The Limits of Power

The first presidential debate is over and I still had PBS on the tv when Bill Moyers comes on with a very impressive guest: Andrew Bacevich. I have been completely sucked into this interview with this person who has such a deep and clear understanding of history and what it can teach us about where our country has ended up at this moment in time. I agree with so much of what he is saying, especially that we have created an “Imperial Presidency” over the past 40 years. I was surprised to find out that Bacevich is a conservative. Educated at West Point, with a PdD in History from Princeton, he served in both Vietnam and the Gulf War

Watch Bill Moyers’ interview with Andrew Bacevich.

Read Andrew Bacevich’s new book, The Limits of Power.

Luxembourg, USA: the movie

There’s a new documentary out about all of the Luxembourgese communities in the USA: Luxembourg, USA. The person we stayed with in Luxembourg City on my recent trip there just sent me the link. (See my earlier post about finding my roots in Luxembourg.) I hope it comes to the U.S. The web site is in French, I translated the promo text below. But the trailer is in English, with French subtitles. Watch the trailer (Windows media file).

Luxembourg, USA
“The film is a ringing portrait of the Midwest, of rural America, crossing a very specific and little known community: the Luxembourgese.

“Between 1830 and 1900, around 70,000 Luxembourgese (at the turn of the century, that was more than 25% of the population of Luxembourg) immigrated to the United States to discover the new world. They named their new cities Luxembourg, Belgium, Rollingstone…

“The film explores the history of and reasons for this immigration to the new world. But Luxembourg, USA is primarily about the Mid West today, the region in the central-north of the U.S., where 90% of the population today is of European descent.

“This part of America is known today as the heartland. It’s rural, conservative, faithful, and patriotic and different from the America imagined in the media. It’s an America rarely treated on television or on cinema and an America within which the descendants of Luxembourgers are truly representative. Who are they, how do they live, and what do they think about their roots?”