Empire for Liberty: America in the Long Nineteenth Century

[volksmarschall]

That is so cool

Thank you; I certainly think so. But maybe only like 2% of the world agrees! Stories. We want great stories! So I've also been taking fellow students to the National Art Gallery in London and telling them the stories behind the great religious and mythological paintings; what the colors mean, why people are where they are, the contrasts, the dialectic, infinity points and the allegorical arcs. Delicious stuff.

Congratulations, man. I've been making my way through this AAR since my return to the forums a while ago, it's an excellent read and a key inspiration (alongside my current undergrad module) for my forthcoming Germany project. Eagerly awaiting its next update!

Thank you! And great to know that this AAR has been an inspiration for you. It's always great to hear that. Also, best of luck in your undergrad studies!

 

[Jape]

Congratulations volk!

Excellent AARing too. Always had a soft spot for Bryan and interested in Populism getting into the halls of power from a counter-factual perspective.

 

[volksmarschall]

CHAPTER XVIII: THE AGE OF BRYAN


The Election of 1896 and the Triumph of Populism​

The catalyst for William Jennings Bryan’s election to the Presidency of the United States was not a one-off moment. It was, in fact, a long series of abuses and resentments going back to the founding rivalry between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. There visions were also geographic in nature. Hamilton envisioned a strong United States built up on the coasts which would be active, bureaucratic, and wealthy. Jefferson envisioned a strong United States built up in the interior heartlands of the country which would be communitarian, agrarian, and virtuous.

Following the Civil War the geographic order of the United States changed. The parity between north and south, which was also tied up with the slavery compromise which undergirded the first constitutional order, was broken. While the south retained Home Rule following the failure of Reconstruction, thereby allowing a certain distinctive Anglo-Saxon Presbyterian identity to remain in the southern states, the geographic parity shifted to a northern hegemony with a Midwest-Northeast dialectic; the Midwest representing the communitarian, agrarian, an virtuous Jeffersonian ideal which was also ascendant in these regions between 1850-1890s, and the Northeast representing the transmutation into Hamilton’s dream as an urban, industrialized, and financialized center of modern trade, capitalism, and bureaucracy. The battle was now on for control over the interior part of the country which we covered in the preceding chapters. Needless to say, the east coast won and the Midwest and Mountain West became colonized territory.

A Puck cartoon mocking both McKinley and Bryan.​

The rise of William Jennings Bryan was only natural; it was the antithesis to the northeastern thesis. Bryan represented the reaction of the communitarian democratic sprit of the people living west of the Appalachian Mountains against the oligarchic, capitalist, and elitist spirit of the Brahmin on the east coast. While a series of less than competent Ohio presidents stemmed the tied, or were puppets to eastern interests, the emergence of Bryan represented the fury of the interior part of the country that felt it was being exploited and ravaged. Southerners, also seeking revenge against northeastern Republicans for the Civil War, joined forces with their Midwestern reactionaries to charge the White House.

Democrats and Republicans divided on the silver issue too. Northeast Democrats tended to be closet Gold Standard politicos, accepting of the ongoing urbanization and industrialization of the United States, but sought a rapprochement between labor and capitalism which would, eventually, become the dominant synthesis of the Democratic Party after William Jennings Bryan. Northeastern Republicans were ardent defenders of the Gold Standard, fervent and fanatical proponents of urbanization and industrialization, and had no concern for labor in part because of their nativistic Protestantism (most of the labor unions tended to be dominated by Irish-Catholics). Southern Democrats and Western Democrats were generally agrarian, anti-federalist, and many were romantics and had their identities bound up with the defeat of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Western Republicans, as we also covered in the preceding chapters, tended toward agrarian laborism and were skeptical of urban capitalism. It was under Bryan that the populist spirit carried itself. Even Midwest Republicans were complicit in his rise, a handful voting for the Bryan-Watson campaign which ensured his election.

