Is it true that Hitler had difficulty drawing the human body?
ChatGPT:
Yes, that is generally true, although it needs some nuance.
Before entering politics, Adolf Hitler aspired to become an artist. He applied twice to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907 and 1908) and was rejected both times.
One of the reasons cited by the admissions committee was that his work showed greater aptitude for architectural subjects than for the human figure.
His surviving paintings and drawings support that assessment.
Most of his surviving works depict:
buildings,
churches,
bridges,
streets,
interiors,
landscapes.
When people do appear, they are often:
very small,
stiff,
sketchily rendered,
or turned away from the viewer.
Art historians have often remarked that Hitler’s strengths lay in perspective and architectural detail, while his weaknesses included:
anatomy,
proportion of the human body,
expressive faces,
movement,
and the emotional vitality of figures.
This doesn’t mean he couldn’t draw people at all. Rather, compared with his architectural rendering, his figure drawing was noticeably weaker.
Interestingly, the Vienna Academy’s evaluators reportedly suggested that he might be better suited to architecture. However, Hitler lacked the secondary-school qualifications required to enter an architectural program.
A psychological caution
Because of Hitler’s later role in history, there has been a temptation to read symbolic meaning into his artistic limitations—for example, suggesting that his inability to depict human beings reflected an inability to value humanity.
That’s an intriguing idea, but it remains speculative. Many capable architectural artists are simply more interested in buildings than people, and artistic weaknesses by themselves don’t predict moral character.
What can be said with confidence is that Hitler’s surviving artwork reveals a clear preference and stronger technical ability for architecture over the human figure, and that this likely contributed to the Academy’s decision not to admit him.
The St. Louis Commune of 1877 was a brief worker-led uprising, marked by the first general strike in U.S. history and the temporary control of a major American city by socialist and communist organizers. [1, 2]
Key Events of the Uprising
The Great Railroad Strike: Grew out of national wage cuts in July 1877, spreading quickly to St. Louis, Missouri, where thousands of multiracial industrial and transport workers shut down local commerce. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Workers’ Leadership: The Marxist Workingmen’s Party helped direct the movement, setting up an executive committee that functioned as a temporary municipal authority. [1, 2, 3]
City Control: For about a week, the coalition maintained public order, negotiated work terms, and paralyzed standard capitalist operations before federal troops and local militias suppressed the movement. [1, 2, 3]
The Georgia landmark is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy
Lorraine Boissoneault | Author, Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene
August 22, 2017 (smithsonianmag.com)
Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial features General Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis—and has stirred up controversy in Georgia for years. Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy
Baltimore uprooted General Lee under the cover of night. New Orleans removed its four Confederate statues to mixed reactions—some voicing relief, others, disapproval. And with the violence that followed the events in Charlottesville, when white nationalists killed one counter-protestor and injured 19 more, the question of how America deals with its history of racism has continued to grow in urgency.
But what’s a state to do when the monument in question is carved 42 feet deep and 400 feet above ground into a granite mountain, with figures of General Lee, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis larger than the presidential visages of Mount Rushmore?
“We must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the Union… the visible image of Stone Mountain’s edifice remains a blight on our state and should be removed,” said Stacy Abrams, a Democratic candidate for Georgia governor, on Twitter in the days after the Charlottesville violence. And while Abrams is far from the only voice to call for the memorial’s removal, her call has been met by many Georgians who want the memorial to remain untouched.
With arguments raging across the country about the validity of Confederate monuments and whether they offer valuable history lessons or simply perpetuate the inaccurate “Lost Cause” mythology, Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial offers an example of the dark past of some monuments—and shows how hard their removal may be.
A Brief History of a 15-Million-Year-Old Mountain
The Stone Mountain quarries were excavated for their granite in the late 1800s. Granite from the mountain was used in cities across the country. Wikimedia Commons
At 1,683 feet tall, with a base circumference of 3.8 miles, Stone Mountain is an imposing feature in the otherwise even terrain. The granite block is a monadnock, or isolated mountain, created by a pocket of magma trapped underground 300 million years ago and only coming to the surface, through uplift and erosion, 15 million years ago.
