boundary 2

In his messianic inauguration address, President Bush spoke of America's global duty being defined by "the history we have seen together". Inevitably, this was a reference to the events of 9/11. But given how much a sense of US revolutionary heritage is now informing current policy, the broader history that Americans are experiencing together should be an equal cause for concern.

The latter half of the 20th century saw US scholars lead the way in popular social history. The world of the workplace, family life, native America and civil rights was chronicled with verve and style. The delicate oral histories of social chronicler Studs Terkel opened up the local and working-class past to mass audiences. He showed how the second world war was as much the people's as the statesmen's war. On National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, history was dissected professionally and polemically.

Today, you would be hard-pressed to find such broad-ranging investigations of the American past. Instead, the bookshelves of Borders and Barnes & Noble are dominated by a very specific reading of the 18th century. This does not, in God-fearing America, represent a new found interest in the secular ideals of enlightenment and reason. Rather, an obsessive telling and retelling of that great struggle for liberty: the American Revolution.

Heroic biography has become the bestselling history brand of Bush's America. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Abraham Lincoln are all speaking from the grave with new-found loquaciousness. Barely a week passes without another definitive life of a Founding Father, Brother or Sister, each one more adulatory than the last.

Not least the vice-president's wife, Dr Lynne Cheney, whose recent contribution, When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots, is the kind of "history" that any ministry of information would have been proud of. Museums and TV schedulers have not been slow to catch the mood. The New York Historical Society currently hosts a vast exhibition celebrating the life of Alexander Hamilton ("The Man who Made Modern America"); the History Channel has even cut into its second world war telethon to offer a series of bio-pics of great American revolutionaries.

Sadly, none of this has resulted in any substantive reinterpretation of the revolution or its principal actors. As Simon Schama rightly puts it, this is history as inspiration, not instruction. Instead of critical analysis, the public is being fed self-serving affirmation: war-time schlock designed to underpin the unique calling, manifest destiny and selfless heroism of the US nation and, above all, its superhuman presidents.

Needless to say, this goes down very well at the White House. We are told that the president's current reading matter includes biographies of Washington as well as Alexander Hamilton. For the biographical emphasis on the Great Man who has the character and vision to transcend as well as define his times fits well with a presidency that values personal instinct and prayer above reason and empiricism.

In fact, the historical community seems to be providing the ideal conditions for the Nietzschean approach of the Bush administration. As one senior presidential adviser scarily informed journalist Ron Suskind: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality ... we'll act again, creating other new realities ... We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Rather than tempering such terrifying ambition, US scholars are happy to play up to it. Historian Eliot Cohen penned an administration-friendly account of how former US presidents have instinctively been right in matters military, compared with their hapless, diffident generals, while prolific biographer Joseph Ellis has sought to offer posthumous suggestions from George Washington to George W.

At a time when the US imperium is rampaging across the globe, you might have thought there would be a historical concern to enlighten the domestic citizenry about foreign cultures and peoples. Instead, public scholars are feeding the nation's increasingly insulated mentality with a retreat into the cosy fables of their forebears. Amid the biography and hagiography, stories of Islamic civilisation or Middle East nation-building are among the many histories the American people are not seeing.

· Tristram Hunt is the author of Building Jerusalem: the Rise and Fall of the Victorian City

tristramhunt@btopenworld.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Paul A. Bové

Distinguished Professor

English Department

Editor, boundary 2

University of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, PA 15260

http://btwoprojects.blogspot.com/

http://groups.msn.com/PaulBovesWebPage

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Wednesday, February 09, 2005

FW: Guardian Unlimited: This Pollyanna army [signed]

-----Original Message-----
From: lindsay_waters@harvard.edu [mailto:lindsay_waters@harvard.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 1:44 AM
To: bove@pitt.edu
Subject: Guardian Unlimited: This Pollyanna army

lindsay_waters@harvard.edu spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and
thought you should see it.

-------
Note from lindsay_waters@harvard.edu:

read it and weep
-------

To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go
to http://www.guardian.co.uk

This Pollyanna army
Bush will not admit that his troops are too exhausted to sustain his
vengeful global missions
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday January 27 2005
The Guardian

The most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush's
second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one
month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief of the US Army
Reserve.

In an internal memorandum, he described "the Army Reserve's inability under
current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements
associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army
Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other
operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force".

These "dysfunctional" policies are producing a crisis "more acute and
hurtful", as the Reserve's ability to mobilise troops is "eroding daily".

The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed of a "volunteer"
army that came into being with the end of military conscription during the
Vietnam war. More than 40% are National Guard and Reserves, most having
completed second tours of duty and being sent out again.

The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only by "stop-loss"
orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service after their contractual
enlistment expires - a back-door draft.

Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30% last year. The Pentagon justified this
de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely a short-term
solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilises and an Iraqi
security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon announced that
the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006.

"I don't know where these troops are coming from. It's mystifying,"
Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat on the House armed
services committee, told me. "There's no policy to deal with the fact we
have a military in extremis."

Bush's speech calling for "ending tyranny in all the world" was of
consistent abstraction uninflected by anything as specific as the actual
condition of the military that would presumably be sent scurrying on various
global missions.

But the speech was aflame with images of destruction and vengeance. The
neoconservatives were ecstatic, perhaps as much by their influence in
inserting their gnostic codewords into the speech as the dogmatism of the
speech itself.

For them, Bush's rhetoric about "eternal hope that is meant to be fulfiled"
was a sign of their triumph. The speech, crowed neocon William Kristol, who
consulted on it, was indeed "informed by Strauss" - a reference to Leo
Strauss, philosopher of obscurantist strands of absolutist thought, mentor
and inspiration to some neocons who believe they fulfil his teaching by
acting as tutors to politicians in need of their superior guidance.

'Informed" is hardly the precise word to account for the manipulation of
Bush's impulses by cultish advisers with ulterior motives.

Even as the neocons revelled in their influence, Bush's glittering
generalities, lofted on wings of hypocrisy, crashed to earth. Would we
launch campaigns against tyrannical governments in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, or China?

Of course, the White House briefed reporters, Bush didn't mean his rhetoric
to suggest any change in strategy.

Unfortunately for Condoleezza Rice, such levels of empty abstraction could
not glide her through her Senate confirmation as secretary of state without
abrasion.

With implacable rigidity, she stood by every administration decision. There
was no disinformation on Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons of
mass destruction; any suggestion that she had been misleading in the rush to
war was an attack on her personal integrity. The light military force for
the invasion was just right. And it was just right now.

Contrary to Senator Joseph Biden of the foreign relations committee, who
stated that there are only 14,000 trained Iraqi security forces, she
insisted there are 120,000. Why, secretary of defence Rumsfeld had told her
so.

Then, implicitly acknowledging the failure to create a credible Iraqi army,
the Pentagon announced that the US forces would remain at the same level for
the next two years. Rice's Pollyanna testimony was suddenly inoperative.

The administration has no strategy for Iraq or for the coerced American army
plodding endlessly across the desert.

Representative Tauscher wonders when the House armed services committee,
along with the rest of the Congress, will learn anything from the Bush
administration that might be considered factual: "They are never persuaded
by the facts. Nobody can tell you what their plan is and they don't feel the
need to have one."

On the eve of the Iraqi election, neither the president's soaring rhetoric
nor the new secretary of state's fantasy numbers touch the brutal facts on
the ground.

Sidney Blumethal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of
The Clinton Wars

sidney_blumenthal @yahoo.com

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

--
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Monday, February 07, 2005

The New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil'

The New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil'

I like this, a secularized use of evil. I could do without the diagnostic rhetoric, but the project is admirable. I say this given how I began in Montreal more than a decade ago to try to bring the concept back into criticism, as I tried with 'boredom' several times in the last few years.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | No monopoly on modernity

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Our Battered Constitution

Thursday, February 03, 2005

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The Year of Living Indecently

Friday, January 28, 2005

VDH's Private Papers::Stories of Imperial Collapse are Getting Old

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Bush Pulls 'Neocons' Out of the Shadows

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Commentary :: Evan Coyne Maloney :: AcademicBias.com

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

WSJ.com - The Darker Side of Colonial Hong Kong

Monday, January 03, 2005

FW: Reuters.co.uk - Humanists and atheists look to higher profile - Mon January 03, 2005 05:27 AM ET

Reuters News Article

Humanists and atheists look to higher profile

Mon January 03, 2005 05:27 AM ET

By Robert Evans

GENEVA (Reuters) - Humanist and atheist groups around the world are looking to boost their profile in 2005 to counter religious fundamentalism and efforts by some Western leaders to relaunch faith as a keystone of national life.

Under pressure from the rise of militant Islam, Vatican activism in the European Union and the re-election of a "born-again" Christian to the White House, they feel they must resist to ensure the ideas of secularism survive and spread.

"In the face of the religious onslaught on Humanist values, we have to speak out and get our message over," says Roy Brown, Swiss-based president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) which links groups totalling millions of members.

Two central events will be a World Atheist Conference at Vijayawada in India in early January and the IHEU's World Congress in July at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

"We must work hard to combat the encroachment of religion on public policy and on the rights of non-believers everywhere," said IHEU executive director Babu Gogineni.

Atheists, who see no evidence for the existence of a deity, and Humanists, who are mainly atheists but include some believers, share that core concern: to keep religion out of politics and limit it to the private sphere.

