Mary E. Brayton

Bryn Mawr College, where I spent the weekend, is one of the leading women's colleges in the country and has been so since its founding at the end of the nineteenth century. While examining my room I found a column of small plaques listing the various girls who had apparently dormed in the room. My historical interest aroused, I began examining the names. At the bottom was one Mary E. Brayton of '01. (That is 1901, not 2001.)

Who was this woman who first lived in the room that I briefly occupied? From a quick internet search, here is what I have discovered so far. Mary Elizabeth Brayton was born in 1880 to Thomas Edward and Martha Brayton in Fall River Mass. She was tutored as a child and attended the B. M. C. Durfee high school to prepare for Bryn Mawr, suggesting a privileged background. Mary graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1901 with a focus in French and Latin. After graduating, she eventually returned to Fall River where she married Edward Ira Marvell in 1912. The fact that Mary, as woman living in early twentieth century America did not marry until her thirties may be explained by the fact that she traveled abroad five times and was active in Episcopalian missionary activity. Mary and Edward lived on 338 Locust St. in Fall River. On a local front, Mary was active in the women's suffrage and labor movements, serving on the Bureau of Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Boston and as the treasurer of the Fall River's Working Girl's Club. She was also into theater and golf. As of 1917, Mary had a son and a daughter.

There is an Abby Slade Brayton Durfee and Mary Brayton Durfee Brown Scholarship Fund at Bryn Mawr for students of English or American descent (was this meant to exclude blacks?) and descendants of the class of 1894, which was established in 1924. Though I am not sure if there is any connection.

If have not been able so far to follow Mary's story past 1917. If any of her descendants find this blog post and wish to fill in the blanks I would be grateful.    

Presenting at the Institute for Humane Studies Seminar

Part of the IHS Scholarship and the Free Society seminar are breakout sessions in which graduate students get to present their own research. The purpose of this is to give presenters the opportunity to receive feedback from a diverse academic audience as well as gain practice in this very process. In keeping with the purpose of the seminar as a whole, which is to foster academics who not only prescribe to classical liberalism but also use it as a foundation for their scholarship, these breakout sessions also provide a forum to discuss how one's work relates to issues of interest to classical liberalism.

I was not initially invited to present when the seminar schedule was first formed, but one of the presenters did not make it so I volunteered to step in at the last minute. The seminar organizers accepted, so I ended up with a much and unexpected, but appreciated chance to do a conference presentation, speaking to a room full of classical liberals about messianism and politics. I mostly discussed the relationship between messianism and failed politics. (See "The Turn to Messianism.")

How does this issue of political messianism relate to classical liberalism? First, I am confronting the question of religion and politics and showing some of the potential pitfalls in any simple attempt to split the two. Second, my work serves to challenge a traditional liberal narrative of modernity in which modernity is defined by secular political revolutions. Following people like Norman Cohn, I argue that religious apocalypticism is not something distinct from secular politics and is, in fact, an important forbearer of it.

Considering how last minute this all was, my presentation was even more of my manic seat of the pants, loud, throwing my hands about and going into side tangents than usual. This style of speaking has its advantages and disadvantages. No matter what I am speaking about, it is difficult to accuse me of being boring. In a regular classroom, though, this can intimidate some students and even annoy those who do not wish to care. In a professional audience, like this seminar, I risk coming across as entertaining, but not professional and not someone to be taken seriously as an academic. Part of my difficulty as to why I cannot simply tone down my style is that I find myself needing the energy boost I receive from bouncing around. This is particularly the case when, as with this seminar, I have not prepared and I am really nervous. (Part of this may relate to my Asperger need for stimming.) I also struggle with a stammer, which particularly manifests itself when I am not on an emotional high.

There is a trap here; either I try and fail to play the part of the professional and risk appearing unprofessional and dull to boot or I can entertaining and even intellectually stimulating, but clearly not anyone's idea of a professional academic. I do admire those tenured academics, who can afford to walk around in jeans and a t-shirt and be eccentric to their heart's content. I simply lack the ability to play the part of the professional academic until I get to a place in which I can stop and freely be me.    

Institute for Humane Studies Seminar: Scholarship & a Free Society

So here I am at a seminar for the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) on Scholarship & a Free Society at Bryn Mawr College, a women's college near Philadelphia. This school is absolutely gorgeous. IHS is a libertarian organization that conducts educational programs for college students. I am having a great time here. How many other places can I respond to something by discoursing on how this is an example of government inefficiency, which free markets are better equipped to handle and no one will think you are rude or engaging in an Asperger tendency to monologue? It is telling that before the lectures started and the rules were read out to us, the IHS representative appealed to us that regardless of what we might think of certain laws we should respect the private contract we have entered with IHS and which IHS has entered with Bryn Mawr and not make use of certain substances currently banned by the state of Pennsylvania.

So far we have had some truly thought-provoking lectures. I am really impressed to the extent these have not been indoctrination sessions. I suspect that part of it is that we are dealing with graduate students, who already are committed in some fashion to classical liberalism and who have a background in the field. So rather than rehash issues of like why individual liberty is important or why government is inefficient, along the lines of Milton Friedman's wonderful introductory book Free to Choose, the lecturers have moved past that and are trying to problematize these issues in some surprising ways. I hope to post my notes for at least some of them. So stay tuned.

Republican Primary Debates: I Have Produced Kids So I am Qualified to be President

I am in middle of watching the Republican Primary Debates. I find it shocking sometimes, when watching Republican politicians, to take a step back and realize how far I have come in the past decade in how little these people speak to me. For example in the opening statement, I think every candidate bothered to mention that they are married with children. Now we know the real reason why this is; it is a simple way for Republicans to claim they have "family values." There is something else here that strikes at the root of what is wrong with our politics. Here we have people running for president and what do they offer us as their qualifications, but that they are "regular" folks just like us. One little problem with this; regular folks are, by definition, not qualified to be president. I have numerous Haredi relatives who are married and have successfully raised ten or more children. None of these people are qualified to be president (even if I suspect they are less unqualified than some of these people on the podium). For that matter I, with my graduate degree, am not qualified to be president even if the Supreme Court were to recognize my constitutional right to run despite my being only twenty-eight years old. (See "My Constitutional Right to Run for the Senate.") 

What I want to hear from a presidential candidate is not how they are a regular person like me, but how they are not like me; that they are one of the most brilliant people in this country, a leading scholar in political theory, economic and foreign policy. Come to the debating podium with their framed Ph.D.s and a stack of published academic books. Barring the arrival of a world class genius I will accept a candidate who would come out and apologize to me: Sorry for having the nerve to run for president; in truth I am really a normal person just like you, with kids and and a job, and am completely unqualified for this office. If you can find it in yourself to think of me as something other then an arrogant power hungry fool, I promise to not make use of any of this power that I have not the faintest clue how to use in the first place. Instead I will leave you to live your lives and raise your children as you think best. Hopefully even people without a single graduate degree should be qualified for that.

Salman Rushdie Doing Television

This past decade has seen an interesting shift in the question of can books survive in a culture increasingly dominated by visual media. The story has become more complex than high brow literature for elites versus the crass popular entertainment of movies and television, particularly as we have seen shows such as Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Mad Men, which have used the open ended screen time of multiple seasons provided by the medium to create complex stories and characters with a literary quality that is hard to deny. Those who would see this new breed of television show as the new literature of our century may have just received some hard evidence of this. Salman Rushdie is doing a television show, noting that "he was drawn to television by the comparatively high status of the writer in the process. 'In the movies the writer is just the servant, the employee. In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.'"

I do not assume that this is the end of the novel, but I think this does mark a major shift in how we think about television. Will it be so obvious to our next generation of writers that novels are the respectable medium and movies and television are the popular entertainment, done for money and not respect.

Piled Higher and Deeper Movie

My life as a graduate student; just replace science with history. Now off to grade some forty finals plus a bunch of essays on Candide.

