History « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Friday, August 21, 2009

History ... Science ...

We’ve had a bit of a heat wave in my region over the past week, and I haven’t had much inspiration to write anything, other than a comment on “Doctor Happiness’s” blog about how karma might stem from and reflect the formation of strange attractor patterns amidst the complex wiring of the brain, and likewise on the higher but still complex plane of human society.

Recall from my last blog post that strange attractors are wobbly and yet stable patterns (or “vibrations”) of activity and relationship between the various factors that define the “state” of an organism, be that organism an ant, a human, a colony of ants, or a society of humans. Strange attractors are known to be rare, and yet rather robust and self-sustaining once started. So perhaps karma is explainable in terms of chaos theory. The concept of fractals and of sensitivity to initial conditions can help one to understand what the eastern sages say about karma, especially how little things can cause big effects and how patterns shown in little things teach us about the patterns of much greater things.

But otherwise, about the only thing on my mind (other than the whole health care reform donnybrook along with the daily concerns of work and family relations) » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:37 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, August 6, 2009

◊ The Fighting Bishop

History ... Religion ...

I’ve been studying up on the Civil War lately, and I just learned of an interesting character from the Confederacy (there were plenty of interesting rebels, but this fellow happened to raise my eyebrow). He was a general in the Confederate Army and his name was Leonidas Polk.

General Polk had a colorful nickname: “The Fighting Bishop”. Aside from being related to former US President James Polk, General Polk was actually a bishop in the Episcopal Church. Early in his life he went to West Point and then served the US Army for a while as a lieutenant, not seeing any hostile action. Interestingly, while at West Point he had studied moral philosophy along with the usual military stuff. He also formally converted to the Episcopal religion while there. Well, all that moral philosophy and religious sentiment caught up with him and he soon quit the Army and went to theology school in Virginia, as to become a priest in the Anglican Church. He worked his way up and by the time of the secession, he was the Bishop of Louisiana.

Bishop Polk, however, still had some military blood flowing in his veins, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:00 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Monday, June 29, 2009

◊ That Boring Little Civil War

History ... Personal Reflections ...

When I was a kid, the American Civil War was mostly a boring subject that you suffered through in history class. About the only cultural reference to it was the opening song from the TV comedy series “F-Troop”; i.e. “The end of the Civil War was near . . .” My parents took my brother and me to Gettysburg one summer, but that was mostly just a yawn for us. About all I remember about Gettysburg was having pancakes in a local eatery and then looking out at some muddy hill slopes from a visitors center on a rainy day. We were less than impressed at the fact that a big battle took place on those hill slopes about a century ago, and that a lot of guys died there. What should I care; none of my ancestors were anywhere near the place when it was happening. They were all in Poland or White Russia at the time, dealing with their own various wars.

Then came my college years, when I joined my youthful colleges in focusing on a more relevant war, i.e. the one in Vietnam. That was the war we were going to stop; that was how we were going to change the world, rearrange the world (as CSN&Y; sang so soulfully). That was going to be our break from the mindless cycle of killing and destruction, of which the Civil War was just another horrible milestone. We were part of a revolution, part of a new day. Or so we liked to imagine.

After college, in my mid twenties, I moved a bit closer to Civil War country. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:16 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 7, 2009

◊ Alcuin — Eternal Soul of an Eternal Student

History ... Personal Reflections ...

I have proclaimed myself on this web site to be an “eternal student”, which means that I have an affinity for the ideals of learning and scholarship, even though I’m neither a student nor an academic scholar. Some people are sports fans; I’m a learning fan, a fan of academic prowess and advancement. Even if I’m not in the big leagues, I still like to participate as I can. So I read a lot, I look things up, think things thru, and write about them (mostly on this web site; I just can’t get myself together to write a big article or a book, as I’m just not ready for all the publisher rejection). But I’m not an “eternal student” as the term is mostly used on the Internet; it is generally a self-reference used by 20-somethings who are in grad school and don’t want to get out into the real world; or who do want to get out into the real world but aren’t having much luck.

People like me (i.e., old people; at least relative to the great majority of people using the web) are also called “life-long learners”. But I don’t like that term either. It sounds too quaint and too lame, sort of like “senior citizen”. Besides, when I say “eternal”, I really mean eternal. I believe that learning is something existentially profound, something with metaphysical bite to it, something that will still have meaning when our earth and our universe are no more. But aside from the ontological aspects, perhaps “learner” is a better term than “student”. Student is a passive word, whereby learner seems more active. A learner is a person who wants to learn, not someone forced to sit in a classroom. You can certainly be a student, in the modern sense, and not be a learner. In fact, the colleges and universities are filled with students whose main inspiration is getting a good job, and not learning and understanding important things about the world.

So maybe I should call myself an “eternal learner”. But hey, what’s in a name. What matters most is what you do in the world with your learning. I was reading the other day about an all-star “eternal learner and educator” from the past, and I thought I’d give him his due. His name was Alcuin, and he lived in Europe back in the 8th Century. Those days were known as the Dark Ages, and learning was a tough sell at the time; most people kept busy trying to avoid famine, plague, and roving vandals. But King Charlemagne decided that there was more to life than war and plundering in the name of the church, and so he decided to use the religious infrastructure of the time to spread learning throughout his kingdom (what we now know as Italy, France and Germany).

The religious infrastructure of affiliated monasteries was about the only infrastructure going at the time. So Charlemagne recruited Alcuin, a church deacon and scholar from England, to set up a school within Charlemagne’s court, and to follow up with a system to spread learning throughout the Frankish Kingdom. Before long, Charlemagne himself was taking classes. And priests were being trained and sent far and wide to work with the local monasteries to set up abbey schools, as to offer elementary education to both the nobles and the common folk.

Alcuin did a pretty good job in making education commonly available in Europe once again, setting up curriculums and teaching methods and tending to many bureaucratic issues. One of his contributions to the teaching of mathematics was the classic and often-hated practical math exercise. You know, the ones that go like this: “a man drives due east at 50 miles per hour, while from the same starting point his wife leaves 30 minutes later and drives due west at 40 miles per hour . . . ” Alcuin was interested and involved in many things, including theology, historical research, and the writing of poetry; he was a Renaissance man well before the Renaissance. His arguments for freedom of conscience helped to convince Charlemagne to abolish the death penalty for paganism.

Alcuin died in 804, and on his tombstone it says: “Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved, Pray, reader, for my soul.” Alcuin thus assumed that he had an eternal soul, and that learning was at the root of its being. I’d like to think that he’s right, and that all true “eternal learners” like him never truly die.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:43 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, February 15, 2009

◊ Some Jewish Questions (and Admiration)

History ... Religion ...

I’ve been pondering the huge topic of Judaism and Israel lately (i.e., the “big concept” of Israel, not just the modern nation), after watching some documentaries and listening to some lectures on Middle Eastern history. I am not from the Jewish heritage, and I am not a professional historian. But still, I’m entitled to my thoughts and impressions. And here they are, for what it’s worth.

(With the footnote that my paternal grandfather may have come from a Jewish family that went Christian during the pogroms.)

The way I see it, Judaism is the result of a theologically-inspired “retrojection”, i.e. the re-arrangement of history by an ancient people trying to find meaning and identity after failing at the Middle Eastern “empire game”. This response to their failure was a success; while many nations and ethnic groups have come and gone over the two millennium of Jewish history, the Jews are still going strong. Nonetheless, the origins of “greater Israel” appear to be grounded in the humiliating failure to mimic what the Egyptians and Persians did way back when — i.e., select a dictator (a king), organize a group of unruly tribes into a submissive collective, carry out great public works, and form a mighty army to conquer other peoples and expand the collective’s wealth and power.

David and Solomon gave it a good try, but in the end their subjects were just a bit too unruly. As a kingdom, Israel just couldn’t cut it. It was thus over-run by other, more effective kingdoms (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans). It was rather humiliating and depressing. The Caanan high-country tribes of early Jewish history needed a very good reason to stick together and not dissolve as other conquered peoples had over the centuries (e.g., the Ammonites, the Meades, the Hittites, the Dacians … the list of defunct nationalities is long). And over time — not all at once, as the Old Testament claims — the “tribes of Israel” came to believe in a national identity and a national relationship with an all-powerful God. Those beliefs were based on even more ancient stories, passed on amidst their members, regarding how some parts of the tribe had experienced and escaped slavery in Egypt with the help of a God who demanded exclusive loyalty.

