Starr's America

Currently, I'm in Austin contemplating driving back to Fort Worth down a 1-35, which is surrounding by sporadic wildfires and gusts of black smoke. Fortunately, I have FaceBook, Twitter, Wundermap, news websites, etc. to tell me "Hey, you might want to wait until tomorrow morning."

My how things have changed since the 1700's.

Never in fifty pages have I learned so much information I did not know previously. That being said, I had a difficult time deciding what to focus on for my blog post. I found Starr's writing to be a little bit too -"Team America" - for me at times, but overall I think he makes some very valid points. I rather enjoyed his assertion that the creation of a free(er) press became the central vehicle for public discussion in America.

"They [newspapers] have become the vehicles of discussion in which the principles of government, the interests of nations, the spirit and tendency of public measure, and the public and private characters of individuals are all arranged, tried, and decided. Instead, therefore, of being considered now, as they once were, of small moment in society, they have become immense moral and political engines, closely connected with the welfare of the state, and deeply involving both its peace and prosperity" (70).

If the newspaper allowed for the sparking of such debates, then we can relate the flow of information to our own age and consider the importance of the information technologies we discussed in class on Tuesday. Do we value the free speech that we have on such forums? And, do these types of informational news sources (blogs, facebook, twitter, cnn.com, etc) facilitate the same types of values as Samuel Miller said the newspaper did in 1808 in the above quotation? Also, I became more involved in Starr's discussion of the newspapers as "the central venue of public discussion independent of government" upon reflection (after I finished all of the reading).

The publication and availability of the Constitution and heavy inclusion of federalist materials in newspapers was particularly of interest. Does the media not become one-sided when it is only publishing and producing pieces that are pro-government? I think Starr a bit of a positive spin on the way anti-federalists handled their lack of voice. Starr says:

"Federalist domination of the debate seemed to the anti-federalists to validate the threat to the public sphere that they saw in the Constitution's failure to guarantee freedom of the press. But though their views may have been under-represented in print, the anti-federalists' participation in the debate may have helped them reconcile them to the result: The political outcome of ratification was not only that the Constitution was adopted, but that the opponents did not contest its legitimacy afterward--indeed, they quickly disappeared as a distinct force and became part of a loyal opposition seeking to modify the new government rather than overturn it" (72).

Clearly, for Starr, the anti-federalists desire for modifying, rather that overthrowing, this new government paved the way for a more democratic society (even though, as he points out a few sentences after this quote, that the federalists continued to have the power for some time). I'm also curious how the anti-federalists participated in the debate when their views weren't represented. Anyone have any good examples other than the publication of the Anti-Federalist Papers? Nice Chart! I did some wikipedia perusing and found that the anti-federalists were offended for being called so because they felt that they were in fact the 'true federalists' and possessed the correct values, which I thought was pretty interesting considering how particular people today are about the labels they assign to themselves and that others assign to them.

Back to my argument though, Starr's description of events where the powerful and the less-powerful were in opposition, almost always contains a positive tone and almost an "everyone wins!" message. For instance, his discussion of the Stamp Act (65) as an act that politicized, rather than stifled the press is an interesting example. The evidence and facts he selects to illustrate how productive a nation becomes when there is a struggle between the powerful and less powerful is a little unsettling (for me). I almost felt at times that Starr was arguing that these tensions lead to revolution (which is often in the form of war) and result in positive political change. In some ways, I felt like he downplayed the struggle that Americans experienced because he depicts early Americans as such revolutionaries that it almost seems like America organically and naturally occurred with little strife. Superheroes who invent their own superpowers like Iron Man and Batman often seem more heroic (because of their choice to become superheroes) than ones who just supposedly had powers within them since birth, for instance, Superman (who is assuming it is his destiny). In Chapter 2, I feel like Starr depicts early Americans as more like Superman. Although, he does illustrate some struggles, he gives examples where one event somehow "solved" an ongoing problem. For instance, his discussion of seditious libel on pages 58-9. He seems to attribute this change specifically to the Zenger case, and claims that "[b]etween 1735 and the American Revolution, the risk of being tried for seditious libel by British colonial authorities effectively disappeared" (59). Is this the only case that factored into the change? What was going on in Britain at the time? Were the courts handling lots of other cases? Was it too expensive to fight all of these cases? I don't know...

Maybe I'm just being overly critical, but I feel like the whole 'political decisions made by America were always right or > European methods' is a little thin. I suppose I just want more from Starr, which could be the result of me knowing very little about this time period, so I want to question the evidence he is giving me. Perhaps it's the years of philosophical training I have in me too; always question what you're told, which is a problem when reading a historical account of the creation of the media in America. Overall, I felt very enlightened by these chapters while reading them and feel that I truly learned a great deal. However, once the wheels started turning and I sat down to digest and think about all I'd read, I become frustrated with all the "yey!" "wow!" star and :) notes I'd made in the margins.