Month: March 2011

historian in the United States is either currently, or has been at some point during their career, a member. Oh, and one more thing worth noting about Cronon.  He’s not an asshole.  You see, academia in some ways is no different than any other profession; there’s no shortage of ambitious, power-hungry, insecure, selfish, pompous wretches at the top.  But I’ve been in the field as a graduate student and a professor for almost twenty years now, and I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about Cronon.  I don’t know him personally, but we move in similar circles, attend some of the same conferences, and have numerous mutual acquaintances.  Academia’s a very small world, and so far as I can tell, Cronon doesn’t just look the way you’d expect a professor would, with his beard, glasses, and underwhelming physique, but he also behaves the way you’d hope a professor would: with professionalism, patience, and kindness.

1934 National Industrial Recovery Act, was inspired more by Mussolini’s corporatism than Keynes.  FDR’s overarching goal was to save capitalism from itself, not to destroy it. But you wouldn’t know that judging by what his critics said about him. Voices on the right such as The American Liberty League and Father Charles Coughlin lambasted the president.  They called him a socialist and claimed his programs were not just bad policy, but downright immoral.  Many critics framed their attack in moral terms because to them, government debt and most public expenditures on the poor were just that: immoral.  None other than former President Herbert Hoover railed against the New Deal as immoral and called for Americans to, “re-establish morals as the first objective of government.”

too soon, fundamentalist Islamists would gain power not only there, but throughout much of the region. The third face was the wizard, conniving behind the curtain.  Neo-Conservatives had developed a calculated strategy to rid the region of governments with a history of hostility toward us, a half-dozen former Soviet-client states leftover from the Cold War.  First Iraq, then Syria, eventually all the way to Iran.  Knock those dominos down one at a time if need be.