Donald Trump and Identity Politics in Eighteenth Century England

Is Donald Trump a Whig?

In the 17th and 18th Centuries, there was a strong and popular association made in England between Roman Catholicism and the idea of Absolute Monarchy. Spain and France were regarded as the prime illustrators of this connection.

Whig Protestants (especially Anglicans) sought on the basis of this association to significantly limit the political freedoms of English Catholics. Many of these restrictions remained in place until the Roman Catholic Reform Act of 1829. One restriction - the prohibition of the monarch being a Roman Catholic or marrying a Catholic - was only repealed as late as 2013.

The tendency to treat entire religious groups as sharing in a particular political ideology is a long-standing one. Donald Trump's generalisations about Muslims is a continuation of this political Whiggish tendency.

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House Building - Archaeological Insights and Spiritual Principles

I got totally inspired last night when eating with friends from church as we were discussing Psalm 127 - "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build labour in vain."

One of our members is a very gifted linguist and was sharing an insight into the cultural context of the psalm, namely that house building in that age (c 10th century BC) was primarily conceived of as horizontal rather than vertical. The addition of rooms adjacent to an existing structure, around a courtyard, would have been the main understanding of the idea at the time, rather than of building higher into the sky. (In fact, a quick look through a concordance reveals a rather negative view in the Old Testament when it comes to tall man-made structures - think Tower of Babel, etc)

This insight got us thinking about how the idea of "the Lord building the house" does not have to mean that one thing completely depends on another for its stability. The building process is more "organic" than "engineered", if that makes sense. This approach contrasts with a view of the Christian life that is unduly shaped by linear processes determined by stated goals and targets.

The idea that we have a vision/target/goal, and that we are to work backwards from that point to construct our Christian lives is one that is widely held and practiced. If, however, we define our goals more broadly - I would argue more biblically - then we can allow for developments which are apparently more random, which do not appear to fit into an engineered model of a narrowly-defined goal-focused life. Biblical goals, for instance, include such elements as, “we make it our aim to please him”, “the goal of this instruction is love” and the command to “walk in the Spirit” and to be “transformed through the renewing of our minds.”

Building, in this sense, is more about God-centered character development, ethical behaviour in the personal and social spheres and spiritual maturation, rather than the accomplishment of tasks which lead from one to another in a structured sense. This organic vision of “house building” is more communitarian than individualistic, is as concerned with ethics and process as it is with outcomes, and is also able to incorporate elements which would not normally be part of a design if we were to think purely functionally. Elements such as Joseph being sold as a slave, Jonah running away from God, and David’s adultery were all elements that, in the gracious and judicious divine house-building process, could be incorporated and used to further the purpose of God in the lives of these individuals.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build labour in vain.

London's Olympic Opening Ceremony Unwrapped - for the Benefit of the Rest of the World

American sprinter Michael Johnson summarised the issue when asked on the BBC whether the rest of the world would "get" the messages of London's Olympic opening ceremony. Since he worked and travelled here often, Johnson replied, he felt he could appreciate it at a cultural level, but he thought that many of his fellow Americans and the rest of the world would not.

Or, as one contributor put it on Twitter: "This is just plain weird."

 

So, without further ado, here is the opening ceremony unwrapped, for an international audience.

The key to interpreting director Danny Boyle's extravaganza, in my view, is to understand the opening scene. While the crowds filtered into the stadium in the hours before the official start, they were greeted with a stadium filled not with ranked masses of drummers or dancers, but by a green field on which grazed sheep, cattle and goats, tended by farmers and labourers dressed in outfits reminiscent of pre-industrial Britain. Bearded gentlemen played cricket on a village green; white clouds floated gently over the idyllic pastoral scene.

source: gorgeaux

The official opening of the ceremony involved the singing of the traditional English anthem Jerusalem, supplemented by national songs of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Written by nineteenth-century poet, artist and mystic William Blake, the words of his poem And Did Those Feet were put to music by Hubert Parry in 1916. The song - known ever since simply as Jerusalem - has come to be widely adopted as an unofficial national anthem for England, sung regularly at international sports matches, and even at the wedding in 2011 of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

The poem has been sung at party conferences by several of the main political parties since the second world war. The song Jerusalem has come to be seen as critical of the damaging effects of industrialisation and of the consolidation of economic power by a landed, industrial and ecclesiastical elite. Blake, raised as a Moravian, was a life-long critic of the established Church of England. In place of such a history, Jerusalem articulates an alternative vision of England - one shaped at every level by the mysterious presence of Christ.

