Facebook Dialogues (#2): Just How Divided Are We?

Here's a classic song from the 1960's about the social changes of the time. The video is a slide show of images from the Vietnam War.

Writing only comes to life when it finds readers. The most fascinating aspect of this whole blogging experiment is seeing the different ways that people respond to what I write. Every posting is an adventure, and when I read new comments, it’s like opening a package on Christmas day. Positive comments, of course, are always encouraging, but the more critical responses are often the most useful. Sure, I sometimes get a little frustrated and defensive when people either misunderstand what I was trying to say or simply disagree with me. But if I allow myself to “listen” to their comments, I sometimes see ways that my writing could improve, and I am forced to further develop and clarify my thinking.

New blog posts, in fact, have often been generated through dialogues I have had on Facebook, Hubpages, or on this blog. Occasionally, I “borrow” ideas from others and see where they lead. More often, however, in the course of either arguing or trying to clarify my position, new concepts, topics, or techniques for expressing my thoughts emerge. I used to feel that online discussions about controversial subjects were generally a waste of time. But as time passes, I realize just how productive these sometimes frustrating conversations can be.

One of these recent dialogues started a few days ago when I put a link to my last blog post – titled “Individual Responsibility” – on Facebook. Five or six Facebook friends would eventually get involved, and it was not long before the discussion drifted away from the main topic of the original blog post. We eventually had two separate discussions going, with one focused on religion and the other the seemingly intense divisions between political factions in the United States. I decided to include snippets from the political discussion that I had with one of my Facebook friends here. Too often, after all, some thoughtful discussion just disappears into the Facebook void.

Michael Ferguson is someone that I (virtually) met earlier this year. He is a blogger and an ambitious visionary who is starting a new media outlet called “Polymathica” (in which I hope to play some role). Here are links to The Polymathica Institute blog, the Polymathica Facebook page, and the Polymathica website. They are all worth checking out.

Michael:  Paul, you ask in your commentary, "So given this fact, why are there so many people who drift toward extreme views regarding individual responsibility?" Because, Paul, as I have told you before, America, and the West in general, is headed for a divorce. We are at the stage where the husband and wife have abandoned all pretext of reasonable discussion. They are simply flinging outrageously over stated invective at each other out of anger. They polarize beyond any point of reason. The other is no longer just wrong; they are stupid, moral reprobates and evil. Are the two sides overstating their case? You betcha. In both cases, they have a vision for their 'nation' and believe that the other side is trying to thwart them and take it down the path to ruination. In an effort to demonize the other side, they make themselves sound ridiculous. That is the current state of the marriage in America. As most of the world wise know, when it gets to this stage, there is no going back. The irretrievable breakdown in the marriage has already happened and the marriage is simply waiting for the two to get tired of the futile arguments.

Me: …..Fortunately, most people don't spend a lot of time thinking and talking about politics anyway. They have other, seemingly more important things to do. So maybe we should not make too much of the screaming and shouting between the small percentage of people who actually get riled up by political issues. Few Americans are likely to come to blows over this stuff.

Michael: Yeah, I'm sure that is how King George and Louis XVI the got themselves to sleep at night. I'm sure that people are far more complacent now than they were in the sixties. Riots, shootings, assassinations of major politicians and religious leaders….such things won't happen, couldn't happen. Nope, today we are too evolved to find ourselves in those situations again. Ahem....... Actually, Paul, as you may have guessed, I was there in the 60's. I saw it as it happened, more often than I would like, in person. Today is spookier.

Me: I'm not saying that people are more evolved. I'm saying that they are generally disengaged. We have two wars going on which few Americans can give any details about. We just had an economic disaster happen that few Americans have spent much time trying to understand. Most of the students that I see spend their time texting and tweeting, and it is not generally about politics. Times are tough, but the United States is still one of the wealthiest nations in history. (And as you have argued several times, we may soon be getting much wealthier.) Few Americans would even consider the possibility of taking up arms for some type of political cause. If anything, a situation like "Brave New World" seems more probable than violent conflict between different factions. Instead of "Soma," people have Iphones and Blackberries. And as long as enough people stay entertained and can get their hands on the latest materialistic necessities, they won't complain too much. If Americans have any real passion, it's shopping. Right now, a lot of people are just pissed off because they can't buy as much stuff. The only question is which political party they blame for their problems. I am starting to wonder if social networking and the information age in general make the conflicts seem worse. Only hardcore people spend any time debating political matters online. Since these tend to be passionate people, it can make the divisions seem even worse. Personally, I'm still not sure if the partisan divisions of today are all that unusual. We just have more mediums available to vent and to find people who feed the frustrations (Beck, Limbaugh, Olbermann, Maher, etc.)

Michael: I remember the race riots, the civil rights marches, the anti-war riots. My parents never saw them coming. It flabbergasted them. They were stunned and shocked by the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It wasn't that they were saddened. It was surreal to them. They lived in a cocoon of middle class America that simply missed the whole dynamic of cultural upheaval until it blasted into their lives through vivid news images. 30% or so of Americans support the Tea Party. That number is growing and will continue to grow. 6 percent of voters say they have attended a Tea Party meeting, rally or march. That is a huge number. You miss a lot, Paul. You are like my parents. You will wake up one day and be shocked by what has transpired….

Me: Michael, you may be right. I may be missing something. Then again, the Tea Party may become another footnote of history, just like many other political movements of various times. I suspect that if Republicans gain complete control of Congress and the Presidency again in 2012, the Tea Party will fade a bit. It's a movement that thrives on being out of power. As I have said before, governing is much harder than complaining about government. If America's problems magically fade away once Republicans gain control, there won't be so much reason to be angry. If, as I suspect, problems do not magically go away, Tea Party people, like Obama supporters at the moment, will become disillusioned. There may also be some parallels between today and the sixties. Of course, in the sixties, there was a war going on in which any young person could be drafted to go fight it. No one is considering a draft today, which is part of the reason why most young people don't care about Iraq and Afghanistan. Decades of segregation and white superiority were also being challenged, which brought about a predictable effort to resist change. I don't see any challenges to the social system today that quite match that one; although the Obama election has clearly struck some nerves. Also, you had a tremendous generation gap between parents who grew up with the Depression and World War II and their children who were raised in the greatest period of economic prosperity in American History (up to that time). We still have plenty of adolescent rebellion, but not on that scale. Also, there were so many people hitting college age by the mid-1960's due to the Baby Boom. I wonder how many young people today believe that they can change the world? As I said before, they are too busy texting to try.

Can "Humanitarian Wars" be Won? (Revised)

Here's a classic Vietnam era anti-war song.

After reading the second comment listed below, and reconsidering my response to that comment, I decided to republish this post with a few revisions. (A future post will explain why.)

When it became clear that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to drag on for a while, the inevitable comparisons to Vietnam began. In some basic ways, however, the current wars bear little resemblance to Vietnam. The rugged terrains of Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing like the tropical rainforests of Vietnam. Insurgents in the current conflicts seem to have far less domestic and international support than the Vietcong once had, and they have not been organized as single, united forces. Also, the number of American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined are only 1/10 (so far) of those killed in Vietnam.

