The Right - The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism

The Right presents a comprehensive study of 100 years of the intellectual and political history of the American conservative movement. Extensively researched and brilliantly told, it tells the story through the experience of its participants describing how they have interacted with, influenced, and been influenced by institutions including political scientists, politicians, economists (Chicago and Austria), philosophers and religions. The book is less about a litmus test for who is a true conservative or what conservatism “really” is than an analysis and description of how the varieties of conservatism differed from one another, why disagreements arose and their effect on politics.

The author, Matthew Continetti, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an intellectual historian of the right. He has extensively researched the history of conservatism, and his presentation is without polemics. George Will, prominent conservative, touts Continetti as “the foremost contemporary chronicler of American Conservatism’s path to today’s problematic condition.”

The book starts with a description of the Harding and Coolidge administrations and in 14 chapters plus a conclusion continues to the events of January 6. Although he favors the conservative position, he does not hesitate to reject the positions taken by some conservative politicians in their support of or failure to object to George Wallace, Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch and the John Birch Society, and antisemitism. The book is very readable and will be certain to create a lively and stimulating discussion in this SDG.

Possibilities and Limitations: And There Was Light, Mr. Lincoln

So much has been written about Lincoln. However, a relatively new core book by Meacham sheds a special light on the last two years of the Civil War. It particularly emphasizes the agony Lincoln faced with the issue of slavery. Did Lincoln believe slavery could be abolished? What did he think his Emancipation Proclamation would accomplish? Was the Country in favor of Lincoln's efforts? What would the election of 1864 bring?  

All these pertinent questions and more are addressed in Meacham's book. Meacham believes Lincoln was torn between his love for the nation and how the slavery issue was tearing apart the sinews of society. I was inspired, also, by Spielberg's Lincoln and how the president made sure the Emancipation Proclamation and the proposed 13th amendment reached the full powers of the Congress. All that will be addressed in this S/DG. Lincoln spoke bravely and manipulated courageously as a politician to make sure Blacks have equal rights. I even liked the portrayal by Tommy Lee Jones as one of the courageous congressmen, Thaddeus Stevens. I was amazed by Lincoln's dedication to moral courage by having the bill, the amendment, accept Blacks as equals pass through the Senate.

It must have been trying times to face the South still pursuing the war in 1864-65 with little end in sight. After all, until the battle for First Bull Run, the South's efforts should be soon over. Lincoln had to write so many grieving widows and mothers about their sons dying in battle during those terrible four years, Lincoln pursued difficult policies with reverence for the Bible.  

Meacham drives home the point that America is the last best hope, and it is possible to achieve goodness. To Lincoln, slavery must occur on a path to "ultimate extinction." The saviing of the Union and the emancipation of slaves went hand in hand.  

Come to this S/DG with the admiration for Lincoln and the appreciation this country still has to achieve for the greatness of Lincoln's vision.  

It is important to offer an S/DG that catalogs the agonies of Lincoln as he personally and philosophically confronts the horrors and treatment of slaves and slavery. The question needs to be asked: Does Lincoln's vision run true today? 

Documentaries You Want to Watch

This film SDG is unusual: the films we watch and discuss are documentaries. The documentary movies are very good, many were rated in as the best ever made https://www.timeout.com/film/best-documentaries-of-all-time  .This film SDG is unusual: the films we watch and discuss are documentaries. The documentary movies are very good, many were rated in as the best ever made https://www.timeout.com/film/best-documentaries-of-all-time .

What documentaries are these, you ask? Well, watching the 14 films you will…

• See the lives of a notorious 60's cartoonist and his brothers who Keep on Truckin’, ranked as one of the finest documentaries ever made.

• Watch a 1922 movie about the struggles of an Inuit man, it was the first documentary film to achieve commercial success; over the years its status as a documentary has been questioned, it is ranked as one of the finest documentaries ever made.

• Be taken down, deep underground, to see striking cave paintings that are thousands of years old.

• Follow two boys growing up in Chicago dreaming of basketball, it is ranked as one of the finest documentaries ever made.

• See and hear the best classical violinists of the 20th century, and follow the commentary by Yitzhak Pearlman, Hilary Hahn and others.

• Watch a British war veteran and an American biologist save ocelots in Peru.

All documentaries are available by streaming on Amazon or on YouTube, also available on other platforms some of which (with commercials) are free.

Each discussion will go deep into the film's subject matter using on-line references.

Come, join us, watch and then discuss 14 beautiful and startling documentary films.

2022 and 2023 Scientific Advances and Breakthroughs

If science. like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning into the consciousness of people.

    —Albert Einstein, 1939 World’s Fair Opening Ceremony

Our modern media regularly features advances in Science and Technology which may strongly, or just silently, affect our lives in immediate ways. Some also are quite exciting or inspirational since they involve the renewed pursuit of Space exploration, life-changing medical breakthroughs, better ways to protect the climate and environment, or our understanding of the cosmos. For those reasons, having an understanding of these leading-edge concepts is important to both the science-minded and to well-informed citizens. While some of these advances may seem obscure, even arcane, they usually have well-documented backgrounds and are based on earlier, often more familiar work, by scientists and engineers. The aim of this SDG is look into and discuss selected leading-edge Science and Technology topics and concepts.