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

Drawing on mythical themes such as the visitation of Jesus as a youth to the British Isles, accompanied by his supposed-uncle Joseph of Arimathea, the poem combines religious, mystical and political themes and has come to be seen as expressing a longing for a just, political and economic settlement in the British Isles, infused with Christian ideals.

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land

This imagery was not lost on the British audience last night. Phillip Blond, author of the influential book Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It, was tweeting lyrical throughout the ceremony. The political think-tanker, economist and one-time theologian enthusiastically tweeted of the opening scene's imagery representing

"A pre-enclosure and pre-capitalist haven - this is already so political - magnificent - romanticism at our heart."

Daily Telegraph blogger Tim Stanley, meanwhile writes of the opening scene's depiction of

"The brutal uprooting of rural Britain. Was this written by GK Chesterton? It's fantastic."

Blond affirms this interpretation of British history:

"It's essentially a Catholic theory of British history" which sees "enclosure as the original crime." 

The idea that the enclosure of common agricultural lands from the 16th to 19th centuries is a root of much of Britain's current economic problems was explored in the early twentieth century by Roman Catholic social theorists such as Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. More recently, socialist historian EP Thompson argued in his The Making of the English Working Class that "Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery."

 

It is perhaps not coincidental to learn that Boyle himself was raised in a Catholic household in the north of England and was at one time considering attending seminary to become a priest.

 

Much else that followed in last night's Olympic extravaganza was a re-telling of this British story. The achievements of the industrial revolution, for instance, were set alongside the fruits of its ugly expression in the efficiency of modern warfare.

The idea that the common assets of the British working class have been appropriated by their rulers continued through the ceremony's subsequent tableaux. Although framed in terms of children's fairy tales, dreams and nightmares, the lengthy section filled with nurses, pyjama-clad children in hospital beds, and frightening apparitions appeared linked to the story of the enclosures. The message was that Britain's greatest human asset - its National Health Service - is under threat from dark forces.

Source: Julie70

The allusion to the highly controversial NHS reform bill recently passed through Parliament - which gives greater access to the Service to private companies, and which was strongly opposed by all of the main professional medical organisations - will not have been lost on a British public widely dissatisfied with the legislation brought in under the current coalition government. The implication that J.K Rowling's Lord Voldemort could be compared to health secretary Andrew Lansley was both excruciating and exquisite.

That a fictional character - the magical Mary Poppins - was instrumental in driving away the threats to the sick children illustrates an additional strand within Boyle's ceremony, namely that of the British romantic tradition. As blogger Cath Elliott noted:

"So Mary Poppins bravely fought off the tories and saved the NHS. Or something."

Romanticism was a key element in William Blake's creative work, expressed in part in Boyle's opening ceremony through humour. Rowan Atkinson, James Bond and the Queen parachuting into the stadium were all part of this tradition of self-deprecating British humour. Mr Bean also performed the first scripted fart at an Olympic opening ceremony. Blond again:

"And it just gets better - this is the true Britain - romantic, visionary and arcadian - and very very funny." 

 

Comparisons with the opening ceremony in Beijing four years earlier are inevitable and the contrast between creative London's story-telling and formal massed ranks of well-drilled citizens could not have been greater.

The ceremony was visionary in the best sense of the word - even as William Blake saw visions throughout his unconventional life. Here was a view of modern Britain with Christian and egalitarian roots, overcoming the forces that would create a harsher, more oppressive future.