Final History 111 Spring 2011

My final was scheduled for Shavuot so I decided to simply give an online final. I just sent it out to my students. Here it is.




Pick three of the following essay questions and write 2-3 page responses. Each question is worth 50 points. Feel free to make use of your notes and do research online or in books. Your work, though, has to be your own. I will be on the lookout for plagiarism. I strongly advise everyone not to talk to their classmates about the final as this will likely cause your essays to sound too much alike. When you are finished, please email your finals to chinn.26@osu.edu. You have until Thursday midnight to finish.




You have been hired to write a screenplay about either the battle of Thermopylae, Robin Hood or pirates. Please write a summary of your proposed screenplay in order to hook a skeptical, but historically illiterate film producer into providing $100 million dollars for the making of this movie. What historical liberties do you plan on taking? Defend your decisions in terms of “narrative thinking.”




Describe life in the Middle Ages as it related to government and law enforcement. Why was life in the Middle Ages so violent despite the fact that almost everyone, at least on paper, was a Christian? What role did nationalism play in people’s minds? Give specific examples.



Does religion make people intolerant of others and hostile to democracy? Give examples from ancient Rome, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. In each of these cases, consider the role played by the specific content of their religious beliefs in the type of decisions made.




The study of history requires a great degree of skepticism. Is this skepticism absolute? What is the ironic conclusion of absolute skepticism? Is there a difference between claiming, as a historical fact, that Persia invaded Greece twice in the fifth century BCE and Mohammed spoke to the angel Gabriel?


What is “Occam’s Razor?” Why is this concept so important in one’s day to day life? What role does Occam’s Razor play in the study of history? Give an example.



What were some of the major technological innovations in warfare from antiquity up until the eighteenth century? How did some of these innovations advance the cause of democracy; how did some of them hinder democracy? What does it mean to have a “citizen’s army?” Why is it so important for the formation and maintenance of democracy?






Bonus: “Everything I needed to know in history (and life for that matter) I learned from watching Monty Python.” Defend this proposition with practical examples from the wisdom of this great British comedy team. (5 pts.)

Why Nobody Wants to be a Feminist: My Response to Clarissa

Clarissa did an excellent post a few days ago, Why Nobody Wants to be a Feminist where she challenges women to accept the full consequences of being liberated from patriarchy.

Feminism has given women a lot in the last several decades. However, new rights always come accompanied with new responsibilities and obligations. While feminism was in the process of granting women rights, they were happy to accept it. As soon as the time came to “pay the bills” and assume new obligations that came with being accepted as fully human, women abandoned the movement in droves. Unless we accept this very unpleasant truth and start doing something about it, it is my profound conviction that no amount of ethnic-specific feminisms and happy bondings between second, third and fourth generations of feminists will help attract more women to feminism. The problem does not lie within the movement. It is located outside, in people who don’t want to belong to it, who cringe when they hear the word “feminism”, or who have abandoned it.


Unless we accept that the patriarchy victimizes and rewards both women and men, we will never move on from this stalemate. Many women are standing in the way of feminism today because they are unwilling to let go of the benefits the patriarchy offered them, even as they keep enjoying the removal of constraints it used to place on their lives. In my culture, we call this “sitting on two chairs.” And that, my friends, is always a dangerous activity to engage in.


I agree with Clarissa, though I would take it a step further. At its heart, feminism has never been about a principled defense of equal rights, but simply a grab for arbitrary special privileges. If feminism was actually about equal rights then the very term "women's rights" would be dropped and everything would be framed in terms of human rights. For example, abortion would have nothing to do with a woman's "right to choose" or "control her own body;" it would simply be a plausible extension of the premise that individual human beings are the ones best suited for evaluating their own good and must be left as the sole arbitrators of matters relating to their own bodies. This leads to the conclusion that individuals should be allowed to use drugs, sell themselves as prostitutes, their own organs and possibly to have abortions. (See "The Libertarian Case Against Abortion.")
   
