Gun Obsession

Recently, I became cognizant that every post on Patriots and Peoples the past three years has been about guns in one way or another. There also have been very few posts. Despite appearances, I have interests other than guns (read my more active Chess Skills for evidence). Nonetheless, my interest in guns has grown over the past few years. This interest is both personal and historical. Guns have long interested me, although for the better part of forty years that interest was mostly historical. My personal interest revived slowly over the past few years. Last fall, I returned to the woods as a hunter for the first time since the late 1970s.

Three or four years ago, a friend shared a series of quotes on Facebook that he alleged made clear the views on the Founding Fathers on the matter of guns. My initial impression was that the list was not characterized by the usual array of fake quotes that seem the norm in highly partisan collections.

Study Regimen

Over the next few weeks, I spent several hours tracking down the original sources of each quote, studying the context, and jotting down some notes in the computer file where I had pasted the collection. My intention was to create a series of blog posts assessing which quotes were credible and which were deceptive. When I saw my friend, I asked about his source. He had received the collection in an email, he recalled, but was vague on the specifics. I found the whole collection online at Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio gun rights organization. Their website offers:

Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) is a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that serves as the flagship of our grassroots efforts to defend and advance the right of more than 4 million Ohio citizens to own and use firearms for all legal activities, including self-defense, hunting, competition, and recreation.
www.buckeyefirearms.org

My friend could have subscribed to their email, but he denied any knowledge of the organization. I am sure that the collection of quotes circulates several ways. It is possible that it originates with the BFA, but there may be another source.

My main concern is the authenticity and relevance of each quote. I appreciate the sourcing in the collection. That is, the collection not only credits George Washington with, "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined...", but also references the president's First Annual Message to Congress. There are many fake gun quotes attributed President Washington that begin with this one.

One of my relatives shared on Facebook last week an image with a version that adds words not only that Washington did not utter, but that were contrary to his known views.

Fake Quote

His source was Mary J. Ruwart, a biochemist turned libertarian political activist. She posted this image 1 February 2017 and it continues to circulate. The measures Facebook has taken against fake news stories does not apply to images and does not apply to errors of historical fact.

I pointed out to my relative that the quote is fake and offered a link to the whole of Washington's address to Congress. I pasted my reply to Ruwart's original post.

My Response

This response and my post on Wayne LaPierre's errors with respect to a John Adams quote both were aided by the work I started three years ago or so on the BFA quotes. My series of blog posts have not materialized the way I intended, but the work has been useful. Like many projects, it has taken longer than anticipated and other interests began to crown upon the project. When I started working through these quotes, I did not have a shelf of books on guns and gun history. Now I have several such shelves and another book is scheduled to arrive today.

Yesterday morning, I started reading Adam Winkler, Gun Fight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011). I am halfway through. I might post a review of this book, which I think is vastly superior to Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment: A Biography (2014), which I reviewed in 2017. I wanted to go to the shooting range yesterday morning, but the snow started falling at 6:00 am and my wife took our Explorer to work leaving me with the car that does less well on slick roads. Instead of shooting a gun or two at some targets, I spent my time reading about them.

Reagan Mythology

Paul Rosenberg offers an assessment of President Reagan's legacy far more realistic than the one driving Tea Partiers and even President Obama, whom Rosenberg opines, "is as drunk on Reagan's kool-aid as anyone else in Washington today."

He explains,

Reagan was a disaster for the American economy in at least four fundamental ways:

... Under Ronald Reagan, the US went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years

... the number of unionised jobs and the number of jobs with American companies declined even further.

... The income stagnation that began under Reagan has had a devastating impact on personal savings.

... Before Reagan, debt really wasn't a problem for America.

The article begins:

As things stand today, the US is hurtling toward a budget showdown in less than a month. Either President Obama will once again capitulate to extreme Republican budget-slashing demands, making Democrats seem as much of a threat to Medicare as Republicans, and virtually ensuring a GOP electoral sweep in 2012, or the US will default on its debt for the first time in its history, most likely plunging the world economy back into another five-continent recession, also costing Democrats the 2012 elections.

Read the rest at Reagan mythology is leading US off a cliff - Opinion - Al Jazeera English


Hat tip to Millard Fillmore's Bathtub for bringing this editorial to my attention.

The American Story

George Chalich was a high school teacher who inundated the junior class with factoids. I loved the factoids he gave us, but hated the slow pace of presentation and the alienating absence of dialogue. We memorized, to the last comma, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution; lengthy definitions of socialism, communism, totalitarianism, republicanism, and democracy; salary schedules for the federal judiciary, members of Congress, and the President; and the eight characteristic behaviors of the "good citizen": I can recall the first two: 1) "a good citizen votes;" 2) "a good citizen votes intelligently." Chalich's stories evoked an alternative vision of good citizenship. Drawing on his Serbian heritage, his story of the beginnings of the First World War becomes a lesson in historiography: "Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian patriot, the newspapers never get it right." The so-called assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand was not a criminal act, but an assertion of the patriotism of a nation within.
Spring Wind Rising (1994), 185-186.

We sat in our straitjackets, took notes, and made efforts to memorize George Chalich's lists. Most of my classmates learned to hate history. Skill at memorization was not high among the talents of teenagers in the 1970s. Even those good at it rarely look back with fondness upon the experience. It should be clear that the pedagogy of memorization is far from an exemplary model for nurturing historical knowledge, let alone historical thinking in high school students. Nor does this failed pedagogy serve the adults who return to school in middle age.

Teachers who are passionate for history should infect students with their enthusiasm, not inoculate them against outbreaks of history mindedness. In a recent National History Center roundtable, the panelists agreed, "that instilling the love of history into students’ lives was the most important objective in a survey course." Salt Lake City, Utah teacher Fiona Halloran notes, "Students come to class hoping for pleasure but fearing pain." She suggests liberty in their writing assignments:

Offering students liberty means asking them to write essays about dissent, identity, and hunger. What do those things mean? Let them decide. As they struggle to match historical events and ideas to concepts like resistance, they will have to wrestle with the most difficult questions history has to offer. ... [Assessment liberty] invites students to tell you about the ideas they found most compelling and their work is therefore brighter, more forceful and more specific.
Halloran, "Historical Gardening"

San Francisco's Valerie Ziegler emphasizes teaching students the process of producing history, and also gives them room for decision. She draws from the Reading Like a Historian project of the Stanford History Education Group (a project led by Sam Wineburg whose Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts I have mentioned in "Reflective Thinking, Teaching and Learning" and other posts). She looks to students to create their own answers to historical questions.

Each lesson in this curriculum begins with a debatable historical question that requires students to formulate answers based on their reading of historical evidence. My students leave my class with confidence in their reading, writing and understanding of how the story of history is told. They develop skills they can use beyond high school.
Ziegler, "Crafting a Love for History"

Chalich's memorization scheme aimed at cultivating a sense of citizenship (voting, not assassinating heads of states). Today's emphasis upon teaching and learning (the lingo that replaced the term pedagogy) cultivates behaviors that are necessary to an engaged and effective citizenry. Several panelists emphasized historical thinking as central to successful democracy.

