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This is what Wikipedia’s This Day in History page told me yesterday afternoon when I looked at January 31, hoping to find some grist for my blogging mill:
1876 - The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations.
Which made me sit up and take notice. I thought to myself: “Self, how do you not know about this?” So I started digging. And I found nothing. Weird. I know a bit about Native American history. And the years surrounding the Civil War and Reconstruction are my specialty. I’ve got all the relevant books in my office and everything. But still: nothing. That would have been the right time to move on. Not me, though, I’m too stubborn dedicated to high-quality blogging.
So I walked down the hall and asked my colleague, Louis Warren, who knows more about Western and Native American history than I do, if he had ever heard that the federal government ordered “all Native Americans to move into reservations” on January 31, 1876. “Nope,” he said. And then, after thinking for a minute, he added: “I bet that had something to do with the Sioux.” My reply? “Oh. Right. Probably.” At the same time, I thought to myself: “Self, why are you so stupid? 1876 + Indians = Little Bighorn. Always and evermore. Self, you’re a fool.”
If you look here you will see me proposing a hundred-or-so-year interpretive scheme for American political history at op-ed size. As I tell my graduate students roughly once a week, all interpretive schemes must fail to account for everything; the question of their success is necessarily therefore one of degree. And interpretive schemes put at a length of 1000 words will by that fact alone be more likely to account for less. Still, they take less time to read. So there it is to poke holes in, if it pleases you to do so.
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Click here for genius. Then, remember to thank Urbino for sharing this with us. Ask yourself: would you have been that generous? If the answer is no, you’re not doing enough for this blog. Regardless: “For you.”
“America still works,” is the headline on Michael Lind’s cover story for the UK Prospect. Okay, dumb hed, but writers don’t choose their own heds, people. The lede tells us the state of the union is strong: “the US will remain first among equals for generations to come, even in a multipolar world with several great powers.” Huh, okay. So, how do we know that? Well, the first point Lind makes is, “there isn’t going to be a non-white majority in the US in the 21st century. And probably not in the 22nd or 23rd, either.” Because, it turns out, Hispanics are really white.
I don’t think Lind means that if there were going to be a non-white majority, that we could consider that America no longer still works, or that it would no longer be a great power. Does he?
What with histories of cod, salt, coffee, sugar, and other food substances currently one of the many minifads in the profession, this is a film whose time has come. Or so think a number of our colleagues, including Alan M. Taylor (No, not Alan S. Taylor. It’s very confusing around here; don’t even ask me about the two Ari Kelmans.) who got it from Andrew Sullivan.
I confess it took me too long to figure out what I was watching. If you need a cheat sheet, it’s here.
Also <insert strong-stomach comment here>.
Also also: if it doesn’t show up immediately below, click this link to go there.
Surely you know by now that John Edwards is suspending his campaign. As to the inevitable question, no, I have no thoughts on what this means for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. For the moment at least, I don’t really care. Because I just read this lovely post by Ezra Klein, in which the following graf appears:
And, finally, a word on Elizabeth Edwards. The first time I came to Washington as an adult, I came because she invited me. An avid blog reader, Elizabeth asked a handful of bloggers to come have dinner at their home in Georgetown. I’d just been hired by the Prospect, but wouldn’t start for months yet, and so imagined this a good opportunity to visit my new city. I remember standing on their porch, ringing the doorbell only to have John Edwards answer. I remember looking behind him, to the older women with short, spiky grey hair — Elizabeth, after a round of chemo. I remember John Edwards trying to have us convince her that her hair looked wonderful the way it was, and she needn’t color it. I remember the evident bond, and deep affection, their interactions displayed. But more than that, I remember how impressive she was, how quick and articulate and argumentative. It was her, not him, who made the biggest impression on me. He was the politician, but of the two, she was the political thinker, the one who devoured commentary and information, the one who conceived of their campaign as a product of the contemporary progressive moment.
Ezra is young. And he is gifted. And I despise him for both of those traits. (I also don’t know why I insist on calling him “Ezra,” as though we’re friends.) Beyond that, he’s a talented writer and thinker. Above all, he’s very sincere. Which is to say, although he’s well schooled in irony — like everyone else these days — he’s unafraid to write something heartfelt, even sappy. Like the above.
And on the day that John Edwards is leaving the national stage — to spend much more time with his family, I hope — sincerity is the way to go. I never supported Edwards in the primaries. Ahough I admired his policies, I was haunted by his 2004 debate with Dick Cheney. But I know that he made this a better race. And Ezra has nicely encapsulated why I’m going to miss John and Elizabeth Edwards so much. Because they, like Ezra, are unafraid to be sincere. And even a bit sappy. In an age of deep cynicism, such displays of public courage move me.
(Update: I should have linked to this, this, and this in the above post. They talk about Edwards’s impact on the race. And now that I’ve wiped my eyes, I’m already back to wondering if Edwards is going to endorse Hillary or Obama. And if such an endorsement will mean anything. Sick. And twisted. That’s what I am.)
(Update II: Eric, who just dropped by my office, insists that I should have said what follows in my original post. So I will. The thing that so captivated me about the Edwardses was their presence on the campaign trail at all. I hope that Elizabeth Edwards is going to live for many, many more years. But my understanding is that she may not. And so, every time I saw her being interviewed, or her husband giving a stump speech, I found myself thinking: how much time do they have left? And what about their kids? In the end, I was left with one of two conclusions: Either the Edwards candidacy was among the most self-indulgent episodes in American political history. Or it was among the most selfless. I believe that the latter was true. I think that John and Elizabeth Edwards genuinely care about this nation and want to make it better. And they devote themselves to that goal even though they might have very little time left together as a family. So now I’m starting to cry again just thinking about it. Thanks, Eric. You didn’t even leave me any tissues. Jerk.)
(Update III: I’ve been hoping, ever since I watched Edwards give his wonderful concession speech after the Iowa caucuses, that he’d end up as Obama’s running mate. Is there someone here who can make this happen?)
I did a Steve Martin singalong bit with a banjo in college once. It worked beautifully, like a piece of machinery — because that’s what it was — all you had to do was master Martin’s precision timing and physical control. Which, it turned out, is what Martin did too: an ode to craftsmanship.
On this day in 1835, Richard Lawrence tried to gun down Andrew Jackson in the Capitol building, the first presidential assassination attempt in American history. And while this is clearly a job for my co-blogger, who cultivates his image as “Assassination Boy*,” I do have a few thoughts on the subject.
On this day in 1861, Congress admitted Kansas to the Union as a free state, ending one part of a bloody struggle that ultimately would lead the nation to war.
The roots of the Kansas dispute ran back to 1853, when Senator Stephen Douglas, a Democrat from Illinois, sponsored legislation to organize much of the land left over from the Louisiana Purchase into the Nebraska Territory. There was a catch: the area in question sat north of the 36-30 line. Meaning that, based on the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it would be free soil. Southerners, jealously guarding the balance of power in Congress, blocked Douglas’s bill. They informed Douglas that if he wanted his Territory, he would have to end the ban on slavery there.
Douglas understood the implications of their request. But he nonetheless organized a new bill, in 1854, repealing the prohibition on slavery north of the 36-30 line and introducing two territories: Kansas and Nebraska. Although Northern legislators in both parties were appalled by this gambit, the bill passed. Some Northern Democrats, despite their misgivings, voted with Douglas. And Southern Whigs broke ranks with their party to insure the spread of slavery into new territory. Truman Smith, a Connecticut Whig who resigned from the Senate after Douglas’s legislation passed, said: “The Whig Party has been killed off effectually by that Nebraska business.” He was right. The Whigs never recovered, sacrificed upon the altar of slave power.
On this day in 1963,1 Robert Frost died at the age of 88. You might think of him as Mr. New England, which is fair enough, but he was named for Robert E. Lee and born in San Francisco — North, South, and West, he contained within him all the sections and tried to speak for the nation.
And he wrote a great poem about America’s idea of the West, which he recited from memory at Kennedy’s inaugural:
The Gift Outright
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
It’s much better than the poem he had written for the occasion, which he couldn’t read because of the light and the wind.2 So let us give thanks for inclement weather.
Also not really a spoiler, but under the fold, just in case.
At least on the Democratic side. So don’t come to me with numbers. And no, I don’t want the voters of Florida disfranchised. But their primary doesn’t count. Got a problem with it? Take it up with the Democratic Party. In the meantime, I’m plugging my ears and focusing my attention on Super Tuesday. That is all.
(Update: Yglesias takes the gloves off. Actually they’ve been off for the past three days. Josh Marshall remains neutral, cooly surveying the scene.)
Not really a Wire spoiler — just a casting note — but I’ll put it below the fold in case you’re super-sensitive.
Pitch-perfect Bush State of the Union, right? Weird hostility to camera, like cornered ferret on meth?** Check. Apparent disregard for circumstances of vast majority of Americans? Check. Treating English language like ferret chew-toy? Check. Disjuncture between facial expressions and content of speech? Check. Policy prescriptions seemingly delivered to him by Xenu-vasal Tom Cruise.*** Totally. In sum, hilarious disengagement from the basic realities of the nation he leads?**** Sigh.
So what to do after watching something so horrid and sad as that? Well, I went to a party with a bunch of historians. Because historians like to party. The only problem? Keeping the papparazzi away. Natch. Anyway, after walking the red carpet and dealing with adoring fans, I asked my colleagues: has the state of the union ever been worse?
And here’s what we decided. Yes, there have been darker moments for the nation. Three of them. First, 1814, at the low ebb of the War of 1812, around the time the British sacked Washington. Second, the spring and early summer of 1863, when the Union couldn’t find a general to deal with Robert E. Lee’s treasonous hijinks. And third, 1933, before FDR’s New Deal began to alleviate the worst effects of the Depression.
So, that’s three times in more than two centuries that things have looked worse for the United States than they do right now. Thanks, President Bush. You totally rock out.
* Obviously, I’ve deployed the ever-popular double-entendre gambit: the speech sucked and so does the actual state of the union. Clever! But really: that was one horrible speech. And also: things aren’t so great right now in the US of A.
** Sorry ferrets, I know I shouldn’t hate on you like this. But Rudy! made me do it.
*** I’m so going to Mars on a rocket fashioned from the skulls of Islamic extremists and fueled by twigs from Bush’s Crawford “ranch.” I can’t wait.
**** Actually, not very funny at all. Do not watch in search of belly laughs. Or even chuckles. Probably not the place to go for giggles or chortles. Hell, just don’t watch unless you want to become terribly, terribly sad. For a long time.
You know Nobel-winner Toni Morrison, “who once dubbed Bill Clinton the ‘first black president,’” endorsed Barack Obama. I was recently reading an item by Greil Marcus (not online) in which he pointed out that Chris Rock said it first. And you know what? the Internet says Greil Marcus is correct: Chris Rock, Saturday Night Live, November 2, 1996; Toni Morrison, The New Yorker, October 1998.
