The Moderate Palestinian (You Know the One Who Wants to Paint Himself Blue and Kill Zionists Like Mel Gibson Does in Braveheart)

Howard Schneider writes in the Washington Post about the Palestinians' opposite poles, comparing the lives of members of the same Palestinian family, the Barakats, living two starkly different lives in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Apparently, the members of the family living in the West Bank have enjoyed some remarkable economic benefits as of late in contrast to those in Gaza. It would have been nice for someone to ask the question how is it if Palestinian poverty is because of the Israeli occupation that Palestinians in Gaza, completely free of Zionist occupiers, are in so much worse shape. The article is a good example of the sort of personal human interest story that, while not anti-Israel in of itself, can be problematic on a large scale. It is not anti-Israel to show sympathy to the plight of Palestinians. For a news agency, though, to offer a constant stream of stories devoted to putting a human face on Palestinians in marked contrast with an unwillingness to do the same for Israelis is to create a bias against Israel.

I find it fascinating the ways in which Schneider is willing to pursue his narrative of moderate west loving Palestinians. He gushes over Odai who is leaving to study film at Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus:

Odai hopes to study film and then return to make his contribution to Palestinian society. It has nothing to do with reconquering land, he said, but reflects an idea taking root in the West Bank -- to help put a bandage on old wounds so they can heal and give rise to something new and durable.

"The first film I'll make will be about the Palestinian cause. I'll tell the story," he said, likening his vision to the movie "Braveheart" and its tale of Scotland's rise alongside England. The Scottish leader William Wallace was not trying to destroy the English, Odai pointed out, but was attempting to carve out a place for his people on land of their own.

I love Mel Gibson's Braveheart, despite its incredible historical inaccuracies and I do not begrudge Odai for liking the movie too. But the fact that he chooses to see the Palestinian conflict through the lens of Braveheart and not say Ben Kingsley's Oscar-winning portrayal of Gandhi says something contrary to our moderate peace-loving narrative.

Braveheart is a wonderful example of manufactured nationalism. There was no nationalism in thirteenth-century Scotland; there was no country Scotland in the modern nation-state sense. This was a feudal conflict in which Edward I (Longshanks) of England attempted to pursue a feudal claim against various Scottish noblemen. This had nothing to do with a crude desire to conquer other lands and subjugate other people. Scotland was a traditional ally of France so any attempt to strengthen their position in France required that England secure its northern border. Over the course of this complex conflict, many people changed sides at various points and it had nothing to do with them loving "Scotland" or "freedom" less. I can only imagine what this teaches a teenage member of a manufactured nationality attempting to restore a state that never existed in the first place.

The nineteenth-century style of nationalism of Braveheart equates itself with freedom. Considering the history of the twentieth century, with the horrors of Nazism, I would hope for just a bit skepticism to any such equation. Anyone willing to make such a point-blank equation between the nation and freedom can rightfully be suspected of Fascism (the Nazis were also believers in freedom if in a Rousseauian or Hegelian vein) or at least being highly at risk of Fascism. In essence, this is the sort of person in need of being put on an emergency life-support drip of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and the American founding fathers. This is not the sort of person you can trust with a gun or a film camera.

The English in the movie are portrayed as brutal oppressors on par with Nazis. There is not a single positive English character in the entire film. Edward attempts to eliminate the Scottish race by allowing noblemen to take "prima nocta" the bride on her wedding night. I certainly have no great love for the thirteenth century English or for Edward. Edward I expelled the Jews from England in 1290, just before the main events of the movie. That being said, any film that attempted such a hostile reductionist and one-sided treatment against a non-European group would correctly be labeled as racist. I can only imagine what the reaction would be if Palestinians were portrayed like this maybe in a really over the top version of Leon Uris' Exodus.

This brings us to the sort of resistance glorified by Gibson. William Wallace does not negotiate with the English or engage in passive resistance; he bashes their heads in with a mace and chain and decapitates them with his broadsword. Wallace does not just fight the English in Scotland. He sacks York and sends Edward the severed head of his nephew. Hardly what I would think of as live and let live sort of behavior.

So what are we to conclude about a Palestinian who views his situation in terms of the movie Braveheart? He sees the world largely through the lens of crude nationalism. His understanding of freedom is more in tune with Fascist totalitarianism than liberal democracy. He believes that Israelis are brutal monsters who wish to enslave his people and rape his women. As such, he believes that the best way to deal with Israelis is to kill them, not only in the West Bank and Gaza but in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well. With moderates such as these who needs fanatics.

Tony Judt Has a Uniquely Jewish State Problem

Today one of my students handed me an article from the Financial Times by Tony Judt. The student's father thought I would enjoy it as an example of leftist Israel bashing and was kind enough to have his son pass it along to me. The article is titled "Israel Must Unpick its Ethnic Myth." Judt takes as his starting point Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People, which attacks the State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise as being based on the false notion of the existence of a Jewish ethnicity, and uses it to attack Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. Judt and Sand are a good example of the sort of selective anti-nationalism so effectively lambasted by Natan Sharansky in his book Defending Identity: its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy. Sharansky attacks Marxists and their ideological descendants in the modern left for being willing to accept nationalism when it served an ideologically expectable purpose such as fighting western capitalist imperialism and rejecting nationalism when it does not serve the cause. It is this sort of thinking that allows someone like Judt to ignore and even indulge Arab and Palestinian nationalism all while villainizing Israel for even the most moderate manifestations of the ideology.

To be clear I have no objection to anyone pointing out that Jewish ethnicity is an artificial construction. All ethnicities are artificial constructions. There is no such thing as a pure race, culture, nation or ethnic group. We are all of mixed stock. That being said this artificial construction of a nation exists, which gives it a political reality, and it is a major pillar of modern politics. It allows us to form the nation-state. Jews have a better claim than most to their nation construct. Jews did not forge their identity to benefit themselves, it was formed by others in order to isolate them and deny them the fruits of the Enlightenment and emancipation and finally to attempt to annihilate them in the Holocaust. Jews should only have to surrender their collective delusions of nationhood when everyone else, including the Palestinians, have done so as well.

