I started at the beginning and am working my way through your rich archive. Just wanted to drop in and comment how powerful this piece was. I look forward to watching your thoughts unfold as I move forward through time, reading your work. Aside: I do kind of wish we still had room in our cosmology to be in the center of nested singing spheres! How magical is that idea?!
Goodness, thank you! I'm glad this one resonated. It's one of the ones I'm going to be revising and republishing over the coming months, for the many more recent readers here.
And I am totally with you on the singing spheres. My undergraduate degree was in mathematics, and one of the most delightful classes was a philosophy of mathematics class. I think I learned about the singing spheres cosmology in high school, but this class really brought it to life. It's really beautiful, isn't it? And maybe, in a way, true.
Thanks, another wonderful article, and as always I learn lots of new things. I figured there was a lot more to the Boston Tea Party than the story we have been told.
Stories are powerful. I love what Philip Pullman says in the book "The Emerald Mile" - “Thou shalt not” is soon forgotten, but “Once upon a time” lasts forever.
I love your final thoughts on finding and amplifying people in communities doing real work. I have a wonderful friend who has a great motto for us all - "Make a Difference, Be The Change".
I just started rereading "The Secret Commonwealth" because my husband and I are watching His Dark Materials and I'd forgotten a lot of the story, so I went back and read the end of "The Amber Spyglass" and kept going. There are so many insightful points in the narrative about the power of story and the workings of power.
Maybe it's the privilege talking -- I had a pretty good education, especially in history, which was always my favorite* -- but there just so much to cover, it seems to me that the best we can hope for in elementary/secondary is a broad noncontroversial overview. Pretty much every single year from, well, pick any starting point, is going to have events and subtlety enough to support a PhD worth of study/work. The idea, it seems to me, is to give just the most general sense of the sweep of events, and then expect students to spend a lifetime learning various stories in whatever granular detail suits them as they go.
I think of 'they never really told me X' as less of an indictment than an invitation.
On the takings question, I totally hear you. But ownership of land is a construct, and the idea that your ownership can be compromised by the state for the general welfare isn't that shocking. It wouldn't make sense that some one could buy up the mouth of a canyon and force a railroad to divert possibly hundreds of miles. This can go too far: I had a takings case in the 90s, arising from the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, and we lost on a similar theory (the government screwing you is an inherent risk, so suck it). They ignored our best cases, which had arisen (a) from the quasi-war with France during the first Adams Administration and (b) the purchase of Florida from Spain.
* And still is. Picture a fat old white guy all hopped up on qat excitedly explaining the Burr treason trial and the continuing legal relevance of the various rulings to a group of Yemeni men on a Sana'a terrace, and you'll get the idea.
I love that perspective on education. It would be great for people to have more thought-out understanding of something like the Boston Tea Party when talking about patriotism or protest, but I totally hear you about having too much to cover in a normal K-12 education. Yes--not an indictment, but an invitation.
On ownership of land as a construct, I'm a big fan of Henry George, who wrote several hundred pages on why land itself--separate from improvements on it--should never be private property but whose increase in value belongs to the community rather than the individual (again, not the value of improvements, just the land). You're right, it's not that shocking that ownership can be compromised for the state, but the reality is that most people *are* shocked by it, like the Nebraska farmers who sued to stop Keystone XL taking their property, or ranchers surprised to find that the government can in fact take their land to build a border wall. This is obviously of interest to me on an everyday life level, but philosophically I find it perennially interesting because it's an opportunity to reexamine a) what we think government is for and how we structure it to achieve that, and b) the values that underpin those beliefs, and how they shift in response to increased scientific knowledge about things like ecology.
I would totally read a whole essay or paper on that Iranian Revolution case! That sounds wild and incredibly interesting.
It's a short-ish story. As is usual in a revolution, all sorts of relationships were disrupted. The Algiers Accords ended the hostage crisis, but also created a tribunal in the Hague for the US and Iran, and their respective citizens, to assert claims arising from the disruption. There was an interesting wrinkle, though: claims of $250,000 and above could be asserted by the claimant themselves, but claims under $250,000 were to be asserted by the governments.
Something like 3,000 "small" claims were asserted by US parties. After about a decade, in what I would say was a bid the placate Iranian moderates, without notice or consent of the claimants, the US government took ownership of the US small claims and settled them for a lump sum. Then the US government used a claims commission to decide the validity of claims, and distribute the money. Some 2/3rds of claims were rejected by the commission. Those folks got nothing. About a third were upheld, but, after the US had deducted just over half the money for its own claims, the lump sum was only enough to pay the original principal value of those claims, and not the interest that had been accrusing for 15 years or so. So, $40 or 50 million short.
We filed a class action on behalf of the successful claimants, and our theory was pretty straightforward: taking ownership of the claims was a taking, the just compensation required by the Constitution is principal plus interest, and so the interest was due, notwithstanding whatever amount the US had gotten from Iran. That is, it wasn't the claimants' job to subsidize the objectives of US foreign policy, but that that burden should be borne by society at large.