In the final analysis the effective U.S. history course fosters active citizenship. History education is the best way to reach for equity, social justice, and new hope. Sitting in our classrooms today are the century’s new leaders; within them the seeds of true equity, gentleness, compassion and service are sown.
David Mitchell, "Primary Sources: The Seeds for Student Growth"

By examining how previous generations of citizens grappled with the issues, students see that they too have a role in shaping the events of their time. They have a stake—more to gain—in looking at how we got to this point. The spirited debate over who should bear the cost of the national road two hundred years ago is the health care debate of today.
William E. White, "The Idea of America"

Andrew Johnson explains in "Let the Questions Guide You," his contribution to the roundtable, how his course is built around four central questions. Well-informed readers will recognize the sources of his questions in famous political speeches and poems.

Each quarter of the school year is framed with a guiding question. “Was this nation conceived in liberty?” compels a study of colonial times, the Revolution and the Constitution, and the Washington and Adams administrations. The question itself constitutes both a compelling essay question as well as a sorting tool for what content to include and what to leave out. Similarly, “Is our government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” compels a study of the abolition movement, the Civil War, and Progressivism.
Johnson, "Let the Questions Guide You"

Lendol Calder, whose "uncoverage" model clearly influences the other panelists, discusses an assignment he uses the first week of his college U.S. history survey.

In the first week of my course, students write a two-page history of the United States. I don’t allow them to look anything up, which makes students think I am testing their factual knowledge. In fact, I use the assignment to learn what students think the story of American history is. By “story” I mean the basic interpretive frame they use to make sense of the American past.
Calder, "But What is Our Story?"

Calder emphasizes that factual recall is not the forte of a well-trained historian so much as an inquiring mindset.

The mark of historical mindedness is not recalling that “this happened and then that happened.” Rather, it is a distinctive sort of questioning and a distinctive method of discovery supported by certain habits, skills, and dispositions.
Calder, "But What is Our Story?"

All of the panelists emphasize student engagement with primary sources. They each emphasize at least some of the processes Calder has called the cognitive habits of the historian: "questioning, connecting, sourcing, making inferences, considering alternate perspectives, and recognizing limits to one's knowledge"(Calder, "Uncoverage: Toward a Signature Pedagogy for the History Survey," The Journal of American History (March 2006), 1364).

Palin's Gaffe and Her Apologists

It’s so important for Americans to learn about our past so we can clearly see our way forward in challenging times; so, we’re bringing attention to our great nation’s foundation.
Sarah Palin, SarahPAC

The news has slowed concerning former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's gaffe, and some of what was there in the beginning seems gone.

The Boston Herald offered this passage in a much copied article:

But Cornell law professor William Jacobson, who asserted last week that Palin was correct, linking to Revere quotes on his conservative blog Legalinsurrection.com, said Palin’s critics are the ones in need of a history lesson. “It seems to be a historical fact that this happened,” he said. “A lot of the criticism is unfair and made by people who are themselves ignorant of history.”
"Experts Back Sarah Palin's Account"

It's a compelling quote. As Jacobson is a law professor at an elite university, I eagerly went to his blog seeking an able explanation and defense of this judgement: Palin's remarks are more accurate than those of her critics.

Searching for this quote, or even the word "ignorant" in Jacobson's blog bears no fruit. Perhaps the quoted lines are from an interview. Perhaps they originally appeared in the post obliquely referenced, but edits removed them.

Jacobson has several posts over the past few days:

"So Now All These People Will Apologize to Sarah Palin About Paul Revere, Right?" 3 June 2011

Noting that Palin's version "seemed odd," Jacobson found that Conservatives4Palin had quoted Paul Revere's 1898 letter and repeats their quote.

“I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the blogger. That's my job.” 4 June 2011

He takes issue with a comment on his blog that accused him of "offering cover" to a politician who deserves scorn.

"Deranged Propagandist" 4 June 2011

Notes that Andrew Sullivan linked to his blog via the label "deranged propagandist".

"Anti-Palinites Go All In On Epistemic Closure," 6 June 2011

Renders accusations against Palin's critics for committing the errors they attempt to pin on her.

The debate also shifted, from she was wrong as to the fact of the warning to she was wrong as to Revere's intent. The goal posts constantly were moved. All in all, there was an intellectual shut down by those on the left and right who don't like Palin, an unwillingness to consider facts which contradicted their narrative.

"Suffolk Univ. History Prof. - Palin Right About Paul Revere," 6 June 2011

Links to the NPR interview with Robert Allison that I discuss in "Paul Revere's Bells".

"I Demand That Obama Recite The Longfellow Poem From Memory," 8 June 2011

Clever turn of the whole controversy against our current President.


Paul Revere's Ride

In his first post, Professor Jacobson searched David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride (1994) for "Paul Revere bells and gunshots," finding this passage: "A townsman remembered that 'repeated gunshots, the beating of drums and the ringing of bells filled the air'" (150). Something along those lines was my second response (after finding Revere's letter) and I bought the eBook from Google. I started reading it from the beginning, but jumped forward to the passages relevant to Palin's version.

The text read fine on my notebook and desktop computers, but Google's iPad app utterly failed after purchasing the book. After nearly twenty-four hours of frustration, I deleted the app, then reinstalled it. Last night I was able to read Fischer's book as I fell asleep. His description of General Thomas Gage's frustration with colonials seems apropos. If Gage's view has any credibility as Fischer presents it, his observation of colonial contradictions establishes a stronger connection between today's Tea Partiers and the original Boston Tea Party.

General Gage reminded himself that most of these infuriating provincials were British too--blood of his blood, flesh of his own freeborn nation. They had been allowed more liberties than any people on the face of the globe, yet they complained that he was trying to enslave them. They were taxed more lightly than the subjects of any European state, but refused even the trivial sums that Parliament had levied upon them. They professed loyalty to their rightful Sovereign, but tarred and feathered his Royal officers, and burned His Majesty's ships to the water's edge.
Paul Revere's Ride, 31

That a tax revolt might be led by those who paid the least taxes seems as true of the eighteenth century Boston smugglers who organized the Tea Party as of those that lead today's group that claims their mantle.

Paul Revere's Ride

Paul Revere's letter to Jeremy Belknap (1798) offers his own account of an event that has been much memorialized, mythologized, and misunderstood in the centuries since. The complete letter is available from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

In Medford, I awaked the Captain of the Minute men; & after that, I alarmed almost every House, till I got to Lexington. I found Mrs. Messrs. Hancock & Adams at the Rev. Mr. Clark's; I told them my errand, and inquired for Mr. Daws; they said he had not been there; I related the story of the two officers, & supposed that He must have been stopped, as he ought to have been there before me. After I had been there about half an Hour, Mr. Daws came; after we refreshid our selves, we and set off for Concord, to secure the Stores, &c. there.
Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap

Sarah Palin's account differs from Revere's, from accounts by leading historians (David Hackett Fischer's account is cited most often), from Wikipedia before her followers attempted to rectify the omission, and even differs substantially from the account in the not always reliable right-wing history in A Patriot's History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. Although a few details that she places near the center of her narrative can be found at the edges of the narrative in A Patriot's History.

