Partisanship of the Founders

Pejmann Yousefzadeh gives a history lesson to those who decry the current political climate and long for the stateliness of the political dialogue used by the U.S. Founders.

In the past few years, there has been a revival of interest in the lives and political careers of the Founders -- a revival that is helped by the many books that have come out on the lives of the Founders. Two of the most recent books are Joseph Ellis's biography of George Washington and Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. Both books are instructive when considering the state of partisanship in America.

Ellis's biography of Washington expertly captures the reasons why upon his death, Washington was eulogized as 'first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.' Washington was no intellectual but he was possessed of superb judgment, tact and discretion. He was also undeniably courageous and his feats of valor on the battlefield justified the respect and adoration he was given. Washington was the natural choice to chair the Constitutional Convention, and was considered indispensable as the first President of the United States. His near decision to quit after his first term raised alarm bells, and his decision not to stand for a third term -- which he surely would have won -- laid down the example of selflessness we expect of American politicians.

And yet, Washington was oftentimes subject to some of the most vicious calumny imaginable -- calumny that almost caused Washington's retirement from politics after his first term, and impelled him to gladly quit the Presidency after a second term. The Father of his country was accused of being senile, a puppet in the hands of Alexander Hamilton, a closet monarchist who sought to become an American Caesar, and so on. These were not just occasional jibes but part and parcel of a concerted campaign in the Jeffersonian Republican press that sought to demystify the first President so as to make it easier to campaign against initiatives like the Jay Treaty, or the financial reforms implemented by Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury. Indeed, one of the newspapers most responsible for seeking to trash Washington's public standing was the Aurora, a Republican newspaper headed by Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin (the bitterness between the Founders apparently extended to their descendants). So rancid was the campaign against Washington that he ended up breaking off relations with two fellow Virginians -- Jefferson and Madison -- because of the part they played in seeking to ruin Washington's reputation. When the first President of the United States finally passed away during the Administration of John Adams, his funeral was mostly peopled by Federalists. Thomas Jefferson -- then the Vice President -- actually boycotted the funeral.

Chernow's biography of Hamilton reveals just how cutting and wounding the political debate became during the age of the Founders. With Hamilton as the de facto head of the Federalists, and with Jefferson and Madison commanding the Republican political machine, political vitriol reached nearly frightening levels. Federalists accused Republicans of being "Jacobins" who were all too willing to excuse the bloody excesses of the French Revolution and the diplomatic depredations of Citizen Genet and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -- who prompted the XYZ Affair. Republicans on the other hand gleefully portrayed Hamilton and the Federalists of being "monarchists," "Anglomen" who were too easily seduced by Great Britain (and probably wanted to return America to Britain's political orbit), rapacious swindlers who wanted to use banks to oppress the agrarian population (creating a central bank was, of course, one of Alexander Hamilton's chief projects). It did not help that the angry political debate between Hamilton and Jefferson was colored by accusations of personal scandal. In one of his many pseudonymous writings, Hamilton -- who was an astonishingly prodigious writer and who probably would have celebrated the advent of the Blogosphere had he lived to see its development -- made what now appears to be clear and insulting reference regarding liaisons between Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings.

In revenge, Republican pamphleteers -- also writing pseudonymously and often -- gleefully harped on Hamilton's involvement in an adulterous affair with one Maria Reynolds, who collaborated with her husband James to garner hush money from Hamilton to keep the affair secret. Initially, Republicans believed that Hamilton paid the hush money because James Reynolds possessed information relating to Hamilton's abuse of his position as Secretary of the Treasury for pecuniary gain. In order to clear his name, Hamilton was forced to make a public and humiliating admission that the hush money was to cover up the affair -- which naturally led to more vitriol directed at Hamilton. Needless to say, all of this anonymous pamphleteering caused political opposition to spill over into blind hatred between the Founders. Hamilton and Madison -- once collaborators on The Federalist -- eventually became bitter enemies. Because of his illegitimate birth, Hamilton felt that he had to be especially protective of his reputation, meaning that anytime that anyone attacked him, instead of ignoring the attacks, Hamilton fired back with even greater literary and oratorical pyrotechnics. Sometimes these pyrotechnics ended up leading to challenges to duels -- one of which, of course, ended Hamilton's life at the hands of Aaron Burr. Consider that: a former Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the Federalist Party ended up dueling with the sitting Vice President of the United States. And to think that we got excited when Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Patrick Leahy to perform anatomical impossibilities upon himself.

