Friday's Klips

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP ––– WHICH? (part 2)

2010-08-09T17:19:00.004-05:00

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP --- WHICH?

by Elbert Hubbard,

Published by The Roycrofters, East• Aurora • Erie • County • N.Y.

Done into a Book by The Roycrofters at their shop, which is in East Aurora, State of New York.

The Closed or Open Shop?

(Part 2)

THE Federation of Labor has placed The Roycroft Shop on the Unfair List.

Isn't that terrible !

It occurred two years ago, and here I have never heard of it until day before yesterday.

Hic, My God ! or words to that effect. We are up against it !

When this bad news was brought to me I set the wheels in motion to find out the whyfore. And here are the reasons : First, The Roycroft Shop is teaching trades to an unlimited number of boys and girls.

Second, I have quoted J. K. Turner, who says, "Nothing that is secret can succeed." Also, I am a personal friend of C. W. Post, D. M. Parry, J. W. Van Cleave, John D. Archbold and James J. Hill, and have spoken well of these men in print.

To all these things I plead guilty ; and I might also add that I am a personal friend of Eugene Debs, T. V. Powderly, Clarence Darrow and Samuel Gompers.

The way I found out I was on the Unfair List

was when an advertiser canceled his contract with us, explaining that a certain Union had notified him that our publications did not bear the Union-Label, that we were officially "Unfair," and that he should cease advertising with us or stand the consequences.

Further investigation proved the facts as stated.

¶ Let it here be said that the Roycroft Shop has never had a strike ; that the wages we pay are above Union scale ; that the conditions under which the Roycrofters work are better than any Union ever demanded or imagined. Our offense is simply that by teaching trades to young people we increase the supply of skilled laborers ; and that to be a friend of men who have spoken in opposition to Unionism is a thing to invite displeasure. This displeasure then finds form in an endeavor to injure our business by posting us as "Unfair."

The hope, of course, is to drive us out of business, or else to force us to adopt the "Label" ; that is, force us to employ only those tho have a Union-Card. This means turning our business over to the Unions, and allowing them to say whom we shall teach and when and how. ¶ Did tyranny ever go further?

Did any "Trust" ever try to do worse? ¶ The Roycroft Shop has been placed on the "Unfair List," not because we are unfair to labor, but because we are not favorable to the Labor Trust. And it is a distortion of language to say we have been unfair to the Labor Trust, simply because we have told the truth about it. Is this not America, the home of free speech?

So let this fact be stated : The Federation of Labor does not stand for labor –– it only stands for such a portion of it as consents to be owned and dictated to by itself. For the multitude of young men and women who wish to gain an education through the skilled use of hands, it cares nothing. It knows nothing about educating the brain by use of the hand. The "pay-envelope" is all it knows or cares about.

Also it cares nothing for production or the net result of labor. All it thinks of is more wages and shorter hours.

The despotism of Unionism, if it could have its way, would reach past human belief. It seeks to paralyze human freedom and stop progress. The building of railroads and growth of cities is nothing to it. The pursuit of another's happiness is its chief concern.

¶ It intimidates my customer until he cancels his contract, fearing that he, too, will be placed on the Unfair List, and that customers will desert him.

¶ It seeks to chain my pen, and say whom I shall speak well of, and whom not.

It tries to name my friends, and if it could separate me from those I respect and admire, it would make their names anathema.

It steps into my household and tells me how my boys shall be educated and how not.

It examines my magazines and warns me to buy only of those advertisers who patronize magazines bearing the "Label."

And then when I protest, it says, "Oh, we do not want to hurt anybody –– if you employ only Union labor and use the Label, nothing will happen to you."

Isn't this disunionism?

Isn't it exactly the attitude of Spain during the Inquisition? Did not Spain say to the Jews, "Come into the Catholic Church, be one with us, and no harm shall befall you !"

The man with the big stick, who flashes a dark lantern in your face, and assures you that if you give him your watch, no harm shall happen to you,

is not a robber. Oh, certainly not ! Gompers just can't see the other side–– it is a matter of human limitation and so we will have to see it for him. He would stop manual training in schools, fearing trades in all prisons, for fear the prisons will become popular and honest men will be left without jobs. ¶ The endeavor of Unionism is to make the job last, not to get it done.

It assumes that the supply of work is limited and, if there are too many apprentices, the working man will soon be on half-time.

Any man with this buzzing bee in his bonnet is already a failure. Superior men see no end to work and all great men make work for thousands. Hill and Archibold are the best friends that labor ever had. They set armies to work and build cities where before were only prairie-dog towns.

Now the men who belong to the Unions are not bad men. Gompers is not a bad man. He gets five thousand dollars a year, and God knows he earns it. I don't want his job. His end will be the hatred of the people he seeks to serve, for labor is always ungrateful. Gompers is a Jew, and above all men the Jews ought to know the sin of persecution by

this time. But Gompers is a man, and no man is fit to be trusted with unlimited power. We are only safe where there is a strong opposition. To gain his lamented point Gompers would outdo his old friend, the lamented Torquemada, who chased the ancestors with sword and fagot. The only word of cheer Sam has for me is this, "Run a Union shop, and I'll guarantee you protection."

And that means, give Gompers the key to my shop and let him appoint a superintendent.

Men are Men––that is the trouble. When Debs indicts "Capitalism," all he does is to indict human nature. Men clutch for personal power, and forget the rights of other men.

The safety of this country demands that we shall resist coercion and intimidation, whether offered by a Church Trust or a Labor Trust. Why does n't Gompers start a factory of his own? Let him run a closed shop if he wants––we do not care.

The Unions have, as we have said, done much good in the past––to them we owe factory-inspection, child-labor laws and the shorter working day. But because a thing is good in small doses is no proof that we can stand an unlimited quantity of it.

A United States Court has declared that posting a

man as "Unfair" because this man employs certain men is itself unfair and must not be continued. For this offense before the law, Gompers may go to jail, and he declares that he is willing to to to jail. If need be, Gompers will be taught the lesson––the leisure will give him a chance to see the truth, which is that the boycott is un-American and must be bundled into the rag-bag of things that were. Lessee, what was it Patrick Henry said about freedom?

Both the word "boycott" and the thing itself are importations, borrowed from a people who, says my old college chum, Wu Ting Fang, govern everybody but themselves, and have influence everywhere, save in their own country. The boycott, I repeat, is un-American. It is a fight in a fog––a secret, treacherous, sneaking stab in the back––a crawling in the tall uncut. If we are going to fight let us fight in the open. Rightly has Judge Gould placed an injunction on the boycott. Let it be deported to the land where it originated.

It cose the Gobeille Pattern Company, of Cleveland, forty thousand dollars to get its name off the Unfair List. But that was ten years ago. I wouldn't give forty cents to have my name blotted from the

"Index Expurgation" of the Federation of Labor, any more than I would give Collier's thirty cents––Collier's who are doing my advertising gratis, to avoid publicity in their columns.

Commercial excommunication now is no worse than church excommunication. When the Church cuts you off, you can go to God direct. You simply eliminate the middleman. When organized-labor leaders seek to starve you out, you make your appeal to the people––and wax fat. Who represents the folks that actually work in this country, anyway ! On your life it is not the Walking Delegate!

When Gompers reaches out his long pole from Washington, New York, or Boston and endeavors to lambaste a man in Battle Creek, Indianapolis or St. Louis, he only wakes the party up and soon has a fight on hand. That a laborer shall not sell his labor where and when he desires ; that an employer shall employ only certain people ; that my boy shall not be educated ; that an advertiser shall not patronize certain periodicals––all this is shockingly Russian and overwhelmingly Irish.

We long ago decided not to be ruled by a person in England, or a man in Italy. The Anglo-Saxon is a transplanted Teuton, with a dash of hardy Norse

in his fiber that makes slavery for him out of the question. In every land upon which he has placed his foot, he has found either a throne or a grave. ¶ When those Norsemen with their yellow hair flying in the breeze sailed up the Seine, the people on the shore called to them in amazement and asked, "Where are you from and who are your masters?"

And the defiant answer rang out over the waters, "We are from round the world, and we call no man master !"

To these men we trace a pedigree. And think you we are to trade the freedom for which we have fought, for the rule of a Business Agent graduated from a cigar factory?

Excuse this smile––I really can't help it.

When that punk party known as George the Three Times disregarded the warning of one Edmund Burke, who said, "Your Majesty, you must not forget that these Colonists are Englishmen––our own people, and they can not be coerced," he invited his own fate.

The English and hired Hessians fought Washington five to one, but Washington was an Anglo-Saxon, a transplanted Teutonic Norse-American, and in

his bright lexicon no such word as "fail" could be found.

Imagine Sam Gompers handing an ultimatum to George Washington, and you get a spectacle no more ridiculous than that of the Federation of Labor saying to the people of America, "You shall not introduce manual training into your public schools for fear it will deprive Michael Mulaney of a job as plumber's monkey !"

Let Gompers rule his Hessians, but remember this, their children will be Americans.

Yet a Labor-Union may do good. I never ask a man whether he belongs to a Union any more than I would ask if he belongs to a Church. That is his business. I most certainly would not ask him to renounce his Union unless the Union were trying to throttle him. Even then it is his affair. But certainly we will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess.

All attempts to build up class hatred in this country must fail. We stand for co-operation, reciprocity, mutuality. "Once a laborer, always a laborer," is not our shibboleth.

Our Labor-Union friends are lifting a fine cry about

the injustice of injunctions. But what is their whole intent but to place an injunction of fear and coercion upon the employer, so that he dare not turn a wheel without permission ! ¶ Is sending Gompers to jail, for violating a court order, any more tragic than for Gompers to send me to the poorhouse for disregarding his orders? In God's name, where is the difference? ¶ We have agreed as a people to obey the courts––that is civilization––and we should obey them right or wrong. We have all been stung at times by the courts, and we take our medicine, knowing that in the long run the courts are right. But we have never agreed to abide by the edicts of the secret conclave of Amalgamated Molders, and I hardly think we will. ¶ There are inequalities in this country that must be worked out ; there are injustices that must be righted ; but the boycott, the club, the fagot, the bomb and the secret conclave––the air brakes on prosperity's wheels––can never right them. We must bring patience, good nature and reason to bear. To solve the problems we must discuss, agitate, write, talk and educate––and yet again educate. Some day, then, the fog will lift, and the sun will shine out. In fact, it is beginning to shine out now.

************

Thus ends part 2.

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP ––– WHICH? (part 1)

2010-08-08T14:04:00.009-05:00

Purchased at auction in Monmouth, IL, today, a pamphlet of rare timeliness:

THE CLOSED OR OPEN SHOP --- WHICH?

by Elbert Hubbard,

Published by The Roycrofters, East• Aurora • Erie • County • N.Y.

Done into a Book by The Roycrofters at their shop, which is in East Aurora, State of New York.

The Closed or Open Shop?

IN Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, an engineer on a fast passenger-train, on a railroad that need not here be advertised, became violently insane. The time on his run had been cut down to fifty miles an hour. It was very rapid running at that time, and told severely on the man's nerves. Suddenly, while at the throttle, reason gave way, and the engineer started to make a record run. He imagined there was another fast train just behind ; his life was at stake, and safety for himself and his train demanded that he should make a hundred miles an hour.

He had nearly attained his pace and was flying past a station where he should have stopped for orders, when the fireman, realizing the situation, laid the madman low with a link-pin, and the train was slowed just in time to escape a wreck.

______

THERE is a natural law, well recognized and defined by men who think, called the Law of Diminishing Returns, sometimes referred to as

the Law of Pivotal Points. ¶ A man starts in to take systematic exercise, and he finds his strength increases. He takes more exercise and keeps on until he gets "––that is, becomes sore and lame. He has passed the Pivotal Point and is getting a Diminishing Return. In running a railroad-engine a certain amount of coal is required to pull a train of given weight a mile, say at the rate of fifty miles an hour. You double the amount of your coal, and simple folks might say you double your speed, but railroad men know better. The double amount of coal will give you only about sixty miles instead of fifty with a heavy train. Increase your coal and from this on you get a Diminishing Return. If you insist on eighty miles an hour you get your speed at a terrific cost and a terrible risk.

Another case : Your body requires a certain amount of food –– the body is an engine ; food is fuel ; life is combustion. Better the quality and quantity of your food and up to a point you increase your strength. Go on increasing it, and you reach a point where you get Diminishing Returns. Go on increasing your food and you get death. Loan money at five per cent, and your investment is reasonably secure and safe. Loan money at ten

per cent and you do not double the returns ; on the contrary, you have taken on so much risk! Loan money at twenty per cent and you probably lose it ; for the man who borrows at twenty per cent does not intend to pay it if he can help it.

The Law of Diminishing Returns was what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he said : "Because I like a pinch of salt in my soup is no reason I wish to be immersed in brine."

Churches, preachers and religious denominations are good things in their time and place, and up to a certain point. Whether for you the church has passed the Pivotal Point is for you, yourself, to decide. But remember this, because a thing is good up to a certain point, or has been good, is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy, that because a thing is good you can not get too much of it.

_________

LABOR-UNIONS well illustrate the law of Diminishing Returns.

Labor-Unions have increased wages, shortened hours, introduced Government Factory-Inspection, have partially done away with child-labor, and done

many other useful, excellent and beautiful things. But when the Labor-Unions go beyond the Pivotal Point and attempt to dictate the amount of the output : forbidding any mand to earn more than so much ; decide on the proportion of apprentices to workmen, that is, who shall advance and who not ; declare what work shall be done in schools, in prisons, and what not ; tear out work that has been done by non-Union men and require that it be done over by Union men ; insist that you must join a Union, or else be deprived of the right to work –– then the Union has passed the Pivotal Point, and has ceased to give an equitable return. When your children do not go to school for fear of the cry of "scab" ; when your wife dare not hang out the washing in the back yard for fear of the cry of "scab" ; when you hesitate to go to your work, knowing you may be carried home on a shutter ; when brickbats take the place of reason, and the Walking Delegate says "Carry a Union-card or take out an Accident Policy," –– then things have gone so far that in self-protection the Union must be temporarily laid low with a link-pin.

The people of America can not afford to let any combination of men become an engine for the

destruction of liberty, be it Labor-Unions, Molly Maguires, Ku Klux, or church.

There are a million and a half men in America paying dues in Labor-Unions. There are eight thousand paid Walking Delegates or Business Agents, who look to the laborers for support.

A million dollars a year is paid to organizers, the money being paid by the laborers.

Here we get an institution that supports a large number of men who do not work ; who can call a strike or declare it off ; who can prey on both employee and employer at will.

It is like a religious institution grown great, that lives and thrives on the fears of its constituents.

¶ Local Unions meet weekly or daily. The men are called together in the "chapel" to receive orders. Conference and consultation are out of the question –– Unions are run by the men who get paid for running them. And the talking men in any Union are, almost without exception, men who hope to rise through loyalty to the Union and not by helping along their employer. Did you ever hear of a Union where the men were called together to discuss methods and means to better the business that supplied them with work? ¶ Well, not exactly!

¶ Members of a Union hope to rise by helping along the Union. They want more pay, shorter hours, and give their time to stating grievances that grow by telling. They wish to become Walking Delegates, organizers or officers in the Union. Men who are loyal to the firm ; who have ambitions about furthering the business ; who expect to become superintendents, foremen, partners and officers in the company, keep out of the Unions, because they are not wanted there. John Mitchell was right, "Once a laborer always a laborer," if you are Union man and work in a Closed Shop. The Closed Shop writes the life-sentence of every man in it, and shuts the man off from the assistance and friendship of the employer.

Labor-Union organizers constantly fan the fallacy that employers are the enemies of the men to whom they supply work ; that capital is at war with labor, and that success lies in secretly combining against capital.

The organizers and helpers are really paid attorneys, and their business is to distort the truth for their own interests. They are preachers upholding their own denomination.

Labor-Union meetings are all ex-parte –– only one

side is represented. The employer, his superintendents and foremen are carefully excluded. With the Open Shop the Labor-Union is a good thing–– it brings men together, and that which cements friendships and makes for brotherhood is well.

But the Closed Shop creates a sharp line of demarcation between labor and capital, and between Union and non-Union men. It says, "Once a laborer, always a laborer." It stops the law of evolution ; throttles ambition ; stifles endeavor ; and tends to make tramps of steady and honest working men. Working men who won homes can not afford to join Unions, and men who are in Unions can not afford to invest in homes. Because to strike is not a matter of choice ; they have to throw up their jobs as the crook of the finger of a man who, perhaps, has no home, no wife, no children, no aged parents. Men over forty who go on a strike do not get back. Strikes are ordered by young men who have no property interests ; no family ties and nothing to lose. For old men who can not earn the scale there is no work. Men with children to feed and clothe had better not forfeit the friendship of their employer by disregard-

ing or opposing his interests. ¶ When the Unions have power to dictate a Closed Shop, they have reached a point where they say, "You must join our Union or starve."

That is, join our church or you shall not live in this community. Exactly the condition that existed in Spain when Torquemada gave all Jews thirty days to join the Catholic Church or leave the country. When he saw that many were leaving the country, he fell upon them, and the gutters of Granada ran ankle-deep in human blood. This, in degree, stopped the emigration, and thousands of people, to save their lives, were forced into hypocrisy and mental servitude.

When Unionism gets to a point where it dictates to the employer whom he shall hire, and decides who shall have the right to labor and who not, then Unionism has become un-American –– a menace too great to overlook. Unlimited power is always dangerous when centered in the hands of a few men.

The American Federation of Labor is controlled by eleven men.

These men are not working men. They may have been once, but now they live in the labor of others.

They undertake to manipulate and regulate the lives of those who toil, and take toll for their service. The result is that, being humans, they are drunk –– power-crazed by success –– and are attempting to run an engine fitted for fifty miles an hour at a speed of one hundred. It is the working out of the Law of Diminishing Returns. From being a benefit, the Labor-Union has become a burden. the few men who control the Labor-Unions have created a phantom in their minds called "Capital," which they think is after them and is going to shunt them into the ditch. They have frightened the laborers so long with ghost-stories that they have come to believe their own fabrications.

What shall be done about this insane clutch for power? Must we forever endure the rule of the Demagog?

Who is right in this question of "Labor versus Capital"?

I'll tell you : both sides are right and both sides are wrong. The capitalists of this country, for the most part, were once working men, and many are working men now.

And any laborer who owns a home and has a savings-bank account is a capitalist.

THE Open shop means liberty. The Closed shop means slavery. Moreover, it means faction, feud, strife, violence.

The Open Shop will make employers considerate, and Labor-Unions cautious. Employers are not base and grasping, any more than men who work for wages are truthful, trusting and intent on giving honest service.

Men are men, and safety lies in the balance of power.

__________

HENRY GEORGE, one of the sanest men that America or any other country has ever produced, a working man, and for many years a member of a Union, and the Labor-Union candidate for Mayor of New York in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six, says, in his "Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII" :

While within narrow lines trades-unionism promotes the idea of the mutuality of interests, and often helps to raise courage and further political education, and while it has enabled limited bodies of working men to improve somewhat their condition, and gain, as it were, breathing space, yet it takes no note of the general causes that determine the conditions of labor, and strives for the elevation of only a small part of the great body by means that can not help the rest. Aiming at the restriction of competition –– the limitation

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of the right to labor –– its methods are like those of the army, which even in a righteous cause are subversive of liberty and liable to abuse, while its weapon, the strike, is destructive in nature, both to combatants and non-combatants. To apply the principle if trades-unions to all industry, as some dream of doing, would be to enthrall men in a caste system. Union methods are superficial in proposing forcibly to restrain overwork while utterly ignoring its cause, and the sting of poverty that forces human beings to it.
And the methods by which these restraints must be enforced, multiply officials, interfere with personal liberty, tend to corruption, and are liable to abuse.
Labor-associations can do nothing to raise wages but by force. It may be force applied passively, or force applied actively, or force held in reserve, but it must be force. They must coerce or hold power to coerce employers ; they must coerce those among their own members disposed to straggle ; they must do their best to get into their hands the whole field of labor they seek to occupy, and to force others to join them or starve. Those who tell you of trade-unions bent on raising wages by moral suasion alone are like people who tell you of tigers that live on oranges.
Labor-associations of the nature of trade-guilds or unions are necessarily selfish ; by the law of their being they must fight, regardless of who is hurt ; they ignore and must ignore the teachings of Christ, that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, which a true political economy shows us is the only way to the full emancipation of the masses. They must do their best to starve workmen who do not join the, they must by all means in their power force back the "Scab," as a soldier in battle must shoot down his mother's son if in the opposing ranks : a fellow creature seeking work –– a fellow creature, in all probability, more pressed and

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starved than those who bitterly denounce him, and often with the hungry, pleading faces of wife and child behind him. And, in so far as they succeed, what is it that the trades-guilds and unions do but to impose more restriction on natural rights ; to create "trusts" in labor ; to add to privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes ; to press the weaker to the wall?
I speak without prejudice against trade-unions, of which for years I was an active member. I state the simple, undeniable truth when I say their principle is selfish and incapable of large and permanent benefits, and their methods violate natural rights and work hardship and injustice. Intelligent trade-unionists know it, and the less intelligent vaguely feel it.

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Thus ends the first half of Elbert Hubbard's pamphlet. I intend to post the rest in the near future, but this demanded I post it today...

William Urban: THE SINGING REVOLUTION

2009-08-08T10:07:00.002-05:00

THE SINGING REVOLUTION
By William Urban

This documentary was recommended by a friend who was aware of my publications in Baltic history. Indeed, this well-produced story of the peaceful Estonian resistance to Soviet occupation was once central to my career.
The story began in 1939, with the Hitler-Stalin pact that led to a Soviet invasion of the four independent states on the Baltic Sea. Fifty years later it was becoming clear that the Soviet Empire was unraveling, and nobody was tugging harder at the strands than the Estonian people. This little land between the Gulf of Finland and Latvia was threatened by environmental destruction and being overwhelmed by Russian-speaking immigrants. The former was part of Soviet economic policy, the latter a “Russification” that would reduce native languages and traditions to folklore celebrations. If the Soviet economy had produced anything like the results promised by one communist leader after another, or if Russian culture had been perceived as superior to that of the West, the response might have been muted rather than musical. But the Soviet Union never employed a soft touch when a heavy hand would do.
Estonians, knowing well the futility of open resistance, used a music festival to remind people of their ancient heritage. Estonians love to sing, and the festival every five years had worked to keep national feeling alive for over a century. Once, when Communist authorities forbade patriotic songs, the mass choir of 20,000 singers refused to leave the stage until they could conclude the program with national favorites.
In the late Eighties I had come to realize that the Soviet government, struggling to reform a failing system, might soon allow foreigners to visit the Baltic states. It was not practical for me to learn Estonian, much less Latvian and Lithuanian, too, so I studied for two summers to revive my university Russian. (I didn’t revive it all that much, but it helped greatly when I visited the three Baltic states in 1992 and ten years later when I spent part of the summer in the south of Russia.) In 1990, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jackie and I were asked to be the first Americans to teach at the university in Kaunas, Lithuania. When the Soviet ambassador would not give us the visas that Moscow had approved, we went instead to Prague and Berlin, where events overshadowed what was happening in the Baltic States.
Shortly afterward, when American scholars were able to enter the Baltic States, there was no one willing to stay home and edit the troubled Journal of Baltic Studies. With the encouragement of Dean Julian I agreed to take on that task.
Roger Noel was my first co-editor, then later Jim Betts and Ira Smolensky. Eileen Loya eventually agreed to help with the correspondence. No released time from teaching, but with two student assistants we managed to put out six years worth of issues in four years, erasing the accumulated backlog from previous editors.
In 1992 a group of American Baltic specialists went to Riga to meet with administrators of the national universities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. We explained how western universities operated, then offered them computers and internet connections on two conditions — that everyone have access and that no record be kept of what they wrote. When the rectors protested that their universities were not accustomed to operating in that fashion, our response was, “They are our computers. You can have them on our terms or not at all.” They gave in.
I then spent a month in Tallinn, teaching American history to a very enthusiastic group of Estonian students at a newly founded liberal arts college. Fortunately, I had a suitcase of discarded junior high textbooks contributed by Tom Best, because otherwise there would have been only Soviet texts in Russian. You should have seen the students’ eyes when I said that they could take the books home.
Afterward I made arrangements for the rector of the college to visit Monmouth. He was very impressed. Monmouth College was exactly what he wanted to create in the Estonian capital. Unhappily, President Haywood was not enthusiastic, and two years later President Huseman even less so. Thoughts of what might have been were present throughout my viewing of The Singing Revolution.
Greatness is not achieved through having superior resources, but through seizing the moment. Monmouth College missed the opportunity to become the first liberal arts college with a Baltic connection. Fortunately, the Estonians made the most of their chances.
If you like to see courage and patience rewarded, this is a film for you. The story isn’t over, of course. The Russian bear is still next door (President Medvedev’s name means “bear”), and it is growling.

The Monmouth Review Atlas (August 6, 2009), 4.

William Urban: UNCLE WALTER

2009-08-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

By William Urban

Walter Cronkite’s death has rightfully provoked reflection on the state of journalism today. He was foremost among that generation of television anchors who projected honesty and accuracy, so that when he said, “That’s the way it was,” that was the way it was. He was, as some have reported, an adult in a medium increasingly populated by children. Spoiled children, too, who were more interested in projecting their version of politics than in reporting.
This version of history is over-simplified. Walter Cronkite had strong views, too. But he did not allow them to appear until he could make a difference by expressing them. As was once said in a different context, “less is more.” If he had expressed his disillusionment with the Vietnamese War at a time when the public still backed it strongly, he would have merely lost the trust of his audience. His terse statement after the Tet offensive caused Nixon to despair, to fall back more and more into alcohol and self-pity.
This is an awkward legacy, because the Tet offensive was exactly what General Westmoreland had said it was — a total disaster for the Viet Cong. The guerillas had come out of the jungles to fight a more or less conventional war, and they were shot to pieces. Henceforth the war was conducted by the North Vietnamese army.
Westmoreland’s statements illustrated the reverse of Cronkite’s personality. He had said so many times that the Viet Cong were being beaten that their momentary display of strength was a game-changer — not only Cronkite, but Congress and the media lost faith in any hope of victory. Westmoreland was soon out, and though his successor managed to stabilize South Vietnam, the American public was saying what was repeated just before the Iraq surge — that the war was lost. There was a peace agreement that the North Vietnamese immediately violated, but the public didn’t care. Congress went so far after Nixon withdrew American forces, then resigned, that it denied the South Vietnamese and Cambodian governments the money, the ammunition and the air cover they needed to survive. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese had help from the Soviet Union and China.
Walter Cronkite’s experience with war, against Nazi Germany, had been much clearer. The great issue of the Fifties and Sixties — America’s race problem — was a replay of that struggle: America had to break with attitudes that had too much in common with Hitler’s screaming crowds. Vietnam, at the beginning, seemed similarly straight-forward. There was no question that the Communist regime was repressive and brutal. Cronkite left no doubts that the long-term results of a communist victory would be an impoverished, backward, intellectually stunted Vietnam — as proved to be the case. Later he understood that nationalism, not communism, was the driving force of the North Vietnamese, but believed that building a South Vietnamese state was impossible in that multi-cultural region. No one today would imagine that a Buddhist monk burning himself to death would change anything, but in Walter Cronkite’s world, “that’s the way it was.”
And that was the way it was. With three television networks, each with good international services but only fifteen (later thirty minutes) to cover the world news, one had to fall back on newspapers get in-depth daily reporting and on magazines for more detailed analysis.
Some commentators blame the proliferation of media outlets for the disappearance of centrists like Cronkite. This is certainly at least partly true — today each television network has a specific target audience in mind. Some, like FOX, have a large moderate conservative following; others, like MSNBC, is discovering that liberals don’t watch much television. But also important is “advocacy journalism” which blurs the lines between reporting and usually pushes a liberal point of view. This has been, arguably, harder on newspapers even than on television because conservatives read more papers; radio, on the other hand, has flourished. Radio is something that people can do while working at another task, and, unlike newspapers, it is — if you are willing to listen to the ads — free. Also conservatives have found ways to make their radio programs more entertaining than have liberals; on television, in parodies of the news, the opposite is true. There isn’t much room for the calm reportage of “the most trusted man in America.”
Cronkite had his views. After retirement he let it be known that he often agreed with progressive policies. This reflected his upbringing in the Thirties, when FDR was the idol of the chattering class and Stalin was preferred to Hitler. It was a stance that would have earned him a niche in modern journalism, but nothing like the influence that he once exercised.

Review Atlas (July 30, 2009), 4.