On January 28, 1916, Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court, thus sparking an exceedingly nasty confirmation fight. Wilson had to know it was coming — the year before he had supported Brandeis for membership in the Cosmos Club, over opposition complaining of Brandeis “that he is a reformer for revenue only; that he is a Jew; and that he would be a disturbing element in any club of gentlemen.”
Brandeis qualified as a reformer, no doubt: he had come to national attention by putting social-scientific data — largely assembled by his sister-in-law and employer in the case, Josephine Goldmark — before the court in Muller v. Oregon. The tactic gave the Court a way to get around the constipated reading of the Fourteenth Amendment it had been using since it started gutting Reconstruction — if the facts now known differed from the assumptions underlying previous rulings, one could overturn them. It is the tactic that underlies Brown v. Board, among other cases.
Moreover Brandeis had written Other People’s Money, which cast doubt on the social utility of very rich people, among other sins, and advised Wilson during the 1912 campaign.
Here’s an interesting post from Jeremy, at Progressive Historians, who’s wrestling with several issues, including the lack of professional rewards for scholarly bloggers.
There’s a lot going on in Jeremy’s post. But it pivots on the provocative question of how blog comments differ from peer review. After writing up a response to that, and some of his other points, I decided that my arguments were cramped — very old media — and curmudgeonly. So, I’ll pass his post along without further comment and hope to generate a discussion about the point of history blogging, professional rewards for scholarly blogging more generally, and the nature of peer review.
Inspired by the discussion to this post, and by Kieran Healy’s evolving workflow post, I pose some questions with my tale of woe about computers and research workflow for historians.
Preambulatory wistful open source note
I learned Emacs first, many years ago, and can still get back into its groove after a few days of use. But historians wishing to geek out in this wise face two problems: (1) publishers want a .doc document at deadline and (2) even with all manner of wonderful LaTeX tools, it’s still profoundly difficult to do historian-style foot- or end-notes. (But see Federico Garcia’s opcit.sty.)
I probably would have weathered (2) and indeed I hacked up opcit to do what I wanted, but I foundered on (1). So I went slinking back to the commercial apps.
In this fallen age
Friends, the truth is out.
Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as “the black candidate,” a tag that could hurt him outside the South.
I know I’m only voting for Obama because I’m black.
I have a theory. It’s half-baked — at best. It’s ill-informed. And, I suspect, it’s not particularly novel. Intrigued? Not really? Oh. Well. That’s understandable. But here it is anyway: the Clintons are most effective when they have aggressive enemies. When they’re not playing offense, in other words, but have their backs to the wall. If I’m right about this, Barack Obama is pretty clearly the wrong opponent for them.
Mark Schmitt asks,
What sort of guide would most help the nerdy boys and girls of 2009 understand and appreciate American politics? It is likely to be something altogether different from The Almanac of American Politics.
I have, as Matt W was gracious enough to point out, done my share of Congressional history. And the answer to Schmitt’s question is, of course, teh Internets: using the Congressional Biographical Directory, the House history site and the Senate history site, there’s not much you can’t figure out. If you’re minimally competent with a spreadsheet program, you can quickly create entire rosters of who’s in a given Congressional session. Pair that with information like what you get from Keith Poole, and you’re on your way to Congressional nerdtopia. No, don’t thank me.
But lordy, did Barone really write this book?
In 2004, he authored an entire book, Hard and Soft America, in which various books, ideas, policies, and politicians are classified as either “Hard” (good) or “Soft” (bad). The world of Theodore Dreiser’s novels is admirably Hard, John Dewey’s theories of education are Soft. Social Security: Soft. Rudy Giuliani: Hard. Intellectuals: Soft. Most baby boomers: Soft. But George W. Bush: “a consistent advocate of Hardness.” And the ultimate in Hardness: “our amazing victories in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Why yes, he did. How did I miss that particular effusion? Let us consult our verities: ah yes, “masculinity in crisis.” Heavens.
Until now, I’ve done my very best not to pass judgement on Hillary Clinton. And I’m still trying. I really (strain) am. But it’s getting harder every day.
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On this day in 1787, Daniel Shays, a farmer and veteran of the Revolutionary War, led a ragtag* band of perhaps 1,500 men toward the federal armory at Springfield, Massachusetts. Shays hoped to seize the weapons stored there and then march to Boston, where he and his men would topple the state government.
What became known as Shays’s Rebellion had begun the previous spring, when debt-ridden farmers in western Massachusetts, fearing they would lose their land, thwarted creditors’ lawsuits by closing the courts. Such actions echoed events that had taken place on the road to Independence, especially the popular response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. But this time, Shays and men like him struggled against their compatriots, rather than the British. The Massachusetts farmers believed their fight would determine the legacy of the Revolution.
The present administration has fostered a zeal for amateurism whose roots run deep in our cultural history, going back at least to the Jacksonian period. I don’t like to mention this, because it gives amateurs a bad name. But it’s surely true; any political figure who works that anti-modern seam gets points just for sticking a thumb in the eye of experts, those cautious, green-eyeshade types who spoil all our fun. Without that eagerness to shrug off the thoughtful, where would John Yoo be?
