Daniel Aaron Lazar

DURING the campaign ahead of Mexico’s state elections on July 4th, many feared that the gruesome run-up to the vote would overshadow the results. Two candidates were murdered, and countless others were intimidated: one would-be mayor found a decapitated corpse deposited outside his home. The atrocities, including four dead bodies hung from bridges on election day, were attributed to drug gangs reminding the country who rules the roost.

Yet the vote itself, in 14 of Mexico’s 31 states, provided a surprise that could redraw the country’s political map. The opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, took over the lower house of Congress from Felipe Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) in 2009. It had been forecast to sweep all 12 of this year’s contests for governorships before winning the presidency after Mr Calderón steps down in 2012. Instead, it took just nine, the same number it held before the vote. Read on from The Economist

A year and a half after Barack Obama hit the “reset” button with Russia, the reconciliation is still fragile, incomplete, and politically divisive. Sure, Russia is no easy ally for the United States. Authoritarian yet insecure, economically mighty yet technologically backward, the country has proven a challenge for U.S. presidents since the end of the Cold War. Recent news hasn’t helped: The arrest in July of a former deputy prime minister and leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, Boris Nemtsov, provoked some of the harshest criticism of Russia yet from the Obama administration. Then last Wednesday, Russia announced that it had moved anti-aircraft missiles into Abkhazia, the region that broke off from Georgia during the August 2008 war. The announcement was hardly welcome news for the United States, which has tried to defuse tensions there for the last 24 months. 

Yet however challenging this partnership may be, Washington can’t afford not to work with Moscow. Ronald Reagan popularized the phrase, “Trust, but verify” — a good guiding principle for Cold War arms negotiators, and still apt for today. Engagement is the only way forward. Here are 10 reasons why

A brief sketch of each of the  13 Colonies (Lazar’s Power Point). This lecture is more summative than analytical. But there is a lot of useful information.

18th Century Colonial Society & Culture Areas of focus are: Demography, Commerce, Religion, Education, Press, Politics & Philosophy

Settlements Across Seas; The Reasons, The Failures & a Success (1520-1624) (Conlin Ch 2)

From America Past and Present (Divine, et al.)

• Ch 2 England’s Colonial Experiment (1590-1750)
• Ch 3 Putting Down Roots
• Ch 4 Frontiers of Empire (1680-1763)

The Green Movement’s bloody street protests may not have toppled Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but they will.

An argument worth reading (from Newsweek)

Americans have lost their commitment to shared sacrifice. This author suggests that Americans should re-read the Gettysburg Address.

A group of young American radicals announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. In ‘The Weather Underground’, former Underground members, including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, David Gilbert and Brian Flanagan, speak publicly about the idealistic passion that drove them to “bring the war home” and the trajectory that placed them on the FBI’s most wanted list. Fueled by outrage over racism and the Vietnam War, the Weather Underground waged a low-level war against the U.S. government through much of the 1970s–bombing targets across the country that they considered emblematic of the real violence that the U.S. was wreaking throughout the world. Ultimately, the group’s carefully organized clandestine network managed to successfully evade one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, yet the group’s members would reemerge to life in a country that was dramatically different than the one they had hoped their efforts would inspire. Extensive archival material, including, photographs, film footage and FBI documents are interwoven with modern-day interviews to trace the group’s path, from its pitched battles with police on Chicago’s streets, to its bombing of the U.S. Capitol, to its successful endeavor breaking acid-guru Timothy Leary out of prison. The film explores the Weathermen in the context of other social movements of the time and features interviews with former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panthers. It also examines the U.S. government’s suppression of dissent in the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back at their years underground, the former members paint a compelling portrait of troubled times, revolutionary times, and the forces that drove their resistance.

A well-constructed and reasonably well-rounded documentary about the Underground

Documentary critical of the U.S. Israel Lobby

Video of a heated round table conference

A conundrum: the Islamic Republic of Iran, no friend of Western-style liberty, somehow nurtured (well, permitted) the great humanist cinema of the 90s. We’ll let the political scientists explain that one, and just note that men like Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami have directed on their own, and encouraged in others, films whose stripped-down, but never simple, artistry touches souls around the world. The stories are often about children —poor ones, blind or lame ones —who fight long odds not to triumph but simply to survive.

Read these four articles on the Crash of 2008-2009.

• Capitalist Manifesto, Zakaria (5 pages)
• Franklin Delano Obama, Krugman (1 page)
• FDR’s Lessons for Obama, Kennedy (2 pages)
• Barack Hoover Obama, Baker (9 pages)

All four authors are very highly regarded.

You should also read this “truly terrifying data about the real state of the U.S. economy“. If nothing else, take a few minutes to peruse the data tables (you will find such data  useful when constructing your essay).

After you have read all of the articles you are to type a 1500 word (2 page, normal font and margins), single spaced essay which, in no particular order:

• assesses what the Obama administration has done hitherto
• evaluates historical precedents
• prescribes a solution for the Obama administration
• warns the Obama administration of potential pitfalls
• cites all sources given above but does not abuse quotes (no more than 10% of your essay can be quotes)

We will discuss your essays in class. Oh, and don’t be surprised if there is a multiple choice and matching quiz on all of the readings. Good luck.

The return of big government means that policymakers must grapple again with some basic questions. They are now even harder to answer…

Fifteen years ago it seemed that the great debate about the proper size and role of the state had been resolved. In Britain and America alike, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton pronounced the last rites of “the era of big government”. Privatising state-run companies was all the rage. The Washington consensus reigned supreme: persuade governments to put on “the golden straitjacket”, in Tom Friedman’s phrase, and prosperity would follow.

Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology…

Read this comparative perspective arguing for smaller government.