Regions of Mind |
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Self-assured but self-questioning.
History, U.S. regionalism, foreign policy, politics, life. Geitner Simmons is an editorial writer with the Omaha World-Herald. This weblog expresses his personal views only. He is also a Midwesterner, a Southerner, a husband, a father, a son. And always a student.
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Tuesday, November 12
Bring back the what? The Nebraska Legislature is holding a special session to try to revamp the state’s laws on capital punishment. State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a diehard opponent of capital punishment and expert in the Legislature’s parliamentary procedure, has introduced a slew of bills to gum up any advance toward continued usage in Nebraska of the death penalty. (Nebraska is the only state that continues to execute offenders using the electric chair.) One of Chambers’ bills would require the governor, attorney general and secretary of state to attend every execution. Another bill would have Nebraska replace the electrical chair with a novel method of execution: the guillotine. Chambers’ bill also states: “The design and construction of the guillotine shall be under the direction of the Governor who may procure the advice, assistance, and expertise deemed necessary by the Governor to carry out the purpose.” The guillotine can be challenged on grounds of being cruel and unusual punishment, though: From what I’ve read, the device occasionally failed to complete its task on the first try, requiring a second attempt. Update: Kevin Drum of CalPundit offers a suggestion about how to guarantee that the guillotine will work every time. And he provides an illustration, no less! The geography of GOP strength The electoral analysis by LA Times columnist Ronald Brownstein isn’t surprising, but it does cite some interesting numbers from around the country to illustrate how Republicans came to score big victories last week:
Monday, November 11
The 11th hour of the 11th day ... My son and I enjoy a book of optical illusions. One tricky illustration with a World War I theme is fitting to mention today. Veterans Day, of course, was originally called Armistice Day, after the agreement that ended the fighting in World War I. The drawing shows the Kaiser on the run. He's wearing extremely baggy pants, black mittens and a big backpack. The caption asks: "Who made him run?" Flip the picture upside-down, and the baggy pants become ears, the mittens become black eyes, and the backpack becomes a collar -- and the picture is of the British bulldog. (Yes, I guess you could say we Yanks actually made the difference in settling that conflict. I suppose the illustration came from a British magazine of the era.) By the way I: There are fewer than 500 World War I veterans still living in the United States, according to this article. By the way II: Strom Thurmond, born in December 1902, was only a few years too young to have been eligible to fight in World War I. By the way III: A press release from the U.S. Department of Veterans Administration last March included this information:
Sunday, November 10
Since Friday Topics for some of the posts since Friday: the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; two posts about Iraq; the civil rights struggle in the Midwest; the Lewis and Clark expedition; and Jesse James. I'd intended to write a long post about a terrorism-related report I'd read, but that will have to wait until another night, when I'm not falling asleep at the keyboard. Mr. Jefferson’s vision In this part of the country, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition is a very big deal. I’m hearing very positive things about a particular book on the expedition: “Finding the West: Explorations With Lewis and Clark” by James P. Ronda. Ronda, a well-respected specialist in American Western history at the University of Tulsa, explores the expedition through seven separate “stories” and a map essay. The book isn’t intended as a comprehensive record of the expedition but as a stimulating re-examination, focusing on various aspects of the event. Ronda talks about Jefferson’s vision for the expedition as well as how Lewis and Clark’s background as Easterners affected their perspectives. He notes that Lewis and Clark were saluted at the official send-off by no fewer than 17 toasts. A U.N. gift for Saddam In a radio interview with Laura Ingraham, Bill Gertz, a security affairs reporter for the Washington Times, wasn’t encouraging in his description of the U.N.’s ability at containing Iraq’s WMD capability. Here is what he wrote in a Nov. 6 article about how Iraq received a specialty chemical useful for boosting the effectiveness of chemical weapons -- and did so under the U.N.’s oil-for-food program:
When a dusty nerve agent is used to attack troops wearing full protective gear, fatalities could be as high as 38 percent, Gertz reported, citing Eric Croddy, of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. By the way: Gertz told Ingraham that something interesting may lie in the near future for Steven J. Hatfill, the biodefense expert who protested his innocence after being mentioned as a possible suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax mailings. Hatfill will be going to Iraq as a U.N. weapons inspector. At least that’s what Gertz said he was told by Hatfill directly. The Iraqi elite prepares for a storm Good stuff in David Ignatius’ latest column about how the Iraqi elite is plotting to cope with the possible toppling of Saddam’s regime:
Ignatius also talks about U.S. psywar activity now under way:
By the way: The Jordanian government instructed its border posts several weeks ago to deny entry to Iraqi men under the age of 45, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says, citing a Jordanian newspaper report. Jordan has also begun what the newspaper called a “search and investigation” campaign to check the residency permits of Iraqis now residing in Jordan. Update: Austin Bay e-mails to note that he covered the same territory as the Ignatius column weeks ago (here and here). Absolutely. If my memory is correct, I saw discussion of Austin's columns at the time by Glenn Reynolds and Don Sensing. Mentors and pupils I’ve meant to mention this long before now: When I first learned that the sniper arrests had included not just John Allen Muhammed but also a 17-year-old (John Lee Malvo), it reminded me that I’d recently read about what Jesse James was doing at age 17: killing and creating carnage as part of the Civil War-era vigilantes riding with “Bloody Bill” Anderson in Missouri. At the wall The 20th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial brings back memories about how much the site impressed me at its start-up. I was a grad student at Georgetown at the time and followed the story of the memorial through the excellent coverage in the Washington Post. (During my first year at Georgetown, I used to drive by the Iwo Jima Memorial every weekday on the way to school -- funny how remarkable sights like that begin to seem relatively mundane after you see them day after day.) There was much to admire about the Vietnam vets who organized the creation of the memorial. They had long felt underappreciated, not least since they lived in the shadow of the (rightly lauded) World War II generation. (Korean War vets, of course, suffered a similar sense of being relegated to second-tier status as “forgotten soldiers.”) The Vietnam vets faced widespread scepticism about their determination and ability to see the memorial project through. Above all, they endured carping from those who derided the memorial’s untraditional -- indeed, radical -- design as a grossly inadequate tribute to the fallen. Where, it was asked, was the august statuary, the obligatory classical architecture, the sense of the traditional -- and what on earth were the memorial’s organizers thinking when they approved that peculiar V-shape as the core of the design? (Yes, statuary was eventually added, and it provided a welcome complement.) But the Vietnam vets held their course. And when the memorial opened in 1982, it quickly demonstrated its power to touch people’s sense of humanity. I went to the memorial not long after it opened. A sense of solemnity overtakes you in descending the trench, step by measured step, until you finally come to the destination: the wall. The wall had not been open for too long when I first saw it. Yet it was already marked with mementoes tucked into the crevices, and in surprisingly large numbers. A slip of paper. A flower. A worn, ’60s-era snapshot -- of a smiling father and son. To stand before the wall, to look up and realize the magnitude of loss reflected in that immense stream of names, is, for me, one of those moments when time slows, then stops. And a sense of the eternal comes near. Standing before the wall was like standing at the bedside as my children were born: All the transient, mundane concerns of life were stripped away. Time slowed, and I felt in the presence of something far beyond myself. Of something transcendent, permanent, holy. Vietnam brought America so much heartache. But at the wall, we at least can pause and reflect. And offer a salute of remembrance. Civil rights history outside the South The 1961 lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, N.C., are rightly honored as a seminal event in the fight for civil rights. Left unmentioned, regrettably, is the fact that similar sit-ins were held at a drugstore counter two years earlier in Wichita, Kan. I learned about the Wichita sit-ins in a review of the new book “Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72,” By Gretchen Cassel Eick. The review, by Timothy N. Thurber, a professor of history at the State University of New York at Oswego, appears in the current edition of the invaluable Great Plains Quarterly. Of course, it was a Kansas case that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Eick’s book compares the situation in Wichita to those elsewhere in the nation during the civil right era, Thurber writes:
The book also examines internal argument within the NAACP:
Update: Joe Kristan, an always thoughtful e-mail correspondent from Des Moines, writes to point out a notable angle from Iowa. In 1948 (13 years before the Greensboro sit-ins, 11 before the Wichita protests), protesters used nonviolent sit-ins and picketing to respond to a Des Moines drugstore's refusal to serve blacks. The county attorney’s office prosecuted the store manager under Iowa’s only civil rights law, a criminal statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. The manager was found guilty by a jury and fined $50. In 1949, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the conviction. The protests and legal outcome are rightly held up as early achievements in the nation's civil rights progress after World War II. Saturday, November 9
Remembering a shrew Mao praised the role of women in Chinese society by saying that they “hold up half the sky.” But women still struggle for economic advancement in modern China. As for involvement in the Communist Party, they hold only a modest number of leadership positions -- and none of the top ones, the AP reports. After I read that piece, I thought of Mao’s outrageously shrewish widow, Jiang Qing, who was put on trial for treason in 1980 along with the rest of the “Gang of Four.” I can still remember the news footage of her in the courtroom, ranting and raising hell, like some deposed empress who refused to accept her fallen status. Which, in a de facto sense, she was. Friday, November 8
Misplaced priorities Kansas-based blogger Mike Silverman (who has an Omaha connection, if memory serves) noted recently that the Army has discharged Arab-speaking linguists -- a highly valuable commodity in the post-9/11 era -- merely because they are gay. The article cited by Mike mentions that seven Army linguists have recently been removed from service under those circumstances. I’ve found some data about the magnitude of the Army’s shortfall in regard to Arab speakers. The GAO examined the topic in a report released last February. Among its findings:
That’s not all:
If that last point doesn't indicate the severity of the Army's need, I can't imagine what else could. It is foolish for the Army to throw away the talents and enthusiasm of Arab speakers, merely on the basis of their sexual orientation, at the very time when such abilities are of enormous importance in safeguarding the nation’s security. Has anybody talked to Dick Cheney about this? Seems like he might be interested in doing something about it, for several reasons. By the way: The GAO report also examined the shortage of foreign language speakers at the State Department, the FBI and the Foreign Commercial Service, part of the Commerce Department. An article in Government Executive magazine from May noted: “The Army has about 15,000 positions requiring proficiency in 62 languages. Last year the service had 142 unfilled positions for cryptologic linguists in Korean and Mandarin Chinese, and 108 unfilled positions for human intelligence collectors in Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Korean and Mandarin Chinese.” Also pointed out in the article: “OPM’s records indicate that the government employs fewer than 1,000 translators and interpreters — a specially designated job series in the federal workforce. But tens of thousands of additional positions across government require language skills.” The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., where the seven linguists were studying at the time of their discharge, is the largest language school in the world. As for recruiting foreign nationals into the Special Forces, the AP article states, “Placing foreigners in the Special Forces was done in the 1950s under the Lodge Act, designed as a mechanism for raising a 'foreign legion' of Soviet-bloc expatriates when many in Washington believed the Soviet Union would invade Western Europe. At least 230 anti-communist Eastern Europeans were brought into the first Special Forces unit, designated the 10th Special Forces Group, in 1952.” Thursday, November 7
