Happy New Year!

After a week of vacation in Ft. Collins, Estes Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park, I am back in the blogging saddle.

Joy and I are letting the kids stay up tonight to watch the ball drop in Times Square, although my youngest daughter seems more interested in the annual dropping of the pickle in the neighboring town of Dillsburg, PA.  (Not to mention the dropping of the bologna in Lebanon, PA and the dropping of the "kiss" in Hershey).  You gotta love central PA culture!

Ready to sleep in tomorrow and watch the Twilight Zone marathon on SyFy and some college football.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Break at The Way of Improvement Leads Home

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of our readers.  I will be back in the saddle on January 1.  In the meantime, enjoy this:

Leigh Eric Schmidt on Ira Craddock

Over at Flunking Sainthood, editor extraordinaire Jana Riess interviews Havard historian Leigh Eric Schmidt about his new book Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman.

Here is a taste:

You've had some wonderfully quirky scholarly interests in your career, everything from Christmas to ventriloquism. How did you first learn about Ida Craddock? What made you decide to devote a book to her?

Several years ago I wrote a book on the making of American spirituality and came across her in that research. She seemed like an archetypal religious seeker and would have fit quite well in that story. Her papers, though, were off at Southern Illinois University, and I never got a chance to go there until shortly after Restless Souls was done. When I saw the Craddock papers--the wealth of letters, her diary of mystical experiences, the unpublished book manuscripts--I instantly thought that hers was a story worth telling, that recovering her life from the censors, medical psychologists, lawyers, and judges offered a rare chance to hear again the suppressed voice of a one of Comstock's targets. I also glimpsed in her story an opportunity to see the sweeping cultural conflicts of the day--ones that still shadow us in debates about religious freedom, evangelical politics, sex, and civil liberties--in a grain of sand.

Why Have American Historians Stopped Writing About National Character?

David Kennedy addresses this question in his recent review of Claude Fischer's Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character.  (You may recall that we discussed this book in previous posts here and here. 

Kennedy offers a very insightful overview of the way in which today's American historians tend to write more about what happened in America and less about the meaning America.  This, however, has not always been the case.  Kennedy places Fischer's book in the context of other works about America written by Francis Parkman, Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, Vernon Parrington, Gunnar Myrdal, Daniel Boorstin, H. Richard Niebuhr, David Reisman, Henry Nash Smith, Robert Bellah, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Robert Putnam.  These writers made "the nation" the most important focus of the study of American history.

Why the move away from the nation?  Kennedy explains, with some help from the late John Higham:

Unfortunately, historians have made no significant contributions to that body of work for nearly two generations (Bellah is a sociologist, Putnam a political scientist; Lipset, who died in 2006, was also a sociologist). Higham dated the termination of historians’ interest in national character to the 1960s and attributed it to two factors. One, he said, was “a profound revulsion, initially against the state”—the most obvious institutional representation of the nation—“for the inhumanities it perpetrated or protected at home and overseas. ” The second, and probably more dispositive, reason was a new historiography, largely European in its origins, dedicated to l’histoire totale and especially to the project of bringing onto history’s stage the stories of marginal or submerged peoples and communities, “rather than the uniqueness of any great community.”

That robust historiographical movement was further energized in the American case—where it was called “social history,” or “history from the bottom up”—by the striking emergence of black nationalist and separatist ideologies in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement’s legislative achievements, the dramatic rise of an articulate feminist movement, and the no-less dramatic resumption of immigration after the repeal of the National Origins statute in 1965. In light of these anti-authoritarian developments and quests for racial, ethnic, and gender identity, it became not merely unfashionable, but professionally suicidal, for historians to suggest that the encompassing character of a society was itself a fit subject for study. In the scholarly vernacular, historians became a guild of splitters, not lumpers. In the popular vernacular, they retreated to their many separate silos and gave up the quest for a synthetic principle that might impart some measure of coherence to their prolific but woefully hermetic studies of race, class, and gender. Diversity became the guiding mantra of contemporary culture and historical scholarship alike. What unifying elements might have historically contained, connected, or shaped all that diversity were questions that went unasked. 

Read the entire review in Boston Review.

On Dylan and Feingold

Yes, you read that title correctly.  Bill Kauffman, writing at The American Conservative, sings the praises of both Bob Dylan and Russ Feingold.  He even squeezed a couple of paragraphs on Springsteen into the piece.

Kauffman connects Feingold to the reforming spirit of midwestern progressives such as Fighting Bob La Follette:

When the Masters of War—“even Jesus would never forgive what you do”—requested the presence of American sons at the blood orgies of 1917, 1941, 1950, and 1964, it was the Upper Midwest, with its Non-Partisan Leagues and retro-Progressives and Sons of the Wild Jackass, that brayed, “No!” Where are their offspring? I don’t mean to be impertinent or importunate, Dakotas and Minnesota and Wisconsin, but we look to you for La Follettes and Nyes and McGoverns and you give us Al Franken and Ron Johnson? Turn off the goddamn television, would you please, and turn on Wisconsin!

Feingold had his flaws but he was the only member of the Senate with the guts to vote against the Patriot Act. As Jesse Walker of Reason writes, he also “voted against TARP, was decent on the Second Amendment, and was one of the rare liberals to reach out to the Tea Parties instead of demonizing them.” He was neither red nor blue—each a scoundrel hue.

Senator Feingold quoted Dylan in his concession speech: “My heart is not weary /It’s light and it’s free /I have nothing but affection for those who have sailed with me.” Dylan closed our concert with “Ballad of a Thin Man,” rasping, “Something is happening here /But you don’t know what it is /Do you, Mr. Jones?”

I’m no more perceptive than Mr. Jones, but one thing is all too clear: the Upper Midwest, historic home of the American peace movement, has come down with an awfully bad case of laryngitis. And it’s gettin’ dark—too dark to see.

Still Looking for Correspondents at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Boston

Are you going?  Would you like to hone your writing and reporting skills?  We are still looking for more people to serve as correspondents at the AHA in Boston. 

I am happy to report that the famous commentator "Wolfe's Tone" will be back again this year.  We are also currently working to secure some other commentators who have expressed interest.  But we could always use a few more.

You can write as much as you like or as little as you like.  I am willing to consider one-post wrap-ups, daily summaries, or, if you are really ambitious, multiple posts-per day.  Perhaps you want to write something to help you condense your thoughts about a panel that you attended?  Or maybe you have been dying to comment--either anonymously or under a byline--on the culture of the AHA and what it tells us about the profession. Do you have a job market story you want to tell? Here is your chance.  I am willing to consider any and all proposals. ,

I am also more than happy to consider plugging your book, article, thesis, dissertation, research or other piece of writing.  You may look at this as an opportunity promote some of your work or at least make people aware of what you are up to.

