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Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Origins of Political Correctness
The first published use of the term political correctness was in 1912 in Chapter 1 of Senator Robert LaFollette's Autobiography . Speaking of his education at the University of Wisconsin, he says "In those days we did not so much get correct political and economic views, for there was then little teaching of sociology or political economy worthy the name".
Sen. La Follette of Wisconsin later ran for President in 1924 on the Progressive Party platform. The University of Wisconsin Madison campus has often been cited as the birthplace of political correctness. Donna Shalala, former Clinton Secretary of Health & Human Services and University of Wisconsin Chancellor has been called the founder of political correctness.
Here is an extended excerpt of the passage:
It is difficult, indeed, to overestimate the part which the university has played in the Wisconsin revolution. For myself, I owe what I am and what I have done largely to the inspiration I received while there. It was not so much the actual courses of study which I pursued; it was rather the spirit of the institution--a high spirit of earnest endeavor, a spirit of fresh interest in new things, and beyond all else a sense that somehow the state and the university were intimately related, and that they should be of mutual service.
The guiding spirit of my time, and the man to whom Wisconsin owes a debt greater than it can ever pay, was its President, John Bascom.
I never saw Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I should say that John Bascom was a man of much his type, both in appearance and in character. He was the embodiment of moral force and moral enthusiasm; and he was in advance of his time in feeling the new social forces and in emphasizing the new social responsibilities. His addresses to the students on Sunday afternoons, together with his work in the classroom, were among the most important influences in my early life. It was his teaching, iterated and reiterated, of the obligation of both the university and the students to the mother state that may be said to have originated the Wisconsin idea in education. He was forever telling us what the state was doing for us and urging our return obligation not to use our education wholly for our own selfish benefit, but to return some service to the state. That teaching animated and inspired hundreds of students who sat under John Bascom. The present President of the university, Charles R. Van Hise, a classmate of mine, was one of the men who has nobly handed down the tradition and continued the teaching of John Bascom.
In those days we did not so much get correct political and economic views, for there was then little teaching of sociology or political economy worthy the name, but what we somehow did get, and largely from Bascom, was a proper attitude toward public affairs. And when all is said, this attitude is more important than any definite views a man may hold.
Friday, October 1, 2004
Now reading... "Double Play"
I just finished the latest Dune prequel and Churchill's "Their Finest Hour".
Now I'm reading "Double Play", a historical novel, by Robert B. Parker, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004. This book is difficult for me to put down, a suspense novel with a special twist that binds together the national pasttime, World War II and racial integration.
Author Robert Parker weaves a believable tale of facts and real people with fictional characters such as protaganist Guadalcanal veteran Joseph Burke recovering from serious wounds and a "Dear John" note on the kitchen table. Burke is stepping back into civilian life as a boxer, mob enforcer and bodyguard. Burke's "Double Play" assignment begins when Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey hires Burke to be Jackie Robinson's bodyguard.
This is a novel about the history of the racial integration of major league baseball.
Robert Parker punctuates his action filled chapters with short vignettes from "Bobby" (Parker?) and dreamy reminisces from the mind of Joseph Burke.
The author placed box scores of Brooklyn Dodger baseball games lifted from newspapers throughout the book.
There are gangsters, there are dolls, killers for hire, and a peek at life on the road lived by Negro ballplayers in 1947. Burke can't get a cab, or a meal, or a hotel room in a black neighborhood and Jackie Robinson can't get a cab, or a meal, or a hotel room in a white neighborhood, so the two men must look out for one another.
I'm on page 198. This is a real page turner, gotta go.
Their Finest Hour
I just finished reading Winston Churchill's "Their Finest Hour".
Prior to reading this book, I had considered Winston Churchill the greatest leader of the 20th-century.
My opinion has not changed.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
The past and the future
I just finished reading "The Fourth Turning" by William Strauss and Neil Howe; and I found it an interesting and intriguing view of the role generations play in our lives.
The general thesis of this book is we have four general generational types that - with one exception - have repeated themselves in a season like manner over the last half millenium. Because the generational types keep repeating we see a repeating set of circumstances in our public lives.
When I combined what's in "The Fourth Turning" with "The Third Wave" by Heidi and Alvin Toffler I find an eerily accurate description of today's times. Quite the deal since "Turning" was written in the mid nineties and "Wave" came out in 1979.
Oh yes - "What Would Jefferson Do?" by Thom Hartmann (quick disclaimer - I know and occasionaly work for Thom). If you're suffering from modern day conservative misunderstandings of our nations foundations this book will help cure you.
Friday, August 20, 2004
"R.F.K. Must Die! A history of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and its Aftermath"
This 1970 book by journalist/Sirhan defense team consultant Robert Kaiser is a poignant insider's look at the mind of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Senator RFK. It is an agonizing portrait of yet another assassin in the Lee Oswald "lone nut" mold. Rather then focus on conspiracy theories (floating around already in 1970), Kaiser's tale is a straightforward journalistic account of the events surrounding the assassination,his interviews with Sirhan, the trial, and the ultimate death sentence handed down by the jury (overturned in 1972 when California outlawed executions).
I know not if this book is still in print, but if anyone is interested in reading about this intriguing case, a turning point in US history - I strongly recommend it. Alas, what motivated Sirhan, and what makes him tick is still as elusive as when I picked up the book in the first place.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
One Reason Why I Love History
I'm currently reading "Reports of General MacArthur," in three volumes. This 1994 reprint, of the original published in 1950, by the U.S. Government printing office are handsome volumes. Each volume, with hundreds of full color maps, glossy paper, and the highest quality binding must have set the taxpayer back a pretty penny. I'm fortunate that my local state university is an official federal government depository and has a large number of official histories on WWII and America's other wars.
In volume I of this set there is a chapter on the Filipino guerrilla movement. It includes an excerpt from a letter written by Tomas Confesor of the Free Panay Civil Government. The letter is a reply to an entreaty from Fermin Caram for Confesor to surrender in order to prevent further suffering by the Filipino people. Confesor's response is a moving and eloquent statement that core values can never be surrendered. This is one reason I love history. On occasion one comes across a real gem, such as this letter. You can read the entire letter here:
www.geocities.com/kabatuhan/Digital/letter.htm
The website is active. If my link doesn't work, just type it into your browser.
Grant Jones
Sunday, August 8, 2004
Revolutions, past and present
It's summer, sometimes associated with light reading. My light reading of the moment is the first of the two Jeff Shara historical novels set in pre-Revolution America.
Yet, while my reading is light the news is not. In another part of the world, across an ocean, our country is trying to force its will upon two other countries.
Reading the thoughts of a fictional Franklin pondering the British attempts at making right through might gives me cause to wonder about our own colonialism in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yes, there are obvious differences. The majority of the Colonists believed they were British before the revolution and that is why they had such a tough time being treated as though they were but savages, to be taxed and ignored. In Afghanistan and Iraq the people have no concept of ever being of the United States, so they are even less likely to want to seek a middle ground between the oppression of corporate colonialism and revolt against the United States.
For those who would talk of how we "liberated" Afghanistan and Iraq let me bring up the fact that our hands are guilty in creating the governments which oppressed those people. Support for the Mujahadeen led to the Taliban and I don't need to link to a photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein to remind a reader that he was a favorite of Republican administrations past.
What bothers me most about considering our own country's founding and these two current incidents of revolution is that we are the children of revolution trying to deny revolution to others. What would Jefferson, Franklin and Adams have to say about our country visciously invading and dominating other countries half a world away and treating them far worse than our own Colonial predecessors were treated?
Saturday, July 31, 2004
The Qur'an, The 9/11 Commission Report.
I've been reading the Qur'an. Actually, I'm not reading the Qur'an, the actual word-of-god Qur'an written in Arabic, but the meaning of the words of the Qur'an in English. It's extremely difficult to read. Unlike the Old Testament, which is arranged chronologically, or the New Testament, which centers around the theme of Jesus and his life, the Qur'an is devided into Surahs that seem to be a hodgepodge of stories, references to current events and politics, (current as in 600 C.E.) and laws. This format leads me to believe that the Qur'an comes from sermons given to the Muslims, probably by Mohommed. A devout Muslim, of course, will tell you it is the direct words of God.
But about half the Qur'an seems to say the same thing: Believe in Allah, and do good. (It's usually a generic sort of good, much like the political rhetoric we see about "values.") Those who do otherwise will burn in hell on the day of judgement. Replace Allah with Jesus, and the same can be said of Christianity.
The one problem I have with the Qur'an appears in Surah 2, verses 6 and 7.
As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not./ Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.