What particularly caught my attention about Judt was his comment that "Egypt or Slovakia are not justified in international law by virtue of some theory of deep 'Egyptianness" or 'Slovakness.' Such states are recognized as international actors, with rights and status, simply by virtue of their existence and their capacity to maintain and protect themselves." For a historian Judt demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of history. Egypt existed as a province of the Ottoman Empire, before being a British protectorate and eventually given their independence. The history of Egypt for the past few hundred years does not make any sense unless one accepts the concept of an Egyptian national identity, even if it was an artificial construction of the Egyptians themselves. There were people living in Egypt who themselves as distinct from the people who ran the Ottoman and later the British Empire (I guess a language barrier, and in the case of Britain religion, helped) and wished to be independent. The situation in Slovakia is even better. From the end of World War I until 1992, with the interlude of Nazi rule, Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia. In 1992 the people in Slovakia decided that, since they were "Slovaks," they wished to break away from the "Czechs" to the west of them and form their own country. The Czechs and the rest of the world went along with this and in 1993 there was the "Velvet Divorce" creating the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The legitimacy for all of this rests upon the willingness of everyone involved, particular the Czechs, to willingly participate in this collective delusion of nationhood and accept this artificial construct of a Slovakian people. So the existence of Egyptians or Slovakians is very relevant to the rights of these states to exist. The only difference between them and Israel is that no one is trying to destroy the states of Egypt and Slovakia and there are no academics like Judt to aid them in such a task by questioning the legitimacy of these states.

How the Mighty European Military State has Fallen: Jeff Sheehan – Where Have All the Soldiers Gone: The Transformation of Modern Europe

Ohio State's eHistory website has just put up my review of Jeff Sheehan's Where Have All the Soldiers Gone: The Transformation of Modern Europe. This is the second review I have done for them. Previously I reviewed Aryan Jesus on the site. Once again I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Steven Conn for giving me the opportunity to review the book and for being such a helpful editor. This one went through a long process. I read this book and wrote the first draft of the review last spring. Dr. Conn, correctly, pointed out that my review veered too much toward being an editorial and asked me to do a rewrite. I did not get back to him with a second version until after the summer, setting a rotten example for any of my students who may be reading this, one that they should most certainly not follow. You can follow the link above for the final version or you can continue reading below for my unedited slightly longer version.



Historical questions are often dictated by present-day concerns. For Jeff Sheehan of Stanford University and his two-hundred page tour of twentieth-century European history that question is how did it come to pass that Europeans would differ so strongly from Americans in regards to the War in Iraq and the question of Islamic terrorism. Modern questions are often a trap that professional historians are rightfully wary of. So it is to Sheehan's credit that what starts off as a modern question is allowed to flower into a judicious and unpolemical account of modern European history. Sheehan describes the evolution of European attitudes toward standing armies and to warfare, without coming down on side or the other. After a pleasurable afternoon of reading this book, I honestly have no idea if Sheehan supported the Iraq War or not. Thus Sheehan has provided what should be an enjoyable and enlightening read for those on the left and on the right.

American liberals, who opposed the war in Iraq, will rightfully object to Sheehan's generalized categorization of Americans as being pro-war and Europeans as anti-war. President Bush's low approval ratings and Senator John McCain's defeat by Barack Obama should demonstrate to anyone that there is more to American public opinion than simple war enthusiasm. (That is unless one accepts conservative rhetoric about there being "real Americans" as opposed to other people who just happen to live in the United State.) To be fair to Sheehan, I do not believe that he intended to make any categorical judgments about Americans. The question he is trying to come to terms with might be formulated as why was it that a neo-conservative movement flourished within American culture to such an extent that it could push publish policy into going to war but not in Europe.

It is against this backdrop that Sheehan offers this overview of modern European political history with a twist. Instead of focusing on World War I, World War II, the Cold War and how the political situations deteriorated in each case into these conflicts, Sheehan examines European attitudes toward the military and to warfare outside of the context of these conflicts. Thus the major conflicts of the twentieth century become the outliers, not what defines European society. From my perspective as a non-military historian, this is just delightfully subversive. I particularly admired the chapter dealing with peace efforts, most notably one by Czar Nicholas II, in the years leading up to the First World War. It serves as a useful counter to the traditional portrayal of bumbling superpowers with their ironclad systems of alliances crashing toward an unforeseen but inevitable war. I owe Sheehan a debt of thanks in that I will now have one good thing to say about Czar Nicholas II to tell my students to balance out the anti-Semitism and truly tragic incompetence.

Instead of a narrative of war, Sheehan offers a narrative of conflicting ideologies. On one side stands a proudly nationalist worldview, in which statehood was understood in terms of its military. Sheehan sees this worldview as a product of the desire by nineteenth-century states to create national identities. The military and making people serve in a national draft as a means of bringing the state into the lives of people living in provincial areas, who beforehand may have been outside of the authority of the centralized state. This was simply was the logical continuation of state-run school systems and other social services. In essence, for Sheehan, the liberal revolutionary tradition coming out of the French Revolution, with its secular state, led directly to European militarism. This militarist perspective comes to be increasingly challenged by a worldview skeptical of state power and the nationalist and militarist ideology needed to support it. In the end, according to Sheehan, World War II effectively eliminated the former view in the minds of the vast majority of Europeans, leaving the field to the later.

One point of Sheehan's that I think is particularly noteworthy is the idea that Americans and Europeans speak very different languages when it comes to the issue of terrorism. When Americans, i.e. the American right, speak about terrorism they use the language of World War II. Islamic terrorists are Nazis and September 11 was Pearl Harbor. (Yes it was the Japanese who attacked us at Pearl Harbor; analogies do not have to be perfect.) I would point to the popularity of the term "Islamo-Fascism" within right-wing circles as a very good example of this. The implications of this should be fairly clear. If the task of the "greatest generation" that fought World War II was to stop a Nazi conquest of the world then the task of this present generation must be to do battle with the forces of radical Islam and stop them from taking over the world. In pursuit of the cause, one becomes justified in all sorts of actions. A trillion dollars fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is not too high a cost to save the world. Four thousand dead in Iraq is nothing to lament when we lost more on Iwo Jima in one day. The dominant European culture views terrorism not as this Manichean struggle with the fate of the world at stake but as a simple policing problem, one that they have been facing for decades now. Such an attitude lends itself to a different set of conclusions. Rather than war the solution becomes better police protection and, at most, some international diplomacy through the European Union and the United Nations.

