That’s what I read too. These young guys think they know everything, but do they know about the Elvis impersonator suit that Jeremy Spencer left behind when he quit Fleetwood Mac? I think not!

That’s funny, even if it wasn’t meant that way. Thanks for the laugh.

The canal experience also exposed huge issues of racism and almost a rigid caste system amongst canal workers, who were mostly black men from Barbados and other West Indies islands. Administrators, technically skilled workers, managers, etc, were all white males, and there was a smug condescension towards the foreign workers in housing, pay, food, health care, and advancement. They certainly were not viewed as the equals of Americans.

Thanks, the Manela book sounds interesting.

I just finished reading David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas about the building of the Panama Canal. During the construction of the US canal, there was certainly a sense of national and technological superiority that the US was succeeding where France had failed, a result of our superior system of government and our society over the corrupt European nations of the period. Nibley’s comments certainly echo that sense from before WWI.

For more information about the incredibly brutal occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 and its impact on American life see Mary Renda’s Taking Haiti. She demonstrates how the occupation of Haiti has been forgotten because it ended badly–with American troops being withdrawn after massive violent suppression of Haitian rebels made the occupation unpopular. We did leave the country with an American style Constitution intact, but we also left it with only one stable institution–the military. Interestingly, the troops were in Haiti from the Presidency of Wilson to the administration of FDR–a time generally looked to as anti-imperial.

The more I read the words of Nibley, the more they sound like Wilson’s rhetoric at Versailles. We do know that much of the church leadership heartily supported Wilson’s efforts with the League of Nations–especially Heber J. Grant who spoke out in favor of the the League and in support of Wilson. Grant spoke out to counteract the opposition of Senator and Apostle Reed Smoot who was one of the League’s most ardent detractors. A great new book by Harvard historian Erez Manela, the Wilsonian Moment, outlines the scope and power of Wilsonian rhetoric in a post-World War I world. He argues that the early 1920s represented a moment where Americans first began to understand their increasingly powerful place in the world and articulated a vision of Democratic influence. He also shows how racial prejudice played a role in America’s smugness. Several other books that I read recently on the interwar period demonstrate America’s increasingly moral presence in the world–even though politically and militarily it espoused isolationism. By the way, I highly recommend Manela’s book which also demonstrates how these ideas played out in other third-world countries, but that is the outside the scope of this post.

Also, although we think of the doctrine of a Divinely inspired Constitution as uniquely Mormon, politicians from the very beginning of the nation have invoked the idea that God’s hand has been watching over this country. Lincoln’s rhetoric is filled with such references as are many President’s Inaugural Addresses. Calvin Coolidge comes to mind as an especially Christ-minded president in this time period.