Most scientific findings or discoveries are often sedimentary, slowly building on the edifice of understanding. Rare is the idea that marks a fundamental change to a system of thought, forcing the rest of science to bend to its own vision. But, in November 1915 Albert Einstein published his new and deeper understanding of gravity, the General Theory of Relativity, that did just that. Now, we’ll discuss several of the best scientific achievements that 2022 and 2023 had to offer—to explore and gain some understanding of the frontiers of science.

Rather than using a static core book, our SDG draws from leading Science and Technology journals and websites. SDG Science Magazine is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is one of the world's top scientific journals. The major focus of the journal is publishing important original scientific research and research reviews, but Science also publishes science-related news, opinions on science policy and other matters of interest to scientists, and others who are concerned with the wide implications of science and technology. For almost a century, Science News journalists have covered advances in science, medicine and technology for the general public, including the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial, the advent of the atomic age in 1945, the space race, and the revolution of genetic engineering from the discovery of DNA to today’s gene-editing technology. Founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899, MIT Technology Review is a world-renowned, independent media company whose insight, analysis, reviews, interviews and live events explain the newest technologies and their commercial, social and political impacts.

These three magazines annually assess the major scientific advances of the preceding year, and look forward to potential advancements in the coming year. This SDG will explore several of 2022 and 2023's breakthroughs and advances in different scientific disciplines as reported in those magazines and their websites. Our group will discuss the science leading up to the breakthrough, and the potential implications, scientific, economic, legal and ethical, of the recent advances. 

This SDG will be accessible to anyone interested in studying, discussing and appreciating the merits and implications of advances across the frontiers of science. Gaining an understanding of the various concepts, principles and applications is desired. Understanding the related or underlying detailed "equations," and their use is optional.

Innovative Short Stories from the 20th to the 21st Century

Anton Chekhov, Steven Crane, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, James Joyce, among others, contributed to the birth of modern short fiction in the late days of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century. Our focus is on more recent great contributors to the genre. We'll read and discuss the stories by Katherine Anne Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Steven Millhauser, and George Saunders.

A leitmotiv of our SDG will be the development of the short story. How has it evolved, thematically as well as stylistically? What new themes have emerged? In what sense do writers challenge and learn from one another?

Adaptations - From Short Story To Big Screen

Film feeds off literature as sharks off a marlin’, film theorist George Bluestone once said. Stanley Kubrick was a compulsive reader, sometimes tearing through a book a day in his constant search for new material. Alfred Hitchcock told of imagining the shape of a film, then having to search for a story to fit his visualization. Howard Hawks claimed that the hardest part of making a movie was finding a good story and then figuring out how to tell it.” [From the introduction of our short story anthology.]

Did you know that many of your favorite movies are adaptations from short stories? Each week we will read a short story (from 10 to 40 pages) and then watch the film adaptation. From noir, to sci-fi, to horror, to westerns. Was the story faithfully translated, or did the director seek to convey a feeling, rather than plot details? Did an “auteur” director make the story their own, leaving the original author “in the dust” so to speak? Perhaps the author wrote the screenplay. What changed in the adaptation from story to screen?

Join us for this 14 week SDG, where we will explore these questions and more. The source anthology includes 35 short stories that have been adapted to film. We covered 14 of these films in Part I of this SDG. Join us for 14 more stories and 14 more films!

The final list of films, discussion leaders, and presentation dates will be determined at the pre-meeting.

Golden Age of Japanese Cinema

Samurais, courtesans, actors, ghosts! In the 1950s into the early 1960s four magnificent Japanese filmmakers made some of cinema's crowning achievements: Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozo and Masai Kobayashi. Their films are set in Japan's historical past or in a fast-changing contemporary society. The films question power, hierarchy and the glorification of war, sometimes employing the supernatural and uncanny. They also look at the meaning and continuance of traditional Japanese culture in post-war society and the family's role in that world. Mizoguchi and Ozu's films, especially, explore the situation of women, past and present, in patriarchal society. Five of our films were named as the greatest ever made in Sight and Sound's latest 100 Best Films. 

In this Film Studies SDG, we'll cover historical background, cultural context , and, importantly, how the art of film--narrative, mise-en-scene, cinematography, music, sound, editing, acting--expresses meaning and a director's unique vision. We will do scene analyses that illustrate this artistry.  

Edith Wharton's Best Novels

Edith Wharton is rivaled only by Henry James in her ability to represent the repressed emotional undercurrents swirling through the upper classes during America's Gilded Age. In this SDG we will read her two finest novels, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (1905) and THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1920). Both these novels explore in penetrating detail the constraints placed not only on the lives of women, but also on those of men living in a society dominated by "good manners" and "respectability." We will also watch the two excellent film adaptations of these novels, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, directed by Terence Davies, starring Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz (2000), and THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Winona Ryder, Jeremy Irons and Michelle Pfeifer (1993).

The Magonistas and the Birth of the Mexican-American Population - A Revolutionary History

In her revolutionary new history of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, "Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire and Revolution in the Borderlands" (Norton, 2022), Kelly Lytle Hernandez reframes our understanding of U.S. history.

Bad Mexicans tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U. S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The U.S. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magón was one of the FBI’s first cases.

But the magonistas persevered. They lived in hiding, wrote in secret code, and launched armed raids into Mexico until they ignited the world’s first social revolution of the twentieth century. Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is a MacArthur ("Genius") Fellow. Bad Mexicans has received the following awards: Winner of the Bancroft Prize (2022) • One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 • A Kirkus Best World History Book of 2022

One of Smithsonian's 10 Best History Books of 2022 • Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize • Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize