the northfield mount hermon review

The NorthfieldMount Hermon

Review

Number 1 2014

The Annual Journal of Collected Analytic Essays by Northfield Mount Hermon Students

Published by Northfield Mount Hermon Mount Hermon, Massachusetts

Edited by

Sean P. Foley History Teacher,

Northfield Mount Hermon

Layout designed by Harry van Baaren

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The NorthfieldMount Hermon

Review

Editor’s Note Sean P. Foley 6

Displacement: Lost or Found Lewei Zhang ’15 8

The Changing Relationship Between the NMH Farm and Dining ServicesIsobel Rountree ’16 12

The Populist Party: The Farmer’s Last Straw Harper Lee Baldwin ’15 16

Yemen and the U.S. Drone Program Patterson Malcolm ’17 21

Jeffersonian Pragmatism Claire Fee ’15 and Gabrielle Rerra ’15 27

Table of Contents

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Sean P. Foley:

Editor’s Note

The students of Northfield Mount Hermon prove time and again the value of a liberal arts education in training literate and effective communicators. They read critically, think logically, and argue persuasively, consistently

producing outstanding analytic and argumentative essays. We founded the Northfield Mount Hermon Review to showcase the very best academic writing produced by our students, and to celebrate the life of the mind at NMH.

This inaugural issue contains five rigorously researched and thought-provoking essays that explore a variety of topics. If there is a uniting theme among these essays, it is the complicated intersection of theory, reality, and action. Lewei Zhang ’15 analyzes the tension between the masculine ideal of a cowboy and the stark realities of a life on the run in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses; Isobel Rountree ’16 discusses the ways in which both values and economic concerns have affected the evolution of the NMH farm and dining services; Harper Baldwin ’15 traces the roots of the 19th-century Populist Party to the inequalities of the Gilded Age, a response to a period in which American government failed to live up to its democratic principles; Patterson Malcolm ’17 argues that U.S. drone strike policy, pioneered in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, has been misapplied to Yemen to the detriment of U.S. long-term interests; Claire Fee ’15 and Gabrielle Rerra ’15 posit that early Jeffersonian Republicans were pragmatic in their adherence to and deviation from their political doctrine.

These five essays were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants. We were thoroughly impressed by the volume and quality of essays that were submitted, and by the careful revisions each student endeavored at the behest of the editor. We are happy to note that students from a range of grade levels (9–11) are represented in this issue, and we hope that the Review will continue to attract submissions from a diverse spectrum of students. We also look forward to featuring

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The NMH Review Sean P. Foley

essays from a greater number of academic departments in the future. We thank all the students who submitted papers and the teachers who nominated papers for our consideration.

In addition, we thank the generous sponsorship of the Communications Office, particularly Cheri Cross, Sharon Labella-Lindale, and Harry van Baaren. We also thank Dean of Faculty Hugh Silbaugh for his support, and Head of School Peter Fayroian for his encouragement.

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Lewei Zhang ’15

Displacement: Lost or Found

The physical meaning of displacement is an enforced departure of people from their usual or proper place; however, people can feel emotionally displaced when they are lost among unfamiliar people, or even facing

an unfamiliar self. In All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy uses the motif of displacement as an indicator of the discrepancy between the protagonist John Grady Cole’s self-image of a dauntless cowboy and his nature as a tender and limited young man. Despite the determination to make himself sound, look, and even think like a cowboy, he discovers on his journey to Mexico that he is different from the role model he has chosen for himself. Through imagery and conversation, McCarthy demonstrates the anxiety Cole feels in unknown or challenging situations, and thus allows the reader to understand Cole’s development of self-identity throughout his experience.

John Grady Cole attributes maturity and manhood to the image of a cowboy, which he visualizes as a man wearing boots, a hat with wide rim, carrying a gun, and riding confidently on a horse. Such merits of a cowboy are the reason that he wants to become one in the first place. However, at home in Texas, his mother’s mistrust demeans such self-identity, or his concept of himself, as she reacts to his demand for a ranch, claiming that “[he’s] sixteen years old, [he] cant run a ranch.”1

Considering himself a grown-up, Cole feels underestimated, but not defeated, as he looks at “an oil painting of horses” right after his mother’s rejection of his plan, reminding himself of the dream yet to be fulfilled.2 This action is a symbol of the displacement Cole feels, as if he were limited by family bonds, when he should be a cowboy, riding horses. He will not live with anything less than his dream. As “[he] cross[es] the old trace again and he must turn the pony up onto the plain and

1 Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 15.2 Ibid., 15.

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The NMH Review Lewei Zhang ’15

homeward,” he realizes that “the warriors would ride on in that darkness they’d become…”3 What drives him into the long and unsettling journey is the frustration at home, initial association of Mexico with ranch and cowboy, and his admiration of heroism. He not only looks for a ranch to be with the horses, but he also hopes to grow into the ideal man that he has predetermined for himself.

Driven by the sense of displacement at home, John Grady Cole ironically encoun-ters even more situations where he feels lost because of the differences between his true self and his aspirations to become mature and fearless. When Cole and his best friend and companion Lacey Rawlins first cross the border, they have a fixed image of a stereotypical cowboy in mind as one who kills without hesitation. Similar to their mimicking of the outfit, they have an admiration for guns, a symbol of cow-boyship. When they meet their future companion Jimmy Blevins for the first time, Rawlins jokes about killing him only to scare him: “You want to flip to see who gets to shoot him?”4 Ironically, the boys who have so heartlessly talked about killing people later face a real-life dilemma: to kill or be killed. Cole kills the cuchillero who has attacked him in the prison canteen. Different from the stereotypical cow-boy that he associates himself with, he regrets this crime ever since he has allowed himself to buy the knife and to kill the cuchillero. He reacts to Rawlins’s attempt at consoling him by saying that “[he] knew when [he] bought the knife what [he]’d bought it for…But [Rawlins] didn’t do it [even if his life was threatened, too].”5 The guilt of having killed someone and even having known it beforehand haunts Cole throughout the story. Not even the most upright reason of self-defense can dispel this feeling of displacement. Unlike a ruthless and fierce cowboy, Cole’s in-trinsic tenderness causes his remorse, even if he knows that the cuchillero has prob-ably killed countless people. Even after he leaves Mexico, “his eyes were [still] wet in the firelight” when he said that “he [the cuchillero] could of been a pretty good old boy.”6 The sense of displacement comes from the lack of ruthlessness, unlike a cowboy. The same feeling keeps him awake in a room after the fight, thinking only “about horses and they were always the right thing to think about.”7 Whenever he

3 Ibid., 6.4 Ibid., 40. 5 Ibid., 215.6 Ibid., 291. 7 Ibid., 204.

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starts questioning his true identity, he tries putting it off instinctively by thinking about horses; the primal relationship not only allows him to impose his thoughts on the horses, but also temporarily relieves him of the identity crisis. It reminds him of his love for horses, one of the few similarities he shares with a cowboy. However, a cowboy’s hardened heart and Cole’s tenderness are so different that the inconsistency cannot be permanently disguised by reinforcing his dream.

Another major gush of emotional displacement is when Cole contemplates his weakness when the guards have unlawfully executed Blevins. When the three boys are brought to the abandoned building, McCarthy uses words like “alien” and “strange” to underscore the displacement Cole feels. Ironically, it comes from both fear and shame of his cowardice. When Rawlins compels Cole to remain silent, he agrees, while “look[ing] at the place where they were, the strange land, the strange sky.”8 He is scared that if he argues with the guards, he will be killed as well; at the same time, his display of powerlessness and cowardice dislodges him from the self-image as a dauntless cowboy. Again, because of the lack of control he feels, Cole tries to “pull down the front of his hat brim” as a reiteration of his “cowboy-ship” as well as a false sense of protection this self-identity gives him.9

However committed Cole has stayed to the goal of becoming a cowboy, the mo-ments of displacement he feels accumulate. It finally makes him realize the differ-ence between him and a cowboy, or his culture and the Mexican culture, which has always been synonymous to “cowboyship” for him. When he returns from the prison, “no one [in the ranch] invite[s] him in,” and Alejandra has decided to leave him for her family. The cultural difference determines that her family and even her reputation mean a lot more than Cole’s to him. She is desperate when she has to choose between Cole and her family, but she picks the latter because she cannot live without it, which she has taken for granted all her life: “I didn’t know that he [the father] would stop loving me. I didn’t know he could. Now I know.”10 Mexico and Alejandra’s rejection smash his last hope and obsession of becoming a cowboy, as he “muse[s] on the question” about where he lives, and concluded for the boys and himself that “[he] [has] once lived at a great hacienda…but now [he] [has] no place

8 Ibid., 177.9 Ibid., 178. 10 Ibid., 252.

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to live.”11 It is not until Cole cuts his ties with the self-image as a cowboy, Mex-ico, and Alejandra that he begins to realize his experience as a “dream,” a dream in which he has stayed too long and from which he can hardly wake up.12 In that dream, he has acted as if he were a real cowboy who fits in the Mexican society, and therefore, will spend the rest of his life with Alejandra. The dream is so tempting because he has lied about his true self, assuming that he is more daring, mature, and determined than he really is—“it was always himself that the coward aban-doned first.”13 Cole has grown to be braver by abandoning his imposture. Just like what the lawyer concludes when Cole tells his story in the court after returning to the United States, “this is pretty clearly a case of mistook identity.”14 McCarthy uses the pun to highlight the theme of mistaken self-image, or the displacement of self.

John Grady Cole’s recognition of his true self could have only been possible with his sensitivity and the displacement he feels in a foreign environment. The loneli-ness in displacement is painful yet fruitful in bringing Cole the conflict he needs to shatter his unrealistic self-image. He has been a shadow who only lives under the light of the prototypical cowboy, but now he learns to judge for himself: “Finally what he [sees] in his dream [is] that the order in the horse’s heart [is] more durable for it [is] written in a place where no rain [can] erase it.”15 The horse has no judg-ment or heart, but it is the reflection of Cole’s heart, where the idea of order lies. It can never be substituted by a cowboy’s heart.

Bibliography

McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

11 Ibid., 243. 12 Ibid., 254. 13 Ibid., 235. 14 Ibid., 289. 15 Ibid., 280.

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Isobel Rountree ’16

The Changing Relationship Between the NMH Farm and Dining Services

Industrialization has revolutionized the global food system, especially agricul-ture, over the last century. The increasing amount of food necessary to feed the world’s growing population is a driving factor that caused this expansion, and

technological advances in food and agricultural industries have allowed this devel-opment to occur.1 The farm on the Northfield Mount Hermon campus has not mirrored this pattern. The size of the farm has decreased over the last century, and agricultural methods are relatively similar to those used in previous decades.2 This is because of ethical, economic, and educational factors that the farm had to consider. The lack of development of the farm has played a large role in changing the rela-tionship between the farm and dining services over time. While the two were once interdependent, the farm can no longer provide all the food the school needs. Agriculture initially industrialized because of the growing population and the new innovations that the population had developed, but mainly for economic reasons. Changes include the expansion of farms with less variation in product, and tech-nological advancements that help to decrease the need for manual labor.3 This has resulted in the requirement of fewer farmers in the production of a larger amount of food, and has made it more profitable for farmers to expand the size of their businesses. However, with the increase in acreage of farms, there has been a decrease in the biodiversity, with a trend toward monocultures. This is for economic reasons, because “farms and other operations could function more efficiently by focusing on fewer tasks.”4 This is a goal of industrialization, which allows more people to enter

1 “History of Food: Background Reading,” Teaching the Food System: A Project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/_pdf/History_of_Food-Background.pdf, 4.