[General Thomas Gage] issued orders to arrest the political firebrands and rhetoricians Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were reported in the Lexington area, and to secure the cannons from the colonists. Gage therefore sought to kill two birds with one stone when, on the night of April 18, 1775, he sent 1,000 soldiers from Boston to march up the road via Lexington to Concord. If he could surprise the colonials and could capture Adams, Hancock, and the supplies quietly, the situation might be defused. But the patriots learned of British intentions and signaled the British route with lanterns from the Old North Church, whereupon two riders, Paul Revere and William Dawes left Boston by different routes to rouse the minutemen. Calling, "To Arms! To Arms!" Revere and Dawes's daring mission successfully alerted the patriots at Lexington, at no small cost to Revere, who fell from his horse after warning Hancock and Adams and was captured at one point, but then escaped.
A Patriot's History, 72-73.

Palin's account garbles these events with half-truths and egregious error, much as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's placement of Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire brought scorn upon her and raised doubts whether any of the Tea Party leaders know enough American history to pass a high school exam.

Needless to say, my blog feed this morning has listed quite a few references to historians and journalists skewering Palin's account. Ed Brayton asserts, "she babbles like an unprepared freshman in history class." Larry Cebula develops this theme with a clip from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and also draws attention to revisions of Wikipedia by Palin apologists. He notes, "she tries to fake her way through with the unprepared student's classic recipe of one-half facts that are wrong and one-half trumpeting what the student believes are the key themes of the course." John Fea repeats Andrew Sullivan's harsh psychoanalysis of Palin, "[o]ne of the most pernicious and dangerous features of Palin is her clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts she has cited are not actually facts, but delusions." Sullivan also comments upon Wikipedia vandalism. The Washington Post employs the Wikipedia entry war as its lead to observe the differences between Michelle Bachmann admitting her error and turning into a joke about liberal Massachusetts and Sarah Palin's claim, "I didn't mess up." Kurt Weldon's brief entry offers a memorable line: "Ignorance is not merely bliss--it's mandatory."


Paul Revere and the Second Amendment

Palin's effort to connect Revere to what would become an issue of gun control and interpretations of the Second Amendment does adhere to a theme in some histories.

He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms.
Sarah Palin

Schweikart and Allen note:

[T]he people of Massachusetts established a revolutionary government and raised an army of soldiers known as minutemen (able to fight on a minutes notice).
A Patriot's History, 72

Revere stated clearly that warning the minutemen of British troop movements was his first task.

Schweikart and Allen also position themselves in a debate regarding the extent of firearm and large weapon possession in revolutionary Massachusetts.

[G]uns were so prevalent that citizens did not need to list them specifically. On the eve of the Revolution, Massachusetts citizens were well armed, and not only with small weapons but, collectively, with artillery.
A Patriot's History, 72.

It is clear, even from this pro-gun account from a pair of far-right historians, that Massachusetts established a "well-regulated militia" to serve at the behest of the revolutionary colonial government. Moreover, I rarely hear conservative advocates of the Second Amendment pushing for my right to have an M1A1 Abrams tank in the driveway and surely that is much closer in spirit to the possession of cannon in 1775. Palin seems to want to push this issue a bit farther than Schweikart and Allen, although theirs may be the text that she is misremembering.


Palin's Apologetics

Former Governor Sarah Palin did get something right in a strange twist of fate. In an interview with Chris Wallace on FOX, Palin said:

Reporters don't seem to be understanding it. Even your own Shep Smith there on FOX News, he announced the other day that I was on some publicity tour. I wanted to say, Shep, take it one step futher, what am I publicizing on this tour? I'm publicizing Americana, and our foundation, and how important it is that we learn about our past and our challenges, and victories throughout American history, so that we can successfully proceed forward. Very heady days, rough waters ahead of us, Chris. We need to make sure that we have a strong grasp of our foundational victories so that we can move forward.
Palin to Chris Wallace, FOX News Sunday, at 14:13

She certainly publicizes the need to learn history every time she speaks about the past, for inevitably she makes the news by getting facts mixed up. She then stays in the headlines by insisting that she did not get things wrong. The more she offers her distorted understanding, the more clearly she publicizes the need to learn history. In the long-run that strategy will backfire, but the short-run is her forte.


Palin's English

Finally, we should not overlook this comic piece by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch: "Sarah Palin's Problem is Her English, Not Her History." Palin speaks the rare dialect Northeast Wasillian.

National Rifle Association member that she is, Palin certainly knew Revere wasn't firing off "warning shots.” There were no warning shots in the days of the single-shot, hard-to-reload musket. Nobody wasted shots, let alone ammunition, on warnings. They shot to try to hit something. Palin just slipped up there with her messaging, which is easy to understand because her problem has never been her history so much as her grammar and vocabulary.
...
This is nothing new. Palin has always spoken some form of Wasillian, or even maybe Northeast Wasillian, an extremely rare dialect.
Medred

On a blog that picked up this piece, a commentator noted that Northeast Wasillian is Palin's third language, after "Ida-the-ho-ian and Wasillian."



Editing note: In the original post I incorrectly attributed to John Fea words of Andrew Sullivan that he quoted on his fine history blog. I have corrected the error. Andrew Sullivan is not in my blog feed, while The Way of Improvement Leads Home is one that I read regularly.

Zinn on Slavery

During an argument on Facebook concerning observations of racism in the Tea Party movement, a putative historian opined:

Maybe you got your history from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States--the most assigned history textbook in our schools. Howard Zinn, Communist Party Member, said that, "objective history was undesirable if it is to serve a social purpose." He also explained that if you ask 100 different people who lived through an event or time what happened you'll get 100 different answers. So he sought to teach history through the perspectives of the victims of history. That makes me wonder who decided who the victims were and how accurate can we expect his books (our history textbooks) to be? One example of how Howard Zinn was wrong: he claimed that European whites brought slavery to the Americas, when in fact there was already an abundant slave trade in place between the Indian tribes well before the white Europeans came. [spelling and punctuation errors in original corrected]

Zinn's discussion of slavery in the first two chapters of A People's History is not quite as represented by this Tea Party apologist. I urge my readers to read Zinn more carefully.

World Malaria Day

I have written several posts on this blog concerning the historical impact of disease. Many diseases continue to ravage modern populations. Malaria is the most prolific killer. As average global temperatures rise, the regions hospitable to the parasites that cause malaria will grow. Much can be done to protect those in affected regions.

Read more of the following at the website for World Malaria Day.

World Malaria day--A Day to Act

25 April 2010 is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world. This year's World Malaria Day marks a critical moment in time. The international malaria community has less than a year to meet the 2010 targets of delivering effective and affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria, as called for by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.

World Malaria Day represents a chance for all of us to make a difference. Whether you are a government, a company, a charity or an individual, you can roll back malaria and help generate broad gains in multiple areas of health and human development.

