Past & Present

In my history classes, while discussing the idea of “globalization” in the latter 20th Century, we look at baseball.

Here is a link, thanks to Mike, that provides an interactive graphic showing the Far East Asia presence in Major League Baseball today.

Did good ol’ Abe Lincoln believe that Congress should not criticize a president’s war moves?

Eric Foner nails conservative pundits who in the last week or so invoked Lincoln to condemn the latest Congressional resolutions and attempted resolutions that condemn President Bush’s escalation of the Iraq War, which the White House terms a “surge”.

Conservatives should think twice before invoking Lincoln’s words, real or invented, in the cause of the Iraq War and before equating condemnations of Bush’s policies and usurpations with treason.

Foner, one of the most visible and, to his credit, politically engaged historians in the U.S., builds the case that Lincoln would instead by troubled by the executive power that has been usurped to conduct the present Iraq War. For evidence, Foner documents Lincoln’s reaction to President James Polk’s aggression against Mexico in the 1840s.

I was fortunate to receive a thoughtful message from a student named Kurt after a class session that covered the aftermath of World War I. The class featured a 10-minute snip from the documentary “The Century” that ABC News produced when the calendar struck 2000. This documentary did a slick job of discussing the Versailles peace talks in 1919.

The one historian in the film we watched [this was David Fromkin, who I believe is at Boston University. I don't know him, but in this film he comes off as petulant] stated that WWI did not in fact fully end until 1994 when the Russian/Soviet troops finally left their occupied countries. I have long thought WWI led to WWII but using the historian’s logic could you not argue that WWI is still going on today with the wars in the Middle East that are at least partly due to border disputes and the seperation of ethnicities and religious sects? North Korea is also still a threat to international security, is that not a holdover from the Cold War which this guy thinks was a continuation of WWI?

Woodrow Wilson seems to be a very good man; from what I have heard I like the guy. But in a way is he not somewhat the same as George W. Bush? People accuse Bush of being so headstrong and stubborn that he is blinded by reality. Wilson although some would say his goals are much different and much more noble seems to have a somewhat similar attitude. He believed so strongly in what could almost be deemed a perfect world that he left everyone else behind. He did not include the U.S. congress in his discussion of the Treaty of Versailes (just like Bush seemed to keep Congress out of the loop on some things) and he also in a way left Europe out of the negotians of the Treaty (or they left him out) just as Bush left the UN and NATO out when it came to the Iraq War. I think Wilson was indeed a very noble man and rather like the guy but when there are historians that argue that he “only made good speeches” I think that could certainly be seen as a logical viewpoint.

I eagerly accept comments, so those with a different take on presidents Bush or Wilson please have at it.

The historians at Middlebury College in Vermont are taking a noble stand against the gray mush that passes for references in this Internet age. They have forbidden students from citing the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in their research papers.

If you have heard of Wikipedia, you probably already know that it allows volunteers to contribute online. Without controls its information is often wrong, or deliberately stated in order to score some ideological jab. The best known example of the political trickery was an entry for “swift boat” that was obviously from a right-wing partisan who hated the Iraq War protester Cindy Sheehan.

I am not saying that Wikipedia is not an impressive example of the power of collaboration that the Internet can foster. I’m not the anti-Internet luddite I once was. I am just saying that Wikipedia is a crappy tool for a student doing historical research — even more crappy than a real encyclopedia. I remember rolling my eyes when I found myself in a high school classroom last spring, and saw Wikipedia recommended on the blackboard as the recommended reference source.

The Middlebury history department is not banning students from using Wikipedia, only from using it as a reference in papers. Many point out that an outright ban would be futile, like banning a kid from listening to rock and roll. Notice, though, that the original problem for the department was students using Wikipedia for their exam answers about an episode of Japanese history.

When half a dozen students in Neil Waters’ Japanese history class at Vermont’s Middlebury College asserted on exams that the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan, he knew something was wrong.

The Jesuits were in “no position to aid a revolution,” he said; the few who were in Japan were in hiding.

He figured out the problem soon enough. The incorrect information was from Wikipedia – the collaborative online encyclopedia – and the students had picked it up cramming for his exam.

The citation ban will not address the tendency to use Wikipedia instead of the assigned readings to prepare for an essay exam. The problem I have encountered, more so than in exams, is that among sloppy attempts at plagiarism, the source from which students cut and pasted most often was Wikipedia — which is often the first response that is listed by Google when a panicked, unscrupulous student in a history class types in “imperialism”, “Jacobo Arbenz Guzman”, or “Shimabara Rebellion”.>

At the risk of having my high-profile career Dixie-Chicked, I am going to admit that I did not support the whole “islamic fascist” label that the White House promoted.

To equate radical Islamists such as Al Qaeda militants with European fascists of the 1920s and 1930s ignored too many differences. Plus, it just promotes this intellectual sloth that is the habit of looking to the World War II era, and nothing but the World War II era, for any and all historical insight into our present day.

Now comes President Bush today, on the occasion of George Washington’s birthday, also linking the U.S. War for Independence with the Global War on Terror.

I guess I should be grateful that we are branching out beyond the 20th Century for analogies. But, instead, I’m just tired.

The assassination in June, 1914, of the Austrian archduke led to World War I. Now his great granddaughter says that Franz’s offspring should never have been evicted from their cozy little place where they lived in Bohemia.

The New York Times adds lots of tasty historical background.

(requires login — it’s free)