Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 437

August 4, 2011: First to Go

Every day for the past two weeks, my Mom has been driving a fourth-grader who graduated from her Bright Stars preschool program—the same Mom and program on which I focused in this Tribute post—about 35 miles (each way) to a Central Virginia horse farm. There, the farm's owner, a friend of my Mom's, has been offering this girl a free slot at the horse riding camp she operates during the summers. This is the second summer where such a slot has been offered to one of the Bright Star graduates, in each case a girl who is recovering from sexual abuse. My Mom has been extremely impressed with how much these couple of weeks, and especially the connection to a particular horse that each girl has fostered during that time, have helped the kids to move forward in the very difficult but essential healing process, as well as other parallel growth and maturation processes in their young lives. Because of the generosity and efforts of both my Mom and the farm owner, the experience costs virtually nothing to the school system or the state or the taxpayers, and yet, like all that my Mom and her colleagues do for their kids and families (the program continues to work with the kids and families through 5th grade), it would not exist without the overarching state- and local-funded Bright Stars program.The vast majority of the spending cuts required by the just-passed debt ceiling deal are to be made in the euphemistically titled "non-defense discretionary spending"; as the article at the first link details, that category comprises a variety of areas, but certainly includes educational and social programs—and Bright Stars, like many programs, is a combination of those two types—front and center. A cynic might argue that my entire first paragraph is too unique or anecdotal to be relevant to the question of such cuts, might contend that such programs in general work far less consistently or include far too much bureaucracy and waste or otherwise can stand to be cut; in point of fact, I have read and encountered a wide variety of arguments along the latter lines, as well as parallel arguments that since we simply must cut spending, the cuts should at least come not from nationally necessary programs such as Social Security or Medicare, nor by negatively impacting industries that create jobs and grow the economy, but from programs like these, which unfortunately are just (in this argument) more cut-able than the other areas. An even more cynical perspective would add that the beneficiaries of a program such as Bright Stars not only are unlikely to vote but have virtually no voice in our national and communal conversations, and as such are perhaps the only group affected by potential spending cuts who will not protest those cuts nor otherwise complicate the process moving forward.The only problem with those various points is that they're all completely nonsensical. For one thing, social and educational programs already receive less governmental, federal funding than any other item on the budget; if we simply must cut spending, we presumably must do so in such a way as to genuinely impact the budget moving forward, and cutting these programs will not achieve that objective. For another, while every industry and field includes wasteful or unnecessary spending and bureaucracy, that already-low level of funding for these educational and social programs, coupled with the tremendous amount that their workers contribute and give on their own—I firmly believe that my Mom's and her friend's generosity in the above anecdote, impressive as it is, is quite the opposite of an anomaly—means that far less is wasted in these programs than in (for example) the defense industry or the budgets of the giant corporations whose tax breaks remain untouched in the debt deal. And for yet another and by far the most important—if also the least quantifiable—thing, the human cost of cutting these programs is without question the most explicit and destructive. It's there that the power of the above anecdote is really revealed: without Bright Stars and the opportunities that it, combined with the efforts of my Mom and her friend, can offer, this young girl and hundreds more in this one program—and millions more in programs and schools around the country—would have no support, no recourse from the horrors that far too often constitute their lives, virtually (if not certainly) no possibility of changing those lives for the better. And what could be of more communal and national importance than the question of whether millions of young Americans will or will not have the opportunity to become strong and successful adults and citizens?I don't personally believe that we should be focused on cutting spending at all, but that's an argument for a different post. For now, the bottom line is that, even for those who believe again that we simply must cut spending, our consistent and continuing priorities in what, and who, we cut first are so profoundly ass backwards as to defy both reason and compassion. What can those of us outside of the corridors of power do about that? Well, for one thing, we can tell stories like the one in my first paragraph, of the people at the heart of these most vital and endangered American programs. If those people don't have enough of a voice in our conversations right now, then all the more reason for us to make sure we voice our support for them. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      A Mother Jones story on where the "non-defense discretionary spending" cuts are likely to come from: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity2)      The website for the Bright Stars program: http://www.albemarle.org/department.asp?department=dss&relpage=38973)      OPEN: What do you think?

August 3, 2011: Two Talented, Troubling Americans

Writing about Matt Damon in yesterday's post got me thinking about what I consider his two best film performances, both as reflections of his truly remarkable range and just as two impressively complex and rich character creations: Tom Ripley, the con artist protagonist of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); and Jason Bourne, the fugitive former-assassin protagonist of The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). There's plenty that could be said about each of these films, including the very impressive supporting casts (Jude Law has never been as good as he is in Ripley and the Bourne films almost made me like Julia Stiles, to cite two particularly impressive examples); similarly, each character was created by an interesting and underrated late 20th-century American novelist whose works still have a great deal to offer in their own right (Ripley appeared in four novels by Patricia Highsmith, whose ground-breaking psychological thrillers also included Strangers on a Train [1951]; Bourne in three novels by Robert Ludlum, whose dense espionage thrillers without question inspired future bestsellers such as Tom Clancy). But for this blog, what's most interesting about both Ripley and Bourne is how much they connect to and yet complicate and critique dominant American narratives.Tom Ripley, at least in the film's representation of him (while I've read both Highsmith and Ludlum, it was a while ago and for this post I'm going with my much clearer memories of the films; I'll also be spoiling those films a good bit, so feel free to stop here if you haven't seen 'em!), has a great deal in common with one of the most iconic American fictional (in every sense) characters: Jay Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Ripley is born into poverty but will do whatever it takes to become wealthy, successful, and (perhaps most importantly) accepted by the most elite and upper-crust of his countrymen; also like Gatsby, Ripley is most talented precisely at performance, at inhabiting every aspect of the character and world he is continually creating. While both men's stories end with a great deal of death and destruction, it's certainly true that Ripley is a far more overt cause of that chaos than Gatsby; Ripley, in short, is willing to murder in order to keep up his performances, while Gatsby's undeniable culpability lies more in his various forms of cheating (financial, adulterous) and his sins of omission. Yet you could make a convincing case that Gatsby is nearly as reprehensible as Ripley, and that the main difference lies in the fact that we see Gatsby through the eyes of Fitzgerald's novelist-narrator Nick Carraway, a man who both falls under Gatsby's charm and who (to an extent) shares Gatsby's culpability in the novel's final events; our vision of Ripley, unmediated by such a narrating voice, makes it easier to judge his most heinous actions for the atrocities that they really are. And as destructive as both men's ambitions and desires ultimately are, it would also be important to keep in mind how fully they line up with some of America's defining narratives, most especially the self-made man and the prominent place he occupies in the American Dream.Jason Bourne's American connections (again, in the film version of the character) are in many ways much more explicitly contemporary, more directly in conversation with national narratives and realities post-9/11. The series' engagement with those contemporary and political issues has been present since the first film but was ramped up in each subsequent sequel; the villain played by the great David Strathairn in Ultimatum represents a particularly clear stand-in for American "war on terror" policies and practices and their logical yet terrifying endpoints. Moreover, both Bourne's complicity in those extremes and horrors and his gradual but absolutely determined extrication of himself and his prior identity from them can be read across the three films as a powerful argument for how the nation as well can and must leave behind what we've become in the decade since 9/11. Yet on another level Bourne connects to a centuries-old and archetypal American hero, the kind of character described by literary critic R.W.B. Lewis as "the American Adam": these Adamic heroes, who originated as many American literary images did with James Fenimore Cooper (and specifically with his recurring hero Natty Bumppo), seem to exist as innocent and largely self-made"new men," outside of (or at least not ultimately bound by) the limits of history and society. Bourne is not the first character who can be said to reveal the fundamental flaws in and even impossibility of such an Adamic identity—Lewis rightly notes that Gatsby can be read in precisely that way—but he is a particularly compelling case: an Adamic hero who comes to realize that he has been instead an anti-hero, and must fight to escape and destroy that anti-heroic identity and the myths that come with it. Both Ripley and the Bourne films are great entertainments on their own terms, but as with all of the best art, they also echo and engage with and amplify ongoing narratives and images, with our ideas about who we are and with what those stories often leave out or gloss over. And that's a very impressive talent for sure. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      A great, telling brief scene from Ripley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiKBP8L-twA2)      The concluding sequence from Identity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4efr_NASQE&feature=related3)      OPEN: Any deeply American characters you'd highlight?

