Steve Harris
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Ukraine

2/25/2022

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How  can a historian of modern Europe not talk about Ukraine this week?

The developments (as of Friday morning) have been both shocking and (at least over the past few months) predictable. Europe (even if the Russo-Ukraine border is about as far southeast as one could go and still call it “Europe”) has not seen a major war since the Soviets and the Americans met at the Elbe River in Germany in May, 1945. People in the former Yugoslavia, of course, would hasten to point out that their vicious series of wars in the 1990s were certainly “major” to them. But other acts of violence were either highly localized (e.g. the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland (1970s-1990s) or very brief. Even the demise of Communism across Central and Eastern Europe brought with it remarkably little military action.

As it happens, in my class on 19C International History this week, I have been lecturing on the ramifications of the post-Napoleonic peace settlements, generally referred to as the “Congress of Vienna,” which started a period of similarly (if also similarly qualified) peaceful European existence which lasted almost a century until the cataclysm of WWI. There are certainly some parallels which will be drawn by historians and pundits once the current conflict ends. Of course, how it ends will determine which parallels are thence drawn.

One trope which has already appeared is the narrative of lapsed progress. In the run-up to WWI, many Europeans congratulated themselves on achieving the pinnacle of human development, both in terms of material life (i.e., standards of living and technology) and morality (i.e., culture and civilization). War was seen as receding into the rear-view mirror (the automotive version of which was invented in 1911). Globalization and integration made it seem that because disruption and autarky were economically foolish, that they were impossible. All this, in the event, proved to be wrong. Similarly in the 21C, the commentariat has been wringing hands over our version of this lapse, with variations on a theme of “Gee, I thought we were past all this sort of thing.” Well, wrong again. Human (moral) progress (if it exists at all) has to be considered on an evolutionary time-scale; not the blip of our own lives and memories. And “Europeans” (and by extension, the rest of us in the “West,”) need to get over the idea that we are uniquely civilized and special. This war shows, again, that “Europe” isn’t so different from the wars and pains of the rest of the world.

There are dozens of other frameworks of historical comparison that will be trotted out during and after this war. But Putin is not Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Bonaparte, nor Bismarck (nor, for that matter, Ghengiz Khan or Attila or Julius Caesar). Analogies to WWI, WWII, the original “blitzkrieg” (of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War), Napoleon, Louis XIV, etc. etc. are thrown around, but are more about displaying the speaker’s erudition and promoting their current policy stance than a guide to what is actually happening. Technology and geography and geopolitics make these and other comparisons of limited value. If, as Mark Twain apocryphally said: “History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes,” then we still don’t know whether we’re seeing a sonnet or a haiku.

Historical analogies offered as the basis of the future course of events are worth even less.

It is worthwhile to observe Putin/Russia’s construction of a historical narrative has been used as a rationale for this invasion. Without taking the time here to puncture his ideas of the scope of the nation (coming soon to a blog near you!), the peculiar lens of his argument “we Russians and Ukrainians (and Byelorussians, for that matter) all actually one people”  doesn’t begin to address why those in Moscow should be in charge. Since the modern polity of Russia originated in “Kievan Rus” (9-13C), then why shouldn’t the folks in Kiev still run the show? To run through all the specifics of his highly-selective and often-distorted view of history would require a book and, in the end, would merely demonstrate (again) the malleability of the historical imagination.

One of the most interesting global dimensions of the crisis is the stance of China. Putin was politic enough to wait until after the Olympics to start his war, so as not to rain on Xi’s parade. China has, so far, been pretty quiet on these events. Russia has to determine its position along the China-West axis, and China has to determine how to use Russia in terms of both materials/commodities and as a geopolitical offset to American dominance. Strictly on such terms, accommodating Putin’s land grab would make some sense. However, China is heavily constrained by the Taiwan analogy. Their comments on the war so far have made note of the importance of national territorial integrity (certainly not a Russia-friendly stance). If China argues that China and Taiwan alone should sort out their (intra-national) situation, then they should also endorse letting Ukraine and the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine sort things out for themselves without Russian intervention. In other words, Russian intervention provides a precedent for US involvement in support of Taiwan, which China cannot tolerate.

War planners in many capitals have developed dozens of different scenarios for how things will evolve over the next weeks and months. If one of these scenarios occurs, then a year from now, pundits will talk about how the outcome was “predictable” and will criticize their policy target of choice (Biden, Trump, etc.) for their failure to foresee and steer us towards a better result. In the meantime, gallons of ink (and their video and electronic equivalents) will be spilled chewing over the developments, but, it’s just as likely that surprises await.

It will be a dire and deadly time for Ukrainians and the Russians engaged in this war. Destruction and refugee crises are highly likely. We can be (must be) sad for all this—at multiple levels, even as we hope things do not spin further out of control. Most aggressors ultimately fail. In the meantime, however, there is much pain. Declining states are not known for rational thinking. None of us is as far from atavism as we would like to think.


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The Biggest Problem

2/18/2022

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The biggest problem with the constitution is not the 2d amendment or the uncertainty arising from the conflict between the rights of a pregnant woman and those of a fetus of a certain age. It is not the electoral college or the lack of term limits. These are all significant issues and there are many more defects in both the Constitution as written 235 years ago and as applied in the 21C (some of which I have addressed in prior postings).

No, the biggest problem in the Constitution is Article V.

What, pray tell, is Article V? I’m so glad you asked.

It’s kind of a lonely, little used part of the Constitution, rarely discussed at the Supreme Court or even the NY Times. It’s the part of the Constitution that provides for amendments, specifically authorizing Congress or a convention convened at the request of 2/3 of the states to propose amendments, which would then be ratified by ? of the states. (It also temporarily barred amendments banning  the slave trade (which expired in 1808) and permanently barred amendments allowing proportional representation in the Senate (which is why Delaware has as many Senators as Texas)).

Yet, here we are, with an uninterrupted government stretching back almost a quarter of a millennium. During that time we have faced invasion and rebellion, fought in many wars (mostly on someone else’s territory), and expanded across North America and parts of the Pacific and Caribbean. However, with the exception of a batch of amendments immediately following initial ratification and a few more adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War, our Constitution has only been tweaked around the edges, and then only about a dozen times. It's not for want of trying. About 12,000 amendments have been proposed over the years since those proposed in the original Bill of Rights in 1789.

Meanwhile, the world in general (and our country as much as any) has moved from agriculture to manufacturing to services and information, incorporated new ways of seeing the world through science and rationalism, built great cities, grown dramatically in population, proclaimed the benefits of democracy, expanded expectations of government, and moved to lifestyle that is far faster-paced and a standard of living that is far higher than was ever imagined in the eighteenth century. Our ideas of who “We the People” are have changed, so too our notions of justice and our relationship to the rest of the world.

The problem is not that the Constitution hasn’t changed. It has been interpreted thousands of times by the federal courts. There are all sorts of things that aren’t mentioned in the original text or even imagined by the authors (e.g., in the original  the President is designated as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy, but what about the Air Force or the Space Force). But judicial interpretations, often contested, usually just fudge things over or nudge the lines a bit.

The first level of the problem is that Article V is, effectively, the only way to adapt the Constitution to a changing world. Even if our Congress weren’t sclerotic and dysfunctional, amending the original document is pretty darn difficult. The method of a state-convened convention has never been implemented (although much bandied-about). In the last 150 years, Congress has often taken decades to decide whether to propose a change and an amendment has only been successfully pushed by popular demand three times: women’s suffrage, Prohibition, and the repeal of Prohibition. The Equal Rights [for women] Amendment, famously proposed in the 1970s languished for years without getting enough state legislative ratification.

The second level of the problem is that this has left the Courts as the only effective means of keeping the law current. It’s not democratic and leaving the role of setting the basic parameters of our society and government to a bunch of old white guys (almost exclusively until twenty years ago) is not a recipe for keeping up with a changing society, much less imagination or innovation. In addition, as the doctrine of judicial review has evolved (since the Marbury case in 1803), the Constitution has taken on a far more legal than political tinge. It has become an almost Scriptural document; increasingly distant from a connection with the people.

This has led to the third level of the problem: an important part of the impoverishment of our civic culture. (In this context, the hacks in Congress are merely another symptom.) A constitution is supposed to be an expression of our beliefs, aspirations, and political judgments. The further it seems from the lives of ordinary folks, the less reason they have to engage in the political process. In other words, it doesn’t feel like it is ours any more. It belongs more to Madison and Hamilton. We don’t feel like we “own” it; instead, we’re its passive subjects. Even our current political debates at a national level are mostly about the practical, the technical, and the budgetary in such bureaucratic detail as to overwhelm any normal citizen. A constitution is, by nature, a document which wrestles with issues of principle, where the trade-offs are clearer and the technocrats have little sway. Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill runs to over 373,000 words. The original 1787 document was less than 4,500.

Given the parlous state of the American body politic these days, there are many who would shy away from a political debate on the state of the nation. I understand their fear. I also look at our current civic predicament as much as a result of lack of serious political discussion as a deterrent to re-engagement.