Fighting a 'gray war' From Austin Bay's latest column, about the Predator missile attack that killed a top al-Qaida leader in Yemen:
That's only part of the way in which Austin's column usefully examines the context of the attack. A familiar pattern From a column by Dennis Prager (via an e-mail from my good friend Craig Brelsford, writing from the Netherlands):
The DLC's very, very big tent An e-mail from the Democratic Leadership Council today noted, properly, that the GOP's success at the congressional level on Tuesday shouldn't obscure the fact that a lot of state-level candidates affiliated with the "New Democrat" faction prevailed at the polls on Tuesday. I was surprised, though, to see that one of the supposed New Democrats listed was Tom Miller, attorney general of Iowa. Maybe Miller has demonstrated moderate credentials in other areas of the law. All I know is that he led the gaggle of state attorneys general who carried on the legal fight against Microsoft this year, refusing to accept the sensible settlement proposed last November. Thankfully, a federal judge rejected the legal claims of Miller and the other AGs last week -- and in doing so, pointly noted that they had completely disregarded the legal parameters a federal appeals court had set. Miller and his fellow AGs were attempting a gross expansion of government intervention into the private sector, seeking not just to address Microsoft's actions from the past but to impose a range of intrusive regulations to control the company's development of future products. The AGs' crusade was intended as an attempt to blast open the way for the assertion of governmental power into a brand-new dimension of antitrust regulation. I would be surprised if the DLC supports that sort of reckless legal adventurism. But if it does, it's hard to see how the organization can still call itself centrist. By the way: Democrats enjoyed a terrific election night in Iowa. Miller won re-election handily. The bloc vote; the federal government as problem 'solver' E.J. Dionne's post-election column had two lines that stood out for me. Here is one:
I suppose he's right that in this particular election, turnout among GOP voters, especially staunch conservatives, was more important, in most states, than the reaction of swing voters. Still, it would be foolish to ignore the swing voters, who are a key reason why American politics ultimately doesn't veer too far from the nation's political center. (I happen to think that's a terrific thing, although I know many true believers on both sides of partisan/ideological divide hold a different view.) Dionne's imagery of right-wingers "swarming" the polls -- as if there were something unsettling about a particular constituency turning out to vote -- is curious. It reminds me of decades ago in North Carolina when Jesse Helms would try to scare conservative white voters into going to the voting booth by ominously warning that otherwise the election would be decided by a large "bloc vote" (meaning "black vote"). Another line from Dionne's column:
This gets down to the nitty-gritty. Dionne argues that the federal government has the capacity to "solve problems." A more accurate description is that federal action sometimes does address a problem in a positive way -- but that in many cases it is a ham-handed endeavor in which already complicated situations are made even more complicated and government becomes more costly and rigid through mindless new accretions of bureaucracy. Sure, small-government idealists are fooling themselves when they argue that everything would be grand if we could just move the clock back so that the federal government's reach would be restricted to that seen in, say, the Coolidge administration -- or better yet (for some), the James Buchanan administration. A certain amount of regulation, imperfect as it is, is not just inevitable in a modern society but necessary -- a point made by George Will in the wake of the Enron debacle. As for Dionne, what gripes me is that he portrays the constant expansion of federal activity as a uniformly beneficent force, without acknowledging the complications often involved whenever government sets out to "solve" things. Wednesday, November 6
The DLC speaks From an e-mail I just received from the Democratic Leadership Council, reacting to the election results:
The DLC's point about the Social Security issue relates to Josh Marshall's point, noted at InstaPundit, about how Democrats have erred by focusing more on tactics than substance. How the DLC faction and the traditional liberals sort out how to differentiate their party from the GOP is the biggest question facing them (reminiscent of some of the after-election intraparty sniping that went on immediately after Gore's defeat in 2000). As for whether the Dems should avoid shrillness: I detest partisan yammering, but then again, the Newt Gingrich crowd prevailed in 1994 because they were willing, even eager, to go to political war (without a care for whether they sounded shrill or not) in the pursuit of their strategic goal: mobilizing their base and winning control of the House (a political perch from which the GOPers have yet to be dislodged). Maybe, eight years later, we are in a different political environment in which a majority of the voting public hungers for political civility. And Bush's popularity, for the present at least, should finally be accepted by the Democrats as a key fact of political life, which makes attacking him a risky endeavor. A difficult political situation to navigate through. Ellis on the election John Ellis's astute political analysis always deserves attention. He's just posted his thoughts on the election ramifications. (Ellis is a cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush, but he makes no secret of that.) Canadian backtracking From today's edition of The National Post:
Among sentences deleated from the earlier draft of the speech: "Instead of complying with its international obligations, Iraq has continued its programs of research and development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery programs. Is it any wonder that Saddam Hussein's government is viewed as a threat to international peace and security?" It's no scandal that a speech was changed before final delivery; happens all the time. What's significant about the article, rather, is that by revealing the sweeping reversal made in the tone of the speech, it indicates what seems to a serious division of opinion among Canadian officials on the Iraq question (or, at least, over whether to bow to pressure from the U.S. on the matter). Noncitizens and voting A Michelle Malkin column talks about how public officials are turning a blind eye to, or even welcoming, allowing noncitizens to vote in parts of the United States:
She quotes a former INS commissioner:.
Legal, regulated immigration is a sensible complement to the functioning of the free market and ought to be applauded and safeguarded. But illegal immigration, and the nonsensical policy of allowing noncitizens to vote, are entirely different matters. Election I'd have blogged late last night, but I have a don't-drink-and-blog rule. (I had some red wine while soaking in the election news.) Most of the good points have already been blogged elsewhere. The congressional results showed that George W.'s political skills and popularity shouldn't be underestimated. The result demonstrated that proponents of the "Emerging Democratic Majority" thesis shouldn't get too cocky (for the moment). It dramatically removed the monkey from Bush's back as far his supposed lack of legitimacy. It embarrased the Democrats as far as their much-heralded get-out-the-vote skills and in regard to the rising-Hispanics-will-lift-the-Democratic boat thesis. Still, Republicans shouldn't exaggerate the advantage they enjoy from current political dynamics. Hubris has already been shown to have hurt the Republicans after the 1994 turnover in the House, and the same point applies now. Poor decisions and policy actions on their part could easily lead to a Democratic resurgence. So, incidentally, could the vagaries of foreign policy. I may wind up looking foolish to say it, but there's a wild card factor in play for the 2004 presidential contest: the whole Iraq/anti-terrorism thing. It's a political plus for Bush now, but it could prove a liability, rather than an advantage, for him in 2004, depending on how things shake out in Iraq and the Middle East should the U.S. invade. (I say this, by the way, as one who's generally a "war hawk" on foreign policy.) An Iraq invasion could trigger all sorts of things, and nobody really knows where it could lead. The situation has the potential to blow up in Bush's face. Then the Democratic nominee, even a ridiculously liberal one, might have a fighting chance at winning. This isn't a prediction. I'm just saying the potential is there. (In case anyone misunderstands my point, let me add that the administration needs to decide whether to invade Iraq based on a judgment about this country's interests, not on what the political effects might be for Bush.) By the way: I can't get over how ancient Bob Shaeffer looked last night on CBS. I hadn't seen him in years, and I was stunned at how he looked older than Robert Byrd. When you compare the analysis teams of the big three networks, the geriatric character of CBS squad really stood out. The age of the CBS team wouldn't matter, of course, if they still displayed some energy. But they didn't. (The little walk-on appearance by Leslie Stahl, for example, added nothing to the program, other than underlining the old-boy/old-girl character of the CBS reporting subculture.) I still like Rather, though, despite his weirdness. Tuesday, November 5
Images and connections A museum here in Omaha has a new, traveling exhibit on the U.S. presidents. In visiting it with my kids over the weekend, I was very surprised to see photos by Matthew Brady from the 1840s of Andrew Jackson (then in retirement) and James K. Polk (the only president to attend my undergrad alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill). Polk was in a group shot at the White House that also included former First Lady Dolley Madison. It was a spooky sensation to stand before an actual, honest-to-goodness photograph taken of Madison, who had been born in 1768. A King and his genealogy Did you know that Elvis Presley could be considered Jewish, because of a Jewish connection through his mother’s side of the family? Did you know that a film crew from Montreal has made a movie on that topic and that the movie is titled “Schmelvis?” Did you know that the Jerusalem Post has written an article about all this? From the article:
The film includes an interview with a woman who, with her late husband, an Orthodox rabbi, lived in an apartment above Elvis and his parents in Memphis. Elvis, she said, always carried a yarmulke in his pocket and loved eating matza ball soup. So now we know. Jokin' around Humor writer Madeleine Begun Kane is at it again, this time tweaking George W. & Co. over the matter of Harvey Pitt. Mad's depiction of Bush's manner of talking, by the way, is a pretty close approximation of my own in one respect -- like George W., I'm often known for leavin' those final G's off words like talkin', goin' and readin'. Monday, November 4
More than a footnote For a good while I've meant to note something about the late Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles, father of Erskine Bowles, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina this year. In 1972, Skipper Bowles became the first North Carolina Democratic gubernatorial nominee since 1896 to lose to a Republican candidate. (Bowles lost to a moderate conservative named Jim Holshouser -- like Bowles, a decent fellow.) The '72 election was also when Jesse Helms won his first term to the U.S. Senate. Although Skipper Bowles suffered the political ignominy I've described, he was a distinguished North Carolinian who served ably as a state lawmaker, state department head and chairman of the board of trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (my undergrad alma mater). Bowles was an energetic fund-raiser for the university. He died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1986. Before his passing, he was rightly applauded at a public event in Chapel Hill for his immense contributions to Carolina. The elder Bowles was a thoroughly honorable man whose contribution to his state far exceeded the political footnote of 1972 by which future generations may come to know him. The embarrassing Mr. Bellesiles I checked the Barnes & Noble Web site tonight to see how it is presenting Michael Bellesiles’ “Arming America” in the wake of the author’s resignation announcement and the scandal over his now-discredited claims. The bookseller is caught in a situation it clearly regards as uncomfortable. On the one hand, the site says Barnes & Noble is no longer stocking the book (though no explanation is given as to why). The site also includes reader reviews in which the long-familiar criticisms of Bellesiles’ claims are presented. It appears that all the reviews, pro and con, have been up for a long while. On the other hand, in an item titled “From Our Editors: Our Review,” Barnes & Noble heaps praise on the book:
As if that weren’t enough, the review goes on to say:
The claim that Bellesiles' thesis is unstated is, of course, insulting to readers' intelligence. To find out the book's agenda, all one has to do is look at the blurbs on the back cover; the message could hardly be any clearer. Trumpets one of the blurbs: "Michael A. Bellesiles is the NRA's worst nightmare." I saw no addendum acknowledging that Bellesiles has announced his resignation or that a Emory review committee had examined his work and found it marred by abundant flaws. The Barnes & Noble site does include several other reviews breathlessly praising the book. They obviously were written very early on, amid the swell of support from the academic/activist left. Claims one: “Bellesiles (history, Emory U.) explodes a number of myths about the role of guns in American history.” It was interesting to see what other titles were purchased by readers who bought “Arming America.” They included “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong” and “Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights.” Another of the books was “The Death of the West: How Mass Immigration, Depopulation and a Dying Faith are Killing Our Culture and Country” by one Patrick J. Buchanan. That was ironic, given that gun-friendly Buchanan was the first presidential candidate to make "lock 'n' load" a campaign catch phrase. Just for the record: The Omaha World-Herald, where I work, expressed editorial indignation back on April 11, 2001, over Columbia University's decision to award Bellesiles the Bancroft Prize. The editorial noted the fine work by James Lindgren, Joyce Lee Malcolm and Clayton Cramer in debunking Bellesiles’ claims. The editorial observed:
Incidentally, George Will had a fine commentary on the Bellesiles matter on “This Week” last Sunday. Posts here since Friday They include two long posts: one about an interesting senatorial memorial service from decades ago, as well as a discussion of the "forgotten critics of globalization." Short items include thoughts on Dick Cheney, John Edward (of the TV show "Crossing Over"), and UFOs. There is also a post titled "A pacifist no more." It's about a well-known media personality who has written eloquently about the need to stand up to terrorism. A different senator, a different memorial service Memorial services for U.S. senators can make for interesting public spectacles, as recent events in Minnesota have shown. A particularly notable service was held in the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 15, 1918, when members of Congress assembled in tribute for the unabashed “wild man of the Senate” -- the late four-term U.S. Sen. Ben Tillman of South Carolina. Unapologetic demagogue, incorrigible race-baiter, occasional populist, defiant sectionalist, old-school Southern rabble-rouser of the worst sort -- Tillman, who died at age 74 in July 1918 while seeking a fifth term, was all that and more. The Tillman memorial service, in which platitudinous praise was heaped on the late senator, turned out to be a remarkable exercise in truth-skirting (although it’s true that Tillman had mellowed somewhat over the course of his congressional service). Looking back on the memorial service provides an opportunity to examine not just congressional fact-massaging but also the injustice and double-talk that undergirded the Jim Crow system. I’ll sketch Tillman‘s career, then provide excerpts from his memorial service. Each excerpt will be followed by an observation. Ben Tillman was the dominant force in South Carolina politics for about 20 years, from 1890 to around 1910. He grew up in an upland South Carolina family in which the violent assertion of “manliness” was taught as a Southern virtue. (Tillman’s brother George once killed a man during an argument, then fled the country, joining William Walker’s filibusters in trying to set up a slaveholding regime in Nicaragua.) It was hardly a wonder that Ben Tillman took up the name “Pitchfork Ben,” to indicate his willing to “stick it” to his foes. In 1876, the young Tillman joined in the work of private “red shirt” militias -- paramilitary groups that intimidated blacks and Republicans and played a key role in helping Democratic “Redeemers” wrest political control of the state from Republicans, ending Reconstruction. In the 1880s, Tillman became an outspoken critic of the conservative elite that dominated the state’s politics. (This, despite that fact that he, like that elite, belonged to the Democratic Party.) He championed the cause of South Carolina farmers, adopting populist rhetoric. He also became adept at whipping up furious passions among his followers, often to the point of violence. As governor from 1890 to 1894, Tillman pushed regulation and taxation of industry, though in relatively mild doses. He established Clemson University (to educate the sons of farmers) and Winthrop College (to provide higher education to young women). He promoted white supremacy and in the mid-1890s achieved the disenfranchisement of blacks. (According to the 1890 census, South Carolina’s population was 60 percent black.) He entered the U.S. Senate in 1895 and quickly earned a reputation as a vulgarian and verbal bomb-thrower. In his first formal speech to the Senate, he referred to Grover Cleveland (a fellow Democrat) as a “besotted tyrant” and charged that the American economy was under the control of Baron Edmund de Rothschild -- the “London Jew,” Tillman called him. (Eugene Debs, then a railroad union organizer and Populist supporter, wrote to praise the speech.) Over time, as he gained seniority and became chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, Tillman grew more civil in his rhetoric and more constructive in his congressional tactics. (I’m reminded inevitably of Jesse Helms, a once-strident lawmaker who has mellowed somewhat after chairing the Foreign Relations Committee.) Some of the rhetoric from the 1918 memorial service:
A sweet sentiment, but it's a real truth-stretcher. In fact, the Senate censured Tillman in 1902 after he punched his fellow South Carolina senator, John L. McLaurin, in the nose. Tillman had accused McLaurin of corruption. McLaurin, in turn, called Tillman a liar. Tillman rushed across the chamber and delivered a blow to McLaurin. Tillman wound up having his own nose bloodied after McLaurin struck back.
The part about looking to the “welfare of our common country” isn’t quite buttressed by the facts. At the 1896 Democratic national convention (at which Tillman briefly entertained hopes of winning the presidential nomination), the South Carolinian was met with angry hissing throughout his speech as he argued, in biting rhetoric, that the South and West were being exploited by the Northeast. (William Jennings Bryan would make the same point, but more palatably, in his famous "cross of gold" address at the same gathering.)
Here is how Tillman expressed his philosophy on race relations in a speech from March 23, 1900: “We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.” Tillman, in fact, stood out as an acid-tongued promoter of white supremacy, both in his public statements in Washington and on the speaking circuit. In fact, he earned major sums by traveling the country and speaking on racial questions in speeches or debates. During a visit to Madison, Wis., for example, he and his wife were given a tour of the University of Wisconsin campus. Tillman later wrote that his speech that night had been “warmly applauded” by many in the audience, which was estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000. When an integrated audience in Denver heckled his white supremacist rhetoric in a speech and called out “Booker Washington” in response, he answered this way: “Booker Washington owes his preeminence over his fellow negroes entirely to the proportion of white blood in his veins.” When President Theodore Roosevelt hosted Booker T. Washington at the White House, Tillman erupted in fury, saying such a development would “necessitate our killing a thousand” blacks in the South “before they learn their place again.” Another Tillman observation: “The negro must remain subordinate or be exterminated.”
Stephen Kantrowitz. offers a differing view in his recent biography, “Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy”: “Ben Tillman’s legacy cannot include the Clemson that now exists, an integrated and coeducational institution ... He would have torn down his beloved ‘farmer’s college’ brick by brick before he would have allowed it to foster a world where neither sex nor race defined the limits of a person’s attainments.”
It was ironic in one sense that Lodge would offer such praise, since Lodge had spearheaded the push for a so-called “force bill” in the post-Reconstruction era to use federal power to coerce Southern states into respecting the civil rights of blacks. The bill was stymied in the Senate. Because of Lodge's promotion of the force bill, his name became anathema to many Southern supporters of white supremacy. A final note: Ben Tillman’s family attorney was an Edgefield, S.C., lawyer named J. William Thurmond. He was Strom Thurmond’s father. Sunday, November 3
The forgotten critics of globalization Supporters of the free market tend to hold up slogan-shouting green-politics marchers as the key opponents of globalization -- as the most fervent foes, that is, of the cross-border spread of capitalism and the materialism and self-fixation associated with it. But globalization is opposed, or at least criticized, by a significant segment of the Western public whose views often receive scant attention from mainstream boosters of globalization. Who are these critics? Religious traditionalists, among them Pope John Paul II, who express concern that globalization is pushing people toward adopting a secular social order. In their view, the more that globalization extends its reach, the more religious believers will find their vital spiritual guideposts placed under threat. A recent article in First Things by Australian sociologist Michael Casey gave voice to that point of view:
Casey approvingly cites an essay by political theorist John Gray in the New Statesman, in which Gray wrote:
Casey then writes, using various quotes from Gray:
The appropriate goal, Casey argues, isn’t to block globalization per se but to channel and modulate it so as to accommodate the needs of believers. Especially significant is the collision between Islam and globalization. Casey writes: “The profound impact that Islam has had on forming the culture, character, and society of the countries it dominates, and particularly in the Middle East, represents a critical obstacle to globalization.” Islam, Casey argues, “will have to rediscover some of the intellectual suppleness that produced the scientific and cultural greatness of the period that fell between the ninth and fifteenth centuries.” It will also need to “encourage the development of clear boundaries between the public and private domains.” What to make of these arguments? It should hardly be a surprise that religious traditionalists would express concern about globalization. The spread of free markets and Western-style individualism does tend to promote enthusiasms (for Hollywood movies, for Britney Spears, for relaxed attitudes toward premarital sex) at odds with conservative value systems. It’s unclear to me what tools are available to reshape the globalizing process into a form more acceptable to religious-minded critics. Casey’s article talks about safeguarding “intermediary groups and bodies,” meaning (I suppose) entities such as churches or local institutions involved in the traditional social life of Third World villages. His goal is fine. But how one specifically would modulate the forces of globalization to minimize the effects on such institutions isn’t clear to me. (Casey, I realize, would respond that the key point isn’t the difficulty involved; it’s that the task ought to be attempted because it is the right thing to do.) As for Islam, it has obviously fallen far short, thus far, in adopting free-market thinking (and so achieving the dynamism and economic benefits that often accrue as a result). Yes, as Casey says, a revival of “intellectual suppleness” in Islamic societies would be welcome, as would be the achieving of a productive separation between the public and private spheres. Maybe, as some enthusiasts claim, a U.S. invasion of Iraq might provide just the shock wave needed to send countries throughout the Muslim-Arab world tumbling toward democratic and economic reform. At the moment, though, I’m not optimistic about that possibility. Look who’s influencing Cheney’s thinking I’ll risk embarrassing myself by linking tardily to something that may already have received considerable notice in parts of the blogosphere. (I see that the blog Yalepundits, for example, has already mentioned it.) The Washington Post reports that Dick Cheney is cheering a new book by an NRO essayist widely popular in warblogger circles:
The point isn’t to recommend a reckless embrace of military force. Rather, it is to recognize that in a world where radical forces have demonstrated their willingness to use catastrophic terrorism, a military response -- war -- may well be the only effective response. Saturday, November 2
