Don't know much about history

Hats off to Eric Muller for actually reading--and writing a terrific post about--Thomas E. Woods' Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. The book is a NYT best-seller, is No. 60 on Amazon's list, and, I'm told, was the No. 2 Amazon best seller in the purple city of Cleveland in December, just behind Jon Stewart's America. In the author's own words,

the book, unlike the typical American history textbook, has a real sympathy for the free market economy and does not make the free market the scapegoat for every ill in America. To the contrary, it shows how central market economics has been to American prosperity. It doesn't go after businessmen as the source of all evil and portray government as the repository of people who are just disinterested crusaders for justice, for example.

Helpfully, Eric connects the dots that align Woods with the League of the South, of which he is a founding member. We've pondered the League of the South on these virtual pages recently before: another founding member is Steven Wilkins, co-author, with Douglas Wilson, of Southern Slavery As it Was.

Picking back up on Woods' own description of the book:

Secondly, it's sort of Jeffersonian. It has sympathy for the idea of local self-governance. Unlike the typical treatment of American history, it does not portray the centralization in Washington as an unambiguously progressive development--that the more power gets centralized, the better the country is.

This thesis is being pursued in not so subtle commentary to Eric's post and the cross-post at ACS Blog. "Deoxy" writes, for example, "'the constitution was never understood to be a permanent union' - as evidenced profusely by many writings of the founding fathers and their references to seceding from England."

Now, I don't know much about history, but this much I know. At least among the political elite of North Carolina prior to the Civil War, there was a strong belief that the Constitution contained no such thing as a "right to secede." Judge Thomas Ruffin was the most senior of the state's delegates to a peace conference held in Washington in 1861. He worked as hard as he possibly could to reach an agreement that would both preserve slavery and preserve the union, for he was convinced, as were other leading southerners, that no right of secession existed. "I was born before the Constitution was adopted," he said from the floor of the conference. "May God grant that I do not outlive it."

The conference was unsuccessful in producing compromise, and Ruffin went on to cast his vote in Hillsborough in favor of secession. But as one historian put it,

He later described this position as a belief in the "sacred right of revolution"--"the right of a whole people to change their form of Government by annulling one Constitution and forming another for themselves." Thus he endorsed secession not because he believed in a constitutional right to separate from the Union but only as a revolutionary act against an oppressive federal government that he believed had already destroyed the existing Constitution.

(Timothy S. Huebner, The Southern Judicial Tradition: State Judges and Sectional Distinctiveness, 1790-1890 [Georgia Univ. Press, 1999].)

A curious thing happened next. Judge Ruffin lost a lot in the war; the Yankees just about destroyed his farm in Alamance County. This is from a letter from C.S. Wooten to Judge Walter Clark written in 1915, remembering the beloved judge (by then long dead):

I saw Judge Ruffin several times. I remember coming down on the cars from the up country in the fall of 1865 & he put out on the train at Hillsboro & went to Raleigh. I heard him talking on the cars & he said I defended the ordinance of secession. I would do it again if the halter was around my neck. He said the Yanks burnt over 14 miles of fence & carried off over 20 horses from him.

(Walter Clark collection, N.C. Archives.)

It appears that the judge may have revised in his own mind, after the war was over, how he thought about secession. It seems at least possible that the strength of the claims for the weakness of Union ties rose considerably after those ties were so violently broken.

"It's going to get very bad, folks."

Via Majikthise, the transcript of a recent speech by Seymour Hirsch.

For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of--you know, we all deal in “macro” in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, “Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?” Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over--by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about. That's wards--you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities. We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to--it's--I'm trying to be optimistic. We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it. Another salvation may be the economy. It's going to go very bad, folks. . . .

Read (as they say) the whole thing.

Building it up, slowing it down

In Praise of Slowness, by Carl Honoré

I had an interesting conversation the other day with René Campbell, director of the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau. She's interested in the "Slow Cities" movement. Begun in Italy and spreading (slowly) across western Europe, it hasn't made much of an impact yet in the United States--unlike the related "Slow Food" movement, which has. Both are responses to globalization, which "proposes median models which belong to no one and inevitably generate mediocrity." Quoting further from the Slow Cities charter: cities are asked to

1- implement an environmental policy designed to maintain and develop the characteristics of their surrounding area and urban fabric, placing the onus on recovery and reuse techniques
2- implement an infrastructural policy which is functional for the improvement, not the occupation, of the land
3- promote the use of technologies to improve the quality of the environment and the urban fabric
4- encourage the production and use of foodstuffs produced using natural, eco-compatible techniques, excluding transgenic products, and setting up, where necessary, presidia to safeguard and develop typical products currently in difficulty, in close collaboration with the Slow Food Ark project and wine and food Presidia
5- safeguard autocthonous production, rooted in culture and tradition, which contributes to the typification of an area, maintaining its modes and mores and promoting preferential occasions and spaces for direct contacts between consumers and quality producers and purveyors
6- promote the quality of hospitality as a real bond with the local community and its specific features, removing the physical and cultural obstacles which may jeopardize the complete, widespread use of a city's resources
7- promote awareness among all citizens, and not only among inside operators, that they live in a Slow City, with special attention to the of young people and schools through the systematic introduction of taste education.

