It took place 100 years ago and was much bigger than the current BP spill [though it still needs to be totally played out.] It is known as the “The Lakeview Gusher” and began in 1910 when an oil line in California failed and exploded releasing a geyser of 90-100,000 barrels of oil a day and lasted for a year. Drilling at the depth of over 2,225 feet an explosion occurred and the well erupted.
For more information here is a great news report from CNN:
I am embarrassed to admit that I myself did not even remember until today that the Anniversary of one of the most important World War 2 events had just passed. The largest amphibious landing in history and one that almost failed. Yet the warriors of our second Great Generation (I tend to count the Founders as the Greatest, sorry) persevered.
I want to, therefore, share with you General Eisenhower’s message to his soldiers just prior to their mission:
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
– Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
My God, I had no idea we have reenactors out here in Colorado and that they actually do a show. It happens this Sunday I will be there! Maybe… Here’s the photo from our little newspaper:
If you do a simple Google search for “founding fathers not christian” you will find a slew of blogs, publications, and whatnot that offer their take on the issue of Christianity and the Founding. These opinion pieces, such as the one I am writing here, offer quotes from Founders such as: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, and others.
I have already addressed the fact that Natural Law was the essential influence in the Declaration and the Constitution. That in itself establishes that the United States of America was founded on principles that flowed from Christian doctrine.
But nonetheless, lets look at this notion that somehow, in the aftermath of the Great Awakening and George Whitefield (who deserves credit for influencing some –if not many– of those Founders such as Samuel Adams), and an era of what some would call today fanatical religious tendencies, that miraculously the Founders were not Christians and at best Deists. By the way, though I think it could be fair to declare some of the Founders as Deists, by definition they stilled believed in God and called themselves, as you will see, Christian. A Deists simply rejects the notion that God intervenes in human affairs (more of a by product of the Enlightenment). This is a reaction, during the 18th and early 19th Centuries, when many rejected the “dogma” of religious institutions; not God.
It would take more time than I am willing and able here to tackle each Founder in one shot, so for this first installment I will tackle two of the prominent Founders that are pointed to as “not Christian”: Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
The man is a riddle, an enigma, and wrapped in a … vortex, or however the saying goes. I love Jefferson. For all his imperfections in modern eyes, he was still perfect in so many other ways. If it is true that Texas has taken him out or reduced his importance, than I am no fan of their new curriculum.
Let me take you back to 1803, Jefferson is into his second year as President. He had been mauled by the Federalists as being essentially an atheist. (I love how pundits today act like the political shenanigans of today are somehow new!) He wrote what is the best letter that I have found concerning his Christianity or lack there of. The letter was to his esteemed Friend Dr. Benjamin Rush (April 21, 1803) and in it Jefferson was clearly reflective on his record as a Christian, and was writing in response to a long standing promise — apparently — to Rush regarding his (Jefferson) stance on Religion and his religious beliefs.
Jefferson started off by stating, first and foremost, “I am a Christian…” and then he qualifies it, but the statement is clear. Now I can stop there and say, “bring it on,” but sense I know there are those who will have the, “yeah buts,” I will continue. [read letter here if you would like.]
Jefferson’s convictions were indeed complex, which is what one would expect with such a complex thinker. Jefferson continued in this letter, but did so hesitantly as he iterates: “I know it will not be expressed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations and calumnies.” Jefferson did not know it, but even today there are those with political motivations (like the Federalists) to essentially demonize him by misrepresenting and distorting a few of his words here or there.
Yet Jefferson is complicated and that cannot be denied. Just read the letter noted above and you will see how three dimensional his mind worked. But to say he was not a Christian is a gross and “malignant perversion” of his words.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
To me Franklin is the key as those who insist that the Founders were not Christian point lovingly to Franklin as the poster child for their argument. Indeed, some of his thoughts and writings can be taken out of context and used to give the impression that he was not a Christian and did not care for religion. He probably did not care for the Church, the institution and did so for reasons he clearly articulated.
Franklin was a child of the Enlightenment and viewed Christianity through that prism. Franklin was a pragmatist and had no tolerance for religious persecution of one religion over another. The “dogma” as he called it. He believed in free will but also wrote very clearly that God, a supreme being, was benevolent and powerful. He believed in Natural Law and also believed in tolerance and utility with regard to living a Christian life. What Franklin did not want was a Preacher telling him how and why he ought to believe in God. [Source: Papers of Benjamin Franklin; also, see Walter Isaacson, "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life," Simon & Shuster, 2003; 84-88.]