What Mother really thinks about her The newspaper I work for, the Omaha World-Herald, reported today that the top-rated syndicated television last year was “Crossing Over." That's the program, of course, in which "psychic medium" John Edward queries audience members in rapid-fire fashion as part of his shtick about communicating with the dead (those who have “crossed over”). When I’ve seen the show, I’ve found it utterly fascinating -- for about 10 minutes. Then I grow bored and change the channel. John Edward is in Omaha this weekend and will hold a sold-out session on Sunday at the Civic Auditorium downtown. A delicious excerpt from today’s World-Herald article about Edward:
Sounds about right to me. But a sizeable chunk of the national TV audience appears to care less about his point. Talking their language This Tuesday, Nov. 5, will be notable not just because it’s election day but also because it will mark an interesting anniversary in Nebraska. In 1957, a Nebraskan named Reinhold Schmidt claimed that on Nov. 5 of that year, he had witnessed a flying saucer land beside the state’s beloved west-to-east waterway, the Platte River. Schmidt said he had boarded the ship and conversed with its crew -- who happened to speak a language he knew. The aliens, he said, spoke in “high German.” Despite criticism from skeptics, Schmidt went on to gain a measure of notoriety as a self-promoting contactee of aliens. He claimed he had had numerous encounters with German-speaking space travelers -- who hailed from Saturn, no less. In 1961, Schmidt was convicted in Oakland, Calif., and sentenced to prison on charges of a confidence crime. Hey, this site covers all the bases. A pacifist no more “I’m just not as inclined to believe people when they say that terrorism is somehow the voice of the voiceless. I think that some people become terrorists because they’re jerks and brutes and murderers.” That’s NPR host Scott Simon talking. Simon, whose vivid personality makes “Weekend Edition Saturday” such a treat, was raised a Quaker and has long embraced the ideals of pacifism. But in recent years he has moved away from supporting a rigid opposition to military action. In a Q&A in the new edition of Time Out New York (I get the print copy at home; I couldn’t find the interview online tonight), Simon talks about his change of mind:
In checking whether I was correct in thinking that Simon is a Quaker, I ran across a speech he delivered on Sept. 25, 2001, in which he voiced similar sentiments. Among the well-honed thoughts he expressed:
Well-put, and right on the mark Poetry time Just time for a quick item for now. This is my first chance to blog this weekend. Since I've written in the past about poltics and poetry (here and here), I'll mention this short piece from the Washington Post by Mike Pesca, a producer at NPR:
BY THE WAY: I'll have a long post soon about another senatorial memorial service that some may find of interest. Friday, November 1
Re-energizing Blogging is on a brief hiatus here until Friday night. Two items that caught my interest at other sites: Power Line's latest on the Senate race in Minnesota (apparently it's not over, Republicans) and Max Sawicky's take on the Wellstone memorial service (unlike myself and other rantin' bloggers, Max didn't have a problem with the event's partisan tone). Thursday, October 31
Everything must bow to politics Interesting take on the Wellstone memorial service by Eric Johnson of the blog Catholic Light (he titles his post "Sen. Wellstone, campaign prop"):
As I've told several friends by e-mail, the Wellstone memorial service illustrated something I saw time and again in covering political campaigns in the '80s and '90s (including the two national political conventions in 1988): the frequent inability of political activists (regardless of party, from my experience) to put things in proper perspective, not least during campaign season. (My thanks to a good friend who e-mailed me the link to Johnson's post over lunch.) UPDATE: My friend e-mails a response to my observation:
He's right. I can't think of an example where religious conservatives exploited a memorial service in such a way. Secular liberals do open themselves up to vulnerability on this score. At the same time, though, over the years I've personally seen Republican/conservative activists commit all sorts of gross misjudgments for the sake of promoting their cause. (The same goes for Democrats.) And some fundamentalist preachers, like some liberal ones, have come in for legitimate criticism for using the pulpit as a political propaganda vehicle, deliberately entangling the sacred with the temporal. The value of 'niche blogging' South Carolinian bloggers Chris Scott (of The Insecure Egotist) and Wyeth Ruthven (of The Wyeth Wire) have disagreed in the past on the nature of debate in the blogosphere. The two have moved their debate/discussion into an e-mail exchange between themselves. Chris excerpts some of their thoughts at his site. (You'll have to scroll down a bit to the post "Wyeth responds.") For example, Wyeth writes:
Check out the whole post. It's worthwhile stuff. Europe sets an example If only, it’s said, America were more like Europe. Then, this country would move its foreign policy away from cynicism and begin to deal with other nations on the basis of genuine respect. What’s more, the U.S. government would finally end its shameful habit of selfishly refusing to live up to its international commitments. But wait a minute -- look at the latest edition of The Economist. European governments, it turns out, aren’t living up to those noble standards either. At least they aren’t when it comes to the agreement governing the EU’s regime for the common currency, the euro. EU members don’t trust each other when it comes to economic policy, The Economist reports. And now a growing number of them are set to violate the agreement’s requirement that national debt be no more than 3 percent of gross domestic output. Reports The Economist:
Simply shocking. Who would have imagined that Europeans would be capable of such a lack of open-heartedness, not to mention a penchant for rule-breaking! After all, European officials and diplomats haven’t hesitated to lecture this country about how it should stop being so cynical toward other nations and fixated on its own interests. When Gerhard Schroeder stands up for his country's interests, he's called a political pragmatist. When Jacques Chirac does the same for his country, he's calmly regarded as just another French chauvinist. But when George W. does it, he's derided as an out-of-control cowboy. Perhaps Europeans should look to their own actions before delivering any more lectures about unacceptable U.S. behavior. The gulf between their actions and ours may not be as great as commonly thought. Wednesday, October 30
History and the crusade against Hitler Independent scholar Michael Beschloss has a new book out titled “The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945.” He talked about it today with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.” The Amazon.com site for the Beschloss book says it doesn’t break any new ground but provides a readable account of the topic. Beschloss’ observations about the Morgenthau plan (which would have converted postwar Germany into a deindustrialized society) covered quite familiar ground, for example. Nonetheless, Beschloss is an articulate, interesting fellow, and the “Fresh Air” interview had some fascinating nuggets:
Bush has a strategy; what about his critics? I’ll cite part of John Leo’s latest column, then follow up with a point of my own:
From now on, the United States will need to answer a crucial question: What is the most appropriate response to the terrorist threat? Bush’s strategy is open to criticism on many fronts, but at least he has an actual policy that can be analyzed and debated. But what is the strategy of the hard-left academic/activist community on this issue? Aside from negativism (don’t attack Iraq, don’t rely on military responses, don’t have Ashcroft types in charge of prosecution policy), the outlines of a larger, coherent response aren’t readily discernible. Such an approach falls far short of what's needed. To deserve intellectual respect, the hard left’s response has to consist of more than saying “no,” reviving '60s anti-war street threater and luxuriating in a reflexive disdain for the commander-in-chief. A voice to be appreciated What may well be the most pungent and intelligent satire on race relations in America is a little-known book that appeared 70 years ago. The novel is “Black No More,” by George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977), an accomplished black journalist who was widely published in U.S. newspapers and magazines. Schuyler’s work appeared in the American Mercury (H.L. Mencken, the magazine’s best-known writer, showered praise on him) as well as in The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP. Schuyler was a well-traveled reporter, editor and editorialist with the weekly Pittsburgh Courier, considered the country’s leading black newspaper. Over the years, he moved steadily to the political right. By the 1960s, Schuyler was an enthusiastic Goldwater Republican. The set-up for “Black No More,” published in 1931, is as hilarious as it is fascinating: An inventor named Dr. Junius Crookman creates a device that can transform “Negroes” into Caucasians. Residents of Harlem rush to undergo the change, and American society is thrown for a loop. The hero, Max Disher, changes his skin color from black to white in order to win the love of a white women. He also finds that he must turn his back on blacks and make his way as a member of the dominant white culture. Over the course of the story, the profound investment that various organizations and intellectuals have in the racial status quo is revealed: On the one side stand the white supremacist yahoos such as the “Knights of Nordica” and the “Anglo-Saxon Association of America.” On the other are black cultural figures such as “Santop Licorice” (Marcus Garvey), “Dr. Shakespeare Agamemnon Beard” (W.E.B. Du Bois) and “Madam Sisseretta Blandish (Madam C.J. Walker). Schuyler uses the novel to explore the themes of miscegenation and racial identity, and he pokes fun at black nationalism as well as white supremacy. Writer Matthew Frye Jacobson summarizes the rest of the story:
In early 2001, National Review Online offered a fine look at Schuyler’s career. Another worthwhile analysis of his legacy is found here. The reader reviews at the Amazon.com site for “Black No More” are especially interesting -- even liberals applaud the book. “Black No More” is a worthy addition to one’s library, regardless of one’s race or political ideology. A notable achievement, in several respects. Tuesday, October 29
A single voice for Europe, eh I see from Don Sensing’s blog that the commission headed by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has released its proposed new constitution for the EU. George Will had a delicious suggestion this week about an appropriate consequence that should flow from the drive for European unity:
George Will seems to be loosening up. His EU/Ohio line was downright Lileks-like. Reading what the Europeans are saying OK, the EU has gotten serious in pursuing monetary union. But here’s an interesting question: How long did it take the United States to achieve true monetary union across the breadth of this country? The Dutch blogger Dilacerator provides the answer in this post. Another European blogger worthy of note (if you regard the Brits, that is, as Europeans) is The Lincoln Plawg, who assembled a blistering and sharply composed critique of a recent Foreign Policy piece by the august diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis. Mystery solved For anyone who read my "ice in one's veins" post and wondered how my visit to donate blood platelets went today: It was excellent. The Red Cross has put in new TVs with individualized VCRs, so the next time I donate, I can watch a movie of my own preference. (I would welcome suggestions as far as releases from the last few years; I don't catch many new flicks these days.) During my stay, I watched the History Channel and caught an episode of "In Search Of." It was one of those typically well-produced installments with that funky background music. Highly informative, as usual: Today, Leonard Nimoy unraveled the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. I'm not sure I understood the explanation, though. Libertarianism and war The site for Reason magazine has an online debate this week between Brink Lindsey and John Mueller on whether libertarians should support military assertiveness in response to terrorism. Brink, of course, has ably argued at his weblog that libertarianism is compatible with a forceful response in the wake of 9/11. Here is his opening essay in the Reason debate. He makes the case for invading Iraq. Our end-time-seeking president (so it’s claimed) Legitimate arguments can certainly be made against an invasion of Iraq. One could argue, for example, that the realistic chances of establishing a functioning “democracy” in Iraq are small, not least in light of the less-than-impressive behavior of the opposition forces in exile. Or that we would be setting ourselves up for an extended occupation, perhaps as tortured as the French experience in Algeria in the ’50s. Or that nobody really knows what the fallout would be in the Muslim-Arab world in the face of Iraqi civilian casualties. Each of those arguments can be disputed, but the point is that each of them is serious and worthy of consideration. The same, however, cannot be said for a particularly ludicrous claim being made of late: that Bush administration officials are seeking an invasion of Iraq in order to placate the religious right and its obsession with biblical end-time prophecy. Evangelical Christians, it is correctly pointed out, have long pushed for closer U.S.-Israeli ties and are a powerful force in influencing how Republican administrations approach issues such as abortion in the foreign policy arena. But some critics of Bush want to take things much further, into outright nonsense, by portraying the invasion policy as guided less by strategy and tactics than by the books of Daniel and Revelation. Maureen Dowd raised the topic in a recent column (whose frivolities I refuse to quote). Tom Teepen, an Atlanta-based columnist who usually makes an articulate case for traditional liberal positions on national issues, raised the end-time topic the other day, writing, “The long-standing support of Israel among American fundamentalist Christians is curdling in some quarters into an unthinking religious romanticism that moons for a general Middle East war, and the bigger the better.” Teepen pointed out how various speakers (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Franklin Graham) had all made public statements critical of Islam. He then concluded:"Well beyond the notice of much foreign-affairs reporting but notorious throughout the Muslim world, this yearning for Armageddon and its concurrent contempt for Islam and antagonism to peace-making are cutting off U.S. policy options and undercutting U.S. credibility." This supposed Rummy-Rapture connection was made most forcefully on a listserv to which I belong. A listserv member wrote:
I apologize for quoting an example of such woeful eccentricity, but as ridiculous as it is, it needs to be noted. How to respond to such claims? I know -- they don’t deserve a response. But I can’t help myself. Here goes. The editorial board for The National Interest, a foreign policy journal, includes prominent neoconservative thinkers including Richard Perle, Midge Dector and Charles Krauthammer. In the many years I have read the journal, I have never seen it feature a single article that analyzed Middle East policy through the prism of end-time prophecy and biblical "code words." To people like Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, the sound analysis of international affairs relies on intellectual touchstones such as "national interest" and "realism," not "Gog" and "Magog." Boosters of the end-time conspiracy theory have yet to present a single bit of proof that Iraq policy has been shaped at any point by Revelations rather than realpolitik. Instead, they’re content to whisper suspiciously about the fact that a Bush speechwriter, Carl Gerson, attended Wheaton College, a traditionalist Christian school, and that after 9/11, Bush delivered a speech in which he stated, “God's signs are not always the ones we look for.” That quote might sound like a pretty convincing indication of end-time belief -- until one understands the context of Bush’s remarks. He was speaking at Washington National Cathedral during a “National Day of Prayer” service for the victims of 9/11. It’s hardly a surprise that Bush would refer to God’s “signs” in such a gathering -- and it’s a good bet he wasn’t the only speaker at the event to comment on God and his intentions. I suppose this post is more of a waste of time than just about anything I‘ve submitted for the blog world’s consideration. But some foolishness has recently been thrown in my face on this issue, and I felt obligated to respond. OK, enough of that. Let’s move on to real issues. Ice in one's veins That's the feeling I'll have later today, when I donate blood platelets. The procedure at the Red Cross takes around two hours, and the blood that is circulated back into one's body isn't quite up to normal temperature. The result is that the body becomes chilled. So, the nurses wind up wrapping me in hot towels as I watch the History Channel on the TV screen above my head. I donate platelets at mid-afternoon about once every six weeks. I highly recommend it for anyone who is physically able and has the time to donate. Platelet donations serve an important medical need. I'm lucky to have an employer that allows me the ability to regularly make such a contribution. Sunday, October 27
The EU hobbles along The euro, I suppose, will somehow muddle through over the long term. But the strains on the EU’s structural arrangements for the currency are really beginning to show. As part of the “stability pact” that euro members agreed to in order to create the currency, governments pledged to keep their national debt below 3 percent of GDP. Germany recently announced it intends to violate that pledge in the face of continuing recession. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank is struggling, not surprisingly, with its obligation to set a uniform interest rate that will somehow be appropriate for the widely varying circumstances of the various EU economies. The challenge will become only more complicated once new members are admitted to the EU as part of its inevitable eastward expansion. Economist David Malpass offered cogent observations in National Review Online, arguing, among other things, that the focus on the debt threshold is misguided:
It’s a sound analysis. But, realistically, there seems small chance that EU members would respond to recession by adopting “sweeping labor reform” and “less government” -- measures widely associated in Europe with the supposed cruelties of American capitalism. Egypt and anti-Semitism No single document, with the arguable exception of Mein Kampf, has brought more misery to the Jewish people than a nasty screed known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, as most visitors to this site probably already know, were a concoction of rabid anti-Semitic conspiracy theories peddled by Russia’s czarist regime just over a century ago and circulated ever since by Jew-haters the world over. It is old news in the blogosphere by now, but Egyptian state television is about to broadcast, with great fanfare, a 30-part series based on the Protocols. The broadcast, in the country long hailed as the leading light of Islamic culture, will serve as an irrefutable advertisement of the sickness at work within the Muslim-Arab world. As described in the Jerusalem Post, the series “will be broadcast during the first half of Ramadan, Islam's holiest month and traditionally prime time for serialized television specials.” Ramadan begins next month. Here is how the historian Howard Sachar summed up the historical background of the Protocols in his book “The Course of Modern Jewish History”:
As if wasn't outrageous enough that Egypt is about to show the mini-series, a committee appointed by the country's information minister reviewed the script -- and had the audacity to declare it wasn't anti-Semitic. The incorporation of ludicrous anti-Semitic slanders into accounts of Egyptian history has an extremely long pedigree, as Paul Johnson explained in his book “A History of the Jews”:
And so, with the new Egyptian TV series on the Protocols, the lies of anti-Semitism march into a new century. The ancient anti-Semite Manetho surely would be delighted. Egyptians ought to be ashamed that such ignorance is about to be displayed so rapturously in their country. That they are not should give Americans great pause about the depths of prejudice and gullibility in the Muslim-Arab world. Saturday, October 26
An encouraging sign in Afghanistan Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, spoke at length at the American Enterprise Institute recently about the economy in Afghanistan. His speech gives me an opportunity to point with pride to an academic institution here in Omaha that is doing impressive work in helping the Afghan people get back on their feet: the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). In his speech, Natsios mentioned only one U.S. entity by name, aside from USAID, in talking about organizations that are helping the Afghan people recover from the Taliban period: UNO’s Center for Afghanistan Studies. (Actually, Natsios said “the University of Nebraska,” but the UNO center is what he was referring to.) At the start of this year, the Center got the contract to develop and print (in Pakistan) all the new, post-Taliban textbooks for Afghanistan. The Center (which I’ve included in my links section from the start of this blog) has also trained teachers and teacher trainers in Afghanistan. The UNO center has long been the only U.S. university organization devoted solely to the study of Afghanistan. Its long-time director, Tom Goutierre, is a solid, level-headed scholar and administrator. The educational situation in Afghanistan provides hope because it indicates something reassuring about the character of the Afghan people themselves. Here is how Natsios explained it:
Something to be proud of here in Omaha. BY THE WAY: The simultaneous, coordinated start of school in all regions of Afghanistan this year had tremendous symbolic force for the Afghan people, says Tom Goutierre, the head of the UNO center. The startup signaled, after the tumult of the Tabliban period, that the country could surmount regional frictions to achieve a crucial nationwide goal. Long memories Natsios’ speech on Afghanistan also mentioned something curious. In Afghan villages, communal memories can run deep -- even back to the time of Alexander the Great. Alexander’s conquests in Southwest Asia are discussed in some villages as part of the local tradition, unbroken over the centuries. “Some of them claim lineage to Alexander the Great,” Natsios said of Afghan villagers he has met. ‘Frighteningly easy’ From an article on weapons of mass destruction in the latest issue of National Geographic:
I knew about the atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking and the awful experiments the Japanese subjected captives to, but I had no idea about the extent of Japan’s use of biological agents.
On a related note, an article in the current edition of The National Interest says that “according to Department of Energy reports, two-thirds of the nuclear material in Russia remains to be adequately secured.” This isn't to say, of course, that the Nunn-Lugar initiative begun a decade ago hasn't made a measure of progress in promoting weapons security in Russia, but much remains to be done. More about Napoleon Knowing of Matt Welch’s interest in France, I e-mailed him a link to my Napoleon post below just after I’d completed it the other night. Matt said he’d read a pro-Napoleon biography by Vincent Cronin several years ago that had noted positive aspects of the French leader even as it explained in detail his hubris and fall:
Friday, October 25
Napoleon the dictator Driving home from work on Thursday I heard an NPR piece about how the French are conflicted about how to look on Napoleon -- he was a world-historical figure of enormous talent, but certainly was no promoter of democratic ideals. I wonder how many French intellectuals, with their reflexive anti-American attitudes, appreciate an irony. Napoleon was guilty of precisely the sin that present-day French critics accuse the United States of committing: pursuing a relentless domination of other nations while trying to mask such exploitation as an innocuous, if not high-minded, assertion of national energy. For all his talk about upholding the grand ideals of the French Republic, Napoleon was a dictator and imperialist who brought enormous suffering to much of Europe. (Not that many of the reactionary regimes opposing him were so virtuous themselves.) All the sophistic apologies for Napoleon can be punctured by a single, devastating word: Spain. No -- another word is more powerful yet: Goya. Nor should it be forgotten that the Napoleonic regime’s efforts to reinstate slavery in the Caribbean triggered a desperate guerrilla conflict in Haiti that saw enormous bloodletting. True, Napoleon earned great public support for the administrative efficiencies of his “gilded authoritarianism.” But it seems inescapable that his popularity among his contemporary countrymen rested at bottom on his military victories (which were admittedly stunning). It’s hard to see how the French can remain true to modern European ideals -- such as the requisite swooning at Jimmy Carter as Noble Peace Prize holder -- and simultaneously sidestep the essence of the Napoleonic regime, which was the obsessive pursuit not of peace and universal equality but of something cheap, selfish and dangerous: la gloire. ‘THE SEDUCTIONS OF AUTHORITARIANISM’: Historian David A. Bell, of Johns Hopkins University, explored these themes in a highly stimulating review last year in The New Republic. He was reviewing the book “Napoleon and his Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship,” by Isser Woloch. Bell wrote:
Precisely. Multilateral loans and realpolitik Twenty years ago, an American who held a top-level position at the World Bank sat beside me in a Georgetown classroom and stated categorically that the United States, as a matter of principle, does not threaten to cut off World Bank loans to individual countries. Such loans, he said, need to be considered solely on their economic merit and not become entangled with non-economic policy disputes. His remark always stuck with me, because it seemed hard to believe. A few years later, I read in one of the national papers about how the Reagan administration had denied a World Bank or IMF loan to some country over some Cold War-related matter. The comment from the World Bank official came to mind this week when I read the details of the Sudan Peace Act, a new, worthwhile U.S. initiative passed with broad support in Congress, to push the Sudanese government to end its slaughter of the largely Christian population in southern Sudan. President Bush signed the measure into law this week. One of its provisions is the direct assertion that the United States will seek to cut off World Bank and IMF loans and credits to Sudan if its government doesn't negotiate in good faith. BY THE WAY: The special U.S. envoy on the Sudan issue is former Missouri Sen. John Danforth. BY THE WAY II: I got an e-mail recently from someone involved in reducing modern-day slavery in Sudan and elsewhere. As I told him in my reply, I need to educate myself more on the issues he is involved in. It's rather ridiculous that I've expanded such great mental energy over the years to study the details of slavery in world history yet remain ignorant, in many ways, of slavery in its present-day incarnation. Thursday, October 24