Like the Green Cities movement, the Slow Cities movement emphasizes environmental sustainability.

Could Chapel Hill be a Slow City? We share many of the goals, at least when it comes to the environment. These are important goals to keep in mind as we move forward with the development of Parking Lots 2 and 5 and the Wallace Parking Deck. We're planning for a phased mixed-use development to the tune of $82 million. An "improvement," or an "occupation" of our downtown? I think it can be a genuine improvement if we are careful.

We're trying to be careful with the architecture, particularly the design of the public space. On February 10--timed to be before we go through our first round of evaluation of potential developers--the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce and the Town of Chapel Hill are hosting a session with Ronald Lee Fleming of the Townscape Institute. We will want his help in identifying what kinds of design work best to get people to slow down and interact, "to promote the quality of hospitality."

The odds are against slow cities, as I've suggested before. Wish us luck.

UPDATE on Ronald Lee Fleming's visit here.

North Carolina scenes

Scenes across the state from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. I'm partial to the Chowan County Courthouse (so is Wendell Berry). Paul likes the municipal building in Matthews because it is both Town Hall and Library. We've seen the Big Chair (Thomasville), but not the World's Largest Frying Pan (Rose Hill).

Environmental justice

William G. Meyers III, if appointed to the 9th Circuit, could, along with other Bush appointees, "shake the foundations of environmental law."

Democrats aggressively blocked Myers' appointment with a filibuster in 2004. So when his nomination lapsed at the end of this past congressional session, many legal experts assumed it was dead, along with the nominations of nine other judicial candidates that were blocked by Senate Democrats for their extremist ideology, industry ties, and/or ethical problems. But on Dec. 23, while Americans were distracted by the holidays, the president gave his corporate backers (especially those in the energy and mining industries) a Christmas present: He announced his intent to renominate seven of the filibustered candidates, including Myers. (The other three were given the option of being renominated, but withdrew themselves from consideration.)

"Renomination on this scope and scale of so many judges who the Senate has refused to confirm has never happened before," says Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm. Noting that Congress has already confirmed 204 of Bush's appointees, Sugameli asserts, "President Bush is trying to convert the Senate into a rubber stamp that will confirm 100 percent of his judicial nominees. That is what is really at stake here."

The fox and the henhouse

Marty Lederman is on the case of an evasive president who won't give a straightforward answer to questions about torture.

In a press conference on December 20, he did give an answer: "We are a nation of laws."

Question: "[H]ow concerned are you by the reports of torture--to use your word, the 'interminable' delays to justice, for the detainees held in Guantanamo, and how much that damages America's reputation as a nation which stands for liberty and justice internationally?"

Answer:

Look, we are a nation of laws and to the extent that people say, well, America is no longer a nation of laws--that does hurt our reputation. But I think it's an unfair criticism. As you might remember, our courts have made a ruling, they looked at the jurisdiction, the right of people in Guantanamo to have habeas review, and so we're now complying with the court's decisions. We want to fully vet the court decision, because I believe I have the right to set up military tribunals. And so the law is working to determine what Presidential powers are available and what's not available.

Not long after, Bush abruptly renominated 20 failed judicial candidates. This attempt at "total victory," said the Washington Post, "will only ensure that the war goes on." (The political war, not the other one, though the line isn't all that clear.) Sen. Schumer said, "This opening shot shows he will only be happy if every judge is approved, which is not what the Founding Fathers intended."

People in glass houses

are sometimes experiencing the work of a great architect.

Design blogs ("or Web journals")

I thought it had happened: that the NY Times had broken its own precedent and used the term "blog" without apology or explanation.

On a recent day, the cyberdesign world was buzzing. Bloggers at apartmenttherapy.com had discovered the mystery manufacturer of a hot paint color called Fresh Melon Green. Over at treehugger.com, bamboo coffins were the talk of the moment. A post at Design Sponge, meanwhile, praised ceramic bowls that double as wall sconces.

