The End of History Revisited

in Current Affairs, History | September 15th, 2007

fukuy3.jpgStew­art Brand, the cre­ator of the icon­ic Whole Earth Cat­a­log, heads up the The Long Now Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to cul­ti­vat­ing “slower/better” think­ing and fos­ter­ing greater respon­si­bil­i­ty over “the next 10,000 years.” (Yes, they’re ambi­tious.) To help bring this about, Brand hosts a month­ly speak­ing series that you can down­load as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — MP3s), and, in late June, he brought in Fran­cis Fukuya­ma to speak. Fukuya­ma, a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal econ­o­my at Johns Hop­kins, first made a name for him­self in 1989 when, dur­ing the wan­ing days of the Cold War, he pub­lished an essay called “The End of His­to­ry?” (Lat­er, he would turn it into a best­selling book, The End of His­to­ry and the Last Man.) Steal­ing a page from Karl Marx, Fukuya­ma main­tained that his­to­ry had a direc­tion to it. It flowed with pur­pose, always bring­ing progress. But the end point was­n’t com­mu­nist utopia. It was lib­er­al democ­ra­cy mixed with free mar­ket eco­nom­ics. That’s where human­i­ty was col­lec­tive­ly head­ing, with a vic­to­ri­ous Amer­i­ca lead­ing the way. (In his orig­i­nal essay, he wrote, “What we may be wit­ness­ing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the pass­ing of a par­tic­u­lar peri­od of post-war his­to­ry, but the end of his­to­ry as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ide­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion and the uni­ver­sal­iza­tion of West­ern lib­er­al democ­ra­cy as the final form of human gov­ern­ment.”)

In the inter­ven­ing years, the world’s move­ment toward west­ern democ­ra­cy has­n’t exact­ly fol­lowed a straight line, and the 9/11 attacks and the ensu­ing “War on Ter­ror” have seem­ing­ly lent cre­dence to a dim­mer world­view, one out­lined by Samuel Hunt­ing­ton in the con­tro­ver­sial book, The Clash of Civ­i­liza­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order. Speak­ing 18 years after the pub­li­ca­tion of his orig­i­nal essay (iTunes — Feed — MP3 — Blog), Fukuya­ma revis­its, clar­i­fies and large­ly defends his the­sis that lib­er­al democ­ra­cy is still on track to pre­vail. And that’s because, in his mind, there are deep eco­nom­ic, sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal trends in motion that dri­ve almost inex­orably toward these polit­i­cal ends. Whether he is right or wrong, it’s impos­si­ble to say. Regard­less, his talk is smart, hard­ly dog­mat­ic, and worth your time.

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Remembering Lenny Bruce and When Taboo-Breaking Comedy Collided with the Law

in Comedy, History, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 14th, 2007

Lenny Bruce (born Leonard Alfred Schnei­der) intro­duced a strong­ly satir­i­cal, taboo-break­ing form of com­e­dy dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, which paved the way for some of America’s great come­di­ans — Richard Pry­or, George Car­lin, Chris Rock, even John Stew­art. And for ush­er­ing in this new era of com­e­dy, Bruce paid a heavy per­son­al price. In 1961, San Fran­cis­co author­i­ties arrest­ed Bruce on obscen­i­ty charges. Then, in 1964, Bruce found him­self in the crosshairs of Manhattan’s Dis­trict Attor­ney, Frank Hor­gan. A six month tri­al fol­lowed, which raised impor­tant First Amend­ment issues, and which also brought Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Allen Gins­berg, Nor­man Mail­er, and William Sty­ron to Bruce’s defense. (Dylan would lat­er write a song about the affair.) But, regard­less, the tri­al end­ed bad­ly for Bruce, and, two years lat­er, the impov­er­ished come­di­an would die of a hero­in over­dose.

For Bruce’s lega­cy, things have got­ten a lit­tle bet­ter. In 2003, Gov­er­nor George Pata­ki grant­ed New York’s first posthu­mous par­don to the satirist, call­ing it “a dec­la­ra­tion of New York’s com­mit­ment to uphold­ing the First Amend­ment.” Mean­while, legal schol­ars have writ­ten books that paint Bruce and his First Amend­ment bat­tles in a rather sym­pa­thet­ic light. Below you can find a video clip of Lenny Bruce appear­ing on the very pop­u­lar Steve Allen Show. It gives you a pret­ty good look at the brand of com­e­dy that Bruce pre­sent­ed to the wider nation. (You can access Part II of the video here.) Beyond this, you may also want to check out the actu­al FBI file that was kept on Bruce. It’s been pub­lished thanks to the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. And if you’re up for more video footage, here is a clear­ly deflat­ed Bruce using his tri­al as fod­der for com­e­dy.

