SUGGESTED FICTION IN TRANSLATION

Jorge Amado, Tent of Miracles: A Novel, translated from the Portuguese by Barbara Shelby Merello, with an introduction by Ilan Stavens (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1991, 2003).

Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, translated from the Spanish by Ruth L. C. Simms, prologue by Jorge Luis Borges, introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine, and illustrated by Norah Borges de Torre (New York; New York Review Books, , 1964, 2003).

Jean-Marie Blas de Robles, Where Tigers Are at Home, translated from the French by Mike Mitchell (New York: Other Press, 2008, 2011).

Max Blecher, Adventures in Immediate Irreality, translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim, , preface by Andrei Codrescu, introduction by Herta Muller (New York: New Directions Books, 2015).

Roberto Bolano, A Little Lumpen Novelita, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, New York: New Directions Books, 2014).

Emmanuel Bove, Henri Duchemin and His Shadows, translated from the French by Alyson Waters, introduction by Donald Breckenridge (New York: New York Review Books, 2015).

Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation: A Novel, translated from the French John Cullen ((New York: Other Press, 2015) (See Laila Lalami, "Scene of the Crime," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/14/2015.).

Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child (Book Four, The Neapolitan Novels: Maturity, Old Age), translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (New York: Europa Editions, 2015) .

Dario Fo, The Pope's Daughter: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia, translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar (New York: Europa Editions, 2015) .

Gunter Grass, The Meeting at Telgte, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim, with an afterword by Leonard Forster (New York: A Harvest Book/A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book/Harcourt, 1979, 1981).

Milan Kundera, The Festival of Insignificance: A Novel, translated from the French by Linda Asher (New York: Harper, 2013, 2015).

Par Lagerkvist, Barabbas, translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair, with a preface by Lucien Maury and a letter by Andre Gide (New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 1951, 1989).

Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories, translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson, introduction by Benjamin Moser, edited by Benjamin Moser (New York: New Directions Books, 2015) (See Terrence Rafferty, "The Stories She Told," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/2/2015.).

Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk, translated from the Turkish by Edouard Roditi, with a new introduction by the author (New York: New York Review Books, 1961, 2005).

Haruki Murakami, Wind/Pinball: Two Novels, translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Steve Erickson, "What Set Him Spinning," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/16/2015.).

Sofi Oksanen, Purge: A Novel, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (New York: Black Cat, 2008, 2010).

Sofi Oksanen, When the Doves Disappeared: A Novel, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (New York: Knopf, 2015).

Per Petterson, I Refuse: A Novel, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Minneapolis, Mn: Graywolf Press, 2015).

Moss Roberts, trans. & ed., Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies, with assistance of C. N. Tay, preface by Yiyun Li, illustrated by Victo Ngai (London: The Folio Society, 2014).

Carlos Rojas, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press/The Margellos World Republic of Letters Book, 2013).

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book, translated from the Chinese by Meredith McKinney (London: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 2006).

Bernhard Schlink, Homecoming: A Novel, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (New Yorzk: Vintage International/Vintage Books, 2009).

Victor Serge, Midnight in the Century, translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Richard Greeman (New York: New York Review Books, 1981, 2015).

Mario Vargas Llosa, The War of the End of the World, translated from the Spanish by Helen R. Lane, illustrated by Ben Cain (London: The Folio Society, 2012).

Timur Vermes, Look Who's Back, translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch (New York & London: MacLehose Press/Quercus, 2012, 2015).

Christa Wolf, City of Angels, or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud: A Novel, translated from the German by Damion Searls (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010, 2013) ("I have know for a long time that the real transgressions are the ones that happen on the inside, not out in the open. And that you can deny these secret transgressions to yourself for a very long time, and hide them, and never speak about them out loud. We cling tight to this innermost secret and keno it and keep it." Id. at 309.).

Christa Wolf, They Divided the Sky: A Novel, translated from the German by Luise von Flotow  (Ottawa: U. of Ottawa Press, 2013.).

MO YAN'S PERSPECTIVE(S) ON CHINA

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Big Breasts and Wide Hips: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996, 2012) (From the backcover: "In a country where men dominate, this epic novel is first and foremost about women, As the title implies, the female body serves as the book's most important image and metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at seventeen into the Shangguam family, she has nine children, none by her husband, who is sterile. The youngest is her only boy, the narrator of the book, a spoiled and ineffectual child who stands in stark contrast to his headstrong and forceful sisters. Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman, constantly risking her life to save the lives of several of her children and grandchildren as the political tides shift dramatically from year to year. [] Each of the seven chapters recounts a different era, from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 through the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the early years of Sun Yat Sen's Republic, the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years. This stunning novel, peopled with dozens of unforgettable characters, is a searing, uncompromising vision of twentieth-century China, as seen through the eyes of China's preeminent . . . novelist.").

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Frog: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Viking, 2014).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), The Garlic Ballads: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Penguin Books, 1995, 2013).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Red Sorghum: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Pow!, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (London: Seagull Books, 2012) (See Ian Buruma, "Folk Opera," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/3/2013.).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Red Sorghum: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Penguin Books, 1993) (Under normal circumstances, it is the power of morality that keeps the beast in us hidden beneath a pretty exterior. A stable, peaceful society is the training ground for humanity, just as caged animals, removed from the violent unpredictability of the wild, are influenced by the behavior of their captors in time." Id. at 323.).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), The Republic of Wine: A Novel, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Arcade Publishing,  1992, 2012).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Sandalwood Death: A Novel (Chinese Literature Today Book Series), translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 2013).

Mo Yan (aka Guan Moye), Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001, 2011).

REFLECTIONS ON CHINA

Perry Link, Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament (New York & London: Norton, 1992).

Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (New York: Farar, Straus & Giroux, 2014).

Wang Hui, China from Empire to Nation-State, translated from the Chinese by Michael Gibbs Hill (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2014).

Wang Hui, China's New Order: Society, Politics, and Economy in Transition, edited by Theodore Huters, translated from the Chinese by Theodore Huters & Rebecca Karl (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2003).

Wang Hui, The End of the Revolution: China and the Limit of Modernity  (London & New York: Verso, 2009).

BEYOND COMPASSION

Larissa MacFarguhar, Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) ("The usual way to do good is to help those who are near you: a person grows up in a particular place, perceives that something is wrong there, and sets out to fix it. Or a person's job suddenly requires heroism of him and he rises to the occasion . . .  Either way, he is taking care of his own, trying to make their lives better--lives that he understands because they are like his. He may not know personally the people he's helping, but he has something in common with them--they are, in some sense, his people. There's an organic connection between him and his work." "Then there's another sort of person, who starts out with something more abstract--a sense of injustice in the world at large, and a longing for goodness as such. This person want to live a just life, feels obligated to right wrongs or relieve suffering, but he doesn't know right away how to do that, so he sets himself to figuring it out. He doesn't feel that he must attend first to people close to him; he is moved not by  sense of belonging but by the urge to do as much good s he can. There is no organic, necessary connection between him and his work--it doesn't choose him, he chose it. The do-gooders I'm talking about are this second sort of person. They're not better or worse than the first sort, but they are rarer and  harder to understand. It can seem unnatural to look away from one's own people toward a moral idea, but for these do-gooders it;s not: it's natural for them." "The do-gooder . . . knows that there are crises everywhere, all the time, and he seeks them out. He is not spontaneous--he plans his good deeds in cold blood. He may be compassionate, but compassion is not why he does what he does--he committed himself to helping before he saw the person who needs him. He has no ordinary life: his good deeds are his life. This make him good; but it can also make him seem perverse--a foul-weather friend, a kind of virtuous ambulance chaser. And it's also why do-gooders are a reproach: you know, as the do-gooder knows, that there is always, somewhere, a need for help." Id. at 4-5.).

SOMETHING TO CONSIDER WHEN NEXT YOUR HEAR ABOUT EXPORTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ABROAD

Ari Berman, Gives Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) ("The fight over the right to vote sharply intensified after Barack Obama's election, the pinnacle of the VRA's success.[] After Obama's victory, 395 new voting restrictions were introduced in 49 states form 2011 to 2015. Following the Tea Party's triumph in the 2010 elections, half the states in the country,nearly all of them under Republican control--from Texas to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania--passed laws making it harder to vote. The sudden escalation of efforts to curb voting rights most closely resemble the Redemption period that ended Reconstruction, when every southern state adopted devices like literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise African-American voters." Id. at 10. "To Justice Antonin Scalia, the overwhelming congressional support for the VRA [Voting Rights Act], most recently in 2006, when Congress reauthorized the act for another twenty-five years by a vote of 390-33 in the House and 9-0 in the Senate, was proof of its unconstitutionality. 'Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act,' he said facetiously. 'Who is going to vote against that in the future?' The hushed courtroom gasped audibly when Scalia attributed support for the law to 'a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.'" Id. at 8. "The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice." Lyndon Banes Johnson, August 6, 1965. If one is a small "d" democratic--that is, you truly believe in the democratic process--, then this and Citizens United should be of grave concern to you.).

THE MYTHS OF AMERICAN ANGLO-SAXONISM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1981) (Perhaps, despite all their individual and collective flaws, the Founders had a more idealistic and universal notion of equality (as in  the self-evident truth that ''all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights') than the following generations, including twenty-first-century Americans. "The flowering of the new science of man in the first half of the nineteenth century was ultimately decisive in giving a racial cast to Anglo-Saxonism. Scientists, by mid-century, had provided an abundance of 'proofs' by which English and American Anglo-Saxons could explain their power, progress, governmental stability, and freedom. Rather than the eighteenth-century emphasis on the human race, its problems, and its progress, there was in the following century a feverish interest in distinctly endowed human races--races with innately unequal abilities, which could lead either to success and world power or to total subordination and extinction. In western Europe and America the Caucasian race became generally recognized as the race clearly superior to all others; the Germanic was recognized as the most talented branch of the Caucasians; and the Anglo-Saxons, in England and the United States, and often even in Germany, were recognized as the most gifted descendants of the Germans. The scientific study of man provided supposedly empirical proofs for the assertions of propagandists and patriots." Id. at 43-44. "By the middle years of the nineteenth century the simple praise of Anglo-Saxon institutions and freedom, which had assumed such importance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had undergone a profound change in England. Rather than emphasizing earlier freedom as a basis for internal reform, the new theorists were envisaging a world shaped to the desires of a supposedly innately superior Anglo-Saxon race. There was a firm and increasing belief that what was good for the Anglo-Saxons was good for the world. In Germany in the early nineteenth century ideas of historic Teutonic greatness were used most frequently to strengthen demands for nationhood. But the English were attracted to the idea of their race as a regenerating force for the whole world, for in Great Britain, throughout her colonies, and in the United States the Anglo-Saxons were apparently completing that march begun in the dawn of history by Aryan tribesmen. It was this aspect of the new Teutonism that also found most fertile ground on the other side of the Atlantic, in the United States. There, ideas and dreams indigenous to American history melded with a variety of themes from Europe to transform Revolutionary ideals for human progress into an ideology of continental, hemispheric, and even world racial destiny for a particular chosen people." Id. at 77. "Though the early years of the nineteenth century both religion and science confirmed Americans in the view that mankind consisted of one human species, that the obvious physical differences were the result of environment, and that the vast differences in the human condition and accomplishments stemmed form the same cause. This view was to change radically in western European and transatlantic thought, but the change also came about because of the peculiarities of the American experience. New racial ideas which influenced the whole of Western society in the first half of the nineteenth century fell on especially fertile ground in the United States. Ideas flowed both ways across the Atlantic in the formative years of he new ethnology. The American experience and American conclusions drawn from this experience helped to shape western European attitudes. Racial differences were dramatized in the United States, for white, black and red were thrust together from the earliest settlements. While blacks, of course, were central to the general development of American thought on race, Indians were of particular importance in the development of American racial thought in the context of an expanding and aggressive nation. In dealing with the Indians the United States began to formulate a rationale of expansion which was readily adaptable to the needs of an advance over other peoples and to a world role." Id. at 99-100. Two point, both of which should be obvious but for which Americans are in constant denial. First, notwithstanding "race" being a mere social construct, one cannot understand American history and American politics without appeal to race. For example, Slavery, Jim Crow, Indian Removal, Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico [Non] Statehood, Chinese Exclusion, Gentleman's Agreement with Japan, Eastern European Immigration Restrictions, Mexican Immigration (both legal and illegal), the whole "Model Minority" hype, and so on. Second, there is a significant racial component to American thought and rhetoric regarding the so-called War on Terror. For example, Syrian Refugees. For the most part, the Founders grounded in the Enlightenment. The later generations have steadily moved away from the Enlightenment and embraced the darkness of superstition, racialism, and religious bigotry. That we Americans are an enlightened people(s) is a myth, if not an outright lie. The myth of American Anglo-Saxism has grave consequences.).

INDIVIDUALISM

Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1980) ("Constitutionalism and absolutism are labels for theories of the polity, alternative conceptions of the proper ordering and use of public power. They consider human beings as political entities, and deal with them only insofar as they have a place in the public realm. Individualism, in the form it took in French psychological and ethical theory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dealt with human beings primarily as private persons, and was more a mood or temper than a theory. It found expression in a variety of ideals during those centuries, Although individualism could be associated with the solitary life of the scholar in retreat form the world, it was more often associated with a pleasurable life of like-minded men (and sometime women( who eschewed regular public involvement to concentrate their energies in philosophy leisured discussion, and good fellowship with one another. Individualism promoted the joy of private life, the fulfillment of each person, the vita contemplativa rather than the vita activa. It was compatible with a greater or lesser awareness of public duties that needed to be performed to make such a way of life possible for those capable of enjoying it, The primary hallmark of individualism, in all it variants, was the exploration and fulfillment of the self." Id. at 83. "The role of the scholar in this impressively articulated order is to assist his king in understanding and applying the principles of philosophy that are the indispensable grounding of all human activity, from the conduct of the self to the government of principalities. Le Caron asserts that a philosopher true to the love of knowledge will also be a 'lover of la chose publique, tending to no other good but common utility, not living a life contrary to that of vulgar men but a better one, and giving no occasion to trouble the political order.' He contrasts such a life with that of the avaricious or ambitious man, the two types that became so prevalent in the social philosophy of the seventeenth century. Of the two, Le Caron regards ambition as more noble, since it imitates philosophy in its attention to public affairs, instead of remaining, as avarice, must always be, caught up in the inferior world of things. But the man who desires glory for its own sake rather than loving the public good corrupts his behavior to please other men, and 'nothing is virtuous or vicious to him but what pleases or displeases his master.' Only la souveraine philosophie comprehends 'the essence and truth of things' and provides a worthy motivation for excellence in human life." Id. at 85-86 (citations omitted).).

HERODOTUS & THUCYDIDES

Mortimer J. Adler, Editor in Chief, Great Books of the Western World, Volume 5: Herodotus, Thucydides (The History of Herodotus, translated by George Rawlinson; Thucydides: The History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Richard Crawley, revised by R. Feetham) (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, 1990).

MANY AMERICANS SENSE THAT THEY ARE PRESENTLY RELIVING WEIMAR GERMANY. AND WE KNOW WHAT FOLLOWED.

Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New YorkL Tim Duggan Books, 2015) ("An instructive account of the mass murder of the Jews of Europe must be planetary, because Hitler's thought was ecological, treating Jews as a wound of nature. Such a history must be colonial, since Hitler wanted wars of extermination in neighboring lands where Jews lived. It must be international, for Germans and others murdered Jews not in Germany but in other countries. It must be chronological, in that Hitler's rise to power in Germany, only one part of the story, was followed by the conquest of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, advances that reformulate the Final Solution. It must be political, in a specific sense, since the German destruction of neighboring states created zone where, especially in the occupied Soviet Union, techniques of annihilation could be invented. It must be multifocal, providing perspectives beyond those of the Nazis themselves, using sources from all groups, from Jews to non-Jews, throughout the zone of killing. This in not only a matter of justice, but of understanding. Such a reckoning must also be human, chronicling the attempt to survive as well as the attempt to murder, describing Jews as they sought to live as well as those few non-Jews who sought to help them, accepting the innate and irreducible complexity of individuals and and encounters." "A history of the Holocaust must be contemporary, permitting us to experience what remains from the epoch of Hitter in our minds and in out lives. Hitler's worldview did not bring about the Holocaust by itself, but its hidden coherence generated new sorts of destructive politics, and new knowledge of the human capacity for mass murder. The precise combination of ideology and circumstance of the year 1941 will not appear again, but something like it might. Part of the effort to understand the past is thus the effort needed to understand ourselves. The Holocaust is not only history, but warning." Id. at xii-xiii. Also, see Michael R. Marcus, "Hitler's Ecological Fantasies," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/6/2015.).

JAMES MERRILL

Langdon Hammer, James Merrill: Life and Art (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Jay Parini, "Their Poems," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).

POLITICAL POWER

Franz Neumann, The Democratic and The Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory, edited with a Preface by Herbert Marcuse (Glencoe, Illinois: The Falcon's Wing Press/ The Free Press, 1957) (From "Approaches to the Study of Political Power": "Political power is social power focused on the state. It involves control of other men for the purpose of influencing the behavior of the state, its legislative, administrative and judicial activities. Since political power is control of other men, political power (as contrasted with power over external nature) is always a two-sided relationship. Man is not simply a piece of external nature; he is an organism endowed with reason. although frequently not capable of, or prevented from, acting rationally. Consequently, those who wield political power are compelled to create emotional and rational responses in those whom they rule, inducing them to accept, implicitly or explicitly, the commands of the rulers. Failure to evoke emotional or intellectual responses in the ruled compels the rule to resort to simple violence, ultimately to liquidation." Id. at 3, 3-5."[The liberal attitude's] sole concern is the creation of fences around political power which is, allegedly, distrusted. Its aim is the dissolution of power into legal relationships, the elimination of the element of personal rule, and the substitution of the rule of law in which all relationships are to become purposive-rational, that is, predictable and calculable. In reality, of course, this is in large measure an ideology tending (often unintentionally) to prevent the search for the locus of political power and to render secure its actual holders. Power cannot be dissolved in law." Id. at 6-7. Therein lies one of the many naive conceits of legal education as general pursued at the typical law school: that many, if not most, problems come down to identifying the the appropriate legal rules. At their core, most issues come down to who has the power and who does not. The legal rules legislated, decreed, or administered will favor, in time, those with political power. Law is politic. From "Intellectual and Political Freedom": "To be sure, we know that since the French Revolution anti-liberal and anti-democratic theories have been propagated which champion the thesis that from democracy there must necessarily emerge the rule of the mob, a bloodthirsty mob which, in order to be able to exercise its rule, places a tyrant at its head. The total state then appears as the necessary fulfillment of democracy. De Maistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortes, Spengle, Ortega y Gasset repeat this idea in one form or another." "Most of them appeal to a supposedly Augustinian anthropology and claim that man, corrupt in his nature, must necessarily create a totally corrupt political regime of mob rule when, as with democracy, he must stand on his own feet." "The possibility of mob rule exists. As a rule, those who advocate this so-called Augustinian anthropology are after all the same who also strive to convert their theory into reality through propaganda and politics,; while on the contrary it seems to be the duty precisely of the intellectual, to oppose the tendencies of mob rule." "This tendency--but it is only a tendency, no more--is indeed inherent in democracy. It means that a purely democratic system has conformist tendencies, that is to say, that the fact of mass rule presses upon the whole intellectual and artistic life of the nation, in order to create a conformist monolithic culture." "These tendencies are not dangerous in themselves. There is anti-intellectualism in every mass movement. The suspicion that the intellectual will refuse to play the game is always present. Rightly or wrongly the mass sees the intellectual as Socrates had asked him to be: as a stranger, a metic, who is the name of truth must not and cannot fully identify himself with any political system." Id. at 201, 210-211.).

LAW AS TERROR APPARATUS OF THE NORMATIVE STATE

Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in History and Memory (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2015) ("[T]he principal instrument of terror in Nazi Germany was not the concentration camp but the law--not, to use Ernst Frankel's terminology, the prerogative state but the normative state, not in other words the coercive apparatus created by Hitler, such as the SS, but the already existing state apparatus dating back decades or even centuries. This is not to belittle the camps role in 1933, of course. During 1933 perhaps 100,000 Germans were detained without trial in so-called 'protective custody' across Germany, most by by no means all of them members of the Communist and Social Democratic parties. The number of deaths in custody during this period has been estimated at around 600 and was almost certainly higher." Id. at 100. "It is important to remember the extreme extent to which civil liberties were destroyed in the course of the Nazi seizure of power. In the Third Reich it was illegal to belong to any political grouping apart from the Nazi Party or indeed any non-Nazi organisation of any kind apart from the Churches (and their ancillary lay organisations) and the army; it was illegal to tell jokes about Hitler; it was illegal to spread rumours about the government; it was illegal to discuss alternatives to the political status quo. The Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 made it legal for the police to open letters and tap telephones, and to detain people indefinitely and without a court order in so-called 'protective custody'. The same decree also abrogated the clauses in the Wiemar Constitution that guaranteed freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of expression. The Enabling Law allowed the Reich Chancellor and his cabinet to promulgate laws that violated the Wiemar Constitution, without needing the approval of the legislature or the elected President. The right of judicial appeal was effectively abolished for offense dealt with by the Special Courts and the People's Court. All this means that large numbers of offenders were sent to prison for political as well as ordinary criminal offense." Id. at 101.).