The proto-Jewish tribes in the Canaan hill country had worshipped multiple gods long after the time of the Exodus, but by the time of the Babylonian exile they started taking the demands of “El” or “YHWH” seriously. They gave up on Baal and the female fertility gods and started building their identity around an agreement, a “covenant”, with the exclusive God of Old. These tribes, now captured and subjected to foreign power, forged their identity around 20-20 hindsight, around an historical explanation for their troubles (i.e., that YHWH was punishing them for wayward conduct). All that false gods worship over the years had gotten YHWH angry; if they could get back to living by the covenant, they might be given another chance.

Well, guess what. The gambit worked, even though it was entirely sincere and not imagined as a “political strategy”. Strategies are what we cynical 21st Century people do. And yet, the ancient tribe of Israel is still a viable nation, very much with us. I believe there is a lesson of wisdom to be seen in all of this. The Persians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians are either gone or but a shadow of their past greatness. But the Jews just keep coming.

And what is to be said about that? I must admit to mixed feelings; it depends on how you look at it. My feelings get tangled up on the topic of modern Israel. In many ways, today’s Israel is a light in the desert, a haven of democracy and civilization in a land all-too-tied to early human history. But the often-vicious things that the nation of Israel has to do in response to its often-brutal neighbors can be very unsettling. Israel survives only by participating in a never-ending war, just as in Biblical times. Only today, Israel gets the military tactics right (for the most part). It even sends its settlers into conquered territory to crowd out others with ancestral claims. But no matter how brilliant its generals or tenacious its colonizers, the wars just go on and on. Peace treaties are made with certain groups, but other groups arise to continue the battle. Not a pretty picture.

But as to Judaism as a larger, world-wide phenomenon: the historical legacy is nothing short of brilliant, truly amazing. The Jews have been a true leavening to all the peoples on this planet. Where would you even start? Art, science, theology, entertainment, academics, commerce, leadership, music, humanitarianism . . . the list could go on and on regarding Jewish achievement. I have two questions about all of this; for one, I have some thoughts; the other I find ultimately vexing.

My first question is whether the greatness of the Jews reflects an existential truth behind the mythologies that have sustained their identity over the many centuries of recorded history. I.e., are they “powered by God”? I believe that they are. I’m not saying that all of what the Old Testament professes about God is true; if God is really as great as those old stories teach, then how could any human writing, however inspired, capture what is beyond our inherent frailties and limitations? But the greatness of the Jews must, in my view, owe something to the “glue” that holds their identity together. That glue must be real, not just a human mythological notion. Plenty of nations had powerful myths but are now long gone. The Jews had God, and are still here. All those brilliant Jewish atheists like Einstein (and Dave, my former boss) notwithstanding!

The more confounding question for me is whether Judaism needs that dry tract of land along the eastern Mediterranean Sea for its identity, much as it needs YHWH. I’ve heard people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, argue that modern Israel is absolutely necessary to Jewish identity and survival. Without it, arguably the Jews could perish; either through genocide (as has been tried, more than once), or by assimilation, or some combination. I cannot glibly respond to this point.

However, I can’t help but wonder if the ultimate failure of the ancient Caananite tribes to hold land against the mighty world powers, their repeated exiles and repatriations and diasporas, formed the setting from which their unending strength was derived. I can’t help but ponder whether in geopolitical failure the ancient Jews brought forth the best within them, and the best in all humankind. The core of the Old Testament, i.e. the Torah, which acts as the Constitution of Jewish identity, can be read to require both God and the ancient homeland as Jewish necessities. But the later parts of the Hebrew Bible extend Judaism into something more than a land-based concept, into a more ethical, moral and intellectual form of strength. God remained the God of the Jews even in the most horrible places so far from . . .

OK, I need to stop. I have no warrant to talk about those horrible places; I’m way outside of my league. But the Israel / Jewish identity connection is an awfully confounding question, and I respect those who have strong feelings about it. For now, I cannot offer a conclusion.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:25 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Friday, January 30, 2009

◊ The Trillion Dollar Question About Obama

Current Affairs ... History ...

I was reading some thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist scholar who is also a conservative commentator (say that three times fast!). I.e., he’s a guy who knows a lot about the history of ancient Rome and the Greeks of old. Obviously he has some things to say regarding whether America is in danger of going the same route, i.e. decline and fall after a few centuries of power, achievement and vast geo-political dominance. Mr. Hanson is pretty cautious about it; he’s not saying that America has turned rotten and deserves to get flushed down the tubes. But he is saying that if we’re not careful about maintaining our world power, our individual virtue, our patriotism, and other assorted conservative values, we could. Hanson is not a big fan of President Obama, but he’s not rabidly condemning him either; he seems to be giving Obama a chance, given Obama’s various moves away from doctrine liberalism towards centrist realism.