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100 Great American Speeches

in Audio Books, English Language, History | August 30th, 2007

mlk.jpgAmer­i­can Rhetoric has com­piled its list of the top 100 Amer­i­can speech­es, all of which can be con­ve­nient­ly accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speech­es list­ed here are known for their elo­quence, and many for the piv­otal role they played in effect­ing major polit­i­cal and social change. The com­pi­la­tion lets you lis­ten to F.D.R. lead­ing the US through the Depres­sion ( “There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself” ) as well as through World War II with his Fire­side Chats. Then, there is Tru­man and Kennedy ( “Ich bin ein Berlin­er” ) fight­ing the Cold War, Nixon bol­ster­ing sup­port for the Viet­nam War with his “Great Silent Major­i­ty” speech, and Mar­tin Luther King ( “I Have a Dream” ) and Mal­colm X ( “The Bal­lot or the Bul­let” ) press­ing for civ­il rights in their dif­fer­ent ways.

The speech­es can be heard large­ly in full, and, while most are polit­i­cal in con­tent, some gems are not. Take for exam­ple William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address, Ursu­la Le Guin’s “A Left-Hand­ed Com­mence­ment Address,” and Elie Wiesel’s “The Per­ils of Indif­fer­ence.” Give these speech­es some time, and it might be a while before you come back up for air.

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Voices of American Presidents

in History | August 14th, 2007

fdrstamp2.jpgHere’s anoth­er exam­ple of pod­casts that bring the past back to life. Thanks to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, you can lis­ten to audio record­ings of twen­ty mod­ern Amer­i­can pres­i­dents (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), start­ing with Grover Cleve­land (1892) and end­ing with GWB. The record­ings most­ly tak­en from inau­gu­ra­tion address­es and State of the Union speech­es include some good his­tor­i­cal finds. Here you get Ted­dy Roo­sevelt blast­ing the elite’s sub­ver­sion of the pop­u­lar will, FDR speak­ing of an endur­ing democ­ra­cy, Har­ry Tru­man call­ing for a last­ing peace after World War II, JFK out­lin­ing the US response to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, and Bill Clin­ton tout­ing the longest peace­time eco­nom­ic expan­sion in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

For more archives of pres­i­den­tial speech­es, here are a few oth­er col­lec­tions worth check­ing out:

FDR: A Pres­i­den­cy Revealed (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pre­sent­ed by the His­to­ry Chan­nel, this col­lec­tion fea­tures some of FDR’s famous speech­es, includ­ing his Fire Side Chats and his first inau­gur­al address. (“There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself.”)

Pres­i­den­tial Archives Uncov­ered (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Pro­duced by the Pres­i­den­tial Libraries of the Nation­al Archives, this col­lec­tion presents clips of pres­i­dents’ seri­ous pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions as well as their per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers. Includes talks by Pres­i­dents Hoover, Roo­sevelt, Tru­man, Eisen­how­er, Kennedy, John­son, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Rea­gan, Bush, and Clin­ton.

Tru­man Library Pod­casts (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) Among these record­ings you will notably find a lengthy talk by David McCul­lough, Tru­man’s Pulitzer Priz­ing Win­ning biog­ra­ph­er.

The Speech­es of John F. Kennedy (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) A new but still small col­lec­tion. Looks poised to grow, how­ev­er.

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The Rich Get Busy and the Poor Get Poorer

in Books, Business, History | August 8th, 2007

Gre­go­ry Clarke, an eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an at UC Davis, offers an unusu­al take on the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion in his upcom­ing book, A Farewell to Alms. Most schol­ars argue that the chang­ing insti­tu­tions of industrialization–factories, cor­po­ra­tions, cities–worked togeth­er to drag us humans into the mod­ern world. Clarke turns that idea on its head.

