• Summary of the topic
• Review of the positions of the Left and the Right
• Historical background 
• Readings for both students and teachers
• Anecdotes

Worth Reading

Background

One of the three major social issues that divides along predictable ideological lines -- the others are gay rights and abortion -- gun control triggers strong emotional responses whenever it's debated. Between episodes of dramatic gun violence the debates largely take place off the front pages. Then, they suddenly materialize as people try to absorb and analyze the latest headline-grabbing horror. This happened after the Kennedy assassination, the attempt on Reagan's life, and of course all the recent mass shootings, which have taken the lives of moviegoers, voters, and of course, students.

The most recent mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT attracted a particularly strong response with the deaths of twenty small children. That shook so many people up that some longtime gun rights supporters themselves called for action.

The problem is always what action to take. University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, author of the Freakonomics books, argues that it is impossible to take any meaningful action given the abundance of guns. He notes there are some 300 million guns in existence in the US and that they can be expected to remain in good working order for decades. No plan likely to pass Congress, he argues, will do anything about those guns.

Like the two other major social issues of abortion and gay rights, gun control has become a major bell of contention for the courts as well as the public. In 2008 the Supreme Court ruled that American citizens possess a personal right to a firearm. The Court did not rule out the regulation of all firearms.

Liberal politicians inclined to call for gun control have been wary of the issue since 1993 when Bill Clinton pushed Congress to back a ban on assault weapons. Many Democrats attributed their defeat in the 1994 elections to the passage of the ban. When it expired in 2004 few Democrats pushed for its reenactment.

Democrats from Red states fear the power of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which counts more than 4 million members.

What do the polls say? According to Forbes:

Looked at over a period of time, Americans view on gun control remains rather stagnant. In fact, opinions on gun control from 1993 to 2012 show that it’s nearly a dead heat between those who want to control gun ownership, and those who want to protect it.

At the start of the Bill Clinton administration in 1993, 57 percent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said it was very important to control gun ownership. That rose to a whopping 66 percent in favor of stricter gun control by the time he left office in 2000. It remained relatively stable even throughout the eight years of President George W. Bush.

Only when Obama took over did the mood start to change. It went from 60 percent in favor of gun control to just 49 percent. In 2012, it was a minority of 47 percent in favor of stricter gun laws and 46 percent in favor of the status quo.

Recent gun violence have had little impact in swaying the public, despite the outrage at the time of their occurrence.

What the Left Says

In his State of the Union address President Obama called on Congress to pass gun control legislation immediately. From the New York Times:

Mr. Obama asked Congress to reinstate and strengthen a ban on the sale and production of assault weapons that passed in 1994 and expired in 2004. He also called for a ban on the sale and production of magazines with more than 10 rounds, like those used in Newtown and other mass shootings. Mr. Obama’s plan would require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing the longstanding loophole that allows buyers to avoid screening by purchasing weapons from unlicensed sellers at gun shows or in private sales. Nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are exempt from the system.

He also proposed legislation banning the possession or transfer of armor-piercing bullets and cracking down on “straw purchasers,” those who pass background checks and then forward guns to criminals or others forbidden from purchasing them.

What the Right Says

After the school shooting in Connecticut, the national gun group indicated support for doing something about illegal gun violence: “The N.R.A. is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure this never happens again.” At a press conference the head of the organization called for placing armed bodyguards in every school in the nation.

Most conservatives believe in the slippery slope theory. They fear that measures to curb the sale of guns will lead to outright confiscation. After each recent incident gun sales have climbed as people raced to make purchases before new laws were enacted restricting the sale of guns.

Conservatives argue that we would be safer if we possessed more guns. Criminals would hesitate to pull a gun on people if they believed people were armed.

Historical Background

[This summary is from an article published on HNN by Robert Spitzer, a political scientist. It has been edited to fit the needs of teachers; dated references have been dropped.]

The issue of gun control has been with America for many decades. Most would date the modern gun control controversy to the 1960s, when assassinations and civil disorder promoted enactment of the first modern gun control law, the Gun Control Act of 1968. From that point forward, pressures to enact stronger gun laws escalated, as did resistance to these efforts. The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) spearheaded the resistance.

Yet, the story of gun control in America predates the 1960s. As Alexander DeConde,the late emeritus professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, describes in his account of the gun issue in America, strict gun laws existed even in colonial America. Also, they were quickly enacted in newly established frontier towns during the nineteenth century, and they were widely debated in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the many ironies of the gun issue is that the gun control proposals debated in the 1920s and 1930s were more far-reaching than the modest proposals that have drawn so much political blood in the last two decades. As Franklin D. Roosevelt's attorney general, Homer Cummings, said in 1937,"Show me the man who does not want his gun registered, and I will show you a man who should not have a gun." It is difficult to imagine any attorney general of either party uttering such a statement today.

DeConde begins his 2001 book, Gun Violence in America: The Struggle for Control, with European antecedents, picks up in colonial America, incorporates the federal period, follows escalating gun manufacturing and use in the nineteenth century, and then describes more familiar gun developments in the twentieth century. Most of the contemporary discussion will be familiar to readers with even a passing knowledge of the gun issue. However, in addition to providing a single, complete narrative of the gun issue, DeConde's primary contribution is an integration of every important element of the debate. That is, he includes not only social behavior, practices, and changes, but the important court cases, legal enactments, and political debates that frame the issue.

