Mauve Moments with Orlando Plumbe

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail

Link: OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail.

We are risking something very basic by failing to communicate the basic ideals of America and instead, as historian David McCullough told me, "raising a generation of students who are historically illiterate." But many of those students will eventually become curious, and without a solid grounding in the past, they could easily fall prey to revisionist history, whether it be of the Confederate or Oliver Stone variety. Yale professor David Gelernter says that "ignorance of history is destroying our judgment." He points to Sen. Dick Durbin's ignorant comment comparing the actions of U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay to those of Nazis and Soviets. His remarks went largely unremarked upon by fellow senators until talk radio made them an issue. Future leaders may make even more horrific missteps: a 2003 survey of seniors at the top 55 liberal arts colleges found that over half thought Germany, Italy or Japan had been a U.S. ally in World War II.

What Happened to History?

Link: What happened to history? - The Washington Times: Commentary - May 07, 2005. From the incomparable Victor Davis Hanson:

To appreciate the value of history, we must also accept that human nature is constant and fixed across time and space. Our kindred forefathers in very dissimilar landscapes were nevertheless subject to the same emotions of fear, envy, honor and shame as our own. In contrast, if one believes human nature is malleable -- or with requisite money and counseling can be "improved" -- history becomes just an obsolete science. It would be no different from 18th-century biology before the microscope or early genetics without knowledge of DNA. Once man before our time appears alien, the story of his past has very little prognostic value. Finally, there is a radically new idea that most past occurrences are of equal interest -- far different from the Greeks' notion that history meant inquiry about "important" events that cost or saved thousands of lives, or provided ideas and lessons that transcended space and time. The history of the pencil, girdle or cartoon offers us less wisdom about events, past and present, than does knowledge of U.S. Grant, the causes of the Great Depression or the miracle of Normandy Beach. A society that cannot distinguish between the critical and the trivial of history predictably will also believe a Scott Peterson merits as much attention as

Book Review--How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Book review--How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman.  I love the subject matter, the book got good reviews, but I could not get into the book.  To anyone with a passing acquaintence with scottish or british history, there is very little new in the book.  Moreover, it never really trys to prove the overblown premise of its title.  It takes a lot of well known stories about different scottish achievements following the scottish reformation, lays them end to end, and offers very little explanation for how they came about.   Scottish achievement in the 18th and early 19th Century is an impressive story, and the mystery of how they did so much from such inauspicious prior history is a historical question that deserves a strong and well supported hypothesis.  But no one nation invented the "modern world" and Herman  certainly does not prove the Scots did.  Indeed, in airbrushing out of his story a number of difficulties the scottish faced during the period, one suspects that he is firmly of the Walter Scott school of romantic scottish history and wanted to cash in on all those tartan loving scottish americans who love the "auld" country without too much reflection on why so many of their forebearers emmigrated from it.

Apocalypse and Charge

I saw two war-as-antiwar movies over the weekend, Apocalypse Now (1979) and Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). They provide a study in contrasting techniques Although enjoyable, the great scenes from Apocalypse seem hopelessly over-the-top now.  Because it has been parodied so extensively, it is tough to remember what aspects of it were cliché when it came out versus which parts have become cliché due to its influence.  For those of you who watch West Wing, it is also fun to see the Martin Sheen of twenty five years ago as a slim somewhat psychotic wise guy rather than the puffed up, evil leprechaun persona of President Jeb Bartlett.  But Apocalypse is made by its scenes, fabulist plot and soundtrack rather than its acting, even though it boasts a lot of star actors, (Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford). 

By contrast Charge is an acting clinic.  This debunking remake of the 1936 action flick of the same name starring Errol Flynn boasts wonderfully measured performances by John Gielgud, as Lord Raglan (the aging commander of British forces in the Crimean War), Vanessa Redgrave, the love interest, and David Hemmings, a young cavalry officer and protagonist, as well as an over the top but highly enjoyable performance by Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan, the highly eccentric, slightly sadistic and egomaniacal commander of the light horse.  The movie is beautifully shot in epic drama form.  You will find its animation of 19^th Century political cartoons, which it uses as segues between major scene changes, to be clever or annoying or both. Overall, it is a mix (albeit a precursor) of Merchant-Ivory/Masterpiece Theatre school of aesthetics and the “oh the madness of war” school of British military flicks perfected by movies such as Gallipoli and Breaker Morant. Although Charge’s pace is much slower than either of those films, it will give you the time to drink in the highly realistic period detail it so painstakingly put forth.

So the antiwar message is made in very different ways in the two films.  Apocalypse takes germs of truth and blows them up into an absurdist fantasy.  Charge attempts to hew as close as it can to the truth and the absurdity comes through in the sharp clarion notes of a bugler’s call.  Both are decent enough entertainment, but it helps to be in the right mood.

Grant Reconsidered.

T wo new books on Ulysses S. Grant suggest a long overdue reappraisal of Grant's presidency may be at hand. The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'Ulysses S. Grant': Shocked and Awed.

Their defenses of the Grant presidency are more interesting. Both make the case that the administration's assorted financial scandals were in most cases small beer, in an era of small government. Meanwhile, Grant had many virtues as a head of state. He attempted to work out a new understanding with the American Indians, and he used the Army to suppress the Klan and uphold African-American rights in the un-Reconstructed South. It was not his fault that the racism and indifference of his white countrymen would plunge the United States into another long night of oppression after he left office.

The unpopularity of Reconstruction of the South following the Civil War cannot be overstated. Only Grant had the political capital  to keep it in place. Once Grant left the scene, Reconstruction ended as part of the politcal deal Republican's need to make to keep the Presidency on 1876.  What followed was followed by nearly a century of Jim Crow (depending if you put the end of Jim Crow at Brown v. Board or the 1965 voting rights act), and the last four decades trying to remediate Jim Crow's pernicious effects. Grant's willingness to use his popularity as a war hero to pursue this unpopular policy may have been more a product of his unyielding  stubborness than  moral enlightment.  Either way he deserves a much higher rating than failure.