William Urban: FROM EGYPT TO BABYLON

2009-07-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

By William Urban
This book by Paul Collins, a curator at the British Museum, is subtitled The International Age 1550-500 BC. It differs from traditional histories of the ancient world in that it is not centered on the Bible, but on archeology. Archeology is not new — Monmouth College had its Classical Collection well over a century ago. About that same time a Monmouth College alum arranged to have one of the three plaster copies of the Canopus Stone sent to Monmouth (the other two copies went to the Louvre and the British Museum); it is on display in the Hewes Library, which has also a nice collection of newer donations. Charles Speel taught Biblical Archeology for decades, Bernice Fox kept Latin and Greek alive through the decades following the nationalization of the women’s colleges in Egypt where many Monmouth College graduates had taught, and I was hired to teach Greek and Roman history. Tom Sienkewicz organized a local chapter of the American Institute of Archeology that has been strongly supported by a series of Monmouth College presidents and deans. Each year he brings in a half-dozen nationally-known speakers to talk about their work in the field — talks that are open to the public — and for several years now students have given programs about their summer experiences in various digs. He takes students each year to Italy, Greece, or this coming May, with Cheryl Meeker, to Troy. The students I have taken to the great museums of western Europe are always enthusiastic, as have been the local high school Latin students my wife took to the museums in Chicago.
This prepared me well to follow the complicated stories in Paul Collin’s book. In his first chapters the societies are well-known — Egypt and Mesopotamian states (modern Iraq) — but quickly new states come to the fore — Assyria, the Hittites — then yet newer ones which reflect the results of modern excavations. Archeologists have become expert at reading inscriptions, particularly the boastful claims of rulers to have conquered neighboring cities; this is one basis of Collin’s political history. Archeologists can also identify imported goods, thus allowing them to recognize when trade or tribute bring foreign objects to a site. By comparing the quantity of foreign goods in various city ruins, and looking through the garbage dumps and what fire and looting have left, archeologists can see when economic times were good and bad.
Collin’s overview of the rise and fall of states is densely written. His is not a book for those who like a straight-forward plot line. If you want good stories, read the Bible, but many names will be familiar to those who do know the Old Testament. This ancient world is very different from the present Middle East. There were no Arabs, no Turks, no Kurds, and the Hebrews show up only from time to time. Moses, who left no archeological evidence, gets a single line; Solomon and David only a few more. Older histories emphasized the fact that the Hebrews were at the crossroads of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but Collins describes fully how many armies marched across these roads. Assyrians rampaged through the region century after century, Hittites moved in, the Sea Peoples destroyed coastal cities.
Greeks don’t get much more coverage than the Jews. The Trojan War is barely mentioned, and Homer’s heroes are truly marginal figures to the great narrative of the mainland empires. When the Persians finally conquered everyone else, they brought order, unity and good government until they ran into the Greeks (a story which viewers of the cartoon-like 300 will recognize, or maybe not). Collins perhaps should have used Persians in his title instead of Babylon, but Babylon is much better known to potential purchasers.
It’s not an easy book to read, but the illustrations are first-rate. No one who works through the text will ever see Egypt as eternally stable and unchanging, but it may not be easy to look at the pictures and see exactly what changed — art resisted change even as the empires of the pharaohs evolved.
This is a story of brutal wars, famines, epidemics and climate change. Some may find in these depressing records a reason for despairing of the human condition — can we ever learn to avoid the mistakes of the past, or are we doomed to defending ourselves forever against evil and aggressive men, a new one always appearing as soon as we defeat the last? Abject surrender seems to work as badly as fighting overwhelming odds, and political choices are always problematic. Others may find solace in comparing our own comparatively minor problems to those of the distant past, but it may help to remember that between the years of disaster and suffering there were long periods of peace when people planted trees and vines, plowed fields and built cities. Without the belief that life must go on there would have been no artifacts for archeologists to dig up.

Review Atlas (July 18, 2009), 4.

William Urban: EMPIRES OF THE SEA

2009-07-19T09:01:00.000-05:00

By William Urban

Economic and political growth and decline are much on people’s minds nowadays. Since gazing into the future is about as effective as staring into a crystal ball, looking in the past gives us at least some perspective.
This history by Roger Crowley — subtitled “The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World” — is a trilling read about the climatic struggle between Christendom and Islam that had begun five hundred years earlier, with the Turks almost overwhelming the Byzantine Empire, then the crusaders driving all the way to Jerusalem, then the long Muslim offensive across the Sea and into Europe. There is nothing particularly new in the account, except perhaps to realize how much there is to learn about events that every historian is vaguely aware of having taken place, but does not quite know how to fit into other important events of that era — the Protestant Reformation, the Dutch Revolt, the religious wars in France, and the Great Armada.
What Crowley demonstrates is that all these better-known events were less important than the threat represented by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the great. From his siege of Vienna in1529 to the battle of Lepanto in 1571, it appeared that Suleiman would press deeper into Catholic Europe, solidifying his hold on Hungary and the Balkans, raiding coastal villages in Italy and Spain (with considerable help from the Catholic king of France), and interrupting trade. Many more white Europeans were being carried into African slavery than Africans were to servitude in the New World.
Crowley does not absolve Christian Europe from all blame for this. The Knights of St. John (a Catholic military order) used their base on Rhodes for pirate attacks on Muslim shipping until Suleiman captured it in a dramatic siege in 1522, then made Malta into the center of their operations. All sides — neither Christendom nor Islam being completely unified at all times — required prisoners to row their war galleys; those slaves, chained to their seats, hardly knew whether to hope for victory or defeat whenever two naval forces clashed — if their ships were sunk, they went down with the vessel, but what other hope of freedom was there? Ransom was possible, but only if one had rich relatives.
One has to feel sorry for poor Spain at this moment. Phillip II was paralyzed by fear of another naval disaster such as Djerta in 1560 that had opened his coasts to attacks by Moorish pirates; he struck back at domestic Moors who had converted to Christianity, believing they were aiding the pirates; he allowed his general in the Low Countries to commit atrocities against Dutch Protestants, believing that this would restore religious unity and peace; and one day he would take care of Queen Elizabeth, who was allowing her pirates to attack Spanish fleets bringing gold and silver from the New World, gold and silver Phillip needed to prosecute, half-heartedly, the war with Suleiman.
There were heroes at Lepanto. Don Juan of Austria, as Phillip’s illegitimate half-brother was known, was young, but he had the personality to inspire soldiers and was intelligent enough to listen to his elders’ advice (and wise enough to tell when to ignore it). He was made commander of the quarrelling Christian states which provided ships and had secretly ordered their commander to avoid battle. Then there was the pope, who provided the money to pay the soldiers and who stiffened the backbones of politicians and generals alike.
Crowley has written a timely book. Only a few years ago Harvard historian Samuel Huntington provoked controversy by predicting that our next conflict would not be a war between states, but a clash of civilizations. Foremost of these clashes, but not the only place where western secular and democratic institutions would be challenged, was with Islamic fundamentalism. Crowley shows that the crisis of the mid-sixteenth century was much more serious than ours today, if that is indeed what we have. A divided West somehow met the challenge. The West has largely forgotten this struggle, but not the Muslim world — it was western naval supremacy, not only in the Mediterranean, but in the Indian Ocean, that led to the political and economic decline of the Ottoman Empire. When that empire collapsed in 1918, the most important symbol of Islamic unity was shattered.
Al Qaida wants a return to the glory days of Suleiman, only this time with Arabs, not Turks, in charge. Its leaders would do well to read this book, too, since the Ottoman sultans understood that power and prosperity resulted from good government, not the enthusiasm of zealots.

Review Atlas (July 16, 2009), 4.

William Urban: HONDURAN HEADACHES

2009-07-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

By William Urban

It would have been easy to miss the “military coup” in Honduras last week. Michael Jackson was all that radio, television and the print media wanted to report on. Besides, who can locate Honduras? But it was quite an event: President “Mel” Zelaya, once a conservative businessman but now a protégé of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, was determined to be reelected in spite of the constitution limiting him to one term — he claimed that only his strong leadership could eliminate crime, the drug traffic and general governmental instability. When he asked for a special referendum to amend the Constitution, his Congress refused to go along; when he announced that he was holding the referendum anyway, the Supreme Court said that it was illegal. When he proceeded with his plan, the Court ordered the military to arrest him and escort him out of the country. Once Zelaya was in neighboring Costa Rica, the Honduran Congress then appointed his legal successor as president until the fall election.
Well, all hell broke loose. You can’t do that! Military coups are the sort of thing that military dictators used to do. First came denunciations from Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, then from Barack Obama (who had just announced that it was not American policy to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries—like Iran). Then came the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and practically everyone else. No one seemed to be bothered by Zelaya’s unconstitutional acts. Chavez, after threatening to send the Venezuelan army to set things right, provided an airplane that took him to New York and Washington, then circled the Honduran capital’s airport but was unable to land. He presumed that crowds would welcome him, then install him in office again. Shots were fired when the crowd tried to surge through a security fence. Zelaya landed first in Nicaragua, where troops are supposedly being prepared for war, to confer with Daniel Ortega, then in neighboring San Salvador, a nation that in 1969 had fought a war with Honduras over a soccer match. This war was more serious than it sounds, but practically everything in Central America is.
We have become accustomed to Latin American presidents coming to office with less than a majority of the votes, then pushing for radical changes, even illegal changes. First was Castro, though he hardly counts, since he seized power by overthrowing Batista (not everyone’s favorite democrat, but much like today’s strongmen who stuff the ballot boxes: “he’s an elected president!”). Then came Salvador Allende of Chile, then Ortega of Nicaragua, then Chavez, who has sponsored look-like strongmen all across the region — most notably, Boliva, Peru and Equador — and has stirred up trouble in Mexico and Columbia. To protect himself from American intervention, Chavez is buying Russian fighter aircraft and welcoming visits by Russian warships.
Our best hope of weakening this crowd is in keeping the price of oil low. It is amazing how oil seems to attract crooked autocrats; the higher the price per barrel, the greater the corruption and the propensity to make trouble (as Saddam Hussein and Iran clerics, and Saudi religious zealots have all demonstrated in various ways). Dealing with our drug problem would help, too.
So, what are we supposed to do about Honduras? It is indeed awkward when an army has to escort a president out of office. Just think how hard it was for Illinois to get rid of Blago. What is South Carolina supposed to do with Mark Sanford? — probably the same thing that Arkansas did with its philandering governor (who didn’t get into real trouble until later, when he lied to a grand jury); the same thing that the people of Massachusetts did with its politician who swam away from a sinking car and didn’t bother to tell the police until the next morning; or how the citizens of Idaho have dealt with a senator who has a “wide stance.” That is, we’ll ignore it. The Hondurans couldn’t do that. A raw grab for power has to be dealt with. If there is a mob in favor of Zelaya, there is an even bigger one ready to resist his return.
President Obama must know how disastrous it would be to send in troops to reinstall a leftist strongman who flouts the constitution and the courts — both the Left and the Right would be angry. Most likely, the president will just not invite the acting president to any photo ops at the White House. After the election in the fall we’ll pretend that nothing happened and that the president is responsible for setting it all right. Meanwhile Latin Americans are preparing to act on their own. It could be a real headache.

Review Atlas (July 13, 2009), 4.

William Urban: WORLD HISTORICAL

2009-07-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

By William Urban

This phrase, a rough translation of the German adjective “welthistorische,” means more to me than to most historians. That is because long ago, in a world that hardly exists now, I studied history in Germany. The phrase means an event that changes world history, not just in one country, but for everyone — a clean break with the past, an opening into a new era.
I did not encounter the term first in Germany, but at the University of Texas, from professors who had studied German history. In the sense of the term, there were events like the French Revolution that everyone needed to know, because their impact was so great that everything which followed seemed to be but a distant echo — like the insane fellow who dressed liked Napoleon and had a self-image of grandeur. Those were the days! Who today has even heard of Napoleon, except perhaps as an expensive brandy? And insane fellows are probably not connoisseurs of fine liquors.
We live today in the beer era — common, cheap, and the container easily disposed of; in fact, it is more common simply to pitch a can into the trash than to reluctantly and lovingly place it there. The same is true of the many potentially World Historical events of our times. They come at us so fast and so quickly that we have no time to savor them. Looking back through the clutter of rapid change, a few stand out.
The First World War — the war to end all wars — ended European world domination. It took twenty years to demonstrate that the colonial powers had bled themselves to death on the battlefields of France, but Europe had sacrificed not only its young men, but its capital and much of its self-confidence. It was surely the World Historical moment of the twentieth century. But no. The Second World War was even more costly in human lives and humane values. Nazism and Japanese militarism were destroyed, but new evils came in.
Then came the Cold War, the collapse of American will in Vietnam, Cambodia and Berkeley, with the imminent triumph of Communism, only to have such expectations end up with the Berlin Wall falling in 1989, then the collapse of Soviet Communism and the evolution of Red China into something completely unexpected — an amalgam of state authority and capitalism that made China into a producer of goods for the world and the number one polluter of our times.
So what are we to make of this? Are these events to be remembered by future generation? Or global warming? Or the panic over global warming? Or merely the dizzy speed of change in every respect, with backward countries sprouting skyscrapers, digging subways, and choking on automobile fumes? Are any of these World Historical moments?
These are the questions I asked myself as I watched the videos from Tehran. Not so long ago it seemed that we were facing Islamic radicals advancing on every front. Now they are being beaten back in Iraq, in Pakistan, and maybe in Iran. In retrospect world historical events seem inevitable. At the time they usually come as a surprise — business as usual. When Kermit Roosevelt went to Tehran in 1953 and rented a mob to overthrow a politician who had come into power by use of a mob, or in 1979 when Jimmy Carter sent clear signals that we would not support the shah, no matter what might come his removal, they could not imagine how this would play out in 2009. They were, after all, not setting world historical events in motion. Today President Obama is probably right to keep American hands clean — at least in public. He comes out of the Chicago school of politics, and we know what that means — one doesn’t survive by being a patsy. But is what is happening in Tehran inevitable? Or, perhaps, is inevitability something we only perceive afterward?
Mostly likely, the Iran revolution will fail. Just as did the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 198. Alas, there is no room here today to discuss this. But I am aware that some readers will ask, “why ‘alas?’” This is a reasonable response — generally, world historical events mean trouble for everyone. But what is happening in Iran could be good news. Who knows? Regime change might happen. It might even inspire North Korean leaders to rethink their plans. Though I won’t hold my breath on that one, I never expected the Soviet Union to disappear the way it did.
The historian can explain world historical events afterward, but beforehand he can only suggest possible courses that highly unpredictable people might choose to take. Or he can fall back on Tolstoy, who said that while generals get armies to the battlefields, they have almost no influence on what happens afterward.

Monmouth Review Atlas (July 2, 2009), 4.

William Urban: WHY STUDY HISTORY?

2009-06-28T09:56:00.001-05:00

By William Urban

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan, the Impact of the Highly Improbable is an interesting read. The title comes from the long-held assumption that all swans were white, an assumption that remained true until Europeans made it to Australia, where swans were Black. They always had been, even back when Europeans assumed the all swans were white. Taleb moves on from this starting point to demonstrate that much of what we believe is not necessarily so, but also that it is dangerous to expect that what we know about the past or the present will be of much use in the future.
This is quite a challenge to the historian. Not that it will change the way we act day to day. Not like the difference caused by a decision that it didn’t matter whether we stopped at red lights or not. But what Taleb is saying is that the likelihood of an improbable event — someone else running a red light — is higher than we expect. Past observations should not be simplistic, based solely on our own experience, but sophisticated, based on statistics.
Changes occur swiftly, even suddenly. Every driver knows how routine driving can be, especially in a small town where the principal danger is running into a stop sign. But your day can be literally ruined when somebody absent-mindedly runs past that stop sign into you. Texting has increased that likelihood significantly, especially when the driver is making a turn on Broadway.
The implications of Taleb’s observation are great. One might assume that the economy will go rolling along year after year, that one’s job will continue unchanged until retirement, and that one’s health will remain good (a bit overweight, a bit out of shape, but still okay), but Taleb says, “Not so fast! You’re living in a fool’s paradise.”
It’s not that the public is composed of fools. But every new business that becomes a success is one that many people have studied and decided was unlikely to make money. What people choose to do is something safe — low risk and low earnings. Those who win big (or lose equivalently) take on improbable enterprises. As Bruce Williams says on the radio, “Running your own business is the most exciting thing you can do.” Also the scariest.
Which is one reason that bad economic times can be good for people. Not everyone, but for those who had been stuck in the safe but slow lane of life and now find themselves having to choose between the fast lane and lying down in it. Black Swans are also opportunities.
Why do we not recognize the likelihood that something unexpected will happen? Because we are hard-wired to make sense of our environment. If we didn’t automatically look for predictability, we’d hardly be able to get through a day. For better or worse, we usually drive on auto-pilot; otherwise, we’d all be like student drivers, being so careful that if we were distracted, we’d overreact and crash into something. (Teenagers love to text, too.)
Now what is the historian to do with Taleb’s insight? Some might conclude that names and dates can now be forgotten. As if that was the heart of history. Names and dates are the stuff of which the narrative is made. No names, no story. But what is important is how we got where we are, and why we hold the attitudes we do. That is, why we believed that all swans were white. Marxists and religious fanatics use history as a political tool to tell their partial narrative and to point the inevitable way to the future. It is these people, not ordinary historians, who will be confounded by Taleb. If they read him, which is unlikely — people chose to read whatever confirms their view of the world, not confuse it.
And there’s the rub. Historians are like everyone else, taking the easy way, no risk way out. Only those who take on the improbable — making history fun, interesting and informative — will prosper in hard times. Marxists will think that hard times are good for them, but improbable as it might sound, their message is most popular among those for whom life is good — well-educated people who have few worries about the future. Just lots of guilt. How’s that for having lots of fun?

Review Atlas (June 25, 2009), 4.

William Urban: BETWEEN HARD TIMES

2009-06-21T09:54:00.001-05:00

By William Urban

As I indicated last week, hard times have been more common than we remember. That is because most of us remember only what we have experienced personally or have been told about. Since times have been pretty good since the end of World War Two, very few of us remember anything but good times.
The post-war boom lasted longer than any period of growth in modern history (since 1500 or so), but it did not even reach some places. It used to be that the movie news had pictures of starving people, but today one can just change channels. The newspapers cover the same information, too, but that is even easier to skip over; also, today too few people even subscribe to a newspaper at all. As a result, we usually don’t even think about those war-torn or badly managed countries where people live miserable lives.
Those who feel guilty about the unfairness of all this — and it is unfair that we were born in America or managed to immigrate here, but it is also true that Americans work hard and they have established a legal-, economic-, and social system that encourages work and saving. Occasionally one hears that the Irish, or the Blacks, or the Hispanics have created American wealth, or that we have stolen it from the Indians or the Third World. It doesn’t take much effort to drive around town to see that people work hard in Monmouth; and corn and beans don’t just appear magically. It is true that not everyone in the world has been treated well, but we don’t have an abundance of food because we ripped it from the mouths of Native Americans — the hunter-gatherers who lived on our prairies were here because they had been driven out of the eastern woodlands by other Indians. They had hard, short lives. If you doubt it, try scrounging for food when the snow is deep. They lived well in the summer after Europeans brought the horse, but winters must have been deadly dull. And they had to fight to keep what they had.
Nevertheless, I have had a person tell me in all seriousness that we have starving people right here in Monmouth. My response was to ask for a name. I’d make a couple phone calls — to Matt Hutton or WRAM or any of several ministers or priests — and have food out to them in a couple hours (or sooner).
That is how disconnected we are from true starvation. Starving means not just going to bed hungry, but being in danger of dying. This hasn’t really been a problem for those of European descent since the earliest days of settlement. Going hungry, yes. There was quite a bit of that in the Thirties, when Roosevelt was plowing crops under to keep prices up (and Stalin was letting troublesome peasants in the Ukraine die). It was important for Hitler coming to power, and for Fascism and Communism to spread elsewhere. The promises of both the ideologies and the dictators were mostly false, but in hard times people grasped at promises.
That is one of the frightening aspects of our current economic crisis. In absolute terms ours is not that bad. It’s not enjoyable to be unemployed, but it’s not like losing your farm eighty years ago. American unemployment is now barely in the range of the European average during prosperity, and right here in Monmouth people can afford gas to cruise around town to recycle what others are throwing away. One just has to look at the piles of “junk” to see how much we have been able to buy in recent years; and one suspects that some of that “junk” has been replaced by something better.
But we have been sold the idea that our current crisis is truly terrible — and since there is little in our personal experience to judge by, we are left to rely upon historians to tell us how good we have it or how bad. Historians? One doesn’t need to be a historian to realize that for decades now our prosperity has been less solid than we believed. One New Madrid earthquake could have made it all disappear. Or an electro-magnetic pulse from an atomic bomb exploded high in the atmosphere.
Our current crisis is certainly not a reason to choose the shared poverty of a fully managed society. Cuba and the late Soviet Union attracted foreign admirers, but common people trapped in those systems of militarized planning tried to escape whenever they could. Zimbabwe and North Korea should remind us how good we have it.

Review Atlas (June 18, 2009), 4.

William Urban: HARD TIMES, COME AGAIN NO MORE

2009-06-15T09:52:00.000-05:00

HARD TIMES, COME AGAIN NO MORE

By William Urban

The words of the Stephen Foster song remind us how tough life was before the Civil War. The same message is conveyed by the better-known melody of Old Black Joe — that times were hard for everyone, especially for slaves. This was the era of Jacksonian democracy, when Whites experienced a combination of hope for prosperity and fear of economic collapse, and Blacks plotted to escape security into that stressful life. Economic security is always purchased at the cost of some freedom, sometimes all freedom; freedom can be frightening, because one has to make decisions and be responsible for one’s own prosperity. Circumstances can make this very difficult.
It is my impression that fewer schools teach these songs nowadays, and ever fewer teach what they represent. There are periodic complaints that young people don’t know the patriotic classics, countered by arguments that these songs glorify war and aggression. It’s a hard time to be a teacher in some school districts.
It’s also both harder and easier to teach music. Not too many decades ago Monmouth College had lots of beginning piano lessons, because elementary education teachers had to be able to play the traditional songs. Now it is easier to provide a teacher with a boom-box than a piano — convenience at the cost of that personal connection to music and a demonstration that playing music personally can be fun. But it is also true that we are past that era when schools boards felt that it was essential to help bind the nation together by emphasizing the history and culture that most Americans shared. “Multi-cultural” has been the catchword of recent years, with race-, gender- and cultural- politics being more important.
Lost in all this is the sense of widely shared successes, failures and suffering. If the piano is old-fashioned, what is a young person to think about memories of the Great Depression? Every family (or at least many) went through it. For some it made a lasting impression; for others the escape into prosperity was more important.
Trash-pick up week illustrates both of these characteristic. I am pleased to see people scour the streets for useable items. That is commendable thrift and enterprise. I grew up in more simple times, and for years our family of five managed to get all our weekly trash into a small bucket that won’t hold half the packing material of any new purchase. The piles of junk that remain after lumber, repairable items and almost new stuff has been carried away — those piles of boom boxes, sofas, chairs, stuffed bears and other worn-out toys illustrate how much we have become a consumer society.
It’s hard to resist. Each fall I take my potted plants indoors, and each spring I realize that I could replace those plants for about the cost of the electricity needed to provide them with heat and lighting. I could do without potted plants. As far as luxuries go, flower gardening is fairly cheap, but it is a luxury. Past generations would have gone straight for the vegetables.
It may be time to remember Stephen Foster, the Great Depression, and Victory Gardens again. Our current hard times have not been as bad as past ones — not that many people have put in gardens. Being out of work is hard, but no one is absolutely starving. More important is the fragility of the recovery. Fear of another 9/11 and the impact it had on the economy caused the Bush administration to begin spending money wildly, and Congress eagerly cooperated with that combination of earmarks and relaxing lending rules that led to last fall’s economic crisis. One who reads much about economics cannot be confident that we can rebound quickly from another 9/11, increased gas prices, or a war — say with North Korea. And one might doubt that earmarks are an improvement over committee oversight.
One has to hope that the Obama plans work quickly, because the spending plans that he and Congress have in mind make Washington budgets look as hopeless as those of Springfield. We have only four ways to cover deficits: raising taxes, borrowing money, printing money, or cutting spending. Congress seems to be choosing the third option — the most dangerous of all, because that leads to inflation, which can destroy an economy more fundamentally than any enemy attack. The fourth option seems to apply only to the missile defense system designed to counter North Korean threats.
When money becomes worthless, that is when the economy really crashes; and that is when people truly cannot buy food, or give it to others. That is when people understand that Camptown Races is so often followed by Hard Times Come Again No More.

Review Atlas (June 11, 2009), 4.

THANKSGIVING

2008-11-27T10:46:00.005-06:00

This column was published yesterday in our local newspaper, as well as sent to me via e-mail. As our local paper has a small readership, I felt I ought to share it with a few more folks. (cross-posted at Composite Drawlings)

THANKSGIVING

By William Urban

Nathaniel Philbrick’s history of the Plymouth Colony, Mayflower (2006), is much more than a celebration of the voyage of Separatist Protestants from Holland and England to New England. It is a story of seven decades of courage, foolishness, bigotry and acceptance, adaptation, war, betrayals and survival.

The Pilgrims actually composed only half of the Mayflower’s company, and they had hoped to make a settlement farther south. Shoals and contrary winds, combined with exhaustion and illness, required them to land wherever they could. And Cape Cod was right there.

This was not an unknown site. About a thousand European fishing vessels were coming to the Maine coast to catch cod, and many crews had come ashore for water, fresh food and trade. Two crews had each kidnapped one Indian who would be important in the colony’s early days. In 1616 a Dutch ship unintentionally brought the plague ashore. Within three years up to 90% of the coastal Indians had died — an event that modern scholars of epidemics warn could happen in the modern world. Thus it was that when the Pilgrims came ashore in 1620 they found abandoned villages and fields, but almost no people.

The first year was so hard that half of the 102 settlers died. The second year more people came. Most of them died, too. It was like Jamestown, where new immigrants died almost as fast as they arrived; and news of the 1622 massacre at Jamestown threw the Pilgrims into panic.

Thus began the story of the shared lives and experiences of the Pilgrims, the Puritans who came to Boston in 1629, and the various tribes of Native Americans. The Pilgrims learned to adapt somewhat to their new circumstances, but not nearly to the extent the Indians did. The acquisition of European wares, weapons and ideas caused a veritable revolution in native life. And, as one tribe after another rose to prominence, the others combined with the Pilgrims and Puritans to crush them.

This led to the great tragedy of 1675-76, King Philip’s War. This conflict should not have happened, and once it started, it should have been confined to the one great tribe. Unhappily, racial animosities on both sides had spread too deeply — warriors and colonists feared each other too much for the leaders to control them, and the leaders were weak. It was, in terms of percentages, the bloodiest war in American history. The colonists were thrown back toward the coast, abandoning towns and villages; the Indians suffered about the same percentage of losses they had suffered between 1616 and 1619. Those who died from violence were numerous enough, but more perished from starvation or from cold and exhaustion while hiding from raiders.

In the end, the war to make the frontier safe only made it more dangerous. No longer were there Indian allies on the borders to keep Canadian Indians from striking without warning. Also, the war would perhaps not have been won by the Pilgrims and Puritans if friendly Indians had not joined them in the contest.

This last point offered one of the few moments of hope for a multi-cultural American future. I know that one of my female ancestors was murdered during this war. She had sent her children to the fort but had stayed at the farm to tend the animals. A century and a half later one of her descendants became a teacher (probably carpentry skills) for the Oneida Indians — and that is where I found him in the Census of 1840. Therein is another lesson. Time heals.

There is room enough for pride in the Plymouth saga to acknowledge the shortcomings of the immigrants and their children. There is also a need to recognize that prejudice and foolishness were not failures of the White immigrants alone. The responsibility of avoiding such catastrophes rested on everyone.

William Urban is a professor of history at Monmouth College and author of numerous fine books, both history and fiction.

Nothing to see here

2008-10-20T12:48:00.003-05:00

No doubt everybody has heard about the "ugly tenor" of the McCain-Palin campaign as it seeks to defeat Obama-Biden in this year's elections. A reporter attended a rally of nearly twenty thousand supporters of the Republican ticket, and, from the midst of the crowd near him, he swears he heard somebody say, "kill him," in reference to Obama. Nobody else attending the event heard it -- none of the speakers, no Secret Service agents, none of the people the agents questioned. Just the lone reporter. The timing of the supposed "threat" occurred while Sarah Palin was en route to the event, still ten miles away in the motorcade, and, yet, media and Obama supporters (pardon my redundancy) seem to think she should have stood up right at that moment and said,"Hey, now, that's just wrong, ya betcha," and apologized for the perceived threat. Except that, there was no threat. Only one person perceived it.

And, on the topic of perceptions and preemption, how often have you heard the term "racist" being bandied about? Is it justified? How about when a twelve-year-old girl wears a t-shirt to school, the shirt reading "Go, Sarah, Go"? How racist is that? How racist is it simply to question a candidate's judgment? Was there overt -- or even implied -- racism in an ad showing pictures of him at his rally in Berlin, comparing him to a pair of celebutantes? Where was the racism in that argument? Which party brings up race as an issue at every opportunity? Which party pushes racial and ethnic divisiveness?

Meanwhile, this past weekend, the Straight Talk Express, campaign bus for the Republican presidential campaign, arrived at one weekend destination with a bullet hole in its window and several paint ball spatters. Last week, a pair of Obama supporters threw molotov cocktails at a McCain sign which was right next to a house, with total disregard for the well-being of those who lived there. Last month, a New York man was arrested for assaulting a McCain marcher with her own sign, beating her about the face and head with the board which held the campaign placard.

Or, if you prefer the less physical assault, take the case of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. Two weeks ago, the only people who had heard of him were his family and his plumbing clients. But then, Barack Obama entered Wurzelbacher's neighborhood while Joe was out in his yard playing football with his son. Obama invited him to ask a question, so Joe asked him, in essence, "If I work hard and improve my business so that eventually I can start taking in more than $250,000, why punish me for becoming successful?" Obama had a rare moment of candor, and gave a blatantly socialist response, "spread the wealth around." For the offense of making The One speak the truth in such a way that John McCain could use it against Obama, "Joe the Plumber" was subject to a full week of media scrutiny and exposure.

Ah, yes. The media think it's important that a private citizen's licence and tax status should be not merely viewed, but examined letter by letter for flaws. The media think it's important to expose Sarah Palin's attempts to have a drunken, child-tasering, abusive man be removed from the employ of the Alaska State Troopers until he can clean up his act (he is still a state trooper, by the way), and her suggestion that a man who had obstructed her administration in many ways might prefer a different government job, prompting him to quit and align himself with other political foes whose ambitions she had thwarted -- to the benefit of regular Alaskans. The media think it's important that we have a play-by-play of Palin family potty breaks and how much soap they use to wash afterwards. But nobody wants to talk about the tons of dirt under Obama's fingernails.

