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American Exceptionalism...

2009-07-02T19:26:30-04:00

“If the sword falls on the United States after eighty years, hypocrisy raised its head, lamenting the death of those killers who tampered with the blood, honor, and holy places of the Muslims. ---When these defended their oppressed sons, brothers, and sisters in Palestine and in many Islamic countries, the world at large shouted. The infidels shouted, followed by the hypocrites. ---They champion falsehood, support the butchers against the victim, the oppressor against the innocent child. ---In the aftermath of this event---every Muslim should rush to defend his religion.” Osama Bin Laden, October 7, 2001

“There is a human condition that we must worry about in times of war. There is a values system that cannot be compromised-God-given values. These aren’t the United States created values. These are values of freedom and the human condition and mothers loving their children. What’s very important as we articulate our diplomacy and our military action, is that we never look like we are creating-like we are the author of these values.” George W Bush, 2002 ⁽¹⁾

State and nation were created simultaneously in the United States unlike France, Germany. But the United States is also an historical cause and has so been identified from its very origins. Eugene Rostow sees a tension in American history in terms of identifying the American purpose. “We emphasize contradictory principles with equal fervor and cling to them with equal tenacity. Should foreign policy be based on power or morality? Realism or idealism? Pragmatism or principle? Should its goal be the protection of interests or the protection of values? Should we be nationalist or internationalist? Liberal or conservative? We blithely answer all of the above.”⁽²⁾

American “exceptionalism” was defined by what America was at home. Foreign policy was designed to defend but not define what America was. The authors of the Constitution foresaw a tension between personal liberty and the needs of defense. But these could be reconciled if policy was pragmatic and not ideological. ⁽³⁾ This was the only option available at the founding of the republic despite the crosscurrents and respective ideological attractions of Britain and France.

But this reconciliation, this measured tone was never completely incorporated in American foreign policy, either in a declaratory way or in practice. In 1812, Andrew Jackson, later the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in what has been called “The second war for independence,” asked “What are we as a nation? For what are we going to fight? ⁽⁴⁾ Les Aspin, the late Secretary of defense, remarked in South Bend a few years ago that American interests may not always be challenged but American values will be at risk more frequently. He was thinking at the time of “humanitarian” interventions in the Balkans; Bosnia and Kosovo but the question remains pertinent today and President Bush merges them, will be seen.

Walter McDougall sees this tension in two “mutually supportive and yet contradictory images, America as a “Promised Land,” a new Israel apart from history under God (John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill”). This image while attracting people by the sheer force of its example led almost ineluctably to that of the “Crusader State” called to save the world. He asks, “Does our liberal heritage as a land of liberty require us to crusade abroad on behalf of others? Or does giving in to the temptation to impose our will abroad, however virtuous our intentions violate the nature of America as a Promised Land? Can the United States remain a Crusader State and still remain a Promised Land?”⁽⁵⁾ This duality was latent in American history but became manifest in the Spanish –American war of 1898 foreshadowed by “manifest destiny”

American purposes abroad are affected by the notion of “civil religion”. Religious and republican values were traditionally set apart in Europe especially in the writings of Machiavelli but in the very origins of the United States religion and republicanism reinforced and supported each other. Jefferson noted the “persistent correlation of republican convictions and heterodox theological opinions.” This was contrary to the experiences of Britain and Canada; while there was some affinity between orthodox Christianity and republicanism under the Puritans in England they inhabited different moral universes. By contrast American republican languages had two main themes-“Fear of illegitimate power and a near messianic belief in the Benefits of liberty.” Religious beliefs set aside the counterposing convictions found outside the United States to “embrace the republican politics of the fathers (Jefferson, Franklin and other heterodox leaders) but rejected their religion.”⁽⁶⁾ The United States did not experience Europe’s religious wars and policies were more temperate about faith. Religion embraces liberty and pluralism. The tension between liberty and pluralism found in 19^th century Europe was not present in the United States.

Missionaries were a motivating force in American activities abroad. Lives needed to be changed and “spreading the good news and the mission of taking the gospel to other societies” was crucial. The U.S. government officials then, and now, should emphasize the separation of such activities from government policy but as one historian noted “not to understand religion---in American history is like trying to make sense of Moby Dick without the Whale.”⁽⁷⁾

While the term “Crusader State” has positive connotations for many, others like John Quincy Adams worried about America becoming the dictatress of the world .

“She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners, than her own were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself , beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice ,envy, and ambition across the colors usurping the standards of freedom She might become the dictatetress of the world; she would no longer be the master of her own spirit”⁽⁸⁾

The “Crusader State” image has deep roots and may create a narrow understanding of nationalism that is difficult for many to accept although it has been applicable at certain times like World War 2. It has served many presidents rhetorically in good stead.

The “Promised Land” image was used in the Declaration of Independence and its notion of a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind” to establish its legitimacy and to justify the call for separation from the British Empire. In like fashion striking universal themes Lincoln in July, 1861 declared that the fundamental issue at stake in the conflict - (Civil War) embraced more than the fate of the United States. “It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic or a democracy –a government of the people by the same people-can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its domestic forces.” American nationalism was “aspirational”, both a guide for the nation and, like democracy, unfinished. The American free society would never be “perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”⁽⁹⁾

In the current crisis this kind of “aspirational nationalism”, an inspiration to some both home and abroad is frequently controversial in both places. Ferguson for example notes the paradox of dictating democracy, of exporting emancipation (for even “benevolent hegemons” are not always appreciated.) Many are unwilling to pay the price in blood and treasure that this may entail. Americans are not imperialistically inclined. They are reluctant to “go there” and if they must go, then they count the day that they can come home They eschew the periphery They cling to the metropole.” Many are skeptical in retrospect of Truman’s very typical words at the very beginning of the Cold War in 1947. He declared that The only to win the world from the threat of totalitarianism was for “the whole world [to] adopt the American system for the American system could survive only by becoming a world system.”⁽¹⁰⁾

In an imaginative historical reconstruction of American diplomacy Mead in Special Providence outlines the political –religious character in part in terms of four presidential models, two of which are discussed below. While Adams-Hamilton were “realists” and called for restraint abroad and Jefferson worried about the impact of American activity abroad at home two others, Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Jackson had very different ideas about the scope of America’s role abroad.

Wilson has always been a contradictory president, calling for democracy abroad but not always practicing it at home, but he has been far removed in spirit from American foreign relations and actions. While he enunciates ideals for America abroad another president, Andrew Jackson reflects the tough “populist” side of an America that reacts in rage when it is challenged and attacked as it was on September 11, 2001.

Wilsonians believe that the United States has both a moral obligation and an important national interest in spreading American democracy and social values throughout the world, creating a peaceful international community that “accepts the rule of law.” The Wilsonian “strain” reflects a view that “the United States has the right and the duty to change the rest of the world’s behavior, and that the United States should concern itself not only with the way that other countries conduct their international affairs but with their domestic policies as well.”

Wilson, as former president of Princeton University, was called the “Princeton schoolmaster” in his time. Appropriately, he lectured and hectored other nations. He went beyond the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary of December 1904, which sanctioned by implication American armed intervention in the Latin American hemisphere, primarily the Caribbean, as part of an international police power.” We can have no sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of government, to advance their own personal interests and ambitions.” Implicitly Wilson contended that only certain types of governments would be tolerated by the United States in Latin America. Military dictators were not but so too were revolutionaries. The United States reserved the right to intervene to use force against unacceptable regimes.

In 1913, the American ambassador in London told British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey what the U.S. would do if it intervened. The ambassador said that first the United States would “Make ‘em vote and live by their decisions.” If this didn’t work out “We’ll go in and make ‘em vote again.” For 200 years, Grey asked? “Yes, the United States will be here for two hundred years and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they learn to vote and to rule themselves.” (AS previously noted this is the “paradox of dictating democracy, or enforcing freedom, or extorting emancipation.”) ⁽¹¹⁾

A far different side of the American historical tradition is that embodied by Andrew Jackson. Where Wilson clearly has an activist side behind the sweeping moral vision, in Jackson’s case it is fiercely personified once the casus belli” is acceptable. In “Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright” Mead epitomizes and encapsulates the Jackonian idea: honor, equity, and dignity for those who pull their own weight and individualism, a duty to seek self fulfillment. Jacksonians are democratic and populist. Spending money on the military is one of the best things that government can do in part because Jacksonian “realism” distinguishes between the acceptable internal country and the dark world outside. Honor, concern for reputation, and faith in military conditions are much more prominent than in the case of Wilson who was horrified by boyhood memories of the Civil War. Accordingly, Jacksonians are suspicious of Wilsonian idealism. They are leery of humanitarian initiatives or world order schemes.

Jacksonian patriotism is “an emotion, not a doctrine.” The nation is an extension of the family. There need be no unambiguous moral reason for fighting. Mass popular patriotism and the moral spirit behind it give the U.S. an advantage in international affairs. It buttresses the international pressure that the U.S. can bear on other states, “coercive diplomacy”. I would agree but it is always a matter of timing and degree. Jacksonians also believe that wars must be fought with all available means Neither Truman, in Korea or Johnson, in Vietnam survived limited wars politically. (It is for history eventually to judge the rightness of their course given the circumstances of the time as they saw them.) Jacksonians like all American presidents want to fight with the least loss of American lives but are not concerned with inflicting casualties on the enemy. In this sense Jackson is like Lincoln who anguished over the terrible losses of Americans on both sides bit resisted all entreaties for a limited war and peace despite the carnage. But then again these were all Americans!

Finally, Mead concludes as noted that despite its limitations American presidents need Jacksonian qualities to get what the U.S. wants. Even the American propensity for violence and military forces and operations may “also increase international respect for American strength and discourage attempts to test it.”⁽¹²⁾

What about the recent past and how have the experiences of the American diplomatic tradition outlined above been reflected in it, particularly in the presidencies of George Herbert Bush and William Clinton.? “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a report of the Project for the New American Century came out in September, 2000 after parts of it were suppressed during the Clinton administration in 1992. But the latter administration reflected its optimistic tone if not its military recommendations. The Clinton administration, noted the end of the military threat from Moscow. The United States was the world’s indispensable nation (Secretary of State Madeline Albright) and the world’s only remaining superpower. (President Clinton) Reflecting this new geopolitical reality one of the report’s “key findings” was that today the United States has an unprecedented opportunity. “It has no immediate great power challenge, it is blessed with wealthy, and democratic allies in every part of the world.”

“At no time in history has the international security been so conducive to American interests and ideals.” The future challenge was to preserve and extend the American peace.” The Cold War was bipolar, the present was unipolar. (With the U.S. as noted the “World’s only remaining superpower.” No longer need the United States deter and contain the Soviet Union with an implied caution about military intervention.) Today, the report contends that the task is to preserve and expand “the zones of democratic peace.”⁽¹³⁾

The document clearly bears some of the strains of the American diplomatic tradition noted above. Another, later study argued that “The United Stats and especially its elite could now “promote a great project of globalization but it is a kind of globalization that entails American values. The American elites consequently want to portray American values as global or universal ones, for “peace, democracy, and free markets, the ideas that conquered the world.”⁽¹⁴⁾

The 1990s were halcyon days. After the turmoil of Vietnam and its tragic ending, the Iranian hostage drama, Watergate, and oil shocks the United States had triumphed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, or as one writer called it the “50 Year Wound”. McDougall notes that American might was unprecedented; it won the first Gulf War in a decisive, short campaign. ⁽¹⁵⁾ American military power, economic might, and even what Joseph Nye called “soft power”, the attractions of American institutions and culture seemed to be in a permanent ascendancy. It appeared to be the first manifestation of the new American century and millennium.

At the zenith, the apogee of the power of Victorian England Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Recessional” which was to be prophetic:

“Far called, our navies melt away, Our dune and heartland sinks the fire, Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Niniveh and Tyre. Judge of the Nations spare us not Lest we forget, lest we forget.”⁽¹⁶⁾ (The irony of the poem in today’s context is clear by noting that Niniveh province is part of the “Sunni Triangle” in northern Iraq-one of the world’s oldest empires haunting the present.)

President George Bush’s Second Inaugural address reflects many historical themes:

“For half a century, America defended our own freedom [note the earlier Truman quote] by standing watch over distant borders. After the Soviet Union there were years of relative quiet, years of repose---and then there came a day of fire.” Then, echoing Wilson and Lincoln the President declares that “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope of freedom in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are one” (the combination foreshadowed earlier in the text.) “Self government is the U.S. imperative proclaimed across the generations. This will not be by force of arms. America will proselytize. (Wilson)” The U.S. will not impose its style of government on the unwilling but “help others find their voice, obtain their own freedom and make their own way, but we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary.”⁽¹⁷⁾ Helping others find the way is leading by example with a bit of help from the “schoolmaster Wilson.”“Defending ourselves and our friends” is standard but quite Jacksonian.

The President’s “State of the Union” speech is more of a governing document, a statement of the administration’s future plans then is the Inaugural Address where Presidents try to speak to posterity. To damp down the messianic spirit of the earlier speech the United States has “no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else, unlike our enemies who are brute, self appointed rulers who seek to control every aspect of life.” By contrast the U.S. seeks a “community of independent nations and democracies. “Since they respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace.”⁽¹⁸⁾ (The peace like character of democracies who don’t go to war with each other is a staple of academic and political thought though not unchallengeable.)

The Islamic Challenge

Who are “these brute, self appointed rulers who seek to control every aspect of every life?” What are some of the motives and expressed intentions of those who helped to plan the September 11, 2001 tragedy, the first direct assault on US territory since the British victory in the battle of Bladensburg in the War of 1812 resulted in the burning of the White House. Ferguson calls the Islamists Nazis because of the messianic beliefs, need to indoctrinate and appetite for persecution (and I would add “victimization”.) They are in some ways also “Islamo–Bolsheviks”, committed to revolution and reordering of the world along anti-capitalist lines. ⁽¹⁹⁾ Like the latter they want to bring “consciousness” from the outside, a very strict ascetic interpretation of traditional sources said to emanate from a transcendent source-God or Allah. President Bush seeks to democratize the Arab world and thus weaken the Islamic fundamentalist appeal. It is a daunting task.

Leslie Gelb, for example contends that Iraqis don’t want to live their lives ruined by masters. They need a government that “commands public loyalty and hope, and looks as if it can prevail. They need an “Iraqi James Madison” who with others can draft a constitution with power, values, and protection worth dying for. ⁽²⁰⁾ How is this to be done?

One way to address the problem of democracy in the Arab world is to be guided by the works of Bernard Lewis who traces Arab hostility to the West to the arrival of Napoleon’s troops in Egypt in 1797 and later the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War 1, ending a long period of Islamic ascendancy. But this while useful is rather general. A preferred approach is to look at Arabs from the inside themselves their society, and their political values. In the west, people perform in contradictory roles while Arabs see people as a unified whole. Doubts about fundamental beliefs are equates with unbelief and the threat of chaos and “chaos, not freedom, is seen by many Arabs as the real alternative to tyranny.” Uncertainty over fundamentals will lead to the dreaded breakdown of the community of believers. In contradistinction to Gelb political institutions have never been separated from the individuals connected with them. In the American case George Washington put his imprint on the presidency and by sheer force of personality and will, after refusing absolute power created a nation that lived, after he had passed from the scene. Only Mustafa Kemal, “Ataturk” accomplished that in the Islamic world.

There is a very traditional social order, one of “mutual indebtedness” that prevents the system itself from falling to pieces. Changing conditions probe these boundaries, these relationships, leading many Muslims to equate Westernization with the breakdown of boundaries, or as one Moroccan judge said “what we call chaos you call civil society.”

