And here’s where you can find it, in fun, fascinating and gripping reads
By Rod Proctor
As I write this from the perspective of a progressive living, and voting, in Oklahoma – among the reddest of red states – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are successfully challenging the Republican Party establishment for control of the party’s base. Likewise, Bernie Sanders remains a thorn in the side of establishment figure and Democratic heir apparent Hillary Clinton.
As the tumult of 2016 rolls on, insurgencies such as these are not confined to the United States. In France, the xenophobic National Front of Marine Le Pen is on the rise; and in the United Kingdom, a referendum is upcoming that could sever the UK from the European Union – with the EU’s open borders often cited as the chief ground for divorce.
There are reasons these insurgencies are flourishing this year, reasons easily explained by a cursory knowledge of history. People in both the United States and Western Europe see their economic status (and hence their social status as well) being compromised by a very real wealth gap that is only accelerating. And they see rapid demographic changes due to immigration and minority birth rates that are leaving them frightened and confused.
They see the rich getting much richer, while their standard of living grows more precarious by the day. They see the color of the population around them becoming unfamiliar. They’re unsure where the blame lies, and are therefore casting about outside the political and economic establishment, looking with suspicion at “the others”– racial minorities, immigrants both legal and not, Wall Street bankers, and establishment political leaders.
This comes as no surprise to those with a general knowledge of the past. In America’s political history alone, troubled times have often led to chaotic situations nearly identical to that of today. Look no further than the appeals of Andrew Jackson in 1824 and 1828, William Jennings Bryan in 1896, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Huey Long in 1930, Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968. Look no further than the rise of the Know-Nothing political party in the 1840s as a response to the influx of foreigners; the reign of the Ku Klux Klan in the South and Midwest; the Anarchist movement of the 1890s and 1900s as America became industrialized and corporatized; and the popularity of the John Birch Society in the late 1950s and 1960s as the Cold War grew hot. For that matter, look no further than the rise of Abraham Lincoln and the nascent Republican Party in the late 1850s, which at that time was widely seen by establishment protectors of the status quo as a dangerous and radical insurgency.
In this audition, if you will, for a blog I hope to soon begin (“A Spot of Blue on a Canvas of Red”), I’m offering for your consideration my take on several non-academic narratives of history that should help you make sense of today’s chaotic climate and tomorrow’s likely outcomes:
“The Outline of History” by H.G. Wells– Wells, the British author of pioneering science fiction including “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds,” was also an amateur historian and an inveterate scribbler of notes while reading. Spurred by the horrors of the first world war, he was determined to learn precisely how mankind came to this catastrophic abyss. He collected and organized his notes on history, enlisted the aid of experts, and gave us a highly readable story of mankind’s origin and the subsequent development and progress of civilized societies from the ancient era through the early 20th Century. He neatly summarized what he had learned from this project in his introduction to the third edition (1923): “The need for a common knowledge of the general facts of human history throughout the world has become very evident during the tragic happenings of (World War I). Swifter means of communication have brought all men closer together for good or for evil. War becomes a universal disaster, blind and monstrously destructive; it bombs the baby in its cradle and sinks the food ships that cater for the noncombatant and the neutral. There can be no peace now, we realize, but a common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general prosperity. But there can be no common peace and prosperity without common historical ideas (author’s emphasis). Without such ideas to hold them together in harmonious cooperation, with nothing but narrow, selfish, and conflicting nationalistic traditions, races and peoples are bound to drift towards conflict and destruction. . . . Our internal policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly vitiated at present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin and historical relationship of social classes. A sense of history as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for peace between the nations (emphasis mine).”
“A Sense of History: The Best Writing from the Pages of AmericanHeritage”edited by Byron Dobell– Lively tales of everything from myths surrounding pre-Columbian Native American mound builders, Andrew Jackson’s war against the Bank of America, and the rise of the Big City, to Henry Ford’s personal fiefdom, Teddy Roosevelt’s Mideast crisis, FDR’s place in history and the 1962 discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
“The March of Folly”by Barbara Tuchman–“What in hell were they thinking?” tales of disastrous policies repeatedly pursued by rulers and governments, running the gamut from the Trojan War and the depraved Renaissance popes, to the short-sighted British rule of North America and our misguided misadventure in Vietnam (were Ms. Tuchman still alive to update her tome, I’ve no doubt the Iraq debacle would figure prominently). There are clear lessons here for today’s would-be leaders. Two other volumes by this highly accessible author offer additional invaluable insights from the past: “The Proud Tower,” which details the inexorable decades-long nationalistic march to World War I, and “The Guns of August,”an examination of the unintended consequences (global war) that resulted from the web of treaties and alliances that entangled Europe and Asia in the summer of 1914 as World War I got underway.
And finally, “The Civil War”by Geoffrey Ward, with Ric and Ken Burns. This is the companion book to the phenomenally successful film of the same name by Ken Burns. The human side of war, both combatant and civilian, has never been more masterfully examined in a book that at turns will have you angry, depressed, choked up, chuckling or outraged. Through recent events such as fights over the Confederate battle flag and racial unrest in places including Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore, Md., we see that scars and divisions from the Civil War remain more than 150 years after the guns went silent.
I could easily lengthen this list, but I’m guessing you get the gist. So tell us your favorites; what you learned, why you found these books worthwhile, and how our current crop of leaders could benefit from perusing them.
I hope to have the blog up and running in the next week or so. We’ll be chewing on politics, history, economics, world affairs and occasionally sports (I’m a sucker for the World Series, the World Cup, March Madness and all of college football). I’ll remain here on Facebook and also over at Twitter (@rpwpb)and look forward to many informed discussions to come.