Sheehan does not discuss it, but this difference in thinking about terrorism also applies to Israel and its differences with the European community. If anything Israel, particularly the Israeli right, is even more entrenched in the language of World War II than even the United States. For Israel, their Islamic opponents are Nazis determined to finish off what Hitler started. In this narrative, the Oslo accords of 1993 become the Munich agreement of 1938 with Israel's security being sold out for a worthless promise, broken before the ink was even dry. From this perspective statements like Nasser's "drive Israel into the sea" or Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel off the map" are not the blustering of politicians but literal plans of action to be carried out. I am not certain what Sheehan's views are in regards to the Mid-East conflict. He does refer to Yasser Arafat in passing as the "future leader of the Palestinian resistance to Israel" (pg. 169) and juxtaposes him with Nelson Mandela. This might be simple carelessness or a sign that Sheehan shares the European perspective on this, to look at this conflict through the lens of Colonialism.

If history means, in some sense, to apologize for the past, for those ideologies that have left the world stage, then Sheehan has offered an apology for late nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalist ideologies and their implicit militarism. He connects them to the nineteenth liberal tradition and offers us an understanding as to why reasonable people believed that it would work. In the end, Sheehan raises some very provocative questions about the role of warfare in the making of a state. If states have traditionally defined themselves in terms of their militaries than what does it mean to be a demilitarized state? Can the European Union ever hope to compete with the United States as a global power if it defines itself as the non-military power?

Mother Russia and its Jews Quiz

What happened to Poland at the end of the eighteenth century and how did this affect Jews? (3 pts.)


How and why did Russian attitudes towards Jews differ from those found within western Christianity? (3 pts.)

How did the Russian government propose to deal with its Jewish problem? (Either give several examples or one in great detail) (4 pts.)


Bonus: Where is the city of Odessa located and why is it relevant to its role in the Russian Haskalah? (2 pts.)

1. Poland is divided up in a series of three partitions at the hands of Russia, Prussia and Austria, culminating in 1795 with the elimination of Poland. This resulted in Russia, completely by accident, finding itself as the host of the world's largest Jewish population, something they never intended nor desired.
   
2. Russia, as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, did not have St. Augustine, the Latin church father par excellence, as part of their theological canon. This means no witness doctrine. As such Russia never had any reason to tolerate Jews to begin with. They never desired Jews nor did they ever invite Jews in. The Western Catholic Church could produce a Bernard of Clairvaux, who could preach a Crusade against Muslims while actively protecting Jews. Russian Orthodoxy, with the rare exception of a Leo Tolstoy, never produced any tradition of philo-Semitism at all.
   
3. The Russian government created the Pale Settlement, essentially saying that Jews could live where they were already, but nowhere else. Even in the Pale Settlement there were limits as to where Jews could live. Czar Nicholas I created the Cantonist decrees, probably one of the most fiendishly clever devices to destroy Jewish life. Jews were to now be subject to the Russian draft instead of paying a tax. (The Russian draft was for twenty-five years. Imagine what the Vietnam War protests would have been like if we were drafting people for twenty-five years.) All groups in Russia could be drafted. Jews though were subject to a special "pre-draft" to get children ready for actual service. Thus the Russian government started grabbing children twelve and even younger to train them for service when they turned eighteen. The Jewish community itself would have to decide which kids went, ensuring that the establishment would protect their own children at the expense of those less fortunate, thus undermining the Jewish community. 

Bonus: Odessa is a port city in the South of Russia on the Black Sea. Contrary to the usual stereotype of Russia as being cold and insular, Odessa is warm and quite cosmopolitan. It is not a coincidence therefore that Odessa would become a major center for the Russian Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment).
One student wrote: "Claire was relevant because she is a main figure in the 'superhero' Enlightenment. Without her, there would be no cheerleader to save and furthermore, no world." Claire Bennett, from the show Heroes, comes from Odessa, TX. This was actually from a good student who was kind enough to indulge my sense of humor. I am a fan of the show, but still no bonus points though, just a smiley face.

Sazed’s School of Religion

In Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novel Mistborn we are introduced to a scholar or religion named Sazed, who serves as a guardian/advisor to the main character, a girl named Vin. Vin is a street urchin who possesses certain extreme powers and must take on the role of a noble born lady to aid in the coming rebellion against the empire. Along the way Sazed gives her an education as to the nature of religion as he subjects her to his unique brand of missionary work.


"I think I have the perfect religion for," Sazed said his normally stoic face revealing a glimmer of eagerness. "It is called 'Trelagism,' after the god Trell. Trell was worshipped by a group known as the Nelazan, a people who lived far to the north. In their land, the day and night cycle was very odd. During some months of the year, it was dark for most of the day. During the summer, however, it only grew dark for a few hours at a time.


The Nelazan believed that there was beauty in darkness, and that the daylight was more profane. They saw the stars as the Thousand Eyes of Trell watching them. The sun was the single, jealous eye of Trell's brother, Nalt. Since Nalt only had one eye, he made it blaze brightly to outshine his brother. The Nelzan, however, were not impressed, and preferred to worship the quiet Trell, who watched over them even when Nalt obscured the sky." …


"It really is a good religion, Mistress Vin," Sazed said. "Very gentle, yet very powerful. The Nelazan were not an advance people, but they were quite determined. They mapped the entire night sky, counting and placing every major star. Their ways suit you – especially their preference of the night. …"

"That's the fifth religion you've tried to convert me to, Saze. How many more can there be?"
"Five hundred and sixty two," Sazed said. "Or at least, that is the number of belief systems I know. There are, likely and unfortunately, others that have passed from this world without leaving traces for my people to collect."

Vin paused. "And you have all of these religions memorized?"

"As much as is possible," Sazed said. "Their prayers, their beliefs, their mythologies. Many are very similar – breakoffs or sects of one another." …

"But, what's the point?"

Sazed frowned. "The answer should be obvious, I think. People are valuable, Mistress Vin, and so – therefore – are their beliefs." (pg. 178-79)

…


"What was that?" Vin asked as he looked up again.


"A prayer," Sazed said. "A death chant of the Cazzi. It is meant to awaken the spirits of the dead and entice them free from their flesh so that they may return to the mountain of souls." He glanced at her. "I can teach you of the religion, if you wish, Mistress. The Cazzi were an interesting people – very familiar with death."

Vin shook her head. "Not right now. You said their prayer – is this the religion you believe in, then?"
"I believe in them all."

Vin frowned. "None of them contradict each other?"

Sazed smiled. "Oh, often and frequently they do. But, I respect the truths behind them all – and I believe in the need for each one to be remembered."

"Then, how did you decide which religion's prayer to use?" Vin asked.