The media tell you that there is nothing important about the relationship between Obama and former-terrorist-current-radicals William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. How do they know there is no there, there? Because Barack told them so. How do they know that Obama doesn't follow the radical teachings of "G-D America" Jeremiah Wright, after attending his church for 20 years and only renouncing the words when in the midst of a campaign? Because Barack told them so. How do they know there is nothing important to the ties between Obama and partisan criminal organization ACORN? Barack told them so. How do they know there is nothing of importance to Obama's ethics violation as he took fees for appearances while still serving in the legislature of the State of Illinois? Barack told them so. They know McCain's followers turned ugly and threatening, because Barack told them so. It seems to me, there's a religious song in there, somewhere.

And we're supposed to take the media's "unbiased" word for everything. We're supposed to pay no attention to the little man behind their curtain. But this isn't Oz, and, even if it were, the powers were those of the people, and the the Wizard was a flim-flam man who took credit.

Out of a clear blue sky

2008-09-11T09:21:00.001-05:00

Today it rains drowsily.

Seven years ago, on a clear day, when the air was crisper than I had seen it in years, I was awakened from a sound slumber by an attack on our country. My television speaker kept repeating, in Katie Couric's voice, "Oh my god. Oh my god." I rolled over to see what the cameras saw, and, from that day forth, my Tuesdays will ever be uneasy.

Two airplanes had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City.

No, wait. That's not quite what happened. That's just the perception of the moment. What really happened was that a handful of men from foreign lands, with a pseudo-religious agenda, had flown them into the buildings, murdering everybody on their respective airplanes and nearly three thousand others. Two other airplanes had been hijacked, as well; one of them flown into the side of the Pentagon, the other, by best estimate, seized back again by passengers and flown into the ground so that it could not harm any other innocents.

Doubtless anybody with access to modern information media will have heard the details of those stories repeated (some will say ad nauseam). I've seen enough replays of events myself that, were I to give birth at this late date, I suspect the images would be imprinted in the genetic code of my child.

What haunts me most is still that crystal blue sky. Over my head, as I walked to my parents' house, was an uninterrupted dome of azure: there were no clouds, no vapor trails, no hint of anything but eternity. The day was perfect -- but for that one glaring flaw.

What made matters worse was that the government grounded all aircraft other than the President's, so the sky remained clear and unmarked for the entire of the day. I tried to put a positive slant on the picture in my head: just think, it looks exactly the way it would have when the pioneers settled here, I told myself. I'm seeing something unique in this day and age of world travel, I prayed.

They say Air Force One flew directly over our town, that afternoon. I wasn't outside to see it. I had to stop looking at the skies long before that hour. The glare of perfection burned into my soul, the contradiction between it and the savagery of man, on our lands, too great that I hid from it all.

Grief still wells up in me this morning as the rains pool on the sidewalk outside. The shock is faded, but the sorrow remains, sometimes evaporating a little, but ever refreshed by the mournful cry of the city's sirens, by the rain of days' reminders.

And for all that, resting inside the pool of sorrow is stone cold fury. Before the first September of our new century, I could not have imagined my heart could hold space for so much of both at the same time. On the afternoon of the eleventh day, that month, I was held by fear as well; fear of further attack, fear for my family who were near the assault in the nation's capital, an unnamed fear of all the other unknowns. Today, the fear is gone. All else remains.

And I am grateful for the rains.

Government-sanctioned extortion

2008-08-16T10:30:00.007-05:00

There's an interesting little ordinance that's making the grade in towns all over the area, these days. The ordinance has hit our charming Maple City, and is already making waves. This new ordinance says that the city may impound your car for a number of reasons, including drunk driving, drug possession in a vehicle, concealed weapon in a vehicle or driving with suspended license.

This particular ordinance was drafted purely as a "revenue enhancer" for each city which has introduced it. How does it enhance revenues? Well, if a person's automobile is impounded, there is a $500 administrative fee (the folks at the city hall desk aren't sure exactly what the money is for, but according to a Galesburg Register-Mail interview with Mayor Rod Davies, the aim is to garner enough cash to pay for the renovation or rebuilding of Monmouth's City Hall, finally moving them back out of the building which used to house the First National Bank of Monmouth). So, the city drafted a rule whereby the city can seize your car and extort money from you for its return.

Think I'm exaggerating the circumstances? Not really. The Register-Mail article does not mention this, but the new ordinance allows for seizure of vehicle from a driver, regardless of whether or not he owns the car. The city can impound a car driven by a teen, even if the teen was driving the family car without permission from the parents. That's a hard way to discover your perfectly normal teen has been sneaking out at night.

But that's not the worst of it.

The city can also impound the car driven by someone using a suspended license. It does not make allowances for whether or not the driver has knowledge of his own license suspension. It does not make allowances for whether or not a separate owner of the vehicle has knowledge of the suspension of the driver's license.

This past week, a case came to the city courts of a citizen of this community who allowed her nephew to drive a vehicle she owns. The nephew is a responsible teen, and she felt she could trust him to show good judgment. The teen is not old enough to drive with more than one underage passenger, so he allowed his older teen friend to drive when a third teen joined them. The older friend had a suspended license. Without going into the gory details, I will here and now say that, according to all accounts, nobody had ever bothered to tell the young friend that his license had been suspended. Not even when he was stopped on the street for riding a bicycle after dark without a working headlamp, only a couple of weeks prior, and had his license run through the system, -- never was he told his license had been suspended more than a month earlier, until he was accosted by a police officer while he was driving his friend's aunt's vehicle.

So, the police had the car towed. The officer informed the citizen, who had come to the scene when called by her nephew, that she had no say in it -- the car was going to the impound lot. When she asked the officer why it was being impounded, he informed her that the youth's license to drive had been suspended, and that was reason enough. City ordinance. When it was pointed out that the citizen had not known the youth's license had been suspended, the officer responded with, essentially, "Ignorance is no excuse."

At the police station and at City Hall, the citizen repeatedly queried about this ordinance and its enforcement in this case, and was told, "You should have known." Should have known that the young man's driver's license was suspended, that is. The youth had not been informed of it prior to that evening, so he had no knowledge. If he did not know his license was suspended, how could he inform others?

How, then, is a private citizen to know? We are not permitted to simply contact the Department of Motor Vehicles and "run" a license. We can't even get a copy of our own records, let alone those of somebody outside our families. And, yet, ignorance of suspension is no excuse. When the city says so, they can take your car. It will cost you $500 plus towing and storage fees to get it back.

Call me crazy, but it seems to me, there's something in the Constitution of the United States of America which prohibits unwarranted seizure of property. I'm urging the city to rescind or amend this dirty little cash cow, before somebody who has suffered this extortion gets wise, gets a good lawyer, and starts a class-action lawsuit. All it would take to forestall that trouble, I suspect, is the judicious use of the word "knowingly", or something similar, in rewriting the ordinance -- and, maybe, an apology and reimbursement to those who were ill-used before the change in language.

The city may not be able to afford a shiny new city hall building without it, but I'm pretty sure the public will be even less happy if they're paying for legal damages to the many who have already been extorted out of their hard-earned cash.

A long time-out

2008-02-27T13:08:00.003-06:00

Last autumn, I had what could politely be termed a miscommunication with the editor of the local newspaper, the result of which was that he is no longer willing to print my words, regardless of their content. It appears that, for him, the source is everything. He will not print my work again. Period.

I am not complaining.

For several months, trying to put together a weekly column had become rather too great a burden for me to bear -- I had too many irons in the fire, so to speak. Add to that, I was suffering from a severe bout of political burnout. So severe was the sickness that it bordered on loathing for all news, even personal and family sorts. I was ready to chuck the computer, dig out my paints, and go hide in a cabin in the wilderness until I met the ghost of Charlie Russell. Instead, I joined a couple more organizations, made a few more friends, and found more ways to fill my already limited time.

Add to that, I traveled a bit (at the end of September), to meet some members of my family for the first time. I don't take kindly to being wedged into an airplane seat so that my knees are returned to the state of crunch they faced a decade ago, but the visit was worth every aspirin. I am pleased to say, them's good people.

I am still busy, with a newly-loaded social calendar and all the obligations which that will entail. There is also a continued search for lawful income, which may interfere with my creativity. And I am still frustrated over the length of duration of the presidential campaign.

But I do hope I will return to writing about current events, in the near future. After all, we do live in interesting times. Curse though that may be, it does make good kindling in which to spark a good discussion.

Meanwhile, for those who have asked after my work, I offer a postcard from AD 1911:

Thank you for your concern and support.

On giving thanks

2007-11-21T13:13:00.000-06:00

One day a mother took her young son to the seashore. As the boy played in the sand, she stood only a few paces away, watching him. Still, she was too far away to do anything as a giant wave arose and swept her son out to sea. Immediately she raced out into the waters, but could not find him to rescue him.

Frantic, she looked up to the heavens and prayed, "Oh, Dear Lord in Heaven, please bring me back my precious baby!" With the next great wave, the boy was gently, miraculously placed into her arms once more.

Kneeling in the drying sand and holding the child close, she glanced upward once more and called out, "He had a hat!"

It may not be apparent to many people, but I'm usually a glass-half-empty sort of person. I'm the sort who, were I the mother above, would not only ask for the hat back, but probably complain about getting us both wet and salty. Being happy with one's lot in life is a direction I don't find comfortable. And so, it comes as some real surprise that, as this holiday approaches, I'm not only happy, but genuinely thankful for all the good which has come my way.

Let me enumerate a small handful of the highlights, from smallest to most precious:

I introduced a new cat into my household, this summer. Over the intervening months, the older female has not accepted the change well, and has spent much of her time hiding or hissing. This week, she began sleeping beside me once more, and has even shown signs she will not try to kill the new cat. The first signs of peace are here.
I live in a community which, like my older female cat, is averse to change. And, yet, it continues to show itself a haven for creative minds -- from the national and international success of our college's historians to the array of local artistic and musical talents (of which these links provide only a small sample, so far). It is hard to be cynical in the presence of such exuberant spirits.
A summer storm brought down a tree in my yard, and, while my young neighbor's truck was crushed, the owner of the vehicle had been behind schedule and had not been in the truck at the time -- even though he "ought to have been." (In fact, most blessedly, nobody here was seriously hurt, and only one man was killed by the sudden storm.) All the heavy trees have been cleared from my land, now. As a bonus, with the trees gone, I have no need to rake.
There is a chance that my most recent efforts to write my resumé will at least get my foot in the door of a career I have groomed for all my adult life. Even if it does not bring me a salary, it has taught me that my lifelong low self-image is not supported by family or fact. I may forget facts, but family will always be there.
I have a good, kind, and loving family, some of whom I met only a few weeks ago, and others of whom made that meeting possible. For the first time, I spoke face-to-face with the daughter I gave up years ago. Not only did I meet her and her husband, but was pleasantly surprised to meet her daughter and newborn son -- she let me cradle my tiny grandson in my arms. How can one be anything but thankful and breathless and awed?

I don't think I'll ask for a hat to be returned.

May your Thanksgiving Day have as many reasons to give thanks -- if not more.

Doll Club small in numbers, big in heart

2007-11-08T17:44:00.000-06:00

Warren County Doll Club currently has fewer than twenty members, but they manage to cover quite a bit of real estate, and share their love for dolls with as many as they can. That’s why they’re having a doll and toy show and sale November 17th, at Galesburg’s Oaks Senior Center.

The club, whose members come from five counties in two states, meet on the first Tuesday of each month to share common ground on their collectibles.

Founded in the mid-1970’s, two of the founding members, Maxine Hiett of Monmouth and Jan Speer of Kirkwood continue to participate in club activities today, often spearheading projects for the club’s members, including day trips to visit museums, shows, and special events.

Warren County Doll Club was once affiliated with a national organization, but went independent by the 1980’s. Since then, the Warren County Club has used funds from their modest annual membership dues -- which once would have gone into paying national dues -- to make regular donations to local charitable organizations such as Jamieson Community Center in Monmouth. Their Christmas meeting is also planned early enough that the members have a “gift exchange” in which each member brings a new doll or action figure, to be donated to the Jamieson Center Christmas Store.

Not only do these women collect rare, antique and other unusual dolls for their own pleasure, but some of them, like long-time member Esther Diehl of Kiethsburg, IL, take the time to restore and make dresses for older dolls which have seen hard times. Mary Sullivan and Vickie Johnson, both of Galesburg, have thriving businesses selling collectible dolls and figurines, and both still manage to find a vast number of others for their personal collections, as well. Members have favorite types, such as Kewpie dolls, Barbies, Madame Alexanders, and other well-known, well-loved dolls, as well as teddy bears, beanie babies, toy trucks and tractors, and even Santa Clauses.

Eventually, though, even the most ardent collectors run out of room for all the dolls and toys they love, and so it is with these ladies. They will be opening up some of their collections, modern and antique, for show and for sale on Saturday, November 17th, from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm, at the Oaks Senior Center (176 N. Farnham Street) in Galesburg. There will be no fee for admission to the doll show. Portions of the proceeds from their sale will benefit the Warren County Doll Club and local charities.

So, if you are still trying to find the perfect Christmas gift for a child -- of any age -- be sure you check out the Warren County Doll Club’s doll and toy sale. They may have just the item you need to put a smile on someone’s face. And, even if you’re not in the market for new or gently-loved, precious toys and collectibles, the members of the club invite you to come meet them, get to know them, and, maybe, join them in their passion for playthings. And although the value of a well loved doll is not measured in dollars; the members may be able to help identify your treasure and use published price guides to estimate value.

For further information on either the Warren County Doll Club or their November 17th sale, call (309) 343-8295, or e-mail scribblerr9@iwon.com with subject line “Warren County Doll Club”.

Nobel Peace Prize Committee proves itself irrelevant

2007-10-18T10:13:00.000-05:00

Here’s the short version: Irena Sendler versus Al Gore. I rest my case.

For those who haven’t heard about Irena Sendler, shame on you -- or shame on your news sources, whichever you choose.

Nearly everybody in the world has heard about the Goreacle, these days, and, even without the aid of the press, the public has begun to hear about the Goreacle’s unforced errors while promoting his new religion of anthropogenic Global Warmism. We’ve heard about his frequent use of petroleum-burning jet aircraft to flit about the planet while demanding that everybody stop traveling. He demands the “no-carbon-footprint-for-thee-but-not-for-me” housing plan, where we all turn down the thermostat to fifty degrees in our little huts in the wilderness while he lives in a mansion with a heated pool and lights running 24/7. Not to mention, he made a film laden with hysterical cries of doom which even his supporters point out is over the top, if not actually false on a number of fronts.

This is the face of a Nobe Peace Prize winner? Let me cite Alfred Nobel’s will as regards appropriate recipients: “...the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Funny, but I don’t see anything in there about establishing new, secular religions which would destroy the economies of modern nations.

Meanwhile, Irena Sendler waits patiently, not expecting any recognition for living a deeply humane life. Irena Sendler, who served her faith by saving children of another faith from certain death, is ultimately ignored by the Nobel committee. Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic nun, who risked her own life to hide Jewish children from the Nazi occupiers, and later to smuggle Jewish children out from the Warsaw Ghetto and into the homes of other willing Polish families, into Catholic orphanages, and Catholic convents for their safety. The Catholic families, in turn, adopted the children through the agency Irena Sendler helped operate. Sendler, meanwhile, kept all the original names of the children, hid the records safe in jars, to keep track of previous lives and new records, so the children could later be returned to their families.

Irena Sendler was eventually captured by the Nazis, tortured, and sentenced to death for her role in aiding the Jews, but members of the Polish Council to Aid Jews (known by code-name Zegota) bribed guards on her way to her execution and managed her escape. As her online biography puts things, “[e]ven in hiding, she continued her work for the Jewish children.”

So, here we have a woman who put her life on the line every day to save people with whom some might say she had only a country and a God in common, and she is passed over for a prestigious award in favor of a man whose goal will make billions miserable for the sake of bad science.

But let us put this award into perspective. Over the course of just slightly more than a century, this award has gone to these successful arbitrageurs of peace: in 1994 Yasser Arafat (starter of fatah and, therefore, the intifada); 2002 James Earl Carter (who handed Iran to the Ayatollahs and other radical islamists during his tenure as president, and, later, helped Arafat start his intifada); 1988 the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (presumably for their aid to starving children and women who were desperate enough to do anything for a hard-boiled egg or a scrap of bread); 1973 Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho (for bringing eternal peace to so many of his countrymen); 1934 Arthur Henderson (Chairman of the League of Nations' Geneva Disarmament Conference); and 1924 Charles G. Dawes, co-author of the Treaty of Versailles and later author of the Dawes Plan.

Certainly the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has gotten a few good ones in, like the International Committee of the Red Cross, George Marshall, Norman Borlaug and Andrei Sakharov. But, tossed on the scales, it would appear that, while those wacky Norwegian committee members have been hard at work hashing out their list, the preponderance of their winners have had less-than-stellar end results for humanity as a whole.

But I guess saving a few trees and a leftist agenda beats saving a couple-thousand-plus innocent Jewish kids -- and therefore humanity’s collective mortal soul --, if you’re on this committee.

Recommended reading:
Tony Blankley's Gore Wins; Facts Lose
Israeli Satire Lab: Al Gore Saves Earth, Mankind, Receives Nobel Prize

Shooting your elephant in the foot

2007-10-11T09:33:00.000-05:00

Like the Democrats, the Republican Party has a lot of room for improvement. Alongside the sanctimonious über-conservative wing, many of their more moderate members are walking into the same trap that their opposition stepped into in the 2004 election. In the 2004 campaign, the dems went on the road without having a genuinely positive offering, settling for "ABB" -- "Anybody But Bush". Now, I'm hearing from some of my conservative friends that they'll settle for "ABC" -- "Anybody But Clinton (Hillary)."

This is hardly a winning strategy, especially for the party which has struggled so hard to rebuild its reputation for Reaganesque optimism.

There were, to all appearances, several good men standing on the dais on Tuesday, answering questions from the moderators from MSNBC and CNBC -- some of them even gave a few of Chris Matthews' questions more dignity than they deserved. All in all, except for the flaming loon who believes in conspiracy theories, the party has a pretty fair offering. With a little time, a little patience, and some good lighting, they might even be brilliant. And not a one of them has advocated anything remotely radically anti-American, unconstitutional, or even particularly unrealistically nonconservative.

Except for the flaming loon who believes in conspiracy theories.

Still, there's a lot of that going around, ever since the days when kids dropped acid.

But I digress.

The Republicans are making a couple of mistakes. The first one is the "ABC" crowd's non-choice choice.

Then there is the hard-right base, taking the view that, if our guy isn't perfect, we'll split the party and let the office go to the opposition. Well, that's using your noodle! If you can't find somebody far enough to the right on every single issue, then let somebody from the far left take over and make things worse (in your perspective). Following that kind of logic, the next time I get a pimple, I should simply peel away all my skin.

It's fine and dandy, in the early days of primary-election campaigning, to have an open debate as to whether or not a candidate will meet your hopes and ambitions, for party and nation. It's quite another thing to announce that if the party doesn't go the way you want it to, you'll boycott the election -- or support a third-party candidate, which can do even more damage (think Ross Perot).

Part of living in this representative democracy is learning a little give-and-take.

The elephant party hasn't always been filled with the smug self-righteous. Once upon a time, most were genuinely righteous idealists -- they were the political power behind the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, and even supported some of the early labor union activities (before the decline of many unions, as they slid toward socialism, communism, anarchy and thuggery). There was no room for priggish negativity.

There still isn't.

It’s time the Republicans got off their whiny behinds and acted like the positive force they once were. The party of Lincoln has a long history of leadership, and therefore, of setting positive examples for the rest of us. There is no need to go on the attack against other persons or parties -- simply present your views in a clear, coherent fashion. Leave home the pie charts and other graphics, though. They never sold anything but colored ink, as far as I can tell.

Here, in running for the White House, all candidates are in the process of selling themselves as the best thing since sliced bread. It’s time these guys --most of them with a business background -- got a clue, and presented themselves as men of vision and Madison Avenue products, to use both to their best advantage. It’s time the party’s leaders figured out that the most popular carbonated beverage in the Western hemisphere didn’t get to the top by saying, “We’re not the other cola,” and they don’t maintain brand loyalty by saying, “If you don’t like what we’re selling you can go buy theirs.” They learned their lesson the hard way, with “New Coke”. When they saw what they’d done, they went back to the original plan: first, they produced what a large portion of their public wanted (instead of trying to reproduce what the other guys sold), and then they worked hard to maintain high enough quality to keep us buying the stuff even when the competitor offers a deep discount and tap water is available for free.

Can we please have this same serious, pragmatic approach from Republican party leadership? Quit trying to turn yourselves into the bickering, divisive party of little tiny factions, pretending to be for unity while partitioning all. I’d like to actually believe the fantasy that there is a difference between the two parties, for a little while longer.

Monmouth College schedules terrorist speaker -- again!

2007-10-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

I'm told this year's freshman convocation theme at my alma mater is "exemplary lives." This fall, they've got a real humdinger of a schedule.

It should be enough that they drag all the regular leftist stuff out, as though that were the only way to live a life of honor, dignity, and goodness. But the college has gone and started a repeat performance of a darned fool act they tried just two years ago.

In November of 2005, Monmouth College hosted a known domestic terrorist, gave him a forum in which to influence the young minds of that institution's students. Like inviting a certain despot to tell his lies on the campus at Columbia, this is not an issue of preserving free speech, or of academic freedom -- it's about offering credibility to a man who unrepentantly, proudly plotted murder.

And, somehow, Bill Ayers will be back again to speak here (Nov. 17, 2007).

Ayers has yet to renounce his violent acts and viewpoints from his days with the Weather Underground. He still talks of those aims with some pleasure -- and encourages young people to act outside the law, even as he promotes his personal techniques for education... those which mock the loyal dead of our nation and promote extreme leftist indoctrination.

Ayers, once again, will use his warm voice and serpentine charm on children -- including some on the faculty -- who are inclined to like the idea of violent overthrow of a democratic government, when that government is not heading the way they want it to.

Why do the faculty of my alma mater ask him back?

The life Ayers has led, in my view, can hardly be described as an exemplary one. He plotted to bomb a social event which would have been filled with cadets and debutantes, as well as some moderately high-ranking members of the United States government. He persuaded others to follow the same path, and his girlfriend died while preparing to perform that violence. He fled the FBI and escaped justice. He never paid for his crimes.

At the same time Ayers plotted against Americans, actual innocents died, due to the same sort of self-absorbed, spoiled, arrogant behavior from the left.

Why on God's green earth does Monmouth College bring this creature back again to speak as though he were an exemplar of anything other than an unapologetic, spoiled, selfish, destructive anti-American jackass?

Will Ayers ever apologize for the acts of violence against innocents? Will Ayers apologize for having encouraged the widowhood of good women, apologize for aiding in the making of orphans? Will Ayers stand and ask forgiveness of the family of, say, civilian mathematician Bob Fassnacht, who died as a result of a terrorist act against Americans, by Americans?

Or is this just another leftist pile of manure trying to sell himself as the "progressive" font of wisdom and virtue?

And, too, what does that say about certain members of Monmouth College's faculty and/or administration, that they can deem a terrorist's life exemplary?

Related:
E pluribus nihil
November: From Arts to Ayers
Robert E. Lee and Bill Ayers, by Ira Smolensky
More on Bill Ayers at Monmouth College
Student Perspective on Ayers (and others) at MC
Again, on Ayers at Monmouth (and other things)

Worth noting:
Columbia Law: Dean's Statement re: Ahmadinejad's visit

Clap Hands, Here Comes Deadly

2007-09-25T13:26:00.000-05:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current head of Iran, has come to New York to speak to the public. Initially, he was to simply address the United Nations on the opening of their new session, but somebody in a civilian position of authority or two thought it would be nice to allow him an opportunity to propagandize outside Turtle Bay. They invited him to speak via teleconference to the Press Conference in Washington, D.C., and, worse, to speak live and in person to the malleable students at Columbia University. I find this troubling, as it is both foolish and dangerous to give credibility to liars, murderers, and their supporters by offering them so bully a pulpit.

My own alma mater, a few years back, faced the same situation on a smaller scale, and I am still ashamed of the warm reception the students and faculty gave to a self-admitted terrorist.

But I find the response to Ahmadinejad’s appearances -- responses both online and out on the street -- even more troubling. Too many of them actively supported Ahmadinejad and were offended that anybody -- like Columbia U’s President Bollinger -- could have been rude to the nice man in the leisure suit.

I’m not going to take the patriotic position, right now, against the man who has provided support for those who kill our soldiers, or against the man who was probably at the lead of the group who declared war against us during the Carter years, by taking hostage our diplomats in the embassy in Tehran. Those issues can be set aside for a moment, since they seem to have no relevance to liberal students and leftwing professors.

But why are the leftist students and professors still supporting Ahmadinejad in the face of his behavior toward the left’s elite back home in Tehran? This man represents a regime which executes people who are accused of homosexuality. It arrests women who don’t meet a strict dress code. It has beaten to death, shot to death, burned to death students and teachers (male and female) who stood in protest of each new loss of freedom. He has threatened war against another sovereign nation.

In other words, he’s against gay rights, against women’s rights, against student/academic freedom, and against peace and tolerance.

How does one place upon an altar a man whose very existence in office negates the lives and lifestyles this group so fervently protects at home? I hate to answer my own question, but, apparently, if you hate Israel or you hate President George W. Bush, if you promise death to modern America and to Western civilization, all other “idiosyncrasies” can be overlooked. You can kill as many gays as you want. You can imprison a woman indefinitely or publicly beat her for “immodesty” -- including the immodesty of having an opinion. You can use live ammunition or flame throwers on students and teachers in peaceful protest. You can intend to -- or even, probably actually -- steal technology, build a nuclear bomb, drop it on the civilians living in the holy land, and they will support you because, well, it had to be done to show precisely how evil Bush and the “Jewish lobby” are.

After all, between Bush and the Jewish Lobby, the Western world is nothing but one giant concentration camp, isn‘t it?

The sad part of this past week’s events in New York is that, at long last, some students began to take offense at one little thing Ahmadinejad said: “We don’t have homosexuals in Iran.” Somehow, that strained credibility in a way nothing else could, even his Holocaust denial and his claims that Iranian women are the freest women in the world. And yet, according to a Daily Kos poll, 45% of participants would still prefer Ahmadinejad over Bush as US President.

Once upon a time, academia was intended to help young people develop skills at critical thinking. It would seem that, by and large, it failed at least a full generation ago. I hope it is not too late to salvage something -- before more Ahmadinejads are made welcome upon our shores.

Suggested Reading:
Jules Crittenden: Persian Sock-Puppets?
Dr. Sanity: "I AM A MUSLIM. I CAN NOT TELL A LIE"
Bret Stephens at OpinionJournal: Columbia's Conceit
lgf: BBC Readers on Ahmadinejad

Fame burns your brain

2007-09-19T13:53:00.000-05:00

What is it about celebrity which makes people insane? Is it the lack of privacy which causes them to go around the bend? Is it that there are too many sycophants and not enough sensible moms? How can ordinary people be turned into such stupid, selfish, thoughtless, dangerous creatures?

From Orenthal J. Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector (not to mention half of Congress and most of the members of Illinois’ bodies of government) who managed to place themselves above the law, to Barry Manilow, Sally Field, Rosie O’Donnell and the Airhead Squadron of Hollywood (Britney, Lindsey, Paris, et al) who lack basic decency, the link is lack of common, everyday manners. Apparently, “common” is beneath them.

I don’t suppose it would ever occur to an artist of such stature as Barry Manilow that, when he’s promoting a newly-released recording, insulting a pretty young pregnant woman by refusing to appear on the same show with her is not only rude, but counterproductive to sales? And, Sally Field might not consider using profanity on television anything new or corrosive to culture, but there are plenty out in the real world who find the term “damned”, when attached to the end of a brief word for “deity” to be more offensive than monosyllabic scatological references, any day of the week. A network has the right to decide it doesn’t want to alienate its very large viewing audience by broadcasting obscenities in the middle of a family program (although, that was a rare occurrence, that it did).

Now, of course, there is a standard view from the elite that the masses don’t know what’s good for them, so they’ll demonstrate by being flippant about things of import to the rest of us -- James Brolin, for example, wishing a “Happy nine-eleven” to America -- and then waiting a day or two before offering an “I’m sorry if you were offended,” apology to the shocked masses. They’ll call our most trusted, loyal, patriotic people liars -- boldly, to their faces, in front of the cameras, the way Hillary did General Petraeus (“suspension of disbelief” my Aunt Frances! Has she looked in a mirror this past two decades?).

I don’t mean to slight the Right, either. Larry Craig, in hope of dodging an arrest, reportedly asked, “Do you know who I am? I’m a Senator!” As if that were going to strike the fear of the Lord into a cop who ... well, let’s face it, the sting was essentially official, legal extortion, wasn’t it? Cop a plea, pay a fine, or we’ll tell the world you are gay, whether you are or not. And, then, even if you take the plea and pay the fine,we’ll still intimate you’re gay later on if we’re in the mood and you’re in the public eye.

Nevertheless, Craig thought that simply by declaring his rank, he could bypass the legal system designed to be egalitarian.

It’s too bad stupidity doesn’t automatically disqualify one from holding public office (by my reckoning, it’s a prerequisite for the job). Craig fell into the same trap that so many others inside the Beltway and out in front of the cameras have done, and thought himself untouchable.

Unfortunately for society, it looks as though they may be correct. Breaking major laws -- like murdering your ex-wife, a girlfriend or some other human being, like driving drunk and endangering the public, like giving support to dangerous enemies of the public -- all are forgiven, if you’re rich and famous. Granted, the presiding judge in the bail hearing for O.J. Simpson was right on the money when he refused to allow the former athlete to be released on his own recognizance. The judge even cited law to support his decision. How refreshing! I doubt it will last, though, once the case goes to a jury.

Too many regular folks out there think, like the celebrities, that if one becomes famous, then “beyond reasonable doubt” should read “beyond all doubt whatever.” If the defense claims he didn’t shoot the girl, that it was metal-munching moon mice who did, the jury will look into that famous face and say, “It could happen. After all, he’s famous enough to attract moon mice. And, besides, when I'm famous, this could happen to me, so I should cut him extra slack."

And thus the famous can continue as infamous, still free to be scummy, in a very public manner.

Heading for simpler times, Redux

2007-09-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across a handful of Luddites, this past weekend.... complaining about how intrusive technology is and how much better things would be if we went "totally green and organic, like in the good old days." After listening for about a half hour, I decided I couldn't stay in the same room and not argue with them, so, mindful of manners while my parents aren't there to bail me out of jail, I left and went home. Then I remembered, this was not the first time I'd encountered this stuff.

Therefore, (and, since I've been a little preoccupied with other responsibilities, this week), I am re-running a column I wrote for the DRA nearly six years ago. A little of my style has changed, and a handful of other personal details are slightly different, as well, but the sentiment remains the same.

Heading For Simpler Times

People always seem to be talking about 'way back in simpler times. I didn’t live in them, but I have read a little bit about them, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go there. At least, not to stay for more than a few days. We humans have a way of glorifying the past, making it seem so much better than what we have today. They even write and sell songs like “Those Were The Days,” “The Way We Were,” and so on. I’m not buying it.

I mean, exactly how far back do you have to go before we had a really simple existence? I seem to recall in my greater youth that this small burg had a couple of spectacularly violent crimes, plenty of drugs to go around, and even a race riot. The ‘sixties were rife with war, drugs, drink, racism, and other self destructive behaviors of the masses. The ‘fifties? Donna Reed? How about "McCarthyism," the Berlin wall, polio? Another decade back, sure we showed ourselves to be noble, but against what, and at what immediate cost but death, or for those who looked Asian or had, say, German-sounding names, suspicion and often segregation. And let us not talk of the position of what was then called the Negro.

Okay, so this past century is too busy to have been called simple. The nineteenth was no great shakes, either. Europe was in a constant state of war, sometimes with us. When there was no declared war for young men to go die in, there was disease, there were skirmishes over expansion, there was lawlessness in the west, Indians killed and were killed, settlers the same, explorers ditto. Pretty much the same as the previous two centuries.

Well, gosh, there’s the Renaissance. Everything was happy and enlightened, then, right? Pardon me while I laugh up my ruffled sleeve. In Europe, while one hand was establishing trade routes, the other was supporting Inquisitions. Fiefdoms and principalities warred for land, serfs, gold, and glory. Plague broke out a couple of times or so. And over in the peaceful New World, natives were dying from disease brought by the Europeans who intended to exploit them by coerced conversion. The peaceful Incas had lovely little bloodbaths of their own, against neighbors who stood against their priests. Skulls were bashed in, organs were ripped out of the living, other cheery stuff like that. Of course, most of the great events touched none of the lowly citizens. Like when a city was besieged, the laborers were allowed to leave each day at five o’clock to get supper. And supplies were only cut off from the soldiers. And pixies and nixies live in my back yard.

So we roll the calendar farther back: in the Middle Ages, ignorance, warfare, rampant disease and starvation. The Dark ages, likewise. The Roman Empire, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt...elite individuals had education and freedom both. That did not make them immune to the vagaries of politics and expansion, any more than they were immune to eruption of volcanoes or typhus or being torn apart by wild mobs of humans or hounds.

The oldest stories of the Bible and Gilgamesh have sickness, drunkenness, hardship, betrayal, intrigue, lust, murder, attempted genocide -- and those are the high points to it all!

Throughout the long history of humanity, we have always had hardships. We, as a species, have labored each generation to make it better for the next. From hardscrabble existences of Everyman to the intellectual struggles of Aristotle, Plato, Isaac Newton, Confucius, Lao Tsu, et cetera, to the artistic endeavors of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, the moment was powerful, and humanity needed hard work for something as basic as betterment. I don’t see the word “simple” anywhere in the definition of labor.

We have developed a complex set of rules and tools for today, but they are not much more difficult to operate than a sixteenth-century political machine. A houseful of gadgets may seem to be a nuisance, but I do not spend ten hours a day cooking and cleaning, and I don’t have to have somebody do it for me (unless he’s hoping for something I won’t promise, later that evening). The food I buy is in season somewhere on the planet, so any time I want it, I can get it. My wardrobe is broad enough to cover all seasons, thank you, Levi Strauss. I’m rather fond of zippers, safety pins, sewing machines. My stereo lets Yo Yo Ma and The Sex Pistols perform in my house, even at the same time, if I so desire. I write on a word processor, able to edit without an eraser or a big trash can. I have safe places to walk, to keep healthy. When I become ill, it takes me five minutes to drive to a doctor’s office, where I am usually diagnosed and treated that day, and on my way to a speedy recovery. I like antibiotics. I like antihistamines. I even like cough syrups, as long as I can find something to mask the flavor. They make me feel good.

And, if something makes me feel not-so-good, e.g. the news, I turn it off for a while and go to my garden, or go with a friend to a house of peace. It’s that simple.

Maus takes the keys

2007-09-04T13:24:00.000-05:00

By Athena Gardenprowler, guest columnist

My name is Athena, but I'm known as Maus. I’m the new cat in the haus. I used to live in a garden, but now I’m indoors. I’m writing this week because the old lady who feeds me (and the other, less important cats, too), is very busy doing stuff outside, this week, and can’t do her own work. She says it’s Warren County Prime Beef Festival week, whatever that means. She says that Warren County is the heart of the country, as far as she is concerned, and that she loves to celebrate it every chance she can get. So she goes out, and she leaves me with these other two cats, and the big, yucky, drooly dog.

It isn’t so bad, this being left inside. There is plenty of water, food, and lots of comfy window seats to sit in and soak up the sunshine without all the mean old tomcats pestering me. I also have some good hiding places, a pawful of toy mices to play with, and plenty of crickets to hunt down and pull apart. But I hear there are all sorts of things going to be happening out there on the edge of my garden, so I thought I’d list a few reasons I’m left alone in here with the computer.

For instance, Wednesday there is a parade. That means lots of people, making fancy things out of wagons and calling them “floats”. That means happy honk-and-thump noise (marching band music, she says) and people riding in cars without being put inside carrying cases, and they can sit on top and wave like they’re chasing invisible moths, the way I do when it’s dark and the old lady is trying to sleep. I know she appreciates my efforts, because she calls my name when I jump across her in the night. The other cats just hiss and growl.

But back to the Prime Beef Festival. Before the parade even got lined up, they had the kind of thing we cats understand, on Saturday night: they got beauty. They picked the new Prime Beef Pageant Princess and let her and her court be lovely.

And on Tuesday evening, they did the opposite: they had homely hogs on show and then people bought them. They taste pretty good if you fix them right. I had a little nibble of roast pork the other night, and I could imagine having it again, I think. Maybe with a seafood or butterfly chaser.

After the parade, the old lady always goes out to Monmouth Park, where there are tents, and those tents have displays, and some have foods of all sorts, like hamburgers, Indian tacos, hot dogs, apple cider slushes, lemon shake-ups and other people foods that even a refined garden cat like me might enjoy, so I expect she’ll bring me some. Maybe she’ll share one of those funnel cakes she waxes poetic about.

The old lady also says that there are things called “events.” This means people gather in a big space to watch something special happen, like bunches of cars racing around and jumping on each other like a bunch of kittens, and like people yowling and playing with strings on sticks and making what they call music. Of course, anybody who plays ElvHiss music can’t be all bad.

Everything else is going to be very noisy, too. There will be rides and attractions, the old lady read on the website. If she took me along with her, I might be able to help her win a few toys for me to play with. But she says I won’t much care for the crowds. She’s probably right. I prefer intimate snuggles.

There will also be the Fourth Annual Prime Beef Festival Cook Off, Saturday. That means food and fun, again. This is a contest to see who makes the tastiest food using beef. The old lady says that’s the best, except maybe a freshly-cracked can of tuna (actually, I said the last part. The crazy old lady prefers this beef stuff). Some of the top cooks in the region come to prepare this beef in front of a crowd, and the crowd tastes the stuff and then votes for their favorites. The old lady says the choices are always hard, because everything is always so good. I don’t suppose anybody has a recipe for beef steak which tastes like plank salmon with butter sauce and fresh moths, but then, no person is purrfect.

(PBF Calendar of events.)

After the storm

2007-08-29T13:53:00.000-05:00

After I submitted my column to the Review Atlas last week, we had a little spot of interesting weather. And, as a result, my household held its third annual August ritual event: we had another treefall. I have decided that this will be the last year for such an event. All the tall trees on my property are coming down.

It’s not for my psychological or emotional well-being that the tree removal service has been called. I fear that aspect of my life is long since gone the way of the dinosaur. The trees simply need to leave. So to speak.

When I looked at the land my parents helped me buy (oh, let's be honest, they bought it for me, cheaply), I used to see three magnificent shade trees. I studied them with great pride. Along with the odd one in the back yard I have never been able to identify, two great maples stood out front, from near the turn of the previous century, reminders of our city’s nick-name. Three years ago, one of those mighty maples fell and took out the corner of my roof. Fortunately, I wasn’t sleeping under it at the time. Then, last year a branch from one forced me to replace my front porch posts and a few other parts. I had asked the tree guy to take the rest, if he could, and he told me it still had a few good years in it. I guess even the experts can be wrong. The rest of it fell last Thursday, in the 80-plus-mile-per-hour winds and driving rain. On the neighbor’s truck. That was the final straw. There are too many good people on my block (in my town, too, for that matter) to put any one of them at risk any more.

I hear that many other folks in the area are reaching the same conclusion, and have pulled out chain saws and will be keeping the tree removal services busy for a long time to come. However, I don’t think strong language will necessarily bring them around to anybody’s house any more quickly, any more than it will ease the installation of a new window or the harvesting of what remains of a field of corn.

This latest storm developed with little warning and left a great deal of chaos in its wake. The storm did a lot of serious damage to property, and claimed one life (we are most fortunate that it was only one, but that single loss we mourn). The post-storm chaos has done some irreparable harm, as well, though. Another family learned the hard way that downed power lines aren’t necessarily cut off from electricity, and that there are very good reasons the power company asks parents to keep children indoors following such a storm. My family’s sympathies go out to the family of the injured child, and we hope for the best possible outcome for them all. It could have been much worse.

The damage to the entire region, too, could have been much worse.

On the greater blessings side of this equation, we have seen that our little pocket of Forgottonia is resilient, that we are proud enough to start digging out as soon as the rains ceased, and that, when we are done with our own pressing issues, everybody pitches in to help the neighbors pick up theirs. Immediately upon hearing the degree of damage done to Kirkwood, several Monmouth organizations -- and a few others -- got going to take box meals and bottled water to the citizens of that small community. Other individuals opened up their houses to take in families whose homes had been too badly damaged for them to remain in.

Precautions still have been taken to prevent looting and other opportunistic crimes, in Kirkwood and in isolated neighborhoods throughout this storm-tossed region. Nobody with any sense begrudges the police barricades. Not only are they protecting the property of the residents, they’re protecting the well-being of our neighbors.

After all, even among those of us who have very limited means, most of us can afford to lose a few shingles, a window, a few appliances -- but our neighbors are our lifeline. It has been this way since the days of the pioneers, if not before. For neighbors, we must drop everything and come help. We’ll worry about settling the bill later.

Gimme that Old Dem Religion

2007-08-21T12:21:00.000-05:00

[My apologies to those who have missed my column in the past three Friday issues of the Daily Review Atlas. We -- the editor and I -- hope the bugs have been worked out, and there will be no further interruptions.]

I’ve been sitting here, in front of the computer monitor, scrolling through news and blog accounts of the goings-on between the Illinois Legislature and the executive office. Being a non-Democrat Forgottonian, I see some cause for enjoyment as I observe the growing division in that party, between the ham-handed legislators and the dimwitted, ham-fisted governor. In the seat of my dreams, there is a growing sense of hope that the Chicago machine may have some of its power stripped away, in the next election. Some of us downstaters have big dreams like that.

But even though I’m seeing an amazing degree of self-destructive stupidity and malice in our state capital, I haven’t yet seen anybody attacked for his or her religion. Nobody has dared yet stand up and use his opponent’s faith as a sledge hammer.

Not so, Louisiana. There, the Democratic party is raising funds to run a campaign ad against Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal, telling outright lies about his beliefs and his degree of understanding and tolerance for others’ beliefs. The advertisement, which has been made available to view on the internet via YouTube, misquotes an article Jindal wrote for the New Oxford Review, slanting his words to make it seem he believes “non-Catholics are burdened with ‘utterly depraved minds’ and calls individuals who ignore the teachings of the Catholic church intellectually dishonest."* Jindal had, in fact, written quite the opposite about non-Catholics, and the latter half is a half-truth dressed in slander, for the statement was as regards the study of Christianity (as in, the history of the faith, not the beliefs themselves). As a non-Christian and still a believer in complete studies of history, I will stand with him. If one does not acknowledge the impact of the Catholic Church on modern Christianity, one is being intellectually dishonest. And so, therefore, is the party presenting this advertisement against Jindal.

Let us move, now, to the next victim of religious assault -- and not at a simple state level, either. He’s a national star, is Latter-Day Saint Mitt Romney. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t heard or overheard somebody ask, in discussing him, “Do you really want a Mormon in the White House?” Quite frankly, I don’t want a politician in the White House, but there I am. I live with the reality that only politicians seem interested in the job. Romney is a politician. If elected, he is not going to turn this country into a great theocracy facing Salt Lake City to pray. He’s been governor of Massachusetts for a couple of terms, already, and the state is no Utah East -- not by a long shot. He’ll probably have about as much luck -- and interest -- in converting us all tohis faith as did Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy.

It is unconstitutional to demand any form of religious test for public office. Why is it that so many Democrats seem so eager to subvert the U. S. Constitution? Worse, why be so hypocritical about it? If they’re so worried about public (or private) expressions of faith from a candidate or an elected official, why, then, do they not purge their own ranks of men like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, born-again Jimmy Carter, or even Minnesota’s new openly-Muslim congressman, Keith Emerson, who is a supporter of the terrorist-support organization, CAIR?

I guess, to these Democrats, it’s fine and dandy to have religion in this country, as long as it’s the right -- correction, LEFT -- religion. Everybody else will go hang.

Now, ask yourself: when the party is done purging all the religions outside the party, do you think they’ll stop at that? Where do you stand, regarding the extreme orthodoxy of the left? Who is more likely to allow you to continue to think, to believe for yourself -- the Mormon and the Catholic, or the guys who are smearing them?

This country has a Constitution, and an amendment within it to protect all faiths, and to bar anybody from creating a religious test for any government office. That provision is as necessary today as it was when it was first drafted more than 200 years ago -- perhaps even moreso.

*Suggested Reading:
Ed Morrissey, at Captain's Quarters: The Party of Tolerance.

Rocking the base’s foundations

2007-08-13T17:57:00.001-05:00

Recent discoveries would seem to shake the foundations of the beliefs of one very large segment of society. To begin with, it has been reported in both the far left New York Times and farther left, anti-American German publication, der Spiegel, that the “surge” and other military applications in Iraq have been succeeding rather dramatically, and that there is a very good chance we are not losing at all. Not only that, but they admit there is real hope of success over there. The people of Iraq -- and other states in the region, such as (wait for it) Syria and Pakistan have seen support for radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda fizzle. They’ve seen military efforts by the so-called insurgents fail, they’ve seen that American troops want them to be free, and they tend to prefer the hopeful Westerners to the nihilistic followers of bin Laden.

Now, nobody is saying we’ve won anything -- at least, nobody in his right mind. But what they are saying is, what the reporters who stay in their hotel rooms in the “Green Zone” in Baghdad have been missing is, there is success.

The second earth-shattering discovery was at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It seems that all the data used to prove the theory of global warming hinged on one very flawed bit of programming. While everybody had fretted furiously over the “Y2K” bug, the computer confusion predicted over the centennial “00” rollover, as a harbinger of doom, cause of airline crashes, collapse of the money markets, and so on, they did not realize it had skewed the research of the scientist who was making arguments in favor of this last decade having been the warmest in history. Thanks to a correction of the Y2K bug, we have seen that 1934 was hotter by more than a smidgen, and that it was hot as heck during the Dust Bowl. We are cooler, now.

Real cool, daddy-oh.

The economy of the United States has improved, as well. For the past six years, our stock market, our jobs market, and our national productivity levels have all increased at a steady pace. When the markets do well, all those 401k’s do better, too. Sure, we’ve had little setbacks from time to time, but, not to rub anybody’s nose in things or anything, it looks as though the “Bush tax break for the rich “ has actually helped -- and continues to help -- the little guy as well. Most improved, in fact, has been the growth of the minority middle classes.

All this, and The Dark Lord, Karl Rove, has announced his resignation from the current administration, effective at the end of this month. He’s no longer the Man In Charge, ostensibly pulling the strings of the Commander in Chief. In fact, his policy advice seems to have been pretty much ignored for the past year or so, in favor of that from Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the State Department hacks and wags.

And, while four years ago there were cries of, “if Bush gets reelected, there will be a Christian theocracy and they’ll start persecuting and imprisoning heretics once again,” the only one threatened with prison for speaking against a religion in this country has been a Ukrainian-born jewish boy who insulted a Muslim, and may spend four years in prison for tossing a Qur’an in the toilet.

It must be very hard to be a far leftist, this summer. For decades, they’ve thrived on keeping people up late at night worrying about things outside human control. And now, almost everything they have believed, or sold as a belief, has been disproved -- or, at least, undermined to the extent that it can no longer be viewed as an Absolute Truth. All their terrors based on seeing free people stand against terrorists, all the horror of seeing their country reject leftist dictators, and all the dread that the very large, very adaptable world is changing and we’re doing nothing to stop it, all those trepidations were for naught, it seems. Now all they have to fear is... fear itself. And even socialist hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt can’t help them on that.

Recommended reading:
USA Today: Major attacks decline in Iraq.
Davids Medienkritik: SPIEGEL ONLINE: "The US Military is more successful in Iraq than the world wants to believe."

Also worth reading:
Victor Davis Hanson at the Corner on NRO (HT: Dr. Sanity)
Rob at Flopping Aces, on Global Warming and Basic Science.

A book in the loo is worth four in the pen

2007-07-31T11:28:00.000-05:00

What would you say if you knew there was a country where a student could be sentenced to as much as four years in prison for making a political statement by dropping a Qur'an into the toilet? What would you say if the law was used to protect only the Qur'an, and books and artifacts from other religions, viewed as holy, were forbidden to be displayed or acknowledged in public places?

It couldn’t happen here in America, could it?

No, this Land of the Free would never allow anybody to suppress freedom of religious expression. We pride ourselves on our freedom. We’ve had that freedom from the get-go. It’s right there in the Constitution of the United States of America.

Except, it is the United States in which a student has already spent time in jail for tossing a Qur'an into the john. And he wasn’t held on any piddly little destruction of property charge, either. Stanislav Shmulevich is charged under felony hate crimes legislation.

Shmulevich threatened nobody. He didn’t prop a flaming cross in the front yard of some poor family in rural Mississippi. He didn’t drop the book into a vat of his own urine, take pictures of it, and sell it as in-your-face art. He simply put a text in an operating plumbing fixture in a college library in New York. For that, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is pressing for the State to throw the book at him (probably not the same book, though). CAIR’s cry of “hate crime” means they view Shmulevich’s act as comparable a couple of thugs beating a kid up for being gay. In CAIR’s view, even dropping a copy of their holy book on the floor is justification for mobs to rise up in foreign countries and riot over the insult. I guess they’re feeling flush with power, and they’re pulling the Feds’ chain.

Stanislav Shmulevich did something rude, insensitive, and offensive to many people, but where is it written that anybody in this country has the right to be protected --by the federal government -- from having his feelings hurt or sensibilities shocked? Since when has our Constitution allowed for Federal prosecution for hurting somebody’s feelings? And, dammit, why wasn’t I made aware of this when I was still in my overly-sensitive teen years? I could have had the entire cheerleading squad sent to Statesville Penitentiary, in Joliet, for life (if only they’d had a women’s wing).

If it’s not okay for Christians to prosecute for Andres Serrano’s federally-funded “Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ",” if it’s not okay for Catholics, specifically, to prosecute Chris Ofili for putting elephant dung on a portrait of the Virgin Mary, why is it, then, expected that our own government prosecute a student for placing a Qur'an in the toilet? What makes Islam so special in the eyes of our government -- a government which supposedly does not recognize one religion over any other? When did they add an Amendment to the Constitution negating the First Amendment by stating that desecration or blasphemy -- for any religion -- but, worse still, for one religion alone, was the responsibility of the Feds to prosecute?

What makes this young man a felon?

I could understand if Pace University wanted to press vandalism charges -- the book did belong to a university library. I’m generally against damaging books, anyway. Shmulevich should replace the copy he destroyed, and maybe do some service in a public library, to teach him a little respect for the printed word, whose ever it is. Even if I don’t like the content of a library book, I still expect those who enter the library to show some consideration for the next reader, and I’d understand if it were decided that the library and librarian receive a little recompense for the damage.

But, somehow, I can’t understand caving in to a demand -- from a group well-known for its support of terrorists and terrorist organizations -- to prosecute a book-soaker for inciting hatred or terrorizing citizens. And I can’t understand people thinking that this is anything close to a reasonable act on the part of college or government.

It seems to me, this case should be put precisely where Shmulevich put that tome. And, if it is not, it would appear somebody has already sent our Constitution deep down that very drain.

Suggested reading:
CAIR's connection to the case is demonstrated, so to speak
Eugene Volokh examines the case, the law and the ramifications.

Protecting your right to be sued

2007-07-25T10:23:00.000-05:00

Last week, Congress had before the vote a national security bill. No big deal. They get those all the time, these days, and nothing ever happens, does it? Our airports are veritable cesspools of laziness and corruption, just as they were a decade ago. Our communications systems are still vulnerable. We’re still heavily dependent upon foreign oil, labor, and manufactured goods. Our borders are still obscenely porous. And “sanctuary cities” are violating federal law to protect illegal immigrants, even when the individuals are convicted of hard crimes.

National security is a joke. Truly, the only people many of us feel we can trust are ourselves and our own -- and now, the Democrats in Congress are telling us that we can’t even do that.

As part of the most recent national security bill to be brought to the House, Peter King (R- NY) attached an amendment protecting private citizens from being sued for making “good faith” reports of suspicious activities. This was in response to what is now referred to as the “flying imams” case, from December of 2006.

In that case, several attendees of a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conference in Minneapolis behaved in what was described by several witnesses and employees of an airline as “an unusual manner.” The group were disruptive, refused to sit in their assigned seats, demanded several seat belt extensions even though none needed one (and which they promptly tucked under their seats), and made statements in arabic supporting the actions and attitudes of bin Laden and al Qaeda, and implying threats against American citizens and government (this was reported by another passenger -- a Moslem, no less).

Because their behavior unnerved passengers and crew, they were removed from the flight and questioned by security staff and police. Eventually, they were allowed to take another flight home, after which they decided to sue the airline -- and all those passengers who had filed reports, but whose names had not been released. The imams filed a lawsuit against several “John Doe” witnesses.

This was clearly an attempt to intimidate private citizens, who have little money to spend on defense lawyers, into no longer reporting activity which causes them concern. It is little different from the gangster who knocks on your door at night, brandishes a gun, and says, “I’m setting up business across the street from you, I intend to kill my competitors, and I have your phone tapped.” It takes extraordinary courage, under such circumstances, to contact the authorities. (Let us remember, too, it was a private citizen -- an employee of an electronics chain store -- who reported the plot by the “Fort Dix Six.” )

But, at least, after the gangster is arrested, he can’t still rob you of all you own via the courts. Or, rather, he couldn’t. Pete King’s amendment would have guaranteed the private citizen protection, there.

Unfortunately, as King’s amendment came up, the Democrats in the House committee made certain it never saw the actual vote. They killed in before it saw daylight. And, when a similar protective bill was up before the Senate, Democrats -- and no others -- voted it down. Theirs was a strictly partisan action, and it serves the public ill.

Not only does this open the door for terrorist-support groups like CAIR to silence those who might report would-be terrorists, it can easily spill over so that any criminal will have the right to sue all witnesses. It undermines the right and responsibility of honest citizens to defend themselves. It also destroys the incentive to be a “Good Samaritan” -- if I try to help somebody, and somebody doesn’t like that I did so, I can get sued for all I have. Why, then, would I be kind to anybody?

Between this and Dem leaders’ unauthorized treaty visits -- and offers -- to Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea and the Palestinian territory (all of whose leaders think it would be just dandy if America were to disappear, and would have no compunctions about helping make it happen), it’s been made very evident that the Democrats in Washington, D.C. -- our own Illinois Congressmen, included and especially -- would rather be seen as politically correct friends to our enemies than as loyal servants of the People of the United States of America.

Maybe they’re not really anti-American, but if the suit is in their size....

Suggested reading:

Michelle Malkin: Don't let the Dems kill the John Doe Amendment/
Captain Ed Morrissey: IBD: Why Do Democrats Want To Help Terrorists?
"I am John Doe" name tags, etc.

Update, Wednesday evening: It looks as though the people will win this one. Hooray for speaking up!

Assume you’re being watched

2007-07-18T14:09:00.000-05:00

Last week, two of the three “stars” of the Democratic Party leadership, the party’s top runners for the presidency, were recorded discussing how they might force the exclusion of other, lesser beings from future debates. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards did not look terribly much like potential leaders of the greatest nation on earth, at that moment. Their tone almost exactly mimicked that of junior high school girls in a locker room, trying to figure out how to have a party without that tag-along bunch finding out and spoiling their fun. The candidates hadn’t realized the microphones were on.

Scene two: Congressman David Vitter (R- LA) saw his phone number come up -- via Larry Flynt’s smut magazine -- among those who called the “D.C. Madam.” He had called from his own office phone. It never registered with him that phone company records could be made public. He announced he had apologized for his thoughtlessness, to his loving and forgiving wife, to the forgiving Higher Power, and to his constituents. We’re still waiting to hear if his constituents have forgiven him the way his state seems to have forgiven its senior kleptocongressman, William Jefferson, his transgressions. Either way, the secret is out.

Scene three: Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) spoke before a crowd of his own constituents. In the course of his speech, he compared President Bush to Hitler (now there’s an original notion! Nobody has ever, in the past, referred to a member of the opposing party as a nazi, has he?), and hinted that the administration might have been responsible for the 9/11 atrocities, or simply used them to solidify a dictatorial control over our free, yet fearful society (again, a new and original delusion, I guess!). For several days after word got out of his statements, Ellison denied having said any such nonsense, until somebody online released the video. He hadn’t realized he was being recorded.

In this day and age, there are very few secrets which can’t be discovered and shared with the world. People have recording devices of all sorts. My very basic wireless telephone can record and send audio. Had we spent another fifteen dollars, I could have had one with photographic capability, or, for just a little more, I could record videos to my heart’s content. My kind of miserliness in the face of technology is fairly rare, these days. Most folks like all the bells and whistles, and use them with enthusiasm.

It doesn’t matter whether you can see a camera, microphone, telephone, or some other device pointed your way. Somebody is watching, somebody is listening. There is no place truly safe from the critical eye. All around Great Britain, as well as in cities around our own country, security cameras and surveillance systems are pointed down upon us. If you search the internet, try looking for your own house on GoogleMaps, for instance. There very well may be a view into your living room window.

Some say the age of “Big Brother” is upon us. This is not Big Brother. Big Brother was a fictional, central, bureaucratic behemoth of oppression, the heart of an ugly fictional nation. This new excuse for paranoia is a real amorphous blob, an organic, growing life form, built of the hands and eyes and toys of millions of people. You can not escape by moving to another country, because these eyes move beyond borders. There is nowhere we can go to be absolutely certain we will be free of its supervision.

The funny thing is, folks have been saying this same thing for years -- centuries, even millennia -- long before the age of recording devices. No matter where you are, if you do or say something, right or wrong, somebody important will know about it. The secular modernists may have thought they had disproven the existence of an all-seeing, all-knowing presence when they came up with scientific atheism, but it would appear (to borrow shamelessly from Samuel L. Clemens) reports of His death are greatly exaggerated. He has simply taken to technology the way the rest of us have. Whether or not we all believe there is a supreme deity, we might as well be on our best behavior. Act as though He’s googled us and is watching our antics played out on YouTube.

The results will probably be less embarrassing than if we assume He’s not.

Let's defund the correct failure

2007-07-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

The word is out on the Mainstream Media’s wires, that Iraq’s government is not meeting those “benchmarks,” our supposed expectations of where they should be by this date or this stage of our involvement. Due to this pronouncement (by the way, as I write this, the news hasn’t been made official, yet. I guess the reporters have consulted a reliable psychic or some other leaker of secrets), it seems a few more American politicians are getting cold feet and demanding that we withdraw fully and completely, yank funding for the war effort, or other such stuff. It’s not a completely partisan call, but it comes darned close to it. A scant handful of Republicans have been listening to the New York Times’ siren call, have started to panic over next year’s election and are considering voting down more funds for troops or for the rebuilding of the Mideast state into a useful ally.

The single real benchmark we all should be looking at is the people of Iraq. Do they believe they can become a free, rich and peaceable land? Independent journalist Michael Yon says they do, and he has American and Iraqi soldiers who back him up. They stand amid the people of Fallujah, of Baquba, of the many other cities once ruled by terror, and the people come to greet them happily, at long last showing signs of trust, of hope, of belief in a positive future. Yon’s substantiated reports indicate that, not only do the majority of the people of Iraq trust our coalition troops, they actively seek them out -- especially the American soldiers -- to give them information to use against al Qaeda and other terrorists. They are coming around to a new way of thinking -- a positive leap, we are honestly winning hearts and minds in Iraq. Yon also reports that members of the local governments are beginning to genuinely do their jobs in serving the people of their communities. City services are becoming available. This bottom-up approach is succeeding.

I suppose the regular media are correct about the condition of Iraq’s central government, though. It’s not exactly top-drawer, not exactly representative of the people, and not exactly capable of running itself honestly and openly without outside help. But then, it’s still new and operating with training wheels.

The funny thing is, our own government seems to have missed more than a few of those same benchmarks, recently, as well, and they’re still happy as clams to continue its funding -- correction: to massively increase its funding. They do much of this in secret, with closed meetings, backroom lunches with lobbyists, and nameless, deeply buried earmarks, shrewdly refusing to make their dirty work transparent to the voting public.

Where they are transparent, though, is in places not to their -- or our -- favor. Our Congress is openly contemptuous of its constituency, and members of the majority party have openly supported totalitarian regimes whose interests run exactly counter to our nation’s well-being. They have openly aligned themselves politically (and in some cases financially) with true enemies of this country (Syria’s chinless ophthalmologist Assad, the whole of Palestinian Fatah and Hamas, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, to name but a few), have made false statements against our own troops, and now refuse to follow through on promises of support for one of our best allies, Colombia, because... uh... well, because it used to be a free-for-all terrorist training ground, and now, thanks to a hard-line policy by the government directed at the drug-dealing kidnappers and murderers of FARC (remember those guys? Bill Clinton pardoned a bunch of them in his last day in office, apparently in exchange for a few votes for Hillary), it’s actually on its way to becoming a clean, free state, almost safe to live there. We can’t have that, now, can we?

If our so-called representatives in Congress want to defund a failing experiment in democracy, they might as well start a little closer to home. Pay us back for all the time they’ve been wasting out there in the District of Columbia putting on their two-ring circus. The taxpayers here could use the money on something really useful -- like helping our genuine allies stand up to thugs and terrorists.

Suggested Reading:
Jules Crittenden takes down one of the MSM biggies.
Michael Yon's recent reports on Baquba (or, really, everything Michael Yon writes).
Bill Roggio's Iraq Report: Phantom Thunder Update.
Pete Hegseth's Give the 'Surge' a Chance, (hat tip: Scott Johnson).
John McCain speaks Truth to Senate.
Gigantic jumble, Dept. of Homeland Security is not yet up to snuff. I, too, am shocked!
Harry Reid introduces us to the back door of earmarking (free registration required). (Hat tip: Ed Morrissey)
Sorry, Colombia! (hat tip: Gateway Pundit -- who has a couple of other good links on the topic).

Farewell, Bubbles!

2007-07-03T10:39:00.000-05:00

There has been much of note in the news, this Independence Day week. Most of what has been reported has been international threats, danger, and visually dramatic, exciting stuff. But then, there was other news, of a deeply affecting sort: operatic star and arts supporter Beverly Sills passed away, Monday evening. A non-smoker all her life, she was taken by inoperable lung cancer, at the age of 78.

I grew up resenting the longhair music my parents used to listen to. And, for the few under-thirty folks who read this, no, my folks did not play hippie stuff on their hi-fi. Dad had a state-of-the-art stereophonic receiver, a reel-to-reel tape deck, and a magnificent turntable with a needle so delicate it probably could have read the wind, but never did a track from Crosby, Stills, Nash or Young cross those hallowed wires. The old fogies played the original longhair stuff: they loved classical music.

I hated it. I’d sooner have eaten a bucket of bugs than allow them to pry me away from my top-forty transistor-radio tunes.

And then, when I was nearly an adult, I saw Beverly Sills on television, with Kermit the Frog. She wasn’t some stuffy artiste, trying to ram “good for you” stuff down my throat. She was a plain-speaking, fun-loving lady with charm and a voice that sparkled clear and fine as Cinderella’s slippers. I was entranced. I began to seek out recordings of hers, in video and in simple, old-fashioned audio, to see if she really had what I thought I’d heard.

She had. She had it in spades.

I will never pretend to be an expert in voice, or in opera. But I will admit to having become a true fan of the woman known to her family and friends as Bubbles. My respect for her began with her singing voice and her sense of humor, but it went much deeper, as did she, herself. Born Belle Miriam Silverman of Brooklyn, New York, working as a commercial-jingle singer at an early age, Beverly Sills grew to become more than a glamorous, glorious coloratura soprano.

Sills showed her witty side as she performed in parodies of opera, with such luminaries of humor as Danny Kay and Carol Burnett -- with the latter of whom, she became the best of friends.

She was the force behind the New York City Opera, as its general director, from 1980 until 1994. As the New York Sun mentions, it was under her stewardship that the City Opera -- “the people’s opera company” -- became the first theatre to install and use a supertitle screen, projecting lyrics above the stage, for all those who have difficulty following the foreign languages of the performances.

Sills then served eight years as the chairman of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts -- its first woman and first performer to hold the position. After retiring from the Lincoln Center, she spent a half year “smelling the roses,” before feeling compelled to return, this time to the Metropolitan Opera, to chair.

Beverly Sills also stood in the foreground for a number of not-so-artistic causes, not the least of which being the March of Dimes and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation -- the latter brought to her attention as her daughter Meredith, born deaf, was diagnosed with the disease.

The discovery of her daughter’s deafness must have pained her tremendously. In a television interview, she mentioned the tragedy of a child of a singer not being able to hear the one other thing to bring joy to her mama. To some degree, we who heard her have had to do our part to make up for that absence, and we have done so with pleasure. We listen, and listen, and listen to her recordings.

The new generations in the entertainment industry have brought us so very little -- Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie, and a host of other pretty faces with null sets for brains and vacuums where their souls should be. Beverly Sills was smart, witty, engaging, talented, dedicated, lively, intense, sweet, fierce, and a thousand other blessed things. In a day and age when real talent is the very last and least significant requirement for success in show business, the loss of so great an artist -- so great a force for art -- is doubly painful.

Suggested other reading:
New York Sun obit.
Associated Press remarks.

in con gru ous

2007-06-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

in con gru ous
adj. disagreeing with circumstances; unsuitable, inappropriate
-Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English

1. Lacking in harmony; incompatible: a joke that was incongruous with polite conversation.
2. Not in agreement, as with principles; inconsistent: a plan incongruous with reason.
3. Not in keeping with what is correct, proper, or logical; inappropriate: incongruous behavior.
-American Heritage Dictionary

Serving in the United States Legislature
-somebody’s old uncle

When I studied civics, ’way back in the dark ages when disco was still king, I was taught that the United States Congress was a representative body of government, and, as such, answered to the people of the United States of America, i.e., the voters.

So, what I have to ask is fairly simple: precisely when did this change?

Surely the majority of Americans can’t actually openly condone William Jefferson’s illicit gains and hope he heads the ethics committee, or encourage Teddy Kennedy’s blatant hypocrisy over alternative energy sources -- or, for that matter, John McCain’s (and nearly everybody else’s, in both houses and the Executive office, as well) delusional views on illegal immigration amnesty (excuse me, “reform”) and its opponents -- can they? At least, most polls I’ve read say not. If more than a plurality, if an actual, sizable majority of American voters and likely voters think, for example, that funding the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is absolutely essential, why would any of our representatives in Congress say otherwise, even in partisan jest?

If the vast majority of Americans have come out in support of transparency in government -- say, asking them to put away nameless earmarks and let everybody see who proposes what spending of taxpayers’ dollars -- wouldn’t one imagine that the vast majority of our representatives might vote accordingly, and not go about tacking on even more earmarks?

Oh, no -- these men and women who have been elected seem to be working under the notion that they are not at all representatives of the people, but have been appointed lifetime overlords of all, by some unseen deity they euphemistically call “the public.” Instead of answering the genuine needs and desires of the people who put them into office, they respond, nearly every time, to those special interest groups the Bicameral Campaign Reform Act was supposed to marginalize. Sadly, those who wound up marginalized seem to be the voters.

I used to be strongly against term limits for public servants. I believed that, as long as the majority were stupid enough to want somebody, over and over and over again, we should grant the majority what their idiot hearts desired. Unfortunately, I’ve seen too often that the incumbents have a worse-than-unfair advantage. Through gerrymandering, corruption and cronyism of the worst sort, men and women whose legislative actions indicate an interest in only themselves (and the occasional partisan hackery) are repeatedly returned to office instead of making room for very capable, responsible challengers.

Today, we step out of the polling booth, and, congratulations! we’ve delivered an arrogant aristocrat who believes herself entitled to her own military jet airplane service, for herself and her family, and thinks it’s her job to usurp the role of Chief Executive in charge of kissing national enemies and insulting allies! (Not that the current Chief Exec is doing that impressive a job at foreign policy, but it’s still a branch-sensitive responsibility, after all. Queen Nan is on the wrong side of that hill, as long as King George and his regent live.)

It is time to rid ourselves of the arrogant aristocracy we’ve been suffering -- from both sides of the aisle. Their incongruous conduct in Congress calls for their expulsion.

It is time to reintroduce the idea of actual voter representation to our representative government. It is time to revisit term limits for everybody, and weigh all in earnest. Otherwise, the public’s faith in our democratic republic will, in all likelihood, continue to diminish, until, ultimately, both necessary faith and its dependent republic must fail.

Suggested Reading:
Stanley Kurtz, on Bad Vibes and Mark Steyn's follow-up comments
McCain says rivals "pandering"
Michelle Malkin liveblogs amnesty proceedings
Captain's Quarters: Doing what Clay Pigeons Do (amnesty bill analysis)
and this nice observation by Indiana's Mark Souder, posted at Power Line.

Fifty years as a circus, and still fun

2007-06-20T13:12:00.000-05:00

I’m going to be a bit brief, this week. I have things on my mind other than news of the world, news of local politics, and things designed expressly to annoy me. Everybody seems in fine health -- no more unusual dizzy spells for anybody, all surgeries have been successful or are put off as unnecessary right now, and therefore, all’s right with the world.

In other words, I’m in too good a mood, right now, to concentrate on anything other than one major family event.

As of this coming Sunday, the 24th of June, 2007, my parents will have been married for fifty years -- half a century. I don’t know what that is in dog years. All I know is, I won’t live long enough to repeat their feat. From what I’ve seen, it’s rare enough among those who marry while young, so, considering I’m already well-past my fortieth birthday, if I were to manage this, it would be a miracle. In fact, it will probably happen just after I win the biggest jackpot in the history of the lotto, the day after I finish the Boston Marathon in third place, and the week after I drop that last two and a half pounds of my successful weight-loss program.

I wish I could sufficiently express my pleasure in celebrating this milestone with my mother and father. I’m not that great a poet. All I really have is this idiotic expression on my face, a look something between awe and joy, with just a smattering of envy.

What I’m saying is, these people, the pair who were reckless enough to have more children after they saw what I was going to be like, have done the most remarkable thing: they have remained in love with each other, through good and bad, for a full fifty years. The story my mother tells of their meeting is straight out of a gosh-darned story book, with heart going pit-a-pat and dreams of this handsome fellow to follow. They met while at college, at a dance. He was a brilliant nerd, she, a wholesome cheerleader. Her cousin introduced them.

Marilyn Heitmann, meet Peter Kloeppel. Pete, this is Mari.

The rest is history.

So, what to do but throw a party? We’ll be spending the weekend with friends and family, under a great tent in a neighbor’s garden, with picnic tables and iced tea and lemonade and laughter. What better way to demonstrate what life in this family has been like, than to gather under the big top with a bunch of zanies? If you know our family, you’re welcome to come join our celebratory circus between 2:30 and 4:00 Sunday afternoon (sorry about the meteorologist predicting heat, again. It’s just that my folks still can’t seem to turn down the steam in their relationship, I guess). There’s no admission fee, no ticket required for this show. Please, come to the garden immediately to the west of the house at 1062 East 2nd Avenue, and help us celebrate a half century of joyful madness.

Slow news day? Paris wept!

2007-06-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

If you watch the news on tv instead of searching through multiple media sources, you might not know that anything happened last week, except for the Great Greek Tragedy which is Paris Hilton’s modern life. That seems to have gotten a whole lot of coverage. But several other genuinely newsworthy events took place, as well. Granted, there were no willowy blonde girls crying in the back seats of police cars in the other stories, but they deserve coverage.

Let me run through a few, as follows:

In Caracas, Venezuela, after Hugo Chavez announced he would not allow one of the (extremely popular) remaining non-government-controlled television stations to “renew its license for broadcast” -- thus effectively shutting down the only in-country opposition voice (a moderate one, at that) -- the people took to the streets to protest. They came by the tens of thousands in peaceful protest. They were met with tear gas, fire hoses, rubber bullets, and, in a couple of cases, real bullets. They still come out, day after day. Meanwhile, actor Danny Glover is planning to make a film tribute to dictator Chavez, because Chavez is such a swell populist fellow.

In Beirut, the Lebanese government has directed its army to lob missiles into the midst of Palestinian “refugee camps”, where al Qaeda has been basing its operations -- with Syrian help -- for some time now. Funny, when the Israelis did this, it was front-page stuff, but now that it’s just another Arab-on-Arab action, the news value seems to have vanished.

In related news, regular Palestinian people in Gaza have openly admitted they miss the good old days when Israel’s army protected them from the civil war that they, the Palestinian people, voted for by electing the “moderate” terrorist group Hamas to govern. Civilians are fleeing into Egypt in such great numbers that Palestinian leaders are finding it difficult to round up enough human shields to protect themselves from condemnation (in both the modern and the classical meanings of the word).

Meanwhile, in the civil-war-that-isn’t, yet, in Iraq, three Kurdish provinces now have fully-operational and fully-in-command regional security, requiring only moderate support from the coalition troops. That makes seven of the eighteen already standing on their own feet.

Kirkuk has graduated some women at their newly-reformed and newly re-formed Police Academy. Although their feminine numbers are small (only two in a class of 980 to become officers), it shows signs of considerable hope. Even more hope-inspiring, they received much support from their male classmates and the community.

Iraq also has women in its army. Having trained in Baghdad and up in Kurdish regions, they’re kicking the hindquarters of the so-called insurgents in their home districts, just like their male counterparts.

In Seoul, South Korea, they had a Memorial Day of their own, on June 3, celebrating America’s part in helping them keep their freedom. The rally drew tens of thousands, many of whom carried both South Korean and American flags, and many others burned or slashed North Korean flags, reminding everyone of who has been friend and who has not.

Prague, Czech Republic, hosted the Democracy & Security International Conference. Attendees included famed dissidents such as Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky, Jose Maria Aznar, Garri Kasparov, and Iraq’s Zainab Al-Suwaij. The conference focused on human rights, and on finding incentives (positive and negative) for governments to improve the state of their citizens.

Back home, it was announced the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, is to be replaced. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chief of naval operations, be nominated to the post in Pace’s stead. If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage of the wait for Paris Hilton to leave her mansion on the way to court (again), you might have caught the eight-second “breaking” report on this little adjustment in our nation’s capital. The rest of the country got word of it via the late-night comics, if they heard at all.

I can now understand how Ms. Hilton might have come to lack contact with reality. After all, in the time before America, the elite often received their news of the world from minstrels, jesters and fools. I’ve heard so much of genuine news from entertainers (and bloggers and other internet sources), and watched the fools who host news shows, now, I, too, feel truly regal.

Suggested reading:

Caracas protests over media control and shutdown begin, are "halted" by police, and continue.
Palestinian civil war "emigration problem."
3 Kurdish regions establish full regional government controls. U.S. and coalition are strictly for support, there, now.
Kirkuk sees women graduate from police academy. Baghdad has women in its army.
Massive pro-US rally in Seoul.
Democracy & Security International Conference. Brilliant coverage here.
Pace replaced.

Confessions of a new food nazi

2007-06-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

My family recently had an eye-opening experience which has led to my becoming a convert to a form of totalitarianism: I’m a food nazi, now. At least, that’s what one of my family members has called me, of late.

What happened was, somebody near and very dear to me had a sudden and severe bout of dizziness and a sense of having had far too much to drink. As this occurred to somebody who has had all of one alcoholic beverage since childhood, we all took it to be a very bad thing, and this person was rushed to the hospital.

It is an act we recommend heartily. Sudden or increasing light-headedness is nothing to take lightly. For all we knew -- for all anybody knew -- what was happening was a stroke. It was time for this one to have her head examined.

Fortunately for all of us, the tests showed no signs of a stroke. What further tests did show, however, was a potassium deficiency.

Now, it had never occurred to me that a little drop in a body’s mineral content could have so dramatic an effect. Sure, I knew about diabetes, I knew that swings in sugar and its processors can make a person get tipsy or comatose, but what does that have to do with the rising price of tea in China? You can have a safe level of blood sugars and still pass out -- or pass on -- from some other imbalance.

But more of a surprise than that this sort of thing can happen to anybody was the surprise I got when I started trying to research the causes and recommended treatments for this problem. There is a whole lot of conflicting information out there.

I must have dug up two or three dozen different websites on the topic of potassium deficiencies, and half supported the use of little potassium tablets, while the other half said the pills were either ineffective or dangerous. Half the diet sites listed recommended foods and recipes the other half said were wrong.

Finally, I started digging deeper into the histories and agendas of each of the websites I had found. You’d be amazed how many were promoting their own lines of products!

It’s funny, I used to take what I read by people with M.D. or Ph.D. after their names as the final word on any given topic. They are the high priests, the ultimate authority in the field, are they not? But when the well-being of a loved one is at stake, my instinct is for extreme skepticism. I simply can not rush out to buy the latest big thing by the latest big brain. I need to sit and study all the options, see more results, examine the motives and motivations of the players... in short, I’m learning to use my analytical skills for a real, immediate purpose.

When I was in school, nobody told me I’d need to think for myself in this fashion. You know how it is -- they train you to trust the authority on a given subject... and while you’re at it, simply trust their authority on who’s an authority. Certainly Al Gore must know what he’s talking about, in the hyperbolic An Inconvenient Truth. So many experts agree with him, especially the ones with no actual experience studying climatology or comparative extraterrestrial environments. So, too, must we take the word of some fellow who has published in some highly touted magazine of health and/or diet. Leave the critical thinking to the experts, you’re not smart enough to figure it out for yourself.

But I am smart enough, and I am figuring it out for myself. Most people really are, if they’re willing to give it a try. And, (I’m not simply bragging, here)partly as a result of my willingness to do my homework, the much-loved one is on the road to a full, rapid recovery, with the help of friends and family and the bullying of somebody who spent an indecent amount of time studying what foods, and how prepared, are best for increasing a body’s potassium without adding fat, sugar or sodium. And if we don’t like the meal -- we’ll figure out another recipe, but we won’t quit watching what we eat. I won’t let it happen again.

I am, after all, a food nazi.

Your tax dollars at work

2007-05-22T12:38:00.000-05:00

On Monday of this week, the Democrats demanded -- with the leadership of possibly the only real hawk left in their party, John McCain -- wait, have I gotten that wrong? You say he’s running for President on the Republican ticket? What exactly was in your tea, again? The man who has made more deals with Teddy Kennedy than any other mortal, the man who helped draft an act which has been proven to undermine the First Amendment (BCRA) is a Republican? Pull my other leg, now.

As I was saying, political paratrooper McCain and his tap-dancing Democrats attempted to push through an unread, and mostly unreadable, draft of a bill purported to reform our nation’s immigration policies and practices. They had demanded a cloture vote (a call for setting the vote on the bill as it stands, allowing for no more debate) for this past Monday evening, and they were expecting to have everybody vote on the actual article this Friday. Now, I don’t know about anybody else, but even with my currently moderate schedule, I have a hard time polishing off a 200-page speed-readable trashy novel in a week. I can’t imagine an insanely busy congresscritter having the time or attention span to consume 1,000 pages of crucial yet dull information, then make a rational judgment on its worth to this nation, in the span of five days. Granted, they have full-time staffs to do the bulk of the research, but it’s probably still too much to ask of most of our elected officials, that they inform themselves on so important a topic in such a short period.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Enough noise had been made among the constituents that, the last I heard, the cloture vote was pushed back a few weeks, by which time they hope many of us will have forgotten the rudiments of the bill.

Those rudiments, by the way, are somewhat intriguing, if not outright rude rudiments. For example, there was, in one early draft, a requirement for those who would seek legal immigrant status to declare and pay all back taxes. Dubya, that dirty dog Democrat in the White House, said it would place undue hardship for these people to do their homework like regular citizens, so we should include tax forgiveness for illegal immigrants.

Oh, wait. President Bush was elected on the Republican ticket, wasn’t he? But, aren’t the Republicans the guys who want to stick it to the little guy? So why was the little foreign guy getting pardoned by the Republican president, while the rest of the citizen-taxpayer little guys get stiffed? What’s wrong with this picture? Or, should the better question be, “what isn’t wrong with this picture?”

There is some good in the bill, though. For example, somebody remembered to include the building of a fence or two, arrangements for employers to be able to do background checks on prospective hires, enforcement for those same employers who become scofflaws, and limits to how many family members can be “grandfathered” into the country on a single person’s paperwork.

On the other hand, it offers nothing toward making it easier for legal immigrants to upgrade their status, it does nothing to encourage current foreign businessmen (or women) to increase their investment in our joint future, and, most importantly, it includes no recognition that a porous border (either north or south) is not merely a sovereignty issue but, with the presence of Hamas and other terrorist groups in Central and South America, and similar groups’ members passing through Canadian points of entry, it’s a serious national security risk. The people we’re supposed to depend upon for our future have made it very clear that our safety is not their concern.

The word is out. Our elected “leaders” are determined to force us to accept that we are unsecured second-class citizens in our own country, and the first-class seats are reserved for illegal immigrants and foreign nationals -- and the assorted elected officials like William “frozen assets” Jefferson, John “Abscam” Murtha, and Nancy “despot hugger” Pelosi who adore them so. Respect for the rule of law is for us, not for them. Apparently, the plan is to “drain the swamp” using illegal immigrant labor, and dump the sludge on the rest of us.

The 2008 elections can’t come soon enough.

Recommended reading:

The immigration bill -- annotated

Thomas Sowell: The Amnesty Fraud.
Michelle Malkin: The comprehensive open-borders goodie bag.
RedState: Response to White House Myth/Fact on Immigration Bill.

Lileks' Bleat -- funny and yet not so funny.

The best show around

2007-05-15T11:47:00.000-05:00

This week, Monmouth College is hosting an old friend of mine. Roger Osborne, graduate of Monmouth High School and Monmouth College, artist extraordinaire, is showing a collection of his works for the public to enjoy, at the Len G. Everett Gallery, on the second floor of Monmouth College’s Hewes Library.

I have known Roger since the day my family moved in catty-whompus across the street from him and his family, back in the day when bellbottom pants and the television series “Dark Shadows” were all the rage. I have seen him grow from an unusual kid to an eccentric adult, and never have I been bored by him. Roger has several very rare talents, from exceptional cook (something he likely learned from his parents early on, but most of you will simply have to take my word for it that he makes meals to die for) to gifted artist to artful raconteur. He displayed all these talents even in high school, here in town, as a member -- and eventual president -- of the Monmouth High School Art Club. And, like anybody with a large body of talent and the ability to recognize it, he was often quite aggravating and frustrating to be around. I imagine it was even tougher for his parents and his teachers.

I hate to admit it, but, to no small degree, Roger Osborne has been an inspiration to me. His youth seemed reckless and full of abandon, but he seldom missed a detail -- except when it came to class attendance. His priorities did not necessarily lie in orthodox learning situations. But he was well-known on campus, and not simply as the offspring of a faculty member, the way some of us got labeled. Roger had a college “plan” named after him. Ask any of the faculty members who have been around for a while what they know about the Osborne Plan. I followed it, for as long as I could. Eventually, though, we had to spread our wings and depart the safe confines of small-town, small-school environs.

Osborne and I left Monmouth to seek our fortunes at approximately the same time, exploring separate parts of the world. While I went east, Roger went Far East. He made his way to Cambodia, where he discovered the mystery and majesty of the temples at Angkor Wat. Unlike many people I know, Roger embraced the place wholly, learning as much as he could about the cultures, the history, and all else about Cambodia -- which one can sense quite clearly, even in his earliest images from the city of temples. Osborne has returned many times, discovering new aspects of the region, and can offer much in the way of guidance and background, for the newcomer to the area.

The show he’s opening, with a reception Friday at 4 p.m., is many of his black-and-white infrared photographs of the ruined temples, and is titled “Angkor Wat: Millennium of Glory.” These photos are highly prized works, of which I am proud to say our family has... some. I hope to inherit at least one, some day. If you, too, are a fan of fine photographs and historical art/architecture, I invite you to join us at the reception, this Friday afternoon. If, by chance, you haven’t heard about the reception in time, or you can’t get away from whatever keeps you busy on a Friday afternoon just before rush hour in Monmouth, please stop by the gallery at least to see the show. Osborne’s works will also be for sale, and buyers will be able to take their purchases home at the end of the show in mid-June.

According to the Monmouth College website (www.monm.edu), the gallery will be open Monday through Friday from 8 a. m. until 4:30 p.m., and has Saturday hours as well. If you need more information about his show, you can contact Monmouth’s Office of College Communications, and the staff there will be able either to answer your questions or direct your inquiries.

Of course, you don’t have to see his photographs to appreciate Roger Osborne. You can sit still and let him talk, and you’ll still come away with a sense of having been in the presence of something uncommon. And I’d like to think that a little of that essence of the extraordinary has, to some extent, rubbed off on those of us who know him.

Nanny and the Protester

2007-05-09T16:40:00.000-05:00

It’s time for a confession: I once worked as a nanny. While my job, then, was largely to keep a pair of intelligent boys (my nephews) out of trouble, I learned that such a task is nigh on impossible. People with determination -- children or adult -- can get themselves into trouble no matter how good your roadblocks are. That’s why I am frustrated and annoyed each time somebody proposes some new legislation designed to protect us from ourselves. They’re trying to counteract fundamental laws of human nature.

Some of my friends say it all started with the seat belt. I’ve worn one in a moving car since they first started installing them in Dodge vans, back in the dark ages. Personally, I see merit in always wearing a safety harness while in a moving vehicle. I don’t want to become a gruesome hood ornament. People who object to that protection are fodder for discussions on Darwinism. But somebody who got himself elected to a job in some legislature decided that he was going to protect the idiots from themselves.

Has it worked? Well, the mandatory seat belt laws were enacted in the mid-Reagan years, and one of my neighbors -- born during the mid-Reagan years -- was tossed out of his rolling pickup truck two summers ago and was darned lucky to survive. He is not, I am led to believe, atypical of males. The law did not amend his recklessness. The shock of seeing his life flash before his eyes did (albeit briefly).

Then, too, that whole gun-control idea is a bust. Even meek li’l ol’ me knows how to make weapons from ordinary household items. Were I unable to buy a gun, I would have no difficulty in wreaking havoc, when I finally snap. You’d be surprised how much damage a catapult can do, if it’s made from sturdy undergarment elastic and launches an angry cat (and, if a cat is involuntarily airborne, it will be angry). Stopping citizens from owning guns doesn’t eliminate the danger of being shot -- it reduces the likelihood one can defend oneself from a gun-toting criminal. I hope that wasn’t the goal!

And third, the Illinois State Legislature has just signed an act banning smoking in public places. Yeah, that’ll show those eeeevil smokers! Now they won’t be able to publicly socialize with anybody any more. I won’t be able to hang out with them, in our usual haunts. The guys in Springfield are protecting me from my choice in friends. Isn’t that nice? After January of this year, any of my friends who smokes will no longer be welcome in places into which I was invited by them. That hardly seems considerate, now, does it?

Not that I think all nanny-like actions by government is bad. For example, I cheered when I heard that the US legislature failed to authorize international drug purchasing. The we-ought-to-buy-where-it’s-cheap crowd was beaten out by the folks who were paying attention to the pet food industry news last month. If we can’t guarantee the quality and safety of a product which is going into our bodies to keep us alive or to make us healthier, how can we justify using it? If we can’t justify using it, how can we justify bringing it into the country in the first place? This isn’t corporate protectionism or silly nationalist isolationism, it’s protecting the citizens from potential external sources of harm.

That, I think, is the difference. Our government has the task of protecting us from others who may mean us harm (or, at least, don’t have our well-being at heart). It should not be tasked with protecting us from ourselves. Educating us on the risks inherent in something, I can approve. It’s nice when a federal expert comes out and says, “bungee jumping off the rim of the Grand Canyon may result in long-term injury or death.” It’s not so great for them to decide for me that I have no right to be that stupid. In the end, if I have no right to decide to be a reckless idiot, I also no longer have the obligation to make sensible choices. All my responsibility is thereby abrogated, and I become an intellectual slave to the Nanny State.

I protest. I think this country is a little too old and a little too independent to need a nanny.

With a spring in my step

2007-05-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

May flowers do tend to spread the pollen about, don’t they? After the late snow and hard winter, everybody else I know (excepting one good friend), is eager for the sun and warmth and the blatant attempts of nature to get back to living greenly. I, however, am the Scrooge of Springtime. As the temperature and the pollen count continue to rise, I say, “Bah! Humbug!” Occasionally, I also squeal, “Eek! Squash bug!” But, mostly, I grouse in a voice roughly (very roughly) an octave lower than usual, about allergies and the cost of living with them.

This spring is a little different, though. I’m actually happy to be where I am, when I am. Not that the allergies are any easier than usual -- quite the contrary. My post-nasal distress is at its seasonal high, my sneezes come frequently and with great force. But I’m happy to be living in a place where I can blow my nose without having to get half-undressed to reach the darned thing.