William Blake's etching/watercolour "Ancient of Days" ( Wikipedia)

The young artist George Richmond was at the bedside of his visionary mentor and friend William Blake when he died in 1827 and describes the scene in moving detail:

He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see and expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ.

– Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven.

Danny Boyle has expressed things slightly differently: "We can build Jerusalem. And it will be for everyone."

 

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Publishing Projects

 

I have started 2011 with the intention of creating a number of self-published written works, to supplement this blog and others that I maintain.

My two main publishing projects for this year are:

1. A series of essays under the working title of Understanding the Times: Essays in Christian Engagement

2. A book examining the radical Christian history of Bristol, my home town.

The essays will  be published once a month on the You Publish site and will be available to download as PDF documents.

In fact, the first essay, setting the scene and introducing the theme, has been uploaded already and can be read here.

Comments welcome, as always. 

The image is Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch, and forms the front cover of the first essay.

Publishing Projects

I have started 2011 with the intention of creating a number of self-published written works, to supplement this blog and others that I maintain.

My two main publishing projects for this year are:

1. A series of essays under the working title of Understanding the Times: Essays in Christian Engagement

2. A book examining the radical Christian history of Bristol, my home town.

The series of essays arise from the same root motivation as this blog - namely to relate the Christian faith to the real world of politics, economics and culture.  They will hopefully be of interest to people of all faiths and none. 

The essays will  be published once a month on the You Publish site and will be available to download as PDF documents.

In fact, the first essay, setting the scene and introducing the theme, has been uploaded already and can be read here.

Comments welcome, as always. 

The image is Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch, and forms the front cover of the first essay.

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The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an earlier post, I noted the work of Kevin Carson in his various writings on the creation of a national economic market in nineteenth century America C19 - a development which Carson describes as an artificial creation, funded by taxation and created by the State through its direct and indirect subsidies of national rail networks and communication infrastructure.

Carson's essay The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies sets out this thesis in a more accessible form than his longer work on the subject and is a readable and persuasive arguement.

I also appreciate the fact that this shorter essay looks not only into the distant past but also at recent developments in the creation of national road networks and the civil aviation infrastructure, as examples of the similar State-lead trends.

Carson also shows the clear links between the creation of such networks and the consolidation of national markets, wedded to global firms.

Take a look and see what you think.

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Beyond Indvidualism

I agree with almost all that Professor Kuehne says below and I like the fact that his own professional life combines elements which are all important to me, as an enthusiastic amateur: history, church life and politics.

The Professor's emphasis on relationships as the appropriate response to the excesses of post-modern individualism appears to resonate with the writings of Michael Schluter, who has applied relational thinking to the world of macro economics here. You can read my thoughts on Schluter's essay here.

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BBC News - Profile: Thailand's reds and yellows

BBC News - Profile: Thailand's reds and yellows

Thailand's increasingly tense political stand-off between the red-shirted United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) and their yellow-clad Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has overtones of some the European political upheavals of a former era.

The two constituencies - the reds primarily a coalition of students, farmers and urban radicals, and the yellows a collective of monarchists and the urban middle classes - resonates with numerous phases of European political history in the C17 and C18.

I'm reminded even of the origins of the English Civil War with its two increasingly polarised camps. In a sense, even the American War of Independence had elements of these traditional class-based and rural-urban divisions, with the added complexity of a long-standing traditional monarchy thrown into the mix.

The BBC's photo essay on the current stand-off is illuminating.

Chomsky on Howard Zinn

While reading American Studies at the University of Sussex in the 1980's, the history element of the degree course was massively geared around what was then still sometimes called "the new social history".

At the forefront of this "history from below" approach was the American academic Howard Zinn, who died last month, and whose influential work, A People's History of the United States, was one of the first books I read at Sussex and my first encounter with this grass-roots approach to historical thought.

Noam Chomsky writes a tribute to Howard Zinn here, a reminder not only of the life of the man himself, but of that distinctive role of the academic-political activist, a role that seems less common at the present time, though the need would appear as strong as ever.

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On Changing the Clocks

It's really only 08.50 as I start to write this.

