Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 June 21

= June 21 =

why is the USA more right-wing than europe and the rest of the westrn world?
Why is it that the US is much more right-wing than other english speaking countries and europe? In the recent UK elections the vote was split with the lib democrats and labour getting a large part of the vote (for the left) and the conservatives getting some for the right - in america it seems that so many more people are republicans or worse, members of the Tea Party. also their policies eg on healthcare, crime and punishment, drugs, equality, taxation etc are much more right wing, even with obama (who everyone thinks is a foreign communist!). I am not saying everyone from the US is like this, but why are there so many more right-wingers in the US and why are their views more extreme? Eerie Lamp Stand (talk) 10:38, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You might find the article Political ideologies in the United States interesting reading. --Viennese Waltz talk 10:44, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That is an interesting article - but it does not really explain why the US is more conservative. Also, why is there no such thing as a mainstream labour or socialist party in the US, whilst most other countries have one? Eerie Lamp Stand (talk) 12:13, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a very good question, but one that I think might need a long, well-researched book, not a few sentences on Wikipedia, to answer. One chapter might be about the Puritans, who were among the first Americans, leaving the UK to start a country in which their particular flavor of anti-everything Christianity could flourish.  One chapter might be about the US as a haven for less-educated immigrants.  One chapter might be about the different effects that World War II had on the US and on Europe.  -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 12:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think people are generalising. I happen to be from west Los Angeles, but I now live in southern Italy. Believe me, the people here are far more conservative than Californians in regards to women's rights, gay rights, religion, family, sex, animal rights, personal freedom of expression. And the Puritans never settled here! BTW, there was no UK when the Puritans arrived in New England in the early 17th century.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:38, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But I would hardly see a person like Nichi Vendola (openly gay communist, president of south Italian Apulia region) getting elected governor of California. Even though there exists socially progressive trends in the US (when it comes to gay right, animal rights, etc.), the formal political domain is pretty much a reserve for white men in suits talking about family values. Even in a state like California. I know that not all Americans are tea party wingnuts, but the (oftenly repeated at WP:RDH) query is valid; how comes that radical/left-wing trends cannot develop an effective political platform on state and national level? --Soman (talk) 14:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That has no effect on real Italian life. In the late 1980s/early 90s Italy had a former porn star in Parliament; however, at the same time in Sicily and Calabria, girls still had to be chaperoned by a female relative when they went out with their boyfriends, and honour killings still take place here. Also there has recently been a nasty spate of homophobic attacks in Rome against gays.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You're getting me wrong. My point is that, in spite of conservative and reactionary trends in society (we can debate how deep they are, and how they differ from country to country), the Italian left is able to have a political platform and is able to get its representatives elected to office, in this case in a staunchly conservative area. The same would be almost unthinkable, that an openly homosexual card-carrying communist be elected (through a hotly contested primary and then a general election) as governor of say Arizona. Then the question is, what are the causes (partly responded in this thread) that makes the US stand out from other Western countries in this respect. --Soman (talk) 13:27, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Note also that, while the US does tend to be more 'conservative' than the UK, your description is of a country far more conservative than the real US. Is it possible that you're mostly seeing the more sensationalized aspects of US politics?  The "Tea Party" is not really quite as large and powerful as they are noisy and fun to interview on television, and it wouldn't be accurate to say that everyone thinks President Obama is a foreign communist- after all, he did win the election by a considerable margin. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 12:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In a nutshell — because the US sees its optimal economic growth in laissez faire capitalism. Bus stop (talk) 12:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * We have had this kind of question before, but I don't know how to find it efficiently in the archives, so I will make another stab at an answer. First off, FisherQueen is absolutely right that most Americans are not on the far right. The Tea Party represents a sizeable constituency but far from a majority.  Also, this varies quite a bit regionally.  I live in the Boston area, which would not be out of place politically in Europe.  On the other hand, parts of the South and West are very far to the right, on average.  Even in those areas, though, you will find a minority who support policies that would be on the left even in a place like Britain. Now, as to why this is different from Britain and Europe, I think that you have to look to history for answers.  For much of its history, up until about the 1920s (my grandparents' generation), the United States was a country dominated by small but entrepreneurial family farms.  While there was an urban working class by the mid-1800s, a majority of Americans were not part of that working class and did not identify with its (leftist) politics.  Instead, they supported low-tax, low-benefit policies more attuned to would-be self-reliant entrepreneurs.  By the mid-20th century, this had changed, but even as the United States urbanized, it remained largely dominated politically by a middle class of salaried employees and professionals.  