July 3, 2009
FROM THE ARCHIVES: "AN EARLIER," NOT "THE FIRST":
Our First Revolution (MICHAEL BARONE, July 3, 2007, NY Sun)
[T]his First Revolution turned out to be a giant step forward for representative government, guaranteed liberties, global capitalism, and an anti-tyrannical foreign policy. That was not necessarily the intention of the actors in this drama, but it was the result they produced. We are its fortunate beneficiaries.The story has a special resonance for New York. It was James II who, as Duke of York and Lord High Admiral, in 1664 ordered the British fleet to oust the Dutch from Nieuw Amsterdam, and when the city was captured it was renamed in his honor.
But five years later James decided to become a Catholic. This was a problem: he was the heir to the throne — his brother, Charles II, had no legitimate children — and most Englishmen were Protestants who regarded Catholicism as tyrannical. When James became king, he claimed the right to dispense with the law blocking Catholics from serving in the army or civil government. He also dissolved Parliament and set out to secure the election of one that would be a rubber stamp. This was in line with the move toward absolutism in Europe, where monarchs like Louis XIV of France were abolishing ancient assemblies as medieval anachronisms and ruling directly through bureaucracies.
The moment of truth came in June 1688, when James's second wife gave birth to a son who would take precedence over his two Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne. Into action stepped Mary's husband , William of Orange, Stadholder of the Netherlands, and, as James's nephew, fourth in line for the throne himself.
In secret William procured an invitation from seven English lords to come over to England, assembled an army of 25,000 men and a navy of 500 ships, and printed and smuggled into England 50,000 copies of a pamphlet setting forth his intention to seek a "free parliament."
After agonizing delays, his forces crossed the Channel in November — not the ideal season for a Channel crossing — and landed in southwest England and marched toward London. James, deserted by his leading general, John Churchill, who later became the Duke of Marlborough, ordered his army not to fight and fled the country, throwing the Great Seal into the Thames. William's Dutch army occupied London.
William could have declared himself king. Instead he ordered elections for a new parliament and conspicuously avoided influencing them. That parliament, after debating whether James had abdicated or was still king, voted to make William king and Mary queen. It also passed a Declaration of Right and effectively required that Parliament must meet every year.
While it's good to recall, the Glorious in particular and the Snglo nature of the American Revolution in general, both just follow naturally from Magna Carta, like Simon de Montfort's and the Puritan.
[originally posted: 7/04/07]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: NO TRIALS FOR THE PRISONERS? THE HORROR...:
The War of Independence Was Hell (Froma Harrop, 6/30/07, Real Clear Politics)
[T]he War of Independence was horrific, according to John Ferling, a leading historian of early America. It was a grinding conflict that rivaled, and in some ways exceeded, the Civil War in its toll on American fighters when looked at on a per-capita basis. Ferling chronicles the suffering in his new book, "Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence" (Oxford University Press)."There's a sense that there was a great deal of gallantry," Ferling told me, "and the Revolution was a war unlike modern wars." Not so.
Ferling offers a gritty, boots-on-the-ground account of a war that subsequent generations had melted into a patriotic story suitable for children. The reality was that combatants on all sides committed atrocities and the body count turned ghastly.
One in four men who served in the Continental Army lost his life, a higher percentage death toll than in the Civil War, where one regular in five perished. In World War II, one in 40 American servicemen died.
Almost half the American rebels taken prisoner died, mainly from disease and malnutrition. The mortality rate among Union soldiers held at the infamous Andersonville POW camp in Georgia was a far lower 37 percent.
Ferling challenges other misconceptions about the period.
With attrition rates like that the Democrats would have surrendered on the 5th of July
[originally posted: 7/04/07]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: TO THE NATIONALIST, PATRIOTISM IS A DISEASE:
US 'flag epidemic' reaches peak on Fourth of July (Chantal Valery, Jul 4, 2006, Agence France Presse)
It's a true epidemic: the red, white and blue, stars-and-stripes banners are everywhere in the United States - on house facades, front lawns, cars and clothes. [...]"Old Glory," as the US flag is affectionately called, can be seen in abundance through the year in the American heartland and the South, and to a lesser extent in cities like New York and Los Angeles. [...]
An official federal government code sets very specific rules on how the US flag should be handled. The national banner cannot be thrown on the ground, hung upside down, torn or allowed to become dirty.
It must be illuminated in nighttime and, the code says, cannot be used as a prop for advertising activities.
However, there is no sanction for violating these rules. The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that freedom of expression guaranteed by the US constitution includes the right to burn the flag, an act frequently observed during protests against the Vietnam War.
Last week, the US Senate barely rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that could have led to criminal penalties for desecrating of the flag.
"I doubt very much that it is the end of the story," said William Galston, an analyst with the Brookings Institution.
"Global public opinion surveys regularly put Americans at the top of the patriotism index," Galston told AFP. "The US flag is the visible symbol of that strong sentiment... Even our national anthem is about the flag."
What makes the American flag unique is that it is in fact a symbol that represents ideas. You can't symbolize France because being French is a matter of blood. You are French or you aren't. Anyone can be American.
MORE:
After 9/11 highs, America's back to good ol' patriotism (Linda Feldmann, 7/05/06, The Christian Science Monitor)
In Monitor interviews conducted during the July 4 weekend, words such as "love" and "loyalty" toward America flow easily, as do expressions of belief in the ideals of freedom and democracy. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that the latest global survey on "national pride," a close cousin of patriotism, found that Americans ranked No. 1 among the 34 democracies polled. [...]Of the 10 areas the survey gauged, the United States ranked highest in five - pride in its democracy, its political influence, economy, science, and military. (The other five areas were history, sports, arts/literature, fair and equal treatment of groups, and social security system.)
[originally posted: 7/04/06]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? :
For those of you who may not realize it, the best show in the history of television also has the most complete archive of its past shows. The Booknotes website has print transripts and viewable Video of many shows back to 1989. Here are links to some that have dealt with the Founding, the Founders, the Revolution, and the Declaration. I starred (*) a few that are particularly worthwhile. :Roger Kennedy : Orders From France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World (1780-1820)[originally posted: 2002-07-01]William Lee Miller : The Business of May Next: James Madison & the Founding
Richard Norton Smith : Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation
Joseph Ellis : Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams
Willard Sterne Randall : Thomas Jefferson: A Life
Clare Brandt : The Man in the Mirror: A Life of Benedict Arnold
David Hackett Fischer : Paul Revere's Ride
Alan Ryan : Introduction Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
Lance Banning : The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison & the Founding of the Federal Republic
Lloyd Kramer : Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions
Jack Rakove : Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
*Pauline Maier : American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
Brian Burrell : The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, and Pledges That Have Shaped America
*Thomas West : Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class and Justice in the Origins of America
*Paul Johnson : A History of the American People
Annette Gordon-Reed : Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy
Alfred Young : The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory & the American Revolution
*Winston Churchill : The Great Republic: A History of America
Howard Zinn : A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present
Joyce Appleby : Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
*Harvey Mansfield : Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
*Robert Scigliano : The Federalist Papers
Roger Wilkins : Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism
Walter Berns : Making Patriots
Irvin Molotsky : The Flag, The Poet and The Song
*Michael Novak : On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding
*Gordon Wood : The American Revolution: A History
James Srodes : Franklin: The Essential Founding Father
FROM THE ARCHIVES: A GIFT FROM THE FOPS:
Bold Men in Ruffled Shirts (DAVID McCULLOUGH, July 4, 2002, NY Times)When we see them in paintings, with their ruffled shirts and powdered hair, they look a little like fops, softies. But life then, at best, was tougher than we know, and they were, too, and the women no less than the men. John Adams predicted a long, costly struggle. "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain their Declaration," he told Abigail. "Yet through the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see the end is more than worth all the means."
It's common enough for the Right in general and cultural conservatives in particular to bemoan the creeping statism of our age and the corrosive effects of moral relativism. The recent asinine ruling on the Pledge seems Heaven sent for a rip-roaring denunciation of a nation on the road to Sodom. But we tend to forget that the Founders were men much like us, men who worshipped freedom but who did not truly expect it to last. The Constitution, with its careful system of checks and balances, amply demonstrates the low estimation in which they held the species.
Yet, we our independence survives. We are less free than we should be, in some ways less free than they were, but we are nonetheless as free as any people on Earth. And we are free in ways--mostly economic--that their fellow countrymen were not.
Our society is less good in too many ways than theirs was--chiefly in the lapse of our moral standards and the loss of the sense of honor that they held so dear. But it is infinitely better in many too--if for no other reason than that their words "All Men", now truly apply to all men, no matter their race, creed, or color and to women as well.
Our generation is less tough than theirs, but our lives have been less tough--in good measure thanks to them. And when called upon, as in the wake of 9-11, we certainly seem to contain the same moral and spiritual toughness in some untapped reserve. Who's to say that we would not rise to as great a cause as theirs was with equal valor and maybe even establish as enduring a legacy.
One suspects that if Adams could see this far he'd not be too displeased with what he saw. No doubt he'd rage against our dependence on government and our abdication of moral responsibility for our own actions, but mightn't he also marvel at what we've made of America in material terms, the wealth and power we've accrued. No doubt he'd mourn the racial tension that remains a disturbing facet of our society, but surely he'd marvel at a Colin Powell, a Condeleeza Rice, an Alberto Gonzales, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and think that there's hope for us still.
Most of all, one supposes that he'd look at the worst of our blemishes--from a $2 Trillion government to divorce to abortion to euthanasia and so on--and see that, however unpleasant to behold, they are products of our free choice. He'd surely not be surprised that that which is worst in us, like that which is best, comes to the surface when we are free. But we are in fact free and that is no small thing. It is a freedom that we should use better, to make a truly good society, but it may be that we never will. It may be that, being merely men, this is the best we can do--though I hope not. Still, if that is the case, then we have in fact done our best. The light we cast may not quite be ravishing, but surely the light he glimpsed came from this almost-shining city on a hill, and surely this "end" justifies the means that he and his fellow patriots were called upon to employ and to endure. And surely, he'd remind us that we are not at an end, are instead in the midst of becoming the America he envisioned, but are well on our way if we only have the courage to make ourselves that nation.
And even if that's all a load of hooey, perhaps he'd consider the sacrifices that they made to be worthwhile just because nearly 230 years later there are almost 300 million Americans who fiercely believe, even if they agree on little else, that :
...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
Maybe just that much is enough. Maybe it's quite a bit.
God Bless America. And God Bless you and yours on this Independence Day and every day. [originally posted: July 4, 2002]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: GET THEE TO A VIDEO STORE:
GET THEE TO A VIDEO STORE:In addition to Independence Day, this is the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, so memorably recounted in The Killer Angels (1974)(Michael Shaara 1929-1988) (Grade: A+). Several years ago,TNT made a pretty good movie version of the book, called just Gettysburg, and they used to show it on the 4th (I don't know if it's on tomorrow, but rent the movie or buy the DVD at Borders for $15). If you can watch it without choking up when Joshua Chamberlain orders the men on Little Round Top to fix bayonets, you're one tough cookie.Another flick you could bring home, though it has its flaws, is Mel Gibson's The Patriot. Just the cinematography, by the great Caleb Deschanel, is worth the price of admission.
Harder to find, but a better Revolutionary War film, is The Devil's Disciple, with one of those great pairings of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. [originally posted: July 3, 2002]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: WHAT COMES FIRST :
True North : Setting the course by America's moral compass (George W. Bush, 12.03.01, Forbes ASAP)When Jefferson sat down to write, he was trying, he said, to place before mankind "the common sense of the subject." The common sense of the subject was that we should be free. And though great evils would linger, the world would never be the same after July 4, 1776. A wonderful country was born, and a revolutionary idea sent forth to all mankind: freedom, not only by the good graces of government but as the birthright of every individual. Equality, not as a theory of philosophers but by the design of our Creator. Natural rights, not for the few, not even for a fortunate many but for all people in all places, in all times. [...]Our nation has always been guided by a moral compass. In every generation, men and women have protested terrible wrongs and worked for justice, for the abolition of slavery, the triumph of civil rights, for the end of child labor, the equal treatment of women, and the protection of innocent life.
In this way we all become more responsible citizens. And by extending to all the promise of America, we show an important kind of patriotism. Seventy-five years ago, our 30th president, the only president born on Independence Day, spoke words that apply to our time. Calvin Coolidge said, "We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first."
This is another selection from the Forbes ASAP on the "Pursuit of Happiness". Note how it sounds like something he'd have written this week to take advantage of the Pledge issue? But it is what he's been saying for years now. [originally posted: 2002-07-02]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE ODD COUPLE
John Adams & Thomas Jefferson (Craig Ceely, Solo HQ)Jefferson, far more of a radical republican than Adams had ever been, could have been expected to introduce no innovations at all during his presidency. But it was Jefferson who, with no Constitutional authority at all, agreed to double the size of the United States by paying France fifteen million dollars for the Louisiana Territory. He was denounced for this by his own southern Republican allies in Congress - but he insisted that he had acted under the treaty-making authority of the presidency, and the purchase was ratified by the Senate. Jefferson's second term in office was marred by the treason trial of his vice-president, Aaron Burr, and by more war fever such as Adams had endured. When he left office in 1809, he was glad to return to Virginia.
By then, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, who'd known both Adams and Jefferson in the Continental Congress, had been trying to effect a rapprochement between the two former friends for about two years. He succeeded: Adams and Jefferson exchanged letters and began a correspondence which lasted for Years - Adams, the strong Federalist who yet insisted on civilian control of the military and avoided war when powerful interests in his own party demanded it; Jefferson, the strict republican who nevertheless, when he had the chance, stretched the Constitution to its limits as far as he could. Their letters touched on each man's respective writings, their careers, and on contemporary affairs. Both agreed that posterity would judge them by what they'd done in 1776. In February 1825 Adams wrote to Jefferson, "I wish your health may continue to the last much better than mine....The little strength of mind and the considerable strength of body I once possessed appear to be all gone, but while I breathe I shall be your friend."
John Adams died peacefully on July 4, 1826 - the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Declaration of Independence. His last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still survives." A few hours later, Thomas Jefferson was gone.
Who would not be happy to be judged by what these two did in 1776? [originally posted: 2003-07-04]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: DEBAUCHERY AND DESPOTISM
Samuel Adams - The Declaration Revisited (Mark Alexander, July 3, 2003, townhall.com)[A]dams would reserve his fieriest denunciations for this week's 11th Circuit Appeals Court conclusion that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore strayed into constitutional impermissibility by placing a monument depicting the Ten Commandments as "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," in his state's Supreme Court rotunda. Of this legal commemoration of our law's foundation, that court declared: "Any notion of high government officials being above the law did not save ... [state's rights proponents] from having to obey federal-court orders, and it will not save ... [Moore] from having to comply with the court order in this case. ... If necessary, the court order will be enforced. The rule of law will prevail."
Adams would note that this decision is most emphatically the opposite of the rule of law. He wrote of that first Independence Day, 227 long years ago, "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient." He would note that Moore's appeal is going to the Supreme Court, where a relief engraved with the Ten Commandments appropriately appears above the Justices' bench and court sessions begin with the proclamation, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court." He would remind that the First Amendment states plainly: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
On this greatest of threats to our liberty, Adams would recall the words of his fellow Founders: "The Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all." (George Washington) "...[T]he danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day." (Joseph Story) "The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." (Thomas Jefferson).
But what would Adams do? [...]
He would advise, "Since private and public Vices, are in reality, though not always apparently, so nearly connected, of how much Importance, how necessary is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our ancestors for these great purposes be encouraged by the government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when Knowledge is diffus'd and Virtue is preserv'd. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauch'd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
He would counsel that religious liberty requires faith-minded (and faithful) defenders, as "...Our enemies have made it an object, to eradicate from the minds of the people in general a sense of true religion and virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them." And he would caution remembering which are first principles: "...[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
The Founders were just Deists though...pretty nearly atheists.... [originally posted: 2003-07-04]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: BOOKNOTES:
Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician by Alyn Brodsky (C-SPAN, July 4, 2004, 8 & 11pm)
The only full biography of Benjamin Rush, an extraordinary Founding Father and America's leading physician of the Colonial eraWhile Benjamin Rush appears often and meaningfully in biographies about John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, this legendary man is presented as little more than a historical footnote. Yet, he was a propelling force in what culminated in the Declaration of Independence, to which he was a cosigner.
Rush was an early agitator for independence, a member of the First Continental Congress, and one of the leading surgeons of the Continental Army during the early phase of the American Revolution. He was an constant and indefatigable adviser to the foremost figures of the American Revolution, notably George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.
Even if he had not played a major role in our country's creation, Rush would have left his mark in history as an eminent physician and a foremost social reformer in such areas as medical teaching, treatment of the mentally ill (he is considered the Father of American Psychiatry), international prevention of yellow fever, establishment of public schools, implementation of improved education for women, and much more.
For readers of well-written biographies, Brodsky has illuminated the life of one of America's great and overlooked revolutionaries.
MORE:
-Benjamin Rush (Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion)
Benjamin Rush: Signer of the Declaration of Independence
-Colonial Hall: Biography of Benjamin Rush
-Benjamin Rush 1745 - 1813 (Africans in America)
-Founding Fathers: Benjamin Rush (Christian America)
-THOUGHTS UPON THE MODE OF EDUCATION PROPER IN A REPUBLIC (Dr. Benjamin Rush, Philadelphia, 1786)
The business of education has acquired a new complexion by the independence of our country. The form of government we have assumed has created a new class of duties to every American. It becomes us, therefore, to examine our former habits upon this subject, and in laying the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government.The first remark that I shall make upon this subject is that an education in our own is to be preferred to an education in a foreign country. The principle of patriotism stands in need of the reinforcement of prejudice, and it is well known that our strongest prejudices in favor of our country are formed in the first one and twenty years of our lives. The policy of the Lacedamonians is well worthy of our imitation. When Antipater demanded fifty of their children as hostages for the fulfillment of a distant engagement, those wise republicans refused to comply with his demand but readily offered him double the number of their adult citizens, whose habits and prejudices could not be shaken by residing in a foreign country. Passing by, in this place, the advantages to the community from the early attachment of youth to the laws and constitution of their country, I shall only remark that young men who have trodden the paths of science together, or have joined in the same sports, whether of swimming, skating, fishing, or hunting, generally feel, through life, such ties to each other as add greatly to the obligations of mutual benevolence.
I conceive the education of our youth in this country to be peculiarly necessary in Pennsylvania while our citizens are com posed of the natives of so many different kingdoms in Europe. Our schools of learning, by producing one general and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.
I proceed, in the next place, to inquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure to the state all the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction of youth; and here I beg leave to remark that the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in RELIGION. Without this, there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all re publican governments.
Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mohammed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is the religion of JESUS CHRIST.
It is foreign to my purpose to hint at the arguments which establish the truth of the Christian revelation. My only business is to declare that all its doctrines and precepts are calculated to promote the happiness of society and the safety and well-being of civil government. A Christian cannot fail of being a republican. The history of the creation of man and of the relation of our species to each other by birth, which is recorded in the Old Testament, is the best refutation that can be given to the divine right of kings and the strongest argument that can be used in favor of the original and natural equality of all mankind. A Christian, I say again, cannot fail of being a re publican, for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy and the pageantry of a court. A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teacheth him that no man "liveth to him self." And lastly, a Christian cannot fail of being wholly in offensive, for his religion teacheth him in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.
I am aware that I dissent from one of those paradoxical opinions with which modern times abound: that it is improper to fill the minds of youth with religious prejudices of any kind and that they should be left to choose their own principles after they have arrived at an age in which they are capable of judging for themselves. Could we preserve the mind in childhood and youth a perfect blank, this plan of education would have more to recommend it, but this we know to be impossible. The human mind runs as naturally into principles as it does after facts. It submits with difficulty to those restraints or partial discoveries which are imposed upon it in the infancy of reason. Hence the impatience of children to be informed upon all subjects that relate to the invisible world. But I beg leave to ask, Why should we pursue a different plan of education with respect to religion from that which we pursue in teaching the arts and sciences? Do we leave our youth to acquire systems of geography, philosophy, or politics till they have arrived at an age in which they are capable of judging for themselves? We do not. I claim no more, then, for religion than for the other sciences, and I add further that if our youth are disposed after they are of age to think for themselves, a knowledge of one system will be the best means of conducting them in a free inquiry into other systems of religion, just as an acquaintance with one system of philosophy is the best introduction to the study of all the other systems in the world.
I must beg leave upon this subject to go one step further. In order more effectually to secure to our youth the advantages of a religious education, it is necessary to impose upon them the doctrines and discipline of a particular church. Man is naturally an ungovernable animal, and observations on particular societies and countries will teach us that when we add the restraints of ecclesiastical to those of domestic and civil government, we produce in him the highest degrees of order and virtue. That fashionable liberality which refuses to associate with any one sect of Christians is seldom useful to itself or to society and may fitly be compared to the unprofitable bravery of a soldier who wastes his valor in solitary enterprises without the aid or effect of military associations. Far be it from me to recommend the doctrines or modes of worship of any one denomination of Christians. I only recommend to the per sons entrusted with the education of youth to inculcate upon them a strict conformity to that mode of worship which is most agreeable to their consciences or the inclinations of their parents.
Under this head, I must be excused in not agreeing with those modern writers who have opposed the use of the Bible as a schoolbook. The only objection I know to it is its division into chapters and verses and its improper punctuation which render it a more difficult book to read well than many others, but these defects may easily be corrected, and the disadvantages of them are not to be mentioned with the immense advantages of making children early and intimately acquainted with the means of acquiring happiness both here and hereafter. How great is the difference between making young people acquainted with the interesting and entertaining truths contained in the Bible, and the fables of Moore and Croxall, or the doubtful histories of antiquity! I maintain that there is no book of its size in the whole world that contains half so much useful knowledge for the government of states or the direction of the affairs of individuals as the Bible. To object to the practice of having it read in schools because it tends to destroy our veneration for it is an argument that applies with equal force against the frequency of public worship and all other religious exercises.
The first impressions upon the mind are the most durable. They survive the wreck of the memory and exist in old age after the ideas acquired in middle life have been obliterated. Of how much consequence then must it be to the human mind in the evening of life to be able to recall those ideas which are most essential to its happiness, and these are to be found chiefly in the Bible. The great delight which old people take in reading the Bible, I am persuaded, is derived chiefly from its histories and precepts being associated with the events of child hood and youth, the recollection of which forms a material part of their pleasures.
I do not mean to exclude books of history, poetry, or even fables from our schools. They may and should be read frequently by our young people, but if the Bible is made to give way to them altogether, I foresee that it will be read in a short time only in churches and in a few years will probably be found only in the offices of magistrates and in courts of justice.*
Next to the duty which young men owe to their Creator, I wish to see a SUPREME REGARD TO THEIR COUNTRY inculcated upon them. When the Duke of Sully became prime minister to Henry the IVth of France, the first thing he did, he tells us, was to subdue and forget his own heart."" The same duty is incumbent upon every citizen of a republic. Our country includes family, friends, and property, and should be preferred to them all. Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it.
He must watch for the state as if its liberties depended upon his vigilance alone, but he must do this in such a manner as not to defraud his creditors or neglect his family. He must love private life, but he must decline no station, however public or responsible it may be, when called to it by the suffrages of his fellow citizens. He must love popularity, but he must despise it when set in competition with the dictates of his judgment or the real interest of his country. He must love character and have a due sense of injuries, but he must be taught to appeal only to the laws of the state, to defend the one and punish the other. He must love family honor, but he must be taught that neither the rank nor antiquity of his ancestors can command respect without personal merit. He must avoid neutrality in all questions that divide the state, but he must shun the rage and acrimony of party spirit. He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.
I do not wish to see our youth educated with a single prejudice against any nation or country, but we impose a task upon human nature repugnant alike to reason, revelation, and the ordinary dimensions of the human heart when we require him to embrace with equal affection the whole family of mankind. He must be taught to amass wealth, but it must be only to increase his power of contributing to the wants and demands of the state. He must be indulged occasionally in amusements, but he must be taught that study and business should be his principal pursuits in life. Above all he must love life and endeavor to acquire as many of its conveniences as possible by industry and economy, but he must be taught that this life "is not his own" when the safety of his country requires it. These are practicable lessons, and the history of the commonwealths of Greece and Rome show that human nature, without the aids of Christianity, has attained these degrees of perfection.
While we inculcate these republican duties upon our pupil, we must not neglect at the same time to inspire him with republican principles. He must be taught that there can be no durable liberty but in a republic and that government, like all other sciences, is of a progressive nature. The chains which have bound this science in Europe are happily unloosed in America. Here it is open to investigation and improvement. While philosophy has protected us by its discoveries from a thousand natural evils, government has unhappily followed with an unequal pace. It would be to dishonor human genius only to name the many defects which still exist in the best systems of legislation. We daily see matter of a perishable nature rendered durable by certain chemical operations. In like manner, I conceive that it is possible to analyze and combine power in such a manner as not only to increase the happiness but to promote the duration of republican forms of government far beyond the terms limited for them by history or the common opinions of mankind.
[originally posted; 2004-07-04]
FROM THE ARCHIVES: WE'VE NEVER HAD A SUCCESSFUL POST-WAR:
Lives lost for freedom (William M. Fowler, July 4, 2007, Boston Globe)
For their service, privates were paid less than $7 a month -- that is, if they received it. Chronically impoverished Congress quickly resorted to paying soldiers in Continental script, which rampant inflation devalued until the term "not worth a Continental" became synonymous for worthless.Disgruntled soldiers complained of their shabby treatment. Washington pleaded with Congress to address the soldiers' grievances. It did not, and on several occasions soldiers mutinied and threatened to march on the government. Despite sympathy for his soldiers, General George Washington remained faithful to the principle of civilian control over the military. He kept command and held the loyalty of the army. At one fateful moment on March 15, 1783, when his officers were planning action against Congress, Washington stood before them and reminded them, "I have been the constant companion and witness of your Distresses." He asked them to be patient. He would personally present their case to Congress.
Washington fulfilled his promise and appealed for justice to the Congress. Politically weak, financially bankrupt, and more interested in ending the war than aiding the army, Congress failed to act. When news of peace arrived, Congress discharged the Continental Army. Since it had no money to pay the veterans, Congress offered them interest-bearing certificates to be redeemed in the future. Many soldiers viewed the certificates as another empty promise. In desperate need of cash, they sold the certificates to speculators for a fraction of their face value. After ratification of the Constitution, the new federal government assumed the obligation of paying off these certificates. To establish the new government's "full faith and credit," Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, insisted that the certificates be redeemed at their face value plus interest. Unfortunately, the payoffs more often went to greedy speculators than to needy veterans.
Once home, weary veterans found their neighbors were nearly as indifferent to their plight as Congress. According to Harrison Gray Otis, a young lawyer in Boston, they returned "to the bosom of their country, objects of jealousy, victims of neglect." Eight years of war had drained the nation. The "Spirit of 76" was dead.
Folks used to claim that democracies were at a disadvantage when they faced authoritarians in war. Actually, we win the wars rather easily, it's the peaces democracies foul up. It seems to be an attention-deficit disorder.
[originally posted: 7/04/07]
COVENANT, THEN CONSTITUTION:
Americanism—and Its Enemies (David Gelernter, January 2005, Commentary)
That Americanism is a religion is widely agreed. G.K. Chesterton called America “the nation with the soul of a church.” But Americanism is not (contrary to the views of many people who use these terms loosely) a “secular” or a “civil” religion. No mere secular ideology, no mere philosophical belief, could possibly have inspired the intensities of hatred and devotion that Americanism has. Americanism is in fact a Judeo-Christian religion; a millenarian religion; a biblical religion. Unlike England’s “official” religion, embodied in the Anglican church, America’s has been incorporated into all the Judeo-Christian religions in the nation.Does that make it impossible to believe in a secular Americanism? Can you be an agnostic or atheist or Buddhist or Muslim and a believing American too? In each case the answer is yes. But to accomplish that feat is harder than most people realize. The Bible is not merely the fertile soil that brought Americanism forth. It is the energy source that makes it live and thrive; that makes believing Americans willing to prescribe freedom, equality, and democracy even for a place like Afghanistan, once regarded as perhaps the remotest region on the face of the globe. If you undertake to remove Americanism from its native biblical soil, you had better connect it to some other energy source potent enough to keep its principles alive and blooming.
But is it not true that the Declaration of Independence—one of America’s holiest writings—treats religion in a cool, Enlightenment sort of way? It does. But we ought to keep in mind an observation by the historian Ralph Barton Perry. The Declaration, Perry reminds us, was an ex post facto justification of American beliefs. It was addressed to educated elite opinion, especially abroad; it was designed to win arguments, not to capture the essence of Americanism as Americans themselves understood it. That essence emerges in the less guarded pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and many other leading exponents and prophets of Americanism, from Winthrop and Bradford through John Adams and Jefferson through Lincoln and Wilson, Truman, Reagan.
Few believing Americans can show, nowadays, how Americanism’s principles are derived from the Bible. But many are willing to say that these principles are God-given. Freedom comes from God, George W. Bush has said more than once; and if you pressed him, I suspect you would discover that not only does he say it, he believes it. Many Americans all over the country agree with him. The idea of a “secular” Americanism based on the Declaration of Independence is an optical illusion.
Suppose you were to put together a bookful of pronouncements and predictions about America’s destiny, ranging over four centuries. What title would you give it?
Such an anthology did appear in 1971; it was edited by an associate professor of religious studies and subtitled “Religious Interpretations of American Destiny.” The book’s main title was God’s New Israel. From the 17th century through John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Americans kept talking about their country as if it were the biblical Israel and they were the chosen people.
Where did that view of America come from? It came from Puritanism—Puritanism being not a separate type of Christianity but a certain approach to Protestantism. And here is a strange fact about Puritanism. It originated in 16th-century England; it became one of the most powerful forces in religious if not all human history. It consistently elicited bitter hatred—and was directly responsible for (at least) two world-changing developments. It provoked the British Civil War (in which the Puritans and Parliament asserted their rights against the crown and the established church), and the first settlements by British religious dissenters in the new world.
And then it simply disappeared. In the late 1700’s or early 1800’s, Puritanism dropped out of history. Traces survived in Britain and (even more so) in America, in the form of churches once associated with it. But after the 18th century, we barely hear about Puritanism as a live force; before long everyone agrees that it is dead.
What happened to it? In a narrow sense, Puritan congregations sometimes liberalized and became Unitarian; the Transcendentalists, prominent in American literature from roughly 1820 through 1860, are often described as the spiritual successors of the Puritans. But Puritanism was too potent, too vibrant simply to vanish. Where did all that powerful religious passion go?
Puritanism had two main elements: the Calvinist belief in predestination with associated religious doctrines, and what we might call a “political” doctrine. The “political” goal of Puritanism was to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament—and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land—in short, as God’s new Israel.
I believe that Puritanism did not drop out of history. It transformed itself into Americanism. This new religion was the end-stage of Puritanism: Puritanism realized among God’s self-proclaimed “new” chosen people—or, in Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable phrase, God’s “almost chosen people.”
Many thinkers have noted that Americanism is inspired by or close to or intertwined with Puritanism. One of the most impressive scholars to say so recently is Samuel Huntington, in his formidable book on American identity, Who Are We? But my thesis is that Puritanism did not merely inspire or influence Americanism; it turned into Americanism. Puritanism and Americanism are not just parallel or related developments; they are two stages of a single phenomenon.
It can be a painful experience to read an Andrew Delbanco, Richard Rorty, Peter Beinart, Michael Tomasky, or other folk of the Left as they wrestle with their need to live Americanism without embracing its Puritanical source. But, as George McKenna points out in his great, Puritan Origins of American Patriotism, they are just experiencing what Cotton Mather defined as "adherent grace":
[T]he stark logic of Protestantism seemed to rule out infant baptism: if sacraments do not give grace, then why baptize a newborn baby, who obviously has not undergone a conversion experience? Cotton's reply was that church membership entails a "double state of grace," adherent grace and inherent grace. Adherent, or "federal," grace is the grace that belongs to all the children of believing parents. [...] Infant baptism does not, of course, give saving grace to the baby, but it admits him or her into the community's collective covenant with God. This covenant thus includes both those who have undergone a faith experience and those...who have not.
For the Decent Left, adherent grace allows for what Rorty refers to as their "freeloading atheism" until they grow up. In the meantime, they are covered by the American covenant even though they don't understand it.
NOT THAT ANYONE COULD BEAT HIM, BUT JEB CAN RUN UNOPPOSED:
Palin to Resign as Governor of Alaska (Mitchell L. Blumenthal, 7/03/09, NY Times)
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, which would allow her to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.
Was Mark Sanford cornering the screwball vote?
ONE DOES WISH...:
Der Indianer: Why do 40,000 Germans spend their weekends dressed as Native Americans? (Noemi Lopinto, Alberta Views)
Blackbird’s fame springs from a remarkable cultural phenomenon: some 40,000 German “hobbyists” who spend their weekends trying to live exactly as Indians of the North American plains did over two centuries ago. They recreate tepee encampments, dress in animal skins and furs, and forgo modern tools, using handmade bone knives to cut and prepare food. They address each other by adopted Indian-sounding names such as White Wolf. Many feel an intense spiritual link to Native myths and spirituality, and talk about “feeling” Native on the inside.Their fascination with Native culture is due in large part to Karl May, the best-selling German author of all time. In 1892, May published the first of many books about a fictional Apache warrior named Winnetou and his German blood brother, Old Shatterhand. The two men roamed the North American plains, using their nearly superhuman powers to fight off the land-hungry government and thuggish, violent pioneers. (Fans of the stories included Albert Einstein and Adolf Hitler.) In the 1960s the duo was immortalized in five popular films, and hobbyist groups began forming across Europe. There are now more than 400 clubs in Germany alone.
Some Natives do take issue. When he first traveled to Germany, David Redbird Baker, an Ojibwe, thought adults playing cowboys and Indians were cute. But when the hobbyists began staging sacred ceremonies like ghost and sun dances and sweat lodges, Baker was offended.
“They take the social and religious ceremonies and change them beyond recognition,” says Baker, who believes that hobbyists, in claiming the right to improvise on the most sacred rituals, have begun to develop a sense of ownership over Native culture. They’ve held dances where anyone in modern dress is barred from attending—even visiting Natives. They buy sacred items like eagle feathers and add them to their regalia. They’ve even allowed women to dance during their “moon time,” which is, according to Baker, the equivalent of a cardinal sin.
...that all the women who celebrate the "spirituality" of the Indians were aware of how they treated their women during "moon time".
HOW DO YOU SAY OWNERSHIP SOCIETY IN BRITISH?:
The new Conservatism can create a capitalism that works for the poor: State expenditure and redistribution has done little to end dependency. We need a fresh approach that gives assets to all (Phillip Blond, 7/02/09, guardian.co.uk)
David Cameron recognised all of this and spoke at Davos early this year of the need to recapitalise the poor and create a capitalism that works for all. The key political aim of this truly transformative conservatism must be the generation of an asset effect for the decapitalised bottom half of society. Assets must, however, come from somewhere, and since redistribution and expenditure via the state has such a poor record in alleviating dependency, a fresh approach is required. Welfare or public expenditure should move from a spending to an investment model. The aim must be to free the poor from welfare subsidy through the generation of asset independence. The following are some ideas as to how this might be achieved: [...]2 The capitalisation of welfare streams. The only real viable source for welfare capitalisation is housing and child benefit. Councils have used their housing stock to generate cash income for benefit dependency for generations. By constantly raising rents, councils have created housing that the working poor cannot afford. Some sort of redress is required – a capital or asset credit, financed by a council bond, should be applied to those whose long-term benefit has, in effect, subsidised council receipts. This credit should be a tradable asset that, when conjoined with other new ventures such as community shares or social investment, can generate an asset effect for those whose routes out of poverty are presently so curtailed.
Similarly, child benefit should be means-tested, and the savings applied to a government matching programme for child trust funds for the lowest income groups. Studies by the Children's Mutual show that if the government matches the deposits of the poorest families, at age 18 the values of those funds for the poorest will be at the national average – currently £10,000. [...]
5 Create a more dynamic and self-managed universal pension. In order to encourage earlier saving, let people access their pension fund to buy a first house or fund education – let the pension become a multi-applicable vehicle to generate other non-speculative and carefully constrained assets. Initiate a good advice service for general public pensions: this would enable people to eliminate management costs and self-manage their own provision, producing a pension pot on average 75% higher than current returns..
ONLY A SUPER-VILLAIN WOULD STOP A TRAIN (via Glenn Dryfoos):
THE MAN WHO INVENTED LUDLUM:
At the Movies (Michael Wood, 7/09/09, London Review of Books)
North by Northwest? Witty, stylish thriller where a man can almost get killed in the middle of nowhere and later scramble about the face of Mount Rushmore? Film where the notion of real-life probability is not just abandoned but lampooned, Hitchcock’s finest attack on the very notion of cause and motive? ‘Here, you see’, he said to Truffaut, speaking about this movie, ‘the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!’ He is saying that the espionage that drives the plot does just that: it drives the plot. We don’t have to know what the spies are after or what’s at stake, even if there is a flicker of a mention of the Cold War in the movie. Do the stolen secrets matter? In the world of actual espionage that would probably be a secret too, but in Hitchcock the answer is a revelation. Of course they matter, even in the entire absence of any content for them. They are the way the film pretends it’s about something.We can think of all this, or of as much of it as we care to, under very good conditions, since a new print of North by Northwest is showing at the BFI, and will doubtless soon appear on DVD – the old DVD is discontinued and can be found only at enterprising or out-of-the-way shops. The film starts in a way that defines its terms with extraordinary elegance, asking us to think about design and daily reality together, as if we could just fade from one to the other and back. Well, we can, can’t we? Saul Bass’s abstract credit sequence – green screen, credits running across multiple diagonal lines – dissolves into Hitchcock’s (briefly, at the start) realistic movie as the lines become the floors of a glass skyscraper full of reflections of cars on a New York street: Madison Avenue, as it happens, in those days the world headquarters of advertising, and crowded with people, including Hitchcock himself narrowly missing a bus. This busy city feeling continues as Cary Grant, playing the ad man Roger Thornhill, appears dictating notes to his secretary. They start to walk uptown, then take a taxi. He gets out at the Plaza, meets some business associates in the Oak Room.
