My Amazon Review of Colin Woodard's "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America"

 

Uneasy Alliances

 

I wish I read Colin Woodard’s book ten years ago when it came out. He hypothesizes that the United States instead of being one united nation, it is more akin to an uneasy alliance rival regional cultures. His eleven cultures formed early in the days of the republic ignore both state and national boundaries. The book is in the tradition of Kevin Phillip’s “The Emerging Republican Majority,” Joel Garreau’s “The Nine Nations of North America” and the more scholarly “Albions Seed” by David Hackett Fischer. I too used a similar approach in an article on the economic geography of the United States.

 

From the beginning the early settlements in the United States were divided on the Revolutionary War with Yankeedom leading the charge while New Netherland (New York City and environs) and the Deep South being more reluctant. He notes that the politics of today mirror those early divisions. Specifically, the Blue State alliance includes Yankeedom, New Netherland, the Left Coast and El Norte (Joel Garreau’s Mexamerica) while the Red State alliance includes the Deep South, the Far West, and Greater Appalachia. The swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa are in what Woodard calls the Midlands.

 

On a minor point I would differ with Woodard when he called SDS’s 1962 Port Huron Statement the “founding document” of the youth movement. Although there were many political aspects to the youth movement at its core it was all about sex, drugs and rock and roll. This is a far cry from the original Yankee (Puritan) and Midlander (Quaker) values. To be a bit snarky what the late Tom Hayden the author of the Port Huron Statement had in common with Puritan values were rigidity in beliefs.

 

My major point of difference is that Woodard is too locked into the view that the Deep South continues to be run by a neo-colonial oligarchy. That was true prior to World War II and it far less so today. The rising cities of Atlanta, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham and the Appalachia city of Austin have more in common with Yankeedom and the Left Coast than the old agribusiness oligarchy. In fact, those cities vote Blue. Further just as Yankeedom has an innate fear of a southern theocracy, the Deep South and Appalachia fear Yankeedom’s religious-like faith in secularism. Further the hitherto reliable blue voters of El Norte are drifting away from Yankeedom as cultural values predominate over economic ones.

Close to the end of the book Woodard offers up the horrifying possibility that a pandemic might induce the suspension of civil rights, the dissolution of Congress and the incarceration of Supreme Court justices leading to a break-up of the United States. In 2011, when the book was published, that had the sound of complete fantasy; not so much today. Despite my quibbles this is a terrific book for those readers interested in the origins of our country and its politics.

For the complete Amazon URL see: Uneasy Alliances (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Ronald Brownstein's "Rock Me on the Water:......."

 

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Movies and too Much Politics

 

Atlantic magazine editor and political writer Ronald Brownstein has written an ode to the creativity surrounding Los Angeles in 1974. Of a sudden Los Angeles was awash in musical, television and motion picture talent with something to say. He highlights Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty for their roles in “Chinatown” and “Shampoo”, respectively. Both movies were written by Robert Towne. With respect to “Chinatown,” Brownstein, in essence, summarizes Sam Wasson’s “The Long Goodbye.” ( See:  Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Sam Wasson's "The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood") Just like Wasson Brownstein views the end of Los Angles’ creative moment with the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” the following year. He forgets that most people go to the movies to be entertained.

 

With respect to the music, he highlights the careers of singer songwriters Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne along with Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills and Nash and the music impresario David Geffen. The way he writes about Ronstadt it seems that he had quite the teenage crush on her. Brownstein was sixteen at the time and likely was not alone.

 

Among the musicians and the actors Brownstein writes of excessive drug use and bed swapping among his leading characters. At times you needed a scorecard to see who was sleeping with who and as the year progressed cocaine use grew to the extent that it eroded their creativity in the years to come.

 

On television Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin made social commentary and had big hit with “All in the Family.” Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, became a caricature of Nixon’s silent majority. But what Brownstein does not understand a good part of the audience was laughing with Archie, not at him. As an aside, I sat next to O’Connor at a wedding and he was far funnier than he was on television. It was also the time of “Maude,” “Mash” and “Mary Tyler Moore.” Brownstein revels in idea that previously untouchable subjects were brought up on television.

 

Where Brownstein goes astray is when he writes about politics of the era. He spends way too much time on Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. I knew both of them. By 1974 the antiwar movement was a spent force. The real activism on the Left was taking place in the nascent environmental movement which was planting the seeds for today’s housing crisis in California, feminism, and gay rights.                        

On the Right activism was on the rise in opposition to feminism, school busing and rising property taxes. Those movements would flower later in the decade and bring on the Reagan revolution. In 1974 Jerry Brown was not the future, Ronald Reagan was, and I say this as someone who knew Brown then and served on his Housing Task Force. Jerry Brown was a far better governor 40 years later in his second go around.

 

Most troubling and not mentioned by Brownstein was that while all of the actors and musicians were partying on, Los Angeles was beset by gas lines, a recession, and the collapse of its manufacturing base. For most people 1974 was a very bad year and what they longed for was escape. It took a while, but Hollywood finally figured it out, just as it did during the Great Depression.

 

I was on the periphery of the events discussed in the book. To me the book stated out very strong then faded. Brownstein preaches too much and he forgets that entertainment is a business, and that business will not succeed if it beats people over the head by telling them how bad all of the social problems of the country are. As Brownstein notes George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame wanted people to feel better after they left the theater than when they first arrived. I go to the movies and listen to music to be entertained. If I want to look at the flaws in American life, I watch the news and read The Atlantic, of which I am a subscriber.

For the full Amazon URL see: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and too Much Politics (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Amity Shlaes "Great Society: A New History"

The Cost of Good Intentions

Revisionist conservative historian Amity Shlaes has written what purports to be a history of the Great Society. True it is a history, but it is far from complete. Nevertheless her book offers a host of easy to read vignettes surrounding the milieu of the 1960’s and early 1970’s. She highlights the important role UAW leader Walter Reuther played in bringing about the civil rights revolution and the role of socialist Michael Harrington in supplying much of the intellectual heft to the ideas Lyndon Johnson promoted. She surprisingly offers a sympathetic portrait of the emergence of the New Left and she is especially sympathetic to the activist role played by Casey Hayden, Tom Hayden’s first wife.

In my opinion she spends way too much time on the role of the Office of Economic Opportunity in promoting far left community groups under the rubric of “maximum feasible participation.” This front of the war on poverty ended in defeat as America’s cities exploded in racial violence. It was the unrest at home and the growing unpopularity of the Vietnam War that led to a Republican revival in 1966, an election she does not mention.

However she is especially acute in her discussion of OEO’s Legal Services Corporation which unleashed a brigade of activist lawyers that rewrote housing, welfare and health law and spawned the notion of the public interest law firm. She also devotes far too much effort in discussing Nixon’s failed Family Assistance Plan while leaving out such Nixon accomplishments of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Thus it was Nixon, not Johnson who created the enlarged administrative state of today.

She also doesn’t really focus on Medicare and Medicaid. It is these two entitlement programs that both improved the health of American and are driving huge increases in federal spending today. As was to be expected the all-in cost of these two programs has far exceeded their initial estimates.

Shlaes offers great insight in highlighting the importance of a now forgotten filibuster in the Senate led by Everett Dirksen. At the height of LBJ’s power in the fall of 1965 organized labor made a big push to eliminate Section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Act. That section allows states to ban union shops and thus offering the option of becoming a “right to work” state. That effort failed and the way was open to industrializing the South and to the diminution of union power in the North.

To sum up Shlaes has written an interesting and enjoyable history of the Great Society, but just remember it will not be remembered as the definitive history of the era.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2GMST6VS3F9NR/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv