Joel Mathis

 In his biography of Frederick Douglass, David Blight relays the following story about racist conspiracymongering as the Civil War came to an end. What's the saying? History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

I am reading David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass -- with current arguments about monuments and Black Lives Matter very much in mind -- and I am freshly struck by how many slave-owners were rapists who treated their own children, their own flesh and blood, as property to be bought and sold. It was a terrible thing. Not a new observation, of course. It's just hitting me anew again tonight. I don't think it's presentism to judge that behavior. Frederick Douglass, certainly, knew it was wrong at the time.

Three thoughts about THESE TRUTHS: A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES , by Jill Lepore: * The book follows two streams of thought -- one that weighs, from the earliest moments of European settlement in the Americas, whether the United States has lived up to its creeds, and another that follows how various technical and media developments (the rise of newspapers, telegraphs, radios, television and the internet) have affected the evolution of our democracy. Long story short: We've fallen short a lot but also progressed -- though Lepore doesn't elide the falling short in order to put on a happy face. As for the technology: America has seen a lot of utopianism that never really panned out. * It's good to read history during these crazy times. America has "been there, done that" with division and dissension so much over the centuries -- and not just during the Civil War. It's good to remember that we're not experiencing much that is new, that hasn't been experi

I keep thinking about Donald Trump's most recent interview with Fox News, in which he was asked what message he would send to Black Americans whose ancestors were held as slaves. His response: My message is that we have a great country, we have the greatest country on Earth. We have a heritage, we have a history and we should learn from the history, and if you don’t understand your history, you will go back to it again. You will go right back to it. You have to learn. Think of it, you take away that whole era and you’re going to go back to it sometime. People won’t know about it. They’re going to forget about it. It’s okay. Now this is a lot of nothing masquerading as something. We know that Trump's knowledge of history is limited, and I've argued that he doesn't really have a sense of history -- if he could think beyond today's news cycle, this hour's tweet, he might take very different actions with an understanding that history's eye is on him. I've co

Not going to link this. But still worth understanding the Trumpist perspective. A couple of thoughts: * AmGreatness is pretty closely associated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative outfit whose primary role these days is to provide an intellectual sheen for Trumpism. There long-term project, though, sees the original sin of America mostly in terms of the rise of progressivism in the early 20th century, along with with the "administrative state" it helped enable. Some of these critiques have merit -- Woodrow Wilson was really a racist asshole! -- but it is also the proverbial man with the hammer who sees the whole world as a nail. The errors of Herbert Croly explain everything bad in the United States, even when they don't, really. Ascribing the Tulsa massacre to progressivism is ridiculous.  * Why? Because Americans were enslaving and killing African Americans long before progressivism reared its head in the United States. The KKK was not a left-leaning outfit. A

On this 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, there seems to be a great deal of hand-wringing that the event is soon to no longer be part of our collective living memory. Today's New York Times story is pretty typical of the angst: The fact that this moment was inevitable has made this no less a difficult year for the survivors, some of whom are concerned that the event that defined their lives will soon be just another chapter in a history book, with no one left to go to schools and Rotary Club luncheons to offer a firsthand testimony of that day. As it is, speaking engagements by survivors like Mr. Kerr — who said he would miss church services on Sunday to commemorate the attack — can be discouraging affairs. “I was talking in a school two years ago, and I was being introduced by a male teacher, and he said, ‘Mr. Kerr will be talking about Pearl Harbor,’ ” said Mr. Kerr. “And one of these little girls said, ‘Pearl Harbor? Who is she?’ “Can you imagine?” he said. We

I've recently become a subscriber to Imprimis -- the most influential conservative publication you've never heard of -- because A) I want to keep tabs on influential conservatives and B) it's free. It's published by Hillsdale College in Michigan, and consists mainly of reprinted speeches from notable conservative thinkers and writers. It's pleasantly old-fashioned, a throwback to the olden days of pamphleteering. Just got my first issue in the mail today, and it's actually kind of a back issue, from back in December, featuring a speech by Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn. In it, he seeks to contrast the bullying and tyrannical nature of the U.S. government today -- exemplified by the mandates included in the Affordable Care Act -- with the liberating nature of the U.S. government in the early years of the republic ... as exemplified by the Homestead Act . A quick primer on the Homestead Act, from Wikipedia: The Homestead Act is one of several Uni