Son of Timatollah

I just finished the first volume of Allan Nevin’s Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (Easton Press, 1932). That marks the halfway point (for now) of my reading of biographies of the presidents of the United States in order of their service.

I'm not exactly sure when I started the project, sometime in 2004 or so, I think. I had read bios of Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin in the early 2000s, then David McCullough's John Adams: A Life, and Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, before I dove in and found a Washington bio. It's been fairly steady since then.

Cleveland, elected in 1884, defeated for reelection in 1888, but elected again in 1892, is considered both the 22nd and 24th president. One of my trivial gripes with President Obama is his sometimes referring to the forty-three previous presidents, when there have been only forty-two previous presidents, but forty-three previous presidencies.

I couldn’t find what I felt would be a truly comprehensive recent bio of Cleveland. I pick these by reviewing sources on the Wikipedia page for the president whose bio I’m going to read, and then skimming Amazon reviews of the candidate bios. At Amazon, one learns that there are quite a few people out there who are engaged in or have completed this same project. So I ended up with this two-volume work, perfectly split with volume one finishing with Cleveland’s defeat by Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. William Henry Harrison's presidency is remembered almost solely for its short duration—Old Tippecanoe became ill almost immediately after his inauguration and only served 32 days—and its giving us the first instance of a vice-president ascending to president after the president’s death. (Tyler was a total mess.)

While matters of situation lead Democrats to want to compare President Obama to Franklin Roosevelt and matters of temperament lead one to compare him with Lincoln, it would be wise for a greater number of contemporary Democrats to study the presidency of Cleveland. Cleveland was elected president after having served previously for one-term as mayor of Buffalo and only one-half of his term as governor of New York. His success in Buffalo rooting out corruption and his success in Albany in spite of opposition from Tammany Hall within his own party had made him the choice of good-government types in both parties.

The GOP of the time had held the presidency since 1860 (excepting the weirdness that was the Andrew Johnson administration), and it had controlled both the House and the Senate for most of the same time. While its opposition to slavery was clearly its core strength during the Civil War and during Reconstruction, its recognition of an active role of the general government in developing the national economy was also clear at the time of its founding. That active role grew in the post-Civil War era into a cozy relationship between business and the GOP that continues to this day. And not unlike this day, there had also evolved in the Democratic Party and goodly number of politicians who had ties to both national and local industry. The big businesses of the day were railroads, who had received numerous grants, concessions, franchises, and subsidies from the federal and state governments to build rail lines locally and across the continent; iron and steel, with plants in the “New South”, e.g. Birmingham, joining existing mills in Pennsylvania and New York; and textiles (still located then along the fall line from New England into the Piedmont). Labor had just begun to come onto the scene.

Both finance and taxation were issues during the times, with Civil War import tariffs still on the books, even having been increased in the time since the war. The Federal government enjoyed revenue in surplus of its expenses, largely due to those tariffs, as well as taxes on liquor and tobacco, and most everyone recognized that the surplus would eventually lead to an end to federal indebtedness, something the economists of the time, as likely would those today, recognized as just as great an evil as continually increasing debt. Federal bonds were part and parcel of the monetary system then, just as they are now. The money of the time was gold coin, silver coin, and greenbacks, and the use of fiat money (greenbacks) was unpopular with creditors and financial interests of the east, but very popular with the debtors and the farmers and developers of the west.

We can look forward to a 2012 campaign in which health care, taxes, deficit/debt, and money are issues, with the last not really being able to be debated much because the Federal Reserve remains, for now at least, mostly off limits to debate. Excepting Ron Paul, few candidates on the right openly discuss the crazy idea of returning to basing the money supply on the ability to mine a selected metal (as much as many of them might like to). The campaigns of 1888, 1892, 1896, and 1900 would see each of the issues above come into consideration and dispute.