(Pickthall Translation. Source: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/)
It appears then, that it is Allah the benevolent, the merciful (as we are repeatedly told) who is responsible for choosing people's religion. And it is Allah, the benevolent, the merciful, who condemns them to hell for it. This theme is repeated in Surah 6, verse 125:
"Those whom Allah (in His plan) willeth to guide,- He openeth their breast to Islam; those whom He willeth to leave straying,- He maketh their breast close and constricted, as if they had to climb up to the skies: thus doth Allah (heap) the penalty on those who refuse to believe."
(Yusufali translation. Ibid.)
The Qur'an makes a fabulous foil for my other book of the moment, the 9/11 Commission Report. Where the Qur'an heaps mounds of overblown, unclear, repetative prosetry on the reader, and the translator tries his best to sound like the King James Bible, the 9/11 CR is written in harsh, stark, detailed declarative sentences. Every detail, every minuatae, down to the airport security guard who passed a metal wand over a hijacker and failed to find a boxcutter is recorded. Knowing that all they had to do was tell the story, the writers were given to understatement, preferring to use the passive voice for instances such as the end of UA flight 93: "The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door. Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din. We cannot identify whose voices can be heard. But the assault was sustained."
It is a classical tragedy, one in which the reader knows the ending, but is moved by learning how it comes about. Only it is not long dead kings in far off lands we are reading about. It is our here and our now. Having seen 9/11 first-hand, and now reading the book, I must say that I prefer the former. However, the politicians who wax poetic about "the days following 9/11," like it was some super 4th of July or a glorious battle campaign would do well to not leave this book to staffers to summarize, but to experience it again themselves.
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Intellectual Underpinnings
I have been trying to get a better sense of the nature and complexity of the ideas underlying the major definitions and redefinitions of America - the Revolution, the Constitution, the Civil War, and the New Deal. I've read Bailyn's Ideological Origins and am working my way through McDonald's Novus Ordo Seclorum. The combination of these books with all the recent books on various aspects of the Enlightenment (Buchan's Crowded with Genius, on the Scottish Enlightenment, and Roy Porter's two books on the English Enlightenment) has made it hard to get out of the 18th century. I'd be very interested in hearing about what others are reading in this vein. I would also like to hear the professional historians' take on how we, the reading public, conduct our self-education.
Monday, July 26, 2004
The Nature of History.
Recently I read John Lukacs, Confessions of an Original Siner (1990). It was a great experience because Lukacs recognizes that the nature of history determines in large measure what kind of historical narrative the historian weaves together. The book is a musing on history, autobiography, and the delicate nature of human memory. For those people particularly the young who are so impacted by all the trends in American scholarship, I recommend this book to set the mind in right order. Donald K. Pickens, Dept. ofHistory Universdity of North Texas.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
a justice on justice
I am reading Sandra Day O'Connor's THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW. It is exceedingly well written, and covers not only issues of how the Court system in this nation operates and her perspective on a number of previous Justices, but also some issues that might suprise. For example, she seems strongly in favor of allowing greater access to the legal system for those who cannot afford lawyers, whether through legal aid or more pro bono work. She is not comfortable with the idea that there is unbalanced access to the legal system.
In talking about previous Justices, she emphasizes how much she learned from the stories that Thurgood Marshall used to tell to illustrate key point he wanted to make.
She also talks about some of the conflicts inherent in our very system of laws, and discusses some of the possible implications.
I have been both surprised and impressed by what I have read, and intend to suggest the book to some of my more gifted high school government students as a resource they might want to consider.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Bowling Alone
I discovered this text after reading a newspaper article that recommended it. It talks about the fact that fewer people vote today than 30/40 years ago and in fact fewer people are involved in clubs, organizations and civic activities. I've reached the section where it discusses possible causes of this trend. Has anyone else read it?
Recent Entries
- Origins of Political Correctness
- Now reading... "Double Play"
- Their Finest Hour
- The past and the future
- "R.F.K. Must Die! A history of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and its Aftermath"
- One Reason Why I Love History
- Revolutions, past and present
- The Qur'an, The 9/11 Commission Report.
- Intellectual Underpinnings
- The Nature of History.
Recent Comments
- Leonard Robinson on "R.F.K. Must Die! A history of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and its Aftermath"
- Jon Everett on Their Finest Hour
- tom plotts on Bowling Alone
- David Lion Salmanson on Bowling Alone
- Shawn McHale on Bowling Alone
- David Lion Salmanson on Bowling Alone
- David Lion Salmanson on Intellectual Underpinnings
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