The change to British Summer Time at 01.00 this morning routinely produces such conversations in households around the country.

The practice of moving the clocks forward one hour on the last Sunday in March was enshrined in British law in 1916. During World War 2, however, the country operated on double summer time, when the clocks went forward in October of 1940 and then were advanced again in the Spring of 1941. Less night time for enemy bombing raids, presumably. Or was it designed to save energy through less lighting being needed?

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents favours returning to the system of double summer time, claiming that the lighter evenings would result in fewer injuries and fatalities on the roads and elsewhere. Such a system, of course, would see sunrise occurring as late as 10.00 am in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, were it implemented across the UK. The Local Government Association also favours such a system. A failed Parilamentary bill of 2006 would have allowed Scotland and Northern Ireland to opt out of double summer time if it were introduced in England and Wales.

In the Middle East, meanwhile, while the British-friendly Kingdom of Jordan adopts the practice of changing the clocks twice a year, neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait take a different approach. They keep the time constant year round but move the working day instead. Kuwaiti workers will therefore arrive at the office on Monday an hour earlier than normal. The latter system would no doubt generate its own variations on the "where did that hour go?" conversations.

Which reminds me, it's 10.10, so I need to go (even though it's really only 09.10).

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Thomas Aquinas on the Credit Crunch

To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality, which is contrary to justice.

Thomas Aquinas,
Dominican friar and theologian (1225-1274).

source

When it's Cool to be a Historian

I read the following paragraph recently from Martin Gilbert's A History of the Twentieth Century (Volume Three, 1952-1999) and thought about how much fun he must have had writing it.

The section is about the invasion of Kuwait by the army of Iraq in 1990 and the response of the global community to it. Quoting President Bush (senior) from his memoirs, Gilbert writes:

"In the first few weeks of the crisis, I happened to be reading a book on World War II by the British historian Martin Gilbert. I saw a direct analogy between what was occurring in Kuwait and what the Nazis had done, especially in Poland....I saw a chilling parallel with what the Iraqi occupiers were doing in Kuwait."

I can imagine a fictitious conversation in the future:

What did you do during the war, granddad?

Well son, I used the excellent facilities of Merton College, Oxford to write books that influenced world leaders. Now bring me my slippers, there's a good lad.

Marvellous.







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Stephen Fry, Pre-Columbian Art and Bristol's Bookbarn

Two unrelated threads came together this week as I was rummaging through the leftovers of Bristol's Bookbarn, which is closing its vast doors and giving away its remaining stock free of charge to anyone who turns up to take it.

One of my interests is early American history, so I was pleased to pick up from the musty warehouse two titles on pre-Columbian civilisations of America.

Meanwhile, right on cue, Twitter celebrity Stephen Fry (he's also a writer, actor and broadcaster, I believe), who has been tweeting this week about his current trip to Baja California to film Last Chance to See for the BBC, uploaded the following photo of pre-Columbian cave art from his travels.

Astonishing coincidences.

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Thinking About Land Tax

Don't worry. I find tax boring and inscrutable as well. The arrival of any correspondence from Her Majesty's Inland Revenue inevitably causes me to want to throw myself under a train at the prospect of (a) having to fill in yet another tax form or (b) having to phone up my local office (located in Scotland for some reason) and explain for the 400th time why I do not in fact owe them any money, despite regular letters to the contrary.

Tax doesn't have to be taxing? Phaw!

Against that backdrop, I have found myself rather surprisingly drawn in recent weeks to the issue of Land Value Taxation, an idea espoused by (among others) the imaginatively named Land Value Taxation Campaign. The basic idea is that taxation should be levied annually on the rental value of land, replacing existing taxes on income and business.

I first stumbled upon the idea when a friend sent a link to a podcast by the "Renegade Economist" Fred Harrison, who in 1983 predicted the 1992 slump and who in 1997 predicted that the property price high point would be 2007 and would collapse in 2008 followed by recession in 2009/10.