Closer to Clarissa's point, feminists themselves have proven unwilling to abandon distinctions of gender when such distinctions are beneficial to women. We see this when it comes to sports and acting awards, but more importantly the draft, which women are still protected from. (It would be worth bringing the draft back just to see men in mass refusing to serve unless women did so as well or agreed to give up the equal right to vote and hold down a job.) Either gender is rendered politically or socially meaningless like race and religion across the board or we admit that it is meaningful and negotiate where and how on the assumption that any special privilege will be paid for by accepting a form of discrimination on a different front. For example, it may be that if women desire special protection in terms of maternal leave they may have to pay for it by surrendering reproductive freedoms. The logic being that if the bearing of children is of some value to society at large so that companies should make special allowances for it then women, in turn, should submit themselves to the needs of society and fashion their reproductive lives in a way that best serves those needs.

Naturally, if the privilege is merely social then the discrimination, in turn, should also only be social. To make my own position clear. I oppose political distinctions based on gender (including women being exempted from the draft). That being said, and this is the Burkean conservative in me, I accept that, at a social level, there will for the foreseeable future continue to be social distinctions based on gender. It is my hope that, as a society, we can figure out a way to negotiate through these distinctions, men and women talking as equals.

There are consequences for this feminist unwillingness to take a principled stand on equal rights. If feminists are seen as trying to sit on two chairs with one rear end, then non-ideologically committed women can naturally only be expected to follow suit and not ask themselves the hard questions about being courted in marriage and becoming stay at home moms. Furthermore, this opens feminists to attack from different sides. Minority group feminists will attack establishment feminism as "white" feminism. If women are simply an arbitrary group grabbing for arbitrary special privileges then other arbitrary groups can arise within this already arbitrary group accuse others of wanting arbitrary special privileges and demand arbitrary special privileges of their own.

The greatest concern to any honest liberal should be how this plays into the hands of conservatives. If the people who claim to be liberals and supporters of equal rights behave like conservatives, creating arbitrary groups and handing out privileges and discriminating against at will, then we can only expect the true conservatives out there to throw away any pretext of supporting equal rights now that they no longer need to feel ashamed in the face of an honest principled liberalism.

John Constantine on Israel and the Jews

My roommate just showed me a piece from the Hellblazer comic. For those of you who are only familiar with the character of John Constantine from the Constantine movie with Keanu Reeves, the comic book version is a lot edgier. In the following piece he takes out a skinhead and gives the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish speech you are likely to ever hear from a comic book character. Considering the amount of Jewish writers out there, it is a pity we do see more of this. Perhaps if more comics were like this we might see Jewish leaders willing to talk like this as well. 

Tzabi the Israeli "Duck and Cover" Turtle

My friend Frank Blazich Jr., a fellow graduate student at Ohio State, is a specialist in American Cold War era civil defense. Right now he is working on a dissertation North Carolina's civil defense program. (Why someone would be working on North Carolina history from Ohio is a separate story that you are free to ask him.) A few months ago, he came over to me and asked me if I could translate something in Hebrew for him. Why would Hebrew be relevant to American civil defense? He had an Israeli version of the American cartoon Bert the Turtle.







I allowed the project to languish on my back burner for several months. (Frank is a much better friend than I am in reverse.) One of the reasons was that there were some terms I was not sure of and my translation is very stilted. So please go over to Frank's blog to see Tzabi the Israeli duck and cover turtle. Those of my readers with a background in Hebrew should feel free to suggest alternative translations.

It is interesting to note that the Tzabi comic was produced in 1967, presumably during the lead up to the Six Day war. Unlike Bert, there is no mention of Atomic bombs. The concern is merely that Egyptian planes might bomb Israeli cities. As a good Israeli turtle, Tzabi does not follow in the ways of the waspy Bert and wear bow-ties.

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part II)

(Part I)

If medieval and early modern Christianity had a pessimistic view of human nature in which man is innately sinful and can only be kept in check by Church and State, we moderns tend to have a rather optimistic view of human nature that stresses man's innate natural goodness. This too has consequences for both theology and politics. If man is good then it stands to reason that he can achieve salvation through his own means without the aid of the Church. Now it becomes possible to talk about human reason as the bar against which to judge all things. Only someone confident in the intrinsic goodness of human beings could allow them to judge the world around them and do it based on what is innate to them. As for politics, a belief in human goodness allows for human beings to craft their own laws. We can even begin to talk about government as a contract between equals instead of the dictates of a patriarch to his children, leading to liberal democracy.

The legacy of this notion of human goodness still presents itself in our debates over crime and punishment and foreign policy. Why do people commit crimes? A conservative would say it is because they are "bad" people, motivated by greed and malice. In order to protect itself, society must remove this person from its midsts, either through prison or even the death penalty. Punishment is something that the person deserves as his just deserts. In the liberal model crime results from either mental illness, being raised in a problematic society or simply bad education. One way or another it is not the person's fault and the purpose of any "punishment" is not to penalize the person, but "rehabilitate" them. (See "C. S. Lewis on the Implications of the Nazi Holocaust.") Why are there terrorists? The conservative will tell you that it is because they are "evil" and hate "freedom." Naturally, such people can only be stopped by invading other countries and killing those people who deserve it. The liberal will tell that terrorists are the products of economic inequality, the legacy of colonialism and a fundamentalist education that preaches hate. Agree to peace talks, address the massive economic inequalities across the globe and provide a proper education for all and terrorism will disappear.

Now even the liberal acknowledges that there is much that is wrong with the world. Rather then lay the blame on people, the blame is placed on society. It is society that creates inequalities and teaches prejudice. People, left to their own devices, would naturally wish to live in harmony with others, recognizing the common humanity of all, and would not be bothered by the existence of other races and creeds. People have to be taught to hate others because of the color of their skin and the deity they pray to. The good news is that people can be saved from their own prejudices. With a properly funded welfare program, civil rights legislation and tolerant education, the natural human goodness in people will reassert itself and stand against all the ills created by society in the first place.

This brings us to Candide, a novel that represents this Enlightenment shift in how one views humanity. Candide is naturally good. Contrary to a simplistic view of the character, Candide is not stupid (a mistake made by the modern day adaptation, Forrest Gump). Candide is simply naive due to the fact that he is raised with no experience with the world. This is crucial to the character because it is precisely this lack of worldliness that allows for Candide's goodness. Candide does not suffer from greed, does not hate anyone and only wishes to live in brotherhood with all. Candide is not even capable of understanding the possibility that other people are not like this. The reason for this is that Candide exists completely uncorrupted by society. (This idea would be taken even further by Rousseau.)

It is for this reason that Voltaire subverts the garden of Eden story. Instead of Adam and Eve committing Original Sin, willfully disobeying the divine commandment to not eat from the tree of knowledge, and being rightfully thrown out of paradise, Candide has no notion of sin. He only wishes to experiment with the laws of "cause and effect." The fact that he kisses Cunegonde is interpreted as sin by a corrupt society, leading to him being wrongfully exiled from his beloved home in Westphalia. Instead of degenerate humans needing to be saved by righteous laws, Candide is the pure one, it is the outside system that is degenerate.


       

Americans and First Person Shooters

Extra Credits has a video blog post on why Americans are attracted to first-person shooter (FPS) video games. His argument is that this is rooted within American culture and perceptions of violence. Americans tend to focus on the individual versus society. Guns are symbols of personal freedom. Violence comes out of the struggle of the individual for freedom. This plays itself out in FPS games in which it is the individual against hordes of "others." Furthermore one's advancement through the game is mainly marked by more powerful guns, which are external interchangeable tools. Japanese culture tends to see violence as a spiritual struggle which, while manifested externally, is really a reflection of an internal conflict. This plays itself out in Japanese games where weapons are not simply tools that one picks up, but extensions of the self. One advances by internalizing greater powers. The FPS has advanced enough that this model may not hold up. For example, Mass Effect requires one to lead a team and use bionic powers with less emphasis placed on guns. Still, this piece holds for more traditional games and is useful food for thought.