Anyway, I noticed a passage in one of Hanson’s book reviews that inadvertently summed up the situation in America today. Here it is:

Despite occasional revisionism, the story of Rome’s fall was pretty much universal . . . After some five centuries of imperial domination from the Sahara to the Rhine, and from the British Isles to Mesopotamia, the Western empire collapsed in the late fifth century . . . An exhausted global empire was so plagued by financial corruption, a bankrupt elite, and rural depopulation that few citizens joined the army. Fewer still knew what fifth-century Rome stood for, much less whether it was any longer worth defending.

In this review, Mr. Hanson was NOT trying to argue that America has caught the same infection that Rome had by the fourth century CE; he was actually arguing against two other writers who feel that it has. But look at the modern parallels: “exhausted global empire”, “plagued by financial corruption”, “bankrupt elite”, “rural depopulation”, “few citizens join the army”. Does a majority of our citizens know what twenty-first century America stands for? I guess that most people would say “democracy” and “political freedom”. But then again, the most recent GOP vice presidential candidate couldn’t think of those words when questioned by a newsman regarding the last President’s “doctrine”. (Yes, I’m referring to Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin; and recall that when Gibson finally got tired of Palin’s lame attempt to respond to that question, his own answer ALSO failed to include democracy and freedom!).

Yea, I think that Mr. Hanson hit a nail on the head there, even if he wasn’t aiming for it. But as Hanson and many other historians contend, history is made not by anonymous forces but by people and ideas. Can Barack Obama come up with the right ideas to steer our nation’s evolving history back towards goodness and strength? Can he turn it back into something that every citizen can believe in? That’s the trillion dollar question.

PS, I also checked out a nine-part lecture on You Tube by Prof. J. Rufus Fears, another conservative academian who has pondered the parallels between the Roman Empire and the U.S.A. today. Fears seems to be saying that we’ve gone pretty far down the same one-way road to oblivion that Rome took, but it’s not too late yet for us to veer away from it. Fears says that we face a matrix of threats similar to what the Roman Republic faced in the first century BCE, including a debt crisis choking off the economy causing a severe recession; a crippling clash of partisan political forces; and a series of threats from powerful foes and rivals from foreign lands.

As with the late Roman Republic, some of our worst threats come from the Middle East. HOWEVER, the biggest threat to Rome’s future turned out to have hailed from north-central Europe, i.e. from the Germanic tribes. And here’s the jawdropper from Dr. Fears: we too face severe future threats from that region, but need to go another 200 miles to the east: i.e., Russia. Yes, Dr. Fears feels that the end of the Cold War and Communism in the early 1990’s was NOT the end of our Russian problem. He thinks that conditions in today’s Russia are ripe for the re-development of a powerful, barbaric and militaristic dictatorship bent on dominating as much of the world as it can; he feels that Vladimir Putin is already setting the stage for that. He goes so far as to say that Russia could become fertile ground for a new Hitler-like figure! Yikes.

Ironically, Fears believes that the U.S. and Western Europe had a chance in the early 1990s to have prevented this. He implies that had we put lots of capital and redevelopment aid into Russia back then, something like we did afterWW2 with the Marshall Plan in Germany, we could have set the stage for democratic institutions to have finally taken root in Russia (as they did in post-war Germany). But we didn’t, and now we’re watching Russia fall back into it’s old nasty habits. With enough dictatorial mobilization and plentiful access to oil and natural gas, Russia could well re-create the specious prosperity that Germany experienced during the Great Depression, back in the mid and late 1930s.

So, if our economy doesn’t snap back within a year but instead sends our nation into a five to ten year malaise, then the USA is gonna be in serious hot water if the Middle East flares-up again (like when Iran goes nuclear), and at the same time a re-militarized Russia starts taking back what the old Soviet Union lost. Yep, it could be much like what the Roman Republic faced about 50 years before Jesus. How did the people of Rome react? Eventually, they gave in to political dictatorship; Julius Caesar set the stage for ending populist rule, and Augustus later sealed the deal. Is this happening today here in the USA? Dr. Fears said that we don’t have an equivalent to Julius Caesar right now; and that’s mainly because Caesar was so brilliant. George W. Bush certainly tried to become a Caesar, but he didn’t nearly have the brainpower. In the end he couldn’t do all that much damage to American democracy as we know it (thanks to screams of bloody murder from the liberal factions).

