Ending the Revolution

I'd had a couple 4th of July posts in mind for yesterday, but didn't have time to actually put anything up, so here it goes...

The 4th of July is the primary patriotic holiday of our country, and yet the event it commemorates (the publication of the Declaration of Independence) was just the first step on our road to nationhood. Although the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Articles of Confederation were not adopted until November of 1777 and were not ratified until March of 1781 -- the year that the Revolutionary War was finally won, with the surrender of General Cornwallis in Yorktown. Yet the Articles turned out to be a fairly unworkable practical form of government, and Shay's Rebellion of 1786-1787 demonstrated that to many of the new country's citizens, armed revolt was still a standard form of political expression.

The ratification of the US Constitution in March of 1789 represented a significant step, creating a stronger central government with more clearly defined powers, and a model for federal constitutions to this day. Yet, whether the words on paper could be translated into a lasting and stable government remained yet to be seen.

To my mind, one of the major milestones was reached in 1794, when President Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

The origins of the conflict rested in 1791, when the federal government, having assumed the states debts that had resulted from fighting the Revolutionary War, levied a tax on distilled spirits. In a move that was arguably quite unjust, the tax was $0.06/gal for large producers, but $0.08/gal for small producers, many of whom were small farmers in the far western areas of the 13 states for whom distilling grain into spirits was the only practical way to get their produce to market -- given the lack of transportation for getting grain to the eastern cities. The taxes stood a good change of putting many small farmers under, and loosely organized groups of revolutionaries first mounted protests, then began to rob the US Mail, disrupt federal courts, harass or attack tax collectors and even threatened to attack Pittsburgh, which was the westernmost big city in the area of the uprising.

On August 7th 1794, President Washington invoke the Militia Act to call up an army composed of state militias. He personally took command of this force of 13,000 along with Alexander Hamilton and General Henry Lee. With this force (nearly as large as the entire continental army during the Revolutionary War) they quickly supressed the revolt. Several ringleaders were sentenced to death for treason, but Washington pardoned them. Many of the small distillers moved out to Kentucky and Tennessee, which were essentially outside of federal jurisdiction, and settled down to become the most famous US distilling region. The tax on spirits was repealed in 1802.

In acting forcefully and bringing an end to trend towards local insurrections, Washington made it clear that politics, not armed rebellion would be the driving force in American history. In order for the rule of law to take root, the government must have a monopoly on organized military force -- lesson that the fledgling Palestinian state has yet to learn. The events of 1794 put our country well on the road to political stability and lasting peace.

Evolution in the Classroom

Never a fan of beaurocracy, I have never been impressed by statewide teaching standards, but it seems they do have their uses. For one Georgia teacher, citing standards allowed her to redirect the concern of parents and administrators about teaching evolution in her high school biology class to the state level, rather than having to fight the battle again and again herself:

"I thought I was going crazy," said Ms. New, who has won several outstanding teacher awards and is one of only two teachers at her school with national board certification. The other is her husband, Ward.

"It takes a lot to stand up and be willing to have people angry at you," she said. But Ms. New did. She repeatedly urged her supervisors to read Georgia's science standards, particularly S7L5, which calls for teaching evolution.

On May 5, 2005, she filled out a complaint to initiate a grievance under state law, writing that she was being "threatened and harassed" though "I am following approved curriculum." She also wrote, "If we could get together within 24 hours and settle this and I feel I have support to teach the standards, then I would tear it up."

Suddenly the superintendent was focused on standards. Mr. Moye called the state department's middle school science supervisor and asked about evolution. "Obviously the State Department of Education supports evolution," Mr. Moye said in an interview.

Obviously? So why call? "I wanted to be sure," he said. "Let's make sure what these standards are."

He added: "I feel strongly about the Georgia standards. I think it's very important. Obviously we'll teach standards; that's the law. We will do everything in accordance with the Department of Education."

And parents' rights? "I explained to parents that we're following the state standards," Mr. Moye said. "I said, 'You can believe what you want, but we have to teach the standards.' If they're upset, they can take it up on the state level."

The superintendent, principal and Ms. Greene all praised Ms. New's ability. "The lady's an excellent teacher," Mr. Moye said, adding, "Maybe she felt like the school system didn't support her. We certainly support her."

Ms. New said that from then on, including the entire 2005-06 school year, she had no problem teaching evolution. "What saved me, was I didn't have to argue evolution with these people. All I had to say was, 'I'm following state standards.' "

All other things aside, it seems to me that there's a value to knowing about a controversial topic like evolution, even if you don't yourself ascribe to it.

Caveat Emptor

We went to Half-Price Books yesterday looking for birthday presents for a party today, and were reminded why we don't often step inside its shelved walls -- it's too hard to escape unscathed. Along with the two presents, we emerged with four books for our own family:

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (old hardcover with library cover)
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (Everyman edition)
Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White (1942 hardcover, in excellent condition)
The Illustrated Book of Myths by Philip Neal (Dorling Kindersley)

All wonderful finds! Most things at Half-Price Books are so reasonably priced that we find ourselves saying, "Well, one more won't hurt..."

RequiesCAT in Pace

Our condolences to the family of the Opinionated Homeschooler on the death of their cat, Big Dave.

He soon had a neighborhood reputation as scourge of the canines. Once, a woman let her leashed toy dog wander up well onto our lawn to do its doggy business. I was just opening the door to ask her not to do that, when a large gray blur streaked out of the bushes and went for the dog. Big Dave was all over that dog like a cheap suit. The woman stared, uncomprehending, while I grabbed for what looked like the midsection of the cat and pulled him off the poor trembling creature. I apologized--"He doesn't like dogs in his yard"--she apologized, we removed our respective animals from the scene; I'm guessing she probably curbed the dog properly from then on.

I hope they say that of me when I'm gone

Review: Guests of the Sheik

Taking advantage of my long weekend, I just finished reading Guests of the Sheik, An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Not nearly as dry as its subtitle suggests, the book is the story of the author's 'honeymoon' in a Shiite tribal settlement circa 1958, or as the intro describes is:

I spent the first two years of my married life in a tribal settlement on the edge of a village, in southern Iraq. My husband, a social anthropologist, was doing research for his doctorate from the University of Chicago. This book is a personal narrative of these years... The village, the tribe and all of the people... are real as are the incidents. However, I have changed the names so that no one may be embarrassed, although I doubt that any of my women friends in the village will ever read my book.

The writing is quite transparent, and you come away knowing little about the author and her husband's opinions (you briefly hear about her husband arguing with some of the men in the village who are convinced Marxism represents the ideal future for Iraq, and there are some friends of theirs who are missionaries whom she visits several times), which in some ways simply serves to make it seem more as if you yourself are immersed in the tribal world in which she lived for two years. In this sense, it's a very good way to get a feeling for what tribal Islamic society was like in Iraq fifty year ago, without the layers of editorializing that most authors seem to feel is necessary in such exercises. Though the author clearly prefers her own culture to that she is immersed in, this is not a book about the suffering of Islamic women, or the possible liberation of Islamic women, or how Islamic women are really better off than their western peers. It's simply about what these particular women's lives were like, a life which is in many ways very alien to Westerners, and yet which clearly is set within the same universal human nature which we all share.

If you have an interest in everyday Islamic culture, this book is well worth reading. My only two frustrations with it are that a) it's fifty years old, and I very much wish I could find something similar written within the last ten or better yet within the last two years and b) a more detailed follow-up chapter would have been really interesting. The author's husband, at least, returned to the village for a time ten years later, and the author remained in correspondence with several of the women in the village. Given some of the ways in which Iraqi culture and politics changed over the ensuing fifty years, I've be really curious to know how those changes played out at the ground level, in this particular Shiite village.

Two things particularly struck me. One was that alien customs often aren't as much so as they seem. The author is surprised at the how strongly the women she meets feel about only marrying men within their own tribe. However the reason gradually becomes clear, in her descriptions of the verious engagements that take place. Since in traditional Islamic culture (at least as played out in that time and place) a man and woman were not supposed to meet face to face until their wedding day, marrying a man from your own tribe gave a woman a back-door way of selecting her own husband. Since boys and girls of the tribe all played together until age 11 or 12, a woman would know all the men close to her own age fairly well. A number of the women in the tribe had specific men among their set of old playmates that they had picked out as a hoped-for future spouse, an arrangment which could then be made by the woman's family.

The other insight that struck me was the extent to which it is very hard to overcome cultural barriers. Near the end, when the author and her husband have moved to Bagdad to do some library research before leaving Iraq, the sheik whose guest they have been comes to visit Bagdad and invites them out to a Western nightclub. The sheik vacations in Lebanon in the summers and considers himself able to appreciate Western ways. Yet he sees them through his own lens of interpretation. Seeing the couples dancing to American music, he remarks of the shamelessness of the tarts cavorting with their clients. The author is on the point of explaining that these are just ordinary people, many of them married couples that the author know from the embassy and various engineering firms, when she realizes this would really do very little good. The sheik already has set very clearly in his mind what constitutes a tart, and claiming these women as acquintances will only diminish them in his eyes, not exonerate the dancing couples. By living according to tribal custom for eighteen months, they have shown themselves to be respectable people in the eyes of the village, but that hasn't served to make the villagers think any better of western culture, merely convince them that a few westerners are decent because they follow tribal customs.

Blog Lite?

Darwin has today and tomorrow off, so posting may be light until Wednesday as we do some family-ish stuff together. Such as lying around wondering how all our energy managed to transfer itself to the girls, watching our Netflix stuff so we can finally send it back, bottling beer, and some home improvement. Perhaps we'll put up something of substance soon, but I give no guarantees.

Until then, I'll leave you with Eleanor's favorite joke.

A duck walks into a bar and asks, "You got any grapes?" The bartender looks up from drying glasses and says, "No, and we don't serve ducks here. Get out."

The next day, the duck comes back and says, "Got any grapes?" The bartender says, "No, we don't got any grapes, and I told you we don't serve your kind here. Get out!"

The next day the duck shows up again and asks, "Got any grapes?" The bartender starts to get mad. "No!" he shouts. "And I don't serve ducks! If you come in and ask for grapes again, I'm going to nail your webbed feet to the bar!" And he throws the duck out.

The next day the duck walks in and asks, "Got any nails?"
"No," says the bartender shortly.
"Good," says the duck. "Got any grapes?"

Calculated to crack up a four-year-old!

To Breed or Not to Breed

We're enjoying a quiet holiday weekend here in the Darwin household, but so that ye may know we (or at least our tireless source of leads) are not slacking, here's an interesting article from Commentary Magazine about the trend towards childlessness among married couples in the developed world.

Though you've doubtless seen such things here before, this one is interesting (among other things) in that it provides some primary source material quotes from ancient sources during the Greek and Roman demographic collapses, when the elites lost the will to reproduce.

Ours, moreover, is hardly the only age or civilization to experience a demographic crisis. “In our own time,” wrote Polybius in roughly 150 B.C.E., “the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birthrate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit.” The reason for this decline, he believed, was decadence. “For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear children born to them, or at most as a rule one or two of them, . . . the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.”