Im-Politic: Why the Cancel Culture Can Be Really Useful These Days

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1619 Project, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, arts, Ben & Jerry's, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, celebrities, China, Dan Snyder, entertainment, ESPN, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, history, human rights, Im-Politic, Jefferson Starship, Josh Hawley, National Basketball Association, NBA, Nike, police brutality, racism, Roger Waters, sports, Starbuck's, The New York Times, Washington Redskins, wokeness

Of course, what sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski thinks about Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or racial justice and police brutality issues generally, or even the proper role of politics in sports, has no intrinsic importance.

I mean, he’s a…sports reporter. As a human being, he’s entitled to his views, and in principle he’s entitled to express them in public. But although he’s great at scooping the competition on the latest roster moves by the Minnesota Timberwolves or whoever, he brings no special qualifications to these matters, and based on what we know, has no distinctive, much less especially valuable, insights to offer. Indeed, he does’t even apparently have any interest in offering them (unless you’re the kind of person impressed with the eloquence of an F-bomb).

Nonetheless, Wojnarowski’s outburst, and suspension by his employer, ESPN, represents a particularly informative opportunity for explaining why the industries like sports and entertainment should stay away from politics not necessarily for the good of the country (a subject that’s unexpectedly beside the point for this discussion), but for their own good. Just as important, his moments of fame outside the professional basketball world make clear that the so-called Cancel Culture that’s emerged with special force recently in the United States has some genuinely constructive uses in these current fraught times.

To recap, Wojnarowski covers pro basketball for sports cable network and website ESPN, and clearly has strong feelings about racial justice/policing etc issues. We know this from his reaction last Friday to message sent by Hawley to the National Basketball Association (NBA) protesting its decision for allowing players to wear “messages that promote social justice on its jerseys this summer but not allow messages that support law enforcement or are critical of China’s Communist Party.” He responded by emailing his F-bomb to Hawley, who proceeded to send out a tweet containing the communication’s image. (See this account for the details.)

To his credit, Wojnarowski has apologized completely, and with apparent sincerity for showing disrespect. But regardless of what you think about the issues above, the NBA’s decision under Commissioner Adam Silver, to “uphold” and even “stand for” values that no one of good will could object to in the abstract is bound to be a recipe for continuing trouble and a hornet’s nest it would do well to avoid for two main and overlapping reasons.

First, what non-arbitrary yardsticks, if any, does the NBA, or a similar organization, use to decide which views it endorses. As widely noted, the NBA is a strongly majority African American league, and Silver has explained that he therefore has tried to be sensitive to the concerns of black players, many of whom have experienced firsthand the varied socioeconomic problems and forms of prejudice that have plagued the black community for so long. That’s perfectly fine, and in my opinion laudible, when it comes to supporting these players expressing their views off the court, as individuals. But as representatives of a team or entire league? And when the league itself takes stances?

This is when a raft of thorny issues rears its head, especially if the league’s policy isn’t “anything goes.” For example, what if – as Hawley suggested – a player wants to wear on his jersey a pro-police or pro-military slogan, or perhaps “All Lives Matter”? Would the league allow that? And if not, on what grounds? Does the NBA really want to permit some forms of Constitutionally protected expression but not others? Would it be willing to establish an issue-oriented inspired litmus test for permission to be drafted or otherwise sign a contract? Would non-playing employees be subjected to the same requirements, too? Or would the league impose a “shut up and dribble”-type rule on players who dissent from its orthodoxy?

These questions may seem academic. But what if the day comes when most NBA players aren’t African Americans? As the league keeps proudly observing, athletes from abroad keep pouring in even now. Maybe they’ll care a lot about police brutality in America’s inner cities, either because they’ve been following the issue closely or because their consciousness has been raised by their African American teammates. But what if, some day, Bosnian-born players wanted to wear jerseys decrying what they see as Serbia’s ar crimes during the Balkans wars that broke out in the 1990s? (Intra-ethnic tensions in the region remain high to this day.) What if Lithuanian-born players wanted to use their uniforms to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent designs on their homeland? If enough European players filled NBA rosters, would the league relish the thought of taking institutional stands on these matters? And if it did, how would it decide which positions to take? Majority vote of the players? The owners? Both? The fans?