I don't remember what most of the 20+ class reps' claims were. One was a US university trying to recover tuition that the Iranian government had promised to pay for Iranian exchange students, another had to do with a Tehran restaurant whose Jewish owners had had to flee. This latter had some extra legal significance, because the settlement between the US and Iran didn't just extinguish the claim, it actually transferred title to the land where the restaurant was to Iran.
The opinions are on the internet. The Claims Court analyzed this as a regulatory taking, and was all 'c'mon man 50 cents on the dollar is nothing to whine about.' On appeal, the Federal Circuit went with 'yeah you're right that this isn't a regulatory taking, but c'mon man they were doing you a favor, and anyway this in the kind of thing that happens.' I thought their dismissal of our quasi-war with France precedent was pretty dishonest, but you get what you get. Anyway, cert was denied.
That is truly fascinating. This one situation cracks open the whole notion of "takings" and "ownership" itself -- who has the power to assert claims? Who has the power to enforce justice? What is the definition of justice? It also speaks to the multi-generational consequences of these kinds of actions, or inactions, or takings, or denial of justice. "This kind of thing happens" might just be a different summation of "History is written by the winners."
Thank you for sharing. These legal areas are so often where society's values and shifts in values show up, and yet few of us get to see them and think about them in real time, much less examine historical cases.
Just a note on the generational aspect: the French captured those ships in the 1790s, and the Claims Court opinion on the 1800 treaty with France extinguishing claims was issued in 1886.
Um, wow? Isn't there some famous quote about the slow wheels of justice, or am I thinking of Dickens's "Bleak House"?
When my husband was studying for the bar in the UK, one of the test cases he had to work on was a right-of-way through a fenced-in yard that I think was used by an auto body repair shop. It was really interesting to read that because the right-of-way cases rely on somewhat recent law but have to reach way back into historical record to prove the path existed and that someone is trying to "take" it by fencing it off or in.
Thank you, Antonia. As Barry Lopez wrote in _Crow and Weasel_:
"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good storytellers. Never forget these obligations.'"
Mostly I've read his older nonfiction, the things my mom had around the house like Winter Count and Arctic Dreams, and Harper's essays. I kept passing Horizon in the bookstore and thinking I should get it but it's so very large.
I started at the beginning and am working my way through your rich archive. Just wanted to drop in and comment how powerful this piece was. I look forward to watching your thoughts unfold as I move forward through time, reading your work. Aside: I do kind of wish we still had room in our cosmology to be in the center of nested singing spheres! How magical is that idea?!
Goodness, thank you! I'm glad this one resonated. It's one of the ones I'm going to be revising and republishing over the coming months, for the many more recent readers here.
And I am totally with you on the singing spheres. My undergraduate degree was in mathematics, and one of the most delightful classes was a philosophy of mathematics class. I think I learned about the singing spheres cosmology in high school, but this class really brought it to life. It's really beautiful, isn't it? And maybe, in a way, true.
Thanks, another wonderful article, and as always I learn lots of new things. I figured there was a lot more to the Boston Tea Party than the story we have been told.
Stories are powerful. I love what Philip Pullman says in the book "The Emerald Mile" - “Thou shalt not” is soon forgotten, but “Once upon a time” lasts forever.
I love your final thoughts on finding and amplifying people in communities doing real work. I have a wonderful friend who has a great motto for us all - "Make a Difference, Be The Change".
Happy New Year!
I just started rereading "The Secret Commonwealth" because my husband and I are watching His Dark Materials and I'd forgotten a lot of the story, so I went back and read the end of "The Amber Spyglass" and kept going. There are so many insightful points in the narrative about the power of story and the workings of power.
Maybe it's the privilege talking -- I had a pretty good education, especially in history, which was always my favorite* -- but there just so much to cover, it seems to me that the best we can hope for in elementary/secondary is a broad noncontroversial overview. Pretty much every single year from, well, pick any starting point, is going to have events and subtlety enough to support a PhD worth of study/work. The idea, it seems to me, is to give just the most general sense of the sweep of events, and then expect students to spend a lifetime learning various stories in whatever granular detail suits them as they go.
I think of 'they never really told me X' as less of an indictment than an invitation.
On the takings question, I totally hear you. But ownership of land is a construct, and the idea that your ownership can be compromised by the state for the general welfare isn't that shocking. It wouldn't make sense that some one could buy up the mouth of a canyon and force a railroad to divert possibly hundreds of miles. This can go too far: I had a takings case in the 90s, arising from the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution, and we lost on a similar theory (the government screwing you is an inherent risk, so suck it). They ignored our best cases, which had arisen (a) from the quasi-war with France during the first Adams Administration and (b) the purchase of Florida from Spain.
* And still is. Picture a fat old white guy all hopped up on qat excitedly explaining the Burr treason trial and the continuing legal relevance of the various rulings to a group of Yemeni men on a Sana'a terrace, and you'll get the idea.
