A review of Ken Burns’ “Horatio’s Drive: America's First Road Trip”

“♪ He'd have to get under—get out and get under—to fix his little machine
He was just dying to cuddle his queen
But ev'ry minute
When he'd begin it
He'd have to get under—get out and get under—then he'd get back at the wheel ♪

♪ A dozen times they'd start to hug and kiss
And then the darned old engine, it would miss
And then he'd have to get under—get out and get under—and fix up his automobile ♪”

– “He'd Have to Get Under – Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile),” a Vaudeville hit from 1913

Some journeys are epic, and done for “serious” reasons – such as frontier exploration, political diplomacy, and scientific discovery. Other journeys are not serious at all, and are done more on a whim. “Horatio's Drive” was in the latter category. In the summer of 1903, Horatio Nelson Jackson undertook the first cross-country automobile journey across the United States. It turned into a race, whose prize was nothing more than bragging rights. The cars broke down many times along the way, and they had to wait for supplies to arrive by train at times. Horatio Nelson Jackson brought along a mechanic named Sewall K. Crocker, and his pet pit bull Bud. There were also letters to Horatio's wife Bertha Richardson Jackson back at home. For reasons unknown to history, he called her “Swipes.” Tom Hanks acts as the voice of Horatio Nelson Jackson, adding his talents to the film.

Bud, Jackson's pet pit bull

A review of Ken Burns’ “Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio” (PBS)

Sometimes these three men were friends … At other times, they were cutthroat business rivals

The filmmaker Ken Burns became famous when “The Civil War” came out in 1990. At the time I write this, “The Civil War” is still the most popular program ever shown on PBS. But few today know about another program that he later made, which came out in 1992. The film that I refer to is, of course, the film “Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio.” Although the subject is a bit obscure, it’s actually much more interesting than one might assume from this fact. It’s a biography of three different men (all very interesting), who helped to create the industry of radio. They were pioneers in the invention of a new information and entertainment medium. Some of them were even friends and colleagues with each other in earlier years, but some of them were cutthroat business rivals and bitter enemies later on. This film is thus a bit like doing twin biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, as Ken Burns does in “The Civil War.” But with one exception, no one died in this market competition between these three businessmen; although that doesn’t make it any less dramatic. (The person who did die, incidentally, was one of these three men – I shall not say which one – when he jumped out of a New York City window to fall 13 stories to his death. This suicide was brought on by his being beaten at the game of business, and thus driven to some amount of poverty and ruin.)

What is “Blackstonian property”?

“There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.”

– Sir William Blackstone's “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1760's), Book 2, Chapter 1

When William Blackstone wrote his “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” he dedicated the entire second volume of this work to property law. He titled this volume “Of the Rights of Things” – that is, the right to own things as property. One of the very first things that he says in the opening chapter of that volume is that “There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.” (Source: Book 2, Chapter 1) This is one of the most famous passages in the “Commentaries.” Today, this definition is sometimes referred to as “Blackstonian property.” But right after that, Blackstone said something else that some might take to contradict that. Does it really do so? I shall examine this question below.

Sir William Blackstone

The Fourteenth Amendment is something of a mixed bag …

It might seem strange to say it today, but the “Bill of Rights” amendments were once understood to apply only to the federal government, rather than to the states as well. This was a particular problem when you consider that the states had (at times) denied these protections to African Americans (and others), even after the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment.

First page of the Fourteenth Amendment

A review of PBS’s “George W. Bush” (American Experience)

“A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone … Those were the good old days.”

– George W. Bush, in a series of jokes at a White House dinner (28 March 2007)

To begin with, this documentary is a hatchet job …

I normally love documentaries, and have watched more than a hundred of them. This included many about American presidents, and I wanted to add this one to the list. Not surprisingly, this turned out to be a hatchet job, with extreme left-wing bias. It is so biased, in fact, as to be factually inaccurate, in ways that I shall describe below.

George W. Bush

A few problems with Rousseau’s “The Social Contract”

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.”