Dresden: Don't apologise - understand

James Woudhuysen has written a scholarly article that attempts to remind of the historical context surrounding the bombing of Dresden and to remove any sense that it was a unique action --one at odds with "standard" Allied bombing policy-- in an attempt to destigmatize the event and convince us that an apology for the Dresden bombing is unwarranted.

The enormity of Dresden means that it deserves sober assessment. Yet the recent discussion and calls for an apology provide the opposite. The further Dresden retreats into history, the more it is viewed as a timeless allegory of human evil, for which current and future generations must feel guilt, and atone. The actions of one man, 'Bomber' Harris, are singled out as barbarities that epitomise the depths to which man can sink in the pursuit of war. Such a treatment sheds no light on the Second World War as an historical event, but is all too revealing about the crisis of self-doubt among the Allied elites today.

The purpose of this essay is to examine what Dresden really meant in the context of the Second World War, and what makes the contemporary understanding of Dresden problematic.

. . . the growing worry about military adventures today finds echoes in the understanding of the Second World War in history. While the Nazis are always used as a sure symbol of Evil, there is less of a sure sense that 'our side' was quite so Good as it was assumed to be. The contrast between the Allies' willingness to bomb Dresden and its failure to bomb the railway lines to Auschwitz caused no small amount of breast-beating around the recent anniversary of the death camp's liberation. Of course, the Allies' motives were never quite as pure as they have been painted. But it says a lot about the profound sense of self-doubt in American and British society today that even the Second World War has now become subject to the same kind of moral relativism that informs discussion of more recent conflicts.

Woudhuysen also offered a few reasons as to why the Allied bombing of Dresden has become so negatively viewed:

Critics "strip the Allies' behaviour from its historical and social context, and, in place of that, give the unchanging mantra of 'man's inhumanity to man' an accent that concentrates always on individual emotions."

They propogate the meme that all war is absurd, that the bombing of Dresden in particular was "over the top" and irrational.

They imply "a kind of moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis."

He then provided some historical context. First, bombs in WWII was hardly "smart" and bombing was an imprecise venture. Second, it was the stated aim of Bomber Command to target labor sources (read: average German citizens and their families) to help cripple the Nazi war machine. Finally

By focusing on the horrors of Dresden, too many critics in practice whitewash the rest of the Allies' actions in the war - not just the use of the atomic bomb, but also, for example, Churchill's manoeuvres in the Indian sub-continent, which cost millions their lives, or the betrayal of Partisans in southern Europe, or the fake 'de-Nazification' of Germany after 1945.

He also sees the change in perception as a result of domestic British and international politics and notes how confusion has crept in

Shortly after Dresden, a few British clerics and obscure Labour MPs issued feeble protests. Thereafter, it suited the postwar Attlee government to distance itself from Churchill. By criticising what it took to be his 'excesses', Labour could reinforce the mistaken perception that the Second World War was a just war, whose sole aim was the defence of democracy against fascism.

By representing the strategic bombing campaign as questionable, Labour could confirm postwar British society in the view that the rest of the tactics deployed were therefore just, too. This, the most important and lasting domestic political legacy of the war, is the one that critics completely ignore. They are part of the problem of the Second World War, and will not aid any clarification of its nature.

It also suited Joseph Stalin to go on about Dresden. . . at war's end, Stalin had control of East Germany [and] he liked to make propaganda about the rapaciousness of his wartime partner.

Ironically, Jörg Friedrich sees Dresden as a diversion from an interest Britain in fact shared with Germany - that of ridding the world of Stalin. For their part, right-wing apologists for Dresden can agree that Britain declared war not just against Germany, but also against the Soviet Union. The upshot is that today, people remain baffled as to what the Second World War was really all about, or should have been about. Instead of clarity on the most important event of the twentieth century, confusion reigns.