Say What? Obama and the Children

President Obama wants to address the nation. He wants his address broadcast in school classrooms.

The Associated Press: "Obama speech to students draws conservative ire"

This is communism.

Hell-NO! Sorry, but I just don't agree with you Mr. President. Socialist programs are what failure is made of, and you sir, are setting this country up for failure. I do not want you influencing my child with your "The Government will solve all your problems" attitude. I would rather have my child realize that it takes hard work and effort to achieve success in this country, and he won't learn that from any politician. I do not want him to rely on government handouts--those only lead to more dependency on other failed government programs.
Greg

This is Nazism.

Why not, Hitler did it
Jack

This violates the authority of parents.

His speech is NOT his decision to make. It is the parents choice. I already informed the school that my daughter is NOT to hear his garbage. I told her there will be problems if they show it. The teacher said she wasn't sure if she would show it or not. When I told her don't want her to show it she said i just reinforced her idea NOT to show it as it is up to the parents NOT the teachers.
Mike

More quotes from Facebook:

Schools are run by the state not the federal government. Obama needs to stick with where his jurisdiction lies. I will not let my children see this video. We are not a communist society...the president is not responsible for telling children what to learn in school, that is a parent's job.
Emily

I am not a NAZI like obamanation...I believe in FREEDOM and CHOICE...not HIS idea of what I need!!!
Paul

Regardless of potential socialism, we as parents should have a right to decide whtat our children see! I certainly do not want my child wondering "what the president wants from me". Most are right, the longer Obama is in office, the more I am reminded of Hitler and Stalin. May the Lord help us!
Abagail

No way I want this guy pushing his socialist agenda in my school. You people are blind if you don't think he will. This man should ashamed of showing his face to the young people who soon will be paying for his screw up. All this guy is looking for is votes for reelection.
Stu

This is POLITICALLY motivated and that is why people are pissed! It is not the President trying to do anything for kid's. It's Political! It couldn't be at a worse time and the whole "MANDATORY" thing is ridiculous. Nobody is racist! Everybody needs to stop throwing the RACE CARD every chance they get. The guy is half white so shut up!!!!!!
Dave

Keep Gov. out of almost everything except Military and infrastructure.Keep children away from the Government so they will not be brain washed intothinking the Gov. is the answer to lifes problems.The Gov. taxes business out of existence and then wonders where all the jobs went.How many people work in a factory anymore,not many I bet,people used to but now we don't make anything because all of our stuff is made in China or the like country and we buy the cheap crap and think we are saving money.Does anyone remember when Walmart was buy America?Now it has changed to Chinamart.
Ronnie

Besides, why interrupt education just to say "stay in school, education is important, etc"?? The kids are in school!! Why make an excuse to tell them the obvious? Sorry, but that seems suspicious to me. I think he has other motives.
Gabby

Why in the world would I let anyone give a speech to my children without my consent. I don't even let them watch Obama at home why would I allow it at school. David, not allowing my children to be given a speech to by him is not dumb electing a President that cares nothing for its people is dumb. And John, do you not know what Hitler did to the people of the world. Hmm what do you call driving our economy into the ground and taking from the common man trying to make a honest living to give to the lazy man waiting for a hand out. I wouldn't say its Hitler like but its not much better. Wrong is Wrong no matter how you spin it. I say we ALL PRAY thats what our schools need GOD.
Heather

The adults in this Country are screwed up enough right now, so now he wants to screw up my kids??? Hell no... They'll be absent that day at the beach...
Rob

I predict an upsurge in homeschooling.
Ted

Displaying 10 of 14090 posts.


Does that render the conservative response clear enough?. The comments are posted faster than I can read them. I read a page, advance to the next page (older), and I'm looking at one that was created after the one I just read because page one is now page four.

These comments are posted in response to a Facebook poll:

Should President Obama be allowed to do a nationwide address to school children without parental consent?

As of 10:17 am Pacific Time

Yes 41,046 (33.1%)
No 78,128 (63.0%)
I don't care 4,885 (3.9%)

Certainly, President Obama's plan to speak to school children is unprecedented. When President George Bush spoke, it was only to millions.

Fresh Roasted Martian Coffee

I rarely agree with my Representative in Congress. We do not share the same political commitments, nor the same priorities. Even so, she is among my "friends" on Facebook. As a consequence, I saw the update when she spoke at the ribbon cutting for the opening of the North Spokane Corridor, the first drivable leg of the North-South Freeway first proposed in 1946. She (or a staffer) posted a photo on TwitPic, and her Facebook page offered a link.

There are plenty of reasons to question new freeway construction, such as the role it plays in the development of sprawl. I tend to think the construction is too little, too late as far as relieving congestion, but the project offers the opportunity to raise some other questions of my Congresswoman. So, I asked a question of her through this social networking site, although I'm skeptical that she will respond.

Cathy, what are you doing to make certain the project gets completed while there is still petroleum on the planet, and to support the development of vehicles that run on other fuels so the new freeway connecting I-90 to Wandermere will not have been an egregious waste of taxpayer money?

In the ensuing conversation with other "friends" of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, others had questions too.

Garlan Cutler: I was not there but I hope you reminded the folks that, President Obama's mandated health care reform, He will make it work. . Seniors Citizens at 68 years of age will be mandated to CHECK OUT OF MEDICARE to reduce the growth in cost of END-OF-LIFE HEALTH CARE SPENDING. If you are still around at age 70 you will be mandated to CHECK OUT OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM, that is all the longer that he is guaranteeing you to live.

There should be no doubt that Representative McMorris Rodgers opposes H.R. 3200, as well as nearly everything else President Obama favors. Her constituents, by and large, believe that Obama's central goal is to render the United States of America a socialist state, particularly with respect to health care. She supports these constituents well.

Garlan Cutler is preaching to the choir, as they say. I did not argue with this nonsense. But others took up the mantle. One "friend" of Representative Rodgers told Cutler that he was "sadly misinformed." Another stated, "[s]ome liar has scared you to death"; medicare is safe. Cutler read these efforts to console, and responded with a clear summary of history.

Garlan Cutler: Just look that the history of the world governments and read between the lines and dont be fooled

There's not much to respond to. there. History, as one legal scholar put it so well, "is a protean activist useful for legitimating a predetermined result." If history itself can prove anything, how will anyone be able to pin down what is read "between the lines"?

In the responses to Representative Rodgers' "status," the health care debate was temporarily suspended to allot space for a question directed at yours truly.

Mike Hen: James, do you really think that we will run out of oil? Are you familiar with the new reserves found in Brasil? Are you familiar with the seeps in California or the Gulf of California? Do you really think the project will take a couple of hundred years?

I replied, but without much specificity as the comments went into a second day. My creed with respect to the oil reserves is this: whether they will run out is not a question; there is a question of when. Will I live to see their exhaustion? Petroleum, I had learned in my youth, derives from dead organic matter--brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex and their social network--compressed for millions of years. Oil is mined from the earth; it is not renewable.

I added my own lesson from history, with a bit of future projection thrown in, and a smiley.