Then everything shifts into an entirely different register, apparently for plot reasons but really because we are beginning to leave all ordinary ideas of plot behind, the pure MacGuffin kicking in. Getting up to send a telegram, Thornhill is mistaken for a man who is being paged, one George Kaplan. Thornhill is promptly kidnapped, and taken off to a palatial pad on Long Island, where after failing to reveal to his interrogators what he is supposed to know, he is filled with bourbon and dumped in a car rolling downhill. Half-asleep and fully drunk he drives the car most of the way off a cliff and back again, narrowly misses hitting several cars coming the other way on a very winding road (distinctly more like somewhere in California than anywhere on Long Island, and even more like a bit of studio superimposed on some footage of the sea), has a bad fit of double vision, and finally brakes hard in order to avoid an elderly cyclist. The police car that has been following him for a while crashes into him, and another vehicle crashes into the police car. Thornhill is taken off to the police station, miraculously unharmed but still very drunk. When he tells the story of his kidnapping, no one believes him, not even (or least of all) his mother, played by the admirable Jessie Royce Landis, almost repeating her role in To Catch a Thief. This is the kind of movie where an arrested man makes his one phone call not to his lawyer but to his mother. He tells her to bring his lawyer.
So far so random, and so mystifying. Hitchcock says that at this point in the shooting of the film even Grant didn’t know what was going on. He was Roger Thornhill.
JUST ANOTHER ONE OF W'S REGIME CHANGES:
Communiste et Rastignac: a review of Le Monde selon K. by Pierre Péan (Christopher Caldwell, 7/09/09, London Review of Books)
It is Kouchner, more than anyone, who has eroded the distinction between philanthropy and combat. As a young gastroenterologist and self-described ‘mercenary of emergency medicine’, he helped launch Médecins sans frontières in the early 1970s. He broadcast the plight of the Vietnamese boat people in the late 1970s, advised Mitterrand in the 1980s, roused public indignation over events in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, and served as interim governor of Kosovo after Nato’s attack on Serbia; more recently he has become the most prominent of several socialists in Sarkozy’s cabinet. Kouchner may not have invented the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’, but he has been its symbol for decades.Most French people would say this is a good thing. In a country that is cynical about politics and elites of all sorts, Kouchner has been consistently beloved, with approval ratings above 60 per cent. He is both a dashing man of adventure and a political idealist – the closest thing present-day France has to a Malraux. His reputation even survived his support for the invasion of Iraq.
In February, however, the country’s most celebrated investigative journalist published an exposé accusing Kouchner of various intellectual, political and financial misdeeds. Pierre Péan is best known for having revealed that the dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa, of the Central African Republic, had given diamonds worth millions of francs to Giscard d’Estaing, and for uncovering the extent of Mitterrand’s work for the Vichy government as a young man. In Le Monde selon K., Péan considers a number of uncomfortable moments in Kouchner’s career as a consultant. More important, if less controversially, he argues that Kouchner’s transnational humanitarianism has made France’s foreign policy interests subservient to those of the United States – indeed, that humanitarianism as he practises it is just a larval form of neoconservatism. [...]
Kouchner has spent the last three decades trying to translate his humanitarian reputation into political, military and diplomatic influence of a more traditional kind. In 1988, Mitterrand created a post for him as secretary of state for humanitarian affairs. Kouchner’s great achievement at the time was to theorise (with the help of the international lawyer Mario Bettati) the droit d’ingérence – the right to disregard national sovereignty and intervene in countries experiencing humanitarian crises – and to get it codified, in UN Resolution 43/131. There was something sneaky about the way the measure was implemented: it calls for intervention in case of ‘natural disasters and similar emergency situations’. Political turmoil turned out to be similar enough to storms or earthquakes, and in 1990 and 1991 the UN Security Council invoked 43/131 to open a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for Kurds fleeing Iraq.
This changed everything. It rendered national sovereignty conditional....
In a presidency with no shortage of significant achievements, perhaps George W. Bush's least recognized is the way the three Western leaders who opposed him--Chirac, Chretien, and Schroeder--were dispatched by their respective leaders and replaced by American allies.
NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO AGREES WITH YOU:
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with: Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme (Cass Sunstein, 1st July 2009, New Statesman)
Political extremism is often a product of group polarisation and social segregation is a useful tool for producing polarisation. In fact, a good way to create an extremist group, or a cult of any kind, is to separate members from the rest of society. The separation can occur physically or psychologically, by creating a sense of suspicion about non-members. With such separation, the information and views of those outside the group can be discredited, and hence nothing will disturb the process of polarisation as group members continue to talk. Deliberating enclaves of like-minded people are often a breeding ground for extreme movements. Terrorists are made, not born, and terrorist networks often operate in just this way. As a result, they can move otherwise ordinary people to violent acts. But the point goes well beyond such domains. Group polarisation occurs in our daily lives; it involves our economic decisions, our evaluations of our neighbours, even our decisions about what to eat, what to drink and where to live.So why do like-minded people go to extremes? The most important reason for group polarisation, which is key to extremism in all its forms, involves the exchange of new information. Group polarisation often occurs because people are telling one another what they know, and what they know is skewed in a predictable direction. When they listen to each other, they move.
Suppose that you are in a group of people whose members tend to think that Israel is the real aggressor in the Middle East conflict, that eating beef is unhealthy, or that same-sex unions are a good idea. In such a group, you will hear many arguments to that effect. Because of the initial distribution of views, you will hear relatively fewer opposing views. It is highly likely that you will have heard some, but not all, of the arguments that emerge from the discussion. After you have heard all of what is said, you will probably shift further in the direction of thinking that Israel is the real aggressor, opposing eating beef, and favouring civil unions. And even if you do not shift — even if you are impervious to what others think — most group members will probably be affected.
When groups move, they do so in large part because of the impact of information. People tend to respond to the arguments made by other people — and the pool of arguments, in a group with a predisposition in a particular direction, will inevitably be skewed in the direction of the original predisposition. Certainly this can happen in a group whose members tend to support aggressive government regulation to combat climate change. Group members will hear a number of arguments in favour of aggressive government regulation and fewer arguments the other way. If people are listening, they will have a stronger conviction, in the same direction from which they began, as a result of deliberation. If people are worried about climate change, the arguments they offer will incline them toward greater worry. If people start with the belief that climate change is a hoax and a myth, their discussions will amplify and intensify that belief. And indeed, a form of ‘environmental tribalism’ is an important part of modern political life. Some groups are indifferent to environmental problems that greatly concern and even terrify others. The key reason is the information to which group members are exposed. If you hear that genetically modified food poses serious risks, and if that view is widespread in your community, you might end up frightened. If you hear nothing about the risks associated with genetically modified food, except perhaps that some zealots are frightened, you will probably ridicule their fear. And when groups move in dangerous directions — toward killing and destruction — it is usually because the flow of information supports that movement.
Those who lack confidence and who are unsure what they should think tend to moderate their views. Suppose that you are asked what you think about some question on which you lack information. You are likely to avoid extremes. It is for this reason that cautious people, not knowing what to do, tend to choose some midpoint between the extremes. But if other people seem to share their views, people become more confident that they are correct.
As a result, they will probably move in a more extreme direction. What is especially noteworthy is that this process of increased confidence and increased extremism is often occurring simultaneously for all participants. Suppose that a group of four people is inclined to distrust the intentions of the United States with respect to foreign aid. Seeing their tentative view confirmed by three others, each member is likely to feel vindicated, to hold their view more confidently, and to move in a more extreme direction. At the same time, the very same internal movements are also occurring in other people (from corroboration to more confidence, and from more confidence to more extremism).
But those movements will not be highly visible to each participant. It will simply appear as if others ‘really’ hold their views without hesitation.
ALL THEY EVER WANTED WAS THEIR RIGHTS AS ENGLISHMEN:
Independence, British-Style (ADAM FREEDMAN, 7/03/09, NY Times)
The English Bill of Rights, like the Declaration, emerged at a moment of crisis. In 1689, the exiled James was raising an army to recapture the throne (he ultimately failed). To keep parliamentary opinion firmly against the old king, the Bill of Rights sets forth a long list of grievances against the crown.The Declaration follows the same template and, in many cases, recites the same grievances. The very first complaint listed in the 1689 document, that the king had suspended laws and the execution of laws “without consent of Parliament,” is closely echoed in the Declaration’s opening gripe, that the king had “refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
Likewise, the Declaration’s defense of the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” conveyed nothing more radical than established British law. Much ink has been spilt arguing that those concepts came from the English philosopher John Locke, or perhaps the Scottish enlightenment, or even American Indian tradition. In reality, the drafters were probably inspired by dowdy old common law, which had long before recognized life, liberty and property as an Englishman’s “absolute rights.” Even Jefferson’s reference to “the pursuit of happiness” was founded on British constitutional principles.