John Yoo likes to quote from Clausewitz these days. But does he really understand him? I don’t think so. The passage cited here, the most clichéd lines of a thoughtful but incomplete masterwork, reveals Yoo’s passion for the good sound bite and indifference to the subtleties of the texts he engages. Of course, if you’ve actually read Clausewitz, you know that this passage is crafted in a typically early nineteenth century dialectical style. It does not reflect Clausewitz’s thinking, but rather that of a straw man. Clausewitz presents his readers with an argument. One man contends that war is a “mere continuation” (“bloße Fortsetzung”) of politics, while a second says that it is “nothing more than a wrestling match.” But the synthesis view that Clausewitz articulates, and which presents the pearl in the heart of On War is far more subtle and complex. War is, he says, a dynamic and inherently unstable interaction of forces of violent emotion, chance and rational planning–his ominous trinity–which is paralleled by another trinity, namely, the people, the army and the leadership. Clausewitz stresses the imperative role played by discipline and training, clear rules, and careful planning towards a clearly conceived objective. Most military leaders in the United States today would not give the Bush Administration a passing grade on any of the key Clausewitz criteria…. Indeed, Yoo’s attitudes towards traditional military rules can be summarized in a single word: contempt. That’s why whenever law of armed conflict issues came up, he never consulted the experts at the Defense Department, he coped with it himself. And he got virtually every significant issue dead wrong. Yoo is like the sorcerer’s apprentice whose half-learned incantations unleash chaos within a few hours of the master’s departure.
Yoo appears to interpret Clausewitz by methods identical to those he uses in interpreting the Constitution, and achieves similar results:
It is ironic that a president who proclaims his faith in “strict construction” of the Constitution would have found Yoo’s interpretations so persuasive, for Yoo is anything but a strict constructionist. One of the arguments most often made in defense of “originalism” is that interpretations emphasizing a “living” or evolving Constitution are too open-ended, and accordingly they permit judges to stray too far from the text. Yoo unwittingly demonstrates that his brand of originalism is just as vulnerable to that criticism as other approaches, if not more so. He not only departs from the text, but contradicts the principles that underlie it.
Second, and more significantly, all of Yoo’s departures from the text of the Constitution point in one direction—toward eliminating legal checks on presidential power over foreign affairs. He is candid about this, and defends his theory on the ground that it preserves “flexibility” for the executive in foreign affairs. But the specific “flexibility” he seeks to preserve is the flexibility to involve the nation in war without congressional approval, and to ignore and violate international commitments with impunity.
Precedent is not on his side.
Of course, there was a time when American justice held clear-cut and starkly different views on precisely these issues. In United States v. Altstoetter, two Justice Department lawyers were charged with criminal conduct for dispensing legal advice that was used to facilitate the creation of a renditions program. In giving this advice, they misconstrued the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and the Seventh Hague Convention on Land Warfare. At trial, they produced plausible arguments for their positions—indeed, arguments far more convincing than any that John Yoo can muster. The result? They were sentenced to prison for ten years, less time served. The Justice Department lawyers in question served in the German Government in the years leading up to and following World War II. If the principles that the United States announced in Altstoetter were applied to John Yoo, he’d be in serious trouble.
Will it happen? I wonder if anyone knows any lawyers who could tell us.
Three things seem to hold true at all times and places in history.
1. The middle class is always rising.
2. Farmers are always unhappy.
3. Masculinity is always in crisis.
Of course, if they are always true everywhere, then it’s difficult to cite them as credible explanations for any one thing, isn’t it?
This observation cannot be original to me, but I can’t remember where I picked it up.
*Not played by Madonna.
(Editor’s Note: David Hickman is a graduate student studying US history at UC Davis. And no, I didn’t make him do this. Cynics. He asked. Why? Because blogging is glamorous. Also: David would prefer that you not ask how many years he’s been in graduate school. He notes that: “If some sort of tenuous connection can be drawn between progressive horticulture and the emergence of environmental thought in California, he still might find a dignified way out of the mess he has gotten himself into.” That said, thanks to David for volunteering to do this.)
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The California Gold Rush began on this date in 1848 when James Marshall plucked several tiny flakes of gold from where they had wedged between the gravel of the American River. As the first significant mineral strike on American territory, the Gold Rush forced the national government to confront the question of how best to put to use non-agricultural lands in the public domain.
The national government had a clear claim to the gold of California. The Land Ordinance of 1785 reserved for the federal government one-third of the mineral wealth extracted from the public lands, and subsequent land laws sustained the precedent. What Congress lacked was the will to make good on its claim. As gold production soared, Congress imposed neither fees or regulations, nor surveyed the lands in preparation for sale. Miners could work the land for free, but they could not own it. Trespassers on the public domain, mostly transients, they alone were to decide the land’s purpose and value.
I reviewed Power and Plenty in TNR here. Findlay and O’Rourke use social-science modeling and the counterfactual method to good purpose:
Even if elements of this story seem familiar, Findlay and O’Rourke tell their tale exceptionally well and give lively attention to alternate possibilities: What should have happened, according to theory? What could have happened, in the realm of plausibility? They find they can cede little to neoliberal economists: Power was generally necessary to secure plenty. “Adam Smith and his liberal followers to the present day, however, would, and have, argued that much of this [state] expenditure was wasted, unnecessarily crowding out more productive private investment. The assumption of course is that the markets and raw material supplies … would have existed regardless”–which, history suggests, they would not have. Had your empire not secured them, your neighbor’s would have, with lasting bad consequences to you.
The sentiment I most liked that didn’t make it into the final draft: it’s a thing of joy if you’re a fact-nerd like me.
On January 24, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill concluded their conference at Casablanca. I have a photograph of the two of them from that meeting on the wall of my office, with the slanting sun in Roosevelt’s face and Churchill standing in shadow — I like it a great deal, as it depicts both men in what looks like genuinely companionable contemplation. I admire both of them as historical figures. Which doesn’t make me any more comfortable with one of the results of the conference: the determination to carry out combined British and American round-the-clock bombing offensives against German targets, which would include cities.