"It just seemed … appropriate," Sazed said quietly, regarding the scene of shadowed death. (pg. 207-08)


This is the sort of intellectual terrorism I can sign up for. It eschews the stridency of religious fundamentalism and the triumphalism of secularism, all while maintaining a place for the scholarship of religion.

Articles of Interest

Moment magazine has an article on converts to Judaism, in which Y-Love is featured.


Ashley Tedesco writes in Jewcy about attempting to be a Jewish studies major at a Catholic school like Fordham. Catholic schools actually often prove to be quite hospitable places for Orthodox Jews and many Yeshiva University people have specifically gone on to Fordham.


Left Brain Right Brain has Ari Ne'eman's testimony before the Equal Opportunity Commission. In the course of the conversation the issue of eliminating many of the specific autism groupings is raised.


I recently mentioned Malcolm Gladwell on this blog. For those of you who are not familiar with him, here is an article of his from a few months ago dealing with how "Davids" can defeat "Goliaths." This article ranges from military issues and Lawrence of Arabia to twelve year old girls playing basketball with a full court press.


Finally Garnel Ironheart offers a lament about the fact that Haredim can get away with knocking Modern Orthodox leaders, but it is expected as a matter of course that Modern Orthodox Jews will be respectful when it comes to Haredi leaders. In the comments section Rabbi Benjamin Hecht links to an old article of his that I read years ago and consider to be the best piece to come out of the whole Slifkin affair. The article challenges Haredim to justify, in terms of Jewish law and tradition, the claim that their rabbis are the de facto authorities over all Jews including those Jews who do not live in their communities or never learned in their schools. Rabbi Yosef Blau once said something similar, noting that, of all the rabbis who signed the Slifkin ban, there was no one, with the exception of Rav Elyashiv, that he would have ever thought to ask a question a question of Jewish to and even Rav Elyashiv he never would have asked something related to theology.

Rowan Atkinson for Drood

I recently finished listening to the audio production of Drood by Dan Simmons. Drood is a fictionalized account of the last years of Charles Dickens' life as told by his friend and sometimes collaborator Willkie Collins. The title refers to Dickens' final unfinished novel, the Mystery of Edwin Drood. I was familiar with the story from the satirical musical version of the story, which has multiple possible ending voted on by the audience. The novel contains numerous running gags on Edwin Drood and other better known elements of the Dickens universe.

Dan Simmons is one of the greatest living science-fiction novelists. Simmons' work has a highly literate quality to it; things like a robot John Keats to having the gods hire classical scholars to report on the ongoing Trojan War. Drood is a literate, historical novel that often goes into the realm of the fantastic. The narrator, Willkie Collins, is an opium addict, who hallucinates. The novel dips in and out of the occult (Collins and Dickens may have mind controlling beetles stuck in their skulls, implanted by a criminal mastermind and Egyptian cult leader.) and we have no idea what is to be believed. Simmons needs to be congratulated for his ability to present the world of nineteenth century England where there is no aspirin or reconstructive surgery to deal with the aches and pains liable to accumulate in the body of a middle aged man. Hence opium. Think of Rush Limbaugh's addiction to Oxycodone just with hallucinations to make things more interesting.

For what it is worth, Guillermo Del Toro is down to direct a film version of Drood. My proposal would be to have Rowan Atkinson play Collins. Not that Atkinson looks like the real life Collins, but this is the sort of role that requires heavy doses of smug superiority even in the face of a contrary reality, something that Atkinson does better than just about anyone. Collins spends most of the novel venting his hatred of Dickens, gripping about the absurdities in Dickens' fiction and how he is truly the better writer. This is one of those characters who charms by simply being a horrible human being.

The Child Voter

As I have mentioned previously, my political awakening came when I was nine years old during the summer of 1992, watching then Governor Bill Clinton run for the presidency. I saw Clinton in much the same way that many college students last year viewed "the second black president," Barack Obama. To me, Clinton was "change" and "hope." At that time this country faced a major crisis, a multi-trillion dollar deficit, and I believed that Clinton was the man to solve it; the Republicans had clearly failed after twelve years of controlling the office of the president so it seemed reasonable to hope that Clinton could change this situation so I would not have to pay this debt when grew up. (We have failed miserably at this, but I will leave it to some other time to discuss who to blame for this.) I managed to impress my grandfather with my command of the issues and rallied my friends to support Clinton in an overwhelming victory in the mock elections held at school. Despite this, our legal system did not allow me to cast a vote in the actual election. I was not able to vote in 1996 nor was I allowed to vote in the closely contested election of 2000 despite the fact that I had skipped a grade and was therefore already out of high school. I was, frustratingly still just several months short of my eighteenth birthday. Readers are free to disagree with my reasons for supporting Clinton and I have certainly evolved in my political thinking over the past seventeen years. That being said, I clearly had achieved, by the age of nine, a certain baseline of political understanding where I was capable, regardless of whether I was right or not, of articulating political views in a coherent fashion. I possessed a political consciousness roughly equal to that of the average college student yet I was not able to directly help put Clinton into office as they helped Obama.

I am not here to argue for children's suffrage, though I do not consider the whole notion as something absurd to be dismissed out of hand. I recognize that, by and large, most children do not possess the baseline of political consciousness necessary in order to take part in civic life. Most children are not economically self-sufficient nor do they pay taxes. They, therefore, have no stake in the system. Most children are under the thrall of their parents and would vote however they told them to. I accept these arguments, but I find it strange that any liberal accepts them because in order to do so a person has to accept as part of the foundation of their political thinking a premise that puts a knife through over a century of liberal thinking, which assumes that one must judge people as individuals and that any attempt to deal with people as a group is nothing but stereotyping and prejudice.

When the authors of the Constitution decided to not give people like my nine-year-old self a vote, a decision confirmed more recently when the voting age was brought down from twenty-one to eighteen, but not nine, they bought into the notion that, since most nine-year-olds lack the intelligence or the economic/social self-sufficiency to serve as citizens, all nine-year-olds were not to be given a vote even those nine-year-olds who did possess these things. Furthermore, they decided that, since most twenty-one/eighteen-year-olds are intelligent enough and are economically/socially self-sufficient enough to serve as citizens, all twenty-one/eighteen-year-olds were to be given a vote, even those who did not possess these things. So today, if you are eighteen years old or above, a citizen of this country, have not been convicted of any serious crimes and mentally competent enough to carry out the physical action of voting, you can vote. (Considering that we dropped the voting age to eighteen at about the same time as we brought in mass college education, I find the whole economic self-sufficiency argument to be laughable. If anything we should have gone the other way and pushed the voting age to twenty-two when most people leave college and start real jobs.) I wish we could scrap the age requirement and directly demand that people pass some sort of citizenship test, like the one we give immigrants, and report a certain level of income on tax returns in order to be allowed to vote. This would make the voting process much more difficult and expensive to boot so we take a shortcut and limit the vote to people of the age bracket of people who generally possess the needed qualities despite the fact that many worthy individuals are shafted by it.

At the heart of this disenfranchisement of children is the argument that it is acceptable to disenfranchise people who belong to a specific group, known for their inability to fulfill a necessary requirement for suffrage. Another way to put this is that if person x belongs to group y and z percentage of y lack characteristic a then it is acceptable to strip x of b regardless of whether x lacks a. I do not object to this, it is essentially an extension of the principle that law can only deal with generalities and not specifics, which Maimonides and the pre-modern legal tradition accepted. That being said, this should put a shiver down every one of your spines.

I can plausibly replace children, as the x in the equation with other groups. Take blacks or women in the nineteenth century for example. Were these groups as a whole, at that point in time, at some theoretical baseline of political consciousness and economic/social self-sufficiency to be allowed to vote? Need I point out that keeping them from voting was justified by comparing them to children? There would be nothing irrational or intolerant about saying that white males (or property-owning white males) as a group have reached this threshold and blacks and women have not and therefore voting should be restricted to white males. You can no longer argue that there are women and blacks who personally pass the necessary thresholds and white males who do not so one should not work with generalizations or stereotypes. We have already decided that it is okay to engage in generalizations and stereotypes when it comes to children. I do not know what sin the conservative who fought against women's and black suffrage, on the grounds of their fitness, committed; I do know that the non-child suffrage-supporting liberal who chastises him for being prejudiced is a hypocrite.

This notion of stripping groups of their right to vote can be brought up to date. Women have proven to be highly successful in terms of education and taking up active roles in the economy. I would say that women in the Western world hit our theoretical threshold sometime during the late nineteenth century. Proof of this is the fact that it was at this point that we saw a mass women's suffrage movement. This required large amounts of women with educations and who were outside of the social or economic control of any fathers or husbands. What about blacks and particularly black men, with their frustrating inability to become productive upwardly mobile members of society, today; have they achieved the necessary threshold? To use examples of some of my fellow bloggers, we could say that Miss S., a black woman, should be allowed to vote while MaNishtana, a black man, should not, regardless of their comparative merit. We could take down Malcolm Gladwell, a writer and thinker I am in awe of, because he is black, male, and even has an afro to boot. We can say that Obama is not qualified to be president. Is it any fairer than banning me from being president just because I am not thirty-five years old? The argument for equality and against prejudice, so crucial to modern thinking, is nothing but a cheap clay idol packed with straw that fails to aid its believers when needed.

If we are to accept the legitimacy of generalizations then we can abandon any moral pretense of believing in literal equality as the whole discussion of civil rights is reduced to a cold calculus of what exactly is our theoretical threshold for citizenship and which groups as groups fulfill it. Admittedly the whole notion of a group is arbitrary and any person can be tied to a group that does not pass the threshold and can, therefore, be disenfranchised. If someone wanted to they could try to disenfranchise my present self by arguing, that despite my graduate education, I still belong to the autism spectrum group. Since this group as a whole might not pass the necessary threshold, I, therefore, should also lose my vote. Let us be clear, we are throwing around hand grenades and they can blow up in all sorts of unwanted places. The decision to put age into play as a relevant group is just as arbitrary as gender, color, or even neurological state. It is simply a convenience that we, as a society indulge ourselves even at the expense of precocious nine-year-olds. Of course, if some groups can be made to pay the price then so can others; it is only fair.

Learned Jewish Women in Sixteenth Century Italy

Renaissance Italy is usually a good place to look for precedents for liberal Jewish practices. In terms of Jewish education for women and women studying the Talmud Andree Aelion Brooks points out:

Shortly before Dona Gracia was born, a Talmud Torah for girls had opened in Rome; its women graduates emerged as poets, writers and patrons of the arts. A woman known as Pomona da Modena, living in Ferrara at the beginning of the century, was said to be as well versed in Talmud "as any man." Another member of Pomona's family, Fioretta, was constantly engaged in Hebrew and rabbinic learning. Others worked as scribes.

Then there was Bienvenida Abravanel, a niece of the famous Don Isaac Abravanel, the man who led the Jews out of Spain at the time of the Expulsion and later settled in Naples. Bienvenida was so smart and well educated that she became the tutor, and later advisor, to Leonora, daughter of the viceroy of Naples. When the Jews were expelled from Naples in 1530, it was Bienvenida who maneuvered through her court connections to have the order rescinded. After the death of Bienvenida's banker husband, Samuel, Bienvenida continued to run his banking business and use her wealth to ransom Jewish refugees captured by pirates. (Brooks, The Woman who Defied Kings pg. 27)

 It should be noted that Isaac Abarbanel believed, in some sense, that women did not have souls and that only men possessed them. Having elite learned women does not mean that women as a group were educated. People who are wealthy and clearly intelligent are going to be allowed a fair degree of eccentric behavior no matter what society they live in and are going to be able to get away with breaking certain social taboos.

Please Label Me: When I Grow Up I Can Decide What to Do With it

Ed Baker of Defense of Reason has a series of posts dealing with a new billboard campaign with the message that children should not be labeled with the religion of their parents. This is an old argument used by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins argues that children are too young to have opinions about religion and, just as we would not label a child as liberal or conservative, since children do not have political opinions, we should not label children as being members of any specific religion regardless of what their parents believe. One should be clear as to the stakes here. The main targets of Dawkins and the New Atheist campaign are closeted atheists, humanists, and otherwise unconventional believers who maintain themselves as religious believers. Such people continue, for their own reasons, to operate within that structure even after they have made their intellectual breaks with it. It is people such as these who can be tempted into secularist social structures that imitate organized religions. Such people need to be told that, contrary to what they might believe, religion is actually harmful for morality and need a shot of self-pride to get them to come out of the closet as non-believes. Such people as these continue with their religions, in large part, because they were raised in them and their identities are encapsulated within them. If such people did not have strong religious identities to begin with then their trip out of religion could be that much easier thus allowing Dawkins and company to go home with their mission accomplished. On the flip side not allowing parents to label their children would create all sorts of problems for religious people. Can Christians and Jews baptize or circumcise their children? What kind of education are parents allowed to give their children? This becomes particularly scary if we assume that the government has some sort of stake in the matter. Would secularists wish for the government to stop parents from raising their children in their faith? Dawkins believes that scaring children about a physical hell constitutes child abuse. Would Dawkins send the police into the homes of literary minded Christians to confiscate their children to protect them from being exposed to Paradise Lost?