My interest then took me to related sites, notably The Distributist Review and the Mutualist, the latter describing itself as espousing "free market anti-capitalism".

After that, I came across a piece by a former Sussex University friend Edward Rhodes on the pamphleteer Thomas Spence (1750-1814) who, along with his calls for universal adult suffrage (including voting rights for women) was an advocate of a system of taxation based on the value of land linked to the corresponding abolition of taxation on income and trade.

Time and inclination permitting, I may explore the theme in future posts. For now, I commend the links if interested in exploring the idea further.

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Colin Crouch, Post Democracy and Grass Roots Church Movements

My guess is that when Colin Crouch, Chair of the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, penned his short but absorbing book Post-democracy he was not anticipating that it would, in part, inspire thought about the nature of the Christian church.

When reading, however, I was struck by one paragraph that seemed to have a direct application to the idea of the church as a movement rather than an organisation.

Against the backdrop of the numerical decline in the manual working classes in Western societies and, as Crouch sees it, the related decline in mass concerted political action emanating from those social groups, he notes one movement that has bucked the trend of growing political passivity in recent years: namely, the rise of the feminist movement. Alongside the green movement, it has, says the author, "constituted the most important new instance of democratic politics at work" in recent decades.

The paragraph that struck me as having something to say (indirectly) about the church was as follows:

"Starting with small groups of intellectuals and extremists, it [feminism] spread to express itself in complex, rich and uncontrollable ways, but all rooted in the fundamental requirement of a great movement: the discovery of an unexpressed identity, leading to the definition of interests and the formation of formal and informal groups to give expression to these. As with all great movements, it took the existing political system by surprise and could not be easily manipulated. ... It is characteristic of a true major social movement that it takes a confusing and sometimes contradictory multiplicity of forms."

Those of us who have a longing to see a mass movement of Christian life which significantly effects the social and cultural landscape of our communities and nations, may wish to reflect on these ideas:

1. Mass Christian movements often start at the fringes and are easily dismissed or ridiculed in their early stages. While we look back with awe at, say, the Wesleyan movement of the C18, we do well to remember that in origin it was quirky and led by a small band of prayerful extremists.

2. A great movement requires the "discovery of an unexpressed identity". While we can rejoice wholeheartedly in the recovery across the Christian church in recent years of an appreciation of the grace of God in regard to the believer's righteous standing in Christ, his freedom from condemnation and law and the power of the new birth to deliver from slavery to sin, there is perhaps yet "more light" to be shed on the implications of this truth for our corporate life together. The discovery that, since I am in Christ, I am one with you if you are in Christ and that, when we meet together, Christ himself is present with us, no matter how few in number we are, is a truth whose power is, perhaps, waiting to be fully realised.

3. This discovery, that we the church have a shared identity and shared life waiting to be fully expressed beyond our current experience of church meetings and organised events could, according to Crouch's model, lead to the "defining of interests." Our interests as Christian believers include encouraging one another to grow in God's grace, caring deeply for one another and sharing our lives together in fellowship. Our interests include living holy lives for the glory of God.and seeking Christ's Kingdom in our lives, our families and in wider society . Our interests include a detachment from worldly priorities and a longing for the "appearing" of Christ at the end of the age when we shall be united with him forever. Our interests also include a desire to make Christ known to others by word and deed and to seek the advance of his kingdom throughout the nations.

4. The discovery of these interests could lead, in turn, to the formation of groups that give expression to them. Groups of believers who meet to pray, to feed on Christ through his word and through the sacrament of the Lord's supper, to share our lives together and to care for, teach and encourage one another. Groups where we learn from God's word and where true discipleship takes place which shapes everything about us. Groups which non-believers attend and in which they witness supernatural occurrences as the Spirit of Christ distributes gifts and manifestations to build up the members. Such groups might vary in size, in time and frequency of gathering and in numerous other secondary matters. I know what you're thinking - it sounds bit like the church we read of in Acts.

