"Saving General Washington" is a book by J.R. Norton. It's published by Tarcher/Penguin and available at Amazon.com. [Buy the book]

A Year Later, the Onion Gets On Board | June 6, 2007

New Onion article: "Retired Gen. George Washington Criticizes Bush's Handling Of Iraq War."

It's entirely possible that my friend Peter, the Onion's managing editor, read SGW and got inspired. Or it's entirely possible that great minds, as per usual, come up with the same kind of stuff. Either way, a terrific story. An excerpt:

The Virginia-born Revolutionary War veteran and national-capital namesake also expressed his worry over the state of the American militia, the unchecked powers of the executive branch, and the lack of a congressional declaration of war.

"The very genius of the American presidency is that it is an office held by an elected representative of the people, not by a monarch who can rule by fiat and enact policy at will," Washington said.

Happy New Year! | Dec. 27, 2006

Very nice interview with me by Judith Siers-Poisson of the Center for Media and Democracy over on the PR Watch website.

All in all, it's been quite a good year.

mp3 Action | Sept. 19, 2006

The mp3 of my appearance on Liberadio is now online if you've got any interest in listening to me talking about the book and/or Al Franken for about half an hour.

The Founding Fathers and 9/11 | Sept. 11, 2006

I appeared on Liberadio (a Nashville-area talk show) today to talk about the parellels between post-Revolutionary War and post-9/11 politics in America. It was less of a stretch than you might think. In both cases, the country (or the colonies) faced a tremendous time of national crisis that gave the people in charge an unheralded opportunity to change the tone and redraw the way politics worked. And in both cases, leaders took decisive action. In the case of Washington (and friends) the country moved firmly away from monarchy and toward a republican democracy. In the case of Bush (and friends) we stepped right back in the opposite direction.

Plan? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Plan | August 16, 2006

Yet another op/ed over in the Monitor, this time going after the canard that Democrats need some sweeping plan to be electable in November. Democrats need to tell voters that they'll stop the madness and fight to return America to its core values, at which point we can huddle as a country and decide where to go from there. Big plans brought us Iraq, Medicare D, and the ever-blooming national debt. Anyway, give it a read.

Already got a nice email about the piece:

Dear Mr. Norton

Bravo on your article in the monitor recently about the Democrats plan. Your insight has encouraged me to take a good look at my party affiliation....... (long enough) well another republican bites the dust Thanks

I'm always wary of claims that people have switched parties on the strength of a single piece of evidence, but sometimes a final straw can break the camel's back.

Right?

Small Biz Op/Ed in the Monitor | July 28, 2006

I've got a new piece in The Christian Science Monitor. This time, it's a rather unlikely op/ed that pits the innovative small-business ethic of Ben Franklin against the Bush administration's Small Business Administration, which — surprise, surprise — has been pumping small-business coded contracts into companies such as Boeing and Bechtel.

Also worth noting: I'll be on the radio show hosted by Twin Cities journalism legend Don Shelby. If you're in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, you can listen to me at 3pm on Monday, July 31, on WCCO 830 AM.

Also, and this is apropos of nothing, there is a fantastically catchy new French single out celebrating(?) the Zidane headbut. Play it to make this unseasonably hot weekend pass a little more quickly. Thank goodness there's no such thing as global warming, or who knows how hot it'd be.

Bush at NAACP | July 24, 2006

The president made a legitimately thought-provoking point during his address to the NAACP last week:

When people talk about America's founders they mention the likes of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams. Too often they ignore another group of founders — men and women and children who did not come to America of their free will, but in chains.

Classic Bush; great rhetoric, no follow-through. Over the past five years, Bush has roundly ignored both groups of founders. Outside of a willingness to used "faith based" programs to buy off African American churches in swing states, few administrations have been so openly dismissive of African American concerns as Bush's. There's a convenient one-word shorthand for this: "Katrina."

And few administrations have so thoroughly limited their respect for the Founders to offhand rhetorical flourishes that ignore the basic principles — a limited executive branch, transparent government, a free press, cautious involvement in foreign affairs — that they stood for.

And could anyone watching at home keep a straight face when he said:

I come from a family committed to civil rights.

Good lord.

A Non-Historical Washington Biopic | July 18, 2006

Matt Hanson, who helped me out with research for SGW on a volunteer basis, sent me a link to a short film about George Washington. It contains language and images which may not be entirely safe for work, so click at your own risk. It bears only a passing relationship to one of my book's themes (George Washington = badass), but it did crack me up.

Fondling Your Muse | July 12, 2006

McSweeney's editor John Warner was kind enough to do a Q&A with me over on his site for Fondling Your Muse: A Book of Advice from a Published Author to a Writerly Aspirant, a Hands-On Guide to Writing Your Very Own New York Times Bestseller. Check it out.

Cap Times Review | July 6, 2006

Never let it be said that Madison, Wisconsin was not kind to the book. John Nichols, an editor at the Capital Times and a regular contributor to the Nation, had some kind words for the book:

"Saving General Washington" succeeds because Norton began by immersing himself in those original texts, and he quotes them well and wisely — especially when using them for the purpose of skewering the Tories who have occupied Washington.