Beyond raising certain questions to Dawkins and company as to what their attentions might be if they ever got the chance to put their ideas into practice, I believe there are more direct objections to make; I will go so far as to go the other direction and say that parents should actively seek to install strong ideological values in their children both in terms of politics and in religion. For one thing I reject the notion that children are incapable of having opinions. I had strong political opinions by the time I was nine. The reason why it took so long was that my parents were fairly apathetic when it came to politics. As the son of a rabbi, I already developed opinions about religion certainly by the time I entered kindergarten. Yes my religious opinions were heavily influenced by my father. In an ideal world maybe you could get children interested in issues by being neutral. In practice though children are attracted to intensity; they will care about things that they see the adults in their lives are truly interested in. So the choice becomes one of raising ideological children or raising apathetic children.

Parents are an important check on society and allow for honest multiculturalism. A parent not raising their children with a strong ideology means that a child is going to be raised in the values of the dominant society. There is a limit to how many viewpoints can take a leading role in the public sphere and schools. (Two would be impressive.) There can be as many ideologies to raise children in as there are parents. One of the great things about the honest sort of multiculturalism is that has checks and balances built into its very nature. Every parent raising a child serves as a check on every other parent raising their children.

Most crucially for the child's own intellectual development, a label is a place to begin one's search and a lens with which to deal with the world. Growing up as a Jewish child meant that I came into the world not as a tabula rasa, but as a part of a developed intellectual tradition. This allowed me to learn this tradition, its questions and its answers. If I did not identify so strongly as a Jew as I do than there would be no personal stake in exploring this tradition and I may never have gotten into the habit of asking the big questions at all.  Being born into a tradition does not mean that one has to be a slavish follower of this tradition. I am free to define my relationship to my tradition as I wish, even to reject it. But if I am to turn my back on Judaism, I would still be able to turn on Judaism as a Jew and thus embrace the label all the more. My father introduced me to Judaism and he has been a major influence. That being said he would be one of the first people to admit that my Judaism is very different from his.

There are limits to what parents can do to their children; I am not about to hand parents a blank check. I believe in practicing my brand of intellectual terrorism whenever I have the chance, with adults and with children. The more closed off the child the more eagerly I embrace the opportunity. The argument is sometimes put to me how dare I step on the prerogative of the parent and expose children to things that I know their parents do not wish them to be exposed to. My response is that parents do not have any intrinsic moral right to their children's minds. In theory I have an equal right to their children's minds to expose them to an ideology of my choice. Children, as beings without the full intellectual capabilities to take on the role of citizenship, are handed over to the physical control of adults, ideally the biological parents. Since the parent has authority over the child's body, he has an advantage when it comes to feeding his ideology to that child to such an extent that he can place whatever political or religious labels on the child he chooses. Since the government, the one body that can override the parent, is not allowed to have political or religious opinions it must turn a blind eye to the child's indoctrination. This, though, does not apply to individuals in society. A parent may be able to win out against society for the mind of his child, but it is at least going to be a fight.

I declare war against those parents who think that they can shut their children away and indoctrinate them as they so choose. I will carry out my moral duty to stand outside your doorstep and the moment your child steps out I will be after him. There is nothing you can do to stop me from talking to your children and giving out books and other forms of intellectual stimulation except to make an even greater effort to shut your child away to the extent that you would literally place your child in a locked cell until they are eighteen. This will also serve to raise the cost of your actions. I will make it so expensive that I will both intellectually and economically bankrupt you.

The Man in Black and My Favorite Sparkly Fairy Vampire Princess: In Defense of Comedic Romantic Heroes

Today I went to see New Moon. I would like to go officially on the record at this point to admit that Twilight is wearing a bit thin on me. This comes from Twilight becoming too popular too quickly and for all the wrong reasons. I think I am going to vomit if I see one more magazine cover with the "sexy stars of Twilight" on the front. Twilight was a brilliant comic horror romance starring Bella's motor mouth. She monologues her way through vampires and werewolves all the while being unfazed by any of it, but keeping her eyes focused on her normal teenage girl issues. Twilight would collapse into absurdity the moment it tried to actually be a real love story; the characters cannot stand up to the limelight of being judged by standard fiction logic. This sums up for me why New Moon was at best a mediocre film. The first film had the good sense not to take itself too seriously and could be taken simply for laughs. New Moon crosses that line into trying to be serious, leaving us with over the top acting and way too much angst. This is particularly unfortunate as, of all the books, New Moon is Bella's story; she is off on her own without Edward for most of the book except when she purposely puts herself at risk in order to summon up images of him telling her not to do whatever she is doing.

I went alone as the girl I am now seeing opposes Twilight. I managed to hook the last two women in my life onto Twilight, but no luck in this case. (I still think she is very cool anyway.) She says that Twilight is the one romance that she would never allow her daughter to read. Her reason for this is that she finds Edward Cullen to be emotionally abusive:

Bella is essentially interacting with Edward in a way that exposes her to emotional abuse.  She stays with him, even when he insists on making all her important life choices. And the only time that she disagrees with him is when she is making a foolish, short-sighted decision (e.g. wanting to be turned, not wanting to go to college, etc.).

I do not hold this against her. Firstly because at least she admits that Alice is a great character. Secondly, because I do not think she is all that far off. Considering all the teenage girls gushing over Edward and taking him seriously, I would have to admit that the risk of girls taking Edward as a romantic ideal and Bella as a model to follow may be too great. Edward's behavior is problematic and nowhere more so than in New Moon. He abandons her, leaving her in a fit of depression for months. Then, when he comes to believe that she is dead, he tries to commit suicide by angering the vampire mafia, the Volturi. No, I would not want my daughter dating Edward, angst-ridden sparkly emo vampire fairy princess or not. As a fictional, over the top romantic hero, though, this is fine. I would not want my daughter dating Romeo, with his panache for killing cousins in duels right after the wedding and general suicidal tendencies, either. The ending sequence of New Moon works fine if you are willing to take it for what it is; a spoof of Romeo and Juliet applied to this vampire universe.