He concluded

An analysis of the context in which the Dresden bombing took place shows how simplistic most explanations of it are. The Second World War was not a straightforward moral battle of Good v Evil, in which Dresden formed a necessary part. Nor was Dresden an abomination that took place outside of British military policy at the time. And it should certainly not be read, as it tends to be today, as a tale of universal, unchanging human depravity - a depravity symbolised by one man's actions but one for which we all continue to remain culpable.

Dresden needs to be understood, not apologised for. It demands a careful historical perspective about a unique set of circumstances, not an emotional spasm of wailing about the intrinsic aggression of all humankind.

I would argue with Woudhuysen's attempt to downplay the degree to which WWII really was "a straightforward moral battle of Good v Evil," especially as it concerned the battle against Nazi Germany. However, I agree that Dresden was not a unique instance of a misbegotten Allied bombing policy formulated by one man.

Political Correctness: Enemy of Art

Maureen Mullarkey reviews Roger Kimball's Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art in which he provides a "pathologist's report" on Art History.

Art history was once an esteemed participant in the methods, values and goals of humanistic inquiry. Its purpose was to yield the broadened literacy that results from genuine scholarship and encounters with great art. But it has become a polemical tool for dismantling the concept of greatness and, with it, the conditions of civilized life. Roger Kimball puts it starkly: “Its enemy is civilization and the … assumptions on which civilization rests. Its aim is to transform art into an ally in the campaign of decivilization.”

Specifically, it is Western civilization that draws fire from academics hostile to the source of their privileges and unmindful of the origins of their own cultural assumptions. As phrased by Keith Moxey, distinguished professor of art history at Barnard and Columbia: “All cultural practice is shaped by political considerations.” So it follows that art history is—must be—”a form of political intervention.”

We have heard this before. In 1963, Leonid Ilyichev, Kruschev’s spokesman for the arts, declared: “Art belongs to the sphere of ideology.” Addressing a meeting of Party leaders and workers in the arts, he insisted that “art always has an ideological-political bent that … expresses and defends the interests of definite classes and social strata.”

He might have been addressing the College Art Association. Certainly, traditional art history still survives; but increasingly, it is practiced against the odds and the mental habits of tenured art appreciators. Kimball’s angry alarum is an extended postscript to “Tenured Radicals”, his 1990 chronicle of humanities departments corrupted by politicized agendas. Beneath the veneer of donnish rationality, lies a drive that is, at heart, a mad endeavor: the compulsion to abuse and discredit traditional values—including standards of achievement—as they manifest themselves in art.

Kimball warns against the debasement of intellectual life by opaque theorizing that sets out to mystify, shunning all obligation to clear thinking. He concentrates on the visual arts because this is the prime arena where intellectual pretension joins rhetorical inflation to promote a crack-pot cleverness that denatures the object it studies. In the arts, there is no brake on confusion between the verbal and the visual. Ornate utterance intervenes to keep us from recognizing what we see with our own eyes.

Many non-scholars apparently enjoyed the work, though one believed that Kimball set up "straw men" by using the most extreme examples of "art-crit" to make his point. For more, ESR (Enter Stage Right) interviewed Kimball last month.(via Justin Katz and Political Theory Daily Review)

Addendum: I've included a link to reviews by "regular" readers, above. Perhaps I should do this more often as there is value in reading how other, presumably non-academic (albeit self-selecting), readers viewed a book.

Addendum II: I just discovered that I wasn't the only one as Dartmouth scholar Mikhail Gronas has already done some research in the area.

Gronas, an Assistant Professor of Russian Language and Literature, is interested in literary tastes. He wants to know why people read certain books, what drives those reading decisions, and what lies behind readers' reactions. Sociological surveys are fine, he says, but the answers are shaped by the questions. With online book reviews, like those at Amazon.com, he can begin to get a quantitative measure of taste (from the number of stars assigned by readers to a book) along with a qualitative assessment (from the personal commentary provided by readers). . .