Democracy must be based on the “spirit of reciprocity.” If people can’t be separated from their roles, an impersonal state is incapable of reciprocity, as would be the case in a constitution The President contends that the fundamentalists hate freedom but most Arabs see themselves as freer to build relationships than those in the West constrained by material things and impersonal conditions. Probing for the new must be kept in bounds so that “What hurts society does not outweigh what helps it.” For Iraqis there is the tightly circumscribed world of kin and territory. For suicide bombers, freedom of choice can mean the recapturing of order through visible martyrdom. ⁽²¹⁾

This essay began with quotes by President Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Seeking to assess the latter’s words is a difficult task of linguistic and theological analysis. Both the Old and New Testaments speak the language of killing in God’s name and by his command while others reflect a different spirit. This is also the case with the Koran. It is difficult to clarify the meanings and nuances of “Al Quran.” For example, on the one hand “fight those who fight you along God’s way, yet do not initiate hostilities; God does not love aggressors” (Al Quran 2-190) but on the other “O you who believe do not take the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends of each other, and whoever among them tasks them as a friend, then surely he is one of them, surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.”⁽²²⁾ It is possible, then to take hope and then swing to pessimism about the possibilities of changing the Arab culture and promote democracy (with uncertain consequences) to weaken the appeal of the “Jihadis”, the “Holy Warriors”.

Islam is split into different factions and schools, with Sunni and Shiia having factions of their own. One of the streams of thought and observance is Salafi Islam, the teachings of the reformer Abd Al-Wahaib or “Wahhabism”, the fundamentalist thought derived from and practiced in Saudi Arabia. The salfiyah movement seeks to return Islam to its purest roots and constructions. Muslims should try as hard as they can to imitate the blessed prophet in every aspect of life. They single out Allah in aid and refuge in times of ease and hardship. It is claimed to be “pure and free from any additions, deletions, or alternatives.” It is not necessarily violent but doctrinally rigid and peaceful.

It has attracted rootless and committed internationalist militias who fight for the “Sharia-Islamic law, a pure community that was said to exist in the 8^th century Caliphate. Some believe that only through armed struggle can Islam save itself from the infidel forces in the world”, expel the west from the precincts of Islam and recreate the Caliphate based on the spread of Islam as in the days of Mohammed and the later caliphs. ⁽²³⁾ (Bin Laden had been infuriated by the American presence in Saudi Arabia intended to protect it from Saddam Hussein and as a logistical base in the first Gulf War, in part because of its proximity to Mecca and Medina, the Muslim holy places.) Wahhabis reject the notion that war is the lesser form of jihad, while purification of self is the greater form, a notion accepted by mainstream clerics. Both forms attract individuals who seek assistance and comfort in the elimination of unsettling possibilities, especially in the age of modernization and globalization.

Some Israelis on the right like the late Meir Kahane (of the Jewish Defense League) admired the militant jihadis who are “ready to fight” and die for their ideas. Democratic liberal societies are getting globalized-rotten to the core. There is a masculine trend embodied in Islam which has no mercy-just power, force, and no place for the individual. America by contrast is “rotten with liberalism, submissive, and no will to live.”

Holy War to some “intensifies the boundaries between Us and Them. It satisfies a longing for a purpose in life, creating a ‘reductive state of bliss’.” What is critical and essential are “perceived humiliation, relative deprivation, and fear-personal cultural or both. There are holy wars when a large group of young men feel humiliated and deprived, when leaders know how to capitalize on those feelings and some segment of society is willing to fund it.” Suicide is critical. While the Koran forbids it, God rewards the martyr. The Koran says “Think not of those who are slain in the name of God as dead. Nay, they live in the presence of the Lord and receive gifts from him.” (Koran.3, 169) ⁽²⁴⁾

Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian jihadist, declared that all those who took part in the January 30, 2005 elections in Iraq were “apostates.” Candidates in the election were “demigods”, those voting for them “infidels.” Democracy supplanted the will of God with a popular majority. It is based on “freedom of religion and belief, freedom of speech, and separation of religion and politics. This is heresy itself.”⁽²⁵⁾

Zarqawi elaborates: “The soldiers of Islam have vowed to fight all forms of atheism, pagans, trees, or a parliamentary council that contravenes the faith and deprives Muslims of the mercy of their Lord. God is our help.”“My fraternal brothers, democracy and parliamentary councils are the beliefs of infidels. Endorsement of them is conversion into their faith and departure from Islam.” Democracy means “that the deified, worshiped is man and not God in the highest. This contravenes the foundation of religion and monotheism.”⁽²⁶⁾

Conclusion

I return to Niall Ferguson who supports the idea of an American “liberal empire” the imperialists IN SPITE of themselves but doubts that the US is prepared to make the sacrifices that are necessary in a struggle that may take generations. It is not so much a matter of defeating an organization –“Al Qaeda, The Base” as overcoming a set of ideas that are deeply held by many of its adherents.

Even democracy, which may be coming slowly to the Muslim world in Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps Iraq, may turn out to be a double edged sword. Fairly elected democratic leaders could set into motion the consolidation of anti-Western and Islamic forces. (One thinks of Algeria and Turkey where the military annulled election victories by Muslim parties and movements.) But this may be a chance that must be taken. Political reform and democracy may not, at least in the short run, eradicate a country of Islamic fundamentalism, but it will deliver some dissent at the grassroots level and perhaps dilute the appeal of the Islamists, the one large scale opposition that is currently available. ⁽²⁷⁾

The broad sweep of American history and diplomacy and a nation founded on a cause thus collides with a highly traditional movement with very different premises that clashes with it because it is the model of a modernist society, a globalist model. There are no clear boundaries in space and time to predict the end of this struggle. In itself it does not lead to nuclear annihilation but the vehemence of the jihadis conveys its own terrors.

But beyond the struggle against terrorism there is Meade’s warning injunction:

“The necessary balancing act between living up to ideals that provide legitimacy to the world order and effectively in defense of ones own core values will be a major problem for American diplomacy in the years ahead, as it was for British diplomacy one hundred years ago.”⁽²⁸⁾

Presented at the annual convention of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, Illinois on April 9,2005. Revised May 2005.

Read the sequel to this article, American Exceptionalism: An Addendum.

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Looking Back at Radical...

2009-09-15T15:24:20-04:00

The following comes in modified form from my book Radicalism in the Mountain West (2007) in the hope of generating some thoughts and discussion.

Historian W. J. Cash observed some years ago that the South is not simply a geographical division of the United States. Rather, one finds in this region “a complex of established relationships and habits of thought, sentiments, prejudices, standards, and values, and association of ideas,” shared by most people, that distinguishes the area from others. While one is not altogether certain the same thing can be said of the Mountain West -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming -- these states do share a common history of interest to students of radicalism.

Used only with express written permission

Radicalism in the Mountain West (2007)

The Mountain West in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and the first two decades of the Twentieth Century was a place where radicals – people who wanted to replace the capitalist system, not simply reform it – were active on both the political and industrial fronts. They sought immediate reforms to loosen the grip of giant corporations and give workers greater control over their government and jobs.

The states and territories of the Mountain West first caught the attention of nationally prominent Socialists not so much because they saw these places as filled with potential radicals, but because these places had so few inhabitants that the leaders felt they would be great places to establish Socialist colonies. Eugene Debs and other prominent radicals dreamed of the Socialist electoral victories that could be realized by moving large numbers of radicals into sparsely settled states like Nevada or Idaho. As the region began to grow in the late nineteenth century, however, national leaders thought less about the size of the population and more about the possibility of immediate and fundamental political and economic change growing out of the emerging anti-corporate reform effort, at the core of which, as they saw it, were the grievances of a new class conscious industrial work force in mining areas.

Radicals liked to think of the workers in the Mountain West as something special in both their willingness to stand up to the boss on the job and in their eagerness to use the ballot to pursue revolutionary ends. Writing about workers in the west in general, one radical expressed the view that their spirit of independence was due to the rough frontier environment that stripped away a man’s “effete artificialities” and forced him “to stand upon his own two feet if he would stand at all.” The end product, at any rate, was a “strong and courageous race” eager for freedom who would not give in to the new industrial system or to capitalist bosses.”People working in and around mines, the radicals argued, stood to be the most radical of the radicals because of their experiences in the East, the severity of the industrial conditions they faced, or both of these causes.

Socialist parties burst on the scene in the Mountain West during the late 1890s and early 1900s as part of both a national movement and a continuation of the regional anti-corporate political reform effort which had featured the emergence of a labor-centered Populist movement.

Mountain West Socialists absorbed much of the Populist platform, some of their leaders and some of their following in the electorate, especially in mining areas. Yet, while, the Socialist parties in the Mountain West took up the “lost cause” of Populism, they also added their own particular ideological interpretations and prescriptions. They contributed to the anti-corporate platform of the Populists, by giving it a deeper, more theoretical underpinning, rooted in what they offered as scientific theory. They also offered fundamental reform – a way out of wage slavery through the establishment of a cooperative commonwealth which would replace capitalism. Members though differed somewhat over how and how soon this was to be done.

By the early 1900s, the Socialist movement in the Mountain West began to acquire the reputation of being home to the most radical of the radicals – the stronghold of the IWW and revolutionaries like Bill Haywood whose version of direct action meant sabotage and industrial violence and, in the end, one big union which would overthrow the capitalist system through a national general strike.

One finds a broad streak of revolutionary direct action in Mountain West radicalism – a willingness to go to a no holds barred war to the finish with the capitalists at the point of production -- that made the region somewhat unique. Still, the extent and importance of this aspect of the radical element in the movement can be overstated. This reputation stems in large part from the widespread attention given to the violent labor wars in the mining areas of the region -- wars in which Socialists as union leaders and members were frequently involved and in which Socialist party leaders expressed their support for the workers -- and by the widespread attention given in the media to the IWW and prominent radicals associated with that organization.

On the left wing-right wing scale, Mountain West Socialist party members tended to be directed toward the left wing. This is generally shown, for example, when we compare how Socialists in the area stood on issues voted upon by party members on a national basis. On the other hand, party functionaries throughout the region, generally took party building seriously. In practice, they championed a variety of reform proposals (immediate demands), sought out middle class as well as working class support, and developed close relations with craft unions as well as industrial ones.

Militant direct action and strike activity which characterized the radical movement on the industrial front may have helped build a sense of worker solidarity that benefitted the Socialist parties but party leaders in the region often felt that the resulting violence and the revolutionary utterances of the radical unionists, especially those who led the IWW, got in the way of party building. When it came to membership, the parties in many places attracted respected middle class members of society. The IWW as it developed had an altogether different membership base than the Socialist parties –drawing unskilled drifters and seasonal workers who were not interested in party politics or voting.

Mountain West parties were often led by middle class people, many of whom had deep roots in their communities and felt comfortable getting involved in civic and political activities. While not abandoning long-term radical goals or the interests of working people, they set out to build moderate reform-minded political parties under the Socialist banner. Overall, Mountain West Socialist parties did well compared to their counterparts in other regions in terms of membership, picking up votes, and winning elections. Socialist candidates in the Mountain West also did relatively well on the local level, again showing a moderate side. These victories often came by riding a protest vote against corruption in local government and incompetent local administrations. Downplaying revolutionary rhetoric, Socialists pledged clean and efficient administrations and focused on such practical problems as getting the government out of debt, improving the local water supply and sewer system and making gains in health and sanitation standards.

Compared to Socialists elsewhere, Mountain West Socialists had several things going for them. They benefitted from an ongoing anti-corporate reform effort which was all the more potent because of its ties to anti-colonial, anti-eastern sentiment. They drew upon the momentum built up by a relatively successful labor-centered Populist crusade. Discontent in mining areas and the activities of the Western Federation of Miners drove the radical cause. The Mountain West was a place where industrialization was just beginning and working conditions , especially in isolated mining camps, were among the worst in the country -- the type of conditions out of which one might expect revolutions to be made. Also, Socialists found themselves in a political party system which, for various reasons, was unusually favorable to third parties efforts.

That the Socialists did not do better in an absolute sense, may be attributed to a variety of factors some of which in varying degrees affected Socialist parties elsewhere and some such as the opposition of the Mormon Church that were unique to the region. When it comes to barriers the story is much the same throughout the region -- the disinterest or downright hostility of workers, the opposition of newly enfranchised women voters, the opposition of church leaders, the fear of town-builders that radicals would scare off investors, the determined, sometimes ruthless, resistance of the mining companies, the use of state and federal troops to subdue striking workers, the popularity of conspiracy theories linking radicals to Germany’s side in the First World War -- presented formidable barriers to the radicals.

Too, the impact of the party movement was sapped by thunder stealing reformers and by some self-inflicted wounds, especially the inability to keep the radical forces together. Radicals argued over goals and tactics and just about everything else. The movement was tragically torn between those who placed emphasis on political action and those who favored direct action on the industrial field. Ultimately the direction actionists went their own way but the resulting violence on the industrial field rebounded not only against the industrial radicals but those who were trying to build conventional political parties.

Looking back though we find Mountain West radicals had played active and important roles in expressing economic and social discontent, agitating for reform, educating the public, building support for innovation, and compelling the major parties to change their policy positions. They functioned as a means through which ordinary people protested conditions and tried to regain control over their lives, their jobs, and their government. They built the agenda for change, and perhaps most all, by frightening the powers that be into making reforms that helped democratize the political system, increase public control of corporations, and further the protection of working people.

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In Memoria for Three Gi...

2010-03-03T16:36:57-05:00

Armed Forces and Society sent me the memoria for Morris Janowitz, Charles Moskos, and Samuel Huntington in the order of their passing. Ironically, Moskos wrote the memoriam on Janowitz.

I have been an IUS fellow for many years and at 75 had the rare distinction of knowing all of them well, Janowitz as an undergraduate senior at the University of Michigan and later as a friend and colleague, Moskos as a great friend and colleague of my age and finally Huntington as a colleague and mentor.

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Morris Janowitz

They were all giants in the field. Janowitz, who founded "military sociology" or as he preferred as a sociologist "armed forces and society." Moskos, a pioneering "field sociologist" an ex GI himself went into some dangerous areas to meet the troops, interact with them, and chronicle their experiences in "The American Enlisted Man". Huntington, a political scientist, who was one of the great seminal thinkers of our time, was often attacked as those who write on public policy often are but courageous and innovative.

I first met Morris as a second semester senior at the University of Michigan in spring, 1956 in a course called "Mass Communications" (Soc 177). We were required to do a content analysis of a community newspaper, in my case as a Chicagoan "The Southtown Economist" from my beloved south side. I felt privileged to receive a "B". Morris was thorough, tough, the complete professional. I later read "The Professional Soldier" which was, as Moskos noted incisive and courageous for its time. The study of the military was not consider academically and intellectually suitable, "off limitsI" when Morris wrote it.

He later helped me receive my first sabbatical in fall, 1977 when I spent time in my old "hood", the University of Chicago. I attended seminars there and he became a close personal friend. I recall that when I returned from a "post doc" at Harvard Morris in that off handed way of his said that "I see that you have taken my advice". Coming from Morris that was high praise indeed!

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Charles Moskos

Moskos was my contemporary. He received his A.B.from Princeton in 1956 at the same time that I graduated from Michigan. I cannot restate Jim Burks' superb encomium to Charlie, both academically succinct and terse but with warm reminiscences from Charlie’s boyhood in Albuquerque, a town that I visited a couple of years ago. I would add that his Greek background added a touch of universality to him. I have a young Greek colleague and we agree: "the gods and goddeses on Mt. Olympus have imbued him!". She knows of Charlie's work and is proud of their common heritage.

Charlie thought and advocated that the military should be far more representative of American society than it has become over time with the advent of the "Total Force" and the all volunteer military. Consequently,he consistently advocated a return to conscription, "the draft" whose existence influenced our career decisions in those days between Korea and Vietnam, Charlie as a draftee, I as a recalled reservist in the 1961 Berlin crisis. He also originated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in regard to homosexuals in the armed forces. I heard him get into a heated argument in Chicago one night on that topic. Charlie would mix his erudition with sharp, wry wit. He asked that "don't ask, don't tell" be inscribed on his tombstone. He never turned personal disagreements into personal vendettas.

