Eric Lanke

Rise of the American Nation by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti

2012-02-25T07:00:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not, this is my high school American historytextbook, which has been carted around in boxes or sitting on forgotten shelvessince the mid-1980s. Whatever possessed me to read it now? Well, I was lookingfor a broad, succinct and authoritative history of the United States, and thismore or less fit the bill.

And you know what? I really enjoyed reading it. I learnedmuch more than I thought I would. Primarily, it seems, I learned how little Iactually know about particular events and time periods in American history.What follows is a sampling of the things that seemed to leap off the page atme, demanding that I take notice of them and adjust my perception of theAmerican nation appropriately. Maybe they are well known by everyone else and Iwas just sleeping in history class on the days they were taught. If so, I askyour forgiveness for my naiveté.

But before I start the list, let me make two generalobservations.

First, this experience has made clear to me how one’s viewof history is tainted by their perceptions and political preferences of today. It’sa little like how the future is always imagined in the context of the present.Just as it is difficult to imagine a future fundamentally foreign from theworld we live in, it’s hard to look at the past without filtering it throughour modern sensibilities and political framework. And my sensibilities andpolitical framework has changed quite a bit since I was in high school. If Ihad read this book this closely then, I’m sure an entirely different list ofthings would have jumped out at me. Reading this book has not only taught me alot about American history, it has also helped me see how much I have changedin the last twenty-five years.

And second, I couldn’t help but notice how good the book wasat sticking to an honest description of the facts, and keeping from its pagesany sense of slanted political commentary. Today’s textbooks (which I clearlyhaven’t read) are derided by some as being full of political correctness andrevisionist history, but if this book is any indication, I’d have to say thoseaccusations are pretty overblown. The authors sometimes describe what motivatedopposing political sides on particular issues, but only to help the studentunderstand why certain actions were taken at certain times. I think they did anexcellent job staying above the fray and describing history as accurately as itcould be in such a format for such an audience.

Okay? Here goes.

1. European nationsclearly thought the New World was theirs for the taking.

From the 1300s to the 1700s, the story of America has itsbeginnings in the European explorers who came looking for trade routes to theFar East and, after it was discovered that there were a couple of continents inthe way, valuables and extensions of their colonial empires. The view amongEuropean nations that this “new world” was theirs for the taking is welldemonstrated in this choice excerpt:

Spain and Portugal, both leaders in the new age ofexploration and discovery, did not hesitate to claim all of the Americas. In1494 they signed a treaty establishing a Line of Demarcation about 1,100 mileswest of the Cape Verde Islands. According to the treaty, all new lands exploredwest of this line were to belong to Spain. All new lands explored to the eastwere to belong to Portugal.

Looking at a map, it’s clear that Spain got the greater partof this bargain, but it amazes me to think that the rulers of Spain andPortugal thought they had the right to even enter into such an agreement. Butthey were no different than any of the other European powers at the time (andAmerica of a few centuries later—see #9 below). King James I of England grantedcharters for people and companies to set up shop in the New World, supposedlyunder his protection and by his decree.

2. People fled topre-colonial America to escape religious persecution in Europe.

During the 1500s and 1600s, Europe was torn by religiousstrife that broke out shortly after Columbus’s voyages. At that time nearlyeveryone in Western Europe belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The conflictbegan when some people began to question certain Church practices and beliefs.Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in Switzerland were two such people.

These religious leaders and people who shared their feelingsbroke away from the Roman Catholic Church and established Protestant, or“protesting,” religious organizations. Roman Catholics called this movement theProtestant Revolt. Protestants called the same movement the Reformation. Bywhatever name, this religious conflict was not just a battle of words andideas. Armies marched, wars were fought, and thousands of people died in battleor were burned at the stake in the name of religion.

We all know this. It falls almost automatically of ourtongue. But before reading thistextbook, I never consciously connected the Protestant Reformation and theviolence that erupted following it as an integral part of the exodus story fromEurope to America.

