Book Review--This Republic of Suffering

Just completed "This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War", the new and well-reviewed book by the new President of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust. Briefly, she writes of how Americans, both North and South, grappled with the issues raised by the half million dead soldiers of the war. The issues ranged from trying to have the "good death", where the dying person affirms the state of his soul in the lap of his family; the trauma of violating the commandment against killing; the ways in which the dead were, or were not, buried; the problems of identifying the dead with names; the burden on the bereaved of "realizing" the death, as well as dealing with the unknown fate of so many thousands; the meaning of the war, if any--the impacts on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, Ambrose Bierce, and Emily Dickinson; accounting for the casualties and eventually memorializing them.

I enjoyed the book, which fit well with my past reading and interests. Faust writes clearly and with a minimum of academic jargon. I noticed a little, but that may be due more to my age than to her use of academese. What struck me? her description of the good death and the idea that Swedenborg (Henry James Sr. was an adherent) had changed the way Americans thought of the afterlife. By 1860 it had become much more real and physical, with family and friends around--even the possibility of communication from the beyond. Resurrection of the body had become more important, which was challenged by the mutilations and disintegration of the war. The idea that military cemeteries were new--the fallen weren't buried in a family plot amongst their ancestors but in geometric military order with their fellow soldiers (but not their foes and not those of another race).

As a bureaucrat I was particularly struck when she noted the absence of bureaucracies (to count soldiers, give them dog tags, track their fate, bury their bodies, notify the next of kin, care for cemeteries). The war caused some bureaucracies to be created, simply as a result of the mass of casualties (think of Clara Barton, Sanitary Commission, etc.). Of course, the Civil War has long been regarded as the first "modern" war, and much of the book carries that theme to subjects which we don't normally consider.

What would I criticize? Nothing much. I do think she missed one long-term result of the war--she has the data but doesn't draw out the implications: The North had the advantage of the established military bureaucracy, such as it was, when the war began. The South could re-create it. So far, so good. But at the end of the war, the North's efforts to account for the Union dead, to bury them properly, and honor them worked through the military and expanded its bureaucracy, while in the south the same emotional impulses had to be undertaken by private organizations, mostly women's groups. I'd suggest the effect was partially to increase the North's comfort with government and bureaucracy, while the South had no such experience. (She does note the Skocpol book which saw the need to provide pensions for the veterans, widows, and orphans as a major spur to developing the American welfare state.) So while the North experienced the government as something that could perform, the South experienced it as irrelevant to their concerns and as unfair (using customs duties they paid to set up cemeteries for Union war dead). That helps to account for the long-term difference in attitudes towards government between the sections.

A Government Blog Someone Likes [Updated]

Patt Morrison writes in today's LA Times in praise of government bureaucrats and transparency:

I can hardly believe I'm about to hold up the TSA as a good example, but the Transportation Security Administration has a pretty fair version of just this service. In January, it started a blog:www.tsa.gov/blog. If a blog can be a page-turner, this one is. There's a Facebook-like feature profiling TSA employees, and under a heading called -- believe it -- "Gripes and Grins," the rest of us can cut loose with "can you top this?" stories about airport security, like the one about the passenger who lost a kidney. The TSA screener wanted him to remove the surgical dressing over the foot-long incision, to get a look at the staples in his gut.

I love this blog. It's the cathartic comebacks you were afraid to make at the time. Even if no official ever reads it, it feels righteous just to praise the laudable and dump on the laggards, dullards and power-trippers.

It's disorderly and unscientific -- and scissors out the nastiest complaints; check the Delete-O-Meter feature. But every government agency should have a blog like this. Public service is customer service. If the waiter at Olive Garden can give you a customer comment card with the bill, why can't official America do the same? Why can't every DMV clerk you deal with, every employee at the Bureau of Public Works, every TSA inspector hand you a "how am I doing?" rating card with his or her name on it?

And government agencies had better get there first, before private websites do. Already there's ratemycop.com, a month-old, private, L.A.-based website that lets citizens name names and badge numbers after law enforcement encounters.

Aftermath of Crackdown--Prince William County

The Washington Times has an article on the effects of Prince William County's crackdown on illegal immigrants--loss of residents, vacant dwellings, foreclosures, loss of business. Yesterday, I think it was, the Post had an article on how the local soccer leagues were bypassing the county, mainly because the players were afraid of being caught up in an arrest (a legal driver is stopped for cause, the officer might check the status of the riders). From what I can tell, the fear level seems higher than justified, but that's often true.

Is a Catfish a Vegetable?