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Samuel Huntington

Finally, Samuel Huntington, the last of the founding greats and the only fellow political scientist. Peter Feaver was one of Sam's graduate students noted his professional accomplishments, the incisive and catholic nature of his scholarship, and what can be only described as his architechtonic mastery of the field, not a dry scholarship by any means but probing and pathbreaking. People have criticized "The Soldier and the State" since it was first published. Carl Friedrich, a Harvard colleague and German said that Huntington advocated what he opposed all of his life, an implied flattering comparison of military models to civilian ones.

I met Sam as the first recipient of the Richard B. Welch fellowship at the (then) Center for International Affairs and the (then) Russian Research Center at Harvard. Sam was very, very tough, a hard taskmaster. I likened him to a squirrel leaping out at you in a seminar. Ironically, Moskos visited Sam at Harvard in the fall of 1982 when I was there in 1982-82. I will never forget his council, advice, and friendship, a great scholar, teacher, and mentor. He served as the unofficial advisor for my second PhD!

I cherish their memories. All served in the U.S. military and were proud of it. They leave models of great scholarship and extraordinary citizenship.

-----

Read the sequel to this Article here.

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A Social Contract for ...

2010-04-12T14:00:21-04:00

The other night I was working with my daughter on a term paper comparing and contrasting different political agendas from the 1930s. One of the most interesting items that I encountered was one that I had probably read thirty years ago as part of a political science class as a college freshman, but I didn’t retain it or fully understand its implications.

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It would seem that over two hundred years ago that some of our founding fathers were struggling with two related concepts as we tried to distinguish ourselves from the feudal system that we had left behind. One of those concepts we have held onto with a passion, declaring it to be one of the cornerstones of the American experiment: the concept of personal property ownership; the idea that through your own achievement you should have the ability to accumulate and own property without regard to your prior economic or social status. This is the cornerstone of the capitalist system. We hear this principle invoked every day, especially when we feel that the government is inserting itself where it doesn’t belong.

America was a place where you could reinvent yourself. You could own property, build a business, and leave it to your heirs. Our largely agrarian society and vast frontiers with what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of land fit this well.

The other principle that we don’t hear nearly as much about is the right of personal competency. The rights to build your skills, express yourself, and sell your products and services as you saw fit. The interesting thing is that there was not only an implied right, but a responsibility.

The Industrial Revolution impacted this model in a couple of ways. We shifted from an agrarian society to industrial, which created a new kind of feudalism, and we ran out of territory to expand. In the feudal system, the “serfs” were bound to the land, without them the nobility couldn’t feed their subjects.

Prior to the legislation passed in the late thirties and early forties we created a kind of industrial serfdom -- collective bargaining was formally or informally outlawed -- we restricted the rights of personal competency.

It also seems in a way that over the next sixty years we gradually embraced a semi-feudal model. Large corporations in many ways replaced the feudal monarchs and nobility -- we created a sort of corporate co-dependency, especially under the models of Theory X and Frederick W. Taylor and scientific management.

Employees, as serfs, couldn’t be trusted or expected to make good decisions. We needed to dumb things down. They would do what they were told, and in return the nobility, or management, would take care of them, and we did. We promised lifetime employment, we provided for their healthcare, and for their retirement. I’m not going to say we did it willingly; organized labor played a huge role in providing these things as well as industrial safety, limitations on work hours, and others. It does seem though in a way we lost the equality factor, we began to “take care of them”, and they began to expect it.

When I entered the workforce I was surprised at the things we didn’t or wouldn’t talk to employees about. We rarely invited them to participate in decisions about how we did things. We didn’t talk to them about how we made decisions about the business, about their pay, or other related matters. It was on a need to know basis, and we had decided they didn’t need to know or didn’t care. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties some interesting things came to pass. One of the first was international competition.

The Japanese and Germans began rebuilding their industrial base and to add insult to injury they were including techniques that had been taught in U.S. universities that brought some of the concepts of personal competency back into the workplace.

“employees became serfs, management became nobility”

We also began using outsourcing and moving production offshore to reduce costs and avoid regulations, not exactly investing in personal competency.

We also begin to notice that some of the costs of “taking care of our employees” were becoming an issue in the modern serfdom. We saw:

the beginning of employers recognizing that the rising cost of healthcare becoming a challenge, experimenting with managed care, cost shifting, reducing benefits, and other strategies
organizations that had practiced no layoff policies began to downsize their workforce and aggressively outsource and offshore
the advent of new defined contribution programs like 401k plans replace defined benefit pension plans
organizations reduce or eliminate retiree health benefit programs.

The government even got in the act by requiring corporate health care programs for retirees to be primary rather than secondary to Medicare.

When this became a prevailing attitude you also saw a shift in employee attitudes. The “social contract” had been broken and employees became less trusting and less subservient.

I hear a lot from people that the latest two generations, the Generation X and the Millennials are much different than previous generations. They aren’t loyal. They want more freedom and definition of their work and involvement. They won’t allow themselves to be lured into a serfdom (and for good reason).

From an employment standpoint, Gen X and Millennials have stated five requirements for them to form a meaningful relationship with an employer:

Satisfying work content.
Association with an organization that they respect and that respects them.
Mutual commitment to them and their careers.
Meaningful and timely feedback to help them improve their skills.
Equitable compensation.

In addition to desiring feedback, they also describe four other elements in an optimal employment environment:

Maximum delegation.
Personal responsibility and “ownership” of their projects and tasks.
Clear boundaries and a sense of the big picture.
Shared ownership (credit) for end results.

“the social contract had been broken, employees became less trusting”

Now here is a thought for you: don’t some of these things sound remarkably like what you would expect from someone who embraces the concept of personal competency? Maybe these generations are taking us full circle back to what Jefferson and the other founding fathers intended -- a relationship between partners that respected and expects individual competency.

I have often said that the flip side of empowerment is accountability, is that what the right to personal competency means?

When I hear personal competency, I don’t think of someone taking care of someone else. I hear of a trust based relationship between equals. Maybe these “new” generations are taking us back to the beginning.

From compliance to commitment, a relationship based on respect, responsibility, information, rewards, and earned loyalty not the fealty of corporate codependency, where “obedience” is rewarded with job security and retirement benefits.

I often hear complaints that these generations are much more transient, they feel loyalty to their profession and their own personal aspirations. That also sounds like personal competence.

In fairness, if we want to fully embrace Jefferson’s model, employees need to embrace the bitter with the sweet. Personal competence also implies a meritocracy; you are rewarded according to your capability and performance.

One of my colleagues has a model she refers to as KindExcellence™, the implication that these two concepts are fundamentally intertwined. You cannot have true kindness if you artificially lower expectations, and you can’t be truly excellent if there is not compassion and consideration for the “whole person” in your decision making. Again, that sounds very much like the right of personal competence to me.

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The other important thing to remember in concert with the principles of personal property and personal competency were the values of the balance between individual rights and societal rights. I don’t have the right to pursue my goals to the obvious and callous detriment of others. Madison, in the famous debates between Brutus and Publius, talked about a central government to deal with issues of the great and aggregate.

When I look at where we are today with issues like healthcare and financial literacy I see an opportunity for collaboration between individual and institution to balance personal competency and the complexity that is a defining social issue, but that is a topic for another day. For today, I see myself as a potential defender of these “new” generations. Perhaps rather than rejecting the “values” that we proclaim they are actually closer to the intent of the Founding Fathers than we were, embracing the rights and responsibilities of not only personal property rights, but personal competency. I like a partnership of engagement and commitment, not entitlement and codependency. For me, this right of personal competency is very personal; I have two “millennials” aged 18 and 22, and I very much like the idea of them growing up in an environment of partnership and competence rather than codependency and serfdom.

About the Author

Mark F. Herbert is a speaker, author and consultant with over thirty years of experience helping organizations like Honeywell, SpectraPhysics, Mobius, Oregon Community Credit Union and others take their organizations from Compliance to Commitment™. He is currently a principal at the consulting firm of New Paradigms LLC. He recently published his book Managing Whole, One Man’s Journey.

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Questioning Our Allegia...

2010-03-01T09:54:20-05:00

Recently, a teacher had school security escort a Maryland middle school student from her classroom when she refused to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. The school later stated that the student was within her rights not to stand, but the action reflects the strong devotion many Americans feel toward the Pledge. Indeed, a lawyer speaking to the Washington Post reported that the student was "mocked by other children in her class and has been too traumatized to return" to school.[i] Is it un-American to not pledge one’s allegiance to the flag?

Many feel that the Pledge is an important practice rooted in the founding principles of our country such as democracy, liberty and a Judeo-Christian heritage. Presbyterian minister George M. Docherty - considered one of the key figures behind the effort to add the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance,was one of these.[ii] Docherty’s passing in November 2008 and the Maryland incident offer an opportunity for all Americans to reflect on the history of the Pledge and consider the ongoing role it plays in our society.

During a visit by President Eisenhower in 1954, Docherty preached that "To omit the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive character of the American way of life."[iii] In an era when Americans sought to differentiate themselves from “godless communists,” Eisenhower took this message to heart.

He stated that “These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.” A bill making the change was signed into law later that year.[iv]

What are the implications of so closely connecting worship of God and allegiance to a symbol of state authority? Eisenhower’s comments underscore how the addition of the two words “under God” explicitly links the state with religious belief. Sociologists classify this phenomenon as “civil religion.”[v] But this link goes deeper than those two words would suggest. To get a sense of why, perhaps it would be helpful to consider the origins of the Pledge itself.

While the roots of the Pledge do go back further than the Cold War, they do not go back as far as some might think.“[T]he practice of imposing a loyalty oath on the general citizenry does not date back to the founding of the Republic,” writes Matthew Cloud in The Journal of Church and State,“but is a product of the rise of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”[vi]

In fact, the Pledge of Allegiance was drafted by the Baptist minister Francis Bellamy in 1892. Bellamy was a Christian socialist who advocated the nationalization of the economy and preached about the socialism of Jesus.[vii] In order to inspire greater devotion to the state, Bellamy came up with a plan to salute symbols of state power. When the Pledge originally appeared, it included instructions for students to salute the flag with an out-raised hand.[viii]

Bellamy, however, was not alone in seeking to inspire devotion to authoritarian governments. In the early decades of the 20th century, Italy and Germany both adopted similar salutes. Wishing to keep the Pledge but ditch the Nazi overtones, Congress chose to adopt the hand-over-the-heart gesture we know today.[ix]

“The concept of ‘allegiance’ is feudal. In medieval Europe, the liegeman, or subject, pledged allegiance to his liege lord,” argues Michael Lind. “In a republic, the people should not pledge allegiance to the government; the government should pledge allegiance to the people.”[x]

There is no doubt that the Pledge inspires powerful emotions. But a history such as this should cause Americans to ask serious questions about why that is so, and whether such emotions truly foster genuine religious belief or support the principles upon which our country was founded.

“Why do so many conservatives who, by and large, exalt the individual and the family above the state, endorse this ceremony of subordination to the government?” asks columnist Gene Healy. “Why do Christian conservatives say it's important for schoolchildren to bow before a symbol of secular power?”[xi]

It is worthwhile to weigh the merits of wedding the devotion we display by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to our understanding of what role governments at all levels should play in our lives. Looking back over the twentiethcentury, we may also wish to offer thanks that we live in a society where this devotion is not obligatory.

[i] Johnson, Jenna. “Pledge of Allegiance dispute results in Md. teacher having to apologize,” 24 February 2010, The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/23/AR2010022303889.html.

[ii]“His push got 'under God' into Pledge of Allegiance,”The Los Angeles Times, 1 December 2008. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/01/local/me-docherty1.

[iii] Gibb, Tom. “Minister reprises 'under God' sermon,” 19 August 2002, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20020819pledge0819p1.asp.

[iv] Schulkers, Randy. “A few more points on the Pledge,”Powhatan Today, 15 July 2009. http://www.powhatantoday.com/index.php/opinion/article/a-few-more-points-on-the-pledge/19943/.

[v] See Wimberley, Ronald C. and William H. Swatos, Jr ., “Civil Religion,”Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, William H. Swatos, Jr., ed. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/civilrel.htm.

[vi] Cloud, Matthew W. "’One nation, under God’: tolerable acknowledgement of religion or unconstitutional cold war propaganda cloaked in American civil religion?,”Journal of Church and State, 22 March 2004. http://bailey83221.livejournal.com/94810.html.

[vii] Healy, Gene. “What’s Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?” Cato Institute, 4 November 2003. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3296.

[viii]Ibid.

[ix] Leepson, Mark. Flag: An American Biography (New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005), 171. http://books.google.com/books?id=qqjzyyZjYTEC&dq=Flag:+An+American+Biography.

[x] Lind, Michael. “The Pledge of Allegiance is un-American,” Salon, 16 November 2009. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2009/11/16/pledge_of_allegiance.

[xi] Healy. “What’s Conservative about the Pledge of Allegiance?”

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Organized Labor in the ...

2010-02-20T17:54:52-05:00

Organized Labor made gains in the post war years in spite of the Taft-Hartley act and the 1945 UAW strike because, Imprimus there was no war damage to the US economy to rebuild, ergo the US dominated the global economy. Secundus, the GI bill eased post war unemployment, and stimulated growth in education, and Tertius, retooling from a war footing was facilitated by the impetus of new technologies and industries developed from wartime research.

The gains made were wage increases tied to productivity increases and cost of living adjustments in 1948 and pension benefits from the treaty of Detroit in 1950.

The end of the war lifted the lid on strikes and as a result strikes and labor demands increased as gas under pressure seeks to equalize a la Boyle. Pressure released involves a return to fill the resulting vacuum until pressure is equalized in a uniform manner.. This equalization came in the form of public resentment of brownouts resulting from mine worker strikes reducing the country’s coal supply and the passage of the Taft-Hartley act. The gains of labor were not so much despite the Taft-Hartley act as the result of the pendulum coming to rest after the extreme swings of the 1945 UAW strikes against GM and the Taft-Hartley act

There had been no aerial bombardment or groung fighting in the continental United States during WWII. Unlike Europe, no factories needed to be rebuilt. Factory workers need not replace casualties. There were more than enough returning veterans to fill vacancies to keep the economy moving. Only minor adjustments such as retooling from building tanks to building cars or from fighter aircraft to passenger airliners were necessary. The American economy had elbow room free from competition, while European economies had to be rebuilt nearly from scratch.

The returning veterans were funnelled into higher education by the GI bill. Thereby relieving any unemployment pressure on the economy. Far from it, college facilities were expanded, creating new job opportunities in teaching and the construction of these facilities.

New technologies were implemented more easily due to the change over from wartime to a peacetime footing. Oil and natural gas replaced coal as the country’s main energy source. A whole new plastics industry was built. Wartime research and development revamped the civilian air travel industry.

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Ronald Reagan and the E...

2010-02-09T12:08:46-05:00

Ronald Reagan successfully negotiated with what he initially called “the evil empire” by: negotiating from a position of strength. His negotiating position was enhanced by a military build-up which included deployment of the Pershing II missile. Ronald Reagan negotiated interpersonally.Ronald Reagan negotiated from a position of strength because he knew that the Soviet system was weak. Reagan realized the futility of giving away the store in making any concessions possible just in order to achieve an agreement with the Soviets. The detent espoused by Nixon and Carter had only emboldened the Soviets to new heights of adventurism. Reagan resisted pressure to reach an agreement at any cost when the Soviets employed covert sponsorship for nuclear freeze movements in Europe and America and a petulant walk out from negotiations. As Soviet heads of state passed, older and more reactionary leaders were chosen, only to die in office quickly each in their turn. With the passing of two premiers, the Soviet system, besides running out of candidates for office, was strained at the need for new leadership and the general shake up concomitant to changes at the top. Pressured by economic failings such as the stress of keeping up with the Joneses arms race with the Americans, consumer demand far in advance of any hope of supply, the Soviet government in desperation turned to a younger man in hopes that a departure from Byzantine cronyism would give the Party breathing space to recover from the prior two changes of government, and coupled with new blood at the helm, domestic problems could be addressed with greater élan.Having seen that policy failed because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, He rescinded the embargo on grain sales that was accomplishing nothing more than hurting American farmer's global marketability. Even with Canadian and Australian grain replaced American grain in Russian markets, Russian people still went hungryRonald Reagan negotiated from a position of strength because he intentionally bolstered America’s military posture. He deployed the newly developed Pershing II missile. The Pershing II missile was capable of targeting accuracy an order of magnitude greater than any weapons platform in use at the time. He proposed deployment of a new cruise missile design capable of extended NOE (nap of the earth) flight. He reinstated construction of the B-1 bomber halted by James Earl Carter and instituted development of the B-2 bomber. The B-2 bomber along with the F-117 fighter represented the development of new technology designed to possess a minimal profile with surface geometry designed to deflect radar and paint developed to absorb radar rather than reflect it.He also proposed MX missile with deployment in multiple silos of a new design intended to survive a first strike that connected by a rail system. Peacekeeper missiles were to be protected from first strike attacks by decoys before they were even launched. The missiles were to be periodically moved from silo to silo to keep observation by Russian satellites confused as to exactly which silo held the missile. Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicle technology was not new, but it was to be improved with the Peacekeeper. Theorized for use in Central Europe, the Neutron bomb, could be deployed against massive Soviet tank columns without destroying European physical assets such as cities and buildings.Aides and translators were dismissed so that Reagan and Gorbachev could engage with one-on-one peripatetic talks. Reagan took a chance and spoke personally one on one with Gorbachev and reductions in tensions and agreements between the nations flowed as if from a font

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Taking Stock of Woodsto...

2009-09-18T14:58:23-04:00

This is the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock and, with it, the romantic remembrances of days past.

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Sure, one can look back and say it was a remarkable event, a gathering unlike others. And there is some truth to this claim. But this is a marginal truth, the footnote to a real story.

One program after another has described the musical encounters, the unfettered expression, even the mud and grime as the beginning of a “new age.” Woodstock has taken on the mantle of a generational theme. And millions claim to have been among the estimated crowd of 400,000.

Ang Lee has taken advantage of this nostalgic journey with his film “Taking Woodstock,” albeit there isn’t any attempt to describe the music at this event. That’s probably just as well since most youthful adherents weren’t listening to the music and many of those who did were too high to know what they were experiencing.

I have another view of Woodstock.

A self-indulgent generation weaned on the slogan "better living through chemistry," sought to display unfettered expression on a cow pasture in New York State. All the romanticized hogwash cannot rationalize youngsters hooked on drugs, sex and rock and roll. Most were simply riding the Eden express to a place called oblivion. They weren’t committed to “new ideas,” as if there are any, nor were they revolutionaries; they simply wanted to have fun.

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To superordinate this youthful venture in rebellion to some kind of religious awakening is absurd on any level, including the debased level of the revelers. Yet remarkably as the years pass and the baby boomer generation wears its graying pony tails to Grateful Dead concerts, Woodstock has taken on a quasi-religious designation. For many a roll in the hay is recalled as a roll in the mud, a moment when you can let it all hang out because anything goes was the modus operandi.

This was undisguised bacchanalia, nothing more or less. Why convert it into the Great Awakening of the Sixties? If anything, it was designed to shock an already shockproof America. It was giving the finger to bourgeois society by the children of the bourgeoisie. These weren’t poor kids trapped in the inner city of marginal schools and insufficient jobs. These were the progeny of privilege acting out in a town far from home with kindred souls who found the liberating effects of drugs.

Drugs, after all, were the lubricant for anti-social expression. They reduced the barriers established by the super-ego. They said in effect, “if it feels good, do it.” For some, the drugs offered freedom; for others, it gave a jolting kick in the rear as overdoses and vomiting were a reminder reality hadn’t evanesced. Brain cells were damaged by drug addled youths who didn’t know when to stop or who thought they could defy gravity on LSD.

Sure, one can look back and say it was a remarkable event, a gathering unlike others. And there is some truth to this claim. But this is a marginal truth, the footnote to a real story. The existential truth is that a lot of youngsters eager to overcome restrictions demanded by social norms found an outlet at Woodstock. These weren’t revolutionaries, although they claimed that title. They were merely rationalizing behavior their parents reproved.

Before Woodstock is given a chapter heading in American history, it behooves those who can remember without the assistance of rose colored glasses, to tell the actual story. That is the story of wild orgies, drug fueled memories and fifth – port-o-potties that didn’t work, mounds of vomit and excrement that was ground into the soil as fertilizer.

For those too young to know, beware of claims about Woodstock. It was not all it was cracked up to be and it certainly is not deserving of nostalgic praise. Memories, of course, can play tricks on us. As I see it, Woodstock is among the most elaborate tricks of all.

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The Civil War in the Li...

2010-01-06T15:23:22-05:00

150-years ago ominous clouds of war loomed over the American socio-cultural landscape. The issue of slavery had deeply divided the nation for a period of years and had led to deep divisions in the national psyche.

The Southern states in increasing measure had seceded from the Union of States and had chosen to form their own confederation, hence the name confederacy and headed, inevitably, on a collision course with the Northern states. To better understand the horrendous path of war on which the United States was about to embark, and its outcome, it is instructive to examine the conflict in light of demographics and resources.

The Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states each had unique strengths and weaknesses which shaped the momentum and direction of the war. The North, for example, had a much larger population than the South.

With 21-million people, the North could much better staff its military and civilain workforces so essential to the war effort. The Confederate states on the other hand had only 9-million people of whom 3.5 million were enslaved African-Americans (Myers, 1999).

As a result, though less than one half the North's white male population, of fighting age, actually fought in the Civil War, the number of soldiers in the Union Army far outnumbered their counterparts in the Confederate Army (Myers, 1999). Because of this, the Confederacy had far fewer people to operate the farms and factories so foundational to producing food and war materiel for their military forces than did the Union.

The North, then, had a much greater ability to manufacture locomotives, artillery, and uniforms and could replace worn-out war commodities than did the South. The South, on the other hand, had to obtain war materiel and other products from European nations which made resupplying efforts very time consuming and expensive (Myers, 1999).Moreover, the North had a much more extensive network of rail lines than did the South which meant that the Union (the North) could resupply their military forces much more cost effectively and efficiently than could the South.

The Union also had an extremely effective Chief Executive in the person of Abraham Lincoln who had the courage and political skill to lead the Northern states and to rally them around the idea that ending slavery and preserving the Union were deeply linked to the ideals of freedom and democracy (Myers, 1999). President Lincoln passionately believed in the rights of all people and in the tragic but necessary task of forming a more perfect and just union on the anvil of war.

The Confederacy, however, also had a very distinctive set of strengths, the chief of which was military leadership. General Robert E. Lee, a Virginian, was a brilliant strategist and battlefield tactician. Additionally, Confederate soldiers and field commanders were better trained and more experienced than their Union counterparts (Myers, 1999).

Coupled with the leadership advantages that the South enjoyed, they also had the advantage of defending their homeland only and of not having to conquer new territory (Myers, 1999). They had motivational advantages of defending their "home turf" and of defending their land, homes, and way of life. They also had the strategic and tactical advantage of knowing their homeland much better than the Union forces did. Depicted below are the relative economic strengths of the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War:

Northern and Border States

Railroad Tracks--22,000 miles
Number of Factories--110,000
Value of Products--$1.6 billion
Bushels of Corn, Wheat, and Oats--728-million
Total Weight of Rice and Tobacco--279-million pounds
Total Number of Cotton Bales Produced--4,000

Southern States

Railroad Tracks--9,000 miles
Number of Factories--21,000
Number of Workers--111,000
Value of Products--$155 million
Bushels of Corn, Wheat, and Oats--331-million
Weight of Rice and Tobacco Produced--386-million
Total Number of Cotton Bales Produced--5-million

Over the course of about four years, through the horrific cauldron of war, the North prevailed, the Union of the nation was re-established, and the freedom of African-American slaves obtained. The cost of the war, however, was extremely high with about 650,000 soldiers and the fabric of the country having been rent asunder which would take many years to recover from.

Source: Myers, Peter J. et al. (1999). Preparing for War, Chapter 10, Section 1, p. 186-188. U.S. History: Globe Fearon Foundations Series, Global Fearon Educational Publisher, Upper Saddle River, NJ. www.globefearon.com/

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The Courage of African-...

2010-01-07T08:41:39-05:00

As America became embroiled in the Civil War in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln faced an excruciatingly difficult decision. He did not wish to alienate border states by allowing African-Americans to fight for the Union Army, but morally he saw the evils of slavery for what they were and he recognized that African-Americans should be enfranchised more in the affairs of state by allowing them to fight for freedom and the preservation of the U.S. as a single unified country. For a period of months, Mr. Lincoln wavered in terms of his decision but came under increasing pressure from Frederick Douglass to allow African-American men to serve in the Union Army (Myers, 1999).

Mr. Douglass, who was one of the most influential leaders of the Abolitionist Movement, and an African-American, summed up his to appeal to President Lincoln by stating: "Let the Black man get upon his person the brass U.S. Let him get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States" (Myers, 1999). Mr. Douglass saw an undeniable link between African Americans' service in the Union Army and their right to become citizens of the United States.

After the passage of several months, President Lincoln relented and pressured the Congress to pass a bill to allow African-American men to fight for the Union Army, which they did. The courage of African Americans in battle for their country since, and before, that time has been exemplary.

They had formidable barriers to overcome, however. Because of the reality of racial discrimination in the North, as well, African-American soldiers had to serve in platoons and companies separate from white soldiers. Furthermore, African-American Union Army personnel usually had white officers who mistakenly believed that they did not have the courage or ability of white enlistees (Myers,1999). As a result, African-American soldiers had to serve with great bravery and distinction to gain the acceptance of their white officers.

Ultimately, some 185,000 African-Americans served in the Union Army, with 100,000 of those having previously been slaves (Myers, 1999). Sadly, almost 40,000 of the 185,000 who served in the Union Army were killed in battle. Moreover, 29,000 African-Americans served with distinction in the Union Navy and another 100,000 worked as laborers and spies for the North.

In spite of the provision of inferior weapons, horses, and medical care to them, African-American troops served with great honor and distinction during the Civil War. 20 African-American Army soldiers and Navy sailors earned the nation's highest medal for bravery, the Congressional Medal of honor. By war's end in 1865, 75 African-Americans had been promoted to officer ranks because of their bravery and distinguised service (Myers, 1999).

The courageous service of African Americans in war time, in many ways, laid the foundation for the civil-rights movement and the eventual granting of their civil rights in the 1960s. They have served their country with blood, sweat, and tears and have established a legacy of courage which will endure in the annals of history.

Source: Myers, Peter J. et al. (1999). The War and American Life, Chapter 10, Section 3, p. 198-199. U.S. History: Globe Fearon Foundations Series, Globe Fearon Education Publisher, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

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The Long-Term Effects o...

2009-11-03T10:58:08-05:00

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH Working Paper 15105

by Dalton Conley and Jennifer A. Heerwig

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. © 2009 by Dalton Conley and Jennifer A. Heerwig. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.

Introduction

Over eight million men and women served in the military during the years of America’s formal involvement in the Vietnam War with well over three million deployed to the theater of combat in Southeast Asia (US Department of Veteran Affairs 2008a). The war claimed more than fifty-seven thousand American lives and left many thousands more service men and women wounded. In 2008, Vietnam veterans constituted over thirty percent of the United States’ veteran population, the largest period of service cohort by far, and received a greater proportion of service-related disability benefits than veterans of World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Gulf War combined (US Department of Veteran Affairs 2008b).

Although not as severe in terms as casualties as World War II, the Vietnam War remains one of the most controversial military engagements in American history and, according to a wealth of previous research, one of the most taxing to its veterans as well. While World War II era veterans were granted generous state-financed educational benefits through the GI Bill (Teachman 2005) and by some measures experienced a significant earnings premium compared to nonveteran peers (Berger and Hirsch 1983), studies of Vietnam veterans have documented a sizable wage penalty as well as a host of mental and physical health problems. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study in the 1980s, for instance, found that the lifetime incidence rate for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder whose symptoms may persist up to forty years after service (MacLean and Elder 2007), was over thirty percent in male Vietnam veterans (Kulka et al. 1990).

The consequences of service for the health and happiness of Vietnam-era veterans has thus been a subject of considerable research (see, e.g., Call & Teachman 1996; Davison et al. 2006; Gamache, Rosenheck & Tessler, 2001; Hearst, Newman & Hulley 1986; Hearst et al. 1991; Liu et al. 2005; London & Wilmoth 2006; Settersten 2006). Military combat has been associated with increased incidence of physical and mental illness and has important consequences for lifetime health and mortality rates among veterans beyond the immediate risks due to exposure to war (Cook et al. 2004; Davison et al. 2006; Gamache et al., 2001; Hearst et al. 1986; Liu at al. 2005; Ruger et al. 2002). In addition to the trauma of combat, some Vietnam-era combatants faced exposure to the environmental toxin, Agent Orange (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin), which has been associated with Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft-tissue sarcoma, and chloracne (Institute of Medicine 1994). Vietnam veterans also report high rates of recreational drug use, including “hard” drugs like heroin—both in the field and upon return to the U.S. (Wright, Carter & Cullen 2005). Vietnam veterans typically also came home to a hostile and certainly less supportive social and political environment than did previous generations of veterans, perhaps increasing their stress levels (Angrist & Krueger 1994; Sampson & Laub 1996).

Selection Bias in Estimates of Military Service Effects

While past empirical and theoretical work suggests that the effects of military service may be both a fruitful and policy-relevant line of inquiry, nearly all studies of veterans, regardless of war-time period, have been plagued by the problem of selection bias. Since entry into the military is typically far from random, the men in the ranks of the armed forces may not be representative of the male population as a whole, making identification of a treatment effect of military service difficult at best.i Specifically, unobserved differences between veterans and non-veterans may influence substantive outcomes directly and may therefore contaminate efforts to estimate a treatment effect of military service or even an intent-to-treat effect of exposure to conscription.

To illustrate, an early investigation by Seltzer and Jablon (1974) found that, even more than twenty years after military service, white male World War II veterans had drastically lower mortality rates compared to the overall white male population. Reduced mortality rates for tuberculosis, cardiovascular disease, and ulcers were particularly pronounced and underscored the potential long-term impact of selection bias on health outcomes. Specifically, if military pre-induction screenings weeded out males who appeared unhealthy or otherwise unfit to serve, reduced mortality rates may have reflected not the ameliorative effects of military service but instead a lasting health selection gradient.

Selection effects may work in the opposite direction, as well. For example, Boehmer et al. (2004) find significantly elevated all-cause mortality for Vietnam era veterans in the first five years after the end of the conflict and elevated cardiovascular related death rates for men discharged from service after 1970 during the second half of a 30-year follow-up frame (also see Settersten 2006 with respect to mental health outcomes). However, just as pre-induction health screenings may select only the most physically fit for actual service, those who are initially motivated to apply for military service (or who fail to evade conscription) may differ in important ways from the population at large making the net effect of selection bias on health outcomes largely indeterminate.

Causal Estimation Strategies

Between December 1969 and February 1972, the United States Selective Service held four Vietnam draft lotteries. Each of these draft lotteries randomly assigned men in the 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1953 birth cohortsii order of induction numbers through a hand drawing of three hundred sixty-five birth dates (and three hundred sixty-six for the leap year lottery of the 1952 birth cohort). Following the lotteries, men in a particular birth year classified as either 1-A or 1-A-Oiii were called to report in order for possible induction up to a yearly draft eligibility cutoff (see Table 1). Draft lottery numbers, then, are highly correlated with Vietnam military service but likely uncorrelated with unobservables that directly influence mortality outcomes (see Angrist [1990]). The draft lottery thus provides a unique opportunity to utilize a random assignment method as a ‘natural experiment’ and cleanly estimate the causal impact of exposure to military conscription on important outcomes net of selection bias.

