Pakistani official” who stated that al-Qaida’s annual budget was $200 million. Wednesday, November 13
Dems to go west (toward Pelosi paleoliberalism)? If Pelosi is selected as the new Democratic House leader, the party will be accused, rightly, of re-McGovernization, with the old Clintonian approach (of liberalism-when-possible/centrism-when-necessary) in retreat. Many House candidates support Pelosi because, indeed, she probably could help energize blue-state Democratic activists to a degree that cautious Dick Gephardt never could. (Of course, her hard-left politics could complicate things mightily for Democrats in marginal, red-state districts.) On policy questions, of course, she seems so retro, so mid-1980s. When reporters ask her about national security policy, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if she responded by calling for a nuclear freeze. If Democrats intend to nominate a Pelosi-style paleoliberal as their presidential nominee in 2004, they would be wise to heed a fundamental point of national politics made long ago by Horace Greeley as the election of 1860 approached. If a candidate is going to champion views well outside the national consensus, Greeley wrote, his agenda had better be “sweetened” by including other, more palatable stances:
Normally, paleoliberals aren’t keen to embrace political pragmatism at election time. But in 2004, after four years of George W., they just might be desperate enough to win to give it a try. A veteran’s son Max Sawicky had a great Veterans Day post in the best spirit of blogging: He ably mixed personal experience into his analysis, producing an effective combination. Max is firmly on the left and hotly opposes Bush’s foreign policy. Does that mean Max regards the military as his enemy? He writes:
Max’s description of his father’s service during World War II is also well worth reading. Joyce Appleby, the Second Amendment and Michael Bellesiles Glenn Reynolds links to an essay by historian Joyce Appleby that accuses the Bush administration of "radical bellicosity" in its foreign policy. Glenn and fans of InstaPundit may be interested to know that Appleby was part of a group of academicians who filed an amicus brief in 1999 that argued for an anti-individual-rights position in the Emerson case. The brief, which cited Second Amendment history in making a claim for a "collective-rights" interpretation, is here. An excerpt from the brief:
I am familiar with some of academicians who signed the brief, and I respect specific works they've done on topics aside from the Second Amendment. An example is Jill Lepore, who wrote a terrific, award-winning book on King Philip's War. On the other hand, one of the signers was the now-discredited Michael Bellesiles. In fact, his historical writings on the Second Amendment figure prominently in the brief's footnotes. Revolution in Georgia I talked this week to an old North Carolina friend who now lives in Georgia. From our conversation, I learned that the GOP’s political gains in Georgia extend beyond the governor’s office, which, as widely noted, Republicans captured for the first time since Reconstruction. Tom Murphy, the long-time Democratic speaker of the Georgia House, was ousted by voters after some 42 years in the Legislature. Democrats still control 106 of the 180 seats in the state House. Meanwhile, post-election defections by four Democratic state senators have given to the GOP control of the Senate. Republicans will hold 30 seats, to the Democrats’ 26. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article threw some light on the factors behind the defeat of Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes:
Movie composers John Podhoretz predicts in NRO that Elmer Bernstein, the workhorse 80-year-old composer who has scored a slew of movies and TV shows over the decades, will win his first Oscar this year. Podhoretz was praising Bernstein’s work in the new “Far From Heaven.” Speaking of movie composers, I see that Brian De Palma has returned to the thriller genre with “Femme Fatale,” but unlike his earlier works such as “Dressed to Kill” and “Blowout,” his new movie isn’t scored by Ennio Morricone. From what I’ve read, the “Femme Fatale” score by Ryuichi Sakamoto still uses the requisite Bernard Hermann-style musical shadings, though. By the way: When I was a teen-ager in the 1970s, I used to arrange music for high school bands and small instrumental groups. Nothing that impressive, but adequate nonetheless. In 1983, I composed a mournful tune on the old, 1970-style electric organ I used to have. The ending had a chord change I especially liked, since it was an unusual one for me. One afternoon shortly thereafter, I saw a rerun of Gunsmoke; Elmer Bernstein had scored the episode. At the climax of the story, Bernstein underscored the scene by using an effective chord change. Yes, the same one I'd employed in my little tune. Tuesday, November 12
Bring back the what? The Nebraska Legislature is holding a special session to try to revamp the state’s laws on capital punishment. State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a diehard opponent of capital punishment and expert in the Legislature’s parliamentary procedure, has introduced a slew of bills to gum up any advance toward continued usage in Nebraska of the death penalty. (Nebraska is the only state that continues to execute offenders using the electric chair.) One of Chambers’ bills would require the governor, attorney general and secretary of state to attend every execution. Another bill would have Nebraska replace the electrical chair with a novel method of execution: the guillotine. Chambers’ bill also states: “The design and construction of the guillotine shall be under the direction of the Governor who may procure the advice, assistance, and expertise deemed necessary by the Governor to carry out the purpose.” The guillotine can be challenged on grounds of being cruel and unusual punishment, though: From what I’ve read, the device occasionally failed to complete its task on the first try, requiring a second attempt. Update: Kevin Drum of CalPundit offers a suggestion about how to guarantee that the guillotine will work every time. And he provides an illustration, no less! The geography of GOP strength The electoral analysis by LA Times columnist Ronald Brownstein isn’t surprising, but it does cite some interesting numbers from around the country to illustrate how Republicans came to score big victories last week:
Monday, November 11
The 11th hour of the 11th day ... My son and I enjoy a book of optical illusions. One tricky illustration with a World War I theme is fitting to mention today. Veterans Day, of course, was originally called Armistice Day, after the agreement that ended the fighting in World War I. The drawing shows the Kaiser on the run. He's wearing extremely baggy pants, black mittens and a big backpack. The caption asks: "Who made him run?" Flip the picture upside-down, and the baggy pants become ears, the mittens become black eyes, and the backpack becomes a collar -- and the picture is of the British bulldog. (Yes, I guess you could say we Yanks actually made the difference in settling that conflict. I suppose the illustration came from a British magazine of the era.) By the way I: There are fewer than 500 World War I veterans still living in the United States, according to this article. By the way II: Strom Thurmond, born in December 1902, was only a few years too young to have been eligible to fight in World War I. By the way III: A press release from the U.S. Department of Veterans Administration last March included this information:
Sunday, November 10
Since Friday Topics for some of the posts since Friday: the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; two posts about Iraq; the civil rights struggle in the Midwest; the Lewis and Clark expedition; and Jesse James. I'd intended to write a long post about a terrorism-related report I'd read, but that will have to wait until another night, when I'm not falling asleep at the keyboard. Mr. Jefferson’s vision In this part of the country, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition is a very big deal. I’m hearing very positive things about a particular book on the expedition: “Finding the West: Explorations With Lewis and Clark” by James P. Ronda. Ronda, a well-respected specialist in American Western history at the University of Tulsa, explores the expedition through seven separate “stories” and a map essay. The book isn’t intended as a comprehensive record of the expedition but as a stimulating re-examination, focusing on various aspects of the event. Ronda talks about Jefferson’s vision for the expedition as well as how Lewis and Clark’s background as Easterners affected their perspectives. He notes that Lewis and Clark were saluted at the official send-off by no fewer than 17 toasts. A U.N. gift for Saddam In a radio interview with Laura Ingraham, Bill Gertz, a security affairs reporter for the Washington Times, wasn’t encouraging in his description of the U.N.’s ability at containing Iraq’s WMD capability. Here is what he wrote in a Nov. 6 article about how Iraq received a specialty chemical useful for boosting the effectiveness of chemical weapons -- and did so under the U.N.’s oil-for-food program:
When a dusty nerve agent is used to attack troops wearing full protective gear, fatalities could be as high as 38 percent, Gertz reported, citing Eric Croddy, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. By the way: Gertz told Ingraham that something interesting may lie in the near future for Steven J. Hatfill, the biodefense expert who protested his innocence after being mentioned as a possible suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax mailings. Hatfill will be going to Iraq as a U.N. weapons inspector. At least that’s what Gertz said he was told by Hatfill directly. The Iraqi elite prepares for a storm Good stuff in David Ignatius’ latest column about how the Iraqi elite is plotting to cope with the possible toppling of Saddam’s regime:
Ignatius also talks about U.S. psywar activity now under way:
By the way: The Jordanian government instructed its border posts several weeks ago to deny entry to Iraqi men under the age of 45, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says, citing a Jordanian newspaper report. Jordan has also begun what the newspaper called a “search and investigation” campaign to check the residency permits of Iraqis now residing in Jordan. Update: Austin Bay e-mails to note that he covered the same territory as the Ignatius column weeks ago (here and here). Absolutely. If my memory is correct, I saw discussion of Austin's columns at the time by Glenn Reynolds and Don Sensing. Mentors and pupils I’ve meant to mention this long before now: When I first learned that the sniper arrests had included not just John Allen Muhammed but also a 17-year-old (John Lee Malvo), it reminded me that I’d recently read about what Jesse James was doing at age 17: killing and creating carnage as part of the Civil War-era vigilantes riding with “Bloody Bill” Anderson in Missouri. At the wall The 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial brings back memories about how much the site impressed me at its start-up. I was a grad student at Georgetown at the time and followed the story of the memorial through the excellent coverage in the Washington Post. (During my first year at Georgetown, I used to drive by the Iwo Jima Memorial every weekday on the way to school -- funny how remarkable sights like that begin to seem relatively mundane after you see them day after day.) There was much to admire about the Vietnam vets who organized the creation of the memorial. They had long felt underappreciated, not least since they lived in the shadow of the (rightly lauded) World War II generation. (Korean War vets, of course, suffered a similar sense of being relegated to second-tier status as “forgotten soldiers.”) The Vietnam vets faced widespread scepticism about their determination and ability to see the memorial project through. Above all, they endured carping from those who derided the memorial’s untraditional -- indeed, radical -- design as a grossly inadequate tribute to the fallen. Where, it was asked, was the august statuary, the obligatory classical architecture, the sense of the traditional -- and what on earth were the memorial’s organizers thinking when they approved that peculiar V-shape as the core of the design? (Yes, statuary was eventually added, and it provided a welcome complement.) But the Vietnam vets held their course. And when the memorial opened in 1982, it quickly demonstrated its power to touch people’s sense of humanity. I went to the memorial not long after it opened. A sense of solemnity overtakes you in descending the trench, step by measured step, until you finally come to the destination: the wall. The wall had not been open for too long when I first saw it. Yet it was already marked with mementoes tucked into the crevices, and in surprisingly large numbers. A slip of paper. A flower. A worn, ’60s-era snapshot -- of a smiling father and son. To stand before the wall, to look up and realize the magnitude of loss reflected in that immense stream of names, is, for me, one of those moments when time slows, then stops. And a sense of the eternal comes near. Standing before the wall was like standing at the bedside as my children were born: All the transient, mundane concerns of life were stripped away. Time slowed, and I felt in the presence of something far beyond myself. Of something transcendent, permanent, holy. Vietnam brought America so much heartache. But at the wall, we at least can pause and reflect. And offer a salute of remembrance. Civil rights history outside the South The 1961 lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., are rightly honored as a seminal event in the fight for civil rights. Left unmentioned, regrettably, is the fact that similar sit-ins were held at a drugstore counter two years earlier in Wichita, Kan. I learned about the Wichita sit-ins in a review of the new book “Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72,” By Gretchen Cassel Eick. The review, by Timothy N. Thurber, a professor of history at the State University of New York at Oswego, appears in the current edition of the invaluable Great Plains Quarterly. Of course, it was a Kansas case that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Eick’s book compares the situation in Wichita to those elsewhere in the nation during the civil right era, Thurber writes:
The book also examines internal argument within the NAACP:
Update: Joe Kristan, an always thoughtful e-mail correspondent from Des Moines, writes to point out a notable angle from Iowa. In 1948 (13 years before the Greensboro sit-ins, 11 before the Wichita protests), protesters used nonviolent sit-ins and picketing to respond to a Des Moines drugstore's refusal to serve blacks. The county attorney’s office prosecuted the store manager under Iowa’s only civil rights law, a criminal statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. The manager was found guilty by a jury and fined $50. In 1949, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the conviction. The protests and legal outcome are rightly held up as early achievements in the nation's civil rights progress after World War II. Saturday, November 9
Remembering a shrew Mao praised the role of women in Chinese society by saying that they “hold up half the sky.” But women still struggle for economic advancement in modern China. As for involvement in the Communist Party, they hold only a modest number of leadership positions -- and none of the top ones, the AP reports. After I read that piece, I thought of Mao’s outrageously shrewish widow, Jiang Qing, who was put on trial for treason in 1980 along with the rest of the “Gang of Four.” I can still remember the news footage of her in the courtroom, ranting and raising hell, like some deposed empress who refused to accept her fallen status. Which, in a de facto sense, she was. Friday, November 8
Misplaced priorities Kansas-based blogger Mike Silverman (who has an Omaha connection, if memory serves) noted recently that the Army has discharged Arab-speaking linguists -- a highly valuable commodity in the post-9/11 era -- merely because they are gay. The article cited by Mike mentions that seven Army linguists have recently been removed from service under those circumstances. I’ve found some data about the magnitude of the Army’s shortfall in regard to Arab speakers. The GAO examined the topic in a report released last February. Among its findings:
That’s not all:
If that last point doesn't indicate the severity of the Army's need, I can't imagine what else could. It is foolish for the Army to throw away the talents and enthusiasm of Arab speakers, merely on the basis of their sexual orientation, at the very time when such abilities are of enormous importance in safeguarding the nation’s security. Has anybody talked to Dick Cheney about this? Seems like he might be interested in doing something about it, for several reasons. By the way: The GAO report also examined the shortage of foreign language speakers at the State Department, the FBI and the Foreign Commercial Service, part of the Commerce Department. An article in Government Executive magazine from May noted: “The Army has about 15,000 positions requiring proficiency in 62 languages. Last year the service had 142 unfilled positions for cryptologic linguists in Korean and Mandarin Chinese, and 108 unfilled positions for human intelligence collectors in Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Korean and Mandarin Chinese.” Also pointed out in the article: “OPM’s records indicate that the government employs fewer than 1,000 translators and interpreters — a specially designated job series in the federal workforce. But tens of thousands of additional positions across government require language skills.” The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., where the seven linguists were studying at the time of their discharge, is the largest language school in the world. As for recruiting foreign nationals into the Special Forces, the AP article states, “Placing foreigners in the Special Forces was done in the 1950s under the Lodge Act, designed as a mechanism for raising a 'foreign legion' of Soviet-bloc expatriates when many in Washington believed the Soviet Union would invade Western Europe. At least 230 anti-communist Eastern Europeans were brought into the first Special Forces unit, designated the 10th Special Forces Group, in 1952.” Thursday, November 7
Fighting a 'gray war' From Austin Bay's latest column, about the Predator missile attack that killed a top al-Qaida leader in Yemen:
That's only part of the way in which Austin's column usefully examines the context of the attack. A familiar pattern From a column by Dennis Prager (via an e-mail from my good friend Craig Brelsford, writing from the Netherlands):
The DLC's very, very big tent An e-mail from the Democratic Leadership Council today noted, properly, that the GOP's success at the congressional level on Tuesday shouldn't obscure the fact that a lot of state-level candidates affiliated with the "New Democrat" faction prevailed at the polls on Tuesday. I was surprised, though, to see that one of the supposed New Democrats listed was Tom Miller, attorney general of Iowa. Maybe Miller has demonstrated moderate credentials in other areas of the law. All I know is that he led the gaggle of state attorneys general who carried on the legal fight against Microsoft this year, refusing to accept the sensible settlement proposed last November. Thankfully, a federal judge rejected the legal claims of Miller and the other AGs last week -- and in doing so, pointly noted that they had completely disregarded the legal parameters a federal appeals court had set. Miller and his fellow AGs were attempting a gross expansion of government intervention into the private sector, seeking not just to address Microsoft's actions from the past but to impose a range of intrusive regulations to control the company's development of future products. The AGs' crusade was intended as an attempt to blast open the way for the assertion of governmental power into a brand-new dimension of antitrust regulation. I would be surprised if the DLC supports that sort of reckless legal adventurism. But if it does, it's hard to see how the organization can still call itself centrist. By the way: Democrats enjoyed a terrific election night in Iowa. Miller won re-election handily. The bloc vote; the federal government as problem 'solver' E.J. Dionne's post-election column had two lines that stood out for me. Here is one:
I suppose he's right that in this particular election, turnout among GOP voters, especially staunch conservatives, was more important, in most states, than the reaction of swing voters. Still, it would be foolish to ignore the swing voters, who are a key reason why American politics ultimately doesn't veer too far from the nation's political center. (I happen to think that's a terrific thing, although I know many true believers on both sides of partisan/ideological divide hold a different view.) Dionne's imagery of right-wingers "swarming" the polls -- as if there were something unsettling about a particular constituency turning out to vote -- is curious. It reminds me of decades ago in North Carolina when Jesse Helms would try to scare conservative white voters into going to the voting booth by ominously warning that otherwise the election would be decided by a large "bloc vote" (meaning "black vote"). Another line from Dionne's column:
This gets down to the nitty-gritty. Dionne argues that the federal government has the capacity to "solve problems." A more accurate description is that federal action sometimes does address a problem in a positive way -- but that in many cases it is a ham-handed endeavor in which already complicated situations are made even more complicated and government becomes more costly and rigid through mindless new accretions of bureaucracy. Sure, small-government idealists are fooling themselves when they argue that everything would be grand if we could just move the clock back so that the federal government's reach would be restricted to that seen in, say, the Coolidge administration -- or better yet (for some), the James Buchanan administration. A certain amount of regulation, imperfect as it is, is not just inevitable in a modern society but necessary -- a point made by George Will in the wake of the Enron debacle. As for Dionne, what gripes me is that he portrays the constant expansion of federal activity as a uniformly beneficent force, without acknowledging the complications often involved whenever government sets out to "solve" things. Wednesday, November 6
The DLC speaks From an e-mail I just received from the Democratic Leadership Council, reacting to the election results:
The DLC's point about the Social Security issue relates to Josh Marshall's point, noted at InstaPundit, about how Democrats have erred by focusing more on tactics than substance. How the DLC faction and the traditional liberals sort out how to differentiate their party from the GOP is the biggest question facing them (reminiscent of some of the after-election intraparty sniping that went on immediately after Gore's defeat in 2000). As for whether the Dems should avoid shrillness: I detest partisan yammering, but then again, the Newt Gingrich crowd prevailed in 1994 because they were willing, even eager, to go to political war (without a care for whether they sounded shrill or not) in the pursuit of their strategic goal: mobilizing their base and winning control of the House (a political perch from which the GOPers have yet to be dislodged). Maybe, eight years later, we are in a different political environment in which a majority of the voting public hungers for political civility. And Bush's popularity, for the present at least, should finally be accepted by the Democrats as a key fact of political life, which makes attacking him a risky endeavor. A difficult political situation to navigate through. Ellis on the election John Ellis's astute political analysis always deserves attention. He's just posted his thoughts on the election ramifications. (Ellis is a cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush, but he makes no secret of that.) Canadian backtracking From today's edition of The National Post:
Among sentences deleated from the earlier draft of the speech: "Instead of complying with its international obligations, Iraq has continued its programs of research and development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery programs. Is it any wonder that Saddam Hussein's government is viewed as a threat to international peace and security?" It's no scandal that a speech was changed before final delivery; happens all the time. What's significant about the article, rather, is that by revealing the sweeping reversal made in the tone of the speech, it indicates what seems to a serious division of opinion among Canadian officials on the Iraq question (or, at least, over whether to bow to pressure from the U.S. on the matter). Noncitizens and voting A Michelle Malkin column talks about how public officials are turning a blind eye to, or even welcoming, allowing noncitizens to vote in parts of the United States:
She quotes a former INS commissioner:.
Legal, regulated immigration is a sensible complement to the functioning of the free market and ought to be applauded and safeguarded. But illegal immigration, and the nonsensical policy of allowing noncitizens to vote, are entirely different matters. Election I'd have blogged late last night, but I have a don't-drink-and-blog rule. (I had some red wine while soaking in the election news.) Most of the good points have already been blogged elsewhere. The congressional results showed that George W.'s political skills and popularity shouldn't be underestimated. The result demonstrated that proponents of the "Emerging Democratic Majority" thesis shouldn't get too cocky (for the moment). It dramatically removed the monkey from Bush's back as far his supposed lack of legitimacy. It embarrased the Democrats as far as their much-heralded get-out-the-vote skills and in regard to the rising-Hispanics-will-lift-the-Democratic boat thesis. Still, Republicans shouldn't exaggerate the advantage they enjoy from current political dynamics. Hubris has already been shown to have hurt the Republicans after the 1994 turnover in the House, and the same point applies now. Poor decisions and policy actions on their part could easily lead to a Democratic resurgence. So, incidentally, could the vagaries of foreign policy. I may wind up looking foolish to say it, but there's a wild card factor in play for the 2004 presidential contest: the whole Iraq/anti-terrorism thing. It's a political plus for Bush now, but it could prove a liability, rather than an advantage, for him in 2004, depending on how things shake out in Iraq and the Middle East should the U.S. invade. (I say this, by the way, as one who's generally a "war hawk" on foreign policy.) An Iraq invasion could trigger all sorts of things, and nobody really knows where it could lead. The situation has the potential to blow up in Bush's face. Then the Democratic nominee, even a ridiculously liberal one, might have a fighting chance at winning. This isn't a prediction. I'm just saying the potential is there. (In case anyone misunderstands my point, let me add that the administration needs to decide whether to invade Iraq based on a judgment about this country's interests, not on what the political effects might be for Bush.) By the way: I can't get over how ancient Bob Shaeffer looked last night on CBS. I hadn't seen him in years, and I was stunned at how he looked older than Robert Byrd. When you compare the analysis teams of the big three networks, the geriatric character of CBS squad really stood out. The age of the CBS team wouldn't matter, of course, if they still displayed some energy. But they didn't. (The little walk-on appearance by Leslie Stahl, for example, added nothing to the program, other than underlining the old-boy/old-girl character of the CBS reporting subculture.) I still like Rather, though, despite his weirdness. Tuesday, November 5
Images and connections A museum here in Omaha has a new, traveling exhibit on the U.S. presidents. In visiting it with my kids over the weekend, I was very surprised to see photos by Matthew Brady from the 1840s of Andrew Jackson (then in retirement) and James K. Polk (the only president to attend my undergrad alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill). Polk was in a group shot at the White House that also included former First Lady Dolley Madison. It was a spooky sensation to stand before an actual, honest-to-goodness photograph taken of Madison, who had been born in 1768. A King and his genealogy Did you know that Elvis Presley could be considered Jewish, because of a Jewish connection through his mother’s side of the family? Did you know that a film crew from Montreal has made a movie on that topic and that the movie is titled “Schmelvis?” Did you know that the Jerusalem Post has written an article about all this? From the article:
The film includes an interview with a woman who, with her late husband, an Orthodox rabbi, lived in an apartment above Elvis and his parents in Memphis. Elvis, she said, always carried a yarmulke in his pocket and loved eating matza ball soup. So now we know. Jokin' around Humor writer Madeleine Begun Kane is at it again, this time tweaking George W. & Co. over the matter of Harvey Pitt. Mad's depiction of Bush's manner of talking, by the way, is a pretty close approximation of my own in one respect -- like George W., I'm often known for leavin' those final G's off words like talkin', goin' and readin'. Monday, November 4
More than a footnote For a good while I've meant to note something about the late Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles, father of Erskine Bowles, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina this year. In 1972, Skipper Bowles became the first North Carolina Democratic gubernatorial nominee since 1896 to lose to a Republican candidate. (Bowles lost to a moderate conservative named Jim Holshouser -- like Bowles, a decent fellow.) The '72 election was also when Jesse Helms won his first term to the U.S. Senate. Although Skipper Bowles suffered the political ignominy I've described, he was a distinguished North Carolinian who served ably as a state lawmaker, state department head and chairman of the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (my undergrad alma mater). Bowles was an energetic fund-raiser for the university. He died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1986. Before his passing, he was rightly applauded at a public event in Chapel Hill for his immense contributions to Carolina. The elder Bowles was a thoroughly honorable man whose contribution to his state far exceeded the political footnote of 1972 by which future generations may come to know him. The embarrassing Mr. Bellesiles I checked the Barnes & Noble Web site tonight to see how it is presenting Michael Bellesiles’ “Arming America” in the wake of the author’s resignation announcement and the scandal over his now-discredited claims. The bookseller is caught in a situation it clearly regards as uncomfortable. On the one hand, the site says Barnes & Noble is no longer stocking the book (though no explanation is given as to why). The site also includes reader reviews in which the long-familiar criticisms of Bellesiles’ claims are presented. It appears that all the reviews, pro and con, have been up for a long while. On the other hand, in an item titled “From Our Editors: Our Review,” Barnes & Noble heaps praise on the book:
As if that weren’t enough, the review goes on to say:
The claim that Bellesiles' thesis is unstated is, of course, insulting to readers' intelligence. To find out the book's agenda, all one has to do is look at the blurbs on the back cover; the message could hardly be any clearer. Trumpets one of the blurbs: "Michael A. Bellesiles is the NRA's worst nightmare." I saw no addendum acknowledging that Bellesiles has announced his resignation or that a Emory review committee had examined his work and found it marred by abundant flaws. The Barnes & Noble site does include several other reviews breathlessly praising the book. They obviously were written very early on, amid the swell of support from the academic/activist left. Claims one: “Bellesiles (history, Emory U.) explodes a number of myths about the role of guns in American history.” It was interesting to see what other titles were purchased by readers who bought “Arming America.” They included “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong” and “Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights.” Another of the books was “The Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation and a Dying Faith are Killing Our Culture and Country” by one Patrick J. Buchanan. That was ironic, given that gun-friendly Buchanan was the first presidential candidate to make "lock 'n' load" a campaign catch phrase. Just for the record: The Omaha World-Herald, where I work, expressed editorial indignation back on April 11, 2001, over Columbia University's decision to award Bellesiles the Bancroft Prize. The editorial noted the fine work by James Lindgren, Joyce Lee Malcolm and Clayton Cramer in debunking Bellesiles’ claims. The editorial observed:
Incidentally, George Will had a fine commentary on the Bellesiles matter on “This Week” last Sunday. Posts here since Friday They include two long posts: one about an interesting senatorial memorial service from decades ago, as well as a discussion of the "forgotten critics of globalization." Short items include thoughts on Dick Cheney, John Edward (of the TV show "Crossing Over"), and UFOs. There is also a post titled "A pacifist no more." It's about a well-known media personality who has written eloquently about the need to stand up to terrorism. A different senator, a different memorial service Memorial services for U.S. senators can make for interesting public spectacles, as recent events in Minnesota have shown. A particularly notable service was held in the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 15, 1918, when members of Congress assembled in tribute for the unabashed “wild man of the Senate” -- the late four-term U.S. Sen. Ben Tillman of South Carolina. Unapologetic demagogue, incorrigible race-baiter, occasional populist, defiant sectionalist, old-school Southern rabble-rouser of the worst sort -- Tillman, who died at age 74 in July 1918 while seeking a fifth term, was all that and more. The Tillman memorial service, in which platitudinous praise was heaped on the late senator, turned out to be a remarkable exercise in truth-skirting (although it’s true that Tillman had mellowed somewhat over the course of his congressional service). Looking back on the memorial service provides an opportunity to examine not just congressional fact-massaging but also the injustice and double-talk that undergirded the Jim Crow system. I’ll sketch Tillman‘s career, then provide excerpts from his memorial service. Each excerpt will be followed by an observation. Ben Tillman was the dominant force in South Carolina politics for about 20 years, from 1890 to around 1910. He grew up in an upland South Carolina family in which the violent assertion of “manliness” was taught as a Southern virtue. (Tillman’s brother George once killed a man during an argument, then fled the country, joining William Walker’s filibusters in trying to set up a slaveholding regime in Nicaragua.) It was hardly a wonder that Ben Tillman took up the name “Pitchfork Ben,” to indicate his willing to “stick it” to his foes. In 1876, the young Tillman joined in the work of private “red shirt” militias -- paramilitary groups that intimidated blacks and Republicans and played a key role in helping Democratic “Redeemers” wrest political control of the state from Republicans, ending Reconstruction. In the 1880s, Tillman became an outspoken critic of the conservative elite that dominated the state’s politics. (This, despite that fact that he, like that elite, belonged to the Democratic Party.) He championed the cause of South Carolina farmers, adopting populist rhetoric. He also became adept at whipping up furious passions among his followers, often to the point of violence. As governor from 1890 to 1894, Tillman pushed regulation and taxation of industry, though in relatively mild doses. He established Clemson University (to educate the sons of farmers) and Winthrop College (to provide higher education to young women). He promoted white supremacy and in the mid-1890s achieved the disenfranchisement of blacks. (According to the 1890 census, South Carolina’s population was 60 percent black.) He entered the U.S. Senate in 1895 and quickly earned a reputation as a vulgarian and verbal bomb-thrower. In his first formal speech to the Senate, he referred to Grover Cleveland (a fellow Democrat) as a “besotted tyrant” and charged that the American economy was under the control of Baron Edmund de Rothschild -- the “London Jew,” Tillman called him. (Eugene Debs, then a railroad union organizer and Populist supporter, wrote to praise the speech.) Over time, as he gained seniority and became chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, Tillman grew more civil in his rhetoric and more constructive in his congressional tactics. (I’m reminded inevitably of Jesse Helms, a once-strident lawmaker who has mellowed somewhat after chairing the Foreign Relations Committee.) Some of the rhetoric from the 1918 memorial service:
A sweet sentiment, but it's a real truth-stretcher. In fact, the Senate censured Tillman in 1902 after he punched his fellow South Carolina senator, John L. McLaurin, in the nose. Tillman had accused McLaurin of corruption. McLaurin, in turn, called Tillman a liar. Tillman rushed across the chamber and delivered a blow to McLaurin. Tillman wound up having his own nose bloodied after McLaurin struck back.
The part about looking to the “welfare of our common country” isn’t quite buttressed by the facts. At the 1896 Democratic national convention (at which Tillman briefly entertained hopes of winning the presidential nomination), the South Carolinian was met with angry hissing throughout his speech as he argued, in biting rhetoric, that the South and West were being exploited by the Northeast. (William Jennings Bryan would make the same point, but more palatably, in his famous "cross of gold" address at the same gathering.)
Here is how Tillman expressed his philosophy on race relations in a speech from March 23, 1900: “We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.” Tillman, in fact, stood out as an acid-tongued promoter of white supremacy, both in his public statements in Washington and on the speaking circuit. In fact, he earned major sums by traveling the country and speaking on racial questions in speeches or debates. During a visit to Madison, Wis., for example, he and his wife were given a tour of the University of Wisconsin campus. Tillman later wrote that his speech that night had been “warmly applauded” by many in the audience, which was estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000. When an integrated audience in Denver heckled his white supremacist rhetoric in a speech and called out “Booker Washington” in response, he answered this way: “Booker Washington owes his preeminence over his fellow negroes entirely to the proportion of white blood in his veins.” When President Theodore Roosevelt hosted Booker T. Washington at the White House, Tillman erupted in fury, saying such a development would “necessitate our killing a thousand” blacks in the South “before they learn their place again.” Another Tillman observation: “The negro must remain subordinate or be exterminated.”
Stephen Kantrowitz. offers a differing view in his recent biography, “Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy”: “Ben Tillman’s legacy cannot include the Clemson that now exists, an integrated and coeducational institution ... He would have torn down his beloved ‘farmer’s college’ brick by brick before he would have allowed it to foster a world where neither sex nor race defined the limits of a person’s attainments.”
It was ironic in one sense that Lodge would offer such praise, since Lodge had spearheaded the push for a so-called “force bill” in the post-Reconstruction era to use federal power to coerce Southern states into respecting the civil rights of blacks. The bill was stymied in the Senate. Because of Lodge's promotion of the force bill, his name became anathema to many Southern supporters of white supremacy. A final note: Ben Tillman’s family attorney was an Edgefield, S.C., lawyer named J. William Thurmond. He was Strom Thurmond’s father. Sunday, November 3
The forgotten critics of globalization Supporters of the free market tend to hold up slogan-shouting green-politics marchers as the key opponents of globalization -- as the most fervent foes, that is, of the cross-border spread of capitalism and the materialism and self-fixation associated with it. But globalization is opposed, or at least criticized, by a significant segment of the Western public whose views often receive scant attention from mainstream boosters of globalization. Who are these critics? Religious traditionalists, among them Pope John Paul II, who express concern that globalization is pushing people toward adopting a secular social order. In their view, the more that globalization extends its reach, the more religious believers will find their vital spiritual guideposts placed under threat. A recent article in First Things by Australian sociologist Michael Casey gave voice to that point of view:
Casey approvingly cites an essay by political theorist John Gray in the New Statesman, in which Gray wrote:
Casey then writes, using various quotes from Gray:
The appropriate goal, Casey argues, isn’t to block globalization per se but to channel and modulate it so as to accommodate the needs of believers. Especially significant is the collision between Islam and globalization. Casey writes: “The profound impact that Islam has had on forming the culture, character, and society of the countries it dominates, and particularly in the Middle East, represents a critical obstacle to globalization.” Islam, Casey argues, “will have to rediscover some of the intellectual suppleness that produced the scientific and cultural greatness of the period that fell between the ninth and fifteenth centuries.” It will also need to “encourage the development of clear boundaries between the public and private domains.” What to make of these arguments? It should hardly be a surprise that religious traditionalists would express concern about globalization. The spread of free markets and Western-style individualism does tend to promote enthusiasms (for Hollywood movies, for Britney Spears, for relaxed attitudes toward premarital sex) at odds with conservative value systems. It’s unclear to me what tools are available to reshape the globalizing process into a form more acceptable to religious-minded critics. Casey’s article talks about safeguarding “intermediary groups and bodies,” meaning (I suppose) entities such as churches or local institutions involved in the traditional social life of Third World villages. His goal is fine. But how one specifically would modulate the forces of globalization to minimize the effects on such institutions isn’t clear to me. (Casey, I realize, would respond that the key point isn’t the difficulty involved; it’s that the task ought to be attempted because it is the right thing to do.) As for Islam, it has obviously fallen far short, thus far, in adopting free-market thinking (and so achieving the dynamism and economic benefits that often accrue as a result). Yes, as Casey says, a revival of “intellectual suppleness” in Islamic societies would be welcome, as would be the achieving of a productive separation between the public and private spheres. Maybe, as some enthusiasts claim, a U.S. invasion of Iraq might provide just the shock wave needed to send countries throughout the Muslim-Arab world tumbling toward democratic and economic reform. At the moment, though, I’m not optimistic about that possibility. Look who’s influencing Cheney’s thinking I’ll risk embarrassing myself by linking tardily to something that may already have received considerable notice in parts of the blogosphere. (I see that the blog Yalepundits, for example, has already mentioned it.) The Washington Post reports that Dick Cheney is cheering a new book by an NRO essayist widely popular in warblogger circles:
The point isn’t to recommend a reckless embrace of military force. Rather, it is to recognize that in a world where radical forces have demonstrated their willingness to use catastrophic terrorism, a military response -- war -- may well be the only effective response. Saturday, November 2
What Mother really thinks about her The newspaper I work for, the Omaha World-Herald, reported today that the top-rated syndicated television last year was “Crossing Over." That's the program, of course, in which "psychic medium" John Edward queries audience members in rapid-fire fashion as part of his shtick about communicating with the dead (those who have “crossed over”). When I’ve seen the show, I’ve found it utterly fascinating -- for about 10 minutes. Then I grow bored and change the channel. John Edward is in Omaha this weekend and will hold a sold-out session on Sunday at the Civic Auditorium downtown. A delicious excerpt from today’s World-Herald article about Edward:
Sounds about right to me. But a sizeable chunk of the national TV audience appears to care less about his point. Talking their language This Tuesday, Nov. 5, will be notable not just because it’s election day but also because it will mark an interesting anniversary in Nebraska. In 1957, a Nebraskan named Reinhold Schmidt claimed that on Nov. 5 of that year, he had witnessed a flying saucer land beside the state’s beloved west-to-east waterway, the Platte River. Schmidt said he had boarded the ship and conversed with its crew -- who happened to speak a language he knew. The aliens, he said, spoke in “high German.” Despite criticism from skeptics, Schmidt went on to gain a measure of notoriety as a self-promoting contactee of aliens. He claimed he had had numerous encounters with German-speaking space travelers -- who hailed from Saturn, no less. In 1961, Schmidt was convicted in Oakland, Calif., and sentenced to prison on charges of a confidence crime. Hey, this site covers all the bases. A pacifist no more “I’m just not as inclined to believe people when they say that terrorism is somehow the voice of the voiceless. I think that some people become terrorists because they’re jerks and brutes and murderers.” That’s NPR host Scott Simon talking. Simon, whose vivid personality makes “Weekend Edition Saturday” such a treat, was raised a Quaker and has long embraced the ideals of pacifism. But in recent years he has moved away from supporting a rigid opposition to military action. In a Q&A in the new edition of Time Out New York (I get the print copy at home; I couldn’t find the interview online tonight), Simon talks about his change of mind:
In checking whether I was correct in thinking that Simon is a Quaker, I ran across a speech he delivered on Sept. 25, 2001, in which he voiced similar sentiments. Among the well-honed thoughts he expressed:
Well-put, and right on the mark Poetry time Just time for a quick item for now. This is my first chance to blog this weekend. Since I've written in the past about poltics and poetry (here and here), I'll mention this short piece from the Washington Post by Mike Pesca, a producer at NPR:
BY THE WAY: I'll have a long post soon about another senatorial memorial service that some may find of interest. Friday, November 1
Re-energizing Blogging is on a brief hiatus here until Friday night. Two items that caught my interest at other sites: Power Line's latest on the Senate race in Minnesota (apparently it's not over, Republicans) and Max Sawicky's take on the Wellstone memorial service (unlike myself and other rantin' bloggers, Max didn't have a problem with the event's partisan tone). Thursday, October 31
Everything must bow to politics Interesting take on the Wellstone memorial service by Eric Johnson of the blog Catholic Light (he titles his post "Sen. Wellstone, campaign prop"):
As I've told several friends by e-mail, the Wellstone memorial service illustrated something I saw time and again in covering political campaigns in the '80s and '90s (including the two national political conventions in 1988): the frequent inability of political activists (regardless of party, from my experience) to put things in proper perspective, not least during campaign season. (My thanks to a good friend who e-mailed me the link to Johnson's post over lunch.) UPDATE: My friend e-mails a response to my observation:
He's right. I can't think of an example where religious conservatives exploited a memorial service in such a way. Secular liberals do open themselves up to vulnerability on this score. At the same time, though, over the years I've personally seen Republican/conservative activists commit all sorts of gross misjudgments for the sake of promoting their cause. (The same goes for Democrats.) And some fundamentalist preachers, like some liberal ones, have come in for legitimate criticism for using the pulpit as a political propaganda vehicle, deliberately entangling the sacred with the temporal. The value of 'niche blogging' South Carolinian bloggers Chris Scott (of The Insecure Egotist) and Wyeth Ruthven (of The Wyeth Wire) have disagreed in the past on the nature of debate in the blogosphere. The two have moved their debate/discussion into an e-mail exchange between themselves. Chris excerpts some of their thoughts at his site. (You'll have to scroll down a bit to the post "Wyeth responds.") For example, Wyeth writes:
Check out the whole post. It's worthwhile stuff. Europe sets an example If only, it’s said, America were more like Europe. Then, this country would move its foreign policy away from cynicism and begin to deal with other nations on the basis of genuine respect. What’s more, the U.S. government would finally end its shameful habit of selfishly refusing to live up to its international commitments. But wait a minute -- look at the latest edition of The Economist. European governments, it turns out, aren’t living up to those noble standards either. At least they aren’t when it comes to the agreement governing the EU’s regime for the common currency, the euro. EU members don’t trust each other when it comes to economic policy, The Economist reports. And now a growing number of them are set to violate the agreement’s requirement that national debt be no more than 3 percent of gross domestic output. Reports The Economist:
Simply shocking. Who would have imagined that Europeans would be capable of such a lack of open-heartedness, not to mention a penchant for rule-breaking! After all, European officials and diplomats haven’t hesitated to lecture this country about how it should stop being so cynical toward other nations and fixated on its own interests. When Gerhard Schroeder stands up for his country's interests, he's called a political pragmatist. When Jacques Chirac does the same for his country, he's calmly regarded as just another French chauvinist. But when George W. does it, he's derided as an out-of-control cowboy. Perhaps Europeans should look to their own actions before delivering any more lectures about unacceptable U.S. behavior. The gulf between their actions and ours may not be as great as commonly thought. Wednesday, October 30
History and the crusade against Hitler Independent scholar Michael Beschloss has a new book out titled “The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945.” He talked about it today with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.” The Amazon.com site for the Beschloss book says it doesn’t break any new ground but provides a readable account of the topic. Beschloss’ observations about the Morgenthau plan (which would have converted postwar Germany into a deindustrialized society) covered quite familiar ground, for example. Nonetheless, Beschloss is an articulate, interesting fellow, and the “Fresh Air” interview had some fascinating nuggets:
Bush has a strategy; what about his critics? I’ll cite part of John Leo’s latest column, then follow up with a point of my own:
From now on, the United States will need to answer a crucial question: What is the most appropriate response to the terrorist threat? Bush’s strategy is open to criticism on many fronts, but at least he has an actual policy that can be analyzed and debated. But what is the strategy of the hard-left academic/activist community on this issue? Aside from negativism (don’t attack Iraq, don’t rely on military responses, don’t have Ashcroft types in charge of prosecution policy), the outlines of a larger, coherent response aren’t readily discernible. Such an approach falls far short of what's needed. To deserve intellectual respect, the hard left’s response has to consist of more than saying “no,” reviving '60s anti-war street threater and luxuriating in a reflexive disdain for the commander-in-chief. A voice to be appreciated What may well be the most pungent and intelligent satire on race relations in America is a little-known book that appeared 70 years ago. The novel is “Black No More,” by George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977), an accomplished black journalist who was widely published in U.S. newspapers and magazines. Schuyler’s work appeared in the American Mercury (H.L. Mencken, the magazine’s best-known writer, showered praise on him) as well as in The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP. Schuyler was a well-traveled reporter, editor and editorialist with the weekly Pittsburgh Courier, considered the country’s leading black newspaper. Over the years, he moved steadily to the political right. By the 1960s, Schuyler was an enthusiastic Goldwater Republican. The set-up for “Black No More,” published in 1931, is as hilarious as it is fascinating: An inventor named Dr. Junius Crookman creates a device that can transform “Negroes” into Caucasians. Residents of Harlem rush to undergo the change, and American society is thrown for a loop. The hero, Max Disher, changes his skin color from black to white in order to win the love of a white women. He also finds that he must turn his back on blacks and make his way as a member of the dominant white culture. Over the course of the story, the profound investment that various organizations and intellectuals have in the racial status quo is revealed: On the one side stand the white supremacist yahoos such as the “Knights of Nordica” and the “Anglo-Saxon Association of America.” On the other are black cultural figures such as “Santop Licorice” (Marcus Garvey), “Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard” (W.E.B. Du Bois) and “Madam Sisseretta Blandish (Madam C.J. Walker). Schuyler uses the novel to explore the themes of miscegenation and racial identity, and he pokes fun at black nationalism as well as white supremacy. Writer Matthew Frye Jacobson summarizes the rest of the story:
In early 2001, National Review Online offered a fine look at Schuyler’s career. Another worthwhile analysis of his legacy is found here. The reader reviews at the Amazon.com site for “Black No More” are especially interesting -- even liberals applaud the book. “Black No More” is a worthy addition to one’s library, regardless of one’s race or political ideology. A notable achievement, in several respects. Tuesday, October 29
A single voice for Europe, eh I see from Don Sensing’s blog that the commission headed by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has released its proposed new constitution for the EU. George Will had a delicious suggestion this week about an appropriate consequence that should flow from the drive for European unity:
George Will seems to be loosening up. His EU/Ohio line was downright Lileks-like. Reading what the Europeans are saying OK, the EU has gotten serious in pursuing monetary union. But here’s an interesting question: How long did it take the United States to achieve true monetary union across the breadth of this country? The Dutch blogger Dilacerator provides the answer in this post. Another European blogger worthy of note (if you regard the Brits, that is, as Europeans) is The Lincoln Plawg, who assembled a blistering and sharply composed critique of a recent Foreign Policy piece by the august diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis. Mystery solved For anyone who read my "ice in one's veins" post and wondered how my visit to donate blood platelets went today: It was excellent. The Red Cross has put in new TVs with individualized VCRs, so the next time I donate, I can watch a movie of my own preference. (I would welcome suggestions as far as releases from the last few years; I don't catch many new flicks these days.) During my stay, I watched the History Channel and caught an episode of "In Search Of." It was one of those typically well-produced installments with that funky background music. Highly informative, as usual: Today, Leonard Nimoy unraveled the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. I'm not sure I understood the explanation, though. Libertarianism and war The