Category Archives: Modern History

Modern History

The Supreme Court of Iowa announces a new revelation

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“equal protection can only be defined by the standards of each generation.”
– the Iowa Supreme Court, Varnum et al v. Brien 04/03/2009 p 16

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Iowa’s marriage law (which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman) violates the state constitution’s “equal protection” clause. The unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court orders the state to begin allowing homosexuals to marry starting in three weeks.

So, each generation gets to define its own version of law and morality?

How’s that working out?

You all do realize that the 20th century was the bloodiest century in all of human history, don’t you?

Moral relativism is a recent development. It is unsustainable. It is logically incoherent.

Thankfully, the court did acknowledge another fundamental political reality:

“While the constitution is the supreme law and cannot be altered by the enactment of an ordinary statute, the power of the constitution flows from the people, and the people of Iowa retain the ultimate power to shape it over time.”

The people of Iowa retain the same ability to correct its Supreme Court’s assault on marriage which was available to the people of California.

Will they do so?

book reviews, Modern History

The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

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I was fourteen years old in the summer of 1969, the summer when we landed on the moon. I was at summer camp in Chattanooga when Apollo 11 touched down in the Sea of Tranquility. The astronauts weren’t scheduled to walk until an hour or so after “lights-out,” but everyone knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime moment of history. Those running the camp rigged up a TV for all the campers in the gym, perched on top of one of the basketball goals and with a crazy tangle of extension cords stretched out to power it.

The images we watched were in black & white, and fuzzy, but clear enough for us to be able to see the white space-suited form of Neil Armstrong as he climbed down the ladder of the lunar excursion module and stepped onto the surface of the moon. And we heard his words clearly: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Like thousands of other fourteen- year-old boys, I found NASA’s manned space program fascinating. I could rattle off all sorts of details about the rockets, the spacecraft, the astronauts, and their equipment.

This summer will be the fortieth anniversary of the first man on the moon. There are three very good books just published that tell the story for children very well. And it is a story worth telling them. It is one of the great accomplishments of the 20th century and of American ingenuity and technical prowess. It took only eight years from John F. Kennedy’s announcement of the goal in May of 1961:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kza-iTe2100

The first of the three is Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca. Moonshot has wonderfully detailed, technical information on the front and back flyleaves, but the strength of this book is the simple, direct text, and clear illustrations that tell the story of the flight of Apollo 11 from the time the astronauts suit up until the time the splash down, back on earth, a week later.

The text of Moonshot is written so that children age 4-7 can easily understand the details of how we went to the moon. Interspersed among the illustrations that show what the astronauts are doing are pictures of a family intently watching the TV coverage. Here are a sampling of the interior pages:

This is a great book for younger readers. Although it pains me to admit my age, this is the perfect book for me to read to my grandson to introduce him to the Apollo program.

Moonshot is a large-format hardback (11.7″ x10.8″), 48 pages and is available for $17.99 directly from Greenleaf Press.

The second book is one of the pop-up books that I always find fascinating. When the paper engineering of a pop-up book is married to the story of the Moon Landing, you have a special kind of magic!

Moon Landing has six elaborate and fascinating pop-up scenes depicting key episodes from the race to the moon.

There is the Redstone rocket launching the first US manned flight, the Gemini flight and first spacewalk, a spectacular spherical moon, a detailed articulated space suit, and the lunar module on the surface of the moon. Booklets, flaps, and fold-out pages offer readers a additional intriguing facts, and a peek inside and behind the scenes.

Moon Landing is described by its publisher (Candlewick Press) as intended for ages 8 and up. It is a hardback and is available for $29.99 directly from Greenleaf Press.

The last of the three books is Team Moon, with the wonderful subtitle, “How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon.”

Team Moon opens, not with shots of the astronauts on the moon, but rather with pictures of hundreds of people gathered to watch the grainy black & white TV pictures beamed back live from the moon. There is a shot of several dozen workers at Grumman (who built the Lunar Lander) crowded around a TV. There is a shot of thousands of New Yorkers gathered in Central Park watching an outdoor TV screen. There is a crowd in Milan, Italy watching a TV on the sidewalk of a café – and there are the anxious faces of the team at mission control watching the coverage as well.