Still, there are some eerie similarities. Like in Vietnam, The United States has been fighting against enemies who can be very difficult to locate and properly identify. These insurgents, like the Vietcong, recognize that they cannot take on the United States military in a “conventional” war. So they infiltrate communities, blend in with the civilian population, and are content to harass American soldiers (and the population in general) with quick hit-and-run strikes and booby traps. They know that they do not have to win in a conventional sense. They also know that when Americans kill civilians, it plays into the insurgents’ hands. So all that they need to do is inflict enough casualties and drag these conflicts out long enough to convince the United States that the costs are too high. In other words, they have to do the same thing that the Vietcong was able to accomplish.

This is why some would say that continued U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are ultimately pointless. Like Vietnam, these conflicts cannot be won. Others, however, disagree. Part of the reason that our efforts in Vietnam failed, they would argue, was that the American public did not adequately support the efforts of the military. And this lack of support went beyond the efforts of the liberal media and of those anti-war hippies. The federal government, partly out of fear of public opinion, asked the military to fight this war with “one hand tied behind its back.” For fear of inflicting excessive civilian casualties, soldiers could not root out and destroy communists as aggressively as necessary. Also, due to concerns about possible domestic and international reactions, restrictions were placed on bombing targets, with the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi being a particularly important “off-limits” potential site. If enough of the public had recognized that “war is hell,” but you must fight to win, then the results may have been different. To those who maintain this view that Vietnam was winnable, history may be repeating itself in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I agree with those who say that lack of public support was a big part of America’s failure in Vietnam. Anti-war protesters, in fact, would take this as a compliment. In theory, it is also possible that more aggressive action could have led to a different result.  This is assuming, of course, that over a half million troops, double the tonnage of explosives that were dropped in all of World War II, and the extensive use of chemical agents were just not enough. Still, there is an even more fundamental problem with this line of reasoning, a problem that also applies to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, the United States’ basic justification for involvement was to stop the spread of communism. Part of this effort, like the Cold War in general, was to protect and promote American interests. (A world full of communist nations, after all, is bad for business.) However, the United States also claimed that defending South Vietnam from communism would make that country a better place. So there was a humanitarian component to this war, a component that can lead to big trouble. After all, the more damage that the United States did in South Vietnam, the harder it was to argue that these efforts were helping the people of that nation. In a sense, the United States, through its stated policy objective, doomed itself to failure. At some point, the infliction of excessive death and destruction would make it impossible to declare any legitimate victory.

In World War II, the United States was not fighting against Japanese and German soldiers in an effort to make those countries better places. The goal was to defeat their military forces and destroy their capacity to continue fighting. World War II was unimaginably horrific, but it was simpler strategically than a war like Vietnam. The United States could more easily identify the enemy’s military forces and felt that it was justified in targeting civilian populations and using all of the firepower at its disposal.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resemble Vietnam much more than World War II. In both places, like in Vietnam, the United States initially used national security as the justification for fighting. Afghanistan had terrorist training camps that were harbored by the Taliban government, and Saddam Hussein (supposedly) had “weapons of mass destruction.” Over time, however, particularly in Iraq, the United States justified its efforts with humanitarian language: liberation, promoting democracy, etc. Now, like in Vietnam, the United States is trying to win wars while appearing to help people, fighting against insurgents who are difficult to distinguish from civilians. With such unrealistic stated goals, it may already be impossible to ever declare victory.

We Need Investment, not Speculation

This classic speaks for itself.

If you want to know someone’s political ideology, just ask him or her why we are in this economic mess. A conservative will be happy to complain about President Obama and his liberal, Democratic buddies. Because of these liberals, the economy is being held back by excessive taxes, regulations, and public debt. People are spooked both by the situation at the moment and by the future impact of health care reform, financial regulation, and a potential “cap and trade” energy policy. Consumers are afraid to spend, and private industry is nervous about investing in an unpredictable environment with a likely future of complicated, burdensome, government rules.

Those liberal Democrats, of course, tell a different story. They emphasize that President Obama inherited a mess left over by the previous administration that has no simple, quick fix. Years of lax regulation and shortsighted tax policies that favored the rich led to a financial implosion, massive public debt, and an average American consumer with limited purchasing power. Immediately upon entering office, the President was compelled to propose, create or inherit bank bailouts, a stimulus package, new financial regulations, and long overdue reforms of health care and energy policy. These drastic, necessary responses to a crisis have made it easy for Republicans to attack him as a promoter of big government. So for primarily political reasons, they say no to everything that he proposes. Clearly, it is unfair to blame a guy for not fixing an inherited problem when the opposition has done everything it can to block his proposed solutions.

There is something to be said for both of these perspectives. Personally, I am not very impressed by either party. Our nation clearly faces systemic political problems that cannot be blamed on any one party. Still, I also believe that we give either too much credit or blame to politicians for the economic health of the nation. To a large degree, the economy has a life of its own. Policies can matter, but political success is often a question of luck. You just hope that your political party is in charge when the economy is in an upswing and out of power during the bad times.

I am not an economist, but I am forced to discuss economic issues frequently during the course of my history classes. This has been particularly true during these last few, extraordinary years. I have tried as best I can to make sense out of this current situation, and from what I can gather, the recent financial crisis and lingering economic troubles are largely the result of the decisions of both private industry and of individual Americans. Banks and other financial institutions made a lot of bad loans, and many Americans were more than willing to take those loans to get into homes that they could in no way afford. Neither political party denies this obvious truth. Republicans, however, tend to blame the borrowers for being foolish enough to take on risky loans and the government for aggressively promoting home ownership. Democrats, on the other hand, blame financial institutions for “predatory lending” and the government for its poor regulation of banks and the real estate industry. Whatever the case, the behavior of the years preceding the crisis demonstrate a problem that runs deeper than some bad home loans.

For many years, some of the greatest minds – and many lesser ones - in America have been drawn to the financial sector. They have gone there to apply their considerable intelligence and technical expertise to two activities: speculation and financial engineering. Some have studied the stock market using complex mathematical and statistical models in an attempt to “buy low and sell high.” Others created complex financial products that they claimed could eliminate the risks from lending and investing. Pools of thousands of mortgages or other types of debt were compiled, and investors would theoretically get a consistent return from these “Mortgage Backed Securities” when borrowers made their payments. Since so many mortgages were lumped together, you could theoretically predict with some certainty how many borrowers were likely to default and therefore eliminate the risk. The problem was that the people originating the loans often did not care if the borrowers had any hope of paying. These brokers, after all, planned to quickly sell the loans to the institutions creating the pools. Home prices became inflated by all of the easy credit, housing speculation became increasingly common, the real estate industry became overgrown, and a false illusion of prosperity resulted from the “bubble,” leading people to spend beyond their actual means.

When many of these loans inevitably began to go bad, all sorts of banks and financial institutions were stuck with these financial instruments, and no one knew what they were worth because few understood them. This ultimately led to mass panic, the financial bailouts, a decline in home prices, and lingering economic hardship. Now I don’t know enough about trading in complex derivatives to give advice on what should be done in this area. My gut tells me that it should either be outlawed or heavily regulated, but what the hell do I know. I can say with some confidence, however, that there are probably more productive things that great minds can be doing than inventing complicated instruments or models for turning money into more money.