There are a variety of ways in which the amendment process could be streamlined; but, of course, doing so would require an amendment. At the least, we should start conversations on the nature of change we would like to see. Let’s stir up the debate about the shape of our core institutions. Those of a rational/liberal/progressive bent (all in the old sense of those terms) should relish a forward-looking discussion.

We’re not going to get where we want, without such an undertaking. And, even if Congress and the state legislatures cannot be cajoled into implementation, we can always start afresh. After all, that’s what they did in Philadelphia in 1787.

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Ungovernability

2/12/2022

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In the 1970s and 1980s, Europe was rocked by three types of terrorist violence: nationalist separatism, such as in Northern Ireland and the Basque country, radical Islamic terrorism, rooted in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and exported to Europe in the forms of hijackings of planes and  the gruesome massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, and a destructive form of anarchic terrorism, most prominent in Germany and Italy and exemplified by the murders of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro and DeutscheBank President Alfred Herrhausen.

More broadly, youth across Western Europe expressed a combination of ennui, nihilism, and Marxism arising from the unprecedented standards of living produced by the three-decade-long post-WWII economic recovery/miracle (known by its French name: “les trentes glorieuses”). On the continent, domestic politics were marked by a bizarre combination of split allegiances and partisan churn. Political analysts coined the term “ungovernability” to describe this state of affairs, wondering whether democratic processes could sufficiently stabilize  and operate “normally” to produce policies to meet the changing demands of the times. The outlook was bleak and aimless.

By the 1990s, the shape of politics was only marginally better, but the collapse of Soviet empire reinvigorated attitudes and perspectives in Europe and a fair amount of the weariness and fear seemed to melt away. The Cold War was over and President Bush (41) talked about a “New World Order.” Well, other things came up and history took a few surprising turns.

I draw this historical picture not to compare it with the present-day US (after all, there are no such simple “lessons of history”), but merely to point out that we are likely no better at predicting the future and the shape of our future than they were.

Contemporary America bears witness to the erosion of democratic and communitarian norms, a wave of over-hyped rumblings about an upcoming “civil war,” an inability to address the existential climate disaster, and a struggle to come to terms with embedded racism/sexism. Our politics are turbid, melodramatic, and sterile. It seems we are having our own crisis of ungovernability; and the situation in many countries around the world is worse.

What is the way out? I wish I knew.

But it is something to know that we don’t know—one way or the other.

Not that we should assume that all will be well; far from it. But just as some cyclical revival is hard to envision; so, too, is further (and terminal) decline far from inevitable. We don’t know what angle of work will prove to do the trick, so we’d best try them all: community, climate, democracy, caring.

I would bet that in 2005, in the aftermath of the re-election of Bush 43,  hardly any of the relatively literate and engaged readers of this blog had more than a vague awareness of the junior Senator from Illinois. Yet,  three years later, a half-Black, Arab-named man was President and many things suddenly seemed possible.

It is striking that we live in a time when both “left” and “right” (whatever those terms mean anymore) think that the country is going to hell in a handbasket. One, both, or neither may be right. All we can agree on is that the future is murky.

Nor are the scare tactics (again, of both “left” and “right”), prominently trotted out in a spectrum of media outlets indicative of not much more than McLuhan’s famous comment about the media being “the message.” The knee-jerk/axon-twitching/stream of semi-consciousness sound bites that populate both the “social” media and traditional outlets tell us little of substance; certainly compared to their hunger for ad/click dollars to be extracted by activating various hormones and revving up our brain chemistry.

In an earlier (1867) version of all this, the English romantic poet Matthew Arnold wrote “Dover Beach.” The closing lines of the poem (which I had to memorize in 9th grade) are:

Ah, love, let us be true to one another,
For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new;
Has neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help from pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Ah, the very essence of dark, rich, romantic emotion. Not much to psych yourself up for. Yet, England and Europe went on to decades of (what seemed to them) incredible progress, hope, and glory. Falling into the abyss of WWI was unseen; almost half a century ahead.

So, is the world ungovernable? Can any society get “on track” or are each of us doomed to find problems over which to angst? More fundamentally, can each of us figure out how to govern ourself? Buying into the hype de jour is certainly a recipe for despair. But it is not enough to ground ourselves in our own lives. Rather, let us try to repair the world as best we can—for our own sakes—even while being confident in our utter ignorance of what-the-hell is likely to happen a week or a decade from now.
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Elbridge's Progeny

2/4/2022

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Elbridge Gerry was a member of the Constitution Convention in 1787 (although he refused to sign the final document) and he went on to become an original member of the House of Representatives in 1789 and later Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812 and Madison’s Vice President from 1813 until his death at the age of 70 in 1814.

