Technology and (Intellectual) History Open Thread

Back in April, 2009, I put up a post complaining about MS Word and musing about the possibility of switching to another word-processing program.  I'm almost embarrassed to report that, after spending some time trying to migrate to Apple's Pages (a nice little program in many ways), I crawled back to the overwhelming industry standard. Word still infuriates me in many ways, but I've yet to find a program that practically replaces it.

Nevertheless, I found the little discussion of other possibilities--and the investigation of those possibilities--intriguing. So I figured I'd start a similar conversation again, this time using as a starting point some computer tools that I actually enjoy.  Though I doubt any of the programs I discuss below the fold will be new to the readers of this blog, perhaps my positive experiences with them will encourage others to give them a shot.  And I hope you'll reciprocate by suggesting things that you've found helpful that I may not have thought of using.


One of the programs that I most rely on is Eastgate's Tinderbox.  Most often described as a notetaking program, Tinderbox is actually a lot more.  I use it primarily to keep track of my notes on my book project.   But it's also been great for taking notes on the candidates for a job search that I'm chairing.  Though it has an extraordinarily loyal group of users, Tinderbox suffers a bit because it's hard to explain what it does...and because, though it's very easy to use, one always has the impression that one is just scratching the surface of its capabilities.   The image at the top of this post is a good example of the sort of thing that Tinderbox can do.  It's a tree of American historiography which graduate student Dan Allosso put together and posted late last year to The Historical Society's blog.  For a closer look at the tree--and a discussion of how Dan made it--check out the original post here (h/t Mark Bernstein, the designer of Tinderbox).

Tinderbox is only currently available for Macintosh (though other versions are apparently in the works).  And at $249, it is a little pricey, though you can demo it for free.  Luckily, Eastgate has just come out with Twig, which appears to be a kind of Tinderbox Lite.  At $79, it's considerably less expensive (though still Mac only).

A much less expensive--and more universally common tool--that I find indispensable is Dropbox, a little program that makes syncing files across one's computers (and iOS devices) incredibly simple.  Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and most mobile operating systems.  And the first 2 GB of storage are free.  My guess is that most of you already use it, but if you don't, just download it and give it a spin.

Even more ubiquitous than Dropbox is the free mediaplayer VLC.  Again, I assume that most of you already know and rely on this little piece of freeware that will play just about any media format.  But if you don't, download it now and give it a spin. There's a version for just about any operating system you've heard of (and probably a few that you haven't).

Until about a month ago, I'd have sung the praises of the cloud-based back-up service Mozy, which offered limited online backup for free and unlimited backup from a single computer for a very reasonable annual fee.  But in January, Mozy announced that they were eliminating their unlimited backup service and were instead essentially charging by the GB.  (To their credit, they gave their users advance notice, which in turn gave us time to find another service to use before canceling our Mozy accounts.)  After doing a little research, the best option for me turned out to be CrashPlan, whose Crashplan+ Family Unlimited service will allow me to back up every computer in my household much more cost-effectively than Mozy's new pricing scheme would allow.

What software (or hardware) are you finding particularly useful these days?

Technology and (Intellectual) History Open Thread

Back in April, 2009, I put up a post complaining about MS Word and musing about the possibility of switching to another word-processing program.  I'm almost embarrassed to report that, after spending some time trying to migrate to Apple's Pages (a nice little program in many ways), I crawled back to the overwhelming industry standard. Word still infuriates me in many ways, but I've yet to find a program that practically replaces it.

Nevertheless, I found the little discussion of other possibilities--and the investigation of those possibilities--intriguing. So I figured I'd start a similar conversation again, this time using as a starting point some computer tools that I actually enjoy.  Though I doubt any of the programs I discuss below the fold will be new to the readers of this blog, perhaps my positive experiences with them will encourage others to give them a shot.  And I hope you'll reciprocate by suggesting things that you've found helpful that I may not have thought of using.


One of the programs that I most rely on is Eastgate's Tinderbox.  Most often described as a notetaking program, Tinderbox is actually a lot more.  I use it primarily to keep track of my notes on my book project.   But it's also been great for taking notes on the candidates for a job search that I'm chairing.  Though it has an extraordinarily loyal group of users, Tinderbox suffers a bit because it's hard to explain what it does...and because, though it's very easy to use, one always has the impression that one is just scratching the surface of its capabilities.   The image at the top of this post is a good example of the sort of thing that Tinderbox can do.  It's a tree of American historiography which graduate student Dan Allosso put together and posted late last year to The Historical Society's blog.  For a closer look at the tree--and a discussion of how Dan made it--check out the original post here (h/t Mark Bernstein, the designer of Tinderbox).

Tinderbox is only currently available for Macintosh (though other versions are apparently in the works).  And at $249, it is a little pricey, though you can demo it for free.  Luckily, Eastgate has just come out with Twig, which appears to be a kind of Tinderbox Lite.  At $79, it's considerably less expensive (though still Mac only).

A much less expensive--and more universally common tool--that I find indispensable is Dropbox, a little program that makes syncing files across one's computers (and iOS devices) incredibly simple.  Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, and most mobile operating systems.  And the first 2 GB of storage are free.  My guess is that most of you already use it, but if you don't, just download it and give it a spin.

Even more ubiquitous than Dropbox is the free mediaplayer VLC.  Again, I assume that most of you already know and rely on this little piece of freeware that will play just about any media format.  But if you don't, download it now and give it a spin. There's a version for just about any operating system you've heard of (and probably a few that you haven't).

Until about a month ago, I'd have sung the praises of the cloud-based back-up service Mozy, which offered limited online backup for free and unlimited backup from a single computer for a very reasonable annual fee.  But in January, Mozy announced that they were eliminating their unlimited backup service and were instead essentially charging by the GB.  (To their credit, they gave their users advance notice, which in turn gave us time to find another service to use before canceling our Mozy accounts.)  After doing a little research, the best option for me turned out to be CrashPlan, whose Crashplan+ Family Unlimited service will allow me to back up every computer in my household much more cost-effectively than Mozy's new pricing scheme would allow.

What software (or hardware) are you finding particularly useful these days?

Book Review: Mueller on Mirra's The Admirable Radical

Review of Carl Mirra’s The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-1-60635-051-5. 224 pages.

Review by Brian Mueller
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee


Like many other academic disciplines in the United States between the 1940s and 1970s, the historical profession included a number of well-known intellectuals within its ranks. Far from being known only among their colleagues in their specialized fields, these historians achieved recognition from the general public. The most prominent American historians of this period include such luminaries as C. Vann Woodward, Henry Steele Commager, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., William Appleman Williams, and Richard Hofstadter. Though writing from different positions on the liberal spectrum, these intellectuals, among others, represented modern liberalism. In addition to their academic roles, the intellectuals mentioned above actively engaged in debates and protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War, or, in the case of Schlesinger, entered the halls of power as government officials. Thus, their influence and interests greatly exceeded the ivory towers from which they lectured and wrote their historical monographs.

For the most part, the aforementioned historians have been the subject of either full-length books or articles. Largely ignored in the intellectual history of the 1960s is Staughton Lynd, whose civil disobedience often overshadowed his acumen as a writer. Whereas the abovementioned historians taught at such prestigious institutions as Yale University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin, Lynd, after initial appointments at Spelman College and Yale, was refused tenure at a major university. Carl Mirra’s The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970, tells Lynd’s story by focusing not only on his battles in the streets, but also his efforts to overcome liberal animosity towards his radical view of history. In the process of chronicling Lynd’s professional activities, Mirra also reveals how physical protests on the streets fostered a greater concern over historical scholarship that favored the study of influential elites over ordinary Americans.

Born on November 22, 1929 to famed sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd, Staughton Craig Lynd grew up in a household that encouraged social action and academic accomplishments. Helen Lynd belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union and Robert Lynd encouraged Staughton to embark on intellectual pursuits that would allow him to eventually work in academia. Beginning his education at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Staughton enrolled at Harvard University in 1946, at age sixteen. While at Harvard, Staughton entered his first radical group, American Youth for Democracy. After a brief time away from Harvard, Lynd graduated with a B.A. in social relations in 1951. Making a decision that would have an impact on his future historical and political thought, Staughton and his new wife, Alice, joined Macedonia, a Cooperative Community in Clarkesville, Georgia in November 1954. When Macedonia closed down, Staughton and his family moved to New York City, where, in 1959, he followed in his parents’ footsteps and embarked on a Ph.D. in history at Columbia University.

Though focusing mostly on Lynd’s intellectual thought and activism in the 1960s, Mirra suggests that many of Lynd’s ideas and actions were a response to James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World, which Lynd read at age sixteen. Mirra portrays Lynd as going through life trying to find the solution to Burnham’s dilemma. The dilemma involved the unlikelihood of constructing a socialist society in an America in which capitalism had such deep roots. While numerous organizations and countless activists meant to reform society, rarely did they ever consider completely doing away with the capitalist system. Through both his writings and activism, Lynd spent the rest of his life working to restructure society into a more just and equal community.

Lynd’s yearning for community is evident in many of his intellectual and social activities throughout the 1950s. Mirra’s description of Lynd as a “premature” New Leftist owes greatly to Lynd’s early support of cooperative communities, such as Macedonia, and his later views on the civil rights movement. Elucidating ideals that would soon become associated with Students for a Democratic Society and their emphasis on participatory democracy, Lynd feared that the wealthy and powerful held too much power, thereby diminishing the voices of individuals seeking change. As a result of these concerns, Lynd showed an aversion to working with the government as an activist. While several civil rights activists wholeheartedly approved of an alliance with liberal Democrats as a means to further their cause, Lynd warned them of the possible adverse consequences of such a strategy. For instance, while Bob Moses and other civil rights leaders sought government protection from racist violence in the South, Lynd hesitated to go to the federal government. Lynd understood that activists needed security, but working with the government also threatened the ultimate goal of the civil rights movement, which was complete freedom. African Americans would not, according to Lynd, obtain complete economic and social freedom from the wealthy elites and those in power unless they formed parallel institutions of their own. As the events at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City unfolded, Lynd’s questioning of the government’s willingness to enact change proved prescient.

Prior to the debacle at Atlantic City, Lynd, while teaching at Spelman College, accepted a position as coordinator of the Freedom Schools during Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Though Mirra spends an entire chapter on civil rights activism in 1964, it is difficult to see how great of a role Lynd played in these events. With the exception of an excellent section on Lynd’s involvement in constructing the curriculum used in Freedom Schools, the rest of the chapter is more of an account of the Freedom Schools and the convention. While these two events proved Lynd’s concern over depending too much on government correct, what influence did his ideas have on the Freedom Schools?

The most valuable chapters in Mirra’s biography, particularly for intellectual historians, are those dealing with Lynd’s scholarly pursuits. Influenced by Howard Zinn’s dismissal from Spelman for his suspected role in a student protest, Lynd accepted a job at Yale in the fall of 1964. Lynd’s experiences in academia illustrate his continued uneasiness with liberalism as his scholarship contradicted much of what liberal historians had written. Whereas his colleague Edmund Morgan’s history of the American Revolution celebrated the Founding Fathers, Lynd, highlighted the continued existence of social inequality. The liberal historians in the department, including C. Vann Woodward, also believed United States history proved that significant progress had been made for all citizens, regardless of sex, race, or class. Lynd, conversely, chose to look at the American Revolution in order to illustrate the close connection between the ideals of contemporary protestors and the Declaration of Independence. Both Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York (1962) and Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) viewed history from the bottom up in order to explore how the various social classes in early American history influenced the American Revolution. Yale eventually refused Lynd tenure, claiming financial restraints. Mirra, however, questions Yale’s contention and posits that Lynd’s political activities, especially his journey to Hanoi in late 1965 with Tom Hayden and Herbert Apthetker, caused his offer of tenure to be denied.

Lynd’s struggle to balance his academic career with his activism is similar to the challenges faced by many intellectuals in the 1960s. Kevin Mattson’s excellent study, Intellectuals in Action, illustrates how intellectuals such as Paul Goodman and William Appleman Williams, despite their own activism, remained ambivalent towards the protests of the New Left in the late 1960s. However, unlike the intellectuals discussed in Mattson’s book, Lynd never gave up on his activism. As a result, Lynd’s career in academia suffered. One of Lynd’s greatest antagonists in the historical profession, according to Mirra, was Eugene Genovese. While reviewing Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, Genovese described Lynd as an “ideologue of the New Left” and criticized Lynd’s scholarship for its “glorification of the common man” and “contempt for and distrust of the intelligentsia (129).” As Mirra notes, Genovese favored Southern planters over the actions of the ordinary citizen.

In the aftermath of his struggle to achieve tenure, Lynd, along with many radical intellectuals, questioned whether university appointments tempered activism. As Mirra explains, Lynd feared that working in a university setting threatened an individual’s radicalism by means of “bourgeoisie socialization (154).” Concerns over tenure and funding for research would replace, according to Lynd, concern for the greater good. As a result, Lynd accepted the nomination put forth by the Radical Caucus of the American Historical Association for him to be the organization’s president in 1969 against Yale’s R.R. Palmer. The bitter struggle to reform the AHA, and the history profession in general, resulted in some reforms being instituted, but Lynd’s bid for president fell short.

Though by no means the only opposition to Lynd’s presidency, Mirra recounts how Genovese spoke out most forcefully against Lynd’s nomination. In response to Lynd’s address at the 1969 AHA meeting, which included calls for an antiwar resolution and for “guerilla history,” Genovese pleaded with AHA members to “Put these so-called radicals down, put them down hard, and put them down once and for all (158).” Using Genovese as a counter to Lynd allows Mirra to make clear the distinction between Lynd and other radical intellectuals who became increasingly conservative as protests on the streets grew. The 1969 AHA meeting would be Lynd’s last attempt at maintaining ties to the historical profession. Lynd entered law school at the University of Chicago and continued his activism as an attorney for Legal Services in Youngstown, Ohio, where he supported workers and prisoners. Despite a change in careers, however, Lynd’s activism never waned and his ideals remained the same. Mirra concludes his biography by noting that Lynd continues “his scholarly examination of the inherent inequality of the capitalist system together with his emphasis, as historian and activist, on the importance of local, communal organizing as key to a better system (169).”

More than forty years later the question still remains as to what role intellectuals, whether in academia or otherwise, should play in the public sphere. Mirra’s biography of Staughton Lynd leaves no doubt that he believes in the importance of active participation by academics in matters of great social importance. Like the subject of his biography, Mirra, as an academic and conscientious objector during the Gulf War, sees a close connection between scholarship and social activism. Along with Lynd, Mirra served on the steering committee for a panel conducted by the Historians Against the War at the American Historical Association conference in 2004. While Mirra refrains from actively critiquing his subject, his account of Lynd’s life from the 1940s to the 1970s is balanced, never becoming a hagiography.

Book Review: Mueller on Mirra's The Admirable Radical

Review of Carl Mirra’s The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-1-60635-051-5. 224 pages.

Review by Brian Mueller
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee


Like many other academic disciplines in the United States between the 1940s and 1970s, the historical profession included a number of well-known intellectuals within its ranks. Far from being known only among their colleagues in their specialized fields, these historians achieved recognition from the general public. The most prominent American historians of this period include such luminaries as C. Vann Woodward, Henry Steele Commager, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., William Appleman Williams, and Richard Hofstadter. Though writing from different positions on the liberal spectrum, these intellectuals, among others, represented modern liberalism. In addition to their academic roles, the intellectuals mentioned above actively engaged in debates and protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War, or, in the case of Schlesinger, entered the halls of power as government officials. Thus, their influence and interests greatly exceeded the ivory towers from which they lectured and wrote their historical monographs.