As the New York Times put it in a recent review, Clarke “believes that the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion — the surge in eco­nom­ic growth that occurred first in Eng­land around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human pop­u­la­tion. The change was one in which peo­ple grad­u­al­ly devel­oped the strange new behav­iors required to make a mod­ern econ­o­my work. The mid­dle-class val­ues of non­vi­o­lence, lit­er­a­cy, long work­ing hours and a will­ing­ness to save emerged only recent­ly in human his­to­ry.”

The most fas­ci­nat­ing part of the argu­ment is that, accord­ing to Clarke, these val­ues spread in part because the upper class­es were more suc­cess­ful at breed­ing and mak­ing sure their off­spring sur­vived to adult­hood. By exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal wills and prop­er­ty exchange, Clarke deter­mined that “[t]he mod­ern pop­u­la­tion of the Eng­lish is large­ly descend­ed from the eco­nom­ic upper class­es of the Mid­dle Ages.” Gen­er­a­tions of ille­git­i­mate off­spring, prof­li­gate par­ents and non-inher­it­ing prog­e­ny sal­lied forth and mar­ried into the low­er class­es, bring­ing their cap­i­tal­ist ways with them.

If this the­o­ry holds up, it might shed some light on the rise of the Eng­lish nov­el. The great Vic­to­ri­an nov­el-writ­ers have traced uncan­ni­ly sim­i­lar process­es of social inter­min­gling and dis­per­sion, and it’s a tru­ism that almost every sto­ry piv­ots around an inher­i­tance. We might visu­al­ize the process as hun­dreds of char­ac­ters cir­cling a few well-guard­ed piles of mon­ey. Most of them end up set­tling for less, and most of the dra­ma and ten­sion in the plot arcs stem from these com­pro­mis­es. And, of course, the nov­els trace the spread of just the bour­geois virtues Clarke is research­ing.

Clarke’s work rais­es a dis­turb­ing larg­er ques­tion: is this a form of Dar­win­ian selec­tion at work? Is cap­i­tal­ism hav­ing an evo­lu­tion­ary impact on human progress? Or is that a ridicu­lous propo­si­tion? To see for your­self, you can check out the first cou­ple of chap­ters for free on Clarke’s web­site, here.

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The Plot Against FDR: Stranger than Fiction

in History | July 25th, 2007

fdr200.jpgIn 2004, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against Amer­i­ca imag­ined an alter­na­tive Amer­i­can his­to­ry. The year is 1940, and Charles Lind­bergh, an Amer­i­can hero and Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, beats FDR in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and takes Amer­i­ca down the path toward fas­cism, import­ing to the US the worst that Europe has to offer.

An implau­si­ble his­tor­i­cal sce­nario? Not entire­ly, not accord­ing to this BBC inves­tiga­tive report (lis­ten here with Real Play­er). In 1933, when Amer­i­ca was mired deeply in the Great Depres­sion, Franklin D. Roo­sevelt came into office and launched fed­er­al poli­cies to revive the econ­o­my. Many now remem­ber well his New Deal poli­cies. But, there were some at the time — par­tic­u­lar­ly well-heeled lead­ers in the Amer­i­can busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty — who adamant­ly opposed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment involv­ing itself in the pri­vate sec­tor. Based on research in the nation­al archives, the BBC inves­ti­ga­tion sug­gests that titans of the indus­tri­al and finan­cial world, includ­ing Prescott Bush (the grand­fa­ther of our sit­ting pres­i­dent), were linked to, if not direct­ly back­ing, a plot that would have Maj.-Gen. Smed­ley But­ler, a high­ly dec­o­rat­ed Marine, lead a 500,000 pri­vate army and push Roo­sevelt out of pow­er. It was a move tak­en straight from Hitler’s and Mus­solin­i’s play­book. To get more on the coup and how it played out, give the 30-minute inves­tiga­tive report a lis­ten.

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex .…

in History | July 24th, 2007

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The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and American?) Empire: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books, Current Affairs, History, Literature | July 13th, 2007

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­ume 1 is. With a run­time of almost 20 hours, this audio­book — click to access indi­vid­ual files or the full zip file — will make it so that you’re not look­ing for the remain­ing vol­umes any time soon. But don’t wor­ry they’re even­tu­al­ly com­ing.

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a recent pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

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