...

"Saving General Washington: The Right Wing Assault on America's Founding Principles" is a redemptive book for Americans who still believe in this promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a reminder — as timely as it is necessary — that those of us who cherish freedom, equality and justice are patriots to the cause of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Paine.

Alterblogged | June 18, 2006

Saving General Washington got a solid blog mention over on Alternet via writer Evan Derkacz.

Derkacz hit the trifecta; he got the book premise right, mentioned the substance of my Al Franken Show interview, and linked to my Monitor op/ed. Big ups!

A Big Day in Wisconsin | June 15, 2006

The Wisconsin Public Radio appearance (which you can listen to here) went quite well, I thought. It was almost 60 minutes, and the Amazon numbers for SGW spiked afterward — really gratifying.

And on a much less objective note, there's a wonderful comment about the book on a site called theskepticsguide.org:

If you want to know how our founding fathers really felt about religion, read J.R. Norton's "Saving General Washington" or Susan Jacoby's "History of American Secularism." I love to throw snippets from these in the face of my evangelistic little brother. Both publications are rational, deliberative prose, replete with ample supporting references for their positions.

Now that's the sort of reaction I was hoping for.

Blog Bounce | June 14, 2006

Glenn Greenwald, the author of "How Would a Patriot Act," was kind enough to give my Monitor Op/Ed a link over at his blog, Unclaimed Territory. Along with "Saving General Washington" and John Dean's upcoming book, "Conservatives Without Conscience," Greenwald's book is part of a wave of new works looking at the authoritarian — hell, un-American — bent of the Bush government.

"Roots of US War Prisoners' Rights Run Deep" | June 13, 2006

My "Saving General Washington"-inspired op/ed appears in tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor, but you can read it on their website right this very moment.

Springboarding off of that, I'll be on The Al Franken Show tomorrow at 1:30pm Eastern to talk about the op/ed.

And the excellent blog Liberal Grace posted a quick (one question) e-mail interview with me. The author looks at current events from a liberal Christian perspective — something we could use a whole lot more of in today's discourse.

Hometown Boy | June 13, 2006

A nice mention [pdf] of "Saving General Washington" in Madison's alt-weekly, the Isthmus, and another in the Capital Times, by Doug Moe. Not bad. Not reviews, per se, but I'm not complaining.

Also, the first SGW Op/Ed may be in the mix this week, springboarding off the "good PR move" made by those three Guantanamo Bay detainees who killed themselves. Would the Founding Fathers have treated prisoners as the United States treats them in Gitmo? I guess that's what's known as a "rhetorical question..."

Oh Canada | June 9, 2006

There was a nice write-up of the book in the May 28 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press — reviewer Ron Kirbyson said a bunch of stuff that I wouldn't mind repeating. Here are some of the best bits...

Norton is convincing in the contrast he draws between the high quality of leadership marking the U.S.'s beginning and its opposite in 2006. His argument is well-constructed, as he contrasts the statements (and actions) of the founding fathers and the present-day American bosses.

His identification of sources, while not so extensive as to be considered scholarly, reflects a thorough knowledge of his material. He is conversant with the documents of the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, the correspondence between early American leaders.

...

On topic after topic, he reveals the insightfulness of the George Washingtons and exposes the superficiality of the George Bushes.

Norton writes with clarity, force and acerbic wit. Further, his word pictures are priceless.

...

Ultimately Norton writes as an optimist. His experience of returning to the words of the founding fathers has inspired in him a renewed sense of the worth of the U.S. as a kind of nation of destiny.

He believes that others can share his experience and feel a similar renewal. Not surprisingly, he believes the Republicans are ripe for defeat in a rebirth of progressive sentiment and thought, a phenomenon for which the odds may be improved by the larger youth vote in upcoming elections.

Now, if only I could get some press like that south of the Canadian border...

To Clarify... | June 6, 2006

Better radio details: I'll be on "What's At Stake" at 10:15am Eastern — that's WPFW 89.3 FM for all you Washingtonians.

And then I'll be on WSUM's literary show this Thursday at 4:15 Central. That's 91.7 FM for all you Madisonians.

WSUM, WPR, Etc | June 5, 2006

With any luck, this will be a decent week for the book. I'll be on WSUM (UW-Madison student radio) on Thursday, and a DC-based Pacifica show on Wednesday. More on that when I have details. Next week should feature my public radio debut, on Wisconsin Public Radio — that has the potential to be great for the book. The Isthmus is doing a brief item on me this week as well — nice to see some of the home-team folks taking notice.

The book has some strong Wisconsin elements — I write about Russ Feingold, Bob LaFollette and Bill Proxmire, and talk a little bit about playing tag in the state capitol building as a kid. That latter point isn't as random as it seems; it's my jumping off point for talking about how the American ideal is a government that is open and accessible to all of its citizens, not the imperial ideal that seems to be increasingly popular with the executive branch in recent years.

The Competition / More Radio | May 23, 2006

Historian Richard Brookhiser has come out with "What Would the Founders Do?" a book that resembles mine in just about every aspect except that:

a) Brookhiser is a professional historian and

b) He sidesteps the fairly crucial question of what the Founders would have made of the Bush administration's complete desecration of their legacy.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but if you have and feel like shooting me an email of your assessment, please do.