What if more money was invested into the creation of actual goods and services instead of pure speculation? What if great minds were focused on innovative products rather than revolutionary investment strategies? To my simplistic economic mind, it seems that our nation would be better off. We live in an increasingly competitive world, and the winning nations will not be the ones that have the best financial engineers who create short-term profits for their investors and themselves. Bankers play a vital role in our economy, but in the end, great innovators and entrepreneurs have played the most significant role in our nation’s prosperity. Americans either invented or played the dominant role in the development of the telephone, electric light, television, personal computer, internet, and countless other life-changing technologies that have produced massive wealth and job opportunities. So where will the next great innovations come from?

Right now, banks and many private companies are sitting on an enormous amount of money. Some of this is the result of improvements in efficiency, productivity, and efforts to scale back the quantity of goods and risky behavior from the inflated, “bubble” years. Consumers are also keeping their wallets shut somewhat due to fears about the uncertain future. In the end, productive investment from the private sector is the key to getting us out of the hole. The government is strapped, and it has historically shown little capacity to efficiently produce innovative goods and services that the public demands. If anything, politicians should be thinking of creative ideas for encouraging investment into the development of innovative products and ideas. When jobs in industries with long-term viability are created, then consumers will once again have money to spend. The trick is convincing banks and companies that it is time to start lending, investing, and expanding once again.

I recognize that the stock market and the real estate industry play vital roles in generating income, creating jobs, mobilizing capital, and improving our future prospects for retirement. It is unhealthy, however, to have an economy where too much investment goes into these potentially speculative activities. “Flipping” a house or selling stock transfers income; these actions do not produce wealth over the long haul. We need innovators who develop valuable goods and services and financial institutions that have the foresight to invest in them. Who will be the next Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or Steve Jobs? God help us if minds like these innovators get too busy analyzing the market or creating the successor to the “Collateralized Debt Obligation.”

The Meaning of the Fourth of July

This song lays out what true Americans would like our country to be.

On July 2, 1776, representatives of thirteen British colonies in North America voted to break free from British rule and form a new nation. (Five more years of fighting against the British would follow.) Two days later, a document was officially drafted that attempted to explain the reasons for this action. The date written on this “Declaration of Independence” would ultimately become the officially celebrated birthday of The United States of America, a day that Americans generally (and “creatively”) refer to as The Fourth of July. The most quoted parts of the Declaration of Independence come from its opening two paragraphs, and they have become a significant part of our national creed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

It sounds simple enough. Governments exist to protect individual rights – a radical idea at the time – and if a government fails to perform this function, then the people have a right to get rid of it. You can make a strong case, however, that the people of the United States have spent the last 234 years struggling to determine the exact meaning of these noble words. To some Americans today, the Fourth of July is a time to celebrate the greatness of the United States, a nation that is history’s greatest embodiment of a land where all people are guaranteed their basic rights. To others, the words in the Declaration would be the first of many examples of blatant American hypocrisy.

“All men are created equal.” At least the founding fathers were somewhat honest in only referring to men. After all, women in early American history had the legal and political rights of children. Still, the founders could have been more honest by saying, “all property-holding, white men are created equal.” Black slaves had no rights, Native Americans were viewed as obstacles to settlement that needed to be displaced, and in many states, people without property could not vote. This was hardly the embodiment of a democratic, freedom loving society where all were created equal.

Of course, concepts like “equality” and “rights” are vague and tricky to define. If you ask Americans today of various political persuasions how they define these words, you are likely to get a variety of answers. Does “equality” refer to the distribution of goods, or is it limited to equality of opportunity? Do all humans have a right to basic needs like a college education, health care coverage, and housing, or are these reserved to those who can afford them? I wonder how the founding fathers would have answered these questions. Given the fact that Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was both a slaveholder and plantation owner, it is clear that his views on equality and human rights were not particularly radical. It is difficult to generalize, however. After all, the founders were a collection of opinionated individuals, not a single entity with one point of view.

In a sense, the American Revolution did not end when the British decided to stop fighting. Instead, the revolution has been an ongoing process. Displacing the British was only part one. When the British were gone, the truly difficult questions had to be answered. What system of government would this new nation have? What policies would it follow? Who would rule this new nation? On the surface, the answers seemed easy. We would have a government free from Britain that protected individual rights, and Americans would rule themselves. Americans, however, both then and now, have never agreed with one another on everything. We have always been a society divided by ethnicity, race, gender, age, social class, religion, and political ideology. These divisions that existed in colonial times did not magically disappear once the British were gone. Even during the Revolutionary War, Americans who fought for the patriot cause had various motivations for doing so, and they had different visions for this new nation’s future. The revolutionary concepts of freedom, liberty, and equality were defined in a wide variety of ways.

Too often, particularly on the Fourth of July, we Americans mythologize those first patriots who founded our nation. In comparison to those glorious people of the past, our country today can seem pretty lousy. But when you take a closer look at the past, you will see that they were not all that different from us. If anything, their society was much worse. Over the course of the last 234 years, our country has expanded voting rights, abolished slavery, established better work conditions, and improved its attitudes toward and treatment of ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and the disabled. There is obviously still a long way to go, but progress has clearly been made. Many people and events, of course, have played a role in these social changes, but the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence have been a significant, consistent, revolutionary force.

The United States does not live up to its noble ideals. No nation ever does. So Americans should not simply rest on their laurels every Fourth of July and celebrate how great we are. Ideals should not be confused with reality. This does not mean, however, that we should all become cynical and depressed because our country falls so woefully short. The United States, in spite of all of its weaknesses and problems, has taken steps over the course of its history toward more closely realizing its creed. A recognition that revolutions never really end, and that progress is possible, should inspire all Americans to push our nation closer to those ideals that we claim to believe.

Vacation, pt.1: Wide Open Spaces

Here's a scene and song from one of the many great Disney/Pixar movies: "Cars."



I wrote this two nights ago, but I did not have any internet access until I arrived home today.

Our family typically goes on two types of vacations. First, there is the type where we travel to one location, stay there for several days, and mix rest and relaxation with some local attractions and activities. Then, there is the more ambitious undertaking that we are currently enjoying and will soon be ending. As I start writing this post, we are at the Grand Canyon Lodge right on the north rim of the canyon. (If it were not pitch black outside right now, I would be staring out the window at an amazing view of the canyon.) This stop was preceded by a couple of days in Las Vegas, a quick trip through Zion Canyon, and then a night and half day at Bryce Canyon.

After a day of hikes, sightseeing, and ranger presentations, I am hiding away at the lodge to get in a little late night writing. (I couldn’t sleep last night anyway.) It’s been a fun trip, but I have reached the point where I am about ready to get home. I’m missing some of my normal routine, particularly racquetball and my standard internet activities. Staying in motels is also getting me a little stir crazy. You don’t realize how dependent you have become on the world wide web and on physical space until you spend a few days “cut off” from civilization, living in a single room. The phrase “comforts of home” takes on a deeper meaning after days of travel.