For the most part, the aforementioned historians have been the subject of either full-length books or articles. Largely ignored in the intellectual history of the 1960s is Staughton Lynd, whose civil disobedience often overshadowed his acumen as a writer. Whereas the abovementioned historians taught at such prestigious institutions as Yale University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin, Lynd, after initial appointments at Spelman College and Yale, was refused tenure at a major university. Carl Mirra’s The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970, tells Lynd’s story by focusing not only on his battles in the streets, but also his efforts to overcome liberal animosity towards his radical view of history. In the process of chronicling Lynd’s professional activities, Mirra also reveals how physical protests on the streets fostered a greater concern over historical scholarship that favored the study of influential elites over ordinary Americans.

Born on November 22, 1929 to famed sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd, Staughton Craig Lynd grew up in a household that encouraged social action and academic accomplishments. Helen Lynd belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union and Robert Lynd encouraged Staughton to embark on intellectual pursuits that would allow him to eventually work in academia. Beginning his education at the Ethical Culture School in New York City, Staughton enrolled at Harvard University in 1946, at age sixteen. While at Harvard, Staughton entered his first radical group, American Youth for Democracy. After a brief time away from Harvard, Lynd graduated with a B.A. in social relations in 1951. Making a decision that would have an impact on his future historical and political thought, Staughton and his new wife, Alice, joined Macedonia, a Cooperative Community in Clarkesville, Georgia in November 1954. When Macedonia closed down, Staughton and his family moved to New York City, where, in 1959, he followed in his parents’ footsteps and embarked on a Ph.D. in history at Columbia University.

Though focusing mostly on Lynd’s intellectual thought and activism in the 1960s, Mirra suggests that many of Lynd’s ideas and actions were a response to James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World, which Lynd read at age sixteen. Mirra portrays Lynd as going through life trying to find the solution to Burnham’s dilemma. The dilemma involved the unlikelihood of constructing a socialist society in an America in which capitalism had such deep roots. While numerous organizations and countless activists meant to reform society, rarely did they ever consider completely doing away with the capitalist system. Through both his writings and activism, Lynd spent the rest of his life working to restructure society into a more just and equal community.

Lynd’s yearning for community is evident in many of his intellectual and social activities throughout the 1950s. Mirra’s description of Lynd as a “premature” New Leftist owes greatly to Lynd’s early support of cooperative communities, such as Macedonia, and his later views on the civil rights movement. Elucidating ideals that would soon become associated with Students for a Democratic Society and their emphasis on participatory democracy, Lynd feared that the wealthy and powerful held too much power, thereby diminishing the voices of individuals seeking change. As a result of these concerns, Lynd showed an aversion to working with the government as an activist. While several civil rights activists wholeheartedly approved of an alliance with liberal Democrats as a means to further their cause, Lynd warned them of the possible adverse consequences of such a strategy. For instance, while Bob Moses and other civil rights leaders sought government protection from racist violence in the South, Lynd hesitated to go to the federal government. Lynd understood that activists needed security, but working with the government also threatened the ultimate goal of the civil rights movement, which was complete freedom. African Americans would not, according to Lynd, obtain complete economic and social freedom from the wealthy elites and those in power unless they formed parallel institutions of their own. As the events at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City unfolded, Lynd’s questioning of the government’s willingness to enact change proved prescient.

Prior to the debacle at Atlantic City, Lynd, while teaching at Spelman College, accepted a position as coordinator of the Freedom Schools during Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Though Mirra spends an entire chapter on civil rights activism in 1964, it is difficult to see how great of a role Lynd played in these events. With the exception of an excellent section on Lynd’s involvement in constructing the curriculum used in Freedom Schools, the rest of the chapter is more of an account of the Freedom Schools and the convention. While these two events proved Lynd’s concern over depending too much on government correct, what influence did his ideas have on the Freedom Schools?

The most valuable chapters in Mirra’s biography, particularly for intellectual historians, are those dealing with Lynd’s scholarly pursuits. Influenced by Howard Zinn’s dismissal from Spelman for his suspected role in a student protest, Lynd accepted a job at Yale in the fall of 1964. Lynd’s experiences in academia illustrate his continued uneasiness with liberalism as his scholarship contradicted much of what liberal historians had written. Whereas his colleague Edmund Morgan’s history of the American Revolution celebrated the Founding Fathers, Lynd, highlighted the continued existence of social inequality. The liberal historians in the department, including C. Vann Woodward, also believed United States history proved that significant progress had been made for all citizens, regardless of sex, race, or class. Lynd, conversely, chose to look at the American Revolution in order to illustrate the close connection between the ideals of contemporary protestors and the Declaration of Independence. Both Anti-Federalism in Dutchess County, New York (1962) and Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism (1968) viewed history from the bottom up in order to explore how the various social classes in early American history influenced the American Revolution. Yale eventually refused Lynd tenure, claiming financial restraints. Mirra, however, questions Yale’s contention and posits that Lynd’s political activities, especially his journey to Hanoi in late 1965 with Tom Hayden and Herbert Apthetker, caused his offer of tenure to be denied.

Lynd’s struggle to balance his academic career with his activism is similar to the challenges faced by many intellectuals in the 1960s. Kevin Mattson’s excellent study, Intellectuals in Action, illustrates how intellectuals such as Paul Goodman and William Appleman Williams, despite their own activism, remained ambivalent towards the protests of the New Left in the late 1960s. However, unlike the intellectuals discussed in Mattson’s book, Lynd never gave up on his activism. As a result, Lynd’s career in academia suffered. One of Lynd’s greatest antagonists in the historical profession, according to Mirra, was Eugene Genovese. While reviewing Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism, Genovese described Lynd as an “ideologue of the New Left” and criticized Lynd’s scholarship for its “glorification of the common man” and “contempt for and distrust of the intelligentsia (129).” As Mirra notes, Genovese favored Southern planters over the actions of the ordinary citizen.

In the aftermath of his struggle to achieve tenure, Lynd, along with many radical intellectuals, questioned whether university appointments tempered activism. As Mirra explains, Lynd feared that working in a university setting threatened an individual’s radicalism by means of “bourgeoisie socialization (154).” Concerns over tenure and funding for research would replace, according to Lynd, concern for the greater good. As a result, Lynd accepted the nomination put forth by the Radical Caucus of the American Historical Association for him to be the organization’s president in 1969 against Yale’s R.R. Palmer. The bitter struggle to reform the AHA, and the history profession in general, resulted in some reforms being instituted, but Lynd’s bid for president fell short.

Though by no means the only opposition to Lynd’s presidency, Mirra recounts how Genovese spoke out most forcefully against Lynd’s nomination. In response to Lynd’s address at the 1969 AHA meeting, which included calls for an antiwar resolution and for “guerilla history,” Genovese pleaded with AHA members to “Put these so-called radicals down, put them down hard, and put them down once and for all (158).” Using Genovese as a counter to Lynd allows Mirra to make clear the distinction between Lynd and other radical intellectuals who became increasingly conservative as protests on the streets grew. The 1969 AHA meeting would be Lynd’s last attempt at maintaining ties to the historical profession. Lynd entered law school at the University of Chicago and continued his activism as an attorney for Legal Services in Youngstown, Ohio, where he supported workers and prisoners. Despite a change in careers, however, Lynd’s activism never waned and his ideals remained the same. Mirra concludes his biography by noting that Lynd continues “his scholarly examination of the inherent inequality of the capitalist system together with his emphasis, as historian and activist, on the importance of local, communal organizing as key to a better system (169).”

