How Is This Gilded Age Different from All Others?

I'll just be throwing up links for a bit until the semester's over. Steve Fraser, who's the editor at large of New Labor Forum and author of an epic biography of Sidney Hillman has a thoughtful article in Salon.com comparing the late nineteenth century Gilded Age to the one we seem stuck in today. It's a well-worn topic but he has some fresh things to say.

In what will surely be a regular feature...

...sometimes you just have to love Fox News

Lincoln v. Russert

Tim Russert: Do you know a man by the name of Frederick Douglass?

Abraham Lincoln: I do believe I've met him on one occasion.

Russert: Mr. Douglass has indicated that he feels positively about your candidacy. Are you aware that between 1845 and 1847 Mr. Douglass traveled through England and Scotland where he regularly denounced the United States on foreign soil?

Lincoln: Well, I do not follow Mr. Douglass' every move, but I believe his complaints were regarding the enslavement of his peo---

Russert: Yes, but many Americans feel that denouncing our nation on foreign soil is an unpatriotic act.

Lincoln: Well, I don't quite---

Russert: Next question: you opposed the recent Mexico war?

Lincoln: Yes, I felt that the President did not provide a convincing justification---

Russert: Yet, you have stated your willingness to use force to maintain national unity if the South were to secede. Can you explain this contradiction?

Welcome to Banalogies

"History is past politics, and Politics present history." So said the nineteenth-century American historian Herbert Baxter Adams, who helped establish the field of modern political history through his seminars at Johns Hopkins. Read the media (whether mainstream, conservative or liberal) or listen to politicians' speeches and you'll see that Adams' observation is as vital today as it was almost a century ago. Historical examples, comparisons, and analogies abound, shaping our understandings of today and informing plans for the future. As well they should.

However, there are dangers in using history in such ways. These do not arise because the past has nothing to tell us about the present, but rather because pundits and politicians often employ history poorly. Especially when it comes to the use of comparisons and analogies, historical examples can distort as easily as they clarify. In his 1973 book on this topic, 'Lessons' of the Past, diplomatic historian Ernest May described these risks better than I ever could:

[P]olicy-makers ordinarily use history badly. When resorting to an analogy, they tend to seize upon the first that comes to mind. They do not search more widely. Nor do they pause to analyze the case, test its fitness, or even ask in what ways it might be misleading. Seeing a trend running toward the present, they tend to assume that it will continue into the future, not stopping to consider what produced it or why a linear projection might prove to be mistaken.

And thus, we reach Banalogies. I hope to use this blog to take a critical look at the use of historical comparisons and analogies by the media and politicians, adding nuance, context when I can and just pointing out when some historical comparisons don't make sense. I also have a slightly more "political" agenda and in my case I plan to promote progressive values, something I believe a thoughtful reading of history can do. I should also say that I will certainly make my own bad comparisons and poor uses of history and I intend this as a learning experience as much as a teaching one. We'll see. In the meantime, enjoy!