I am half way through a fascinating biography of William Jennings Bryan. It's entitled "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" by Michael Kazin. Unlike H.L. Mencken, whom I found rather tedious, as I mentioned earlier, Bryan was a much more interesting character for me. Furthermore, Kazin's biography goes a long way to illustrating the great influence Bryan had on American politics, especially the old time "Liberal" politics, which found its culmination in the New Deal of Roosevelt. It was quite surprising for me.
Also, we are coming up very shortly on the Centennial of the Azusa Street Revival. So I picked up Cecil M. Robeck's very recent book "Azusa Street: Mission & Revival, The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement". I plan on reading it during my trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon, to celebrate my 30th wedding anniversary.
I'll probably have more to say about these books later on.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Well, I finished the Reader's Digest Illustrated History of South Africa. I do recommend the book but with some reservations.
First of all, the book seemed obviously written from the perspective of "scientific" or "Marxist" historical interpretation. That is the school of thought that maintains that history should be analyzed as chiefly the interplay of material "economic" forces, wherein various economic "classes" struggle with each other for supremacy. One doesn't necessarily have to be Left-leaning to hold to such a theory of historical interpretation, although I think that the writers of this particular history were probably so. A "scientific" historian just as easily can be a fanatical follower of an Adam Smith, or a Larry Kudlow, instead of a Karl Marx. In any case, my biggest disagreement with "scientific" historians is that a materialistic interpretation of history ends up being very distorted, even monotonic. While economics are a very important aspect of history, they are not the whole story. Men are much more than merely a producers and consumers of material goods. If historians don't take into account the great importance of the spiritual and cultural, then they end up only telling only part of the story, and indeed I think they leave out the most important part. For example, in this particular history, the influence of missionary work in South Africa is given short-shrift and is mostly denigrated. But I suspect that it was far more important than the writers of this history have let out.
Secondly, the book unfortunately gave the communist party the kid-glove treatment. Let there be no mistake about this: from the 1920s through the 1940s (and after), the communists were getting their orders straight from Moscow, and thus from that Arch-Murderer Josef Stalin, during his time in power. If they were ever anything, they were cynical, totalitarian opportunists who, while mouthing words like "liberation" and "justice", were really out to grab a power-monopoly for themselves, by any means, mostly through agitation and infiltration if possible, or if necessary through violence and murder.
Thirdly, while the book was informative it still left me with plenty of unanswered questions. The writers of the book tended to over-compensate in many areas. Whereas they provided plenty of interesting information about diverse African cultural life, especially in most of the side bars, yet on the other hand, there was very little culturewise said about Afrikaner society. For example, there was much said about the confluence of Afro-American jazz with African music in the later 20th Century. But on the other hand, except for the mention of one song title ("Vat jou goed en trek"), it would have seemed that Afrikaners didn't have any music. In fact, from reading the book, one could get the idea that the Afrikaners (or the British, for that matter) really didn't have anything that could be termed a "culture", unless one had decided beforehand to defined culture exclusively in terms of "rapacious greed, brutal cold-heartedness, and fanatical racism". This was very unfortunate, and it left me feeling that the book was, at best, an incomplete picture, and a tendentiously lopsided one to boot.
The over-compensation was somewhat understandable. South Africa already had a deplorable, discriminatory social system, but when in 1948 the National Party won a vise-grip lock on the parliament, it proceeded to make a bad situation a thousand-fold worse by afterwards passing some of the most loony-bin racist laws ever imposed by any legislature in the British Commonwealth. Much of the turmoil that the country experienced after 1948 came about because the majority of the population actively began to oppose, in various ways, the NP's Apartheid laws. As the resistance increased, the government's response, sadly, was mainly to pass and attempt to enforce even more brutally repressive laws. Now when book was written in the 1980s, the conflict had reached its fastigium, and by that time South Africa was very much in the news. The country was a pariah and was under various sanctions, imposed by various other nations in an attempt to force a change in its internal policies. During those years, the writers probably had as their primary goal incontestably demonstrating the injustice of Apartheid; consequently, they strove in their narrative always to favorably depict one group of people (those suffering the most under Apartheid), but unfortunately the writers tended to dehumanize (almost demonize) everyone else in the story, primarily the Afrikaners and to a lesser extent the British.