Final Note, this government website has an array of documents regarding the dedication of Jefferson, Madison, ect., and their religious convictions come Sundays. Strange how non-Christian folks such as Jefferson and Madison would bother dedicating, religiously, their Sundays to God and church.
Next Segment: Washington and John Adams
Historian Ray Raphael has a very interesting article in the recent issue of American History Magazine. He argues that the tea party is filled with “myths” that have carried on to our present day. I though it fit to post it here since we have a modern “tea party” movement. Furthermore, I admit that I was, until now, one of those Americans who had always believed that the event was seen as a patriotic event by the Founding Fathers. But as Raphael states:
Revolutionary-era Americans, though, didn’t celebrate the event. This might seem strange, since the patriots were the celebrating sort. They staged festive ceremonies to commemorate anniversaries—the first Stamp Act protest, the act’s repeal, the Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independence—but the “action against tea” or the “destruction of the tea” (as they variously called it) went unheralded in public ritual. For a half century, Americans shunned the tale, and certainly did not call it a tea party. At first, they didn’t dare. Anyone who had anything to do with the event could face prosecution, or at least a lawsuit. Privately, some people knew who was behind those Indian disguises, but publicly, nobody said a word. Moreover, many patriots viewed the destruction of tea as an act of vandalism that put the Revolution in a bad light. Patriots also downplayed the tea action because of its devastating impact. That single act precipitated harsh retaliation from the British, which in turn led to a long and ugly war.
The Boston Tea Party is now an iconic event suffused with myth, but below the surface is the story of a true act of revolution, carried out in a context of power politics, with surprising parallels in the modern era.
His three myths about the event are:
Do you agree or disagree with Raphael’s argument?
I think it is safe to say that when things are tough, people become loony when dealing with education reform. I have been following the interesting situation in Texas, where the Slave Trade is being changed to the “Atlantic Triangular Trade in textbooks. But now Utah wants to put their five cents in. They don’t want to change the curriculum or lay off people. They just want to get rid of the 12th grade.
I don’t know how they do things in Utah, but our horrible education program out here in California teach “American Government” (They should be teaching “Civics”) and Economics in the 12th grade. Where will you fit these two subjects if students or parents decide to “opt out” of the 12th grade? Research shows that the majority of students today don’t even know who the Vice President is, what the Bill of Rights consists of, or who their city mayor is. In fact, I would argue that many don’t even know the purpose of a city council! And economics, an issue highly relevant in today’s economic climate is to be eliminated? How is one to understand why we are in the deficit ridden economic mess we are in if they are not taught the subject? Furthermore, many colleges don’t require that economics be taken for a Bachelor’s Degree. that means thay educated people will not learn the topic. But we are assuming that all the students will be attending college,which if they don’t they will never learn it at all!
We need education reform, not elimination. We can disagree on what reform is, but naming the slave trade something else because it is a “negative connotation” (Um, duh!), and getting rid of two courses essential to “creating productive members of society” is not the answer.
What do you think?
Robert H. Wiebe is the professor of history at Northwestern University, and is the author of The Segmented Society and Self Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy, and The Search for Order, 1877-1920, the focus of this short post.
This is a book assigned to me in my graduate class and I am compelled to discuss it. Think of the time period, post Reconstruction, Gilded Age, Progressivism, Industrialization, population drift, New Immigrants, and Imperialism. America was changing and began to find itself, you could say. New problems to be dealt with as urbanization and industrialization caused a shock wave of response to social issues such as child labor and worker safety. Muckrakers would also expose “How the other Half Lives” and the “Progress and Poverty” of their time. The transforming of America was seen in science and technology, the Bessemer process initiated what the perfection of Iron and evolution of steel that allowed Andrew Carnegie to create cheaper steel and start a revolution in industry: Skyscrapers and railroads. Cities grew and in all directions. Though, as was usually the case, not an American invention, but something that an American with vision and who was willing to take a gamble, would perfect and profit from.
Carnegie wrote “The Gospel of Wealth” and articulated his view that the rich are merely “trustees” of their wealth and should give back to society. His famous quote said it all: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” He literally died broke when you compare the wealth he had from start to finish. Robber Baron or Captain of Industry whose success helped the masses far more than it hurt them? You decide.