Also:
Stanley G. Payne, Fascism: Comparison and Definition (Madison, Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison, Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

ON NATIONALISM

Frank M. Turner, European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche, edited by Richard A. Lofthouse (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2014) (From "Chapter 10, Nationalism": "It was always difficult to determine exactly which ethnic groups could be considered as nations with claims to separate territorial and political existence. In theory any of them could, but in reality nationhood came to be associated with those ethnic groups that were large enough to support a viable economy, that had a history of  significant cultural association, that possessed a cultural elite which allowed the language to spread and flourish, and that had the capacity either to conquer other peoples or to establish and protect their own independence. Throughout the [nineteenth] century there were smaller ethnic groups who claimed to fulfill those criteria, but which  could not effectively achieve either indolence or recognition. They could and  did, however, create domestic unrest." Id. at 157. Might those last two sentences trigger in one's mind thoughts on "white nationalism" in twenty-first century America?).

"MURDEROUS MODERNITY," HOLOCAUST NOT "METAHISTORICAL MORALITY TALE"

Konrad H. Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015) ("The brutality of the Holocaust, broadly defined, poses a fundamental challenge to the Western master narrative that views modernization as a civilizing process. If since the Middle Ages Europeans had been progressing toward a reduction of violence . . . , the sudden relapse into utter barbarity during the Nazi dictatorship is hard to explain. In order to maintain the optimistic Whig interpretation of ineluctable progress, democratic intellectuals have tended to claim that the Germans deviated form this liberal development, flowing a special path in an anti modern direction. But the Polish Jewish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has challenged this self-exculpatory view, which understates Western imperialist crimes; instead, he claims that 'the historical study of the Holocaust has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Nazi-perpetrated genocide was a legitimate outcome of rational bureaucratic culture.' By producing a sense of 'moral indifference' among the perpetrators and conferring 'moral invisibility' on the victims, modernity itself was to blame. 'Both creation and destruction are inseparable aspects of what we call civilization." "In order to resolve this paradox, it is necessary to strop treating the Holocaust as metahistorical morality tale and to reinsert it into its actual historical setting. Hitler unleashed his wars of aggression primarily as an effort to gain hegemony over the European continent in order to strengthen Germany's base for global competition. The ensuing mass murder of civilians was the result of Nazi dreams of eastern settlement, which required the ethnic cleansing of the existing residents so as to create space for German colonists. The persecution of millions of Jews caught in ghettos and concentration camps stemmed moreover from a post-Jewish-emancipation form of racial anti-Semitism which, by arguing biologically, cut off any escape by religious conversion or sociocultural assimilation. Finally, the ideological war of annihilation against communism and the Soviet Union facilitated mass killing because the savagery of the fighting ruptured all moral restrains. By involving local auxiliaries and extending into the Balkans, the Nazi campaign of mass murder interwove these three separate strands in a more complex fashion than is commonly remembered." Id. at 365-366 (citations omitted). From the bookjacket: "Out of Ashes explores the paradox of the European encounter with modernity in the twentieth century, sheddng light on why it led to cataclysm, inhumanity, and self-destruction, but also social justice, democracy, and peace." Also, see Geoffrey Wheatcraft, "Continental Divides," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/2/2015.).

AFTER THE BOMBS FALL: THE IMPACT OF NUCLEAR WAR IN HUMAN TERMS

Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (New York: Viking, 2015) (See Ian Buruma "Under a Cloud," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/2/2015.).

Below is a email I received regarding my comments on the NYT piece on rules pertaining to  halloween costumes. Read it. It makes good points, of which I am much sympathetic, so there is no need for a either/or debate. Moreover, reasonable people can, may, and do disagree.