The world that oil wrought was the twentieth century. That the twenty-first will differ in the main is crystal clear--just look into the ball ;-).

Mike Hen continued with questions and more links; my belief in dinosaur origins was put to the test.

Mike Hen: James, perhaps you'd like to comment on this. There are a number of theories out there that might lead to a reduced concern for the future. One of the considerations is that the atmosphere of Titan is chock full of the organics that are being talked about here. Nature in the raw as it were.

First, I attacked the source, calling WorldNet Daily less than credible, but acknowledged that the story, if true, could lead to revisions of my theory. Then added some practical concerns: I'm not ready to pay for spaceships through a tax on my Chevron Card.

Mike, thanks for the links, although it would be nice to see a source more credible than WorldNet Daily for the possibilities that science might need to significantly revise our understanding of how crude oil is formed. As for tapping reserves in outer space, the consequences for prices at the gas pump seem likely to be unpopular.

Still, it's something to think about.

Then, I did some web surfing, and came up with a science site that corroborated the WND story, albeit with the skepticism endemic to scientists. The LiveScience article also enriched my volcabulary with some new terms that I immediately put to use.

[I]t is a science source rather than an opinion oriented "news" source. According to LiveScience, abiogenic petroleum likely requires thousands of years, just as biogenic petroleum.

Hen thanked me--the civility of our discourse might serve as a model for some of those in Congress--and he continued the interrogation.

Mike Hen: James, an interesting article. The main thing that I came away from it with is 'we don't know how it's done or how long it takes.' It seems the scenario is not quite as bleak as you originally painted it.

BTW, do you have any energy sources that can handle the current requirement without disrupting today's society? If not then I'll have to stick with the current source and I believe that others will reconsider their earlier stand on the green revolution.

BTW 2, I looked at the author not the media presenter, in the WND story. I have no affinity for WND and considered the story in terms of the author's quals.

BTW 3, [;)] Boy do I wish we could drill on Titan, and maybe vacation on Mars.
Enough of my flights of fantasy! Have a good one.

I imagine sitting in a Starbucks on Mars, continuing this conversation with another as unpersuaded by my arguments as I am of his.

Mike, we seem to view the world, especially the past and future, from substantially different perspectives. I do not see the complete depletion of petroleum as "bleak," nor societal change as disruptive. Society has never been static. To say that the twentieth century was petroleum centered and that the twenty-first likely will not have been so when we are dead and it is history is not to paint a bleak picture of the future, but to imagine possibilities--I'll warrant that drilling on Titan is also imagining possibilities, as is sipping fresh roasted Martian coffee!*

My original question to Representative Rodgers might be rephrased thus: Are you pursuing legislation that is not rooted in static notions of twentieth century realities as normative for our future? I hope not, although I fear that such is precisely the case.

That's where I left it this morning, except that I pasted the whole conversation into this space with a brief headnote.

My title deserves more. The original post is embarrassing.

This afternoon, I rewrote the blog post. Being the archivist that I am, I preserved the original in a post with a date nearly two years ago. Blogger's editing quirks permit a few liberties that I'm beginning to explore. Follow the hyperlink to my archive of the original post if you wish to make fun of my copy and paste laziness.


Addenda 25 August 2009

Last night, Mike Hen added a final note to our conversation. It's clear that we have some agreement regarding our disagreement, and some shared values and perspectives, despite seemingly adverse political priorities.

James, I'll accept your analysis on our viewpoints as accurate, although I'm not against a change in energy sources in the slightest. What I am against is change that would damage our society in any way.

The lure of the uncertain future is best answered on an individual basis with little change, in society, being felt until it has been vetted by forerunners.

Again I ask, what can you put in my tank tomorrow so that I can get to work. Twenty years in the future is well past the point that I'm willing to wait in order to keep from losing my present job.

I'll also agree that the only thing that is constant is change, the only thing we're quibbling about is the speed.

Thanks Mike. I enjoyed the exchange.


*The link to this coffee company was added after I Googled "Martian coffee" and found my blog on page two. This coffee company was next in their list. Their correction to some misconceptions concerning The War of the Worlds deserves a visit.

A Patriot's Blog: Larry Schweikart

Just a quick note to observe that Larry Schweikart has a blog: A Patriot's History of the United States.

His blog states that it is "the official blogspot of 'A Patriot's History of the United States'." Mine is critique.

The Place of Democracy

A third place must be within walking distance from home, a place where one feels valued as more than a faceless consumer, where socializing, loitering and lingering are recognized as social assets, not commercial liabilities, where conversation and camaraderie prevail, where status and pretension have no place and where the hot political issues and the latest football scores gain equal attention.
Roberta Brandes Gratz, New York Times Book Review

A third place, as Ray Oldenberg defines it, may be a tavern or coffee house, a beauty parlor or general store, a diner or soda fountain. All these places where neighbors gather are essential to democratic society.

Instead we have today well planned and orchestrated "town hall" meetings that are fracturing as the disenfranchised--who want exactly the same thing as the most powerful lobbies in Washington DC--speak up out of turn, heckle, and yell, and generally create a disturbance. Ray Oldenberg, author of The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How they Get You Through the Day (1989), might suggest that the eruption of these protests stems from the same trends that gave us the mortgage crisis. Oldenberg's target is magadevelopment projects "promoted erroneously as community revitalizers" (Gratz). One thinks of Applebee's, billed as "your neighborhood bar and grill," and often planned as an integral piece of suburban development projects that "stifle democratic socializing and foster instead separation, isolation and alienation" (Gratz).


Serendipity

I have not read Oldenberg's book, but my memory of this book review has been stirred at least once every year in the past twenty years. Two weeks ago I found my old and tattered copy of "The Saloons of a Free People," New York Times Book Review (24 December 1989), 2. After writing about the taverns of graduate school and discussions of The Journal of John Woolman in a graduate seminar (see "The Greek Chorus"), I unpacked, sorted, and threw away almost the entire contents of an old file of miscellany left over from a rushed packing of things that seemed important at the time during a previous move. In that file were some notes from my reading of Woolman right next to this book review. I found the juxtaposition serendipitous.

The day I read that review remains clear in my mind. My siblings and I had gathered with our children and parents for the Christmas holiday at a time-share condo lent to my mother by one of her co-workers. The condo was on an island in south Puget Sound. We had been told to bring apples because the deer would eat them out of our hands. My youngest brother was able to get one deer to take the apple out of his mouth. I had to leave the gathering for a few hours on Christmas Eve to return my children to their mother in Seattle. On the return trip, I took the Bremerton Ferry back to the west side of the Sound. I recall feeling a sense of tranquility that night as the ferry pulled away from Seattle--tranquility was rare enough in the wake of my divorce to be memorable. On Christmas morning I enjoyed a quiet walk on the beach.