Finally, the book only covers events up until around 1987, thus making it out-of-date. Indeed, many things have changed drastically in South Africa since the turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s. The crazy Apartheid system is now, thankfully, history. But the Republic of South Africa still has many grave problems that it is struggling with: a terrible unemployment rate, and a devastating AIDS crisis. But I also have heard that the people of South Africa have become increasingly optimistic about their future. I have to say I found reading about the history of South Africa to be very fascinating.
First of all, the book seemed obviously written from the perspective of "scientific" or "Marxist" historical interpretation. That is the school of thought that maintains that history should be analyzed as chiefly the interplay of material "economic" forces, wherein various economic "classes" struggle with each other for supremacy. One doesn't necessarily have to be Left-leaning to hold to such a theory of historical interpretation, although I think that the writers of this particular history were probably so. A "scientific" historian just as easily can be a fanatical follower of an Adam Smith, or a Larry Kudlow, instead of a Karl Marx. In any case, my biggest disagreement with "scientific" historians is that a materialistic interpretation of history ends up being very distorted, even monotonic. While economics are a very important aspect of history, they are not the whole story. Men are much more than merely a producers and consumers of material goods. If historians don't take into account the great importance of the spiritual and cultural, then they end up only telling only part of the story, and indeed I think they leave out the most important part. For example, in this particular history, the influence of missionary work in South Africa is given short-shrift and is mostly denigrated. But I suspect that it was far more important than the writers of this history have let out.
Secondly, the book unfortunately gave the communist party the kid-glove treatment. Let there be no mistake about this: from the 1920s through the 1940s (and after), the communists were getting their orders straight from Moscow, and thus from that Arch-Murderer Josef Stalin, during his time in power. If they were ever anything, they were cynical, totalitarian opportunists who, while mouthing words like "liberation" and "justice", were really out to grab a power-monopoly for themselves, by any means, mostly through agitation and infiltration if possible, or if necessary through violence and murder.
Thirdly, while the book was informative it still left me with plenty of unanswered questions. The writers of the book tended to over-compensate in many areas. Whereas they provided plenty of interesting information about diverse African cultural life, especially in most of the side bars, yet on the other hand, there was very little culturewise said about Afrikaner society. For example, there was much said about the confluence of Afro-American jazz with African music in the later 20th Century. But on the other hand, except for the mention of one song title ("Vat jou goed en trek"), it would have seemed that Afrikaners didn't have any music. In fact, from reading the book, one could get the idea that the Afrikaners (or the British, for that matter) really didn't have anything that could be termed a "culture", unless one had decided beforehand to defined culture exclusively in terms of "rapacious greed, brutal cold-heartedness, and fanatical racism". This was very unfortunate, and it left me feeling that the book was, at best, an incomplete picture, and a tendentiously lopsided one to boot.
The over-compensation was somewhat understandable. South Africa already had a deplorable, discriminatory social system, but when in 1948 the National Party won a vise-grip lock on the parliament, it proceeded to make a bad situation a thousand-fold worse by afterwards passing some of the most loony-bin racist laws ever imposed by any legislature in the British Commonwealth. Much of the turmoil that the country experienced after 1948 came about because the majority of the population actively began to oppose, in various ways, the NP's Apartheid laws. As the resistance increased, the government's response, sadly, was mainly to pass and attempt to enforce even more brutally repressive laws. Now when book was written in the 1980s, the conflict had reached its fastigium, and by that time South Africa was very much in the news. The country was a pariah and was under various sanctions, imposed by various other nations in an attempt to force a change in its internal policies. During those years, the writers probably had as their primary goal incontestably demonstrating the injustice of Apartheid; consequently, they strove in their narrative always to favorably depict one group of people (those suffering the most under Apartheid), but unfortunately the writers tended to dehumanize (almost demonize) everyone else in the story, primarily the Afrikaners and to a lesser extent the British.