I appeal to my favorite comic romance (and hers as well) The Princess Bride. (Many of you will have likely seen the brilliant film adaption of it. I urge you to read the even better novel from which it came. The novel makes fun of Lord of the Rings.) The story involves two lovers Buttercup and Westley. Westley leaves Buttercup to make his fortune, is captured by pirates and assumed dead, only to come to Buttercup's rescue several years later as the Dread Pirate Roberts. When he rescues her he is dressed in black and wearing a black mask. Buttercup does not recognize him but assumes that he is the man who killed her love. The man in black is rude to spiteful to Buttercup until she pushes him down a ravine and he calls out "as you wish," his old code phrase for "I love you." Buttercup then roles down the hill herself to smother him with kisses. So Westley manages to survive the pirates and become their leader, but he does not bother to send his love a message saying "I am alive and running a successful pirate business." (This is a variation on the classic question about Joseph, who becomes the Viceroy of Egypt and goes seven years without sending his father Jacob a note saying "I am fine dad, I was just sold into slavery by my brothers, but things are going pretty good now.") To top this off, Westley acts very coolly to her upon rescuing her, accusing her of abandoning him to marry Prince Humperdinck. We are never told what makes Buttercup so attractive. She spends the entire story in need of being rescued and whining. (Hardly a good feminist role model.) I would not consider this behavior the sort to be imitated. That being said I am willing to accept this as a spoof on the traditional romance, taking romantic troupes and pushing them to over the top extremes. If I wanted to get academic I would say that we are engaged in a feminist deconstruction of the traditional romance, bringing out the latent patriarchy of the genre by taking it to its reductio ad absurdum extreme.

I am willing to accept stories like Twilight and Princess Bride for what they are, comic romances that present over the top love stories with particularly domineering and moody male heroes with love-struck and submissive females with little in the way of actual personality, as long as they stay in their boundaries. The moment any future teenage daughter of mine takes any of this too seriously I think I would need to have a talk with her. (Note that memorizing the entire film of Princess Bride does not consist of taking things too seriously. Rather it is the mark of a healthy childhood and mature taste in movies.) There are fairy tales, fairy vampire princesses with sparkles and then there is real life. Fairy tales are useful as long as they are kept in their place.

Unpolemical Narratives

RVA responded to my previous post with a long comment that I believe deserves a posting in its own right:

I find both of your following contentions persuasive, that – a) History should be taught from an unpolemical stance and that we should try to understand historical events from the perspectives, rationales, and narratives which individuals in that era would view the world; and b) that we inevitably transform history into a narrative with identifiable heroes and villains.

I find attractive your theory that history should be taught from an unpolemical perspective (inasmuch as possible) because we need to equip children with analytical and critical thinking skills, rather than imposing values upon them (i.e. capitalism is good and inevitable, democracy is without flaws, etc.). Values are which are 'learned' and 'understood' are much more powerful, durable, and influential than those which are imposed upon us. It is essential that we teach our youth the ability to understand both sides of an argument, rather than pushing them to become ideologues who lack the ability and skills to analyze the effects and implications of their beliefs. It is better to teach children why communism/Nazism/fascism is attractive, and then have them internalize that perspective, which will allow them to understand why Germany voted in the Nazis, or why Lenin became a Marxist; because it will then allow students to learn the lesson that ideologies which may be attractive in theory may turn out to be dangerous in practice, or that good ideas which gain popular traction can become corrupted and perverted by leaders who succumb to the temptations of power. We often try to "otherize" the Nazis and Communists; but instead we should seek to understand that they were human and that their decisions were driven by human instincts; rather than dehumanize them, we should try to understand what aspects of human nature led to their misguided decisions and results, which can only be done by internalizing their perspectives, so that we can learn and comprehend the lessons to be learned from the history of the 20th century. Students who lack the skills to internalize the perspectives from past historical eras will be more prone to be misguided by demagogues and ideologues because they will lack the tools and skills to withstand the imposition of social and political narratives which they encounter.

I am also very intrigued by your theory that history is often turned into a narrative with identifiable with heroes and villains. I would go further and speculate that humans have an intrinsic need, desire, and addiction for narratives; that our species inevitably tries to make sense of all external stimuli, and that our common vehicle of understanding an incomprehensible universe is to turn empirical reality into narratives, into stories which cater to our desire for a) intrigue, b) triumph of good, c) finality & resolution, and d) meaning to our existence.

In this sense, the two doctrines are in conflict: First, that we should unpolemicize history; Second, that humans inevitability tend to "narrativize" history to fit our cultural and societal values. You write, "We wish to find that hero who took on the forces of darkness and forever changed the world for the better. We want it so badly that we will write him into history, running over any inconvenient facts in the process." This seems persuasive. But given that premise, I must ask you whether it is really possible for historians to write histories which are unpolemical? Even if historians are capable of writing unpolemical histories, will they have enough traction to become persuasive to other historians, or even to the general public? Does the structure and composition of History departments at American universities allow the writing of unpolemical histories? Is it possible to teach a course which doesn't implicitly assign valuations to historical events or historical figures? Is it inevitable that historians "narrativize" history? Are there societal benefits to the polemical teaching of history which outweigh an unpolemical approach? Are there benefits to making history into a narrative?

I could not have said this better myself. As historians, when we try to explain why Nazism and Communism may have been attractive to reasonable, rational and moral people we are not defending Nazism and Communism. Quite the contrary, we are trying to stop these ideologies from ever reentering the world stage. If all I understand about Nazism was that it was intolerant than I will not be able to recognize it when it comes to tempt me in real life with its offer of national unity, pride, order and the advancement of civilization. I would also point out that this applies to religion. Religious groups often make the mistake of thinking that they can shut their children away from the outside world and create straw-man images. This works up until the moment that the child comes in contact with the real outside world and realizes that his parents and teachers have misled him. In my experience there is not a more powerful way to convince a person to abandon his previous beliefs than to allow him to realize that the authority structure which he has followed has been less than honest with him even about some small issue. If my parents and teachers will lie to me about one thing what else might they have lied to me about?