Perhaps this book review caught my eye because the coffee houses and taverns of graduate school were a little slice of paradise. They were not places of tranquility, but conflict. The conflict was much cherished and cemented me to my peers. We lived to argue politics and aesthetics, philosophy and current events. We watched the horrors of the San Francisco earthquake that fall on the television in The Cavern; there we argued about President Bush's invasion of Panama to depose Manuel Noriega, speculating about the significance of Bush's old CIA connections; and we continued our debates from the class where we read William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, selections from Cotton Mather's Magnalia, John Woolman's and Benjamin Franklin's autobiographies, the Declaration of Independence, and other seventeenth and eighteenth century texts.

After the holiday with my family, I met up with Daggy and Wang in Seattle's U-District for a two day drive south to San Francisco, where the three of us were joining thousands of history professors and graduate students at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Because the United States was at war, I draped a US flag over the back seat of my Dodge Aries. This patriotic icon enlivened the discussions with Daggy (a German student studying here) and Wang (from China and hoping to remain in the US after graduate school). "I just don't understand you Americans and your flag," Daggy stated more than once.

I bought some books at the conference, and a bunch more when the spring semester started in January. The review of Oldenberg's book got filed away so I would not forget it. Yesterday, I finally ordered the book for $2 plus shipping from one of those megadiscount stores with warehouses in Seattle, Atlanta, Portland. The book may prove dated after these twenty years, but I plan to read The Great Good Place.


Un-American Activities

I think town hall meetings are as American as apple pie. ... They [protesters] had a right to express themselves. I wished that we'd have had a little bit more opportunity to discuss things before they started to boo. But they're all kind of performance art and they're all kind of opportunities of guerrilla theater to affect political issues and to make an impression, and I felt like it was a good discourse.
Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), Quoted in "In the Crosshairs of Un-American Town Hall Protests"

Thanks to a poor choice of words by San Francisco's Representative in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in USA Today, the focus of health care reform has degenerated into polls and pundits concerned with the merits of protest. FOX News host Greta Van Susteren led off her interview of Representative Cohen with a question that has nothing to do with health care. She asked about the protests rather than the bill. When he managed to squeeze in some comments regarding the substance of the bill, and the protesters objections to things that are not in it, she asked whether he had read the whole text. Then, she interrupted his answer.

There was an anti-government individual who is an activist who circulated petitions on the e-mail to encourage people to come and to be concerned about some of the myths, the ideas that Congress had opted out, which is not true, that abortion was part of this, which is not true, that there would be -- seniors would be hurt by a diminution in health care, which is not true, that there would be euthanasia, which is not true. But all these things were used to get people out and people came there with those things in mind. And that's what they wanted to cheer and jeer about.
Cohen, "Crosshairs"

Van Susteren asked about the text's length, whether the Congressman had read it, and seemed disappointed that he had. She shifted to his understanding--revealing her own difficulties with a complex bill--so she could interject her argument that laws should be simple and short.

You know, smart people can write things so the rest of us can understand it. And here's the problem. If it is so complicated, the people down the road who are going to have to implement it, you know, that's going to be even a bigger nightmare and they're not going to get it right unless you guys write a bill that's very plain and very easy to understand so we can all understand it. I actually believe you can if you want to.
Greta Van Susteren, "Crosshairs"

Cohen was prepared and hit back with another talking point of the Right: activist judges. If a bill eschews technical language, it empowers the courts to interpret the imprecision of simple language. That's not something Van Susteren and her colleagues at FOX News want to endorse.

That might be how it plays in coffee houses too.

Blogging and Academia

Wait--You think people actually read the archives of blogs? I think most readers think of a blog as being only as good as its most recent post.
GayProf at "Does blogging hurt or help an academic career?" Historiann

I hope people read blog archives, or I'm wasting my time. Except that I'm not.

On the one hand, my blog is designed around its archive. I'm slowly working through an old, classic, ideologically oriented survey of American history--A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn--alongside a much newer, ideologically motivated, and almost entirely ignored within academia, survey of American history--A Patriot's History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. If and when I ever finish these two books, Patriots and Peoples will have become a comprehensive resource for students of American history.

My blog started as a notebook, and it serves that purpose. The more I write, the easier writing becomes. My academic writing had become almost non-existent due to more than a decade of part-time teaching supported, in part, with income from an entirely non-academic avocation. However, being the way I am, even that has an academic aspect. One of my high school friends was complaining about that--or laughing at me--after he asked a question about the history of chess the other night, and then said, "don't answer that." "James can never say yes or no, but must give us a lecture," Brett noted. This personality quirk observed by the kid that used to poke me in the back with his pencil in George Chalich's U.S. History class more than thirty years ago reveals that my long-windedness to make a simple point is not a consequence of graduate school, but its cause.

I started blogging because any writing stimulates more writing, especially when that writing attracts one or two readers. If I'm not writing, I get depressed.

I'm not struggling with the tenure and promotion questions, and the place of blogging within, that is the focus of much of the conversation at Center of Gravitas and Historiann. My career in academia is hanging by a thread, and proceeds course to course, each with a separate contract. If I get good teaching evaluations, another contract comes along. Fail once, and I'm slinging tacos at some fast food outlet in your town. Adjuncts don't have the pleasure of worrying over blogging in the annual review. Even so, the issues Historiann and GayProf raise about blogging and academic work are central to both. Both of their blogs reveal the scholar's mind even in stories of fishing trips or Facebook. Not that such writing necessarily meets the terms of service or scholarship as understood by university promotion and review committees. But the tremendous output of both these bloggers merits some consideration as a worthy endeavor for professors. Other blogs, such as Larry Cebula's Northwest History, appear central in their focus and content to the author's professional work. The possibility that such a blog could be credited in promotion decisions should be kept open. Not all blogging is the same.

Nothing New Here

What passes for thinking today is the old process of relating the unknown and unexpected to familiar categories of explanation which have been arranged on a symbolic basis by our educational experience. If an event does not relate to the categories we have committed to memory early in our youth, then it has no ultimate existence for us or it is forced into these categories and forgotten. Society is trapped between a world which it experiences and a world it has been taught to recognize. Never have so many foolish statements been sent abroad in search of true believers.
Vine Deloria, Jr., We Talk, You Listen (1970), 23.

What is remarkable about this piece of commonsense?

First, as I was remembering it while walking laps on an asphalt trail around a nearby city park, I thought I'd read it the previous evening in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). It took me a lap and a half to correct this error of recollection. I did not read it in Robert Pirsig's classic on Tuesday evening, but in Deloria's second book on Monday morning.

Pirsig has been sitting on the shelf for many years unread. In graduate school, my wife often told me that I should read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which she assigned to her English composition courses. I started it once a few years ago, perhaps twice, but other priorities interfered and the text went back on the shelf. Then, last week, one of my son's friends (a college sophomore) sent me a text asking about Phaedrus. I did not know the answer, so I started anew reading Zen on Sunday evening. This time, I'll get through the whole by dedicating to the task thirty minutes or so each evening.

