Two Links With Comment

There is a move afoot among conservative types to replace US Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill. This article asks that we stop bashing Grant. I have to admit that, when I was in college, Grant was seen as a mediocre President. It is fair to say, however, that my college curriculum didn't cover Reconstruction in any depth. I'm ambiguous on Grant's virtue as President, in that "effectiveness" counts as least as much as "intent," but the article does make the good point that Grant's contributions before being President were much more significant then Reagan's.

One of the topics I keep meaning to explore in fiction is the idea that you can't "wall off" evil. So, I find this article very much on point. Key quote: Americans mostly think that evil like Nazism is a geographical construct that you can localize to some other place (Germany) and time (antebellum slave states)...Europeans mostly understand Nazism as an impulse towards evil which everyone always has to decide whether or not to indulge.