However, Dr. Fears notwithstanding, we now have a man in power with Caesar-like brilliance. (Recall that Caesar started out as a “Populare”, roughly comparable with today’s “Democrats”.) Obama got into power partly by repudiating the empire-building tendencies of his predecessor. Nevertheless, if things don’t go well during his tenure and our nation faces the real prospect of serious decline in living standards for almost every citizen, then I could imagine a scenario where President Obama tacitly convinces the citizens to forfeit much of their political freedom, so as to maintain personal, economic and national freedom. (Will the liberals then scream at Obama as they did at Bush? I don’t recall many screams when Obama tossed campaign financing reform aside. Love is blind.) As Professor Fears points out, this choice has been made by many other peoples over a wide variety of circumstances throughout the course of history. It would be a mistake to think “it couldn’t happen here” — given the extremely dangerous economic and international situation that America now faces.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:03 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Monday, December 8, 2008

◊ The Schizophrenic Empire

History ... Society ...

When I was in grammer school and high school, I learned about history — as did most of us. Regarding our own nation, I learned about the Revolutionary War, about the Civil War, about WW1 and WW2, about the Founding Fathers, about the adoption of the Constitution, etc. Regarding world history, I was taught about the great empires in China and Rome and the Middle East, about the kings and queens of England, about Alexander the Great, about Genghis Khan and Marco Polo, about the Greeks and the Egyptians with their pyramids, and other sundry events and dates and figures. Unfortunately, I never thought to ask the bigger questions: just why were there kings and nations and wars and trade routes to China? I never stopped to wonder just when and why, in the course of early human history, did people give their consent to being ruled by a king or other kind of government? Just why did they affiliate themselves with a kingdom or a fiefdom or a nation? When did they consent to the idea of war, of putting their lives on the line to bring mayhem and misery to other people who were ultimately like themselves? And when and how did the one or two good things that came from large-scale organization brought on by kings and ruling elders, i.e. trade and shared learning, get going?

Only in my old age did I even think of these things as questions. I have been listening to a CD course from The Teaching Company called “The Wisdom of History” by J. Rufus Fears. I must give Prof. Fears credit for bringing up those questions. In his history of the Middle East, the big professor (Dr. Fears does appear to be a robust man; his “hotness rating” on ratemyprofessors.com is 0) points out that it was in Egypt and Iraq where the first kings and kingdoms occurred. Humans were living there as they were throughout the rest of the world, i.e. in little family-tribes, getting by through a mix of hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture.

However, the weather started changing, getting dryer and dryer, and a lot of these little tribes were in trouble. Someone figured out that they could prevent these people from starving by learning how to channel the big rivers and predict their flows, i.e. the Nile and the Tigris / Euphrates system. This would take large-scale organization on the part of those with the right information; and such organization required the ability to boss other people around. Since it was a matter of growing food or starving, a lot of people gave in and pledged their allegiance to the handful of folk with information about the rivers. (Information is the precursor to power.) And so came the birth of kingdom and absolute tyranny. The new kings soon made it clear that they were the boss, not to be questioned. If you don’t like it, go find your own river.

Once we had kingdoms with hundreds and eventually thousands of people willing to do what the king said, it wasn’t hard to take the first steps towards war. Maybe there were still tribal people getting by out beyond the rivers in question; well, why not organize some of the subjects into a fighting group, arm them with sticks and rocks and whatever else could do harm, and go out and conquer those little tribes. It would make the kingdom bigger, give the king more land and people to control, and thus allow more taxes to be levied as to support the material comfort of the king and his family. So, the idea of war and conquering got started. It got especially interesting when one growing kingdom discovered that there were others out there, and that they were becoming interested in the same hills or seas or rivers for future expansion. So, more and more emphasis was placed on training armies and making war. Eventually, war got so popular that it became more than a way to compete with other kingdoms for new turf; if done right, it could conquer another kingdom as a whole, providing a bounty of new lands, slaves, and whatever material comforts the losing kingdom had accumulated.

So, starting with the Middle East but certainly expanding rapidly out from there, the world saw the continual geographic growth of regions where local inhabitants lost their freedom, where they were forced to swear allegiance to a king and give in to his demands (including taxes, service in the army, contribution of free labor for public projects, obedience to general laws of behavior, etc.). There were fewer and fewer places where a small family tribe could just live on the land as they chose. The world was getting organized, but in a rather crude way; there were a handful of big bosses (kings), and thousands then millions of people taking orders from them unquestioningly. (If you did question the king, you were probably a goner).