After a brief background on Kennedy’s announcement of the goal, the book begins a detailed account of the landing attempt and the six challenges (most unexpected) faced by the crew. The first challenge was an overloaded computer began failing and sounding alarms. The second challenge was that the landing area was littered with boulders and Armstrong had to fly the Lander past it to a safer spot. But there was very little margin in the fuel supply. In simulations, he had always landed with over 2 minutes reserve left. On the real landing attempt, the flight controllers called out the 120 second warning, then the 60 second warning, then the 30 second warning. Armstrong finally got the Lander down with only 18 seconds of fuel left in reserve. I won’t give away the other problems, but suffice it to say , that there was a lot of fancy footwork going on in Mission Control that was not reported at the time!

This is a great book for any kids who have an interest in the space program and the history of Apollo. The 80 pages are laid out with full page photography on every page – and a very engaging text.

Reading level is 5th/6th grade and up. Team Moon is a hardback, 80 pages, full color. The price is $19.95, direct from Greenleaf Press.

Middle Ages, Modern History

Terrorism, Genghis Khan and the post-Christian West

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The delicacy of the new Secretary for Homeland Security is now causing her to refrain from using the word “terrorism.”

This is, of course, sophistry.

Terrorism is not the invention of Al-Qaeda, nor is it a defining characteristic of radical Islam.

It has a meaning that is fairly simple to understand. An act of terrorism is one that seeks to cause an adversary to experience fear. Its intent is to demoralize and move the opponent to alter his behavior and conform to the will of the terrorist. just as War is Politics, carried on by other means (Clausewitz), so terrorism is War carried on by other means. The object of all three (Politics, War, Terrorism) is to impose one’s will on the adversary.

The Persians practiced terrorism. So did the ancient Greeks. So did the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and on occasion, the Egyptians. The Romans practiced terrorism. But the targeting of non-combatants was condemned by Christianity, and so terrorism was only sparingly employed through 1000 years of Christendom, and when it was used it almost always provoked horror and condemnation.

The classic terrorist tactic is the massacre of prisoners, or the sacking of a city which has refused to negotiate, surrender, or consider paying tribute. The execution of a conquered garrison or the sacking of a city has no immediate tactical advantage. But the act is intended to serve as a warning to other cities of the terrible consequences of resistance.

Genghis Khan was famous for his use of terror. During the Mongol conquest of China, his forces would arrive at a Chinese city and erect a large white tent for Genghis. If the city submitted to his rule, it might be looted, but the lives of the inhabitants would be spared. if there was no response to the white tent, then a red tent was erected in its place. If the city now fell the soldiers and male inhabitants of the city would be executed, but the women and children would be spared. If the city continued to resist, a black tent would be put up – signifying that when the city fell, all of it’s inhabitants would be executed. And they were. It’s difficult to calculate numbers 800 years after the fact, but rough estimates indicate that 30 million people were killed in China by Genghis and the Mongols. Terrorism worked.

Genghis’s grandson, Hulagu Khan (brother to Kublai Khan) used precisely these tactics in his conquest of the Middle East in 1258. He besieged Baghdad, and when it fell after a one-month siege, the Mongols executed almost the entire population of the city. Estimates range from 100,000 to one million. In 1260, Damascus surrendered to the Mongols rather than suffer the same fate.

The notion that individual human lives have immense value is a western ideal. It is not exclusively Christian, but the notion is certainly central to Christianity. It is historically true that the influence of Christianity had the effect of setting limits in warfare. It is a western, Christian, notion that civilian, non-combatants should not be targetted or deliberately killed.

As the Christian consensus has evaporated in the west, the less likely the culture has become to value or protect individual human life. Pragmatism is antithetical to natural law.

Terrorists are quite prepared to take innocent human life, because in their calculation this helps to achieve their ultimate objective (though this probably ascribes more rational analysis to terrorists than they deserve).

It is not just Islamic terrorists who think this way. Beginning in the Enlightenment, exemplified in the “Reign of Terror” of the French Revolution, an ever-increasing percentage of the west (and many of its intellectual elites) have been rejecting any notion of innocent human life. It is a short step from the “Reign of Terror” to the Anarchists’ “Propaganda of the Deed” to the social Darwinism of the German, Italian, Russian, and Chinese despotic Utopians.

Radical Islam is only the latest millenarian movement to reject the value of human life and adopt pragmatism and terrorism as their tools.

You cannot reason with them. You cannot persuade them to abandon terror. You can only defeat them.

Peace is never achieved by negotiation – only temporary cease-fires. Peace is achieved when one side is victorious over the other.

Modern History, National Politics

Ted Kennedy offered to conspire with the Soviets on the best way to outwit Ronald Reagan

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That’s the claim made in The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World by John O’Sullivan. Published in 2006, I’ve had it in my to-read stack for too long and I overlooked it too often. Its a delightful read. Sullivan is an excellent writer, clear, to-the-point, and with a wealth of inside ancedotes. Born in Britain, but with extensive experience as a journalist in both the US and the UK, O’Sullivan served for a time as a special advisor to Prime Minister Thatcher.

