Daniel Aaron Lazar

The photos are rich, the facial hair is awesome,  and the commentary, provided by David Plotz, is thoughtful and good humored.

Here’s an FYI: “Facial hair was associated with a few things: It was associated with a new idea of manliness. It was associated with new ideas about religion, a new passion for Old Testament religion and a sense that you were stepping back into the righteous days of the Hebrew prophets. It was associated also with militarism, because it really became popular in Anglo-American culture after the Crimean War. And finally, and I think most interestingly, it was identified with radical nationalist politics in Europe. Beards really took off in places like France, Italy, and Austria, that were undergoing liberal revolutions. I think it bespeaks a sense that both the Union and Confederate soldiers felt that they were nationalist revolutionaries.”

From Dec. 16, 1944 to Jan. 25, 1945, American, British, Canadian, Belgian, and French forces fought to stop the final major German offensive of World War II: The Battle of the Bulge was launched in the heavily forested Ardennes Mountains of Belgium. While Allied forces ultimately triumphed, the bitter victory left tens of thousands dead on both sides. Here, in a series of rare photos from LIFE.com, is a look back at the pivotal, brutal, seven-week struggle known as the Battle of the Bulge.

The “Battle Hymn” became the leading anthem of the Union cause and would emerge as one of the most enduring works of art of the Civil War years. Meanwhile, the tale of the poem’s composition—one of the great creation stories in American letters—became nearly as famous as the poem itself; it became, in a sense, an inextricable part of the poem. The millennial meanings attached to the hymn, with its portrayal of Union forces—God’s “terrible swift sword”—as apocalyptic agents, and the account of the hymn’s origins fed off each other. Together, they encouraged a sense of providential national identity deeply seductive to American audiences—then and now.

Perhaps Iranian political culture would be less fixated on conspiracies if certain nations would not secretly invade Iranian airspace.

GPS monitors can track your every movement. Brain scans can now see lies forming in your brain. And advancements in genetic engineering may soon allow parents to engineer what their children will look and be like.

These new technologies are “challenging our Constitutional categories in really dramatic ways,” says George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen. “And what’s so striking is that none of the existing amendments give clear answers to the most basic questions we’re having today.”

Listen to this episode of Fresh Air, where Rosen, the co-editor of the  Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, details how technological changes that were unimaginable at the time of the Founding Fathers are challenging our notions of things like personal vs. private space, freedom of speech and our own individual autonomy.

Summary of the 4 December 2011 State Duma election results

Parties and alliances	Seat composition			Popular vote	%	± pp swing
	Seats	±	%
United Russia	238	77	52.88%	32,379,135	49.32%	14.98%
Communist Party	92	35	20.46%	12,599,507	19.19%	7.62%
A Just Russia	64	26	14.21%	8,695,522	13.24%	5.50%
Liberal Democratic Party	56	16	12.45%	7,664,570	11.67%	3.53%
Yabloko	0	0	0%	2,252,403	3.43%	1.84%
Patriots of Russia	0	0	0%	639,119	0.97%	0.08%
Right Cause	0	0	0%	392,806	0.60%	new party
Total	450	0	100%	64,623,062	100%
Valid ballot papers				64,623,062	98.43%
Invalid ballot papers				1,033,464	1.57%
Eligible voters				109,237,780	Turnout: 60.10%
Source: Summary table of election results – Central Election Commission

1. Medvedev Responds with Proposals for Systemic Change (NYT Dec 22)
2. How far can the resistance to Vladimir Putin go? (New Yorker Dec 12)
3. Is this a Russian Spring? (BBC Dec 7)

Your assignment–Write, and post a 750-1000 word essay which:

1. Cites all three of the above articles (other resources are available below)
2. Synthesizes the given articles with previous lectures, readings, and discussions
3. Is thesis-driven and evidence-based
4. Attempts to pose an original argument
5. Answers these questions:

• Summarize the 2011 Duma election results. What do these results suggest?
• What are the causes of post-election political discontent in Russia? To what extent are these grievances valid?
• According to Remnick’s piece in the New Yorker, how is the suppression of civil society at the heart of the problem in Russia? Do you tend to agree with his assertions? (If you want more scholarly info on civil society in Russia, see the pieces posted below.)
• Specifically how have Putin, Medvedev, and United Russia responded?
• Conclude by hazarding a response to these questions: Is this the end of an era in Russia? The beginning of the end? Neither?

BRING A PRINT COPY TO CLASS IN ADDITION TO POSTING AS A COMMENT

EXTRA CREDIT: Up to 7 points for offering a substantial (200+ word) and evidence-based refutation of a classmates’ essay. (this is probably the only extra credit for the semester)

“A Balanced Assessment of Russian Civil Society” from Colombia University. More optimisitc than Remnick

Russian Democracy in the Absence of Civil Society. Not so optimistic.

Photo Essay: The Anti-Putin Brigade (Foreign Policy)

Thousands Call on Putin to Go (BBC Dec 25)

Day By Day Summary (Slate Dec 4-12)

Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Politial Information think tank, agreed that Putin is increasingly the target but stressed that the opposition continues to lack a comparable leader figure. “Russia without Putin” is the strongest slogan, but it is at the same time the weakest one,“ Mukhin said in an interview. “Because the answer is: ok, Putin, leaves, and then what? Nothing is being offered instead. There is no strong figure that would be able to compete with Putin. It is the weak point, where the pro-government forces are going to strike.”

How does the Kremlin see all this? Check out the state-owned RIA Novosti covers the 2011 protests. Want a hint? December 29th headline: “Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has blamed the United States for being behind the recent wave of protests in Russia against the outcome of the December 4 parliamentary elections”

Below: Discussion with Anastasia Mirzoyants, the Eurasia Project Manager at Intermedia & ; Jeffrey Mankoff, Associate Director of International Security Studies at Yale University and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Anatoly Karlin, student at UC Berkeley, gives some context to the numbers in this op-ed for Al Jazeera. Karlin also runs the blog Supreme Oblivion

As America marks the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the US Civil War this year, German history buffs have been re-enacting the bloody battles between the Union and Confederacy.

Christian Ortschig’s weekdays are spent working in Germany’s social insurance administration. But on any given Saturday, he might be leading Union troops into battle against the Confederate Army.

Ortschig stands in a field overseeing the military drills of a couple dozen men and women as they prepare for the afternoon’s big battles at the Wild West theme park “El Dorado,” which is located on the outskirts of Templin about 50 miles north of Berlin.

“This is like a film, like theatre,” says Ortschig. “I am not a Union boy. I am not a Rebel boy. I am a German. But when I put on this uniform, I play a Union officer.

Like Ortschig’s Scottish uniform, a lot of the history here is an odd mishmash of fact, fancy, and convenience. Men meticulously dressed in period costumes from the 1860s mingle with soldiers in uniforms from the US Revolutionary War. Conversation seems to focus on the physical trappings – the clothes and the weapons – not difficult issues like slavery or the war’s staggering body count.

Such events happening about once a month in Germany do feel a little bit like drama camp for adults. But most of the people say they come for the history, not just the costumes.

“We know that 200,000 Germans served in the US Civil War. That’s more than 10 percent of the Union soldiers,” Ortschig says. “So this is our history too.”

Ute Frevert is the head of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She says the choice for Germans to re-enact the Civil War battles may seem odd on the surface, but she explains it this way: “It’s safe.” In Germany, it’s taboo to glorify anything military-related since World War II. So for Germans who want a taste of the pageantry of battle, the 19th-century American conflict fits the bill.

“It’s safe enough for Germans to re-enact the US Civil War because it is so far away,” says Frevert. “It is not something you associate with Germany.”

When asked why Rebels typically outnumber the Yankees at these re-enactment weekends, Frevert says that might be Germans’ sympathy for the losers, or because the Confederates’ costumes are fancier.

“We also think about how it is cruel that brothers fought against each other. I have friends on the other side in the South and I would never shoot on them in real life,” says Melchurs. “This is only a game.”

And it’s the kind of game where the battles end not in bloodshed – but with German beers around a fire.

Read full text at The Local

We knew, of course, about Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. But our general sense of the war was that a horrible tragedy somehow had the magical effect of getting us free. Its legacy belonged not to us, but to those who reveled in the costume and technology of a time when we were property.

Our alienation was neither achieved in independence, nor stumbled upon by accident, but produced by American design. The belief that the Civil War wasn’t for us was the result of the country’s long search for a narrative that could reconcile white people with each other, one that avoided what professional historians now know to be true: that one group of Americans attempted to raise a country wholly premised on property in Negroes, and that another group of Americans, including many Negroes, stopped them. In the popular mind, that demonstrable truth has been evaded in favor of a more comforting story of tragedy, failed compromise, and individual gallantry. For that more ennobling narrative, as for so much of American history, the fact of black people is a problem.

Ta Nehisi Coates tries to answer this vexing question

Frederick Douglass called it “a sacred effort,” and Lincoln himself thought that his Second Inaugural, which offered a theodicy of the Civil War, was better than the Gettysburg Address.

Historian Garry Wills does a magnificent job of unpacking Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

As the Civil War ground on, and the fate of the young nation hung in the balance, Ralph Waldo Emerson argued vehemently for a federal emancipation of the slaves. “Morality,” above all else, he asserted, “is the object of government.” He lauded President Lincoln for his principled moves in that direction.