Bryan won in an interior tidal wave over the northeast. Every former state of the Confederacy, Quebec, all western states, and all Midwestern states, with the exception of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, flocked to Bryan. His 270 electoral college votes easily swept away McKinley’s stranglehold on the east coast: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware on upward. It was a shock, for many, who felt Washington D.C. firmly protected by the northeast fortress. While it was exposed politically, deep inside the political trenches, the machinations of D.C. were; for Bryan would struggle against the myriad of forces arranged against him just as Andrew Jackson had struggled against Nicholas Biddle, the National Bank forces, and the Whigs.

Nevertheless, Bryan’s win came as a shock to the literary and political establishment. Moreover, Bryan invented the modern method of campaigning in the process.[1] Bryan travelled over 20,000 miles by train in a three-month blitz of the Midwestern states proclaiming his message of free silver, anti-banking, and anti-capitalism. It worked. By thin margins he secured the Midwestern states he needed to ride into Washington triumphant. While many welcomed him in, like Jesus in Jerusalem, Bryan’s story, like the story of Christ, was to end in tragedy.

That said, most historians are equally mesmerized by his inaugural address, which was considered divisive, blistering, but, on the whole, rhetorically brilliant:

Against us are arrayed a comparatively small but politically and financially powerful number who really profit by Republican policies; but with them are associated a large number who, because of their attachment to their party name, are giving their support to doctrines antagonistic to the former teachings of their own party.

Republicans who used to advocate bimetallism now try to convince themselves that the gold standard is good; Republicans who were formerly attached to the greenback are now seeking an excuse for giving national banks control of the nation’s paper money; Republicans who used to boast that the Republican party was paying off the national debt are now looking for reasons to support a perpetual and increasing debt; Republicans who formerly abhorred a trust now beguile themselves with the delusion that there are good trusts, and bad trusts, while in their minds, the line between the two is becoming more and more obscure; Republicans who, in times past, congratulated the country upon the small expense of our standing army, are now making light of the objections which are urged against a large increase in the permanent military establishment; Republicans who gloried in our independence when the nation was less powerful now look with favor upon a foreign alliance; Republicans who three years ago condemned “forcible annexation” as immoral and even criminal are now sure that it is both immoral and criminal to oppose forcible annexation. That partisanship has already blinded many to present dangers is certain; how large a portion of the Republican party can be drawn over to the new policies remains to be seen.

For a time Republican leaders were inclined to deny to opponents the right to criticise the Philippine policy of the administration, but upon investigation they found that both Lincoln and Clay asserted and exercised the right to criticize a President during the progress of the Mexican war.

Instead of meeting the issue boldly and submitting a clear and positive plan for dealing with the Philippine question, the Republican convention adopted a platform the larger part of which was devoted to boasting and self-congratulation.

In attempting to press economic questions upon the country to the exclusion of those which involve the very structure of our government, the Republican leaders give new evidence of their abandonment of the earlier ideals of their party and of their complete subserviency to pecuniary considerations.

But they shall not be permitted to evade the stupendous and far-reaching issue which they have deliberately brought into the arena of politics. When the president, supported by a practically unanimous vote of the House and Senate, entered upon a war with Spain for the purpose of aiding the struggling patriots of Cuba, the country, without regard to party, applauded.

Although the Democrats realized that the administration would necessarily gain a political advantage from the conduct of a war which in the very nature of the case must soon end in a complete victory, they vied with the Republicans in the support which they gave to the president. When the war was over and the Republican leaders began to suggest the propriety of a colonial policy opposition at once manifested itself.

When the President finally laid before the Senate a treaty which recognized the independence of Cuba, but provided for the cession of the Philippine Islands to the United States, the menace of imperialism became so apparent that many preferred to reject the treaty and risk the ills that might follow rather than take the chance of correcting the errors of the treaty by the independent action of this country.

I was among the number of those who believed it better to ratify the treaty and end the war, release the volunteers, remove the excuse for war expenditures and then give the Filipinos the independence which might be forced from Spain by a new treaty.

In view of the criticism which my action aroused in some quarters, I take this occasion to restate the reasons given at that time. I thought it safer to trust the American people to give independence to the Filipinos than to trust the accomplishment of that purpose to diplomacy with an unfriendly nation.

Lincoln embodied an argument in the question when he asked, “Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?” I believe that we are now in a better position to wage a successful contest against imperialism than we would have been had the treaty been rejected. With the treaty ratified a clean-cut issue is presented between a government by consent and a government by force, and imperialists must bear the responsibility for all that happens until the question is settled…

…[I pledge my undying breath to redress these wrongs, end the imperialist push by those in our government and the Republican party, and return the workings of government to the people of the United States of America.]*​

Thus in 1897, the Bryan Administration began.

A Puck cartoon mocking Bryan’s supposed anti-imperialism.​

[1] This is true. Bryan, in irony, used a railroad to travel through the Midwestern states which were considered volatile regions where pro-populist and anti-populist forces collided along cultural, economic, and party lines.

[2] This speech is from his 1900 speech “Imperialism.” I’ve extracted excerpts and re-written it to be his inaugural in this AAR’s timeline.

*Final sentence is added by the author to conclude the historical speech as if an inaugural address.

 

[Tankman987]

Good to see the Great Commoner finally get his due

 

[stnylan]

Let us see what Bryan does.

 

[volksmarschall]

Good to see the Great Commoner finally get his due

Let us see what Bryan does.

The last crusade against the oligarchs!

Alas, we know how it must end.

 

[eoncommander]

I'm a relative newcomer to the AAR community, only having been here for about a year (and working on my own story for four-plus months). I just a couple of weeks ago finished your epic Decline and Fall of Roman Civilization, and continued on to your more recent efforts. I am only partway through Chapter III of this story, but I wanted to leave a note anyway. I am something of an amateur historian myself, having studied it as an undergraduate. My focus was primarily on early modern Europe and the Industrial Revolution, with a small dabbling in mid-to-late 20th century events; in doing so, I somehow contrived to avoid all of 19th century history (and I used to joke that my knowledge of American history was barely high-school literate). I have found all of your works to be incredible learning opportunities for myself; though specific events have obviously been altered, you present the real forces that push the events as the stars of your story, rather than any particular Great Men. It is both wonderful to read, and inspiring as an example of a historical "narrative" that is anything but.

Anyway, I've nominated this story for the AAR showcase of the week. Your work always deserves a wider audience.

 

[volksmarschall]

I'm a relative newcomer to the AAR community, only having been here for about a year (and working on my own story for four-plus months). I just a couple of weeks ago finished your epic Decline and Fall of Roman Civilization, and continued on to your more recent efforts. I am only partway through Chapter III of this story, but I wanted to leave a note anyway. I am something of an amateur historian myself, having studied it as an undergraduate. My focus was primarily on early modern Europe and the Industrial Revolution, with a small dabbling in mid-to-late 20th century events; in doing so, I somehow contrived to avoid all of 19th century history (and I used to joke that my knowledge of American history was barely high-school literate). I have found all of your works to be incredible learning opportunities for myself; though specific events have obviously been altered, you present the real forces that push the events as the stars of your story, rather than any particular Great Men. It is both wonderful to read, and inspiring as an example of a historical "narrative" that is anything but.

Anyway, I've nominated this story for the AAR showcase of the week. Your work always deserves a wider audience.

It's always wonderful to hear readAARs who find inspiration and worth in a writer's work, even if AARland! I'm glad to know you enjoyed reading through that monstrous tome, Decline and Fall, and have found yourself in nineteenth century America in Victoria 2. Hopefully you'll continue to churn through this and find much beneficial material, and, of course, insightful and inciting story telling.

I have a similar story with history too. Back as a UG a good friend of mine (a year below) came into class one day asking if I had any good recommendations for Latin American history. I told him I could tell him everything I knew about Latin American history in about a minute! Speak not on things one does not know, that's always been my motto.

Cheers!