My grandfather flew a B-24 in the war as part of the Allies’ European bombing offensive. Here is his plane, shot down.
He survived the crash, was taken prisoner, and escaped: he omitted to mention to his captors that he had been born in Germany and, though he immigrated to the U.S. as a kid, he sprechened pretty well, thank you, which helped him get along through the countryside till he was back behind Allied lines. I loved him, and am proud of him and his war service, and that doesn’t make me any more comfortable with the result of the conference either.
I have an old and dear friend* who asked me to ask my new and equally dear friends the following question: who’s the most important — meaning influential, as in, could play the lead in the book or movie version of, [Insert Name]: And How S/he Changed America** — historical figure about whom most people know nothing?
Well friends, what say you? I suggested James Eads, a nineteenth-century engineer who invented and built: a diving-bell(ish) device that allowed him to walk on the bed of the Mississippi; salvage boats with which he pulled wrecks from the bottom of the same river; gunboats that helped the Union Navy control the same river (are you detecting a theme?) during the Civil War; a bridge in St. Louis that spanned the same river (okay, now you’re getting it, right?); and jetties that solved the problem of silting at the mouth of the same river (don’t make me hit you over the head).
James Buchanan Eads is someone about whom many specialists — historians of science and technology, for example — know a great deal. But most adult general readers***** would not have heard of him. And honestly, the fact that there hasn’t been a good Eads biography ever is at least a little bit stunning. But whatever.
So who’s your James Eads? Seriously. I’m genuinely curious. As is my friend. Do you know who invented the grape? Or made Hitler famous? Or changed the way we think about towels? Don’t be shy. Spill. Tell us all about it. Step up, people.
* No, I’m not making said friend up. Unlike my other old and dear friend who has this persistent rash. What should I he do about that, while we’re on the subject? Seriously, is there an ointment or something? He’s really itchy.
** A book for which an author receives a large*** advance and then earns out on said advance after book climbs to #3**** on the NYT Non-fiction bestseller list
*** How large? That’s not really your business, is it? Back away from the blog.
**** We shouldn’t be unrealistic, right? So let’s stick with #3. Anything more than that would be quite unlikely. And also greedy. We’re not greedy here. Really.
***** This is, if you don’t already know, a desirable market to reach. As in: $$$.
The great moderation now seems to have depended — in part — on a huge speculative bubble, first in stocks and then real estate, that hid the economy’s rough edges. Everyone from first-time home buyers to Wall Street chief executives made bets they did not fully understand, and then spent money as if those bets couldn’t go bad. For the past 16 years, American consumers have increased their overall spending every single quarter, which is almost twice as long as any previous streak.
The subprime mortgage crisis, in isolation, seems likely to produce losses of a couple of hundred billion, possibly enough to generate a mild recession in the USA. But the possibility of large-scale failure in bond and credit derivative markets, now all too real, could bring an end to the long period of global economic expansion that began with the end of the last big global recession in the early 1990s.
Henry Paulson, channeling Andrew Mellon:
“This market needs to correct. We’ve had unsustainable growth for some period of time. We’re not trying to prolong that — it needs to correct.”
And now, Belle Waring:
When my banker said in November that the risk of a total meltdown and recession were already priced into financial stocks I laughed, hollowly. Could the US really head into a protracted recession? I say yes
– and then she goes on, “but I always say that.”
Right. Predicted five of the last three recessions, and all that. Still, it doesn’t look good.
If you didn’t catch the most recent Colbert Report, with the segment on the hospital strike, you must. As and when I can find it online, I will link to it. But it will be repeated over the next 24 hours. Tape it, watch it, see it somehow.
UPDATED: For some reason WordPress won’t let me embed it, but look here, here, or here. Truly remarkable. “The year was 1969…. In April of that year hundreds of hospital workers who had decided to form a union went on strike….”
UPDATED AGAIN: More — Colbert’s Civil Rights MLK Day Writer’s Strike-Busting Writerless Show — In Song — on Colbert’s “core of earnestness.” Exactly.
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The 24th Amendment was ratified on this date in 1964, making poll taxes illegal in federal elections.
Poll taxes were one way that the states of the former Confederacy circumvented the 15th Amendment. These taxes became common at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Many states included grandfather clauses in their version of the poll tax, allowing people whose parents or grandparents had voted to do so as well. In this way, the taxes disfranchised African-Americans while allowing whites, with some exceptions, to vote.
The House of Representatives passed five bills banning the poll tax in the 1940s. But each time the measure failed to get through the Senate, where Southerners blocked the legislation. Finally, in 1962, the Senate approved the 24th Amendment. It took two more years for ratification. And when the 24th Amendment went into effect, five Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia — still had poll taxes on the books. Only in 1966, in the case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, did the Supreme Court rule that all poll taxes were unconstitutional.
On this day in 1890, Fred Vinson was born. When the Supreme Court of the United States first heard Brown v. Board, he was the sitting Chief Justice, and under his leadership the Court could not reach a decision about school segregation — which he believed the Constitution permitted. He died before the Court could re-hear the case. Felix Frankfurter reportedly declared, “This is the first indication that I have ever had that there is a God.” The appointment of Earl Warren to replace Vinson changed the micropolitics of the Court — and the course of the civil rights movement.
During oral argument of Brown, Robert Jackson remarked, “I suppose that realistically the reason this case is here is that action couldn’t be obtained in Congress.” The Court was stepping in where politics had failed, in a national crisis. And only Vinson’s death ensured that the Court would do what pretty much everyone now believes was right.
