Dispatches from Vilnius

This month's reading group will be The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The critical reception of the book was mixed in its day.  Some thought it was an all too obvious critique of Brook Farm , while others simply took it as a romance novel.  Hawthorne and Melivlle were both critical of the Transcendentalists and the Utopian communities that were sprouting like mushrooms throughout Northeast and Midwest America, but from what I read it was more a sardonic pleasure in teasing Emerson and the Unitarians who established Brook Farm. Hawthorne was actually a founding member of Brook Farm and throughout his life seemed to have struggled with his religious identity.  Modern day critics view the novel as an attempt to reconcile these emotions through his seven key characters.  It is obvious that he drew on his personal experiences in creating this novel, as any novelist would.  It is a story rich in symbolism and offers many interpretations. ...

I finally got around to watching the 2011 HBO special on Reagan .  It is a strange assemblage of clips and interviews that left me scratching my head through the first half of the documentary.  I was trying to figure why retired Col. Andrew Bacevich played such a big role in this documentary.  Turns out the war veteran is a well-respected political scientist who was one of the more outspoken opponents of the Iraq War, losing his son in 2007.  Yet, in this documentary he offered a largely favorable opinion of Reagan in restoring confidence in the military. Unfortunately, the director doesn't provide any background to the interviewees.  Of course many of them you know like Michael and Ron Reagan, James Baker, George Schultz, Pat Buchanan and biographers Edmund Morris and Lou Cannon.  The voices speaking on behalf of Reagan outnumber those critical of him.  The best known critical voice was  Robert Parry , who broke the story on Oliver North's...

There are quite a few Right Wing watch groups these days, but one of the blogs I enjoy is that of Warren Throckmorton, who has gone after David Barton and others attempting to inculcate their perverted interpretations of history on unsuspecting Americans.  One of the more recent examples is the so-called Institute on the Constitution , which presents a very Puritanical interpretation of the Constitution, audaciously claiming that the Founding Fathers were influenced by early Puritan ministers, not the Age of Enlightenment. The Institute of the Constitution is offering a 12-part lecture series over the Internet, as well as taking their show on the road to anyone who will host them, and apparently there are many willing hosts .  While it seems organizations such as this one are working primarily through the conservative Evangelical community, the so-called scholars behind these tracts are getting wide spread attention through conservative media outlets, and their work ap...

A book that keeps popping up on my screen each time I open amazon is Allen Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America .  At one cent for a used hardback it is mighty tempting.  A little more through London-based amazon.  According to this NY Times review , Guelzo looks at the backstage politics of a very bitter Senate campaign, as well as the debates themselves. I suppose why I keep returning to Lincoln is that it seems the House has never been so divided as before the Civil War, with the Republicans blocking any progressive legislation in Congress and states pushing socially divisive laws and challenging the federal government on everything from the Affordable Care Act to federal gun and marijuana laws. Guelzo's book pretty much fell on the 50th anniversary of Harry Jaffa's seminal Crisis of a House Divided , which looks at the famous Debates within the context of a deeply divided union.  The earlier book has long been considered one of ...

It's a great pleasure seeing so many folks from Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Romania looking in.  I've been running this blog from afar in my adopted home town of Vilnius.  Yet, my passion for American history and literature remains strong. I've also explored a great deal of Eastern European history in literature in the process, often finding interesting convergences. One of my more recent personal discoveries was Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who fought in the American revolution and became great friends with Thomas Jefferson.  Ostensibly a military engineer, who worked under George Washington and later became a house guest of Jefferson.  Along the way he befriended Agrippa Hull.  The triad of Kosciuszko, Jefferson and Hull is the subject of Gary Nash's Friends of Liberty . Kosciuzsko is claimed by at least three countries: Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.  He fought alongside Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in its war with Russia during the late 18th centur...

If you can get past the cover there is a very good story inside on the radicalization of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but judging from reactions to the cover few will read what is inside.  It's not like the Rolling Stone article offers anything really new, but it does provide a compelling story line back to the late 90s when Dzhokhar's parents chose to seek asylum in the United States after they had both lost their jobs in Russia due to Chechan purges.  His father, Anzor, was apparently a well respected investigator in the state prosecutor's office in Dagestan before the purges.  Without a job, he took his family to Cambridge, where he had connections in the small Chechan community. What follows is essentially the tale of "Jahar," as he came to be called by his friends and teachers, with side notes on Tamerlan, or "Timmy," as they tried to fit into their new world.  For young Jahar it was relatively easy, but Tamerlan struggled and never quite...

Although George Zimmerman didn't invoke the notorious Stand Your Ground law , it seems it came tangentially into play in a Florida courtroom.  The lawyers for Zimmerman were content with the standard self-defense plea, which they used successfully to gain his acquittal, despite the judge allowing the jury to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter.  The defendant was being tried for second-degree murder. The case does call into question the degree to which Stand Your Ground laws are being interpreted and the seemingly loose nature of self-defense these days.  Where before the threat had to occur on your property, now it seems it is enough to feel threatened anywhere.  Florida has spawned similar laws in more than 20 states, which allows a person to shoot another as long as he "reasonably" thinks he is in danger, which is pretty much what Zimmerman's defense argued. The Tampa Bay Times identified over 200 cases in Florida alone where the Stand Your Ground ...

It seems we will have another Kennedy Love-In this Fall as this November will mark 50 years since his assassination .  It is really remarkable how the legacy of Kennedy lives on.  My feeling it is more about the promise that his presidency held than it is any policies he set, but Larry Sabato , the director of UVA's Center of Politics believes fully that Kennedy was a transformative figure in American politics. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the way LBJ literally carried his predecessor's torch as he pushed through Civil Rights legislation that had been first put forward by the Kennedy administration.  But, in reading Caro's recent book on LBJ and other accounts it is highly unlikely Kennedy would have ever gotten that legislation through Congress on his own, as it took someone with the determination and means of LBJ to get the bill passed by a very conservative Congress.  However, Kennedy is still given much of the credit for this and other legislation ...

Once again we see the loathsome "Obamacare" under fire with huge amounts of money being spent to fight it by conservative groups.  Kaiser Health News reports that negative ads outnumber positive ads five to one , and an estimated $1 billion will be spend on advertising in the year leading up to the midterm elections as the Republicans once again plan to make an "issue" out of it. Of course, it didn't help matters that the Obama administration chose to defer mandates another year, ostensibly to avoid making it an issue in the midterms.  The news media pounced all over this, with many sources questioning the "Constitutionality" of the deferment.  But, I think it is just an attempt to move away from the overhyped Snowden affair onto another hot button issue, as the Obama administration is perfectly within its rights to delay the mandates, especially if they found holes in the system, which they claim they did. It seems the GOP will never accept ...

It would be nice to think of ourselves as a nation of readers.  I would love to draw some of our onlookers into a reading group by asking viewers to suggest titles.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a recent history title, and we do American fiction as well, preferably classics.  Let's see what you have to offer?

You would think with a title like  Lincoln Unbound , Rich Lowry would have plenty to say about Lincoln, but looking at the amazon preview there are 6 modest chapters totaling about 240 pages with 20 pages of notes.  This is less a history than an attempt by neoconservatives to reclaim Lincoln.  This book has been duly approved by William Kristol, Bill Bennett and surprisingly Michael Burlingame, who not so long wrote an epic account of Honest Abe. The introduction is interesting as Lowry appears to set up a battle not only with progressives, who have long adopted Lincoln as one of their own, but the Libertarian right wing of the Republican Party, who has had a very unfavorable impression of the first GOP president, especially  Thomas DiLorenzo , who saw Lincoln as little more than a tyrant, hell bent on creating a empire to rival that of Great Britan. Lowry sees Lincoln as an advocate of free market economics, allowing him to find ground on which to build his...

A Canadian "former historian" weighs in on the American revolution, calling it a failure in this op-ed piece in the Washington Post.  I don't imagine many persons ever heard of Paul Pirie, including myself, but the article has been scarfed up by the mainstream media and I read it this morning on Yahoo! following the link to the Washington Post. Not that it offers any penetrating analysis.  His opinion is short and draws mostly on CIA factbook references  What Mr. Pirie fails to note is that Canada probably wouldn't have enjoyed its sense of autonomy had not the British failed in securing the colonies.  It was as a result of the American Revolution that Britain began to consider extending a higher degree of self-governance to its colonies and eventually came up with the idea of the Commonwealth. Understandably, Canadians are proud they withstood the invasion of 1812, when the United States threatened to annex Canada.  But, Pirie seems more interested in...

We saw Justice Roberts make the pivotal decision on "Obamacare" last year.  This year it is Justice Kennedy who proves to be the pivotal judge on two fateful decisions.  Kennedy is now the hero of the gay community, having been the deciding vote in overturning DOMA, but the goat among minority voters, who saw him vote to repeal a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  So, who is Anthony Kennedy, which Time magazine has dubbed "The Decider?" If you have access to Time, which I don't, you can read its  cover story .  Reading this story in Salon , it is easier to see how Kennedy may have reconciled his seemingly contradictory opinions, as he saw DOMA as "bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group."  He probably also saw Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in the same light, as it explicitly singled out Southern states. His decision on DOMA also seems to have opened up an ugly wound in the Supreme Court, which saw him very much at od...

A couple of new books that highlight women's roles in World War II, notably the New York Times bestseller The Girls of Atomic City .  Denise Kiernan focuses on a secret city created in Tennessee, where a predominantly women work crew the enriched uranium for the United States' nuclear program.  According to Kiernan, the women had no idea what they were working on, which I suppose avoided any moral ambiguity.  Reviews are light, but it seems Kiernan is aiming at a broad audience, focusing more on the women's individual stories than the program itself. Rocket Girl , the story of Mary Sherman Morgan, appears to have gone straight to paperback.  Morgan was the first American woman rocket scientist, and had a better idea what was going on during the war, as she was designing explosives.   She switched to rocket propellants after the war and her research led to a fuel capable of putting rockets into orbit.  One of the unsung heroes of the early Explore...