Pakistan as nuclear enabler Jim Hoagland pulls no punches in a column about the dangers of Pakistan as the portal through which fateful nuclear-weapons assistance has flowed to North Korea and perhaps Iran:
Hoagland’s column intensifies my pessimism whenever I contemplate the long-term implications of Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weaponry. It hardly seems farfetched that if -- when -- nuclear terrorism announces itself on American soil through an attack too awful to contemplate in detail, the trail of nuclear assistance could trace back ultimately to a fateful exchange with irresponsible forces within Pakistan. BY THE WAY: Twenty years ago, when I was a grad student at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, Jim Hoagland was kind enough to meet with me in his office at the Washington Post and talk about my interest in getting into journalism. Hoagland was already at that time a columnist for the Post, yet he displayed a down-to-earth manner and was generous with his time. His decency and generous spirit set an example I've remembered and continue to admire. Distant ripples Brink Lindsey notes in a post that he, like myself, had a Civil War ancestor (in fact, he had several ancestors) held as POWs at the Point Lookout prison in Maryland. Brink's post is an illustration of one of his great strengths as a blogger: lyrically weaving his personal experiences into considerations of larger questions. He shares a vivid family story of what happened when one of his ancestor returned home from the prison. Brink mentions that some Confederate prisoners may have signed their oaths of allegiance to the Union with an X not because they were illiterate but as a way of indicating their protest or reluctance in doing so. That may well be the case for some of the prisoners, but in the case of my ancestor, he was indeed illiterate. When he signed an application in, I believe, 1910 for a veterans pension, he also signed with an X. One of his sons (my paternal grandfather) was also illiterate. I'll close simply by quoting the end to Brink's post:
Hallway etiquette I recently mentioned a co-worker's question as to whether people in Britain pass each other on the left in hallways. Holly Gallagher responds:
So now we know. UPDATE: Another e-mailer says that in Scotland, people pass each in other in hallways on the left but that escalators use the same arrangement as in the United States, with the ascending escalator on the right as you face it. Wednesday, October 23
Not tonight; coming attractions I have other commitments tonight, so it will be a blog-free evening for me. Topics in the blog pipeline here include a post about lynchings, the electric chair, and a pair of boots; economic policy in the EU; a satirical novel about race in America; Western views on Islam during a particular time period; and a tangent involving American history and Quebec. War in space and underground Russia’s apparent decision to retain multiple-warhead nuclear missiles will probably pose “no significant increase in threat” to this country. Military planners haven’t figured out how missile defense will be specifically incorporated into official U.S. strategic doctrine. And it hasn’t been decided how the nuclear reductions agreed to by the United States and Russia will be specifically distributed among the three legs of the U.S. triad: aircraft, submarines and land-based missiles. Those were among the observations Admiral James Ellis gave in response to recent questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. Ellis, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (StratCom), was being considered for the command position of the newly reconstituted StratCom, which is absorbing the U.S. Space Command. The full Senate recently approved Ellis’s nomination unanimously. Ellis’s written responses to the committee underscored strong support for Russia. Ellis expressed no great concern not only about Russia’s MIRV capability but also about its launch on warning ability. He expressed support for continued exchanges between U.S. and Russian nuclear missile personnel as well as for the Bush administration’s plans to cut U.S. strategic nuclear warheads to within a range of 1,700 to 2,200 warheads. Ellis specifically stated, “I concur with the determination that given the current international environment, emerging threats, and technology available, the nation’s deterrence needs can be satisfied with 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear missiles.” It’s no surprise that a candidate for one of the CINCs (top military commands) would endorse the administration’s strategic policy. Still, Ellis’s comments were in sharp contrast with congressional testimony by Admiral Richard Mies, then-commander of StratCom, in July 2001. At that time, Mies told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee:
In the Armed Services Committee’s recent questioning of Ellis for the StratCom post, his response was given as “classified answer” when he was asked, “Should tactical nuclear weapons be brought under the auspices of Strategic Command?” The committee asked whether Ellis thought that some hardened underground facilities are “beyond the reach of a U.S. military strike.” Ellis’s answer:
Many U.S. military studies and doctrinal analyses have pointed to the need for a feasibility on the potential effectiveness of nuclear weapons in reaching underground bunkers, Ellis said. “Our focus,” he said, “remains on conducting a detailed feasibility study, and any production decision would be made as part of a separate process.” In other words, Ellis’s testimony indicated, as have news reports, that U.S. strategic planners are indeed interested in including nuclear weapons as a possible tool for attacking bunkers. (An examination of nuclear bunker busters is here.) The Strategic Command, Ellis told the Senate committee, will have top authority as far as U.S. strategic nuclear forces and will play a major role in regard to military space issues, computer warfare and missile defense. StratCom, he said, “will serve as the primary advocate for all warfighter space-related needs.” It has yet to be determined what role, if any, the command will have in regard to certain tasks relating to space and missile defense, he said. Ellis, who has graduate degrees in aerospace engineering and aeronautical engineering, spoke about a range of issues relating to military space policy. He stressed the need to safeguard U.S. satellites as well as the need for a new generation of flexible launch vehicles. As for the incorporation of missile defense into official U.S. doctrine, Ellis said, “The relationship between offensive forces and missile defenses merits comprehensive analysis, but this point remains undefined.” The critics of StratCom from within the arms control community will criticize Ellis and other U.S. military officials for advocating consideration of nuclear weapons as anti-bunker tools. But it’s hard to see how Ellis can be depicted as some kind of wild-eyed nuclear Philistine, given his generous words about Russia and his endorsement of reduced strategic missile numbers. The contrast with the rhetoric of his predecessor is quite revealing. Tuesday, October 22
Musical pitch Orchestras tend to play slightly sharp (just above the pitch) because the acoustic effect allows the showcasing of the violin section. Ron Carter, the veteran jazz bassist, mentioned that point to Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” the other day. Carter is classically trained and also plays the cello. His point about modulating the performance to highlight the violins reminds me that, if my memory is correct, Beethoven chose a particular key change near the end of, I believe, his Fifth Symphony because in that key the violins could be played at their very fullest volume. The topic of musical pitch arose in the "Fresh Air" interview when Gross asked Carter what it was like to play bass behind saxophonist Eric Dolphy, whose intonation was extremely sharp. Trying to complement Dolphy’s idiosyncratic pitch was maddening, Carter said. His fingers, Carter said, had to struggle to achieve what his ears were telling them to do. Time windows A quick note: The vast majority of items here are posted either at night, after the rest of my family is asleep, or in the early morning just before I get ready for work. I do a few items at work, but my opportunity to post from the office is shrinking considerably. I wanted to mention this in case some people ever wonder about the lag time in posts here. Anyway, this is one of several reasons why this blog is more of a free-floating essay blog untethered, for the most part, to the day's headlines. Panhandle politics When I posted last night about the description of the Panhandle as “the other Florida,” where residents express a sense of alienation from the rest of the state, I was hoping I would get a response from Florida resident Dan Hobby, who has sent me cogent e-mails on a variety of subjects. The morning e-mail did indeed include some thoughts from Dan. He provides useful info in explaining why statewide politicians generally don’t invest too much time campaigning in the Panhandle:
Dan also has these thoughts on the fallout in Florida from the creation of “Gulflandia,” a new state encompassing the Gulf Coast areas from Texas to Florida, suggested in the 1990s by a columnist in Mobile, Ala.:
See why I like this guy's e-mails? BY THE WAY: David Hogberg may be a specialist in Iowa politics, but his blog has a good roundup of items relating to the Florida gubernatorial election and the prospect of a post-election lawsuit. Has the time come for Gulflandia? Andrew Sullivan’s letters section this week had an e-mail from a Florida resident who complained about how that state’s Panhandle region is neglected by the rest of the state (even though the capital, Tallahassee, is in northwestern Florida):
Florida is, of course, by no means the only state with a “forgotten” region in which residents chafe at implications that they enjoy only second-class status. I suppose examples could be cited from every state. In colonial South Carolina, great tensions arose between the coastal elite and upland residents. One of South Carolina’s central achievements was finally taming the sectional frictions that had plagued the state. Regional differences led West Virginia to ultimately break off from Virginia during the trauma of the Civil War. Southern Illinois, from what I gather, has long had a pronounced sense of aloofness from the rest of the state. Here in prairie country, a similar dynamic is in play for an area informally dubbed Siouxland. It encompassing the area where the states of Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota come together. Siouxland is so far removed geographically and mentally from the respective state capitals that Siouxland communities have joined together to promote themselves in an impressive display of cross-state cooperation. (Incidentally, for a medium-sized city, Sioux City, Iowa, has done a marvelous job of recreational development along the Missouri River.) In Alabama, an editor at the Mobile Register (a terrific newspaper, by the way) wrote a column in the mid-1990s in which he called, tongue in cheek, for the formation of “Gulflandia” -- a separate state that would encompass the coastal areas along the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida. (Note that Gulflandia would have included “The Other Florida.”) The Gulf Coast areas of the Deep South have long felt a sense of alienation from state policymaking elites, he argued, and would do best to go their own way. After all, he said, Gulflandia would include some of the nation’s busiest ports and most popular fun-in-the-sun tourist locations. (Did you know that the Gulf Coast area of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle is called the “Redneck Riviera”? It’s an outstanding beach location.) Monday, October 21
In love with LA Speaking of U.S. regionalism, Scott Rubush, who’s traveled the United States pretty extensively, talked about the New York-D.C. rivalry in a recent post -- and argued that Los Angeles is far superior to either one. He also expressed curiosity about the awesome population concentration of the Northeast corridor:
I’d never thought of it in quite those terms. I don’t quite get Scott’s point, though, about people being interested in living “even” in the Appalachians. Sure, there’s a lot of poverty in the mountains, but there are also thriving cities (Asheville and Blowing Rock in N.C., Roanoke in Va.). Plus, some of the most gorgeous country around. My wife has hiked so many of the Appalachian peaks that she knows, or at least used to know, a lot of them by sight. Scott, a Pennsylvania native who grew up in North Carolina, recently relocated from LA to Delaware. In his post, he painted an evocative picture of the City of Angels (his last sentence is the killer):