Driving around through parts of four states in six days can get a bit exhausting and monotonous, particularly when exposed to a steady dose of Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers. One cool thing about this kind of a trip, however, is that you get a better feel for the layout of this amazing country in which I live. The American Southwest so often conjures up images of nothing but deserts and barren landscapes. And while we have seen plenty of shrubs and cacti, we have also gone through forests; seen some amazing canyons, mountains and cliffs - and I’m not just talking about the national parks; and driven through green plains and meadows.

The most distinctive quality of the land, however, and something that I always notice while taking these kinds of trips, is emptiness. The overwhelming majority of the landscapes we have seen are basically devoid of people. It’s amazing how quickly your idea of what constitutes a city can change when driving through mile after mile of nothingness. Suddenly, if you see a few houses and businesses, you feel like you have once again rejoined civilization. In Southern California, there is no way in hell that one of these little conglomerations of buildings would even register as being remotely urban. But when out on the open road, a town of 500 is a major population center. And if a town has a real supermarket, a Starbucks, or a Wal-Mart, then it is clearly a thriving metropolis.

Rural environments and general emptiness are still pretty common in the United States. Amazingly, even through our population has increased tremendously over the last one hundred years, there is almost as much empty space today as there was in the early twentieth century. This is because we Americans, like people in all industrialized societies, have a habit of packing into huge cities. As people have become increasingly dependent on commerce to survive, they have been compelled to live in cities. After all, if you rely on trade, then you are forced to live near other people with whom you need to trade.

When the United States was first developing in the nineteenth century, people saw the “empty” lands on the western frontier as a great blessing for our nation. If problems like overcrowding, unemployment, homelessness, or shortages of land and resources developed, then people could look to the west for new opportunities. This was why some Americans were nervous at the end of the 1800’s when it seemed that the frontier was gone. Without this “safety valve” to ease tensions in the more settled, urbanized areas, our country would lose its uniqueness. We would no longer truly be the land of opportunity, and we would develop the kinds of problems seen in the more developed parts of Europe.

Clearly, these fears were largely unfounded. The idea that struggling Americans living in urban areas needed the frontier is clearly a myth. People are not leaving the cities to flock to the frontier. If anything, the opposite has been happening for decades. Southern California, in spite of all of its problems, continues to snowball in population. Meanwhile, states like Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming and several others are filled with cheap land and wide-open spaces. Some of this can be attributed to geography. Southern California has access to the ocean and nice weather. Montana, of course, is landlocked and gets freaking cold. But this is also part of a general American and global trend in which most human beings are compelled to cluster into urban areas.

So in a sense, the American frontier never actually disappeared. It is still out there. I’ve seen quite a bit of it in my travels over the years. But most Americans, from what I can gather, are not itching to move there. Maybe the increasing importance of the internet will play some role in reversing this trend. If people can sell goods and services on-line rather than in person, then they can theoretically live anywhere. A certain amount of human concentration, however, seems inevitable. Certain business transactions must still happen face-to-face, and goods and materials will continue to flow through urban centers that thrive due to their location. Plus, large cities are like a magnet, sucking people in to do business with those who are already there.

I always tell my students that they should get the heck out of California when they graduate from college and get some cheap land out in North Dakota. I then assure them that I will keep an eye on things for them out here in Orange County. The frontier is a nice place to visit from time to time, but I don’t know if I could live there. I’m spoiled by Southern California weather, and a teaching job in a “town” of 150 might not pay very well. So I better get off to bed. For tomorrow, we will leave this iconic symbol of the American frontier and head back toward Southern California, iconic symbol of the modern age.

Las Vegas: Shining Symbol of the U.S.A

Here's on old song by Ray Charles about a typical victim of Las Vegas.

We have decided on the destinations for our summer vacation this year. We are going to spend a couple of days in Las Vegas, then go up to Bryce Canyon for a day, and last but not least, stay for a couple of nights at a lodge right on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The kids are excited because it will be the first time that they will travel outside of the state of California. What they find most exciting, however, will be the chance to get free ice cream on the way to Vegas at the Dairy Queen owned by their uncle. One of the great things about kids is their ability to get excited about the little things.

I am ready to go out and hit the open road as well. The only problem, however, is that I am feeling a little guilty about the Vegas part of the trip. This is not because I am planning on indulging in all of the sins for which the city is well known. Gambling has never been my thing anyway, and this is a family trip, after all. The plan is to hang out at a fancy resort and show our kids a little bit of the ridiculous spectacle of the city with all of its bright lights and gigantic buildings. My guilt instead comes from knowing the historical origins, economic foundation, and environmental impact of this crazy place sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

At a used book sale a few weeks ago, I found some good history books, one of which was called, “The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and its Hold on America.” In honor of our upcoming trip, I decided that I should read this book first. I have read about 1/3 of it so far, and I already have a good understanding of the author’s basic thesis. Ever since Las Vegas started to build up in a significant way during the 1930’s and 1940’s, it has been financed, owned, and operated by organized crime networks. Nevada, a state that was going nowhere, turned to legalized vice in the early 1930’s as a means of developing its economy. Gambling was illegal in other states at the time, and the end of prohibition dried up bootlegging activities, so Nevada became a Mecca for people looking to make money from “sin.” In a sense, the state of Nevada sold its soul to the devil, and Las Vegas evolved into a national capital not only for gambling but also for laundering the money earned throughout the nation from selling drugs and conducting other illicit activities.

The connection of Las Vegas to organized crime is one of the best-known “secrets” in the United States. What this book seeks to emphasize, however, is the degree to which Las Vegas is the central place in organized crime networks that permeate life throughout the entire country (and world), with public officials being complicit in all of these activities. Meyer Lansky, the man who ran much of the national crime “syndicate” in the early 20^th century and who helped finance the build up of Vegas, learned two things early in life: public officials can be bought, and the only people who make consistent money in gambling are the ones who control the game.

While many people are aware on some level of the “dark history” of this city, I get the feeling that few are really bothered by it. This may be partly because they either fail to realize or refuse to believe how powerful organized crime figures really are. I would also argue, however, that Vegas’ connection to organized crime is part of its appeal. The city sells itself, after all, as a fantasyland where anything goes: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” It’s a place where you can be bad, and we all know that bad is fun. The fact that the “baddest” people in the land built it adds to the mystique.

Now while some may be able to ignore or deny the dark forces behind the city of Vegas, it is impossible to be unaware of its environmental impact. Here is a city in the middle of a desert wasteland that is filled with huge, air-conditioned casino hotels; giant water fountains; perfectly manicured golf courses; and the brightest glowing lights on planet earth. So where does all of this energy and water come from? How is the environment of the areas that supply Vegas impacted by this mass diversion of water and electric power? Is this an efficient use of resources, particularly in a God-forsaken environment like this?

Las Vegas, from what I can gather, makes no economic and environmental sense. Once again, however, this may be part of the appeal. It is the ultimate example of a magic oasis in the desert, a place where you can escape reality and indulge yourself a little (or a lot). This city produces no tangible commodity. It does little - if anything - to benefit the nation, and it probably does many things that harm us all. Las Vegas’ main commodity is an image of itself, and its primary goal is to suck us into that image and separate us from our money. It’s a business model that is all about taking and leaving nothing tangible in return. (It’s even worse than Wall Street.)

I know all of this, and yet off we go. So how do I justify this behavior? Ultimately, I recognize that dark forces are out there no matter where you go. At least in Vegas, this reality is somewhat out in the open. Also, Las Vegas may be the ultimate symbol of my flawed, fascinating, frustrating, fun loving, “f_ _ _ ed up,” freedom loving country. The United States is a land of excess, and Las Vegas – not New York City, Hollywood, or Washington DC – may be the best place to find out what makes Americans tick.  It’s educational, and hopefully, I can score a good buffet or two. Of course, in order to maintain my integrity, I will read my anti-Vegas book a little at the resort. I’ll have to keep an eye out, however, in order to make sure that “The Mafia” is not watching.

Was the American Civil War Worth the Cost?

This is the opening song for the Civil War film, "Gods and Generals."



620,000 Americans died in the United States’ only Civil War, and another 400,000 were wounded. These numbers in themselves are difficult for Americans to wrap their minds around. But when you consider the fact that there were approximately 32 million people living in the United States when the war began, the casualties become even more unimaginable. After all, just the population of California today is significantly higher than 32 million. Can you imagine a war in which there were one million casualties in California alone?

So whose fault was it? If you can still find Americans who are aware that there was a Civil War, I imagine that the majority of these respondents would view the south as the “bad guy.” After all, eleven southern states “started it” by committing treason against the United States and attempting to form a separate country. Also, typical explanations for the causes of the war focus on slavery, and the south in this narrative becomes the evil region defending slavery against northerners who were (supposedly) against it. Reality, however, is a bit more complicated. When I cover the Civil War with my history classes, the root cause I keep coming back to is southern paranoia. Mistakenly, they believed that the north was filled with people who wanted to abolish slavery, and if the north was ever able to gain complete control of the federal government, then they might force the south to change its way of life. The attempt of a crazed, white, northern abolitionist named John Brown to violently liberate slaves, and the election of a Republican named Abraham Lincoln who supported policies only advocated by the north, fed into these fears and pushed some southern states over the edge. The facts that Lincoln clearly stated that he, like most northerners, was not an abolitionist, and that the majority of northerners condemned the actions of John Brown, were not enough to extinguish these fears that had been building for some time. Then, like now, political beliefs often had little to do with evidence and reason.

One could just as easily, however, blame the north for the war. The south, after all, wanted to leave the union peacefully. In their minds, our country was first and foremost a collection of independent states, and these individual states had the right to withdraw from the union at the time of their choosing. Southern states were simply asserting the same right as the British colonies when they formed the United States in the first place. The north, of course, did not see things this way, so the decision was made to invade the south and put down this rebellion. At that point, the war truly started.

But what if the north had made a different decision? They could have told the southern states to just go ahead and leave. Think of all the benefits of this decision. Hundreds of thousands of people could have avoided death, maiming, and psychological damage. Families who lost loved ones could have kept their husbands, sons, and brothers. All of that money poured into military supplies could have been saved. (Mississippi and California would no longer have to share the same country.) President Lincoln must have spent a lot of sleepless nights wondering if he and the Congress had made the correct decision. Given the fact that he was a man inclined toward intense mood swings, his job must have been agonizing.

Of course, if the north had made a different decision, it is hard to predict how American history would have played itself out over the past 145 years. Some would argue that conflict was going to happen eventually even if the southern states were allowed to secede. Much of the tension that led to the war was caused by decades of competition over the western territories. Both regions wanted expansion. The problem was that they had different visions for what the west would someday look like. The south had visions of plantations, cotton fields, and slave labor; the north saw a future of family farms, businesses, towns, and wage labor. So how would they divide the undeveloped lands in the southwest, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains? Would the United States and Confederacy peacefully draw a line down the middle, or would they compete in a land grab that might ultimately lead to war?

Also, what would happen the next time that a state or group of states had a gripe about a federal policy? If southern states were allowed to separate peacefully from the union, then a legal precedent would be set. It is possible, therefore, that our currently large country with many regional differences would have ultimately been carved up into multiple smaller nations. A map of North America today might resemble that of Europe. I wonder if California would still be in the union. If any state seems like a candidate for secession, it would be my home state. Much of the rest of the country thinks that we are nuts anyway. Plus, we have Arnold, Disneyland, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, redwoods, wine country, central valley farms, a hell of a lot of beachfront property, and one of the largest economies in the world. As an independent nation, California could also solve its fiscal problems like the federal government: by cranking our more currency and borrowing until the end of time. I better stop this line of reasoning. People might think that I am some sort of a “Californiaist” revolutionary.

Last but not least, how long would slavery have continued if the south were allowed to secede? In order to win the war, save the union, and prevent future conflicts, the north eventually took the drastic step of freeing the slaves. If the south had never seceded and triggered the northern invasion, then slavery would have stayed intact indefinitely. And when you consider the fact that the post-Civil War system of segregation lasted until the early 1960’s, you must conclude that if the south were left to itself, then slavery would have lingered for some time. Today, almost fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, the lingering effects of our nation’s legacy of racism are all around us. Imagine the conditions faced by African-Americans today if slavery was a much more recent phenomenon.

It’s fun for historians to speculate about what might have been. But unless someone invents a time machine and goes back to mess with the past, we will never know how different decisions might have played out. So we are left with speculating about and ultimately shaping our future. And as I look to the future, I wonder what it would take for Americans to endure the kinds of sacrifices made by people of the Civil War era. What cause would we consider righteous enough to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans in a war?

Clearly, the United States government does that think that Americans are willing to make significant sacrifices in the “War on Terror.” Apparently, they are worried that we do not see the cause as adequately vital to our survival and/or just. Taxes have been kept historically low, especially relative to past times of war. Few politicians would even consider the possibility of reestablishing a draft. It has been politically easier to add another trillion to our national debt and to squeeze the volunteer soldiers (and their families) to the breaking point. Yet even as they try to shield most Americans from the cost, some of our citizens have long been fed up with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently, about $120 billion per year (out of a budget of $3.55 trillion) and approximately 5,500 American deaths (out of a population of over 300 million) are too high of a cost. Many others seem apathetic and perfectly content with living their lives as if our nation was not at war. So those who want Americans to awaken from their apathetic slumber should make a simple demand: the government must ask Americans to share more fully in the costs of these wars. The Civil War generation sure the hell did, and we have been reaping the benefits, and paying the consequences, ever since.

How to Cover 30 Years of History in 30 Minutes (or less)

Rarely do songs go as well with a blog post as this one does:




I am teaching a class this semester that covers all of United States History, from Columbus to Obama, in nine weeks (six hours per week). This is an unusual format for me. At the three other schools where I teach, the classes either cover Early American History (before 1877) or Modern American History (post-1877). Plus, classes usually last for sixteen weeks and meet for three hours per week. So students in this “unusual” format are expected to absorb 500 years of History in half of the normal time.