2 Peter Weis (Northfield Mount Hermon Archivist), in discussion with the author, September 25, 2013.3 “History of Food: Background Reading.”, 4.4 Ibid.

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The NMH Review Isobel Rountree ’16

the workforce outside of farming. However, the NMH farm has not industrialized in this way.

Economic, ethical, and educational considerations resulted in the divergence of the NMH farm from the global food system. The NMH farm is a program funded and run by the NMH school. This means that the farm is on a budget determined by the school. This budget has not allowed the farm to purchase the technologies that have aided larger farms in reducing the price of their products by reducing labor costs.5 For example, the farm has not invested in a hay machine. Liam Sullivan, the farm director, thinks that making that investment would help in the long term by enabling the farm to make its own hay rather than purchasing it. The budget constraints of a school complicate running a farm, and the incorporation of edu-cation into the farm program is also restrictive. The NMH farm is first and fore-most a place for learning. The work job program is the most prominent example of this, and has helped to keep the farm more educational than production-based. The small scale of the farm allows students to be involved in the daily production of food items.6 Because the farm is not driven primarily by economic concerns, the farmers are more focused on preserving the health of the land through using natural farming processes rather than on producing large quantities of food. Many products from the farm are higher quality as a result of the lack of synthetic fertil-izers and pesticides used in the process.7 However, higher quality in this case entails higher prices, which has forced dining services to buy products elsewhere.8 The reasons behind the difference between the global agricultural system and the NMH farm are plentiful and logical, but they have forced the relationship that the farm has with dining services to decline over time.

The decrease in the size of the farm has caused the bond between the farm and dining services to deteriorate. The NMH farm was once much larger than it is today; in 1900, there were about 200 cows on the farm.9 Currently, there are only

5 Liam Sullivan (Northfield Mount Hermon Farm Program Director), in discussion with the author, September 26, 2013.

6 Ibid.7 Ibid.8 Rich Messer (Northfield Mount Hermon Dining Services Director) , in discussion with the author,

September 27, 2013.9 Peter Weis.

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three dairy cows on the farm.10 The farm was previously closer in size and produc-tion methods to the standard, and was therefore able to supply the dining hall with a larger percentage of its needs. The farm was able to keep up with its competi-tion in production rates, so dining services could buy more of the relatively cheap products. The farm was much larger compared to the student body than it is today and could supply a larger amount of the food for consumption. After widespread tuberculosis in NMH cows in the 1920s and a complete shutdown of the farm from 1961 to 1974, the farm decreased drastically in size.11 In its reinvention, the farm did not utilize mechanization, and the student interest in the “back to the land” movement influenced the remodeling of the operation. Industrialized farms surpassed NMH’s production abilities and decreased the costs of their products by expanding farms, raising monocultures, and taking advantage of technological ad-vancements. It is no longer economically viable for dining services to purchase food from the farm.12 The NMH farm cannot compete with the increased quantities or decreased price of food grown on industrialized farms.

Both the farm and dining services have made important steps away from the global patterns of the food system. Dining services has put a large amount of effort and money into buying 10 percent of its food from local sources. Rich Messer, the director of dining services, believes that knowing how food is grown is important when buying for a school because of the added responsibility of making healthy choices when feeding students.13 Because NMH is a school, all aspects of life on campus are related to learning, including the farm. So when the farm program was reintroduced in 1974, it was decided that the money it cost the school was paid back through the educational benefits it gave students.14 Since then, the staff members on the farm have made it their first priority to ensure that work job stu-dents learn how to work—providing the education for the “hand” that the school’s mission promises. NMH’s nature as a school also affects dining services, the farm, and the relationship between the two.

10 “Farm Program,” Northfield Mount Hermon, http://www.nmhschool.org/about-nmh-farm-program.11 Peter Weis.12 Rich Messer.13 Ibid.14 Peter Weis.

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The global pattern of agricultural industrialization was not followed by the NMH farm. This has caused the bond between the farm and dining services to weaken, because dining services can no longer afford the products that are made on the farm. Though dining services makes most of its choices based on economic factors, they strive to take advantage of local food sources and organic options in order to fulfill their educational goals. Further, the farm does not produce enough to meet the quantities necessary to maintain Alumni Hall, and dining services now has to look to larger companies to stay within its annual $1,000 per student budget. This has made the farm focus more on individual buyers than on its sales to dining ser-vices.15 Education of students is the driving force behind the NMH farm. The de-viation of the NMH farm from the global pattern of industrialization has resulted in the change in the relationship between the NMH farm and dining services from a strong interdependence to a relationship lacking mutual support. The common goal for education is the only remaining connection between the two.

Bibliography

“Farm Program.” Northfield Mount Hermon. http://www.nmhschool.org/about-nmh-farm-program.

“History of Food: Background Reading.” Teaching the Food System: A Project of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/teaching-the-food-system/curriculum/_pdf/History_of_Food-Background.pdf.

