Reagan - the great man: an appreciation with cautions

Another excellently delivered talk, this time from Professor Brands, from Texas, about Ronald
Reagan and his presidency. He emphasizes "the man who wasn't there" aspect, and shows how his particular form of social emptiness was such a help in dealing with Gorbachev.

Prof. Brands has a lively way of talking and, it would seem, a lively way of thinking. I will be interested to read his book, not least as I rather agree with his view about the official biography of "Ronnie" (aka "Dutch") by Edmund Morris, which I read with  considerable disappointment, especially as Morris has so many interesting things to say about  Reagan in interviews.

See what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExwSBuX6iw0&nohtml5=False

The man who wanted to be President, but ended up as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Another fascinating talk (if you can ignore the fifteen minutes at the beginning of mutual
congratulation) about Salmon P. Chase's term as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

He was the most ambitious man ever to sit on the court, yet he was a serious lawyer, and a man Lincoln admired.

More importantly, this is an excellent insight into how the court worked and thought in those days, and shows how a free society modifies its opinions, practices and views as it moves forward. No pyatiletki!

http://www.c-span.org/video/?55936-1/revisiting-chases-jurisprudence

The Supreme Court at war with the President during the Civil War

A splendid, and elegantly delivered, lecture on the cases and issues before the US Supreme Court during the Civil War. The Chief Justice, Roger Taney (pictured right), was a pro-slaver, while the President of the country was, of course, the opposite. This illustrates how law can operate in a national crisis of which it is itself part.

Ex parte Merriman (1861), which concerned the use of habeas corpus as a way of getting round the draft, is the most interesting case. That was the Court against the President. The President won.

The talk is introduce by a black Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. It was delivered within the Supreme Court itself.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?56717-1/supreme-court-docket-18611865

Southern hospitality: American etiquette as it really otta be

Here is an interesting programme, which makes a contrast with Russia today, where so many people I have met outside the Garden Ring of Moscow are embarrassed to socialise with people of different income levels. A great example of "southern" (American) culture is the statement made by one of the people interviewed who is trying to explain the essence of "southern hospitality" (which seems to me to be the essence of Highland hospitality in Scotland too). He says: "In the south you are never to poor to be hospitable."

The unspoken but essential corollary, which is equally rare in modern Moscow, is that you are never to rich to accept hospitality. It is an ideal, of course, not always a fact. But ideals are important, like dreams. This one expresses true etiquette at its most basic level.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03ppyh2

Marriage and politics in Abraham Lincoln's life

And here is a wonderful, and in places very moving, talk about Abraham Lincoln's private life, and especially his relationship with his wife, Mary (pictured right).

It focuses on the very unRussian idea that a leader's character and personal relationships are an important key to his performance in the public domain. The speaker describes the speech Lincoln made from the back of the train that took him from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington to be sworn in as President. He thanked all the people from his home town who had given him so much help over the years, including his neighbour "with whom he shared a house cow". That just about says it all about the United States as a social concept in comparison with the world of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg at the same time.

Though the title refers to his secretaries the talk is more about him and his wife.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?284103-1/book-discussion-lincolns-men-president-private-secretaries

Abraham Lincoln and the virtues of patience and calmness in foreign affairs

Another interesting lecture, this time about Abraham Lincoln's foreign policy as President. It featured a preference for waiting and seeing which might well be adopted more often today, rather than media-focused activism.

There is also an amusing caricature at the beginning of his Minister in St Petersburg, during the time of the Civil War, the "bounder" and anti-slavery campaigner Cassius Marcellus Henry Clay (pictured right), who later helped organised the purchase of Alaska from Russia. It was after him, at a couple of generations removed, that Cassius Clay, the boxer, was named.

But most of all the talk is a model of clear speech which many Russian (and other) lecturers could copy with advantage.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?316821-1/book-discussion-lincoln-world

The way to write interesting history

For all Russians who wish to write in a way which the reader will follow (and not in the bureaucratese which universities here love), listen to this wonderful programme about the murder of a forgotten President of the United States. I recommend you try to write much as the lecturer speaks (cleaned up a bit for the printed page, of course).

President Garfield (seen, right, on his deathbed) was assassinated in the same year as Tsar Alexander II was, but in very different circumstances indeed.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?325579-1/discussion-assassination-president-james-garfield

The Zimmermann telegram

A fascinating programme from C-Span about  the famous Zimmermann telegram, sent by the German Foreign Office to Mexico in early 1917, offering them parts of the United States which had been surrendered after the Mexican War of 1846 if they would attack America in the event that the United States joined the war on the Allied side. The British decoded the message and used it very subtly to try to influence American public opinion about the war.

There is an interesting Russian angle about the German attempts to attack (in an early form of a-symmetric warfare) the Allies by raising colonial people against their imperial masters. The Irish uprising in 1916 was one example, but there were others. The Russian revolution of 1917 was the only one which succeeded (the British succeeded with the Arab revolt against the Ottomans in Palestine too). 

http://www.c-span.org/video/?308861-1/zimmermann-telegram

More Russian editing required!

Just editing a text written by a Russian who appears to be suffering from locigal constipation brought on by ABS (Aquired Bureaucractificatory Syndrome).

It occurred to me just now that an accurate precis of the main thought in the passage I have been sweating over for at least a minute would be: "...the clarification of the simplifcation of the redaction of the abstraction..."

Why Russian businesses should use my editing services

This is why Russian businesses should use my editing services:

"Growing the actions on the aria of quality improvement for the human resources involving into performing of IT and Telecom services through the developing of a join programs of collaboration between State and Business which help to teach yang specialists including they are improvement of a foregone languages knowledge."

Is it any wonder that "the West" does not, according to many Russians, understand this country?

Since the time of Ivan the Great, the obligation has been on the subject to understand the state, not on the state to make its meaning clear to the subject. Business today has the burden of 500 years of top-down communication to overcome. It is not ONLY a question of linguistic competence, in my opinion, but a cultural problem associated with the arrogance of command.