By cutting out some material and moving faster than I normally do, I have been able to get through all of this information when I have taught with this format in the past. I am always worried, however, that if I don’t pace myself properly, I could end up being forced to cover the last thirty years of American History in about a half an hour. So should that ever occur, here is how I might go about covering the years from 1980-2010 during those last precious minutes of class time:

“So in 1980, things were not looking too good for our country. Inflation was out of control, Americans were starting to buy lots of things from other countries (especially Japan), and things like the Iranian hostage crisis made us look weaker around the world. So many Americans turned to a conservative ex-actor named Ronald Reagan to be our savior. He had the right plan for the right time: to get government out of our lives – cut taxes, roll back regulations, cut expensive social programs - and to build up the military so that we could once again take on communists and other evildoers. After a couple of bad years, the economy started to turn around, and inflation was brought under control. As the economy grew, many Americans went back to our good old-fashioned heritage of materialism and individualism. Even some TV preachers used channels on a phenomenon called cable television to tell people that God would make his devoted followers rich. After all, what did years of that hippy, anti-materialist, liberal, secular, “peace and love” crap get us? We rediscovered what Americans always knew: that money makes you happy. There were some problems, however, that would come back to haunt us. The federal government was running big budget deficits, wealth was more concentrated toward the top, and the push toward deregulation may have eventually gone too far.

Then George W. Bush’s dad became president, and an amazing thing happened. The Soviet Union, and their puppet governments in Eastern Europe, collapsed. To the shock of almost everyone, the Cold War was over. This was fantastic, but there was one big problem: what would guide our foreign policy now? For forty-five years, U.S. actions were consistently guided by a desire to defeat communism. Without the big bad buy, what would be the plan? At first, Saddam Hussein stepped into the role of bad guy when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Here was a chance to use that big military that Reagan built up in the 1980’s, and in a matter of days, the Iraqi army was annihilated. Suddenly, Americans were waving flags again and celebrating a military victory. For many, this was a sign that the embarrassment of Vietnam was being put behind us. “Bush the first” seemed like a lock to win re-election.

But when the economy went bad for a while in the early 1990’s, and a quirky businessman named Ross Perot decided to run for president, the door was open for an unknown governor named Bill Clinton to become our next president. And conveniently for him, the economy took off on the longest ride of sustained economic growth in American history. Much of this was due to the increasing integration of the global economy, the growing sophistication of personal computers, and the expanding use of something called the internet (which Clinton’s Vice President had apparently “invented”). And as many Americans gorged themselves on all of this wealth and invested into new high-tech products and industries, politics was of limited interest. O.J., Monica, and Y2K kept us distracted, and it wasn’t like politicians were getting much done anyway. We had a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, and as the two parties became increasingly hostile, they seemed to spend more time talking about Clinton’s sex life than proposing effective policies. Things seemed to be going remarkably well anyway – the federal government actually ran a surplus for a while - so the lack of political achievements did not seem like a big problem. Also, our newfound status as the world’s only remaining superpower created a sense of safety from foreign threats.

But due to Clinton’s “sexual issues,” Al Gore’s lack of political charisma, a spoiler named Ralph Nader, our ridiculous system for choosing Presidents, and the beginnings of a mild recession triggered somewhat by the “dotcom bubble”, “Bush II” became president in one of the stranger elections in history. George W. Bush immediately began to push the Reagan agenda. Then, within a matter of months, the growing terrorist threat that most Americans had spent years ignoring and neglecting hit our country on 9/11. Suddenly, we had a big, scary enemy again, and as you are well aware, the “War on Terror” has been proceeding ever since. Most Americans were terrified and ready to “kick ass” for a while, but it did not take long for many people to become distracted once again by good old-fashioned materialism and the wonders of modern technology: cell phones, high speed internet, social networking, reality TV, “Tivo”, etc. They were also distracted by a new bubble in real estate that began to form after the previous internet bubble had burst. Housing prices rose rapidly, fueled largely by insane loans packaged together into strange, unregulated financial instruments that few understood. Then, toward the end of the Bush presidency, the financial system crashed and burned, and government came running to the rescue.

This collapse laid the groundwork for an amazing event: the election of the first non-white man to the presidency. Unfortunately for President Obama, he came into office at a time of several crises: conflict dragging on in Iraq and Afghanistan, economic recession, the rising cost of health care, and an intensifying level of partisan bitterness that can be traced back to the Clinton years. To a large degree, our nation is beginning to pay the price for past foolishness. Unsustainable spending on Medicare, Social Security, and Defense has caused ballooning budget deficits now that the economy has slowed down. Reckless borrowing and spending over the course of many years brought us to the brink of disaster, although the government, at a very high cost, has apparently managed to ward off a huge crisis. Has the time come where we have to face reality? Have we started to realize that our political and economic systems as they currently stand are unsustainable? Or will self-centered special interest groups and continued partisan bickering continue to hold back meaningful reform?

Every generation must ask itself how the people of the future will judge them. I have a feeling that the last 30 years will be remembered for a couple of things. First, it will be remembered as the beginning of a technological revolution comparable to the invention of agriculture or to the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century. It is still too early to tell where this change will ultimately lead us. Second, it will be remembered as a period of reckless borrowing and spending – in both the private and public sectors - fueled by the belief that happiness comes from accumulating the stuff that every American has a God-given right to have. And as Americans were distracted by their desire for things, tough decisions have been put off by politicians (of both parties) who are afraid of telling American voters the truth: taxes must inevitably be raised, significant spending cuts on big budget programs must be made, the health care system must become more financially efficient, and we must begin the initially painful process of moving toward an economy that is not based on fossil fuels. In short, Americans must make sacrifices. These tough decisions have been put off for too long, and my grandkids might look at me someday and ask me what the hell we were thinking.”

Our Trip to the Huntington Library

Here's an oldie from one of the greatest voices in rock history: Roy Orbison. It's called "Working for the Man."


 

Yesterday, as part of my wife’s birthday weekend, we went with the kids to Huntington Library & Gardens up near Pasadena. It is definitely worth checking out if you have never had the opportunity. The place is part historical research library, part museum, and part arboretum. If you do nothing but wander through the various botanical gardens, you will easily get your money’s worth. The kids had a great time sniffing and photographing the various plants and flowers. Just the Rose Garden took about an hour. I’ve included some pictures below (most of which were taken by my older daughter, a budding photographer.)

As we wandered through this amazing place, my wife and I had the same recurring thought:  “man, Henry Huntington must have been freaking rich!” The main art gallery is located in a small part of what used to be his ridiculously huge mansion, and the various botanical gardens are essentially his former front and backyard. Much of what you see has been collected and planted since the Huntington exhibit was established after his death in 1927, but still, what he and his wife managed to compile and create is astounding.

So how did he get all of this money? I did a little research, and it turns out that he got some of his fortune the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. Collis Huntington, Henry’s Uncle, made an enormous fortune in the railroad business.  Henry started working for his uncle as a young man and worked his way up in the company. When his uncle died, Henry inherited one-third of the family fortune. Henry would then proceed to become quite a businessman in his own right, making much of his money building electric public transportation systems in California. This was how he ended up buying his “little estate” in Southern California. He married his uncle’s widow – who was close to Henry’s age, so it wasn’t too gross – a woman who turned out to be quite the art collector herself. And the rest, you might say, is history.