They draw their inspiration from freethinkers down the ages, from ancient Greek and Indian philosophers through the 18th century Enlightenment that shaped much of modern political thinking in Europe and North America.

PRINCIPLES ATTACKED

But they see key Humanist principles -- respect for human rights and racial and sexual equality with morality based on reason rather than on the dictates of a supreme being through a holy book -- as under assault, and not just in Muslim countries.

The re-election in November of George W. Bush, U.S. Humanists fear, strengthened the influence of Christian fundamentalists dedicated to restoring the Bible, "God's word," to a central role in public life and foreign policy.

Many of Bush supporters appear to see the war in Iraq in the same terms as the president, and Muslim fundamentalists, as one arena of a cosmic struggle between good and evil in which what Humanists would regard as crimes are permissible on both sides.

Bush's triumph has also boosted opponents of abortion and homosexuality, as well as supporters of Intelligent Design (ID) which rejects evolution -- the development of all life on earth from lower forms through natural selection of the fittest -- as elaborated by 19th century British naturalist Charles Darwin.

The ID movement emerged from the ranks of U.S. creationists, who believe the Bible is literally correct and that their God created the world and all in it. ID limits itself to arguing that an intelligence must have shaped life.

In many U.S. states, fundamentalists on school boards ensure that creationism -- taught widely until the late 1960s -- is still present in some form. ID supporters are now demanding that their beliefs be taught alongside evolution.

Last month British philosopher Anthony Flew, long a champion of unbelief, announced to the dismay of some fellow atheists that he was now convinced an intelligence must have provided the spark of life and perhaps even done some designing.

His "conversion" was greeted with delight on creationist and Catholic websites. But Flew hastened to clarify that he believed that the intelligence involved was not the Christian, Jewish or Moslem "personal" deity, and that there is no "afterlife."

GOD OF THE GAPS

Atheist scientist-thinkers, like British biologist Richard Dawkins, said Flew had simply come to "the god of the gaps" -- a view held by some philosophers but few scientists that some "force" must have been at play because science has not pinned down how life could have begun otherwise.

In Britain, many Humanists feel that Prime Minister Tony Blair -- a strong religious believer -- and members of his government are undermining secular traditions.

They point to his promotion of faith schools run by various religious communities, including two financed by a fundamentalist businessman where creationism is taught as science.

Blair's push for a new law that would protect all believers from "incitement to hate" on the grounds of their faith -- a key demand of Muslim activists -- is bound to restrict criticism of religion as such, Humanists argue.

His readiness to bend government policies to the views of "faith" leaders, they say, has led religious hard-liners to demand ever more concessions on social and cultural issues such as limiting the right to stage plays that might offend religion.

In most Muslim countries, religion and politics are closely intertwined and apostasy or renunciation of the faith is often a criminal offence. Penalties include execution, but "apostates" are routinely treated as outcasts and harassed.

Secular and evangelical Christian groups launched a campaign at the United Nations last year to convince Islamic leaders to work to change this, but to little effect.

SOME ADVANCES

However Humanists see some advances over the past year in Europe, Asia and even in Africa where atheists have begun to organise.

In Europe, Vatican efforts to have the EU constitution include a reference to the continent's Christian heritage were blocked. The European Parliament voted to bar a traditionalist Italian Catholic from becoming the new justice commissioner.

France's ban on Muslim headscarves in state schools was imposed in September with few problems, despite warnings that it would unleash protests and alienate many in Europe's largest Islamic minority.

In Spain, the Socialists replaced the Catholic-inspired Popular Party after its decade in power and began a series of secular reforms angering the Church hierarchy, including a move to allow gay marriage.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost power in India's general elections to the firmly secular Congress Party.

Even at the United Nations there was good news from for Humanists.

Bangladeshi writer and medical doctor Taslima Nasrin, living in exile after criticising Islam and an active campaigner for the rights of women and the non-religious, was awarded a UNESCO prize for promoting cultural tolerance.

But at the same time a Vatican campaign led to the world body adding "Christianophobia" to "Islamophobia" and anti-Semitism as issues its human rights bodies report on -- a sign for many that religious forces are reinforcing their grip.

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boundary 2

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: What's Going On?

Friday, March 25, 2005

WSJ.com - Bush Lines Up Unlikely Allies

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay

Thursday, March 24, 2005

The New York Times > National > Schiavo Case Highlights Catholic-Evangelical Alliance

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: DeLay, Deny and Demagogue

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The New York Times > Washington > News Analysis: Wolfowitz Nod Follows Spread of Conservative Philosophy

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

The New York Times > AP > National > Bush to Recommend Wolfowitz for World Bank

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Guardian | The last of the utopian projects: Eric Hobsbawm

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Columbia U. Professor, Criticized for Views on Israel, Is Banned From Teacher-Training Program

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Historians in Cahoots [signed]