August 2, 2011 [Tribute Post 20]: Inspiring Public School Teachers

Unfortunately overshadowed by the debt ceiling nonsense was the July 30th Save Our Schools march in Washington, and especially the speech delivered by actor and all-around impressive guy Matt Damon at that march. See the first link below for the full text of the speech, which weaves together Damon's individual experiences, his Mom's life and efforts, and his educational perspective and arguments about as well as could possibly be imagined in such a brief text. Damon makes a compelling case against standardized (and especially high-stakes) testing, a position I certainly share; but even if we leave that issue aside, he also argues—not only with his words but also in his very identity—for a greater appreciation of the work done by and the hugely powerful influence of teachers, and most especially (at least in his case, as in mine) public school teachers.Most of my first half-dozen Tribute Posts here focused on inspiring teachers, many of them from my 15 years in the Charlottesville Virginia public schools: that would include my high school English and writing teacher Mr. Heartwell; my elementary school History teacher and Camp Virginia guru Mr. Kirby; my middle school English teacher Mr. Hickerson; and my high school Calculus teacher Mrs. Perkins. I could (and perhaps down the road will) write at least as many additional Tributes to other, equally inspiring teachers from those years, among them: Mrs. Sturgill, who taught middle and then high school sciences into her 70s when she could have long before retired (not least because her husband was a prominent physician at and director of the University of Virginia hospital); Mrs. Banks, who included Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (!) on the syllabus of her amazing 8th grade English class; Mrs. Frankel, who made the nuances and power of American history come alive without sacrificing the slightest bit of rigor in our AP US course; Mrs. Wilroy, the very young and very passionate 9th and 10th grade English teacher whose talents and commitment I should have vocally appreciated much more fully than I did; and Dr. King, the legendary principal at my elementary school who passed away far too young but has continued to influence his students positively through a college scholarship fund. Our national narratives about public education have been dominated for at least two decades now by two pretty destructive threads. The more recent is also the more overtly partisan and divisive, the perspective that public school teachers (like all public employees) are overpaid and over-coddled, leeches who benefit from the system far more than they give to it, thanks in large part to their even more leech-y teachers' unions; I believe that at least as many Americans oppose this narrative as support it, which doesn't lessen its potential destructiveness but does make it slightly less horrific to think about. But the longer-term narrative, the one about holding schools and teachers accountable—the narrative that is the direct source for high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind and every other imposed method of assessing whether schools and teachers are doing their jobs (and then penalizing them if they're not)—is both far more broadly accepted (how can it be bad to hold someone accountable?) and far more dangerous and destructive. After all, at that narrative's core is the idea that if our public schools are failing, that's due, whether in part or in large part or in sum, to the failures of those who work in them, and thus ultimately of public school teachers. Like Damon, I reject that narrative wholeheartedly, partly from my own experiences with such schools and teachers, but partly because I know that for far too long we as a society have given them far too little support (financial and otherwise). If anything, it's astounding, and very inspiring, that we still have so many great public school teachers—and it is something we had for damn sure better not take for granted.More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      Damon's amazing speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/matt-damons-clear-headed-speech-to-teachers-rally/2011/07/30/gIQAG9Q6jI_blog.html?fb_ref=NetworkNews&fb_source=profile_oneline2)      What looks to be a pretty positive website in support of inspiring teachers everywhere: http://www.inspiringteachers.com/index.html3)      OPEN: Any great teachers you'd nominate?

August 1, 2011: What's the Point?