In 1888, the tariff was the dominant campaign issue, with Cleveland’s vigorous call for tariff reform—both reducing the surplus and leading toward freer trade—coming too late in his first term to prevent his proposal being defeated and giving the Republicans and their business supporters an issue they used successfully to prevent his reelection, but leading to the excesses of the McKinley tariff of 1890. At the time, though, big employers had far greater leverage over the votes of their employees, since unionization was rare, and employers could either escort their employees to the ballot box and ensure how they voted, or still, in some cases, collect the ballots of their employees and have them taken to the ballot box themselves. There was a time, we forget, before the Australian ballot.

Not to draw the parallelism too closely, but the contemporary debate over taxes is similar. The current tax structure, brought to you by a GOP bought lock, stock, and barrel, by big business and big finance, in cahoots with a substantial wing of the Democratic Party, similarly in the pocket of big finance (more) and big business (some), gave us the Bush era tax cuts, which, as sensible people know, has continued a shift in wealth from the middle-class to the rich without delivering one bit the promised increase in jobs or prosperity. The Gilded Age tariffs, similarly, put big money into the pockets of industrialists and financiers, by protecting their businesses from foreign competition while increasing the cost of necessities and other products to those who farmed and those who worked.

Cleveland began his term recognized as a conservative Democrat with some connection to those with financial interests, particularly in his being a hard (gold) money guy. But he clearly came out for a more sensible structure for tariffs that would reduce the costs of raw materials and manufactured products, to the advantage of ordinary citizens. The debt situation of his time is topsy-turvy to ours now, but the necessity of reforming the way the Federal government raises revenue is just as important in this election as it was then. We have to ensure that all pay their fair share, understanding that it is completely and totally fair to expect those who can pay more to actually pay more through real, progressive income tax rates.

So, I encourage my fellow Democrats to learn more about President Cleveland and not to look only to the Great Depression and FDR for parallels in economies and politics.

Labels: biography, cleveland, gilded age, grover cleveland, obama, parallel, president

[This is a reprint of a brief review I posted on Visual Bookshelf.]

Steven Johnson,  Where Good Ideas Come From, Riverhead, 2010.

What an informative and entertaining read. Johnson explores how innovation happens, from discovery in the natural world via the sciences to invention in technology via engineering. What emerges is contrary to the lone actor idea that's popular both in popular culture as well as in commerce-directed politics.

It turns out that ideas and innovations that have impact are more likely to emerge where there are networks to build foundations, explore precursors, and create environments where the new concepts and inventions can flourish. Johnson doesn't just claim this without justification, he performs a reasonable analysis of numerous inventions, classifying them by owned/public and by sole/networked, demonstrating that a preponderance come from the public-networked combination.

His identification of aspects of good innovations are the chapter titles—"the adjacent possible," "liquid networks," "the slow hunch," "serendipity," "error," "expatiation," and "platforms"—each with multiple examples of supporting ideas and technologies. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ideas and the kinds of environments that make good ones come forth.

p.s. The appendix to the book with its list of discoveries and innovations is worth the price.

Labels: book, ideas, johnson, review, steven

How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman. Jossey-Bass, 2010.

How Learning Works takes results collected from the educational research community and puts them into terms that an educational practitioner can understand and use. The seven principles—students' prior knowledge can help or hinder learning; how students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know; students' motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn; to develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned; goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students' learning; students' current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning; and to become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning—seem common sense at first glance, but the details behind each and how to use those in students' educational experiences are valuable and applicable anywhere from K-12 to higher education. It's the how to apply these principles part that's most valuable. A good read for anyone in the educational world.

Labels: ambrose, education, how learning works, learning, principles, teaching, techniques

Heard what was likely a repeat of the wake/memorial for Sargent Shriver on the drive home yesterday. Heard two things I hope are worth sharing. First was a funny by George McGovern on Methodism for my old MYF friends: "It won't keep you from sinning, but it will take all the fun out of it." (Maybe that's why I reverted to heathenism.)