"Amazon.com book reviews are not based on literary theory," he says. "They are written by everyday readers, not scholars, who bring a new perspective to the topic of taste. Since online reviews are voluntary, they offer honest opinions that aren't prompted by specific questions." [emphasis mine]

(via Political Theory Daily Review)

British Anti-Slavery Movement - Why Then?

Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains is reviewed in the Economist.

Why an ancient practice, condemned neither by the New Testament nor by Christian tradition, was recognised as unacceptable by growing numbers of men and women in the second half of the 18th century has long puzzled historians. Mr Hochschild avoids big-picture answers and concentrates on the extraordinary characters involved. . .

His mainly British cast is a large one. . . The objects of their concern were by no means all helpless victims. Slave rebellions rocked the West Indies throughout the 1790s and beyond. After the French abandoned Santo Domingo to the British in 1793, the army's attempt to put down Toussaint L'Ouverture's slave revolt cost more soldiers than it lost in the American war of independence. At Westminster, even MPs who approved of slavery questioned its expense. . .

t once was fashionable to explain the ending of slavery as an economic consequence, and to treat changing attitudes as secondary. Slavery, it was argued, was ceasing to be profitable. With industrialisation, investors in slave ships and plantations had better places to put their money. Reformers, in effect, were pushing at an open door. Even if the dates worked better—and there was money in slavery well into the 19th century—mechanical stories of this kind would explain at best lack of resistance, not anti-slavery pressure.

Opponents of the slave trade agitated not only for new laws. They badgered courts to look at old law in fresh light. . . [Hochschild] remind[s] us how a committed minority can persuade a majority to see what at first they cannot or do not want to see. In one of many vivid passages, Mr Hochschild describes a simple but electrifying piece of evidence that Clarkson placed before an enquiry into the slave trade by the Privy Council in 1788. It was a diagram of a slave ship, the Brookes, showing slaves tightly packed and chained in rows. For many people, this was perhaps the first time that the reality of the slave trade had impinged upon them: with their own eyes, they could see its cruelty.

Enlightenment and Islam in the Arab World

George Shadroui analyzes a few questions while attempting to answer one big one, is democracy possible in the Muslim and Arab world? He concludes it's possible, and comments that intellectual leading the way is indeed a surprise

Ironically, it has been George W. Bush, a man some criticize for wearing his Christianity on his sleeve, who has embraced the notion that the Islamic world is open to change, that Muslims do want to self govern and that Muslim women do crave full participation in culture and politics. Bush’s formulations can be crude and even troubling at times, but surely he is not wrong to encourage open-mindedness where the hopes of millions of Muslims and Arabs, not to mention Israelis, are concerned. It won't be imposed, but it can be encouraged if we are realistic and tough-minded. If not for their sake, what about our own? Though I wish the president was a little less starry-eyed in his idealism, in the aftermath of 9/11, it remains a fair question.

Himmelfarb on Trilling, Eliot and the origins of "neoconservatism"

Gertrude Himmelfarb remembers the effect that Lionel Trillings 1940 essay, "Elements That Are Wanted," on T.S. Eliot in the Partisan Review, had on her and her fellow young "neo-Trotskyites."

I had never read Eliot's essays or the journal he edited . . . I was, however, a faithful reader of Partisan Review, which was, in effect, the intellectual and cultural organ of Trotskyites . . . Many years later I remembered little about Trilling's essay except its memorable title, "Elements That Are Wanted," and the enormous excitement it generated in me and my friends. . . it was a revelation, the beginning of a disaffection not only with our anti-Stalinist radicalism but, ultimately, with liberalism itself. Trilling has been accused (the point is almost always made in criticism) of being, not himself a neoconservative, to be sure, but a progenitor of neoconservatism. There is much truth in this. Although he never said or wrote anything notable about the "practical sphere" of real politics (he was not a "public intellectual" in our present sense, commenting on whatever made the headlines), he did provide a mode of thought, a moral and cultural sensibility, that was inherently subversive of liberalism and thus an invitation to neoconservatism."