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “The Social Contract” (1762), opening lines of Book I, Chapter I

I first read this work in English translation for a history class …

In the spring semester of 2007, my history professor of that time assigned my class to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “Du contrat social, ou principes du droit politique” (“The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right”). This assignment was for a Western Civilization class that I was then taking. At that time, I read it in English translation, which would contribute to my later desire to read it in the original French. But it would be several years before I ever got the opportunity to do so. Thus, by the time that I started this later project, more than a decade had passed since my first reading of the book for this history class in 2007.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

… but more than a decade later, I read it in the original French for my own amusement

When I started this project, I had just finished reading another Rousseau work in its original French. This work was Rousseau's “Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes” (“Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men”). I wanted to read this other work first, since it was written some seven or eight years before “Du contrat social, ou principes du droit politique.” The full English title of the work that I'm reviewing here is “The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right.” But for simplicity's sake, I will just refer to it here as “The Social Contract.” I started this work in July 2018, and finished it some six months later in December 2018. Thus, I have now read this entire work in its original French. I can thus certify that my criticisms of this work are not based on mistranslation.

Statue of Rousseau, on the Île Rousseau, Geneva

A review of Bettany Hughes’ “The Spartans”

“Athens became the seat of politeness and taste, the country of orators and philosophers. The elegance of its buildings equalled that of its language; on every side might be seen marble and canvas, animated by the hands of the most skilful artists. From Athens we derive those astonishing performances, which will serve as models to every corrupt age. The picture of Lacedæmon [a. k. a. “Sparta”] is not so highly coloured. There, the neighbouring nations used to say, ‘men were born virtuous, their native air seeming to inspire them with virtue.’ But its inhabitants have left us nothing but the memory of their heroic actions: monuments that should not count for less in our eyes than the most curious relics of Athenian marble.”

– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences” (1750), First Part

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth-century admirer of the Spartans

A number of people have praised the Spartans – including Rousseau, Machiavelli, and Hitler …

Many centuries after the Spartans, Jean-Jacques Rousseau once praised their culture in his “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.” He said that the memory of Sparta's heroic actions “should not count for less in our eyes than the most curious relics of Athenian marble” (as cited above). Niccolò Machiavelli was another philosopher who praised the Spartans. (See the footnote to this blog post for the details of this.) American colonists and French revolutionaries have sometimes been among those who praised the Spartans. In modern times, some liberals have also praised Sparta for what they perceive as its “greater respect” for women’s rights. And, as the presenter of this documentary notes, Adolf Hitler also praised the Spartans, with Nazi Germany using them as a model of sorts – particularly in their use of eugenics. (See the Wikipedia page on “Laconophilia,” or the “love of Sparta,” for some of the details of this.)

Adolf Hitler, a twentieth-century admirer of the Spartans

… while Alexander Hamilton considered Sparta to be “little better than a wellregulated camp”

Ironically, Sparta was admired even by some from its arch-rival Athens, the other great superpower of Ancient Greece. The Spartans actually believed that they were creating a “utopia.” But if anything, it seems to have been closer to the other end of the spectrum – a dystopia. Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that “Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often engaged in wars, offensive and defensive, as the neighboring monarchies of the same times. Sparta was little better than a wellregulated camp; and Rome was never sated of carnage and conquest.” (Source: Federalist No. 6) Thus, although he recognized Sparta as a “republic,” Hamilton considered Sparta to be “little better than a wellregulated camp” (an accurate summation). This documentary shows that the truth about Sparta is less romantic, and far less flattering, than the description offered by Rousseau. It acknowledges the rights of women in Sparta, even as it repeats tired old myths about how women actually had more rights in Sparta than they did in Athens (although I should acknowledge that they were still second-class citizens in both). But as this documentary notes, Sparta was “no feminist paradise.” It was a hellish dystopia (as mentioned earlier), with no real concept of human rights. It killed those boys that it deemed “weak,” denying them any future chance to redeem themselves for the unforgivable “crime” of weakness.

Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours’s “The Selection of Children in Sparta,” painted 1785