Dragging Things Back Down

That post on Hobbes elevated the tone around here up to nosebleed level, and it's for me to drag it back down. I can't much figure out how, though. It is too hot here in decaying Worcester, MA, to think about much of anything at all.

But here's an observation: these New Englanders love their Dunkin Donuts. I have heard the Doc say, often, "Man, I don't know, but that Dunkin Donuts has wicked good coffee." Here it is, hotter than these people are used to, and they are still walking around town with super-sized Dunkin Donuts cups in their hands. And they ain't Dunkinfrappacinno's, let me tell ya! This is hot Java that they're sucking up!

Moral of the observation: The true Yankee knows what they like, and sticks to it, regardless of the circumstance. It's either stubborness, bullheadedness or impressive consistency: you be the judge.

Hobbes Locked Out

After yesterday's Court ruling that sodomy is included among those "rights" protected under the 14th Amendment's provisions for privacy and individual liberty, it occurs to me that that dusty British Whig John Locke is ascendant if not already triumphant. Not that he was ever descendent, but Lockean individual natural rights to life, liberty, and property were at least (until recently) subject to the prudent checks of social stigma and what was, to use a colonial phrase, "meet and convenient." Liberty went only so far as "the soft collar of social esteem" allowed it, marking that happy combination of liberty and order. The two were meant for each other, a match made in human nature/heaven. Most saw that liberty without order was anarchy, and order without liberty was tyranny. Seems sensible, no?

No longer. Increasingly, all infringements on individual rights are seen not only as violations of something natural to man but unconstitutional. Virtually nothing that society at large deems necessary for political, social, or moral order is allowable, legal, or defensible -- to defend such things marks one for several varieties of hatred and isms. And so, we have this interesting combination (some might say contradiction) of an increasingly democratic world with fewer and fewer matters open to majority rule. If we embrace democracy and majority rule, yet tell majorities they have no right telling other people how to live, what will be left to decide? Won't democracy be merely a shell, a quasi-libertarian system where everybody does as they please, society and majorities be damned?

Which brings to mind the much abused "Monster of Malmesbury" Thomas Hobbes, a thinker shoved into the shadows by the Lockeans. Hobbes saw that liberty without order, which truly is man in a state of nature, was a nightmare. Everyone following their own little versions of happiness (or in Hobbes' eloquent word "felicity"), everyone an atom unconcerned with others unless others infringed on my pursuit of happiness. Such a life is ultimately unliveable and, using Hobbes' famous phrase, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Hasn't this come to pass? A Lockean world of individual rights is one profoundly solitary. The quality of modern life is often poor, nasty, course, and unsatisfying. Blind pursuits of happiness contra society do indeed have a brutish quality, natural man satisfying his wants against the competition and criticism of others, leading too many to rather short unhappy lives.

So while Locke may smile that the world is his, Hobbes may frown that it is his too. Only no one realized that Hobbes' "war of all against all" was not heaven, but a hell of our own making.

The History of Anti-Americanism

Anti-Americanism has a history. That is something I am apt to forget. I often mistakenly believe that America has always been seen as a beacon for the blah-blah-blah. Nothing could be further from the truth. Much of the European interaction with America has been with a shadow America, or rather a white screen on which Europeans project their own emotions and, often enough, insecurities. For examples, see Charles Dicken's account of his travels in America, and Frances Trollope's pitiless take upon the United States. And they just found Americans had poor manners. Others are apt to find all sorts of things they don't like in Europe here in America, writ large.

Someone who knows a lot more about this than I is James W. Ceasar, Professor of Political Thought at the University of Virginia. His brilliant article "A genealogy of anti-Americanism" is online at The Public Interest website. It is a must read, and I plan to make some more comments on it tomorrow.

Speaking of Hot

Having apparently few other topics of interest to which to devote their collected brainpower, the Royal Society of Chemists and the Institute of Physics in the UK are wrangling over how to produce the best cup of tea. The physicists claim that the chemists are over complicating the matter, and the chemists sneer that the physicists’ obsession with simplification applies on so many levels.

I would like to put in a plea for scientific unity and argue that, if you follow both sets of advice, you will come up with a truly superlative brew. But it did not take the chemists and the physicists to tell me this. The most useful and enchanting book ever written about tea, Malachi McCormick’s A Decent Cup of Tea, clued me in to this long ago.

I must also give a cry of triumph over the RSC’s curt dismissal of the tea bag. When last in England I became involved in a tea disputation, and sides ended up oddly divided with Americans backing loose leaf tea and the Brits backing tea bags. Is this the pernicious effect of “Cool Britannia”? If it meant that one could get a decent cup of coffee throughout England, I suppose that would be progress of a sort, but those that have lived there have stories about the coffee that make my hair do the fretful porpentine. Besides with tea bags, you get all that extra paper littering the harbor, and those little strings would wrap around the necks of indigenous waterfowl. Loose leaf is much more versatile.

Indeed it is hot here in New England, all the more oppressive because we completely skipped over spring. It rained and rained and rained March to June, and then rather suddenly popped up to 90 degrees around June 23. But after a winter of extraordinary snowiness, I will take it.

By the way, I am back after yet another hiatus and appreciate my comrades for their "picking up the slack."

I think this is a fabulously brave and "spot on" article by John Derbyshire on homosexuality in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches. I worked four years in an American seminary, watching and digesting many disturbing things, and Derbyshire's comments hit home. Oh the things I saw; oh the things I could relate! But since that particular religious society was darn good to me, and I am as loyal as a dog, any exposes will have to wait. Suffice to say, JD is on to something here.

A book review by Roger Scruton, lamenting excessive democratism and pleading for the necessity of (and the inevitability of) elites. We like Scruton.

I may put this book on my summer list, an academic thriller based upon the disputed authorship of William Shakespeare. And the prevailing current in DC today may be Wilsonian (a tide I often happily ride upon), but being positive about Woodrow Wilson is still hard for me. He gave us the income tax and he maligned a foreign policy based on national interest. I'd have voted for Taft.

And check out the latest Books & Culture website for several interesting articles on the Civil War, thinking ahead to next week's 140th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Hmmm, this being true I do believe I will begin posting some Civil War thoughts seeing as this is one of my specialities and research interests (especially the causes thereof 1820-1860).

Lack of a Temperate Climate

It is, btw, dang hot here in central New England. Especially for someone who has spent three years in England, where they have a temperate climate, with a narrow range of possibilities, usually a binary option of light drizzle or brilliant sunshine. On Sunday it was cold enough that you had to wear a fleece everywhere. Today it's shorts, t-shirt and sandals. Such craziness! Americans just don't appreciate that even in the most mild and temperate of their regions the weather seems extreme.

Here in the Heart of New England

I have been in Worcester, Massachusetts for the last week or so. It's a pretty sad city. At some point everybody decided to move into the near suburbs, leaving the heart of Worcester desolate and lonely. But there are some real gems in this town. One of them is the American Antiquarian Society.

The AAS is a great big collection of old books. It has "American" in its title. But it is really a repository of New England greatness. This is true even of the portraits that they have in their main reading room. I sit at a table under the dome of the AAS, reading about Virginian controversies of the 18th century...but all the while John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is staring sternly down at me. Cotton Mather, just to his right, looks a lot more benign. You can see why he and Ben Franklin got along. And in a seated pose and with what can only be described as a heroic frame, Calvin Coolidge is bigger than any of them; he doesn't look at you, just stares off stage with a content expression on his face, as if he's just seen Hoover lose his re-election attempt.

Weekend Roundup

Let's just think of this as Close-of-the-Century Heroes Weekend. That would be the 18th century, not the 20th. At a time when major networks are vying to get a wounded Army private into a music video if she would just talk to them first, it's nice to think about what John Paul Jones would have done to an MTV producer if they had gotten in his way as he came out of a bar.

But, in all honesty, if it had guaranteed him enough publicity to give him a chance at a ship, I think Jones would have been on MTV in a flash. Evan Thomas, a Newsweek reporter and amateur sailor has written a new biography of Chevalier Jones. Here's the NY Times review. But as good as the book sounds, as compelling as its subject is, to be honest it seems hard to write a lot about John Paul Jones. Sure, there are some thriling sea battles to chronicle. There is a larger than life character to depict, who actually thought hard about how to beat his opponent. But Jones is a very minor character in the American Revolution. If you think of the Revolution as a grand narrative, it's hard to find a place to shove him in. His greatest victory, at Flamborough Head, is a sort of naval side-show, remarkable because it was the one frigate single-ship action of the Revolution that the US Navy won. Yes, yes, Jefferson and Washington both had his bust in their homes; but surely that was because Houdon had done it, just as he had done their busts. The book to read would be one that covered the privateers who did serious damage to British trade, and who fought the occasional rousing battle. But it hasn't been written yet, not to the required standard of dual narrative and analysis.

Also in the Time, in one of those excellent editorial decisions, is a review of the new biography of Horatio Nelson, entitled Nelson: Love and Fame. It's by Edgar Vincent, and it sounds like a great read, having both sound writing and some penetrating analysis. Sure, it is more than a little bit annoying to be told that "Nelson invented the modern system of mission command, based on consultation and coordination rather than hierarchical obedience, pioneering methods of management that are standard practice on Wall Street today"...as if Nelson was the first commander to call a council of war. But Vincent (a former naval officer and--gasp!--management consultant) at least has an eye for such things, an eye which academics and professional biographers intent on finding the real Nelson are too busy to develop.

But even Horation Nelson, as influential as he is, can't compete with John Wesley's influence. Nelson defeated a fleet; Wesley inspired a movement that converted nations. This is, roughly, the three hundredth anniversary of Wesley's birth. An article in Christianity Today Online entitled "How John Wesley Changed America" is a good place to start reading.

The Life It Saves May Be Your Own...

This just in from ScrappleFace, the indispensable news source:

(2003-06-21) -- A 14-year-old Philadelphia boy was treated and released from a hospital this morning after being shot in the chest by a friend who wanted his new copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , according to a news release from Bloomsbury, the publisher of the book.

Physicians say the boy would be dead but the bullet struck the 870-page book first, leaving the child with only minor injuries.

Harry Potter turns out to also be involved with events in Israel:

-- Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, agreed to a 72-hour cease fire with Israel to allow its young homicide bombers time to read the new J.K. Rowling offering.

Hey, who are you going to get your news from? Some shady outfit like The New York Times?

Swede Watch

The French? Pah! They are of no concern! The people I keep an eye on are the Swedes.

Don't believe me? Look at the wackiness they can make people do. Or, to be fair, the things people do for them. Pavlov's dogs had it easy.

I mean, doesn't it make you wonder, how they manufactured and sold the two ugliest car lines in the history of the automotive industry?

Jersey Lightning

The ever excellent Washington Post Food section has an article about an indomitable duo's quest to drink a Jack Rose in a DC bar. It's excellent reading except for one crucial error. Their relation of the history of applejack is foul beyond compare, giving credit for this fine beverage to "New England" with no mention of the real perpetuating source of applejack: New Jersey. Sure other places had some form of applejack, but the real source, and the one that kept it on the beverage shelf, was little N.J., thanks to a Scots immigrant from Fife who set up a distillery in the then Colony of New Jersey. Laird's distillery in Colt's Neck, NJ was a main supplier of the spirit since the early 1700's and remains so to this day. (The distillery though is no longer in NJ, but now is located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a change that your correspondent finds pleasing in its relation to her own meanderings. I just followed the applejack.). Yo Jack Rose lads, your quest for the cocktail is admirable, but if you’re going to praise the applejack, give credit where it’s properly due. Or at least brush up on your geography.

A Relief

Human cases of West Nile haven't hit Canada...yet.

Lawn Ornaments III

Saw a new one last week. I am used to the black outline of the cowboy, no matter that it looks slightly out of place on the east coast. But it took me a while to realize that what I was looking at was a cowgirl. How PC.

Why doesn't someone come up with some regional outlines? In Maine they should have codgers with beards and oilskin caps and souwesters on their lawns...they should outline well. In Pennsylvania they could have Amish chaps with beards and flat hats. Regional authenticity for lawn ornaments!

The ultra-expensive Frontgate catalog, btw, is selling Murano glass balls for your front yard. Yes, you can wipe the eyes of your neighbors by putting this exquisite handblown ornament in your front yard. Positioned, no doubt, atop a pedestal of Carerra marble.

