The more I read by Temple Bailey, the more unsure I am about how I feel about her books. Judy was delightful. Glory of Youth had its moments, but mostly I found it kind of irritating. The Trumpeter Swan is never irritating, exactly, but it’s definitely never delightful, either.

It’s one of those post-WWI novels, where every young man in sight has gone and been heroic overseas, and now they’re home and they don’t know what to do with themselves. And The Trumpeter Swan is a lot more explicit about that theme than a lot of books are, but underneath all of the complaining about how unappreciated the returning soldiers are, there’s not a lot going on. I mean, it’s theoretically a WWI novel, but it’s actually one of those books where an assortment of young people get paired off.

The main young people, I suppose, are Randy Paine and Becky Bannister. They belong to neighboring aristocratic Virginian families, and, predictably, Randy has always been in love with Becky. But he’s poor — he returns home after the war to find that his mother has turned their home into a boarding house — and she’s rich — semi-secretly an heiress, actually — so he doesn’t think he can tell her. Meanwhile, there’s George Dalton, rich, handsome, dissolute, and probably not quite as excitingly dangerous as he’s meant to be. He doesn’t know that Becky’s rich, although, to be fair, his intentions to trifle with her affections probably wouldn’t be affected if he did. Anyway, because this is kind of a predictable book, he gets in over his head and actually falls in love with Becky, although not until she’s realized that he’s kind of an ass. There are a couple of nice bits when he finds out how wealthy she is and is sort of humiliated, but there should be more.

Meanwhile, Randy finds himself a nice job selling cars, and, because otherwise this book would not be able to maintain pretensions to being a Significant Novel about soldiers returning from the war, he decides that he also wants to write a Significant Novel about soldiers returning from the war. This is entertaining because a) it’s fun to try and figure out how similar the novels he’s writing is to the one he’s in (with which it shares a title), and b) his attitude is so casual, all, “yeah, I never actually tried to write before, but I’ve always wanted to, and I’m pretty sure I can.” And then of course the first thing he writes is amazing, and he’s lionized by the entire New York publishing industry.

Randy and Becky are fine, I suppose. Of the three eventual couples, they aren’t the least interesting, anyway; that honor goes to Mary Flippin and her secret husband, who we’re eventually completely unsurprised to be told is Becky’s cousin Truxton Beaufort.

Madge MacVeigh and Major Mark Prime aren’t terribly interesting as a couple either, but Madge is pretty interesting as a character, so they get points for that. Madge is George Dalton’s sometime girlfriend, and, like him, she’s rich and indolent. Unlike him, she longs for the simple life, although no one believes her when she says so, and it’s hard to blame them, because she tans her skin to match her hair and always dresses in mauve. She manages to pull off being artificial and forthright at the same time, which I found to be pretty impressive.

Madge is one of only three characters in this slightly overpopulated book that I ended

Lauren, Publicity Assistant

If you haven’t already heard, unfriend is the New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year. In honor of this announcement, I surveyed Facebook users across the country about why they would choose to unfriend someone.

1. They’ve turned into a robot.
“People send me Green Patches all the time,” said Jane Kim, a television research assistant in NYC. “It’s annoying. And that’s all I ever get from them. Clearly, they’re not interested in actually being friends.”

That’s because your friends are robots, Jane. Marketing robots. These are the friends you never hear from except when they want you to join a cause, sign a petition, donate money, become a fan of a product, or otherwise promote something. Farmville robots are increasingly becoming problems as well, but are not yet grounds for unfriending.

2. You don’t know who they are.
“A few days ago, Facebook suggested I reconnect with a friend whose name I didn’t recognize,” said Jessica Kay, a lawyer in Kansas City. “She’d recently gotten married, but I hadn’t even known she was engaged. I’ll probably unfriend her later. Along with some random people I met at parties in college.”

“You’re tired of seeing [that mystery name] your newsfeed,” said Jonathan Evans, a contract specialist in Seattle. “You haven’t talked to that person since the random class you took together, and you’ll probably never talk to them again.”

3. They broke your heart.
Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City, shared that his number one reason to unfriend someone is “because they just broke up with you on Facebook.”

So, maybe they didn’t break your heart. But if the only reason you were friends on Facebook is because you two were somehow involved, it might be time to play some Beyoncé, crack open the Haagen-Dazs and click “Remove from Friends”.

