"A Philosophical Brief in Defense of Liberalism"

"Living this liberal vision, for Obama, means accepting the diversity inherent to a large society made up of people with all sorts of beliefs and worldviews: recognizing that 'our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they'll extend to us.' It means understanding 'true freedom' as something that gives all of us the right 'to make decisions about our own life [and] requires us to recognize that other people have the right to make decisions that are different than ours.' And it means seeing democracy as more than 'just a bunch of abstract principles and a bunch of dusty laws in a book somewhere,' but rather 'the values we live by.'"

Zack Beauchamp at Vox reacts to Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

And Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect looks back to the Democrats' 1924 convention.

"He Showed the Way to the Modern World"

"Wilson championed—and came to symbolize—progressive reform at home and liberal internationalism abroad. So long as those causes commanded wide support, Wilson's name resonated with the greats of American history. In our time, however, the American left has subordinated the causes of reform and internationalism to the politics of identity, while the American right has rejected reform and internationalism altogether. Wilson's standing has been crushed in between."

David Frum at The Atlantic calls to "Uncancel Woodrow Wilson."

"In a Century's Time, When Future American Students Think of Presidential Corruption, They'll Immediately Think of Donald Trump"

"Against the past few years, Teapot Dome appears almost quaint—a relic of a bygone, back-slapping era, a time when Americans paid off Americans, all for other Americans' benefits, all in a neat, tidy circle of domestic graft. It's not just the magnitude of the Trump-era corruption that challenges our notion of what an American president dedicated to financial misconduct can accomplish. It’s that now, the players are transnational in scope—crossing borders, crossing boundaries, taking full advantage of the financial secrecy tools wherever they may be, and the fecund opportunities that a president like Trump can provide."

Casey Michel at The Bulwark writes that "[a] century on, it’s clear that Teapot Dome is no longer the lodestar of presidential larceny, the shorthand for shortchanging the public, the metric against which all other corruption scandals are compared."

Boats Against the Current

"The American Dream is, of course, another of Gatsby's Big Themes, and one that continues to be misunderstood. 'Fitzgerald shows that that dream is very powerful, but that it is indeed a very hard one for most Americans to realise. It feeds them great hopes, great desires, and it's extraordinary, the efforts that so many of them make to fulfil those dreams and those desires, but that dream is beyond the reach of many, and many, they give up all too much to try to achieve that great success,' Cain points out. Among the obstacles, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, are hard-and-fast class lines that no amount of money will enable Gatsby to cross. It's a view that resonates with a mood that Cain says he's been picking up on among his students--a certain 'melancholy' for the American Dream, the feeling fanned by racial and economic inequalities that the pandemic has only deepened."

Hephzibah Anderson at the BBC calls The Great Gatsby, the "world's most misunderstood novel."

"When the Blues Was Mass-Market Party Music and Its Reigning Stars Were Women"

"Ironically, the records that the Blues Mafia dedicated themselves to rescuing from obscurity have become far more famous than the smash hits of the 1920s. Male country blues resonated with rock's singer-songwriters in a way that the classic blues never could. While a few women, notably Victoria Spivey and Edith Wilson, lived long enough to return to the stage during the 1960s blues revival, the likes of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were far more interested in the hardbitten men of the Delta. 'It is surely no accident that so many of the early blues performers that revivalists scorned as inauthentic were women; to them, authenticity had a male voice,' writes Hamilton."

At the BBC, Dorian Lynskey discusses "[t]he forgotten story of America's first black superstars."

"They Recognized That He Was One-Eighth Indian, but He Had Served the Interests of White People for a Long, Long Time"

"'The one thing that might have lightened the persecution of Curtis was that he was half white,' Brooks says. 'He's light-complected, he's not dark-skinned like a lot of Kanza. His personality wins people over—unfortunately, racists can like a person of color and still be a racist, and I think that's kind of what happened with Charlie. He was just a popular kid.'" 

Livia Gershon at Smithsonian discusses Charles Curtis, the first Native American to become Vice President of the United States.

"The Necessary Resource if History Was to Be Understood as a Theatre of Revolutionary Possibility"

"It was Walter Benjamin, the Berlin-born literary and cultural critic who sustained an important affiliation with the Institute, who tried to explain the relationship between Marxism and religion with a memorable image: Marxist theory, he wrote, is like the chess-playing automatism first presented at the imperial court in 18th-century Vienna, whose movements seemed to be governed by nothing but the mechanical operation of levers and wheels. But the true animus of Marxist theory is theology, which in the modern era must hide itself from public view but still lends Marxism its apparently autonomous power, much like the individual who was cleverly concealed within the chess-player's cabinet and assured its victory." 

Peter E. Gordon at New Statesmen explores the relationship the Frankfurt School had with religion.

"I Would Vastly Prefer a Limited Career with the Consciousness of Having Done the Right Thing"

"Finally, as the new postwar president, 'I thought the spirit of clemency was quite in harmony with the things we were trying to do in Washington; that Debs had never been guilty of any overt act; that he never countenanced destruction of government by force, and probably I could persuade him to become a factor in contributing to tranquility throughout the land.'"

Ron Radosh at The Bulwark tells the story of when President Warren Harding freed Eugene Debs from federal prison.

"The Left Is Far Stronger Today"

"The habit of mind I term 'asymmetrical multiculturalism', which combines white intellectuals' hostility to their own group with a romantic celebration of minorities, began not in the 2010s, but in the years following the First World War. Likewise what we call wokeness is a sensibility rooted in a set of ideas I term 'Left-modernism', a hybrid ideology of liberal cosmopolitanism and cultural egalitarianism. This blend crystallised before the War, but spread within US high culture in response to nativist populism in America and nationalism in Europe."

Eric Kaufmann at Unherd compares the 2020s to the 1920s.

"A Long, Four-Decade Pause"

"It's not the first time politicians have latched on to economic unrest and public safety concerns to press a hard-line, anti-immigration agenda. In 1921, Congress passed, and President Warren G. Harding signed, the 'Emergency Quota Act,' sharply reducing the number of immigrants permitted to enter the country. A putative response to rising unemployment and social unrest, in reality the law represented the culmination of decades of racial and religious-motivated bigotry against newcomers from southern and Eastern Europe and Asia. It also portended a long, four-decade pause in the country's openness to immigration."

Joshua Zeitz at Politico compares Donald Trump to Warren Harding.

"It Has Touched Almost Every Aspect of Cultural and Commercial Production"

"The school's founding proclamation made no mention of industry or new technology. Instead, it called for 'a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavoured to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists!' It aimed to break down barriers between art and different forms of craft. It dreamt of 'a new building of the future that will unite every discipline', which would 'rise to heaven from the hands of a million workers as a crystal symbol of a new faith'."

Rowan Moore at The Guardian marks the centennial of the Bauhaus.

"Arguably Serving as the Most Politicized and Abusive Branch of Federal Law Enforcement"

"The viciousness we are witnessing today at the border, directed at children and adults, has a long history, a fact that should in no way mitigate the extraordinary cruelty of Donald Trump. But it does suggest that if the U.S. is to climb out of the moral abyss it has fallen into, it has to think well beyond Trump's malice. It needs a historical reckoning with the true cause of the border crisis: the long, brutal history of border enforcement itself."

Greg Grandin at The Intercept discusses the history of the U.S. Border Patrol.

In the Eye of the Storm

Kevin Jennings and Victor Davis Hanson debate immigration in the Los Angeles Times.

What Ever Happened to...

"She began her career at 3, starring in her own show on NBC radio by the age of 5, cutting records and appearing in vaudeville, in shorts including 1929's 'Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder' and in Paramount's 1933 feature 'International House' with W.C. Fields.

"Variety founder Sime Silverman himself mentioned Rose Marie in its pages for 'The Child Wonder,' writing, 'Though but a kidlet, she seemed to have an idea of her own.'"

Carmel Dagan at Variety writes an obit for Rose Marie.

"No Other Event Until the Vietnam War Evoked as Much Anti-American Sentiment"

"For many people in 1927 and after, the two men were victims of a deep-seated fear of immigrants. For others, they were criminals and terrorists who benefited from a worldwide campaign led by people who despised America and its institutions.
"Today, the United States is engaged in a bitter struggle between these same two views, with the xenophobic forces currently in political power, especially in the White House."

