How Corporate America Invented Christian America In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.
Sam Shepard: 'America is on its way out as a culture' | Stage Sunday evening in Santa Fe and Sam Shepard and I are sitting at a downtown bar, drinking tequila and eating tacos. The light is low, the night warm and the conversation darts and dives while the bartender rattles the cocktail shaker and behind us the tables begin to fill. Already we have covered several pressing matters, including the merits of Chekhov ("I'm not crazy about him as a playwright… why are you going to bring a dead bird onstage?"), the qualities of greyhound piss ("like champagne" apparently), and the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis: "The way she turns into a bird! Unbelievable. But now our conversation has turned to the subject of True West, the play Shepard wrote in 1980, now revived at the Tricycle theatre in London. "I think Phillip's production is great," he says this evening. Shepard saw Seymour Hoffman a week before he died of a heroin overdose in February and says he had no inkling anything was awry. He pauses. At the moment, he is writing his first novel.
A Short History of White Racism in the Two-Party System | The Weekly Sift If you’ve seen the Lincoln movie, maybe you’re still walking around with this bit of cognitive dissonance: In 1864, the Democrats are the party of slavery and the Republicans the party of emancipation and racial justice. What’s up with that? How did we get from there to here? The story is doubly worth telling because Republicans like Ann Coulter and Jonah Goldberg have been misrepresenting it so grossly. A good place to start is the presidential election of 1860, which brings Lincoln to power and convinces Southern whites (the only people who can vote in the South in 1860) that secession is their best chance to maintain slavery*. Lincoln gets only 40% of the vote, but in a four-way race (the Democratic Convention split over whether the platform should endorse the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision) that’s enough to win. 1876 electoral map 1896 electoral map 2012 electoral map The “solid South” stays Democratic through 1944, when FDR carries Mississippi with 94% of the vote. Phillips writes:
Malcolm X Was Right About America Malcolm X about two weeks before he was murdered in 1965. AP/Victor Boynton NEW YORK—Malcolm X, unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,” Malcolm said. King was able to achieve a legal victory through the civil rights movement, portrayed in the new film “Selma.” “Sometimes, I have dared to dream … that one day, history may even say that my voice—which disturbed the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency—that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even fatal catastrophe,” Malcolm wrote. The integration of elites of color, including Barack Obama, into the upper echelons of institutional and political structures has done nothing to blunt the predatory nature of empire. “We’re anti-evil, anti-oppression, anti-lynching,” Malcolm said. If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page.
Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party | The Weekly Sift Tea Partiers say you don’t understand them because you don’t understand American history. That’s probably true, but not in the way they want you to think. Late in 2012, I came out of the Lincoln movie with two historical mysteries to solve: How did the two parties switch places regarding the South, white supremacy, and civil rights? The first question took some work, but yielded readily to patient googling. Who really won the Civil War? That sounded crazy until I read about Reconstruction. And oh, those blacks Lincoln emancipated? Here’s what my teachers’ should have told me: “Reconstruction was the second phase of the Civil War. It wasn’t just that Confederates wanted to continue the war. The Lost Cause. But eventually the good men of the South could take it no longer, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to protect themselves and their communities. A still from The Birth of a Nation That telling of history is now named for its primary proponent, William Dunning. The first modern war.
The United States of fear: Alec Soth photographs the death of community in America | Art and design In 2000, the US academic Robert D Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. His thesis was that Americans had become increasingly insular, disconnected from family members, friends and neighbours and disinterested in joining clubs or social groups. Individualism had replaced community and though, for instance, more Americans were visiting bowling alleys than ever before, many were doing so alone. Bowling Alone is one of two starting points for Alec Soth’s Songbook. Soth’s Songbook is a lyrical meditation on community and its antithesis – the American urge for individualism. As such, Songbook revisits themes explored in his previous books, Sleeping By the Mississippi, Niagara and the rare-as-hen’s-teeth Broken Manual, all of which evoke an America in which individuals often seem lost or estranged from mainstream society (if, indeed, there is such a thing any more). Soth is always a mischievous onlooker.
KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT Lawrence Kohlberg was a moral philosopher and student of child development. He was director of Harvard's Center for Moral Education. His special area of interest is the moral development of children - how they develop a sense of right, wrong, and justice. Kohlberg observed that growing children advance through definite stages of moral development in a manner similar to their progression through Piaget's well-known stages of cognitive development. These conclusions have been verified in cross-cultural studies done in , , , , , , , , and . An outline of these developmental stages follows: FOCUS: Self AGES: Up to 10-13 years of age, most prisoners Behavior motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain. STAGE 1: PUNISHMENT AND OBEDIENCE: Might Makes Right Avoidance of physical punishment and deference to power. response of physical retaliation. determine its goodness or badness. holocaust who were simply "carrying out orders" under threat of punishment, illustrate that others? peers. "nice." here.
Home truths: the secret lives of other people’s houses The plumber: Kate, 39, Cambridge If I could ask all clients to do just one thing, it would be: “Make me a cup of tea.” You’d be amazed how many people don’t do it. I did one job where the husband was at home in the mornings and he’d make himself a pot of fresh coffee that smelt amazing. You might think of bathrooms as quite an intimate space, but I can generally tell more about people from walking through their front hall than I can from their bathroom. If you don’t clear up, then it does make my job that much harder. The cleaner: Jessie, 48, Devon You are always on your guard. By the time I left, they seemed to trust me. I would much rather work for families from old money. I’ve never been tempted to have a snoop around. I found a loaded shotgun under the bed once. The private chef: Luke, 38, London My day starts at about 11am. There’s Mr and Mrs X and their three children, who are nine, four and two. It’s weird. The personal assistant: Kate, 40, London The landlord: Neil, 40, Surrey
Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice Social justice, as a concept, has existed for millennia — at least as long as society has had inequity and inequality and there were individuals enlightened enough to question this. When we study history, we see, as the American Transcendentalist Theodore Parker famously wrote, “the arc [of the moral universe]…bends towards justice.” And this seems relatively evident when one looks at history as a single plot line. Things improve. And, if history is read as a book, the supporters of social justice are typically deemed the heroes, the opponents of it the villains. And perhaps it’s my liberal heart speaking, the fact that I grew up in a liberal town, learned US history from a capital-S Socialist, and/or went to one of the most liberal universities in the country, but I view this is a good thing. But millennials are grown up now — and they’re angry. Many will understand this term I used — millennial social justice advocates — as a synonym to the pejorative “social justice warriors.”
Joaquin Phoenix: ‘In real life, evil seduces’ | Film Joaquin Phoenix sucks on a cigarette and paces the room like a skittish fox examining nooks for potential boltholes. There aren’t any. It’s the 20th floor, the window is sealed and I’m standing in the doorway. He turns. He continues pacing, oblivious to the leather armchair, pausing to take in the view of downtown Los Angeles on a sunlit, winter afternoon. Known to be sensitive and at times temperamental, in 2010 he made the mockumentary I’m Still Here, in which he renounced acting, grew a Unabomber beard and shambled around as a mumbling, wannabe hip-hop artist. He eventually surrenders to the armchair and proves affable, thoughtful and grounded as he ruminates in a slightly raspy voice on the perils of awards, the difference between good and bad acting, why he has yet to appear in a superhero film, whether he’s a muse – and why stardom begets insincerity. There’s clearly still plenty in the tank because he says this with passion. He ponders this. He lights up another cigarette.
How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media's Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies | Popehat American journalists and pundits rely upon vigorous free speech, but are not reliable supporters of it. They both instruct and reflect their fickle audience. It's easy to spot overt calls for censorship from the commentariat. Those have become more common in the wake of both tumultuous events (like the violence questionably attributed to the "Innocence of Muslims" video, or Pamela Geller's "Draw Muhammad" contest) and mundane ones (like fraternity brothers recorded indulging in racist chants). But it's harder to detect the subtle pro-censorship assumptions and rhetorical devices that permeate media coverage of free speech controversies. Fortunately, this ain't rocket science. When you see the media using these tropes, ask yourself: what normative message is the author advancing, and does it have any basis in law? Trope One: "Hate Speech" Example: "hate speech is excluded from protection. dont [sic] just say you love the constitution . . . read it." Example: "It’s not free speech.