DeConde notes that guns were indeed present in colonial America from its earliest days but that the number of guns was far less than legend would have it. Further,"English colonists did bring firearms with them for self-defense as well as for offense," but they "also brought the practice of restricting gun keeping, usually to selected upper-class males" The relative rarity of firearms in America was attributable to some obvious facts, including that they were expensive (guns were either made by hand in America, or imported from abroad), were made of materials that deteriorated rapidly, meaning that they had to be constantly serviced and maintained; required considerable skill to master; required maintenance after relatively few firings; and required firing materials that were also difficult to come by and that had short shelf lives. During the Revolutionary War, 80 percent of all firearms and 90 percent of the needed powder had to be imported from France and Holland. In the early 1790s, Secretary of War Henry Knox concluded that only about 20 percent of the nation's 450,000 militiamen possessed firearms. Of the government-owned stock of 44,000 muskets, half were inoperable.

The most interesting elements of the book include DeConde's careful discussion of social connections to guns and gun use in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The actual role of the gun in the settling of the rural American frontier was little, and strict gun controls emerged as soon as settlements were incorporated. As one cowboy noted,"this business of gunfights" was"nearly all exaggeration." Instead, the West was settled by"a lot of hard work on the range but very little shooting." (p. 86) In contrast, gun use and gun carrying became a major issue in urban areas, ultimately spurring progressive-era reformers to demand strict laws on gun carrying and possession. George Templeton Strong noted with dismay on the eve of the Civil War"An epidemic of crime" in New York City, which prompted many of his upper-class friends to purchase and carry revolvers as they walked the streets,"though it's a very bad practice," Strong added.

By the end of the nineteenth century, two social pathologies came to dominate the gun issue, as would be true from that day to this: assassinations, and crime. So, too, emerged the primary counter-argument--the need for self-defense. Ironically, the Second Amendment would only enter the gun debate as an argument against more gun control in the 1980s. (Even during congressional hearings on what became the National Firearms Act of 1934, two representatives of the NRA, including its president, offered extended testimony in opposition to the bill before Congress, but in all of their arguments, they never even mentioned the Second Amendment.)

Topics for Discussion

Worth Reading

Background

Syria has been embroiled in a civil war for over a year -- a war which has claimed over ten thousand lives. The uprising against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011 as part of the broader Arab Spring. Among the many factors in the uprising: discontent with the authoritarian regime; high youth unemployment (around 25 percent, about average for the Middle East -- but the unemployment rate for older adults was in 2007 only 4 percent, one of the largest imbalances in the world); and the fact that the Assad regime is dominated by the Sh'ia Alawis (of which Assad himself is one), while the rest of the country is majority Sunni Muslim.

Mass protests against the Assad regime began back in Feburary 2011, which were met by beatings and other brutalities by police. As clashes between demonstrators and the authorities intensified, the death toll began to climb. By April, the Syrian Army was being deployed against the protesters, and by the end of the month fissures erupted within the military, as some soldiers showed reluctance to fire on their own people. By July, several major Syrian cities were effectively under siege by the military, though Syria's two largest cities, Damascus (the capital) and Aleppo have been relatively quiet.

What began as a mass protest movement has morphed into a quasi-guerrilla campaign against government forces by the Free Syrian Army, a group of deserters from the government forces as well as civilian volunteers. The Assad government dismisses the rebels as a foreign-tainted insurgency.

How has the crisis played out overseas? U.S. relations with Syria have generally been cool for the past several decades (Syria is Iran's most important Arab ally, and Syria has been listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. since 1979), and American politicians have universally condemned the recent actions of the Assad regime -- however, the Obama administration began a policy of rapproachment with Syria in 2010 -- Secretary of State Hilary Clinton called Assad a "reformer" as late as March 2011. The past year has seen a reversal of that policy, particularly after the U.S. ambassador to Syria was recalled for fear of his safety after he was attacked by pro-Assad mobs.

The regime has relied on the support of Russia and China to shield itself from United Nations intervention. Both Russia and China are on the U.N. Security Council and have indicated that they will veto any resolution authorizing the use of force against Assad, and they have already vetoed a U.N. resolution calling upon Assad to relinquish power. Russia continues to be a major weapons dealer to Syria, and China has its own economic interests in the country and the region generally.

What the Right and Left Say

Given the ongoing U.S. presidential campaign's focus on domestic matters, differences between liberals and conservatives on Syria have remained largely in the background, and are in any event ambiguous. President Obama has gone on record calling for Assad to step down, but some Republicans -- notably John McCain -- want the United States to go further and actively arm the anti-Assad forces.

Notably, neither the president nor his Republican opponents are calling for airstrikes.

Even Middle East experts, generally speaking a contentious group when it comes to politics, are ambivalent about intervention in Syria. Daniel Pipes, a conservative commentator, has written that "I favor a U.S. policy of inaction, of letting events transpire as they might." Liberal historian Juan Cole, despite his support for the uprising, maintains that without a U.N. resolution, which does not appear to be forthcoming, any intervention in Syria would be illegal under international law.