15 Liam Sullivan.

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Harper Lee Baldwin ’15

The Populist Party: The Farmer’s Last Straw

Between the years 1865 and 1900, the United States experienced the Gilded Age, a time of huge industrial growth and large demographic changes. Western and southern farmers created the Populist Party at the end of the 19th century as a way to combat the economic and political disenfranchisement that they experi-enced during this period. Urbanization and the creation of new technology caused economic unrest among farmers. In the Gilded Age, the railroad industry gained massive wealth and political influence, and prospered due to a lack of government regulation. These conditions allowed the industry to take advantage of rural farmers who were eventually stripped of their political voice by these corporations. By unit-ing through social and political clubs, such as the Grange and farmers’ alliances, farmers produced change on the state level that eventually created the political plat-form of the Populist Party. This political group emerged from the farmers’ discon-tent concerning conditions in the Gilded Age, such as urbanization, huge corporate power, and the preservation of their way of life and political influence.

The Gilded Age saw a massive increase in urban populations. The industrialization of the East, which generated new labor opportunities, caused this exodus and cre-ated economic problems for farmers in the West. Agriculture employed 50 percent of Americans in 1880, but by 1920 this number had dwindled to 25 percent.1 The creation and completion of the transcontinental railroad contributed to this depar-ture by allowing the transportation of foodstuffs between the East and the West, which increased labor specialization and enabled the West to feed the East. Techno-logical advances, such as more-advanced harvesters, combines, reapers, and plows, reduced the time necessary to produce a crop by more than half, contributing to the obsolescence of many farmers.2 This new productivity turned farming from a

1 David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant, 14th ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2010). Chapter 24, Notes, 1.

2 Mark Epstein, Fast Track to a 5 (Boston: Wadsworth, 2010), 219.

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The NMH Review Harper Baldwin ’15

form of subsistence living into a business, causing the number of farms in the West to triple, even while many “traditional” farmers went broke and left.

Economics did not favor the farmers in this time, either. The prices of staple crops such as corn, cotton, and wheat went down, while (independently) the cost of transportation, equipment, and land went up.3 This deflationary crop market, coupled with an inflationary finished-goods market, resulted in an increase in bank interest rates. As an industry that only received money during the harvest, farming saw higher prices cause farmers to permanently go into debt from a couple of bad crops or years of drought. These economic problems were caused mostly by a low supply of currency, which farmers wanted to combat with the unlimited coinage of silver, an inflationary metal. This would become a key part of the Populist platform. The industrialization of the East caused major demographic and economic changes to the agricultural West, and started the unrest that would eventually lead to the creation of the Populist Party.

The railroads also caused economic and political strife for western farmers. The railroad industry was massively wealthy, and this enabled it to control the political atmosphere and to disenfranchise western farmers, causing them to seek their own political party. Monopolies, pools, and rebates were common in this time, and these economic practices allowed the railroad industry to set its own prices with-out the regulation of a competitive market. They exploited the farmers’ reliance on railroad transportation by charging exorbitant shipping rates and grain elevator fees. Railroad companies and land speculators also acquired large tracts of land in the West and sold it to farmers at very high rates. These economic problems made many farmers go into debt or go into foreclosure. Mary Lease, an outspoken Pop-ulist, summed up this problem in an 1890 speech, stating that “the great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”4 Railroad companies also dominated the political scene by using their wealth to buy politicians. Government corruption was very prevalent in the late 1800s. The railroad industry could easily choose a candidate who would oppose economic regulation, which was already almost nonexistent in the railroad industry. The opinions and thoughts of westerners were disregarded by politicians because they were not a large political or

3 Ibid. 4 David L. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant, A89.

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economic majority. Even at the state level, the election of senators was left in the hands of state legislatures, disenfranchising the masses. A large part of the Populist platform was the direct election of senators and secret ballots, showing the farmers’ distrust of the American political system. The railroad industry economically and politically disenfranchised farmers, forcing them to create their own party to fight back.

Before western farmers formally created their party, they created smaller social orga-nizations to air their grievances. The most popular of these organizations were the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (the Grange) and various farmers’ alliances, which sought to make political change, educate farmers, and form social links in communities. They sponsored events such as picnics, lectures, and live mu-sic.5 These groups united agrarians in a way that allowed for reform on a state level that eventually led to their bid for federal-level influence.

The Grange was formed in 1867, and by 1875 it had obtained over 800,000 mem-bers in the West and South.6 Although some of their projects were failures, such as the manufacturing of farm equipment, these associations created cooperative silos and farms that helped ease farmers’ economic burdens. They promoted Granger Laws, the goals of which were the regulation of business, the railroads, warehouses, and grain elevators.7 Grangers succeeded in winning important cases in the Su-preme Court regarding commerce regulation, such as Munn v. Illinois, in 1877.8 This case ruled that a corporation’s “regulation is a thing of domestic concern and...the State may exercise all the powers of government over them, even though in so doing it may indirectly operate upon commerce outside its immediate jurisdiction.”9

This case was mostly overturned in Illinois v. Wabash, in 1886, which ruled that interstate commerce and trade fell under the jurisdiction of the federal govern-

5 Ibid., Chapter 23, Notes, 5.6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 6.8 Epstein, 220.9 “1877 Munn v Illinois,” Connecticut Consortium for Law & Citizenship Education, April 30, 2003,

accessed November 21, 2013, http://cclce.org/files/ResourceCD/documents/USA/19th_century/1877_Munn_v_Illinois.html.

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ment.10 Although court regulation failed on a large scale, the farmers’ alliances and Grangers motivated public opinion that made the way for the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which regulated the railroads (although somewhat ineffectively), and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which attempted to counteract the power of trusts.11 Some Granger politicians were elected to office in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.12 The widespread support for these politicians and acts shows the discontent of the lower levels of American society at this time, a phenomenon that can still be seen to this day as the nation struggles to decide how to regulate big business.

In 1890, the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union formed a united front for the various farmers’ alliances.13 They met in Ocala, Florida, in 1890 to decide on their ideas and goals. Their main objectives were the direct election of senators, the unlimited coinage of silver, government control of the railroads, limited immigration, a graduated income tax, an eight-hour workday, secret bal-lots, and the use of initiative and referendum.14 With goals pertaining to the labor movement (such as the eight-hour workday and limited immigration), the party attempted to appeal to laborers in the East, but this did not prove to be effective. The basis of the Populist Party in the election of 1892, the Omaha Platform, would be based on these aims. It was written on the 116th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and not only outlined the farmers’ political ideas, but summed up the problems of American society, such as governmental corruption, limited freedom of speech, and the power of wealth. It states that “the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few...from the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.”15 The goals of the Omaha Platform show the farmer’s distrust of the current government, their economic unhappiness, and their general disenfran-chisement.

10 Epstein, 221.11 Kennedy et al., Chapter 24, Notes, 6.12 Ibid., Chapter 23, Notes, 6.13 Epstein, 221.14 Ibid., 221-222.15 “The Omaha Platform: Launching the Populist Party,” George Mason University: History Matters,

accessed November 21, 2013, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5361/.

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Overall, these feelings were felt among many people in the nation in this time, as profit became the main goal and business began to overrule agriculture. Farmers at-tempted to combat their economic disenfranchisement through grass-roots political organization, but their inevitable failure illustrates the immense power of money in American democracy. The Gilded Age solidified the capitalist market in America, and the plight of the Populists shows that as this free market system became fully formed, many Americans lost their political voices. As business and money came to rule the nation, true democracy became less important, and although the Pro-gressive Era in the early 1900s brought some semblance of fairness back into the political arena, the agrarians and the poor of the country never truly got their vote back. The struggle of the Populists not only shows the intense lifestyle changes that took place in the late 1800s, such as urbanization and the shift from small sub-sistence farming to lucrative business farming, but also the rise of capitalism, and consequently the weakening of democracy that characterizes the Gilded Age.

Bibliography

Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey. The American Pageant. 14th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2010.

Mark Epstein, Fast Track to a 5. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010.

“1877 Munn v Illinois.” Connecticut Consortium for Law & Citizenship Education. April 30, 2003. Accessed November 21, 2013, http://cclce.org/files/ResourceCD/documents/USA/19th_century/1877_Munn_v_Illinois.html.

“The Omaha Platform: Launching the Populist Party.” George Mason University: History Matters. Accessed November 21, 2013, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5361/.

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Patterson Malcolm ’17

Yemen and the U.S. Drone Program

Along with Pakistan, Yemen has become a critical area of operation for the U.S. drone program’s assault on Al Qaeda. Due to Yemen’s instability, Al Qaeda—or militants affiliated with the group, such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)—are increasingly active in the wake of the Arab Spring’s political instabil-ity. The government of Yemen no longer controls large sections of the country. In order to successfully carry out drone missions to target the leadership of Al Qaeda and disrupt potential attacks against American interests, the United States was forced to align itself with the Yemeni government. Today, Yemeni leadership is a dysfunctional bureaucracy battling the currents of the Arab Spring and the forces of tribal and sectarian opposition. The Obama administration’s decision to rely on drone strikes in Yemen may cause disruptions to Al Qaeda’s leadership, but in the long run, the U.S. attacks on “terrorists” create more support and recruits for the next generation of extremists, ultimately undermining the legitimacy of the very government the United States is trying to save.

To understand why Al Qaeda gravitated toward Yemen and why this nation has been plagued by civil war, one must look closely at the demographics. Almost entirely Muslim, Yemen is split into two main religious groups, the Sunni major-ity and the Shia minority. These two main sects of Islam have engaged in war for thousands of years, stretching across the Islamic world. Yemen’s civil war is just one branch of a wider conflict that is currently splintering the Arab world from the streets of Baghdad to the civil war in Syria. Another factor contributing to over-all government instability in the region is the tribal nature of the Yemeni people. Across the country, warlords control small sects and are dictating their own people’s laws and rights. Combined with the rugged isolating geography of Yemen, tribal-ism deters the allegiance of many Yemeni citizens away from the government and toward their tribal lords. Finally, Yemen only started its difficult journey of inte-grating the lives of southern Shias and northern Sunnis in 1990. This newly unified nation was likely to fail because of the obvious Shia–Sunni split, tribalism, and geographic isolation of vast regions.

After the unification of Yemen, cooperation between northern and southern Yemen

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was made nearly impossible when President Ali Abdullah Saleh (r. 1990–2012), a northern leader, ousted all southern government officials during a state of emergen-cy in 1994. After Saleh’s violent suppression of a revolt in 1994, he never recovered his credibility, and remained in a weakened state until the Arab Spring rioters took to the streets in 2009, angered by horrible living conditions and government re-pression. Yemen is ranked 160th in the Human Development Index (HDI), which measures life expectancy, education, and income, one spot above Haiti.1 Eventually, the government and rioters reached a peace deal to end the conflict once the gov-ernment agreed to a series of reforms.2 The Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia and spread from Egypt to Bahrain and Kuwait, was a decisive factor encouraging Yemenis to continue their protests. Unable to quell the riots in the capital of Ye-men, Saleh was forced to step down in 2012. Insurgents and separatists alike seized the Arab Spring, and Saleh’s eventual resignation, as a chance to overthrow the gov-ernment. The Shia in the South were not satisfied with the removal of Saleh, calling for a separate state with the re-creation of South Yemen. While the government is fighting Shia secessionists in the South, the AQAP stepped onto the battle field and is now the greatest threat to the already weakened government.

The civil war in Yemen has settled into a deadly stalemate, with terrorists un-leashing attacks on the cities in the North, and the U.S. drones, in support of the government, targeting AQAP members in rural provinces in the South and East. The U.S. attacks are not without strategic reason, for the same Al Qaeda groups have been linked to attacks on the United States. The most deadly was the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed and 37 were injured.3 In 2009, a Nigerian linked to AQAP and trained in Yemen, attempted to blow up a domestic flight over Detroit with an underwear bomb. The drone attacks are an attempt to target the leadership that carries out such attacks against the United States, and given recent territorial gains by the AQAP, the drone war has grown in importance for the Obama administration.

The Obama administration’s growing reliance on drones is in no way exclusive to Yemen. The U.S. first began using drones in the Waziristan tribal region of Paki-stan to target Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership who were using the lawless region

1 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), “Indices & Data,” Human Development Reports, accessed December 11, 2013, http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/.

2 “Yemen Profile,” BBC News, October 26, 2013, accessed December 03, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14704852.

3 “USS Cole Bombing Fast Facts,” CNN, January 01, 1970, accessed March 24, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/meast/uss-cole-bombing-fast-facts/.

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as a sanctuary for attacks in Afghanistan.4 The Obama administration unleashed as many as 265 covert drone strikes as of 2012, the vast majority of which occurred in Waziristan.5 The targets of these attacks are suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership, but sometimes civilians are caught in the crossfire. In both Pakistan and Yemen, the U.S. drone policy has angered and radicalized a large segment of the population. What makes Yemen fundamentally different from Pakistan is that the vast majority of those killed by drones are Yemeni citizens who are fighting a civil war. The drones unify secessionist tribesmen, AQAP, and Arab Spring politi-cal protesters, giving each group a reason to rally against the U.S. and oppose the Yemeni government. It is estimated that about 17 percent of all drone casualties are civilian, but that number is declining as technology allows for increased accuracy,6 and has recently been reduced to 3 percent in Pakistan.7 The inhumane nature of these strikes is what has caused many human-rights organizations to oppose the U.S. drone program. In the case of Pakistan, enough high-priority “terrorists” are killed with limited civilian casualties to keep the program going despite local anger. But in Yemen, the aforementioned indigenous tribal dynamics of the resistance has made the problem even larger for the U.S. and the Yemeni government.

While the U.S. has made significant progress eliminating the leadership of Al Qaeda in Pakistan with an aggressive drone campaign, the drone program in Yemen is far more problematic. Every time the U.S. kills an AQAP member, the U.S. has more than likely killed a Yemeni linked to a particular tribe or family. These U.S.-sponsored attacks in a civil conflict can lead tribal members to support the AQAP and not the U.S.-backed Yemeni government. In the end, the tribal nature of Yemen makes the Pakistani drone program counterproductive when applied to Yemen. Gregory Johnson, professor at Princeton University and expert on Yemen says, “I don’t believe that the U.S. has a Yemen policy, what the U.S. has is a coun-terterrorism strategy that it applies to Yemen.”8 By unleashing two years of heavy drone use in Yemen, the U.S. has helped recruit a new class of AQAP members

4 David E. Sanger, “The Dark Side of the Light Footprint,” in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York, NY: Broadway Paperbacks, 2013).

5 Ibid.6 Ibid.7 Sebastian Abbot and Munir Ahmed, “Pakistan: 3 Percent of Drone Deaths Were Civilians,” Washington

Post, October 30, 2013, accessed December 13, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-3-percent-of-drone-deaths-were-civilians/2013/10/30/692b23f6-4194-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html.

8 David Rohde, Foreign Policy, The Obama Doctrine, March 3, 2012, accessed December 16, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_obama_doctrine.

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who have every reason to hate the U.S. and the government it supports. In 2009, there were an estimated 300 AQAP fighters in Yemen, now there are over 1,000.9

Many of these types of problems that emerge when fighting a counterinsurgency war can be traced back to a controversial Pentagon document from the Vietnam War era. In February 1970, Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, working for the U.S. government-funded think tank RAND Corporation, published a 186-page manual called Rebellion and Authority.10 This manual became the popularly accepted way for governments to deal with extremism and rebellion. According to Leites and Wolf, a swift and powerful display of authority is necessary in order to eliminate a threat to a government. This especially describes the use of covert drone strikes to dispel terrorists in Yemen. Then why is the number of Al Qaeda members in Yemen on the rise? The Obama administration believes that by using drones, the U.S. is avoiding civilian casualties as well as legitimacy issues. Although the civilian casu-alty rate has decreased, drones appear to have the same negative effect on the local governments’ legitimacy as the use of ground soldiers. The only way the country of Yemen can succeed on its own is if the government is considered reliable and fair. With heightened anger over the use of unmanned aircraft to hunt down AQAP and insurgents, with little justification, it is hard for the Yemeni people to look at the U.S. and Yemeni government as powers of justice. Maintaining legitimacy is essen-tial in controlling a population and bringing an end to an insurgency. If the U.S. drone program continues, the Yemeni government stands little chance of remaining in power without direct foreign intervention.

