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A Party Incubator

10/31/2025

Almost five years ago (111320), I pointed out the charade of our two political parties (the Dems being only marginally better off than the GOP) and called for a reformulation of the structure of our partisan system. The Biden interregnum—focused as it was on being more anti-Trump than something innovative—did little to stop the deflation and distraction of the Democrats. Their reaction to the loss last year has been aimless and incoherent and is reflected in dire drops in popular support (both voter registrations and fund-raising). The Republicans, while organizationally stronger, have wholly gone over to the cult of personality and nihilism.

So, I observed with considerable interest the announcement last July of the establishment of the America Party. Now, the principal sponsor of this new organization is none other than the inimitable Elon Musk, whose outsized personality ensures attention to any of his proposals. His remarkable business success (PayPal, Tesla, Starlink, SpaceX, X (nee Twitter), Boring Company, etc.) has lately been overshadowed by his bizarre dabbling in government reorganization (DOGE). Still, he has been the country’s most successful serial entrepreneur and even if his political nous is spotty, he has a track record for start-ups. The America party may, however, be stillborn. In August, Musk indicated that he was refocusing on the ailments at Tesla (he’s hardly been in the press for months); and it’s not clear whether the party will ever get off the ground. Given Musk’s substantive policy predilections, however, this may not be a great loss to our political culture.

At the time I wondered whether any number of more center-left billionaires would similarly sponsor a new party (Bloomberg?, Soros?). Fund raising would not be a problem, and expertise can be quickly hired (of course substantive political leadership is much harder to find and any likely standard-bearer would likely be wary of being seen as a hired shill).

Perhaps a more promising approach could be getting a bunch of such folks to each chip in (say, $100M each) into a party incubator. We would need 6-10 folks with different political views or who had no particular political profile to ensure that the funds would not come with any particular agenda attached.

The project would be overseen by a set of perceptive worthies from across the political spectrum who would be charged with spinning off three or four new partisan entities. Instead of our current donkey and elephant symbolism, we could have an eagle, whale, bison, and salmon (or some such). Groups of polticos would pitch their ideologies/platforms/organizational capabilities to this panel who would choose the most coherent and capable to contest future elections. Given our current selection, we need to repopulate civil society and reboot our political culture.

This approach would accelerate the development of a new political culture in this country. Multiple entities would reframe the issues facing the country, provide platforms for new potential leaders, and garner lots of attention. They would be well funded and not tied to any current organization or ideology or personality.

It would be a radical re-set for the country. There is a long history of popular interest in independent candidates and “third” parties in this country. However, efforts over the past few decades (John Anderson (1980), Ross Perot/Reform Party (1992/96/2000), Ralph Nader (2000/04) have mostly been vehicles for individuals. Most fringe parties (e.g. Libertarian, Peace and Freedom) have been based on marginal ideologies and have thus had to struggle for funding.

Incubators have popped up all over as places to spur the development of technology projects, sometimes in academe, sometimes as vehicles for venture capitalists. Philanthropies use them, too, to help nascent non-profits get off the ground. In this sense, politics may not be so different as a field of activity. Bringing together money, mentors, dreamers, and doers without a sanctioned or pre-conceived set of policies or philosophies is a different way to think about moving past our current decimated political landscape.

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Kill all the Historians

10/24/2025

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In Henry IV (Part II), one of those planning to overthrow the incumbent royal dynasty says: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s a line we attorneys have frequently heard since we were in law school. Usually offered as a derogatory remark, it misconstrues Shakespeare’s sense that lawyers were, in fact, laudable champions of order, whose disposal would pave the way for revolution.

It’s hard to know what the Bard would write about our own parlous times. The current administration clearly doesn’t want to get rid of all the lawyers. After several years of foaming about the Dems “weaponizing” the law, the current incumbents are offering a master class in how to do so. They clearly want at least some lawyers to validate their own interpretations of all sorts of laws. And, as some law firms have demonstrated, there are plenty who (even if not fully fallen to the dark side) have been willing to make Faustian bargains. It seems likely, after all, that we will have plenty of lawyers for years to come.

Nonetheless, Dick the Butcher (Shakespeare’s character)’s sentiment would seem well applicable to my second profession. Whether in terms of attacks on universities in general, or planning to promote only “patriotic history” (according to a recent proposal from the rump Department of Education), or willfully ignoring inconvenient historical facts (foreign or domestic), or trimming the booklists at your local public library, History is under attack as never before.