Or take an international issue on which (as Hawley noted) on which the league has already made clear it prefers not to speak out – human rights in China. What if a player wanted to wear a slogan that slammed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? What if a player of Chinese descent sought to protest Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong? What if one of the NBA’s Muslim players wanted to publicize atrocities committed by China against his co-religionists in the Xinjiang region? Would such players be censored? That option certainly can’t be ruled out, because the league’s lucrative China business has unmistakably led it to tread warily on this ground – even though its influence in the People’s Republic is considerable precisely because of the huge numbers of ardent Chinese NBA fans. But could the league proscribe this or any other kind of selective censorship on the basis of principle? Good luck with that. In fact, as with the other international issues mentioned above, it’s hard to imagine a better formula for sowing bitter divisions up and down league rosters and throughout the fan base. What intelligently led business would want to stir up that hornet’s nest?

Which brings us to the second major reason to de-politicize the NBA – and the related entertainment industry: They’re businesses. Any efforts to impose official orthodoxies will antagonize significant shares of their customer bases as sure as it’s bound to please others. And the league would expose itself to the Cancel Culture – which would have every right to rear its head, and which in these circumstances arguably would serve useful social, political, and economic purposes. After all, if it’s OK for the NBA as a business to take a stand I don’t like, it’s just as OK for me to register my dislike, and/or try to change its mind through the most effective legal means available to me and other individual customers – our pocketbooks.

These actions would by no means amount to calls to censor the NBA, or deny it or any of its franchises a right to free speech. If business owners want to use their assets to push certain agendas, that’s their prerogative. (I’m much less comfortable with permitting businesses to use unlimited amounts of money to fund campaigns for political office – but let’s leave that subject for another time.) It’s anyone’s prerogative, however, to object by not purchasing the product – just as it’s anyone’s prerogative to turn the channel if they decide they don’t like a TV or radio program. If these consumer actions endanger a business’ profits – too bad for them, and no great loss for the nation. If these organizations aren’t willing to pay a commercial price for their principles, chances are they’re not that deeply held to begin with.

The same rule of thumb, by the way, should apply to organizations as such that are resisting becoming politicized – like the Washington Redskins football team, which just yesterday announced that it will be changing its name because many (though no one knows exactly how many) view that monicker as a racial slur. As I see it, owner Dan Snyder has the God-given right to name the team anything he wants. And fans have the right to object by avoiding games in person or on TV, shunning team merchandise etc.

At this point, it’s crucial to note that skepticism about the wisdom of sports leagues and their teams (and other businesses) taking institutional stands on public issues doesn’t automatically translate into opposition to individual athletes or owners or other employees of sports leagues and other businesses taking such positions as individuals, without identifying themselves with their employers. That freedom needs to be respected – or at least that’s how I see it.

But how I see it, it turns out, isn’t the law. Private businesses generally can fire employees for any reason they like, including speaking out politically outside the workplace, as long as the reason has nothing to do with race, religion, gender and, now, sexual orientation. One reason surely is that such actions can reflect poorly on a business, reduce its earnings, and wreak non-trivial collateral damage – e.g., via a revenue drop big enough to endanger salary and wage levels, and even jobs. In other words, in most cases, you as an individual worker can legally be canceled.

Another reason evidently is that this kind of firing doesn’t inherently prevent you from expressing yourself. It simply prevents you from expressing yourself and holding a particular job. Given how important jobs are, that can easily look like a distinction without a difference. But again, if a principle is held strongly enough, it should be worth an economic price.