The startling paragraph on Kennedy comes on page 197:

“Six months after becoming general secretary of the CPSU [early 1983], Yuri Andropov received a highly confidential letter from his successor as KGB chief, Viktor Chebrikov. It was classified “Top Secret – Of Special Importance,” and reported an approach to the Soviets made through the good offices of former senator John Tunney of California. The senior American politican making the apporach was Senator Edward Kennedy. He was requesting a personal interview with Andropov because “in the interest of world peace it would be useful and timely to take a few extra steps to counteract the militaristic policies of Ronald Reagan.” (Chebrikov is summarizing Kennedy here rather than quoting him directly.)

. . . Kennedy made several subsequent attempts to advise the Soviets on the best way to outwit Reagan.”

This report is particularly odious, because Andropov was the immediate successor to Brezhnev. He had been the Soviet ambassador to Hungary in 1956 and played a key role in the brutal soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt. He was also the architect of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

And this is the man that Senator Kennedy sought to conspire with in order to thwart Reagan.

Pardon me if I do not join in the encominiums to the Senator from Chappaquidick as the greatest legislator of the past 100 years.

– Rob Shearer

Modern History

Modern Times, Stravinsky & Dr. Zhivago

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Every year for the past eight years, I have been teaching a course to high school seniors on Western Civilization from 1870 to the present. Every year for the past eight years, once we reach 1920, the text I have assigned for the course has been Paul Johnson’s Modern Times.

And every year for the past eight years as I re-read the text, I am astonished at what a tour-de-force Johnson’s history is. There simply is no other treatment of the 20th century which combines a narrative of events with a close analysis of the importance of ideas and worldview. Johnson clearly articulates a moral vision of the twentieth century in which the villains are those who perversely embody the “will to power” and who attempt to use political power to build “despotic utopias.”

This year, for the first two chapters, I found short video clips which I have been able to use effectively in class.

Johnson’s first chapter, A Relativistic World, focuses on the impact of Einstein & Freud (and to a lesser extent Marx & Nietzsche) on the popular mind from 1900-1920. He mentions, as one example of the widespread appeal & impact of moral relativism, the premier performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes of Paris, and choreographed by Nijinksy. The premier audience found the dance & music so provocative that a riot erupted among the audience as supporters and opponents of the piece attacked each other violently. The Paris Police were called before the first intermission and had difficulty restoring order. Part of the audience’s outrage was the staccato, dissonant nature of Stravinsky’s music, part was outrage at the jerky, non-traditional movements of the dancers choreographed by Nijinksky, and part was outrage at the storyline which tells of the pagan sacrifice of a virgin necessary to usher in spring.

It turns out that in 1987, the Joffrey Ballet recreated this 1913 premier performance using the original sets, costumes, and choreography.

AND, there is a YouTube video of the performance!

The first three minutes of the piece are melodically deceptive – and then the fun begins! My students watched with close attention, and understood the significance of the performance in a much deeper way than could be achieved simply by reading a description.

The second chapter in Modern Times is entitled, The First Despotic Utopias. Most histories of the twentieth century move rapidly from the end of World War One to the rise of Hitler in Germany. Johnson tells the story is greater detail and provides a much deeper understanding of the developments that preceded, foreshadowed, set the example, and paved the way for Hitler. The first despotic utopias were Russia under Lenin, and Italy under Mussolini. Lenin ruled Russia from the Revolution in 1917 until his death in 1922. Mussolini (who had been a socialist before World War One, and who studied Lenin’s revolution closely) sent his 40,000 blackshirt militiamen marching on Rome in October of 1922. Mussolini in the 1920’s was an impressive figure in world politics. Lenin’s Russia was widely admired in the European and American press for having achieved an economic miracle and laid the foundations for a “worker’s paradise.”

The successes of Lenin in 1917 and Mussolini in 1922 were what led Hitler to attempt to seize power in Munich in November, 1923. Without studying Lenin and Mussolini, one cannot understand why Hitler acted as he did, or what he hoped to achieve.

My students were puzzled by Lenin’s seizure of power. They had a hard time understanding how such a small party of communists wound up overthrowing the Tsar, the Duma, and seizing control of the Russian government.

In response to their questions, I played for them the following clip from Dr. Zhivago, which vividly illustrates the tactics of the communists in infiltrating the Tsarist army, encouraging desertion, mutiny, and the murder of the officers. After watching the clip, my students understood much better how and why the Revolution started in Russia.

