Bush Family Research Articles

"Is a Nation to Be Sold like the Skin of a Beaver!": James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie and the Dilemma of Countersovereignty

James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking series is often characterized as a literary staging ground, on which Cooper deploys, tests, and evaluates various political principles and representative figures. The Prairie, set on what Charles Adams refers to as the "blank slate" of the newly purchased Louisiana Territories, is exemplary of this sort of function, as demonstrated through the conflicting modes of proprietorship and legal authority represented by Ishmael Bush, Mahtoree, and Duncan Uncas Middleton. Yet while in most recent scholarship what is staged in the Leatherstocking novels is either an arrangement of competing political theories or the duality of settler identity formation, this essay argues that The Prairie engages a more foundational, and explicitly geopolitical, concern. The fundamental tension of the novel, between its historically deterministic opening and closing and its highly convoluted and contested middle, is suggestive of a powerful anxiety, exacerbated by the Louisiana Purchase, over the basis of American sovereignty as it takes shape in response to Indigenous forms of territoriality. Read this way, the depiction of conflicting modes of property law, framed by the novel's narrative tension, appear as symptoms of the dilemma of what Manu Karuka has termed countersovereignty, made apparent as the Bush family are forced to acknowledge that the "empty empire" of the Louisiana Territories is not so empty after all.

Contestations of Imperial Citizenship: Student Protest and Organizing in Qatar's Education City

Texas A&M, a public land grant university in College Station, Texas, has a long history of engagement with the Bush family. These ties highlight the university's entanglement with US imperial enterprises, which extend into the Persian Gulf. George H. W. Bush's own explanation of why he decided to place his presidential library at the campus despite not attending Texas A&M focused on these connections: “Over the years, Aggies have provided great service to the Armed Forces of our country. Patriotism abounds at A&M.” Meanwhile, Qatar hosts the largest concentration of US troops abroad. The US military's Central Command is at Al Udeid Air Base, not far from the Education City complex that hosts TAMUQ and several branch campuses of American and other foreign universities. The students at these institutions are Qatari citizens, South Asian and Arab immigrants, and international students, primarily from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today by David S. Brown

Reviewed by: Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today by David S. Brown Alan Draper Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today. By David S. Brown. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 335. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-2923-0.) David S. Brown must have either the soul of a contrarian or the courage of a lion. At a time when politics in the United States has become tribal and Americans have become so polarized and partisan that Democrats and Republicans not only have different political values but also may be less likely to marry or be friends, Brown wants to rehabilitate centrism as a "vital and inclusive tradition" (p. 1). He argues that there is a "distinctively moderate leadership line" that stretches from John Adams to Barack Obama and suggests that "there is good reason to believe that America is in the midst of a moderate era" (p. 267). Brown believes moderates have been denied the credit that they deserve. Moderates are not opportunists who lack convictions, he argues, but men of principle and profiles in courage who buck party loyalty and ideological orthodoxy. They are pragmatists who can find common ground amid factional and partisan conflict and often do so at great risk to their political careers. The center is defined by the polarities that these bold moderates have to navigate. For instance, according to Brown, John Adams steered a course "between Hamiltonianism and Jeffersonianism," John Quincy Adams "between Jacksonianism and Cotton Whiggery," Abraham Lincoln between abolitionists and states' rights advocates, Henry Adams between robber barons and radicals, Theodore Roosevelt between Mugwump reformers and corporate capitalists, and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. between New Deal Democrats and Republican traditionalists (p. 111). Furthermore, three generations of the Bush family leaned against the rightward drift of the contemporary Republican Party, and the last three Democratic presidents—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama—leaned against the leftward pull of their party. Brown argues that the virtues of "'inspired moderation'" as exemplified by these visionaries have existed since the Constitutional Convention and have served us well ever since (p. 4). [End Page 147] Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today is learned, well written, and panoramic, stretching from John Adams's through Barack Obama's presidencies. But the portraits in Part 1, "Patriot Kings," which covers John Adams, George Cabot, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, are much more detailed and sophisticated than Brown's descriptions of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Bushes, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama in Part 3, "Pragmatists." This last section feels forced and rushed. Three chapters are devoted to John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Adams, while the author's analysis of the last three Democratic presidents is condensed into a single thirty-page chapter. Part 2, "Progressives," which focuses on Henry Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft, occupies the center in terms of quality between the most and least satisfying sections of the book. Moderates is refreshing in that it reminds us that the center is not simply home to opportunists without principles or careerists who blow in the direction of the wind. Compromise sometimes requires political creativity and a dialectical ability to see a new synthesis. It can also require political courage for politicians to stake out lonely positions against party orthodoxy. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to distinguish conviction from expediency. For example, was Clinton's so-called New Covenant a novel, daring synthesis or simply Republicanism with a Democratic accent? Brown is willing to give many in his pantheon of moderates the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore, it is not clear that the vital center has had much coherence through time, as moderates from different eras do not seem to share common principles. Finally, the vital center may serve as a valued keel in American politics that stabilizes the ship of the state, but it continues to be defined not by its own principles but by more powerful forces above deck that propel and steer the ship. Alan Draper St. Lawrence University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association...