Still, the geographic growth of all this forced control caused by megalomaniac kings did cause one good thing to happen, something that would eventually give many of the small people the opportunity to gain some level of power and freedom of their own. And that was trade. As kingdoms grew, roads and ships had to be built. Over time, people became more mobile. And people discovered that over those hills or across the bay were other people who had access to local resources that allowed them to make metal plates or pottery or perfume; they might be interested in exchanging some of that stuff for what we have, be it fish or apples or wool or stone tools. Once trade started, many possibilities for individual betterment were unleashed. Numbers and writing were started by kings and their ministers to keep track of taxes; but those techniques eventually got out and were adapted as to help traders. So, with trade was spread the ability to write and understand numbers. Eventually, this spurred the exchange of ideas and techniques. Civilization was on the way.

And thus came about the schizophrenic world that we know: a world of war, a world of power, a world of allegiance demanded by king and country, demands that that too quickly become tyranny. And yet, a world of economic opportunity, intellectual development, and humanistic ideals. The Middle East was the birthplace of our key monotheistic religions, and thus the ethics of individual dignity and rights that eventually stemmed from them. Not far away were the ancient Greeks, who through the leisure and learning allowed to a privileged few (because of trade) were able to develop philosophies and ideals like democracy.

So there it is, the (very rough) story regarding the origins of the best and worst of humankind — if I’m hearing Dr. Fears right. It’s too bad that we are all taught at a young age to take them for granted. If we are going to emphasize our good things and phase out the bad, we need to know where they came from and why they got so popular. History needs to stop being all about dates and people and battles, and start being more about why humankind is the way that it is. You gotta know how you got here in order to get any further.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:46 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Friday, November 7, 2008

◊ We Don’t Learn From History – Russia and Iran

History ... Politics ...

Didn’t Take Long: VP-elect Joe Biden said that once Barack Obama was elected, some nation or force would confront the US, just as the Soviet Union was thought to have put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 to rattle President John Kennedy. (“Watch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy”, Oct. 20, 2008.)

Well, the votes from last Tuesday haven’t been completely tallied yet and already two threats have arrived on the proverbial radar screen. Iran just issued a statement threatening to shoot at US aircraft operating near the Iran / Iraq border (Reuters quotes an unnamed Iranian politician as saying “This is a clear message to the American president-elect because radicals are not very happy that Obama has been elected.” ) And, Russian President Medvedev just announced his intent to station tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad sector of Russia, that isolated little portion of Russia squeezed between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. He claims this to be a necessary countermeasure to the anti-ballistic missile interceptors that the US plans to install in Poland. Interestingly enough, the US rationale for placing those missiles in Poland is to blunt the threat of a missile attack on Europe from Iran.

(This sounds rather crazy at first; Iran’s missiles should logically be aimed at Israel, not Europe. BUT, if a nuclear-emboldened Iran eventually plans to attack Israel, it might also want to discourage Europe from uniting with the US in defense of Israel. Iran’s ability to lob a nuke at Vienna or Paris might bring back those old European pacifist instincts that served it so tragically in the 1930’s, should Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian surrogates bring Israel to its knees.)

I am currently listening to a Teaching Company lecture series on “The Lessons of History” by Prof. Rufus Fears. One of his lessons is that we don’t learn from history. Before WW1 and WW2, according to Prof. Fears, Americans and Europeans didn’t think that another big war could happen. They were convinced that technology and world trade had changed things such that no one anywhere would remain interested in the barbaric tradition of war. Life was good, everyone seemed happy; another big war just didn’t seem possible. And yet, more big wars tragically occurred.

I can’t help but wonder if some of that mentality lives on, as reflected in President-elect Obama’s solid victory over Senator McCain. This is not to belittle the credentials that Senator Obama earned over the past year as a skilled politician and an intelligent leader. He survived two extremely brutal political campaigns and proved that he has “the right stuff”. I previously expressed my reservations about him, and I still have some concerns; but I do feel a bit better now. However, a segment of his supporters (young people and liberal Democrats) cast him as “the peace candidate”, the guy who they hope will successfully conclude the two US military involvements in the Middle East which have dragged on since 2001.