4. You don’t like them anymore.
In the early years of Facebook, users would  friend everyone their dorm, everyone from high school, and every person they had ever shared a sandbox with. But now, many people are finding they no longer like a number of their friends, and spend time creating limited profiles, customizing the newsfeed, and avoiding Facebook chat.

Teresa Hynes, a student at St. John’s University, pointed out that it’s silly to be concerned one of these people might find out you’ve unfriended them and get angry. “You are never going to see them again,” she said. “You don’t want to see them ever again. You hated them in high school. Your mass communications group project is over.”

5. Annoying status updates.
“I don’t want to see ‘So-and-so wishes it was over,’” said Andrew Varhol, a marketing manager in NYC. “Or the cheers of bandwagon sports fans—when suddenly someone’s, ‘Go Yankees! Go Jeter!’ Where were you before October?”

Excessive status updates are one example of Facebook abuse. Amy Labagh of powerHouse Books admits she is irritated by frequent updates. “It’s like they want you to think they’re cool,” she said, “but they’re not.”

A professor at NYU, agreed, and said he finds a number of these frequent updates to be “too bourgie.” “It’ll say something like, ‘So-and-so is drinking whatever in the beautiful scenery of some field.’ I mean, really?!”

The style and type of each update is also important. A number of users agree that song lyrics, poetry, and literary quotations can be extremely annoying. Updates with misspellings or lacking punctuation were also noted. “I once unfriended someone because they updated their statuses in all caps,” said Erin Meehan, a marketing associate in NYC.

6. Obnoxious photo uploads.
Everyone has a different idea about what photos are appropriate to post , but a popular complaint from Facebook users in their 20s concerned wedding and baby photos. “It’s just weird,” said a bartender in Manhattan. “I know that older people are joining now, but if you’re at the stage in your life when most the photos are of your kids, I mean, what are you doing on Facebook?”

“I think makeout photos are worse,” said his coworker. “My sister always posts photos of her and her boyfriend kissing. Sometimes I want to unfriend and unfamily her.”

Across the board, a number of users found partially nude photos, or images of someone flexing their muscles as grounds for unfriending. Another reason, as cited specifically by Margitte Kristjansson, graduate student at UC San Diego, could be if “they upload inappropriate pictures of their stab wounds.”

7. Clashing religious or political views.
“I can’t handle it when someone’s updates are always about Jesus,” said Robert Wilder, a writer in New York.

In the same vein, Phil Lee, lead singer of The Muskies, said he’s extremely irritated by “religious proselytizing and over-enthusiastic praise and Bible quoting. Often in all caps.”

An anonymous Brooklynite shared that he purged his Facebook account after the last Presidential election. “It was a big deal to me,” he said. “I found it hard to be friends with people who didn’t vote for Obama.” After which his friend added, “I voted for McKinney.”

8. “I wanted a free Whopper.”
In January, Burger King launched the Whopper Sacrifice application, which promised each Facebook user a free Whopper if they unfriended 10 people. It sounded simple enough, but if you chose to unfriend someone via the application, it sent a notification to that person, announcing they had been sacrificed for the burger. Burger King disabled the application within the month when the Whopper “proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.”

Since Facebook has made the home page much more customizable than it used to be, you might wonder, “Why unfriend when I can hide?” More and more, Facebook users are choosing to use limited profiles and editing their newsfeed so undesirable friends disappear from view. “I find lately I’m friending more people, then blocking them,” said Gary Ferrar, a magician in New York. “That way no one gets mad, no one’s feelings get hurt.”

Do you have another reason? Tell us about it!

Richard Davis is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University. His new book, Typing Politics: The Role of Blogs in American Politics, provides a comprehensive yet concise assessment of the growing role played by political blogs and their relationship with the mainstream media. In the post below, Davis introduces an excerpt from his book which talks about Trent Lott.

In December 2002, Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, lost his job as Senate majority leader because of an off-hand statement he made about Mississippi’s vote for then-third party presidential candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948 and how the nation would have been better off if Thurmond, an avowed segregationist then, had won the presidency that year. Political blogs helped bring Lott down. They continued the story until the traditional media picked it up and brought it to the attention of the general public and other politicians who quickly distanced themselves from Thurmond.