This “randomized natural experiment” of the Vietnam draft lottery has been used by several existing studies to sort out the unique experience of the Vietnam-era cohort. As the first to deploy this novel estimation strategy, Hearst et al. (1986) documented the short-term consequences of Vietnam military service on subsequent mortality risk. Between 1974 and 1983, Hearst et al. found that draft eligible Vietnam era men living in California and Pennsylvania experienced significantly higher mortality rates than draft ineligible men—particularly from suicide and motor vehicle accidents. Later work by Angrist (1990) utilized draft eligibility as an instrument variable (IV) for military service to study income and earnings for male veterans. Angrist’s study showed that white veterans experienced a 15 percent drop in lifetime earnings compared to similar white non-veterans while non-whites faced no wage penalty as a result of military service. (It should be noted, however, that since there were other behavioral responses to draft lottery number on the part of both the individuals and employers, the effect should rather be interpreted as an estimate of “intent-to-treat.”) Caveats aside, these findings jointly suggest that the effect of military service on the lives of these veterans may be causal instead of simply a remnant of differential selection into the military. Moreover, the work of Angrist (1990) suggests, in line with a significant sociological literature on the ameliorative effects of service for minorities (Lundquist 2004; Lundquist 2008; Sampson & Laub 1996), that the effects of military service may vary by subpopulation.

Nonetheless, the more recent research using IV estimation by Angrist and Chen (2008) suggests that, despite early evidence to indicate that the negative effects of military service may indeed have been causal, such putative deleterious effects may have faded over time. Using the 2000 Decennial Census, Angrist and Chen (2008) find that the wage penalty for white veterans has dissipated along with the elevated mortality rates previously documented by Hearst et al. (1986) for whites and non-whites alike.

Important questions remain, however, about the potential causal impact of military service on health outcomes. While Angrist and Chen (2008) find little evidence for a long-term effect of Vietnam military service on mortality, their study may mask important variation in the effects of Vietnam military service on specific causes of death—as Hearst et al.’s early study implies—as well as important subgroup variation in mortality rates. Using a different, complementary data source, the present study attempts to flesh out the long-term effects of Vietnam draft eligibility on mortality outcomes using a variation of the Vietnam draft lottery technique adapted from Hearst et al. (1986).iv

Data and Methods

Our data come from the National Center for Health Statistics multiple cause of death file, 1989-2002. This file contains all deaths processed by the NCHS for each calendar year. For the time period 1989-2002, all deaths in the United States were processed by the NCHS. Each record in the multiple cause file contains background information on the decedent taken from the decedent’s U.S. Standard Certificate of Death including race, sex, and level of education as well as the decedent’s day, month, and year of birth. The file also contains information on underlying cause of death.v

Due to problems with the assignments of lottery numbers prior to 1970vi, we restrict our analyses to those decedents born between 1950 and 1952. To further ensure comparability of our analyses across birth cohorts, we use only the data years for each birth cohort corresponding to ages 39-49 (e.g. data years 1989-1999 for the 1950 birth cohort). Thus, our sample includes a total of 372,128 decedents including 246,504 males and 125,624 females. Of these decedents, 245,088 are non-Hispanic whites, 89,589 are non-Hispanic blacks, and 27,947 are Hispanic with a remaining 9,504 classified as non-Hispanic “other” on the U.S. Standard Death Certificate.

Using publicly available records of the Vietnam-era lottery resultsvii, we begin by assigning each decedent, females included, the random sequence number or draft lottery number corresponding to his or her date of birth. We then calculate the observed proportion of draft eligible and draft ineligible male and female decedents based on the highest draft lottery number called to report for a given draft year. In 1950, for instance, the highest draft lottery number called to report was 195. Thus, all decedents with a lottery number below or equal to the eligibility cutoff are coded one for draft eligible, and all of those decedents above the 195 cutoff are coded zero as draft ineligible. Expected proportions for each draft eligible birth cohort are given in Table 1.

We next calculate the frequencies of draft eligible and ineligible males and females as a proportion of all male and female decedents. For example, for draft eligible men we compute

Used only with express written permission

where pEMis the observed proportions of draft eligible male decedents out of the total number of male decedents in our “sample”. Again, we proceed by calculating these relative frequencies for each of the four groups--draft eligible and ineligible men and women--using the equation (1) specified above.

After each relative frequency has been calculated for draft eligible and ineligible men and women for a variety of subgroups, we utilize an estimation strategy that deploys two counterfactuals to assess excess mortality among draft eligible men. First, we compare the observed proportion of draft eligible males to the observed proportion of draft eligible females. Women, logically, should not demonstrate a “draft effect”. That is, there is no reason to expect that any fertility difference by birth date differed significantly by sex and thus any significant difference between the proportions of draft eligible males and draft eligible females may thus indicate a “draft exposure” effect.

Our second comparison utilizes information on the proportion of draft eligible birth dates in each draft lottery calendar year to detect excess mortality among draft eligible men. We do this by comparing the observed proportion of draft eligible males (pDEM) to the expected or theoretical proportion of draft eligible males given the proportion of males draft eligible for each birth cohortviii. Thus, we compute the proportion of expected draft eligible men as

Used only with express written permission

where max1950represents the highest lottery number called to serve for the 1950 birth cohort and days1950represents the number of days in the 1950 calendar year. The difference between the observed proportion of draft eligible males minus the expected proportion of draft eligible males ( - ) yields our estimate of excess mortality. Again, we may test the difference of proportions to assess the significance of the draft exposure effect.

Since previous research has turned up evidence to suggest that a draft exposure effect may be most pronounced for certain causes of death, we repeat both of the above counterfactual analyses by a variety of causes that have been linked to military combat.

These causes include malignant neoplasms (cancer), ischemic heart disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, motor vehicle accidents, and suicide. (See Appendix A for coding decisions.)

As a final specification check, we run several regression discontinuity (RD) models that regress the frequency of deaths by draft number on draft number in both linear and quadratic form for each birth cohort. Thus we estimate:

Used only with express written permission

where the right-hand side variables are draft number in both linear and quadratic form, a dummy variable indicator for eligibility status (ELIGIBLE) and, as a robustness check, a vector of dummy variables for month of birth (MONTH).

Results

We begin with results for our first counterfactual, which compares the observed proportion of draft eligible men to the proportion of draft eligible women for our sample overall and for a variety of subgroups. As shown in Table 2, our first comparison turns up only slight evidence for a draft exposure effect. The results for the combined sample are largely insignificant with one exception--decedents with thirteen or more years of education. In this case, the proportion of draft eligible male decedents is larger than the proportion of draft eligible female decedents indicating a slight draft exposure effect. Highly educated draft eligible male decedents thus exhibit excess mortality of about 1.17% compared to draft eligible females.

Used only with express written permission

We next present results for our second counterfactual. Again, for this comparison we calculate the observed proportion of draft eligible male decedents, as above, and the theoretical proportion of draft eligible males based on the highest called draft lottery number for each birth cohort. Table 3 presents the results for the sample overall as well as for a variety of subgroups. Here, too, we find little evidence of a draft exposure effect in the form of excess (or reduced) mortality amongst draft eligible male decedents. The one exception is a slight but statistically significant mortality reduction for male decedents with twelve years of schooling or less.

Used only with express written permission

Finally, we conclude our counterfactual analysis with results by particular causes of death. Even though our previous analyses turned up little evidence to indicate a draft exposure effect, it could be the case that exposure to the draft elevated (or reduced) the probability of mortality due to certain conditions as research by Hearst et al. (1986) suggests.

Table 4 presents results for each unique cause of death for the first comparison, males versus females. We here find no evidence of elevated (or reduced) mortality for draft eligible men for any of the particular causes of death that have previously been linked to Vietnam combat. The differences between draft eligible males and draft eligible females for each cause are small and statistically insignificant.

Lastly, Table 5 displays the cause of death results for the second counterfactual, which compares the observed proportion of draft eligible male decedents in our sample to a theoretical or expected proportion of draft eligible decedents based upon the highest lottery number called to report for service. Here, too, we find no evidence of a draft exposure effect on eligible male decedents. All of the calculated differences are small and statistically insignificant.

Used only with express written permission

Finally, estimation of several regression discontinuity models corroborates the results of our counterfactual analyses.ix There appears to be no draft exposure effect for any of the 1950-1952 birth cohorts even after controlling for month of birth and adding an interaction term for draft eligibility and birth year.

Discussion and Conclusion

Given the considerable difficulties involved in identifying a true treatment effect of military conscription, our study contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the long-term health consequences of service in general and service during the Vietnam era in particular. Using a novel estimation strategy, we have assessed--and detected very little--excess mortality for the 1950-1952 draft lottery cohorts.

In contrast to the work by Hearst et al (1986), we find little convincing evidence of a lasting draft eligibility effect on the Vietnam era birth cohorts. Our analysis indicates that, even after controlling for a variety of potential confounders such as education and nativity status, mortality for the draft eligible population appears unaffected compared to both the expected proportion of eligible males by birth date and the female population. Similarly, analyses by underlying cause of death turned up little evidence that exposure to the draft may have elevated mortality due to, for example, suicide or motor vehicle accidents.

Coupled with recent null findings by Angrist and Chen (2008) on the long-term consequences of Vietnam service, our analysis suggests that the short-term elevation in mortality rates following combat may have dissipated over time or, alternately, may have been remnants of sampling (in the case of Hearst et al [1986]) or study design (in the case of Boehmer et al [2004]). More importantly, however, the absence of a long-term effect of conscription on mortality for the Vietnam cohorts may imply that the deleterious effects of military service on health have been greatly overstated.

Since such labor market losses and deleterious health effects of military service in general and combat in particular have long justified the state’s role in compensating veterans for their sacrifices in the line of duty, these null findings are of significant theoretical and policy importance. As Skocpol (1992; 1993) and others have argued, the introduction of generous pensions to both Union Army veterans and their families may have actually preceded benefits granted to industrial wage-earners, long considered the primary beneficiaries of modern welfare state. Beyond pensions, however, other scholars have recognized military service as one of the most important pathways to claims based on citizenship. As Gifford notes, “as a service to the state itself, and typically imbued with notions of patriotism, valor, and self-sacrifice, military service is an unambiguous citizenship-defining experience” (2003: 25-6). In the language of T.H. Marshall (1950), military service has historically guaranteed veterans not only civil and political rights but social rights as well. It is in this context that sorting out the causal impact of service, particularly during a conflict as controversial and consequential as the Vietnam War and particularly on an outcome as important as mortality, becomes especially important in order to weigh political and economic claims made by veterans and their representatives.

Endnotes

i. For the purposes of this study, we restrict our analysis of the effects of military service to male veterans simply because during the Vietnam-era an overwhelming majority of military personnel were men (Kulka et al. 1990).

ii. The first draft lottery held on December 1, 1969 actually assigned all men born between 1944-1950 order of induction numbers. However, for reasons explained below, we deal only with the 1950-1953 cohorts.

iii. Men available for immediate military service were classified as 1-A and conscientious objectors to military training and combat were classified as 1-A-O or “conscientious objector.”

iv. It is complementary in that the Census measures men still alive and residing in the United States while the death records we use those who died in the U.S. The Census-approach might overstate the effect of military conscription since it would count those who fled to Canada and did not return as dead, while our approach would underestimate an effect since those who fled to Canada would appear to still be living since they would not appear in U.S. death records. This is not so much of a concern in the end since we arrive at similar results, at least with respect to the overall impact.

v. For data years 1989-1998, underlying cause of death is coded using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 9th Revision. In 1999, the NCHS began implementation of the updated ICD 10th Revision. Thus to ensure comparability across data years, we code the underlying cause of death for all years based on the 34-category classification of the ICD-9.

vi. The 1970 draft lottery also applied to men born between 1944 and 1949, but most of these veterans had already entered the service prior to the lottery drawing. Thus, the remaining men eligible for induction under the 1970 lottery may not constitute a representative sample as Angrist (1990) indicates.

vii. See http://www.sss.gov/lotter1.htm.

viii This comparison assumes that birth dates are uniformly distributed across thecalendar year and thus any differences by lottery number are due to an eligibility effect rather than variation in fertility rates. Hence we also use an alternate “check” using the male-female comparison, which should implicitly correct for the possibility of varying fertility rates.

ix. Results available upon request.

References

Angrist, J. (1990). "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records." American Economic Review 80(3): 313-36.

Angrist, J. and S. Chen. (2008). “Long-Term Consequences of Vietnam-Era Conscription: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings.” NBER Working Paper #13411.

Angrist, J. and A. B. Krueger (1994). "Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More than Nonveterans?" Journal of Labor Economics 12(1): 74-97.

Berger, M. and B. Hirsch (1983). "The Civilian Earnings Experience of Vietnam-Era Veterans." Journal of Human Resources 18(4): 455-479.

Boehmer, Tegan K., Dana Flanders, et al. (2004). “Postservice Mortality in Vietnam Veterans.”Archives of Internal Medicine 164: 1908-1916.

Call, V. and J. Teachman (1996). "Life-Course Timing and Sequencing of Marriage and Military Service and Their Effects on Marital Stability." Journal of Marriage and the Family 58(1): 219-26.

Institute of Medicine. (1994). Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used inVietnam. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Cook, J., D. Riggs, et al. (2004). "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Current Relationship Functioning Among World War II Ex-Prisoners of War." Journal of Family Psychology 18(1): 36-45.

Davison, E., A. Pless, et al. (2006). "Late-Life Emergence of Early-Life Trauma." Research onAging 28(1): 84-114.

Gamache, G., R. Rosenheck, et al. (2001). "The proportion of veterans among homeless men: a decade later." Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 36: 481-85.

Gifford, Brian. (2003). “States, Soldiers, and Social Welfare: Military Personnel and the Welfare State in the Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY.

Hearst, N., T. Newman, and S.B. Hulley. (1986). "Delayed Effects of the Military Draft on Mortality: A Randomized Natural Experiment." New England Journal of Medicine (314): 620-4.

Hearst, N., J. Buehler, et al. (1991). "The Draft Lottery and AIDS: Evidence against Increased Intravenous Drug Use by Vietnam-era Veterans." American Journal of Epidemiology 134(5): 522-5.

Kulka, Richard A., William E. Schlenger, et al. (1990). Trauma and the Vietnam WarGeneration. New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel, Inc.

Liu, X., C. J. Engel, et al. (2005). "The effect of veteran status of mortality among older Americans and its pathways." Population Research and Policy Review 24: 573-92.

London, A. and J. Wilmoth (2006). "Military Service and (Dis)Continuity in the Life Course." Research on Aging 28(1): 135-59.

Lundquist, Jennifer Hickes. (2004). "When race makes no difference: Marriage and the military." Social Forces. 83:731-757.

Lundquist, Jennifer Hickes. 2008. “Ethnic and Gender Satisfaction in the Military: The Effect of a Meritocratic Institution.”American Sociological Review 73: 477-496.

MacLean, Alair and Glen H. Elder, Jr. (2007). “Military Service in the Life Course.”AnnualReview of Sociology 33: 175-196.

Marshall, T. H. (1950). "Citizenship and social class and other essays." Cambridge: CUP. Ruger, W., S. Wilson, et al. (2002). "Warfare and Welfare: Military Service, Combat, and Marital Dissolution." Armed Forces & Society 29(1): 85-107.

Sampson, R. and J. Laub (1996). "Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965." AmericanSociological Review 61(3): 347-67.

Seltzer, Carl C. and Seymour Jablon. (1974). “Effects of Selection on Mortality.”American Journal of Epidemiology 100: 367-372.

Settersten, R. (2006). "When Nations Call: How Wartime Military Service Matters for the Life Course and Aging." Research on Aging 28(1): 12-36

Skocpol, Theda. (1992). Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress.