What struck Himmelfarb was that

Trilling . . . did not believe morality was absolute or a 'religious politics' desirable. But Eliot's vision of morality and politics was superior to the vision of liberals and radicals, who had contempt for the past and worshiped the future. Liberals, in the name of progress, put off the realization of the good life to some indefinite future; radicals put off the good life in the expectation of a revolution that would usher in not only a new society but also a new man, a man who would be 'wholly changed by socialism.' Marxism was especially dangerous, Trilling found, because it combined "a kind of disgust with humanity as it is and a perfect faith in humanity as it is to be." Eliot's philosophy, on the other hand, whatever its defects and dangers, had the virtue of teaching men to value "the humanity of the present equally with that of the future," thus serving as a restraint upon the tragic ambition to transcend reality. It was in this sense, Trilling concluded, that Eliot bore out the wisdom of Arnold's dictum. Eliot's religious politics, while maleficent in the practical sphere, contained elements wanting in liberalism--"elements which a rational and naturalistic philosophy, to be adequate, must encompass."

Further, Himmelfarb reminds us, particularly historians, that literature can help us understand the past.

Trilling . . . did not reflect much upon the kinds of moral questions, or "moral values," that occupy us today: marriage, family, sex, abortion. What interested him was the relation of morality to reality--the abiding sense of morality that defines humanity, and at the same time the imperatives of a reality that necessarily, and properly, circumscribes morality. He called this "moral realism." . . . Trilling wrote about "the dangers of the moral life itself," of a "moral righteousness" that preens itself upon being "progressive."

. . ."Moral realism" is Trilling's legacy for us today--for conservatives as well as liberals. Conservatives are well disposed to such realism, being naturally suspicious of a moral righteousness that has been often misconceived and misdirected. And their suspicions are confirmed by the disciplines upon which they have habitually drawn: philosophy, economics, political theory, and, most recently, the social sciences, which are so valuable in disputing much of the conventional (that is to say, liberal) wisdom about social problems and public policies.

The element that is still wanting, however, is the sense of variety, complexity, and difficulty--which comes, Trilling reminds us, primarily from the "experience of literature," and which at its best informs the political imagination as well as the moral imagination.

Carnival of History #2

Hm. Well, I missed Carnival of History #1, but thanks to Glenn Reynolds, I've been led to #2. As a medievalist (at least I'm minoring in it with an MA thesis pending...yeah, a bit different), I found Hugo Holbling's review of Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor very interesting. I've not read the book, but based on Holbling's review, I may have to pick it up. There's much more to dig into, and I intend to do just that. In short, these History Carnivals have something for everyone.

Toward a Secular Theocracy

Eric Cox reviews Paul Edward Gottfried's Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy.

To Gottfried, multiculturalism is not a dry academic philosophy but rather the political tool of an identifiable ideology being used to redefine Western notions of normality for the purpose of seizing and exercising central state power. Examples of specific items on the multiculturalists’ agenda, Gottfried argues, are affirmative action; so-called hate crimes legislation and workplace anti-discrimination policies that exclusively target white males; gay marriage and adoption; educators’ inculcation of sensitivity toward all religious beliefs and lifestyles (except Christianity); and bans on expressions of Christian faith in public places. Gottfried acknowledges that people can support any of these policies without being multiculturalists—that is, without having the intent of denigrating whites, heterosexuals, and Christians—but he contends that multiculturalists promote them with the express purpose not merely of winning votes from various minority groups, but of the much larger goal of remaking Western societies, in the same sense, one might say, that the National Socialists and the Communists attempted to do so. . . Gottfried also disputes the commonly held notion that multiculturalism is merely a philosophy of moral relativism advocating “tolerance” for all categories of people. Instead, he writes, it is an ideology that views with utter contempt anyone who belongs to the wrong category of humanity, such as white-male-Christian-heterosexuals, and actively attempts to undermine institutions that support or reflect their values and lifestyles.