The Amendment Diversion: How Clinton, the Democrats, and Even Sanders Distract Attention from Effective Strategies for Too Much Money in Politics by Promoting Futile Remedies -- Book I: Hillary Clinton and the Dark Money Disclosure 'Pillar'

2016 election campaign's defining issue is the recovery of democracy from the death grip of plutocracy. reform proposals that are supported at the outset of the primary season by Democrats and their leading presidential candidates are all inadequate for the task. This study provides a critical analysis of the current set of the widely promoted proposals on this issue of money in politics. It features those of the Democratic candidates and the congressional party. analysis of these proposals functions as a strategy primer on the subject of money in politics for purposes of wisely assessing the widely promoted but misleading and terminally ineffective strategies. This helps open space for identifying and formulating effective strategies. Democrats and their professional activist allies, including celebrity activists and non-profit organizations have not been credible sources of strategic advice on the issue of money in politics. Their priority is the marketability of soundbite strategies, not effective political strategy. current proposals are necessarily deficient because they all start from the erroneous assumption that the Constitution was written to establish a corrupt plutocracy and that it must therefore now be amended to enable democracy.This premise asks us to believe, without evidence, that the framers' professed intention to establish a democracy legitimized solely by the consent of the governed must now be considered to have been an elaborate fraud because five undistinguished Supreme Court justices tell us, two centuries later, that their Constitution mandates a plutocracy where money buys legitimacy. It is safe to say that the framers, who never said any such thing in the many volumes they wrote about the Constitution, are more reliable sources on this question than two Reagan and three Bush family appointees elevated from deserved obscurity to serve political ends.The active form of the Amendment is advocacy of a constitutional amendment as the only solution to plutocracy. This advocacy is most often phrased as having the purpose of overturning Citizens United, which would only leave in place the noxious root of the problem, which is Buckley v Valeo (1976). Such advocacy often takes the form of the mere concept of an amendment, little more than the quoted phrase, thereby avoiding the devilish detail of producing actual text. Amendment proposals that are reduced to text, upon analysis, are found to have perverse unintended consequences.Alternative diversionary proposals instruct us that the only available remedies short of such an amendment are a set of ineffective shopworn piecemeal reforms that comply with the Supreme Court's judicial supremacist interpretations. These interpretations reflect the Court's own plutocratic Constitution, nowhere to be found in the text of the original document. Servile compliance with the Supreme Courts' illegitimate plutocratic amendment of the Constitution is the passive form of the Amendment Diversion.This series on The Amendment Diversion is contained in three Books to be published in 2016. Book I describes Hillary Clinton's reform proposal which is so minimally piecemeal as to be probably counterproductive. Her proposals explore just how thinly a piecemeal reform of money in politics can be sliced so as not to offend her donors, while appearing to offer substance. In this effort she embraces President Obama's example of how Democrats avoid offending their plutocratic backers while throwing spare soundbites to their uninformed and effectively disenfranchised voters.Hillary Clinton is campaigning on her experience and pragmatism. But pragmatism in the form of piecemeal, gradualist, incremental reform of systemic corruption tends to only make it worse. Clinton's proposals on money in politics so vastly underestimate what it takes to reform a systemically corrupt government that it draws into question her fundamental understanding of the subject. Nor is Clinton's experience with this issue during her service as Secretary of State a recommendation for her candidacy. Instead of attesting to her knowledge, Clinton's experience confirms that she lacks either understanding of or concern about the centrality of the issue of systemic corruption. Her direct intervention to derail anti-corruption programs in Afghanistan contributed to the current precarious status of the Kabul government, and to rendering futile the longest war in American History. Even if Clinton's proposals are not necessarily different in significant ways from her opponent Bernie Sanders' current proposals, her relevant experience, pragmatic approach and lack of determined resolve is the opposite of what is needed to remedy the defining problem of the era.