As early as 4000 B.C., Paleo-Indians were drawn to the imposing mountain. Soapstone bowls and other artifacts recovered by archaeologists testify to the mountain’s earliest visitors. Researchers later found stone walls erected atop the mountain, likely constructed sometime between 100 B.C. and 500 A.D..
But it wasn’t until the 19th century that humans began exploiting the unique geologic structure on a more massive scale. In 1869, Stone Mountain Granite and Railway Co. began a systematic effort to mine the mountain for stone. That work was taken over by the Venable Brothers in 1882, whose workers harvested 200,000 paving blocks daily, in addition to other sizes of blocks.
With its uniform color, the granite became a coveted building material. Blocks from the Stone Mountain quarry were shipped across the country and around the world. They form the steps on the east wing of the U.S. Capitol; they’re in the locks of the Panama Canal, the structure of Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., and the Imperial Hotel building in Tokyo; and the blocks were used in dozens of courthouses and post offices across America.
But for all its architectural impact, Stone Mountain had yet to achieve its greatest claim to fame and notoriety. That would come in 1916, with a Civil War widow and a sculptor who later carved Mount Rushmore.
The Birth of a Memorial
Members of the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross on top of Stone Mountain while initiating 700 new members in July 1948. The mountain was also the site of the group’s second resurgence. AP Photo
“Just now, while the loyal devotion of this great people of the South is considering a general and enduring monument to the great cause ‘fought without shame and lost without dishonor,’ it seems to me that nature and Providence have set the immortal shrine right at our doors,” wrote newspaper editor John Temple Graves for the Atlanta Georgian on June 14, 1914.
His argument was simple, and less provocative than a statement he’d made on lynching a decade earlier (in which he argued lynching was the most useful tool in preventing rape, since “the negro is a thing of the senses… [and] must be restrained by the terror of the senses”). Graves believed the South deserved a monument to its Confederate heroes. Stone Mountain was a literal blank slate, just waiting for a suitable memorial to be carved into it.
Among those Southern citizens who read Graves’s editorial and others like it was C. Helen Plane, a member of the Atlanta United Daughters of the Confederacy (founded in 1895) and honorary “Life President” of the group. At 85, Plane fought as passionately for the memory of her husband and other Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War as she had done decades earlier. She brought the issue of a memorial before both the city and state chapters of the UDC, quickly gaining the group’s support. While the UDC briefly considered such notable artists as Auguste Rodin to carve the features of General Lee into Stone Mountain, they ultimately settled on Gutzon Borglum.
But after visiting Stone Mountain, Borglum was convinced the UDC hadn’t been ambitious enough in their idea for a bust of Lee. He proposed what would be a 1,200-foot-long carving featuring 700 to 1,000 figures, with Lee, Jackson and Davis in the foreground and hundreds of soldiers behind them. The monumental work would require eight years and $2 million to complete, though Borglum estimated the main figures could be finished for just $250,000 (almost $6 million today).
“The Confederacy furnished the story, God furnished the mountain. If I can furnish the craftsmanship and you will furnish the financial support, then we will put there something before which the world will stand amazed,” Borglum announced before an audience of potential sponsors in 1915.
While the amount Borglum required seemed impossibly high, Plane pushed forward with her fundraising efforts, writes David Freeman in Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain. Plane also secured a land deed from the Venable family, with patriarch Sam Venable even inviting Borglum to his home at the foot of the mountain.
But the sculptor wasn’t the only person Venable welcomed to his property in the fall of 1915. He also befriended William Simmons, who ushered in the modern era of the Ku Klux Klan, founding the Second KKK at the top of Stone Mountain on November 25, 1915. That night, more than a dozen men gathered to become part of a resurgent white supremacy group that had mostly died out in the late 1800s. Inspired by the film Birth of a Nation, they burned a cross and swore their loyalty to the Klan, ushering in a new era of white nationalist terrorism.
Venable himself, who was part of the ceremony, quickly rose through the ranks of the KKK, allowing the group regular use of his grounds. As Paul Stephen Hudson and Lora Pond Mirza write in Atlanta’s Stone Mountain: A Multicultural History, “Their meeting place for decades was known as the ‘Klan Shack’ in Stone Mountain Village.”