The Washington Post has an article on an attempt (passed in the Senate) to have the USDA inspect catfish, like they do meat. There are a lot of catfish grown in the Mississippi Delta, but apparently imports are becoming a problem in the last couple years. So cynics think the inspection provision is just to put another hurdle in the way of imports. Non-cynics would look at the problems with heparin and contaminated corn gluten and say inspection is long overdue.

But House staffers tried to cover all fish, not just catfish, which seems to have been a case of overreaching, maybe fishing from a bridge too far. If the Post is right, a new farm bill, when passed, will not include an inspection provision.

The article triggered my memory, though. (Hopefully accurately--once again I'm too lazy to doublecheck my facts.) Back in the dark ages, maybe the mid 80's, cotton and rice were having their problems so producers in the Delta were looking for alternative crops. Rice fields in particular were candidates for conversion into crayfish and catfish ponds. And it seemed a propitious time to push these products. (Was it then that Rene Prudhomme was big with his Cajun cooking? Maybe so.) The problem was farm program rules--ASCS had this funny idea that land under water, if it wasn't growing rice, wasn't really "cropland". So a rice planter who wanted to switch a field to catfish pond would be reducing his cropland and likely giving up rice base (if the land was fully based--i.e., 1,000 acres of land = 1,000 acres of cropland = 1,000 acres of rice and cotton base).

So someone, probably Rep. Jamie Whitten, included a provision in the farm bill that ensured that the land retained its cropland status. And, unlike fruits and vegetables, producers could grow catfish on their base acres.

The Two Cultures?

A now mostly forgotten writer named C.P. Snow, Baron Snow to us plebes, made his name in 1959 for talking about "Two Cultures" by which, as a Brit, he meant the divide between literary types and scientists. These days we are more likely to think of red states and blue states.

Here, at the History network is a good piece reflecting on the differences between rural and urban cultures: A Historian Reflects on the Rural-Urban Divide and Election '08 By Daniel Herman

"...ruralites and urbanites have had no use for one another since at least the turn of the last century but they don't necessarily coalesce around timeless left-right oppositions. A hundred years ago, I pointed out to my wife, much of the heartland was not red but bright blue whereas much of urban America was not blue but bright red. One might go so far as to say that the modern Democratic Party that attracts so many urbanites was born in a manger, whereas the modern Republican Party that attracts so many ruralites was born in the caverns of Wall Street." It's interesting, particularly the cat who hides in the cavern.

I'm perhaps also struck because my grandfather worked the rural Presbyterian churches of the Dakotas and Nebraska, a process he alludes to.

The Return of Archy and Mehitabel?

I know I'm showing my age, but that's what I thought of when I read this post
from Ann Althouse, carrying on the cockroach viewpoint meme. See Wikipedia

Libertarians Surprise One.

From Volokh conspiracy

"And the poor and politically weak are the most important potential beneficiaries of libertarian public interest efforts in the fields of economic liberties and property rights, among others. The wealthy and powerful can usually defend their property rights and other economic interests in the political process and therefore have much less need for judicial protection."

What the Internet Is Missing

It's missing ads. No, not electronic ads, but the print ads which will be indispensable for social historians of the future. I say this because yesterday the Post ran a full page ad which I'd like to link to, but I can't.

Instead I'll link to the website--LifeLock, which is an identity protection service.

The service itself, LifeLock, appears to be consolidating a number of things you can do for yourself, requesting free credit reports, taking your name off junk mailing lists, etc. You aren't paying for a magic formula, you're paying for convenience. Is it a good deal--damn if I know, might be, particularly for someone with paranoid tendencies who simultaneously is willing to trust someone to guard their identity.

But what it does have is a great gimmick--the founder puts his social security number in the ad. It's a great example of what used to be called "eating your own dogfood" (I think that was it--anyway the idea is, when you're developing an IT system, the big test of its usefulness is whether its developers use it themselves. Sort of like Congress--if they come up with a new health care system, do they scrap their own current system and switch to the new one.

Farmer's Hard Choices

What to plant? See this NYTimes article and the related slideshow.

Particularly note two things--the slide showing the farmer's messy desk (see-my messy desk is a result of being a farmer's son) and the sidebar graphics, particularly the one showing wheat prices adjusted for inflation--in the early 70's wheat hit $25 a bushel in today's prices.

It's a Changing World--The Richest Are Indians

From the WSJ blog:

No, the biggest surprise is the rise of the Indian rich — four of the top eight billionaires in the world are from India. Topping the ranks is steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, whose worth Forbes puts at $45 billion. Next up are the Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, with $43 billion and $42 billion repsectively, largely from petrochemicals. Rounding out the list is KP Singh, the real-estate magnate, at $30 billion.