Finally, the book only covers events up until around 1987, thus making it out-of-date. Indeed, many things have changed drastically in South Africa since the turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s. The crazy Apartheid system is now, thankfully, history. But the Republic of South Africa still has many grave problems that it is struggling with: a terrible unemployment rate, and a devastating AIDS crisis. But I also have heard that the people of South Africa have become increasingly optimistic about their future. I have to say I found reading about the history of South Africa to be very fascinating.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Here's a sample quote, from page 328, out of the book Reader's Digest Illustrated History of South Africa, which I have been reading:
First of all, the British spelling is obvious from the word "favoured". And glaring is the use of the letter "s" instead of a "z" in "proletarianisation", which itself is a very polysyllabic Marxist concept. In fact, "class struggle" concepts pop up all throughout the book. From a historical standpoint, in the particulars that were being discussed, I would say that feudalism might have provided better analogies for understanding what was going on (in a rather landlords vs. serfs sort of way) instead of merely trying to pigeonhole everything into Marxian categories of thought, which seems to happen quite frequently here and there in the book. Anyhow, I suspect that many of its contributing writers might have been British educated and politically left-leaning, to put it mildly. It seems increasingly clear to me that the book has a definite slant. Unfortunately, it's the only book I have been able to find so far that covers the entire history of South Africa.
The installation of fencing on sheep and ostrich ranches was another blow to those living on the breadline: because it reduced labor costs, it meant that the landholder no longer needed to rent out land to white or black bywoners (literally a "by-dweller", a tenant or squatter on another man's land), as the bigger farmers got richer, so the smaller producers went to the wall—being forced to join the growing ranks of men who could earn a living only by selling their labor—a system of proletarianisation that favoured the spread of agricultural capitalism.
First of all, the British spelling is obvious from the word "favoured". And glaring is the use of the letter "s" instead of a "z" in "proletarianisation", which itself is a very polysyllabic Marxist concept. In fact, "class struggle" concepts pop up all throughout the book. From a historical standpoint, in the particulars that were being discussed, I would say that feudalism might have provided better analogies for understanding what was going on (in a rather landlords vs. serfs sort of way) instead of merely trying to pigeonhole everything into Marxian categories of thought, which seems to happen quite frequently here and there in the book. Anyhow, I suspect that many of its contributing writers might have been British educated and politically left-leaning, to put it mildly. It seems increasingly clear to me that the book has a definite slant. Unfortunately, it's the only book I have been able to find so far that covers the entire history of South Africa.
Friday, March 03, 2006
As I mentioned earlier, I have been studying up on the history of South Africa. What I picked up from the library was "Reader's Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story", published back in 1988. The reason why I picked this particular book was because it was the only one the library had on the subject.
That the title said "The Real Story" caused me some pause. A sort of yellow caution light went off in my mind when I saw the title. Huh? "The Real Story"? As opposed to "The Fake Story"? The title suggested to me that perhaps there was a certain polemical intent behind the book, that perhaps it was a product of an politically-motivated "information campaign". As I remember, back in the 1980s South Africa was very much in the news. So I decided to proceed with a certain amount of guarded discernment.