More than forty years later the question still remains as to what role intellectuals, whether in academia or otherwise, should play in the public sphere. Mirra’s biography of Staughton Lynd leaves no doubt that he believes in the importance of active participation by academics in matters of great social importance. Like the subject of his biography, Mirra, as an academic and conscientious objector during the Gulf War, sees a close connection between scholarship and social activism. Along with Lynd, Mirra served on the steering committee for a panel conducted by the Historians Against the War at the American Historical Association conference in 2004. While Mirra refrains from actively critiquing his subject, his account of Lynd’s life from the 1940s to the 1970s is balanced, never becoming a hagiography.

Is Secular Humanism a Religion?

Most historians who study the modern Christian Right discuss, to some extent, how religious conservatives replaced the communist Great Satan with another bogeyman, “Secular Humanism,” a phrase common to the religious right lexicon from the 1970s on. For example, Daniel K. Williams, in his new book, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right, dedicates a sub-section of his chapter on the “Culture Wars in the Carter Years” to “Concerns about ‘Secular Humanism’ in Education.” Williams notes that religious conservatives did not focus on humanism when it first organized in 1941 under the auspices of John Dewey’s American Humanist Association (although, as I show in my book, they certainly focused their ire on Dewey’s educational philosophy). Williams continues: “Yet when social conservatives became concerned about changes in school curricula in the late 1960s, they decided that objectionable programs such as sex education and values clarification classes might be an attempt by the National Education Association and, in the words of conservative Catholic journalist John Steinbacher, John Dewey’s ‘coterie of sycophantic followers’ to ‘make good little Humanists out of the kids’."

But despite such cursory attention to the problem of secular humanism, historians rarely take religious conservative thought about secular humanism very seriously. In other words, what we need is an intellectual history of the Christian Right’s critique of secular humanism. We need this because such a critique has formed the intellectual basis and legal strategy of the Christian Right’s struggles over public education since the 1970s. We need this because doing justice to the Christian Right’s argument allows us to better understand the movement. And we need this because, as I will seek to make clear in my conclusion, the Christian Right's critique of secular humanism obliquely reveals a major blind spot of contemporary progressive education.

Influenced by the 1970s writings of Francis Schaeffer, Rousas John Rushdoony, and Tim LaHaye, the Christian Right argued that the public schools were in violation of the First Amendment because the schools established an official religion: secular humanism. Yep, that’s right, they contended secular humanism, though atheistic, evinced all the traits of a religion and thus the public schools, awash in secular humanism, violated the religious freedom of Christians. Secularists considered this ironic, to say the least, given that the so-called Lemon test put the concepts “secular” and “religious” in direct opposition to one another in that for a statute to be deemed constitutional it must have a secular purpose and its principal effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion.

Nevertheless, the argument that secular humanism was a religion, and that its dominion over the public school curriculum was a violation of the First Amendment, guided conservative legal attempts to remove evolution from biology classrooms or, at least, have it taught alongside some form of creationism (including, recently, intelligent design). Occasionally, the Christian Right found sympathetic judges on this matter, such as Brevard Hand, a federal judge in Alabama who ruled against state schools in a 1987 decision, writing that the secular humanist “omission” of religion “does affect a person’s ability to develop religious beliefs and exercise that religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.” But Hand’s logic was overruled and, generally speaking, the courts have yet to grant legitimacy to this argument. For example, in another 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court found that a Louisiana law requiring teachers of evolution to give equal time to creationism was unconstitutional because its sole purpose was to “advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind.” Obviously, to make this argument the Court did not conceptualize evolution, which the Christian Right considers integral to secular humanism, as religious doctrine.

But, just because the courts have yet to take the Christian Right seriously when it claims secular humanism is a religion does not mean intellectual historians should do likewise. LaHaye, now famous for authoring the best-selling premillennial dispensationalist Left Behind series, wrote a three-part “Battle” series in the late 1970s and early 1980s that gave his readers a framework for understanding secular humanism. LaHaye dedicated the third book in the series, The Battle for the Public Schools: Humanism’s Threat to our Children (1983) (which arrived quickly on the heels of The Battle for the Mind and The Battle for the Family), to those parents concerned about the decline of the public schools, especially “the growing army within that group who realize that secular humanism, the religious doctrine of our public schools, has brought on this decline.” LaHaye coined the awkward phrase “humanist educrats,” a reference to “the elite heads of many teachers colleges, administrators, and many superintendents and principals who are determined to jam atheistic, amoral humanism, with its socialist world view, into the minds, of our nation’s children and youth, kindergarten through college.” Like so many before and since, he blamed the apparently all-powerful John Dewey. “Dewey made the teaching of humanism exclusive by getting traditional religion and its values expelled from the public schools.” The expulsion of Christianity from the schools, and its replacement by secular humanism, was, for LaHaye, “the origin of rampant drugs, sex, violence, and self-indulgence in our schools, which are not conducive to the learning process.”

LaHaye listed all of the traits that he thought defined a religion, and argued that secular humanism, “the official doctrine of public education,” displayed all of them:

1. A well-defined Bible or “Scriptures”
2. A stated doctrine or dogma
3. An object of worship
4. A priesthood
5. Missionaries
6. Seminaries
7. Temples
8. An established life-style
9. A support base
10. Its roots are grounded in ancient religions
11. Recognition by the Supreme Court as a religion
12. Vigorous opposition to theistic religion
13. A world view
14. Open acknowledgement of its position

Now, I don’t buy the argument that “secular humanism” qualifies as a religion by those standards, or any other set. But, the Christian Right had valid reasons to believe that the nation’s public schools no longer represented their moral vision. The Supreme Court enshrined secularism (if not secular humanism) in the schools with a series of landmark cases, most famously the Engel v. Vitale decision that declared school prayer unconstitutional in 1962. (Stay tuned for an upcoming roundtable at this blog on David Sehat's new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom, a discussion which will no doubt deal with some of these issues.) Curriculum trends were just as distressing. Though progressive educators since Dewey had desired that schools teach skepticism of established institutions, including organized religion, few teachers actively challenged local norms, especially religious orthodoxies. But this changed in the 1960s. In English classes, teachers increasingly assigned works by minority and women authors that complicated traditional canons. In social studies, students were challenged to clarify their own values, independent of those instilled by their parents. In science, teachers slowly overcame the century-long taboo against teaching evolution. And in health classes, honest discussions of sex came to replace moral exhortations.

A popular anthropology curriculum created for elementary students by psychologist Jerome Bruner in the early 1970s—MACOS, or, “Man: A Course of Study”—exemplified this liberalization of the curriculum. During a MACOS unit students examined the Netsilik Eskimo culture, including their practice of killing the elderly, in order to understand, yet not judge, cultural difference. Such relativism became the norm. The single, authoritative account of American history increasingly gave way to an approach that accentuated multiple perspectives. This was highlighted by a 1991 New York state report, “One Nation, Many Peoples,” that deemphasized assimilation by affirming “a right to cultural diversity” that the authors argued must be reflected in the curriculum. In short, God and Country gave way to something else, call it “secular humanism” if you like, although “multiculturalism” works better.

This is not to say that such liberalization or secularization or multiculturalization took hold everywhere or at all times. In some parts of the country, for example, the traditional patriotic historical narrative has never given way to social “history from the bottom” or a curriculum that deemphasizes American exceptionalism. Not all Americans get acquainted with evolution in school. Some biology teachers in Kansas no doubt still adhere to the 1999 state board of education decision to remove evolution as one of the five unifying themes in the science classroom. Perhaps more importantly, at least since the 1983 A Nation at Risk report, neoconservative educators like William Bennett, Lynne Cheney, Chester Finn, and (until her recent intellectual u-turn) Diane Ravitch, have sought to implement standardization in order to reverse progressive educational trends in place since the 1960s. But, such facts notwithstanding, generally speaking, the way our children learn is much different than it used to be, much more liberal or progressive or multicultural or even secular humanist.