If interested, shoot me an e-mail at jfea(at)messiah(dot)edu

Did I Hear This Correctly? Pat Robertson Wants to Legalize Marijuana

Barack Obama and the Revitalization of Conservatism

The election of Barack Obama, writes historian Julian Zelizer, has been "the best thing that ever happened to the right."  Indeed, Obama's election seems to have revitalize American conservatives.  Here is a taste of Zelizer's recent piece at Salon:

Yet it is fair to say that one of the major stories of Obama’s presidency has been the revitalization of conservatism. Within only two years, Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives through a dramatic midterm election. There are now an abundance of Republicans, some old (Newt Gingrich) and some new (Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin), who are jumping over each other to campaign for president in 2012. Republicans have been able to join hands, despite their differences, by using President Obama as their foil. The president has filled a similar role as communism did during the Cold War. Perhaps most troubling to liberals, President Obama has been unable, and in some cases unwilling, to dismantle pillars of Bush’s policies. The extension of the Bush tax cuts was a major victory for conservatives, even as they gave way on unemployment benefits.

Read the rest of the article here.

Jerry Stiller on Festivus

Frank Costanza discusses Festivus: the "feats of strength," the meaning of the holiday, and its commercial exploitation.

Taking Back Your Faith from the Amercian Dream

I enjoyed this short piece at CNN by David Platt, pastor of the Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama.  It seems as if this evangelical mega-church is doing some very good things.  Here is a snippet:


And it’s not just distant needs we’re trying to meet. It’s also needs near at hand.

One day I called up the Department of Human Resources in Shelby County, Alabama, where our church is located, and asked, “How many families would you need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs that we have in our county?”

The woman I was talking to laughed.

I said, “No, really, if a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?”

She replied, “It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families.”

When I shared this conversation with our church, over 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption. We don’t want even one child in our county to be without a loving home. It’s not the way of the American Dream. It doesn’t add to our comfort, prosperity, or ease. But we are discovering the indescribable joy of sacrificial love for others, and along the way we are learning more about the inexpressible wonder of God’s sacrificial love for us.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my country and I couldn’t be more grateful for its hard-won freedoms. The challenge before we American Christians, as I see it, is to use the freedoms, resources, and opportunities at our disposal while making sure not to embrace values and assumptions that contradict what God has said in the Bible.

I believe God has a dream for people today. It’s just not the same as the American Dream.
 

Publishers Weekly Review of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation

The first review of Was America Founded as a Christian Nation has appeared.  A nice plug from Publishers Weekly:

Fea, history professor at Messiah College, does not answer the title query because, he says, “it’s a bad question.” Instead, Fea urges, think like a historian. Turns out, history is not about picking the best fruit off the vine to support your opinion--or the opinions of TV talkers--it’s about doing your homework. He does just that to produce this primer, as he calls it, which defines “history,” “nation,” and “Christian.” Fea studied current position papers of proponents and opponents of the title’s question, and he read from the past: the Federalist papers, John Adams and Jefferson’s writings, state constitutions, debate resolutions. In part one, the author traces the concept of a Christian nation from 1789 to today; part two focuses on the American Revolution, from the British colonies’ points of view to the constitutional “wall of separation between church and state.” Part three, the most fluid and fascinating, profiles specific founders, their orthodoxy vs. their orthopraxy, especially concerning the topic of complex, un-Christian slavery. Fea’s style, clean and simple, persuades by history, not histrionics. (Feb.)

How Many Student Development Workers Have Met This Guy?

Ryo Chijiiwa's Hut 2.1

Ryo Chijiiwa quit his job at Google, bought sixty acres of undeveloped land in Northern California (which he named "Serenity Valley"), and started building huts.  Here is his story.

Watch this tour of his more recent building:  Hut 2.1

Wisconsin-Madison Get $20 Million to Promote the Humanities

The Humanities are not dead yet.  Inside Higher Ed is reporting today that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has received a $20 million gift, half of which has come from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, to establish additional programs in the humanities. 

This is great news.  We need more donors and foundations to step up to the plate to promote the humanities at other schools as well.

James Madison, the Second Amendment, and the Supreme Court

The constitutional debate over the the right to bear arms was reopened recently when Justice Stephen Breyer claimed that the founders, especially James Madison, would have thought it was appropriate to regulate the use of guns.  His comments were made in the context of a discussion about the 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court struck down a D.C. ban on handguns.  Breyer, along with Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, were the dissenting justices on the case.

In today's New York Times, historian Pauline Maier notes that there are historical problems with the arguments made by both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion in D.C. v. Heller.  Here is a taste:

The dissents — written by Justices Breyer and John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — held that the Second Amendment affirms the right of the people to “keep and bear arms” as part of a “well-regulated militia,” but not an absolute individual right to own a gun. And if there is no constitutional right at issue, gun regulation should be set by elected legislatures and local governments, not the courts. That’s not “activist.”

Indeed, contrary to what many Second-Amendment absolutists suggest, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller did not preclude all regulations of firearms, only those that amounted to a prohibition on ownership or prevented their use in the home for self-defense.

However, Justice Breyer went further in his Fox interview. He said that James Madison wrote the Second Amendment because some Americans feared that Congress would call up the state militias and nationalize them. Madison proposed the amendment, the justice said, to appease these skeptics and to “get this document ratified.” Justice Breyer continued: “If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us.”

There is a problem with this argument: by the time Madison proposed what became the Second Amendment on June 8, 1789, the Constitution had already been ratified and was in effect. Rhode Island and North Carolina had yet to ratify, but it’s hard to believe that Rhode Island, with its many Quakers, would be enticed into the Union by an amendment affirming the right to bear arms.

Madison’s actual motives for proposing the amendments, as a representative in the first federal Congress, are well documented. He hoped to “parry” the call for a second federal convention to consider amendments proposed by several state ratifying conventions, one of which would have modified Congress’s wall-to-wall taxing powers.

Have a Happy Counter-Cultural Christmas This Year

Here is a taste of this week's Patheos column:


"Dad, why do people who are not Christians still celebrate Christmas?"

This is the kind of insightful question that can only come from the mouth of a 9-year-old. My daughter wonders why people who do not attend church still have Christmas trees, bake Christmas cookies, put colored lights on their houses, go to Christmas parties, and give gifts on December 25th. To phrase her question differently, she wants to know how Christmas—the birth of the baby Jesus—became embedded in American culture to the point that it could be celebrated by her non-church-going friends and their families.