Some would therefore describe Henry Huntington as a great businessman, collector, and, ultimately, philanthropist. This is not the only valid point of view, however. After all, how did Henry’s uncle accumulate the massive fortune that became the basis for his nephew’s success? Who did the hard labor of building those railroads, and how well were these workers paid? Some, myself included, would argue that Henry, like his uncle, was also a great exploiter of the working class, and money which could have gone toward providing these workers with a decent standard of living instead went into a fancy house; a hell of a collection of art, furniture, and historical documents; and some damn impressive landscaping. It’s a beautiful place, but was the cost truly justified?  I better discontinue this line of questioning. People might start labeling me as one of those Obama-supporting socialists.

The Huntington Library is one of the many great monuments to wealthy and powerful individuals that have been built throughout the history of the civilized world: the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Versailles, The Forbidden City, etc. One of the greatest mysteries of life for me is how certain elite individuals are able to amass so much wealth and power. Why do the masses feel compelled to devote so much labor, resources, and devotion to an individual who, in a purely physical sense, is basically the same as they are? Why do people tolerate this degree of inequality? Many answers to these questions have been developed over the years, but I have yet to hear a completely adequate explanation. It may be just another piece of evidence proving that our species is not particularly rational. In the end, monuments to the powerful may be the ultimate paradox. In a place like the Huntington Library, beauty and incredible human achievement are wrapped together with human vanity, waste, and injustice.

Would a Modern American Survive "The Oregon Trail"?

This song from my favorite album by The Who glorifies life on the road. I doubt that pioneers on The Oregon Trail 160 years ago could relate to these lyrics.



In one of my classes, we recently watched a movie and did an assignment about the “Oregon Trail.” Topics such as this always make me realize how much tougher and braver the average person of the past was in comparison to a middle-class American (like me) today. I doubt that I would even last a day on the Oregon Trail. For me, after all, a two-day camping trip is a bit of a grind, and I am usually on a campground with actual toilets and showers! (And I sleep in a tent on a foam mattress.)

It’s hard for me to decide what would suck the most about taking a five-month, two- thousand mile hike to the west coast. First of all, of course, there was the constant knowledge of all of the various ways that one might die on the trail: disease, starvation, prairie fire, injury, Indian attack (which was rare, by the way), nasty weather, getting stuck in the snow, being eaten by a fellow traveler, etc. According to the film that I show to my students, one out of seventeen pioneers on the Oregon Trail died on the trip. How many middle-class Americans today would even consider taking a journey with that kind of a death rate? When we travel by plane, car, boat, or train, we begin with the assumption that we will reach our destination safely. How many of us take off for work or on a vacation crying with our loved ones out of fear that we may never see them again? We live in a world, after all, where people travel great distances for the fun of it. In the time of Columbus, people would have thought you were nuts if you sailed off into the open ocean on a pleasure cruise.

One of the great blessings of the modern world – and some would say curses – is that you never feel like you are isolated and alone. We always have our trusty cell phone at our side. The national weather service can warn travelers of impending trouble. GPS devices can help us to know at every moment our specific location, and if we end up stranded somewhere, all sorts of modern transportation and communication devices can be used to get to us. On the Oregon Trail, of course, travelers were cut off somewhat from civilized society. If you got injured, sick, or struggled to find food and water, there was no way to call for help and no store where you could shop for supplies. You could wait by the trail in hopes that someone might show up, but there was no way to know when or if this might happen. If bad weather lay ahead, there was no warning. And if you ran into some bad guys, you better be able to fight them off. Few people in a modern, industrial society have any concept of what it means to be isolated. For many, the phone is practically implanted to their ear or to their rapidly texting fingers so that they never have to feel anything resembling loneliness and isolation.

I have a feeling, however, that the constant fear of various forms of death would not be the hardest thing about life on the trail. The worst thing, in fact, might be plain old mind- numbing boredom. For a person like me who considers an eight-hour car ride or five-hour flight to be an almost unbearable ordeal, it is impossible to even comprehend what a five-month journey across the plains and through the Rocky Mountain passes would be like. Can you imagine hanging out with the same people, most likely your family members, every day for that length of time? And to make matters worse, you would not have an IPOD, radio, video game device, DVD player or anything else to keep you occupied (and distracted from the annoyances of your siblings.) You would be forced to talk to people, read books, and engage in other non-electronic, archaic activities. Hangman, twenty questions, and the “let’s count the blades of grass game” could only be entertaining for so long.

So why were people of the past able to do this? How did they withstand the physical ordeal, the fears, and the mind-numbing boredom and drudgery of trail life? The simple fact, I would argue, was that trail life was not a huge deviation from their normal, day-to-day lives. In the America of the 1840’s, death could always be around the corner. Before the advent of modern medicine, roughly half of people died by the age of five. If a disease was contracted, doctors could do little to cure you, and some of their misguided practices could play a big part in finishing you off. Many people were still forced to adapt to and deeply respect the whims of nature since they did not have the modern technologies that lead us to believe that we can overcome weather, natural disasters, and time and space itself. Since death was always in their face, their fear of it was probably not as great as modern Americans who often do everything in their power to put their impending mortality out of their minds. It takes so little, after all, to freak us out. Almost every year, we hear the story of some disease that is apparently going to wipe out all of humankind: SARS, West Nile Virus, Mad Cow Disease, Swine Flu, etc. Now while I recognize that these diseases do some real damage, the death rates are microscopic in comparison to the epidemics, plagues, and day-to-day diseases of the past. Would one hundred people dying of West Nile Virus freak people out 160 years ago?

People of the past were also well acquainted with boredom and drudgery. Without modern labor saving devices, they were forced to perform many time consuming, physically demanding tasks that most modern Americans have never had to do. Doing laundry, chopping wood, gathering water, and producing food required both time and hard labor. For me, the ten or fifteen minutes that I must spend on laundry, the half hour at the grocery store, and the twenty minutes spent doing dishes feel like an overwhelming ordeal. I wonder how long I would last on a mid-nineteenth century farm. And when I managed to get some free time, would I know what to do with it? Before Facebook, cell phones, video games, ESPN, and DVD players, what the hell did people do with themselves?

In a sense, people 160 years ago were almost a different species than I. Because their lives were harder, they became tougher. Because they were well acquainted with drudgery, they tolerated boredom more effectively than many of us would, and a good book or conversation was often the ultimate form of entertainment. They were not conditioned to need continuous visual stimulation. And because they knew that death was a possibility no matter how risk-averse one might be, they may have been willing to take more risks. Still, I can’t imagine that the journey on the Oregon Trail was remotely easy. So like the Polynesians who ventured throughout the Pacific, the people who first crossed the Sahara Desert, or the men who were crazy enough to set sail with Columbus, the pioneers on the Oregon Trail deserve the awe and respect of the wimps of modern society. I don’t know if we will ever truly see the likes of them again.