The second was shared by the immediately prior speaker, who I didn't get an ID on. And I came in during this recitation of a poem that Shriver loved, which after a little bit of searching apparently Mother Theresa had on display (and which was wrongly attributed to her for a while). The poem, The Paradoxical Commandments, is by Dr. Kent M. Keith, who wrote it as a Harvard sophomore in the late 1960s. Go check it out, please. Cheesy, yes, but sweet and likely a fulfilling approach to life on this rock.

Labels: commandments, george, keith, kent, mcgovern, paradoxical, sargent, shriver, wake

For years, opponents of legal recognition for the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgendered people have used the phrase "no special rights" as part of their arguments. In their framing, LGBTT people serving without fear in the military—or, recalling Anita Bryant, the classroom—is a special right. LGBTT people marrying the person they love (who, duh, very frequently happens to be of the same gender as they are), is a special right. LGBTT people not being able to be fired from their job is a special right. Etc.

It's never made sense, but with yesterday's approval by the Senate of the House bill that repeals Don't Ask, Don't Tell, empowering the executive and military to phase DADT out within the next few months, what becones clear is that "no special rights," like much of their anti-progressive agenda, is upside down.

The right is right that there should be no special rights. So much so, that maybe we ought to enshrine the no-special-rights idea into a near-fundamental principle: No Special Rights. The rules we operate under ought to be structured so that what's good for one ought to be good for all. If you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. Straight Person, can join the military, then so can any LGBTT person with similar qualifications. If you can't be fired from your job for being male, female; red, yellow, brown, black, white; 20, 30, 40, 50 years old; born rich, born poor; born in the USA, permanent resident, naturalized citizen; etc., then neither can any LGBTT person with similar attributes.

Of course, there are times when the government, as the legitimate repository of the community's interests, should abridge a citizen's rights. We have multiple ages of empowerment in consent to sex, signing up for military service, buying booze, and voting. We recognize that certain professions and careers like firefighter, EMT, and cop require levels of physical mobility and strength at the upper end of the scale; once the performance criterion is established, though, we ostensibly don't distinguish on the basis of attributes like gender/sex or color/race any more than we would on the basis of eye color or hair color.

There are legal terms for the government's exclusion of certain classes of citizens—or empowering of other individuals and collectives to exclude others or include only certain folk— ranging from rational basis to strict scrutiny. I won't claim to understand the distinctions among those as well as I could or ought to. The arguments used to put DADT in place initially and then against its repeal claimed that the presence of openly gay and lesbian individuals in military service would destroy unit cohesion and decrease the effectiveness of the military, hence the government had a legitimate interest in prohibiting LGBTT individuals from serving in the military. The recently conducted study by the DoD of attitudes towards gay men and lesbians serving suggests that even if it were once true, it no longer is so. And, this has never been an "all other things being equal" situation. The military has a unique ability with its command structure to achieve unit cohesion through training, practice, and, most of all, orders.

With DADT repeal passed and waiting to be signed, and with the current administration expected to put policies in place within the service branches leading to its going away, let's move to apply the No Special Rights principle to the matters of employment, marriage recognition, marriage, and immigration of spouses/partners. That is, an employer has No Special Right to pay less, not give benefits to, not hire, or fire an LGBTT employee. Health care providers have No Special Right to exclude family of choice from a patient's visitors. The general government and the governments of the states have No Special Right not to recognize the marriages of LGBTT folk in states where same-sex marriages are performed, including the implications of that for taxes and survivorship. The governments of the states that don't perform same-sex marriages have No Special Right not to. And the general government has No Special Right to prevent the non-citizen spouses of LGBTT US citizens from entering the United States the same as would the spouse of any other US citizen.

With the repeal of DADT passed, the onus shifts from proponents of legal recognition of LGBTT rights to explain why change is necessary onto the opponents to explain why change is not necessary. Against equal rights for LGBTT individuals: It's up to you to demonstrate conclusively, if you can, why you should be exempt from the No Special Rights principle. What gives you the right to treat others like second-class citizens?