Not what the founders envisioned A UPI piece on "The Emerging Democratic Majority" book includes this right-on observation about how the proliferation of safe U.S. House seats through redistricting has stood an assumption of the founders on its head:
Locke, Hume and those other guys; blog democracy Don't unfairly caricature the nature of the Enlightenment, the Insecure Egotist says. He's responding to a point made by one of my friends in the "East Germans/Britney Spears" post below, in which I excerpted comments from two friends commenting on topics including Greece, Western civilization, globalization and other tangents. One of my friends wrote, "It's true that the East didn't experience the Enlightenment and the rest, but I would disagree that this was a bad thing. The enlightenment's goal was to focus on man rather than God and the end result in Western Europe is a Godless and decadent society." To which the Insecure Egoist responded:
And the Insecure Egotist isn't finished, either. He has some thoughts responding to a post from a fellow South Carolinian, Wyeth Ruthven (whose Wyeth Wire site has great stuff on S.C. politics from a Democratic perspective). Wyeth recently argued that bloggers strive to narrow the parameters of legitimate debate to unfairly stifle dissent; he also tweaked the blog subculture for its overly cute catch phrases. The Insecure Egotist has a differing view:
Just asking: If bloggers shouldn't use terms like "fisking" and "idiotarian," does mean the Car Guys can no longer refer to Sonya Henne's tutu? Into the night My 8-year-old son and I stood outside under the full moon Saturday night in a most unusual circumstance: We were only a few feet away from a pack of wolves -- literally. We were participating in a "creatures of the night" program at a wildlife preserve just south of Omaha. A great experience. The wolf pack -- with 17 members -- is kept in a large wooded area behind an 8-foot-high chain link fence. (The top part of the fence is bent inward at a 45-degree angle; wolves have shown that they otherwise can climb over fences of that height.) I've seen the wolves there before in daylight. It's quite a different experience, though, to see them on a chilly, moonlight night, staring at you with intense interest. The hierarchy within wolf packs is rigorously enforced, incidentally. There are alpha males, of course, but also alpha females. From what I've seen, those at the bottom display a conspicuous submissiveness. One of the guides once said that when the handlers tried to give the lower-ranking wolves a similar amount of food as their superiors, the alpha members of the pack rushed forward and grabbed the "extra" food before it could be eaten. Another scene from our visit Saturday night: two majestic male caribou doing battle over a female just up a hill from our car. We could see the males' muscular shoulders and huge antlers heaving during their contest. The last episode of the night involved playing recordings of owl calls to see if any real owls would answer. Two did. One, a barn owl deep in the woods, shrieked an enthusiastic response. I won't soon forget its call -- a crazed howl of falsetto laughter -- as we stood with a full moon and a canopy of stars overhead. Breaking up Canada; trying not to break up Iraq Columnist/author Austin Bay, seeing my quotes from a Patrick Ruffini post about a hypothetical secession of Canadian provinces to the U.S., sent me the text of a draft of an October 1995 column Austin wrote just before a secession vote in Quebec that year. Among Austin's observations:
Loved that part about the irony concerning the Mohawks. BY THE WAY: This Austin Bay column titled "Baghdad the Day After: Revisited" was discussed last Friday morning on CSPAN. Austin lists several key invasion-related objectives that would need to be achieved to encourage stability in Iraq. Among them: "The quick arrest and prosecution of war criminals. De-Baathizing Iraq will produce a real renaissance." Which reminds me: Has anyone blogged on de-Nazification after WWII and the possible lessons for a post-Saddam Iraq? Might be a useful intellectual exercise about now. Minding the media Criticism of the media is, of course, a central preoccupation of the blogosphere. Some of my favorite analysis of the press subculture comes from Media Minded, who works as copy editor at a large daily newspaper. One recent post of MM's (titled "Media blow-ups, past and present") concerned alleged sexism in a headline. Another good one was titled "Where does bias come from?" The links to those posts were extremely slow when I checked them just now from my modest home PC. An alternate approach would be to go to the Media Minded site and scroll down. It's well worth it. Sunday, October 20
‘Did we tear down the Berlin wall so that East Germans could ogle Britney Spears?’ I blogged the other day about the particular stridency of anti-Americanism in Greece. Two friends of mine (one Protestant, one Catholic, both social conservatives) responded with lively e-mails. The points they discussed ranged from Christian-Muslim clashes in past eras to whether Greece belongs in the EU to John Paul II’s promotion of Orthodox-Catholic reconciliation to globalization’s tendency to promote secularism and materialism. I so enjoyed reading their observations that I asked them if I could excerpt their messages here, without attribution. They agreed. Friend 1 (who is Protestant; he is referring to Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”) :
Friend 2 (responding to the e-mail from Friend 1, an excerpt of which I sent him; the book he mentions is "Clash of Civilizations"):
Friend 1 (responding to the e-mail from Friend 2, an excerpt of which I forwarded him):
Saturday, October 19
Blogs and wordiness Calpundit did a word count on 30 bloggers to see who had the wordiest posts on average. I came in third, after No. 1 Steven Den Beste and No. 2 Jane Galt. That's OK. Sure, writing long generally isn't a good way to build readership at a blog. And if people visiting this site get turned off by the length of the posts, that's their choice to make. But a key reason I took the leap into blogging in July was to write essays on serious topics. Space limitations in my editorial work often mean I have no room to mention interesting tangents on certain topics. So, if I think they're worthwhile, I post some of those at this site. When Nicholas Kristof did that column a while back that acted as if the entirety of the Great Plains is in a depopulation crisis, I wrote a long piece to point out the region's demographic and cultural complexity. When I responded to the counterfactual claim that Britain could have embraced Thatcherite economic policies in the 1940s, my post explaining why such a scenario was extremely improbable ran to considerable length. When I examined the hypocrisy of antebelleum Southern slaverholders, I didn't do so in a little 200-word snippet. I felt at the time that the nature of those topics warranted the length of the posts, and my view hasn't changed. I have material for explorations here of American Western art, end-time religious beliefs in America, the history of the Confederate battle flag and a lot of other things, and I have no intention of addressing those topics in little chunks. In addition, I use this site to excerpt generously from particular pieces, rather than merely provide a link. I intend to continue doing that. I'm not saying that linking blogs are inferior. I'm just explaining what my vision is for this site. It's relevant to note that I rarely get e-mail about the shorter items here. But my longer pieces have generally prompted a lot of reponses. And many of them are exactly the kind of thoughtful, well-conceived messages a blogger would hope for. This sounds like I'm mad at CalPundit, but I'm not. He's a great guy. In fact, some of the e-mails he's sent me in recent months are examples of precisely the kind of thoughtfulness I just mentioned. Are they consistent or not? A co-worker raised a good question the other day: In England, when people pass each other in the hallway, do they pass them on the left side of the hall? A list of listservs I referred in a recent post to the H-DIPLO listserv; someone e-mailed to ask what that is. It's an online discussion group that is one of many academic-oriented listservs listed at this site. Friday, October 18
Why we did it and Japan and Europe didn't Robert Shapiro writes in Slate today about the continuing rise in U.S. economic productivity. The increase, he says, stems mainly from business investment in information technology and IT services. A key point:
Shapiro's point doesn't mean American society should reject the regulatory impulse. But it does mean we should be smart about it. Growth, and higher incomes, are linked in a fundamental way to granting businesses operational flexibility. That may sound like a platitude, but apparently the Japanese and Europeans have paid a significant price for failing to heed it. Clinton and military pre-emption Christopher L. Ball, a poli sci professor at Iowa State, has an interesting observation on the H-DIPLO listserv this morning:
I wonder how the North Korean admission will affect the South Korean presidential election (set, I believe, for December). Kim Dae Jung's government has, of course, been strongly pushing reconciliation with the North, but North Korea's blatant mendacity on the nuke issue would seem to strengthen the arguments being made by the South Korean opposition party. From what I've read, the fortunes of the presidential contenders have gone back and forth this year, in part because the South Korean party system is weak and volatile due to pronounced divisions along regional and other lines. Thursday, October 17
Blogging against the warbloggers (FYI: I've added to this post over lunch today [Friday], so it's in a slightly reworked form from the original. -- GS) My Southern Democratic/Southern studies acquaintance Wyeth Ruthven takes warbloggers to task, and cites Orwell in doing so. TAPPED, fresh from a Movable Type makeover, takes note. Aw, come on, how about a little moral equivalence here. I agree that warbloggers can in many cases be criticized for hubris, zealotry and quirky catch phrases. But don't many on the left exhibit similar shortcomings in their approach to political debate? Thoughtful folks on the political left have written me from time to time to voice complaints about how bloggers leap so quickly to bash anyone who voices even the most modulated dissent from the dominant views in the warblog subculture, at least in regard to the terrorism question. It's a fair point; I've gotten a few zinger hard-line e-mails from some of the blogosphere's true believers on occasion. But don't sidestep the sins of the American left, either. The reports of left-wing assaults on free speech on college campuses have been covered for years in The New Republic and elsewhere, whether the issue was speech codes used to opportunistically squelch conservative political claims or over-the-top campaigns against conservative campus newspapers. The current issue of National Review, in fact, has a piece about spirited attempts to silence right-wing campus newspapers, including resort to theft of the newspapers themselves. Wyeth's well-written post is one more chapter in the never-ending squabble over who is more narrow-minded and meaner: those on the right or those on the left. From what I see among the worst offenders, a lot of the time it's a pretty close call. Political winds John Ellis pulls together a lot of useful election-season info. Of course, Patrick Ruffini is always an especially valuable source. Ruffini, incidentally, had a great post about that poll in which four of 10 American respondents said they would support annexing Canada. Observed the GOP-boosting Ruffini:
A strategy for the GOP to consider down the road, perhaps, if the authors of "The Emerging Democratic Majority" prove correct. Good news on fighting global poverty? The reduction in “extreme poverty” may be significantly greater than the World Bank has estimated, Robert Samuelson says in his latest column. Citing a new study by Indian economist Surjit Bhalla, he writes:
Most of the gains occurred in Asia, according to the study. If Bhalla’s findings are accurate, the improvement is stunning, since he reports that as a whole, Asia’s rate of extreme poverty dropped from 54 percent in 1980 to 7 percent in 2000. “Gains,” Samuelson writes, “are unfortunately missing from two regions: Africa and Latin America.” Speaking of Africa, I read in a Cato newsletter this week about two free-market think tanks that are getting off the ground in Nigeria and Kenya. (I searched for URLs and found them here and here.) ... now for Samuelson’s bad news In the same column mentioned above, Samuelson, who doesn’t shy away from inconvenient facts, also talks about how support for free-market thinking is weakening in Latin America, given the economic meltdown in Argentina (yes, I’m well aware that some key economic policies there were statist rather than capitalistic) and the likely election of leftist candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. Samuelson writes:
As usual, his analysis makes plenty of sense. Too bad a similar clarity of thought wasn’t displayed at the recent U.N. conference on poverty, which floundered for days trying to frame the issues it took Samuelson only two paragraphs to accurately summarize. Wednesday, October 16