This then leads me to my conclusion: The conservative critique of secular humanist schools should make clear that, like all curriculums, the contemporary school curriculum, despite its implied cultural relativism, proves to be more tolerant of some cultural positions than others. This is normal and good. I think education should be intolerant of some positions. In my perfect world, I would have schools inculcate socialistic values and be prejudiced against values inimical to them.

I contend that the progressive educational establishment is dishonest about their project. A 1987 report put out by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, entitled “Religion in the Curriculum,” found that “references to religion have all but been excised from the public school curriculum.” Progressive educators should come out and say, forcefully, that religion is not welcome in the public schools because it contradicts the values children need to learn to become tolerant citizens in a multicultural society. If they don’t believe this to be their project, and most probably don’t, then there needs to be serious reflection about why religion is hardly taught in the schools, given how important it continues to be in our political culture. Religion is progressive education’s blind spot. Why isn’t it taught about? Is it too controversial? Should something so important be so taboo?

Is Secular Humanism a Religion?

Most historians who study the modern Christian Right discuss, to some extent, how religious conservatives replaced the communist Great Satan with another bogeyman, “Secular Humanism,” a phrase common to the religious right lexicon from the 1970s on. For example, Daniel K. Williams, in his new book, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right, dedicates a sub-section of his chapter on the “Culture Wars in the Carter Years” to “Concerns about ‘Secular Humanism’ in Education.” Williams notes that religious conservatives did not focus on humanism when it first organized in 1941 under the auspices of John Dewey’s American Humanist Association (although, as I show in my book, they certainly focused their ire on Dewey’s educational philosophy). Williams continues: “Yet when social conservatives became concerned about changes in school curricula in the late 1960s, they decided that objectionable programs such as sex education and values clarification classes might be an attempt by the National Education Association and, in the words of conservative Catholic journalist John Steinbacher, John Dewey’s ‘coterie of sycophantic followers’ to ‘make good little Humanists out of the kids’."

But despite such cursory attention to the problem of secular humanism, historians rarely take religious conservative thought about secular humanism very seriously. In other words, what we need is an intellectual history of the Christian Right’s critique of secular humanism. We need this because such a critique has formed the intellectual basis and legal strategy of the Christian Right’s struggles over public education since the 1970s. We need this because doing justice to the Christian Right’s argument allows us to better understand the movement. And we need this because, as I will seek to make clear in my conclusion, the Christian Right's critique of secular humanism obliquely reveals a major blind spot of contemporary progressive education.

Influenced by the 1970s writings of Francis Schaeffer, Rousas John Rushdoony, and Tim LaHaye, the Christian Right argued that the public schools were in violation of the First Amendment because the schools established an official religion: secular humanism. Yep, that’s right, they contended secular humanism, though atheistic, evinced all the traits of a religion and thus the public schools, awash in secular humanism, violated the religious freedom of Christians. Secularists considered this ironic, to say the least, given that the so-called Lemon test put the concepts “secular” and “religious” in direct opposition to one another in that for a statute to be deemed constitutional it must have a secular purpose and its principal effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion.

Nevertheless, the argument that secular humanism was a religion, and that its dominion over the public school curriculum was a violation of the First Amendment, guided conservative legal attempts to remove evolution from biology classrooms or, at least, have it taught alongside some form of creationism (including, recently, intelligent design). Occasionally, the Christian Right found sympathetic judges on this matter, such as Brevard Hand, a federal judge in Alabama who ruled against state schools in a 1987 decision, writing that the secular humanist “omission” of religion “does affect a person’s ability to develop religious beliefs and exercise that religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.” But Hand’s logic was overruled and, generally speaking, the courts have yet to grant legitimacy to this argument. For example, in another 1987 case, Edwards v. Aguillard, the Supreme Court found that a Louisiana law requiring teachers of evolution to give equal time to creationism was unconstitutional because its sole purpose was to “advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind.” Obviously, to make this argument the Court did not conceptualize evolution, which the Christian Right considers integral to secular humanism, as religious doctrine.

But, just because the courts have yet to take the Christian Right seriously when it claims secular humanism is a religion does not mean intellectual historians should do likewise. LaHaye, now famous for authoring the best-selling premillennial dispensationalist Left Behind series, wrote a three-part “Battle” series in the late 1970s and early 1980s that gave his readers a framework for understanding secular humanism. LaHaye dedicated the third book in the series, The Battle for the Public Schools: Humanism’s Threat to our Children (1983) (which arrived quickly on the heels of The Battle for the Mind and The Battle for the Family), to those parents concerned about the decline of the public schools, especially “the growing army within that group who realize that secular humanism, the religious doctrine of our public schools, has brought on this decline.” LaHaye coined the awkward phrase “humanist educrats,” a reference to “the elite heads of many teachers colleges, administrators, and many superintendents and principals who are determined to jam atheistic, amoral humanism, with its socialist world view, into the minds, of our nation’s children and youth, kindergarten through college.” Like so many before and since, he blamed the apparently all-powerful John Dewey. “Dewey made the teaching of humanism exclusive by getting traditional religion and its values expelled from the public schools.” The expulsion of Christianity from the schools, and its replacement by secular humanism, was, for LaHaye, “the origin of rampant drugs, sex, violence, and self-indulgence in our schools, which are not conducive to the learning process.”

LaHaye listed all of the traits that he thought defined a religion, and argued that secular humanism, “the official doctrine of public education,” displayed all of them:

1. A well-defined Bible or “Scriptures”
2. A stated doctrine or dogma
3. An object of worship
4. A priesthood
5. Missionaries
6. Seminaries
7. Temples
8. An established life-style
9. A support base
10. Its roots are grounded in ancient religions
11. Recognition by the Supreme Court as a religion
12. Vigorous opposition to theistic religion
13. A world view
14. Open acknowledgement of its position

Now, I don’t buy the argument that “secular humanism” qualifies as a religion by those standards, or any other set. But, the Christian Right had valid reasons to believe that the nation’s public schools no longer represented their moral vision. The Supreme Court enshrined secularism (if not secular humanism) in the schools with a series of landmark cases, most famously the Engel v. Vitale decision that declared school prayer unconstitutional in 1962. (Stay tuned for an upcoming roundtable at this blog on David Sehat's new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom, a discussion which will no doubt deal with some of these issues.) Curriculum trends were just as distressing. Though progressive educators since Dewey had desired that schools teach skepticism of established institutions, including organized religion, few teachers actively challenged local norms, especially religious orthodoxies. But this changed in the 1960s. In English classes, teachers increasingly assigned works by minority and women authors that complicated traditional canons. In social studies, students were challenged to clarify their own values, independent of those instilled by their parents. In science, teachers slowly overcame the century-long taboo against teaching evolution. And in health classes, honest discussions of sex came to replace moral exhortations.

A popular anthropology curriculum created for elementary students by psychologist Jerome Bruner in the early 1970s—MACOS, or, “Man: A Course of Study”—exemplified this liberalization of the curriculum. During a MACOS unit students examined the Netsilik Eskimo culture, including their practice of killing the elderly, in order to understand, yet not judge, cultural difference. Such relativism became the norm. The single, authoritative account of American history increasingly gave way to an approach that accentuated multiple perspectives. This was highlighted by a 1991 New York state report, “One Nation, Many Peoples,” that deemphasized assimilation by affirming “a right to cultural diversity” that the authors argued must be reflected in the curriculum. In short, God and Country gave way to something else, call it “secular humanism” if you like, although “multiculturalism” works better.

This is not to say that such liberalization or secularization or multiculturalization took hold everywhere or at all times. In some parts of the country, for example, the traditional patriotic historical narrative has never given way to social “history from the bottom” or a curriculum that deemphasizes American exceptionalism. Not all Americans get acquainted with evolution in school. Some biology teachers in Kansas no doubt still adhere to the 1999 state board of education decision to remove evolution as one of the five unifying themes in the science classroom. Perhaps more importantly, at least since the 1983 A Nation at Risk report, neoconservative educators like William Bennett, Lynne Cheney, Chester Finn, and (until her recent intellectual u-turn) Diane Ravitch, have sought to implement standardization in order to reverse progressive educational trends in place since the 1960s. But, such facts notwithstanding, generally speaking, the way our children learn is much different than it used to be, much more liberal or progressive or multicultural or even secular humanist.

This then leads me to my conclusion: The conservative critique of secular humanist schools should make clear that, like all curriculums, the contemporary school curriculum, despite its implied cultural relativism, proves to be more tolerant of some cultural positions than others. This is normal and good. I think education should be intolerant of some positions. In my perfect world, I would have schools inculcate socialistic values and be prejudiced against values inimical to them.

I contend that the progressive educational establishment is dishonest about their project. A 1987 report put out by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, entitled “Religion in the Curriculum,” found that “references to religion have all but been excised from the public school curriculum.” Progressive educators should come out and say, forcefully, that religion is not welcome in the public schools because it contradicts the values children need to learn to become tolerant citizens in a multicultural society. If they don’t believe this to be their project, and most probably don’t, then there needs to be serious reflection about why religion is hardly taught in the schools, given how important it continues to be in our political culture. Religion is progressive education’s blind spot. Why isn’t it taught about? Is it too controversial? Should something so important be so taboo?

History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present

[Warning: Long post. You may want to print. - TL]
----------------------------------------------------

Review of George Cotkin, Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-0-8122-4227-0. 262 pages.

Review by Tim Lacy
Monmouth College


History as "Productive Confusion": Studies of America’s Moral Fiber, 1940-Present


I.

The human soul possesses some kind of an essential imperative to remember moral axioms and lessons from the past. Institutionally, the clearest proof of this is in religion. Revered works in both the Eastern and Western traditions are commonly recited for their proverbs, tales of good and evil, and moral laws. Among individuals, the wise (as well as the pretentious) quote pithy laws and maxims from memory---the simpler, the better. Today's Evangelical Christians and faithful Muslims quote passages from their respective sacred texts, and intellectuals borrow quotes from literature or perhaps even a philosopher. There is a reason why John Bartlett's Familiar Quotations was filled with lines from the Bible and Shakespeare when first published in 1855.[1]

Related to the simple urge to have prescriptions on hand, there exists another, more complex means of thinking through morality and virtue in the Western tradition. Aristotle helped articulate this other approach. The key to this line of thinking is circumstance, no matter where on the timeline the action under consideration occurred. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observed that "every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kinds of things by which it tends to be made worse or better." Continuing and rephrasing another aspect of Aristotle's passage centuries later, Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica, wrote: "A virtuous man acts as he should, and when he should, and so on in respect of other circumstances." And Aquinas continued in two other passages:

"Human actions are good or evil according to circumstances. ...The fullness of [an action's] goodness does not consist wholly in its species, but also in certain additions which accrue to it by reason of certain accidents. And its due circumstances are of this character."

"The vicious man...acts when he should not, or where he should not, and so on with the other circumstances. [2]

If Aquinas and Aristotle are correct, and morality is always and everywhere linked to circumstance, and the study of history, furthermore is the study of circumstance (or context) par excellance, then it is clear that the study of history is absolutely crucial to understanding morality. Indeed, one might argue that by studying history, one is always engaged, at a minimum, in an indirect moral endeavor.

Of course some works of history are more and less specific about their moral goals. The moral message of a historical work depends on the historian's willingness to engage moral questions and problems. And if historians are cautious in the moral arena, their reluctance derives from mistakes of older works where moral judgments were not hard earned. While caution perhaps makes historians seem timid or amoral, it also serves as armor against foolishness and the hazards of subjectivity. One person's evil is often, with good reason, another's grey area.

II.

My first direct interaction with George Cotkin came via e-mail about three years ago. In an unsolicited note, he wrote simply to praise the U.S. Intellectual History weblog as a "wonderful idea." He promised to "spread the news" to his students and colleagues. I relay this because, though I generally refuse my first impressions on principle, the charitable kindness of that missive accurately conveyed something about Cotkin’s character. My next noteworthy interaction was indirect. On a prompt from Wilfred McClay, I read Cotkin's April 2008 article, “History’s Moral Turn,” in the Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 69, no. 2). The essay led a symposium, with responses from Neil Jumonville, Michael O’Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry. Cotkin's final reply to his respondents came in the July 2008 issue of the journal.[3] Off and on for the rest of the year I contemplated how to continue that conversation at the weblog. In the end I did nothing, and regretted it.

My regret was rooted in the fact that I was impressed with Cotkin's call for historians to explicitly take up moral analysis. In the article he cited abundant evidence of a "moral turn" evident in American life---explicit at the time in America's public sphere, particularly in the actions and words of President George Bush (pp. 293-94). His piece resonated deeply with a sense, buttressed perhaps by my Catholicism and reading in theology and philosophy, that historical analysis must necessarily involve trafficking in morality, sometimes deeply. Admittedly, the historian’s moral sensibility is often tempered, and sometimes disguised (intentionally and unintentionally). The discredited legacy of providential history, tempered and corrected by the analytical turn of the late nineteenth century, explains historians' general reluctance to take up explicit moral analysis.

But Cotkin asserted that historians need to participate, and that they "can play an important role in deepening and directing" the moral conversation. He argued that historians have a positive role to play in moving the public "away from simplicity to complexity, from rhetorical heat to cool compassion." Indeed, other academic intellectuals, particularly moral philosophers, use history to discuss morals in their work. Cotkin chided them, however, for "conceptualizations that are deep, but...historical excavations [that] are commonly shallow." He then made the case for historians to pick up the baton:

Historians can, and are at present, beginning to benefit from acquaintance with how philosophers employ and problematize various concepts—intentionality, virtue, character, moral luck, action, and Just War. ...The moral turn is less about imposing our moral and political judgments on historical events and figures. It looks at historical agents and events to warn us that human motivation is complex and confusing, open and constrained. Morality becomes a process of thinking rather than a predigested set of answers. ...History’s moral turn may help create productive confusion, a willingness to recognize that behind all of our moral choices...lurks paradox, tragedy, and irony (p. 294).

Cotkin spoke generally to historians in his article, but it was clear to me that intellectual historians were specifically implicated. Few other subfields engage philosophy, but that was precisely the discipline he underscored.

I could quote endlessly from the Cotkin essay because it lays out the historiography of moral considerations in the history profession: opposition to, proponents of, always been there, impossible to escape, decayed sense of, secularity and morals, and books that specifically addressed moral inquiry and moral problems. I can stop here, however, because the rest of the article was a precis for another larger work due to appear in a few years.

III.

That work, titled Morality’s Muddy Waters: Ethical Quandaries in Modern America and published by Penn Press, made it to my desk last October. The book both exemplifies Cotkin's call to action and exhibits the assertion that history, written and analyzed by historians, is a superb vehicle for the study of morality. As a matter of classification, the book is what some could call a "study in U.S. intellectual history." In other words, it is not a straightforward narrative of intellectual-ethical-moral matters with seamless transitions between chapters and a recurring community of discourse. Cotkin proposes topics, presented chronologically, that underscore moral complexity, competing ethical imperatives, circumstances, the nature and effects of evil, empathy, responsibility, moral clarity, strictures, contingency, contradictions, and character. I was most fascinated by the emotional complexity of morality, both as cause and effect, of the events presented.

As is the case with any accessible history, Cotkin's overall argument appears in various forms throughout the text. One version arises, naturally, on the first page: MMW "rejects...easy certitude and argues that we need instead...a healthy dose of befuddlement, and even when we are assured that our ends are correct and moral...the means to achieve them may be deeply problematic" (p. 1-2). The problem at hand is moral absolutism, and the solution is complexity. Indeed, by way of conclusion, Cotkin presents a most intriguing paradox with his thesis: namely, that less moral certainty leads to more morality. Stated another way, "the best moral decision-making occurs only after internal struggle and the recognition of bewilderment concerning means and ends" (p. 5). But how does he arrive at this end? What evidence is presented?