Weibe begins his narrative in 1877 when we find America caught up in a great depression and the national strike in 1877. By the 1880s the Gilded Age is here with its progress and wealth as farms, banks, businesses and railroads expanded and most prospered. This leads to his thesis that all this change cased a drastic shift as the small autonomic communities in transition struggled with a so-called “search for order.” This was a transition between the Old world and the New. Weibe argues that those small “island communities” were essentially left behind.
Weibe’s book is a good read and a very useful resource that I highly recommend even though I don’t agree with everything and feel he lauds to a degree the disappearance of the “island communities,” where I on the other hand do not. The struggle for order was still localized on a small community level and on a bigger urban level as well What evolved was a divide between them in some respects. Anyway, a good read and worth the time and effort.
Now that I’ve got your attention let me explain what I mean by my title. I currently finished reading The End of Reform by Alan Brinkley for one of my APU courses. Brinkley argues that the time period from 1937-1945, the “second half” of the New Deal, was the “end of reform.” Americans had switched from a more militant and aggressive “statist” philosophy in dealing with the Great Depression to a more pro capitalist and new “liberal order.” These changes are attributed to the embrace of a consumer oriented capitalist economy instead of a largess in government control, regulation, and spending, as the New Deal was initially created for. The reasons for the change were due to the recession of 1937, the rise of conservatism against the New Deal, and the changing of FDR’s “brain trust” from orthodox New Deal leaders to a more modern liberal one. The book is pretty informative, and his arguments are well argued—even if you disagree with his conclusions.
But one reason he mentioned halfway through his book really got me thinking. Brinkley’s support for his thesis makes sense—recession, changing leaders, etc. But his take on how the totalitarian regimes overseas in Europe affected American feelings on what role the “state” should play was much more significant than he bothered to mention. Brinkley writes that
“No one giving serious thought to the nature and role of government could remain unaffected by the character of the regimes the United States and its allies were fighting in World War II. As early as the mid-1930s, a revulsion from and fear of totalitarian states of Europe—Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Soviet Union—had begun to penetrate the thinking of many liberals and intellectuals…Perhaps inevitably, it prompted some liberals to reconsider their own commitment to an activist managerial state. Statism, they began to believe, could produce tyranny and oppression. However serious the structural problems of the capitalist economy, a statist cure might be worse than the disease” (154).
In this, Brinkley’s book comes across as a warning to much of what is going on in our current economic climate. Prior to WWII, Americans had not only known publicly about the regimes in Europe, but had praised Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin, and many were calling for similar regimes in the United States. They wanted more government involvement. After all, Mussolini made the trains run on time, the concept of “equality” that the Soviet Union lied about, and Hitler’s desire to simply revive the German economy were good things to many Americans. But after Pearl Harbor Americans began to see just that too much control by the state only led to tyranny and dictator ship. Americans had never been fond of either, and they were not about to let what was happening in Europe happen in America.
Therefore, Americans took a good look in the mirror and saw that the very thing they were fighting against during WWII, was possible in their own backyard. Brinkley demonstrates just how effective the fear of statism in America was by how FDR himself gradually chose to distance himself away from the New Deal, and focus more on the war effort (where I think his real “greatness” is best represented).
That was in the 1930s and 1940s. But what about what’s going on today? The American people during WWII could see very clearly what statism could create—a Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin. This brought a fear that called for a return to capitalism as a better remedy not jut for economic success, but for freedom and liberty. The people saw and reacted.
But today’s statism is much more deceptive than when FDR was running the show. We have Americans like Vance Jones calling for socialism that were placed in leadership by President Obama. We have been moving rapidly in just two years toward a large increase in government power, especially in the economic sector. And although the tea party people represent the “fear” and reaction that Americans in the 1940s displayed, we are not involved in a war against the very type of governments we were afraid of similarly becoming like. We have “social democracy” promotion, or simply called “social justice.” All mentioned are simply more of the same. It is statism.
My title states that totalitarianism is the savior of American Capitalism. Certainly the regimes in Europe had much to do to bring Americans back to their senses. I just hope we don’t need another Hitler, Stalin, Franco, and Mussolini to do so again. But the way we keep looking to government to solve the problems we currently face, it makes me wonder if history is repeating itself. Somewhere out there George Santayana is saying, “I told you so.”
I am a teacher at a public school and this new documentary I find interesting. I look forward to seeing this film when it opens in June, 2010:
