What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

National Review ^ | April 7 2018 | Daniel Gerelnter

[iowamark]

A friend recently posed this question: “If you had to recommend one book for a first-time visitor to the U.S. to read, to understand our country, what would it be and why?”...

If the goal is an education, we could recommend Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s Growth of the American Republic, a two-volume history that used to be required reading...

Huckleberry Finn may be the greatest American novel... But there is no single novel, no matter how great, that can do the job alone.

Consider instead the great American essayists who invented a new style of writing in the 1920s and founded The New Yorker. E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat is the finest such essay collection... Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel is nearly as great...

Teddy Roosevelt’s short book The Strenuous Life, which opens with his 1899 speech by that name, is an explanation of America’s view of itself — a view that greatly shaped the 20th century. It was the peculiar marriage of power and prosperity together with a sense of moral urgency. Roosevelt demands an active life, a life of struggling for personal and national virtue. He commends a triad of strength in body, intellect, and character — of which character is the most important. America must meet its moral obligations vigorously, he tells us: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”...

The origin of that moral urgency was America’s most important spiritual crisis. It is best expressed in a single speech, rich in Biblical imagery and contemporary prophecy: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is the greatest of all American writing. It is a tone-poem or photograph of the American soul. A complete understanding, in just 697 words.

[DiogenesLamp]

I actually love New England Clam Chowder. I don’t know why anyone in the South wouldn’t like it, it’s good.

[9YearLurker]

I always enjoy local fiction, locally set when I am visiting abroad. So I would think it somewhat dependent on the traveler’s particular itinerary in the US.

As to further edification, that depends on how well read and versed the traveler is with American history and thought to begin with. ‘Democracy in America’ is accessible, timeless, and insightful.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I wasn’t doing what before, addressing your points on economic matters as causation of the Civil War? Now that’s not true. I wrote several posts on those matters. While I am not sure of all the details of the arguments you wish to make on that topic, I am completely at a loss as to which social changes you were referencing. It seems so easy for you to make a serious attempt at clarity here. Why post something and then backtrack so mysteriously?

[DiogenesLamp]

I have yet to hear you acknowledge that the South was providing the vast majority of all income from Europe, and therefore was providing the vast majority of all funding for the Federal Government.

I did see you admit to 60%, which ought to prove the point even with the rest ignored, but it does not seem to have dawned on you that this money represents a motive. No, you flatly reject "money" as a motive, and insist that it was all about "social change" that wouldn't change if the South hadn't left.

Me? I always bet on money and power as a motive. That social justice warrior crap is just to fool the dupes. It's always about money and power.

[SoCal Pubbie]

We will discuss this further when you answer my question.

[DiogenesLamp]

We will discuss this further when you answer my question.

I don't think there is any point. You either have objectivity, or you don't.

If you have objectivity, I think i've said enough. If you don't, then no further relating of information will serve any purpose.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I am as objective as is humanly possible. I am also very fair, which should be obvious I’m giving you a chance to clarify something you’ve written so as to avoid misinterpretation. I think any objective third party reading our exchange would conclude, as I have, that you refuse to answer my request because an honest answer would reveal that you full well know the real reason for secession. You still have a chance to clarify that post in question.

I’m waiting.

[SoCal Pubbie]

While I’m waiting, I’ll add that I have already acknowledged that the South was providing the majority of export dollars flowing into the US before the Civil War. What you have not shown is how that affected tariffs, how that relates to unfair taxation of Southerners at 12 times the rate of Northerners per capital, or why the South should consder this grounds for secession.

[x]

If the South was producing the vast bulk of the European money, how was it all ending up in New York?

Did it? A lot of it ended up here ...

... or in mansions like it. Or in the furnishings and gardens. Or in agricultural equipment, seed, livestock and land. Or in slaves.

Some was in banks in New Orleans or Charleston or New York or London. Some went to pay for shipping and insurance.

If you lived in a very agrarian part of the country, you'd be buying stuff that was made elsewhere, so it made sense to keep some of your money with commission merchants or cotton factors who sold what your plantations produced and bought the things you wanted or needed. Much of the money you made in the harvest would have to be spent on planting the next crop, so it didn't make sense to take it in cash and spend it all or stuff it in your mattress.

Western banks tended to be newer and less experienced and more likely to collapse when panics (what we'd call recessions or depressions) broke out. Western state governments also overextended themselves and became insolvent, leaving their bonds worthless. Those were two more big reasons why plantation owners in the Old Southwest may have liked to spread out their investments and keep some of their money in Northeastern or foreign hands.

[x]

I don't think there is any point. You either have objectivity, or you don't.