 

[volksmarschall]

CHAPTER XVIII: THE AGE OF BRYAN


An Administration for the Forgotten Half​

As mentioned, the triumph of Bryan was more the triumph of multiple forces that conspired to swell into the perfect storm of electoral discontent: economic exploitation, westward settlement, religious revival, nativism, agrarian exhaustion and poverty, industrialization, urbanization, anti-imperialism and imperialism, all contributed, in their own ways, to Bryan’s election. As such, Bryan’s administration was the administration for the forgotten other: the farmer, the craftsman, the laborer, the Catholic (despite Bryan being a very ardent anti-Catholic Presbyterian), the widow, the woman, and the toiling disposed masses of the country dislodged and discontented with the post-Civil War settlement and expansion. Among Bryan’s first tasks as President, along with his new army of Democrats who seized control of both Houses of Congresses for the first time since the antebellum period, was to promote the “minimum wage” for workers and pass into law agrarian relief bills.

The philosophy the spurred American populism in the 1880s and 1890s, beyond opposition to the Gold Standard, anti-imperialism, and anti-immigrant nativism, was the use of American political power for the benefit of the masses—or the common man. In this sense populism was a great synthetic movement for it combined the agrarianism of Jefferson and Jackson with the muscular instrumentalism of the Whig and Republican parties—not to the benefit of the capitalist class, but to the farming, working, and toiling classes of the country. While it is easy for some to scoff at the “conspiracy theories” of the populists, the populists were proven right. It was obvious that the American government was the arm of the Boston and New York elite. The policies enacted by the American government, from roughly 1864-1896, strongly promoted the Hamiltonian vision of a country guided by financial bankers, traders, stockmen, and business owners. Now, however, the tide had turned against that so-called meritocratic elite in favor of the disposed.

The Bryan Administration oversaw some of the most pro-women political gains in American history. Among the landmark initiatives was the “Married Women’s Property Act,” which made women legal owners of property with all the protection and benefits of the law that came with it.​

Ironically, however, this promotion of the virtuous farmer and the disposed laborer was the first time in history that this occurred. From the end of the Articles of Confederation to the Civil War, the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian strand of the Democratic Party, even, to some extent, going back to the reasons for the disintegration of the Articles of Confederation in the first place (Shays’ Rebellion), was promotive of the landowning classes. It is true that many farmers, low-scale and small property-owning, were included—by technicality—in this class of men. Yet when the American government, from the end of the Revolution until the breakdown of the first constitutional order in the blood and fire of the Civil War, promoted the interests of landowners that primarily meant large-scale landowners.

As such, Richard Hofstadter described the great “reactionary” John C. Calhoun the “Marx of the Master class.”[1] It may have been more apt to describe Calhoun as the “Marx of the Landowning class.” Perhaps even Jefferson could be described as the genius theorist of the landowner. So while Jefferson may have saw the low-scale and small property-owning farmer as the backbone of the country, his political program primarily benefited large property owning magnates—often at the exclusion of the common farmer and laborer. Much more ironically, this promotion of large-scale agrarian interests—the plantations—spurred capitalist industrialization in the northeast. New York and Boston were the epicenters of this industrialization thanks to large-scale southern and Mid Atlantic agriculture. The hesitancy of many Whigs in the 1840s and 1850s to support anti-slavery and abolitionist politics was premised on the protection of the textile mills and other industries which depended on the cheap and large influx of southern cotton. But when the Republicans were victorious in the Civil War, and beginning with the Lincoln Administration’s pro-industrialist policies after the war, government policy now primarily benefited the capitalist and financial classes. The common man was squeezed again. But this time there was a major difference. The farmer and laborer were entirely looked down upon. Where the farmer and laborer did see marginal gains from Jefferson and Jackson, they were utterly devastated by the Civil War and resulted railroad conquest and eastern seaboard industrialization which levied great debts onto farmers to the benefit of New England and New York City.

Democratization flowed through populism in the regard. Since the populist movement was the great mass democratic movement in American history, whereas the Revolution, Civil War, and progressive movements were all movements of select elites despite popular reception otherwise, the aim of populism was to bring a greater mass involvement and participation in government affairs. For the first time in America’s history, the common man, and woman, was now the explicit beneficiary of government policy.

Another one of the major policy achievements of the Bryan Administration was unemployment subsidies.​

With the energies of the federal government directed away from the northeast, the moneyed interests nevertheless conspired against the Bryan Administration. The engines of progress and industrialization know of no end or boundary. While the Bryan Administration rode a wave of decades long resentment, and, in some instances, centuries long resentment, by 1898, the Democratic Party suffered setbacks and lost control of the Senate which stymied much of the populist program initiatives begun in 1897. While some populist oriented Republicans in the Midwest often sided with the Democrats on some issues, a new fissure erupted in the Democratic Party.

Divide and conquer is a good strategy. And the nascent progressive movement, which was an urban movement, began to cut into Democrats on the agrarian-urban divide. The Bryan Administration played both sides equally between 1897-1899, but Democrats in New York City and the eastern cities, who represented the union interests, were bullied into becoming the pro-progressive wing of the Democratic Party at the expense of the populist and agrarian wing of the party. Eastern Democrats were no longer supportive of western and agricultural policies. It was a concession that the progressive capitalist movement would rely on.

By wrangling the union movement under its control by granting key, albeit minor, concessions, the orientation of political power shifted away from the rural and interior region of the country and back to the coasts. The pro-industrialization outlook fostered onto Bryan by an alliance of Northeast and urban Republicans and Democrats worked in tandem.[2] The Republicans advanced the banking and capitalist interests which relied upon union labor as its backbone. Democrats were upheld as the champions of the urban and working poor, but the banking, industrial, and financial industries needed these workers. By the turn of the century, agrarian discontent was still foaming.


[1] See Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It.

[2] One of the great books showing the “progressive movement” as a capitalist movement is Gabriel Kolko’s book The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916. You can also read Martin Skylar’s excellent study The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916.


SUGGESTED READING

Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It.

Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916.

Martin Skylar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916.

 

[stnylan]

Bryan is certainly making the most of his time in office, and so far sounds like he threaded the needle with some aplomb.

 

[Idhrendur]

So if we keep giving you awards, do you continue giving us updates? Because if it gets us more updates, we can arrange for awards.

 

[volksmarschall]

So if we keep giving you awards, do you continue giving us updates? Because if it gets us more updates, we can arrange for awards.

Haha. I figured someone might say that. It just happened to be coincidental. The past month I've been very busy returning to the US from the UK. Finishing a major essay on Homer's Iliad, along with essays on Plutarch, Beowulf, and Dickens' Great Expectations for my literary column. With that having moved out of the way I was able to dedicate some spare time to getting another update for this when I saw the note of the Weekly Showcase.

So cause and effect has betrayed you! (Though it wouldn't be a bad deal to get through the final twenty years of this AAR.)

 

[volksmarschall]

CHAPTER XVIII: THE AGE OF BRYAN


The Venezuelan Crisis and the Monroe Doctrine​

While much of the Bryan Presidency was preoccupied with social and economic issues, the culling blow to his presidency was not so much the divide and conquer strategy employed the eastern elite against him, splitting off pro-business and establishment Democrats and Republicans against him, but the Venezuelan Crisis and the testing of Bryan’s commitment to the Monroe Doctrine.

Bryan had been an outspoken critic of American imperialism during his campaign for the presidency and he remained a largely pacifistic president. While the outdated American navy needed urgent modernization, Bryan had requested the funding from Congress for only two new battleships (pre-dreadnought) to be laid down, along with a handful of cruisers, to be constructed and commissioned between 1899-1905. Though the U.S. Navy was quite large, owing to the buildup during the Civil War and American participation in the Scramble for Africa, the American navy was more a paper tiger and still sailing, pun intended, many sail ships while Britain, France, and the newly formed Germany, along with Italy, were rapidly modernizing their navies with steel centered ships.