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with my critiques of the History discipline, so I won’t rehearse them here. After all, those shortcomings all fall within the category of venial sins and the critiques were intended to promote a more robust engagement with the complexity of our pasts. The current onslaught is more severe and Orwellian.

History, as the saying goes, is “written by the victors” and has been a tool of state power for millennia. The rise of a professional discipline in the 19C, working toward producing “accurate” descriptions of the past has thus been a counter-vailing trend, which flourished in the 20C; an important branch of the “speak truth to power” school of public engagement. History has also been part of the modern project of recognizing and dealing with the complexity of life. Indeed, one of my grad school professors constantly challenged us to “complicate” the stories we were exploring and explaining.

There are virtues in simplicity and the versions of history that are told in elementary schools are necessarily more cursory than those in high school (a fortiori, in college). It is a sign of intellectual maturity to be able to hold conflicting interpretations and perspectives in one’s head simultaneously. It’s difficult to square the call to only offer “patriotic” history with such aspirations, but perhaps it’s only fitting for an Administration whose members often seem to be stuck in sixth grade and who generally seem to prefer mythology. As Jack Nicholson’s character says in “A Few Good Men” they “can’t handle the truth.”

We can see this not only in terms of the specific policies and budget moves towards History (slashing NEH and public broadcasting budgets, rewriting the signage in National Parks), but also in the renaming of the Defense Department, recalling the halcyon days of the “War” Department when America won all its wars (and was right (dammit!) to do so), soldiers were soldiers, and men were men. In its eagerness to be anti-“woke”, the Administration is planning a broad return to the “good old days” when only white male lives mattered. Military bases; names are once again named in honor of Confederate Generals (whose patriotism did not fully extend to the United States of America), not to mention the likely plans to haul various Confederate statues out of storage. The “hit list” (so far) of senior government officials includes the Archivist of the United States, most of the leadership of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Librarian of Congress.

Beyond the political level, the discipline is in disarray and ill-prepared to defend itself. Universities caving into Administration pressures provide little cover for those who wish to “speak truth to power” and stand up for their version of history and, more importantly, for the possibility of multiple interpretations. Drops in enrollment generally and evaporating endowment of small liberal-arts colleges (on top of the disorientation of dealing with AI) have demoralized academic Historians across the country. If there’s relatively little protest about the gutting of health care, you can be sure that “History Forever” will not be the battle cry of a mass-movement Resistance.

Almost five years ago, in the context of the first impeachment trial, I noted that the final appeal was not to the legal courts, but to History. This assessment is especially important if (at least) some of the lawyers are “killed” (at least metaphorically). It also highlights the importance of a diverse and vibrant community of Historians to argue over the interpretations of the past and engage youth and citizens in considering their own place in history. In contrast to the (mercifully) relatively incompetent first term, this time around, they seemed to have learned to move against this fallback line of defense as well.

In doing so, the Administration and its fellow-travelers demonstrate their own short-sightedness. They think theirs is the final act and that the pendulum will not swing back in due course (even if not soon enough for many). If I were to overstep my role as a Historian and enter into a prophecy, I might say that “History will come back.” Instead, I will merely point out that it always has so far.

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Baltic States

10/17/2025

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Baltic States

No, not the Balkans. I’m talking Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (with honorable mention for Finland). As a traveler and as a Historian of Modern Europe, I had a big gap for this corner of the Afro-Eurasian continent that’s now (after a 12-day sojourn) patched (if not fully explored).

Big countries get all the press—in both History and current affairs. The political crisis in France the past few weeks has gotten far more coverage than the conflicts within the government in Lithuania, for example. Little countries (and the three Baltic States all qualify, with a combined population of about six million) get squeezed in between big powers, a situation often to their geopolitical detriment. The Baltics have been caught between Russians and Germans (and the Swedes in the 16-18C) ever since they were dragged into Christendom in the 13-14C. It hasn’t been pleasant and since the rise of European nationalism in the 19C, they each have bristled under the domination of their bigger brethren.

When the Russian Empire collapsed under the twin blows of WWI and Lenin’s Revolution, they bolted for independence, only to be swept up by Stalin in 1940, Hitler in 1941, and Stalin again in 1944. It’s no wonder they were first out the door when the USSR collapsed in 1991. Each asserted that they were reviving their independence from early in the 20C. The Museum of the Occupation in Riga (Latvia) stacks these eras together in a powerful story of modern independence in the face of oppression.

It's also no wonder that they jumped into the arms of the European Union and NATO in 2004 as the best protector both of modern democratic norms and of military defense. The number of NATO flags flown in all corners of the three countries was remarkable and shows that these folks know what’s really important. Even more than the NATO and EU flags, the Ukrainian flag was everywhere. As fellow-sufferers of Russian aggressiveness, the Baltics are strongly committed to support Ukraine morally as well as financially. In both Latvia and Lithuania, they have renamed the street on which the Russian Embassy sits as the “Street of Ukrainian Freedom” and anti-Russian protests are an ongoing feature. Significant Russian-speaking populations in Estonia and Latvia make them uncomfortably similar to Ukraine as targets of Putin’s efforts to reconstruct the Russian Empire.

Beyond their geopolitical situation, it's important to recall that while we may lump the three countries together, there are sharp differences between them in history, culture, and language; although local animosities and rivalries seem to be suppressed. None of the three languages is mutually intelligible and none has any significant connection to their European neighbors. Estonian is closest to Finnish and Hungarian, but Latvian and Lithuanian are their own branch of the linguistic tree. Fortunately (and, again, typical of small countries) everyone in the big cities speaks multiple foreign languages with English being ubiquitous. Lithuania is predominantly Catholic (tied to their close relationship with Poland for several hundred years (16-18C). Latvia is mostly Lutheran, and Estonia is a mixed bag of post-religious, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox.

Lithuania was a major power in its own right in the Middle Ages. It was the largest country in Europe in the 15C, famously stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea (far more important than the contemporaneous Henry VIII of England who gets vastly more press). It is now, of course, just a shadow of its former expanse (only about 7%). The Grand Dukes were remarkably religiously tolerant then and, among other groups, Jews flourished, becoming a significant portion of the population before Russia took over in the 18C. Russia confined Jews mostly to that territory (called the “Pale of Settlement”) and, of course, the population of Jews was almost eliminated during the Holocaust. There are moving memorials and museums to this lost culture in each country. Latvia and Estonia never grew beyond their own neighborhood. Instead, their principal ports: Tallinn and Riga were key parts of the Hanseatic League, a Baltic-focused association of trading cities from the era (13-17C) before modern nation-states became the dominant form of political organization.

As former Soviet territories, they emerged in the early 1990s far behind Western Europe in terms of economic development, but have made considerable strides since then, especially in Lithuania and Estonia, not far from Spain in GDP per capita, leaving Russia far in their wake. They cling to their traditional culture even as they increasingly shift towards comprehensive European integration. While Wi-Fi is everywhere, Estonia is notable for its commitment to digitalization, especially of governmental processes. Each has its own sets of castles (mostly from the Middle Ages) and palaces (a couple of Versailles wanna-be’s). Tallinn has a well-preserved medieval old city, Riga has a lovely Art Nouveau quarter, and Vilnius has some older buildings as well, but comes across much more as a bustling modern European capital.

History, as I have repeatedly said, doesn’t hold many specific lessons for current events; there’s too many differences in contexts. Nonetheless, given the current febrile political environment and the dark outlook we all face on several fronts, there is inspiration to be found in the example of the Baltics. They’ve been occupied for most of the last five hundred years. They have suffered—culturally and economically—far more than what we in the modern West are used to. Still, they persevered and, eventually, triumphed. In each of the three countries, they look back with pride not only on their uniqueness, but also how they banded together in 1988 to create a human chain of more than 2 million people stretching from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius to demonstrate a shared commitment to their independence and hope for freedom. They were likely as surprised as most that it came to fruition so quickly, when the Soviet empire collapsed in 1991, but they showed that dark times are not all end times. The event is called “The Baltic Way.”

Overall, I had a successful trip. It was a good reminder that one of the benefits of travel is seeing the diversity of people in places, even (especially?) in parts of the world that we think are broadly familiar. There is diversity and pride in culture and history in every corner of the world and, in an important sense, everywhere is a corner.

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The Number of Nines

10/11/2025

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There is an ongoing (and seemingly perpetual) debate between historians and social scientists over the purpose, feasibility, and value of each others’ work and discipline. As a historian, I am “true to my school,” and can easily poke holes in the premises and theories of social scientists. At the same time, I am alive to the conflicts, limitations, and overreaching of my fellows.

Social scientists critique historians by saying that the latter fail to advance human understanding, that the mere chronicling of human events might well be interesting and their stories might be engrossing, but that without theories and models, we have no way of evaluating behavior and come to an understanding of how and why people do what they did (and do). Historians might respond that their work often (usually) incorporates social science theories (e.g., the will to power/domination, the importance of community compliance and acceptance, or the economic value of personal fashion). Historians would also stress 1) that such theories only go so far in explaining historical actions, 2) that there is so much that is unknown about human motivation, and 3) that there is so much contingency in human events; that theories aren’t, in the end, worth very much.

Historians’ critique of social scientists builds off these points. They emphasize that theories and models may have all sorts of mathematical elegance, but for all their complex calculations, they are still crude approximations of behavior. For example, extensive studies have been made of the correlates of war as social scientists seek to understand what causes such conflicts. Historians remain dubious (to put it mildly) of such efforts, pointing out the significant difficulties of defining what is meant by war (and its various theoretical causes), not to mention the limited number of cases of war in human history, each of which has so much distinctive context as to make them incommensurable.

A central component of social scientists’ defense of their approach is that they are at least trying to derive meaning from the sprawl of human experience. They emphasize that—as social scientists—they a pursuing an ever-greater approximation of an accurate depiction of the nature and practice of humanity. It is no accident (and here both groups agree) that “science” is part of the rubric of this set of disciplines. The methodologies and language used by social scientists—including experimentation, testing hypotheses, and statistical analyses—are all grounded in the “hard” sciences. Their aspiration is to replicate the amazing success of physics, chemistry, and biology over the past half-millennium only, this time, in terms of understanding economic behavior, voting patterns, and social structures.

The value of science lies in its production of knowledge that enables us to predict how nature will work in the future. By “nature” here, I mean all manner of ‘things:’ blood vessels, comets, and the addition of a liter of nitric acid to five kilograms of granite. Science, however theoretical or “pure,” is not merely about understanding stuff; historically; it has to lead—eventually—to our ability to interact with nature in the future. The success of science historically can be seen in the extent to which we as a species have gained confidence that we can predict this aspect of the future: the apple that fell from a tree onto Newton’s head gives me confidence that I could determine (with appropriate testing of the tree and stem, combined with an evaluation of the wind) when the apple that sits over my head will fall on me or how, with appropriate design, the ceiling that sits over my head will NOT fall on it. The “scientific revolution” of the 16-18C is a short-hand description of not only the process of gathering such knowledge, but, more importantly, the dramatic boost in human confidence in the understanding, management, and predictability of nature.

Science has leveraged mathematics to foster this sense of confidence and to accommodate its incompleteness (science inherently being a “work in progress”). We can’t be entirely sure that some rogue asteroid won’t hit our planet, but we can speak of a 99.9999% degree of confidence. This is close enough to “true” that we can thereby get on with our lives. This (apparent) precision is an inestimable part of creating the appearance of accuracy as a source of trust.

Few parts of the social sciences can aspire to this kind of precision, much less this degree of approximation of ultimate accuracy. There are too many variants and vagaries in human psychology to support it and there are too many contingencies in the future course of events to enable predictability. Stated simply, social scientists necessarily produce fewer “9s” than their “hard” science counterparts (I will, of course, grant that there are no bright lines here (for example, between physiology and psychology).) What social scientists can produce at best are plausibilites, likelihoods, and indications as to whether Amazon Prime Day prices will result in larger sales volumes, or recent diplomatic gestures regarding Palestine will cause Israel to moderate its attacks.

Academic social scientists at least insert some number of caveats into their work, even if these often don’t make it into the popular press reports or these same academics when they become talking heads on TV or the Net. Applied social scientists (by which I mean the vast majority of white-collar jobs such as business managers or other bureaucrats, salespeople, educators (including history teachers), or therapists) were either never aware that they don’t know exactly what they’re talking about or have forgotten it.

As I have repeatedly remarked, historians are also at risk of forgetting the necessary caveats in their work or, worse, of forgetting that our knowledge of the past (or as close as we can get to it) provides no more basis for predicting future behavior than for any other profession. Generally, however, we avoid even talking about such precision or accuracy. In other words, we don’t even claim any “9s”

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A Party Incubator

Kill all the Historians

Baltic States

The Number of Nines

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

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A Party Incubator

Kill all the Historians

Baltic States

The Number of Nines

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

Archives

Sign up for alerts when there's a new post

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