From the perspective of the Bible and Christian theology, Christmas is about the Incarnation. It is the story of God revealing himself to humankind in the form of a baby, the child born to Mary in that Jerusalem stable. Indeed, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . .

But in America, the biblical and theological meaning of Christmas has always existed in tension with cultural forces that have sought to draw one's focus away from the "Reason for the season." In fact, for most of American history, the birth of the Savior has taken a back seat to the merriment and commercialism of that "most wonderful time of the year."

Read the rest here.

Defending Palin's Reading Habits

I am no Sarah Palin fan.  If she were elected the next president of the United States I think it would be fair to interpret it as a crisis in our democracy. 

Of course Palin has been a favorite target of liberals in the media and the latest point of criticism has been her reading habits. Lately Palin has been telling reporters and interviewers that she has been reading C.S. Lewis.  This has prompted all kinds of attacks from pundits.  On MSNBC, commentator Richard Wolffe ridiculed Palin for reading Lewis.  So did comedian Joy Behar.

Frankly, these comments by Wolffe and Behar say more about Wolffe and Behar than they do about Sarah Palin.  I will let Michael Flaherty, writing in the Wall Street Journal, explain.  Here is a snippet of his op-ed:

Mrs. Palin is on the right track by giving C.S. Lewis a prominent place on her reading list. Yet Ms. Behar and other Palin critics have dismissed Lewis's work, forgetting that Lewis was a medieval and renaissance scholar at Oxford and the author of several brilliant Christian apologetics. Ms. Behar's dismissal of children's books as less than important makes her a modern-day Eustace, the type of bully who mocks readers of fairy tales as simpletons.

Lewis thought quite the opposite. He thought that fairy tales were the best way to convey truth for children and adults alike. He wrote about this quite often in his letters, and took no shame in reading fairy tales out loud in British pubs with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in his dedication to Lucy Barfield in "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." 

"You are already too old for fairy tales," he wrote to the young Lucy, "but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." Hopefully that day will come soon for Ms. Behar as well.

Wolffe and Behar have no clue.

Thinking Historically About the Word Processor

All of my students grew up with word processors.  To understand a world in which word processors do not exist takes an act of historical imagination.  This piece by Clive Thompson could almost work as a primary source in a history class. It is a first-hand account of a person describing a world that, for the most part, no longer exists.  Here is a taste:

When I first got my hands on a word processor, it felt absolutely uncanny: The words! They’re … they’re moving around! THEY LOOK LIKE PRINTED WORDS BUT THEY’RE MOVING AROUND. But pretty quickly I grasped the new style of composition that was possible, and I loved it. Precisely as Englebart envisioned, I could write longer, more discursive drafts, letting my thoughts wander into ever-more-creative-or-weirder nooks, and taking arguments to their logical endpoint just to see where they’d lead. I could give myself mental permission to do this because it was easy to redact the best parts into my final essay. Robert Frost talked about how he couldn’t tell what a poem was going to be about until he’d finished writing it. That’s what word processors did to my academic and journalistic writing: As the mechanical act of writing became easier, it became easier to write prodigiously as a way of sussing out my own thoughts.

It’s hard to remember now, but many people back in the 80s totally freaked out about word processing. I recall professors worrying that it would make students write more sloppily, and even think more sloppily. The fluidity of cutting and pasting seemed intellectually suspicious. I even remember one of my TAs arguing — in a lovely foreshadowing of today’s fears that “the Internet is making us stupid” — that cutting and pasting would render our generation unable to craft a coherent argument, because the sheer slipperiness of digital prose, its slithy rearrangeability, would render our ideas and prose rootless, nonsequential, and flighty.

I tell my students that the past is a foreign country.  I am guessing it does not get much more foreign to them than someone having to write a paper long-hand and then type up it  up with no backspace button or no ability to cut and paste.

Why Can't Liberals Get the Religious Vote?

Responding to Tiffany Stanley's recent article in The New Republic (we blogged about it here), historian Michael Kazin offers his take on why the Democrats have failed to attract religious voters.  Here is a snippet:

Religious conservatives are having their own problems attracting young people who don’t want to be preached to about the sinfulness of their sex lives or anyone else’s. But the Christian Right remains a potent force in the Republican Party and in the larger political culture—as witnessed by the huge audiences Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin attract. Its acolytes are passionate, united, and mobilized by two political issues that nearly everyone in the country has an opinion about: opposition to abortion and to gay marriage. What similarly kindles the fervor of religious liberals? Fighting poverty, establishing a living wage, stopping capital punishment, ending the war in Afghanistan? Each of these issues appeals to a cluster of pious activists, but none stirs the sense of mission that would attract masses of new people to give up their leisure time for the cause and draw the attention of major media and leading politicians.

So it should not be a surprise that Obama and the Democrats have failed to organize a major effort to attract religious voters. If the president did “articulate the moral-religious values that permeate his policies,” as Stanley advocates, who would echo his words and what would they do about them? Alas, until there is a movement of religious Americans willing to act on the injunction in Matthew 25 (“whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”), liberals will mostly be singing to the same, diminished choir.

What's the Difference Between a Front Porch Conservative and a Tea Party Conservative

If you are a conservative, are you a Tea Party conservative or a Front Porch conservative?

Peter Lawler explains the difference:

The Tea Partiers are especially attached to the forms and formalities of the Constitution, and they hold that democracy is limited by the liberty given to people by God. They’re also, like the Porchers, all in favor of local control as a way of allowing the manners, morals, and religion that form a particular community to flourish...

The Tea Partiers and the Porchers are both very concerned with with small business and individual property owner. They both favor Main Street over Wall Street, and they believe that Big Government and Wall Street have formed a corrupt alliance...


But Red Tory Porchers, at least, believe, with Marx, that the development of capitalism–including, of course, globalization–will destroy everything small, local, humane, and personal without a kind of government intervention that might be called paternalistic. Local self-government needs to protected against the impersonal grain of modern life...

The Tea Partiers tend to think that Big Government–not capitalism–is the cause, And so they are, in the Porcher view, insufficiently attentive to the economies of scale that allow WalMart to triumph over widespread personal ownership of “the means of production.” The centralization of brains and power in a displaced or globalized, irresponsible meritocracy is not caused, primarily, by Progressive Big Government...

My First Exposure to Charles Dickens Was Through Mr. Magoo

How many of you of a "certain age" remember the Mister Magoo Christmas Carol?  It first appeared on TV in 1962.  I remember watching it as a kid and being scared to death.

Boston 1775 on the Lyme Tea Party

I learned about another eighteenth-century "tea party" today.  Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell investigates what may be the first use of the word "tea party" to describe the revolutionary-era destruction of East India Tea.  Apparently a group of patriots in Lyme, CT destroyed a shipment of 58 boxes of tea in March 1774, about four months after the famed Boston Tea Party.

These kind of copy-cat were not unusual.  As some of my readers know, I have been piddling away on a book about a similar event that happened in December 1774 in the south Jersey town of Greenwich.

But what is unusual is the fact that this event was referred to by the residents of Lyme as a "tea party" as early as 1805. According to most historians, the destruction of British tea in response to the Tea Act was not called a "tea party" until the 1830s.

The event in Greenwich has always been called a "tea burning" (because they burned the tea and did not dump it in the river), but there is no reference (after the event occurred in 1774) to the event in any extant writings--public or private-- until 1839.  (Actually, it was referred to as a "tea party" in the 1870s.  A group of Victorian women sponsored a literal "tea party" in order to raise funds to help promote the Philadelphia Centennial and they used the event in Greenwich as a way to get local residents to contribute).

Another "Random Act of Culture"

Going the AHA? Check out the Brattle Book Shop

But before you do, read Randall Stephens's interview with Ken Gloss, proprietor.  The post also includes a short video of the store's outdoor area.

Here is a taste:

Stephens: Many historians that I know keep an eye out for that gem of a book. What sorts of books at Brattle would catch the eye of a historian on the lookout for a bargain or a rarity?

Gloss: We buy and put out books each day. Many of those are by amateur historians, professors, and writers. So you never know what will be on the shelves. That is what keeps people coming. There are also many, many bargains.  

The Spiritual Discipline of a Book Release

Here is a short piece by George Guthrie that all authors who are Christians should read.  A taste:

In the life of an author of books there comes such a moment on the brink of a book’s release.  The frantic rush to get words on the page, edits done, design-decisions landed, and final page proofs read (again), is past.  The thing is out of your hands until of course it flies back to your hands as a finished product.
The book arrives in the mail.  Elation.  You like the feel of the book, the dream having become waking reality.  The freebies sent by the publisher are distributed; friends and family celebrate.  They assure you that your book will change the world (but will they really read it?).  And now, now in this moment of the deep breath, you wait.  You wait to see if anyone in the wider world will take up and hold this baby you have birthed and thrown out into the world, vulnerable; will anyone at all be drawn to it with affection?  Will they share that affection with others (say, on Amazon, blessing your baby with 5 stars)?  Surprisingly, in this moment of birth, which should be all joy and hope, the storm clouds of war loom on the horizon.  For it is not the book that is vulnerable; it is you.  The book, solid paper and ink, can last for years on dusty shelves in obscure used bookstores.  You are flesh and blood and raw emotion...

So the Christian author is confronted with a spiritual challenge in this war, a clarion call to come over the ravine and face Goliath; for in the quiet of this moment before the plunge or plummet, a still small voice reminds you that this work cannot be summed up with numbers but rather has to do with individuals and ministry and integrity, has to do with gifts given and gifts opened with joy, and a different set of measurements altogether.  Hopefully, you followed the Lord into the pages of this book, and the Lord is with you here in this moment of crossing the ravine, in the gibbering insecurity you feel. The angst of rising and falling rank on Amazon, of the number of twitter followers and blog posts read, must be crucified with Christ, must be resurrected in a clear-eyed, authentic living, day by day, moment by moment focused on the advancement of the Kingdom that lasts.

Wow! I Would Not Want to Be Laurie Fendrich's Kid on Christmas

I don't think I have ever read a more scathing attack on Santa Claus.  Here is a taste:

In 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to The New York Sun inquiring if Santa Claus were real. In what would become one of the world’s most famous editorials, the Sun lied to her. Here, in part, is what the editorial said:

"Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!"


What a disservice to humanity—not to mention to the child who asked for the truth. And to what end? To preserve raw, cheap sentimentality. A world without Santa would be no more dreary than the world is with him right now.  Nor would his absence harm childlike faith, poetry, or romance. On the contrary, if Santa Claus and his coterie of reindeer and elves were suddenly to go poof, the holiday season—a happy time for the already happy, but frequently a miserable time for those who are less than happy—would offer people of all faiths, or no faith at all, a much better shot at finding a bit of love, generosity, devotion, beauty, and joy than they can ever find while Santa lives.

Born centuries ago, from the union of paganism and Christianity, today’s Santa is fully backed by an adult conspiracy that ranges from parents and teachers to NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which has been “tracking” Santa’s movements since 1955).  Santa is about terror, not love (anybody else ever had to hold a screaming child who’s refusing to sit on the lap of the man in the red suit?), and he’s about greed, not generosity. If it weren’t for the blustering blinders imposed by “tradition,” we’d have come to our senses and gotten rid of him a long time ago.

And Fendrich does not stop there.  Read the rest...

I'm Talking About God's Train...

From left to right: Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins singing on the 1977 Cash Christmas Special.  Lewis and Orbison are sporting some serious belts. Enjoy!

Is Doing a Ph.D a Waste of Time?

Probably, according to this article in The Economist. 

There is really nothing new here.  This piece is a typical rant on the fact that the work one puts into a Ph.D is not often rewarded with a job.  Unfortunately, much of what is said here is probably true.

Here is a taste:

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

I still say that a person who feels called to an academic life needs to pursue a Ph.D, but not without knowing the risks ahead of time.

We are a "Top 5 Graduate School Blog"

That's right.  Thanks to Cali Pitchel McCullough and her ongoing series "Dispatches from Graduate School," we have been chosen by the folks at Gradshare 360 as one of the "Top 5 Graduate School Blogs" in the country.  We are indeed honored to receive this award!

I am now waiting for Cali's agent to call me to renegotiate her contract!

If you are unfamiliar with Cali's wonderful ongoing series on graduate school life, you can get caught up here.  (You can read what else we and others have had to say about graduate school life in history by clicking here).

In the meantime, here is what Gradshare has to say about Cali:

So this one is a little different, it's more of a "blog within a blog." This blog series about grad school life is featured on The Way of Improvement Leads Home, a blog tied to a 2008 best selling non-fiction book by the same title. Dispatches from Grad School is authored by Cali Pitchell McCullough, a Ph.D. student in American history at Arizona State University. So far the blog has eleven installments, and Cali does a great job sharing her graduate school experiences -- touching on topics like trying to balance work and grad school, the importance of the student faculty relationship, her everyday life trying to manage family and academia, and insights into the world of a history grad student. It's easy to relate to Cali through her personal yet informative posts, and she includes some nice photographs too!