site for Reason magazine has an online debate this week between Brink Lindsey and John Mueller on whether libertarians should support military assertiveness in response to terrorism. Brink, of course, has ably argued at his weblog that libertarianism is compatible with a forceful response in the wake of 9/11. Here is his opening essay in the Reason debate. He makes the case for invading Iraq. Our end-time-seeking president (so it’s claimed) Legitimate arguments can certainly be made against an invasion of Iraq. One could argue, for example, that the realistic chances of establishing a functioning “democracy” in Iraq are small, not least in light of the less-than-impressive behavior of the opposition forces in exile. Or that we would be setting ourselves up for an extended occupation, perhaps as tortured as the French experience in Algeria in the ’50s. Or that nobody really knows what the fallout would be in the Muslim-Arab world in the face of Iraqi civilian casualties. Each of those arguments can be disputed, but the point is that each of them is serious and worthy of consideration. The same, however, cannot be said for a particularly ludicrous claim being made of late: that Bush administration officials are seeking an invasion of Iraq in order to placate the religious right and its obsession with biblical end-time prophecy. Evangelical Christians, it is correctly pointed out, have long pushed for closer U.S.-Israeli ties and are a powerful force in influencing how Republican administrations approach issues such as abortion in the foreign policy arena. But some critics of Bush want to take things much further, into outright nonsense, by portraying the invasion policy as guided less by strategy and tactics than by the books of Daniel and Revelation. Maureen Dowd raised the topic in a recent column (whose frivolities I refuse to quote). Tom Teepen, an Atlanta-based columnist who usually makes an articulate case for traditional liberal positions on national issues, raised the end-time topic the other day, writing, “The long-standing support of Israel among American fundamentalist Christians is curdling in some quarters into an unthinking religious romanticism that moons for a general Middle East war, and the bigger the better.” Teepen pointed out how various speakers (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Franklin Graham) had all made public statements critical of Islam. He then concluded:"Well beyond the notice of much foreign-affairs reporting but notorious throughout the Muslim world, this yearning for Armageddon and its concurrent contempt for Islam and antagonism to peace-making are cutting off U.S. policy options and undercutting U.S. credibility." This supposed Rummy-Rapture connection was made most forcefully on a listserv to which I belong. A listserv member wrote:
I apologize for quoting an example of such woeful eccentricity, but as ridiculous as it is, it needs to be noted. How to respond to such claims? I know -- they don’t deserve a response. But I can’t help myself. Here goes. The editorial board for The National Interest, a foreign policy journal, includes prominent neoconservative thinkers including Richard Perle, Midge Dector and Charles Krauthammer. In the many years I have read the journal, I have never seen it feature a single article that analyzed Middle East policy through the prism of end-time prophecy and biblical "code words." To people like Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, the sound analysis of international affairs relies on intellectual touchstones such as "national interest" and "realism," not "Gog" and "Magog." Boosters of the end-time conspiracy theory have yet to present a single bit of proof that Iraq policy has been shaped at any point by Revelations rather than realpolitik. Instead, they’re content to whisper suspiciously about the fact that a Bush speechwriter, Carl Gerson, attended Wheaton College, a traditionalist Christian school, and that after 9/11, Bush delivered a speech in which he stated, “God's signs are not always the ones we look for.” That quote might sound like a pretty convincing indication of end-time belief -- until one understands the context of Bush’s remarks. He was speaking at Washington National Cathedral during a “National Day of Prayer” service for the victims of 9/11. It’s hardly a surprise that Bush would refer to God’s “signs” in such a gathering -- and it’s a good bet he wasn’t the only speaker at the event to comment on God and his intentions. I suppose this post is more of a waste of time than just about anything I‘ve submitted for the blog world’s consideration. But some foolishness has recently been thrown in my face on this issue, and I felt obligated to respond. OK, enough of that. Let’s move on to real issues. Ice in one's veins That's the feeling I'll have later today, when I donate blood platelets. The procedure at the Red Cross takes around two hours, and the blood that is circulated back into one's body isn't quite up to normal temperature. The result is that the body becomes chilled. So, the nurses wind up wrapping me in hot towels as I watch the History Channel on the TV screen above my head. I donate platelets at mid-afternoon about once every six weeks. I highly recommend it for anyone who is physically able and has the time to donate. Platelet donations serve an important medical need. I'm lucky to have an employer that allows me the ability to regularly make such a contribution. Sunday, October 27
The EU hobbles along The euro, I suppose, will somehow muddle through over the long term. But the strains on the EU’s structural arrangements for the currency are really beginning to show. As part of the “stability pact” that euro members agreed to in order to create the currency, governments pledged to keep their national debt below 3 percent of GDP. Germany recently announced it intends to violate that pledge in the face of continuing recession. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank is struggling, not surprisingly, with its obligation to set a uniform interest rate that will somehow be appropriate for the widely varying circumstances of the various EU economies. The challenge will become only more complicated once new members are admitted to the EU as part of its inevitable eastward expansion. Economist David Malpass offered cogent observations in National Review Online, arguing, among other things, that the focus on the debt threshold is misguided:
It’s a sound analysis. But, realistically, there seems small chance that EU members would respond to recession by adopting “sweeping labor reform” and “less government” -- measures widely associated in Europe with the supposed cruelties of American capitalism. Egypt and anti-Semitism No single document, with the arguable exception of Mein Kampf, has brought more misery to the Jewish people than a nasty screed known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, as most visitors to this site probably already know, were a concoction of rabid anti-Semitic conspiracy theories peddled by Russia’s czarist regime just over a century ago and circulated ever since by Jew-haters the world over. It is old news in the blogosphere by now, but Egyptian state television is about to broadcast, with great fanfare, a 30-part series based on the Protocols. The broadcast, in the country long hailed as the leading light of Islamic culture, will serve as an irrefutable advertisement of the sickness at work within the Muslim-Arab world. As described in the Jerusalem Post, the series “will be broadcast during the first half of Ramadan, Islam's holiest month and traditionally prime time for serialized television specials.” Ramadan begins next month. Here is how the historian Howard Sachar summed up the historical background of the Protocols in his book “The Course of Modern Jewish History”:
As if wasn't outrageous enough that Egypt is about to show the mini-series, a committee appointed by the country's information minister reviewed the script -- and had the audacity to declare it wasn't anti-Semitic. The incorporation of ludicrous anti-Semitic slanders into accounts of Egyptian history has an extremely long pedigree, as Paul Johnson explained in his book “A History of the Jews”:
And so, with the new Egyptian TV series on the Protocols, the lies of anti-Semitism march into a new century. The ancient anti-Semite Manetho surely would be delighted. Egyptians ought to be ashamed that such ignorance is about to be displayed so rapturously in their country. That they are not should give Americans great pause about the depths of prejudice and gullibility in the Muslim-Arab world. |
