-By Thomas E. Brewton
James T. Kloppenberg is Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard University. His featured article in the November-December 2010 edition of the Harvard alumni magazine explains why academics find President Obama so attractive.
The article title – From Hull House to the White House – sets the tone.
Unfortunately the internet version of the article is only a short extract of the version in the magazine’s print edition. Some of the quotations below are not in the web version.
Hull House was the famous settlement house established in 1889 by Jane Addams, who was among the first generation of women to receive college educations. The content of those women’s education was much influenced by America’s burgeoning love affair with socialism, already well entrenched in France and Germany and rising to influence in England with the Fabian Society, led by George Bernard Shaw and by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
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Academic Theorist In The White House”
A party is a party. Sure, in politics there are internal fights, jealousies, and intrigues, but when the final push to election day is upon its members, a party supports the one carrying the party banner. They may be disgruntled because the man they supported didn’t win the primary, but they hold their tongue and pull the lever for the Party candidate. Many even about face and hit the hustings for the party guy even as they worked against that candidate in the primary.
Last January, Jennifer Cline sent a letter to President Obama telling him of her woes. She had been diagnosed with two kinds of cancer, she lost her job and was about to lose her home. Surprisingly the president wrote her back and told her that “things will get better.”
The polls are now open all across this great land for what promises to be one of the most historic upsets in American electoral history. And you have a chance to be a part of it.
The head of the Obama Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez, admitted this week that he has no real intention of trying to assure that members of our military are afforded their right to vote, and will not attempt in a timely fashion to enforce the MOVE Act (Military and Overseas Voter Empower Act) intended to make sure that our soldiers get their ballots with time enough to return them so that they can be counted on election day.
There is little doubt that Al Franken’s namesake is a perfect analogy because he is certainly a Frankenstein of a Senator. When he barely won the Senate seat for the Democrats in Minnesota over incumbent Norm Coleman several years ago it was painfully obvious that major improprieties and problems marred that election. His win was cobbled together from various “dead” sources, if you will. As the RNC says, Franken’s election “serves as a glaring and painful reminder to voters that we can never take any election for granted.”
Contrary to popular perception, the criminal group ACORN (Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now) is not quite a’moulderin’ in the grave, folks. Many might recall that Congress turned off the spigot of federal funds flowing into the coffers of the organization responsible for federal election law crimes all across the country. Many might all recall that ACORN itself eventually said it would shutter its operations.
So you have Avastin, a drug used to treat breast cancer that has a record of