Monday, October 15. 2007
God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead. Quotes from Mead about the book at Dino or Powerline. Sample: The conventional wisdom says that the history of the last 300 years is the story of the rise and fall of Europe. I think that is wrong. The main trend in world history has been the development and continuing growth of a global system of power, finance, culture, ideology and trade based first on the power of Britain and then on that of the United States. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Britain has only been defeated in one major great power war – the war of the American Revolution. To put that another way, since the seventeenth century, either Britain or the United States or both together have been on the winning side in every great power war in which they have participated. God and Gold is a book about this Anglo-American world system. Why have the British and the Americans established the most powerful and influential international power system in the history of the world? What does history teach us about the dangers we now face from the conflicts in the Middle East and from other challenges of the 21st century such as the rise of Asia? Are the best days of Anglo-American power already behind us, or do we still have an important role to play in world history?
Wednesday, October 3. 2007
Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died in the blow-up of the Columbia. Among his gear was a drawing of the earth, from beyond the moon, by Petr Ginz, a Czech author, pamphleteer (he would be a blogger today), and drawer of pictures who was killed in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 16. Petr never ceased believing that he and his young friends would be rescued. His sister survived the Holocaust. The story of Petr is in The Diary of Petr Ginz.
Sunday, September 30. 2007
Hero of Alexandria, of course (c.10-70 AD). He also may have invented the use of the windmill, and built a wind-powered organ (h/t, Stumbing and Mumbling). Who knew they had organs back then, before churches and before rock bands?
Saturday, September 22. 2007
There is no place in the US with more interesting historical walking tours. The Battle for New York. h/t, Buddy
Monday, September 17. 2007
Today is Constitution Day. Good piece in Charlotte Observer, via Oxford via Burkean. 
Friday, September 14. 2007
A tip of the old camo cap to David Thompson, who found a site about New York's 1939 World's Fair. I know that my Gramps took my Mom and my uncle to see it all. Lots of images at the site. Here's a postcard of the Underwood Typewriter exhibit: 
Monday, September 10. 2007
In Belgium there are two communities. One are called Walloons and they speak French, the others are called Flemings and they speak a kind of low Dutch. They can't live together. After the war, we should make two states, one known as Walloonia and one as Flamingia, and we should amalgamate Luxembourg with Flamingia. What do you say to that? US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Oliver Lyttelton (Lord Chandos) of the British War Cabinet, 1942
Belgium was part of Holland until 1830. It is just another artificial state, and may be on the verge of falling into pieces. The above quoted from Crisis in Belgium at Brussels Journal.
Ron Howard's new film. Trailer.
Tuesday, September 4. 2007
 How the hell would I know what's going on in Iraq?
That is to say, I've seen the cooter of every trashy teenage "singer" getting out of car and going to a party. I've seen all I need to see of Brangelina and the football team of children they're trying to purchase wholesale instead of doing it retail like we all do. I've seen drivel and piffle and nonsense; I know that Anna Nicole Smith's "anus is unremarkable," since I've read her autopsy. WTF is going on in Iraq? Are there any paparazzi there? Don't get me wrong. The media has not fallen asleep or anything. I know, for instance, that Bush is Hitler. I know every permutation of his brownshirt perfidy. I've seen and read and heard eleventy billion soliloquies, with photoshopped picture learning aids, exquisitely detailing his crimes against humanity, nature, and God-- except there isn't a god, of course. Silly me. And I'm beginning to supect Helen Thomas doesn't like him much, either. And yes, I understand that Bushitler had a ninja army of mercenary big tobacco executives and Enron jacklegs and someone named Scooter precisely plant explosives during lunchtime when the buildings are empty to blow up the World Trade Center to start his illegal war for oil. I get all that. My bad. Let's not exaggerate. When you report these things, the hair farmer at the network desk always says: "Some say" George Bush had a ninja army of big tobacco executives and Enron jacklegs and someone named Scooter ... Finally, Katie Couric went to Iraq. Now we're getting somewhere. I read with studied interest her dispatch, because her Ernie Pyle style would doubtless clue me in to whole situation there. The Intertoob thingie must have had a kind of interstellar binary paper jam, as I read some sort of note apparently written by a teenage girl describing how grim life at summer camp is because the compressor on the ice cream refrigerator is busted and now we don't have any ice cream. And boy, it's hot and there's no ice cream. The end. You'll have to expend a lot of effort, it seems, to have any idea what the hell is going on in Iraq. If you Google "unreported Iraq," for instance, there's plenty about Haditha, which was plenty reported. It was so very reported, for a while. The last report I got about it was that it made John Murtha get an unlisted phone number. But since pictures of flag draped coffins are not allowed by the fascist regime we've got going, there really is nothing to report until Nancy Pelosi puts on a scarf again. Perhaps I'll try the Intergoogle again, and see if I can find out anything about what it's like to be a soldier in Iraq. I guess since everyone on TV and radio and the newspapers are going to talk only about themselves, we should let the soldiers do likewise. The Iraq Unreported Pool
Monday, September 3. 2007
Grover Cleveland reluctantly supported the concept of a Labor Day during his re-election campaign. He lost anyway. It was meant to be a day off from work for union organizers to organize. I guess now it means the official end of summer, time to get engaged with work again, and hot dogs and watermelon. To me, it means two things: our peak tomato season, and time to start pulling out the hunting gear. I suppose it also means the official start date of the national campaign, but I am already bored with that. Brief history of the holiday here. (If your eyes are failing, that's Teddy Roosevelt somewhere in the photo.) We did a piece last year about the skilled trades. Done with Mirrors has some thoughts about America's love-hate relationship with work. And one more: Americans are the most productive workers in the world. Blue Crab. It's called the Protestant Work Ethic.
Thursday, August 23. 2007
A reader likes to highlight the distinctions between a Democracy and a Republic, and recommends this very clear brief essay on the subject. It's worth reminding oneself about this.
Wednesday, August 15. 2007
VJ Day. Photo is the White House lawn, Aug. 15, 1945. (Thanks, Roger de H.) 
Tuesday, August 14. 2007
 When the Marquis de Lafayette snuck out of France against the King's wishes in 1777 to join the many unemployed French - and some German - officers who wanted to aid the Revolutionary cause, he was 19 years old, with a pregnant, lovely - and enormously wealthy - wife at home. He loved to spend her money, but what he really wanted was the glory of his military ancestors, most of whom, like his father, died in battle.
And, like any French aristocrat, marriage was no obstacle to his skirt-chasing. A wonderful summer read: Adopted Son: Washington and Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution.
Thursday, August 2. 2007
Flash maps of the Middle-Eastern empires at Acute Politics. (h/t, Jules)
Thursday, July 19. 2007
Robert Kagan says that the post-Cold War mirage of international harmony is gone, and normal world history has resumed. He begins: The world has become normal again. The years immediately following the end of the Cold War offered a tantalizing glimpse at a new kind of international order, with nations growing together or disappearing altogether, ideological conflicts melting away, cultures intermingling through increasingly free commerce and communications. But that was a mirage, the hopeful anticipation of a liberal, democratic world that wanted to believe the end of the Cold War did not end just one strategic and ideological conflict but all strategic and ideological conflict. People and their leaders longed for "a world transformed." 1 Today the nations of the West still cling to that vision. Evidence to the contrary -- the turn toward autocracy in Russia or the growing military ambitions of China -- is either dismissed as a temporary aberration or denied entirely.
Read the whole thing.
They do explode on occasion, but yesterday's Lexington Ave. steam explosion was more dramatic than usual. Old steam pipes.
Wednesday, July 11. 2007
 For those who are inclined towards a federalist, libertarian view of the American nation, the debate about the Most Destructive President probably ought to be about Lincoln and FDR.