3. Those seekingfreedom to practice their religion curtailed that freedom for others when giventhe reins of power.

Plymouth was for Separatists. Massachusetts Bay Colony wasfor Puritans who had not at first completely rejected the Anglican Church.Colonists who refused to accept the official religious beliefs were oftenthrown in jail or driven from the colony. Once exiled, they might be put todeath if they returned. Such was the fate of Mary Dyer, a Quaker, who washanged in Boston in 1660 when she returned to protest the persecution ofQuakers.

At first it was only Rhode Island, founded by RogerWilliams, that took a different path.

In Rhode Island there was no established church. Church andstate—that is, the government—were separate.

No one could be taxed for the support of the church. No onecould be forced to attend church. No one had to belong to a church in order tovote. People could worship as they pleased and speak their minds freely.

Maryland and Pennsylvania had similar practices, but both requireda professed belief in “Jesus Christ,” in the case of Maryland, and in the “OneAlmighty God,” in Pennsylvania. Had it not been for the experiment in RhodeIsland, one has to wonder if such a concept would have become part of thegrowing American tradition.

4. The first publicschools in the English-speaking world were in Massachusetts.

They were started, evidently, to insure the ability amongthe populace to read the English Bible. The law, passed in 1647, mandated thatevery town with more than 50 households would hire a teacher of reading andwriting with town funds, and those with 100 households or more had to providean actual school to prepare young men for college. Everyone, rich and pooralike, were to benefit from these expenditures.

This law was the first of its kind in the English-speakingworld. It was not popular everywhere in Massachusetts. Towns sometimesneglected to provide the education ordered by the law. Nevertheless, the lawwas a landmark in the history of education. It expressed a new and daringidea—that education of all the people was a public responsibility.

5. Even ThomasJefferson acted unconstitutionally when he thought a higher purpose was beingserved.

The particular instance that brought this illumination wasthe Embargo Act of 1807. In it, in order to reduce the number of Americansbeing impressed on the high seas into the English Navy, President Jeffersonurged for and Congress passed a law forbidding Americans from trading with anyforeign nation. Not just England. Any foreign nation. It also forbade Americanvessels to leave for foreign ports. After twenty years of arguing against actsof previous administrations and Congresses on the grounds that they wereunconstitutional, the Father of Liberty brings about the most oppressive attackon personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. It is episodeslike this that lend credence to the view that American history is one long taleof ever-increasing encroachments on the personal liberty first guaranteed underthe Constitution (see #6, below).

And please. I can’t help but ask. What is an “Americanvessel?” A ship owned by the United States? Or a ship owned by a citizen of theUnited States? Of course it is the latter, but the very phraseology, albeit acommon convenience, lends itself directly towards the kinds of usurpations ofliberty envisioned in the Embargo Act itself. Today, no one stands a chance ofsuccessfully arguing that the United States government doesn’t have the rightto restrict the freedom of movement of its citizens, but back in the early daysof the nation, before major precedents had been set, it may have been aworthwhile discussion to have. Is my car an “American car?” How about thecomputer I’m typing on. Is it an “American computer?” What rights should thegovernment have over the possessions of its citizens?

6. It doesn’t matterwhich political party is in charge. The power of the Federal government alwaysincreases.

In 1816, even before President Monroe was elected for thefirst time, the Republicans took steps to strengthen the growing nation. In sodoing, they increased the powers of the federal government at the expense ofstates’ rights. To justify their actions, they used a loose interpretation ofthe Constitution, like the one favored earlier by Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists.This was one reason that the Federalist Party disappeared. By 1816 theRepublicans were doing many things the Federalists had favored doing for years.

This one was absolutely stunning to me. I know aboutFederalists like Alexander Hamilton, people who wanted a strong federalgovernment and fought passionately for powers that were eventually NOTexplicitly given to the federal government in the new Constitution. And I knowabout Republicans like Thomas Jefferson, people who would always see the UnitedStates as a plural noun, as a collection of free and independent states, andthe Constitution as the document where those states explicitly gave only alimited number of enumerated powers to a federal government of their owncreation. But I guess I never fully realized how little that dispute at thefounding of our country actually mattered in the long run.

