My new (as of Jan.) teaching gig is with Christopher Newport University. CNU itself is an interesting institution, one that provides hope that American academia won’t eventually split apart into a Red system and a Blue one, and that college costs can be kept under control. And it hosts, with outside donor help, the fine Center for American Studies, under whose auspices I am a visiting faculty post-doc, and which recently put on an excellent conference on FDR’s legacy.
Today we put up videos for most of the talks at the conference, and while the keynote by Stanford historian David M. Kennedy is excellent, the one you really want to check out is the brief lunch talk by UVA political scientist Sidney M. Milkis. Milkis is more well-known for his scholarship on the presidency, but he’s also done important work on the development of American liberalism in the 20th century, most notably by editing three books with Jerome Mileur on the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society respectively. The New Deal volume features his essay on FDR as attempting a “Second Founding” with his articulation of his Four Freedoms and his Second Bill of Rights; it is from this essay that his talk at CNU was adapted.
I agree with Milkis that the importance of FDR’s constitutional re-founding rhetoric, particularly as exemplified in his Second Bill of Rights (scroll down) cannot be underestimated. Some of those rights were rights to a decent job, housing, education etc. Indeed, if you watch Milkis’s talk, you’ll see that at the end he provides a lengthy answer to an inaudible question from a gentleman in the audience. The question had to do with whether it was appropriate to imply that the American people had “so to speak” adopted his Second Bill of Rights without having gone through the process of amendment, indeed, without FDR even calling for this process. (I know the content of the question because I was the gentleman who asked it!) Sid gives a good answer, but he’s ultimately not as critical of FDR’s constitutional rhetoric as I would have liked him to be…indeed, I interjected at one point that I would have been fine with the speech if FDR had merely said we had adopted a new set of values or goals.
Anyhow, check it out. Sid’s a lot of fun, and a great scholar.
March 15th, 2013 | 4:22 pm
Thanks, I’ll try to get to these. Sid’s book on TR and Progressivism is important and forces us to think more clearly about realignment. Are there books better than his on FDR? Please recommend any. Finally, was anything interesting said about Japanese relocation in WWII? I sense some revisionism among serious historians.
March 15th, 2013 | 4:32 pm
[...] My new (as of Jan.) teaching gig is with Christopher Newport University. CNU itself is an interesting institution, one that provides hope that American academia won’t eventually split apart into a Red system and a Blue one, and that college costs can be kept under control. And it hosts, with Go to the Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
March 15th, 2013 | 4:40 pm
ken, I didn’t make the Japanese relocation talk. I’m more or less a layman when it comes to FDR…I found, like plenty of conservatives, Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man illuminating, but unlike her and David M. Kennedy, I’m more interested in the constitutional stuff than the daily life in the New Deal.
Perhaps the most astounding talk of the conference came from the libertarian economist, Robert Higgs, author of books like this one: http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=65 His talk at our conference was about the amount of federal direction of the US economy during, sort of a NRA-on-steroids situation. For some reason, we don’t have that one available on video. Maybe later.
March 15th, 2013 | 4:42 pm
Sid Milkis is one of the nicest professors I’ve ever met. He’s also written some outstanding books that have really helped my understanding of American politics. Besides the ones you mention, the book of his that I learned the most from was “The Politics of Regulatory Change: A Tale of Two Agencies” (he actually co-wrote it with Richard Harris). It’s a very important for understanding both the Administrative state
March 15th, 2013 | 4:56 pm
Thanks, Carl. Yes, Higgs is provocative. Chris–in fact I helped Sid and Richard gather material from the EEOC when I worked there for Chairman Thomas. They were so impressed with him that Sid added Thomas to some Brandeis government studied advisory board. Subsequently, Sid and another colleague caught grief when Thomas was nominated for SCOTUS.
March 16th, 2013 | 4:45 pm
Norman Rockwell in the tank for the New Deal! I now suspect the turkeys were stuffed with economic royalists.
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