Skocpol, Theda. (1993). “America’s First Social Security System: The Expansion of Benefits for Civil War Veterans.”Political Science Quarterly 108(1): 85-116.

Teachman, J. (2005). "Military Service in the Vietnam Era and Educational Attainment." Sociology of Education 78: 50-68.

US Department of Veteran Affairs. (2008a). “Fact Sheet: America’s Wars.” Washington, DC: US Department of Veteran Affairs. Retrieved June 1, 2009 (http://www1.va.gov/opa/fact/amwars.asp).

US Department of Veteran Affairs. (2008b). “Annual Benefits Report: Fiscal Year 2008.” Washington, DC: US Department of Veteran Affairs. Retrieved June 9, 2009 (http://www.vba.va.gov/REPORTS/abr/2008_abr.pdf).

Wright, J. P., David E. Carter and Francis T. Cullen (2005). "A Life-Course Analysis of Military Service in Vietnam." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 42(1).

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Losing Liberty

2009-10-06T11:01:32-04:00

There is a shift occurring in the United States, a tectonic shift that is imposing statism in a land predicated on limited government.

In the past, the not very distant past, mediating structures served as a barrier against managerial despotism. But these structures have been under assault for decades and are showing signs of weakness and decay.

The family has been undermined by divorce and illegitimacy. Schools have eroded rigor and standards. Churches resemble social institutions more than religious centers. And associations like Rotary and Lions are suffering from insufficient enrollment and a lack of interest.

The America Tocqueville described in mid-nineteenth century is largely gone, a testament to the past when national identity was being refined. Not only is the culture unable to orchestrate the competing interests of government and the individual, it contributes to the widespread belief that if liberty must be modified for the sake of security that is a trade-off the public is willing to accept. The New Hampshire slogan “Live free or die” is great for license plates, but not for contemporary politics.

Some would argue that big government is a natural consequence of living in a bigger and more complex nation that was the case a hundred years ago. Needless to say, this is obvious. But what is not so obvious is that incrementally the government has assumed the position of granting rights to citizens instead of having citizens grant rights to the government. During this onset of the recession it was believed by members of both parties that extending government power was essential in dealing with the economic vicissitudes of the moment. In doing so, however, the politics of grievants has emerged. If the government uses its largesse to address social woe how are rights determined and who allocates the benefits? A government insistent on hand-outs will be a government that encourages grievance.

If government benefits end up as more important than liberty, this democratic republic cannot survive. As Bastiat among others noted, a plebiscitary democracy that hands out “free” benefits will end inexorably in authoritarianism. This is, alas, the road to serfdom as Hayak described it.

Let me not overstate the case. Despite an inclination to support limited government as the nation’s founders did, my issue with the Obama administration, to cite one example, is that it is weak where it should be strong and strong where it should be weak.

For example, the president has put his prestige and influence behind a health care proposal that a majority of Americans oppose and that willy nilly will shift health care to the public sector. By contrast, Iran has violated the non-proliferation agreement, has abused its citizens for contesting electoral manipulation, and has been the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Yet the president who should recognize and resist these challenges seems weak and unresponsive.

Americans realize the government of Grover Cleveland may not be an appropriate model for President Obama. But they are beginning to realize that government intrusiveness can reduce if not discard their liberties. In fact, there is hardly a liberty enumerated in the Bill of Rights that hasn’t been curtailed in some fashion by recent governments. Perhaps the only liberty that has expanded its reach under a heretofore unknown precedent of privacy is sexual freedom. But is sexual freedom cover for the reduction of every other form of liberty?

The road to serfdom is paved with rights and benefits. People want more of whatever someone else will pay for. The casualty in this assessment is personal responsibility and liberty.

We are not yet an authoritarian state and my hope is that America never will be one, but it is imperative we guard against that eventuality recognizing that the rights we invent come with a corresponding withering away of freedom. Big government may not be a problem if it exercises power judiciously and in ways that promote American interests. Yet it is also true that government has a stake in perpetuating itself. It may not always be the problem, but it is rarely the solution and all the programs that the American people covet may in the end alter the America they once loved and admired.

Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001) and America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books).

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American Lynching

2009-09-28T15:42:30-04:00

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village

Flesh can house no memory of bone. Only bone speaks memory of flesh.

Rebecca Schneider, “Archives: Performance Remains”

I presented early drafts of this article in November 2004 at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference and in December 2004 at Kansas University’s Hall Center for the Humanities. Sandra Richards and Harry Elam read this manuscript in various forms and provided useful and important insights. My conversations with Christina McMahon and Charles Leonard, two doctoral students at Northwestern University, assisted my reading of the body part as fetish object.

The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching

On 2 April 1899, approximately two thousand white men, women, and children participated, as both witnesses and active agents, in the murder of Sam Hose in Newman, Georgia. Sam Hose was burned alive. In the final moments of his life, the assembled crowd descended upon his body and collected various parts of it as souvenirs. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican recounted the scene of Hose’s dismemberment in the following manner:

Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on, but stood the ordeal of fire with surprising fortitude. Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits, and even the tree upon which the wretch met his fate was torn up and disposed of as “souvenirs.” The negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver. Those unable to obtain ghastly relics direct paid their more fortunate possessors extravagant sums for them. Small pieces of bones went for 25 cents, and a bit of liver crisply cooked sold for 10 cents.^[1]

Seven months later in December 1899, the New York World, in an article entitled “Roasted Alive,” reported on the similar fate of Richard Coleman in Maysville, Kentucky, before a crowd of “thousands of men and hundreds of women and children.” The article noted that “Long after most of the mob went away little children from six to ten years of age carried dried grass and kindling wood and kept the fire burning all during the afternoon.”^[2] It also revealed that “Relic-hunters visited the scene and carried away pieces of flesh and the negro’s teeth. Others got pieces of fingers and toes and proudly exhibit the ghastly souvenirs to-night.”^[3] In a 27 February 1901 Chicago Record article on the hanging and burning of George Ward before a crowd of four thousand people in Terre Haute, Indiana, the newspaper gave the following account of the scene of Ward’s murder:

When the crowd near the fire tired of renewing it after two hours, it was seen that the victim’s feet were not burned. Someone called an offer of a dollar for one of the toes and a boy quickly took out his knife and cut off a toe. The offer was followed by others, and the horrible traffic was continued, youths holding up toes and asking for bids.^[4]

Sam Hose, Richard Coleman, and George Ward are three of the more than three thousand black men, women, and children who were lynched across the United States between 1880 and 1930. My investment in the lynching tragedy does not center itself on the horrifying numbers of black men, women, and children who were forcibly taken from their homes (or from jail cells), paraded throughout town, and executed before a mass mob.^[5] Nor does my interest rest in the allegations and charges used to justify these assaults—from stories of sexual assaults on white women to violations of minor laws and ordinances (such as vagrancy or trespassing). Nor am I interested in reading lynching in terms of a pre-scripted performance or ritualistic practice. These areas have been addressed, in books and articles, to the point of near-exhaustion in the areas of African American studies, English, history, sociology, and performance studies. What captures my attention is something that appears within the majority of these disciplines but has received scant attention in each: the dismemberment of the black body for souvenirs following the lynching event. I am interested in this feature, in large part, because I am haunted by the image of white hands, variably male or female, adult or child, holding aloft a slice of Sam Hose’s crisped liver, Richard Coleman’s burnt flesh, or George Ward’s toe. As a means of working through my own complicated relationship with this image while simultaneously spotlighting an often-neglected area of lynching scholarship, I here focus upon the lynched black body in the aftermath of the lynching event and variously read it in terms of the souvenir, the fetish, and the performance remain. I contend that the lynching keepsake not only can be defined by, but also can exceed, each of these three terms. Containing within itself the various features of the souvenir, the fetish, and the remain, the body part recalls and remembers the performance of which it is a part. It not only gestures toward the beliefs that motivated its theft, but also renders visible the body from which it was taken.

The Body as Souvenir

The lynching souvenir is a spectacular performance remain or, more accurately, a remain of a performance spectacle. Although not typical of all lynchings, nearly a third of them were orchestrated affairs in which allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the accused were circulated in such a totalizing manner that the community rendered the accused guilty in advance of, and without, a trial. With the populace “so powerfully insistent on guilt, so uninterested in any other scenario,” advertisements were placed in local newspapers in which the date, time, location, and even the schedule of activities (the program) were announced.^[6] On the scheduled day and at the appointed hour, scores of spectators would assemble to witness the public staging of vengeance acted upon the accused by the victim or the victim’s family, the prolonged torture of the accused by the lynching organizers, the lynching (by burning, hanging, or shooting) of the accused, and the dismemberment of the accused’s body into souvenirs. As public performances, lynchings far surpassed all other forms of entertainment in terms of their ability to attract an audience and the complexity of their narratives. A lynching was an event—something not to be missed. In this section, I seek to understand the purpose and the function of the souvenirs collected by participant-observers at the scene of the lynching event.

The word “souvenir” has its origins in the Latin word subvenire, which means “to come into the mind” (OED). Both a noun and a verb, souvenir can refer to the actions taken to ensure that something or someone is remembered, or can serve as a trigger toward that remembrance. Its memorial function, whether as a transitive verb or an actionable noun, anchors itself in its ability to bring the sensation of the other—an other person or an other place—into one’s own body or conception of self. The souvenir, according to Susan Stewart, author of the only book-length study of the concept, “is by definition incomplete. And this incompleteness is always metonymic to the scene of its original appropriation in the sense that it is a sample.”^[7] It exists after the fact—after the passage of the event or the experience of which it was once a part, as part of the whole—in order to gesture back to the event or the experience that was. Stewart observes:

But whether the souvenir is a material sample or not, it will exist as a sample of the now-distanced experience, an experience which the object can only evoke and resonate to, and can never entirely recoup. In fact, if it could recoup the experience, it would erase its own partiality, that partiality which is the very source of its power.^[8]

The souvenir refers back to a larger experience, of which it is a fragment. If the souvenir could be the entire experience rather than just a part, then it would cease to be a souvenir. Jean Baudrillard made a similar claim in his article “The System of Collecting” when he observed that the collectible is “divested of its [originary] function and made relative to a subject.”^[9] Incomplete in itself, the souvenir requires an accompanying narrative furnished by its possessor in order to fill in that which is missing and to allow the fragment to reflect the event or experience of which it is a part. For example, a seashell, removed from a beach, can represent a beach vacation. Although the shell may not carry any real meaning in and of itself, it assumes a symbolic value when a narrative is attached to it.

An aura or a sense of mystique shrouds the souvenir because, in addition to being incomplete, it is also illicit. It “always displays the romance of the contraband, for its scandal is its removal from its ‘natural’ location.”^[10] Certainly, the appeal of a souvenir, to the person who takes the object and the audience to whom it is displayed, anchors itself in the souvenir’s stolen quality. Taken away from its environment, which is unlike the one in which it is displayed, the souvenir’s presence reveals its own theft. In the case of the shell, its presence in the apartment of a landlocked city dweller underscores the fact of its removal from its natural environment. Despite its incomplete and stolen nature, the souvenir threatens the stability of the present through its portrayal of the past as fixed and controllable. According to Stewart, it functions to “authenticate a past or otherwise remote experience and, at the same time, to discredit the present.”^[11] Jane Desmond, in Staging Tourism, situates this aspect of the souvenir within a “salvage paradigm” which she defines in the following manner:

This belief assumes that that which is natural is vanishing and is in need of saving . . .Ultimately, this is a liberal attitude with potentially conservative outcomes. While seeming to celebrate cultural difference or the natural world, this paradigm dehistoricizes certain people, practices, geographic regions, and their animal inhabitants, setting them up as avatars of unchanging innocence and authenticity, as origin and ideal.^[12]

The souvenir saves the past and represents it in the present. It records the that which was into a material object that can be referenced and revisited over time. In contrast,the present, the that which is now, existing just beyond ourselves, resists both objectification and commodification because its ongoing status disallows the creation of an entrapping retrospective narrative. This retrospective narrative, when attached to the souvenir, fixes the past and thus renders it unchanging. It also creates the possibility of historical revision in that the narrative itself determines the meaning of the keepsake. For example, in the case of the shell, my accompanying narrative supplements its incompleteness and enables it to represent my beach vacation while simultaneously displacing the historical origins of the shell itself.

The lynching keepsake satisfies each of these descriptors of the souvenir. First and foremost, it is incomplete and finds a sense of wholeness through an embrace of an accompanying narrative. In the cases of the crisped liver of Sam Hose or the burnt flesh of Richard Coleman, it seems unlikely that anyone encountering either without the aid of a story to flesh out the details of the lynching event would know what she was seeing.^[13] George Ward’s toe, even if recognized as being a toe, would still remain incomplete without the aid of a narrative to identify the original possessor of the body part and to relay the process of its collection. It is only when the details of the burning of each individual are revealed that the objects become meaningful as souvenirs.

Unfortunately, the narratives attached to these body parts are difficult to locate. As Kirk Fuoss realized in his 2002 article on the performance structure of lynchings, “one of the most significant aspects regarding the subjects of lynching is precisely the way in which the true and complete story evades the truth-telling capacity of even the most ablest investigator employing the most insightful and uncompromising methods.”^[14] What makes the stories so evasive is not necessarily the lies and falsehoods told to the investigators, but the general unwillingness of members of localized communities to share their tales with strangers or outsiders. Arthur Raper, the sociologist who first offered a comprehensive study of lynching in 1933, referred to this tendency toward silence when he observed, “A lynching makes a lot of otherwise good people go blind or lose their memories.”^[15] An example appears in the court transcripts of a 1930 case involving the lynching of two teenagers in Marion, Indiana. In the following exchange, Earl Stroup, an “outside” prosecutor, questions Bert White, the town’s longtime “local” sheriff.

Q. You have no doubt talked to a number of people who were spectators there and saw a lot of this.
A. Yes sir.
Q. Who?
A. I couldn’t say.
Q. Acquaintances of yours were there?
A. Well, people—business people that were there in the crowds that night and was there on the street: I expect the whole town was down there.
Q. Can you name any particular person?
A. No sir I couldn’t name any particular person.^[16]

White’s stonewalling of Stroup reveals the difficulty of obtaining the narratives of the people who participated, even as witnesses, in the various lynching campaigns. His selective amnesia explains how, as Raper noted, “[o]f the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, the latter not guiltless, only forty-nine were indicted and only four have been sentenced.”^[17]

When the first-person stories of lynching events were revealed to outsiders of the community in which the lynchings had occurred, they either were broadcast by overzealous children or were spoken conspiratorially in hushed tones to avoid detection. Walter White in Rope and Faggot, his 1929 study of lynchings in the Southern regions of the United States, gives an example of the first type of leak by opening his book with the following personal anecdote:

In Florida some years ago, several lynchings and the burning of the Negro section of the town followed the attempt of a Negro pharmacist to vote in a national election. One morning shortly afterwards I walked along the road which led from the beautiful little town to the spot where five Negroes had been burned. Three shining-eyed, healthy, clean children, headed for school, approached me. As I neared them, the eldest, a ruddy-cheeked girl of nine or ten, asked if I was going to the place where “the niggers” had been killed. I told her I might stop and see the spot. Animatedly, almost as joyously as though the memory were of Christmas morning or the circus, she told me, her slightly younger companions interjecting a word here and there or nodding vigorous assent, of “the fun we had burning the niggers.”^[18]

The children, in their sheer enthusiasm, share their narratives with White. Interestingly, the author elects to spare his reader the details given him and offers merely a summary of what was said. White’s anecdote intrigues me because it underscores the vividness of the memory of the children who attended the lynching event. Compared to the memories of “Christmas morning or the circus,” the children’s reflections likely arrived in a torrent filled with so many details that the listener must have been taken aback by them. This alluded memory of the children and their (later) willingness to show White the site of the burning—that is, if they had the time to do so—underscores the fact that these narratives did not immediately disappear.

Sociologist Orlando Patterson, in Rituals of Blood, writes, “It takes little imagination to understand now, how the powerful—and for the children who were forced to watch, no doubt traumatic—experience of watching the torture, mutilation, and the burning alive of the African-American victim would have become encoded forever, through the overwhelming odor of his roasting body, on the memories of all who participated.”^[19] Evidence in support of Patterson’s claim appears in the 1997 documentary Third Man Alive, in which several senior citizens recall witnessing the performance of two lynchings in 1930.^[20] Despite the passage of years and the onslaught of age, their memories remain so fresh and complete that at least one of them, like White’s informants, becomes animated in the retelling. If we consider White’s sources, along with those depicted in the video documentary, to be representative of the participant-observers at the scene of the lynching spectacle, then it follows that lynching memories and the narratives through which they were expressed remained alive within localized communities but rarely may have been shared with outsiders. Whereas the youth and carelessness of children explain one way in which these narratives escaped the protective silence of the communities, it would be a mistake to assume that the only leaks were from children. James Allen, the collector of a series of postcards which later became the much-discussed Without Sanctuary exhibit, gained his first lynching images by attending antique fairs and flea markets and, within those spaces, by being approached by individuals who, in a whisper, would offer to show and sell himvarious images of lynched figures.^[21] Allen remembers, “. . . a trader pulled me aside and in conspiratorial tones offered to sell me a real photo postcard.”^[22]

While it is remarkable that Allen was able to obtain the various images that fill his collection, what fascinates me, within the context of the accessibility of lynching narratives, are not the pictures on the postcards but the few lines of text that appear on the back of them. Although these words were written in a relatively public forum (postcard), they signal the types of conversations and exchanges people would have held within a private space. On one card, a son, referring to the image of the burnt body of William Stanley, who was murdered in August 1915, writes to his mother, “This is the Barbecue we had last night, My picture is to the left with a cross over it, Your son.”^[23] On another, an unidentified author, on a postcard depicting the March 1910 murder of Allen Brooks, notes:

Well John—This is a token of a great day we had in Dallas, March 3, a negro was hung for an assault on a three year old girl. I saw this on my noon hour. I was very much in the bunch. You can see the negro on a telephone pole.^[24]

What these few lines reveal is that the lynching campaigns—and, more importantly, the crowd’s participation as witnesses, in the execution of those campaigns—were significant events in the participants’ lives. They motivated discussion and prompted audiences to share their experiences with one another. According to Jane Desmond, such narratives tended to “authenticate the acts of travel, and of witnessing and then in turn position the recipient as witness to the sender’s experience. In this way, a public act (seeing a sight) is transformed into a private history (what I saw) with social meaning (look at what I saw).”^[25] Beyond merely projecting a sense of wholeness upon an incomplete souvenir, these accompanying narratives appealed to a community of listeners. This displaying and sharing—a form of showing and telling—rendered the object and the event from which it was taken meaningful within a given community.

As powerful as the accompanying narratives are, they do not replace the need for the souvenir itself. The magic of the souvenir anchors itself in its status as contraband, an object improperly removed from a given place or an event. This is why the body part as a keepsake trumps postcards or pictures of the same lynched body. The former contains, in a Benjaminian sense, an aura lacking in the latter. The desire for the actual body parts was so pronounced that spectators literally stripped the scene of the lynching campaign for souvenirs that bore even the slightest relation to the event that had transpired there. Dennis Downey and Raymond Hyser, in their book No Crooked Death, underscore the frenzy for authentic items in their account of the behavior of the crowd following the murder by burning of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, on 12 August 1911. They write:

Approximately one hundred and fifty individuals maintained an all-night vigil near the fire, waiting to collect souvenirs. Some of the more aggressive among them used fence railings to dredge Walker’s bones from the glowing embers. The manacles and footboard were also pulled from the pyre and then doused in water and broken up as souvenirs. The next day, several enterprising boys even sold some of Walker’s remains to anxious customers in Coatesville. A curious reporter who visited the lynching site several months later found many changes, including the absence of grass where the burning took place and the almost complete demolition of the split-rail fence. “Visitors have carried away anything that looked like a souvenir,” he wrote.^[26]

The absence of remains at the site of the lynching campaign reveals the actions of collectors who, in the aftermath of the event, took everything having to do with the lynching site—even the blades of grass that the ashes of the body had touched. To possess a souvenir of Zachariah Walker’s body or of the scene of his murder was to have material evidence of your presence at, and proximity to, the event. Recalling that the site was stripped bare, the souvenir likely reminded its viewer of the looting that occurred in the aftermath of Walker’s murder. Its presence as a souvenir underscored its absence from the scene of the lynching campaign.^[27]

In addition to referencing their status as contraband, lynching souvenirs embody the past in the present. They not only fix the black body within a historical moment, but also transform it into a captive object to be owned, displayed, and, quite possibly, traded. What makes them so interesting is that they, much like the contemporary mass-produced, stereotypical commercial images of the black body, sought to commodify the body at a time when it was gaining new liberties in the present. The majority of scholars who have published studies on the lynchings of black men, women, and children agree that the motivating factor for such campaigns was a postemancipation backlash in which white, working-class residents of primarily agricultural communities sought to stay the perceived threats of increased social rights and property ownership by African Americans. Robyn Wiegman, in American Anatomies, views lynching campaigns as an organized effort by the dominating elements within society to prevent the “transformation from chattel to citizenry” of the black body.^[28] Lynching objectified the body. Lynching souvenirs commodified it. Walter White asserted that “lynching is much more an expression of Southern fear of Negro progress than Negro crime.”^[29] Michael J. Pfeiffer, in Rough Justice, observed that lynchers “sought to ‘preserve order,’ that is to uphold the hierarchical prerogatives of the dominant residents of the locality.”^[30] W. Fitzhugh Brundage, in Lynching in the New South, writes that lynch mobs “enacted a ritual that affirmed their racial beliefs but also embodied their commitment to such values as white male dominance, personal honor, and the etiquette of chivalry.”^[31]

The lynched body, as a keepsake, conforms with the various attributes of the souvenir as outlined by Stewart, Baudrillard, and Desmond. It is therefore surprising that Stewart considers such “souvenirs of death” to be “the most potent antisouvenirs.” She writes:

They mark the horrible transformation of meaning into materiality more than they mark, as other souvenirs do, the transformation of materiality into meaning. If the function of the souvenir proper is to create a continuous and personal narrative of the past, the function of such souvenirs of death is to disrupt that continuity. Souvenirs of the mortal body are not so much a nostalgic celebration of the past as they are an erasure of the significance of history.^[32]

In the case of the body, Stewart contends that it is always already more than material; the effort to transform the meaning which it has into material (i.e., to turn the body into a screen upon which another meaning can be projected) exists as a form of historical erasure. Her argument suggests, in the case of lynching souvenirs, that George Ward’s toe would represent the lynching campaign and, perhaps, the desire of the lynch mob to fix the body in the past—but not the lynched person, George Ward. To view Ward’s toe as a souvenir would be to erase George Ward from history.

I understand and respect Stewart’s objection. It is discomforting to think of a program from a theatrical production and a body part in the same manner—as being souvenirs of a witnessed performance event. To read the body part as a souvenir is to sacrifice its status as a subject, reified with a distinct personality, and to transform it into an object. At the same time, I believe that we cannot impose a personal, moral limit to the souvenir. Despite our own misgivings, we have to realize that the body, within lynching scenarios, did serve as a souvenir or keepsake for those who attended the lynchings; we must accept the fact that the souvenir, by definition, includes the body. The body part gains its status as souvenir at (spatially) and in (temporally) the moment of its removal. Its theft signals a break in which the keepsake assumes a projected meaning that may or may not correspond with its prior, pre-removed status. Although it is unfortunate that we could lose sight of the person in our analyses, the reality is that the souvenir exists at the moment of its removal. It is at this point that the body part literally disassociates itself from the body. I suggest, therefore, that we reject any assertion that the body part cannot be a souvenir. In the preceding pages, I demonstrated how it satisfies the most significant attributes of the souvenir: it is incomplete and requires an accompanying narrative; its allure is its status as contraband, continually gesturing toward its own theft; it brings the past into the present by giving it a tangible, material form. Although the body part as keepsake threatens to erase the deceased body from history, I contend that the possibility of such historical revision is itself an aspect of the souvenir. In the pages that follow, I continue my investigation of these lynching souvenirs within the frame of fetishism and performance remains. I maintain that the referent (George Ward) of the souvenir (toe) never entirely disappears.

The Body as Fetish

Whereas the body part, when viewed as a souvenir, underscores its own materiality and consequently absents its originary wholeness, when read as a fetish it regains its prior prefragmented status. Additionally, it projects—or, perhaps more accurately, has projected upon itself—powers which exceed its tangible properties. Beyond being the stolen catalyst that aids in the creation of a retrospective narrative concerning a witnessed event, George Ward’s toe, for example, as a fetish object could be viewed as possessing magical abilities capable of bringing luck or restoring health. In this section, I examine the body parts as fetish objects with the aim of understanding why spectators collected them and how the meaning they bore directly referenced the lynching victims themselves.

In Crowds and Power, Elias Canetti contends that the desires within a group to kill and to collect pieces of the recently killed as souvenirs increase in proportion to the size of the swelling crowd. Detailing the scene of a public execution, he writes, “[t]he real executioner is the crowd . . . It approves the spectacle and, with passionate excitement, gathers from far and near to watch it from beginning to end. It wants it to happen and hates being cheated of its victim.”^[33] According to Canetti, the act of witnessing the death of another transforms and ultimately leads to the disbanding of the group, because in these moments the assembled spectators “recognize the [executed] as one of themselves . . . for they all see themselves in him.” Haunted by the reflection of their own mortality, they disperse “in a kind of flight from him.”^[34] Why do the actions of Canetti’s racially unmarked audience at a public execution differ from those of the white spectators who attended the lynching of a black individual? Unlike Canetti’s “baiting crowd,” whose newfound self-awareness compelled them to flee the murder scene, the lynching audience lingered. In the murders of both Ward and Coleman, spectators remained at the site for hours after both men had been killed. Furthermore, they dismembered each body and collected its pieces as souvenirs of the lynching event that they had witnessed. If the spectators had recognized themselves in the figures of either man, it seems unlikely that they would have behaved in the manner in which they did. Instead, the crowd acted more like game hunters in the moments following a successful hunt. They sought souvenirs that could represent not only the experience of the hunt, but also testify to their presence at and, presumably, their participation in the death of their game. Canetti contends that such behavior is typical of the “hunting pack,”“the most primitive dynamic unit known among men,” when he asserts that in the aftermath of the kill “[e]ach man now wants something for himself, and wants as much as possible.”^[35] George Ward’s toe and Richard Coleman’s tooth became analogous to a bear’s claw and a shark’s tooth. They were trophies. Unlike the animal pieces, however, the parts belonging to the human body were deemed special. They had value, meaning, and, by some accounts, unique powers. These body parts as trophies were not just souvenirs. They were fetish objects.

Meaning “charm” or “sorcery” and deriving from the Portuguese word feitico, the word “fetish” was employed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portuguese merchants to describe the sculptures, figurines, trinkets, and other religious possessions of their West African trading partners. Offering a useful definition of the term in his two-part investigative study, William Pietz asserts that the fetish object has four traits: it is materially based; it synthestizes multiple elements into a single body; it has social value; it has the power to affect the physical body. “The first characteristic to be identified as essential to the notion of the fetish,” Pietz writes, “is that of the fetish object’s irreducible materiality.” He continues, “The truth of the fetish resides in its status as a material embodiment; its truth is not that of the idol, for the idol’s truth lies in its relation of iconic resemblance to some immaterial model or entity.”^[36] Whereas the idol does not have any power in itself, the fetish’s magic emerges from its ability to resemble or reference something else.^[37] For example, a crucifix does not have any real power other than its ability to reference the suffering of Jesus Christ. To pray to the cross is not to pray to the material object of the cross, but to Christ; the underlying premise is that the crucifix connects the praying body to Him. In contrast, the fetish, as Joseph Roach observes in Cities of the Dead, possesses “original motive powers.”^[38] Its power is both contained within, and emerges from, its materiality.

Furthermore, the fetish object “has an ordering power derived from its status as the fixation or inscription of a unique originating event that has brought together previously heterogeneous elements into a novel identity.”^[39] The lynching souvenir as fetish object satisfies this requirement in its ability to condense multiple meanings into a single body. George Ward’s toe can represent George Ward, the lynching campaign, Ward’s dismemberment, white chivalry, and dozens of other meanings which rally together at the site of the body (part). The toe, as fetish, structures and orders these meanings but exists as the sum total of them all. The third attribute of the fetish object is that it has social value. The fetish object carries meaning to those individuals who desire to possess or who already own it. It is important to note that this value does not have to be widely accepted or universally understood; the Portuguese merchants did not hold the same religious beliefs as their trading partners. Finally, the fetish object must cause an effect in the physical body of the possessor or, as Pietz noted, it requires “the subjection of the human body (as the material locus of action and desire) to the influence of certain significant material objects that, although cut off from the body, function as its controlling organs at certain moments.”^[40] In the most dramatic reading of this attribute, the fetish exerts a real, tangible effect upon the physical body; its embrace or presence heals a sick person or helps an infertile person conceive a child. If we think of the somewhat caricatured image of the voodoo priestess manipulating a doll and the resulting effect on the human body, then we have gained a glimpse of the fetish object in its most extreme form.

Of the few published accounts that mention lynching souvenirs, Andrew Buckser’s 1992 article, “Lynching as Ritual in the American South,” most closely reads these collected body parts in terms of fetishism. Despite not employing the word, he repeatedly states that the mass mobs who participated in the lynching campaigns and subsequently dismembered the body believed that the remains were magical, or at least had the capacity to bring about physical changes in the body of the possessor. He observes that the collectors of body parts “attributed to these souvenirs the power to bring luck or to promote health.”^[41] Elsewhere in his article, Buckser makes repeated references to such keepsakes as “good luck charms”; George Ward’s toe might have been the equivalent of a rabbit’s foot. If we take the author’s account at face value, then the lynching souvenirs were fetish objects. They were thought by those who collected them to be material objects that were meaningful, valuable, and capable of exciting a physical effect upon the body. Unfortunately, Buckser’s claims are unsubstantiated; he neither cites nor references a single source in support of his statements that people viewed souvenirs as being either magical or lucky.

Despite the fact that she does not view the body part as being particularly lucky, Trudier Harris, in Exorcising Blackness, her 1984 study of white-on-black lynchings as reflected in both history and literature, suggests that it did bestow symbolic power on its possessor. The author maintains that the majority of lynchings were used to check the threat of black male sexuality. Through the murder and castration of the black male body, the men within the crowd sought to reaffirm their privilege and status in society. According to Harris, sociopolitical power and sexual potency are indistinguishable. She writes:

For white males involved in the lynchings and burnings of black males, there is a symbolic transfer of power at the point of executions. The black man is stripped of his prowess, but the very act of stripping brings symbolic power to the white man. His actions suggest, that, subconsciously he craves the very thing he is forced to destroy. Yet he destroys it as an indication of the political (sexual) power he has and takes it unto himself in the form of souvenirs as an indication of the kind of power he would like.^[42]

Harris reads the actions of the white lynchers as forms of phallus and penis envy. The crowd checks its perceptions of the excesses of the black male’s sexuality through a dismemberment of his body. The body parts themselves as souvenirs and fetish objects signal the removal of the sexual threat and the crowd’s desire for the power contained within such threats. Harris’s critique reads the black body through a lens of psychoanalytic fetishism, consequently fixating the various stereotypes of the black body, potentially overlooking the social factors that contributed toward these lynchings and ignoring the presence of women within such performance spaces. Still, her underlying thesis foregrounds the power contained within the various trophies of the lynching spectacle.

