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A Challenge to Robert Redford

Nixon is back. Back from the dead to haunt us once again with his lies. With his one Big Lie. The one he got away with. The one all too many historians and journalists still complacently accept.

This burst of interest is not really a surprise since—like him or not—Richard Nixon remains one of the great American characters, a Rorschach blot upon which we project our conceptions of American politics and history…

Nonetheless, on the fundamental question—what did the president know and when did he know it?—the vast majority of accounts take Richard Nixon at his unsupported word.

It’s amazing to me that historians of Nixon and Watergate have been so timid on this issue.

It’s not a trivial matter, it goes to the question of the true character of one of the great characters in American history. It goes to the question of whether discovering the whole truth matters

I reiterate my challenge: Give us your answer to the question in this documentary, prove my theory about Nixon’s guilt wrong, or prove someone else gave the order, or admit you don’t care whether Nixon has, in the end, gotten away with his crime.

Originalist Sin: the Founding Fathers not only supported mandates, they passed laws imposing them

The five conservative justices on the Supreme Court—Thomas, Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Kennedy—cloak themselves in the myth that they are somehow channeling the wisdom and understanding of the Founding Fathers, the original intent that guided the drafting of the Constitution.  I believe the premise of their argument is itself suspect: It is not clear to me how much weight should be given  to non-textually based intent that is practically impossible to discern more than 200 years later. Most of the issues over which there is constitutional dispute today could not even have been envisioned when the document was drafted.

Why Are Teen Moms Poor?

Delivering the commencement address last weekend at the evangelical Liberty University, Mitt Romney naturally stuck primarily to “family values” and religious themes. He did, however, make one economic observation that intersects with some fascinating new research. “For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child,” he said, “the probability that they will be poor is 2 percent. But if [all] those things are absent, 76 percent will be poor.”

These are striking numbers, but they raise the age-old question of correlation and causation. Does this mean that the representative high-school dropout would be doing much better had he stuck it out in school for a few more years? Or is it instead the case that the population of high-school dropouts is disproportionately composed of people who have attributes that lead to low earnings?
Good questions. Some answers.

What Did Thomas Jefferson’s World Sound Like?

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “music is the favorite passion of my soul.” He was an avid collector of musical scores, and believed that the new republic needed to build a musical tradition. The blog “Musicology for Everyone” lists the third president as the second most musical, after Warren Harding, who played the sousaphone well enough to join the band celebrating his election.

Despite Jefferson’s ear for music, however, little attention has been paid to what he heard and how he processed those sounds. A modern-day visitor to Charlottesville, Va. and Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, has a pretty good idea of what Jefferson’s hometown looked like 200 years ago—but what did it sound like?

Interview: Tracing The Divides In The War 'To End All Wars'

The human cost of World War I was enormous. More than 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians died in the four-year-long conflict, which also left 21 million military men wounded.

“Many of them were missing arms, legs, hands, genitals or driven mad by shell shock,” says historian Adam Hochschild. “But there was also a human cost in a larger sense, in that I think the war remade the world for the worse in every conceivable way: It ignited the Russian Revolution, it laid the ground for Nazism and it made World War II almost certain. It’s pretty hard to imagine the second world war without the first.”

Hochschild traces the patriotic fervor that catapulted Great Britain into war during the summer of 1914 — as well as the small, but determined British pacifist movement — in his historical narrative To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. The book frames the Great War not as a struggle between nations but as a struggle between individual people — sometimes even family members — who supported and opposed the war.

Happy 200th Birthday, War of 1812!

A primer on America’s most bumbling, most confusing, and most forgotten conflict.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, a fact that may elude all but the most committed enthusiasts of America’s more obscure wars. Don’t expect coverage to compete with or even register alongside the steady drumbeat that has accompanied the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. It’s hard to imagine a flurry of 1812 books flying off the shelves, or the New York Times commissioning a blog series about the conflict. Like Avogadro’s number or the rules of subjunctive verbs, the War of 1812 is one of those things that you learned about in school and promptly forgot without major consequence.

There are plenty of reasons for this. The War of 1812 has complicated origins, a confusing course, an inconclusive outcome, and demands at least a cursory understanding of Canadian geography. Moreover, it stands as the highlight of perhaps the single most ignored period of American History—one that the great historian Richard Hofstadter described as “dreary and unproductive … an age of slack and derivative culture, of fumbling and small-minded statecraft, terrible parochial wrangling, climaxed by a ludicrous and unnecessary war.”

Our founding document is losing out to Canada? A Daily Show writer protests.