It seems that those nice people that the Speaker of the House wants to sit down and chat with have started arresting women who don’t cover themselves sufficiently. In Ahmadinejad’s Iran, women who are covered from head to foot, with scarf, loose-fitting pants under loose-fitting coats, heavy stockings, gloves, and sunglasses can still get a warning ticket for public indecency, if their trousers ride up too much when they sit down (heaven forfend a man should see a tiny bit of bare ankle!). Men, too, can be arrested for trimming their beards incorrectly, or for plucking their eyebrows, or for wearing short sleeves on a hot day.

But let me not dwell upon that centerpiece to the Axis of Evil. Just because they’re imprisoning people for owning satellite dishes doesn’t make them the scourge to end all scourges. In fact, some of our allies might be applying for the title, soon.

Egypt, for example, recently sentenced blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil to four years in prison, for the crime of “insulting Islam and the Mubarak government,” simply for disagreeing with some of their respective and joint policies. One can only imagine how crowded our own prisons would get, how empty our universities, if our current administration were to start the practice of jailing those it decides have insulted it or, say, Christianity. Blessedly, we’re still free.

So, as long as we’re permitted to insult our own, let me ask one question: what kind of idiot government sends roughly two billion dollars annually in foreign aid to a state which eagerly hunts down and imprisons its own unarmed scholars? What kind of idiot government pays two billion dollars a year in foreign aid to a country where islamofascism is encouraged? What kind of idiot government -- to the tune of billions of dollars per year in foreign aid -- supports its own enemies, not only in Egypt, but in Palestinian territories, in Venezuela (yes, we sent money to all of them)? We’ve even sent cash to Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s prime thug, as if we believed he would use it to actually help the very people whose suffering he is causing.

And, yet, our government, for all its idiocy, means well. Even when Ninny Pelosi snubs our allies and seeks out our enemies, the rest of the people believe we are in this game for more than just ourselves. Even when moonbats Reid, Murtha, Durbin, et al. insult our troops, we still have a restrained, honest, virtuous people’s military, by and large. This is a darned fine country, even with the idiots and their hijinks in high office (perhaps I should say, despite the idiots at the top). We Americans are not always the most adept at fixing problems, but we are usually the first ones on the scene, the last ones out after clean-up, and the most enthusiastic to help some more. After all the times we’ve been slapped silly, we still come running when crisis arises.

Some may think it quaint, or childish, the way Americans strive to please so many others on this jaded planet. I think it’s awesome. We have all the resources we would need to become an isolationist nation, closing our hearts and borders to all, and yet we’re open to honest folk, and, more importantly, we are free.

That’s nothing to sneeze at.

News beat

2007-04-24T12:11:00.000-05:00

I suppose I should know better than to take a week away from the news. While I was busy pretending that getting a year older wasn’t such a bad thing, all sorts of entertaining events appeared on the television screen, most of them having nothing to do with fiction and everything to do with fantasy.

For example, Senator Harry Reid says the "Mission Accomplished” sign above President Bush as he landed on the Abraham Lincoln in 2003 was, after all, accurate, and we should have brought the troops home that day, if not sooner. But, apparently, simultaneously, he thinks that our troops are -- and ever shall be -- failures in Iraq. He reinforces this improbability in his own mind by skipping those pesky briefing meetings with the field commander just recently -- and unanimously, I might add -- put in charge of Iraq. But then, all other Democrats in Congress -- save Senator Levin -- skipped the same briefings.

The trouble is, most news sources seem to be eager to support Reid in his anti-troop, irresponsible nonsense. They report only explosions and deaths, without once mentioning the numbers of places which, once havens for terrorists, are now free and functioning.

Roughly one-third of the country is now functioning freely. Najaf, once a hot spot for al Qaeda (those guys the left keep saying are not and never have been in Iraq, even though members of al Qaeda Iraq keep explosively insisting they exist) is now a functioning district with a working infrastructure and a crime rate lower than most Canadian provinces. Maysan Province is now repopulated and under the control of the Marsh Arabs Saddam tried to kill off. And many of the Iraqi people have been saying for months, now, that things have improved greatly even in some of Baghdad’s toughest districts. Still, Reid and the media beg us to write the entire of the Iraqi peoples off as not worth the effort. As blogger Mohammed at Iraq the Model said, “We’re not asking the media and the stop-the-war crowd to carry arms and shoot the terrorists; we just want them to stop shooting at us.”

That’s probably too much to ask of some on the left, though.

And, speaking of things left, I was also not aware until this Monday that Cheryl Crow announced we only need one square of toilet tissue per visit to the throne. I have only one thing to say to that: eww. I know I’ve tackled issues regarding tissues before. In fact, in one of my earliest columns I pointed out that it matters which way one puts the roll on the spool, especially if one has cats. Having it come over the top and unfurl down the front means having your cat redecorate the house in a Charmin fashion. But this thing about rationing wipes I hadn’t considered. My mother had a few ideas to offer the green-obsessed Ms. Crow: ancient Romans shared a public wet sponge on a stick; Arabs use the bare left hand; campers use leaves; farmers around here just a couple of generations ago used corn cobs or catalog pages. Is Ms. Crow volunteering to revive any of these methods in this country? Has she never heard of recycled paper products? Or, was she being tongue in... no, let’s not go there.

In Lewiston, Maine, the police are protecting the children from the dread ham steak of doom. They’re investigating a hate crime, in which a junior high school student left a ham steak on the lunch table for a classmate. Nothing to see here, just islamic radicals having dhimmis rewrite the law so that food is now illegal at lunch tables.

I also missed some good news. In Pakistan, in Morocco, in Iran, in Iraqi provinces, in Turkey, and in about a dozen other places, people have held large protests against terrorism and terrorists -- specifically, against islamic terrorists. In Pakistan, in fact, they stood up against the resurgent Taleban. Not only did they stop protesters from destroying a cleric’s home and family, the people of another town came out in droves to defend their own, beating back a Taleban mob which aimed to kill a community’s resident transvestites. Some folks have, it seems, been pushed too far. Would that some Westerners could see more of this true moral courage.

Would that a few more of our own could show some of it.

Suggested further reading:
Malkin: NY Post Hammers Reid.
So does Joe Lieberman.
And don't forget to check out pretty much everything posted at Gateway Pundit. (He's probably the best source for useful international news.)

Monmouth Civic Orchestra: It's SHOWTIME, folks!

2007-04-22T19:12:00.000-05:00

this poster will remain at the top of the page until the beginning of the concert

Spoiled to death

2007-04-10T15:16:00.000-05:00

Because in the next week or so comes my mumblety-somethingth birthday*, I’m taking time off to enjoy the finer things in life: sitting and enjoying the company of my cats.

People assume that I spoil the cats who share my house with me. I don’t. I give them a lot of things they probably don’t need, but then, I don’t go overboard and pretend that they’re my natural-born offspring deserving of a college education or diamonds and mink stoles. I occasionally get a little crazy with the catnip from the garden and the little mousey toys from the discount store. I’ve acquired a pair of harnesses and leashes designed expressly for cats, so that I can walk them over with me when I come to use Mom’s computer. And I buy lots of those premium bite-sized treats my family members call kitty-crack.

Okay, I spoil them.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for the panic I felt when I heard that there was a massive recall of pet foods and treats. Cats are dying out here, and they keep adding new products to the recall list, which means there is still stuff out there on the market which could kill ma wee beasties (okay, a dog has died, too, but think of me as the crazy cat lady, please, will you?). My friends and I swapped what information we had, and cleaned out our cupboards, comforting each other that our best buddies would be just fine, once we rid our homes of the potential hazard to liver, kidneys, whatever. Not that I worried so terribly much. Most of the stuff on the list was the really expensive food and treats, far outside my budget.

Still, concern prompted me to do some homework. I found the very, very long list of recalled products, passing on the internet link to two of my friends while receiving the same from two others. Then I proceeded to seek out recipes, so that I might make my own special foods for the critters of the household. I shared one dog biscuit recipe with Mom, who promptly made up a batch. Lesson learned: one should not bake with peanut butter unless one is planning to share it with the entire household. Next time we bake dog biscuits, we’ll be baking people biscuits, too. The temptation is too great, otherwise.

Another lesson: dogs and cats have low tolerance for many of the things we take for granted in our own diets. I knew years ago that chocolate and caffeine could be deadly to pets, but I hadn’t known that grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure (the juice seems to be safe for pets, though). Macadamia nuts can bring about partial paralysis and death. Offering them iron-enriched vitamins designed for human use may damage the linings of the digestive tract, as well as causing failure of kidney, liver, and other organs. Too much liver can cause Vitamin A toxicity. Onion and garlic can cause hemolytic anemia and, ultimately, liver failure and death. Offering baby food to your pet is a reckless decision, too, since many of the best baby foods contain onion and/or garlic.

And that’s the short list. There are countless ways to make unnecessary mischief for the furball in your life. Letting him hang out in the garage, where he may lick up the tasty antifreeze could cost your friend his fuzzy life. Using cocoa bean hulls in landscaping, if you enjoy allowing whiskered companions to help you with the garden. Letting them nibble at the trash, exposing them to toxic molds and bacteria. Letting them play in my basement does the same.

So, here I am, all worried. I’m going to have to trust in one brand of pet food, and just hope for the best -- keeping an eye on the animals in the meantime, to see that they don’t show signs of illness. Maybe I’ll even take up eating Purina Cat Chow, myself. The cats seem to like it plenty, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in the list of ingredients that I’m allergic to -- unlike most prepackaged people foods on the market.

I could make my birthday cake out of it, as long as my piece had chocolate frosting. None of that for the rest of the household, though. There is such a thing as spoiling a cat to death.

*Those who really need to know my age already do, and the rest of you can assume I'm just bashful, or something.

Suggested Reading:
Foods Which are Toxic to Dogs.
Dammit Jim, I'm a cat-owner, not a dog-biscuit chef! (for the comments, the recipe, and especially for the links).

Trotting out that old beast

2007-04-04T14:16:00.000-05:00

The left is trying to revive the seventies.

For starters, the left has been attempting to revive the tragedy that was our cut-and-run from Vietnam. They’re doing their best to put us right back there, also and especially, in regard to trusting our government. Except that, this time, it’s not the President who’s Nixonian in degree of corruption, it’s the Speaker of the House and her little clique of would-be-kings, er, ah, queens, er -- whatever.

Switch on the Wayback Machine, Sherman.

Does anybody here truly remember the 1970s? Or is it merely the fog of senility creeping over the baby boomers in charge? The decade in question was when, in movies, there were no heroes, no direct plots, no points to the stories, no point at all. Men suffered to wear polyester leisure suits with wide white belts, and we women broke our legs trying to dance in platform shoes as Donna Summer sang “Dim All the Lights.” And, of course, for many, the lights were dimmed ultimately via chemical alteration to the brain.

As if the seventies weren’t horrifying enough in simple acid flashbacks, somebody is trying to put us back where we were when domestic terrorists killed an innocent student in Wisconsin and police officers and bystanders elsewhere, or when we were held hostage to Iran and OPEC.

Of course, back then, times were great because everybody suffered grave oppression.

O! for the halcyon days when when women and blacks could own no property, when the law said wives could be beaten, when... no, wait, that was 1670, not 1970. But since the 1970s are so popular once more, naturally the leftists are trying once again to pass an “Equal Rights Amendment.”

Yeah, we really need one of those, because there are no rights for women or gays or any other regular folks in this country. The Constitution of the United States only protects rich male landowners, the way it always has and always will. The rest of us are merely chattel, aren’t we?

I have no future of my own. I have no voice in the decision-making for my own life, I have nothing but the burden of being a wife and mother, and, if not that, then I am to be cast aside like all the other nonentities. Therefore, I need the aid and protection of hard-core man-hating anti-family feminists and the knights who protect and serve them.

Isn’t that right?

More than thirty years ago, they trotted out that old dog. They tried to tell us we were oppressed, that we were unprotected by laws, that we had no rights unless a special law singled us out for special treatment. But, as the old saying goes, that dog don’t hunt. As voters, we women are citizens of this great nation. As citizens, we have all the same rights and responsibilities as every other citizen. And, should somebody attempt to deny us our rights, we have full access to courts and the redress accorded to all citizens. Is that so bad?

I have nothing against feminism. I am, after all, a feminist, myself. I believe in the equality of the intellect and spirit of men and women. I believe we are highly compatible -- not identical, but balanced. I believe we bring our own individual talents to the table, and that is a very Martha-Stewarty “good thing.” We don’t need laws to force us to pretend we’re all the same. If we were all identical, we’d either be pretty darned dull, or -- if everybody were identical to me -- pretty darned annoying.

I suppose being cogs in a great socialist machine sounds like a dream if you have issues of self-esteem. Then, everybody gets ground down to the same level of misery. But for those of us who have some small talent, the idea of becoming uniform, of dulling ourselves down to the level of, say, the complacent French worker is the ultimate fright.

I don’t want the government to have power in my life even as much as it already does -- why would I support its taking on more from me? Why would I want to live a single second of the leftist nightmare, the one they fought and killed for in the1970s?

And, why on earth would anybody in his right mind want to relive Disco Fever?

What part of "no"...

2007-03-28T16:43:00.000-05:00

I’m not quite sure why it bothers us so, but when a child deliberately does what we tell him he mustn’t, most of us become very, very angry. It doesn’t change when somebody past his majority does the same thing. When you tell the mechanic, “Don’t bother to look at the taillights, I’ve got higher priorities up front,” and he messes with the taillights and tries to bill you for it, you jolly well want to punch out his headlights, don’t you?

So why is it that Congress thinks it’s exempt from this response?

The President, the Constitutional Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, has told them repeatedly that he will not give a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, believing it to be dangerous to do so. General David Petraeus, the man whose confirmation received the unanimous support from Congress, has said setting an artificial timetable is dangerous, and that the new plan should be given a chance before anybody starts using words like “withdrawal”. Even the majority of the public, in a recent Investors Business Daily poll, has said we do not want to discuss withdrawal so much as we want to discuss possible victory. We don’t like quitting when there’s a chance we can actually succeed.

So, what exactly do the Democrats in Congress think they’re gaining by pushing that button? Here they are, passing a bill which demands a timetable for withdrawal. Not only that, but they attached a gazillion dollars in pork spending to this emergency funding bill originally drafted to support the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. For crying out loud, whom do they think they’re fooling?

Oh. Sorry. I just remembered. Cindy Sheehan is still out there. So are Barbra Streisand and Sean Penn. The leading voices of the “reality party” are there to cheer on Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the cut-and-run, we-spit-on-funding-the-troops-which-is-how-we-show-our-support Congressional Democrats.

It doesn’t matter if setting a public timetable for withdrawal is tantamount to publishing the holes in security schematics and patrol schedules for weapons depots worldwide. Al Qaeda will never notice we’re gone, will they? Mujaheddin, the Sadrists, and others will certainly not sit idly by, waiting until we’re gone, before ripping in to the new democracy and collapsing the fragile liberties. Everybody left of the aisle knows those Muslim fanatics have no patience, and they’ll get themselves all killed off LONG before we’re gone. Or perhaps they’ll be converted to peaceful methods by dint of a schedule from the Executive Office and the Pentagon, as mandated by Grandma Pelosi.

Yeah. That’ll happen.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, D-MD, as he approved the monster multibillion dollar containment farm for fat and sassy pork attached to the demand for this schedule, had the audacity even to say, “Today we are demanding accountability.” Apparently, in his mind, accountability is something which Democrats and their accountants don’t have to deal with. And, in his world, nobody will notice if -- instead of supporting the troops by drafting a straightforward budget to keep them safely in position defending themselves and the free world -- we spend a 74 million tax dollars on peanut storage and then tack on a minimum wage increase that’s already being discussed in another bill . It’s an emergency, isn’t it? So the brie, the Godiva chocolate and the filet mignon are in my grocery basket because it’s an emergency. The folks who pay my bills will never complain that I eat better than they do. And, after all, as one of the oppressed, I deserve it.

The irresponsible manner in which the Senate and House Democrats have laid forth an attempted power-grab from the Executive branch will end up costing somebody -- and most likely, not the President. The first casualties, should this succeed even in the slightest will be, of course, the troops, and, of course, the hapless citizens of the budding democracy in the Mideast, followed by the Constitution and the citizens of the United States of America.

But we must not question their patriotism.

We all -- on both sides of the political fence and straddling it, too -- say, no, we don’t want a repeat of the mistakes made in Vietnam. The president says, no, he will not set a timetable for failure. General Petraeus says no, don’t hamstring our efforts. What part of “no” do the Democrats in the House and Senate not understand?

The 2007 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill (Senate Version). (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Driving the snakes out

2007-03-20T14:34:00.000-05:00

Saint Patrick was best known, in legend, for driving the snakes out of Ireland. His saint’s day, as virtually every green beer drinker and corned-beef-and-cabbage diner knows, was this past Saturday.

But not everybody gathering for weekend festivities was celebrating Padraig’s life. In cities all around the country, people gathered to make their own statements in advance of the 19th of March, the fourth anniversary of the date our troops began their march on Baghdad. There were anti-war protests in most major cities -- and there were, unreported by the mainstream media, counter-protests, as well.

One protest in particular, in Washington, D.C., outnumbered their opposition at least 3 to 1. National Park Service estimated this group to number roughly 30,000, positioned at three locations, while their opponents on the issue garnered no more than 10,000 at peak, and tapered off to less than 1,000 within the first two hours of the all-afternoon event. What the media doesn’t tell you is that the larger group was called “A Gathering of Eagles,” and they were there to show their respect for the troops, to show support for their efforts, and to protect the people’s property. The anti-war, anti-America,
hate-Bush-and-all-things-not-leftwing crowd straggled in and straggled out. Some had, in advance of their event, announced plans to bring cans of paint with which to vandalize the Vietnam War Veteran’s Memorial (the Wall). Some of them had already demonstrated a willingness and ability to do such harm, having just two weeks ago spray-painted the steps to the Capitol building.

The antiwar crowd and their fellow travelers came with pre-printed, prepackaged signs, t-shirts, puppets, pre-recorded music programs, and a carefully scheduled day’s events. Much of what they carried was clearly professionally done, of a high quality indicative of a substantial amount of money having been invested in their gathering. Much of their support came from the overtly anti-American socialist organization, International ANSWER and George Soros’ bottomless pit of hate-Bush funding. They came selling t-shirts and buttons bearing the likeness of mass-murderer Che Guevara and shouting threats, profanities and vulgarities.

A Gathering of Eagles was a genuine grassroots event. Only a little over a month ago, the internet began to see discussions at “milblogs” -- blog sites run by and devoted to members (both active and retired) of the military -- concerning the upcoming leftist promises to claim the day and the sites for themselves. It would seem that quite a few Vietnam veterans were displeased with the prospect of the left once more gaining the stage and driving public opinion away from a potential victory. Discussions became plans, and, Voila! Not only did a few hundred Vietnam vets show to protect the Wall from vandalism and to remind the nation of their message, they managed to gather momentum and collect people from all over the country, to rally to their side. They carried handmade signs, American flags, and, on occasion, each other. While some resorted to shouting and taunting -- and booing a certain speaker from the other side -- most were polite, considerate, and even cleaned up after themselves, leaving no litter on the ground when they went home and giving aid to an antiwar protester who cut his hand. They were rock-solid in their support for the troops and the nation.

It seems to me that the Gathering of Eagles’ turnout is indicative of something the Democratic leadership in Congress has missed, in their cock-suredness that their scant majority was a mandate to cut and run from Iraq: some of us actually have learned a thing or two from history. Soldiers and their loved ones will not allow this nation to be sold out again by the self-ambitious -- not while they still have a say in things. As one attendee at the Gathering said to Michelle Malkin and Hot Air Video, “Someone should have done this a long time ago, and we’re not going to let that happen again.”

This crowd foresees a short political life for any copperheads on or around the mall, and sees no need to call for a saint to help clear the snakes out. They can clear them out, on their own. Among them are natural enemies of snakes. Those who gathered there last weekend were, after all, Eagles.

Suggested reading:

Eagles
At Flopping Aces, Curt offers The Gathering of Eagles - Report and
Wordsmith has March 17th was a Great Day for the Real Peace Activists...
Michelle Malkin has What they didn't show you on TV (which embeds the video, just under 9 minutes long), and Gathering of Eagles -- 30,000 strong "blogburst" with many links worthy of following.

Moonbats
Gateway Pundit offers something on the damage "Peace protesters" did in St. Louis, MO, Portland OR & other towns.
Smash has a little background on some of the organizations who funded the Left's protests, in Marching with Moonbats, part I and on the Eagles and friends, part II, Eagles up! (for starters).

Copperheads
Mackubin Thomas Owens: on Copperheads, Then and Now (HT: Jim Hoft)

Please forgive our boldness, O Masters!

2007-03-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

From this past Sunday through the upcoming weekend, we have been enjoying the fruits of Sunshine Week. According to Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner, Sunshine Week is “an effort led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to press for greater transparency and accountability in our government and to increase public awareness of the importance of doing so.”

When Senators Tom Coburn and Barack Obama got together last year and put forward their budget bill, it seemed as though somebody (or bodies) up there on the Hill had finally figured out that the natives were, indeed, getting restless, and those somebodies were willing to quell the concerns of the masses. All last spring and summer, the new media had quietly seethed and pressed for reforms, especially as it comes to spending earmarks. The educated public were tired of seeing their tax dollars vanish down a hole of non-accountability. The Coburn-Obama bill was supposed to correct that, shining a light on every little proposed expenditure.

The bill proposed, among other things, that the national budget with all its add-ons and earmarks be made public over the internet (with some exceptions for national security purposes) at least 48 hours before it was to come to vote, that every earmark be “claimed” -- that is, a name be attached to it any part where the budget was redirected to provide some spare cash for a pet project, so that we could all know whose bright idea it was to build a memorial fountain in the middle of, say, Lake Michigan. It would make public the government again, and, perhaps, give us reason for trusting our representatives.

It would appear we trusted a little too soon.

The bill did not pass in its undiluted form, but with all manner of attachments which, in essence, make it purely a symbolic gesture. And the Office of Management and Budget is playing along with them. Again, I cite Mark Tapscott:

[W]ord is circulating on the Hill that the Bush administration is going to release only a limited database of earmarks later today or maybe no database at all, but just aggregate or summary data.

Seems the White House legislative staff fears releasing the database would offend members of the appropriation committees in Congress.

Gee, whiz! They’re worried about upsetting congresscritters. After all, they put all those signs up all over the National Zoo to discourage that sort of thing. We all know how dangerous it is to feed the self-righteous indignation of an elected official.

Heaven forfend that the high and mighty might be forced to account for themselves, and for their budgets! Private citizens and private businesses have been forced to reveal more to the public about their expenditures, over the past years, than have public officials. This, combined with the so-called draining of the swamp which put several known crooks at the heads of important commitees, would indicate that our elected officials think that they are far and away superior to all the mere mortals who elected them from amid their ranks. We dare not raise our eyes and gaze upon the highest of the high, for fear we may better understand the process of making the holy sausages and find that the by-product which goes into it isn’t really worth what the Good Butcher charges us for it.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh, too judgmental. Perhaps they believe they are protecting us from ourselves. Perhaps if we were to understand all that they were doing, we would become so overwhelmed with gratitude and shame for our suspicions, our civilization would collapse. Perhaps they simply fear that we will be blinded by the light that shines out their budgets. Or, perhaps they truly have, like Caligula, become gods.

Must we continue to bow and scrape and kowtow to them, because they believe they know better than we know what’s good for us? I think not.

It’s not too early to start thinking of replacements for all the members of Congress who voted against the transparency bill, or pushed amendments to nullify it. It’s not too late to remind them who actually pays the power bill at their temple. They are not gods. At best, they are mere mortals, and, at most, they have become self-absorbed, self-serving vampires.

And we know what happens to vampires when the sun strikes them.

Suggested Reading:
Mark Tapscott on Sunshine Week and on Admin caving on earmarks. Plus the Sunshine Week official website.
Also, check out Porkbusters -- especially their Hall of Shame.
Plus -- Captain's Quarters: Popeye Strategy for Iraq.

Twice the standards of everyone else

2007-03-07T12:39:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, the media have been abuzz over the word Ann Coulter used to describe John Edwards -- in another classic example of a “failed joke” of epic stupidity. That word used to mean a bundle of sticks, and now is a derogatory term for a man who prefers the intimate company of other men. It has become an ugly term, and Coulter deserves all the castigation she gets, from both left and right sides of the political spectrum, for pretending to make humor with it.

Still, we’re not asking that she enter rehab for it.

Meanwhile, one of the left’s favorite “funny” men, Bill Maher, has come out in all seriousness to support of the attempted assasination of the vice president of our free country. What do we hear about “hate speech” from the leaders of the left? Crickets chirping.

One of the left’s prominent leaders, Jimmy Carter, came out with a book blaming Israelis for having the gall to be blown up by Palestinian suicide bombers, and by having the further nerve to build a fence to prevent more deaths. Did more crickets chirp? No, the author was nominated for a second Nobel Peace Prize.

And Al “the Goracle” Gore received an Oscar for Best Documentary, for his popular amalgam of propaganda and glitzy effects, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The very same week, it was made public that, in one month, his modern (1980s construction) mansion in Nashville uses 20 times the energy of the average American home. Last August alone, that house’s electricity usage outstripped the average family’s total energy consumption for a full year, including light, heat, and transportation. And there the Goracle stood, in all his pride, lecturing people about “reducing their energy footprint” to nil. There he stood, exhaling carbon dioxide while lecturing the masses on reducing their carbon dioxide emissions to nil.

To top things off, he pushed “carbon offsets” as his excuse from energy restraint.

The concept of offsets was introduced during negotiations for cleanup efforts in Europe and Asia, in advance of the ill-conceived Kyoto accord. Those states which could not initially afford to clean up their polluting acts could buy their way out of trouble by paying into a fund, with the aim that the funds would be applied to development of cleaner energy sources. This led to a number of theworst offenders remaining the worst offenders, but on a grander scale because they know they can buy their way out of trouble. It’s the equivalent of church indulgences -- the ones which, ultimately, contributed to the failure of credibilty of the Church, and led to Martin Luther’s rise. Gore is now promoting the purchase of said offsets from a company for which he is the founder and fully stock-holding chairman, so the Goracle stands to gain much by the sale of these indulgences.

Contrast a 2001 Chicago Tribune report of one famous house in Crawford Texas: “Geothermal heat pumps located in a central closet circulate water through pipes buried 300 feet deep in the ground where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees; the water heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. Systems such as the one in this ‘eco-friendly’ dwelling use about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and cooling systems utilize. A 25,000-gallon underground cistern collects rainwater gathered from roof runs; wastewater from sinks, toilets and showers goes into underground purifying tanks and is also funneled into the cistern. The water from the cistern is used to irrigate the landscaping surrounding the four-bedroom home. Plants and flowers native to the high prairie area blend the structure into the surrounding ecosystem.” No offsets required.

The Nashville Electric Service, though, lacks the data on how many offsets Gore would need to pay for the many private jet flights he makes, the number of limousine and Sport Utility Vehicle rides he takes, the amount of energy consumed in staging his worldwide public appearances selling the “most pressing moral issue of our day.”

Meanwhile, the Goracle and his acolytes refer to President Bush as the man who has done the greatest harm to the ecosystem.

And we will not even go into the fictions Joe Wilson and Patrick Fitzgerald have been selling about others’ supposed lies.

Without double standards, it seems, some folks would have no standards at all.

Suggested Reading:
On Gore's Nashville mansion: Tennessee Center for Policy Research
On Bush's Crawford house: Common Dreams
Gerard van der Leun asks "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the greenest of them all?"
Donald Sensing is shocked to be defending Al Gore, and his "comments" section has good responses
Eric Scheie of Classical Values on Why hypocrisy shouldn't -- but does -- matter
Will's Corner Googled The F-Word... Lots Of It At Daily Kos. (not the "f-bomb, though. It's related to Coulter's choice)
Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse: What Joe Wilson's Lies Have Wrought
Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute: Fitzi's Dishonor (HT: Instapundit)

Marathon (wo)Man

2007-02-28T11:18:00.000-06:00

(Warning: this column contains excessive use of pointless Oscar references)

Last Sunday, the American Film Academy hosted its award show and handed out Oscars. I tried to watch the show -- I really, really did! -- but it was just too much for me. Three hours and forty minutes of self-indulgent hullabaloo were too much, causing a partially Lost Weekend. At the first sign of trouble (that would have been the first 45 minutes, actually, when they did everything except announce a major award), my hand reached out in panic, in search of the remote control device. I did switch back every few minutes, but I spent most of the evening studiously avoiding it, out of justifiable concern that I might have my brain sucked dry by the lack of entertainment value. Opinions of others whom I respect, who still sat through the whole show, indicate mine was a wise choice.

There ought, for our sanity, to be a strict time limit on these pointless pageants. And I’m not just talking about awards shows.

Election day is not until November of 2008 -- heck, the primaries aren’t even for another year, and here we are in the first days of March of ‘07 trying to make up our minds as to which jackass we want to replace the current one. We have four hats in the ring -- and another already withdrawn. Why are we thinking about this now? To my mind, it feels a little like discussing Oscar potential for an unfinished, unsold screenplay. It’s starting to draft your doctoral dissertation while you’re still only in eighth grade. It’s picking Miss America while she’s still in diapers. It’s getting engaged before you’ve actually spoken your first word to your betrothed. That may work in a Great Ziegfeld fantasy, and it may work in an aristocracy where merit counts for nothing, but it’s generally not a good idea in a free society.

The marathon run these candidates have started may tell us a lot about them, but we don’t know enough about our future to know precisely what kind of leader we’ll need for those next four or eight years. We can’t necessarily gauge which one of the many we will most need. All we know is what has happened so far -- and a very limited amount of that, to be certain.