I guess this makes him a full-fledged “Founding Father” of these United States. Nonetheless, his principal legacy is derogatory, since he gave his name to an on-going abuse of democracy, specifically: the egregious configuration of electoral districts. While Governor of Massachusetts, it fell to Gerry to approve that state’s legislative district boundaries in 1811. One such state senate district in the Northeast corner of the state resembled (according to a newspaper at the time) a salamander; and thus the “gerry-mander” was born.

Picture
The practice of drawing electoral boundaries to favor the party in control of the process  has a robust history in the US (and likely other countries as well). The problem was even worse before the Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds vs. Sims (1964) that legislative districts had to be equally sized (the so-called “one-man, one-vote” rule). Since then, what was a widely-practiced partisan art has turned, with the aid of computers, into a highly-refined (and even more extensive) science.

The best solution to the partisan problem has been the recent move in multiple states to establish independent citizens’ commissions to control the boundary-drawing process. We have it here in California and twenty other states. Similar methods are used in many countries around the world. Still, in a highly-partisan and contested environment, there is a lot of energy around what many would call abuses of democracy. It looks like several state legislatures “hi-jacked” their commissions this year to reinsert their political spin. To be sure, this is a bi-partisan issue, i.e., both parties are adept at abusing the process. It’s partially about helping your own team and partially about incumbents’ self-preservation.

As you might guess, I am no fan of letting politicians choose the terms under which they are to be re-elected. But my focus today is on a related practice: the construction of highly-contorted legislative districts to ensure the representation of designated ethnic groups. A recent piece in the Times highlighted this with maps of districts that make Gerry’s salamander look downright orthogonal. Here is the Maryland Third Congressional District.

Picture

This approach grew out of a plausible desire to rectify the lack of minority representation in government by designing districts likely to elect a BIPOC.1 The history of voting rights abuses against Blacks in particular is well-documented (and continuing), notwithstanding the Voting Rights legislation of the 1960s and there’s no doubt that gerrymandering has been used extensively to minimize the political power of such groups.

One might argue that “turnabout is fair play” as a justification for contemporary practice; even if it is difficult to justify on its own terms and opens the door to the kind of absurd results illustrated by Maryland. A good idea can easily be taken too far.

My deeper concern, however, is that this approach distorts our politics by insisting on a priority for racial classification. In this, political districting reflects our larger societal fixation on “race” and “national origin.” While there is much for US society to atone for in this regard, especially historically; there is no doubt that using a single frame of classification does a disservice to every person (each of whom is a complex of characteristics and interests). What would Congress or state legislatures look like if districts were drawn on the basis of occupation or age or “class”? In addition, this sort of practice all too easily lends itself to perpetuation and a sense of entitlement. For example, Florida’s current controversy pits the (Republican) Governor against the (Republican-controlled) State Senate, where the latter’s plan is designed to ensure that there is no “retrogression” (i.e. dilution of minority voting strength). Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed.

The Dems have been wrestling with their version of this challenge in terms of voters of Hispanic heritage. Not only has there been a (problematic) tendency to lump together Cubans, Salvadoreans, Mexicans, and Bolivians; but Dems have too often assumed that as an “oppressed”  people, Hispanics would vote Democratic in order to oppose discriminatory policies on immigration and civil rights. However, it appears that these people are, like people everywhere else, interested in social stability, education, jobs, etc., on which the official Democratic Party Line may not be the best on offer.

In a recent posting, I urged consideration of an electoral method—common in many democracies—in which proportional representation was used for at least part of the legislative selection process. This would provide another means of addressing the concern that certain groups were excluded from political power, but would have the advantage that people could pick their own groups and decide for themselves which interests/characteristics were most important to them.

Perhaps it is my legal training that leads me to an underlying belief that good process is a big help if you’re looking for good results. Partisan distortions of democracy not only make it harder to address the people’s actual concerns, but undermine their confidence in the method. “Racially”-based distortions do, too; even if they’re well intentioned. There is a price to be paid, eventually.

The final point to be made returns to poor Mr. Gerry. In fact, he refused to sign the Constitution because he thought the proposed federal government was too powerful and that deferring the recognition of individual rights was dangerous. He signed the “gerrymandering” legislation twenty-four years later even though he thought it too extreme in its partisanship. So much for being able to construct and control one’s legacy.


1 I have to say that I hate this acronym for both semantic and political reasons, but it has gained currency in the last few years. By the same token, I don’t like to use the word “minorities” since (as I have noted in earlier posts) at a global level, it is the “white” folks who are most definitely a minority.

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    Condemned to Repeat It --
    Musings on history, society, and the world.

    I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

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