And, just in case you've forgotten, in a country where religious freedom is rightfully enshrined, your personal religious beliefs, which must and will be respected, do not empower you to discriminate against others in the civic arena.

Labels: DADT, don't ask don't tell, gay marriage, gay rights, lgbt, LGBTT, marriage, same-sex marriage

For all our troubles, midterm finds this Administration and this country entering a season of hope. We inherited a mess, we didn't run away from it and now we're turning it around ... My biggest regret is that because the accumulated damages piled up so high for so long, putting America's house in order has been a tough and painful task ... We've got to prove that what we said about it is true - it'll work.

Answer here.

Labels: elections, midterm, president

Just for reference, what I posted on 1 September 2003. Not that it is necessarily inconsistent with what I posted yesterday: Being aware of radical Islam as a threat to what we hold dear isn't the same thing as saying it's anything goes in the 9/11-memorialization department, which is not to say there were aspect of how to commemorate, in a positive sense, that I failed to address yesterday.

Contemporary comment in square brackets; e.g., [added on 12 September 2010].

I think 9/11 is still very very important to be aware of. I think that to the degree we try to pretend like enough time has elapsed that its impact isn't relevant at this time is not, in many senses, wise. I believe, unfortunately, that radical Islam would not stop even if it controlled Mecca and Medina and Jerusalem -- power corrupts, etc. -- and that many of those who believe that way will continue to threaten free peoples -- or North Americans and Europeans and substantial numbers of Asians and most Latin Americans these days and increasing numbers of Africans, and the Israelis, if you think we're just all controlled by the big corporations and that representative democracy is a sham. [I have no idea why "Israelis" isn't the end of that sentence. I couldn't tell you why the corporations/democracy line is there.]

Threaten with death. Threaten with destruction. Threaten with subjugation.

While our individual, national, and global pasts may have brought us to this point, with plenty of wrong, hateful, and stupid moves on everyone's parts since time immemorial, nothing in that past justifies the actions of radical Islam. Those who believe that way base what they are doing on their traditions and their book, just as radical Christians in the USA continue to attempt to justify wrongful attitudes towards some on the bases of their traditions and their book. Luckily we live in a part of the world where those radical Christians are restricted to some degree by other traditions and other texts, like, say, the US Constitution. But there's only a short step from vouchers to madrassas, so it could happen here if we're negligent.

Would/will those radical Christians try the same murderous tactics that the radical Islamicists do? Hopefully we never get to find out. But the radical Islamacists continue. Today, tomorrow, next week.

I don't think they should not be allowed to achieve their aims. I think that free individuals should be allowed to worship as they choose, but that aggresive religions -- like collectivist or totalitarian or facist political movements -- must be restricted, preferrably by custom but, if necessary, by law.

I regret that stopping them requires, at times, the use of physical violence. Or killing. I respect those who thoughtfully disagree with using so much or any force, but I prefer not to live in the first phases of several hundred years of a very dark age. Or that such an age come to be while we are alive to stop it.

N.B.: "Radical Islam" does not equal "Arab." [Or "Muslim."] Saying "the Arabs [Muslims] this, the Arabs [Muslims] that" is just as stupid as "the Jews this, the Jews that." It doesn't fit. At least take the effort to pin things down to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Egyptian government, [the Taliban -- we thought they were defunct -- the Pakistani intelligence agency,] etc. There is groupthink, but as long as there are individuals, attributing groupthink to attribute groups is, in fact, not accurate. Formal organizations with formal processes is one thing, but "the Jews," "the Arabs," "the Gays," etc. just doesn't cut it for me.

Exceptions matter.

Individuals matter. Individuals are all that matter, in the long run. Groups are just accidents of attributes that belong to individuals. Sorry if that is disrespectful to your individual traditions.

So don't forget 9/11. Don't forget that there really is a "they" out there that wants to kill "you." Just for being born where you were. Just for being who you are, whether that's American, gay, Jewish, or a female human who enjoys having sex. Much less all of the above.

Labels: 9/11, timatollah