The urban working class that supported socialist politics in Europe never attained a majority for reasons having to do partly with the larger relative importance of services (vs. manufacturing) in the U.S. economy, even in the early to mid-20th century.  Another important factor that sharply distinguishes the United States from Europe historically is the racial division of the U.S. working class.  Until the 1960s, the black working class, whose politics were generally well to the left of the mainstream in the United States, were largely disfranchised.  (See Jim Crow laws.) This kept the political balance tilted to the right of the actual preferences of the population. As voting restrictions on blacks were lifted in the 1960s, the Republican Party, in particular, began an effective strategy to appeal to poor and working class white voters on issues of cultural resentment and subtle racism.  For example, Republicans campaigned for limited government and tax cuts on the grounds that taxes and government spending primarily benefited welfare queens—a coded term understood to refer to black people.  Through such strategies, and through corporate control of the media (e.g. Fox News), a large part of the natural constituency for left politics—lower income or working-class white voters—have been effectively recruited as supporters of right-wing policies.  Thomas Frank has explored related issues in his (IMHO) brilliant work What's the Matter with Kansas?.  Marco polo (talk) 13:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Eerie Lamp Stand -- Werner Sombart wrote a famous essay in 1906 titled "Why is there no Socialism in the United States?" which still might repay reading... AnonMoos (talk) 15:38, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Total speculation on my part, but in addition to being settled by religious conservative groups which hoped to escape Europe's persecution and/or perceived debauchery (Puritains, Quakers, etc.), the US has a strong history of rugged individualism brought about through frontier culture. When settling the frontier, you didn't have the support of the same social systems that were available in Europe or in cities - all you could count on was you and your rifle. Or at least this is the impression one is given by dramatic romanticizations of the American Old West (think John Wayne movies, or the Lone Ranger). -- 174.24.195.56 (talk) 15:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You may want to clarify your question. The US tends to favor right-wing philosophies (ie. the Democrats are center-Right by European standards), but our political parties are nowhere near as right-leaning as some active parties in Europe. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 16:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Another thing to clarify is that the United States has a plurality voting system much like Britain's in which a single legislator is elected from each electoral district (constituency). This has almost inevitably led to the development of precisely two major parties that tend to take the votes of their "base" on either the right or the left for granted and to compete for independent voters in the middle.  So while the Democrats are center-right by European standards, many of their voters are significantly further to the left, because they have nowhere else to go (the Republicans being well to the right, though (mostly) not (yet) quite far right, by European standards). In the system of proportional representation common in most countries of Europe, the United States would probably have smaller parties that would be left of center even by European standards.  Indeed, the existence of such parties might conceivably move the ideological center of the country to the left, because the true left now has very little voice in the U.S. media. Marco polo (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Although Canada has a similar Westminster system and isn't dominated by two parties (at least not to the same extent). TastyCakes (talk) 22:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The very first sentence in the OP's question makes a false assumption. And things go downhill from there. Americans are more apt to believe in individualism, and Europeans in collectivism. If that means America is more "conservative", then so be it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Where "individuals" is a euphemism for "Corporations". APL (talk) 22:38, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fwiw that's not been my experience in the US, standfast Boston which was pretty relaxed. Most places I've been discouraged individualism, encouraged conformity and rule adherence either explicit or tacit rules.  What the originator has done is not be particularly clear about what is meant by left and right wing in this context.  I've generally found the US to be economically liberal and socially conservative, pretty much across the board.  Whilst the economic mechanisms do encourage entrepreneurialism the is a level of support for the entrepreneurial approach that's not present in the UK and in several European countries.  Failure in the UK is something to be feared, whereas in the US there is a societal support for failure as a learning experience.  It's a form of conformity in its own right.
 * I'm afraid that the crass, ill-informed, generalisations don't work.
 * It'#s also already been observed that one of the significant differences in the political environment is the range of opinions are much wider. There is a bland uniformity in the US political scene, with two major parties sharing very similar outlooks both centre right.  That is present in the UK with all three major parties being roughly centre left, although what we have in the UK and elsewhere in Europe is much more dynamism around the range of political views.  Take a look at for example the BNP, socially conservative and economically socialist, the Green party, socially liberal and economically socialist, UKIP, socially conservative, economically liberal, Libertarian Party, socially and economically liberal lots of single issue parties that do actually retain a share of vote.  Numerous independents in parliament.  That certainly has an impact on policy direction as the main parties need to account for them.  My own constituency was, and remains, marginal and I'm pretty sure that the UKIP and English Democrat vote is one of the main factors that makes it marginal.
 * ALR (talk) 08:35, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Obviously there's a danger of generalization with any such observation... I would say, for example, that the average American is much more open to the idea of immigration that the average European. If you happen to see economic liberalism as being non-conservative I'd also say America is less conservative in that context as well. I also suspect some of Europe is more religious than America (see Religion in the European Union) and far-right politics seem to have more followers in Europe than the US. TastyCakes (talk) 23:01, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, comparisons are essentially difficult. I'd say that xenophobia is highly present in both U.S. and Europe, but it takes different shapes in political expression. For example, an organization like the Minuteman Project would be so politically incorrect in Europe that even the extreme rightwing would have difficulties digesting it. When it comes to religion, I'd say that there might be some places in Europe that are more religious an the average American citizenry, but there would be far more places in the U.S. that would be more religious than the European average. Also, the role of religion in politics is different, where U.S. candidates for office makes far more often seek to profile themselves as religiously devout, visit religious institutions during campaigns, make religious references in speeches, than the average European candidate would do. --Soman (talk) 03:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

My (American) view is that when one country pays for the common defense of many, and the others spend their tax revenues on social welfare, there will tend to be different trends in political ideology over several decades. And, when one has experience with fascism, but less so with communism (and, American had little direct experience with either inside its own borders), one may tend to lean to the left. DOR (HK) (talk) 08:37, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Many european countries were behind the iron curtain for decades, and were communist during that time. 92.24.189.232 (talk) 16:49, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * One of the reasons may be that the US has more space and less population density, particularly in the pioneer days. When you are living an isolated existence you would be more likely to differentiate between Us and them, as you seldom come into contact with "them". (Unfortunately Us and them redirects to something weird). 92.28.241.163 (talk) 14:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I wonder if there is a European version of Conservapedia. :-D  70.54.181.70 (talk) 17:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Hochschule fūr Kunsterzeichnung, Berlin 1933-1937
A biography of artist Lili Rilik-Andrieux (1914-1996), née Abraham, has her studying art (specifically drawing) in 1933-1937 at a "Hochschule fūr Kunsterzeichnung" [sic] in Berlin. I've had no success confirming the name of this institution, which may be corrupted by a transcription error or the like. The only Google hits are verbatim from the same text I'm reading. Help in puzzling this out is appreciated by yrs. truly, -- Deborahjay (talk) 10:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty certain it should read "Hochschule für Kunsterziehung" - a quick Google seems to confirm that that was the official name of Berlin's academy of the arts until at least 1945. "Kunsterzeichnung" is not a word in German, someone probably confused "Erziehung" and "Zeichnung" -- Ferkelparade &pi; 10:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Leo Tolstoy
I hear that Leo Tolstoy fathered more than twenty children from many women ! He was an intelligent, gifted and higly educated and literate person, why the hell he did that ? Jon Ascton   (talk)  14:06, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Why would this be a problem for an intelligent educated person and not a problem for a stupid illiterate person? Heck, aside from your moral judgment, why would this be a problem at all?  Googlemeister (talk) 14:23, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * He is known to have had 14 children, 13 with his wife and one before marriage. That is not abnormal for the time.  He likely had others, which again is not abnormal for the time. --  k a i n a w &trade; 14:26, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * King Charles II of England fathered at least 14 illegitimate chidren by a variety of mistresses. His remote ancestor Henry I of England outdid him in the paternity stakes by siring at least 20.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:29, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You see, when a man and a woman like each other very much...


 * (*ahem*) Sorry. The point being, even smart people enjoy sex, and may feel it appropriate to have more than one partner. Even if multiple children are involved. Remember, some societies don't place the stigma on children born out of wedlock that American Puritanism does. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 17:00, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you have a citation that says that children born to unmarried parents are more stigmatised in "puritan America" than in other so-called liberal societies? The Scarlet Letter took place over 350 years ago! I don't think you'll find people following unmarried mothers around California, Florida or New York beating drums.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:55, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Tolstoy pre-dated The Pill, but he didn't pre-date the sex drive. That tended to result in large numbers of pregnancies (although higher miscarriage and infant mortality rates did compensate a bit). --Tango (talk) 21:06, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sort of on this topic, you may find the South Park episode "Sexual Healing (South Park)" pretty funny.