It’s hard to believe that of all the supposed threats to the United States Constitution—super Pacs, activist judges, termites at the National Archives—the greatest menace to our founding document would be Canadians.  And yet, a study soon to be published in the NYU Law Review and previewed in the New York Times, reveals the ugly truth:  “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere.”  What has taken its place as the world’s next top model?  The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

D’oh!  Canada?!

Tommie Smith and John Carlos

The 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute: African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a gesture of solidarity at the 1968 Olympic games. Australian Silver medalist Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of their protest. Both Americans were expelled from the games as a result.

Johnson's Oath

Jacqueline Kennedy wears her pink Chanel suit, still stained with the blood of her husband, as Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office in Air Force One.

According to Lady Bird Johnson, who was also present:

“Her hair [was] falling in her face but [she was] very composed … I looked at her. Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked, it was caked with blood – her husband’s blood. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights – that immaculate woman, exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood.”

The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World

Spanning one-ninth of the earth’s circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents.

Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.

For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.

Taking account of seasonal variation and accommodating a wide range of modes and means of transport, ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history.

Danton in Film

Made in 1982 by the Polish director, Andrzej Wadja, Danton is based on a Polish play of 1931 called the “Danton Affair.” Begun in Poland during a high point of the Solidarity liberation movement, it was eventually filmed in France after the movement was outlawed and martial law was instituted in 1981 under General Jarulszelski—a coup directed by the Soviet Union.  After the coup, Wadja and his crew moved to France as émigrés.  There they completed the film with a cast of Polish and French actors.

Danton was played by the French Gérard Depardieu and Robespierre, by the Pole Wojciech Pszoniak.  The  film reflects Wadja’s opposition to the return of a Stalinist regime in his homeland.

Our objectives are to compare Andrzej Wadja’s portrayal of the Danton Affair with history while also assessing the film itself as an historical artifact. As a means to this end, your assignment is to:

1. Read this Wikipedia entry on Danton. This should offer a decent foundation.
2. Read Robespierre’s Justification for the Use of Terror and The National Convention’s decision that “Terror is the order of the day”
3. Read these film reviews from Mary Ashburn Miller of Reed College and Vincent Canby of the New York Times.

Then write 1000-1500 word film review which considers the objectives above and which clearly demonstrates that you have read and thought about the given readings. To do so, consider these questions:

  • Some critiques claim that historical films reveal more about the period in which they were made than about the period they portray.  To what extent and in what specific ways do you think this is true of Danton?
  • However flawed it may be, what does Danton contribute to your understanding of the French Revolution?
  • What does Danton illustrate about the possibility of film as form of good history?

Be prepared to discuss your film reviews in class.

Lesson Plan on Life During the Great Depression: A Diversity of Experiences

To some extent, the optimism of the Roaring Twenties was stymied by the financial crash of October 1929 and the economic depression that ensued. Conventional memory of the The Great Depression (TGD) paints a historically inaccurate, often whitewashed, version of life in America during  TGD. To the chagrin of historians of this era, we paint TGD in broad brushstrokes and, as a consequence, overlook the nuances and the diversity of American Experiences during TGD.

Thus, the objective of this lesson is to explore how different people from different walks of life experienced TGD. This era was complex, dynamic, and curious; it was not just Depressing.

To this end, each of you will read 1 of these 4 documents and respond to the questions given

Print your reading responses, bring them to class, and be prepared to discuss the articles.

Group #1: Wall Street Stock Broker
Group #2: American Women
Group #3: White Americans
Group #4: African Americans

If you are really interested in life during TGD, my favorite book on the era, and one of my favorite oral histories, is Hard Times by my hometown hero Studs Terkel

How A Secret Society of Rebel Americans Made Its Mark on Early America

SONS OF LIBERTY – For the American “armchair historian,” this American Revolutionary organization conjures up a myriad of confusing images. But, what of this “secret” organization that played such an integral part in advancing the idea of American independence from Great Britain? What were the Sons of Liberty? Who were its members and how widespread was its support among the thirteen colonies comprising British America? What was the ideology and degree of political affiliation within the organization?
 

COMMON SENSE—Thomas Paine, 1776

Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” is credited with having precipitated the move for independence. In fact, the exact nature of the American cause would have been rather hard to define in 1775 or early 1776. Clearly the Americans wanted the English to stop abusing them, as they saw it, but how was fighting a war supposed to achieve that end? What would constitute victory? As long as they were still British subjects, they would still be subject to British law, and by 1775 it was unlikely that Parliament would grant them any real form of self government. As the Declaratory Act of 1766 had made clear, Parliament claimed the right to govern the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” Since achieving quasi-independence was an unrealistic hope, therefore, the only thing that finally did make sense was American independence, a case made very powerfully by Thomas Paine.