If there was any doubt that mainstream news programming hadn't become a reality show, the coverage of Edward Snowden's mad flight should do away with those doubts once and for all.  John Oliver had a field day with the coverage on The Daily Show, and it still continues with so-called news hounds sniffing around the Moscow airport for his whereabouts, when apparently he has been seeking asylum in Russia. Putin appears to have given him the green light with the interesting caveat that he "stops inflicting harm on our American partners."  He probably meant embarrassment, because that is all it has been thus far.  Still, the "29-year-old hacker" (as Obama referred to him) couldn't resist yet another dig, lashing out at the administration for revoking his passport, essentially making him a "stateless" person.  Shades of Tom Hanks' Terminal here.  One can only assume that Snowden has very little to offer, if Russia is treating him so bli...

In one of the more epic filibusters, Wendy Davis stood and delivered for 13 hours a filibuster that staved off a draconian anti-abortion bill in Texas.  This stopped the Senate from ram-rodding a bill pushed by Rick Perry, as the 30-day special legislative session expired at midnight and Ms. Davis was still standing in her now famous pink Mizuno tennis shoes .  These are one of the preferred shoes of marathon runners, and Ms. Davis stood for what would essentially be 3 marathons for most runners to stave off this measure. She got help from some of her female colleagues, notably Leticia Van de Putte, who stood down a last minute effort by Republicans to force a vote over Wendy's filibuster.  Unlike other filibusters we have seen recently, this one had consequences, as this anti-abortion measure has been adopted in neighboring Oklahoma and Arkansas as well as other Southern and Plains states.  Hopefully, this incredible stand will call attention to the nation-w...

No surprises in Massachusetts as former US Representative Ed Markey held off Navy Seal Gabriel Gomez by 10 percentage points.  Markey had the money and the clout to withstand the challenge.  The GOP offered little support for Gomez, who distanced himself from the Tea Party in presenting himself as a moderate in favor of gun control and supporting the Affordable Care Act and pending Immigration bill.  But, in most other respects Gomez was thoroughly Republican. Scott Brown is now seen as  a "blip on the radar screen."  Remember when Republicans were so excited about his "surprise victory," hailing him as the 41st Senator in an effort to derail the ACA. The surprise to me is that over 50 per cent of Bay State voters don't identify themselves with either party, although these so-called Independents tend to lean Democrat in Massachusetts.  This is well above the national average.  Seems fewer and fewer persons want to identify themselves with on...

Jim Crow rears his ugly head again in a devastating Supreme Court decision that allows state voter ID laws and a number of other discriminatory state voting laws, after the federal government fought so hard to defeat these pernicious laws in the lead up to the 2012 election.  "Chief Justice" Roberts calls Section 4 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act "outdated," and that it needs to be modernized, yet cites examples where the section has helped many voters gain access to the voting booth where they otherwise wouldn't.  "Justice" Alito rolled his eyes when Ginsburg issued her statement in opposition to the decision.  The biggest surprise is Anthony Kennedy, who had what appears to be the deciding vote and voted for the repeal of Section 4. Not surprisingly, this challenge to the Voting Rights Act came from Shelby, Alabama.  Congress had voted to uphold the Voting Rights Act in 2006, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, but here is Robe...

I finally finished Dan Richter's Facing East from Indian Country .  Very strong ending as he writes that the Revolutionary War was as much about nullifying the British treaties with Northeastern Indians as it was about taxes, illustrating how the Colonists felt that the Indians were allies with the British, and that the British treaties impeded Westward territorial expansion.  After the war, when some of the Northeast tribes were able to forge treaties with new United States, Jefferson and others undermined them by encouraging northeastern territorial governors, like William Henry Harrison in the Indiana territory, to encourage trade which would put the local tribes into debt, settled only by land acquisitions.  In this way the US was able to get Ohio and Indiana for roughly two cents per acre. The frustration among the indigenous tribes was best summed up in William Apess' Eulogy on King Philip , referring to the famous Metacom.  Apess, a metis who had skippe...

This new book on Edmund Burke by British MP Jesse Norman looks very interesting. The author, who is currently the number two man in the British conservative party, attempts to not only place Burke within the context of his times, but in the second half of the book illustrate how Burke's views have been co-opted for better and for worse, notably by American Republicans, who have drifted far from the intent, much less the meaning of Burke's works. Burke was probably best known during his time for his repudiation of the French Revolution, which he compiled in his Reflections in 1790, before things turned sour.  Others, like Thomas Paine, extolled the Revolution, hoping that it would lead to a more egalitarian society. For Burke, it didn't matter so much who ran government, but how it was run.  He was a conservative in the old sense believing in a free and open society, but one in which property rights were paramount.  He found the kind of "egalitarianism" be...