I had a pretty unpleasant Facebook-thread argument recently—in the immediate context of the debt ceiling nonsense and President Obama, two topics about which I have nothing more to say at the moment—with a leftist political activist (not someone I know personally, but such are the promise and peril of Facebook and the internet) who feels that "academic liberals" are "the lamest, most clueless, most useless motherfuckers in the world." Since he said this to me directly, after I had offered him what he admitted was "unreciprocated civility," the line certainly reflects most centrally the guy's particular and unattractive online voice and personality. But leaving the insults aside, his broader points, which focused on how academic liberals (and perhaps liberals more generally) don't have the will or tenacity to do whatever it takes to "win" political arguments and thus are ultimately powerless in the face of win-at-all-costs conservatives like those currently running the show in DC, are ones I have myself considered often, including in and in regard to this space.For example, much of my April 19th post focused explicitly on the question (in response to a few prompts, including William Hazlitt's still relevant 1820 essay "On the Spirit of Partisanship" and the work of Reconstruction-era activist and writer Albion Tourgée) of whether liberals should fight conservative fire with fire or with complexity, should (at least at times and when necessary) abandon the high roads of historical awareness and knowledge and context (among many others) and play dirty in order to take on conservative movements that seem often to rely heavily, even depend, upon propaganda and misrepresentations and bald-faced lies. Since that time I have, I will admit, included more contemporary and political topics among my focal points here, but I have not, I devoutly hope, abandoned even a fraction of my desire for nuance and context, for awareness and knowledge, for connecting such issues thoroughly to the long and multi-part threads that can be traced from them to so much of our national history and identity and narratives. As I wrote in that April 19th post, and as I still believe, trying to provide all of those layers is the right thing to do, but what my Facebook interlocutor might ask (if with more vulgarity), and what I certainly ask myself frequently as well, is whether it's the best thing to do, at least for those of us seeking to enter into and even ideally influence broader national conversations.I'd be lying if I said I had the answer to that question. But I think a news story from today (available at the first link below) illustrates, if I do say so myself, the real and urgent need in our national conversations not only for the voices of public AmericanStudies scholars in general, but in this particular case for the argument at the heart of my recent book specifically. In this story, the despicable anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller, about whom I wrote in my July 25th and July 26th posts, comes out in support of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik; Geller makes that disgusting case in a variety of ways, but in one particularly telling comment (later scrubbed from her site but caught in a screen capture also available at that first link) she captions a photo of the kids at the Norwegian youth camp (taken the day before the shooting) by asking her readers to "note the faces which are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian." Geller may think that she's making a point there about Norway specifically or European societies more generally—and certainly she, like Breivik and the rest of their anti-Muslim ilk, are indeed intertwined with social changes and concurrent hate movements throughout the continent—but to my AmericanStudier's mind the loudest echoes are of deeply American narratives about who is and is not a "pure" or "real" American, narratives which have been and continue to be constructed in direct response both to immigration and to racial and cultural mixture. And narratives, yes, that represent precisely a crucial inspiration for much of my own attempt to define American identity precisely through the concept of such mixtures, to make them the most "pure" version of who and what we have been and are.If I had to guess, I'd say that my Facebook conversant would argue that the best, and perhaps the only, way to respond to somebody like Geller is to publicly attack and shame her, to put her bigotry and vitriol on display for all to see—and to make clear at the same time how deeply interconnected she and they are to the current Republican party (note the photo of her with House Majority Whip Eric Cantor in that linked article). Again, he might well have a point. But to me, responding by first noting the deep-seated national narratives to which her bigotry and vitriol connect, and then positing some alternative and more genuinely communal narratives in their place, can and, I still believe, will ultimately allow us to move into a future where we all stand a better shot of winning, maybe not immediate prizes of power or influence but fundamental and more meaningful ones of equality and hope. At the end of the day, I'm going to keep making that point, here and everywhere else. More tomorrow,BenPS. Four links to start with:1)      A story on Geller: http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/08/01/284011/pam-geller-race-mixing-breivik-right/2)      A collection of great, and very broadly accessible and meaningful, resources and documents on race and identity in America: http://www.pbs.org/race/007_Resources/007_01-search.php?orderby=title&getonly=all&searchheader=All%20resources&queryfrom=url&page=83)      Speaking of public conversations, the first posts are up on the NEASA pre-conference blog, at http://neasaconference.blogspot.com. Check 'em out, and please feel free to add your voice and ideas into the mix through the Comments there (or to send me such responses if you'd rather they be posted by someone else)!4)      OPEN: What do you think?

July 30-31, 2011: July Recap

[New post for today coming, well, later today, but for now I wanted to post the first version of a new feature for the blog, an end-of-month recap of the month's posts [with hyperlinks]. I know that my titles aren't always that overt, so hopefully this will help give you all a sense of what I've written about over the last month of posts.]July 1: A Tale of Two Sixties: David Halberstam, Roger Ailes, and post-1960s journalismJuly 2-4: The Fourth Dimension: My second book and definitions of American identityJuly 5: The Genres of Abraham: Early 20th century Jewish American writer Abraham CahanJuly 6: Trial and Error: The jury trial system, the Constitution, and Casey AnthonyJuly 7 [Scholarly Review 1]: A Good Deal: Elizabeth's Cohen's Making a New Deal, a book about industrial workers in early 20th century ChicagoJuly 8: Deadly Personal (Repeat): In response to a controversial Texas execution, a re-post on the death penalty, Steve Earle, and Dead Man WalkingJuly 9-10 [Tribute Post 18]: Web Feat: The internet, teaching and scholarship, and my Dad Steve Railton's great scholarly websitesJuly 11: The Okay American Novel: Proposed revised versions of Huck Finn and The Great GatsbyJuly 12: What's the Fantastic For?: George R.R. Martin, fantasy fiction, and AmericaJuly 13 [Scholarly Review 2]: Encyclopedic: Scholarly encyclopedias, especially the Gale Enc. of Multicultural America and the Encyclopedia of American Studies July 14: Not a Fan: The US Women's Soccer Team, sports fanaticism, and us vs. them mentalitiesJuly 15: On the Other Hand: Michael Irvin on marriage equality, and the more inspiring side of sportsJuly 18: If You Like This Blog…: The New England American Studies Association's upcoming (starts this week!) pre-conference blogJuly 19: Be Like Ike: Complicated political histories, and what 21st century liberals and Americans can learn from President EisenhowerJuly 20: That's Rich: Growing wealth, and concurrent wealth inequalities, in AmericaJuly 21: Impoverished Arguments: My response to a controversial Heritage Foundation study on poverty in AmericaJuly 22 [Scholarly Review 3]: Caroline Rody: The great scholarly work of this University of Virginia professorJuly 23-24 [Tribute Post 19]: Amy Winehouse: My tribute to the talented and troubled British singer, and a couple American connectionsJuly 25: Crazy Talk: Norwegian terrorist Anders Brievik, terrorism, and talk radioJuly 26: Fighting for America: Anti-muslim extremists, Muslim Americans, and Colin PowellJuly 27: WWJD?: On the perils of quoting the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and Muslim AmericansJuly 28: Advancing Through History: The South Central (LA) Tea Party and Me on the historical and contemporary roles of the NAACPJuly 29 [Link-Tastic Post 1]: The Debt Ceiling: A collection of links about this issue and its contextsHope this helps! More soon,BenPS. Any topics, issues, events, figures, texts, or etc. you'd like me to add to my August plans?

July 29, 2011 [Link-Tastic Post 1]: The Debt Ceiling

Since the outset of this blog I have tried, with the links at the end of each post, to indicate just how much I see my own ideas here as both part of a broader conversation and as a starting point from which readers can and should continue their own research and reading and learning and analysis. To that end, and to add one more feature into the mix here, I've decided that I'll occasionally create a post in which I try mostly to aggregate a few different useful and productive links on a particular topic; my goal here is not simply to replicate a Google search or the like, but instead to highlight other AmericanStudies-type work that, it seems to me, would help any interested reader continue thinking about the issues in question.To start us off with a particularly relevant topic, here are (in no particular order, although the first few are more explicitly political/argumentative and the last couple are more primary source/statistical) some AmericanStudies-type links on or related to the debt ceiling:1)      A post on the ceiling's legal history, including a link to the full text of the Supreme Court case that more or less directly ruled the debt ceiling unconstitutional: http://renaissancepost.com/politics/debt-ceiling-unconstitutional-per-14th-amendment-and-proved-so-in-perry-v-us/2)      Another take on that Court case, from the Constitution Center's own site: http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/constitution-check-can-the-president-ignore-the-debt-ceiling/3)      A history of debt ceiling votes (focused on Republican support) over the last 15  years: http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2295-A-Brief-History-of-Debt-Limit-Votes-in-the-House4)      Ronald Reagan's perspective on the first debt ceiling vote of his presidency, as he articulated it in his private diary: http://www.businessinsider.com/maddow-ronald-reagan-debt-ceiling-video-2011-75)      Info on the public debt over the past 60 years or so, from the Treasury Department: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/mspd.htm6)      A series of charts related to federal budgets (including debts) from 1968 through 2007: http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdfThat's enough for one post, I'd say! If you have other links to add, please feel free to do so, as always! More this weekend,BenPS. One more time, any links you'd highlight?

July 28, 2011: Advancing Through History

I've made no secret, here or in any other arena (outside of the classroom, at least), of my profound disdain for the Tea Party (the current political movement, not the thing in Boston back in the day). There are lots of reasons why I feel that way, but if I had to boil it down, I'd focus on two distinct but interconnected elements: the TP's striking and foundational antipathy toward cultural "others" (as evidenced by one of its primary rallying cries, employed partly in direct opposition to the Obama presidency but also in response to issues like illegal immigration: "I want my country back!"); and its deeply oversimplified and almost entirely inaccurate vision of American history (as evidenced by the coupling of its use of the Revolutionary-era "Don't Tread on Me" flag to a platform that bears no meaningful resemblance to the ideas and ideals of the Founders). Both of those elements were ironically but clearly on display this past weekend at the inaugural meeting of the South Central (Los Angeles) Tea Party; the event (per the story at the first link) was emceed by an African American minister named Jesse Lee Patterson, and focused mostly on expanding Patterson's portrayal of the NAACP as "no different than the KKK" and an organization dedicated to "causing black Americans to hate their country, to hate what's right."Patterson and his fellow speakers apparently paid lip service to the NAACP's incredibly rich and vital history, arguing that the organization had done good work in its "nascence" but is no longer needed. But as with so many of our contemporary political and cultural issues, the more genuine and accurate narrative is significantly more complicated on two interconnected fronts. First, I would argue that our communal awareness of the NAACP's history, especially in its founding and formative years, is at best hugely limited, and at worst actively distorts the organization's truly and impressively radical identity and work. That history really represents some of the most inspiring characteristics of the early 20th century Progressive movement, from the organization's multi-racial and diverse group of 1909 founders (including W.E.B. Du Bois and three very distinct white Americans: Kentucky blue blood William English Walling; Mary White Ovington, a suffragette and the descendent of generations of New England abolitionists and reformers; and Romanian immigrant and New York social worker Henry Moskowitz) to its sophisticated and to my mind very American form of socialism (one concerned not with the strident attacks and violent goals of Russian Marxism but with a genuine and impassioned interest in issues of class, poverty, labor, and reform). And from the outset the NAACP wedded those voices and political perspectives to a complex blend of occasional protest (such as its responses to the film Birth of a Nation [1915]) and continuing research, reporting, argument, and advocacy (such as in its vital magazine The Crisis [1910-present]), balancing both reactive and proactive efforts as well as any American social organization ever has.It's that balance in particular that illustrates the second and even more salient complication of Patterson and company's arguments. It's true that African Americans have advanced significantly in the century since the NAACP's founding, but many if not all of those advancements have depended precisely on the efforts of organizations like the NAACP, both in its reactions to the century's worst racial abuses and excesses (the continued horrors of lynching and Jim Crow, individual horrors like the Scottsboro case, anti-Civil Rights violence, and many others besides) and its proactive contributions to advances in housing, education, the post-World War II integration of the armed forces, and many more. And while, again thanks in significant measure to the NAACP and its peers, the issues facing 21st century African Americans (and thus all 21st century Americans) are very distinct from the ones that faced Du Bois and his colleagues in 1909 (or King and his colleagues in 1959, or Jackson and his colleagues in 1989), it is beyond naïve to argue that such issues no longer exist or (as a co-speaker at the Tea Party event claimed) that they no longer have anything to do with race. Moreover, while combating our contemporary issues certainly depends on an awareness and engagement with them in their present complexities and realities, it can only be aided by a concurrent knowledge of history, both generally and in terms of the NAACP's vital and still relevant role specifically. We all know the cliché that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. There's still plenty of truth to that one, but in this case, as in so many on which I've focused here, I'd say that it's just as accurate, and less well-accepted, that those who oversimplify and falsify history greatly limit our chances for a stronger future. If African Americans, and all of us, are going to keep advancing, it's going to be through our shared history—and it's that "shared" part which renders the Tea Party's version so woefully inaccurate and inadequate. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      The story on the South Central Tea Party event: http://www.thegrio.com/politics/black-reverend-preaches-stereotypes-to-mostly-white-south-central-tea-partiers.php2)      A great resource for finding early issues of The Crisis: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=crisisnaacp3)      OPEN: What do you think?

July 27, 2011: WWJD?

It has often and accurately been noted of the Bible that it can be quoted in support of just about any position and argument, a fact borne out nicely by the history of a nation in which various communities have indeed quoted the Bible for and against the institution of slavery, for and against the removal and even destruction of Native American communities standing in the way of national expansion, for and against the KKK's brutal terrorizing of post-bellum African Americans, for and against the extension to gay Americans of the legal right to marry, and so on. Yet at least as prominent in our national conversations, and of far more specific salience to our unique national identity, is our similarly impressive ability to marshal quotes from the Founding Fathers in support of virtually any position on any issue. Not only did most of those guys write a ton (literally), but they did so over in most cases long and varied careers in which their perspectives and ideas changed significantly and sometimes entirely.For that reason, the contemporary game—one played most consistently at the moment, in my experience, by folks in the Tea Party, but certainly with players from a variety of other places on the political and cultural spectrum as well—of "What Would Jefferson [or any other Founder] Do?" is far more likely to tell us about the perspective of the player than about our third president. Yet while such selective quoting and referencing of the Founding Fathers is thus perhaps a largely a-historical exercise, that of course doesn't mean that there isn't value and meaning to studying and engaging with what they had to say; not just in order to better understand them and their era, but also, if cautiously, to think about how their voices and ideas—and especially the nation whose government and political identity they helped create—are relevant to our own moment and debates. It was at least partly to that end, for example, that I wrote my December 3rd post on the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions drafted by Jefferson and Madison in response to them; my first interest there was in portraying the historical situation and issues and ideas with complexity and accuracy, but I will freely admit that I hoped (as I do in most every post) that there would likewise be contemporary and ongoing relevance to those focal points (although luckily that relevance is not for any one person, including me, to determine with any finality).Sometimes, on some issues, it can be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to tease out what any given individual Founder might have believed, much less what that disparate and often divided community of Americans did. And sometimes it's not. When it comes to the question of whether Muslims might have a place not only in the new United States but in American political life—a question that is at least parallel to the issue of who is and is not American with which I engaged yesterday—the Founders were very consistent and overt in their support for such a place. As the great article at the first link notes (among the many sources its author marshals for this position), during the debates over ratifying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights a North Carolina Baptist argued explicitly that "As there are no religious tests, pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain office"; in response, a Provincial Congressman from that state countered precisely that "in the course of four or five hundred years I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it. I see nothing against it." Thomas Jefferson, who owned a copy of the Qur'an and authored America's first act for establishing religious freedom (linked below) in order to protect "the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and the Infidel," would certainly have agreed.We shouldn't need the validation of the Founders in order to argue for any position, much less a crucial one such as the full inclusion of every American in our political, social, and cultural life; it was precisely with an awareness of a society's inevitable (and necessary) changes that the Framers created an amendment process for the Constitution, among other such safeguards. But if you're going to argue that religious—like racial and ethnic and cultural and communal—acceptance and interconnectedness are founding American values, as I would and do, it doesn't hurt to have TJ and friends on your side. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      An excellent brief article on the Founders and Islam: http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/the_founding_fathers_and_islam2)      Jefferson's "Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" (1786): http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html3)      OPEN: What do you think?

July 26, 2011: Fighting for America

As I've read more about the political and cultural beliefs of, and especially the huge manifesto penned by, Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, it's become clear that while his perspective was broadly anti-multiculturalism and –liberalism, he was specifically and centrally obsessed with what he saw as the threats posed to Western nations like Norway and America by Muslim immigrants. (Jihadists, he would say, but he very overtly meant not only Al Qaeda terrorists but all Muslim immigrants and arrivals.) To that end, the source quoted and referenced most often in his manifesto is (per Jeffrey Goldberg's story at the second link below) Robert Spencer, a so-called "counterjihad" writer who has made his name and career arguing for this same kind of broad and sweeping anti-Muslim position in the United States. Spencer and his friend and co-blogger Pamela Geller were at the forefront in the controversies over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," and have two of the most prominent anti-Muslim voices in our national conversations for some time now.To folks like Spencer and Geller, fighting for America means doing exactly what they're doing—fighting for what they see as our cultural identity and values against this hostile, invading Muslim presence. That's certainly how Breivik saw the battle unfolding as well, both in his native Norway and around the Western world. The very tragic irony, of course, is that this perspective mirrors quite precisely how Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda ilk think of the presence of Westerners in Arabic and Muslim nations—as an invading presence, one threatening to change all that the nations are at their core, one that thus can and should be answered, with violence if necessary (and isn't it always to such thinkers?). As Goldberg puts it so succinctly and correctly in that linked piece, the most likely future victims in this fight, at least here in the United States, would seem clearly and horrifically to be Muslim Americans, particularly those associated with "controversial" projects such as the proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. How long before projects like that, or other mosques or Muslim gathering places, begin suffering the brutal fates of black churches during the Civil Rights era? And will Geller argue of such violence what she did of Breivik, that "if anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists"?There are a whole host of ways one could respond to these arguments, but I don't know that anybody has ever or could ever do so with more elegance and passion than Colin Powell. In the midst of endorsing Barack Obama for president in October 2008, Powell stepped back to address the question of Obama's alleged Muslim identity, and of Muslims in America more generally. If you haven't seen or read this part of his statement, or even if you have, it's worth quoting in full:"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
I feel particularly strongly about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.
And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life."Khan lost his life fighting for America too, in a way that puts the Spencers and Gellers and Breiviks of the world to shame. Or should, if they had any capacity for that emotion or any other recognizably human one other than fear and hatred. I don't believe in violence, but I do believe that those of us who care about America and all of its citizens must and should fight back against this perspective in every other way. More tomorrow,BenPS. Three links to start with:1)      A story on Powell's statement, including the beautiful New Yorker photo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-invokes-imag_n_135977.html2)      Jeffrey Goldberg on Norway and anti-Muslim sentiment in America: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/on-pamela-geller-robert-spencer-and-other-jihadists/242474/3)      OPEN: What do you think?

July 25, 2011: Crazy Talk

Acts of terrorism are, by their very nature, committed by crazy people. That's not to say that the terrorists can't or don't have very elaborate and detailed and well-developed rationales for their actions, nor that they can't belong to communal organizations that have (often) helped them develop those rationales and commit their acts of destruction and murder. Nor is to say that we can't analyze their actions and draw broader conclusions about society and its various issues and problems as a result. But nevertheless, I believe it's vital to note at the outset here that anyone who destroys innocent lives and communities—and even more so anyone who includes children in his or her scope—reveals him or herself to be on a core level so bereft of human emotion and empathy as to be clearly insane.Yet if terrorism constitutes insanity on an individual level, it also and with more significance comprises on a communal level the triumph of simplistic and simplifying narratives. That is to say, each terrorist must, as a prerequisite for committing his or her acts, fully embrace such simplistic narratives on a number of key levels: in terms of history and community, a terrorist must believe entirely in an us vs. them narrative, one in which Northern enemies are conspiring with African Americans to destroy Southern white civilization (in the KKK narrative), the British seek to eradicate the indigenous culture and community of Northern Ireland (in the IRA narrative), Western nations bring their corruption and evil to Muslim nations and holy territory (in the Al Qaeda narrative), and so on; and in terms of individual identity, a terrorist must believe that every person who belongs to that "them" community is equally culpable for its crimes and so equally deserving of the ultimate punishment as a result. Of course many people might similarly embrace such narratives but not (because they're not as crazy, among other factors) respond with terrorism; but recognizing the importance of these simplistic narratives to terrorism makes even more plain the high stakes in pushing back against those narratives throughout our society and culture.The early and evolving information about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian farmer who committed the horrific terrorist acts in that nation over the weekend, reinforces each of these ideas: Breivik, who according to his own writings saw himself as a "conservative Christian knight," was without question crazy; yet he was also heavily influenced by simplistic narratives about politics and culture, particularly narratives about the evils of multiculturalism and "cultural Marxism" and the threats that those boogeymen represent to 21st century societies. And as the first two links below (both pieces written by investigative journalist Dave Neiwert, probably the best chronicler of domestic terrorism in our nation's history) detail at great length, Breivik's attachment to those narratives connects him very explicitly to many of the American right-wing terrorists who have committed or attempted to commit their own heinous crimes over the last few years; each of them, as the details always illustrate, was similarly disturbed, but each likewise has been heavily influenced by these simplifying narratives. And as Neiwert's second piece argues, it is no coincidence that these American terrorists have usually been directly and overtly influenced by the right-wing media empire, and particularly by the voices of talk radio and Fox News; the most central and salient characteristic of those voices is their continual creation of simplistic political and cultural narratives, visions of our national identity and community that mirror quite precisely the aforementioned multi-level simplifications on which terrorism depends.I'm not arguing that these right-wing voices directly incited the terrorist acts, nor, by extension, that they should be censored or shut down; again, the terrorists themselves seem in each and every case to be certifiably crazy. But neither can we turn a blind eye to the increasing—or at least increasingly prominent—presence of crazy talk in our political and cultural conversations, of voices that exist solely to create and perpetuate some of our most simplistic and simplifying narratives. Pushing back against those voices and narratives, seeking to complicate and challenge their ideas, might not stop any individual terrorists, but it can most definitely strengthen the quality and value of our national conversations. Not to do so would be, well, crazy. More tomorrow,BenPS. Four links to start with:1)      A story on Breivik's political beliefs, with lots of relevant links: http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/norway-terrorist-breivik-was-ardent-2)      Another great story by that same journalist (Dave Neiwert), on Glenn Beck's multifarious connections to political criminals: http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/glenn-becks-radio-rwanda-schtick-tra3)      An even greater story, on the fortunately failed attempt to bomb an MLK Day rally in Spokane: http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/24/homegrown-terrorists/4)      OPEN: What do you think?