Historical Background

Like many of the countries in the region, Syria has a history both profoundly ancient -- agriculture made its first appearance in Syria nearly 12,000 years ago -- and profoundly modern -- the independent state itself dates only to 1946. To give some idea of the centrality of Syria in the vast theater of history, the region was ruled at one time or another by the Assyrians (who lent the country their name), the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Armenians, the Romans (under whom the province of Syria peaked in population and influence),  the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Mongols, the Mameluks, the Ottoman Turks, and finally the French before becoming independent. Syria was critical to the growth and expansion of early Christanity, and Damascus served for a time as the capital of the Islamic Empire.

The modern Syrian state was born in the fires of the two world wars. After World War I, the French took control of the Mandate of Syria the auspices of the League of Nations, and the country played host to fighting between pro-German and pro-British French forces in 1940. By 1946, however, the French were forced out and an independent Syrian republic was established. A series of military coups (one of which was probably sponsored by the CIA) left the country politically unstable, and by the late 1950s Syria was caught up in the great geopolitical games of the Cold War (Syria was an early and close ally of the Soviet Union in the Middle East) and pan-Arab nationalism (the country briefly unified with Gamal Nasser's Egypt as the United Arab Republic).

In 1963, the Ba'ath Party, which mixed Arab nationalism and socialism in its ideological program, came to power in a coup. Ba'athism has played an important, if somewhat misunderstood, role in the Arab world since the 1960s -- the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq in 1968 and eventually spawned Saddam Hussein's regime. But it's important to remember that the Ba'athist party split into pro-Syrian and pro-Iraqi factions in 1966, and that Syria even went so far as to support the U.S.-led coalition in the First Gulf War. What both Iraqi and Syrian Ba'athists shared, however, was an authoritarian bent that increasingly relied upon the military as a power base. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashar al-Assad became president in a bloodless military coup.

Assad's was the last of the successful military coups, but his regime has faced popular uprisings and insurgencies before, particularly from Muslim extremists. In February 1982, Assad leveled the city of Hama (also a hotbed of discontent in the current uprising), killing anywhere between 17,000 and 40,000 people.

Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000 and his subsequent succession by his son sparked hopes in the West that the regime would relax its vise-like grip on the politics of the country and, perhaps, back away from the anti-American and anti-Israeli nature of its foreign policy (Syria was a major participant in the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars). Bashar al-Assad, after all, speaks French and English, was educated in London, has a British-born and educated investment-banker wife (who controversially appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine, but whom as subsequently been described as a Syrian Imelda Marcos") -- the very portrait of the modern transnational class of businesspersons and technocrats. This obviously hasn't prevented Assad from ordering a bloody and brutal crackdown against initially peaceful protesters in 2011.

Discussion Topics

• HNN Hot Topic: Election 2012
• HNN Hot Topic: Electing Presidents
• HNN Hot Topic: The Electoral College
• Should We Take Away the Voting Rights of 18 Year Olds?

Background

What qualities should one look for in a presidential candidate? Since the advent of television, many Americans seem to have decided that presidents should be selected on the basis of their personality and image: how they come across on television. The way many Americans choose presidents today marks a sharp departure from the past. While personality and image were always important factors, they were usually not decisive until TV came along. Before TV, voters placed a high emphasis on a candidate's resume and political party affiliation.

In the current polarized political climate party affiliation, to be sure, is still important. But how voters pick their party is different from in the past when economic considerations drove their decision. Today it is often cultural factors that shape a voter's preference for a party rather than, say, membership in a union.

Studies conducted by the University of Michigan demonstrate that by some measures voters today know less about the issues than their counterparts forty years ago. Several factors are responsible for this decline. Three stand out: (1)television, which transmits emotion well but not information, (2) the weakness of the party system, which formerly helped voters identify particular parties with particular policies, and (3) the collapse of the union movement, which formerly helped educate voters about the issues.

The role of the media in this decline is unquestionable. The media focus on sound bites, gotcha journalism and personality obscures the issues voters need to understand to make sensible decisions.

The great journalist and historian Theodore White used to say that presidential elections turned on three issues: war and peace, bread and butter, black and white. No doubt these issues remain important. But today elections are just as likely to turn on media caricatures of the candidates, including such superficial questions as whether they seem comfortable on TV.

What the Left Says

Like conservatives, liberals are often drawn to outsiders. But unlike conservatives, they've been more willing to give relatively young candidates a shot at the presidency: John Kennedy, Gary Hart, John Edwards, Barack Obama. Experience has seemed to count less than imagination and charisma. Since Kennedy, Democrats have frequently longed for another Camelot candidate who could inspire change.

What the Right Says

Conservatives have tended to shy away from younger candidates, favoring instead party war horses who have already gone around the track a couple of times. Bob Dole and Ronald Reagan won the GOP nomination on their third tries. George H.W. Bush and John McCain won the nomination on their second tries.

In the postwar period Republicans have been drawn to outsiders and military leaders. They went for Gen. Dwight Eisenhower over Sen. Robert Taft, Gov. Ronald Reagan over Rep. George H.W. Bush, Gov. George W. Bush over Sen. John McCain. Although they nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater, it wasn't because he was a senator so much as because he championed outsiders. Dole and McCain became party nominees because they were war heroes, not because they had served in the Senate.

While conservatives say that they admire business people, no businessman since Wendell Willkie made it very far as a candidate until Mitt Romney.

Historical Background

They knew they didn't want a king. But in creating the office the Founding Fathers knew concretely what they wanted in a president. It was George Washington. They designed the office with him in mind. By their lights Washington was ideal: He was a hero with a long impressive resume. Most importantly, he was above politics. His signature appeal was his oft-stated desire not to be selected as president. He preferred, he insisted, to return to Mount Vernon where he could tend to his farm. His ideal was Cincinnatus, the Roman military hero who returned to his farm after his military career had ended.

No one who succeeded Washington ever approached his heights before entering office. But the first six presidents fitted the founders' ideal. All had established themselves as outstanding individuals with national reputations and long resumes before their selection as president. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were heroes of the Revolution. James Madison was regarded as a father of the Constitution (though modern historians note that many of the provisions he championed were dropped). James Monroe and John Quincy Adams had distinguished themselves as diplomats. Three of the six had served as secretary of state, which was regarded as a stepping stone to the presidency.

Then the masses began voting. And once they did the resumes of presidents came to count for a lot less. Instead, voters were drawn to men (all were men) who in one way or another reminded them of themselves either by the way they dressed or talked or had made their way in the world. Unlike Washington, these men could not remain above politics, though most pretended they were.

Topics for Discussion

• Would George Washington be able to be "George Washington" in today's political climate?
• Do voters make rational choices?
• Should we prefer candidates with long resumes?

Background

North Korea caught headlines at the very end of last year when Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of the country since 1994, died suddenly but not unexpectedly. The older Kim had been grooming his son Kim Jong-un to take power since June 2010. Before Kim Jong-il came his father Kim Il-Sung (who, after his death, was proclaimed “Eternal President of the Republic”)—a Kim has been supreme leader of North Korea since the end of Japanese rule in 1945.

North Korea—officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—is one of the most repressive and authoritarian states in the world. Commonly referred to as a communist country, North Korea’s governing ideology is in fact difficult to define. Officially, the country adheres to the juche idea, which roughly translates to self-reliance. Western commentators have variously described North Korea as Stalinist, fascist, national socialist, neo-monarchist, and theocratic. The late Christopher Hitchens described Pyongyang as “rather worse” than the dystopic London of George Orwell’s 1984. B.R. Myers has argued that North Korea’s defining ideology today is not Marxism-Leninism but “an implacably xenophobic, race-based worldview derived largely from fascist Japanese myth.”

Power is centralized in the hands of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the military. Kim Jong-il initiated a “military-first” policy in the late 1990s that emphasized the pre-eminence of the military in North Korean life. One of the direct consequences of this military policy has been North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. North Korea unsuccessfully tested a nuclear weapon in late 2006 and successfully tested a small warhead (2-6 kilotons yield, approximately one-tenth the power of the Hiroshima bomb). In response, the United Nations imposed further sanctions.

The North Korean economy is moribund—per capita GDP is among the worst in the lowest in the world and private enterprise is officially illegal.  It’s been estimated that… North Korea, which has about 50 percent of the population of South Korea, has an economy only 3 percent as large. International trade, except on the black arms and drugs market, is almost nonexistent (partly due to U.N. sanctions), and what little above-the-board trade does occur goes overwhelmingly to China.

In short, there’s a reason why North Korea is colloquially known as “the hermit kingdom.”

With the death of Kim Jong-il, there has been renewed speculation that the country may undergo significant changes. Kim Jong-un is young and relatively inexperienced, and may therefore not enjoy the full support of the military. Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, half-brother of Kim Jong-nam and current resident of Macau, told a Japanese journalist that the regime needed to embrace reform based on the Chinese model, or face destruction.

North Korean refugees paint a portrait of an almost impossibly closed society, with almost no information from the rest of the world allowed. The regime permitted the use of cell phones in 2008 and even established a 3G wireless network, but the state controls almost all content and does not permit phone calls outside the country.

The collapse of the North Korean regime is desired neither by China or South Korea; the former fears the potential influx of huge numbers of refugees (since the Korean demilitarized zone is heavily mined, it’s most likely North Korean refugees would flee across the Chinese boarder, and indeed, most refugees and defectors from within North Korea use this route) and the latter fears the immense economic and social problems of integrating the populace of such a repressive and backward state into one of the most advanced economies on the globe.

Recommended Reading

What the Left & Right Say

North Korea has been a source of relative unanimity amongst American politicians, in that both Democrats and Republicans believe North Korea to be a hostile totalitarian dictatorship. (The North Koreans, for their part, view the United States as their most implacable enemy.) How exactly to deal with North Korea has, however, been a subject of contention between the two parties.

The defining issue in U.S.-North Korean relations for the past twenty years has been North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The Clinton administration signed an agreement with North Korea in 1994 to freeze their weapons program over congressional Republican opposition (The GOP believed, correctly, that North Korea could not be trusted to keep its word). The Bush administration refused to negotiate bilaterally, preferring the six-party talk framework between the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. Despite President Bush’s famous declaration that North Korea was a member of the “Axis of Evil” alongside Iraq and Iran, relations gradually thawed until 2009, when, in relatively quick succession, North Korea successfully tested a small atomic bomb, arrested two American journalists, and, in May 2010, attacked and sunk a South Korean corvette.

Historical Background

Korea, from 1910-1945 a Japanese colony, was divided into American and Soviet occupation zones at the end of World War II; the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was officially established in 1948 under Kim Il-Sung. At the time, it was one of over half a dozen Soviet-backed republics in Europe and Asia. In 1950, with the support of the Soviet Union and the newly-established People’s Republic of China, North Korea launched an invasion of the South; only U.N. intervention stopped Kim from forcibly reunifying the country.

A peace treaty was never signed between the belligerents, only an armistice agreement which established the still extant 2.5-mile wide demilitarized zone between North and South. After the war, Kim Il-Sung consolidated his power over the country, rejecting Soviet-style de-Stalinization—indeed, Kim intensified his personality cult to the point where it reached God-like dimensions—but navigating a political tightrope between China and the Soviet Union after the Sino-Soviet split. By the 1970s, though, North Korea had begun to embrace juche rather than Marxism-Leninism as its fundamental ideology, and by the 1991 the collapse of the Soviet Union left the already cash-strapped North Korean state without its major source of foreign aid. South Korea, on the other hand, enjoyed explosive economic growth throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and transitioned to democracy from an authoritarian anti-communist regime in 1987.

In the 1990s, North Korea suffered a severe famine which killed upwards of 3 million people due to a combination of flooding, economic mismanagement, and loss of Soviet aid. The famine, combined with the death of Kim Il-Sung in 1994, was possibly the most serious challenge to the North Korean regime since the Korean War, but the regime survived, partly by virtue of Kim Jong-il’s military-first policy, which mollified one of the few potential power bases outside of the Kim family.

Stories

Recommended Reading

Questions:

What is Historical Thinking?

Worth Reading

Background

Every four years the United States elects a president. In the modern era the two main parties (Democrats and Republicans) select their nominees at caucuses and primaries that take place during the first six months of the year. Candidates compete for delegates to the national conventions, which formally select a nominee during the summer.

Candidates compete for delegates in caucuses and primaries. At a caucus voters meet in neighborhood gathering places to discuss the election and then hold a vote. In primaries voters simply cast a ballot. In primary states politicking at the polls is actually illegal. By custom Iowa holds the first caucus and New Hampshire holds the first primary. Both states say that it's useful to the country for candidates to compete in their small states first. They argue that this system gives less-well known candidates a chance to compete since costs are relatively low. Most candidates use the elections in these two states to hone their message and engage in retail politics: meeting voters one on one. Critics argue that the states are unrepresentative of the country as a whole. After Iowa and New Hampshire, it's mostly a free-for-all, with states vying to hold their elections according to a schedule set by state and national party leaders. On Super Tuesday -- which is usually held in February or early March -- more states hold elections than on any other date. Super Tuesday often settles the race in both parties.

Because modern campaigns cost millions of dollars -- in 2012 Barack Obama's campaign is expected to spend more than a billion dollars -- most candidates run out of money quickly and drop out early unless they are on a winning streak. Winners attract donors, who want to know that their money isn't going for a lost cause.

Unlike the general election, the winner-take-all principle does not hold during the primary season. Candidates win delegates in proportion to their totals on election night, though Republicans shift to a winner-take-all approach in contests that take place starting in April (Florida, which held its primary at the end of January, is the sole winner-take-all primary that occurs before April). The system is designed to give losing candidates an incentive to remain in the race in hope of breaking out later on.

What the Left Says

Liberals bemoan the role of money in elections and insist the current system is basically corrupt. They argue that presidential contests have become so expensive that they favor either rich candidates or candidates who sell out to groups that possess the ability to generate large contributions. The birth of social media has changed the dynamic of elections somewhat, giving candidates the chance to raise millions in small donations from large numbers of ordinary voters. But most campaigns still rely heavily on large donations. While donations to a candidate's campaign are limited by law, there are many ways around the restrictions. Contributions can be bundled together from the employees of a corporation or labor union, giving those entities more leverage over a campaign than individual voters who make small contributions. And nothing prevents a wealthy individual from spending millions of dollars to help elect a candidate as long as they do not coordinate their activities with the candidate's campaign. Similarly, Super PACs (political action committees) are allowed to spend as much as they want on a candidate's behalf as long as they too do not coordinate with the campaign they are benefiting. But liberals say it's easy to get around the restriction. Nothing stops a candidate from announcing publicly how these Super PACs could be helpful.