The Obama administration would argue that the U.S. drone policy is buying the Yemeni government crucial time to stabilize and regain control over the multi-faceted insurgency that has occurred in the region. But at what cost? Oftentimes, government stability coincides with a decline in terrorist activity. But if the drone policy creates more recruits or sympathy for AQAP and other insurgencies, then the U.S. policy could be counterproductive. Realistically, Yemen lacks the infra-structure, resources, and government discipline to run a stable, functioning bu-reaucracy while fighting a civil war on multiple fronts. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have an interest in stability in Yemen and must support the government with substantial economic aid. If Yemen falls to AQAP, it won’t be long before the Islam-ic fundamentalists target Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region.

9 Ibid.10 Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf Jr., “Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent

Conflicts,” Rand Corporation, accessed March 26, 2014, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R0462.pdf.

25


If the South or the AQAP wins the revolution, brutal repression that comes with extremists seizing power will likely follow. This is why the U.S. has chosen to counter the Yemeni insurgency with a “lite footprint,” without directly sending U.S. soldiers to fight. AQAP is considered one of the most active and fastest-grow-ing insurgent groups in the world, and a dangerous threat to the U.S. and some of our most important allies in the region, so it is the U.S. government’s responsibility to address this issue of national and regional security. Given the recent experience fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and growing isolationist trends in America, the U.S. drone policy is the safest, cheapest, and easiest way that is currently at the disposal of the Obama administration. However, the Yemeni government needs a far more comprehensive strategy to combat both separatist and extremists in the re-gion than the current U.S. drone policy. Aid from the U.S. and Gulf States toward producing infrastructure to increase the legitimacy of the government in Yemen could greatly impact not only the revolution, but the sustainability of Yemen in the future postrevolution era.

Bibliography

Abbot, Sebastian, and Munir Ahmed. “Pakistan: 3 Percent of Drone Deaths Were Civilians.” Washington Post. October 30, 2013. Accessed December 13, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-3-percent-of-drone-deaths-were-civilians/2013/10/30/692b23f6-4194-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html.

Kechichian, Sevag. “Yemen’s Response to Brazen Attacks Inadequate.” Opinion. December 8, 2013. Accessed December 09, 2013. http://www.alja-zeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/yemen-response-brazen-attacks-inade-quate-201312843138607325.html.

Lietes, Nathan and Charles Wolf Jr. “Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts.” Rand Corporation. Accessed March 26, 2014, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R0462.pdf.

Rohde, David. “The Obama Doctrine.” Foreign Policy. March 12, 2012. Accessed December 15, 2013. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/the_obama_doctrine#sthash.KORKXyNL.YeJ1Nkx7.dpbs.

Sanger, David E. “The Dark Side of the Light Footprint.” In Confront and Conceal:

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Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power. New York, NY: Broad-way Paperbacks, 2013.

“Several Killed in Yemen Drone Strikes.” Al Jazeera: Middle East. November 9, 2013. Accessed December 03, 2013. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middlee-ast/2013/11/several-killed-yemen-drone-strikes-2013119003940201.html.

Worth, Robert F., and Eric Schmitt. “Jihadist Groups Gain in Turmoil Across Mid-dle East.” New York Times. December 3, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/world/middleeast/jihadist-groups-gain-in-turmoil-across-middle-east.html?ref=yemen&_r=0.

“Yemen Profile.” BBC News. October 26, 2013. Accessed December 03, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14704852.

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Claire Fee ’15 and Gabrielle Rerra ’15

Jeffersonian PragmatismDuring the period 1801–1817, the Republican and Federalist parties generally held opposite political views. Federalists were considered loose constructionists, lobbying for a union between states’ power with that of the U.S. government, while Jeffer-sonian Republicans were thought to be strict constructionists, strongly opposed to interfering with state or foreign affairs. However, the elected political candidates of the Jeffersonian Republican Party did not always embrace the views their party ex-pected them to support. Perhaps it is a reflection on their wisdom that, during their presidencies (1801–1817), Jefferson and Madison were able to support two contra-dicting beliefs: the need to respect the liberties of the people and states outlined in the Constitution, while understanding that a more pragmatic outlook, supported by a broader construction, was often most advantageous for the nation. Jefferson’s and Madison’s embodiment of both a liberal and a republican democratic view ra-tionalized to voting Americans the radical Jeffersonian Republicans’ position; they also proved wrong the supposition many voters and opposing party members had made—drawing on the Jeffersonian Republican Party’s history of opposition to the federal monetary system among other items created without the explicit approval of the Constitution—that only a strict interpretation of the Constitution would be embraced by the party.

Though Jefferson is often considered an idealist with regard to the conduct of U.S. diplomacy, he was not strictly opposed to engaging in European deals if they served to benefit America. When the opportunity to purchase the Louisiana Territory from the French presented itself, he envisioned an expansion of the agrarian society upon which he believed the American economy would thrive. Jefferson approved of the Louisiana Purchase but did so without benefit of a specific provision within the Constitution. By expanding America’s western and southern borders, Jefferson demonstrated his willingness to stretch his political ideology to satisfy the needs of the country.