This Day in History: The Battle of Bunker Hill

It should of course, as countless pedants like to point out, be called the "Battle of Breed's Hill". Bunker Hill had an earthwork on top of it, but no business resulted. The action occurred a half mile to the east, on the slopes of Breed's Hill.

All in all it was a lousy idea to occupy that hill. The Americans were, no doubt, thinking that with such a commanding position they could rain down artillery fire upon the British fleet in Boston harbor. But what artillery did they plan to use? They had none; and the Rebel army outside Boston would be without cannon sufficient to threaten the Royal Navy until the next winter, after Henry Knox's epic march from Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain.

What they were, those New Englanders on the Charleston peninsula, was bait. And the British Army rose at the offer. They embarked in their longboats, headed out into the Charles River, and prepared to hit the Rebel positions from three sides. It would end the Massachusetts rebellion in one decisive stroke.

In the end it did not work like that. Time and tide and the complexity of the landscape funneled the British assault into a frontal attack. And it was not just Massachusetts that the British marched against. On that day they confronted all of New England. There were Massachusetts men in the redoubt on Breed's Hill, sure enough, while William Prescott paced back and forth on the ramparts for all to see. But those were men of Connecticut behind the rail fence who awaited the assault of the Guards. Rhode Island men waited in trenches. And that was John ("Live Free or Die") Stark of New Hampshire on the beach behind the stone wall that he had had built in haste, waiting for the light infantry to come in lines of eight abreast.

In the end, of course, the Rebels lost. They were driven from that hill in a rout. But that rout presaged the majority of battles for the next eight years. Time after time the British Army, in good 18th century fashion, would hold the ground when the battle was over. But they did it at considerable cost. Veterans of wars with the French would say, after Bunker Hill, that they had never known such ferocious combat. They said it with pride, then, because they believed that they were fighting fellow Englishmen who would always fight better than the Frogs ever could. Yet they would continue to say the same thing in the long years ahead when even the most ardent proponent of British imperial rule admitted that they were no longer fighting Britons, but Americans.

There's a great website on the Battle of Bunker Hill courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Check it out.

See What Socialized Medicine Gets You

Toronto, Disease Capital of North America.

I have to add that I hope that if this man has West Nile, he acquired it when traveling to somewhere warm. Otherwise there is a truly scary vector up there in Canada. The US only acquired its first potential case this week, and it was in balmy South Carolina, which makes far more sense than Canada, where as the article notes, cases weren't expected to appear until August.

Blah, blah, blah. History, history, history. Now that I have rediscovered my pass code, it is time this blog was livened up, which means a return to the last interesting topic raised: lawn ornaments.

Ever since Dr. C's FASCINATING diatribe thereupon, I have been giving close scrutiny to the lawn decoration ethos of various areas. First, as I was abroad when Dr. C's genius struck, I observed lawn decoration in the environs of Oxford, England. It uniformly consisted of burgeoning roses that apparently grow like weeds, tasteful, but uninspired. Though the garden display at the local ironmongers promised great things, gnary a gnome did I see. Thus the most interesting lawn ornament display abroad award goes to St. John's College, Oxford, which had a teddy bear hanging by the neck in its garden.

The inner suburbs of Washington, DC also are unfertile territory. The best we have is the occasional reflecting ball, the odd flamingo, and geese in matching outfits, but the geese tend to coyly peer out from porches, as if afraid to brave the greater world of the yard while wearing a ballerina's tutu, and who can blame them?

Southern New Jersey has more in the area of lawn ornaments, but they generally are limited in scope. They consist of the silhouettes popular a decade ago that linger on (The slouching cowboy; the dog and cat), the ever popular lawn deer (an ornament I find very puzzling in an area overrun by the real thing, unless of course clever hunters use them as decoys), geese whirligigs (ditto), the odd reflecting ball, and, for the Catholic, and invariably Italian, population, a statue of the Virgin. To be sure, there is a man on Almond Road whose yard is well...like Disneyland in miniature, but he is the exception rather than the rule.

No, from what I've observed in my travels, the Mecca for lawn ornaments is New England, even more than in the South where your neighbors are apt to use your lawn ornaments for a bit of traget practice. (Although to be sure, there are things like mini-Graceland, but that's not really a lawn ornament.) Yes indeed, Ex Nova Anglia Semper Aliquid Novi. If New England doesn't have it as a lawn ornament, it doesn't exist. From the enthusiasm with which New England yards embrace the lawn ornament, it makes you wonder if they weren't mentioned in the Mayflower Compact.