What the Right Says

Conservatives say it's a fool's errand to try to place limits on money in politics. While some conservatives like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from time to time have supported campaign finance reform, most disparage restrictions as an impairment of political freedom. They argue that donors should be able to give as much money as they wish as long as the identity of the donors is disclosed. When liberals cry that corporations are influencing the political process, conservatives retort that labor unions also have an outsized impact. Conservatives decry the use of labor dues on behalf of political candidates the union supports given that union members are usually not given an opportunity to say who should receive support and who shouldn't. Conservatives like columnist George Will argue that liberals are misguided in thinking that there's an excess of money in politics anyway. As Will likes to joke, we spend more on potato chips every year ($7 billion) than we do on elections.

Historical Background

What set the United States apart from the very beginning was the commitment of the country to elections. In the early years of the Revolution before the ratification of the Constitution the suffrage was restricted to white males with property. By the time George Washington became president property qualifications had been abolished in most states, though some still restricted voting to taxpayers. It's estimated that between 60 and 70 percent of adult white males could vote. Nowhere else in the world did so many have voting rights so early on.

The Founding Fathers' embrace of the principle of self-government was married to a deep suspicion of popular opinion. To curb the possibility that demagogues might whip voters up into a frenzy from time to time, the Founders limited direct popular control of the federal government to one half of one branch: the House of Representatives. The Senate was elected by the state legislatures. The President was elected by the Electoral College. The Supreme Court was appointed by the President with the confirmation of the Senate. Later amendments to the Constitution eased some of these restrictions. By the twentieth century the Electoral College had become a nearly worthless relic and senators were elected directly by the people.

In the early years of the Republic elites (primarily concentrated in New York and Virginia) held sway over the government. Not until the election of Andrew Jackson did political parties in the modern sense develop. But once they did the elites learned that they had to share power with ordinary people, who now could express their will at the ballot box through organized parties. The invention of the party system is one of America's chief political innovations. From the start the parties were dominated by bosses, which somewhat diminishes the halo that hovers over our political history. They remained a keystone in the American political system until the 1960s, when television gave American voters the opportunity to see politics up close and decide for themselves which candidates they wanted to support. Once the candidates figured out that they could appeal to the people over the heads of the bosses through television, the days of the bosses were numbered.

The first experiment with primaries took place early in the twentieth century in connection with the birth of the Progressive movement. But within a few years party bosses beat back the attempt to give voters direct control over the nominating process. They retained primary control through 1968, when the Democratic Convention under their control gave the nomination to Hubert Humphrey, even though he hadn't won a single primary. Angered by this turn of events reformers revamped the system, establishing the now-familiar process in place today.

Topics for Discussion

What is Historical Thinking?

Worth Reading

Background

Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, 2011, when a group of protesters, prompted by a July 13 blog post by the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters proposed that “20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months,” borrowing tactics from the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square which toppled the Mubarak regime and the Indignants movement in Spain, especially their use of online social networks like Facebook and Twitter for communication.

Though the movement itself has been criticized, even by its supporters, for its lack of specific demands and goals, Occupy Wall Street has indisputably changed the national conversation from the debt and deficit talk of August to a discussion of income inequality and the fading sense of opportunity in modern America, particularly for young people.

Unemployment, particularly high among young people, is one of the protesters’ major grievances; another related problem is costly college tuition, which is a leading cause of exploding student debt. Without jobs, many recent college graduates feel there’s no way for them to pay back their loans and get on with their lives.

The protesters have also voiced opposition to the influence of money in politics, particularly the 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court—the “corporations are people” ruling which held that corporations, unions, and other special interest groups could spent an unlimited amount of money on elections.

The protest itself coalesced in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks away from Wall Street itself. Eight days after the protest began, on September 24, the New York Police Department clashed with protesters and arrested some eighty people. Video of a police officer pepper-spraying nonviolent protesters went viral on the Internet, generating a great deal of media attention for the protests, causing them to go national, even global.

At the peak of the movement in October 2011, nearly one hundred cities in the United States saw Occupy protests, and similar protests occurred in Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel, Japan, and even Mongolia. Violent riots at Occupy Oakland culminated in the first general strike in the U.S. since 1946.

One of the more novel aspects of the Occupy movement has been its emphasis on consensus-based democracy in its decision-making. Indeed, one of the movement’s major talking points has been that it’s “leaderless,” though observers (especially at the original encampment in New York) have noticed individuals who have taken on the role of “organizers.” Since the City of New York does not allow megaphones in its parks without a permit, the Occupiers used a call-and-response “human microphone” that supporters claim is a unique community-building tool to ensure that every voice is heard—critics, on the other, say it’s a silly gimmick.

What the Left Says

Liberals, or at least mainstream liberals, have been ambivalent about Occupy Wall Street. On the one hand, it’s a movement that finally looks like it could be the Left’s answer to the Tea Party—it’s changed the national conversation from debts and deficit reduction to income inequality and corporate greed; it’s energized the grassroots; it’s even gotten support from blue-collar union workers.

On the other hand, much of Occupy’s ire has been directed at Democrats in general, and President Obama in particular, for their purportedly close relationship to Wall Street. Democrats have come under fire for their support of the bank bailouts and the Dodd-Frank reform of the financial system (which Occupy regards as weak), and their pursuit of Wall Street dollars for re-election campaigns.