Second, the notion of fixed categories that fail to account for observed phenomena tend to irritate dark horse politicians. I'm thinking in particular of John Waite who is running for Spokane City Council. He is one of several candidates hoping to unseat Nancy McLaughlin, who has raised more money than "all other candidates in every council district combined" (Pacific Northwest Inlander). This morning, Waite sent out through Facebook a rant against the Inlander article, stating:

You have done a great disservice to the 3rd district city council race in Spokane, and a disservice to me, a progressive independent running for office. Just because someone doesn't carry around their "progressive democrat" card doesn't mean that you cannot have progressive leanings. Neither does being a fiscal conservative stop you from being a social progressive. It just means that I actually think about how I can pay for government plans. The things I think are important are fiscal responsibility, fair and responsible budgets, social equality, a healthy social service structure (preventive services, healthcare and policing), an emphasis on "quality of life", and all of this built around a progressive tax structure (which we don't have). And to say that the 3rd district is some "conservative bastion" disregards all the non-republicans, non-conservatives who have suffered through 8 damaging years of conservative government. Maybe you need to take off your two-party system glasses, get out of the office and visit some of the neighborhoods you write about in your newspaper.
John Waite

Third, the construction of such categories is the integral to the business of college, but perhaps not of the "real University" as Phaedrus conceived it. Thinking and effective writing differs. The teaching of rhetoric in freshman composition classes, for instance, brings out this scene in Zen.

A student would always ask how the rule would apply in a certain special circumstance. Phaedrus would then have the choice of trying to fake through a made-up explanation of how it worked, or follow the selfless route and say what he really thought. And what he really thought was that the rule was pasted on to the writing after the writing was all done. It was post hoc, after the fact, instead of prior to the fact. And he became convinced that all the writers the students were suppossed to mimic wrote without rules, putting down whatever sounded right and changing it if it didn't. There were some who apparently wrote with calculating premeditation because that's the way their product looked. But that seemed to him to be a very poor way to look. It had a certain syrup, as Gertrude Stein once said, but it didn't pour. But how're you to teach something that isn't premeditated?
Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 156.

Food for Thought

The long view of history highlights some compression towards the present.

Obama's Inaugural Address

... a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart--not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. President Barack Obama, Inauguration Speech

The International Herald Tribune (an arm of the New York Times) has the text of President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address as released to the media. Commentary available at CNN, The Oval--USA Today, HollyScoop, New York Daily News, Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, Historiann, Doghouse Riley at Bats Left Throws Right, Reuters, PajamasMedia, Controversial-Affairs and many more. Others with the text include Mahalo, Washington Post, London's The Independent, El Mundo, Susan Polgar's Chess Information Blog, and more increasing by the minute.

Garth Brooks has the crowd jumping as he sang. ...It was a very inspiring environment to be around. Gene Brake, CNN iReporter

Obama's Healthcare Plan

A new study has located an unexpected source of opposition to President-Elect Obama's plans to extend health care to the more than nine million children without coverage: the children themselves. I found the link at John Fea's excellent The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I was ignorant of the Onion News Network, but it's clear they are getting the scoop on Fox.


Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children's Healthcare

Who Reads Books?

We do. Moreover, we plan to read more in 2009 than we did in 2008. I noted in "Twilight of the Books" last January that my wife and I had resolved to log our reading in 2008, at least our reading of those books that we devoured cover-to-cover. We did not count the daily newspaper (her), dozens of news blogs and websites (me), or more than a hundred articles in professional journals (both).

We are continuing this year with the goal of averaging twenty-five pages per day. Last year's average was a tad over twenty if we count the forty-three books we completed and the portions of nine others in which we've made significant progress. For example, I started Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges in January, and read a bit almost every day--often rereading a portion from the previous day because I forget where exactly I'd gotten on the bookmarked page, or failed to recall or comprehend the passage. On December 31, I was mid-way through the essay, "Dante and the Anglo-Saxon Visionaries," that begins on page 287. In the supplemental log, I noted 286 pages in this book. The book begins on page 3, but prefaces are not counted and are numbered separately in most books, so the actual number of pages read differs slightly from the official count.

To the extent that our Reading Challenge was a contest, my wife won. Her twenty-one completed books totaled over 7000 pages, while my twenty-two were significantly under 6500. But, when we add in the unfinished books, we both read more than 7500 pages. I'm about four dozen pages ahead in this count. In other words, I could have won (even though it was a challenge, not a contest).

Twenty-five pages per day works out to 9125 pages each. My first effort will be to finish several excellent books that I set aside for reasons I won't go into. I've mentioned Borges; other good books are:

Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (1928)
Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (2008)
Plato, The Laws

I also plan to finish two books that are disappointing. One is poorly written; the other superficial.

John McCain, Faith of My Fathers (1999)
John Talbott, Obamanomics (2008)

My wife's unfinished list includes a memoir that I read in April: Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (1995). She's also reading Building Suburbia (2003) by Delores Hayden, which I started while waiting in her office one afternoon. I might pick it up again. It's one of several in our home library purchased for her work in economic development, but also drawing from and contributing to academic work in my field of American studies.


Modernism and Postmodernism

My wife also read a chunk of Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon (1997), while I continue to be tempted to make another effort at getting through Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973). But every time I pull it off the shelf, I remember the value of first laboring through James Joyce, Ulysses, and starting that without first reading all of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey seems senseless.

Among the six novels I read in 2008, Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis, translated by Helen Caldwell (1953) was exceptional; also worthy of rereading is Don DeLillo, Falling Man (2007). It horrifies me to report six novels in one year because not many years ago that was a common monthly total. Alas, our world is less and less one of books, and the ramifications could be disastrous. Consider the benefits of reading as Maryanne Wolf expresses it near the end of Proust and the Squid (2007).

Socrates never knew the secret at the heart of reading: the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than those that came before. Proust knew this secret, and we do. The mysterious, invisible gift of time to think beyond is the reading brain's greatest achievement; these built-in milliseconds form the basis of our ability to propel knowledge, to ponder virtue, and to articulate what was once inexpressible--which, when expressed, builds the next platform from which we dive below or soar above.
Wolf, Proust and the Squid, 229.

Reading enables the complexity of thought that our challenges require. Books offer the best prospects for extended reading, and hence the richest thoughts. Let us not forget President Theodore Roosevelt who reportedly read a book every night, and who expressed a strong preference for thick texts. It should be no surprise that John McCain chose that Republican leader to praise in his concession speech--one of the brightest moments in 2008.

Note to Students and Parents

In the spring I will be offering a new class for the students at Deer Park Home Link. This post augments information in the course description.

Home Link Historians is a writing class designed for students that read history as part of their curriculum. Students will keep a journal of their reading in the form of a blog (short for web log). Instead of writing for an imagined audience, as in most writing classes, students will write for readers that will be able to leave comments.

I will use several writing prompts to offer structure and stimulate thought about issues central to the study of history. It does not matter what era, nation, culture, or special topic the student is studying: the writing prompts will be flexible.

The first prompt: What are you reading? Why are you reading it? What do you expect to learn?

The student blog will be located at Home Link Historians. It will be single blog with many authors writing under pseudonyms to protect their individual privacy.


Sample entries in Patriots and Peoples

For students and parents coming here to get a sense of how keeping a blog as a history reading journal might work, these samples might be of interest. For regular readers of this blog, this listing highlights some of my better entries over the past year.