Psychoanalytical Critique Of Therapy Culture

Patrick Turner reviews Rob Weatherill's Our Last Great Illusion: A Radical Psychoanalytical Critique Of Therapy Culture, a Freudian look at the "therapy culture. . .[that] tackles the subject from a psychoanalytic perspective informed by postmodern cultural theory. Intended for a general audience, the book nonetheless assumes a fair degree of familiarity with a wide range of thinkers and critical concepts." Indeed, if the review is any reflection of the book, readers better prepare for some thick reading. Nonetheless, Weatherill's conclusion, as interpreted by Turner, is interesting.

What we now have in the progression from modernity to postmodernity is the absolute hegemony of a generalised, new age therapeutic ethos of 'care' and 'well being' that has dissolved all previous boundaries between private and public self and is impervious to the ideological divisions of an earlier age. For Weatherill, this triumph of a liberal, as opposed to radical, progress finds its apogee in the current emphasis within government public policy on promoting emotional skills and self-management rather than equality and control. In the commercial sector the dominance of the therapeutic can be seen in contemporary forms of marketing, customer care, product design and service provision that speak to a desire to be looked after, flattered and stroked. The explosion of personalised, 'new age' forms of expertise that offer eclectic strategies for gaining 'emotional intelligence', self mastery and overcoming barriers to achievement in any domain imaginable from sex to creativity to work is further evidence of the triumph of the therapeutic.

Is this an intellectual way of wondering whether it is more important to be free or well-cared for? Perhaps.

The Hidden Inequality in Socialism

David R. Henderson, Robert M. Mcnab, and Tamas Rozsas have a new article (pdf) for The Independent Review about The Hidden Inequality in Socialism. According to the authors

In recent years, researchers on transition economies have concluded that income inequality increased in the former socialist countries of eastern Europe and central Asia despite the liberalization of political and economic life. This judgment, however, places too much credence in the data reported by socialist planners and underestimates the cumulative effect of the myriad inequalities present under socialism.

Bicycle History

Steve Weinberg takes a look at Bicycle: The History by David Herlihy.

[T]o call the book a traditional history is misleading. Herlihy uses brief boxed asides, artwork, photographs, cartoons, technical drawings and other tools to dazzle. The oversized format could qualify the tome as a coffee table book, except that I think of that term somewhat negatively, connoting something rarely read, and for good reason. 'Bicycle,' on the other hand, is compulsively readable.

In an interview about the book, Herlihy spoke of the technological and social impact of the bicycle

Q: What was the impact of the invention of the bicycle?

A: The bicycle had a substantial technological impact. It is not an exaggeration to say that the bicycle business of the 1890s spawned the automotive industry. During the peak year of production in 1896 some three hundred firms in the United States alone produced nearly two million bicycles, and many of these companies went on to make automobiles using the same highly advanced production systems. Many automotive pioneers, including Henry Ford, started out working with bicycles. And bicycle technology also helped produce the first airplanes. The Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics; they used bicycles for wind tunnel experiments and built the Wright Flyer in their workshop.

Q: What about the social impact of the bicycle?

A: The bicycle changed social life in all sorts of ways--for women in particular it provided a justification to dress more sensibly and a means to travel without supervision. And in the early twentieth century, when cars were still prohibitively expensive, millions of working-class people relied on the bicycle for everyday transportation. This is still the case in the developing world. And of course the bicycle has long provided healthy and fun exercise to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Seems like an interesting topic to consider within the context of Turner's Frontier school of History.

"The Lessons of 1787"

Leslie H. Gelb fears that the newly-elected Iraqi Assembly doesn't adequately represent Kurds and Sunni's. Thus, she looks to the Lessons of 1787 learned by the U.S.: form a committee for the job.

. . .the new Assembly should forgo drafting the constitution and establish a special constitutional committee for that purpose. Such a committee would be selected to better reflect both Iraq's population and its power elites.

It's easy to keep the process legal and ensure it does not subvert the election. The election law gives the Assembly the responsibility for putting together the constitution. But it does not say the Assembly has to draft the document itself, or forbid it from assigning the duty to another body. Of course, the special body would still have to submit the draft for the Assembly's approval.

Members of this special constitutional committee would be chosen by the Assembly itself and could be Assembly members as well as appointees of the new government. The composition of the committee is critical. It should include Sunni Arabs in sufficient numbers; if they are not given a stake in the new Iraq, most will continue to help their vile insurgent brethren, willingly or unwillingly.