On an unrelated note, I'll be doing some more radio this week. Tonight, at 5:10pm Central, I'll be on The Marc Maron Show. Thursday evening, at the god-forsaken hour of 9pm Central, I'll be on "The Other Side" with Glenn Urbach, on Pacifica. Tune in... if you dare!

I guess that you don't really need to be very daring in order to tune in.

Pub Day | May 18, 2006

The book's officially out. W00t! Started the morning with an interview (taped for broadcast tomorrow) with Rachel Maddow. I'll be doing The Al Franken Show today from 1:30-2pm Eastern, and quite possibly The Majority Report tonight.

Radio, Radio | May 11, 2006

A bit of radio coming up next week... Mostly Air America (Rachel Maddow, Marc Maron, Al Franken) and a Pacifica show. After that initial bounce, no telling where things may go. More details on the days/times when I have everything nailed down.

The First Review is In | April 13, 2006

Kirkus was quite kind to "Saving General Washington," calling it "judicious," "wry," and "sometimes a tad smartass." The stirring conclusion:

"It's thus a great irony, Norton argues, that the Bushies so intently strip away civil liberties even as they profess to be legitimate heirs to the likes of Adams, Washington and Jefferson. In the matter of nepotism alone, Norton deftly shows, they don't even approach operating in the same moral universe.

More Jon Stewart's America than Alistair Cooke's, but with a fierce and often funny point. Just the thing for the midterm elections."

In the Mix on Amazon | March 30, 2006

A British friend of mine pointed out that the book has popped up on Amazon, which was news to me. Preorder your little hearts out. Personally, I'm waiting until I can get it at Borders — which is May 18, incidentally.

Novus Annum | January 1, 2006

It's suddenly 2006, and I'm coming down the final stretch in terms of writing the book; just adding a few satirical fake news articles to tie the text together. This is fortunate, as I start my new job at The Al Franken Show tomorrow. My fiance and I made eggs benedict for breakfast this morning; a lot of work, but actually worth it. Came out stellar. Three cheers for Wolferman's English Muffins, and, of course, butter.

The Other End of the Storm | November 8, 2005

I'd intended to blog throughout the writing process, but subsequently got overwhelmed. The good news is that the corpus of the book is largely finished — something like 20 chapters are cooling on the rack as I write these words. The other, uh, good news is that extensive revisions should focus and reorganize the raw text I've created into a cogent and passionate argument about how far our government has strayed from its progressive and pragmatic roots.

Slightly Used, Much Abused | September 9, 2005

Been exhaustively plumbing the depths of the White House website to unearth examples of the Bush administration using and misuing the legacy of the Founding Fathers. The good news is that they've only blatantly misused the Founding Fathers' words about ten times. The bad news is that over five years they've only used them — in total — about 37 times. The Founding Fathers just aren't on the administration's radar whatsoever — they're useless artifacts, trotted out on Thanksgiving and July 4, and forgotten in the course of actual policy-making.

The Godless Constitution | September 3, 2005

Just read "The Godless Constitution," by Isaac Kramnick. Great stuff — a very useful polemic from a distinguished scholar of the Revolution that points out that not only is the Constitution not a blueprint for a Christian theocracy (as Focus on the Family would argue), but contemporary critics absolutely blasted the Constitution for its secular nature.

Kramnick is careful (as I shall be) to not attack religion per se; he points out that some of the leading crusaders for keeping church and state separate were men of the cloth who saw the danger of discrediting religion as outweighing the benefits of getting mixed up in politics.

Down and Dirty with Hamilton | September 1, 2005

Ambitious perusal of Ron Chernow's excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton is yielding mixed fruit. On one hand, the Founders are behaving a lot more like human beings once they actually enter government. The feud between Jefferson and Hamilton is gut-wrenching, especially the character assassination that Jefferson engages in.

On the other hand, Hamilton and Madison have gotten into a serious quarrel about the intent of the constituion's framers, and whether the document is flexible and open to interpretation or should be strictly read (with few implicity powers.) The implication: even the Framers argued about the Framers' intent, and to pretend that there is one static or orthodox reading of the Constitution is lunacy.

House of Paine | August 25, 2005

Tom Paine is a kindred spirit — his lucid writing and expertly channeled rage are equally inspiring. Will be interesting to see how strong of a case can be built around the idea that Paine is one of the first to define what it means to be "American" — and how much he has in common with modern liberals.

Digging Up Jefferson | August 18, 2005

Research continues apace on the book. Having "done" Washington, Hamilton, and Franklin, I'm now beginning to wade through the works of Jefferson. First impressions: He's smarter — and colder — than the rest of these guys. He brings the sometimes chilling detachment of a surgeon or biologist to just about everything he does. His "Notes on the State of Virginia" are mind-blowingly detailed and precise. They're like an entire detailed encyclopedia entry.

Saving General Washington blog launched | August 10, 2005

Crude though it may be, this post kicks off the "Saving General Washington" blog. Keep checking this URL for more information about the book.