Unlike Harris and, to an extent, Buckser, Orlando Patterson does not view the lynching souvenir as being socially significant as a collectible before the enactment of the lynching performance. It is the lynching event itself that transforms the souvenir into a fetish object, giving it value, meaning, and motive powers. According to Patterson, a sociologist, the lynching spectacle can be read as a religious rite whose allure appears in its seeming ability to transform the everyday object into something rife with spiritual meaning. The body part, like the eucharistic wafer, changes within the framework of the performance event. Often incited by the rhetoric of priests or ministers, frequently occurring on Sundays, and usually conducted in public communal areas, lynchings, Patterson contends, bore striking similarities to religious services. Likening the spectacle to a sacrificial rite, he asserts:

Because the sacrifices did not take place in already consecrated places such as churches, the use of fire as a consecrating agent became necessary, in this way serving the multiple functions of consecration, torture, and the divine devouring of the soul. The stakes to which the victims were tied were obviously consecrated in the process also, since they became relics to be treasured.^[43]

The lynching event was a racial holocaust. It transformed the lynching victims into martyrs, not only sanctifying their bones but also the various properties of the murder scene. Much as people seek splinters from the True Cross on which Christ was nailed, and similar to Catholic churches being blessed by their possession of the bones of deceased saints, the witnesses cum collectors sought a religious experience in their pursuit of lynching souvenirs. The souvenir-as-relic became a way for participant-observers to enhance their spirituality. Furthermore, the relic as a fetish object, with its perceived original motive powers, could be thought to bestow certain effects upon the physical body of its possessor. If the chalice that Christ’s lips touched could bring eternal youth and the bones of St. Peter could consecrate the grounds of a basilica, then what, if any, power rested in George Ward’s toe?

George Ward’s toe, in reality, could not bring luck, resolve sexual anxieties, or engender a religious experience. While I do concede the possibility that some individuals may have held such beliefs, my discomfort with such an overarching reading of the meaning contained within the body parts rests in the fact that each reading absents the body of George Ward. The lynching souvenir becomes a number of possibilities, but none of them is as a representation of the lynching victim himself. Is it possible to hold Ward’s toe without thinking of Ward himself or, at least, being aware of the body that was once Ward? I do not think so. In fact, I would assert that the value, the meaning, and even the desire for the lynching souvenir rested in the popular awareness that the possessed keepsake not only lived but also existed as a subject. This thing here was alive. It was him. The souvenir as a fetish object had the power to remember the dead.

The crowd’s desire for the living remain, the fetishized lynching souvenir and its meaning and value, are all irrevocably tied to the lynching victim. Elias Canetti, at various points in Crowds and Power, remarks that the act of witnessing death, which entails being in its presence, leads not only to the recognition that the witness too could have died but also, and perhaps more importantly, that the witness has survived. She is lucky—because she continues to live. The lynching souvenir becomes, for her, a treasured keepsake remembering her encounter with death as well as a charm that protects her from death. The witness is lucky because she was not George Ward. Similarly, the souvenir’s symbolic power emerges at the moment the spectator realizes that the lynching victim has died. Canetti writes, “Simply because he is still there, the survivor feels that he is better than [the dead].”^[44] In his reading of lynchings as a sacrificial rite, Orlando Patterson makes an important observation that bears on this discussion of the crowd’s awareness of the life contained within the souvenir: “An essential part of the sacrificial rite is that some profound change occurs in the sacrificed object, and there is awe in actually witnessing the state of life to a state of death.”^[45] Indeed, according to Patterson, the silence-inducing transformation proves so striking, with its religious overtones, that the crowd feels compelled to strip the scene for mementos. Despite my doubts that the audience viewed the lynching body part as a consecrated object, I believe that the particular allure of the body part rested in its status as both a part and a remain of the transformation process. The possession, once viable, no longer lives.

In their reconstitution and remembrance of the lynching victim, the crowd had neither the opportunity nor the occasion to know the actual person being lynched. Considering the racial politics of the period and the fact that lynchings were intended to stem the social advancement of African Americans, it seems likely that the body part as souvenir prompted thoughts of an imagined and perhaps mythical construct of the black body. It was not George Ward’s toe. It was a black toe. Some nigger’s toe. This disavowal, through the creation of a generalized substitute, of the particular (the referent) threatened to absent the actual body from the lynching scene without jeopardizing its symbolic value as both souvenir and fetish. Perhaps the best way of understanding how Ward could disappear within the recollected spectacle that dismembered him is to consider two very different scenarios involving his remains. In the first, the crowd descends upon his body and collects pieces as souvenirs of the event they have witnessed. In the second, Ward’s family, after the crowd has departed, searches the lynching site for pieces of the lynching victim to bury. Within each scenario, the body part triggers a different conception of Ward. Surely, the crowd and the family members did not think of the same person, in the same manner, in their respective interactions with his bodily remains.^[46] Although I suspect that those who collected body parts were not seeking to commune with the recently departed (but still present), I believe it is important to consider the possibility of such an action occurring. Is there a way in which a person can know George Ward through the possession of his parts? Is it possible to see him when we look at his souvenired and fetishized toe? I believe it is.

To touch the body, even as a collected part, is to gain access to its embodied experience, memory, and history. It is to encounter the skin and bloodstream memories about which contemporary artist-scholars Brenda Dixon-Gottschild and August Wilson have written.^[47] These past experiences survive in the present, across new and present bodies, because the body itself remembers the violence that was directed against it. This violence lands upon and marks the body. It shapes its movements and governs its actions. It is this experience of violence, a body-marked violence, that gets passed from generation to generation through the socialization of children. For example, a child’s “whuppin” echoes prior acts of corporeal punishment, such as the whippings of captives on plantations. From this perspective, future bodies carry the markings, the scars, of a passed/past violence. Violence passes. To touch the body part, as a souvenir of a lynching event, is to reopen or reawaken the embodied experience of prior bodies.

In a 2003 article, “Touching History,” I developed this contention through a close analysis of Suzan-Lori Parks’s play Venus and Robbie McCauley’s performance piece Sally’s Rape.^[48] I asserted that Parks and McCauley could access the embodied experiences of Saartjie Baartman, Sally Hemmings, and McCauley’s great-great-grandmother, among others, because their embodied experiences reside within the black body. This occurs because African Americans share a common history and, more importantly, the legacy of that history structures similar experiences of the body. Whereas the differences in bodies and lifestyles among other “obvious axes of division,” as Paul Gilroy terms them, impacts the imagined experience and threatens to encourage the creation of a construct as substitute for the original body, the possibility exists that the imagined reconstruction could resemble the actual experience of that same body.^[49]

Patrick Johnson, in Appropriating Blackness, gives an example of such a reality when he documents his reaction to witnessing the performance of a white Australian gospel choir. Johnson writes, “Had I closed my eyes on that occasion, I almost might have thought I was back home in North Carolina. Not only did the choir approximate a ‘black’ sound, they created the ethos of a black devotional service . . . I was impressed.”^[50] Is it feasible to say that a person can know entirely the experiences of another through the touch? No. To make such a claim would be to fall into the trap of racial essentialism. What I am asserting is that the presence and proximity of another person, even as a collection of parts, requires you to take that person into account. You must deal with her. You must engage with her. You must interact with her. The compulsory nature of this engagement promotes an awareness of a person who is literally other to one’s self. Admittedly, this interaction does not have to espouse understanding, compassion, or empathy, but it does mandate recognition. It forces us to see George Ward, not just a toe.

The Body as Remain

In the preceding two sections, I have discussed the lynched body as a souvenir and as a fetish object. I have argued that the lynching keepsake satisfies the core requirements of the souvenir and have challenged the contention that such death remains are antisouvenirs. Concerning the collected body part as a fetish object, I have introduced an anthropological understanding of the concept and explained how the body part, in the aftermath of the lynching campaign, could be perceived as possessing unique powers. In this final section, I look at the body in terms of the remain. I contend that its presence allows us to re-member the performance event.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable move within the discipline of performance studies to redefine the concept of performance from the ephemeral to the remaining. Whereas scholars from Herbert Blau to Peggy Phelan have helped to build the popular understanding of performance as that which is “always at the vanishing point” or that which “cannot be saved, recorded, or documented,” more contemporary voices, like those belonging to Philip Auslander and Rebecca Schneider, have offered compelling cases to the contrary.^[51] Auslander, who insists that recordable and savable performance already exists in the form of theatrical productions which utilize media technologies, critiques the traditional understanding of performance when he writes, “All too often, such analyses take on the air of melodrama in which virtuous live performance is threatened, encroached upon, dominated, and contaminated by the insidious Other, with which it is locked in a life-and-death struggle.”^[52] Phelan, in a 2004 article, responds to such a critique and updates her original argument by acknowledging that “the technology capable of broadcasting live art has grown enormously” in the twelve years since she first wrote about the role that disappearance plays in performance. Although she concedes that media can “record and circulate live events,” she refuses to give them “live performance” status. She notes, “[t]hese technologies can give us something that closely resembles the live event, but they remain something other than live performance.” According to the author, the value of live performance, in which the bodies of actors encounter those of the spectators, is the “possibility of [each group] being transformed during the event’s unfolding.”^[53] Although the spectator might be affected by the screened image, the presence of the spectator cannot effect a transformation in the prerecorded image. Schneider, in a more nuanced approach, similarly critiques this thrall toward disappearance by suggesting that performance can both disappear and remain. In her aptly titled article “Performance Remains,” the “performing theorist” observes, “For upon any second look, disappearance is not antithetical to remains. Indeed, it is one of the primary insights of poststructuralism that disappearance is that which marks all documents, records, material remains. Indeed, remains become themselves through disappearance as well.”^[54] Although Auslander and Schneider agree that performance is savable, the latter’s approach proves more diplomatic in that it seeks to create a space for the performance remain within the extant theories of others. Schneider encourages her reader “to think performance as a medium in which disappearance negotiates, perhaps becomes, materiality.”^[55]

The lynching spectacle exists as an example par excellence of the type of perform-ance for which Schneider advocates. It stages the transformation of the living body into a set of lifeless parts to be collected; the spectacle becomes materiality. In the case of George Ward, his lynching enacts his disappearance. The person and, indeed, the body (as a whole) recognized as Ward vanishes in the moments surrounding his death. However, these same moments also mark the rebirth of a dismembered Ward as performance remains. His death creates souvenirs of his life. Their presence, as a consequence of his absence, bestows meaning, value, and the perception of power upon them. More interestingly, these material remains testify to the lynching victim’s former living status. They continually evoke the victim’s body through a repeated underscoring of its absence. Ironically, Ward’s new found visibility anchors itself in the fact of his invisibility. This is the magic of the performance remain. It remembers its own disappearance and, as a result, renders the performance event whole again.

The word “remain” acts both as a noun and a verb. As a noun, it refers to “[t]hat which remains or is left (unused, undestroyed, etc.) of some thing or quantity of things.” As a verb, it means “[to] continue to exist; to have permanence; to be still existing or extant” (OED). Coupled together, the two meanings suggest a temporally ambiguous object that existed in the past (and was saved), exists in the present, and will continue to exist in the future. The remain remains; it not only lingers, but also, in some instances, lives. Within the context of theatre and performance studies, the remain can be thought to be the opposite of the stage property (or prop). Unlike the prop, which, as Andrew Sofer has observed in The Stage Life of Props, is “visibly manipulated by an actor in the course of performance,” the performance remain gains its social value and meaning through an accompanying narrative provided by its possessor, a person who bore witness to the original performance event.^[56] Despite these differences, the remain does share one significant attribute with the prop: both evoke a sensation of “pleasure in seeing the relic revived, the dead metaphor made to speak again.”^[57]

This sense of pleasure in the revival of the body part as remain appears in Samuel Pepys’s recollection of his encounter with Queen Katherine of Valois on 23 February 1669.^[58] According to the famed diarist, the skeletal remains of the monarch, who died in 1437, were on display at Westminster Abbey on the day that Pepys encountered them. Remembering both the queen and the day, he recalls that he held “her upper part of her body in my hands. And I did kiss her mouth, reflecting upon it that I did kiss a Queen, and that this was my birthday, 36 years old, that I did first kiss a Queen.”^[59] Despite the fact that Pepys interacts with an assortment of two-hundred-year-old bones, he believes that he has had an encounter with the queen through his interaction with her remains. Prodded by his imagination, he revives the body in the present in order to enable the touch of flesh on flesh to occur. It is important to observe that Pepys writes that he did not kiss bones, or even the remains of the queen, but rather that he did kiss a queen. She lives through his remembrance. The diarist’s account and actions reveal that it is possible to create a personal, physically intimate, and temporally present experience with human remains. Collectively, his experience suggests that we can re-member the body of another through an embrace of his or her remains.

In the cases of Sam Hose, Richard Coleman, and George Ward, each individual had to be dismembered in order to be remembered. The remains of their bodies remind the viewer of their ordeal. When we are confronted with a dismembered finger, we are compelled to imagine the hand and, by extension, the body from which it was taken. We similarly are invited to restage (in our minds) the process of its removal. The same applies when we are confronted with the various other corporeal souvenirs of lynching campaigns—teeth, toes, slices of liver, and clumps of hair, among other body parts. The souvenir as fetish object as performance remain exists as both a metonym, referencing the lynching campaign, and as a synecdoche, reminding the viewer of the formerly whole body of which it is a part. Indeed, the power of the black body as souvenir emerges from its seeming ability to exceed each of the previous terms. It is and is not a souvenir. It is and is not a fetish. It is and is not a performance remain.

Reflecting upon the frequency with which participant-observers descended upon the body of the lynching victim with the aim of collecting souvenirs, and recalling that the lynching event was one of, if not the most spectacular performance events of the past two centuries, it is difficult to understand how, or even why, theatre and performance studies scholars would deny the existence of such performance remains. While I acknowledge that the assertion that performance disappears or vanishes both imparts a sense of urgency with regard to the documentation of the live event and bestows a greater cultural value (because of its seeming rarity) upon the art form, I am convinced that such an approach prevents contemporary scholars from fully exploring all of the dimensions of the performance event, including the important role that the performance remain plays within remembered performance. It has been my contention that the remain as fetish object and souvenir not only encapsulates but also provides access to the entirety of the performance event. It brings the past into the present and, in so doing, allows its possessor to touch history. Through its accompanying narratives, it appeals to a community of listeners and gains social meaning in the process. It also creates the possibility of an imagined, personal interaction with the original body, even as a construct, that exists within the present as a series of parts. In short, the value of the performance remain is in its seeming ability to reactivate the expired performance event.

Certainly, the lynching souvenir held different meaning for the white participant-observers who attended the lynching event and collected souvenirs from what it has for me, a critic and black scholar who is more than three generations removed from the lynchings discussed in this article. Whereas the spectator might have used the souvenir to remember her experience at the scene of the event or to represent her determination to prevent the social ascendancy of African Americans, I employ it to gain access not only to a particular historical moment, but also to the embodied experience of a specific person within that moment. In the case of George Ward, the performance remain grants me, along with other contemporary audiences, the opportunity to remember the body of Ward. It renders the body whole again and, in so doing, offers a perspective into the lynching event that ended his life and created the remain. Although it is unlikely that anyone would know exactly what Ward was thinking in his final living moments, the remain has the potential to activate the various embodied experiences that lie dormant within the body and, in so doing, offers the possibility of approximating Ward’s experience. Whether the possessor of Ward’s part proves successful in the endeavor to know Ward, his history, or the scene of his murder, her possession of his remains allows her to remember the nature of his disappearance. His toe may be a souvenir, but it also is the lynching spectacle.

Harvey Young is an assistant professor of theatre at Northwestern University. Currently, he is revising the manuscript for his first book, which looks at how select African American artists, athletes, and playwrights use performance to access the embodied experiences of passed/past black bodies, and is researching his second book on the explosive growth of regional theatres in Chicago in the 1970s.

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