7. History has analmost creepy tendency to repeat itself.

Read this and tell me what period of history it is talkingabout.

By [year] all sections of the United States were enjoyingprosperity. Conditions were so prosperous, in fact, that various groups hadbegun to indulge in overspecualtion. This was excessive, risky investment inland, stock, or commodities in the hope of making large profits. Southerners,tempted by rising prices for cotton, bought land at inflated prices. Westernsettlers, tempted by rising prices for grain and meat, also scrambled to buyland. Manufacturers in the Northeast, eager to take advantage of the generalprosperity, bought land and built new mills and factories.

All these groups borrowed money to finance their enterprises.Many banks encouraged the frenzy of speculation by lending money too freely onthe flimsiest security.

Then came the crash. Late in [year] the directors of the Bankof the United States ordered all their branch banks not to renew any personalmortgages. The directors also ordered the branch banks to present all statebank noted to the state banks for immediate payment in gold or silver or in nationalbank notes. State banks could not make their payments and closed their doors.Farmers and manufacturers could not renew their mortgages, and many lost theirproperty.

By mid-[year], because of numerous foreclosures, the Bank ofthe United States had acquired huge areas of land in the South and Middle Westand many businesses in the East. People ruined by foreclosures blamed the bankfor their troubles and called it “the Monster.”

Astute students of history will pick up on the references tothe Bank of the United States and realize that we’re talking about The Panic of1819. But replace the “Bank of the United States” with the “Federal ReserveSystem” and investments in “land, stock, or commodities” with “mortgage-backedsecurities” and you have the story of the Great Recession of 2008. Spooky.

Wait. Here’s another.

The roots of the depression. The depression of[year] had its roots in events that occurred largely during [name]’sadministration. After his election in [year], [name] had gradually withdrawnfederal funds from the Bank of the United States. He then deposited this moneyin “pet banks,” many in western states. With the federal money as security, the“pet banks” printed large amounts of their own bank notes.

Many “pet banks” were also “wildcat banks,” which issued banknotes far in excess of the federal funds on deposit. Because they were soplentiful and had so little real value, these bank notes were easy to borrow.People borrowed this “easy money,” often with a minimum of security, to buyland and to invest in the nation’s growing transportation system. For a time itseemed as though almost everyone was speculating with borrowed money.

Land speculators were especially active. Between [year] and[year], yearly federal income from the sale of public land rose from about[amount] to about [amount twelve times as much]. Much of this money was in theform of “wildcat” bank notes. The United States Treasury was flooded withunsound currency.

In July [year] President [name] acted to check the wave ofspeculation sweeping across the country by issuing the Specie Circular. ThisExecutive Order forbade the Treasury to accept as payment for public landanything except gold and silver, known as specie, or bank notes backed byspecie.

The panic of [year]. Shortly after[name] issued his order, the trouble began. The sale of public land dropped offsharply because few people had gold or silver coins to pay for the land.Persons holding bank notes began to ask the banks to exchange the bank notesfor the gold or silver itself. Many banks could not redeem their own banknotes. As a result, banks began to fail. By the end of May [year], soon afterPresident [name] took office, every bank in the United States had suspendedspecie payment. Before the panic ended, hundreds of banks had done out ofbusiness.

As the banks failed and sound money disappeared fromcirculation, business suffered. Factories closed. Construction work ended onbuildings and roads. Thousands of workers lost their jobs. Hungry people riotedin the streets of New York and Philadelphia.

President [name] and other leaders of the time did not thinkthat the government could or should do anything to try and stop the depression.[Name] declared that “the less government interferes with private pursuits, thebetter for the general prosperity.” Thus he could only sit back and wait forthe depression to run its course.

No, this isn’t 2008, either, although it could very well bewith a swap of “fractional reserve banking” for “wildcat banks.” And it’s alsonot 1929, although it again could very well be with a swap of “Wall Streetspeculation” for “land speculation.” No, the fact that banks were issuing theirown notes, backed or not by their own reserves, is the clue that this is 1837and the two presidents are Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.