Moshik Temkin at The Observer marks the ninetieth anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

"We Are Living in an Age of Political Racism and Mainstreamed Hate"

"Key to all of this is the interplay between racism in culture, in politics, and in public life. Each reinforced the other, creating an atmosphere of hostility and violence that wasn't otherwise inevitable, even as it had its antecedents. Put differently, racist violence isn't spontaneous; it creeps up from fertile ground, feeding on hate and intolerance in the public sphere. The lynching epidemic exploded with the end of Reconstruction and the reconciliation of Northern and Southern whites under the banner of white supremacy, pogroms in towns like Tulsa occurred in an atmosphere of unimaginably virulent racism, and the killings and assassinations of the civil rights era were inseparable from the segregationist fire-eaters that governed states like Mississippi and Alabama. Today, the rising pace of hate crimes is tied to a political style that has harnessed and weaponized white resentment by way of an ethno-nationalist movement that sees America in narrow, racially exclusionary terms."

Jamelle Bouie in Slate discusses the fruits of Donald Trump.

"Dramatically Altered the Story of Crime and Punishment in the United States"

"According to U.S. immigration officials, Mexicans made nearly 1 million official border crossings into the United States during the 1920s. They arrived at a port of entry, paid an entry fee and submitted to any required tests, such as literacy and health.
"However, as U.S. immigration authorities reported, many other Mexican immigrants did not register for legal entry. Entry fees were prohibitively high for many Mexican workers. Moreover, U.S. authorities subjected Mexican immigrants, in particular, to kerosene baths and humiliating delousing procedures because they believed Mexican immigrants carried disease and filth on their bodies. Instead of traveling to a port of entry, many Mexicans informally crossed the border at will, as both U.S. and Mexican citizens had done for decades.
"When the debate stalled over how many Mexicans to allow in each year, Blease shifted attention to stopping the large number of border crossings that took place outside ports of entry. He suggested criminalizing unmonitored entry.
"According to Blease’s bill 'unlawfully entering the country' would be a misdemeanor, while unlawfully returning to the United States after deportation would be a felony. The idea was to force Mexican immigrants into an authorized and monitored stream that could be turned on and turned off at will at ports of entry. Any immigrant who entered the United States outside the bounds of this stream would be a criminal subject to fines, imprisonment and ultimately deportation. But it was a crime designed to impact Mexican immigrants, in particular.
"Neither the western agricultural businessmen nor the restrictionists registered any objections."

Kelly Lytle Hernandez at The Conversation discusses "the Immigration Act of March 4, 1929."

The "Homegrown Authoritarian"

"Italians learned in the 1920s what Americans are learning in 2016: Charismatic authoritarians seeking political office cannot be understood through the framework of traditional politics. They lack interest in, and patience for, established protocols. They often trust few outside of their own families, or those they already control, making collaboration and relationship building difficult. They work from a different playbook, and so must those who intend to confront them.
"The authoritarian playbook is defined by the particular relationship such individuals have with their followers. It's an attachment based on submission to the authority of one individual who stands above the party, even in a regime."

Ruth Ben-Ghiat in The Atlantic compares Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini.

And Colin Campbell at The New Republic sees Trump in a character inspired by Mussolini in Thomas Mann's short story "Mario and the Magician."

"All These Subcultures Have This Love for the Place"

"'The photos reminded me of my childhood growing up in L.A.,' said DeBro. 'It reminded me of black-and-white TV, watching roller derby, wrestling and boxing with my dad. Richmond 9-5171: It seemed like we all knew that phone number. The photos sparked my interest. I was starting to see the scope of this narrative and how it fits into the history of L.A., the violent birth of the city, and how it connected to so many different parts of the city.'"

As a new documentary about the venue approaches, Lorraine Ali in the Los Angeles Times discusses the Olympic Auditorium.

"The Trump Nobody Knows"

"The Man Nobody Knows became an instant bestseller, moving a quarter-million copies by 1926. It was, like The Art of the Deal, an inspirational success manual. And it’s hard to miss the echoes in the language the two authors employed, or in the ideals they chose to exalt."

Yoni Appelbaum at The Atlantic compares Donald Trump to Bruce Barton.