Even knowing the history of our nation’s struggle to free ourselves from Great Britain’s rule, the day has come that I envy The Queen’s subjects. They actually have a time limit on campaigns. Nothing can be released as campaign material until a month before elections, and they have a spending cap, as well. This means that, were we under their laws, for the next year, we wouldn’t have to hear from anybody but actual, newsworthy individuals. No listening to nonsense about whether the Mormon guy is “electable despite his religion,” or whether “America is ready” for a woman or a person of color for a whole nother year. No suffering the calls from various headquarters of campaigns asking for your time, your money, your input, et cetera until this time next year. And then, after the primaries were over, we’d get some quiet time before they could start in with the ads telling us how eeeeevil the other guy is. The only commercials we’d see would be the normal, marginally offensive ones for regular manufactured goods... um, that is, for products not walking upright and kissing babies. Wouldn’t that be loverly?

As a believer in our Constitutional right to free speech, though, I can’t actually say I would approve of our adopting anything like what the Brits have. Deep in my heart, I know that we can not restrict political speech, no matter how annoying, no matter how painfully prolonged the message. That would mark the end of all other freedoms, as well. A Gentleman’s Agreement wouldn’t hurt, though.

Still, no matter how solid and rational I am about Constitutional protections, I dream of the day when election campaigns run less than a year, and the Academy Award ceremonies last only two hours. I dream of the day, in each, when quality outstrips quantity, at all levels of both. I dream of the day when I no longer cringe, at the polls or as award shows are aired.

I dream the Impossible Dream: there’s got to be a Morning After.

Hail and farewell to the Chief

2007-02-21T10:30:00.000-06:00

I was never all that interested in sports, when I was in school. The attraction came to me late in life, as I learned to appreciate the fellowship of fans, the trust that is shared among those who support a common cause, that cause being something other than avoiding work. Support of a team is an elemental tribalism, without the need to resort to violence to establish hierarchy. At least that’s what the anthropologists tell us. Personally, I discovered that sports are artistic. The athletes perform some elegant maneuvers, create a beautiful dance, and I have learned to enjoy the view and share it with my friends.

The dance is not only performed by the basketball, football, and such players. The cheerleaders and mascots have their place in the scheme of things, too. Only, somebody is messing with the music.

As of the time I write this, Chief Illiniwek has one last dance to strut, Wednesday evening. After that, he is to be retired, and the University of Illinois will be looking for a new mascot. The dispute leading up to the Chief’s removal from view is one of the silliest I have seen. The NCAA decided that the depiction of a member of an extinct nation was hurtful to some other persons who may have had an extremely distant connection to them, as the figure was supposedly subject to ridicule. As a result of those hurt feelings, the NCAA summarily announced that, in effect, either the injun goes, or the team goes. If the guy in the big headdress continues his dance, the team is locked out of the “Big Dance”, the post-season championship games. Naturally, as the athletic program at any given Big Ten university is a huge generator of cash, the school’s heads chose to make Illiniwek into a heap of feathers, instead of a powerful rallying symbol. They knuckled under in the face of blackmail.

That is a pity.

Chief Illiniwek was one of the most carefully respectful figures, when he was first introduced to the public more than eighty years ago. That hasn’t changed. The university went to the trouble of not merely getting permission to use his image, but asking advice from the regional tribes as to how he might best show the strength of the local people via the student athletes. The dance has always been carefully choreographed so as to present a strong, spiritual image -- not a taunting piece of nonsense to bring embarrassment to anybody.

To be honest, I cannot believe this decision by the U of I will bring anything good. My own alma mater has a human mascot. How long will it be before Sean Connery and a dozen other “sensitive” Scots come running to tear the kilts off Monmouth? Will the pride of Dublin come to Notre Dame to stop their use of the little leprechaun? Will the tree-huggers come after the Sycamores? And, more comparable still to the Illini -- a nation long since gone -- will some Swedish-American cry insult over the use of his fantasy ancestor’s image by the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings? Where does this hypersensitivity nonsense stop -- when all the mascots are named after single-celled organisms, when all sports are outlawed and the population is too weak to lift a twig?

How this is supposed to help the pride of a dead people I can not understand. For those who say it helps the pride of the remaining Native Americans, I will beg to differ. Injured pride comes when a person sees that he, himself, can not live up to a high standard or to the bold examples set before him. If one wishes to boost the pride of a person, one shows him how to stand on his own, and encourages him not to whine about what the other guys are doing.

It is time some folks grew up.

When a person takes insult where none is given, when the crowd sides with the complainer and silences the other, it sets an unfortunate precedent. It emboldens others to silence those they do not like. It encourages futher extortion. It buries open dialog. That, in turn, breeds greater -- justifiable -- resentment, and eventually creates true hatred and real oppression.

I’m fairly certain that’s not what the students were paying to learn when they enrolled at the University of Illinois.

Edwards campaign gets blogged down in muck

2007-02-13T11:00:00.000-06:00

This has been an interesting winter for bloggers.

For anybody who has not yet heard what bloggers are, these are the people who write regular log entries on the internet -- web logs, abbreviated to ’blogs. I happen to keep a blog*, myself, but mine is merely an outlet for my own ego. I don’t expect to effect change in anybody but myself, and I seldom break news of anything more than a personal nature. Still, others have been outlets for hard news when nobody else would tell it, and a couple of them, by virtue of the substance of the news they released, have been agents of change.

So, those who keep blogs -- bloggers -- are, by some, deemed to be the new up-and-coming powerhouse. Candidates for government office occasionally write their own blogs, but more often now hire other popular bloggers to present the daily patter of the campaign office, expecting they will capture the brilliant, hip and youthfully energetic crowd. In some ways, it is not unlike hiring a speech-writer, press secretary, and newspaper publisher all rolled into one. And the popularity of the blogger beforehand may be the difference between having the Monmouth Daily Review Atlas and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch release your news. Mitt Romney has a campaign blogger, as do Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. And the last of those three saw trouble, this week.

Amanda Marcotte, whose blog Pandagon has long been a site for strong language and strong opinions from the left, was picked up by Edwards to put her “hip” spin on the campaign. The problem with his choice of bloggers was that Marcotte has long been a very good example of how not to play well with others. Her blog is not merely leftist, but hate-filled and chock full of bile, largely directed toward Christians, particularly Catholics. She was downright pornographic in the way she discussed things as important to Christian faith as the Virgin Birth. Marcotte went out of her way to be grotesque. And when she was called to task on it, she blamed the right-wingers for her mess, complaining they were censoring her.

After some discussion with headquarters, she issued the “I’m sorry if you were offended by what I said,” pseudo-apology and promptly went back to her nasty habits. Eventually, even the pretty boy whose campaign she was supposedly helping could see that she was alienating the very people he needed, and it appears she was asked to resign from her position as campaign blogger for the harm she was doing.

You know you’re in trouble when you start dragging down the reputation of a personal injury attorney.

Marcotte was downright Dixie Chick-ish in crying “censorship!”

There are plenty of open venues from which to vent her spleen. She has not been jailed or fined or in any way silenced. Marcotte has simply lost her bully pulpit. Her blog, Pandagon, is still up and running. She went back to blaming the far right “wingnut Christofascist[s]” for her humiliation, without noticing that some of her strongest critics were from the left end of the political spectrum. She blamed her troubles on those who pointed out the offensive statements she had made. Marcotte has only herself to blame.

A worse part of this mess was how long it took for John Edwards to recognize he had a problem, and do something about it. His team hired a bigot, and it was a week before it came to the public’s attention. Only when it looked as though it would cost him the support of the liberal Christians did he act to clean up his house. That does not speak well for him. It says not only that he was of the mistaken belief that bigotry, when it’s from the left, is “edgy” and hip, but that, when that bigotry was pointed out for the ugly thing that it was, he was reluctant to do more than “tsk-tsk” and let her continue her ugly ways -- for the sake of his campaign.

Worst of all, considering how so many of the members of the left still seem to feel it was Marcotte who was wronged, there may be a real problem within the Democratic party. If they cannot recognize and cannot purge this sort of disgusting bigotry from their own ranks, it bodes ill for the future of civility, in campaigns, in blogging, and in general.

*okay, three in total, here, here and here, but who's counting?

Recommended reading:
Michelle Malkin: Edwards' blogger resigns.
Ed Morrissey: Marcotte Quits, Sun To Rise In East In The Morning
Howard Kurtz: A Blogger for Edwards Resigns After Complaints.

And, on the second blogger resignation, of Melissa McEwan: Daniel Glover at Beltway Blogroll: Edwards Bloggers: And Then There Were None

and Iowahawk: oh, heck, just read Iowahawk in general, including his archives (right sidebar, way down). But don't do it with food or drink in your mouth. (Strong -- but very funny, in context -- language warning.)

With malice toward none

2007-02-07T12:55:00.000-06:00

O tan-faced prairie boy,
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give –– we but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Monday, the 12th of February, marks the 198th anniversary of the birth of my hero, Abraham Lincoln. I’m not just a fan of the man because I’m in Illinois, either. Although respecting the man seems to be a prerequisite to settling down in the Land of Lincoln, my arrival upon these shores, so to speak, came by virtue of birth. My arrival at Lincoln came as a matter of choice -- and yet, the choice was a natural one.

I gather that most people think of Mister Lincoln as that cartoonish fellow in the stovepipe hat, down-home and folksy. They remember his beard, they remember the Gettysburg Address, and they surely studied that he was the President of the United States during probably the greatest challenge the nation could face, and he led the country well.

That’s not the primary reason for my cheering for the man. My rationale is purely personal: if not for him, I would not exist. He was our family’s Saint Valentine, in a manner of speaking.

In 1862, in the midst of the growing chaos, a bill was put on Lincoln’s desk which his predecessor, James Buchanan, had vetoed. The bill was the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Bill. Lincoln signed it into law. What the Morrill Act did was to allow each state in the Union to set aside a percentage of land to sell, for the express purpose of establishing a university. My parents met at one of those universities. Their eyes met, they fell in love, in a setting made possible by Lincoln’s decision. The rest, as they say, is history.

Aside from setting the stage for the wonder of my birth, though, that bill Lincoln signed gave us what eventually would become the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), and set precedent for the later establishment of historically black colleges like Tuskeegee University in Alabama, and Native American schools such as the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in Virginia. Not so bad for a wartime chief, eh?

Let’s add, now, that, during the same year he signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, and then, two years later the Pacific Railway Act of (surprise!) 1864. These acts made it possible for federal support to be given to the private companies building railways (the Union Pacific Railway and the Central Pacific Railroad) to create a transcontinental line. It not only gave land, but ultimately cash, so that the railroad companies could get all the land they needed to build a great road west. Granted, the Acts did allow for some egregious corruption, but, ultimately, it gave the country the one thing it needed to bind the land together as one. I won’t say the end justified all the means, but the end was, after all, good. Much else, after all this time, can be forgiven.

Ultimately, Lincoln also made my home what it is today, by creating the United States Department of Agriculture. Yes, the guys who make sure your food is safe were first put together as a government agency with Mister Lincoln’s signature. And beneath that big USDA umbrella now rests the Small Community and Rural Development division, which has for many years assisted Monmouth -- and towns just like us-- in keeping competitive, alive and afloat. For the tree-huggers, too, the USDA has a division focusing on conservation: Natural Resources and Environment, subdivided into the Forest Service and the Social Conservative Service (SCS) , who work toward a cooperative effort between landowners, developers, communities, etc., to protect our water and soil.

In other words, Lincoln was far from merely a wartime president. He was one singular man who simultaneously saved and reshaped the country, helped to make it the great nation that it is today. In the process, he made quite a few of us what we are, as well. It was, truly, more than all the gifts of the world he gave us.

Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside

2007-02-01T12:33:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, somebody whose opinions I was beginning to admire made a statement which, on the front of it, seemed rational and reasonable, not at all out of the ordinary. But the more I thought about it, the more it gnawed at me.

This man’s story is not unusual.

He had been born and raised in suburbia, and made his way to yon hinterlands in college, then bounced around awhile before finally returning to those stomping grounds of his late formative years. He decided to stay, because there was a steady job for him here, and because it was a nice place to raise kids. He liked the straight streets on an even grid, the fact that one could walk down them at night unmolested. He found he even liked and respected the people. What this man said was, “I was shocked by how many erudite people lived out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Initially, I couldn’t understand why this statement would bother me so much. After all, virtually the entire rest of the world felt the same way. My mother reminded me of an occasion when she had spoken with a woman who had come to the region to instruct the locals on various government and private plans for long-term farm growth. Mom said the woman was surprised these farmers so easily grasped her difficult business concepts.

And then it hit me: this bothered me because these prejudices are so widely held.

The common perception from city and suburb is that, if one is a farmer, one is a nitwit. If one is raised in a farming community, one is fated to be a caricature -- a bumpkin, a rube, a hick, a hayseed, a clodhopper, a goober, a chawbacon, a Tony Lumpkin with straw still clinging to his hair, ever wondering why everybody in the Big City is staring at him while he gawps at “them tawl buildin’s.”

But life is not Green Acres. The commonsense man is not a mere transplant from Manhattan, plunked among villains and boobs.

Here we have open spaces between buildings, between townships, but not between the ears. All the city slicker stuff isn’t exactly new to us. Long-range business planning was invented by farmers, who needed to be able to set things by for their children. These days, the farmer who doesn’t know what a spreadsheet is, is a rare breed indeed. Farmers use computers to plan, use the internet to order supplies, to buy and sell crops, to keep track of market trends, to do all sorts of things other than simply to communicate with friends, relatives, and associates. Today, farmers are often the first to recognize and utilize new technologies -- who else has such vested interests in advances in genetic research, climatology, environmental conservation, geology, machine dynamics (including engineering and maintenance), fuel efficiency, alternative energy, building construction, mass international transportation, and so many other “hot” topics of the day?

Farmers’ kids, too, are in touch with whole wide world, and have been so for my entire lifetime. For as long as I can remember, we out here have had access to public television, and all the culture it brought. Before that, too, rural kids had radio shows, libraries, artists, musicians, coffee shops, and most of the cultural amenities the city kids had. We still have rapid transportation to and from major cities, so we from the dingles can visit museums, galleries, and cultural centers to our hearts’ content, and still be home in time for the Tonight Show.

Plus, we get our produce fresher than city kids do. It doesn’t take a genius to taste the difference between a tomato picked green and shipped from some distant state to be sold at the supermarket and a fully-ripened tomato still warm from the vine.

By no means am I saying that life in a rural community is superior to that of a city or suburb (I may often think it, but I won’t speak the words aloud). But what I am trying to say is simply this: it should come as no surprise to anybody who pays attention, that living out in the boonies of America is not what it was a century and a half ago. The day of the blindly ignorant, isolated, gee-whiz plowboy is gone, and it’s high time people recognized the fact.

Consider yourself spanked

2007-01-25T17:26:00.000-06:00

California seems to be at the forefront of every nanny-state movement, and, therefore, is also at the forefront of taxpayer burden and state deficits. They just can’t get enough of telling the everyman in their midst how he should spend his money, his energies and his life. This week, they’re at it again, just about hitting bottom about hitting bottoms.

What’s going on is a legislative move to make it illegal to spank your toddler. Call it the Touch No Child’s Behind Act. State Assemblywoman Sally J. Lieber, of Mountain View, CA, has proposed that penalties be assessed for an adult who swats the posterior of a naughty bratling, to the tune of as much as one year in prison. Lesser punishment might include mandatory child-rearing classes (at least, they call it lesser. I’ve voluntarily been to a couple of state-sponsored classes, and I’d have -- in retrospect -- happily exchanged them for a few weeks in Hannibal Lecter’s cell).

I have raised no children of my own. As a rule, I’m not overly fond of kids, in fact. If I had my druthers, everybody under the age of 25 would be sent to another planet until he or she could prove ready for adult company and adult conversation (although, all the young’uns that I know personally have managed to persuade me that they are worthy of being excepted). Therefore, I am the perfect person to decide how you should raise your children, right? I -- and others who think similarly -- will make the rules for all families. Those of us who don’t care for kids (in either sense of the term) are the perfect experts on how best to rear the darling tykes. Isn’t that how it works?

Well, that’s how this State of California Assemblywoman seems to think. But worse than just having a single person or a small committee with no experience in child rearing and no true vested interest in helping specific children to excel, she is planning to have the great impersonal state practice further child rearing by a scribble of the pen, as it were. The law books and the public records care not one whit about the future of a single small child.

Let me say here, I’m not the biggest fan of spankings. I received enough of them, myself, to make me think twice about the effect on the brain of a thump to the rump. If it had so little effect upon me, in my formative years, I have a hard time imagining how useful it would be on a less tetchy tot. Anatomically, I don’t see any direct connection between the seat of one’s pants and the seat of knowledge. But then, I don’t know everything there is to know about the way a child’s mind works when addressed by a palm across the back of a diaper. I can confidently say, though, that the Pampers cushioned me from harm, and I still cried, because... well, because I’d been naughty and I’d been spanked. But I continued to have many, many, many naughty moments, for years afterward. That sort of behavioral modification seems to have been somewhat lacking, at least in my case.

Nevertheless, to make this small act of disciplining children a matter for the state, complete with court hearings and prison time... where the heck is the logic in it? Are there not already laws against child abuse? If a parent or guardian applies excessive force of hand to child, there are many laws to address the problem. I doubt they would need anything further on the books. As in so many cases of “bold, decisive, innovative legislation,” they simply need to enforce the laws they have.

And, if this thing comes to pass, what will be next? Does the bar continue to get lowered, to criminalize speaking harshly, or making the kiddies eat broccoli before they can have dessert? Will the parents be sent to “re-education camps” if their babies are forced into the bath and then put to bed against their will at night? What about footie pajamas and bunny-eared hooded sweatshirts? What will the law be on those implements of humiliation and torture?

When do --or when did -- parents stop having the right to actually parent, and become strictly followers of state policy on the breeding and handling of state property?

Worth reading: "Cat Lady" Sally Lieber Offers Child-Rearing Tips

Examining ice-olationism

2007-01-17T14:50:00.000-06:00

Under normal circumstances, I like winter. I like winter weather, I like the idea that the summer heat isn’t going to come up and bite me on my anatomy, I like the idea that my allergies are limited only to those which thrive indoors. Winter is my friend.

Except when it coats the front steps with shiny, lovely, slick ice.

So, there I was, Sunday morning bright and early, lying on my back on the slickened sidewalk, my hand less than twelve inches from the bag of salt I had been heading for. The sky was grey, the air above me was blue with expletives, and nothing was broken, not even the phone in my back pocket. I looked down the walkway, toward the little red car parked in the street -- the one which had been encased in ice -- and I had an epiphany: my friends on the left are correct: isolationism could work.

I don’t want to go outside. It’s dangerous out there. I could fall again, and not be so lucky as I was on Sunday, where I hit my head and only the stair cracked (no surprise to my parents. They knew I was hard-headed, years ago). Besides, I don’t need anything outside my house. I have a cupboard full of ramen noodles and canned chicken and spaghetti rings and other horrible indigestible things purported to carry nutrition. They will last me until spring. By then, I’ll be able to harvest... no, wait. I have to plant, first, before I can harvest. Hmm. Let’s start over again.

I have some seed packets. I can plant them now, in the pots I have stored in the garage, in dirt I can dig from beneath the ice... anybody have a pickaxe? I guess I have to go out and get one. Dang. Maybe I should just try to grow plants in the dirt of my basement floor. It looks less clayey in some places. But then, I’ll be needing to go out for grow-lights and I’ll need an electrician to rewire the basement to handle the increased burden on the wiring system of the house. And then, I will be using a lot more electrical power. And, of course, I’ll have all the neighbors and the police wondering what it is I’m secretly growing in my cellar, that uses all that power and keeps the basement glowing. That’s not exactly the best way to build trust, is it? Back to the drawing board.

It would appear that localized self-sufficiency, as a major element in isolationism, can’t really work, can it? After all, if I need iodized salt to prevent thyroid problems, I’m not going to be able to go out to the corner of my garden and dig some up, am I? And, I’m not going to allow myself to suffer scurvy just because I don’t want to be beholden to a fuel company and some shipping firm for bringing me a crate of oranges from Florida or Spain. Heck, I even have to look outside my own block to get the stuff to melt the ice off my sidewalk! If I leave the slick surface alone, I could fall again, or the mailman and anybody else who may be walking past my door could be hurt, and that can lead to bad blood.

Improvements in medicine, diet, communications, international good will, and self-defense -- among other things -- all depend upon interacting with people outside our immediate neighborhood. When, in the process of reaching out to maintain those connections, we get hurt, the first instinct is to withdraw and avoid that contact again. But cutting and running from reality doesn’t bring us a newer, better reality. All it does is isolate us, so that nobody will trust us when we offer help, and nobody will hear our own cries for help, should we need it in the future.

All in all, lying on my back -- scraped, stunned and bruised -- on the slick sidewalk beats sitting indoors and trying to swallow another can of store-brand spaghetti rings. That tomato sauce isn’t overly digestible, anyway. Plus, eventually, three cars got chopped out of the ice, that Sunday morning, five people smiled on their way out for meetings, and the effect was spread outward from there, I hear.

A cold, hard life isn’t all bad, if you’re willing to share the good parts.

Suggested reading:
New York Sun Editorial: Enemy in Our Back Yard
Victor Davis Hanson: War?– What War?

And they had such promise, too

2007-01-11T11:15:00.000-06:00

When the leadership of the Democratic Party were campaigning for those congressional seats, last fall, they were full of conciliatory words and language of openness and change.

Well, some were, anyway.

And, as the returns came in and they saw that they were going to have the majority, some of them even promised great things, like bipartisanship and ethical reforms. The “culture of corruption” was going to be a thing of the past, and “inclusiveness” would be the new byword. Then there was that stuff about supporting the troops, because, you know, the troops aren’t smart enough to take care of their own interests.

Even before they took control, though, those promises were cast to the four winds.

To begin with, the openness and inclusion thing was shown to be a pile of nonsense. The layout for the first 100 hours is to introduce bills right and left without allowing for any input from the other side of the aisle. No matter that the law may have no worth, or that, perhaps, a better-written, thought-out bill might come from the Republicans, it won’t be allowed on the floor -- not so long as the Democrats in power have anything to say about it. Not that they actually have anything close to a mandate from the people of this country. A mandate would have shown in the form of, say, a clear, extremely lopsided majority. They’d have won at least 60 percent of the seats, instead of eking out that one above half. And their weakness will be reflected when the President vetoes their acts, and the remaining 49 per cent thumb their noses at a vote to override the veto.

Next came the promise that the party would support the troops. Apparently, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem to think that support comes in the form of threatening to cut off their paychecks if the President doesn’t do what they tell him to do in Iraq. In my neck of the woods, that’s not exactly seen as supportive. And, I don’t know that many soldiers, past or present, would disagree with me. In fact, there are even a few members of the Democratic party who say that such threats are not helpful to mission or morale.

Promised ethical reforms, too, got the heave-ho, when Speaker-elect Pelosi named John (“your Abscam bribe isn’t big enough for me”) Murtha as her pick to become House Majority Leader, then, at the behest of the Black Congressional Caucus put forth Alcee (“I can be judge and criminal at the same time”) Hastings for Senate Intelligence Committee chair, and, most egregious of all, she is setting the fox in charge of the henhouse by naming West Virginia’s Allan Mollohan the head of the panel which reviews the budget for -- among other things -- the FBI which is currently investigating him for ethics violations.

It seems there is a change coming.

Under Democrat management, the most blatant crooks get reelected and even promoted. Back in the bad old days, when the Republicans were the majority and somebody in that party got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he was respectfully asked to resign from his seat, or even summarily dismissed and replaced by somebody with a slightly less shady history. If a Republican candidate were reported to have asked, for example, if his wife might want to become intimate with him in a slightly unusual setting -- even if she said “no” -- he was cast to the wolves, never to hold any major public office again, but Democrats philander with underlings all they want and still receive applause. If a Republican honored another man at that other’s hundredth-ish birthday party, he was branded a racist and forced to step down from his position of leadership, while a retired Kleagle of the Klan is still a respected senior Democrat in the Senate.

It’s true, the Republicans are in no wise saints. They are, after all, politicians – a grimy breed if there ever was such a thing. But so far, I have seen no evidence that the “culture of corruption” that the Democrats decried is going to be uprooted in favor of that promised civility, cooperation, and true character. As far as I can see, to most of the elected body “Integrity, integrity, integrity” is still just a tongue twister.

Yes, that’s quite a change from status quo, isn’t it?

Suggested reading:
Captain Ed, at CQ: The addiction remains strong
Sister Toldjah: Dem push for cut and run 'officially' begins.
Bloomberg report on the Mollohan scandal

THE CHALLENGE

2007-01-10T16:20:00.000-06:00

This beig the 19th and final part to the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

THE CHALLENGE

WE Americans are traditionally a hopeful peo-ple. That spirit is standing us in good stead today. We do not see ourselves in the grip of circumstances over which we have no control and about which we can do nothing. We believe that a great deal can be done to better the world and that we, in cooperation with other free people, can do it.

Our foreign policies reflect that conviction.

In the foregoing pages we have given a brief summary of those policies and of the steps now being taken to put them into effect.

We believe that the objectives we have set for ourselves are possible for attainment. We believe that with hard work and persistence we can accomplish the tasks before us.

This is a challenge. It is worthy of the great tradi-

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tions handed down to us from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the other brave and determined men and women who, over the years, have helped mold our Republic. As an American writer recently put it :

"For the high-hearted successor of the men of old there is wonder in being an American, for the bold man there is delight."

---------------
FOR SALE BY THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS,
U. S. GOVERNMENT RPINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON 25, D. C.

PRICE 25 CENTS

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1952

RIGHTS OF MEN AND NATIONS

2007-01-10T14:50:00.000-06:00

Part 18 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

RIGHTS OF MEN AND NATIONS

THE United Nations Charter pledged all its signers to respect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. But it did not define those rights and free-doms. One of the first tasks of the United Nations, therefore, was to develop a common understanding among its members on the meaning of those words. To be realistic, such an agreement had to express the honest beliefs and aims of all the nations that supported it. It had to be a common denominator of the standards of justice and freedom that human beings have a right to demand.

The United States worked hard to bring about such an understanding. American citizens' organizations gave vigorous support to these efforts. The Universal

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Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by the Human Rights Commission, of which Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the chairman. The draft was approved in 1948 by the General Assembly as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations."

The next step is to get the common understanding in the Declaration accepted in practice, as part of the constitutions and laws of nations. This work has been going forward for 4 years. The United Nations through its Commission on Human Rights is undertaking to draft an international covenant which will embody in treaty form certain basic rights as a minimum standard below which no nation will go.

Each nation which ratifies the covenant binds itself to adopt appropriate legislation, if none then exists, to assure that those rights recognized in the covenant are also recognized under its own national laws. Those ratifying nations whose standards are below those of the covenant would be obliged to raise them at least to that level. Those nations which may already have higher standards in some respects will continue to follow their own standards. Nothing in the draft covenant is grounds for lowering already existing standards. In the United States our Constitution will continue to guarantee our own liberties.

Another project of the United Nations is the out-lawing of genocide, or mass murder of whole groups of

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people, such as Nazi Germany officially practiced. In 1948 the General Assembly unanimously approved a convention pledging its members to treat genocide as a crime and to punish it accordingly. The genocide convention came into efect on January 21, 1951, after the required 20 nations had ratified it. This treaty is now before the Senate for ratification.

Progress in human rights is not confined to the mak-ing of treaties and declarations. The United Nations is working on such concrete things as the free gather-ing of news, the free movement of peoples, and the free exchange of knowledge. The U.N. specialized agen-cies provide many channels for concrete progress in various aspects of human justice and freedom.

There is no need to create a ferment of ideas in the world. It already exists. The need – and this the United Nations can meet – is to translate the ideas of freedom and progress into practical terms of better health, better nutrition, beter homes and schools, as well as better laws to protect the people from oppression.

One of the truths of which we ourselves are con-vinced, and of which we want to convince others, is that American democracy is liberal and progressive – American policy is a force for freedom.

An example of this truth can be seen in the American attitude toward national independence. We affirm the right and capacity of all peoples to work toward self-government or independence, but we recognize that all are not equally ready to shoulder these responsibilities. We are strongly opposed to any aggression that threat-

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ens to destroy the opportunity of a people to become or remain independent.

The United States has cooperated with other nations to enhance the capacity of dependent peoples to gov-ern their own affairs. We have worked by direct nego-tiation and through such international bodies as the Trusteeship Council, the General Assembly Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, and the Caribbean and South Pacific Commissions. Our effort in helping the people of the Philippine Islands to set up and maintain their own government is an example of our sincere interest in the independence of peoples.

Some Americans have been troubled by the fact that the nations whose independence we have helped to establish and maintain have not all had representative governments or practiced democracy as we understand it. The fact that we help a country to be free of for-eign domination does not mean that we admire the particular government it happens to have at any par-ticular time. It means that we do not want any people to be deprived of the chance to govern themselves, as they would be if they became Soviet satellites. It means that we want the kind of international community in which each nation is free to manage its own affairs, sub-ject, of course, to its pledges and responsibilities under the United Nations Charter.

Within the broad area of the Charter, there is plenty of room for people to experiment and to change their forms of government, if they wish – plenty of room for

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progress toward governments truly responsive to popu-lar aspirations. But the Charter also lays upon all the members of the United Nations the responsibility of re-specting the rights of other nations, the responsibility of managing their own affairs in ways that will not create a danger to the world, and the responsibility of cooperating to protect the free world against aggression.

THE CAMPAIGN OF TRUTH

2007-01-10T12:01:00.000-06:00

Part 17 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

THE CAMPAIGN OF TRUTH

THE last several years have witnessed an increasingly bitter and vicious campaign of hate and slander against the U.S. Government and its people by the Soviet Union and its satellites. As a result, early in the spring of 1950 President Truman asked the Congress for a special appropriation to expand our overseas in-formation and educational exchange activities and to launch what he termed a "great campaign of truth."

Our efforts to promote and secure the cause of free-dom in the world have one strict limitation. We will not – indeed we cannot – impose ideas on other nations. Democracy cannot be forced on people. It has to grow out of conviction and experience. It has to be voluntarily tried and accepted. Other ways of life can be im-posed by force and terror. Democracy cannot live by force and terror. Tyranny feeds on ignorance. De-mocracy and freedom thrive on knowledge and understanding.

All possible information media are used in the Campaign of Truth. Through the radio we reach audiences throughout the world, including people behind the Iron Curtain. Publications, particularly popular leaflets and pictorial books, are widely circulated. Films, selected on the basis of popular appeal, are shown to thousands daily in the free parts of the world. A program for the

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exchange of persons is helping to develop an under-standing between our people and the people of other nations.

These operations are conducted largely through U.S. information missions overseas, which serve as arsenals of ideas about the principles for which the United States stands.

During 1951 the technical work of the Campaign of Truth was greatly improved. More effective broadcast-ing devices were supplied, including a broadcasting ship that can avoid the Soviet jamming better than a fixed station. Information services are now more sharply beamed to individuals and groups in other countries

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whose attitudes have an important influence on national action.

To present simply an accurate picture of the United States is now only a part, although still an important part, of our total effort. The emphasis is stronger on pointing up the values we share with other free peoples. We point out the ways in which freedom is threatened by aggressive Soviet communism. We show the other free peoples that their stake in the future is closely tied in with our own. Only by developing an awareness of these ties can we effectively reach other peoples and their governments and gain their support.

The United States wants not only to let the world understand us, but to encourage free interchange of in-formation and news among all peoples. To this end we cooperate in the efforts of the Unnited Nations and UNESCO to make "freedom of information" a reality. These programs deal with exchanges of educational materials ; exchanges of scholars, teachers, students, and journalists ; and methods of increasing the supply of newsprint and book paper.

The Campaign of Truth is a necessary instrument of the foreign policy of the United States. It brings out the psychological effect of the political, economic, military, and diplomatic measures taken by the U.S. Government to strengthen world freedom. It contributes to the effort to deter Soviet communism from under-taking aggression, whether by force of arms or by civil subversion. It contributes to the building among free

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nations of mutual confidence in their ability to defend themselves against aggressive forces. It helps to main-tain stability and cohesion in areas of the world in which the ferment of change may be exploited by the cynical conspirators of the Cominform. It is a major means of strengthening the spirit of resistance to new Soviet ag-gressive plans among peoples who are captives of Soviet communism and of keeping alive the hope that in time they will again be free.

DISARMAMENT

2007-01-09T15:21:00.000-06:00

part 16 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

DISARMAMENT

IN November 1951, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom presented tot he General Assembly a disarmament plan covering all armed forces and all armaments, including atomic weapons. This plan offers the world a program that would promote peace, would lift the burden of armaments, and would liberate new energies and resources for greatly enlarged programs of reconstruction and development.

First, it proposes a continuing inventory of all armed forces and armaments in every country having substan-tial military power. The inventory would be checked and verified by nationals of other countries working as inspectors under the United Nations. The inspectors would be given authority to find out the real facts and to keep a constant eye on what each country is doing

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in the way of armaments. In other words, all nations would be required to lay their cards on the table, face up, and to keep them there.

Second, the plan proposes that a specific program be worked out for the reduction of armed strength. The entire disarmament program might be developed be-fore any part is put into effect, or we could start with the continuing inventory and inspection system. The plan is flexible in this respect, in order to give every opportunity for agreement.

The program would move forward step by step. Each step, when completed, would build confidence for the next. If at any time there were a breach of trust or an act of bad faith, all participating nations would have immediate notice and could act in time to protect themselves.

As the President has said, this proposal has been made because it is the right thing to do. "We are not," he declared, "making it in any sudden spirit of optimism. We are not making it as a last gesture of despair. We are making it because we share, with all the members of the United Nations, the responsibility of trying to bring about conditions which will assure international peace and security. The people of the world want peace. To work in every possible way for peace is a duty which we owe not only to ourselves, but to the whole human race."

This latest proposal is a logical extension of our con-tinual efforts since 1946 to establish a system of control under the United Nations that would make it possible

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to abolish atomic weapons and to reduce all other forms of armaments and all armed forces without endangering world security.

The Soviet delegate, Mr. Vyshinsky, said that the pro-posal made him laugh. He soon discovered this was a silly thing to say. He quickly changed his scornful at-titude and hastened to make proposals of his own. He demanded that the General Assembly begin by declar-ing an unconditional ban on atomic weapons – even before there was any way to enforce the ban. He went on to demand that the five principal Powers cut their armed forces and nonatomic arms by an arbitrary one-third. This would leave the U.S.S.R. and its satellites with at least as great a superiority in tanks, planes, and troops as they now have.

Mr. Vyshinsky was merely continuing the efforts of the Soviet Union since 1946 to confuse the issue by call-ing for an exchange of promises without safeguards. If the democratic coun-tries could be led into a promise to abolish atomic weapons, they would be bound to honor their word. Meanwhile the So-viets, sheltered in secrecy behind the

--

Iron Curtain, could continue to keep the rest of the world from knowing what they are doing. In secrecy they could go on building up their own stock of atomic weapons.

We cannot, of course, agree to a plan that would bring about such a threat to the free world. That is why we are obliged to insist on the U.N. plan for the control of atomic energy, or some other plan that would be at least as effective in preventing all use of atomic power for warlike purposes.

But Soviet propagandists seek to divert the world's attention from the huge Russian armies. They try to make people believe that atomic weapons, in which the free world has superiority, are solely weapons of aggres-sion, while their own armies are only for defense.

The fact is that the aggression in Korea was carried out entirely by land armies with ordinary tanks and guns. The danger of aggression in Europe and other places rests in the Soviet concentration of such power. On the other hand, the overwhelming superiority of atomic weapons among the nations of the free world has been, ever since 1945, the most potent of all deter-rents to war. Undoubtedly, this has been one of the principal reasons why the Soviet leaders have not or-dered the Red Army to march. We shoud not forget that the atomic bomb can be a defensive weapon and a rifle can be a weapon of aggression.

Of course, our disarmament proposals have a very close relationship to other events which go on in the world. We have made it quite clear that it does not

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make any sense to reduce armaments when we are combatting aggression in Korea. Moreover, there is a close relationship between the problems of disarmament and other major issues between the Soviets and the free world. So we have said that there must also be a settlement of the main political issues which have divided the world at the same time that we start re-ducing armaments.

The very working out of the disarmament system, particularly the development of the continuing inven-tory and inspection system, will in itself help to reduce the political tensions and help us to find solutions for problems which now seem difficult to everyone. It was in this spirit that France, the United Kingdom, and the United States submitted their disarmament proposal.

While the attitude taken by Mr. Vyshinsky toward this proposal makes it clear that it will be hard to achieve success in disarmament in the immediate future, prog-

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ress has been made on this important problem. On January 11, 1952, the General Assembly adopted the proposal of the three Powers with only slight changes. The Soviet Union has agreed to take part in the work of the new Disarmament Commission set up by the General Assembly resolution.

In this Disarmament Commission, the United States will continue to press for an honest and practical agree-ment and will make specific proposals to the Commis-sion, wth the hope that other governments will do likewise. We hope that in the Commission's delibera-tions all states will come to recognize that a compre-hensive program of disarmament will safeguard the security of every state and will contribute to the peace the world wants.

Free men do not trifle with peace. They will fight if attacked. They will build their defenses when they feel that their existence is threatened. But they will always seek a world in which recourse to arms will be neither likely nor necessary. This is what we of the free world are doing today – building our strength be-cause we must, planning for a disarmament because we desire a world free from the danger of war.

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A PEACE ORGANIZATION

2007-01-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

Part 15 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

THE UNITED NATIONS AS A PEACE ORGANIZATION

PEACE was uppermost in the minds of those who wrote the Charter of the United Nations. "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" was stated as one of the chief purposes of the nations that met at San Francisco to establish the United Nations.

United States participation in the United Nations was one of the most popular, nonpartisan steps this country has ever taken. Both major political parties supported

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it wholeheartedly, and the Sen-ate approved the United Nations Charter by the overwhelming majority of 89 to 2.

Having been so enthusiastic at the start, many Americans have expected too much of the United Nations. They forget that the United Nations was not designed actually to make peace after World War II. That job was to be handled by the victorious Great Powers through such special instruments as the Council of Foreign Ministers. The United Nations job was to maintain and organ-ize the peace after it had been made by the Great Powers. Because of Soviet obstruction, that peace has never been fully achieved.

Thus the United Nations was born into a world torn by dissension. In particular, the Soviet Union soon showed its unwillingness to help make the new organi-zation work as intended. Instead of living up to its Charter obligations, the Soviet Union abused its veto power to obstruct U.N. action. Moreover, the Soviet Union continually refused to agree on Great Power arrange-ments for placing military forces at the disposal of the Security Council.

These circumstances forced the free nations to find

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ways of making the United Nations work despite Soviet obstruction. This was reasonably easy on the nonpoliti-cal matters where the veto did not apply. The United Nations quickly proved its ability to move ahead in such important fields as international health, education, finance, communications, aviation, labor standards, food and agriculture, and the settlement of refugees.

Many of the U.N. agencies are working together to promote the technical and economic progress of under-developed areas, a program with which the U.S. Point Four is closely allied. Likewise, the United Nations has been able to promote the advancement of dependent peoples – a tenth of the world's population – toward eventual self-government.

Even in the veto-ridden political and security field, the United Nations was able to make important gains. In 1946 the Soviet Union was trying to use its troops in northern Iran as a lever to split off the province of Azerbaijan from that country. Discussion in the Security Council focused world opinion on this situation. Under this moral pressure the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Iran.

After that, the United Nations was able to help other countries resist Soviet-directed threats to their inde-pendence. In Greece, the United Nations "watch dog" commissions threw the light of world opinion on the interference of the Soviet Balkan satellites in Greek affairs. This moral pressure helped in the suppression of communist guerrilla warfare.

The United Nations was also able to localize and

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dampen explosive situations in Indonesia, Palestine, and Kashmir which might have torn the free world apart. In each case, the United Nations got the fighting stopped and persuaded the combatants to take steps toward a peaceful settlement of their differences. Under U.N. auspices the United States of Indonesia and, more recently, Libya have attained their independence.

These and other U.N. successes have contributed much to building toward peace in an uneasy world. But all this steady progress was directly menaced by the com-munist aggression in Korea in June 1950. This was a direct challenge to the U.N. ability to maintain peace.

With the full backing of the United States, the United Nations met this challenge swiftly and courageously. Within 24 hours of communist attack, the Security Council called upon the invaders to cease hostilities and to withdraw their forces. Within 3 days, the Council recommended that the U.N. members to to the aid of the Republic of Korea. Fifty-three nations endorsed this historic decision – the first such peace-enforcement action ever taken through an international organization on behalf of the world community.

It was clear, however, that only certain accidental cir-cumstances had enabled the United Nations to act swiftly and effectively. It happened that the Soviet delegate had boycotted the Security Council and was not present to veto recommendations for action. It also happened that American forces were in Japan and could rush to Korea in time to help check the first onslaught. This lesson made it plain that the United Nations must

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have better means for coping with outright aggression.

The United States took the lead by proposing a far-reaching program to build an effective U.N. collective-security system. Our "Uniting for Peace" plan was presented to the General Assembly in September 1950 and was approved by 52 members, with only the Soviet bloc voting against it.

This plan opened the way for the United Nations to meet the new circumstances created by the obstructive tactics of the Soviets and their reliance upon armed ag-gression. It provided that, by a two-thirds majority, the General Assembly could recommend collective action against aggression, whenever the veto prevented the Security Council from doing its job. Our plan also set up a Peace Observation Commission to watch trouble-spots in order to deter aggression and to keep the United Nations informed of situations where action might become necessary.

The Uniting for Peace program also outlined ways of getting military strength ready in advance so that no potential aggressor would be tempted into aggression by thinking the U.N. members would not resist. With such preparedness, the United Nations would not have to improvise a defense in haste and would be able to distribute the burden of collective defense more fairly than was possible in Korea. All U.N. members have been asked to maintain special contingents within their own armed forces ready to be used promptly for U.N. action against future aggression. So far, 29 countries have made generally favorable responses to this request.

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Finally, the Uniting for Peace program set in motion a Collective Measures Committee to make plans by which the United Nations can be more effective in case of future disturbances to world peace. The U.N. action in Korea and its long-range collective security planning have added greatly to its strength and con-fidence. The United Nations shows a growing power to use the immense resources of the free nations for building a peaceful and secure world community.

NATIONAL DEFENSE

2007-01-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

This is part 14 of the pamphlet "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

NATIONAL DEFENSE

HERE at home the defense establishment is a major support of our foreign policy. In our democratic system, military power supports, but does not shape, our policies. The responsibility for maintaining the military forces that the country needs is put, by law, into the hands of the Secretary of Defense. But in practice it is often Congress that shapes our defense by de-ciding how much to appropriate for it and by limiting its appropriations to certain specific purposes.

When the Republic of Korea was attacked, the United Nations was able to prevent a quick communist con-quest of the country because the United States had defense forces in the vicinity. We were able, in the face of appalling difficulties, to strike a retaliatory blow and, although greatly outnumbered, to resist the aggressor while we mobilized further.

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On July 19, 1950, the President proposed an imme-diate expansion of our military establishment. The President's program involved the drafting of new man-power, calling up the reserves. It involved doubling the defense budget so that by June we were spend-ing at the rate of 30 billion dollars a year. The budget for fiscal 1953 provides for defense expenditures of almost 60 billion dollars.

The United States today is a major military power not because the Government has become militarized or because its people have developed aggressive intentions. They have chosen to arm themselves and other free people because they are determined not to live out their lives under the domination of a foreign power.

MUTUAL SECURITY PROGRAM

2007-01-08T17:05:00.000-06:00

This is part 13 of the government pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

MUTUAL SECURITY PROGRAM

MANY of the programs we have been discussing in the preceding pages – such as economic assistance and Point Four – are now included in the Mutual Security Program.

The Mutual Security Program combines, under cen-tral direction, the various foreign-assistance programs, including military and economic aid. Its aim is to create the strength necessary to prevent aggression. The Program is a combined effort of the free nations, recognizing that the security of the United States de-pends on strengthening and developing the free world.

Much of the aid provided under the Mutual Security Program goes for military items, a continuation of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program. In some cases this means finished armaments. In others it means raw materials to enable other countries to produce arms in their own plants.

In the world today, however, there is no sharp line between military and economic strength. Each builds upon the other. Military aid must be accompanied, in many cases, by economic aid if real defense strength is to be attained.

Under the Marshall Plan, the European economic system had reached almost complete recovery when the attack on Korea created a new situation. With the in-vasion of the Republic of Korea, Western Europe was faced with economic demands that it could not meet

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without assistance. Economic aid to Western Europe under the Mutual Security Program is, therefore, tai-lored to meet the emergency. It provides necessary equipment and materials to prevent bottlenecks. By this aid Europe is enabled to expand production and meet its responsibilities, without falling into run-away inflation that would open the way to communist sub-version.

Other free nations also receive economic aid, where it will contribute to the security of the United States and other nations of the free world. The United States makes a separate agreement with each country receiving aid. Each agreement reflects what the needs of that country are, what it can do for itself, and what is neces-sary in the way of help from the United States. Self-help and mutual aid are the principles upon which each agreement is based.

In presenting the Mutual Security Program to the Congress President Truman said :

"Our country has greater economic strength and larger potential military power than any other nation on earth. But we do not and should not stand alone. We cannot maintain our civilization, if the rest of the world is split up, subjugated, and organized against us by the Kremlin."

The Mutual Security Program means that the United States works with the rest of the free world in a unified defense effort. It is helping to build the military and economic power that will make impossible the com-munist dream of world conquest.

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POINT FOUR

2007-01-08T10:29:00.000-06:00

part 12 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

POINT FOUR

PRESIDENT Truman, speaking of the Point Four Program in his State of the Union Message in January 1952, said :". . . there is nothing of greater importance in all our foreign policy. There is nothing that shows more clearly what we stand for, and what we want to achieve."

To share our knowledge and skill, and apply them cooperatively, is the purpose of the Point Four Pro-gram. It is a long-range program, for the ills of centuries die slowly. The program is, nevertheless, pro-ducing immediate and visible benefits and, in so doing, is making an important contribution to the security of the United States and the rest of the free world.

The United States is working in partnership with the governments of great areas of Asia, Africa,

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and Latin America to help them carry out their own plans for economic development and social progress and become strong, prosperous members of the world community.

In the job we are doing, we –– and they –– are faced with these inescapable facts …

The vast majority of these people are not only desperately poor but are continually hungry and under-nourished. Eight out of ten of them live and work on the land but are unable to produce enough food even for their own daily needs.

Two out of three of these people –– men, women, and children –– are continually or frequently ill with preventable diseases that sap their strength and reduce their productive powers.

Eight out of ten of these people do not know how to read or write. They go through life without the basic tools of education.

The average individual income in these areas is not more than 80 dollars a year. It falls as low as 25 dollars in certain sections.

We know these evils can be corrected.

During the past 50 years, we Americans and other peoples of the North Atlantic community have gained knowledge and technical skills which can be used to cut down hunger, disease, and mass poverty.

In most of the areas where Point Four is at work the threat of communism is not primarily military. It is mainly in the human misery and unrest on which com-

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unism feeds. The chief defense against communism and tyranny lies, therefore, in a powerful and con-certed attack on poverty, disease, and ignorance and their attendant miseries.

By joining in this attack, we are, in effect, repaying a small part of an old debt. Our own free and prosperous society was created and built out of people, ideas, capital, and materials borrowed from every nation and every culture in the world. We borrowed beef cattle from the United Kingdom and India, horses from Arabia, wheat from Turkey. We brought grasses from Africa, clovers from Iran and Korea. Many of the elements of our music, art, law, and science are borrowed. We devel-oped our nation with the help of capital and skills from Europe.

Americans, in turn, have gone out to work with other peoples, to learn from them and to share what we know with them. In his inaugural address of January 1949, President Truman proposed to make cooperative eco-nomic development a major national policy and a major enterprise of the American people and their Gov-ernment. Because this was the fourth point of the President's foreign-policy proposals in that address, it has become known as the "Point Four Program."

The President proposed more than an American pro-gram of cooperative economic development. He called for a "cooperative enterprise in which all nations work together." Point Four, launched by the Act for Inter-national Development in June 1950, is now part of a world-wide movement. The United Nations and the Organization of American States are expanding their technical assistance programs, and part of our Point Four funds go to the support of these international programs. The member nations of the British Common-wealth are carrying out the Colombo Plan, a far-reach-ing economic development program, in Ceylon, India, and Pakistan.

Point Four is at work in practically every field of eco-nomic development. American technicians are con-cerned with water, power, and mineral resources, trans-portation, public administration, housing, and social welfare. But the bulk of the work is concentrated in the fields of agriculture, health, and education. These are the keys to the first stages of productivity and prog-ress.

With the aid of modern farming methods introduced by their American partners, the people of rural areas are making spectacular gains in food production. Better seed, better tools, improved soil practices, more water

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for irrigation have brought visible results on farms in India, Iran, and Liberia and in many parts of Latin America.

American health officers and nurses are teaching simple healthy practices and helping to stamp out preventable diseases. Spraying with DDT has meant no-table progress in the wiping out of malaria. The digging of wells for safe water has cut down such water-borne diseases as dysentery.

American education specialists are helping to expand rural and vocational school systems.

One of the fundamental features of the Point Four program is the expansion of capital investment in under-developed areas. Additional private and public capital is essential to increase the productivity of these areas and to raise living standards. The International Bank and the Export-Import bank have already made a num-ber of constructive loans which have aided capital expan-sion in these areas, and more such loans are in progress.

By late 1951, projects were in operation in 33 countries and 342 foreign nationals were receiving training in the United States under the Point Four training program. During the fiscal year 1952 the number of persons em-ployed on Point Four projects overseas is expected to increase from about 900 to about 2,800.

ECONOMIC WELL-BEING

2007-01-07T16:52:00.000-06:00

part 11 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

ECONOMIC WELL-BEING

THE foreign economic policies of the United States are based on our own national experience.

In the development of our economic system we have learned certain facts. We have learned the importance of efficiency of production. We have benefited by the free exchange of goods and currency. We have seen the results of cooperative handling of common problems.

Our foreign economic policies attempt to translate what we have learned into international terms. They emphasize increased production in both agriculture and industry. They call for expanded world trade and the development of mass markets.

Our goal is world-wide sufficiency, stability, and security.

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For these purposes we have negotiated treaties and agreements dealing with problems of economic develop-ment, trade, civil aviation, and a host of similar ques-tions. We have worked with other nations on the convertibility of currencies and the stimulation of invest-ments. We have constantly emphasized those inter-national arrangements most likely to contribute to peace.

When the fighting stopped in 1945, millions of fam-ilies were homeless and hungry. Factories and farms had been destroyed and railroads and homes torn up. Nations had no money to pay for imported food, ferti-lizers, tools, and raw materials to start earning a living once more. They had to have outside help in order to survive in freedom.

UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, did a major job in feeding the hungry, settling the homeless, and providing tools for recovery.

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The United States made substantial contributions to UNRRA, in addition to sending food and making loans where the needs were most urgent.

By 1947, however, it became cleat that such programs were not enough. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State Marshall invited the European nations to unite in draw-ing up a joint plan for full recovery and pledged American aid when such a plan should be developed. The majority of the European nations responded. The Soviet Union refused to cooperate or to let its satellites join.

The Marshall Plan worked. By 1951 Western Europe was well on the road to economic recovery. The program had cost the United States something over 11 billion dollars, largely spent in equipment and materials for which the Europeans did not have the dollars to pay.

Paul Hoffman, former head of the Economic Coop-eration Administration, maintains that the European recovery did not cost the American taxpayer a nickel. He based this statement on the conviction that, but for the economic and political revival of free Europe, the United States would have had to spend many billions more on armament. In short, American aid saved Europe not only from economic collapse but also from communist domination.

In line with our conviction that efficiency pays, Americans shared with European farmers, labor leaders, and industrialists American experience in ways to in-crease production. But increasing production was not

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enough. The world movement of goods between countries had to be increased.

Before World War II the United States, under the Trade Agreement Act of 1934, had been negotiating with various countries for the reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers. After the war this program was stepped up. In 1947 the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was negotiated. It was later ratified by 34 countries, representing four-fifths of the world's trade. Three major rounds of tariff reduction have been successfully concluded under this agreement.

The agreement provided, for the first time in history, a forum where the nations could discuss trade problems on a democratic basis, settle complaints, and work to-gether toward the increase of trade. Tariff reductions tend to stimulate world trade. They promote economic stability.

Under the United Nations a variety of institutions have been established to tackle international economic questions. Several old, long-established agencies such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Labor Organization are now working under the United Nations. Others, like the Food and Agriculture Organ-ization, the International Monetary Fund, and the International bank for Reconstruction and Development, were established during World War II. Valuable work has been carried on by the regional economic commis-sions for Asia and the Far East, Latin America, and Europe in developing an understanding of economic problems and a joint approach to them.

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Emergency agencies have been created to deal with such problems as the Palestine refugees, the reconstruction of Korea, and the welfare of millions of children through the U. N. International Children's Emergency Fund. The United States cooperates fully in all U.N. efforts to promote economic progress and stability.

Lack of economic stability is one of the free world's most pressing problems. Rearming the free world and supplying the forces in Korea have produced serious shortages and sharp increases in raw-materials prices. Along with the other countries, we have been concerned with controlling inflation in prices of raw materials and finished goods and the serious economic dislocations that would result.

To meet this problem the United States, in coopera-tion with other producing and consuming nations, has set up the International Materials Conference to study problems of supply and demand in key commodities. Allocations have been worked out for a number of ma-terials. Nations are working together to increase pro-duction of scarce materials and prevent waste and misuse.

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The underdeveloped areas of the world are being helped to develop their vast resources through the Point Four technical assistance and economic development programs carried on both by the United States directly and through the United Nations. We are constantly urging greater production, stability, and progress for the great mass of the world's rural population.

SECURITY IN THE NEAR EAST

2007-01-06T12:11:00.000-06:00

Part 10 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

SECURITY IN THE NEAR EAST

IN the Near East live over 100,000,000 people, people whose friendship and well-being we as a mem-ber of the free world will always value. Throughout history the Near East –– the land bridge to Asia, Europe, and Africa –– has been a region of great strategic im-portance. Today the Near East is a hub for land, sea, and air communications, of which the Suez Canal is the best illustration. Near East oil fields contain over two-fifths of the world's proved reserves of petroleum. The Near East is troubled with many unsolved social and economic problems. There is a need for organiza-tion to utilize land and water. Many of the people suffer from diseases that lower their vitality. There is a wide-spread lack of modern technical skills.

Responsible governments are trying to improve con-

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ditions, but the obstacles are deeply rooted, Many of the customs and traditions of the Near East peoples, for example, stand in the way of improvements in their standard of living.

Political problems that disturb the area, such as the oil dispute in Iran, the Suez dispute, and the tension between Israel and the Arab States, are aggravated by the strong spirit of nationalism among the Near East peoples. Americans have a traditional sympathy for the spirit of independence and patriotism, but we have also learned that freedom depends on cooperation for mutual security.

The Soviet Union appreciates the economic and stra-tegic value of the Near East and constantly tries to gain positions of advantage there. After World War II, the Soviets promoted civil war in Greece. They put pres-sure on Turkey for concessions in the Dardanelles and in eastern Turkey. Their fifth column in Iran, the Tudeh Party, takes advantage of every chance to divide and weaken the Iranian people. Soviet agents miss no opportunity to encourage trouble between Israel and the Arab States.

The Soviet Union, in its approach to the Near East, has the advantage that it can win what it wants if it can rouse enough quarrels and disorder to create chaos in the area. The Soviet Union seeks control of the Near East but is not interested in relieving its troubles. The Soviets do not know or attempt to provide the solutions to any problems, nor do they care where the right and

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wrong can be found in any dispute. Their agents only blow on every fire and sabotage every element of good will or good sense.

The Soviets, however, have met with determined re-sistance. Backed by strong moral pressure from the United Nations in 1946, Iran got rid of the Soviet oc-cupying army which at first refused to evacuate its northern provinces. Greece, with American economic aid and military advice, decisively defeated the Soviet-inspired guerrilla revolt that had seriously threatened the freedom of the Greek people. Turkey, also with American backing, said a firm "no" to the Soviet encroachments.

After the attack on Korea, both Greece and Turkey sent forces to support the U.N. resistance in that coun-try. They also asked to be included in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization so as to cooperate in the collective defense. The organization of a common defense in the Near East, hard enough in any case, would be considerably more difficult without the sup-port of Greece and Turkey.

The answer to the political problems of the Near East is up to the people themselves through self-education and an awareness of civic responsibility. The free world can give military and economic help. The Mutual Security Program is providing economic and technical assistance from the United States, as well as military aid.

To strengthen the defensive capabilities of the Middle East, we are working with other nations to establish a

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Middle East Command. The Middle East Command will help the states of the area with their preparations to resist Soviet aggression.

United States policy looks beyond the present emer-gency. Our program is designed to help the people of the Near East obtain the tools and technical guidance now which will enable them to carry on their develop-ment through the years to come.

KOREA

2007-01-05T16:21:00.000-06:00

Part 9 of the pamphlet, "OUR FOREIGN POLICY 1952":

KOREA

THE invasion of the Republic of Korea presented the United States and the United Nations with an emergency demanding immediate and vigorous action.

By that invasion the Soviet leaders made it clear ot the world that they would use military force to gain their ends, at least in places where they could achieve a quick victory.

But they underestimated the free world.

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The United Nations Security Council acted with dramatic and unprecedented speed. It branded the at-tack as a breach of the peace. It called upon all mem-bers of the United Nations to go to the aid of the Republic of Korea. The United States rushed to Korea such forces as we had in the vicinity, and our troops were soon joined by forces of other U.N. members.

This was a reluctant but necessary resort to force by the free and peace-loving members of the United Nations. Neither the American people nor their allies wanted to make Korea a springboard for a larger war. We knew that spreading the conflict beyond Korea would be the surest way of bringing on a third world war, rather than of preventing it. We went into Korea to help stop a specific aggression threatening both our particular interests in the Pacific and our general in-

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terest in world security. We acted because it was the only way of protecting our own national security.

If we and the other members of the United Nations had let Korea go under, we would have been aiding aggression by default. Such inaction would have created great fears in other countries that the successful aggressors might turn on them next and that they would be left alone to their fate. The United Nations would have been started down the same disastrous de-cline as the League of Nations when its peace-loving members failed to stand up against the first Axis aggressions in Manchuria and Ethiopia. By meeting the challenge, the United Nations gained strength and proved that collective security can work. In addition, this action roused the free world to the urgency of building up an adequate defense.

The stakes involved in Korea are so important that we should be clear about what the military action there has accomplished. The announced aims of the com-munists were to conquer the Republic of Korea and drive the U.N. forces into the sea in the process. Success would have brought them within easy striking dis-tance of the heart of Japan.

These aims have been frustrated. The communists themselves have accepted the present battle line as the military demarcation zone in the armistice negotiations. In other words, the aggressors have not pushed us into the sea and have actually ended up behind the 38th parallel from which the aggression started.

The communists have suffered the staggering total

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of more than I 1/2 million casualties, the cream of their armies. Their own economies have been hurt badly by the U.N. strategic embargo, and their ability to start trouble elsewhere has been somewhat reduced, at least for a time. The U.N. forces have not destroyed all of the power of China. That was not their job, and to have attempted it might have precipitated World War III. The U.N. forces have repelled the aggression that they went to Korea to repel.