"We're not in Kansas anymore"

[Lanya]

This gives that line a whole new meaning.

via Balkinization  (A law blog)

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The Wizard of Oz--Did You Know?

Brian Tamanaha

Every now and then I read something that comes as a complete surprise. You might have the same reaction to the following passage from Jack Weatherford's The History of Money (1997), which comes out of his discussion of the late nineteenth century debate over adding silver to the gold monetary standard:

    The most memorable work of literature to come from the debate over gold and silver in the United States was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, by journalist L. Frank Baum, who greatly distrusted the power of the city financiers and who supported a bimetallic dollar based on both gold and silver. Taking great literary license, he summarized and satirized the monetary debate and history of the era through a charming story about a naive but good Kansas farm girl named Dorothy, who represented the average rural American citizen. Baum seems to have based her character on the Populist orator Leslie Kelsey, nicknamed "the Kansas Tornado."

    After the cyclone violently rips Dorothy and her dog out of Kansas and drops them in the East, Dorothy sets out on the gold road to fairyland, which Baum calls Oz, where the wicked witches and wizards of banking operate. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow, who represents the American farmer; the Tin Woodman, who represents the American factory worker; and the Cowardly Lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan. The party's march on Oz is a re-creation of the 1894 march of Coxey's Army, a group of unemployed men led by 'General' Jacob S. Coxey to demand another public issue of $500 million greenbacks and more work for common people.

    Marcus Hanna, the power behind the Republican party and the McKinley administration, was the wizard controlling the mechanisms of finance in the Emerald City. He was the wizard of the Gold Ounce--abbreviated, of course, to Wizard of Oz--and the Munchkins were the simpleminded people of the East who did not understand how the wizard and his fellow financiers pulled the levers and strings that controlled the money, the economy, and the government.

    In the Emerald City ruled by the Wizard of Oz, the people were required to wear green-colored glasses attached by a gold buckle. Beyond the city, the Wicked Witch of the West had enslaved the Yellow Winkies, a reference to the imperialist aims of the Republican administration, which had captured the Philippines from Spain and refused to grant them independence.

    In the end, all the good American citizens had to do was expose the wizard and his witches for the frauds they were, and all would be well in the bimetal monetary world of silver and gold. In the process, the farmer Scarecrow found out how intelligent he was, the lion found his courage, and the working Tin Man received a new source of strength in a bimetallic tool--a golden ax with a blade of silver--and he would never rust again as long as he had his silver oil can encrusted with gold and jewels.


I'm sure others know about this, and maybe I'm exposing my particular ignorance, but I had no idea that The Wizard of Oz was a political allegory. What makes this discovery especially jolting, for me at least, is that its meaning at the time--when many people would have recognized Baum's allusions--was so radically different from its taken-for-granted meaning today.

I hesitate to sully a discovery that is fascinating for its own sake, but I will use this example to quickly make a serious (albeit tangential) point. The original meaning theory of constitutional interpretation has prominent contemporary advocates--including, famously, Justice Scalia--who point to solid political theory arguments in support. But we must be mindful of the elusiveness and haze that envelops original meanings. Unless we turn constitutional interpretation over to trained historians with ample resources and time (and even then there will be problems), our assumptions about original meaning will be precarious.

Posted 1:39 PM by Brian Tamanaha

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/12/wizard-of-oz-did-you-know.html

[domer]

"The original meaning theory of constitutional interpretation has prominent contemporary advocates--including, famously, Justice Scalia--who point to solid political theory arguments in support. But we must be mindful of the elusiveness and haze that envelops original meanings. Unless we turn constitutional interpretation over to trained historians with ample resources and time (and even then there will be problems), our assumptions about original meaning will be precarious."

The "original meaning school" should be termed the "concretist school" for their literal style of interpretation. It focuses unduly on the specific problems the founders had in mind at the time of writing, rather than the abstract principles to be derived from the solutions they chose. The life of the constitution, clearly, lies in its principles, not their 18th century applications.

[Plane]

"The life of the constitution, clearly, lies in its principles, not their 18th century applications."

Isn't here a balence to be struck?

A knoledge of the circumstances should help understand the principals , I hope , without obscureing the principal behind detail presently useless.

[Lanya]

Hmm.

Worth doing a little reading elsewhere before posting. This has evidently been debunked a few times; I only kept track of one of them. 
Sort of reminds me of reading in a 60's Time Magazine what the lyrics were to a Rolling Stones song, why they were objectionable, and how they hurt the nascent women's movement.  Like Time cared! 
My main thought at the time was, "Whoa, wait til I tell my friends there are WORDS in their songs!"

http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/Populism.htm

[Amianthus]

I'm sure others know about this, and maybe I'm exposing my particular ignorance, but I had no idea that The Wizard of Oz was a political allegory. What makes this discovery especially jolting, for me at least, is that its meaning at the time--when many people would have recognized Baum's allusions--was so radically different from its taken-for-granted meaning today.

Probably because it was not written as a political allegory.

The name "Oz" did not come from an abbreviation for "ounce." In the author's own words, from a press release in 1903:

I have a little cabinet letter file on my desk that is just in front of me. I was thinking and wondering about a title for the story, and had settled on the "Wizard" as part of it. My gaze was caught by the gilt letters on the three drawers of the cabinet. The first was A-G; the next drawer was labeled H-N; and on the last were the letters O-Z. And "Oz" it at once became.

But I see you've already discovered that it was not an allegory.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Probably because it was not written as a political allegory.

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Just when I wanted to ask about the flying monkeys...

[Plane]

Isn't it sometimes true that analisis of the US Constitution is simularly Humbugged?