Lincoln - a superb and fascinating human being by any measure - squashed any pretense of voluntary confederation among the units of the young nation. FDR elevated the power of the Federal government over the individual to levels which never could have been imagined previously. However, the ultimate result of the sickening Civil War has been positive - freedom for many and preservation of the union (although one may and should question whether maintaining the union was worth the destruction of the South and 620,000 dead - the most in any war in America's history). FDR's accumulation of power in DC has been an enduring disaster which, because of the numbers of clients and beneficiaries, may be impossible to undo short of rebellion (see Vermont's recent threats to secede, but for different reasons). Did the New Deal have any impact on the Depression? No, none - and some argue that New Deal policies helped to perpetuate the Depression. But "he cared." I am sure that he did. Individual freedom from government power is always stolen with the excuse of "crisis." (Thus the Left has learned to have a "crisis du jour" to try to justify the expansion of the Federal government at the expense of the states and the citizen.) The Great Depression was the seemingly permanent crisis which was used to justify almost any power grab by Washington. How was this done? The notion of a permanent severe scarcity crisis was presented, which supposedly only Roosevelt's leftist (more acurately, Stalinist) government experts were smart enough to deal with. A piece on the subject by Captain Ed pointed me to George Will's review of Shlaes' The Forgotten Man, which we have discussed here earlier. A quote from Will: Before Roosevelt, the federal government was unimpressive relative to the private sector. Under Calvin Coolidge, the last pre-Depression president, its revenue averaged 4 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 18.6 percent today. In 1910, Congress legislated height limits for Washington buildings, limits that prevented skyscrapers, symbols of mighty business, from overshadowing the Capitol, the symbol of government. In 1936, for the first time in peacetime history, federal spending exceeded that of the states and localities combined. Roosevelt said that modern "civilization" has tended "to make life insecure." Hence Social Security, which had the added purpose of encouraging workers to retire, thereby opening jobs to younger people. Notice the assumptions of permanent scarcity, and that the government has a duty to distribute scarce things, such as work.
The New Deal "brain trust" was wrong about theory, wrong about the American vision of freedom, and wrong about the direction of the future. You can read a couple of our previous pieces on this subject here and here. Addendum: The Jacksonian makes a different argument - for Pres. Wilson, here. He makes the case that the political changes from 1909-1919 set the stage for FDR. A good read.
Wednesday, July 4. 2007
 How easily we forget that the Declaration of Independence only predicted the USA in retrospect. The Declaration was the military and political alliance of 13 colonies, each of which was self-governing within the generous limits established by Britain. In the Declaration they proclaimed themselves to each be a "state," ie a nation, independent from Britain, and to join to remove British colonial control, by force of arms if necessary.
Each state coveted its autonomy, during and after the war. There was no US until 1789 when those independent 13 states, after much dithering, politicking, and ambivalence, agreed to cede some small amount of power, besides the power to run the Continental Army, to a united Federal government. They were all, naturally, and rightly, suspicious about the idea. But the State of New York, as I understand it, gets the main credit for insisting on the addition of a Bill of Rights before being willing to sign on to the document. Many delegates felt that enumerating all of those rights - and more - was unnecessary and obvious. Image: Weisgerger's painting of Betsy Ross presenting the flag of the Continental Army in 1777 - what was called the flag of the "Grand Union." Prior to that time, the Army had only State and militia flags and banners.
Tuesday, July 3. 2007
A brief look at the history of travel by Culver at History News Network. A quote: Americans were long suspicious of leisure – it was for the wealthy and effete, not the hardworking and respectable. A brief respite from work to recover one’s health was acceptable; leisure as a way of life was not. Recreational travel was meant to be constructive, educational, or redemptive, such as nineteenth-century Chautauquas or visits to national parks. Mere hedonistic fun was a danger to morals and a healthy work ethic. While many Americans discarded their fear of leisure during the twentieth century, and even embraced it as a way of life – for an example of this, see retirees – academics continued to view tourism with suspicion.
Read the whole thing.