If you have objectivity, I think i've said enough. If you don't, then no further relating of information will serve any purpose.

The Great Hogg has spoken!

Begone, Varlet!

Back to your hovel!

[SoCal Pubbie]

Okay how about those social changes?

[DiogenesLamp]

Did it? A lot of it ended up here ..

Yes it did, and I have little doubt the old Southern Aristocracy prompted quite a lot of envy and hatred just from being so well off on the backs of their slaves.

It offends the human sense of fairness that some should have so much without really working for it.

But they acquired that wealth legally according to the laws of that time frame, and so people had to accept that it was unfair, but not illegal.

This still doesn't make it reasonable to rig the laws against them, just because they had money.

[DiogenesLamp]

I still have a reasonable expectation that you and BroJoeK can eventually see the bigger picture. :)

[x]

But they acquired that wealth legally according to the laws of that time frame, and so people had to accept that it was unfair, but not illegal.

Leaving aside the legitimacy of plantation wealth for a minute, that was also something that could be said of New York merchants and bankers back then.

They made their money legally. They benefited from slavery but weren't anywhere near as guilty as the planters or slave traders, yet you continually rant against them and advocate what is a major change in the laws -- breaking up the country -- in order to take money away from them.

Inconsistent much?

[DiogenesLamp]

Leaving aside the legitimacy of plantation wealth for a minute, that was also something that could be said of New York merchants and bankers back then.

It was legal because their larger representation voted to make it legal. It doesn't mean that the people who were having to pay that money liked it and wanted it to continue.

They benefited from slavery but weren't anywhere near as guilty as the planters or slave traders, yet you continually rant against them and advocate what is a major change in the laws -- breaking up the country -- in order to take money away from them.

No other avenue of redress was available to them. Offering them protection for slavery would do nothing about the money drain from the South to the North. It's why they didn't care about the Corwin Amendment. It wouldn't address their real complaint.

[x]

New York has an excellent natural harbor. New Yorkers had the foresight to build a canal route to the interior, and later an extensive rail network. It had a large population in the city and surrounding area. And people there took an interest in trade, technology and manufacturing and acquired an expertise at those things.

That's a great set of natural and acquired advantages. As a socialist, you naturally resent the city's success and view it all as illegitimate. You'd rather shake things up and you assume that somebody else would come up on top once you've displaced those who were successful, but it wouldn't work. New York businessmen were good at what they did, good enough for wealthy people in other parts of the country to entrust them with their money.

No other avenue of redress was available to them. Offering them protection for slavery would do nothing about the money drain from the South to the North. It's why they didn't care about the Corwin Amendment. It wouldn't address their real complaint.

I assume you are talking about cotton planters here, though you don't make that clear. There was no "money drain." Plantation owners used money to buy things they wanted or needed that were produced elsewhere. They also clearly found it convenient to keep sums with bankers in New Orleans or Charleston or New York or London and to work with brokers and factors in those cities.

The whole cotton business was illegitimate or immoral by today's standards but there was nothing illegitimate in planters wanting to do business with those who lived outside the cotton-growing regions. They weren't obligated to do for themselves what others had more experience doing. And yet you find the fact that some areas specialize in agriculture and others in commerce an affront to your socialist sensibilities.

[DiogenesLamp]

Enter Rudy Giuliani, a political and legal Subject Matter Expert - with direct knowledge of evidence held by NYPD and NY FBI field office of gross criminal conduct by Hillary Clinton. (Weiner Laptop etc) Buried by SDNY Clinton Allies

No prosecutions of Hillary Clinton coming from SDNY, but they are all over the effort to try to get a prosecution against Trump and his associates like Michael Cohen.

SDNY. South District, New York.

Doing the work of the deep state "establishment." Trying to destroy Trump before he can drain the swamp.

[DiogenesLamp]

New York has an excellent natural harbor.

Yes it does, and what is the primary purpose of a harbor? Is it not trade?

Would you say "trade" was the life blood of New York?

[DiogenesLamp]

As a socialist, you naturally resent the city's success and view it all as illegitimate.

I am not a socialist. I hate those bastards and everything they stand for. It is not my job to "share the wealth."

But I have learned that Nazi style "crony capitalism" is also a threat to liberty. When influence becomes so large that it can set government policy, it has become a threat to the rest of the nation.

[DiogenesLamp]

We rejected you. Us unwashed, uncivilized, non-DC/NY-living nobodies rejected you, and now you can’t even get your phone calls returned from that 24-year old guy in a MAGA hat down at the Old Executive Office Building. You’re a nobody, a punchline, writing articles nobody reads for magazines no one remembers.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/04/19/never-trumpers-whining-about-principles-was-just-an-act-n2472106