BTW, I am also glad to learn that some think that The Way of Improvement Leads Home is a "best-selling" book!

Sunday School at Slate Hill Mennonite

I spent the last three Sundays teaching Sunday School at Slate Hill Mennonite Church, a local congregation in the area where I live.  I was invited by my friend and colleague David Weaver-Zercher (check out his new book, The Amish Way) to do a three-week series on Was America Founded as Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction.

I don't know what the "students" in the class thought about the course, but I really enjoyed  bringing some of my research to the lay Christian audiences I hope to reach with my book. The material led to some fruitful conversation and discussion on the topic and the adult churchgoers in the class seemed very engaged with the subject.  (Of course it also helped to have five or six Messiah College faculty members in the class!  I joked that I had never taught a Sunday School class with so many Ph.Ds in the room!). 

As Mennonites, many of those in attendance seemed fascinated, and probably a bit disturbed, by the way in which the founding fathers often linked Christianity to the general well-being of the American republic.  Folks like Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, etc... believed that Christianity was essential to a successful republic. The state needed Christian churches to flourish in order to make the United States a virtuous nation. In other words, these founders seemed more interested in Christianity as a means of serving the state than they were as a means to draw closer to God.

I think I might become a Mennonite!

The Fundamentalist Origins of the Christian Right

In a previous scholarly life, I spent a lot of time studying American fundamentalism.  I have about a third of the research done for a biography of cantankerous fundamentalist Carl McIntire, but early American interests have drawn me away from that project.  Some day I hope to return to it.  Right now all the stuff I have accumulated for that project sits in a few boxes in my home study.  Maybe some day one of my students will get excited about this subject and will help me sort through my notes and everything else that I have gathered.

I have been pleased to see that scholars are now turning to people like McIntire and other anti-communist fundamentalists of the post-war era to explain the origins of the Christian Right in America.  I noted this trend in a recent review of Daniel K. Williams's excellent, God's Own Party, and now I see a similar argument has been taken up by Markku Ruotsila of the University of Helsinki.  Here is the abstract of the paper he will be presenting at the next months AHA meeting in Boston:

Recent scholarship has argued that Cold War anticommunism was key among the tools with which conservative evangelicals in the United States negotiated their return to the mainstream of American public conversation. While useful, such renderings of the anticommunist leaven in the repoliticization of religious conservatives remain misleading as long as they remain pivoted, as they currently are, on the small cadre of reputedly moderate neo-evangelical intellectuals. Entirely obscured in such portrayals is the agency of the militant separatist fundamentalists whose engagement with anticommunism was at once broader in scope, much more systematic, organized and pervasive, and of significantly earlier lineage than that of their neo-evangelical rivals.

This paper will argue that the roots of the Religious Right do indeed lie in Cold War Christian anticommunism but that the lines of influence stretch as much, if not more, from the fundamentalists gathered around the controversial pastor Carl McIntire and his American (and International) Council of Christian Churches as they do from the neo-evangelicals. A pivotal transitional figure who nurtured, renovated and passed on to a new generation the anticollectivist public doctrines of the original fundamentalist movement, in his anticommunist work McIntire pioneered, as well, the faith-based mass demonstration and petition, the political use of Christian radio and the lobbying of government officials that the later Religious Right perfected. A reasonably direct line can even be drawn from the organizations that he led to those that he inspired into being to those that the Religious Right itself created. Rethinking the emergence of the Religious Right in terms that privilege its founders’ actual original affiliations, both theological and organizational, in the fundamentalist anticommunism of the Cold War contributes to a more contextual and inclusive, thus a historically more accurate representation of the Religious Right’s origins. 

By the way, this looks like a great panel.  It also includes Molly Worthen, Darryl Hart, R. Marie Griffith, and Leo Ribuffo.

I am still looking for AHA correspondents, so if any of you will be attending this session and want to write something about if for the blog let me know.

The Birth of Jesus According to Social Media

Dispatches from Graduate School--Part 12

Cali Pitchel McCullough is a Ph.D student in American history at Arizona State University.  For earlier posts in this series click here. --JF

Arizona saw dark skies and heavy, grey clouds this week. A silvery sky and cool, damp air are the perfect accompaniment to a good book. In our new condo we have three floor-to-ceiling windows that allow natural light to spill into the living room. A table and two upholstered chairs are situated in the corner where the sun shines brightest. I’d love to report that I had plenty of time to settle myself into one of the chairs, The Age of Homespun on my lap and a hot tea piping steam into my little reading nook. Despite my good intentions (one book a week, complete with notes to share with my cohort), my first week of freedom and free time did not go as planned.

We moved into the condo one week ago on Saturday. 1500 square feet of belongings crammed into just under 900 square feet of new living space made Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday unbearable. I could not focus my attention on reading when I had to crawl over and around fifty craft-colored boxes. So I got to work. I successfully unpacked 80% of the boxes, sent four loads to Goodwill, found a place for the utensils, and established the “junkdrawer.” I did manage to read the introduction to Ulrich’s book about objects and their value and meaning over time. But just the intro was OK. It was onlyTuesday night. I had the rest of the week ahead of me.

Wednesday rolls around and I had to make several trips to Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot for the requisite contact paper and cleaning supplies. Said trips ate up most of my day and by the time I would have settled into my comfy chair, my parents were knocking on the front door ready to take Quinn and I out to dinner. OK. No big deal. Thursday through Sunday would be adequate for finishing the book.

Thursday morning. Rainy. Dreary. Damp—such a nice alternative to the typical sunny December day in Arizona. I scurried out of the door for an early morning yoga class and planned to return for a marathon reading session. After class I came home, fixed myself some lunch, and started sifting through some of the remaining items from the living room floor when I heard a subtle clinking sound from the other side of the room. I first assumed this sound was coming from below. We’re on the second floor of the condo and it’s not unlikely to hear  loud noises from our downstairs neighbor. The sound intensified, so I moseyed over to the kitchen to investigate.

Clink. Clink. Clink. As I moved from the sink to the stove I felt a cool drop on my neck. Water, dripping into the kitchen from one of the can lights in the ceiling. At first it wasn’t too bad. I simply placed a towel under the infrequent trickles and snuggled back into my happy place. The towel had dampened the noise, so I was shocked to hear another clink. And then another. A new leak! Two leaks turned into five, and when I no longer felt capable of controlling what had become a frighteningly steady stream of water into our laundry area, I made Quinn come home early from work.