The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and Holidays in General.

Here's a link to Stephen Colbert's web site. You will see a video of a song from his Christmas special called "Another Christmas Song."

Easter Sunday is the most important date in the Christian calendar. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, the central event in Christian theology. What I have always found fascinating, however, is the fact that the United States, like many other societies I imagine, devotes much more attention, energy, and money to Christmas than to Easter. This is in spite of the fact that only two gospels bother to give any details about Jesus’ birth, and the New Testament epistles never mention it at all. The resurrection, however, is central to all four gospels, and the apostle Paul and other New Testament writers discuss it repeatedly. Is the story of a baby’s birth more appealing and comfortable than a story of execution and resurrection? I am not enough of a historian, psychologist, or theologian to say for sure.

The modern American celebrations of the two holidays, however, definitely have some things in common. Both holidays involve gift giving to good (and arguably bad) children, and they usually require a certain amount of candy. Candy seems to be a common staple in American holidays: Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving (if you count pie). The sugar industry is making a killing.  Other major American holidays, however, are mainly an excuse to have a barbecue, blow things up, or go to a special three-day sale. Christmas, of course, has got it all (except the fireworks). It has the candy, one or two (or three) months of special sales, parties where people gorge themselves, and the opportunity to get the coolest gifts: toys, clothes, electronics, etc. On Easter, all you get are baskets, eggs, chocolates, jelly beans, and that plastic fake grass. It’s not bad when you are a kid, but it sure the heck isn’t Christmas.

For many kids, however, the dominant characters associated with these holidays are two mythical gift-givers: Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Now for Christmas, there is some historical and theological basis for the fat, bearded, saintly gift-giver in the red suit. In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, three wise men show up bearing gifts of precious metals, oils, and perfume. (Today, they would have picked these up at “Nordstrom’s.” If they were cheap, they might choose “Sears.”) More generally, Jesus himself represents the gift of a savior for all humankind.

It’s harder, however, to find a theological or historical basis for the Easter Bunny. So I decided to do a rare thing for this blog: conduct some research. I turned to trusty “Google,” and punched in “History of Easter Bunny Eggs.” Many sites came up, with not all of them agreeing on the details. From what I can gather, however, both rabbits and eggs are ancient symbols of fertility. Rabbits, after all, “breed like rabbits,” and eggs, of course, give birth to new life. There is some degree of evidence indicating that rituals involving eggs were performed in pre-Christian times to coincide with the rebirth of life at the beginning of spring. Christian missionaries, as they often did, probably adopted – some would say co-opted – these traditions into the springtime celebration of the resurrection. (Even the term “Easter” seems to have pagan origins.) Evidence for bunnies appears a bit later. The first written reference to an Easter hare appeared in seventeenth century Germany. By the eighteenth century, German immigrants to the American colonies were telling their kids stories about an Easter rabbit distributing eggs to good little kids. Kids at this time were making little baskets in which the Easter bunny could place their gifts. Then, most importantly for children today, sweets in the shape of eggs and bunnies began to appear by the nineteenth century. Eggs, after all, are not the most exciting “treat” in the world for a child. (When was the last time that you saw a kid eating his or her hard-boiled, decorated egg?) But you can’t go wrong with sugar.

I don’t think that my kids have ever asked me why a rabbit – or as they get older, a strange adult – sticks candy and plastic eggs in a basket for them on something called Easter. They are just happy to get any candy that a small furry animal or large human is willing to hand them. Of course, I doubt that many adults look into the origins of the annual rituals that we call holidays. Some complain that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other commercialized symbols and practices can snuff out the historical or sacred traditions that formed the basis for the holidays in the first place. We must remember, however, that holidays always take on a life of their own, and they are a reflection of the cultures in which they are celebrated. In some cases, holidays in ancient times were co-opted by the Christian church and given new meaning. This eventually caused many to lose sight of the original pagan symbolism associated with practices like decorating eggs or putting up Christmas trees.

The same type of thing may be occurring today. The American religion of commercialism is often able to snuff out the original meaning of the symbols that make up our holiday traditions and stories. Halloween is more about candy than confronting death as winter draws near. Thanksgiving is apparently about thanking God for turkey, football, and large balloons floating in New York City. Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to buy off your significant other with candy (of course) and flowers. Is this a bad thing? I would argue that it is the inevitable result of living in a society where commercialism and materialism have largely replaced the sacred and symbolic. Still, I love most of these holidays. They have become an integral part of the annual cycle that makes up my life, and I, like everyone else, can give these holidays whatever meaning I choose. Plus, I sometimes get some cool stuff (especially on Christmas).

A Few Words about Abraham Lincoln

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. I always remember this because it is the day before my birthday. (I was almost a Valentine’s baby.) Lincoln is one of the most beloved and mythologized men in American History. When you visit the Lincoln Memorial, you feel like you are in some kind of a Greek temple. Except with Lincoln, you want to sit on his statue’s lap and tell him your problems. (Does anyone remember that episode of The Simpsons?)

Lincoln, however, was more human (and interesting) than his statue. A few years ago, I read a biography of Lincoln called With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham Lincoln. This book, among other things, brings the real Lincoln to life. Lincoln, as the legends say, did work his way up from virtually nothing to become a successful lawyer, assemblyman, one-term congressman, and eventually President. His father could hardly write, which caused Lincoln to be ashamed of him. (Lincoln himself had a little more than a year of formal schooling.) Lincoln did not even attend his father’s funeral. He loved telling jokes, some of which would be considered a bit dirty by his society’s standards. He would often suffer intense bouts of depression where he would go into self-imposed isolation for long periods of time. Some believe that he may have had bipolar disorder or suffered from manic depression. Throughout his political career, he would make public statements indicating that he did not necessarily believe in racial equality. He once famously said that his opposition to slavery did not mean that he supported the idea if interracial marriage. When he started laying out reconstruction plans toward the end of the war, these plans did not include much in the way of aid for the former slaves he is given so much credit for setting free. When he first became President, a job he would have never dreamed of getting just a few years earlier, he was somewhat indecisive and insecure at times. When his generals during the early years of the Civil War often failed to take decisive and effective action, Lincoln did not feel confident enough to take more direct charge of the war. He was not particularly popular through much of his presidency, and he was nervous about his prospects for winning reelection in 1864. It was only after his assassination that he started to become one of the most beloved men in our history.

My goal is not to trash this man with whom I almost share a birthday. For me, the flaws and weaknesses of Abraham Lincoln make his achievements more impressive. He definitely grew into the job of President, and most Historians rank him as the greatest chief executive in our nation’s history. No President of the future is likely to have a resume that includes achievements as impressive as abolishing slavery and saving the union. He was also a man who showed the capacity to evolve. (Karl Rove would have labeled him a “flip-flopper.”) He grew from a man who believed that abolishing slavery was impractical to the President who pushed through the 13th Amendment. If he had lived to see Reconstruction through, would he have eventually supported plans to help ex-slaves transition more effectively to their new lives? We will never know. Still, the Lincoln story, particularly when it includes his flaws and weaknesses, gives me the hope to believe that a person as imperfect as I can do something significant with my life.