8. The Mexican Warwas a war of aggression started by the United States.

They don’t teach this much in high school (at least not thehigh school I went to), but the evidence is right there in the textbook. Therewas a border dispute. Some people thought the Mexicans invaded the UnitedStates and attacked American soldiers. Others (and most historians today)thought Americans invaded Mexico and were attacked by Mexican soldiers. Eitherway, the Mexicans struck the first blow, and that’s probably why most people,if they know anything about it at all, think the Americans were fighting forsome kind of noble cause. They weren’t. They were fighting to acquire territorythat they thought they were entitled to, and which most international observersunderstood to be part of Mexico.

9. Americans clearlythought the world was theirs for the taking.

The phrase most often used is ManifestDestiny. Its spirit is no more brilliantly illustrated than by something calledthe Ostend Manifesto.

In 1848 President Polk had tried to buy Cuba for $100million. Spain had refused to consider the offer, but some southernerscontinued to cast longing eyes at Cuba. Finally in 1854, the American ministersto Great Britain, France, and Spain met is Ostend, Belgium. They issued astatement now know as the “Ostend Manifesto.”

The ministers declared that, if Spain refused to sell Cuba tothe United States, the United States would have the right to seize it by force.President Pierce disavowed this statement, but northern abolitionists werefurious. They pointed out that southerners were ready to plunge the nation intowar in order to add slave territory to the Union.

Doesn’t that make sense? If you don’t sell me your iPad, Ihave the right to take it from you by force. After all, it has been ordained byGod that I should possess all the iPads, from the Atlantic to the PacificOcean. How else can they be kept safe, and how else can I ensure that nobody isusing them against me and my interests?

10. The raw politicsof the day shaped every era of American history.

By raw politics I mean the political maneuvering thatparties do to gain and keep control of the various branches of government.Every era has them, and to try and understand why things happened withoutunderstanding the political priorities and motivations of the major players isto never fully understand what happened and why. These two paragraphs refer tothe North’s plans for reconstructing the South as the Civil War began to drawto a close.

Some Republicans frankly admitted that their thinking aboutreconstruction was influenced by practical politics. They believed that, whenthe war ended, white southerners would reject the wartime Republican Party andflock to the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats returning to Congress wouldprobably support northern Democrats, thus making the Republicans a minorityparty. Such a combination might endanger measures supported by manyRepublicans—a high tariff, national banks, free land, and federal aid torailroads.

The Republicans could keep the Democrats from gainingmajority power in state as well as federal governments in two ways. First, theycould give voting rights to the former slaves. These new voters would supportthe Republicans at the polls in gratitude for emancipation. Second, they couldkeep former Confederate leaders from voting or holding public office.

Political calculation—maintaining power in Congress—was afactor in reconstruction policy, just as it is a factor in every modern issuebefore today’s Congress. It’s easy to remember that about the present, butsomeone difficult to remember that about the past.

Want another example? How about the impeachment of AndrewJohnson who, whatever you think of his politics (if you even know who I’mtalking about), was evidently not guilty of anything the Founders would’vethought was an impeachable offense. But that didn’t stop his politicalopponents, the “Radical” Republicans who controlled Congress.

To find grounds for impeachment and to reduce the President’spower, Congress in 1867 adopted the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto.Under this law the President could not dismiss important civil officers withoutthe Senate’s consent. Believing the law unconstitutional, Johnson decided toput it to a test. In February 1868 he demanded the resignation of Secretary ofWar Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton has consistently cooperated with Johnson’spolitical enemies.

The House immediately adopted a resolution that “AndrewJohnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes andmisdemeanors in office.” The Radicals also charged that Johnson “did attempt tobring into disgrace, ridicule, contempt, and reproach the Congress of theUnited States.” The Radicals cited occasions when the President publicly made“with a loud voice certain intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues”against Congress “and did therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces.”

Shocking, I know. Bitter menaces? How such a man ever gotelected in the first place is a mystery.