 * Communism notwithstanding, why is Trolstoy + Frida a bad genetic match? Shadowjams (talk) 08:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.147.52 (talk) 10:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't feed the trolstoys. --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If you visit Wikiquote and have a look at Leo Tolstoy's most infamous remarks, I'd wager that a good half of them contain the word 'love'. Being so in love with love, it is not so hard to imagine that he was quite... pro-social, shall we say, when it came to his relationships with women. Vranak (talk) 03:05, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What it boils down to is that Tolstoy, like most people, liked to get it on.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Judge Laughlin or McLaughlin
I was doing revisions to a "this day in baseball history" list on another site, and found this item: "June 20, 1905 - A young woman sues the New York Giants for injury suffered when a foul ball hits her. Judge M. Laughlin rules that patrons attend baseball games at their own risk." I'm trying to figure out who the judge was. A look through google points towards Judge Chester B. McLaughlin, but I have no confirmation. Could someone with access to legal data bases or newspaper archives from that time confirm this ? Any additional info, such as was this the date of the incident, or that of the judgment, would also be appreciated. --Xuxl (talk) 14:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I found a Chicago Tribune article from June 21, 1905. The unnamed woman was hit on the nose by a foul ball at a game against Boston at the Polo Grounds on Sept. 3, 1904. She sued the Giants for $500. On June 20, 1905 "Civil Justice McLaughlin" ruled that "those who entered the grounds did so at their own risk." Hope this helps a little. --Cam (talk) 03:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Cam. That is indeed useful. --Xuxl (talk) 15:12, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The queen of Frederick the Great
I know Frederick was married to Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern. But she did not live at the court of Frederick so she could not have functioned as queen in a ceremoniel sence. Who filled the place as queen in the court etiquette of the Berlin royal court during the reign of Frederick? His mother or his sisters, perhaps? --85.226.45.47 (talk) 18:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What ceremonies do you have in mind? His mother most likely functioned as hostess and de facto first lady of the court. Surtsicna (talk) 18:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Having read our article about Elisabeth Christine and our article about Frederick II of Prussia, I get the impression that Frederick did not maintain the same kind of court culture at Sanssouci that may be familiar to us from Versailles. Apparently, Frederick kept Sanssouci virtually void of women (except probably servants), and conversation was "peppered with homoerotic banter".  During the winter, there may have been more of a semblance of a court in Berlin, but his mother was alive only for the first 17 years of his long reign.  If she played a queenly role before her death, it is not clear that anyone replaced her afterwards.  What exactly was the ceremonial role of a queen, anyway, and why would he have needed someone to perform that role?  Marco polo (talk) 19:12, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * At the Serbian royal court when King Milan I of Serbia separated from his consort, a cousin Katarina Konstanovic served as the de facto "first lady"; this would mean she took precedence at court functions, sat at the head of the table opposite the king during banquets, was present at his side greeting guests and statesmen, opened each ball by dancing with the king, etc.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * ...and those are ceremonial duties of a queen consort. Jeanne, I am surprised that you haven't created an article about Katarina Konstanović (or did you mean Katarina Konstantinović?). Surtsicna (talk) 10:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Surtsicna, you inspired me to do just that! Another instance where a question at Ref desk/Humanities has brought about the conception of an article!--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 08:24, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was more or less what I was refferring to: the first lady of the court. The ceremonies differ between courts, but they are always there - at least when they were female guests received at court, he would have to have a hostess there. I suppose that the spouse of the crown prince held that role from 1765 forward. Perhaps his sister Wilhelmine, who often visited him, played this part in 1757-1765? I know it is likely that his mother performed the part in 1740-1757, but is it confirmed?--85.226.45.47 (talk) 11:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You would probably have to obtain his biography to find out who acted as his official hostess.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 12:59, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Catholicism in the Old South
The O'Hara family in Gone With the Wind were Catholic (Gerald was Irish, after all). How likely would they have had access to a Catholic church in rural Georgia in the antebellum period? Or would there have been itenerant priests? Martha Mitchell obviously knew more about the period and the region than I do. :) I have ancestors who were Irish who immigrated to Virginia and then Tennessee, but there's no discoverable record of their retaining their Catholicism after they immigrated.  One of my ancestors was the James Burke of Burke's Garden, Virginia.  Everard Proudfoot (talk) 19:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Catholicism was more prevalent in the south than the north in the early US. The North was settled almost exclusively by protestant sects, but large Catholic populations settled around the Chesapeake and down into Virginia.  it was only after the war that the demographics changed: Persecution by reactionaries in the south drove many Catholics out (Priests were sometimes targeted and lynched by the KKK, to the extent that the pope order them to stop wearing the highly identifiable, traditional frocks in public). at the same time, massive immigration of Irish and Italians into the northern industrial states increased the Catholic populations in those regions.  -- Ludwigs 2  20:02, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know about Georgia, but in Mississippi — thus closer to traditionally Catholic Louisiana — there were very few Catholics pre-war. When William Henry Elder became the bishop of Natchez in 1857, the diocese (which encompassed virtually all of Mississippi) had nine priests for its eleven parishes.  At the same time, there were heavily Catholic areas in the North; see the Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches in Ohio, which was settled almost exclusively by Catholics (mostly Germans, with only one Irish parish and a few French ones) and which remains almost entirely Catholic to this day.  Nyttend (talk) 20:45, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Martha Mitchell may well have known a thing or two (she certainly had a hell of a lot to say), but the author of GWTW was Margaret Mitchell. :) --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   21:28, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Does the novel or the movie explicitly state they were Catholic? I have a number of Irish ancestors who came to American in the early 19th century, and they were all Protestants. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:48, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See Confiteor In addition, the lines they say while praying are at http://monaenglish.blogspot.com/2009/04/gone-with-wind-script-01.html. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ya, so many Ulster Scots (aka Scotch Irish) immigrated to the US it's not really a given that they were Catholic just because they were from Ireland. TastyCakes (talk) 21:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but my ancestors were from the South, not from Ulster. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:00, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There were Protestants in Southern Ireland (at least before the Irish Civil War there were). DuncanHill (talk) 08:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Snort. Yeah, Margaret.  Duh.  :)  Everard Proudfoot (talk) 21:52, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In the Gone With the Wind novel, there is a scene in which Gerald O'Hara refers to a neighbouring family as Scotch-Irish, meaning obviously that they were Protestant; also in the opening chapter of the novel it explains Scarlett's ancestry: Irish father (Catholic), French Catholic mother who had Presbyterian relatives.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:41, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The Colony of Maryland had begun as Catholic one although it later was changed. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 12:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

American military bases
The United States has military bases in dozens of countries around the world. What other nations have military bases in other sovereign countries, and where? 87.113.148.113 (talk) 23:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This is only a start, but the country links at Lists of military installations are interesting. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:16, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * France was recently in the news with the closure of their base in a former colony in Africa. Russia still maintains some bases in some of the now-independent former Soviet republics. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 11:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Britain and Australia have external bases, and a number of countries, including Chile and Argentina, have bases in Antarctica, though they claim bits of that continent as their own. Marco polo (talk) 15:40, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Except for the United States and Russia, the countries with extensive foreign military bases tend to be the former colonial powers of Europe. That might also be said to be the case for Russia, depending on how you characterize the Soviet Union.  Colonial relationships also affect U.S. bases (the U.S. was never an economically significant colonial power, but its few colonies were strategically far-flung), but World War II and the cold war were more important considerations for U.S. bases.  John M Baker (talk) 20:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * British overseas bases are here, although some are on British Overseas Territories, formerly known as Crown Colonies. Some US bases on British territories (e.g. Ascension Island) were as a result of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement in 1940. Alansplodge (talk) 11:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr.
I'm trying to improve the article on Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., but I've run into a bit of confusion regarding the years he was elected and when he served. Now the Texas State Legislature meets every other year. The book I'm using and the succession box that an earlier user created both confirm him serving in 1918. But, the book also says "And when, in November of that year (earlier stated as 1917), a special election was announced to fill a vacancy in the dictrict's legislative seat, the seat Sam had been forced to give up ten years before, and Sam, now able to afford it, announced for it, no one even bothered to run against him." The source possibly used to create the succession box says that he served in the "Twenty-ninth, Thirtieth, Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth, Thirty-seventh, and Thirty-eighth legislatures". So my question is what did that special election in November 1917 mean? Because if they serve every other year then 1917 would be a legislative year, not 1918. It's just really ambiguous, could someone help clear it up?


 * Ok I figured it out, so it looks like somebody was elected in 1916 to serve 1917 to 1918. However the seat became open and sam johnson served the remainder of the term and the election in 1918 was acually for the legislative session from 1919 to 1920. http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/legis/sessionYears.html --Profitoftruth85 (talk) 04:26, 26 June 2010 (UTC)