Speaking of reflecting poorly on business, that’s apparently what the Washington, D.C. pro football team’s sponsors decided when they started threatening Snyder recently with withdrawing sponsorships if he didn’t relent and drop “Redskins.” In effect, they told him they’d fire his business, as they had every right to do And Snyder quite understandably decided that his profits were more important than preserving his memories of his boyhood sports idols. (He’s a native Washingtonian and lifelong-fan,)

Celebrity status, as in sports, of course, creates interesting wrinkles – mainly, a team could in theory fire an athlete for expressing a view that owners consider objectionable, but enough fans might disagree strongly enough to retaliate commercially against the team. In these cases, the only reasonable conclusions to draw are that (1) life is sometimes unavoidably unfair and (2) some decisions are risky, and businesses that employ and even foster outspoken stars, like sports franchises, need to hope they have the judgment to come out on top. The same goes for keeping or dumping controversial names and mascots.

Generally speaking, Cancel Culture-type entertainment issues play out like Cancel Culture-type sports issues, but some crucial differences should be taken into account. Principally, whereas sports as such have absolutely nothing to do with public issues, literature, music, theater, the movies, and the like have always been closely connected with these matters. How could they not? Of course, the arts have created any amount of pure fluff. Much so-called serious art plays purely to our pure emotions, too.

But from their beginnings, the arts have represented expressions of ideas as well, and any healthy society that wants to stay healthy should hope that individual artists and organizations keep sounding off vigorously on “politics.” Moreover, logically speaking, there’s no built-in problem with entertainment companies and those institutions that organize the industry (and administer awards) championing and condemning specific positions as well.

By the same token, however, whether you denigrate the practice as intolerant Cancel Culture or not, it’s any art or entertainment consumer’s right to choose not to patronize any individual entertainer or artist or entertainment business or organization they disagree with about anything, and even to encourage others to join in. The market and the consciences of individuals and companies and organizations in the arts and entertainment fields will decide what kind of arts and entertainment products will be produced, with whose sponsorship (if any) and how influential and commercially successful they’ll be.

The real dilemmas for consumers come in when, say, your favorite singer makes terrific music but expresses offputting ideas on public affairs. In those cases, there’s no reasonable alternative to each individual figuring out which he or she values more – the instrumentals and vocals, or the lyrics – and there’s no ready formula for doint so. For me, it’s how I justify continuing to play Jefferson Starship’s musically magnificent but politically infantile (putting it mildly) 1970 album “Blows Against the Empire,” but also how I’ve decided that I’ll probably keep ignoring Roger Waters’ new material because I find the Pink Floyd co-founder’s anti-Israel invective so despicable.

Of course, Cancel Culture-type issues have arisen in connection with other industries as well. For me, because they generally have nothing to do with ideas and values, the sports rules of thumb seem to be appropriate for them, too. So I’ll keep passing up Ben & Jerry’s – and not simply because they always put in too many fill-ins and too little ice cream. Ditto for Nike’s various social justice kicks (which the athletic shoe company apparently views as being perfectly compatible with its massive job and production offshoring). And since I can now get a good cup of joe, find a comfortable place to sit, take a load off, and use free WiFi at any number of coffee bars around the country, so long to Starbuck’s and its insufferable in-my-face “commitment to racial justice and social equity.”

Whatever you think of the above arguments, they still leave unresolved three big aspects of the intertwined rise-of-institutional “wokeness/“Cancel Culture debate still unresolved.

The first, concerning historical monuments, markers, and names etc. I’ve already dealt with extensively, and you can examine my views by entering terms like “Confederacy” or “history” in RealityChek‘s search engine.

The second concerns the view that the kind of voting with your pocketbook that I’m recommending clashes with the idea that vigorous debate is a cornerstone of any sound democracy. I strongly agree with that notion. But it strikes me as naive to believe that at present, or in the foreseeable future, the conditions exist or will exist for any kind of helpful debate about the emergence of woke corporate culture.

For decisions like the NBA’s to take up certain causes (but not others) didn’t result from any engagement with the fan base. I’m sure some polls have been taken, but those were undoubtedly market research exercises to try to see whether such moves would pass muster with its customers – or whether they mattered at all. But to my knowledge, neither the league nor any of its corporate counterparts offered the general public the option of commenting substantively, much less indicated that these comments would be taken into account. The decisions were made by fiat. And given the vast disparity between the power and influence of a huge, well-financed business on the one hand, and individual customers or fans on the other, who can reasonably doubt that these debates won’t even happen until it’s clear that fan objections are impacting bottom lines?

If anything, these points are even stronger when it comes to institutions that are widely supposed to be in the debate-fostering business themselves, at least in part. It’s true, I’ve argued, that at least when we’re talking about the news media, or the broader information industries, these suppositions are largely misconceptions. It’s also true that I wouldn’t advise anyone to stop reading, say, The New York Times, because it’s chosen to enter the field of education and create the (in my view recklessly slanted) “1619 Project” to rewrite American history, or because its news coverage too often seems to be shaped by a widely held staff view that the sins of President Trump are great enough to warrant abandoning traditional journalistic ideals like objectivity.

But these Times decisions also were made by fiat, with no substantive input sought from readers. So if at some point I or anyone else concludes that the Times‘ reporting and analysis has become so unreliable as to be useless, I’ll cancel my subscription with a perfectly good conscience, and hope others do likewise.

The third dimension of the wokeness/Cancel Culture debate concerns wrongs committed or controversial remarks made by high profile individuals, and the proper responses both of the general public and of whatever employers or constituencies to which they’re responsible. Simply put, should such words and deeds be forgiven or punished, and if the latter, is there a statute of limitations?

Clearly, some of the deeds (like sex crimes) bring into the picture the criminal justice system, which I assume everyone views as the way society should deal with these actions. More difficult to decide, at least in principle, is how to treat those convicted once they’ve paid their debt (assuming they get released). At this point, I don’t see any viable alternative to engaging in or avoiding Cancel Culture-type responses, since the offenses cover such a wide range of actions, and since the subsequent behavior of the guilty is certain to vary greatly as well. Therefore it seems impossible to figure out a cookie-cutter blueprint for forgiveness or lack thereof. Case-by-case seems to be the best strategy for their employers, too.

Nor do I see any viable alternative to dealing with case-by-case to speech that’s legal but that offends for all sorts of valid reasons. In other words, there’s no escaping judgment calls.

So let’s give the Cancel Culture one or two cheers (as opposed to the full three). I just wish I was more confident that America’s national supply of judgment was adequate or increasing strongly.  

Following Up: The New York Times’ Fake History of the U.S. is Spreading

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1619 Project, African Americans, education, Following Up, history, journalism, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, racism, Sean Wilentz, slavery, The Atlantic, The New York Times

Since Americans’ mistrust of the news media keeps getting stronger, it’s a safe bet that they’d be pretty upset to find out that one major news organization is playing a bigger and bigger role in shaping their childen’s education. And they could well become livid if they learned that this media influence in the schools is growing even as scholars in the relevant field are concluding that much of the material being propagated is bunk.

Yet that’s exactly what’s been happening with The New York Times‘ 1619 Project. As I reported in a post last year, the project, named after the year the first black African slaves were brought to North America, seeks to [its words] “reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” The Times‘ reason for undertaking this effort? Its conclusion that “our story” as a nation hasn’t been told “truthfully.”

As I explained last year, the big problem with the 1619 Project isn’t that reconsideration of any aspect of U.S. history (or any history) should be beyond the pale, but that a news organization like The Times has no qualifications to undertake this task. Even more troubling: The Times lately has endorsed the view that it should act like a news organization with a substantive agenda, or several of them. And one of them is writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Now confirmation has just emerged making clear that this bias has significantly infected the 1619 Project, and it comes not only from the ranks of America’s academic historians, but from historians with decidedly progressive views. Their case was summarized (at length) by Sean Wilentz of Princeton University, who concluded in a piece in The Atlantic (itself a pretty progressive publication) that although the role of slavery and racism in American history “remains too little understood by the general public,” The Times in many cases sought to fill the gap “through falsehoods, distortions, and significant omissions.”

What’s arguably worse, as Wilentz’ account makes clear, The Times not only blithely brushed off all of the historians’ critique. It doubled down on its propagandizing.

And here’s what’s clearly worse: The paper’s efforts to introduce this shoddy excuse for scholarship into school curricula have been succeeding. According to this report, 1619 Project materials are now being used or will soon in school systems in Chicago; Newark, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and Buffalo, New York. A New York City school is teaching with the Project as well, And The Times is working with an important ally – the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which has produced a variety of “curricular resources,” including “a reading guide for the issue, activities to engage students, and more.

It’s bad enough that American journalism keeps spewing out Fake News. It now needs to be spreading Fake History? And the nation’s schools need to be swallowing it?

Im-Politic: Why The New York Times Shouldn’t be Writing the History of Slavery – or Anything Else

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1619 Project, Dean Baquet, history, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media bias, race, race relations, racism, Russia, slavery, The New York Times, Trump, Trump-Russia

It’s bad enough that The New York Times all but admitted last week that its news operations lately have been driven by over-arching missions and “visions” centering on specific issues. In the words of Executive Editor Dean Baquet at an internal “town hall” meeting of Times staff, the paper is now shifting from investigating “Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice?” to focusing on “what it means to be an American in 2019” and more specifically writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Possibly worse is how The Times has also decided that this mission includes throwing much of its still considerable resources behind what Baquet called “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken in [inaudible] newspaper….”

For although it’s disturbing that a news organization would in effect bet the house on probing an issue – and thereby create overwhelming incentives for its staff to assume continually that any and all appearances of smoke, even from clearly conflicted sources, add to the case of underlying fire – this Times decision at least dovetails generally with commonly used definitions of journalism that have long served the country and its democratic system well.

Not that the press should get into the habit of proactively designating issues as existential priorities well before the outcomes and implications are reasonably clear. But Baquet deserves some slack here given the charges that the President was a Manchurian candidate beholden to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin – unmistakably an earth-shattering story at least potentially. Therefore, it’s hard to blame him for in effect establishing a major priority and allocating his resources accordingly, and it’s nitpicking to insist that he still might have gone somewhat too far.

Two possible and related qualifications to these conclusions, though, should be kept in mind. First, it’s painfully obvious from the meeting transcript linked above (and not disavowed by any participants) that any number of Times staffers are virulently anti-Trump – which logically raises suspicions about whether any of the paper’s reporters or editors cooperated with the equally virulent Trump opponents in the Obama Justice Department and intelligence agencies to keep the story artificially alive through publishing obviously selected leaks selectively, and even through knowingly trafficking in sheer rumor and innuendo.

Second, as I’ve written, given the abundance of Never Trump-ers in the federal bureaucracy and in the D.C. Swamp generally speaking, and given how commonplace leaks of even the most sensitive material had become, long before the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report, it was becoming increasingly apparent that if no smoking guns had yet been found, chances are they didn’t exist. But there’s no reason to believe that the paucity of genuinely damning evidence ever gave Baquet any second thoughts about his initial decision – which indicates troubling stubbornness at best and even more troubling bias at worst.

But I can’t prove either of the these two points. Moreover, just as I can’t legitimately fault Baquet for per se focusing, at least for a serious period of time, tightly on the Trump-Russia story, I can’t fault him per se for deciding subsequently to devote much of the paper’s attention to race relations. For times change, and news coverage priorities need to change with them – although Baquet’s link of the decision to a Trump record that he plainly views as uniquely and dangerously divisive strongly indicates that he’s prejudging the results awfully early in the game.

The examining slavery thing, however – that’s fundamentally different. It’s the kind of endeavor, after all, that can’t be squared with any longstanding tradition of American journalism. Instead, the “1619 Project” at its heart is nothing less than an effort to change the way Americans view their history, and how it’s been impacted down to the present by slave-holding. (1619 was the year in which the first enslaved African blacks arrived in North America – specifically, near British-held Jamestown, Virginia.  Just FYI, African slaves didn’t arrive in French-held North America until a decade later.) If you’re skeptical about this 1619 project claim, check out how it’s described by The Times:

“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

For good measure, the paper tells us that “it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

Any thinking person understands the need for continual reassessments of history – and all fields of knowledge – if only because new information is constantly coming to light. In addition, you don’t need to fall prey to “present-ism” (judging or merely viewing past events and works through the prism of contemporary standards) to recognize that standards do change; that they can change for legitimate and considered, as well as for faddish and/or partisan, reasons; and that whenever such circumstances warrant, reassessments are needed. Indeed, these exercises are especially important when engaged in the always hazardous but ultimately needed effort to identify the past’s lessons.