The U.S.S. Indiana, one of only two modern steel battleships in the U.S. Navy during Bryan’s Presidency.​

The Monroe Doctrine had affirmed that the United States would take action against European powers intruding into the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine had an awkward legacy. On one hand, the Monroe Doctrine effectively denied further European imperialism over the American continents following American Independence and its declaration by James Monroe. On the other hand, it was also a tool for American expansionism over the North American continent while warding off European powers from possible intervention. The Monroe Doctrine was invoked during the Spanish-American War, and both Britain and France, who still had interests in the New World hemisphere, were successfully kept out of the “Affair in the Caribbean,” as it became known. At the same time, however, the Monroe Doctrine also allowed for the flourishing of Latin American republicanism which was, between the early revolutions through to the end of the nineteenth century, a precursor to the “Good Neighbor Policy.” American interests, apart from the Panama Canal and the acquisition and liberation of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, actually fairly restrained. U.S. forces had not entered the South American nations until the crisis in Venezuelan and the promise of French intervention which worried Americans, as well as South Americans, of the possibility of a French conquest of Latin America.

France was one of the major losers in the Scramble for Africa. Italy had seized much of North Africa apart from French Algeria. British and American colonization had seized the southern and equatorial half of the African continent. Americans and Frenchmen even fired shots at each other in the Congo during the period of colonization. Though diffused, tensions ran high for the French Republic which was quickly seeing its prominence in the world fade as Germany became the dominant continental power, Italy surpassed it in the scramble of Africa, and Britain remained an uneasy “partner,” more than an ally.

Bryan’s anti-imperialism was bullied by the French when Venezuela fell into civil war. America’s response to problems in Venezuela was typical of Bryan’s “hands-off” attitude. The French, however, declared their intentions to support the government and quell the revolutionaries. Brazil and Colombia were both alarmed by France’s intentions. Both nations appealed to Bryan for help. Bryan dispatched personal letters to the French government to refrain from intervening in Venezuela.

The crisis reached a boiling point when French warships appeared off the coast of Caracas and shelled the city, which had been overrun by rebels. The news of the French bombardment of Caracas sent shockwaves across the Americas, and especially across the desk of many in Washington D.C. Immediately after the news, anti-Bryan hardliners began to assail the president for failing to uphold the Monroe Doctrine and to help “our South American brethren.” Bryan had been sandwiched on the issue. He was a committed anti-imperialist and isolationist. Many of his most fervent supporters, from the American South and Midwest, cared little of the events going on in Catholic South America. What cause of concern was it for hard working Protestant Americans in the middle of the country?

Caracas after the French bombardment.​

When news reached the administration that a French fleet had departed from Brest, there was growing expectation of a French invasion. The Caribbean Squadron and the Atlantic Fleet was assembled and put on high alert. Bryan dithered as he was contemplating whether to personally endorse women’s suffrage, which was gaining tremendous momentum across the Western and Midwestern states, his home turf. Distracted by domestic issues, and constrained by his personal anti-imperialism, along with increasing attacks by his opponents, Bryan relented and sent 30 American warships, including the newest American battleship, the U.S.S. Indiana, to prevent the French from invasion.

Meanwhile, he dispatched 15,000 troops to French Guyana as a show of force. The French backed down but not without securing an American pledge for intervention in Venezuela and keeping the trade lanes out of the nation’s many ports open for French interests. Committed to the deal, American forces entered the country to quell the revolution.[1] The move played well into the hands of Bryan’s critics. They accosted him as unprincipled for betraying his earlier anti-imperialism, even though his critics were cheerleading for war against France.

The diplomatic scuffle between America and France, and France’s inability to assert international prestige, saw the collapse of the French liberal government and its replacement by a socialist regime, the first of its kind in Europe. The Venezuelan Crisis, as it became known, also hampered the Bryan Administration greatly. Bryan became lonely and isolated. He was abandoned by many of his fellow anti-imperialist friends. Though having already been reelected, his administration’s social and economic policies had equally been cuffed by the Boston and New York brahmin. This didn’t mean that all was lost for Bryan. He had, as mentioned, presided over unemployment subsidies and greater labor privileges and laws. He would, before leaving, also endorse and see the passage of the seventeenth amendment which granted women the right to vote in 1904.


[1] In reality, there was a minor war between me and France over some African territories. The only fighting took place in South America, which was minor, and Venezuela was also experiencing a civil war which I ended because I was allied with Venezuela (I’m allied with all the South American nations in game). I’ve re-written the events to correspond more or less with a Venezuelan crisis because there was no real action in Africa.