The specific thesis of MMW, in relation to its historical material, is this: by "allowing moral moments to emerge in their full confusion" we "learn from historical situations...that we...wander through a fog-enshrouded landscape of perplexing issues" (p. 4). Cotkin adds that "the point of history is to muddy the waters of easy moral clarity rather than to confirm our own sense of moral righteousness or political persuasion" (p. 4). In other words, we do not see enough the moral confusion in history, and a "moral turn" in works like MMW will enrich the present by showing us that moral clarity is not a given. It is hard earned, and sometimes real understanding cannot happen until after the fact.

To enact his thesis in a way that is different from other historians who have fruitfully engaged morality (e.g. David Brion Davis, William Cronon, Harry Stout, Drew Gilpin Faust), Cotkin follows through on his exhortation from "The Moral Turn" by incorporating the work of moral philosophers, ethicists, and psychological theorists. This begins in chapter one with a long, fascinating look at Hannah Arendt and her critics. It continues in the next chapter on World War II bombing by exploring combatant/combatant line in theories of total war (e.g. Giulio Douhet) and just war (e.g. A.C. Grayling, Robert Nozick, and Michael Walzer, Avishai Margalit). Having paused on many occasions in the classroom to pose moral questions in relation to the use of atomic weapons, I appreciated Cotkin's interjection of philosophy in a section titled "Can Bombing of Civilians Be Justified?" (pp. 51-54). That section could be lifted, as is, and incorporated as either an in-class reading or an out-of-class reflection.

In successive chapters, Cotkin continues this invaluable task. In tackling My Lai he weaves in the work of psychologists Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, and Robert Jay Lifton, as well as the reflections of Reinhold Niebuhr and the work of Aristotle on the cultivation of character. John Howard Griffin and his famous work, Black Like Me, are examined in relation to the writings of Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, and a host of philosophers who have written on empathy. A key issue for Griffin was whether moral luck can be transformed, via empathy, into some kind of "universalist vision" (p. 120). When Cotkin moves to capital punishment in chapter five, the pro-death penalty thinking of Ernest van den Haag, Isaac Ehrlich, Hans Zeisel, and the Straussian Walter Berns makes an appearance. In opposition, Cotkin refers to the thinking of Karl Menninger, Hugo Adam Bedau, Philip Hallie, and the famous Sister Helen Prejean.

The last, and necessarily most tentative, full chapter focuses on terrorism and the Iraq War, post September 11. Philosophy makes its appearance in the form of a long discussion about "humanitarian intervention" (meaning, of course, the military variety). The theorists and philosophers of interest include Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refugee and neoconservative Zionist, and Ron Dermer. They co-authored a work The Case for Democracy (2004), the book Bush cited as inspirational for his international moral vision (i.e. democratic freedom must be spread at any price). Other intellectuals cited by Cotkin in this chapter, covering various degrees of interventionism versus outright opposition, include Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Samantha Power, David Rieff, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Beinart, and Paul Berman---the last receiving extended treatment. Even though this topic still retains some heat, and it is clear that Cotkin did not support the war, his fairness in relaying the thought processes of the "war hawks" enables a civil tone to pervade the chapter. He only reproves in his final analysis of the characters.

Again, in relation to the aforementioned topics, Cotkin does not merely incorporate the insights of the abovementioned philosophers, ethicists, and psychologists. If he only did that, he would be reproducing the same works as other thinkers who utilize historical examples. Cotkin sets himself apart by following through on his promise to create "productive confusion" by adding more of the context, usually in terms of discussing decision-making and motivations of historical actors, but also by way of regret. He embraces "a tragic and ironic moral stance," and also avoids being judgmental (though the judgments, and regrets, of historical actors are given full play).[4]

IV.

This work engages that still-evolving subfield called the history of emotions---both in its historiography (i.e. approach) and topically in the narrative. Indeed, by invoking the messiness of war, murder, racism, hate, and capital punishment, one can hardly avoid terms like suffering, regret, revenge, morale, repulsion, honor, joy, shock, elation, unsavory, etc. One term, however, that both captured the emotional responses of several of Cotkin's historical eras and evoked an intellectual-religious-emotional response in this reader was "demonic." The word necessarily has fuzzy referential content, but nevertheless draws on our fears and repulsiveness. 'Demonic' captures something of the unreasonableness of radical evil, helping Cotkin articulate what I think is universal revulsion at mid-century's Holocaust and mass murders. It is not surprising, then, that 'demonic' arises primarily in chapter one on "The Problems of Evil," which focuses on Hannah Arendt. This, indeed, is the chapter that opens up the language, terms, and problems that haunt the rest of the book.

Cotkin's goal is to parse the depths of evil. To his credit, he does not pretend to have an answer, or answers, about why evil exists---the metaphysics of evil. Rather, through Arendt as a kind of avatar for his own views, Cotkin gets at the depths of evil achieved both within and outside of social and political structures. The primary structure of concern at mid-century is totalitarianism. Arendt starts with Kant's idea of "radical evil" in The Origins of Totalitarianism (pp. 17-19), intensifies it, and then clarifies further in Eichmann in Jerusalem by adding "the banality of evil" (pp. 23-24). To help Arendt and himself in grappling with people Hitler, Stalin, and Gary Gilmore later, as well as events like My Lai, Cotkin interjects the mysterious element of the 'demonic' into his studies (pp. 16, 79, 136). Here is a crucial passage (bolds mine):

Arendt...painted herself into a narrow corner. If the crimes of totalitarianism were as original and immense as she averred, then could they be anything other than demonic? She never hesitated to describe them throughout Origins...as "monstrous." But to use the term demonic would be to situate evil as mysterious, perhaps outside the realm of rational explanation and the march of worldly events. The demonic resisted laws of nature and the wills of men. Even strong structures of representative democracy and public debate, it seemed, were futile against a demonic entity. ...Arendt was onto something when she remarked on the mysterious nature of evil as something not "humanly understandable." ....Radical evil, despite her best attempts, seemed to slip through her interpretive structure. Arendt's frustrations grew just after publication of the book, when she admitted , "What radical evil is I don't know" (p. 22).

In other words, because totalitarianism demolished the principles of "freedom, contingency, and choice"---principles on which Kant's and Arendt's views of radical evil rested---other concepts had to be introduced in a world where "evil had assumed a new face." But Arendt left her version "grounded...in the institutions and ideology of totalitarianism" (p. 19). Her only revision was to introduce "banality" as an explanatory trope for Eichmann's "less than demonic" position as a "dedicated bureaucrat" lacking "independence of mind" (p. 24).

But the idea of the 'demonic' raises a host of other issues. From where does the idea arise? Is it a universal concept? How can one discuss the topic without an in-depth study of Western theology or metaphysics? Mortimer J. Adler once asserted that a philosopher could posit the existence of angels, meaning the possibility of spiritual intelligences, or "bodies without minds," without buying into Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Adler argued that it was of a piece with general popular fascination about the idea of "superhuman intelligence," and suggested that fascination could be called "theology-fiction" or "philosophy-fiction" (instead of the old term, "angelology").[5] Adler buttressed his assertion by noting that many philosophers in Western history have speculated the possible role of angels in the universe, including Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Descartes, and others. Studying angels was about studying intelligences that were less than Divine (even if that divinity constituted only the necessary God of the philosophers) but greater than human. As for Satan and demons, however, Adler asserts that they are products of Western religious dogma, and shared by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (though Christianity has special assertions about Satan in relation to Jesus Christ).[6]

I relay this apparent digression because Cotkin does discuss religion, particularly Christianity, in Morality's Muddy Waters. Topics that arise on the latter include born agains, Catholicism, Dorothy Day, fundamentalism, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Denis de Rougemont. For the most part, Cotkin limits his discussion of these figures and topics to the historical actors at hand: Arendt's views of Rougemont, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Christianity is broached, Dorothy Day's influence on John Howard Griffin, fundamentalists' views on capital punishment and retributive justice, and the religious backgrounds of My Lai soldiers. With the exception of Arendt's reaction to Rougement's 1944 book, The Devil's Snare, Cotkin does not spend much time delving into theology (p. 15-16).