That the sclerosis of a Justice should serve as the fulcrum of history in a democracy is madness. So too is a Court that can reach decisions on the basis that, well, this decision is better than that one because now we have more Justices on the Court, and a lotta lawyers are unhappy with what we said before.1
But that is what we have: a nine-justice life-tenure tribunal stepping in, will-we nill-we, when our political institutions fail. And it doesn’t always work out so well. (This decision good for this case only. Offer void anywhere they respect democracy and/or the rule of law.)
So in our fine legal/political system, it matters who gets into the White House next, quite a lot, actually, completely irrespective of his or her position on Iraq, healthcare, or economic stimuli.
1No, really: “It has been urged also that the decision in Hepburn v. Griswold should be held final under the doctrine of res adjudicata, independently of the merits of that decision. But circumstances, the absence of a court as large as now, lessened the force of that decision, and induced a great portion of the legal profession to desire a reconsideration of the question.”
(Editor’s note: Historiann’s site says that it covers “History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present.” So I thought I’d ask her to post something about Roe v. Wade, whose thirty-fifth anniversary falls today. Thanks to Historiann for agreeing to do this. We need all the help we can get.)
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Many thanks to Ari and Eric for finding my blog, historiann.com, and for inviting me to comment today at The Edge of the American West. Historiann lives on the other edge of the American west, in sight of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains.
Legions of the holy will be marching today in Washington, D. C. to mourn the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, and restricted the rights of states to regulate later-term abortions. One of the claims of the forced pregnancy gang that Historiann has never understood is the claim that “there’s no such thing as a right to privacy in the Constitution.” This dubious suggestion always seems to rest on an overly literal reading of “Constitution” (curiously, some people don’t include amendments and case law, but of course the Constitution is the sum total of the Constitution of 1789, its 27 amendments, and Supreme Court case law over the past 228 years), and on an overly literal reading of “privacy,” which (like “God” and “unitary executive”) is a word not found in the text of the Constitution or its amendments.
I’m told that I have to explain why I teach history. Which is kind of tough. Because, right now at least, I don’t. I’m on leave. Writing. And I won’t be in the classroom again for quite some time (though I can feel the minutes slipping away).
But when I do teach, there are three things that keep me going. Through the grading, that is, which can be a horrible grind. But not a grind like actually working for a living, mind you. If you know what I mean. Anyway, here goes.
The Martin Luther King of American memory serves this nation as the safe Civil Rights leader. When shrunk to fit within the confines of soundbite history, the pages of a textbook, or the scenes of a primary school pageant, King is cleansed of anger, of ego, of sexuality, and even, perhaps, of some of his humanity.
Counterpoised against the ostensibly violent Malcolm X, who supposedly would have forced America to change its ways by using “any means necessary,” King comes off as a cuddly moderate — a figure who loved everyone, enemies included, even whites who subjugated black people. Although there’s some truth lurking behind this myth, there was more (about both X and King) to the story: complexities and nuances that escape most popular recollections. Martin Luther King, no matter how people remember him now, was not nearly so safe as most of us believe.
On March 12, 1968, less than a month before he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, King visited the wealthy Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe. Largely white, Grosse Pointe was — and to some extent still is — a bastion of establishment power. By that point in his career, King had embraced issues that moved well beyond the struggle against de jure segregation in the South. He had begun focusing most of his energy on inequality nationwide — de facto issues of poverty, job discrimination, fair housing, and, as Matthew Yglesias notes, the Vietnam war.
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Hey, Kelman, we got blog-tagged! Does this mean we’re cool, or that we have cooties? Someone has to explain the Internets to me. In my day it was all 2400 bps access to BBSes.
So: why do I teach history? Because too many people swoon when sanctimony-mongering war-lover Tony Blair says, “There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood, or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day.” Too right, Tony! This time out will be completely different! Except, not so much. We are stuck in historical grooves, and it will take more than Tony Blair and his magical world-transforming war-pony (now with special Bill Clinton approval!) to get us out of them.
Which is by way of saying, if there isn’t a group of people who spend their time teaching history qua history, the only thing people hear about history is what the agents of an administration want you to hear. It’s just like World War II, people! Which was the good war! When will you people understand that all this is okay because Lincoln did it! Or maybe Roosevelt. Anyway, it’s good if Roosevelt did it unless it was the New Deal, because the New Deal was bad, unless you can add. What were we talking about? Look, over there, some monuments to the dead! Be reverential! And vote for me.
So I teach history because I don’t like that treatment of history. Which doesn’t, of course, explain why I don’t like it. Cussedness, I expect.
Here’s a secret: another reason I teach history is because I like it. A lot. I like going into the classroom, talking to students, reading and thinking about books and sources. I like putting lectures together, paring them down to the key points, and picking good visual elements to make the argument carry itself. There is no essential part of teaching I do not like.
Then there is the historical answer, which is: I started it a while back, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and they still let me.
Kelman should go before we tag anyone else.
Commenter charlieford asked, “just curious: what are your thoughts in before they’re converted into words?”
This is a difficult question to answer. Sometimes people rely on the concept of “felt sense.” An emailer passed this essay along to me, and I pass it along to you:
The poet reads the written lines over and over, listens, and senses what these lines need (want, demand, imply …..). Now the poet’s hand rotates in the air. The gesture says that. Many good lines offer themselves; they try to say, but do not say –that. The blank is more precise. Although some are good lines, the poet rejects them.
That ….. seems to lack words, but no. It knows the language, since it understands –and rejects –these lines that came. So it is not pre-verbal; rather, it knows what must be said, and knows that these lines don’t precisely say that. It knows like a gnawing knows what was forgotten, but it is new in the poet, and perhaps new in the history of the world.