If only someone told me this argument years ago when I was a kid. Mom, you have to let play Wolfenstein. I am exercising my natural American love of liberty and abusing it. If you do not let me play I may grow up to become a liberal and not support the invasion of other countries.

 

History 111: Candide and the Innate Goodness of Man (Part I)

(Go to 2:55 for Candide's showdown with the villainous  Jew.)


My last discussion of the early modern debate about human salvation proved surprisingly fitting for the last book we are doing, Voltaire’s Candide. Candide has the advantage of being short enough that we can go through it in two classes. If it is part of the Enlightenment, it is a critique of the old world I have spent the quarter trying to describe. If Voltaire was prejudiced against Jews, it is still one of the funniest books ever written. Candide also serves as an example of the modern shift in the understanding of human nature from a pessimistic view, in which human beings are hopelessly depraved, to a more positive view, in which humans are assumed to be innately good.

In the debate over salvation, both our Catholics and Protestants operated from the assumption of human depravity. In the Catholic model humans are just mostly depraved. We are tainted by Original Sin; while we are capable of doing good and resisting sin in specific situations, it is inevitable, barring divine intervention through grace, that we will come to sin. For example, even if I resist temptation and do not sin with a woman, the mere fact that I lusted after the woman is itself a sin; if I truly understood who God was, I never would even contemplate breaking his commandments. The fact that I would contemplate such a thing demonstrates that I am under the taint of Original Sin and of Satan. From this perspective it may be less damaging for my soul in the long run if I had given in to temptation. Now that I have not, I am in danger of believing myself to be righteous so I will never repent and I will add the sin of pride. The Catholic solution is that one needs to enter the body of the Church and come under the forgiveness earned on the cross. Being baptized and receiving the sacraments will not necessarily make me a better person; human depravity remains and I will have to answer for my sins in purgatory. By being part of the Catholic Church, though, one has access to Jesus’ atonement and can hope to eventually get out of purgatory and enter heaven.

Protestants are even more pessimistic about human nature than Catholics. Lutherans believe that man is almost completely depraved, incapable of doing any good or avoiding any sin on his own. The only redemptive feature in human nature is the ability to have faith. Calvinists are the most extreme, believing in utter human depravity and that humans can have no role in their own salvation. While, in a sense, Protestants value good works less than Catholics do, Protestants tend to agonize over the implications of their day to day works. Catholics can feel confident that, having entered the body of the Church, they are part of the saved despite their sins. With Protestantism there is no longer a set recognizable body of believers that one can belong to and be confident of salvation. Furthermore there is an assumption that one’s salvation should be manifested in good works. Thus if I am still sinning, even after being baptized as a Protestant, it is a sign that perhaps I never genuinely believed and received graced and am therefore not really one of the saved.

This view of human nature has political as well as religious implications. If I cannot hope to get right with God on my own because I am so depraved, neither can I fashion laws and a government for myself to live with others. Just as I need God to reveal his laws through the Church as I could never learn them on my own, he also needs to establish a government for me, such as a king, with rulers to keep me in line, because I could never do so on my own. Now it might happen that this king will prove corrupt as he is also a depraved human sinner. If that happens then I should take it as a punishment from God for my sins and should pray for forgiveness and ask God to change the heart of the king. Under no circumstance should I even contemplate rebellion. What basis do I have to believe that I, a depraved sinner, can possibly fashion anything better? How dare I reject the government that God saw fit, in his infinite mercy, to grant me that I may become less of a sinner.

Admittedly, already with Protestantism this model becomes more complicated. While Protestants may believe in human depravity they also believe in grace which can rectify human nature. This allows for there to be a “community of saints,” that small group of people blessed with grace. Such people would be capable of establishing their own “godly” government. It may even be their duty to seize the reins of government from an unsaved king. In the case of the English Civil War, this led to the execution of Charles I and the establishment of an English Republic under Oliver Cromwell. It also led to the Fifth Monarchy movement, which thought that Cromwell was not godly enough and tried to remove him as a limb of Satan.