Greeks seek a new Great Schism A recent Economist survey described Greece as a country that has regained its confidence and economic footing. Missing from The Economist’s examination, however, was consideration of the remarkable depth of hostility that many Greeks, across political and social lines, expressed against the United States soon after 9/11. Greek journalist Takis Michas has written in depth over the past year about how Greek anti-Americanism manifests itself with such vehemence across political and social lines. I was first alerted to his writing by an article of his in The National Interest last spring. He has since written on the same topic for the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. In his article for The National Interest, Michas described Greek resentment over U.S. support for the military junta that took power in the the 1960s. He also described the numerous anti-American and anti-NATO positions of Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou in the 1980s. But, Michas writes,
Machis has a new book out that explores Greek support for the Serbian regime in the 1990s. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Greek government voiced strong support for the United States. But coverage by the Greek press was replete with the notion that the United States itself had brought on its suffering -- an idea also voiced, Machis writes, by the “immensely popular Archbishop Christodoulos of the Greek Orthodox Church.” Machis recounts a telling incident:
The most striking aspect of Machis’s analysis, however, is his point that anti-Americanism now provides a crucial commonality among Greek Communists, the Greek Orthodox Church and some Greek conservatives. Describing the attitude of Greek nationalists, he writes:
Such stridently nationalistic views are championed by the Greek Orthodox Church, he observes:
A group of “neo-Orthodox” intellectuals posit an extreme form of xenophobia that is enjoying growing respect and attention. As described by Machis:
I’ve seen some online BBS chatter in which people have raged at Machis’ arguments. These critics have tended not to dwell on substance but instead talk about the (all too true) horrors wrought by the Greek colonels and, frequently, stoop to ad hominem, idiotarian attacks. (Here is one BBS example; the post ends with a slap at the United States as “the largest terrorist nation on the planet.”) A sharp response to such arguments came from a BBS reader who, after criticizing the U.S. government for supporting thuggish regimes in the past, went on to make this point:
Indeed. I find it hard to give much credibility to Greek critics who berate the United States for “triumphalism” when those very critics ground their arguments in supporting a raging nationalistic triumphalism of their own. Similarly, Greek complaints against supposed U.S. fanaticism in responding to 9/11 are weakened by the fanaticism on abundant display in Greece whereby Communists and Greek Orthodox join hands while spouting wild-eyed conspiracy theories against the West. It is encouraging to see Greece’s economic health restored. But it is lamentable to see its attitudes toward the outside world guided by such radicalism and grossly mistaken assumptions. UPDATE: A good friend, knowledgeable about the Greek Orthodox Church, passes along a Sept. 16, 2001, news article from the Orthodox news service in which Archbishop Christodoulos "called for the unabashed condemnation of 'those who choose violence and blind terrorism.' " CONSTANTINOPLE?!: More relevant info from my friend:
By the way, I e-mailed my friend back and asked him if he was correct in referring to the "Patriarch of Constantinople." He wrote back and said that, yes, the full name is the "Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople" -- or EP. (Its Web site is here) Although the Greek Orthodox Church is in communion with the EP, the latter is a separate entity. The EP is ecumenical-minded and has positive relations with the Catholic Church. Tuesday, October 15
Confederate dead, American unity, family ties The U.S. Supreme Court refused this week to wade into a court fight over whether the Confederate battle flag can fly over Point Lookout, a national cemetery in southern Maryland where all of the approximately 3,300 soldiers buried there served the Confederacy. Because of the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case, a federal appeals court ruling prohibiting display of the flag will stand. A former leader of the Sons of Confederate Veterans had filed the suit. A federal judge sided with his claims, but the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- which often takes a decidedly strict constructionist approach -- sided with the federal government. Here is how the AP summarized the court’s findings:
The Washington-based Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld that ruling. The Supreme Court then refused to consider the appeal. This strikes me as a case where neither side has overwhelmingly strong arguments. Flying a Confederate battle flag in this instance, at a cemetery where the more than 3,000 dead all expressed loyalty to the Southern cause, doesn’t seem a particularly provocative act. Everyone knows the Confederacy is long dead. A lawyer could honestly argue that such a display should be seen as more in the nature of antiquarianism than as an expression of hostility to the United States or an incitement toward racism. On the other hand, Point Lookout is, indeed, a national cemetery run by the U.S. government, not a Confederate entity. The Union won the war, and there should be little surprise if the Veterans Administration (the federal agency in charge of national cemeteries) sets parameters on which flags can be flown, including a prohibition on a flag associated with the losing side. The Confederate battle flag has also become inextricably entangled with the promotion of racist speech through the commandeering of the flag, generations ago, by the Ku Klux Klan. On the separate, and far more important, issue of whether the battle flag should be displayed on state property in the South or anywhere else, I can give an unequivocal opinion: State governments would be wise, and fully entitled, to ban such displays. State flags ought to be instruments for promoting unity among the residents of a state. The Confederate battle flag, in contrast, stands at the very opposite extreme: It possesses a symbolic power that is explosively divisive. After decades of appropriation by the Klan (and through its frequent display in the 1950s and ’60s as a general symbol against the civil rights movement), the flag is irredeemably tainted with deep-seated connotations of racism. It stands as a symbol of allegiance to values hostile to the racial reconciliation toward which so many in the region have striven in recent decades. I intend to post at length here sometime not just about the flag’s past as a symbol but also about the many fascinating side issues associated with it. BY THE WAY: As for Point Lookout, the national cemetery, I have a personal connection: My paternal great-grandfather, a North Carolinian serving as a private in the Confederate army, was confined at the large prison camp there not once but twice. He was captured in Virginia in November 1863 and interned at Point Lookout until November 1864, when he was among more than 3,000 Confederates paroled from the prison. He was captured a second time, in March 1865, when he and other Southern troops launched a desperate surprise attack to try to break the Union grip on Petersburg, Va. More than 1,600 Confederates were killed or wounded in the assault, and 1,900, including my ancestor, were taken prisoner. It is possible that he may have seen Abraham Lincoln, who inspected captured and wounded Confederates after the attack. On June 19, 1865, my ancestor was released from Point Lookout after signing an oath of allegiance to the United States. Because he was illiterate, he indicated his agreement by signing with an X. I have a photocopy of the document. It is a remarkable feeling to hold that piece of paper and consider the significance of what it entailed. UPDATE: Chris Scott, of the blog The Insecure Egotist, has a different take on some aspects of the flag issue. I respect his views, which are well argued, and understand the frustration that some folks in the Confederate heritage subculture feel about automatically being labeled as white supremacists. When I lived in Salisbury, N.C., I saw the local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter put together a wonderful annual event about the Civil War prison in Salisbury. The event brought together descendants of inmates and prison guards, examined the history seriously and emphasized reconciliation, without any mint-julip sentimentality about the Old South. As far as the battle flag, though, I still find it far too divisive a symbol for display on state-owned grounds. THE REDOUBTABLE JOHN ROSENBERG: weighs in on the flag topic, disagreeing with me on a key point, at his blog Discriminations. A scary concept: comedians with law degrees My Bush-tweaking buddy Madeleine Begun Kane (one of whose blogs is here and whose latest politically tinged song parody is here) e-mails to let me know about a fun idea from Sean Carter, whom she describes as "a lawyer, stand-up comedian, humor writer, author and public speaker." At his site Lawpsided.com, Carter has announced what he calls his Fantasy Supreme Court League contest. He writes:
The contest specifies the cases involved; they cover topics including copyright law, capital punishment and cross burning. By the way, I like Carter's list of nicknames for the Supreme Court justices. Among them: Justice Anthony "Don't Call Me 'Tony' " Kennedy; Justice Antonin "Fuggetaboutit" Scalia; and Justice Clarence "I've Switched to Pepsi" Thomas. Miles Davis, jazz-fusion and the hydrogen bomb Boston Globe journalist Fred Kaplan argued something surprising in Slate the other day. He defended Miles Davis’s recordings from the 1970s and ’80s. (By the way, this post will eventually amble toward consideration of U.S. security policy.) Actually, I should be more precise. Kaplan defended Davis’s live recordings from that period. He was quite honest in describing the decrepit state of Davis’s studio work:
Pretty sad, especially considering that Davis towered as a jazz pioneer from the ’40s through the late ’60s, releasing a phenomenal string of influential recordings including Birth of the Cool, ’Round About Midnight, Kind of Blue, My Funny Valentine and Bitches Brew. (Here is a Miles Davis discography.) Kaplan argues that Davis’s venture into jazz-fusion in the ’70s and ’80s shouldn’t be ignored. To back up his claims, he cites the work of Davis’s band on a CD box set, The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux, 1973-1991. Kaplan describes it as “a hidden archive revealing that the great Miles Davis did not fade out with a whimper.” I’ll take Kaplan’s word for it, and if his argument is correct, I’m heartened. But I suffered through so much astringent jazz-fusion in the ’70s and ’80s in hopes of finding something palatable that I don’t care to revisit the genre right now. (I’ll readily admit that jazz-fusion guitarist John McLaughlin was an awesome technician, even if he wasn’t lyrical.) For my money, the best jazz-fusion album came out way back in 1973, when the way-hip Bay Area band Azteca recorded Pyramid of the Moon for Colombia. I was just a kid reading Downbeat -- yeah, in milltown/furniture belt North Carolina -- and I well remember the review for the album, which received five stars. I bought the record at Brindles. A wonderful achievement -- inventive arranagements, inspired muscianship. The band, with around a dozen players and several vocalists, had a lot of notable players: percussionist Pete Escovedo (father of Sheila E.), sax man Mel Martin, trumpeter Tom Harrell, bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Lenny White. Guitarist Neal Schon, who went on to success with the rock band Journey, provided an unbelievable break-neck solo on a tune called “What'cha Gonna Do?” It’s a blistering composition that still rocks. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE HYDROGEN BOMB?: OK, here’s the H-bomb connection: Fred Kaplan, who wrote the Slate, is the same fellow who wrote a 1983 book called “The Wizards of Armageddon,” about the rise of U.S. nuclear weapons theorists during the Cold War. The book is useful, although it employs a rhetorical framework -- nuclear strategists as a closed priesthood of narrow-minded theologians -- that has since become a cliche. Maybe it was already a cliche by the time Kaplan’s book came out; I don’t know. Here are a few nuggets from “The Wizards of Armageddon”:
I’ve run out of time tonight. This odd amalgam of thoughts will have to do for now. Monday, October 14
Coming up I'll blog later tonight on these topics: Miles Davis and the hydrogen bomb; anti-Americanism in Greece; interesting nuggets in congressional testimony by a senior military commander. Southern politics David Broder explained the fundamental points pretty well in a lengthy piece on this year's electoral battles in the South. Excerpts:
BY THE WAY: I'll get back into the regular blogging groove tonight. New York politics I registered surprise last week at George Will's report of the significant electoral inroads Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton made in winning votes in upstate New York; I noted the irony that Democrats had failed to win the mayoral race in NYC. Gary Farber, the hard-working blogger at Amygdala, e-mailed me with some thoughts on the topic (Gary, who's now in Boulder, Colo., grew up in NYC and spent most of 2000 and all but the last two weeks of 2001 on Long Island):
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