In the following excerpt I talk about how much has changed since that incident. The excerpt closes with questions I raise and answer in the book.

When the Trent Lott story first broke in 2002, blogs were unknown to the vast majority of Americans. Fewer had even read a blog, much less a political blog. Since then, the blogosphere has carved out a niche in American political life. It is a factor in public relations strategies. It is catered to by national policymakers. Blog stories break into national news media topics. Occasionally, blogs have played a role in dramatic events in American politics such as the retirement of Dan Rather, the withdrawal of Harriet Miers’ name as a Supreme Court nominee, and the resignation of Trent Lott as Senate majority leader.

Whether the blogosphere is a permanent fixture in political life is debatable. Online discussion has undergone various forms in the lifespan of the Internet and, for the most part, online forums have lacked the transformative powers once predicted for them. Bulletin boards, Usenet, and chat rooms are examples of political communication forms that were at one time touted as capable of transforming politics and reshaping the way political communication is conducted. However, each failed to attract visible roles as permanent forces on the Internet, much less the larger political environment. E-mail is one forum that has outlasted the others and has the strongest potential of operating as a grassroots mobilizing tool, although even it has not achieved that potential.

Blogs could be different. Their history is short. But during their brief existence, they have affected a few key events and possess the potential of affecting more in the future. Perhaps the greatest hope for long-lasting blog role is the attention they receive from journalists….

The present task, however, is to answer some questions about this newly influential medium: Who are these bloggers, particularly the most influential ones who receive media attention and attract relatively large numbers of readers? How did they get to be influential in the blogosphere, as well as in American politics? What are their blogs about? And, finally, how do they operate and what do they say on those blogs that impacts other political players?

By Anatoly Liberman

This month I again spoke on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and, as always, received many questions. During the hour at my disposal I could address only a few of them. The gleanings for June will incorporate answers to our correspondents and listeners, but I don’t want to make my summer posts unbearably long and will divide the answers into two parts. Part 2 will appear next week, which is a blessing in disguise, because the next gleanings will have to wait until August 26. Today I will deal with general questions.

Language history and colonial languages. American English is a colonial language, a circumstance that explains its conservative character. But American English is full of new words. How does this fact tally with my statement? (This is the question I received.) “Conservative” refers mainly to pronunciation and grammar. In colonies, the speech of the settlers also develops, because change is the law of language, but it tends to preserve (perhaps conserve would be a better term) many features brought to the new home from the old country. A glance at Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch here means “deutsch,” that is, “German”), Louisiana French, French in Quebec, the Spanish of Latin America, and Modern Icelandic in comparison to Norwegian will reveal the conservative nature of all those languages. With regard to English, a few facts can be cited. Despite the regional differences, most Americans sound their r’s in words like part, pert, hurt, girl, and the like; lorn (still recognizable from lone and lorn creature and from forlorn) and lawn are not homonyms in their pronunciation. British English lost its postvocalic r’s since the days of the colonization of North America, while American English still has it. In British English, cask, glass, path, and so forth have the vowel of father and Prague. The pre-17th-century norm required the vowel of bad in all of them, and this is what we have in American English. Anyone who will compare the grammar of the Authorized Version of the Bible with the grammar of American English will notice numerous similarities that are not shared by that translation and present day British English. The suggestion from a listener that the pronunciation of Spanish in Latin America may stem from the resistance to the norm of the old country has little ground. Sounds develop according to the laws over which speakers have minimal or no control. By contrast, words are not subject to mechanical laws. They come and go, and speakers are able to accept or reject them consciously. In American English we find many words that were at one time current in British dialects and later disappeared, and hundreds of words have been coined on American soil, but they shed no light on the opposition avant-garde versus conservative as it is understood in this context.

Does the term American language have justification? Languages cannot be always delimited on linguistic grounds. No doubt, English and Japanese are different languages. But what about Swedish and Norwegian? Russian and Ukrainian? Sometimes such questions become heavily politicized. Mutual intelligibility is not the only criterion here. In most cases Swedes can understand Norwegians, but according to our classification, they speak different languages. Swiss German is vastly different from the German in its standard variety (for example, as it is taught to foreigners), and so is Dutch. But the Dutch speak a language of their own, while the Swiss emphasize the unity of their language and German. If a speaker from Lancashire tried to communicate with a speaker from Kent, both using the broad variety of their dialect, they would not understand a word. Yet we agree (and so would they) that both speak English. A similar situation holds for Spanish, Arabic, and even for some countries whose population is small and the territory not too great, Danish, for example. Consequently, the answer to the question about the American language depends on one’s personal predilections. H.L. Mencken, a brilliant journalist with a chip glued to his shoulder, preferred to think that the American language existed. It seems that the American variety of English would be a more appropriate term. English is spoken in many countries by many people. Some time ago the ugly plural Englishes was coined. This noun is disgusting, but the notion it captures is real.

