It is a way of pseudo-argument privileging one narrow type of political view (conservatism) over all others — a view that we must try to divine the “original” intentions of the Founders in our creation and interpretation of the law.
A view that, by the way, the Founders did not share.
Originalism is an excuse framework for denying people the right to self-govern unless approved of by the white aristocratic elite who fancy themselves the Real Americans, over and above everyone else.
It is based on a kind of paternalism over the Founders, whose “perceived shock” at modernity itself would allegedly disallow almost anything the 340 million modern inhabitants of the United States want to do versus what would have been acceptable to the 2.5 million individuals who declared independence almost 250 years ago.
Originalism is a way of allowing conservative judges to play God. It takes the radical ideas of the Enlightenment in our self-governance and twists them back into a form of “received wisdom” delivered by conservative judges’ religious views — in violation of the First Amendment.
Fundamentalist lawyers, judges, and legal operatives often want to drag “original” back even further — to Biblical law. In both cases, the power grab lies in religious nationalists inserting themselves into the picture as the only interpreters of “God’s will” or “the textualist view” (how convenient!), in which they believe the founding documents were theocratic when they clearly were the opposite of that — the Founders talked about it a lot! And many of them were Deists, famously so.
President Biden and Vice President Harris commemorated the 1 year anniversary of the January 6 attack on our democracy with morning speeches and a day of remembrance inside the Capitol rotunda with Representatives and Senators giving a number of moving speeches in their respective chambers. The tone on TV news and blue check Twitter was somber and reflective. The President referred to the violent events of Jan 6, 2021 as a terrorist attack on our democracy, and said that the threat was not yet over — that the perpetrators of that event still hold a “dagger at the throat of America.”
Only two Republicans were present in chambers when the moment of silence was held for the nation’s traumatic experience one year ago — Representative Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, the former VP and evil villain of the George W. Bush years. That this man — a cartoonish devil from my formative years as a young activist — was, along with his steel-spined force of nature daughter, one half of the lone pair that remained of the pathetic tatters of the once great party of Lincoln.
What do you do if you’re in a 2-party system and one of the parties is just sitting on the sidelines, heckling (and worse!?)? How do you restore confidence in a system that so many people love to hate, to the point of obsession? Will we be able to re-establish a sense of fair play, as Biden called on us to do today in his speech?
The Big Lie is about rewriting history
We don’t need to spend a ton of time peering deeply into discerning motive with seditionists — we can instead understand that for all of them, serving the Big Lie serves a function for them in their lives. It binds them to their tribe, it signals a piece of their “identity,” and it signals loyalty within a tight hierarchy that rewards it — all while managing to serve their highest goal of all: to annoy and intimidate liberals. Like all bullies, their primary animating drive is a self-righteous conviction that “I am RIGHT!” at all times and about all things, and that disagreement is largely punishable by death or, in lieu of that, dark twisted fantasies of death passed off lamely and pathetically as “just joking, coworker!”
The filibuster is an archaic rule that was at first only there by accident, then whittled into a sharp blade of minority rule by Southern plantation owner and virulent white supremacist John C. Calhoun — a man credited with laying the groundwork for the Civil War.
The South Carolina plutocrat strategized on behalf of wealthy aristocratic ambitions in the 1820s and 30s. Dubbed the “Marx of the master class” by historian Richard Hofstadter, Calhoun consumed himself with an obsession over how to establish permanent rule by his 1% brethren. He was an early proponent of property over people — the original “just business” kind of cold calculating supremacist that would come to typify the darker southern shadow culture of America.
Calhoun came to the conclusion that the Founders had made a grave mistake when creating the nation, and had put in too much democracy and too little property protection. He had a conviction that collective governance ought to be rolled back, because it “exploited” the wealthy planter class such as himself. During his time in the Senate he engineered a number of clever devices for the minority to rule over the collective will of the public — dubbed a “set of constitutional gadgets” for restricting the operations of a democratic government by a top political scientist at the time.
Public choice theory and Charles Koch
Slaveholding Senator John C. Calhoun inspired a series of men in the future to take up the torch of minority rule and its apparatus. James McGill Buchanan combined ideas from F. A. Hayek with fascist strains of Calhoun’s ministrations in the Senate to pack a conservative economic punch with public choice theory.