And yet, the Declaration of Independence makes no explicit claim to British pedigree, but appeals to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and “the supreme judge of the world” to support its argument. That turned what otherwise would have been a mere restatement of English law into an invitation to the world to recognize certain “self-evident” truths about equality and freedom.
The world would be a better place today had the King granted them.
RESIDUAL?:
Our Founders the Realists: The Constitution succeeded because its authors had a clear-eyed view of human nature. (Rich Lowry, 7/03/09, National Review)
The Revolution was institutionalized in the Constitution, an inspired exercise in leveraging human failings against one another — “ambition counteracts ambition” — to create a stable structure of liberty.“It may be a reflection on human nature,” Madison wrote in a famous passage in Federalist No. 51, “that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
How did the Founders come to know man as they did? They had broad practical experience that exposed them to humanity in its glory and its folly: as lawyers, military officers, and — especially important — legislators. Some knew hardship. Try, like Alexander Hamilton, making your way as a penniless, orphaned bastard from the West Indies and see if you don’t pick up a few hard-boiled lessons about how the world works.
They read widely, knew the classics, and soaked up history. John Adams studied and wrote a book about the French civil wars of the 16th century, concluding of human affairs: “Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.” Madison undertook a yearlong study of the history of republics and confederacies prior to the writing of the Constitution. Believing “experience is the oracle of truth,” he endeavored to learn from this long, unrelieved record of failure.
They didn’t let their view of reality get obscured by abstruse theories or sunny abstractions of the sort that perverted the French Revolution. No philosophes need apply. Instead, a residual Calvinism tinged their worldview. They admired the “country” tradition in England, characterized by a deep distrust of the crown and support for republican reforms to preserve English liberties. In this tradition, the late historian Martin Malia writes, “men were neither rational nor naturally good,” and “human government therefore invariably tended toward corruption and despotism.”
What the Constitution institutionalizes is the Fall.
WE DON'T PAY FOR HEALTH, JUST FOR HEALTH CARE:
Health Care: Costs And Reform (Bruce Bartlett, 07.03.09, Forbes)
Americans widely believe that while the our health system is expensive it is nevertheless the best in the world. However, a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests otherwise.According to the OECD, the U.S. spends 5% of GDP more on health than France, the nation with the second highest level of health spending among the 30 wealthy countries in the organization. The average for all OECD countries is 8.9% of GDP.
We spend $7,290 per person on average versus $2,964 among all OECD countries. Norway, the nation with the second most expensive health system on a per capita basis, spends $4,763. (Currency conversions based on purchasing power parity.)
Of course, Americans know that they pay a lot for health; the rising cost of health insurance for employers is the main reason why wages have been stagnant for years. [...]
Nor has the U.S. bought significantly better health with its vastly higher health spending. Life expectancy at birth is probably the best general measure of a population's health. This statistic has increased by 8.2 years in the U.S. since 1960, but has risen more in most other OECD countries. In Canada, life expectancy has risen 9.4 years and more than 10 years in both Germany and France. Life expectancy rose by almost 15 years in Japan over the same time.
Infant mortality is another good general measure of the quality of a health system. In 2006, 6.7 infants died per 1,000 live births in the U.S.--a sharp decline from 26 deaths in 1960. But the infant mortality rate is lower in every other OECD country except Turkey and Mexico. The average rate for all OECD countries is 4.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.
The U.S. does excel at one thing: the amount of highly expensive medical equipment per capita. In 2007, there were 26 MRI machines per 1 million population here versus an OECD average of less than 10. But our lead in high-tech equipment is shrinking. A few years ago we had far more CT scanners per capita than any other country; now our lead is much less and several countries have more scanners per capita.
As an economist, Mr. Bartlett ought to know that modern health care is just a consumer good, like chips and salsa. Analyzing it as if its effects mattered to the consumer makes little sense.
BECAUSE, YOU ACTUALLY DO HAVE ALL DAY:
As American as…Cricket: Cricket and baseball are twin brothers, separated at birth. (Roger Bate, July 3, 2009, The American)
I cannot remember the first time I heard an American say “cricket is so boring: it lasts for days and still ends in a draw.” Let’s just say it was not this decade or the one before that. I am not going to try and explain cricket—the rules are too complex for a short article. Or to persuade you that cricket is a great game—hundreds of millions of Indians, Pakistanis, South Africans, Zimbabweans, Sri Lankans, Australians, New Zealanders, Bangladeshis, West Indians, Kenyans, Dutch, Welsh, Scots, and English, like me, know it is.It is fair to say if you do not like baseball, then you will not like cricket. But if you do, read on a little longer.
There are many similarities between baseball and cricket. They are duels of batter (batsman) and pitcher (bowler). They showcase highly individualized, skillful players striving for a collective goal. They are slow, staccato games with plenty of pauses for the audience (and indeed players) to consider what could happen next. Both can move from the seemingly pedestrian to vibrant excitement in less than a second.
They are sports with tremendous history and fabulous rivalries. While there is no love lost between Red Sox Nation and Yankees fans, India and Pakistan almost went to war over cricket (and who knows, they still might). Both sports boast legendary players who elevated the game to new heights. Born at roughly the same time as Babe Ruth, Australian great Don Bradman dominated cricket for nearly 20 years. When Bradman told Ruth that a batter did not have to run on contact in cricket the Babe barked “Just too easy!” Yet Babe Ruth eventually became fascinated by cricket.
Good sports can be enjoyed at many levels. The casual observer enjoys soaking up the atmosphere and beer; the serious fans obsess over the minutiae.
Freshman year at Colgate, an Anglophile in our dorm organized a cricket match. We used a sawed off hockey goalie stick, a tennis ball wrapped in tape and the wickets were stacked milk cartons. We dressed in such whites as we had and mixed up vats of gin and whatever. At one point, two professors had to cut across the Quad in mid-game and one was heard to say to the other: "At least we're importing a better brand of ruffian these days."
THERE'S NOTHING MORE PRO-LIFE THAN NOT DRIVING:
Highway fatalities decrease in U.S. (Kristi Jourdan, 7/03/09, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
There's a bright spot among the dark news cast by the nation's economy -- the recession is keeping drivers off the road and setting record lows for the number of highway fatalities nationwide.
So House Republicans do deserve some credit.
READING, WRITING, AND ROMANISM...:
CITY CATHOLIC SCHOOLS TROUNCE REST IN READING AND MATH (YOAV GONEN, 6/29/09, NY Daily News)
The Archdiocese of New York's 132 city elementary schools continue to outperform public schools by leaps and bounds in reading, and to a lesser extent in math, new statistics show.Seventy-eight percent of Catholic-school eighth-graders aced the state reading exam -- 21 percentage points higher than the public-school kids -- and 82 percent passed the math test, 9 percentage points better than their public-school counterparts.
In fourth grade, 85 percent of Catholic-school kids met or surpassed state benchmarks in reading -- 16 percentage points above the public schools -- while 88 percent did so in math, 3 percent higher than the public-school youngsters.
THE NEEDED TRANSPARENCY ISN'T WHO HAS WHICH ONES...:
European Commission Outlines Derivatives Revamp Plan (CAROLYN HENSON and NEIL SHAH, 7/03/09, WSJ)
The European Commission Friday outlined measures it is considering to improve the safety and transparency of Europe's over-the-counter derivatives trade.The measures include broadening the standardization of derivatives products and extending the collection of data on the number of transactions and the size of outstanding positions.
...but what riskk each derivative contains.
YET SCOTLAND HAS AN OBESITY CRISIS:
Survival of the less fit: The mystery of Scotland’s shrinking sheep may have been solved (The Economist, 7/03/09)
Tim Coulson of Imperial College, London, and his colleagues examined the weights of about 2,000 female sheep that lived on the island in the two decades of their study. They combined this information with detailed histories of individual animals. They found that daughters were, on average, lighter than their mothers had been at the same age. Their legs were shorter, too, suggesting that the breed really was shrinking.Why is this happening? The researchers, who published their results in the current issue of Science, suspected that it might have something to do with climate change.
IT'S NOT A MARKET...:
Rogue trader sends oil to year-high on $10m gamble (Susan Thompson and Miles Costello, 7/03/09, Times of London)
PVM Oil Futures, a London-based division of the world’s biggest broker of over-the-counter derivatives, has lost almost $10 million (£6 million) after falling foul of a rogue trader. [...]
The rogue trades are widely believed to have caused global crude oil prices to spike to their highest level in more than eight months – a leap that traders and analysts had struggled to explain.
...it's a three-card monty game.
EXCEPT IT'S THE DARNEDEST THING... (via Glenn Dryfoos):
Capture the Flag (Timothy Egan, 7/01/09, NY Times)
Traveling in California and New York over the last couple of weeks, I noticed something in the summer landscape of these two deeply blue states that is more reminiscent of rural America this time of year – a surfeit of American flags.Among the offerings of street vendors in Harlem and outdoor stalls near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the flag is often fused with the image of President Obama, a burst of color against a bleak wall, sometimes with a Superman motif. In California, I saw Old Glory on bicycles in the Bay Area, on backpacks in Yosemite and at campgrounds under the redwoods.
It’s not unusual to see a flag in liberal provinces, of course. But in the Bush years of sanctioned torture and war built on deceit, many Americans withdrew from overt displays of patriotism. Some said they were ashamed of their country.
While following the length of the Lewis and Clark Trail several years ago, I was struck by the huge number of flags in places like rural Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana. On Indian reservations, the same thing – though often with tribal symbols superimposed. But in the major cities along the trail, St. Louis and Portland among them, I was hard-pressed to find a flag in front of a home.
I wondered whether urban Americans, overwhelmingly Democratic, had something against the flag, or if they felt the country was no longer theirs. Now you can ask the same question of the other side of the political spectrum.
...we Republicans don't actually stop loving our country just because a Democrat gets to govern it once in awhile. We're funny that way. Patriotism is bigger than politics for us.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: CONSISTENCY OF PURPOSE:
Empire of Liberty: The Historical Underpinnings of the Bush Doctrine (Thomas Donnelly, June 24, 2005, AEI Online)
Far from constituting a radical break from American foreign policy, the basic impulses of the Bush Doctrine can be traced throughout much of our history. [...]Above all, American strategic culture is notable for the disproportionate role played in it by American political principles, or, to use the modern term, by ideology. We have sought to make an empire for liberty, to wield power not for its own sake but for the sake of securing the natural political rights “inalienable” to all mankind and which, alone in the American imagination, legitimize power.
This is not to say that the United States has pursued an entirely altruistic course or been unconstrained by the realities of statecraft and the limits of power throughout its history. Rather, it is to assert that American strategy-making and war-making have been informed by a belief that long-term security can be achieved, and only achieved, by the spread of liberal governance, and that American liberal governance is in turn impossible absent the exercise of American military power. In the case of the Revolutionary War, Americans understood themselves as Englishmen in America, and they would have preferred to remain within the British Empire had the price of security been accompanied by the liberties that were their rights as citizens of the empire. But what Americans wanted, London would not give. Increasingly, the colonists understood that only their own power could guarantee their natural political rights.
From the willingness of the revolutionaries to shed blood on behalf of what they held to be “self-evident” truths about human political equality to Lincoln’s declaration at Gettysburg that the Civil War, more than a struggle over states’ rights, would result in “a new birth of freedom,” America’s wars have consistently been shaped by the desire to create a balance of power that favors freedom. As American power and the empire of liberty--now including Europe, maritime East Asia, and new footholds in Afghanistan and Iraq--have grown, so the definition of an acceptable balance of power has shifted. The Bush administration’s focus on the greater Middle East is a natural step in this evolution.
The second source of American strategic conduct has been a belief that we stand at the center-point of international politics; the United States regards itself as a kind of “Middle Kingdom.” American strategic horizons have always extended in many directions: east, west, north, and south. Far from being natural “isolationists,” Americans have always felt themselves exposed to threats and dangers, with little strategic “depth.” When the United States reached its supposed natural frontier with the settlement of the American West, the American strategic imagination leaped over the oceans, first in the Pacific and then the Atlantic, believing that the homeland was only as safe as the farthest frontier. As the “rimlands” of Europe and the western Pacific were secured, the American security perimeter has moved forward into central and eastern Europe, the Middle East, central and south Asia.
The third theme of American strategy is the habit of expansionism. Believing ourselves to be safest not only when our outer perimeter is secure but also free, Americans have felt a necessity to project power unto the farthest reaches of the globe. In the period from the Monroe Doctrine to the Spanish-American War, the habits of expansion and preemption became more than rhetoric, and the commitment to individual liberty, wrenched from the fire of the Civil War, became an ingrained reality. In sum, American strategic culture came of age during this period, and, at century’s end, was no longer content to simply stand behind its ocean walls. Increasingly, a North American empire of liberty could not be separated from the larger world of empires abroad.
A brief taste of European-style imperialism in the late nineteenth century sufficed to sour Washington on direct conquest and rule, yet U.S. leaders have insisted for more than a half-century on exercising a de facto hegemony over defeated foes even well after they become formal allies. The United States cannot be said to “rule” Germans or Japanese, yet America asserts its desire to make the rules by which the international system operates and in which these nations are embedded; the phenomenon of economic globalization rests on a phenomenon of political and strategic Americanization. By incorporating past enemies into the ever-growing empire of liberty, the New World fundamentally changed the Old, and American strategic culture not only proved its enduring strength, but its fundamental flexibility and adaptability. At times, as during the late-Cold War period of détente, that flexibility proved so great as to call into question the basic tenets of American strategic culture. Yet though they bent, these tenets did not break.
Finally, as observed by Yale University historian John Lewis Gaddis and others, Americans have long had a predilection for preemption, prevention, and for what has lately been called “regime change.” Contrary to conventional wisdom, the concept of the “failed state” is one Washington policymakers have recognized throughout history; moreover, Americans have often moved rapidly to address these perceived dangers when the balance of forces appeared to be in our favor. Thus, as American colonists grew in strength vis-à-vis neighboring Indian tribes, their approach became strategically preemptive, preventive, and decisive--likewise with Spanish and Mexican competitors for the North American continent. When, during the twentieth century, the cost of preempting European great powers or preventing their wars seemed too great, the United States initially settled for a return to the status quo even while--in the voice of Woodrow Wilson--preaching revolution and regime change. Further involvement in Europe hardened American attitudes. Now, as the guarantor of a global order, the old habit is hard to break: acting to prevent weak, corrupt, and illegitimate governments from making mischief is central to American strategic thought and practice. And we most often regard wars as successfully concluded when failed states have been replaced with stable ones constructed on an American model.
In sum, there has been a more or less consistent purpose to American power and a strategic culture that remains a source of American conduct. It is at once “realistic,” in the sense of being a keen calculation of power, especially military power, and at the same time “idealistic,” in the sense of being motivated by a set of transcendental claims about the nature of the good society. The quest for the good society, as Gerald Stourzh observes in his study of Alexander Hamilton, has confined itself “within the walls of the city. Principles of political obligation and organization have been sought within the confines of a given society.” The growth of American power has raised our understanding of where our walls are, of the outer limits on the good society; our peculiar strategic culture has driven us onward.