I’ll spare the details of the next 3-4 hours (sopping wet towels, every bowl and cooking pot employed in the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry area, a shop vac, several expletives, and a forecast calling for more showers), but suffice it to say, it’s Sunday and The Age of Homespun is still not read.

Messiah College Gives Back Like Its Dynamite!

All the gloves in this video were donated to the Harrisburg YMCA.

Sunday Night Odds and Ends

A few things online that caught my attention this week:

Check out Google Ngram 

David Sehat reviews Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788.

Adam Goodheart reads Walt Whitman at the Library of Congress.

Bill Kauffman reviews Leigh Eric Schmidt's Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman.

Selling degrees at UMass-Amherst.

Great primary stuff on the Boston Tea Party from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Victor David Hanson defends the liberal arts. 

Interesting debate on Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine.

Philip Luke Sinitiere interviews Daniel K. Williams, author of God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right.

Jill Lepore on Paul Revere, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the American Civil War.

Edward Ball on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

Here's one way to study for your comps.

Patricia Cohen's latest article on digital humanities.

Amid much controversy, the President's House in Philadelphia is open.  Edward Rothstein reviews it.

A cynical look at the male undergraduate.

The American Revolution as a civil war.

Pauline Maier reviews Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson.

Right-wing children's books.

Andrew Wulf reviews Virginia Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved.

Nice Plug for Confessing History

Byron Borger, the owner of Hearts & Minds Bookstore in Dallastown, PA, has included Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation, in his gift giving guide for the "inquisitive, scholarly, curious, and intellectual."

Borger writes:

Three young, respected scholars from three mature evangelical colleges, worked to find pieces that explore the theories and approaches to history that comport with a Christian worldview.  Every academic discipline should be so fortunate to have emerging scholars that have stood on the shoulders of older leaders in their field (in this case, like Mark Noll or George Marsden), thought deeply about the most basic matters, and then got busy doing good scholarly work.   A must for historians, and nearly a must for anyone interested in how Christian presuppositions shaped academic work.  Highly recommended.


Order it today through Hearts & Minds!

Building a Publishing Platform

Dan Reid of InterVarsity Press has some informative thoughts about how authors and potential authors can establish a "publishing platform" for their books.  Here is a taste:

Marketers in publishing houses today habitually ask, “What’s the author’s platform?” What’s the place on which they stand and can be seen above the crowd—what’s their name recognition, their associated institutions, their networks of influential people? Who are the tribes listening to them? Who are the opinion shapers who will endorse and promote their book? 

In the comments section of the post a reader asks, "Dan, so what I hear you saying is this--author's go forth and promote yourselves!  Is this correct?"


I like Reid's answer: "...I hesitate to say 'promote yourselves' (something I personally recoil from), if you know what I mean.  But I would say 'promote your ideas,' in the sense that you thought them worth writing about, so they should be worth promoting in the marketplace of ideas."

The Sad History of the Snowman

Read Bob Eckstein's great post Smithsonian.com about the history of the snowman.

Until Frosty came along, the snowman, according to Eckstein, was "abused by children and exploited by advertisers."  Here is a taste:

There is also visible evidence in trade cards, beautifully illustrated pieces of paper that were the business cards of their day. Shop owners would leave them on their counters for customers and collecting them became a popular hobby. Like so many other advancements in the world -- including the first photographs and early silent movies -- the snowman was right there, showing up front and center. And more often than not -- taking a beating. With the popularity of postcards by the turn of the century, it was no different; images of snowmen pelted with snowballs by gangs of scamps and wayward youths plowing their sled or pig-driven toboggans into snowmen (that’s right, there used to be pig-driven toboggans).

Some of these early postcards show snowmen being bludgeoned by two-by-fours and stomped on by tots. There are examples of snowmen being held up by gunpoint by little girls and stabbed with brooms. At one point, a snowman is dragged into a studio and forced to pose with kittens—while not violent, it was certainly humiliating. But the ultimate indignity would have to be a holiday card showing Santa Claus in a convertible racing car running over a horrified snowman, who is screaming for dear life...

Have the Democrats Abandoned Faith-Based Voters?

Yes, according to Tiffany Stanley's recent article in The New Republic.

Between 2004 and 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy for president, he became possibly the most prominent Democratic politician who was comfortable speaking about religion—a liberal who gave the impression that his religiosity was heartfelt, genuine, and important to his politics. He spoke with ease about his conversion; of the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.; and, in a key speech before the Call to Renewal conference in 2006, of the importance of “religion in the public square.” In the 2008 presidential election, Obama’s message seemed to resonate with religious people who had not, in recent years, gravitated toward the Democratic Party. He won more churchgoers than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton.

But, in just two short years, the left has become sluggish in its courtship of religious voters, significantly scaling back its faith-outreach programs. While many factors—primarily the economy—doomed the Democrats this fall, the consequences of this abdication nevertheless seem to be severe. In the recent midterm elections, House Democrats lost white evangelical voters in greater numbers than they did in 2004, when “values voters” flocked to George W. Bush. Reversing their Democratic allegiance from the past two elections, Catholics—nearly a quarter of all voters—favored the GOP 54 to 44 percent. Compared to 2008, the drop-offs were steep: a 20-point decline with Catholics, a 14-point decline with white evangelicals, and a 10-point decline with white Protestants. How and why did this happen?

So here is the question:  Did the Democrat's failure to attract religious votes in the 2010 midterm election happen because:

a).  Democrats, as Stanley argues in her piece, stopped speaking religious language and appealing to religious voters.

b).  Americans did not like how much money Obama was spending and it just so happens that people who do not like such government spending are also religious.

Which leads to another question:  If Obama's spending on health care, the bailout, etc... would have been somehow couched in religious language, would Democrats have fared better among religious voters?

Grafton on the Academy

How about this for a stinging indictment of academic life:

Worse, we train our graduate students to do the same, even though they will never find tenure-track jobs. By doing so we condemn them to a hopeless, grinding life, which they will spend trying to pursue their pedantry while flying down the freeway from one part-time position to another. We don’t teach undergraduates at all, even though we shamelessly charge them hundreds of dollars for an hour of our time. Mostly we leave them to the graduate students and adjuncts. Yet that may not be such a bad thing. For on the rare occasions when we do enter a classroom, we don’t offer students close encounters with powerful forms of knowledge, new or old. Rather, we make them master our “theories”—systems of interpretation as complicated and mechanical as sausage machines. However rich and varied the ingredients that go in the hopper, what comes out looks and tastes the same: philosophy and poetry, history and oratory, each is deconstructed and revealed to be Eurocentric, logocentric and all the other centrics an academic mind might concoct. So long as professors do not forswear their foolish ways, the university is doomed to fail the students and parents whose hard-earned money and hardly borne postgraduation debt support it. It is a Hogarthian picture: plushy professors, drunk on self-satisfaction, sprawl on satin couches, stomachs poked upward, while their half-naked students stagger out the back door to a lifetime of rag picking. 