As to the issue of the importance of writing non-polemical history and our need to write narrative, yes there is a conflict. We are fighting against a deeply rooted part of our nature. To make matter all the worse, we are up against the desires of a society that does not have historical interests at heart. Textbooks are passed through committees made up of non-historians who wish to use history to lobby for their own group interest. It is for this reason that I refuse to teach out of a formal textbook. Writing non-polemical history is not going to be easily accomplished if at all. This is one of the reasons why we need professional historians, who have spent years immersing themselves not just in historical documents, but in historical reasoning as well. Some gentlemen scholar writing history in his spare time as a hobby is just not going to cut it; it will get us Gibbon.

 I do believe that it is at least theoretically possible to transcend our human biases and write non-polemical history. The first thing is that history is about a method and not a narrative. As long as we are simply using the historical method to analyze texts we get around the issue of narrative and do not have to worry about bias and polemics. The second thing is that when we do eventually come to write narrative, which we must in the end, we can avoid the standard narratives. Instead of talking about conflicts with heroes and villains we can talk about evolving processes that have arisen between contesting sides. In this, Hegel was onto something, though I would not accept his attempt to enforce meta-narratives over all of history. Even if the two sides may never have been able to reconcile in life, the historian understands both sides and therefore makes a sort of peace between them.

If you are interested in the topic of historical narratives I would recommend you read Hayden White's Metahistory.

Historical Progress and Reasonable Men

Miss S. raises some issues with one of my arguments from my presentation on Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. I argue that history should be taught with a decidedly unpolemical stance, even when dealing with societies and institutions that most people today would find morally abhorrent such as slavery or open patriarchy. History should be presented from the perspective of those who lived then. We need to ask ourselves what was going through their heads when they did these things and what they would say in their own defense. The moment one takes a judgmental stance and starts to cluck about people in the past not being open minded or tolerant than one is no longer doing history. Miss S. asks:

 Reading your post I can't help but feel as if your method of justification for the behaviors of people from the past fails to own up to the great potential that men possess. I'll explain why in a bit, but this is surprising because you seem to view those people and those societies in/from the past in high regard; higher regard than I (a non-historian) does. By our modern definition (and maybe even a historical one) "great" men were not those who compromised too often. If anything they were incredibly stubborn and rarely achieved any accolades for their behavior while they were alive.

You present slavery as an example of a social situation where bad moral actions (even for that society, at that time) could be reasoned away by the short-sightedness of the society and their reluctance to compromise their economic foundation. Perhaps I am interpreting this entirely wrong, but why should it be encouraged for the students to empathize with such a mindset and not be critical of it? There were plenty of other individuals from that same time period who were quite critical of the institution of slavery (I don't think anyone is debating that). What you have is a situation where sociology mixes with history and you have an example as to how gross acts of immorality can exist and the society at large puts up with it. Like how the Romans watched people being mauled to death by beasts in the Coliseum for sport. Like how our society today retains very little modesty in regards to sex.

In politics, yes you routinely make "deals with the Devil"; but also, if you notice, when you look throughout history, some of the great societal changes came about because either leaders or a group did not compromise -- and took the "all but nothing" stance. Believe it or not, this is not an outright criticism of your efforts. In fact if I were your student, I would find the exercise to be an interesting one. I would just wonder how you could explain away the impetus of ideas that were uncompromising and self-serving; yet impacted history greatly. Your approach would justify the actions of American slaveholders; but not that of the American (Union) government.

George Bernard Shaw once said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." I think Miss S. would agree with Shaw as would most people. I cannot disprove this claim, but would point out that it is based on a flawed human perception of history. One of the common traps that people fall into, when dealing with history, is narrative thinking. When studying historical events we look for stories to tell, ones that have all the qualities of the fictional stories we manufacture out of our own imaginations simply for entertainment. A good story that will hold onto the attention of listeners and readers is going to have a unified story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, a limited number of characters, clear heroes and villains, something important at stake, like saving the world, with a climax in which everything will stand or fall based on one person making a single decision in just one moment. Since we like these sorts of stories, we will purposely try to construct historical narratives along these lines. The problem with narrative thinking is that there is no particular reason to assume that events in the physical world really do operate like this. So we fall into the trap of a self-selecting bias; we see what we want to see even if it is a product of nothing more than our imaginations.

Does history advance because of a few brave heroes who do things that others think are impossible, defy the odds, and save the world? We wish to think this so we construct heroic narratives where society progresses through conflicts in which the good guys win in the end. A more accurate view of history would be that society evolves as part of a continuous process. The mechanism for this change is not clear cut conflict, but the compromises that different factions reach as part of their ongoing dialogue. Why did the Civil Rights movement succeed? Because blacks defeated their enemies with their marching or because mainstream America became convinced that giving blacks equal rights strengthened Middle America by bringing in moderate peaceful blacks and expelling segregationist whites? Middle America made a deal with black America and we are still working out the details. The same thing goes for the gay rights movement. Their success, ironically enough, has been due to their ability to adapt themselves to mainstream culture by seeking mainstream marriage than trying to actually change mainstream culture. For all the talk about extra-marital sex among American youth, the standard is still mainstream marriage. Groups outside of the mainstream make their deals with mainstream America and both sides win in the end.

It is very easy to admire someone like John Brown who made a martyr of himself trying to free slaves. But what did John Brown accomplish; he got a lot of people killed in Kansas and most famously at Harper's Ferry. In the end, he freed no one. On the other hand take Abraham Lincoln, who is often drafted in the cause of American hero. Unlike the Lincoln of popular myth, though, the real Lincoln was very much the political pragmatist. In 1860 he did not run on a platform of getting rid of slavery, just to not allow slavery into the territories. How many slaves did the Great Emancipator free? Zero. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in territories not currently controlled by the Union. That being said it set the stage for the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments by binding the American government to the ending of slavery. It was not the moderates who were being short-sighted. In a sense, it was people like John Brown who were the real short-sighted ones.

We wish to find that hero who took on the forces of darkness and forever changed the world for the better. We want it so badly that we will write him into history, running over any inconvenient facts in the process. When writing fantasy we could leave our Saurons and our Lord Voldemorts as being motivated just by evil. I do not understand evil as a motive. The closest I can come is the pursuit of good ends through means that are so evil that they cancel out the good at the end. For example, there is trying to save the world by becoming a dark lord tyrant and nuking most of it. In fantasy, one has the luxury of not having to seriously consider the "villains" and can just tell the story from the perspective of the "good guys." As a historian, though, I also have to be willing to consider "Sauron" and "Voldemort." Since it is precisely such people who represent the greatest difficulty, understanding them becomes the task that dominates my work as a historian.