And what thinking, informed person doubts that the nation’s professional historians fully understand this imperative, and that in fact their discipline isn’t in a constant state of reassessment?

But even if these scholars were failing their country and academe’s best traditions and practices, why would any thinking person consider The Times institutionally qualified to fill the gap competently? What evidence has the paper presented that it can carry out satisfactorily a project that even it describes as “unprecedentedly ambitious” and that’s surely more accurately described as “unprecedented” period? And as a result, from where does The Times draw its confidence in declaring that it’s able to “finally…tell our story truthfully.”

My answers to all these questions: “Beats me.”

And if you believe that the paper is up to this task, you really need to read the full transcript of the town hall meeting. For it makes distressingly clear that many of the paper’s staffers have no use for notions like sticking to the facts and enabling readers to make up their own minds – at least not since the civilization-menacing emergence of the Trump presidency. (Or was it the Trump candidacy?) As for views of race and its proper role in Times journalism, take a look at these remarks from one staffer:

“I’m wondering to what extent you [Baquet] think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, ‘OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?’”

His boss’ response (in part)?

“I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.”

Translation: “You’re right. And the 1619 Project is aimed at persuading Americans to think ‘a little bit more’ like you.” P.S. The transcript records zero pushback against this wildly distorted, reductionist view. That is, like too much of the rest of the Mainstream Media, The New York Times has drifted dangerously far from the notion that journalism amounts to “writing the first draft of history.” It’s going to start writing that history itself. And it’s firmly convinced that it has a monopoly on wisdom.

And that’s fine in principle – if the paper wants to turn itself into something like an opinion publication, a think tank or a lobby group. For a newspaper, however, it represents a bright and dangerous line crossed, and is certain to further erode the public’s confidence in journalists – thereby adding to a list of dangers facing American democracy that’s already far too long.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Krugman’s (Embarrassingly) Phony Tariff History

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1920s, agriculture, Economic History Association, history, Paul M. Krugman, protectionism, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, Trump, World War I, {What's Left of) Our Economy

To the many reasons I have to envy Paul M. Krugman (his high profile perch as a New York Times pundit, his Nobel Prize in economics, his surely stratospheric income), one more can now be added:  As strongly indicated by his latest column for The Times, he works for folks who allow him to publish any claim he’d like without being fact-checked or even questioned in any way.

In that piece, Krugman sought to debunk President Trump’s recently tweeted claim that “TARIFF is a beautiful word indeed” by showing that “the actual history of U.S. tariffs isn’t pretty.”  One major example he used:  Because America “took a sharply protectionist turn before the infamous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act,” the country’s farmers “spent the 1920s suffering from low prices for their products and high prices for farm equipment, leading to a surge in foreclosures.”

“Part of the problem was that U.S. tariffs were met with retaliation; even before the Depression struck, the world was engaged in a gradually escalating trade war.”

Sounds pretty convincing, right? In fact, not even close. And not least of which because the only two sources cited by Krugman contain absolutely no mention of low farm prices or foreclosures or unaffordable farm equipment stemming from any trade-related developments. In fact, there’s not even a mention of “high prices for farm equipment” at all.

The sources – articles on the Economic History Association’s website on the 1920s tariffs, and on the U.S. economy in the 1920s (you can read them here and here) – demonstrate that agriculture’s woes during this period (not surprisingly) resulted from many cases. But tariffs don’t make the list. 

Simply put, the main culprits were excessive borrowing by American farmers late in the previous decade based on the assumption that agricultural output in war-torn Europe would remain long depressed, and that this market would for many years be importing ever greater amounts of U.S. farm products; and a subsequent price-depressing glut in American supply when European output recovered faster than expected once World War I ended.

A a result, U.S. farmers were left with lots of new acreage and machinery that suddenly became superfluous even though their new owners still needed to pay off the debts they incurred to buy them.  No wonder so many weren’t able to meet their mortgage payments.

Adding to American agriculture’s problems during this period were a productivity boom triggered by surging mechanization and other advances that permitted agricultural production to rise much faster than domestic (and foreign) consumption; and an economy-wide depression in 1920 and 1921 that primarily resulted from excessive monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. Again, nothing about tariffs.

Importantly, the 1920s economic history article in particular is a gold mine of information about many developments of that time that shed considerable light on today’s major economic challenges – as I’ll be describing in some future posts.  In the meantime, I’d strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in the American economic invest the time needed to read it – starting with Paul Krugman.

Im-Politic: New Evidence that “Hamilton” is (Embarrassingly) Fake History

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"Hamilton", Alexander Hamilton, diversity, Forbes, Founding Fathers, history, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, liberals, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike Pence, Ralph Benko, Trump

American elites’ views on immigration issues are just the gift that keeps on giving if you suspect that way too …

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The Shock of the Old

Tags

A History of Civilizations, Benjamin Franklin, China, Fernand Braudel, history, John Bach McMaster

The economy stinks, the election is abominable. So why not take a break from the headlines with a post celebrating the power of great historical writing to shed light on our past and, indirectly but no less importantly, on our present?

The three examples I’ll cite come from two works that on the surface don’t seem to have a lot in common: a late 19^th century biography of Benjamin Franklin by American John Bach McMaster, and a History of Civilizations – which came out about a century later – from the French scholar Fernand Braudel. Nonetheless, they’re both the products of authors who share a crucial characteristic: They were pioneers of an approach to history that has steadily shifted the discipline from a tight concentration on politics, diplomacy, philosophical concepts, transformational individuals, and discrete events in general to the study of the deeper trends – social, economic, cultural, ecological, and technological – that have driven the evolution (or stagnation) of peoples on the everyday level.

The opening to the Franklin volume is a masterpiece of stage-setting – and a superb example of how history can enlighten by spotlighting the magnitude of change:

“The story of the life of Benjamin Franklin begins at a time [1706] when Queen Anne ruled the colonies; when the colonies were but ten in number; and when the population did not sum up to four hundred thousand souls; at a time when witches were plentiful in New England; when foxes troubled the farmers of Lynn [Massachusetts]; when wolves and panthers abounded in Connecticut; when pirates infested the Atlantic coast; when there was no such thing as a stage-coach in the land; when there were but three colleges and one newspaper in the whole of British North America; when no printing press existed south of Philadelphia; when New York was still defended by a high stockade; and when Ann Pollard, the first white woman that ever set foot on the soil of Boston, was still enjoying a hale old age.”

The next paragraph, which includes a description of Boston as barely out of the hamlet stage, is just as good.

Among the many talents exhibited by Braudel is one that’s something of a mirror image of that apparent from McMaster’s first paragraph: illustrating the power (and implications) of continuity. Among the standout instances in his History of Civilizations are these two passages that render much more comprehensible the almost incomprehensible durability of certain traditions – in this case, China’s:

“Imagine,” he writes of both China and India, “”the Egypt of the Pharaohs, miraculously preserved, adapted more or less to modern life, but having kep its beliefs and some of its customs.”

Braudel writes in a similar vein about the longstanding official Chinese fondness for grandiose public spectacles – and their longstanding resonance with China’s masses:

“To gauge their effect, imagine the impact in Europe of a series of imperial dynasties maintaining the self-same style and significance from Augustus until the First World War.”

In his famous 1991 account of the rise of emergence of modern art, scholar Robert Hughes famously referred to its capacity to deliver “the shock of the new.” McMaster and Braudel make clear the rest of their discipline’s capacity to deliver “the shock of the old.”