Under the Constitution a President may be impeached ongrounds of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Althoughthe charges brought by the House against President Johnson were of doubtfullegality, he was nevertheless impeached.

Johnson’s trial before the Senate, presided over by ChiefJustice Salmon P. Chase, lasted about two months. After prolonged debate itbecame clear that Johnson was not guilty of any offense for which he couldlegally be removed from office. Nevertheless, when the Senate vote was counted,it stood 35 to 19 against Johnson, just one vote short of the necessarytwo-thirds majority required for removal from office. Johnson continued toserve as President for almost a year, until his term expired, but his influencewas at an end.

It’s another episode from history eerily reminiscent of amore current controversy. Looking back a hundred a fifty years, it’s always sosimple to see the political motivations for what they are. Why do we have sucha hard time when the events happen today or in our recent past? Do we somehowthink that the leaders of today are above such petty motivations? Is that whatpeople thought in Johnson’s time?

11. Industrializationprofoundly changed the character of the nation.

The mechanization ofAmerican life began in the early 1800s with inventions like water-poweredmills, steam-powered machines and interchangeable parts, and industrializationbegan in the late 1800s with something they called the Industrial Revolution.

In years to come, the Industrial Revolution would help unitethe American people. It would help solve problems of transportation by bindingthe nation together with a web of steel rails. It would provide Americans withunheard-of labor-saving devices. It would profoundly affect the roles andstatus of both women and men in American life. It would help Americans conquerthe wilderness and make use of what were then considered the inexhaustibleresources of forest and sea and soil. It would in time transform the UnitedStates into the wealthiest nation on earth.

Living now in the 21st century, it is difficult tounderstand how different life was before industrialization. I caught a glimpseof how surreal the new ways of life must have seemed to people used to the oldfrom this paragraph about “company towns.”

Workers in so-called “company towns” faced the greatestdisadvantages. There were mining districts in Pennsylvania and West Virginiaand textile-mill regions in the South where companies owned entire towns—allthe houses, stores, and other buildings. The companies employed the teachersand the doctors. The local magistrates and the police owed their jobs to thecompany. In these towns workers did not dare protest the rent they paid fortheir company-owned houses or the prices they paid in the company-owned store.Frequently, the workers received part of their wages not in cash but in creditat the company store.

I listened to a podcast recently that talked about how ourmodern educational system is also a product of the Industrial Revolution, wherethings like standardized testing and multiple-choice questions were inventedspecifically to have a better and more reliable way to train children andimmigrants for the life of an industrialized worker. The podcast in questionargued that it was time to start rethinking some of those educationalinstitutions because the necessary workforce of today or tomorrow is soradically different from the one that built Henry Ford’s Model Ts, but that’snot to undermine the profound effects industrialization has had on our nation.In many ways, its legacy has not yet reached its climax.

12. Industrializationled in great measure to imperialism.

The textbook offers an interestingexplanation for the age of imperialism that began near the turn of the 19th tothe 20th centuries:

The Industrial Revolution was largely responsible for themounting interest in colonies. Factories needed raw materials in ever-growingquantities. Manufacturers, to keep their factories operating, had to find newmarkets for their finished products. Improvements in transportation, especiallythe steamship, enabled businesses to buy and sell in a truly worldwide market.As trade increased and profits accumulated, business executives and bankerslooked overseas for opportunities to invest savings.

And it was really the Spanish American War that gave theUnited States is first taste of being a colonial power. As a result of winningthat war, the Americans found themselves in possession of the Philippines, andfacing a dilemma. Should they set the people of those islands free? Or forcethem to live under American rule. In 1898, then President McKinley made thedecision for us. As he later explained…

…the United States could not return the Philippines to Spain,for “that would be cowardly and dishonorable.” It could not give them toFrance, Germany, or Great Britain, for “that would be bad business anddiscreditable.” It could not turn them over to the Filipinos, for they were“unfit for self-government.” McKinley concluded, “There is nothing left for usto do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift andcivilize and Christianize them.”

Swell. Except theFilipinos did not want to be uplifted or civilized (many were, in fact, alreadyChristians).