Monday, June 25. 2007
This week it's La Crosse, Wisconsin, a nice little town on the Mississippi River along the border with Minnesota. As the story goes, the site got its name when explorer Zebulon Pike witnessed local Indian tribes playing a game with sticks that resembled a bishop's crozier, or crosse, in the language of the French fur traders who, as usual, were the first Europeans to establish themselves in the area. In the late 1800s, thousands of Norwegian and German settlers moved to the area, lending it a character which remains to this day.  The town was the beneficiary of plenty of that distinctively American "main street" style architecture during the 1880s and 1890s, as can be seen in the old postcard above, and to the town's good fortune most of it has survived to the present day. Through a city-wide master plan for redevelopment La Crosse has managed to renovate and refurbish over 100 historic buildings while attracting cutting-edge technology and communications firms to the town. The entire riverfront has been developed as well and outfitted with walking paths and recreational boating areas, making the downtown an even more attractive place to live. The main downside to the place? It's too darn cold for a lot of folks, though the Norwegian settlers didn't mind too much, as this excerpt from an 1854 letter written by a Norwegian immigrant to his relatives back home shows:
"When you wrote about some coffee beans, it is impossible for us to obtain them. They grow in South America under sunshine and a warm and unhealthy climate. Here the climate is cold, healthy and fresh. . . "
The Dylanologist would have to agree, though of course it's true that there's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.
Monday, June 18. 2007
With all the posts Bird Dog and I have written about the tragic fate of so much of the nation's architectural legacy during the 1960s and 70s (here and here, for examples), I decided to put a more positive spin on things by focusing instead on those fortunate towns that survived "urban renewal" more or less intact. Whether through shrewd foresight, adept planning or just plain luck, these towns weathered the storm and survived into a age where the noble civic architecture of the pre-war years is valued and treasured. Our first featured town? Staunton, Virginia, known for being  the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson and a major trade hub of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Unlike many other southern cities, however, Staunton received hardly any damage during the war, so a large number of the elegant antebellum residences have survived to the present day. In the four decades following the war, the city was embellished with stately Victorian and Romanesque architecture courtesy of architect T.J. Collins. Staunton was small enough, moreover, that no urban planner chose to route an interstate through the downtown area during the postwar years. When the city fell into decline in the 60s, many buildings fell into disrepair, but few were actually torn down.  By the late 1970s, civic-minded citizens were already hard at work preserving the precious architectural heritage of Staunton. The one major new addition to the downtown in recent years - a much-needed parking garage - was built in an elegant classical style that melded with the rest of the city and captured an award for outstanding and original design in 2002.
The huge 1st century BC Hunnu Kingdom, against which the Great Wall of China was a defence, seems to have consisted of Mongols. Attila, too. As a wag commented, hunnu?
Saturday, June 16. 2007
Addendum - by coincidence, a piece by Driscoll yesterday on pre- and post-Dallas liberals.
Monday, June 11. 2007
We have mourned, on these pages, the destruction of the great American downtowns during the 60s and 70s in the name of progress. And we have praised the liveable, human-scale cities which, for whatever reason, managed to escape the wrecking ball. Why does Savannah, GA always come to mind? Georgia on my mind, I guess. In 1950, Louisville was the 12th largest city in the US, and a thriving place. But the downtown lacked parking lots, so lots of buildings "had to" come down. Photo below: the 1920 Rialto Theater during the 1969 demolition, replaced by a parking lot. I'd be willing to bet they wish they had the Rialto now. An essay, Louisville after the Bombings, here. Our Dylanologist says the same essay could have been written about Nashville. 
 Western soldiers like to collect souvenirs of war. As quoted in a scholarly essay by Michael Stevenson :
'Many soldiers in the 24th Division's tank companies and Scout platoons began to collect battlefield souvenirs - especially Soviet AK-47 assault rifles carried by the military. … In one instance, an elaborate Iraqi Defense Ministry compound was broken into by the 2-4 Cavalry, and, under the eyes of its commander … soldiers loaded glassware, trays, sterling silver, gun collections, oversized rugs, and a huge photograph of Saddam Hussein onto tanks and armored cars to take back to America. … The items were to be used … for a Cavalry Ball, to be held after the war…'. In the case of this war, a 'war-souvenir officer' was even appointed to gather war trophies - flags, enemy tanks and artillery pieces, two camels, etc - for display at the Fort Stewart Museum, back in Georgia.
Stevenson's essay takes a look at how widespread this was during the 19th Century wars in Africa. Why did people go to the trouble of collecting this stuff, what meaning did it have for the collectors, and what meaning does it have for later owners? The whole essay is linked above. Photo: Zulu shield and spear.
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