Category Archives: History

Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy by Jean Bethke Elshtain

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One hundred years ago, Jane Addams was one of the most famous and most admired women in the world. 

Wikipedia lists her occupation as “social and political activist, author and lecturer, community organizer, public intellectual”. Her tombstone in Cedarville, Illinois, describes her as a “humanitarian, feminist, social worker, reformer, educator, author, publicist, founder of Hull House, President [of the] Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom”. It also notes that she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Addams fought for women’s suffrage and is considered the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Sociologists view her as a social theorist. Philosophers place her in the school of philosophy known as Pragmatism.  At her death, some compared her to her hero, Abraham Lincoln, although she never sought political office.

This well-written book is an intellectual biography of Addams. It tells her life story but concentrates on her ideas and the policies she advocated. I especially enjoyed learning about her work at Hull House (a Chicago organization dedicated to making life better for immigrants and the poor); her ideas about government as an extension of housekeeping; and her emphasis on treating those who are different from us with respect (for their benefit and ours).  

This Week of All Weeks, Jane Addams Is Worth Thinking About

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Jane Addams (1860-1931) isn’t famous these days. At one time, however, she was the most-admired woman in America and well-known throughout the world.

Wikipedia lists her occupation as “social and political activist, author and lecturer, community organizer, public intellectual”. Her tombstone in Cedarville, Illinois, describes her as a “humanitarian, feminist, social worker, reformer, educator, author, publicist, founder of Hull House, President [of the] Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom”. It also notes that she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Addams fought for women’s suffrage and is considered the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Sociologists view her as a social theorist. Philosophers place her in the school of philosophy known as Pragmatism.  At her death, some compared Jane Addams, who never sought political office, to her hero, Abraham Lincoln.

As this horrible week comes to a close, it may help us to consider Jane Addams as an example of, in Lincoln’s words, “the better angels of our nature”.

Today, Addams is best known as the principal founder of Hull House, the first “settlement house” in the United States. It opened its doors in Chicago in 1889 and continued to operate until 2012. Its initial goal was to help recent immigrants find their place in American society, because Addams’s purpose in life was to convert her progressive ideas into action.

Here is a passage from Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy by Jane Bethke Elshtain:

The statement of purpose in Hull-House’s charter read: “To provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago”; but this fails to capture the spirit and the manifold activities of Hull-House. Addams refined this statement over the years. It was a “place for enthusiasms”; it helped “give form to social life”; it offered “the warm welcome of an inn”; it was a place for mutual interpretation of the the social classes one to another; it responded to ethical demands and shared fellowship; it was a place for the life of the mind….

At the conclusion of her second autobiographical volume, The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, Addams takes another stab at it: “It was the function of settlements to bring into the circle of knowledge and fuller life, men and women who might otherwise be left outside” [ p. 92].

The work of Hull House “gained expression in day nurseries, kindergarten classes, playgrounds, boys’ and girls’ clubs, a cooperative boardinghouse, theater workshops, music schools, language classes, reading groups, handicraft centers and eventually a Labor Museum” [p. 93].

In the early days, after Addams and a Hull House resident named Julia Lathrop came to the aid of a young woman, all alone, giving birth in a nearby tenement, Addams exclaimed:

“This doing things that we don’t know how to do is going too far. Why did we let ourselves be rushed into midwifery?” To which [Lathrop] replied: “If we have to begin to hew down to the line of our ignorance, for goodness’ sake don’t let us begin at the humanitarian end. To refuse to respond to a poor girl in the throes of childbirth would be a disgrace to us forevermore. If Hull-House does not have its roots in human kindness, it is no good at all” [p. 93].

We might say the same thing about the United States of America during the months and years ahead.

Taking Advantage of the Electoral College: Two Possibilities

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I don’t know about you, but I’m still avoiding the news. 

I do know, however, as votes are still being counted, Hillary Clinton is leading her opponent. She has 60.5 million; he has 60.1 million. (And roughly 6.2 million fools voted for candidates who had no chance to win.) In fact, her margin will continue to grow, since California is still counting votes and California voters strongly support Clinton. 

In a better world, these results would mean Clinton won the election. But in this world, we didn’t hold just one election. We held 51 separate elections, one for each state and one for the District of Columbia. The winner of each of those 51 elections thereby received a certain number of “electoral votes”. 

For example, Clinton beat her opponent by more than 2.5 million votes in California. That means she will get all of California’s 55 electoral votes. But if she’d won the state by 1,000 votes instead, she’d still get all 55. With some very minor exceptions, it’s winner-take-all. This is the system our founding fathers came up with more than 200 years ago. 

Furthermore, the number of electoral votes each state receives isn’t based purely on population. California, for example, has about 38.5 million residents. Montana has 1 million. One might think that California would get 38 times as many electoral votes as Montana, but that’s not how it works. Each state (and D.C.) gets at least 3 electoral votes. So empty Montana gets 3, while not-empty California gets 55, or 18 times what Montana gets, not 38 times.

Another way of saying this is that because we elect a President in this strangely indirect way, individual votes cast in Montana are worth more than ones cast in California. 

Our founding fathers weren’t idiots, of course. The complicated system they devised was partly a way to give smaller states more representation than bigger states, because small states like Rhode Island were afraid they’d be bullied by big states like Virginia. That’s why the small states were given extra weight in choosing a President. (Why the big states weren’t equally concerned about being cheated is an interesting question.)

So, officially speaking, we won’t know who the next President will be until December 19th. That is when the various “electors” submit their ballots. 

But wait! The founding fathers didn’t completely trust the wisdom of the voters. They had more trust in the electors, who were presumed to be pillars of the community. The voters might prefer an orange-haired demagogue or TV personality as President. The electors would presumably know better. They might have the good sense to choose a former Senator and Secretary of State. They might even choose whichever candidate won the nationwide vote. The point is that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires an elector to vote for the candidate who won that elector’s state.

Now, it’s true that some states would levy a small fine on an elector who applied his or her judgment and voted for someone who didn’t win the state’s presidential election. But other states don’t even levy a fine. Electors from those states can vote for anyone with no penalty at all (except a lot of criticism from disgruntled voters back in their home state).

The ability of the presidential electors to vote for whomever they want has given rise to a petition at Change.org. It calls for the Electoral College to choose Hillary Clinton on December 19th. If she ends up with, say, 230 electors pledged to her after all the statewide ballots are counted, she would only need 40 electors to switch to her. Whoever receives 270 electoral votes become President. That’s how the system was designed to work.

I don’t expect 40 or so Republican electors to do what’s best for their country and the world, so I’m not expecting much from the petition. But I signed it anyway, as have more than a million other people. As they say, any port in a storm, especially a  world-class (pardon my French) shit storm! 

Fortunately, there is another way to eventually use the Electoral College to make America a better place. Several states have already adopted legislation that would award their electoral votes to whoever wins the nationwide “popular” vote. The legislation will take effect in those states as soon as states with a combined total of 270 electoral votes pass the legislation. After that, whichever candidate got the most votes nationwide in the next Presidential election would automatically receive at least 270 electoral votes and become President. It wouldn’t matter how states that haven’t adopted the legislation allocated their electoral votes.

The great thing about this plan, which is called the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact, is that it wouldn’t require changing the U.S. Constitution. The anti-democratic effect of the Electoral College would be eliminated without eliminating the Electoral College itself.  It’s very difficult to amend our Constitution. It’s only been done fifteen times in the last 200 years. So a plan that uses the Electoral College instead of trying to get rid of it has much to recommend it. (Of course, as long as the Electoral College exists, some electors might still go their own way.)

As of 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have joined the Compact. Their 165 electoral votes are 61% of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force. In addition, the necessary  legislation is pending in Michigan and Pennsylvania. If those states adopt it, we’ll have 74% of the necessary 270 votes.

As you might expect, states controlled by Republicans are less likely to join the Compact. Republicans love the fact that they’ve won two of the last five Presidential elections while losing the popular vote (The man who became President lost to his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, by 550,000 votes in 2000).  That doesn’t mean, however, that the Compact will never come into play. It just means Democrats need to take control of more state governments.

It might even be possible to get the necessary legislation passed in Republican-controlled states using public referendums or ballot questions. Most people, if asked, would probably agree that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the election. Well-financed campaigns to get the issue on the ballot in several more states might hasten the day when the person who gets the most votes will always win the election.

Of course, many Americans already believe that’s how our system of government works. Whoever gets the most votes wins. Knowledge of the Constitution isn’t our strong point. After the election we just had, I don’t know what is. 

The Oxford History of the French Revolution (2nd Edition) by William Doyle

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I now have a feeling for how complex the French Revolution was, since the author goes into great detail while still taking the story from roughly 1775 to 1815. However, this isn’t an introduction to the topic. Events and personalities are mentioned and described as if the author expects the reader to know a lot about French history already. 

A couple things I learned: The large debt France accrued by supporting the American revolution was one of the factors that led to dissatisfaction and the eventual revolution. And the revolution had a major effect on the entire French population, not just the residents of Paris. Most of the victims of the Terror, for example, weren’t Parisians. The revolution also affected all of Europe as it quickly led to war between France and most of its neighbors.

One thing I thought was odd: The author implies that the American revolution played no role in fomenting revolution in France (other than the effect of the debt France acquired):

The modern idea of revolution goes back no further than 1789. But once it had occurred in France, the idea that it was possible, and right, to overthrow an existing order by force, and on grounds of general principles rather than existing law, was launched. Simultaneously a new figure appeared on the stage of history: the revolutionary. There had been no revolutionaries before 1789. 

Tell that to the men who signed the Declaration of Independence or fought in our Revolutionary War. For that matter, tell it to George III.

We Should Let Garrison Keillor Pick the Next President

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Mr. Keillor shared his thoughts on Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign yesterday on Facebook. I don’t think he’d mind me reprinting what he wrote. Or you can click on this link to read it.

[Quote:]

I saw Hillary once working a rope line for more than an hour, a Secret Service man holding her firmly by the hips as she leaned over the rope and reached into the mass of arms and hands reaching out to her. She had learned the art of encountering the crowd and making it look personal. It was not glamorous work, more like picking fruit, and it took the sort of discipline your mother instills in you: those people waited to see you so by gosh you can treat them right.

So it’s no surprise she pushed herself to the point of collapse the other day. What’s odd is the perspective, expressed in several stories, that her determination to keep going reveals a “lack of transparency” —- that she should’ve announced she had pneumonia and gone home and crawled into bed.

I’ve never gone fishing with her, which is how you really get to know someone, but I did sit next to her at dinner once, one of those stiff dinners that is nobody’s idea of a wild good time, the conversation tends to be stilted, everybody’s beat, you worry about spilling soup down your shirtfront. She being First Lady led the way and she being a Wellesley girl, the way led upward. We talked about my infant daughter and schools and about Justice Blackmun, and I said how inspiring it was to sit and watch the Court in session, and she laughed and said, “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to show up in a courtroom where a member of my family might be a defendant.” A succinct and witty retort. And she turned and bestowed her attention on Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was sitting to her right. She focused on him and even made him chuckle a few times. I was impressed by her smarts, even more by her discipline.

I don’t have that discipline. Most people don’t. Politics didn’t appeal to me back in my youth, the rhetoric (“Ask not what your country can do for you”) was so wooden compared to “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” so I walked dark rainy streets imagining the great novel I wouldn’t write and was still trying to be cool and indifferent well into my thirties, when other people were making a difference in the world.

Hillary didn’t have a prolonged adolescence and fiction was not her ambition. She doesn’t do dreaminess. What some people see as a relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work for the night is coming.

The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring that Mrs. Clinton has. She is the first major-party nominee to be pictured in prison stripes by the opposition. She is the first cabinet officer ever to be held personally responsible for her own email server, something ordinarily delegated to anonymous nerds in I.T. The fact that terrorists attacked an American compound in Libya under cover of darkness when Secretary Clinton presumably got some sleep has been held against her, as if she personally was in command of the defense of the compound, a walkie-talkie in her hand, calling in air strikes.

Extremism has poked its head into the mainstream, aided by the Internet. Back in the day, you occasionally saw cranks on a street corner handing out mimeographed handbills arguing that FDR was responsible for Pearl Harbor, but you saw their bad haircuts, the bitterness in their eyes, and you turned away. Now they’re in your computer, whispering that the economy is on the verge of collapse and for a few bucks they’ll tell you how to protect your savings. But lacking clear evidence, we proceed forward. We don’t operate on the basis of lurid conjecture.

Someday historians will get this right and look back at the steady pitter-pat of scandals that turned out to be nothing, nada, zero and ixnay and will conclude that, almost a century after women’s suffrage, almost 50 years after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, a woman was required to run for office wearing concrete shoes. Check back fifty years from now and if I’m wrong, go ahead and dance on my grave.

[Unquote]