The reaction from the Far Left has been much more positive—many have made triumphal comparisons to the ‘60s counterculture, and some even see Occupy Wall Street as the next step in an ongoing global protest movement, pointing to the Arab Spring, the anti-austerity protests in Europe, and now the anti-Putin protests in Russia as proof.

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What the Right Says

Conservatives have criticized Occupy Wall Street from the beginning as an unrealistic, uninformed, pointless, and illegal waste of taxpayer money and public space. Conservatives allege that their goals are incoherent, their understanding of economics in general and capitalism in particular is laughable, and the Occupy movement does not offer any specific solutions. In any event, the Occupy movement’s politics of social justice, its emphasis on the dangers of inequality and the corrupting influence of money are at odds with the conservative belief in individualism, personal responsibility, and the free market.

One-time Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain bluntly said, “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed.”

It’s not just liberals who have noted the similarity that the Occupy protesters have to the hippie counterculture of the 1960s—conservatives have, too, but with much more negative undertones. Conservatives have sneered that protesters are indigent, shabby, vague about their political goals, and hedonistic. Conservatives have also pointed to tensions within the Occupy movement between homeless participants and the more well-heeled college grads as evidence of its insincerity.

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Historical Background

Mass economic protests are as American as baseball and apple pie. Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786-1787 and the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791-1794 are early examples of unrest caused by a bad economy. Indeed, in both cases, rural farmers were facing heavy taxes supported by urban business elites. In the case of the Whiskey Rebellion, it took a 13,000-strong army led by President Washington himself to end the unrest, a move which upset many at the time (not least the farmers themselves) and which some historians believe was an overreaction.

A more direct predecessor was Coxey’s Army, a protest march of the unemployed to Washington D.C. during a depression in 1894 to lobby the government for jobs (they were promptly arrested upon arrival).

More famous (and much larger) than Coxey’s Army was the Bonus Army. In 1932, unemployed veterans of World War I marched on Washington to demand the immediate payment of bonuses which had been promised to them by the federal government but which were not redeemable until (ironically) 1945. The protest was massive—43,000 people, including the vets’ families—so President Herbert Hoover sent in the army. Douglas MacArthur, then the army chief of staff, personally led two regiments of infantry and cavalry (backed by tanks commanded by none other than George S. Patton) to clear the Bonus Army’s encampment. Fifty-five veterans were injured and a hundred and thirty-five were arrested. The vets ended up getting their bonuses in 1936, after congress overrode a veto from Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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Background

The origins of the Tea Party are broad and deep, but the spark that set it off happened on February 19, 2009, when CNBC Business News editor Rick Santelli, in a broadcast from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, called for a “tea party” to dump derivatives into the Chicago River. His call for action went viral and by Tax Day, April 15, over 750 Tea Party rallies were held across the country, with nearly 300,000 people in total participating.

The Tea Party is neither a political party nor a monolithic political movement—it is rather a loose collection of like-minded groups; some of these groups are small, grassroots organizations, others are well-funded, corporate-backed entities. What unifies these groups is anger over taxpayer-funded bailouts of big banks and companies and wasteful federal spending, antipathy to social entitlements in general and health care reform in particular (though polls indicate that a majority of Tea Partiers do not want cuts made in existing Medicare and Social Security benefits), and self-identification as Republican and conservative.

Tea Party supporters tend to be older, whiter, and somewhat more affluent—and more likely to self-identify as conservative—than the general population. The most important element of Tea Party ideology is economic—supporters tend to be staunch free-marketers and staunch opponents of government intervention in the economy—in other words, they want less government, and lots of it. Tea Partiers also tend to support orthodox conservative positions on social issues like gay marriage and foreign policy, are skeptical of climate change, and support anti-illegal immigration measures. Many are skeptical of America’s involvement in foreign wars. Nonetheless, those policy preferences are less at the core of Tea Party identity.

The Tea Party had an outsized influence on the 2010 midterm election. Tea Party-aligned Republican candidates won House, Senate, and gubernatorial seats throughout the country, with some big winners being Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Senator Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Governor Nikki Haley in South Carolina. However, the Tea Party also unseated many establishment Republican candidates in the primaries; in some cases, the Tea Party candidates proved to be too extreme for their constituents—Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Joe Miller in Alaska, all of whom lost close Senate elections to their Democratic opponents.

What the Left Says

Liberals have been very critical of the Tea Party since the beginning of the movement, seeing it as an overreaction to the election of a Democratic president. Some liberals go even further in stating that the Tea Party is an overreaction to a black president, and indeed, one of the more common liberal criticisms of the Tea Party is that it’s racist, citing the movement’s largely white demographic make-up and the occasional insensitive protest placard. Another common liberal criticism is that the movement is fundamentally inauthentic: it was hyped and sold, so they say, by the conservative Fox News Channel, and that too many of the most influential Tea Party groups are in fact fronts for wealthy and powerful Republican interests. Freedom Works, one of the largest, is run by former GOP House majority leader Dick Armey.

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What the Right Says

Conservatives maintain that the Tea Party is an organic movement that has been misrepresented, even slandered, in the mainstream media as “neo-Klansman and knuckle-dragging hillbillies.” Far from embodying these odious stereotypes, conservatives believe Tea Partiers are law-abiding, patriotic American citizens who are very worried about the direction of the country. They’re concerned about excess regulations, taxes, and government corruption and crony capitalism. Indeed, for conservatives, the Tea Party provided a much needed dose of reality in contrast to the almost messianic expectations liberals had for Barack Obama.