I love that perspective on education. It would be great for people to have more thought-out understanding of something like the Boston Tea Party when talking about patriotism or protest, but I totally hear you about having too much to cover in a normal K-12 education. Yes--not an indictment, but an invitation.
On ownership of land as a construct, I'm a big fan of Henry George, who wrote several hundred pages on why land itself--separate from improvements on it--should never be private property but whose increase in value belongs to the community rather than the individual (again, not the value of improvements, just the land). You're right, it's not that shocking that ownership can be compromised for the state, but the reality is that most people *are* shocked by it, like the Nebraska farmers who sued to stop Keystone XL taking their property, or ranchers surprised to find that the government can in fact take their land to build a border wall. This is obviously of interest to me on an everyday life level, but philosophically I find it perennially interesting because it's an opportunity to reexamine a) what we think government is for and how we structure it to achieve that, and b) the values that underpin those beliefs, and how they shift in response to increased scientific knowledge about things like ecology.
I would totally read a whole essay or paper on that Iranian Revolution case! That sounds wild and incredibly interesting.
It's a short-ish story. As is usual in a revolution, all sorts of relationships were disrupted. The Algiers Accords ended the hostage crisis, but also created a tribunal in the Hague for the US and Iran, and their respective citizens, to assert claims arising from the disruption. There was an interesting wrinkle, though: claims of $250,000 and above could be asserted by the claimant themselves, but claims under $250,000 were to be asserted by the governments.
Something like 3,000 "small" claims were asserted by US parties. After about a decade, in what I would say was a bid the placate Iranian moderates, without notice or consent of the claimants, the US government took ownership of the US small claims and settled them for a lump sum. Then the US government used a claims commission to decide the validity of claims, and distribute the money. Some 2/3rds of claims were rejected by the commission. Those folks got nothing. About a third were upheld, but, after the US had deducted just over half the money for its own claims, the lump sum was only enough to pay the original principal value of those claims, and not the interest that had been accrusing for 15 years or so. So, $40 or 50 million short.
We filed a class action on behalf of the successful claimants, and our theory was pretty straightforward: taking ownership of the claims was a taking, the just compensation required by the Constitution is principal plus interest, and so the interest was due, notwithstanding whatever amount the US had gotten from Iran. That is, it wasn't the claimants' job to subsidize the objectives of US foreign policy, but that that burden should be borne by society at large.
I don't remember what most of the 20+ class reps' claims were. One was a US university trying to recover tuition that the Iranian government had promised to pay for Iranian exchange students, another had to do with a Tehran restaurant whose Jewish owners had had to flee. This latter had some extra legal significance, because the settlement between the US and Iran didn't just extinguish the claim, it actually transferred title to the land where the restaurant was to Iran.
The opinions are on the internet. The Claims Court analyzed this as a regulatory taking, and was all 'c'mon man 50 cents on the dollar is nothing to whine about.' On appeal, the Federal Circuit went with 'yeah you're right that this isn't a regulatory taking, but c'mon man they were doing you a favor, and anyway this in the kind of thing that happens.' I thought their dismissal of our quasi-war with France precedent was pretty dishonest, but you get what you get. Anyway, cert was denied.
That is truly fascinating. This one situation cracks open the whole notion of "takings" and "ownership" itself -- who has the power to assert claims? Who has the power to enforce justice? What is the definition of justice? It also speaks to the multi-generational consequences of these kinds of actions, or inactions, or takings, or denial of justice. "This kind of thing happens" might just be a different summation of "History is written by the winners."
Thank you for sharing. These legal areas are so often where society's values and shifts in values show up, and yet few of us get to see them and think about them in real time, much less examine historical cases.
And, obviously, the timeless for dealing with the various injustices to Indigenous peoples are much more egregious.
Absolutely.
Just a note on the generational aspect: the French captured those ships in the 1790s, and the Claims Court opinion on the 1800 treaty with France extinguishing claims was issued in 1886.
Um, wow? Isn't there some famous quote about the slow wheels of justice, or am I thinking of Dickens's "Bleak House"?
When my husband was studying for the bar in the UK, one of the test cases he had to work on was a right-of-way through a fenced-in yard that I think was used by an auto body repair shop. It was really interesting to read that because the right-of-way cases rely on somewhat recent law but have to reach way back into historical record to prove the path existed and that someone is trying to "take" it by fencing it off or in.
Thank you, Antonia. As Barry Lopez wrote in _Crow and Weasel_:
"'I would ask you to remember only this one thing,' said Badger. 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good storytellers. Never forget these obligations.'"
I love this Barry Lopez thought, thank you!
Oh my gosh that's amazing. Exactly what I myself needed for the year! (I have not read as much Barry Lopez as I should have by now.)
<3 His fiction and nonfiction alike are beautiful in myriad ways. It's hard to recommend any one work, as they're all riveting.
Mostly I've read his older nonfiction, the things my mom had around the house like Winter Count and Arctic Dreams, and Harper's essays. I kept passing Horizon in the bookstore and thinking I should get it but it's so very large.
I just saw he passed away on Christmas. I had no idea. What a loss. http://www.barrylopez.com