But the overlap between the memorial and the Klan didn’t end with their geographical origins. At one point, Borglum considered including the KKK in his monument at the prompting of Plane, who wrote:
“The Birth of a Nation will give us a percentage of next Monday’s matinee. Since seeing this wonderful and beautiful picture of Reconstruction in the South, I feel that it is due to the Ku Klux Klan which saved us from Negro domination and carpet-bag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?”
Although Borglum ultimately declined to include the figures in his carving, he agreed the KKK should have some recognition in the memorial, perhaps in a room carved out of the mountain. But none of his plans were destined to be achieved. By 1924 he had only completed Lee’s head, having been delayed by World War I, and a disagreement between Borglum and the managing association resulted in him leaving the project in 1925. But he wasn’t between jobs for long; Borglum went on to work on Mount Rushmore, a project that lasted him from 1927 till 1941.
Meanwhile, the Klan’s membership exploded to more than 4 million members, and in 1925 they marched on Washington, D.C. Wherever the group popped up, acts of terror committed against innocent African-Americans, Catholics and immigrants were sure to follow.
Reclaiming the South from the Civil Rights Movement
Workers prepare for an expected 100,000 people for the dedication of the world’s largest memorial to leaders of the Confederacy, May 1970. AP Photo/Joe Holloway Jr.
With only three years to go before the land deed from the Venables was set to expire (they had granted 12 years to finish the memorial), a second sculptor was brought in. But Augustus Lukeman barely had time to remove the work Borglum had done and start work on a carving of three figures on horseback when he was forced to abandon the project in 1928.
The deed expired, the Venable family took back their property, and the mountain remained untouched for 36 years. Although the Georgia state government attempted to gain recognition for Stone Mountain from the National Park Service, they were informed that scarring from the earlier granite quarries and the incomplete carvings destroyed the mountain’s natural value.
But with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and the growing influence of the Civil Rights Movement, the time had come for renewed action. “So long as Marvin Griffin is your governor, there will be no mixing of the races in the classrooms of our schools and colleges of Georgia,” Griffin informed his constituents in 1955 during his inaugural address. With help from the Georgia General Assembly, Griffin went on to purchase the mountain, using $1 million in public funds. He then made the Stone Mountain Memorial Association a state authority, meaning the governor would appoint the board of directors but the association would receive no tax dollars. To historian Grace Elizabeth Hale, the motivation for doing so couldn’t be clearer.
“State politicians formed Stone Mountain Park as part of an effort to ground the white southern present in images of the southern past, a sort of neo-Confederatism, and halt nationally mandated change in the region,” Hale writes. “For the governor and other supporters of the new plans, the completion of the carving would demonstrate to the rest of the nation that ‘progress’ meant not black rights, but the maintenance of white supremacy.”
After Walter Kirkland Hancock was chosen to lead the sculpting efforts, work resumed in 1964 after a nearly-40-year hiatus. The dedication ceremony was held May 9, 1970, and the memorial was finally completed in 1972, with fine enough detail that the eyebrows and belt buckles were visible, the sculpture large enough that a grown man could stand inside one of the three horse’s mouths. The memorial became the largest high relief sculpture in the world, depicting Davis, Lee and Jackson on horseback, their figures stretched across three acres.
An early version of the park beneath the sculpture included a replica plantation, where slave quarters were described as “neat” and “well furnished” in promotional materials. The slaves were called “hands” or “workers,” Hale writes, and black actor Butterfly McQueen was hired to provide visitors with information about the park.
Sandblasting the Confederacy
Today Stone Mountain Park welcomes millions of people each year, who can hike the mountain or visit the park’s attractions. Wikimedia Commons
Today, with 4 million visitors coming to the park each year, the mountain has changed little but the message has shifted. While nature and the memorial are still featured, its theme-park attractions include a 4-D movie theater, a farmyard, miniature golf, a dinosaur-themed playground and more. As far as educational experiences are concerned, a museum includes exhibits on the monument’s history and geology, and an adapted version of the plantation, called “Historic Square” features original and replica buildings and relays information about the antebellum period.
While the violence at Charlottesville spurred new debates over Confederate monuments, controversy surrounding the Stone Mountain Memorial is nothing new. As part of a 2001 political compromise to change the segregation-era state flag so it no longer included symbols of the Confederacy, lawmakers in Georgia’s General Assembly agreed to a statute that protects plaques, monuments and memorials dedicated to military personnel of the U.S. and the Confederate States of America. This, of course, includes Stone Mountain.
