During World War I, 30,000 American women were rounded up, and half of them were detained, often for months, for the supposed purpose of preventing the spread of venereal diseases in soldiers. Some of the arrested were prostitutes, while others were so-called charity girls, young women who picked up men at dance halls simply to have a good time. That the incarceration of these women at detention camps surrounded by barbed wire did nothing to change the rate at which soldiers were contracting STDs was a piece of information that the Committee on the Prevention of Social Evils Surrounding Military Camps was not much interested in during the late summer of 1918. Nor did the committee seem to care that it was often the men who had infected the women.
The unfortunate female detainees at 43 sites around the country were subjected to hard labor, forced medical treatment, unspeakable humiliations and even rape. Their ordeal provides the inspiration for Michael Lowenthal’s lively and illuminating novel Charity Girl.

A wicked sense of humour, a whistle-blower, or just a PR man who was left out of the loop? On the net, you get to decide.

I hear from the Today Programme that President Bush thinks that History will judge Blair kindly. Well it is possible, I suppose. Though I know some of the people who’ll have a hand in actually writing the first, second and third drafts of it, and many of them will have quite a lot of sympathy with this sort of list.

If anyone ever tries to tell me that impartial narration of facts is possible, I think I shall point them at that list – it’s a rather fine example of a gloriously, knowingly impartial list. Which is not to say that it is ‘wrong’ or should be discounted out of hand. ‘Biased’ does not, contrary to what GCSE History tries to tell you, mean ‘ignorable’. See also something like An Inconvenient Truth for another example.

I sympathise with the writer. He needed a better editor (one who didn’t give him such an awful headline), and isn’t really a patch on Clarkson when it comes to writing over-reactionary prose. But there are numerous choice sentences:

If we recreate the Dark Ages in the 21st century, it will be our own doing, too. Nobody is making us. None of our Evil Empires came from outer space. The red cancer of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism may have gone into remission, but the malignancy of tyranny comes in many colours.

I’m uncertain whether to file this under humour, modern life or politics. Much of what he says is overblown. And yet, there is a serious point in what he writes. Somewhere.

The blog that pointed me to this column thought that his his point was this:

Increasingly people use the arbitrary “good of society” as a justification to remove more and more rights from others.

Actually, this is an old, old problem. For some of the very best essays on the subject, read Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty, by Isiah Berlin, especially the one on Rousseau.

The people he writes about did not aim at tyranny, but the good of all. Sobering stuff.

I never thought that the original blog (or is that “bog”?) post sounded entirely serious. There are several give-aways, including the reported reaction of her younger brother to her scheme. Nevertheless, the “blogsphere” seems to have missed the joke entirely. She has had to point it out herself.

Of course, the same thing occurs all the time in the study of history. Franklin, it is often reported, suggested that the Turkey and not the Eagle should be the symbol of America. Well, so he did – almost – in a letter to a young relative that was intended to be entertaining, educating and witty. Not that you’d guess it from many accounts.

There’s only one solution: manditory “sarcasm” tags, which will cause the content to be hidden from any web browser operated by journalists or in nations known to be lacking a sense of humour.

Nowadays all of this training would be done with a computer screen and a flight simulator. It’s a more powerful world, but one where all the magic is contained in black and white boxes, out of sight and beyond comprehension.

The bill, whose chief sponsor is the Republican majority leader in the Senate, would ban professors at public colleges and universities, while working, from:

Endorsing, supporting or opposing any candidate for local, state or national office.

Endorsing, supporting or opposing any pending legislation, regulation or rule under consideration by local, state or federal agencies.

Endorsing, supporting or opposing any litigation in any court.

Advocating “one side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan controversy.”

Hindering military recruiting on campus or endorsing the activities of those who do.

There is more about the background to this proposal here, and the Wikipedia entry on the person behind it is here.