The book itself is plentifully illustrated, the writing is compact and concise, and it is jammed packed with information and sidebars. On one page it also has a well-done portrait painting of the Zulu king Cetshwayo, who was depicted as a very handsome and regal looking fellow. And, of course, there were plenty of other drawings and photographs from South African history. It also helped that I happen to have an old Britannica World Atlas to locate the numerous places mentioned in the book. The "The Real Story" covers the history of S.A. going all the way back to the early Dutch colony at Capetown ("De Kaap" as they called it in Dutch). And at this point in time, I am half-way through the book, having gotten past the bloody Boer War of 1899-1902, and am now in the early days of the Union of South Africa, which came into being on May 31st, 1910, with the unification of the Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Natal, and Transvaal. I just finished reading the chapter which covered the political activities of the young Mohandas Ghandi.
But as I was reading along, I couldn't help but notice the peculiar manner in which things were being analyzed. It seemed clear to me that things were being set up within a framework that was rather materialistic in its cast, with an almost monotonic emphasis on economics. I kept thinking to myself "hey, this narration is having a certain class struggle taste about it, even if nobody is using exactly those words". And I also noticed that the role of xtian missionaries in S.A. was pretty much denigrated in the book. And there would pop up in various places some pretty snarky and tendentious phraseology that had a propaganda flavor about it. My caution lights were starting to blink. I peeked ahead towards the ending of the book. Hmmh. Let's see. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is some sort of hero? He might had been back in the 1980s, maybe. But today he is just another despotic and corrupt thugocrat, who is destroying his country. Hmmh. Am I really getting the "Real Story" here, or just more warmed-over Marxist claptrap dressed up as history? I couldn't help but wonder.
Now over the years, my reading of history has shown me that, while there is Good and Evil in the world, there are also a billion shades in between, as far as the players on the stage of history are concerned. This group or that group of people, the majority of the time, are never wholly "this" or wholly "that", whatever your favorite "this" and "that" might be. Every barrel has its good and bad apples, as well as all kinds of apples in between, along with lots of oranges, lemons, tangerines, kumquats, quinces, tomatos, bananas, peppers, mangoes, cucumbers, pineapples, cranberries, and grapes. History is a very fruity and variegated thing. But while reading "The Real Story", I increasingly started to get the feeling that "hey, the deck here seems a little stacked in one direction only"—mainly, that all the Europeans were totally, wholly, and nothing but the "bad guys" in the story, and everybody else was the "innocent, oppressed victim". Things were starting to sound like that old-time dialectical-materialistic "Thesis and Antithesis" tune.
But nothing in History is ever as simple as that. And I hope nobody misunderstands what I am trying to say here. All human history has plenty of rotten stuff that goes along with it (and S.A. definitely had its share of it). Yes, there are even chapters in American history that are pretty shameful too, as everyone well knows. (By the way, the "Rand Lords" reminded me of our home-grown, union-busting "Robber Barons" of the later 19th Century.) However, America has also done some very great things, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. History is the way it is because because men are motley sinners. Yes, that is truely the case, but there is also Redemption, which is what makes a big difference.
In the front cover of the book, the "Consultant editor" is listed as being Christopher Saunders, and the "Historical Advisor" is Colin Bundy. My prelimary googling around on the Internet seems to indicate that they are historians from the Marxist school of thought. I'll be researching this some more, but if that is the case, I don't find it surprising that their book would reflect their philosophy.
By the way, the only thing Marxism had ever really accomplished back in the 20th Century was to kill and enslave millions of people; it piled the bodies high in places like Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and Eastern Europe. And its track record in Africa isn't all that great either. On the other hand, it has given Gorbachev a comfortable retirement (unlike many of his predecessors), and many tenured college professors owe their careers to it. Nevertheless, I have no interest in giving Marxism a second chance to prove itself. It is a blind alley, a seductive and misleading philosophy, and a false god.
That the title said "The Real Story" caused me some pause. A sort of yellow caution light went off in my mind when I saw the title. Huh? "The Real Story"? As opposed to "The Fake Story"? The title suggested to me that perhaps there was a certain polemical intent behind the book, that perhaps it was a product of an politically-motivated "information campaign". As I remember, back in the 1980s South Africa was very much in the news. So I decided to proceed with a certain amount of guarded discernment.