This is either the great strength or great weakness in Cotkin's analysis. As a weakness, unlike his insertions from philosophers and psychologists throughout the book, the relative absence of theology diminishes the real contributions of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers. If religion has something substantial to say to us about the human condition, as a great majority of the world believes it does, then it would behoove the intellectual historian dealing in morality to read some of that speculation into the text. In the case of MMW, where most of Cotkin's decision-makers are operating in something of a Judeo-Christian context, whether by violation of or perceived adherence to their faith, that means doing more with Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant theology. Perhaps theological speculation about demonic evil, given dispassionately, would at least help us understand something about the contexts in which these evil characters saw themselves? Would this also help us understand how the masses processed and received news of these atrocities of hatred, murder, mass murder, and international humanitarianism?

I fully recognize the dangers of a professional historian engaging in this kind of speculation. How would colleagues perceive the work? Would an academic press accept the book? What is the line between moral speculation and moralizing? How does one discuss the meaning of 'demonic' without getting past knee-jerk reactions? Cotkin's work is about "productive confusion." Does theological speculation move us into contentious, unproductive territory? And then, in relation to America's Judeo-Christian culture, how does one properly navigate the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish lines of division? Then again, if competing ethical imperatives are an important topic, what raises the bar on moral competition more than religious divisions?

It is not hard to see how avoiding in-depth theological speculation also strengthens the book. For one, it keeps Christianity from dominating MMW, making Cotkin's moral analysis accessible to a wider audience. His more secular study of the idea of evil in recent history results in an unpretentious exploration of the confusion of the moments at hand. By avoiding easy answers, especially those amenable to particular religious dogma, Cotkin maintains the humility, or "moral modesty," he sought to model in the book (p. 205). Indeed, early in the text he wrote:

Some readers may chafe at talk of evil as too tinged with religious overtones or weighted by heavy metaphysical baggage. It resists explanation and therefore obfuscates reality or explains away horror---all dangers, to be sure. (p. 7).

Cotkin listened to this inner warning, and stuck with philosophical and psychological contributions to understanding the events and topics he chose. Based on the fairness of the rest of the text, I believe Cotkin could have successfully navigated a few pages of theology in each chapter. Those few pages, however, would have constituted a tremendous amount of work, especially when exploring work outside one's faith tradition. Even so, in MMW as it is, there is nothing wrong with leading us to the brink. Perhaps by being led to the edge, the reader may be inspired to think through his or her own knowledge, or lack of knowledge, about radical evil in the world.

V.

When "The Moral Turn" appeared in 2008, I mentioned that it led a symposium with four interlocutors. It is worth revisiting some of the points made there now that Cotkin has provided a book-length example of his call. None of the respondents, of course, had access to Morality's Muddy Waters. Even so, all four respondents made solid points about the study of morality in history and asked poignant questions.

Neil Jumonville rightly reminded readers that many mid-century intellectual historians---Richard Hofstadter, David Potter, and Louis Hartz---were excellent models of "complexity, nuance, and contingency" on moral matters. Michael O'Brien asserted that "engagement with morality has been fairly constant in historical scholarship since almost any period one might care to name." He doubted "that the dialogue Cotkin wishes to encourage between historians and moral philosophers is capable of being sustained." O'Brien also warns against prescription and moralizing. In my view, Cotkin avoids those pitfalls. He also proves in the pages of MMW that an in-text dialogue between historians and moral philosophers can be sustained. Lewis Perry reminded Cotkin that yet another intellectual historian, John Higham, had also encouraged historians, in a 1962 essay, to develop a moral voice obtained from historical study. Titled "Beyond Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic," Perry cited the Higham essay as taking a stand against false detachment and objectivity. The present sometimes demands historical moral reflection. I have not read the Higham essay, but it seems, to some extent, to have prefigured Cotkin's call.[7]

As I have discovered is often the case, James Livingston's response proved most provocative. He flat out denied that a "moral turn" in history was necessary because "the grammar of American history has always been determined by moral problems." Livingston went on to assert, thinking he had put Cotkin in some kind of a headlock, that the early modern, or Enlightenment, project of narrative construction necessarily consisted of agents, historians and otherwise, articulating their moral points. Livingston tightens his hold by pointing out the cultural pervasiveness, in history and the general public today, of moral considerations. I think this misses Cotkin's point. He did not dispute that moral considerations, simple and otherwise, abound. Rather, Cotkin called for an explicit, conscious engagement with moral complexity, or productive confusion, and moral philosophy in the text. In other words, if historians have been and always will be moral agents, they have not always engaged the subject with the complexity, fairness, depth, and explicit sense of purpose exhibited in MMW. [8] I think Livingston, in the end, would be happier with the product of Cotkin's book than he was with Cotkin's proposal in the Journal of the History of Ideas. Then again, he might not.

VI.

Though the presidential administration that haunts the end of Morality's Muddy Waters is gone, questions remain about the motivations, ideological and otherwise, for going to war in Iraq. Just this week an exclusive Guardian story revealed that a key source from Germany, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi and code-named "Curveball," lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to boost his personal prospects of success in civilian life. It was al-Janabi's testimony that floated to the top of America's intelligence system, to the point that it anchored Colin Powell's infamous U.N. testimony before the war's start.[9] Here is a CNN story that elaborates:



Even with this revelation, what is interesting to me is that Cotkin's analysis of the Iraqi War stands. Why? Because Cotkin aimed at the moral roots and simplistic black-and-white thinking, or good-versus-evil drama, that drove President Bush. The fact that the intelligence was fuzzy only proves that ideology drove the war. Furthermore, its same kind of thinking that inspires the Tea Party and other politically powerful conservatives.

Of course that wing of the political spectrum is not unopposed. President Barack Obama exhibits an understanding of moral complexity, and his name arises in a few spots in the text. Cotkin is heartened by President Obama's admiration of the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly in relation to the latter's imperative that sin, pain, evil, unexpected consequences, and humility are necessary topics in relation to foreign and domestic policy (p. 201).

Even so, we cannot be reminded enough—whether by friends, relatives, ministers, teachers, colleagues, or otherwise—that moral progress will not be achieved without embracing complexity. Cotkin is not naive to the fact that we must eventually act, but he implores us to abhor anti-intellectualism and embrace circumspection. We must aspire to a full understanding of moral complications, potential and real. With that, Morality's Muddy Waters stands tall as a model of timely, professional engagement on a topic that concerns a wide variety of the populace. We need more historical works that convey the "productive confusion" Cotkin provides.

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*A special thanks to Paul Murphy and David Veenstra for their comments on this review.

[1] Justin Kaplan, ed. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little Brown, 2002).

[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by W.D. Ross, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 8, Aristotle: II (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 350 (II-3); Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. by Father Laurence Shapcote, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Vol. 17, Aquinas: I (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 695-96 (II-I.18.3).

[3] The JHI symposium is located on pages 293-337. The full citation for Cotkin’s reply is as follows: “A Conversation About Morals and History,” JHI 69 (June 2008): 493-97.

[4] From Cotkin's reply to the Symposium, 496-97.

[5] Mortimer J. Adler, The Angels and Us (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1982), x, 3-4.

[6] Ibid., 83-85.

[7] Symposium, 320, 324-25, 334-35; Cotkin, "Conversation," 493-97.

[8] Symposium, Livingston, "The Return of the Self-Made Man: A Response to Cotkin," 327-31.

[9] Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, "Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war," Guardian, February 15, 2011. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war. Accessed on February 21, 2011.