Charlie Rose

robdverity  05/01/2011 04:33 PM Report

John, whatever you're smoking I want some. You covered more diverse topics in one post than ever occurred to me (or most I'm guessing).

JohnGelles  05/01/2011 02:39 AM Report

John Meacham is always a friendlyh vooice of reason -- never a fiercely partisan cry to end pluralism in favor of one ideology only, one rule only, one seat of power only.

Yet in the real world, decision by authority is committed to writing or voice command and carried out -- often as originally sought -- and often as events dictate with more effect than people's intentions.

In the last analysis Lincoln is America to more fine people who love this nation than any other candidate. Washington and FDR are in the running -- and all three make up the Pantheon of our Gods.

We live in an interesting time at the moment -- entering a struggle with nature and financial habits -- each with the power to do us in.

Obama, I believe, has the opportunity to enter the Pantheon. Does he have a chance? He sems to have learned nothing of the power of production and swallowed all the error of financial habits built on internal contradictions -- of which the paradox of thrift is foremost.

Some of learned in 1944 that a world can afford what it produces. And it cannot afford to believe it it cannot producde far more than it ever has.

Obama taught at the University of Chicago. This is the Citadel of ignorance in matters functional and real. He should have taught at the Universoty of Missouri, Kansas city, or at least at Yale.

What of Lee and Grant. One was partnered with Lincoln. The other with the Devil. Thank God, God licked the Devil -- although he nearly did not.

My wife and i stayed up for the Royal Wedding. It was glorious to watch and listen to. The marriage service was perfect and made clear for all to see that same-sex marriage misses the point nature made with most people.

There is obviously a need to include childless couples among our closest friends -- including same-sex couples, -- even people allowed more than one partner in their immediate family. But the Royal Wedding suggest we use different words for the bonds between couples unlike the romance we witnessed Friday morning.

Suppose we used the word "union" for a Royal Union of same sex partners where a King took as his bed partner a man and a Queen took a woman.

All could be worked out if necessary. Or, peraps it would make sense and be fair, if persons who loved their own gender were allowed to remain single all their lives for simplicity's sake. By contract they could protect the rights of any partner the same as marriage does.

Why bring this mess up when it is the Civil War and slavery that's on our mind? Because slavery is unfalir to slaves. And prejudice against same-sex attachments is unfair to our our brothers and sisters who are born different from most.

charlizecourriers  04/29/2011 02:41 PM Report

Not going to Tripoli will be a major mistake-as was not going to Baghdad. But reading Meacham would be even worse!

tuckercook  04/29/2011 01:40 PM Report

I really look forward to reading Jon Meacham's coming book, "The Last Gentleman," a biography of Bush 41,---for the reasons that were discussed last night. You see, I mourned for at least a week, when the first President Bush lost his bid for re-election in November 1992. In the post-Viet Nam and pre-9/11era, he did so much to set this country on the right course, which has since been undone.

An admirer of the best of America's iconic traditions, I found his laconic reaction to fall of the Berlin Wall, his sober signing into law the tax hike to reduce a growing deficit and the noble manner in which he prosecuted the Gulf War,---brought honor to our nation and very much warranted his re-election. For me, his loss of a second term revealed how much of the best of our tradition of stoic moderation, seen in likes of Washington, Lincoln and Eisenhower, would come to be disregarded, by the American people, in the quarter century that would follow.

During the Viet Nam era, I served in uniform, and I distinctly remember how the American people--and their Congress--looked the other way, when our battle torn troops came home from that conflict, without the least recognition. So, I cannot express the pride in our forces that I, at last, felt, as I stood on the sidewalks of Broadway and watched, as my unit's banner was marched down the canyon of heroes in the majestic mist of an old fashion ticker-tape parade on so bright and sunny a day, in the immediate aftermath of Desert Storm. That day made up for the two decades of my thinking my nation had come to ignore so many of its uniformed heroes. What an irony it is, that I owe those monumental emotions to George H. W. Bush, and I will never forget what he did, even though his party and our nation still turns away from him.

In the post-9/11era, it is the same story all over again, as for our forces and their families. We cannot let the Congress of the United States forget the one-half of one percent of the nation's households that have waged a two-front war alone, for the same duration as the Trojan War, which Homer described, or they will. Indeed, they already have, and they want the American people to do the same.

tuckercook  04/29/2011 01:37 PM Report

CORRECTION: To say the Civil War was about union versus states rights and not slavery is the same as saying John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan, because the US Constitution allowed him to purchase a gun, and that Hinckley's fantasies for Jody Foster had nothing to do with it. I've read Gallagher and I'd like to know where he states the former view. I think you are mistaken, REMant.

tuckercook  04/29/2011 01:34 PM Report

To say the Civil War was not about the union versus states rights and not slavery is the same as saying John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan, because the US Constitution allowed him to purchase a gun, and that Hinckley's fantasies for Jody Foster had nothing to do with it. I've read Gallagher and I'd like to know where he states the former view. I think you are mistaken, REMant.

REMant  04/29/2011 11:38 AM Report

I think is is somewhat unfortunate that the sesquicentenary of the Civil War has to happen at this particular moment, as it certainly has energized people like those composing the editorial board of the Wash Post who are advocating the invasion of Libya, Syria, and God knows what else. They have been running and re-running tendentious pieces by obscure historians.

Personally, I have always had little interest in the Civil War, because everything that happened there is prefigured in the Revolutionary period, and I've noticed that the tendency to view the history of the United States through this prism, always accompanies a tendency to tendentiousness. Too, while the battles, etc, are interesting, the reason and strategy of it can be put in a paragraph, and is really the essential part. Not to disparage Foote, but I would be reading Gary W. Gallagher’s "The Union War" out recently (see Yardley's review at http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/gary-w-gallaghers-the-union-war/2011/03/31/AFtFPVkD _story.html) and his earlier "The Confederate War." (On Gallagher himself see http://www.virginia.edu/history/user/23) Also Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page's new, "Colonization after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement."

As Gallagher argues the Civil War was about union, the existence of the nation, not slavery, and that had been the issue in independence, and in forming the Constitution, no matter how much Northerners disliked the Southern "nabobs." Most if not all of the Founders, North and South, were opposed to the continuation, or at least the expansion, of slavery. The problem was how to make a go of the country without the black people, not to mention what to do with them, for the question wasn't simply about wages, but whether blacks and whites could co-exist, and whether the North could exist without the South. That is why British revolutionary war strategy was to sever the two, and why George Washington was made commander-in-chief. It was not always that hard for the North to make its case, of course, since British merchants had made themselves obnoxious to many planters, the mother country was opposed to westward expansion, and had its own share of emancipationists even then. But the South chafed at Northern protectionism, as much as British, and it should not be forgotten that for the North it meant control not only of Southern production, but also of the necessary avenue to the Midwest provided by the Mississippi. Too, the Constitution did not so much legalize slavery as work it into a representation formula necessary for union. There were no tractors in those days, while slavery of one sort or another was an ancient institution, not always bad, if decidedly un-Whiggish.

As Werner Jaeger argued, Homer is philosophy, not narrative, about ideals, not events. That it is the same sort of mindset as a savage or ten-year-old is of no consequence. And as I think the general tenor of Burns' work is Foote's, I would consider turning the sound off, and just watching the pictures, lest you come to think the war had no deeper meaning. BTW, the Wikipedia entry on Foote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelby_Foote) is quite good.