5. Such a movement could take existing systems by surprise. A system that has for so long been leader-centric could find that anyone and everyone is hosting and starting groups without asking for permission. We could find that, just as unnamed believers fleeing persecution first took the gospel to Antioch and into the Gentile world (see Acts 11), we could today see ordinary believers who have regular full-time jobs in offices, schools or factories breaking into new people groups with the good news in our multi-cultural cities and that new churches are appearing who sing the praise of Jesus Christ in Somali, Arabic and Polish. Although we may think we would rejoice in these untidy developments, we may in reality find ourselves nervous about these uncontrolled events, in similar ways to the reaction of European Catholicism 500 years ago when the reformers promised to translate the Bible into the common languages and place it in the hands of ploughmen and weavers to read and obey as their conscience taught them.

6. The fact that such a movement cannot be manipulated indicates how different it is from other structures that may exist within a society. In particular, such a mass movement is in nature quite different from a corporation or a firm, particularly as they increasingly exist in the Anglo-American economies. Such firms, which tragically (to my mind) some churches have sought to imitate, have a product or products, streamlined delivery and marketing systems, multiple layers of managers and highly powerful senior executives, the CEO being at the top of the organisation. All of which can make them efficient but also controlling.

Let me speak plainly.

I see a growing movement of believers developing outside of traditional church structures - and even outside of "new church" structures. Some of these believers are discouraged. Others are weak. And some, frankly, have significant gaps in their theology and practice. Most of them love the Lord Jesus but have fallen out of love with their previous experience of doing church. Many are longing for a way of being the church together that is highly relational, flexible and "in life".

I also think that those with gifts of leadership, teaching, pastoral care and apostleship would do well to serve these scattered believers with the word of God and with their gifts.

I'm reminded of the advice that Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones gave to the late Henry Tyler, a founding elder of what is now Church of Christ the King in Brighton. After finishing Bible college, Henry, who I knew personally, was considering taking on the pastorate of a Baptist church. Lloyd Jones urged Henry to "stay among the house churches" that were emerging in the 1970s and to teach them the word of God.

A similar phenomenon is emerging today. I hope that those outside this emerging movement who are leaders have the wisdom of Lloyd Jones as they look on and consider their response.

I have written a review of professor Crouch's book here.

Imagining Greener Cities

Reading James Joyce's Dubliners at the moment, I am struck by his descriptions of the city. In particular, his anecdotes about the relationship between buildings and green spaces is of interest.

Examples abound. The tall trees that line the mall with the sunlight slanting through them onto the water; crossing the Liffy in a ferryboat; a wide field in Ringsend (all in An Encounter).

In Araby, we are introduced to houses with apples trees in their back gardens, muddy lanes, cottages and stables

"where a coachman smoothed or combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness."

Eveline is set against the backdrop of residential development:

"One time there used to be a field in which they used to play every evening....Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it."

Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century had missed out on much of the industrial development enjoyed further north in Belfast, and had therefore suffered economically. This was one factor in explaining the unique way that the city's infrastructure developed during the period before the Easter Rising of 1916.

Am reminded while reading of the stories told by an old local resident (in his 90's) who remembers my current neighbourhood in north Bristol when much of it was an English meadow in which he and his friends had riverside picnics. He also recalls that the three mile journey to the city centre was by tram or bicycle, partly through open fields.

On a tangential note, I remember talking with an old Finnish missionary several years ago while visiting Bangkok. Arriving in the city just after the Second World War, he remembers elephants working inside the city limits and only three bridges crossing the Chao Phrya River in a city which he described as essentially a collection of villages linked by boats.

Of course, none of this romanticising of the past means that these cities were necessarily healthier places to live than are cities today. However, in an age "addicted to oil" (to quote President Bush) it is often difficult to imagine cities without vast numbers of cars and building developments that dwarf and sometimes replace residential communities which have evolved over centuries. Drawing on the experiences of older people, and reading stories of urban life in a previous age, can be a means of fuelling the imagination and helping us to think creatively about the way that urbanisation in the C21 could work for us with reduced car use and oil dependency.

At least, that's what these people think.

Incidentally, in 2003, a BBC poll voted Dublin as the best European capital city to live in.

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Living History

Presidential electioneering in its modern form began with Harry Truman who, in 1948, toured the United States on a private train in order to cover as many of the key states as possible and rally support for his campaign.

I recently learned that my father was present at one such "whistle stop" when Vice-President Truman appeared at Union Station in downtown Toledo, Ohio, in the autumn of 1948. Aged 21, and an undergraduate at Northwestern University in Illinois, my father was part of a crowd of a few hundred mostly sympathetic listeners who heard Harry Truman deliver a speech from the back of his chartered train.

Apparently, the event was open to the general public (unlike the stage-managed "public" events of current elections) and involved virtually no visible security presence.

Truman had a reputation for earthy speech - the joke was that President Roosevelt spoke for the common man and that Truman (his VP) was the common man.

During the short rally, a member of the crowd shouted "Give 'em hell, Harry!" Which of course he did, defeating Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey, despite a three-way split in the Democratic party between Truman, Strom Thurmond of the pro-segregation Southern Democrats and Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace, who had served as Roosevelt's Vice-President in his previous term of office.

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The Old Woman Who Voted for the President

At his victory speech in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama referred to a 106-year old woman from Atlanta - Ann Nixon Cooper - who voted in Tuesday's election, apparently for the first time.

Meanwhile, in Gaithersburg, MD, 108-year old Geneva Garner cast her vote in her 22nd presidential election - on this occasion choosing independent candidate Ralph Nader, who received virtually no coverage on any of the mainstream American media channells and even less overseas. Nader has championed grass roots consumer action and environmentalism.

Said Garner - who can remember listening to speeches by Theodore Roosevelt in the first decade of the 20th century and who was born when William McKinley was president - " I don't expect him [Nader] to win. It's just on principle … It's a protest vote."

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Brewster Kahle: A digital library, free to the world

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Bush Widens America's Afghan War, a Throwback to Cambodia

News that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff are calling for American troops to pursue "extremists" across the Afghan boarder into Pakistan reminds me of the failed US policy in Vietnam when, faced with an unwinnable war, the decision was taken in 1970 to widen its scope into neighbouring Cambodia.

As today in Afghanistan, the situation in south east Asia in 1970 appeared to justify the initiative. Viet Cong forces had extended the Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh was under threat of communist attack. American forces were vulnerable to attacks originating from within Cambodia and on that basis Commander of US forces in South Vietnam General Creighton Abrams argued for the elimination of their bases on the Cambodian side of the boarder.

Without consulting of informing the Cambodian government of Lon Nol, President Nixon agreed with his General's advice and ordered 20,000 American troops and warplanes across the boarder, announcing on a televised broadcast on April 28th that the future of world peace depended on America's success in Cambodia.

38 years later, and illustrating the maxim that there is nothing new under the sun, we are faced with an American military commander (Admiral Mike Mullen) calling publicly for a military strategy that covers "both sides of the boarder" between Afghanistan and Pakistan, announcing to the House Armed Services Committee that

"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency....We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan... but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming."

One can only hope that President Bush resists this call in the final months of his administration - an initiative that will plunge America's only "ally" in the region into complete turmoil and dissipate the remnants of any good will that may exist among the Pakistani population. The evidence so far gives little hope for that outcome:

• in July, President Bush approved orders enabling US Special Operations forces to conduct ground operations in Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistan government
• since April, missile strikes have been carried out on positions within Pakistan, attributed to coalition forces or CIA drones based in Afghanistan - strikes that have killed both Pakistani civilians and militants
• A raid in South Waziristan last week left 15 people dead and prompted Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to strongly criticise the raids and insist that there was no deal allowing foreign troops to conduct operations inside the country: "The sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost," he added in a statement subsequently backed by the country's Premier Yousaf Raza Gilani.

It seems to be a principle of imperialism that when losing a war, the "arrogance of power" (to quote Senator J. William Fulbright) dictates an expansion of that same war. The Senator's observation from 1966 still seems relevant in 2008:

"Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence."

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