Category: European History

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Is Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic Worth Another Look?

Late Medieval Market Scene

When I was growing up, I noticed that the educated adults in my St. Louis suburb had strong faith in three big ideas—Darwinian evolution, Freudian psychology, and the Protestant ethic.

Since then, Darwinian evolution has held its own, but Freud has given way to other psychologies, and the Protestant ethic—the subject of this column—is rarely to be seen.

The German sociologist Max Weber developed the idea of the Protestant ethic, first in essays written in 1904 and 1905 and then in his 1920 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.[1]

In a sense, “ascetic Puritans,” primarily Calvinists, transferred the mystical spiritual  asceticism of Catholic saints to a less stringent but more productive real-world discipline, making possible a dynamic capitalistic world, according to Weber.

Puritans were supposed to work, even make money—but not for the sake of enjoying it. “[T]he pursuit of wealth as an end in itself [was]  highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing.” [2] Among other things, wealth would indicate that one was among the “elect,” that is, predestined to go to heaven. Continue reading “Is Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic Worth Another Look?”

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Climate Change and the “Madness of Crowds”

Madness of crowds: witches' sabbath

Can history help us understand today’s panic over global warming? I believe so.

I do think we are experiencing panic. While the Earth is warming and human activity is probably contributing to it, the overheated efforts to make people fear the long-term future suggest that this is more of a crusade than a rationally considered enterprise. Extreme fear of global warming is negatively affecting politics, the economy, the media, international relations, and education.

I will look at two disastrous periods that have some resemblance to today’s craze: witchcraft fears in the Middle Ages and the eugenics movement of the 1930s. I am not alone in making these comparisons to climate change alarm , as you will see. [1]

But first, bear with me as I report on some of the efforts to ignore or squelch criticism of the prevailing apocalyptic approach. These efforts are inappropriate,  even unethical. Then I will discuss the two previous outsized eras. Continue reading “Climate Change and the “Madness of Crowds””

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Three Themes: U.S. Presidents, War, Economic Development

Today I’m going to summarize three articles on historical issues. One article critiques historians’ rankings of U. S. presidents; one looks at a 1752 essay by David Hume and sees insights into the Ukraine war; and the third explains why most of the theories of economic development since World War II have fallen into the dustbin of history (I wrote that last one).

Are Presidential Rankings Biased?

It is something of an event every few years when the C-Span TV network or the American Political Science Association (APSA) reports on a new assessment of American presidents. The C-Span version relies primarily on historians, the APSA on political scientists, but their evaluations are  similar.  To give you a flavor, the latest rankings by both organizations have the same top four presidents: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt. C-Span rates Eisenhower and Truman as no. 5 and 6; APSA chose Thomas Jefferson as no. 5 and Truman as no. 6.

After that, the rankings differ somewhat but they tend to be roughly consistent. Continue reading “Three Themes: U.S. Presidents, War, Economic Development”

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Which Wars Should the U.S. Have Kept Out Of?

A scene from Vietnam in 1968, a "wrong war."

I would like to share with you a stunning essay from RealClearHistory.[1] By “stunning” I don’t mean it is absolutely correct but it is eye-opening. David Pyne lists the wars the U.S. shouldn’t have entered or supported—but did. These wrong wars start with the Spanish-American War in 1898 and end with today’s Ukraine-Russia war. As for the wars we should have fought, he bluntly explains how they were badly managed.

Pyne writes:

“A study of the outcome of major wars America has fought over the past 125 years strongly suggests that U.S. military involvement in these conflicts has resulted in tragic and unforeseen consequences leading to tens of millions of unnecessary deaths while also serving to create new, and, in some cases, much more powerful enemies, making the U.S. much less safe and secure in the process.”

This man is not a left-winger writing for The Nation or Mother Jones. He is deputy director of a nonprofit organization, EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.  EMP refers to electromagnetic pulses, which can be used to disrupt the electrical grid and possibly other critical infrastructure. The organization was initially authorized by Congress as an advisory board and works with conservative members of Congress.

Continue reading “Which Wars Should the U.S. Have Kept Out Of?”

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Why Didn’t the U.S. Free the Slaves the Way Britain Did?

West Indies

The United States went through a devastating civil war to end slavery—the deadliest war in American history. Have you ever thought about how the British ended slavery in their Caribbean possessions such as Barbados and Jamaica?

The answer is, in a word, “peacefully.” It happened fifteen years before our 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and 17 years before the end of our Civil War.

I don’t mean to gloss over the turmoil—there were major slave revolts in British territories before the Emancipation Act was adopted in 1833, and full emancipation did not arrive until 1838.  From 1787, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was created (mostly by Quakers), protests against the slave trade in Britain were fierce, long-lasting, and initially futile.

But by 1838 all former slaves in the British possessions were free—without a widespread war. Continue reading “Why Didn’t the U.S. Free the Slaves the Way Britain Did?”