A review of “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (1970 movie)

“Thus, the earnest hope of the Japanese Government to adjust Japanese-American relations and to preserve and promote the peace of the Pacific through cooperation with the American Government has finally been lost. The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.”

– Closing lines of the “Japanese Note to the United States,” on 7 December 1941 (which was delivered an hour after the Pearl Harbor attack, and did not contain an actual declaration of war anyway)

Pearl Harbor was part of a series of attacks throughout the Pacific …

On a warm Sunday morning in Hawaii, Japanese carrier planes attacked the United States fleet in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. But contrary to popular perception, this was not the only place that they attacked that day. The attack was actually simultaneous with moves elsewhere in the Pacific on places like British Malaya, British Singapore, and British Hong Kong. Prior to these attacks, neither the United States nor Britain had been at war with Japan; so these two countries were thus drawn into the Pacific theater of World War II at almost the same time. Other American possessions that were attacked at around this time were Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island, and the Philippines.

"Battleship Row" at Pearl Harbor (photograph taken from a Japanese torpedo plane, 1941)

A review of PBS's “Murder of a President” (James A. Garfield)

“I conceived of the idea of removing the President four weeks ago. Not a soul knew of my purpose. I conceived the idea myself. I read the newspapers carefully, for and against the administration, and gradually, the conviction settled on me that the President's removal was a political necessity, because he proved a traitor to the men who made him, and thereby imperiled the life of the Republic ... Ingratitude is the basest of crimes. That the President, under the manipulation of his Secretary of State, has been guilty of the basest ingratitude to the Stalwarts admits of no denial. ... In the President's madness he has wrecked the once grand old Republican party; and for this he dies.... I had no ill-will to the President. This is not murder. It is a political necessity. It will make my friend Arthur President, and save the Republic.”

– Charles Guiteau, in his letter to the American people, on 16 June 1881

On July 2nd, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau went to the Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station, and lay in wait for his intended murder victim. President James A. Garfield was scheduled to leave Washington D.C., and Guiteau wanted him dead before his train ever left the city. When President Garfield walked into the waiting room of the station, Charles Guiteau walked up behind him and pulled the trigger at point-blank range from behind. President Garfield cried out: “My God, what is that?”, flinging up his arms. Guiteau fired a second shot, and the president collapsed. One bullet grazed the president's shoulder, while the other struck him in the back. Guiteau put his pistol back into his pocket and turned to leave via a cab that he had waiting for him outside the station, but he collided with policeman Patrick Kearney, who was entering the station after hearing the gunfire. Kearney apprehended Guiteau, and asked him: “In God's name, what did you shoot the president for?” Guiteau did not respond. The crowd called for Guiteau to be lynched, but Kearney took Guiteau to the police station instead. (This paragraph borrows some exact wording from Wikipedia, which I should acknowledge here as a source.)

Contemporaneous depiction of Garfield assassination, with James G. Blaine at right

President Garfield with James G. Blaine in the railway station, shortly after the shooting

A review of PBS's “The Great War” (American Experience)

“We [the German government] intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”

– Zimmermann Telegram (1917), one of the events that led to the American entry into World War One

President Woodrow Wilson walked a tightrope during the early years of World War One, trying to steer a middle course between full neutrality and full involvement. Of course, Americans did not declare war on Germany until April 1917, and waited even longer than that to send troops to Europe. But even at the beginning of the war in 1914, most Americans did not want the Germans to win, and some of them actually sold food (and sometimes weapons) to the Allied nations. There was a massive peace movement before America officially got involved, and PBS makes sure to cover it here. But there were also many supporters of getting involved sooner - and this, too, receives some good coverage from PBS. Among the supporters of earlier American involvement was the former president Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a major critic of Wilson for his perceived lack of muscle in this struggle - a correct perception. But Wilson was also criticized by the peace movement for supporting aid to Britain and France. Thus, he was having a hard time walking this tightrope within his own party. Unfortunately for Wilson, this balancing act would prove even harder when the Germans sank the RMS Lusitania in 1915.

Sinking of the RMS Lusitania, 7 May 1915

A review of PBS Empires “Martin Luther”

"Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen!"

- Martin Luther's "Speech at the Diet of Worms" (1521)

We take it for granted that the name “Protestant” comes from the word “protest.” But this name is a relic of a time when a “protest” against the establishment was more prominent. That establishment was then challenged by the distant thunder of revolution. It was just called the “Protestant Reformation” …

A review of Ken Burns’ “Baseball” (PBS)

“♪ Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry sou
Katie blew. ♪

♪ On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said 'No,
I'll tell you what you can do:' ♪ ”

– The unknown first verse of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (1908)

When Ken Burns' “The Civil War” came out in 1990, it was the most popular program in PBS history; and it still holds that record today. This program received significant critical acclaim, and it certainly deserved this acclaim. But when Ken Burns was asked what he was going to do next, he was met with raised eyebrows when he said “baseball.” For many people, baseball seems like something less than a “serious” historical topic; and probably seemed like a waste of Ken Burns' talent to boot. But to me, this is no “anticlimax” – this is a legitimate historical topic in its own right. You can learn a lot about the history of America by studying the history of its baseball, I think – at least, for the periods after baseball was invented. I will return to this theme multiple times in this post, as I give some related anecdotes from baseball history. Suffice it to say for now that it gives some great insights into this country; and that if you really want to understand America, you would do well to study this game in detail.

National League Baltimore Orioles, 1896

Christy Mathewson, known as “The Christian Gentleman”

A review of “The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance” (PBS Empires)

“To the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De' Medici:

Those who strive to obtain the good graces of a prince are accustomed to come before him with such things as they hold most precious, or in which they see him take most delight; whence one often sees horses, arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and similar ornaments presented to princes, worthy of their greatness. Desiring therefore to present myself to your Magnificence with some testimony of my devotion towards you, I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, the knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity; which, having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into a little volume, to your Magnificence.”

– Dedication of Niccolò Machiavelli's “The Prince” (1532)

When people today think of the “Italian Renaissance,” they usually think of accomplishments in the arts and sciences – or sometimes, philosophy. They would not often think of power politics, or the squabbling among the Italian city-states of the time. But this era was marked by ferocious power politics in Italy, which created great turmoil on the Italian peninsula. Niccolò Machiavelli's “The Prince” was the product of this time, and so was its disturbing view of ethics and politics. There was much to fear for Italians of this time.

The rise of the Medici family owed much to the economic strength that they gained from banking

During this time, one family in particular rose to prominence in Italy – and more specifically, in Florence. In its heyday, this family produced kings, queens, and even three popes. That family was, of course, the Medici; but it did not start out as a royal family. Rather, it made its name through banking; and amassing wealth by means of the private sector. The rise of the Medici family owed much to the economic strength that they gained in this way. They actually started out their ascendancy as a family of Italian merchant-bankers, and continued to be such even during their political rule. They were among the earliest bankers in Europe, and were great pioneers in the banking industry. Their depositors stored their money in the “Medici Bank,” and the Medici then loaned out this money to people who needed it. The interest from these loans actually brought great wealth to the Medici family, and allowed them to pay some small interest to their depositors as well. It helped to create the family fortune, which brought them to political prominence in Italy. Money was often the greatest weapon in the Medici arsenal, and was a great driver of the politics of the Renaissance (as it was for every other era of human history).

Cosimo de Medici, the Italian banker who became the first of the Medici dynasty

The document that changed everything in America …

When the Founding Fathers wrote the original Constitution in 1787, they were creating a document that would change everything in America, keeping a fragile union of thirteen states from descending into war debts, bankruptcy, and even armed rebellions. One uprising in particular came from a disgruntled Revolutionary War veteran named Daniel Shays, whose uprising against the government of Massachusetts had been an impetus for holding the Constitutional Convention in the first place. It did not start out as a popular document, and was opposed openly even by some of the men who had been present at the Convention. Thus, the particulars of this document were debated fiercely from one end of the thirteen former colonies to the other.

George Mason

Luther Martin

What were the particulars of this document, and why did they create such an uproar when they were first written? What relevance might its passages have today, when our world is so different from the one they inhabited 200 years ago? What was it about this document that caused it to be so successful, and which made the country that adopted it into the greatest superpower that the world has ever known? And why is this most essential ingredient to the country's remarkable success story such an obscure and forgotten secret?

In this series, I will try to answer these questions, as I talk about everything from the people that influenced the Constitution (such as John Locke, and Baron de Montesquieu) to the men that commented on it (such as William Lloyd Garrison, and Abraham Lincoln). I will try to be informative, but I will not shy away from inserting persuasive commentary at times as well. I will lay out the case for why the Constitution of the United States is the greatest success story that human politics has ever known.