This is how Anthony Grafton begins his review of two new books on higher education:  Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus's Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kinds--And What We Can Do About It and Mark Taylor's Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities.   Both of these books make the same indictments about higher education that Grafton makes in the paragraph above, but despite Grafton's agreement with the authors on the sorry state of the university, he does not think these authors have the best solutions for how to reform it.

HT: Ralph Luker

Best Fake Punt I Have Ever Seen

Krauthammer on Obama's Comeback

Those on the left may not be too happy about Obama's new tax deal, but Charles Krauthammer thinks it marks the beginning of Obama's comeback.

Here are some great lines from this very smart column:

Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama... 

Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred - and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal... 


And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power - the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto - he walks away with what even Paul Ryan admits was $313 billion in superfluous spending... 


But don't be fooled by defensive style or thin-skinned temperament. The president is a very smart man. How smart? His comeback is already a year ahead of Clinton's.

Most Popular Posts of the Week

Here are the ten most visited posts this week at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

1.  The Top Ten Most Religious Cities in America (November 2010)
2.  Super-Sizing DaVinci's Last Supper (March 2010)
3.  The Most Awkward Family Photos Ever (November 2010)
4.  How to Cite Facebook and Twitter (January 2010)
5.  I Like Your Tattoo of St. Athanasius (November 2010)
6.  Interviewing at the AHA: Some General Tips (December 2010)
7.  Does Sarah Palin Speak in Tongues? (August 2008)
8.  Glen Beck's Black Robe Brigade and the Plight of the Local Pastor (September 2010)
9.  Religion in Jamestown (July 2009)
10. Teaching with 19th Century Newspapers (December 2010)

Also receiving votes:
Reno vs. Orsi on Catholicism (December 2010)
In Defense of the Lecture (December 2010)

Wilfred McClay on Noah's Ark

The Noah's Ark theme park that is. 

Perhaps you have heard about this.  The state of Kentucky is going to use tax money to support the construction of Ark Encounter, a Christian theme park in rural Grant County that will teach patrons that Noah's Ark and the Flood were real events.  The company that is building the theme park is closely linked to an evangelical ministry called "Answers in Genesis," which promotes the idea the Earth is only 6000 years old.

WIlfred McClay, writing in the Wall Street Journal, thinks the approach taken by the opposition to this theme park--that the government should not be sponsoring such things--is a "tired" one.  Religious groups received money under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. 

But McClay is more interested in what such a park tells us about American evangelicalism.  He writes:

What is more interesting about Ark Encounter is what it tells us about the paradoxes of American evangelicalism, a non-worldly belief system with a restlessly entrepreneurial and commercial spirit. The term "fundamentalism" generally denotes a comprehensively anti-modern movement. But this is only partly true. Far from being a counter to modernity, American fundamentalism often embraces it with far greater enthusiasm and finesse than its mainline competition.

Look at the effectiveness with which conservative evangelicalism has made use of television, radio and the Internet. Or consider the eagerness of "creationism" to claim the mantle of science, which is quite a different matter from rejecting modernity altogether. In commercial enterprises like the Christian music industry, or Ark Encounter, the packaging of products is the same as it is in the most successful secular businesses; only the content is different. Evangelicals assume that all such modern techniques can be redeemed through certain proper uses. The medium, in this view, is not the message.

Perhaps so. But it is also possible that there is no way for Ark Encounter to bring the Bible to life without demeaning or cheapening the very things it is intending to exalt. In that sense, the theme park may challenge not the proper separation of church and state as much as the proper separation of faith and commerce. Still, America's robust commitment to religious liberty means allowing the widest possible latitude to such undertakings—and allowing criticism of them to flourish as well. Let the deluge begin.

Was Jesus a Liberal Democrat?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive

HT: Shaun Turner via Facebook

Post-Christmas Gifts

These books are not out yet so you cannot give them as Christmas gifts, but I am looking forward to reading them in the new year.

Kariann Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation 

Gordon Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States 

Alfred Young, Ray Raphael, and Gary Nash, Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation.

Benjamin Irvin, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors

Ruma Chopra, Unnatural Rebellion: Loyalists in New York City During the Revolution. 

Maya Janasoff, Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World'

Edward Lengel, Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth and Memory

Daniel Richter, Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts

Douglas Winarski, et. al, From Jamestown to Jefferson: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in Virginia  

Of course if you need a last minute gift before December 25, you can always pick up a copy of:

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America


Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian's Vocation


Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction.  (Actually, this one is not due out until February).

Do You BELIEVE in Santa Claus?

Alan Brinkley on Kloppenberg and Obama

This morning I read Alan Brinkley's review of James Kloppenberg's Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition.  I have been eager to read this book since I first noticed its appearance a few months ago. After reading Brinkley's review I want to read it even more.


Brinkley begins with a great summation of Obama's problems--short, concise, and to the point:

Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, the global exuberance that greeted his victory has dramatically faded. The worst economic slump since the 1930s has dragged on for nearly two years with no end yet in sight. The Obama Administration’s stimulus package (along with the much-hated but essential Bush-era TARP) has succeeded in stopping the unraveling of the economy, but unemployment remains stuck just below 10 percent. His signature health-care bill is under ferocious attack, with state attorneys general around the country filing suit to weaken or repeal it and with congressional Republicans vowing to block any corrections or improvements to the bill. The war in Afghanistan, which has become Obama’s chosen conflict, is no more successful than the Iraq War that he opposed. His approval ratings are in the mid-40s, and it is not hard to imagine that they could go a lot further down. And he faces an energized, if not particularly organized, insurgency–the Tea Party “movement”–which has helped invigorate the right and the Republican Party. In the meantime, much of Obama’s base–liberals, leftists, and many others–feel deeply disappointed, if not betrayed. It may be that no president since Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt has faced such a stubbornly difficult set of crises as the ones Obama is confronting, none of which he created. But it was probably inevitable that he would be blamed for them even so. 

He concludes with a powerful statement about why the United States has not embraced Obama:

Obama is one of the most articulate and intelligent men ever to have been president. And his understanding of ideas and faiths is consistently impressive. As Kloppenberg makes clear, Obama grasps a wide range of political and social theories. He is remarkably open-minded in his judgment of values with which he disagrees. He embraces pragmatism at the same time that he embraces communitarianism and idealism. He understands many social worlds, both black and white. The famous cadence that brought him to the attention of the nation in 2004–“there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America”–expresses a view that, for Obama, has been more than a phrase. It represents the vision of reconciliation and community that he tried to create in his campaign and in his presidency, and that he may continue to try to create in the future.

But at least for the moment, we do not live in a nation that yearns for reconciliation and community. We live, instead, in an increasingly polarized nation–a polarization most visible in government and politics but visible as well in ordinary interactions among ordinary people. Overcoming the deep rifts within American society is a great and worthy goal, and Obama may one day be the person who can bridge the growing divides. But in the meantime, there is work to be done–shoring up the economy, helping the unemployed, fighting off the right–and that work does not seem likely to be achieved by the pragmatist’s commitment to shared ideas and “deliberative democracy.” If we are not sure yet how much of Obama is a pragmatist and how much is an idealist, we do know how much more of each we need him to be.

Presidents are not judged only by their ideas and their hopes. They are judged by their accomplishments. And accomplishments, especially in politics, require more than eloquence and more than intelligence. In the increasingly polarized political world that Obama faces, dreams of consensus and reconciliation are not what progressives seek, nor what the nation needs. The world the President inherited requires political skills, conviction, toughness, and the willingness to fight–the very things Obama’s many admirers are waiting to see.

The Civil War: Should We Celebrate It or Commemorate It?

Is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War a celebration?  The Sons of Confederate Veterans in South Carolina think that it is.  On Monday they will be holding a "Secession Ball," complete with a 45-minute play re-enacting the signing of the Ordinance of Secession.  The South Carolina State reports:

One of the stated purposes of the ball is to celebrate a ‘joyous’ occasion when South Carolina seceded from the Union,” said the Trust’s statement. “The Trust cannot join in that celebration as a fair reading of the Declaration of Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina adopted by the Secession Convention shows that the cause for secession rested on the North’s hostility to slavery and its refusal, among other things, to enforce the fugitive slave laws.”

The Trust’s Web site links to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a secession ball sponsor that disputes the Trust’s reading of history.

In its press release, the Trust said, “Because we disagree on some points does not mean the Trust cannot find common ground on others.”

Trust president Robert Rosen said his organization wants to “work with groups in a constructive manner,” ensuring all points of view — including Confederate points of view —- have a chance to be aired.

This raises a couple of interesting questions: Should the Civil War be celebrated or commemorated?  Or more broadly, what is the difference between a historical "celebration" and a "commemoration?"

So You Want to Be a Journalist

Review of Houston, Benjamin Franklin & the Politics of Improvement

Here is my review of Alan Houston's Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (Yale UP, 2008). It originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of the American Historical Review.

Was Benjamin Franklin a Lockean liberal or classical republican? Neither, argues Alan Houston. Rather, Franklin’s political and social thought is best understood by the concept of “improvement.” Originally an agricultural term, Houston argues that during the seventeenth century improvement was “extended to include a host of social and political reforms aimed at growth, development, or perfection” (p. 12). Indeed, Franklin employed the term constantly as a means of understanding the civilizing process. In this outstanding contribution to eighteenth-century studies, Houston shows how Franklin’s views on commerce, sociability, population growth, political union, and slavery were all tied to the idea of improvement.


Franklin’s understanding of improvement was most closely linked to commerce. Trade required the cultivation of human relationships based on personal need and interest. Economic development, in Franklin’s way of thinking, always led to sociability and mutual trust, resulting in a more civil society. In other words, there was no tension in Franklin’s thought between commerce and the virtue of society, a dichotomy that has long been a staple of classical republican thinking. But neither was Franklin a self-interested liberal. Houston’s analysis rescues Poor Richard from Weberian attempts to explain him as a man who cared only about accumulating wealth.


Houston argues convincingly that Franklin’s understanding of commerce explains his never-ending practice of forming voluntary associations. Rather than concentrating on some of the more well-known of Franklin’s associations such as the Junto or the Library Company, Houston describes his 1747 attempt to develop a volunteer militia in Philadelphia in response to the threat of pirate activity in the Delaware Bay. Franklin’s vision for this militia, known as the “Association,” was democratic in nature. It rejected the social hierarchies often associated with classical republican life, but it also required sociability and community among the tradesmen who participated in it.


Franklin believed that a growing population was essential to the development of any society. Such growth led to the increase of trade and wealth and, ultimately, human happiness. Yet, as Houston amply shows, Franklin’s“political arithmetic” also had a nativist flavor. Franklin had serious doubts over whether German immigrants could assimilate into the culture of the British colonies. Furthermore, Houston’s ahistorical attempt to discuss Franklin as foreshadowing Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection seems out of place, although it does raise some interesting questions.


Franklin, of course, is perhaps best known as a promoter of American independence. Houston reveals that Franklin was always thinking about the notion of political “union.” Whether it was his promotion of internal improvements, his proposals for colonial unity at the Albany Congress, or his arguments on the floor of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin believed that “without Union, improvement was not possible” (p. 222). His view of political union, like his belief in associational life, was driven by his commitment to democratic ideals. Franklin, for example, supported a strong federal government for the United States, but he demanded that government always be rooted in the voice of the people. His belief in a strong union embodied in the people was evident most clearly in his promotion of Pennsylvania’s controversial unicameral state legislature. Houston portrays Franklin as quintessentially
modern. He reiterates the point that Franklin had no use for the class structure inherent within a society ordered by the moral and social ideals of classical republicanism. Like commerce, society improved and the common good was strengthened through a sense of community defined by individual wants and needs.


Slavery, of course, did not fit very well with Franklin’s view of improvement. He believed that slavery was an institution left over from a previous stage of civilization. It was not until the end of his life that he decided to do something about slavery, but when Franklin finally did get involved in abolitionist causes he did so, according to Houston, based upon his longstanding commitment to societal improvement through commercialism. Slavery was an economically inefficient institution because it did not allow individuals to associate freely with one another in the kind of voluntary communities that were conducive to a civil society.


Houston’s book will be successful in convincing American political historians that the practice of pigeonholing the American founders into “republican” and “liberal” categories needs to stop. He has done early American historians a great service by offering a new approach to Franklin’s thought that is grounded in both his words and deeds. This clearly written and carefully argued interpretation of Franklin in his times provides us with a level of thoughtful reflection largely absent from the host of Franklin biographies that appeared during the recent sesquicentennial celebration of his birth.