Are there periods of accelerated and periods of slow language change? Although this question has been debated for decades, we still have no definite answer to it. The paradox of language development is that, apart from registering new words, we notice even epochal changes only in retrospect. Language changes through variation. Some people say sneaked, others say snuck. Once all those who say sneaked die out, the “harm” will be done. This won’t be an epochal event, but it follows the familiar model. We are more or less resigned to the fact that great upheavals happened in 13th and 15th-century English, but it is surprising to learn that in the days of Charles Dickens some vowels were pronounced differently from how they are pronounced today. Yet even in the course of the last 50 or 60 years, the British pronunciation of so, no, low has changed dramatically, and people who return to the town of their childhood sometimes hear the question: “Where are you from?”. (From the street round the corner. Really? You don’t sound like us. Their norm has changed, and the guest’s vowels have adapted to those of his new home.) Many attempts have been made to correlate language and societal change. To the extent that migrations, conquests, long wars, and revolutions result in great demographic changes (George Babington Macaulay spoke about the “amalgamation of races”), this correlation makes sense. But in many cases we observe curious things. In 1066 England was conquered by the French, and this fact determined many events in the history of English. For example, in Middle English, endings underwent weakening. But Germany was not conquered by the French; yet the endings weakened in German exactly as they did in English. An attractive hypothesis crumbles like the proverbial cookie. All this being said, it is probably true that in the countries where everybody goes to school and is exposed to the relatively uniform language of the media, sounds and grammatical forms change more slowly than they did in the past.

If meaning is determined by usage, how is it possible to state that something is right or wrong? A related question: “Some changes in language seem to flow from general ignorance of proper usage. When should we resist it?” I think right and wrong are a matter of statistics. Every novelty has to be accepted or rejected by the community. For example, some of my students confuse precise and concise (they think that precise means “short, compact”). So far this usage is “wrong” because it has not spread to the majority of English-speakers. If this happens, it will become “right.” In a highly literate society like ours, teachers and editors guard the norm and correct mistakes. Their work is useful, but they fight a losing battle. Wilderness always takes over. Some time later we begin to call the weeds a flowering wilderness and still later a blooming garden. Every innovation in the history of language was at one time a mistake. This is how language changes. Observing the process is breathtakingly interesting, but being part of it is sometimes depressing. In language, as in everything, it may good to be a little behind the fashion.

Should etymology be left to professionals, or is anyone allowed to dabble in it? People do not need permission to have ideas. Language and politics are two areas about which everybody has an opinion. This is natural: all of us live in a society, and all of us speak. Etymology cannot be guessed; it has to be discovered. The sad fact is that in so many cases the early history of words is lost and then the dictionary says “origin unknown.” But most people do not want to discover the truth the hard way. A professional etymologist has to spend years learning languages and their laws. Conversely, it takes no time at all to suggest that posh and tip are acronyms (they are not!). Sometimes under the influence of superficial similarities speakers change the words of their language (this is what is called folk etymology; like nose drops, it gives immediate relief but provides no cure). As a result, we now say shamefaced instead of shamefast and spell island with an s in the middle (several centuries ago, it occurred to some ill-advised Latinists that island is related to insula). Now these wrong variants are the only ones we are allowed to use. Language belongs to the people, and they do with it what they want. But the science of etymology, like any other science, should preferably be left to experts.

To be continued.

To celebrate the anniversary of the G.I. Bill we have excerpted a piece from the beginning of The G.I. Bill: A New Deal For Veterans, by Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin which looks at just how beneficial the G.I Bill was not only for troops but for all of America.  Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and the Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions at Cornell University.  Stuart M. Blumin is Professor Emeritus of American History, Cornell University.

In its final form, the GI Bill appropriated $500 million for the construction of facilities for veterans, including hospitals; authorized unemployment compensation of $20 per week for a maximum of fifty-two weeks, with job placement services available under the U.S. Employment Service; provided up to four years of education and training at an annual tuition rate of as much as $500 (and a monthly stipend of $50 for single men and women and $75 for those with dependents) to GIs who had served at least ninety days, with the presumption that the schooling of all veterans who enlisted or were drafted before their twenty-fifth birthday had been interrupted; and guaranteed 50 percent of farm, home and business loans of up to $2,000-much less than the maximum amount originally proposed by the American Legion-at an interest rate no higher than 4 percent.

Roosevelt signed the bill on June 22, with most of the House-Senate conferees and representatives of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars in attendance…Speaking briefly at the signing, Roosevelt claimed paternity for a measure his administration had neither introduced to nor steered through Congress, noting at the outset that it “carried out most of the recommendations” he had made in three speeches to the nation in 1943.  More important, perhaps, was the president’s notion of the core idea among the bill’s various programs.  To Roosevelt, this was neither educational opportunity nor government-guaranteed residential loans but the successful transition of millions of veterans from military service to civilian work.  He singled out “satisfactory employment” as the most urgent need of service personnel and concluded that the GI Bill would help meet that need.  It was for this reason, above all, that the bill delivered an “emphatic notice” to veterans “that the American people did not intend to let them down.”

The passage of the GI bill was, of course, covered by the popular press.  However, the legislation did not receive editorial comment in the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Daily Tribune, Des Moines Register, San Francisco Chronicle, or Los Angeles Times. The White House signing ceremony competed with news about the allied invasion of Europe, which had occured less than three weeks earlier.  More important, along with the nation’s politicians, jounralists did not deem the bill “histroric” or “iconic” but rather, as a writer for the New Republic predicted, 800,000-100,000 returning soldiers would use them.

With an assist from vererans’ organizations, the Veterans Administration scrambled to inform GIs of their rights.  As they were discharged, soldiers and sailors received a VA pamphlet, Going Back to Civilian Life, and a Handbook for Service Men and Service Women of World War II and Their Dependents, which laid out the key provisions of the GI Bill.  The American Legion distributed 2.7 million copies of Gateway to Opportunity, which contained capsule descriptions of all of the benefits, and a half million “Open Letter to GIs” folders, which reviewed the loan provisions.

The American president called the Indian president to come over to his country for a cup of tea. When the Indian president came over, they had the cup of tea and went off to a jungle; The American president wanted to show him somthing.

When they reached a place the American started digging and told the Indian to help him dig. After digging 100 metres below the ground they saw a wire. The American president exclaimed “Ah Yes, see there we had technology even 100 years ago!” The Indian president didnt show any jealousy but rather invited him to his country for a cup of tea.

Later when the American President came to India and after having the cup of tea the Indian President took the american president to his jungle in india. When they reached a place the Indian started digging and asked the American president to help him. After digging 100 metres they didnt find anything. The American president was confused he said “what are you trying to show me?” “keep digging you’ll see” replied the Indian president. After digging 200, they found nothing but rubble and then finally after digging 300 metres they still saw nothing. The indian prsident exclaimed “Ah you see this? we had wire-less even 300 years ago.”

The American president called the Indian president to come over to his country for a cup of tea. When the Indian president came over, they had the cup of tea and went off to a jungle; The American president wanted to show him somthing.

When they reached a place the American started digging and told the Indian to help him dig. After digging 100 metres below the ground they saw a wire. The American president exclaimed “Ah Yes, see there we had technology even 100 years ago!” The Indian president didnt show any jealousy but rather invited him to his country for a cup of tea.

Later when the American President came to India and after having the cup of tea the Indian President took the american president to his jungle in india. When they reached a place the Indian started digging and asked the American president to help him. After digging 100 metres they didnt find anything. The American president was confused he said “what are you trying to show me?” “keep digging you’ll see” replied the Indian president. After digging 200, they found nothing but rubble and then finally after digging 300 metres they still saw nothing. The indian prsident exclaimed “Ah you see this? we had wire-less even 300 years ago.”

By Anatoly Liberman

It is rather odd that laughter and daughter do not rhyme, while cough and doff do. No one is surprised (after all, have and behave do not rhyme either, while live can rhyme with five or with give; anything is possible in written English), but it is still odd. As always, our spelling reflects the pronunciation of long ago. Once upon a time (that is, in Middle English), to begin at the beginning, words like ought had the diphthong we today hear in note, whereas aught had the diphthong of Audi. The digraph gh had the value of ch in Scots loch. Then the diphthongs merged; hence the homophones ought (ought to) and aught (for aught I know) in present day English. (Vowels constantly merge or split into two, and the ever-active kaleidoscope puzzles both historical linguists and the uninitiated, but there is some logic in this merry-go-round, even though it is often hard to detect.) The most enigmatic change occurred to the consonant designated by gh. It appears to have been torn between the opposing forces: while one made the consonant weak, the other strengthened it. For example, the word enough, whose graphic shape is an accurate transcript of its medieval pronunciation, has come down to us in two forms: one (archaic) is enow (rhyming with now), the other (which everybody uses) is pronounced as enuf. Likewise, Modern English has preserved slough “the skin of a snake,” that is, sluf, and slough “bog,” as in The Slough of Despond, rhyming with enow, cited above. The family name Slough is a homophone of slough “bog.”

Some time in the 15th century, the tug of war between the weak and the strong variant (au ~ ou versus f) began, as evidenced, among others, by the spellings broft “brought” and abought “about” (abought must have been born of utter confusion: so many words with au and ou had gh in the middle that inserting gh where it had never been pronounced looked like a reasonable procedure). But a particularly interesting case is the history of the word daughter. In 17th century private letters, daughter appears in the forms dater, dafter and daufter; daufter, which also turned up in the 18th century, probably reflects a mixed pronunciation, a hybrid of competing variants. The phonetic descriptions going back to that time contain statement like: “Some say f [in daughter]” and “Most of us pronounce dafter.” The same authorities testify that bought, naught, and taught often had f before t. The merger of au and ou was in progress in the 17th and even 18th century: ought could be pronounced like aft in Modern British English or without f but with the same vowel. Sought tended to be a homophone of soft. Henry Fielding (1701-1754) and Smollett (1721-1771), the latter the favorite author of the young Dickens, wrote soft and thoft for sought and thought when they reproduced the speech of people from the countryside. The poets of the Elizabethan epoch rhymed thought and aloft, caught and shaft, manslaughter and after. Shakespeare also rhymed daughter with after (and with slaughter). As late as 1764, the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson attested to the variant druft for drought. The form dafter stayed in many British dialects, for example, in the north and in East Anglia.

The word draught had a similar history. Its etymology is transparent. “Draught” is an act of drawing or that which is drawn. The meaning “design, plan” was preceded by “picture, sketch” (from draw “to describe a line”). The game known as checkers in American English is called draughts in Britain (draught meant “move,” so that draughts can be glossed as “moves,” whereas checkers refers to the “checkered” shape of the board.). The inner form of draught is more obvious than its origin. This noun was borrowed from Scandinavian (probably in the 12th century) and later reinforced by its Middle Dutch synonym dragt. Draft existed at one time as another pronunciation of draught; the form surfaced only in the 18th century. In Standard Modern English, draught is never homophonous with drought, but different spellings have been used to differentiate meanings. While American English banished draught and replaced it by draft in all senses, British English distinguishes between them. Thus, we find a beast of draught (a phrase of the same structure as a beast of burden and a beast of prey) and a draught horse; a draught of water (as well as a draught of pain), and susceptible to draughts. But in both countries, if people are anti-draft, their resentment has nothing to do with a current of air. A banking term is also draft everywhere. When a verb was formed from this noun, naturally, the later form became its basis; hence to draft. A much longer and more precise essay could be written on the subject, but for starters a rough draft will probably suffice.

Corollary: some people are daft, and others are still dafter.

Stephen Spector, chairman of the English Department at Stony Brook University, is the author of Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism which delves into the Christian Zionist movement, mining information from original interviews, websites, publications, news reports, survey research, worship services, and interfaith conferences, to provide a surprising look at the sources of evangelical support for Israel. In the original post below Specter looks at the contrast between Bush and Obama’s views on Israel and Islamic extremists.

President Obama’s staff recently removed a stern-looking bust of Winston Churchill that George W. Bush had kept in the Oval Office, replacing it with a bust of Lincoln. There could hardly have been a more compelling symbolic gesture to mark the change in presidential worldviews.

As Obama notes in The Audacity of Hope, Lincoln believed that there are times when we must pursue our own absolute truths, even if there is a terrible price to pay. But Obama also knows that Lincoln had a complicated view of world affairs: Lincoln knew that we must reach for common understandings and resist the temptation to demonize, since we’re all imperfect and can’t know with certainty that God is on our side.

Bush’s impulse, by contrast, is to value moral clarity. As a result, he took Churchill as his model in advocating an unambiguous and aggressive response to Iranian and Arab extremists. He did take pains to note that the battle is not with the “great religion” of Islam, which he called a religion of peace, but with terrorists. Yet in describing the goals of radical Islamists, Bush repeatedly evoked the fascist aggression in World War II. In 2005, for example, he warned that militants practicing a clear and focused ideology of Islamofascism seek to establish “a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.” Today’s terrorists, he said in 2006, are “successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists and other totalitarians of the twentieth century.” They have a common ideology and vision for the world, Bush said, and against such an enemy the West can never accept anything less than complete victory. That echoed Churchill’s words rallying the British people against Hitler: “You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

Religious and political conservatives who made up much of Bush’s electoral base often view the world as he does. They particularly admire Churchill’s dogged determination in warning of the approaching Nazi danger in the 1930s. Like him, they name what they see as the coming fascist threat and they disdain attempts at appeasement. Many of them warn, as Bush did, that World War III has already begun.

Discussing a foiled terrorist plot in 2006, Gary Bauer, a leading conservative Christian, quoted one of Churchill’s classic lines: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” (A few days later, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used the same quip, which was surely more than a coincidence.) And Bauer is far from the only evangelical who reveres Churchill. The devotion of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is so great that the largest painting in his Colorado Springs office is not of Christ, but of Sir Winston. (According to Dan Gilgoff in The Jesus Machine, Dobson’s wife didn’t want him to buy it because she was afraid that he would put it in their bedroom!)

John Hagee, the founder of the pro-Zionist evangelical lobbying group Christians United for Israel, is one of those who considers the Islamist threat today to be equivalent to the danger posed by the Nazis in the 1930s, and equally impossible to appease through compromise. In 2007 he received standing ovations at AIPAC’s annual policy conference in Washington when he said, “It is 1938; Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.” Hagee warned that the “misguided souls of Europe…the political brothel that is now the United Nations, and sadly even our own State Department will try once again to turn Israel into crocodile food.”

Some Israeli and American officials and commentators also evoke the Nazi threat in describing the present conflict with Islamic radicals. Benjamin Netanyahu, the new Israeli prime minister, says that, in Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel is confronted by an enemy of the sort that the Jewish people have not faced since Hitler. The conflict is not about territory, but about Islam’s goal of eradicating the Jewish state, Netanyahu says, a statement that agrees perfectly with the warnings of Michael Evans and other Christian Zionists.
Jihadist Muslims intend to perpetrate a second Holocaust, says Netanyahu. He adds that Ahmadinejad presents an even more serious threat than Hitler did: Hitler lost the war because he could not develop nuclear weapons, but Ahmadinejad is on the verge of accomplishing that. General Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, adds that when Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off of the map, he means to destroy the West, a charge that echoes those made by American Christian Zionists.

The Obama administration is hoping to achieve through diplomacy what confrontation against a supposed unified enemy did not. They’ve even dropped Bush’s signature phrase, the “War on Terror.” Meanwhile, Christian Zionist leaders are sending newsletters and prayer updates to hundreds of thousands of readers pointing out that Netanyahu called Iran’s leaders a messianic apocalyptic cult who must never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. For them and many other religious and political conservatives, negotiation with Islamic fundamentalists is nothing other than the folly of appeasement, the same catastrophic mistake that Neville Chamberlain made in 1938.

Megan Branch, Intern

In a time where newspapers are folding and cutting delivery days left and right, it’s easy to forget that the newspaper was once the favorite, and maybe only, way for people to get information. During the American Revolution, journalists were similar to modern-day bloggers. Everyone, it seemed, was starting a newspaper to bring his opinions to the public, including some people who might surprise you. In Scandal & Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy, Marcus Daniel, associate professor of American History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, offers a new perspective on the most influential, partisan journalists of the 1790s. Daniel reminds us that journalists’ rejection of civility and their criticism of  the early American government were essential to the creation of modern-day politics.  Check back tomorrow for the answers.