Now, although I don’t know most of you, I do know one of your secrets. I know you have written poetry. So I can ask you: Isn’t that how it is? This ….. must be directly referred to (felt, experienced, sensed, had, …..). Read the rest of this entry »
On this day in 1914, Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo and Secretary of Agriculture David Houston, opened hearings in St. Louis.1 They were, as Senator John Weeks would afterward say, in the midst of “tangoing about the country asking the people if they wanted a reserve bank.” At the close of their dance, “in the home States of each member of the committee at least one regional bank was established, while two were given to Missouri, Secretary Houston’s State.” Weeks went on, “they are not the natural locations for reserve banks.”
On the one hand, there were excellent substantive reasons for placing the banks as they did. Missouri stands at almost the geographic center of the contiguous U.S. and borders eight states. It was in 1910 the seventh-most populous state in the country, well ahead of its fellows in the national midsection.
On the other hand, it is profoundly difficult not to believe that politics played some role. It always does. Which is why I’m bringing up not the origin, but the organization, of the Federal Reserve system. Too often we write about the passage of legislation as the end of a story, rather than simply a chapter-break within it: in 1913, Congress established the Federal Reserve system, which we still have today — hurray! now we have completed the epic that began with Hamilton’s Bank, continued through the Second Bank and Jackson and the National Banking system of the Civil War and the gold and silver controversies.
I was one of the thousands of moronic progressives who lived through Bill Clinton’s presidency by gritting my teeth. I totally underestimated what an effective leader he was — at the time and given the givens. In retrospect, though, I think he was one of our better presidents*, perhaps even cracking the top five.
So, it has been with considerable anguish that I’ve watched him demeaning himself with his odious attacks on Barack Obama. And let me be clear: Bill should be stumping for Hillary. For more reasons than I have time to catalog. But I wish that he would campaign with more dignity. I find his tendency to toss bombs and then throw up his hands with a “What? Me?” expression on his face especially maddening. If he keeps this up, I think he’s going to end up doing Hillary more harm than good. And he’ll certainly damage the party’s reputation, as he remains, to a very great extent, the most visible and popular Democrat in the country.
Anyway, if it turns out that this is true, that leading Democrats are asking Bill to cool it — and it works — that would be very welcome news.
* Low bar alert. Please lower your mast if you wish to sail through unscathed. Seriously, it’s either a very hard job or the people who get it are unusually lame. Probably both, right? Always avoid monocauasal explanations.
Via Josh Marshall at TPM.
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My colleague, Louis Warren, called me last night to try to explain the apportionment of Nevada delegates. And this article tries to do the same thing. I honestly can’t believe this is how the system works. But there you go. Also: how many people named “Ari” write for The Nation in one capacity or another?
Via Apostropher at Unfogged.
* More fun facts about Nevada are available here and here. Like, for instance: “The Orovada Series Soil was designated as Nevada’s official state soil in 2001.” The Orovada series contains volcanic ash, which means that you need less water to grow crops. Good thing, too, since Nevada is the driest state in the Union, with an average rainfall of just 7 inches. California’s state soil is the San Joaquin.
Update: And here’s Chris Hayes on the same issue (delegates — not ducks or soils)
Rare footage from seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Because Kelman tells me I’m writing too much boring historical stuff.
This may or may not be the lesson I take away from this very sad article. But there’s just no arguing with that last clause.
Sometimes writing the On This Day in History post provides an opportunity to actually think about the past while trying to say something interesting. And sometimes it’s a just chance to think a bit about the connection between history and current events. Then there are days like today.
I have a variety of different sources from which I gather my OTDH ideas. The nature of their content is actually pretty interesting in its own way, if mostly predictable: very heavy on the Revolution, Civil War, and WWII. War is the new black. Almost nothing on women’s history, African-American history (except for the Civil Rights movement), Native American history, or environmental history. There’s one site (this one), that occasionally has a bunch of interesting stuff on the history of science and technology. And the Library of Congress’s American Memory site is amazing, though I’ve found few opportunities to link to it.
Despite having a number of places to trawl (troll?) for entries, occasionally I have a day like today (another example is here), when I can’t find much that captures my fancy. But then, looking around this evening, I found this:
1644 - Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America’s 1st UFO sighting
Such a find elicits a couple of responses. First, Eric, will you please cook me up one of your special history cartoons, this time starring “Perplexed Pilgrims”? With hats? Because I really want to see that. But only if there are hats. And second, is my next book going to be called Perplexed Pilgrims? Why yes, yes it is.
And that’s all I have for you. Oh, also this link, which purports to have more on the subject. Though I have my doubts. Buzzkill, I know.
Ben Forgey, former Washington Post architecture critic, talks to a reporter for Washingtonian, about the Civil War and the landscape of the capital.
Why is this your favorite spot?
I’ll tell you one reason: because of the brevity of the inscription behind Lincoln on his throne. “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.” It takes your breath away every time you read it.
What about the structure?
The proportions are classical in nature; every detail is out of the classic Greek Revival handbook. It was put together with exceptional craft and a great sense of proportion. The immense size of the statue isn’t overwhelming because of the scale of the room. It was meant to impress; the proportions were very carefully worked out so this oversize Lincoln fits in this great chamber….How can you feel optimistic in a place that celebrates wars and generals?
A lurker (c’mon people, just comment) sent me this. I pass it along to you.