The book itself is plentifully illustrated, the writing is compact and concise, and it is jammed packed with information and sidebars. On one page it also has a well-done portrait painting of the Zulu king Cetshwayo, who was depicted as a very handsome and regal looking fellow. And, of course, there were plenty of other drawings and photographs from South African history. It also helped that I happen to have an old Britannica World Atlas to locate the numerous places mentioned in the book. The "The Real Story" covers the history of S.A. going all the way back to the early Dutch colony at Capetown ("De Kaap" as they called it in Dutch). And at this point in time, I am half-way through the book, having gotten past the bloody Boer War of 1899-1902, and am now in the early days of the Union of South Africa, which came into being on May 31st, 1910, with the unification of the Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Natal, and Transvaal. I just finished reading the chapter which covered the political activities of the young Mohandas Ghandi.
But as I was reading along, I couldn't help but notice the peculiar manner in which things were being analyzed. It seemed clear to me that things were being set up within a framework that was rather materialistic in its cast, with an almost monotonic emphasis on economics. I kept thinking to myself "hey, this narration is having a certain class struggle taste about it, even if nobody is using exactly those words". And I also noticed that the role of xtian missionaries in S.A. was pretty much denigrated in the book. And there would pop up in various places some pretty snarky and tendentious phraseology that had a propaganda flavor about it. My caution lights were starting to blink. I peeked ahead towards the ending of the book. Hmmh. Let's see. In Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is some sort of hero? He might had been back in the 1980s, maybe. But today he is just another despotic and corrupt thugocrat, who is destroying his country. Hmmh. Am I really getting the "Real Story" here, or just more warmed-over Marxist claptrap dressed up as history? I couldn't help but wonder.
Now over the years, my reading of history has shown me that, while there is Good and Evil in the world, there are also a billion shades in between, as far as the players on the stage of history are concerned. This group or that group of people, the majority of the time, are never wholly "this" or wholly "that", whatever your favorite "this" and "that" might be. Every barrel has its good and bad apples, as well as all kinds of apples in between, along with lots of oranges, lemons, tangerines, kumquats, quinces, tomatos, bananas, peppers, mangoes, cucumbers, pineapples, cranberries, and grapes. History is a very fruity and variegated thing. But while reading "The Real Story", I increasingly started to get the feeling that "hey, the deck here seems a little stacked in one direction only"—mainly, that all the Europeans were totally, wholly, and nothing but the "bad guys" in the story, and everybody else was the "innocent, oppressed victim". Things were starting to sound like that old-time dialectical-materialistic "Thesis and Antithesis" tune.
But nothing in History is ever as simple as that. And I hope nobody misunderstands what I am trying to say here. All human history has plenty of rotten stuff that goes along with it (and S.A. definitely had its share of it). Yes, there are even chapters in American history that are pretty shameful too, as everyone well knows. (By the way, the "Rand Lords" reminded me of our home-grown, union-busting "Robber Barons" of the later 19th Century.) However, America has also done some very great things, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. History is the way it is because because men are motley sinners. Yes, that is truely the case, but there is also Redemption, which is what makes a big difference.
In the front cover of the book, the "Consultant editor" is listed as being Christopher Saunders, and the "Historical Advisor" is Colin Bundy. My prelimary googling around on the Internet seems to indicate that they are historians from the Marxist school of thought. I'll be researching this some more, but if that is the case, I don't find it surprising that their book would reflect their philosophy.
By the way, the only thing Marxism had ever really accomplished back in the 20th Century was to kill and enslave millions of people; it piled the bodies high in places like Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and Eastern Europe. And its track record in Africa isn't all that great either. On the other hand, it has given Gorbachev a comfortable retirement (unlike many of his predecessors), and many tenured college professors owe their careers to it. Nevertheless, I have no interest in giving Marxism a second chance to prove itself. It is a blind alley, a seductive and misleading philosophy, and a false god.
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