The conquest of the Philippines turned out to be moredifficult that the defeat of Spain. The Filipinos, led by Emilio Aguinaldo,fought as fiercely against American rule as they had against Spanish rule. Forthree years 70,000 American troops fought in the islands at a cost of $175 million($4.6 billion in 2011 dollars) and with a casualty list as high as that as thewar with Spain.

And when the Americans finally won, they set up a governmentfor the Philippines with an appointed governor, a small elected assembly, anappointed upper house, and the ability of the United States Congress to vetoall legislation passed. I wonder if any of that would have sounded familiar tothe guys who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor in 1773.

One of the things I found most surprising about this 25-yearold textbook was the way it didn’t shy away from a treatment of imperialism atall. Chapter 29 is titled “American Expansion in the Caribbean; 1898-1914,” andone of its section headings is “Americans begin to build an empire in theCaribbean.” It seems true andappropriate to me, but it seems like most Americans are opposed to that kind ofperspective on our history. To see it handled so matter-of-factly in print,especially in a textbook aimed at teenagers, underscored for me the explanatorypower of such a reading.

A big part of this was evidently a corollary Teddy Rooseveltadded to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that not only would the United States actaggressively against any nation seeking to set-up colonies in the New World,but that the United States would act as a kind of police officer in anydisputes between outside nations on those in the Americas. The corollary led tolots of interventions—in Puerto Rico, in Cuba, in Colombia, in Panama, in theDominican Republic, in Haiti, in Costa Rica, in Guatemala, in the VirginIslands, in Nicaragua—until Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover eventually triedto put an end to it during their administrations. FDR, too, sought a newfooting with Latin America in his Good Neighbor Policy, which supposedly said thatno state had the right o interfere in the internal or external affairs ofanother, and that the United States was now opposed to policies of armedintervention.

13. The federalgovernment assumes radical powers in war time.

Imagine if this happened today.

The President was authorized to set prices on manycommodities, including such essentials as food and fuels. He was alsoauthorized to regulate, or even take possession of, factories, mines,meat-packing houses, food processing plants, and all transportation andcommunication facilities. The President exercised these vast powers through a numberof wartime agencies, or boards.

The War Industries Board, established in [year], became thevirtual dictator of manufacturing. It developed new industries needed in thewar effort. It regulated business to eliminate waste and nonessential goods. Beforethe war’s end, the War Industries Board was engaged in regulating theproduction of some 30,000 commodities.

Other federal agencies also took an active part in planningthe war program. The War Finance Corporation loaned public funds to businesses needingaid in manufacturing war materials. The Emergency Fleet Corporation built shipsfaster than [enemy] submarines could destroy them. The Railroad Administrationtook over the operation of the railroads, reorganized the lines, and controlledrates and wages. The Fuel Administration stimulated a larger output of coal andoil and encouraged economies in their use.

This wasn’t World War II. This was World War I. But itclearly presaged a lot of the government activity that took place during WorldWar II to marshal industry for the war effort.

14. Some horriblethings have more or less been erased from the public consciousness and,although true historical events, bear no real weight on the modern citizen’sunderstanding of his or her history.

The “Bonus Army,” 17,000 strong, arrived in Washington, D.C.,in June 1932. They were veterans of World War I and they called themselves the“Bonus Expeditionary Force.” Many arrived with their families. They traveled infreight cars, trucks, and wagons and on foot. They were in Washington to pleadfor a war bonus owed them. The money was not due until 1945, but they wanted itin advance.

They were allowed to live in empty government buildings andto camp on a swampy area across the Potomac River. The army provided them withtents, cots, field kitchens, and food. When the Senate refused to grant tobones payment, most of them gave up a returned home with money provided by thegovernment.