The committee must also engage Iraq's James Madisons and Ben Franklins. The constitutional committee has to include the real power brokers in religion, politics and commerce. It's not at all clear how many of these types were elected on Sunday. American officials probably don't know them all, but Iraqis do.

As a practical matter, these local leaders would provide the political cushioning necessary during the yearlong drafting process and would be essential to the final passage of the constitution. The public vote on its approval comes a year hence and requires a nationwide majority. But Iraqi leaders have agreed that the constitution can be blocked by a two-thirds vote in three of the nation's 18 provinces. That could happen in the three Kurdish provinces or in the four controlled by Sunni Arabs. With such stalemate would probably come civil war.

To assume that civil war naturally follows from such a "stalemate" is presumptuous and ignores or underestimates the foresight of those who will draft the constitution. Wouldn't one think that compromises would be accepted prior to risking civil war? Gelb may be correct in believing a committee is the only feasible way to construct a constitution, but she still underestimates the political acumen of the Iraqi people. After coming so far, it is hard to believe that any committee would allow any civil war "trip-wires" to be written into the constitution. But many in the West have been underestimating the Iraqi's for quite a while now, haven't they?

"Gay-braham" Lincoln?

Cathy Young at Reason surveys the "was Lincoln gay" debate from both left, right and center.

Demographics and the Culture War

Stanley Kurtz reviews four books under the heading "Demographics and the Culture War" in the most recent Policy Review.

Bush=Wilson?

In 'W' is for Wilson?, James Pinkerton worries that a "Wilsonian" foreign policy will lead President Bush into other liberal policies.

"Was the Iraq Election like Vietnam 1967? Or America 1864?"

Noel Shephard asks"Was the Iraq Election like Vietnam 1967? Or America 1864?"

Blinkered History

David Aaronovitch has written a commentary, "Potty history" dealing with the call in Britain to make some "History" standards. It is a good intro to what a historian deals with when analyzing events. One must balance the view from the top with the view from the bottom. Aaronovitch, an ideological "lefty" who tends to favor "peoples history," has a good outlook on the value of teaching a shared history

I understand the need for a shared story that both is and isn't history. [Tim} Collins's speech also included this rather good passage: 'We cannot be surprised that some within the next generation do not value our parliamentary democracy if they know nothing of the English civil war, do not vote if they are not taught about the struggles to widen the franchise, and do not value any authority figures if they are not told the inspiring tales of the national heroes of our past.'

But such an approach also has dangers. Palestinian schoolchildren are not taught about the extermination of the Jews. The decision has been made, I imagine, that this story would be obliterating. It would over-shadow their own national myth and make the sudden disaster that befell them in 1948/9 seem somehow understandable. The result of this omission is, and can only be, a complete failure to comprehend what has happened. I imagine that Israeli education similarly denies the real experience of the Palestinian Arabs.

We could easily make the same mistake here. Mr Collins is asking the historian Andrew Roberts to draw up a prospectus for what children should know about British history. It seems to me that this remit is too narrow.

However bad it may be not to know what Nelson's ship was called, isn't it infinitely worse that virtually nobody in Britain would be able to correctly answer the question, 'After the Soviet Union, which country lost the most citizens in the Second World War?' It was China. The same China which is, at long last, beginning its rise to world prominence. So what will be more important for every schoolboy to know about: Trafalgar or the Cultural Revolution? Zaì-jiàn.

Again, it must be remembered that he is talking about Britain, but the warning is worth remembering. However, I must confess that I think that what can be taken from this is that History is a balancing act. Youth are best served if their historical instruction is in the form of a holistic narrative, as opposed to an ideological one. One can raise up heroes of all classes, both soldiers and diplomats, farmers and soldiers, without denigrating any of them.

President Bush DOES Read History

Brian Lamb interviewed the President who revealed a degree of historical knowledge that many probably thought he lacked.

LAMB: What role have books played in your presidency?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, there's a -- I ended my convention speech in 2000, and one of the debates, with a phrase by a great Texan named Tom Lea, who wrote the definitive book on the King Ranch, but is a painter -- was a painter, and one of the paintings now hangs in the Oval Office. He said, "Sarah and I live on the east side of the mountain; the sunrise side, not the sunset side; the side to see the day that is coming, not to see the day that has gone." That's a very optimistic view. See, I see a better day coming.

It turns out that the President better have seen the day that has gone in order to be able to help lead to the day that is coming. In other words, history really matters for the President. And so I read a lot of history books. I'm reading the Washington book by Ellis right now. I read the Hamilton book by [Chernow], which I thought was a fascinating book. I can't remember all the books I read, but I do read a lot of books. And from that, I'm able to gain a better appreciation of where we're going.

For example, the Hamilton book I thought was a very interesting history of how hard it was to get democracy started, in some ways. And yet here we are in Iraq, trying to help them get democracy started, and yet it's expected to be done nearly overnight. And so it helps me keep a perspective of what's real and what's possible, and some of the struggles we went through.

Admittedly, we're dealing with different technologies than, obviously, in the old days. But, nevertheless, it's hard for democracy to take hold. And I think that history gives me a kind of -- it helps me better explain and understand exactly what we're seeing. And that's important for a policymaker to be able to grasp the realities of the situation based upon some historical lessons.

You know, I spent a lot of time talking about the Japanese after World War II, about how they were the sworn enemy, my dad fought them; I'm sure you've had relatives that know people that fought the Japanese. And yet today, because we insisted that Japan become a democracy, they're now our best friend, or one of our best friends. And that's an interesting history lesson, that 60 years after being a sworn enemy, we're now tight allies in leading the cause of freedom and peace, working together to deal with North Korea. Japan is helping a lot in Iraq.It just shows the power of freedom to change an enemy to a friend. That's something you learn from history books.

Hobsbawm: "In defence of History"

Eric Hobsbawm states "it is fashionble to say 'my truth is as valid as yours. But it's not true."

The major immediate political danger to historiography today is "anti-universalism" or "my truth is as valid as yours, whatever the evidence". This appeals to various forms of identity group history, for which the central issue of history is not what happened, but how it concerns the members of a particular group. What is important to this kind of history is not rational explanation but "meaning", not what happened but what members of a collective group defining itself against outsiders - religious, ethnic, national, by gender, or lifestyle - feel about it. . .

This produces endless claptrap on the fringes of nationalist, feminist, gay, black and other in-group histories, but it has also stimulated interesting new historical developments in cultural studies, such as what has been called the "memory boom" in history.

It is time to re-establish the coalition of those who believe in history as a rational inquiry into the course of human transformations, against those who distort history for political purposes - and more generally, against relativists and postmodernists who deny this possibility. Since some of the latter see themselves as being on the left, this may split historians in politically unexpected ways.

The Marxist approach is a necessary component of this reconstruction of the front of reason. While postmodernists have denied the possibility of historical understanding, developments in the natural sciences have put an evolutionary history of humanity firmly back on the agenda. . .

However, the new perspectives on history should also return us to that essential, if never quite realisable, objective of those who study the past: "total history". Not a "history of everything", but history as an indivisible web in which all human activities are interconnected. Marxists are not the only ones to have had this aim, but they have been its most persistent pursuers.

Not the least of the problems for which the perspective of history as interaction is essential, is one that is crucial for the understanding of the historic evolution of homo sapiens. It is the conflict between the forces making for the transformation of homo sapiens from neolithic to nuclear humanity and the forces whose aim is the maintenance of unchanging reproduction and stability in human social environments. For most of history, the forces inhibiting change have usually effectively counteracted open-ended change.

Today this balance has been decisively tilted in one direction. And the disequilibrium is almost certainly beyond the ability of human social and political institutions to control. Perhaps Marxist historians, who have had occasion to reflect on the unintended and unwanted consequences of human collective projects in the 20th century, can at least help us understand how this came about.

I'm Back

I've been gone doing other bloggy things. But now I'm back. Posting will resume shortly.