A young Charles Koch was exposed to Buchanan’s re-interpretation of Calhoun’s re-intepretation of the founders’ intentions, and embarked on a lifelong mission to indoctrinate the world in the religion of hyper-libertarian Ayn Randian fiscal austerity.
New lie, same as the old lie. The old lie is that America was never intended to be a democracy — which is doublespeak nonsense. The old lie is that the Declaration of Independence was wrong — that all men are not created equal; that the entire reason we founded a new nation was somehow misguided. But “conservatives” have been fighting fervently for this original Big Lie since time immemorial.
So: Charles Koch is the new John C. Calhoun. He and his vast navel-gazing empire of “think tanks” and other organs of self-regurgitation have managed to brainwash enough people and operate enough bots to make it almost a coin toss whether the average citizen believes the nation was founded as a democratic republic or an authoritarian theocracy.
The filibuster is one of the strongest minority rule tools in their toolbox.
Corruption erodes trust, fairness, and ultimately, the rule of law. A fair playing field is necessary for a thriving democracy. Justice must come for the rich just as she comes for the poor. Including Trump corruption.
Many people around the world were shocked in the aftermath of World War II. How could “polite” society break down so utterly, so swiftly, and so zealously? Why did authoritarian personalities come to dominate human affairs, seemingly out of nowhere? How thin is this veneer of civilization, really?
A braintrust of scholars, public servants, authors, psychologists, and others have been analyzing these questions ever since.
Books about authoritarianism
For a long time it was convenient to think of authoritarian personality as primarily a European problem, or in any case, a phenomenon that happened elsewhere. We are still waking up (…again) to the scope and depth of the problem, while anti-government groups organize relatively openly and we have yet to see justice for the January 6 attack on our capital. There is much work to be done, and in the meantime we can always continue to educate ourselves about our nation’s history — and the role of slavery, white supremacy, and racism in the shaping of the country and the future class structure of today’s America.
Research has shown that emotional repression causes authoritarianism (Altemeyer, Adorno, Stenner et al). Fundamentalist religious groups favor the most repression, culturally — ergo, fundamentalist groups are at the highest risk for nurturing authoritarian traits.
Emotional repression is the keystone of fundamentalist parenting. The strict application of “Biblical law” as cherry-picked by extremists is inherently contradictory & hypocritical, stunting emotional and psychological growth through corporal punishment and capricious applications of anger for sometimes opaque reasons.
When trusted caregivers apply physical violence to a developing mind, seeds of deep distrust and paranoia are planted. Children learn to “obey” by repressing negative parts of themselves so deeply they fall out of conscious awareness altogether & rule the personality “from below.”
Never being given the required emotional support to transcend the paradoxical human project of reconciling the positive & negative aspects inherent in all people, they become “arrested” at a moment of obsession with punishment as the only solution to every problem. They see the world in very black and white terms — the classic “you’re either with us or against us” zero-sum worldview in which everybody who doesn’t agree with you must be delegitimized and eradicated completely.
Mythology has it that “reckless Democratic spending” is to blame for the ballooning of the national debt — though the historical record shows otherwise.
In fact, the conservatives‘ beloved demi-god Ronald Reagan was the first President to skyrocket the debt, thanks to some bunk ideas from an old cocktail napkin that linger to this day — the Republican monetary theory in a nutshell is (I shit you not) that we should take all our pooled tax money and give it to… billionaires. Because, you know, they’re clearly the most qualified people to make decisions affecting the 99% poor people. Supposedly they’re the smartest folks to entrust with our money.
Trickle down, debt up
Except it’s not true, as year after year and study after study shows. Nor for all their finger-waggling at Democrats over the national debt has the GOP turned in a balanced budget since Nixon. Republicans are the most gigantic hypocrites on economics writ large, but particularly so for the national debt — with Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump all turning in record debt increases, primarily through tax cuts for the wealthy and the Gulf and Afghanistan wars.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton balanced the budget, created a surplus, and reduced the debt during his 8 years in office, and Obama inherited the deepest recession since the 1929 Great Depression.
The financial crisis of 2008-09, itself caused by the reckless Republican zeal for deregulation — this time of financial derivatives — was a wholly GOP-owned debacle that the next president paid for politically. Nevertheless, President Obama had the debt again on a reduction path as a percentage of GDP — but then Donald “I bankrupted a series of casinos!” Trump oozed his way into the highest office in the land.
It’s weird how “reckless Democratic spending” always happens under Republican administrations!
During the Trump administration, Republicans patted themselves on the back for giving a $2.7 trillion tax cut to billionaires for no reason, while the economy was relatively hot already (after being rescued by Obama). Not only was no progress made on diminishing the debt, but the national debt actually increased (both nominally and as a percentage of GDP) under Trump’s first term even before the sudden arrival of a novel coronavirus caused it to leap into the stratosphere like a 21st century American tech oligarch.
Only when President Biden arrived on the scene and took the helm of fiscal and monetary policy did the national debt begin cooling off once again — all while dramatically and quickly scaling up covid-19 vaccine production and distribution and passing over $3 trillion in Keynesian legislation meant to get the dregs of the middle class reoriented to a place on the map vis-a-vis the 1% once again.
Republican national debt bullshit
I am hereby calling bullshit on Republicans’ crocodile tears over the national debt, which they suddenly remember only when a Democrat is in town and summarily ignore while their guy is in the hot seat burning through cash like it’s going out of style.
We need to have a better collective narrative for Democratic success on the economy. The Republicans are no longer the kings of the economic world — if they ever were. It feels more like smoke and mirrors each passing day, with climate change denial, the Inflationary Boogeyman, and other GOP Greatest Hits playing ad nauseum on the AM social media waves.
Here are at least a few things to remember about the national debt, that Republicans generally get wrong:
wars are very expensive
booms in social services are expensive too; but not as expensive as wars
there is not any perceivable truth in the old GOP party line that Democrats always overspend and Republicans are always thrifty
Reagan and both Bushes presided over two of the biggest spikes in public debt in recorded history, outside of FDR who had both the Great Depression and WWII to contend with
Clinton, Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, and Truman all decreased the debt
be wary of graphs that don’t “normalize” to GNP — it’s an attempt to “lie with statistics” by obfuscating the roles of inflation and the growth of the economy itself
there is more than one way to look at and evaluate the level of public debt
I’ll be continuing to work on this as information comes out of the various investigations and inquiries into the attempted coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, from the January 6 Committee to Merrick’s DOJ, the GA district attorney, NY district attorney, various civil suits, and probably more we don’t even know about yet. You can navigate the full mind map as it grows here:
Head onward into “Continue Reading” to see the same mind map through a geographic perspective:
Or capital vs. labor, oligarchs vs. plebes, plutocrats vs. proles, rich vs. poor — however you want to narrate it, the property vs. people struggle continues on in new and old ways, each and ere day.
Here in America, the plutocrats have devised many clever methods of hiding the class struggle behind a race war smokescreen, that is both real and manufactured — instigated, exacerbated, agitated by the likes of schlubby wife abusers like Sloppy Steve Bannon, wrinkly old Palpatines like Rupert Murdoch, and shady kleptocrats like Trump and Putin.
The United States has nursed an underground Confederacy slow burning for centuries, for sociopathic demagogues to tap into and rekindle for cheap and dangerous political power. Like The Terminator, racist and supremacist troglodytes seem always to reconstitute themselves into strange and twisted new forms, from slavery to the Black Codes to sharecropping to convict leasing to Jim Crow to Jim Crow 2.0 — the psychopaths want their homeland.
Ds need to start framing this as an oligarch's game in which a global class war is repeatedly laundered and diverted into a provincial race war. https://t.co/9a0KikBuGo
The political left loves people, and our extremists for the most part destroy capital or property that insurance companies will pay to make shiny and new again — unlike the right wing extremists who bomb federal buildings, killing hundreds of people and costing taxpayers’ money to replace.
Meanwhile, the right wing claims to be the righteous party for its extreme fixation on life before birth, yet its regulation-allergic capitalists destroy people and the natural world more broadly, from factory farming to deforestation, the destruction of habitats, strip-mining and other toxic extraction practices, and on into climate change itself. Being in fact the chief architects of manmade atmospheric devastation, they have managed to make themselves invisible from the deed by simply (wink wink!) denying it exists.
WWJD?!
Certainly, not anything the Republican Party is up to. Jesus would be sad.
Freedom means the right to make choices. When you have a large population, that means many different kinds of people are making many kinds of different choices for different reasons. That means, mathematically speaking, a broad distribution graph of options chosen over time. Freedom produces diversity, as a direct consequence of its own laissez-faire philosophy.
The Founders knew this. James Madison was an intellectual of his day, and a polymathic student of the great ideas of his time. It is hard not to see the influence of exposure to Condorcet’s theory about decision-making in Madison’s later ideas about diffusing the flames of factions by essentially dousing them in the large numbers of people spreading out within the growing nation. He believed that ideas and interests that were actively opposing each other would be a good way to preserve enough vigor to sustain an active self-governing democracy.
Regardless of the origin, Madison clearly himself was advocating for the power of diversity to preserve the very republic. He believed that this diversity of views in fact provided the structure that would help prevent singular demagogues from rising up too far and destroying democracy forever in their quest for unlimited power. The founders shared this foresight — that giving Americans the freedom to live as they may would lead to a healthy democracy, through the promulgation of different ideas and knowledge as well as through vigorous debate.
You can’t have freedom without diversity
Many who cite Freedom as their patriotic raison d’être do not seem to tolerate well the exercise of freedom by others, particularly others they disagree with or do not like. But as the great Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer once said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” She had the insight that if her civil rights could be taken away from her, then no one else’s rights would be safe in this nation either.
America has always struggled to live up to its founding ideals — but it seems like if we want to truly honor their memories, we would continue to take that vision at face value and continue to carry the light of the torch of equality, perhaps upwards to the crest of a hill from whence we may shine once again.
A national banking crisis in America that eventually spread to threaten economies around the globe, the economic crisis of 2007-8 was precipitated by the financial industry getting deeper and deeper into highly leveraged risk with a specific type of financial product called a subprime mortgage.
The loans were not of very high quality, due to the effects of predatory lending and of companies “pushing their luck” in a deregulated market by knowingly offering mortgage credit to Americans who couldn’t really afford to buy the homes they were encouraged to purchase. Mortgage underwriters were often incentivized with large bonuses for subprime signups, and even relatively well-off home buyers were often shepherded into subprime loans with worse terms than the traditional 30-year mortgages they would have qualified for.
Financial “hot potato”
The mortgages were securitized as complicated new types of assets, re-packaged into large bundles of derivatives to better obscure the sources, and rated far more favorably than warranted by the nation’s credit rating agencies. Sold swiftly around the world and especially here in the U.S. to institutional investors (who manage, among other securities, the pensions and retirement funds of the country), the game of financial “hot potato” ensured that almost no one in the complex chain of exchange had any incentive to take responsibility for the actual solvency of the underlying loans.
Eventually, the bubble popped and the house of cards came tumbling down. The downturn is widely regarded as the worst economic disaster in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s, brought on by the stock market crash of 1929.
Moral hazard: Does commercial and investment banking under one roof create the wrong incentive?
In post-recovery, much scrutiny remains over the question of whether one specific law — the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which separated commercial banking from investment banking in response to the Great Depression — should be reinstated. Following its passage, the U.S. was able to stop the previous historical cycle of banking crises with regularity about every ~15 years:
…Until “stagflation” (high inflation coupled with stagnant growth) plagued the American economy in the 1970s, and the political establishment began to adopt policies heavily influenced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economic thought, which borrowed heavily from an earlier wave of economic philosophy in the 1930s loosely congealed under the term “neoliberalism.” Widespread financial deregulation ensued, leading to the full repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. Many economists now point to the deregulation spree as the ultimate cause of the 2007-8 financial crash.
The estate tax only kicks in at $5.4m in wealth — so it’s not about the “American worker”!
Repealing it would give away $270 billion to rich elites.
The concept of “double taxation” is a red herring, because most estates contain real estate assets whose capital gains have never been realized and taxed.
Inequality is the difference in measures of economic well-being between individuals in a group, among groups in a population, or among countries. Also known as economic inequality; inclusive of both income inequality and wealth inequality.
In the United States, the data broadly shows shared economic growth and prosperity in the post-WWII period until the 1970s, when things begin to take a turn: economic growth slowed and income inequality began to increase. For the past 40-50 years, income growth for lower and middle class Americans has stagnated while income growth at the top of the distribution remained growing strongly. Meanwhile as wages have stagnated, costs have risen dramatically, especially in key universal areas like housing, utilities, health care, and education.
Those at the top of the wealth distribution who benefit financially from the growing inequality find numerous ways to justify the architecture of the system, and retain much of the power and control over its design. Yet an overwhelming majority of the available historical and present-day data indicates that stark income inequality has wide-ranging negative effects on societies as a whole, from exacerbating social ills to deleterious effects on basic human needs.
Related effects
Endangers the basic viability of democracy by concentrating power vs. distributing it broadly
Or: How Milton Friedman destroyed Western civilization, the neolliberalism story.
An economic ideology first theorized in the 40s and 50s by scholars, it was brought to popular attention in the 1970s by the works of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand among others. It grew in popularity and became widely adopted in U.S. economic policy beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 80s.
The essential heart of neoliberalism is the idea of the rich as top performers and job creators, driving the economy forward through their achievements and innovations; and that societies work best with little government regulation and where citizens are shaped to work according to market principles. Its adoption as a major driver of policy effectively undid many of the gains to middle class opportunity created by the New Deal, FDR‘s ambitious public works project that pulled the nation out from the grips of the Great Depression following the 1929 crash on Wall Street.
Neoliberalism is the dominant economic orthodoxy in the modern era. It is both a political and a financial ideology, with the following extremist beliefs:
Antigovernment sentiment — Their pitch is that all governments, including democratic ones, threaten individual liberty and must be stopped (or “drowned in the bathtub,” in the words of anti-tax zealots and movement conservatives).
Free markets should conquer governments — They claim, absurdly, that the toppling of self-governance would improve both economies and individual liberties.
The victory of markets is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it — The fall of the Soviet Union and Cold War Communism was deemed the “end of history” by neoliberals, who believed that laissez-faire free market capitalism would inevitably triumph over all other forms of economic and political systems.
Economies work best when governments don’t intervene — Neoliberals want to prevent the powers of government from interfering with their ability to cut corners, dump industrial waste, pay fair wages, offer benefits, adhere to safety standards, engage in deceptive advertising, commit tax evasion, and so on — while continuing to supply them a steady stream of the public’s money via unpaid for tax cuts that balloon holes in the deficit. They fight against regulation tooth and nail, and try to claim that markets operate “naturally” as if under something akin to laws of physics — while failing to mention that there are no markets without regulation, without standards of fairness, without a justice system to enforce contracts and do its best to ensure a relatively equal business playing field.
The alchemy of neoliberalism will transmute greed into gold for everyone — The neoliberal promise is about spreading wealth, freedom, and democracy around the world — at the barrel of a gun, missile, or drone if necessary. Neoliberals consider greed to be the essence of human nature, and have modeled an entire societal system around this most base of human instincts. They claim, improbably — and surely many are True Believers — that narcissism and the aggressive pursuit of power and wealth will somehow magically create peace, happiness, and riches for everyone.
The insistence that governments and self-rule should be subordinated to the ultra-rich, to the oligarchs — that, to me, is the core essence of why this framework is evil. The staggeringly dissonant conviction about transforming sociopathy into global peace is a very close second.
Since the 1970s and accelerating with Reagan years, wealthy elites in the right wing have been spending gobs of their ill-earned wealth on creating a conservative movement echo chamber of think tanks, talk radio, literature, televangelists, YouTube streamers, and more — it is the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton warned us about. It most certainly exists, and it most certainly is aggressively pursuing its political aims to disenfranchise the American people as fully as possible, so as to better walk away with an absurdly unjust share of the mutually created wealth by the wealth of intelligent and diligent labor here in the United States.
Common whites
It appeals to the MAGA crowd because it allows them to vicariously tag along with the rich and powerful right-wing bigots who flaunt and dangle their wealth in front of the plebes by which to entice them to open up their wallets and send in a meagre donation for this or that white victimhood fund that does nothing but enrich the scam artists who run it as a hollow shell. It validates their hardcore white supremacy and casual racism alike, provides the sadistic satisfaction of attacking their enemies (symbolically and/or literally), gives them something to do and believe in, and keeps them entertained while their pockets are being fleeced in broad daylight.
Neoliberalism has succeeded in undermining some of the last shreds of democratic infrastructure and civic goodwill in society at this point in American political history. The defenses brilliantly architected by the Founders to ensure checks and balances would manage the power games in Washington to within workable levels have frayed even further under 4 years of Trump, and the vitriol of the January 6 coup attempt and insurrection that’s fueled further right-wing Big Lie entrenchment and domestic terrorist extremism.
Democracy is in crisis, and neoliberalism the culprit of this hostage story.
At least Joe Biden is correct in his analysis of the solution: we should tax the rich.
This is an attempt (bear with me!) to encapsulate a framework of the major events of importance since our curious species came down from the trees. Human History Timeline is going to be a work in progress… forever! Be sure to check back as time unfolds.
Year
Event
Region
Theme
Domain
-250000
Modern humans emerge in Africa.
Africa
Ancient History
Science
-120000
Earliest cave paintings we know of are located in a South African cave.
Africa
Ancient History
Arts
-100000
Modern humans migrate to the Middle East.
Middle East
Ancient History
Human History
-75000
Modern humans arrive in Southeast Asia and China.
Asia
Ancient History
Human History
-40000
Modern humans had now spread around the globe as we arrived in Europe, living alongside Neanderthals. The earliest European cave paintings are from around this time in Spain.
Europe
Ancient History
Human History
-28000
The Neanderthals go extinct.
Europe
Ancient History
Human History
-16000
Humans cross the Bering Strait to Alaska over a land bridge exposed by the warming planet
North America
Ancient History
Human History
-15000
The ice age ends, and global temperatures rise by 15 degrees C.
Global
Ancient History
Science
-14000
Modern humans reach South America
South America
Ancient History
Human History
-10000
First human settlements begin in the North American Great Plains, modern-day Syria, and in the Yellow River Valley region of China.
Global
Ancient History
Human History
-7000
Invention of textiles in Egypt
Africa, Middle East
Man vs. Nature
Technology
-5000
Cultivation of tin as a metal resource
Ancient History
Technology
-4241
The Egyptians begin using the 365 day calendar
Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
-3800
Bronze Age begins
Global
Ancient History
Technology
-3500
Mesopotamian cities Ur, Uruk, and others have emerged in and around modern-day Iraq
Middle East
Ancient History
Politics
-2980
The Great Pyramid of Zoser is built in Egypt
Africa, Middle East
Ancient History
Architecture
-2000
The last woolly mammoths die out and the species go extinct
Global
Man vs. Nature
Science
-2000
Epic of Gilgamesh composed
Middle East, Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
-1792
Hammurabi's Code of Laws
Middle East
Democracy's Story
Politics
-1200
The Iron Age begins almost simultaneously around the world, in the Middle East, Europe, and India
Middle East, Europe, Global
Man vs. Nature
Technology
-800
The city of Rome is founded by Romulus and Remus
Europe
Ancient History
Politics
-560
Siddharta Gautama born in India, later to become the Buddha; founder of Buddhism
Asia
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
-530
Greek tragedy is in full swing with contributions from Aeschylus, Thespis, soon Sophocles, and others
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
-510
Roman Republic formed when the citizens overthrew king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, aka Tarquin the Proud
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
-49
Republic of Rome becomes the Roman Empire when Julius Caesar overthrows the Republic
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
-27
Julius Caesar Augustus becomes the first emperor of Rome, ruling for 45 years
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
79
eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Science
312
New self-made Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity — at least nominally; he makes the empire safe and welcoming to Christianity, while maintaining many of his old Roman beliefs
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
325
Council of Nicaea called by Emperor Constantine; the adoption of the Nicene Creed establishes the empire's stance on the divinity of Jesus and establishes Christianity as the state religion
Europe
476
The last western Roman emperor , Romulus Augustinius, is deposed — beginning the era of the Holy Roman Empire and marking the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages
Europe
Age of Empires
Technology
632
Death of Muhammad leads much of the Middle East and North Africa to convert to Islam
Middle East, Africa, Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Politics
656
The first battle between the Shia (followers of Ali) and the Sunnis (followers of Aisha) over the fate of Islam — a war still raging to this day
Middle East
900-1200
the golden age of North African science
Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Science
1000
an Indian mathematician recognizes the power of zero
Central Asia, Asia
Our Place in the Universe
Science
1040
Movable type is invented in China
Asia
Knowing Things
Technology
1066
Battle of Hastings — France's William the Conqueror defeats the other claimant to the English throne Harold and is crowned the first Norman king of England.
Europe
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1073
China invents an elaborate incense seal clock
Asia
Knowing Things
Technology
1149
Founding of Oxford University in England
Europe
Knowing Things
Knowledge
1200
Cambridge University founded in England
Europe
Knowing Things
Knowledge
1265
first Parliament elected in England, consisting mostly of feudal lords, knights, and wealthy aristocrats
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1271
Venetian Marco Polo travels to China with his father at the age of 17; having been the first Europeans to visit the court of Kublai Khan over a 9-year stretch, the elder Nicolò Polo brings his son with him on the return journey — it will take them a trek of three and a half years
Europe, Asia
Age of Empires
Knowledge
1328
The sawmill is invented
Europe
Business of the World
Technology
1330
the hour becomes essentially our modern concept of hour
Global
Man vs. Nature
Technology
1347-1351
Approximately 75 million people die from the Bubonic Plague
Europe, Africa, Middle East
Man vs. Nature
Science
1399
English poet Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
1431
Joan of Arc is burned at the stake
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
1445
Gutenberg invents the printing press
Europe
Attention Must be Paid
Technology
1492
Christopher Columbus lands in the Americas, ushering in the age of Spanish Conquistadores and the colonial period — first in the Bahamas, then Cuba, then Hispaniola before heading home
North America
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Knowledge
1517
Martin Luther, a German monk, becomes disillusioned with the church's selling of indulgences to fund construction projects (and with Calvinism more generally). Submits his 95 theses to papal authority, and after various machinations is excommunicated for challenging the authority of the Pope
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1583
Galileo dedicates himself to the study of mathematics and physics
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1585
Founding of the first American colony at Roanoke, in modern-day North Carolina
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1607
Founding of the second American colony at Jamestown, in modern-day Virginia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1636
Harvard University founded
North America
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1637
the first American slave ship sets out on her maiden voyage
North America, Africa
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1665
Plague arrives in London
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Science
1688
Glorious Revolution in England: Parliament invited Dutch William of Orange & his wife Mary, James's Protestant daughter, to replace James
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1701
Yale College founded
North America
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1760
invention of the steam engine in England (James Watt)
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Technology
1776
U.S. Declaration of Independence is written in Philadelphia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1787
U.S. Constitution written in Philadelphia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1789
U.S. Constitution is ratified
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1799
~10-year French Revolution overthrows the monarchy
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1839
Louis Daguerre demonstrates the photographic technique he's developed: the camera
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
1844
The Associated Press founded
North America
Attention Must be Paid
Knowledge
1859
Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1865
U.S. Civil War ends
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1914
WWI begins
1921
Tulsa massacre
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1942
Pearl Harbor
North America
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1945
WWII ends
1949
Formation of NATO
Europe, North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1953
Korean War ends
1954
Brown v. the Board of Education
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1961
Stanley Milgram conducts his famous obedience studies showing how willing students are to give electric shocks to their peers if ordered to by authority figures
Science
1964
Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
Democracy's Story
Politics
1975
The Vietnam War ends
1980
Election of former actor and PR agent Ronald Reagan as President of the United States
1984
Breakup of the Bell system monopoly
1986
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine
1987
Iran-Contra scandal wherein Reagan trades arms for hostages and lies about it
1989
Berlin Wall falls
1990
Tim Berners-Lee puts up the first web page
1991
Soviet Union collapses
1998
Microsoft monopoly broken up
2000
Vladimir Putin becomes Russian President following Yeltsin's resignation
2007
Apple announces the first iPhone; Google announces Android
2008
Bitcoin and the blockchain invented
2010
Citizens Unied ushers in the era of dark money in politics