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The NMH Review Claire Fee ’15 and Gabrielle Rerra ’15

Never completely abandoning his idealism, Jefferson rejected balance-of-power pol-itics. He attempted, under the Embargo Act of 1807, to manipulate other nations’ ability to unfairly capitalize on American commerce by prohibiting international trade entirely. Yet, by stretching the Commerce Clause to do so, Jefferson violated his principles of strict constructionism. In a political cartoon published in 1808, Alexander Anderson, an American illustrator, depicts Jefferson as a turtle biting an American merchant, restricting his ability to trade with the British by the Embar-go Act.1 The turtle is strategically placed between two American merchants trying to trade with the British ships in the harbor. In an effort to force other foreign powers to respect the United States’ neutral trading rights, Jefferson eliminated all trade with foreign nations under a fiscally devastating act. Thus, it is difficult to pigeonhole Jefferson as either an idealist or a realist, as the many difficult deci-sions he made during his presidency chronicle a man constantly wrestling with his personal beliefs, his party’s ideals, and what was practical and most advantageous for the United States. At the same time that the Federalist Party was collapsing, the delegates at the Hartford Convention decided “Congress shall not have the pow-er to lay any embargo on the ships or vessels of the United States...for more than sixty days.”2 Although he did not agree with this statement, Jefferson realized after repealing the Embargo Act and replacing it with the Non-Intercourse Act that the former had damaged the economy more than it contributed to it.

An advocate for the protection of the individual’s rights from an all-powerful government, Jefferson also became a liberal supporter of maintaining civic virtue during his eight years as president. In fact, depending on the situation, Jefferson employed either line of thinking to support his opinion. In his first inaugural speech, delivered in March of 1801, he stated, “We are all Federalists, we are all Re-publicans.” More than a conciliatory means to mend the gashes inflicted by the two major political parties during their jousts—their division was further intensified by the close election of 1800—Jefferson’s statement holds true to his belief in an active citizenry, a society freed from the hereditary privilege he believed restrained some white men from exercising their freedom. He did not rule as a Jeffersonian but as a representative of the people. Jefferson once wrote in a letter to Samuel Kerche-val, a Virginia lawyer and author, “the laws and institutions must go hand in hand

1 Alexander Anderson, Cartoon in Collection of the New-York Historical Society. 1808.2 “Report and Resolutions of the Hartford Convention,” Speech.

29


with the progress of the human mind.”3 He was convinced that the government was responsible for providing a society that maximized the potential of the human mind rather than for providing for the advancement of the Jeffersonian Republican Party. Jefferson quickly realized the shortcomings of political parties because of the disunity they created, undoubtedly enhanced by the geographic barriers and socio-economic discrepancies evident in America, and his disregard for them is reflected in his political moves. In the same letter, he claimed, “institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times.”4 Jefferson showed a desire for a government that satisfied the nation, and he was concerned about the damage political parties might cause to the nation’s unity.

Jefferson’s successor, James Madison, led the first postrevolution war on American soil, without the assistance of a foreign power. After the war, Madison signed the bill for a second national bank, despite his strong opposition to the First Bank char-ter. Lack of a national bank damaged the nation’s economy during the War of 1812 (the country had an outpouring of bank notes soon after), and the necessity of a bank to ensure fiscal security became clear. However, by vetoing the 1817 Internal Improvements Bill, Madison maintained his support for strict interpretation of the Constitution explaining, “but seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution...believing that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite separation of powers between the general and the state governments...I have no option but to withhold my signature from it.”5 Many Republicans believed strongly in the idea of states’ rights. Jefferson expressed the majority Jeffersonian Republican opinion of dividing national power between the federal government and the states in a letter to a future member of his cabinet, Gideon Granger, in 1800: “Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single govern-ment.”6 While both presidents supported the maintenance of railroads and roads, they saw them as projects to be attended to at the state level. Madison’s rejection of federally funded infrastructure, outlined in the vetoed Bonus Bill, demonstrated a seemingly nonpartisan motivation for doing so. Madison restrained the executive

3 Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval. July 12, 1816.4 Ibid.5 James Madison, “James Madison: Message to Congress Vetoing an Internal Improvements Bill,” March

1817, Speech.6 Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, August 13, 1800.

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branch’s ability to exercise its power to benefit the country because he believed it encroached on states’ rights and violated the Constitution.

The argument that Madison cannot be characterized as a consistent strict construc-tionist is further supported by John Randolph’s address on the proposed Protective Tariff of 1816, delivered to the House of Representatives: “[W]e have another proof that the present government have renounced the true republican principles of Jefferson’s administration on which they raised themselves to power...”7 Madison supported the protective tariff because of the security it would offer to the infant American industries, but Jeffersonian Republicans generally rejected it because it was not only created to support government obligations but also the economy as a whole. The Second National Bank, a federally funded infrastructure, and the protective tariff—all of whose components made up Secretary of State Henry Clay’s American System—were supported by Madison (aside from federally funding infra-structure), despite the largely federalistic advances, with industry as the backbone of the American economy.

Through their actions, Jefferson and Madison conceded that political situations occasionally call for necessary concessions from strict constructionism to further the well-being of the country. However, their temporary concessions from strict constructionism do not repudiate the Jeffersonian Republican political ideology, but rather emphasize the need for flexibility when making decisions on behalf of a politically divided nation. While the Jeffersonian Republican Party was not without weakness, a more successful strategy than the appeasement of a party’s opponents has yet to be demonstrated and continues to be a deciding factor in a president’s success.

Bibliography

Anderson, Alexander. Cartoon. In Collection of the New-York Historical Society. 1808.

Jefferson, Thomas to Samuel Kercheval. July 12, 1816.

7 John Randolph, “A Speech to the House on the Proposed Tariff of 1816,” Speech.

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Jefferson, Thomas to Gideon Granger. August 13, 1800.

Madison, James. “James Madison: Message to Congress Vetoing an Internal Im-provements Bill, March 1817.” Speech.

Randolph, John. “A Speech to the House on the Proposed Tariff of 1816.” Speech.

“Report and Resolutions of the Hartford Convention.” Speech.

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