“Many members of the [Georgia Legislative Black Caucus] weren’t completely comfortable with it, but we thought that was a compromise to make,” says Lester Jackson, a Georgia state senator from Savannah. “Fast forward 15 years and we need to go back and revisit that.”
In 2018, Jackson and others plan on introducing a resolution in the Georgia state government that would establish a study of all the Confederate monuments in the state. The study will provide evaluations of the monuments based on when they were erected and with what intentions, and recommendations for how to move forward in removing or replacing them.
“When we start removing the symbols of hate and separatism and racism, that’s an important start to becoming one nation of one people,” Jackson says.
But the political process would be lengthy and likely controversial, considering 62 percent of people surveyed in a recent poll believe Confederate statues should remain standing, reports Clare Malone at FiveThirtyEight. And that’s not even taking the practicality of the project into consideration.
“The removal of the carving is not a trivial matter,” said Ben Bentkowski, president of the Atlanta Geological Society, by email. “You just can’t come in the night and remove it.”
Because the carving is 42 feet deep into the mountain, and hundreds of feet wide and tall, even controlled blasting could be dangerous for workers and bystanders. That said, the granite itself is solid, so sandblasting the sculpture wouldn’t affect the structural integrity of the mountain. And although he couldn’t provide a definite estimate for the cost of such an undertaking, Bentkowski believed it would “take millions of dollars to do it safely and not leave just a blast-scarred face of the mountain.”
Another solution goes in the opposite direction of destruction: why not add more to the sculpture? Figures proposed to balance history out have included Martin Luther King, Jr. and, more facetiously, Atlanta-based hip-hop duo Outkast. But this, too, would be a costly endeavor and is currently outlawed under the 2001 statute.
While Abrams and others have called for the sculpture’s removal, politicians on the opposite side of the issue have come to its defense. “Instead of dividing Georgians with inflammatory rhetoric for political gain, we should work together to add to our history, not take from it,” said Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle of Abrams’ position, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
There’s no easy answer when the monument in question is carved into a mountain, when Confederate generals continue to provoke strong emotions. What the debate boils down to is whose version of history will endure. And even when you have a 1,000-foot-granite wall at your disposal, it will never be enough space to capture the complexity of the nation’s centuries-long struggle with the legacy of slavery.
“We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
–President Eisenhower
(Image from Wikipedia.org)
January 17, 1961 (archives.gov)
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
******
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
******
Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
******
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
******
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
******
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war-as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years-I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
******
So-in this my last good night to you as your President-I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find somethings worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I-my fellow citizens-need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing inspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
The Restoration of Democracy Day is not an official public or national holiday in Greece. It is instead recognized as an official national observance.
The Restoration of Democracy Day in Greece commemorates the July 24, 1974 fall of the military junta and the return of civilian rule under Konstantinos Karamanlis, marking the birth of the Third Hellenic Republic.
The Military Dictatorship (1967–1974)
A coup d’état on April 21, 1967, led by right-wing army colonels, overthrew the elected government.
The regime stripped citizens of basic political and personal rights, jailed or exiled political opponents, and used strict censorship.
Popular resistance peaked with the Athens Polytechnic Uprising in November 1973, which the junta suppressed with tanks, causing civilian deaths.
The Collapse of the Junta
The regime tried to orchestrate a coup in Cyprus in July 1974, prompting a Turkish military invasion of the island.
The catastrophic handling of the crisis caused the military regime to collapse under leadership of Dimitrios Ioannidis.
Military leaders surrendered power and called for a national unity government on July 23, 1974.
The Return to Democracy (Metapolitefsi)
Konstantinos Karamanlis flew back from exile in Paris and was sworn in as Prime Minister at dawn on July 24, 1974.
The new leadership freed political prisoners, legalized banned political parties like the Communist Party, and set free elections for October 1974.
A democratic constitution was adopted in 1975, and a historic referendum ended the Greek monarchy.
FRONTLINE PBS | Official May 9, 2023 FRONTLINE As controversy erupts around Clarence and Ginni Thomas, this two-hour documentary special tells the inside story of their path to power. This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate. Over the past three decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has risen to the center of power in Washington, impacting issues affecting millions of Americans — from abortion to affirmative action. By his side has been his wife and best friend, Ginni Thomas. Together, the Thomases have left an indelible mark on America — in the legal realm and in conservative politics. But what has fueled their rise and expanded influence, and what have been the consequences? “Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court” is a FRONTLINE production with the Kirk Documentary Group. The director is Michael Kirk. The producers are Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica. The writers are Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser. The reporters are Vanessa Fica and Jane Mayer. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath. Explore additional reporting related to “Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court” on our website: https://to.pbs.org/3LyTJbv
The Committees of Correspondence were vital Patriot networks established by American colonies before the Revolutionary War. Initiated by Samuel Adams in Boston (1772) and expanded colony-wide by Virginia (1773), they allowed leaders to share political grievances, mobilize grassroots resistance, and coordinate the First Continental Congress. Wikipedia +5
Origins and Purpose
Before the American Revolution, intercolonial communication was slow, limited, and heavily reliant on official (and often intercepted) British mail routes. To counter British policies—such as the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts—Patriots established an underground letter-writing network to bypass royal authority. Wikipedia +2
The movement evolved in two major phases:
Local Committees (1772): On November 2, 1772, during a Boston town meeting, Samuel Adams formed the first major committee to draft a statement of colonial rights and circulate it as a pamphlet throughout Massachusetts. Wikipedia +1
Intercolonial Committees (1773): In March 1773, Virginia leaders—including Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee—established the first intercolonial standing committee to communicate directly with other colonies, unifying the Patriot cause. Encyclopedia Britannica +1
Key Functions and Impact
The Committees of Correspondence functioned as “shadow governments” that actively undermined royal rule in the Thirteen Colonies: History.com +2
Information Exchange: They rapidly circulated news about British abuses, legal infringements, and local protests (such as the Gaspee affair). George Washington’s Mount Vernon +2
Public Mobilization: They educated everyday colonists on their political rights, ensuring that the push for liberty reached rural towns and not just coastal cities. George Washington’s Mount Vernon +1
Unification: By spring 1773, 12 colonies had joined the network, creating a unified political front that bridged cultural and economic differences. Society for History Education +3
Legacy and the Continental Congress
The unified communications network laid the crucial political groundwork for organized resistance. When the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts) in 1774, the committees were instrumental in organizing and summoning the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The vast majority of delegates who attended this historic convention were active members of their local or colonial Committees of Correspondence. Wikipedia +3
You’re probably referring to the papal bull Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452.
This document has become one of the most controversial papal decrees in history because it authorized the Portuguese crown to wage war against certain non-Christian peoples and to enslave captives.
The key passage granted King Afonso V of Portugal the authority:
“…to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever… and to reduce their persons to perpetual servitude…”
In modern English, “perpetual servitude” means permanent slavery.
Why was it issued?
The historical context was the expansion of Portugal along the west coast of Africa and conflict with Muslim powers following the fall of Constantinople’s predecessor conflicts. The papacy was encouraging Portugal’s military campaigns against Muslims and supporting exploration and territorial expansion.
Three years later, in 1455, Nicholas V issued another bull, Romanus Pontifex, which expanded Portugal’s exclusive rights over lands it discovered along the African coast. That document reinforced Portuguese claims to trade, conquest, and enslavement in those regions.
Was this the “Doctrine of Discovery”?
Partly.
The so-called Doctrine of Discovery is not a single document but a collection of papal bulls and later legal principles. Among the most important are:
1452 – Dum Diversas (authorized conquest and perpetual servitude of certain non-Christians)
1455 – Romanus Pontifex (expanded Portuguese rights of conquest and trade)
1493 – Inter Caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI after Columbus’s first voyage, which divided newly claimed lands between Spain and Portugal.
Together, these documents were later cited by European colonial powers to justify territorial claims over lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples.
How is it viewed today?
Today, these bulls are widely criticized as providing religious justification for colonialism, conquest, and slavery.
In recent decades, many Christian denominations and Indigenous organizations have called for repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery. In 2023, the Vatican issued a joint statement rejecting the legal and political use of the “Doctrine of Discovery.” The statement said that these papal documents “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and that the doctrine “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church.”
One interesting philosophical observation, given our previous conversations, is that Dum Diversas illustrates a distinction you’ve often explored in your Translations: the difference between authority and Truth. Historically, a pope possessed immense institutional authority within the Church. But your first step asks a different question:
Does institutional authority, by itself, establish Truth?
That question allows one to distinguish between an institution’s historical actions and the metaphysical question of what is ultimately true. It’s one reason these fifteenth-century documents continue to be discussed—not only as historical artifacts but as examples of how claims of authority can shape history in ways later generations may judge very differently.
Herman Melville famously captured the concept of America as a “New Israel” in his 1850 novel White-Jacket. He wrote, “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world”. This notion reflects a long history of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Melville Context
While the quote sounds like a celebration of American missionary zeal, Melville often used it with deep irony. In White-Jacket, he critiqued the military, the government, and the authoritarian nature of the American naval system. He recognized the immense promise of the nation but warned heavily against its hubris and cruelty. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The “Chosen People” Concept
The idea of being the “new chosen people” or the “Israel of our time” is one of the most enduring civic conceits in American history: [1]
Roots: The metaphor dates back to the Puritans, who viewed their journey to the New World as a biblical Exodus and the Atlantic crossing as a path to a new Promised Land. [1]
Revolutionary Era: Preachers and politicians frequently cast the break from Britain as a new Exodus, casting King George III as Pharaoh and the American colonies as God’s chosen. [1]
Melville’s Usage: In We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people, Melville contrasts this lofty ideal against the nation’s capacity for violence, viewing it both with “delirious passion” and profound skepticism. [1]
Broader Perspectives
Scholars often examine this paradox of the “chosen” American identity, which elevates the nation to a universal standard while also tempting it with tribalism and violence. For an in-depth breakdown of how this theological metaphor shaped U.S. politics and history, you can read the Americans, the Almost-Chosen People analysis provided by Tablet Magazine. [1, 2, 3]
The concept of a “Chosen Nation” is a powerful political and religious myth. It suggests that a specific country is selected by a divine power to fulfill a special mission on Earth. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Core Characteristics
Nations that claim this identity usually share specific traits:
Sacred Mission: Believing they must spread democracy, freedom, or religion.
Exodus Narrative: Viewing their founding as a miraculous escape from tyranny.
Moral Superiority: Judging their actions as inherently good or divinely sanctioned.
Promised Land: Treating their physical territory as a holy or gifted space. [1, 2]
Key Historical Examples
Ancient Israel: The original biblical archetype, serving as the foundational model for later Western nations.
The United States: Rooted in the Puritan “City upon a hill” metaphor and evolving into Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism.
Great Britain: During the Victorian era, the British Empire often viewed its global expansion as a divine duty to “civilize” the world.
Apartheid South Africa: Afrikaner nationalism heavily relied on a chosen-people narrative to justify minority rule and separation. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The Double-Edged Sword
This belief system creates a powerful paradox within a society:
The Positive: It fosters deep national unity, inspires social reform, and drives monumental national achievements.
The Negative: It frequently justifies colonialism, the displacement of indigenous peoples, imperialism, and blind nationalism.
The “Hollywood Ten,” often confused as “Hollywood Seven,” were a group of prominent industry professionals cited for contempt of Congress in 1947 after refusing to testify about their alleged Communist Party ties before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). They were subsequently blacklisted from working in the entertainment industry. [1, 2]
The Hollywood Blacklist and the Red Scare
In October 1947, HUAC launched hearings into alleged communist influence in the American film industry. When 10 prominent writers and directors (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo) refused to answer the committee’s questions about their political affiliations, they were sentenced to prison and effectively blacklisted by studio executives. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
This purge was a cornerstone of the broader Red Scare and McCarthyism era, which terrorized the entertainment industry through the 1950s. Studio bosses surrendered to pressure, and individuals were often denied employment based on vague accusations or for having exercised their First Amendment rights. The blacklist was actively enforced by private publications like Red Channels, which targeted actors and writers for suspected progressive political sympathies. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The blacklist’s chokehold on Hollywood only began to crumble in 1960 when prominent figures like Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger openly credited blacklisted writers like Dalton Trumbo. [1]
For a deep dive into the historical exhibits and the lasting legacy of the Hollywood blacklist:
Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
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