Imagining Opportunity: The 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act and the Promise of the Public Domain

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-279
Author(s):  
Sara M Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Western Landscape

Abstract The turn of the twentieth century brought a significant expansion of the nation-state, as the U.S. Congress passed new homestead laws that experimented with adapting land policy to regional conditions. That focus on creating opportunity on challenging, non-irrigable terrain presents a striking contradiction to the firsthand experiences of the western legislators who argued in support of the bill. Elected representatives from these districts justified larger acreages by candidly acknowledging the geophysical realities of the western landscape—those climatic and topographic conditions that were the most frequently cited challenges to settlers in the West—even as they argued that land law should be made more flexible to support new farms and ranches. Adapting to the limits of the western landscape became a paramount goal of legislators who drafted federal land policy, ultimately contributing to expanding the reach of the expert and interventionist state and signaling a new era in regional development.

Use of Public Rangelands in the American West

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Vale
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
American West ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Land Policy ◽  
Multiple Use ◽  
Bureau Of Land Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Poor Condition ◽  
Federal Land ◽  
Land Policies

The Bureau of Land Management, the land agency that administers much of the federal rangeland in the American West, has frequently been characterized as excessively responsive to the desires of ranchers, with resulting land deterioration and loss of resource values. Both the generally poor condition of the public domain, and the Bureau's attempt to maintain stocking levels while improving the range, support this characterization.Several policies and programmes over the last decade, however, suggest that the Bureau today is less strongly tied to the livestock industry, and certainly its lands are being increasingly coveted by groups other than grazers. This recent trend towards a more ‘multiple use’ agency has been strengthened by Congressional passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976. Whether or not diversification of land policies will continue into the future is, however, at present unclear.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby C. Rider
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Government ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter considers the scope of the U.S. Cold War propaganda efforts during the late 1950s. In many ways, the 1950s had set the stage for the remainder of the Cold War. The superpower sporting rivalry continued to elevate the political significance of athletic exchanges, track meets, and a range of other competitions and interactions between sportsmen and sportswomen from the East and the West. For the U.S. public, the Olympics were still the source of much debate as each festival arrived on its quadrennial orbit. Victory or defeat at the Olympics clearly remained important to the public and to the White House. Declassified documents also suggest that in the post-Eisenhower years the government was still deploying the Olympics in the service of psychological warfare.

Immigration and Family Separation in the U.S. at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arodys Robles ◽  
Susan Cotts Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnic Stereotypes ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The U.S

This essay provides the first quantitative and comparative estimates based on a nationally representative sample of the extent and duration of family separation associated with immigration to the U.S. at the turn of the century. It uses information from the Public Use Sample of the 1910 U.S. Census to examine the separation of husbands and wives, and parents and children, and compares the largest ethnic groups (British, Irish, Scandinavians, Germans, Poles, Italians, and Jews). Of those couples who were living together at the time of the 1910 census and who had married before immigration, more than half immigrated in the same year. Children were often separated from their fathers but rather rarely from their mothers. Most separations of any kind were brief, usually lasting less than two years. Some of our estimates are in line with the findings of others, while in other cases they raise questions about ethnic myths and ethnic stereotypes.

A Search for Identity: The “German Question” in Atlantic Alliance Relations

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Marie Mushaben
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Global Environment ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
State Identity ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
German Question ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The U.S

AbstractMajor changes in the postwar global environment have transformed “the” German question into many German questions that continue to complicate the foreign and domestic policy-making processes in the Federal Republic. Inconsistencies between official policy pronouncements and the accepted political modus operandi are explainable in terms of four “paradoxes”: (1) the nation/state identity paradox; (2) the reunification/integration paradox; (3) the stability/security paradox; and (4) the lessons-of-history/normalcy paradox. West German commitment to the Atlantic Alliance remains unshaken, but the FRG should not be forced to choose between the U.S. and Europe, between integration with the West and further improvement in relations with the GDR. Normalization of those relations will be best served by a mutual adherence to the principles of balance, territorial integrity, confidence building and greater transparency in matters of inter-German decision making.

scholarly journals Elonis v. United States: The Doctrine of True Threats: Protecting Our Ever-Shrinking First Amendment Rights in the New Era of Communication

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-223
Author(s):  
Mary Margaret Roark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The U.S

The First Amendment protects one of our most precious rights as citizens of the United States—the freedom of speech. Such protection has withstood the test of time, even safeguarding speech that much of the population would find distasteful. There is one form of speech which cannot be protected: the true threat. However, the definition of what constitutes a "true threat" has expanded since its inception. In the new era of communication—where most users post first and edit later—the First Amendment protection we once possessed has been eroded as more and more speech is considered proscribable as a "true threat." In order to adequately protect both the public at large and our individual right to free speech, courts should analyze a speaker’s subjective intent before labeling speech a "true threat." Though many courts have adopted an objective, reasonable listener test, the U.S. Supreme Court now has the opportunity, in deciding Elonis v. United States, to take a monumental step in protecting the First Amendment right to free speech. By holding that the speaker’s subjective intent to threaten is necessary for a true threat conviction, the Court will restore the broad protection afforded by the First Amendment and repair years of erosion caused by an objective approach.

Regionalism, Imperialism, and Sovereignty: West Indies Federation and the Occupation of Haiti

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Raphael Dalleo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The West ◽  
Complex Roots ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Economic Imperialism

Examining the West Indies Federation during the twentieth century against the backdrop of the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 shows the complex roots of decolonization and helps us understand the occupation as a foundational event for the twentieth-century Caribbean imaginary, much as the Haitian Revolution was for the nineteenth. The occupation is usually considered only in relation to its impacts in Haiti and the United States, but Haiti’s symbolic significance meant that its occupation shaped the perspectives of Caribbean people throughout the region. Major thinkers of federation, particularly Richard B. Moore and George Padmore, developed their political perspectives through responses to the occupation. We can thus see the questioning of nation-state independence and the critique of neocolonialism (as a form of US economic imperialism allied with elites in the neocolony) emerge from the lessons of Haiti’s occupation.

Conclusions

2018 ◽  
pp. 280-292
Author(s):  
Cristina E. Parau
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Causal Factor ◽  
Veto Players ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Elected Representatives

This chapter concludes the volume. In normative terms, the Judiciary revisions imposed on CEE since 1989 (and now the West) exhibit an unmistakable pattern: they transfer political power away from majoritarian institutions to non-majoritarian ones, from elected officials to judges; exclude the ‘sovereignty people’ from a voice in the Judiciary’s make-up; and insulate judges from accountability and liability to democratic boundaries. This Template amounts to the Americanization of the European Judiciary, and reflects the Network Community’s ambition to rule through the Judiciary (in Europe, but perhaps globally). In causal terms, a nexus was discovered explaining the Template’s puzzling ubiquity: the agency of a class of transnational elites sharing a collective identity and solidarity; their paradigmatic assumptions about the Judiciary’s role in democracy, and the coerciveness of their hegemonic discourses, which the public is unable to fathom or negotiate. The Network’s motivation is not solely the aspiration to solve mankind’s problems, but the all-too-human will to the power to arbitrate between all other political actors. A crucial but ‘invisible’ causal factor was the omission by the main veto players, elected representatives in parliaments, to forestall their own disempowerment.

The Bimillennium

2000 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Michael Grant
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Turn Over ◽  
Do So ◽  
Mathematical Error

Everyone is now celebrating the Bimillennium, and very many are writing about it. Bimillennium of what? Of our era, of course: A.D. 2000. Our era is supposed to have begun with the birth of Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ was not, unfortunately, born in A.D. 1: he was born in 11 or 7 or 6 or 5 or 4 B.C. We do not know exactly when, and our sources have made no particular effort to tell us. Our era was only established by a Russian monk Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century A.D. – he had been asked to attack the problem by Pope John I. The theory of Dionysius (which appears, incidentally, to be based on a mathematical error) was taken up by the West, and has held the field ever since. That is why, quite illogically, we commemorate the Bimillennium today: and why governments are spending a great deal of their peoples' money to do so. But let us not, all the same, belittle this misconceived Bimillennium. For it gives a great many people the opportunity to think a lot about their lives – to turn over a new leaf, hoping confidently that their new era and behaviour will be an improvement on the past. So for that reason let us welcome the Bimillennium. But not because it is the Bimillennium of the birth of Jesus Christ, because it is not. Not that the public, as a whole, minds. Any more than it minds about the religious basis of Christmas. It is, however, in my opinion, worth recording that this religious basis exists, and that on these grounds the whole foundation of the Bimillennium is fallacious, although no doubt it will receive the most massive celebrations, and these are justified in so far as they persuade people to change and improve their lives and the life of the community to which they belong. This was certainly the case in A.D. 1000, and I hope and believe it will be the case in 2000 as well.

Constitutionalism and Bureaucracy in the 1980's Some Bicentennial Reflections

1984 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Herman Belz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
Interstate Commerce Commission ◽  
American Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Independent Regulatory Agencies ◽  
The U.S

Although plans are well underway for celebrating the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution in 1987, it is doubtful that many of the public will be aware — or if aware would care to celebrate — a centennial milestone in the history of American government that teachers of political science will recognize as having great importance for American constitutionalism. I refer to what may be described, with some historical license, as the birth of the administrative state. This event was announced by the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” and by the creation in the same year of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the prototype of the independent regulatory agencies that were to affect so profoundly the nature of American government in the twentieth century.

Is Justice Burning?

2018 ◽  
pp. 61-94
Author(s):  
Peggy Kamuf
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Times Square ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Sexual Display ◽  
Public Executions ◽  
The U.S

This chapter begins with a survey of several of the explanations historians of capital punishment have put forward for the end of public executions in the West starting in the mid-nineteenth century. Besides well-known arguments of Foucault and others, I cite Victor Hugo’s observation from 1832 that moving the scaffold away from public view was an admission of shame in the practice. Against the background of secrecy laws proliferating around the U.S. death penalty today, I read Robert Coover’s 1977 novel The Public Burning, which restages the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 as an immense public spectacle in Times Square. The novel, I argue, crosses the two senses of its title; by dragging the execution into the public square it also brings out a shameless public sexual display, a public that is burning.

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