Im-Politic: Why Most of the U.S. History Wars Shouldn’t Even Be Fought

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Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Founding Fathers, history, history wars, Im-Politic, political correctness, Princeton University, racism, Robert E. Lee, slavery, Woodrow Wilson

Last week I wrote about my experiences with the political correctness and free speech disputes at my alma mater Princeton University in the mid-1970s and, what do you know? They reappeared on the campus this past week in their “history wars” form. It’s worth covering – but not because the demands for more or less erasing the physical legacy of former university and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from the campus were especially novel or unusual according to the standards of our time. Nor was the university’s response, which could be interpreted in various ways ranging from a polite brushoff to an instance of kick-the-can-ism.

Instead, this episode is worth covering because it provides a good opportunity for presenting some common-sense guidelines on depicting historical figures in public spaces or within private communities when such a private controversy arises (as in the case of a private university).

The Princeton students protesting the university’s longstanding showcasing of Wilson base their position on the former president’s segregationist views on racial subjects and on the segregationist policies he approved during his White House tenure. There’s no legitimate doubt that their accusations are accurate.

Defenders of the university status quo have pushed back with equally accurate points – noting that some of Wilson’s decisions on a related question – the role of Jews in American society – both on the campus and in Washington, D.C. were enlightened by the standards of his time. Indeed, they legitimately go even further, and argue that, in both these positions, Wilson was a major champion of many progressive values. (Here’s an excellent summary of this case.)

In my view, the pro-Wilson forces have the better argument, by a considerable margin. But they don’t deserve victory for the reasons they emphasize – i.e., because their opponents have failed to recognize what how exemplary Wilson really was. Instead, their position is stronger because it makes clear what should matter most in evaluating and acknowledging the role of historical figures: the sum total of their records and significance. As a result, leaders like Wilson deserve recognition because their impact on university and American history far transcended characteristics rightly regarded as shortcomings today, and that were hardly impressive even in their own eras.

That is, Wilson was not simply a racist. He was someone whose actions shaped American politics and higher education in ways felt even today. And because this record was at worst lamentable in some (but hardly all) respects, it’s fitting and proper that the nation – and the university – have decided to honor him.

In this way, therefore, Wilson resembles the Founding Fathers. As widely known, Washington and Jefferson were slave-holders. But obviously they were so much more. It’s somewhat less widely known that Lincoln held racist views about black people. But he was so much more. This point might seem indistinguishable from the debate over merits that I just belittled, and obviously they’re very close. The essence of it is, though, that for figures of wide-ranging importance whose legacy was not overwhelmingly malevolent, these debates simply shouldn’t be necessary. Therefore, when they break out, the kind of common sense that’s essential for sound decision-making inevitably and damagingly takes a back seat.

Moreover, in this way, Wilson, the Founders, Lincoln, and others in this category fundamentally differ from, say major Confederate leaders. Although Robert E. Lee, for example, served America admirably in the Mexican War (which was not an especially admirable venture), his name wouldn’t be on roads, public schools, and even university campuses all over the country because of that role, or even because he became commander at West Point. He’s only widely remembered at all because he was a leader of the greatest single act of treason – and one motivated overwhelmingly by racist considerations – in American history. So he clearly belongs in the textbooks – along with other prominent Confederates. But honoring their memory, and that of their cause, is disgraceful.

Not every such decision is an easy call. Andrew Jackson, for instance, embodied many praiseworthy populist impulses, and was certainly a consequential president. He also rose above sectional interests and perspectives by opposing southern claims of states rights over federal law, and would have enjoyed great ratings had opinion polls existed back then. But his Indian expulsion policies were reprehensible, and arguably so even for the early 19^th century.

If the common sense rule is invoked, however, Americans shouldn’t be faced with too many of these hard calls. Because the essence of history is change, and because it’s vital to keep learning about and rethinking the past, judgments about various historical events and individuals should never be fixed in stone or so viewed. But unless you think that the basic, admirable narrative of American history is fundamentally wrong, or that most of our leading forebears were in fact generally contemptible, you’ll agree that the overwhelming burden of proof is on the revisionists to overturn the current consensus on events and individuals that Americans have chosen to honor – and that far more often than not, this burden has not remotely been met.