Still, the point I want to make is that we are running the risk of sanitizing culture. I agree that we should not demean or dehumanize others, and that certain costumes are beyond the pale of decency. But the criteria cannot be that someone, or some group, will have their identity bent out out shape. I am reminded of a essay I read recently. It is from Amartya Sen's essay, "The Smallness Thrust Upon Us," which is reprinted in Amartya Sen, The Country of First Boys and Other Essays, edited by Antara Dev Sen & Pratik Kanjilal (New York: The Little Magazine/Oxford U. Press, 2015). In the essay, Sen begins:

'There used to be a me,' said Peter Sellers in a famous interview, 'but I had it surgically removed.' Removal is challenging enough,but no lees radical is surgical addition--or implantation--of a 'real me' by others who propel us in the direction of a new view of ourselves. We are suddenly informed that we are not really what we took ourselves to be: not Yugoslavs, but actually Serbs ('You and I don't like Albanians'), or not just Rwandans, but Hutus ('We hate Tutsis'), or--as some of us old enough may remember from the 1940s--that we are not primarily Indians, or human beings, but in fact just Hindus or Muslims (who must respectfully confront Muslims, or Hindus, on the 'other' side). 'Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,' Ogden Nash had proclaimed. 'But hating, my boy, is an art.' That art is widely practiced by skilled artists and instigators, and the weapon of choice is identity.

Id. at 43. We think we have something special to protect in our identity, but it is mainly a social-political construct thrust upon us by foes and, all to often, by 'friends'. It is primarily a tool for our being socially and politically manipulated by others, or for our politically manipulating others. In the final analysis is anyone essentially Irish, German, Polish, Japanese, American, or Indian, etc.? In the final analysis is anyone just a catholic, a jew, a moslem, a buddhist, a Jain, etc? In the final analysis is anyone essentially male, female, transgender, etc? In the final analysis is anyone essentially left- or right-handed? No! We are not essentially this or that? And we should not let other define of as essentially this or that, and we should especially not define ourselves as essentially this our that. Have some imagination. Be Walt Whitman, be large enough to contain the contradictions, the many differences. As Sen writes, 

[W]e belong to very many different groups, and we have to choose out priorities between them. Even though the allegedly irresistible demands of a parochial identity--of a sect or a community or even a nation--may be invoked to bully us into submission, we have to resist smallness being thrust upon us. 

Id. at 46. What the restrictions on halloween costumes does, though well-intended, is impose a subtle requirement on us to place identities on the others. Don't offend those who identify themselves racially, or ethnically, or gender-wise, or by professions, etc. Be parochial, and respect others being parochial. Be white bread. Be boring. Be neutered.

Not me! I want to live in a robust society, where there is diversity of thought and ideas, diversity of values, diversity of perspectives. Why, because I am not absolutely sure I am right about anything, let alone everything. So, unlike the fascist among us (be their conservative, or liberal, religious or secular, etc.) I need the diverse perspectives. Why would I want to live is a society where everyone is like me? Or like you? God, either would be HELL. But that is were we are headed in this sanitized society we are developing. Give me the discomfort of diversity, the risk of being insulted and hurt by others insensitivity to me. It will not kill me. It will make me stronger. And it will help me figure out who I want to be in all its contradictions, inconsistencies, etc.

Respectfully,

ME

Postscript Also, keep in mind that Halloween, or All Saints' Eve, or eve of All Hallows Day, originated as the beginning of the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. [citations omitted] Halloween is in part a evening of mocking death before we remember and honor the dead. Life/living mocks death. The fascists mock life/living.

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From:
Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2015 1:09 PM
To:
Subject: 

"Dear L, 

And yet, just a couple of weeks ago, you posted a thought-provoking piece about dehumanization. Could it be that these costumes, appropriating the culture of an exoticized "other," desensitize in the name of fun and contribute to a person's dehumanization of others? Maybe it's not so fun for everyone.  I agree that it is unfortunate we need rules to make people more conscious of this possibility. Certainly it would be preferable if everyone could just be more aware, but for educational institutions, perhaps it is our job to use rules to raise awareness so that it becomes inculcated and habitual.

Respectfully"

On Oct 31, 2015, at 12:16 PM, I wrote:

I get it. But things like this certainly sap the honest fun out of life. Universities and students are becoming neo-fascisit! RULE. RULES, AND MORE RULES!

Halloween Costume Correctness on Campus: Feel Free to Be You, but Not Me By KIRK JOHNSON  Universities and student groups are issuing recommendations about costumes, which tread a line between flattery and mockery that is not always obvious.

LECTURE ON THE DEMISE OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA

Ira Berlin, The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("History is not about the past; it is about arguments we have about the past." Id. at 1. Also, see Edward E. Baptist, "Black Abolitionists," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/13/2015.).