But no. "Blogs" are promptly identified as "Web journals" in the next graf.

Justice delayed

The State of North Carolina's fight to reclaim a stolen Bill of Rights suffers another setback.

Taking His message on the road

When President Bush speaks of ending tyranny around the world, former Alabama judge Roy Moore sees a local issue. "The real issue in this country is not terrorism, it's tyranny," Moore said. "Tyranny is putting ourselves above God, and our federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have done exactly that."

Last summer, the American Veterans in Domestic Defense "remove[d]" Justice Moore's "beautiful monument from a dark room of the Alabama Supreme Court building" to take it on educational tour into the heartland, then on to Washington. By November it was in Bossier City, La. This week they were in Austin, at the Capitol grounds, the site of contention in an upcoming Supreme Court case on the subject. (The plaintiff is a lawyer who is homeless.)

There's a case from Kentucky on the docket, too. In both cases, there's an argument that the display was in a secular context. For Moore, a win would not be good enough. "The difference between those cases and my case is the acknowledgement of a sovereign God. It's that simple," he said.

Worth a thousand words, they say

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern No. 13 won Time magazine's "Best Comix" award for 2004. Paul loves this book. Like one of my favorite bloggers, I don't get it about graphic fiction. But ever selfless, I gave Paul an autographed copy of Chris Ware's award-winning cover for the book, a redundancy since he had the book already, but suitable for framing. I had to call McSweeney's, though, to make sure it was autographed. I couldn't find it the signature! It is tiny and in pencil, the artist's way, to avoid accusations of the signing machine.

Durham in black and white

"A cafe near the tobacco market," Durham, May 1940

Photos of Jim Crow Durham c. 1939-40 are part of the Library of Congress' collection of such photographs taken for the Farm Security Administration. "Although no documentation has been found to indicate that photographers were explicitly encouraged to photograph racial discrimination signs, the collection includes a significant number of this type of image, which is rarely found in other Prints and Photographs Division collections." At first I thought the photo above, by Jack Delano, was Fishmonger's, below.

Fishmonger's, 806 W. Main Street, Durham

It isn't, obviously, but the style is the same (the door on the right is unused now). It will be hard now to look at this building with innocent eyes.

Can anyone identify the other building? Marion Post Wolcott was taken with it, too. (The reflection gives a hint of the location: where is it, or was it?)

Delano captured a couple of shots of the bus station, a dose of reality to underscore Matt Robinson's art.



But the real reality check--to shift out of Durham and away from Jim Crow for the moment--is this photo in Wolcott's North Carolina collection of a "log house" in Carrboro, 1939.

No John Kennedy

Peggy Noonan takes W. to the woodshed.

How blogging is like a cocktail party

Jeff Pomerantz wonders what it means for him (as an academic) to blog, and he has some interesting ideas.

. . . it occurs to me that the fact that my readers know who I am but I don’t know who they are, makes writing this blog pretty much like all of the writing I do professionally. I publish a paper, the reader knows who I am, but I don’t know who they are or even if they’re reading it. And there’s less chance that I’ll get comments, making the reader even more of a stranger to me. Plus I know many of the people personally who may be reading my stuff; LIS just isn’t that large a field. So I have people I know personally sneaking around reading my writing, & not telling me, & I have no way to know they’re doing it. Jeez, when I put it that way… how weird does that sound? (Or at least I don’t know they’re reading my stuff until I read their stuff and I’m cited in it, inshallah.)

So what’s the big deal? I ask myself. Why do I feel differently about this form of writing than I do about any of my other forms of writing? . . .

The resilience and persistence of cities

On February 11, 2002, just five months after disaster struck in the form of four hijacked airplanes, scholars at MIT launched a remarkable series of discussions on "trauma, recovery, and remembrance." For many it was too soon to think about recovery from the devastation in the heart of New York City, but for urban planners and historians, there was a long view to be taken.

The conference reached beyond the campus walls via live streaming video (the videos are still available). And the book that came out of it, The Resilient City, has just been published. "The process of organizing and producing this book," write editors Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella, "was, in the end, both a scholarly and a therapeutic exercise."*

It is heartening, in a way, to learn that "only forty-two cities worldwide were permanently abandoned following destruction between the years 1100 and 1800." Latter-day examples of dramatic recovery include Atlanta and Richmond, Dresden and Coventry and Berlin. What I'm especially interested in, though, is what the recovery looks like, how a city remembers and tells future audiences what happened: the issue of memorialization.

At the time of the conference, the memorializing process in New York City was not nearly as far along as it was by the time the book was published. Vale offered these cautionary words: "The process of post-disaster recovery is a window into the power structure of the society that has been stricken. . . . Who decides what will be rebuilt where, and which voices carry forth the dominant narratives that interpret what transpires? . . . To analyze remembrance is to look at how what is remembered gets selected, when, and by whom."

The conference videos, especially Vale's talk, were useful to me two years ago as I finished a talk for a conference on "commemoration and the city."


Sgt. William Jasper monument, Savannah

My subject was the history of a statue in Raleigh of Judge Thomas Ruffin, a man revered in official North Carolina history for having been one of the best-respected judges of the 19th century, a man better known by legal historians as the author of an infamous case in the law of slavery. On the one hand I find it therapeutic and deeply necessary to tell the truth about Ruffin's part in solidifying the "absolute" power of the master over the slave. On the other, I worry about my own small place in a sorry history, about the flip side of judging the memorial narratives of the past. There's plenty we might want to ask Judge Ruffin if we were to bring his statue out from the shadow of the court building where it stands today, I concluded, but "the jury is still out on all of us. Before we become too comfortable with our satisfying revisions of a troubling history, as we grapple with the choices we make, the stories we tell, in a new time of war, we might ask how we think we ourselves can avoid the snares of myth and memory."

The jury is still out on the process of memorialization in New York City, too. By the time The Resilient City was going to press, there was more to say about it: architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind were, as Max Page put it in his contribution to the book, "thrown together in a shotgun marriage," out of which they designed their Freedom Tower; while Michael Arad and Peter Walker's "Reflecting Absence" won the memorial competition.



"Reflecting Absence"

Writing in 2004, Page found New York "poised between two kinds of resilience." One embodied a "renewed vitality," a spirit "that led, in the months after 9/11, to an unprecedented outpouring of radical ideas for rebuilding commercial hubs, public housing, and parks across the entire city." It seemed to him, though, that this was giving way to another kind of resilience: "elasticity--that is, like a rubber band, things return back to normal, to life before the event."

Everything, we were told, would change. With office towers ringing a beautiful, clean park and an elegant, clean memorial, we have returned to a vision of New York--including its political and economic state--before 9/11. If all that the rebuilding comes to is a memorial garden with some reconnected streets, a thicket of office towers, and a million-plus square feet for a hotel and shopping mall, then we will have failed to invest in a more vibrant, more just new York, our national jewel, what E.B. White called "the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions."

But this end is not necessarily the end, in New York or anywhere where the past, through conscious process, becomes present: in every urban landscape, there remains the space to reflect upon what is remembered and what will persist.

*An instructor at MIT at the time of the conference, Campanella is now on faculty at UNC. Vale spoke at UNC in 2003 at a conference on affordable housing. Among the speakers at MIT was Edward Linenthal, who spoke here last fall at the conference on "Remembering Reconstruction at Carolina."

UPDATE: Newsweek reviews The Resilient City.

Close encounter

A Futuro house on the move in California. See pictures in this story.

(Via BoingBoing--thanks, Will.)

Why Kennedy's inaugural speech can't be beat

John F. Kennedy understood chiasmus, anaphora, and anastrophe, but rhetorical skill was not really what made his inaugural speech so great. He was simply a different kind of speaker, and we are now a different kind of audience.

On Susan Sontag (again)

Scott McLemee in The American Prospect has the best tribute I've read yet to Susan Sontag. He discovered her, as I did, at a young age in Texas:

My first recollection of reading her goes back a quarter-century, to the moment when (determined to get an education, despite the best efforts of the Texas public-school system to the contrary) I got hold of a copy of Against Interpretation and Other Essays from the Carnegie-funded public library in the next county. It was the original hardback, from 1966, its dust jacket wrapped in Mylar. Before opening the book itself, I sat looking at the photo on the back. It showed a woman looking down, so lost in thought that she could not possibly be aware of her own beauty.

At the end of the title essay, Sontag wrote, “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” For me, this sentence meant, for one thing, an appointment with the dictionary. . . .

Inauguration Day

Bah! Humbug! says my neighbor (distinguished presidential scholar) Bill Leuchtenburg about a $40 million inauguration.

The event today is "by far the most ostentatious wartime inauguration," another historian says.

I'm OK, you're OK, plastic's a tough call

Hurrying to beat the flurry of snow, this afternoon at the store I had to pause to answer the timeless question: "Is plastic OK?" An environmental reporter at Grist magazine seems unclear on the details, but she's basically convinced me that no, it probably isn't: "The mysterious world of plastics: convenient, yet filled with vague and shadowy dangers."