Update: Eric suggested a change in the title. Which I’ve now made. Also, after watching this a couple of times, I have two thoughts: first, it’s remarkable to see the South’s fortunes wax and wane around key events, including Lee’s second invasion of the North, culminating in Gettysburg; and second, as David intimates in the comments, the spikes in the death toll after major battles are horrible to behold.
Update II: Well, I just watched this again, with a colleague this time, and I was struck by how much time passes after Gettysburg, and how much blood spills, before the war finally ends. In my Civil War class, I make this point. But in the survey, for the mass of the undergraduates I teach, after Pickett’s charge, the war’s pretty much over. I try to talk to them about the 1864 election, using Lincoln’s precarious position in late summer of that year as a way of explaining war fatigue. But this video makes the point more clearly and more powerfully. And I like the music.
Update III: And I’ve changed the title yet again. What a pathetic freak I am. I’ve also now watched the video without the sound, which didn’t add much to experience for me. Changing the title every few hours, though, now that’s blogging gold.
Broadly speaking, free trade is a phenomenon of whose long-term benefits I am persuaded, while I am concerned about its short-term downside. These are cautiously held convictions, but I hold them.
I am also persuaded that it sounds arrogant and, well, churlish when proponents of free trade say things like this:
All economists know that when American jobs are outsourced, Americans as a group are net winners. What we lose through lower wages is more than offset by what we gain through lower prices. In other words, the winners can more than afford to compensate the losers. Does that mean they ought to? Does it create a moral mandate for the taxpayer-subsidized retraining programs proposed by Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney?
Um, no. Even if you’ve just lost your job, there’s something fundamentally churlish about blaming the very phenomenon that’s elevated you above the subsistence level since the day you were born. If the world owes you compensation for enduring the downside of trade, what do you owe the world for enjoying the upside?
Tyler Cowen continues,
Progressive taxation, some would say in response!1
Tim Harford, however, nails it:
…people lose their jobs all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with foreign trade. I’d argue that they deserve some help. Why are jobs lost to foreign competition so privileged?
I do not see why this is “nailing it.” Harford (and Cowen) appear to assume that jobs lost from free trade are lost to impersonal market forces — the same incidents that make someone lose his job if his neighbor works harder and gets his goods to market faster and cheaper than he does.
But many people believe jobs lost to foreign competition are different, and to use Harford’s term, “privileged,” because the freeing of trade results from recent federal policy, and does not appear like an impersonal market action at all. Suppose for example the government were to allow by law the importation of slaves2 as laborers in certain industries. Apart from all other considerations, this policy might result in the loss of jobs, or at least a reduction of wages, for people who worked in those industries before the new law. You can see why, under such circumstances, these workers might want compensation: the new law benefits the employers to their detriment.
The point is, it seems as though the rules of the game have been changed, by a government that is supposed to represent not only the people who will benefit soon from those changes, but the people who will suffer soon from those changes. It is easy to see why this change of rules would seem unfair and worth compensation.
Finally, we might consider that historically, globalization (of which free trade is one aspect) has caused all manner of political problems that might, as a practical matter, be avoided with the judicious use of policy. I do not see that calling the un- or under-employed — who are assuredly among the under-insured and the generally poorly treated — “churlish” represents the best policy path to ensure that we all benefit from open markets.
Below the footnotes and fold, an essay I am currently working on, discussing globalization’s effects on American politics throughout history.
1“Some” includes, presumably, Adam Smith.
2No, I am not saying that free trade is equal to slavery. I am very obviously finding an analogous situation that offers some of the effects of free trade in an exaggerated fashion simply to make a point.
It really is. The Confederate flag has been kicked around for long enough. Thank goodness we’ve finally found a presidential candidate brave enough to stand up for white Southerners. Because, y’know, “all the average guy with a Confederate Flag on his pickup truck is saying is: he’s proud to be a Southerner.” And also: Macaca! I’m guessing he’s saying that, too. Of if not saying it, perhaps thinking it.
Okay, that last part was all me. But the first part comes courtesy of Americans for the Preservation of American Culture (APAC).** Which is under siege. American culture, that is.*** Forget the global hegemony enjoyed by Hollywood, McDonalds, and the English language (not as certain, I know). If Mike Huckabee, eating fried squirrel and wearing St. Andrew’s Cross drawers, isn’t elected president of these United States, the terrorists will have won. And also that dark fella Obama.
So the crazed racists gentlemen behind APAC have manned the battlements. They’re running some mighty informative commercials in South Carolina, the Cradle of Secession, making sure that their kinfolk and friends know that John McCain hates the Confederate Flag. And America. Which is fine by me. Because anyone who wants to derail the Straight Talk Express is, in some twisted way, probably a friend of the Republic — even if they also embrace treason. Weird.
Back at the start of the year I spun out an argument about The Wizard of Oz and American magic, which was to say that it was always there, and not here. Pursuing related themes I was thinking this afternoon about American archetypes — as you know, the main traditional ones are the Yankee, the backwoodsman, and the minstrel (also known as the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion).
We also have in Johnny Appleseed a frontier version of the Fisher King (which is to say, the Jessie Weston version of the Fisher King, not the original). Yes, he was a real person, but there is a myth there — like the Fisher King, he is associated with fertility and an obscure hurt; “some absolute misery of the heart.”
And then there is John Henry, the backwoodsman conquered by the machine (the Tin Man shares some of this story).
We have others, like the “super-duper magical negro.” And also, the Star, the Sinner Redeemed, and the Gangster.
One could readily point out that McCain and Giuliani are pretty clearly trying to out-do Bush as the Gangster. Thin Huckabee is the Sinner Redeemed, but that’s not the only Huckabee on display. Obama is of course trying