Some 2,000 of the veterans, many of whom had no place to go,decided to stay. They were ordered to leave. In a clash with the police,several veterans and police officers were killed. Army troops then moved inwith machine guns, tanks, and tear gas. The troops drove the veterans from thebuildings and broke up their encampment across the river, burning the shacks asthey did so.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around this one. I’dnever heard of it before, and this is the sum total of the informationpresented about it in the textbook. Imagine if 17,000 Gulf War Veterans marchedon Washington today, demanded payments they had been promised to help themduring times of economic depression. Imagine next that, while these veteranswere camped out on the Mall, Congress voted not to support them and they weresent away. Those that didn’t leave voluntarily, some 2,000 of them, wereattacked by the units of the National Guard, pepper spray and assault riflesused as needed to clear people out, and flamethrowers used to destroy thedetritus they left behind. Could such a thing happen today? I would’ve havethought no, but knowing that such a thing did happen in 1932 forces me toreassess my assumptions.

15. America’s entryinto World War II didn’t end the depression. It deepened it.

I was especially sensitive to this one, because the idea thatWorld War II, and the government spending that accompanied the war effort,ended the Great Depression is one of the most enduring historicalmisunderstandings of our time. I wanted to see how this high school textbookwould handle it, so I was sure to underline passages like this:

Where did the money come from to finance the war? A littlemore than one third came from taxes, which were raised to the highest level inAmerican history. The government borrowed the remainder, chiefly by sellinghuge issues of bonds. Because of this borrowing, the national debt shot upwardfrom about $49 billion in 1941 to nearly $259 billion by the spring of 1945.

The dollar cost of the war was staggering. By 1945, militaryexpenditures totaled $400 billion. This was twice the sum that the federalgovernment had spent for all of its activities, including all wars, between1789 and 1940!

And this:

Despite these [rationing] efforts, the process of consumergoods rose, especially food prices. By 1944 the cost of living had risen 30percent above 1941 prewar levels.

And this:

In July 1942 the National War Labor Board (NWLB) tried towork out a compromise. It granted a 15-percent wage increase to meet the risesin living costs. Several months later Congress and President Rooseveltauthorized the NWLB to freeze the wages and salaries of all workers at thenewly established levels.

And this:

The most drastic means of controlling profits was the excessprofits tax, levied in 1940. The tax obliged corporations to pay to the governmentas much as 90 percent of all excess profits.

The highest taxes in American history, including a 90percent excess profit tax on businesses. A ballooning national debt. A30-percent increase in the cost of living with frozen wages and salaries. Exactlyhow did all of this get America out of the Great Depression?

16. The Bay of Pigsand the Cuban Missile Crisis were two separate incidents.

All you Boomers can start razzing me now, but somehow Imanaged to conflate the two episodes in my admittedly poor understanding of theKennedy administration. It’s not such much that I consciously thought they werethe same thing. I just didn’t really know what the Bay of Pigs was and Imust’ve just pushed it together with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The textbook has set me straight, but here’s the funnything. Knowing how that they are separate incidents—the Bay of Pigs refers toan April 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba that was an attempt to overthrow the Castroregime and the Cuban Missile Crisis is, of course, the standoff between theAmericans and the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles in Cuba in October1962—I’m left with the conclusion that the two events were, in fact, related.

Not that the textbook actually connected those dots for me.Regardless of what you think of Fidel Castro, do you suppose he was motivatedto bring Soviet missiles and technology to his island nation because his giantAmerican neighbor had tried to overthrow his government with a CIA-ledinvasion?

17. The Vietnam Warwas an unconstitutional mistake, based on a lie, that irrevocably blurred theline between right and wrong.

I don’t know how else to characterize it. Especially whenyou read about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

On August 4, 1964, President Johnson appeared on television withshocking news. He announced that two American destroyers had been attacked byNorth Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. The President stated thathe had therefore ordered American planes to bomb North Vietnamese torpedo basesand oil refineries. He also asked Congress to grant him authority to takeaction against North Vietnam.

The President did not tell the nation that the American shipshad been assisting South Vietnamese gunboats that were making raids on NorthVietnam’s coast. He also did not inform the nation that there was some doubtwhether there had been any attack on American ships at all.