1. What early American journalist studied epidemics while taking a break from politics and his newspaper?

2. What grandson of a certain Founding Father used his inheritance to start a newspaper?

3. Which former public-school student, after failing to successfully run a dry-goods shop, decided to “try his luck” at journalism?

4. What Princeton alumnus and early journalist wore homemade clothes to his commencement ceremony?

5. What journalist scandalized Philadelphia with the window dressing in his printing shop and bookstore?

I know our American friends were busy casting their vote yesterday, deciding who is to be the next President of the USA, but here’s something else very important indeed you can vote for. OK, perhaps not quite as important as deciding who is going to be the most powerful elected leader in the world, but hey, I’m British. I was feeling left out.

What we’re asking you to vote for, though, are the words you love to hate from 2008. Susie Dent has revealed the UK word of the year already but is there a word that has been everywhere that you would quite happily never see again?

We’ve made a few suggestions, but you can also nominate some words of your own. The survey closes on December 15th 2008, and all entries will be put into a prize draw. One lucky winner will receive a copy of Susie’s book Words of the Year.

Our suggestions are:

CREDIT CRUNCH - a multi-purpose word used to mean anything relating to the current financial turmoil

DELEAVERAGING - an opaque word to most, meaning the reduction of borrowed capital used to increase the return of an investment

MEDALLING - used at the Olympics, a curious example of a ‘verbed’ noun, from the word medal

FREEMALE - a manufactured word coined by a marketing company to mean a single woman

VISUACY - a word blend used as shorthand for ‘visual literacy’

I'm a particular fan of American history in that I'm particular about the parts I like. It isn't an ideological divide as much as it is that there are certain periods that appeal to me for some reason. I'm fond of the colonialists and the American Revolution, but for the stories of the smaller moments and not the battles. I also have a soft spot for the socialist movement of the 1930's and

by Dean Brindell Fradin illustrated by Larry Day Walker Books 2008 It's a reflection of my quality education that I graduated without knowing the story of the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Or it's proof of what a horrible student I used to be. But perhaps if I'd had this nifty little picture book when I was younger it would have stuck with me while I was attempting to handle

After a decade of work, Oxford University Press and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute published the African American National Biography(AANB). The AANB is the largest repository of black life stories ever assembled with more than 4,000 biographies. To celebrate this monumental achievement we have invited the contributors to this 8 volume set to share some of their knowledge with the OUPBlog. Over the next couple of months we will have the honor of sharing their thoughts, reflections and opinions with you.

Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades. In the article below he looks at Annie Lee Moss.

A peculiar effort has been underway to rehabilitate Joe McCarthy as a Red-hunting investigator. Some commentators have declared the censured senator vindicated by the opening of Cold War archives that revealed the extent of Soviet espionage in the United States. A key figure in this debate is a witness whose brief appearance before McCarthy helped undo his public reputation: Annie Lee Moss. (more…)

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I've been a bad blogger this week, I know, I'm sorry.

I have some new art started, but I don't feel like showing it yet. Its all at that 'ugly stage', you know what I'm talking about.
I CAN tell you that the truffles in the picture are reference for some of what I'm working on. YUM. Who doesn't love a good truffle?

I wish I had something educational or insightful or... just plain interesting to talk about.
I've been reading some good blogs this week ~ the kind where people "learn you" something, or have something useful to share. I'm very impressed with that. I don't know how they do it AND do their art as well. A few:
The Extraordinary Pencil
Making a Mark
Maggie Stiefivater

I've started reading The Golden Compass, and am loving it. I want a daemon now. (No, I haven't seen the movie, didn't want to spoil the book.)

I promise I'll have some art to show this week, promise. Something. No more yarn ACEOs I don't think, I'm tired of doing those. But more yarn, yes, but just different. You'll see.

written and illustrated by Matt Faulkner Simon and Schuster 2008 LuLu and Jelly can't believe that Abbey saw a fountain in town that bubbled colored water; they have to see this for themselves. When their Uncle Jack needs to make a run into town the kids beg to go with so they can investigate. Oh, but this is the Deep South, and it's mid 1960's, and the town is crowded with freedom riders and