"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc. having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; by virtue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall laws, ordinances, acts, lawne decorations, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.."

Oh dear, I mentioned history and Virginia and New England. None of us are safe....

Crime Prevention and Other Things

Now this is the way to treat criminals! Guy gets robbed and the bad guys flee in car. So what does the guy do? He chases them in his Hummer and eventually runs over the getaway car. That's right, the Hummer (like a tank) rolls over the getaway car.

Big day in Republican history: 147 years ago today, the Republican Party opened its first national convention in Philadelphia, eventually leading to the nomination of the "Pathfinder" John C. Fremont. Polled pretty well in a three man race versus Buchanan and Fillmore. Later had a disasterous (he had no political nose at all, which makes one wonder how he would have fared as president) Civil War career. And 31 years ago today, 5 men were caught burglarizing the DNC at DC's Watergate complex, which nixed Nixon two years later. So in one day, you have the highs and lows of one political party.

Today is also the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, but I will leave that to my colonialist comrade.

Interesting only to me, perhaps

Isn't it interesting that in the election of 1860, Vice-President John C. Breckinridge polled more votes in Massachusetts (6,163, 3.6%) and Maine (6,368, 6.3%), than Illinois (2,331, 0.7%), Iowa (1,035, 0.8%), Michigan (805, 0.5%), Minnesota (748, 2.1%), and Wisconsin (887, 0.6%) combined? He polled no votes at all in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey (probably because the ballots did not include his name), but got 218 in Vermont, 2,125 in New Hampshire, and whopping 14,372 (19.2%, just barely beaten by Douglas) in Connecticut. In fact, Breck polled a higher percentage of votes in CT than either Indiana or Missouri. So, which is really the abolitionist homeland, New England or the Old Northwest?

Just thought you'd like to know. Maybe.

"He cannot control his Natural Passion," indeed. Jackson probably had the nerve to grab the salt shaker without asking Jefferson first. "The barbarian! The knave!" To be a fly on the wall for that dinner!

I too want to read that Burstein book, although being a Jacksonian partisan I am suspicious already.

"He cannot control his Natural Passion"

Having discussed Polk, who can resist mentioning Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson himself, Polk's political mentor? Polk was called "Young Hickory" by both admirers and despisers. Both of them were "Scots-Irish", Protestants from Northern Ireland whose families came orginally from the British borderlands; and both of them were North Carolinians who emigrated to Tennessee.

One of the best popular historians around is John Buchanan. That's what I think having read his The Road to Guilford Courthouse, which chronicles the southern campaign of the American Revolution. Buchanan now has a book out entitled Jackson's Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters . I haven't read it, but from what I can gather, it doesn't seem the most PC of books. Buchanan seems to be of the opinion that all them thar Indians needed some killin', and by gar! That thar Jackson, he war the one t'do it! He also contends that the settling of what we now think of the "Deep South" but was then the "Southwest" was the real drama of western expansion; everything else was relatively easy...and I am bound to say that I agree with that premise.

For a very different take on Old Hickory, I am looking forward to getting a hold of Andrew Burstein's The Passions of Andrew Jackson. Burstein wrote to what is my mind the most perceptive and fundamentally decent book on Thomas Jefferson, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist. It is a book without any hagiography of the old Dumas Malone "Mr. Jefferson" School or any of the pious umbrage that recent scholars seem to enjoy wallowing in whenever they discuss Jefferson. And it is beautifully written, as well. The Passions of Andrew Jackson should be a good summer read.

"He cannot control his Natural Passion" was, by the way, Jefferson's assessment of Jackson after Old Hickory had dinner at Monticello. It is hard to imagine, for Jefferson, a more fundamental and serious criticism. Read Burstein to find out why.

James K. Polk

Well, it's hard to resist a nice lob over the net. James K. Polk was a great American president. I am not sure, however, that my enthusiasm for him is as unqualified as it used to be.