The Politics of Deliberation:QātChews as Public Spheres in Yemen

During a televised interview with the London-based Mid- dle East Broadcast Corporation, Yemeni president 'Ali ¯ 'Abd Allah S.alih . rational- ized his plans for his son Ah . mad's succession by claiming that another republic, the United States, had provided the example: George W. had inherited his position from his father, former president George Bush. President S.alih . was then asked whether he was aware of the U.S. electoral process by which President Bill Clin- ton had succeeded the elder Bush and then won a second four-year term. S.alih . laughed and said that Clinton was a muh . allil, or legal facilitator. According to Islamic law, or shari, for a divorced woman to remarry her ex-husband, she must first marry a muh .allil, an interim husband who makes possible the return of the actual one. In this view, the Clinton presidency amounted to a mere formality, enabling junior's succession and putting the Bush family back in the White House (MBC interview, February 2001 (facsimile transcript); 'AliMuh . sin H. amid, pri- vate communication). As analogies go, the comment was rather weak, casting

Bush Hill: Material Life at a Working Plantation

Bush Hill plantation, located near Aiken, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia, along the middle Savannah River valley, was owned by four generations of the George Bush lineal family between ca. 1807 and 1920. Drawing upon the interpretive concept of the working plantation, perceptions regarding material conditions and the standard of living experienced by southern planters are explored in this essay. Economic records indicate that the George Bush family was among the top wealth-holding groups within the surrounding community. Although the planter family was affluent, the standard of living revealed archaeologically was economically conservative. The Bush family used inexpensive household items and did not acquire the luxury goods often thought to be archaeological hallmarks of genteel society, such as expensive dining sets or tea ware. Conversely, archaeological data revealed they were aggressive consumers, indicated by the sheer quantity of material discarded at the site. The example provided by Bush Hill underscores the complexity of planter households in the past and illustrates that the wealth held by former site residents is not always directly discernable in the archaeological record.

CONSOLIDATION AND LABOR IN ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT: A PEEK AT CLEAR CHANNEL

In the past eight years the multinational, multimedia conglomerate Clear Channel has come to exemplify what opponents of media deregulation predicted would happen as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Before 1996, Clear Channel was merely an obscure regional player in radio and TV. Today, on the strength of $22 billion in acquisitions, the company is an international powerhouse that dominates the radio, concert and live theater industries, and is a major owner of TV stations. Clear Channel has a long history with Bush family politics, exclusively promoting a conservative agenda, and regularly engaging in partisan politics. Still, the company is somewhat unique among its peers because it has quickly developed a near‐uniform reputation as a bad actor and has drawn comparisons to Wal‐Mart because of the way it victimizes workers, competitors, communities, and consumers. The company is overwhelmingly nonunion, and actively seeks to undermine work and employment standards for its employees. Clear Channel presents a huge organizing challenge to unions, because left unchecked, many of its worst cost‐cutting practices threaten to become the industry standard.

Complicity

Complicity Noël Burch (bio) Anyone who comes in from the outside quickly learns that the people of the U$A are the most un/misinformed in the developed world, that the country is one [End Page 131] where there is no public debate about any of the essential issues of our time. Capitalism versus socialism, productivism, consumerism, and imperialism—all are carefully erased, dispersed, always already irrelevant. And indeed, along with "the lies my teacher told me"1 and a debased electoral system,2 the media are certainly the most important vector of this unique combination of ignorance, prejudice, and helplessness. But what else, one is tempted to ask, is new? So forgive me if I do not address questions of media studies, which anyway are not really in my ken. Instead, let me set forth briefly—and rather peremptorily, I am afraid—my objection to an assumption that seems to underlie all of these essays, one that sets the manipulators against the manipulated, the guilty ruling classes and their media flunkies against the innocent masses. Christopher Sharrett states this assumption thus: "Knowing the historical context of U.S. state operations is important to understanding how provoked or fabricated crises and a propaganda system that collaborates in this deception are necessary to gain public acceptance of policies that would otherwise be abhorrent." Really? Abhorrent to all Americans? I wonder. This kind of rhetoric belongs to a stalwart left tradition that probably has a Greek name and that consists of feigning to believe that "the people," or "the workers," implicitly share the consciousness of a lucid vanguard (feminists have been guilty of the same oratorical sleight of hand). As such, of course, it is a touching stamp of authenticity: all of these authors are fighting to keep alive the materialist values of the Left, and I salute their efforts. However, this distant observer—and until recently regular visitor—suspects on the contrary that there is a deep tacit complicity between those directly responsible for U$ actions abroad, judged abhorrent indeed by most of the rest of the world, and the mindset of the vast majority of people living in "America," whose usurped denomination has always hinted at its hegemonic vocation. That complicity has a name. Bush senior spelled it out when he defended the U$ refusal to adhere to the Kyoto protocol—meant to start containing the greenhouse effect—in the name of "the American way of life." This brazen contempt for the planet and the future of humanity failed to arouse substantial protest in the United States. Was it simply for lack of information? Or was it because the immense majority of the Bush family's compatriots—not just the alienated born-againers in the Bible Belt—are happy to benefit from that way of life . . . even its K-Mart tag ends? And because they have been trained to live in an eternal present. And I include most of the well-paid academics who constitute the backbone of the liberal and the Radical Left in the country. As Bush juniorand the rest of that gang know, if you are not going to reduce the consumption of gasoline, then you need new resources (hence the Alaska scandal, the campaign against Cesar Chavez, and the war to get Saddam's oil). And the electorate seems less and less disturbed about massacring a lot of gooks "out there," in that mostly fictional world that 80 percent of Americans have never visited. Terry Eagleton suggests that the popularity in the United States of postmodernist ideology is a way of coping with a lived contradiction: [End Page 132] This doctrine . . . is currently being deployed by some to defend the American way of life. . . . In order to avoid the unwelcome conclusion that there is no rational justification for one's form of life, one must seek to disable the very idea of critique itself, branding it as necessarily "metaphysical," "transcendent," "absolute," or "foundational."3 The American way of life has many dimensions, most of them pernicious,4 but Bush père was referring in fact to that culture of consumption/ WASTE (the latter being the obliterated face of the American way of life) that along...

The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom

Saul LandauLondon: Pluto Press, 2003. ix, 182pp, $38.95 cloth (ISBN 0-7453-2140-2)As Michael Moore and Ann Coulter can attest, there is a lot of money in partisan political commentary. Reviews of their books on booksellers' websites run into the hundreds, usually awarding the author either a furious one or enthusiastic five stars, depending on the political prejudices of the reader. Indeed, given the enormous sales of Moore and his fellow antagonists, there is a good case for arguing that their books--highly subjective, eccentrically researched and indomitably splenetic as they are--carry more weight with ordinary readers both inside and outside the United States than a hundred erudite articles in academic journals.With The Pre-Emptive Empire, Saul Landau, who describes himself as an internationally known scholar, author, journalist and activist, is the latest writer to answer the partisan call to arms. As is typical with works of this kind, his thesis is relatively simple. George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000 as part of a malevolent corporate plot, invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in pursuit of the sinister designs of a neoconservative cabal, and, perhaps even more seriously, serves as the front-man for the destruction of the world by the baleful forces of globalization and world capital.These are not, it has to be said, unusual views. Neither are they so wholly divorced from reality as to qualify their author for immediate incarceration in the nearest sanatorium. But nowhere are they illustrated by anything that might pass for solid evidence; instead, Landau relies on partisan reports from sympathetic sources, piling assertion upon assertion in a rapidly rising pyramid of self-righteous anger. Indeed, at stage is there any suggestion that Landau has actually done any very detailed research for his book; like the Moores and Coulters of this world, he had need to, because he already knew what he believed before he began writing the book. And neither is there any suggestion, however meagre, of even the slightest self-doubt or complexity in Landau's view of the world. There are heroes and there are villains; their identity is self-evident, and only a fool or a dupe could question his judgement.Landau's great hero is President Fidel Castro of Cuba, who is twice described as a religious figure and is praised for his miraculous leadership, his practical political perspective and his heroic discourse of justice and independence (pp 103-04). Never does Landau even hint at the possibility that Castro might have the odd weakness to accompany his superhuman strengths, or that the Cuban regime might be less than paradise on earth. His treatment of the book's villains is equally subtle. In early chapter, the Bush family is likened to the murderous and corrupt Mafia family from the film Prizzi's Honor. President George W. Bush is twice lampooned for his struggle with alcoholism, while his father, who served as ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China and director of the CIA, is described as having no qualifications (p 14) for the presidency he assumed in 1989. …

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush

This is an acerbic, withering account of the ascent of the Bush family to the pinnacle of the American political and social elite and the implications of the dynasty's hold on power for democracy in America. With an unerring instinct for fakery and humbug, Phillips traces the convoluted trail of Bush mendacity through three generations. The picture he paints of a family willing to do anything to hold power and a country so craven as to vote for it is both very funny and completely dismaying in equal measure.

First son: George W. Bush and the Bush family dynasty

First son: George W. Bush and the Bush family dynasty

First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty

First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty

“Man and Beast”: The Meaning of Cooper's The Prairie

The language, action, setting, and characterization of The Prairie cohere around the idea of man as one species of animal among many. On one level, man is a hunter, dominating the other beasts upon whom he is dependent for food and clothing. On another level, man is a scientist, subjecting the beasts to study, classification, and control. On a third level, the novel observes man as an animal of ambiguous identity. The various groups of characters exemplify differing varieties of humanity. The barbaric Indians and the angelic Inez are opposing extremes in dehumanizing characterization. Ellen and Paul display the conflicting demands of feeling, reason, and conscience on the typical middle ground of human nature. In the most dramatic aspect of the romance, the Bush family is forced by pressure of extraordinary circumstance from a brutal, lawless existence into a troubled consciousness of human guilt, justice, and mortality. Finally, in the aged and dying Leather-Stocking is represented a rare example of a fully human life achieved at the most primitive remove from mere animality.

Bush family of Chidrey, Berks

Bush family of Chidrey, Berks