“Thinking Historically”

On keeping a journal: “Spiral Notebooks”

Primary Source focus: “Lee Resolution”

A topical blog entry concerning a common myth: “Columbus and the Flat Earth”

Another popular myth: “The Burning of the Boats”

Investigating a text’s footnotes: “Depopulation: Ubelaker’s Low Estimate”

Comparison of two texts on a limited subordinate topic: “Sixteenth Century Spain: Contrasting Images”

Current events connection: “Booker T Washington’s White House Dinner”

Now that you're already looking at my online writing, you might also find my Chess Skills blog of interest.

The End of Google

I found my own blog this morning through an unusual route. That is, I found another blog based upon Patriots and Peoples, but without my input, nor my explicit consent. It was not up-to-date, nor complete, and it contained alterations that I dislike and oppose. The blog in question is a sample Mobiforumz blog (I will not provide the link--Google them if you want). It is called Journey of James Stripes and consists of posts I wrote 18 April - 2 August, 2008. It has all the appearances of having been created by some webcrawling robot. Each of my posts is attributed to "hidayath," who may or may not be a real person.

Theft might be the right word.

I was ego-surfing as part of the process of helping a young man just out of his teenage years understand how a potential employer might look at his MySpace or Facebook page, or use Google, to supplement his self-disclosure in a job application. I've been ego-surfing longer than I've known the term, and am well aware of what comes up when my name is fed into search engines. This practice of checking up on myself was part of how I evaluated Ask.com when someone owning a few shares in the company was touting it. It returned a lot of unrelated junk a year ago. It does better now, but still lacks Google's ability to find what it should.

Because I have an uncommon name, a search for me finds mostly stuff I've written. Many of the hits that are unrelated to me connect to "St. James Infirmary Blues" by the White Stripes, or Jack White attending a James Bond premier, or articles in the Stars and Stripes newspaper with photos by Stephanie James.

If articles I've written for scholarly journals are not returned in the first few pages by a search engine, it's not worth using. My article on Russell Means, for example, should be found easily. If one plumbs the depths, my contribution concerning "blind swine" to Edward Winter's enterprise should appear.

Most often Patriots and Peoples is the top hit. It seems as though Google thinks that this blog is my most important work.

When I found a Mobiforumz blog with my name in the title in the first page of hits, I was curious. My first glance at the site brought to memory many frustrating Google searches for specific information. Often I use the web to quickly find a credible source of real information--a book or website that I recall dimly. For years, Amazon has filtered its way to the top of most searches. In the past few years Wikipedia has risen to a place of preeminence. As the universal encyclopedia written equally by the ignorant and the knowledgeable improves, Google's tendency becomes less fatal.

More and more, however, it seems that searches through Google turn up information that originates with Wikipedia or Amazon, but was cannibalized from there for another site. Some cannibals add a service, Pickii, for instance sells books too. Many of these other sites contribute no original data, but exist solely to offer an abundance of the advertisements absent from the originating sites. These Para-Sites are an inevitable product of late-capitalism, and its tendency to nurture marketing saavy more than quality product development. They are the "fast food" of an information diet. They produce information bloat akin to what one would expect from a steady diet of Big Macs.

Copyright Issues

Patriots and Peoples carries a Creative Commons license. Today I changed this license as a consequence of my ego-surfing misadventure. Previously I had encouraged derivative work, thinking of the sort of use that was called "fair use" before lawyers and the free market went after the work of honest people.

In K-12, higher education, and after-school programs and workshops, teachers face conflicting information about their rights, and their students’ rights, to quote copyrighted material. They also confront complex, restrictive copyright policies in their own institutions. As a result, teachers use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms.
The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy (2007)

When I added my CC license, I chose "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States." After witnessing derivative work with advertising hyperlinks thrown randomly into the text, dating site marketing, and other changes, I had to reconsider. This work now carries the "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" license. I understood before I wrote my first Amazon review that once something is in cyberspace, the author loses control. Socrates said the same thing about printing speeches in the Phaedrus, but the global internet kills authors with a relish unknown in ancient Greece.

Presenting one's corpus to cannibals is another matter.

Derivative Work

Chesstiger's "Two rook pawns with an extra pawn on the opposite side" builds on something I posted as "Fox in the Chicken Coop." Although I created the diagram found there, it almost certainly has been independently created by others. Nevertheless, Chesstiger mentioned my Chess Skills blog when he posted the diagram with his own extended analysis. Scholarship is the usual term for building on the work of others, and it should not require explicit authorization by the copyright holder. Still, the Creative Commons license seemed to connote a world where knowledge is freely shared for everyone's benefit. That was my intent. The license change should not affect responsible extensions of this sort.

My writing is also replicated by Reuters and similar services with full attribution (see Lee Resolution). That derivative work does no harm, and may confer benefits both to me and to readers. Reuters also has explicit permission. Alas, Google does not pick up these syndicated articles often, at least not any of mine.

Google seems to be finding too easily this new Para-Site containing my words in an alien context hostile to my intent. As it crowds its way onto the search pages with others that mine Wikipedia, Google loses its value. Google's recent drop in stock value has been part of the painful economic correction afflicting all markets; however, if the search engine can be hijacked so easily, it may be still overpriced.

Chess, Checkers, Ping-Pong

Was Richard Nixon a chess player? That's one of many insignificant questions that will join the significant inquiries as I read through Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008). The subtitle provokes the first significant question: How did the political ascendancy of Richard Nixon stimulate internal cultural conflict?

This question will wait until I read the text.

Chess was important for a brief moment before the world knew about Watergate, but after some of the crimes had been committed. A lone American had taken on the Soviet Empire in a battle over sixty-four squares. This American, Robert J. "Bobby" Fischer, had a lot of pecularities and was in danger of forfeiting the World Chess Championship match with Boris Spassky. Henry Kissinger called the chess player.

This is the worst player in the world calling the best player in the world.
Kissinger to Fischer*

A glance through the index of Nixonland turns up no evidence that Fischer's chess exploits and Nixon's interest in them is narrated in its more than seven hundred pages. There are nearly a dozen references to checkers, on the other hand, and there is a chapter entitled "Ping-Pong".

Checkers was a dog, and Nixon's Checker's Speech was one of the greatest political speeches in the twentieth century.

Nixon played the pivotal role in the opening of communist China to American enterprise. Someone dubbed it Ping-Pong Diplomacy and the name stuck. American ping-pong players traveled to China for a match in which they got schooled by superior players, but the United States thanked the players for their sacrifice.

I'm paying a lot of attention to chess these days, and logging my dogged support of a Russian player--Vladimir Kramnik--who appears on the verge of a devastating loss to an Indian--Viswanathan Anand. The battle is taking place in Bonn, the former capital of West Germany that also served as capital of a reunited Germany until the government was tranferred back to Berlin in 1998-1999.

Bobby Fischer died in January. But his spirit has a way of inserting itself into contemporary chess events. Can Nixon be far behind?


*Quoted in David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How a Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 143.