* Great news, the book I contributed to: The College Lecture Today: An Interdisciplinary Defense of the Contemporary University (Lexington Press), has recently been published; the book I mentioned a couple of months ago when we received news of its acceptance. If you want to waste $90 U.S.D. to read my chapter on the narrative pattern of religious narratives and why they make good stories via the synthesis of narrative and persona immersion, you can do so. Or you can just read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces!

 

[DensleyBlair]

Committed to the deal, American forces entered the country to quell the revolution.[1] The move played well into the hands of Bryan’s critics. They accosted him as unprincipled for betraying his earlier anti-imperialism, even though his critics were cheerleading for war against France.

Ah, my favourite type of political point scoring: bad-faith accusations of hypocrisy in an opponent. Plus ça change.

I appreciate I haven’t been around for a long time, Volks, but I’m steadily trying to get myself caught up. In the meantime, I greatly enjoyed the last update. I recently went back and re-read a favourite Vicky AAR of mine (and of many people, I think), MondoPotato’s The Republic. Certainly reminded me how much fun it can be to read about the murky dealings between the US and it’s southern neighbours around the turn of the century. This update was no exception.

I’ll try to be a bit more regular around here over the summer. Looking forward to more, and congratulations also on your latest publication.

 

[Specialist290]

Bryan appears to have been forced into a no-win situation here. Back down, and he makes the United States look weak and lets the Europeans run amok in the Americas; intervene, and he loses his own credibility with his base as a hypocrite. Only an expert of the Swamp's treacherous currents could have threaded that needle, and for all his rhetorical skills I never really got the impression that Bryan would have been comfortable with that -- he was too principled to be that conniving.

* Great news, the book I contributed to: The College Lecture Today: An Interdisciplinary Defense of the Contemporary University (Lexington Press), has recently been published; the book I mentioned a couple of months ago when we received news of its acceptance. If you want to waste $90 U.S.D. to read my chapter on the narrative pattern of religious narratives and why they make good stories via the synthesis of narrative and persona immersion, you can do so. Or you can just read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces!

Excellent news! Sadly I'm a little short on discretionary cash, but glad to hear it all the same

 

[stnylan]

Ahh, the very real problems of being an idealist in political office. Rare are those who do not find their idealism leads them into traps (I draw a distinction between an idealist and someone with principles - the latter will let their principles inform them, allowing a sliding scale that can still permit effective action; whereas the former finds their idealism to be a prison (of course, it can be difficult to distinguish the two until a moment of crisis)).

Byran has found his idealism wanting in the moment.

 

[volksmarschall]

Given that we've been focusing on culture and other important spirits often neglected in history, for those who like folk history, culture, and music, I present to you Rick Garland for 11 minutes so you can get a wonderful little history lesson into the Irish roots of "The Bonnie Blue Flag," with singing included, including the Union song of the same tune, "The Irish Volunteers," based off the Irish drinking song: "The Irish Jaunting Car."

Some of the Americans may already know the Irish drinking song roots of many famous American songs of our culture. But for those who do not, enjoy!

 

[dark_melancholy]

Oh my, I'm gone for a few months and here we have at last our boy JayBee in the White House. I'm not surprised to see him stymied by smoother political operators but, eh, don't care; got women's suffrage.

 

[volksmarschall]

While this is only useful to east coast readers, yours truly will be a guest on the show the Catholic Current, carried by The Station of the Cross radio network, August 16 for the 5 PM show to discuss classics; the heroic tradition; Christianity, and Western civilization. I'm informed they also are on podcast so anyone who would like to get a condensed version of the chapter I wrote for the aforementioned book The College Lecture Today, as well as to get more insight into my line of work and writing on classics, literature, and philosophy, can get a front row ticket into the drama of being a literary essayist, editor, cultural critic and occasional lecturer.

Cheers!

 

[Idhrendur]

They do indeed have a podcast (search for The Catholic Current). I'll give a listen once it's live.