The clip compresses the whole history of Russia’s involvement in World War One to about seven minutes. The opening monologue (by Alec Guiness playing a party member) is stunning:

“In bourgeoisie terms it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes, and which of them won was a matter of indifference. I was ordered by the party to enlist. I gave my name as Petrov. They were shouting for victory all over Europe, praying for victory to the same God. My task, the party’s task, was to organize defeat. From defeat would spring the Revolution and the Revolution would be victory for us. The party looked to the conscript business. Most of them were in their first good pair of boots. When the boots wore out they’d be ready to listen. When the time came I was able to take three battalions with me out of the front line. The best days work I ever did.”

The clip shows starkly the anguish of the 900 mile Russian front and the suffering of the Russian army. By the second winter of the war, the boots had worn out. It then shows an encounter between a group of deserters and a company of replacements being led by their officers to the front. The deserters entice the replacements to join them. When they officers attempt to rally the troops, they are murdered.

From there it was just a matter of using the officer-less deserters to seize factories and city councils, and in a few short weeks, the entire Russian government.

My students understood.

– Rob Shearer
Publisher, Greenleaf Press
Director, Schaeffer Study Center

Ancient history, book reviews, children's books, Middle Ages, Modern History

A Street Through Time and A City Through Time

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I am, in general, a big fan of the DK books. Their Eyewitness series, with 160+ titles now, is an excellent resource for young readers (approximately 8-16) on a wide variety of topics. I’m busily adding all of the Eyewitness books into their own category in the Greenleaf online store. But beyond the Eyewitness books, with their museum quality photography, DK has also done some excellent development in traditional illustrated children’s books.

Parents, teachers, and students who will be tracing the history and connectivity of peoples and places from ancient through medieval and modern times will find the following two books very intriguing. They will definitely help your students to understand how the past still influences and is visible in the present.

The first title is A Street Through Time, by Dr. Anne Millard and Steve Noon. It is billed as a 12,000-year walk through history. The book focuses on a location somewhere in the island of Britain, along a river and presents a detailed over-sized two-page spread which depicts what the place looked like at fourteen key periods of history. The first picture is labeled 10,000 BC. We can pass lightly over this one, since it’s largely guess-work. The second scene is 2,000 BC and shows farmers who have constructed a simple village. By 600 BC, this village has passed into the iron age and grown in population. On a nearby hilltop is an iron-age fort similar to those found throughout southern Britain. In AD 100 our village has become an outpost of the Roman Empire. There is a Roman bath, a Roman temple, and a Roman market. In AD 600, things have slipped backwards. The Romans are gone, their buildings are in ruins. But the place by the river is still inhabited. In 900 AD things have gotten both better and worse. There is a stone church and new thatched residences, but there is also the threat of Viking raids. Our scene shows such a raid in progress. In 1208 AD, we have reached the high middle ages. The village has grown a bit. There is a castle on the hill now. In 1400 AD the village has turned into a town. There is a new stone church, new town walls, and a new stone bridge. The townsmen are prospering. In 1500 AD, the plague strikes. It’s not a pretty scene. The next scene is labeled 1600’s finds our town caught in the conflict between King and Parliament – civil war in fact. Some of the houses are burning, the castle on the hill is under siege, and there are soldiers marching in the fields outside the town walls. The 1700s are much more prosperous, even elegant. The residences along the river have been rebuilt. The castle is in ruins, but there is a Georgian estate constructed beside it. The 1800s show the effect of the industrial revolution. The effect on the town is mixed. Some prosper, but many of the workers are poor (grim times). The last two scenes show our familiar street in the late 1800s and today. The church is still there – a landmark to help us orient ourselves. The castle is in ruins, but has become a tourist attraction.

Among the other fun things to do with this book is to play a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” game. The illustrator has hidden a time traveler, named Henry Hyde in each scene. He keeps the same costume through the ages, and you can recognize him by the goggles on his head, his scarf, and long duster.

There are also text cues in the sentences printed in the margins that direct the reader to find particular features. A teacher or parent could use these very effectively with a child. An older student will enjoy the challenges on their own.

The book is oversize, 14″ x 10″, making each 2-page spread a full 28″ wide.

A Street Through Time is a hardback, 32 pages, with full-color illustrations throughout. It is available for $17.99 direct from Greenleaf.

The second DK book is constructed on the same pattern as A Street Through Time, but takes a broader view. A City Through Time is billed as “The Story of a City – from Ancient Colony to vast Metropolis.” The setting for this book is somewhere in Europe, at the mouth of a river on the Mediterranean coast – though the precise location is never specified. Rather than give an identical view for each snapshot in time, the depiction of the city in these spreads is a bit more varied. This allows for a more detailed examination of particular features and buildings. The story begins with a Greek colony in 550 BC (with a separate spread on the Greek temple), then continues to Roman civitas (again with a separate spread showing the public baths in great detail). There is a view of the medieval city (with detail on the castle) and then the more modern industrial port (and railroad station) and the steel and glass modern city (with a cutaway view of a skyscraper turned on it’s side).

This one is also oversize, 14″ by 10″ making each 2-page spread a full 28″ wide.

A City Through Time is a hardback, 32 pages, with full-color illustrations throughout. It is available for $17.99 direct from Greenleaf.

– Rob Shearer
Publisher, Greenleaf Press

Modern History

The Outstanding Event of Modern Times. . .

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“. . . modern times did not develop in ways the generation of 1920 would have considered ‘logical.’

[. . .]

“The outstanding event of modern times was the failure of religious belief to disappear.”

[. . .]

“What looked antiquated, even risible, in the 1990s was not religious belief but the confident prediction of its demise once provided by Feuerbach and Marx, Durkheim and Frazer, Lenin, Wells, Shaw, Gide, Sartre and many others.”

  • Paul Johnson, Modern Times, page 700 in Chapter 20 on “The Recovery of Freedom“

Today’s Western Civ Four class concluded with a discussion of the last chapter of Johnson’s book. Twenty-five years after its first publication, and 17 years after he added the more upbeat, concluding chapter, Johnson’s work holds up extremely well.

Johnson’s overarching thesis is that the 20th century saw politics replace religion as the “one legitimate form of moral activity.” The results were a tragedy of world historical proportions. Now, as we look back on the bloody excesses of the 20th century, there is hope that mankind may be regaining some perspective. The state cannot reshape human nature. The state cannot usher in a utopia. The state, given free reign, turns out to be a murderous tyrant.

Mankind was saved from the twin evils of politics and statism by the arrival, sequentially, of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan.

I have a message of hope and good cheer for you, gentle reader: The 21st century, like the 20th, will NOT develop in predictable ways – certainly not in ways foreseen by the pundits of the dying liberal intelligentsia. There IS hope. There ARE signs that God continues to build his kingdom. The vibrancy of the church in China and in Africa gives hope. The collapse of the liberal elites (both secular and religious) in the West proceeds and even in some cases appears to be accelerating.

Keep watching. Keep praying. Keep following Jesus. And wait and see what God will do.

Modern History

Pope Benedict on Religious Freedom and “illusory visions of truth”

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Pope BenedictPope Benedict gave a short, interesting, and profound speech on Friday. Of course, you won’t read about it in any of the mainstream media. Or if you do, it will be framed in a way that obscures and distorts its meaning. He was speaking to a meeting of the Centrist Democrat International, an international alliance of political parties devoted to promoting the idea of Christian Democracy. The member parties are drawn primarily from Europe and Latin America.

He called on the delgates to “prevent the dissemination and entrenchment of ideologies which obscure and confuse consciences by promoting an illusory vision of truth and goodness.”

And what are some of the illusions?

  • Financial gain as the only good;
  • it is legitimate to destroy life in its earliest or final states;
  • the fundamental nucleus of society is [not] the indissoluble bond of marriage between a man and a woman.

The Pope said those are ILLUSIONS. And called upon Christian politicians to oppose them. I think the Pope is fundamentally correct when he asserts that these are not just Roman Catholic positions on the most important issues of the day – they are the Christian, biblical positions.

The Pope went on to defend the idea of religious liberty — for ALL religions. He said “religious freedom is a fundamental expression of respect for human reason and its capacity to know truth.”

And then he threw down the gauntlet to the Islamic world: “The exercise of this freedom also includes the right to change religion, which should be guaranteed not only legally, but also in daily practice.”

Because the mainstream media are so clueless on a)all matters of religion;  and b)anything having to do with the Pope, I would urge you to read the Pope’s speech for yourself. In fact, because the media do such terrible filtering and distorting, I’d urge you to read speeches by any political figure for yourself — but especially those by the Pope and by President Bush. Here’s a .pdf of the Pope’s speech taken from the Vatican website. Highlights are mine.

hat tip to the blog, Atlas Shrugs, where I ran across a reference to the speech.

-Rob Shearer
  Director, Schaeffer Study Center