First, his record. He kept all his campaign promises, which were highly specific. Chief among these was the expansion the US territory. Jefferson set the foundation of westward expansion, but Polk built the house that stretched from Atlantic to Pacific. The United States of America, continental empire, open to Asia and Europe, was created by Polk. Our destiny wasn't manifest so much as it was created by Polk. This achievement, when soberly considered, makes him one of the most important chief executives in American history. For if any man defined the importance of "energy in the executive", it was Polk. In an age when the President worked by himself with the assistance of a secretary (maybe two, if you were fighting the Civil War), Polk's drive to accomplish his goals led to an early death.

Now, for the qualifications. Since my earlier enthusiasm for Polk, I have read Ulysses Grant's Memoirs, and Grant has convinced me that the Mexican War was a Bad Thing. Moreover, I have become suspicious about Polk's motivations. Surely the acquisition of Texas, California, etc., was to have an outlet for the surplus slave population? It certainly couldn't have been to open the trade door to Japan.

So while no longer an ardent Polkite, I still think that it is an indisputable fact that Polk is one of the most important Presidents in American history. He shows, moreover (like Teddy Roosevelt, another workaholic), that the Presidency is what you make of it. Of course, making it might kill you.

Do-dads, do-dads

I noticed that today is the 154th anniversary of the death of James K. Polk, and since my compatriot in this blog is a confirmed Polkian (or is it Polkite?) I thought I would invite him to tell us "Why J. K. Polk was a great American." Although I am drawn a bit more to Jackson and the ne'r-do-wells Pierce and Buchanan, I look forward to the explanation.

Did you see this latest bill in the House, forbidding tax write-offs to companies who do business at same-sex clubs? Can we put this at the top of the "doesn't government have anything better to do" list? We have crime, terrorism, and a bad economy, and two congressional buttinskys want to slap the hands of Augusta and the Elks Lodge?

What is the point of genealogy? I mean, what is the basic core of wanting to know about your ancestors, sometimes dozens of generations removed from yourself? I don't ask this critically but quizzically. It would seem the explanation comes down to three essential reasons: (1.) mere curiosity of how you got to this place at this point in time, and/or (2.) exploration of the self, in that you believe in "blood" and that characteristics can be passed down, and/or (3.) it makes you feel good about yourself (their glory rubs off on you, or you are so much more successful than them). So if Uncle Albert owned a successful haberdashery in the 1880s and met the president, you can say, "isn't that interesting," or "my ancestors were keen businessmen and political activists -- it runs in the family," or "well, you had a rich uncle who met the president once," or (even better) "our ancestors were dung gatherers, so it just goes to show you how far we have come."

More on Alan Furst

BTW, I would encourage the Doc to grab some Furst. It is a beach read of the kind that beach reads should be, for it stimulates rather than deadens. People read all this CusslerClancyCootsCrap and turn into sonambulent morons. Avoid sonambulent moronism! Read Furst!

His latest, Blood of Victory, is available of course from Amazon. (And isn't it time for us to have a "partnership" link with Amazon so that big dollars can really start rolling in?) (And speaking of morons, BTW, read some of the reviews of Blood.) And here's an interesting interview with Furst. Enjoy.

History Talk II

Oh, my, what a rich vein the Doc has opened up. The curmudgeonly bile rises to my throat as I contemplate his words. So much to vituperate, so little time. And so much to comment upon, as well. One of these hours we should talk about what Brookhiser said, and what "We, the People" is all about. But I won't even bother to link to it, yet. We could vituperate about student evaluations. But that would to misdirect good bile. Right now I want to vituperate about talking history to students.

For- Lo! - the Doc is right. Once upon a time I thought that I could seminar them to death. I would be their Socrates, and they would be my little Plato's-- or Alcibiades'. But that doesn't work in history. You have to have a certain base of knowledge, which even the brightest college student now lacks. I well recall trying to explain the investiture controversy of the 11th century to some students (simply put, does the Pope or the King get to appoint bishops?) and ending up 45 minutes later trying to explain the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. You have to build your foundations very deep these days. And you would be a fool to trust a textbook to do so.

This is why we lecture. Not because we prefer it, or are good at it. Simply because high school teachers have forsaken their responsibilities, and left us to build the foundations they should have started. Do I like a seminar? Sure. Love it. But that is now a treat that must be reserved for advanced students...the ones who have heard the lectures. First vegetables, then the dessert. You can't be feeding strawberry shortcake to the malnourished Ethiopian children, can you?