Three days later Congress granted the President’s request. Itadopted what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This gave thePresident power “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attachagainst the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

The House votes unanimously for the measure. The Senatepassed it by a vote of 88 to 2. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, who votedagainst it, warned that “we are in effect giving the President warmaking powersin the absence of a declaration of war. I believe that to be a historicmistake.

At a minimum, I believe Senator Morse was right. It was ahistoric mistake. One, unfortunately, that future Congresses would repeat infuture situations. What I find most striking about this is that it is languagefrom a high school history textbook, published a little more than 20 yearsafter the fact. This isn’t some anti-war rag. This is mainstream history,boiled down to a few declarative sentences, and it all but says that thePresident lied and that the war was fought unconstitutionally.

And what a war.

The Air Force poured bombs, napalm, rockets, and machine-gunfire on Viet Cong villages, hideouts, and supply routed in South Vietnam. … Withsupport from the air, South Vietnamese and American ground forces carried out“search-and-destroy” mission against the Viet Cong. In areas they could nothold or defend, they moved the people to refugee centers and burned thevillages.

The Viet Cong, by the way, were not robots, but humanbeings, and their villages were populated by families. By the end of the war,at least 6 million people were refugees and 160,000 South Vietnamese and922,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese people had been killed.

Yet the textbook only uses terms like “guerilla tactics” and“terrorism” to describe the actions of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.What was that I said about history repeating itself?

18. There were twoenergy crises in the 1970s.

The energy crisis of the late 1970s is a dim memory for me(I was born in 1968). I remember the lines of automobiles at the gas station,but what I don’t remember is the energy crisis of the early 1970s, the onePresident Nixon tried to deal with, in part by announcing a program to make theUnited States independent of all foreign countries for its energy requirementsby the early 1980s. How’d that work out?

19. President Reaganhad virtually nothing to do with the release of the American hostages in Iran.

This, too, exists as one of my earliest political memories.Somehow, I was left with the impression that after Carter’s failed negotiationsand botched rescue attempt, President-elect Reagan secretly brokered a dealwith the Iranians and saw the hostages released on the day he was inauguratedas President.

That’s evidently not what happened. Instead the CarterAdministration continued to negotiate after the failed rescue attempt, andsecured the release with the Algerian government acting as a neutral arbitratorand in exchange for a payment in gold tonnage and a promise never to interferewith Iran’s internal politics again (that last bit I actually picked up fromWikipedia, not my high school textbook).

Why did Iran want a promise that the U.S. would neverinterfere with them again? Because the reason the hostages were taken in thefirst place stemmed from the CIA-led overthrow of the democratically-electedIranian government and the installation of the Shah, a dictatorial ruler, in1953. The Shah had eventually been deposed in 1979 by an internal revolution,and he had fled to the United States for protection. The hostage takers wantedthe Shah returned to Iran so he could be executed for his crimes against theIranian people, and they took the hostages when the U.S. refused to comply.

Whose Job Is It to Be the Facilitator?

2012-02-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

Eric Lanke

Rise of the American Nation by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti

Whose Job Is It to Be the Facilitator?

A Bias for Action

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

No One Knows How to Make a Computer Mouse

The Mind of the Community

Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather

Stop Calling It Strategic Planning

The Right Way to Use Expert Speakers

The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris

Why Change the World in 2012?

Dear Older Generation: It's Not Just Your America

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

It's Not Innovation If It Only Serves You

Innovation Does Not Happen Online

A Tragic Legacy by Glenn Greenwald

What Race for Relevance Inadvertently Taught Me About Committees

Calling Everyone (Not Just Boomers): Which Battle Are You Fighting?

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

Film Directing Lessons in Innovation and Leadership

Things I've Learned from Being a Board Member

Hemingway’s Chair by Michael Palin

Which Committee Are You On?

Secrets of Innovation

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Race for Relevance is a Negotiating Position

Why Innovation is Hard

Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

The Chief Detail Officer

Help the Customer Succeed

Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

The Giant Hairball of Complexity

Should Committees Report to the Board?

Women with Men by Richard Ford

Millennials Are the New Slackers

There Is No Recipe for Innovation

Recipes for Innovation