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Historical Background

The Tea Party is a movement very aware of the power of history as a force in politics. The use of the iconic Revolutionary War name and clothing has given it an instant identification in the public mind, helping reinforce its commitment to the Constitution.

Indeed, the political power of the original Boston Tea Party of 1773 has been recognized since the bicentennial of 1976, when anti-tax activists donned colonial garb to protest what they viewed as unconstitutional taxes. Even Ron Paul, the GOP’s most uncompromising libertarian and candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, held a “Tea Party” fundraiser on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Indeed, Tea Party-influenced commentators like Glenn Beck have been instrumental in sparking a popular reassessment of many American presidents. Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and other progressive presidents and public figures have been reinterpreted not as crusaders for social justice, but statists who wished to limit individual freedoms. The most extreme reinterpretations have drawn lines connecting Wilson to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

On an organizational level, the Tea Party also has antecedents in the several waves of right-wing populism that have ebbed and flowed since the Great Depression. Much of the rhetoric leveled against President Obama today—that he’s a socialist who wants to dismantle capitalism—echo charges levied against Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in the 1930s.

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Background

The economy is bad. In September 2011, the official U.S. unemployment rate stood at 9.1%. That means nearly one person out of every ten can’t find a job. But that’s only the official unemployment rate. That doesn’t count people who do odd jobs or people who’ve given up looking for work entirely. That number is actually 16.2%.

The economy isn’t bad just in America—it’s bad in Europe, too. In England, the unemployment rate is the highest it’s been since 1994, 17 years ago. In Spain, nearly one in two persons under the age of 25 can’t find a job.

Even the people who have jobs are suffering. They’re working longer hours (often because their companies can’t afford to hire additional help) for less money than before the Recession began.

So, people who can’t find a job at all are hurting and people who have jobs are hurting.

Who’s not hurting?

Well, to a great extent, corporations and banks.  Corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash as are the banks.  The corporations don’t want to spend the money until demand for their products rises.  The banks are loaded with a lot of toxic assets left over from the housing boom, making bankers skittish about loaning money to people and small businesses. 

The roots of the Recession are really tangled. Even the immediate cause of the Recession—the banking crisis in 2008—is complicated. These are some of the causes: 

What the Left Says

Liberals believe the best way to bring an end to hard times is through government action.  They believe in the economic theory propounded by the British economist John Maynard Keynes.  Keynes preached that government needs to take up the slack when other sectors are cutting back on spending.  The Left favor government spending now.  They believe we should address long-term debt problems once the economy improves.

It’s not surprising that one of the biggest complaints of liberals involves income inequality. The rich, they say, are now richer than ever and are not sharing their gains with the rest of society.  Moreover, the rich insist the poor and middle class need to make sacrifices.  (One of the complaints of the rich is that the most people in the workforce no longer pay any income taxes, though they do pay other taxes such as Social Security taxes.)  The richest 20 percent of Americans now control over 80 percent of the country’s wealth.  The last time the country’s wealth was as highly concentrated was in the late 1920s—before the Great Depression.  Liberals want to see the wealth spread more evenly.  They feel that this would help the middle class and the economy. 

When the banks got into trouble many on the Left wanted them to be broken up, with investors taking heavy losses.  Instead, they were bailed out and allowed to grow even bigger as they swallowed up weaker rivals.

What the Right Says

Conservatives are focused on the national debt, which has grown enormously over the last few years.  The deficit in 2011 is over $1.3 trillion, a little more than in 2010.  Conservatives believe the deficit is a drag on the economy.  Businesses and investors will hold back until they are convinced that the political establishment in Washington puts the country on a sound fiscal path. 

Conservatives believe that government should be doing everything it can to help job creators.  They want low taxes on small business and corporations to encourage job growth. Investments drive growth.  They argue that as a society we need to reward people who invent products like the iPod and the iPad.  That means lowering their taxes.  Specifically that means lowering the corporate tax rate. 

One of the main targets of conservatives is government spending.  They want to cut subsidies to the arts, NPR, Planned Parenthood, and other recipients favored by liberals.  But most importantly, they want to cut entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Historical Background

This is the third great economic calamity to strike the United States in the last century.  The first was the depression of the mid-1890s that drove farmers (who for a generation had been dealing with low prices caused by overproduction) into crisis.  In 1929 Wall Street crashed and the Great Depression began during the administration of President Herbert Hoover.  At the time Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933 unemployment had reached 25 percent. 

Two key institutions responsible in part for the current crisis – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--trace their origins to the Great Depression.  Fannie Mae was established in 1938 to help Americans get a mortgage and live out the American Dream by buying their own home.

The Depression ended with the onset of World War II, which dramatically increased the government’s role in the economy and led to a boom that mostly lasted, with a few notable breaks, for the next forty years.   Consumer spending became a major part of the economy, accounting for 70 percent.  When consumers stop spending the economy goes into a recession.

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