And stay the hell off my lawn!

History talk

A really splendid article in the Wall Street Journal this morning by Richard Brookhiser, one of the best popular historians/biographers today. Apparently, a new federal program called "We the People" has been proposed to rectify the appalling lack of historical knowledge by American students. Now, leaving aside my cynical worries about how and when the historical establishment will warp the purposes of this program, I think Brookhiser lands some blows when he attacks social history, or as he calls it "social studies." Abandoning the traditional narrative history of great men and great events, history today is more a matter of unavoidable movements, trends, and shifts (and the self-loathing that comes with realizing you are "on the wrong side of history"). Brookhiser advocates returning to teaching history through, to use his catagories, stories, conflicts, personalities, and lessons. I am sympathetic.

Driving in the car yesterday, on my usual round of errands, I began thinking about my semester-end student evaluations. For now, I will avoid ranting about the very concept of student evaluations (let me get this straight, the students who say things like, "cool, we're watching a video in class" and "who is Nixon?" will be evaluating my class?...ok, a small rant) and instead focus on what they said. I am always blessed by very good student reactions to my classes; they do lots of work, are graded harshly, but appreciate that the class is interesting and not "dumbed down." Great. But it is the "what can the professor do to improve this class" that always gets me. The most consistent complaint is "the professor lectures too much." Most profs would probably see this repeatedly mentioned and think about changing their approach, making their classes more seminar-oriented. I absolutely refuse and dig in my heels.

Why? $20,000+ a year is an awful lot to pay for a conversation. If you want a conversation, go to a bookstore and start talking to people. It is free and appropriate. In a college or university, before any conversation takes place, students must have a knowledge of the facts, personalities, and events before any meaningful and useful conversation takes place. I am not interested in what students think about Joseph McCarthy if they do not understand what archival research in the past ten years has taught us about Soviet espionage, among other things. They want to tell me about "McCarthyism" and blacklisting and voice their opinions, but when questioned have nary a clue about Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, or the Rosenbergs. Conversation, debate, "dialogue" (an annoyingly common postmodern word) is a complete waste of time if students do not have at least a basic understanding of the facts, and when it is made a primary focus ahead of lectures it only reinforces ignorance. This is why lectures come first, conversation second, and I have no intention of changing this approach.

Hence, Dr. Curmudgeon.

Well, I have not selected my next book as of yet, so perhaps I will dip into Furst. Right now, I am trudging through James Buchanan's annual addresses and proclamations, and his 1866 autobiography. Riveting for me, dull as dull can be for most.

Watched a portion of C-Span's James Buchanan special, aired a couple of years ago in their well done presidential series. Predictably, the first question asked by the very first caller was "is it true James Buchanan was a homosexual?" I've always thought this a profoundly stupid question, based in a thorough misunderstanding of the nineteenth century. Evidence for this shoddy case is apparently based on four things: his bachelor status, his close friendship with Franklin Pierce's Vice-President William King, affectionate language used in letters to King, and contemporary quips about Buchanan being a dandy. Let's break this down:

1.) It hardly needs to be said that being a bachelor indicates nothing. Buchanan was so miserably upset with a broken engagement in his youth that he never allowed himself to be hurt by a woman again. One vicious (and false) rumor was that he cocked his head noticably to one side because he tried unsuccessfully to hang himself after that breakup-- the truth was that he did not see well out of one eye.

2.) He was a close friend of King's, I believe even rooming with King at one point. This rather ordinary fact has been transformed into evidence of something sexual. But rooming together was quite common, especially in DC during this era. Congressman and Senator Franklin Pierce roomed with other men at the same time, as did most senators and congressmen of the era. That's what boarding house life was like in the 1830s and 1840s; it's not evidence of anything untoward.

3.) This one gets me the most, that Buchanan wrote rather touching letters to King. Anyone with any experience in looking at nineteenth century letters knows that the preferred idiom was highly sentimental, romantic language, typical of the Victorian-era on both sides of the Atlantic. Simply put, everyone wrote this way: men-women, women-men, men-men, women-women. It indicates nothing. Pierce and Hawthorne often said they loved one another -- only living in a 2003 vacuum, totally ignorant of nineteenth century history, can give his any sexual meaning. Go read Karen Hansen's marvelous social history A Very Social Time and then look at Buchanan again. His writing was ordinary, not notable at all.

4.) Apparently Buchanan was a fop and liked nice clothes, and this led some contemporaries to label him a dandy or a "nancy." Big deal. The great Democratic historian George Bancroft used to walk around Boston in the 1830s and 1840s wearing purple knee breeches from France, years after they were out of style, causing everyone to laugh at him. Was he homosexual too? Chester Alan Arthur was roundly mocked for dressing to the nines and wearing the latest New York fashions in the 1870s and 1880s. How about him?

The case for a homosexual Buchanan is bad history.

More Summer Reading

Well, my summer reading is not as noble as the Doc's. Last Friday I returned to Our Native Land after four years of living in the United Kingdom. In the intervening days I have been devouring books as if there is no tomorrow–and who's to say that there is? Anyway, half of what I have read has been historical fiction. I have been trying to find authors of historical fiction who have the art and vesimilitude of Patrick O'Brian, he who authored the magnificent Aubrey-Maturin series; or, more properly, roman a fleuve, for it is one long 20 volume novel.

My contenders for the crown are headed by Alan Furst, who if nothing else writes the finest spy novels ever. Forget Le Carré; he's a poser. Furst has the real stuff. All of his stories are set from about 1935 to 1945, most of them just a year after the beginning of the war. His characters are dispossesed and nationless Eastern Europeans looking for something to believe after twenty years of believing lies. And above all, he writes with such elegance, such vividness, that reading his novels is an almost tactile experience. I highly recommend him.

Summer reading of note

Finished a couple of books in the last week, both worth the time and money. Ronald Radosh's Commies is an entertaining, name-dropping autobiography of life in the "Old Left, New Left, and Leftover Left." He plainly spells out the communist affinities of most American left-wing organizations in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and rather honestly describes his slow "conversion" in the 70s and 80s to "loving America." The only drawback to the work is lack of comtemporary relfection; in other words, I was left wanting a bit more commentary on where Radosh is now (intellectually) and what life is like amid the ex-lefties like David Horowitz, Peter Collier, and the like. But his mention of (among others) Peter, Paul, and Mary, Eric Foner, and Eugene Genovese makes Commies a riveting read.

I also managed to finish Roger Kimball's The Long March, another retrospective on the 60s, albeit from a different perspective. Whereas Radosh speaks from former advocacy of ninny New Left ideas, Kimball speaks from a life-long hatred of the same. Long March is intellectually "thicker" and, in a sense, more damning with its voluminous evidence of vacuous left-wing commentary from the likes of Susan Sontag, William Sloane Coffin, Herbert Marcuse, and Norman Mailer among many others. Indeed, the very volume of stupidity makes the book tedious at times; I found myself unconsciously skimming quotations and paragraphs, muttering to myself, "more of the same ... stupid, crazy, dangerous ... more of the same..." Still, the case against ever again listening to these left-luminaries is solidly made, and Kimball's case is worth the effort.

Back from a week's hiatus, but due to a family illness I was unable to make pilgrammage to Warren Harding's home and memorial. Do not fret, because I still plan a trek later this summer and will fill this blog with Hardingalia.

Thought this is an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal, defending federal historic preservation dollars for religious sites. I hardly think the establishment clause forbidding a federally established church prevents tax dollars from helping preserve an eighteenth century chapel, but give the ACLU and the church-state separatists a chance. They always find a way.

Why Religious Studies Isn't Interested in Deities

But having taken the obligatory stab at the whingers at the Chronicle, here is a very interesting essay
from its latest issue by Rodney Stark on the failure of religious studies departments to take the worship of gods seriously. They'd rather be doing comparative sociology, you see, rather than seriously look into all that disguise for the "real" motivations.

It all strikes me as being spot on. There is an interesting nexus between the modern culture of cynicism and the academic's need to find the "real" motivation. Modernity, postmodernity, or laziness? Discuss.

Just in from Pravda

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on academics who blog. Their is some concern that they might not be writing about their own sub-specialty! They might not know all before they write! Yikes!

Next up: peer review for blogs. Good thing that the Doc et alia are ahead of the curve.