(Two more lessons of history – the USA gets very tired of war after a few years; and the Middle East is the graveyard of empires.)

In my opinion, there are still strong forces out there in the world today for whom war IS still thinkable. Even worse, they may see war as an extension of an historic vision, just as Hitler once convinced Germany of an historic destiny to conquer Europe. Such modern forces could well include Russia and Iran. Russia lost the Marxist vision, but I’m sure it can come up with some new “lesson” (or older lesson about the greatness of its past) that it feels bound to teach the world. With Iran, the lesson is very old, regarding the superiority of the Persian people (they’re still getting over that defeat by the ancient Greeks) and the ultimate victory of the Shia vision of Islam. How better to gain dominance over the Islamic world but to take out Israel, something that Sunni-based al Qaeda can only dream of. (Al Qaeda showed us that pan-national “movements” can be extremely dangerous; but we must NOT take that to mean that the world has changed such that powerful nation-states will never “go Napolean” on us.)

I think that President Obama will be smart enough to see the warning signs and realize the need to quickly and forcefully prepare for and respond to what Biden predicted. Unfortunately, the political pressures from his supporters will make it difficult for him. He will be urged to get US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan quickly, and to avoid installing that anti-ballistic missile system in Europe (which Russia hates so vehemently even though it’s too light-weight to knock down their nuclear missiles). There are intelligent arguments for this. BUT, if this is done too quickly, it might create the impression of weakness and pacifist delusion, just what the bad guys are looking and hoping for. I suspect that Obama will in fact “stand strong” militarily, and will take a lot of criticism from some who vigorously supported him (he might wind up being called “a Bush in sheep’s clothing”; or would that be too ironic?).

Hopefully, Senator McCain will be among the first to speak up and defend President Obama in time of crisis – and in preparation for a coming crisis that the public doesn’t yet see. McCain, for all his failings, does have an old-fashioned sense of sin and the need for atonement. Recall how he vigorously promoted campaign reform after being caught in the Keating banking scandal in the 1980s. Well, Senator McCain sinned again by unleashing Sarah Palin from the frozen wastes of Alaska (what if she appoints herself to replace a re-elected Senator Ted Stevens once the Senate banishes him?). And McCain probably knows it. Hopefully he will realize that his penance is to once more cross the line of party loyalty, so as to do all that he possibly can to promote the success of President Obama. I expect nothing less of John McCain over the next four years.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:49 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Monday, June 23, 2008

◊ Goodbye George Carlin, Father Ed; Hello ‘Juneteenth’

Art & Entertainment ... Current Affairs ... History ... Personal Reflections ...

Just a few random notes that came to mind today.

First off, the passing of comedian George Carlin. I wasn’t a huge fan of his. A lot of his humor stemmed from the ubiquitous striving among comedians to be the “dirtiest”, the most outrageous, and the most ribald joke teller. But Carlin was one of the wittier ones. He could also work into his routine a delightful, almost innocent weirdness. So it was with some regret on driving to work this morning that I recalled, after some inner confusion about the issue, that I never did see him live. I almost did. He did a show at my college (New Jersey Institute of Tech) back when I was a sophomore, right about this time of year. I wanted to go, but it turned out to have been on the night before a final exam in an important course. So I stayed home and studied. And I don’t regret it. What did upset me was that for a minute or so today, I DID think that I had seen him. It took some effort to break thru the early morning fog in my mind as I was waiting at a traffic light in Newark, listening to “Morning Edition” on NPR.

Second. I found out today that the Roman Catholic priest who baptized me had passed away earlier this month. I never knew Father Ed as a child, as he left my home parish while I was still a toddler. But thru some odd coincidences, I got to meet him about 16 years ago. He seemed a bit upset about the fact that I had moved over to the Anglican side of Christianity. Perhaps he would have been even more upset had he known that I would later give up all forms of organized religion. But that never meant that I don’t take seriously the ideas and ideals of theology and faith. And today we found out that at least 1 in 5 atheists also do so! (I.e., the just-released Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey indicates that 21% of those who call themselves ‘atheists’ also claim to believe in God).

Third. This past Thursday was June 19, or “Juneteenth”, a traditional African American day of remembrance marking the end of slavery in America (it took until June 19, 1865 for Union enforcement of Lincoln’s Emancipation to reach Galveston, Texas, one of the last corners of the former Confederacy to receive the news). I rather expected Barack Obama to have taken advantage of the fortuitous proximity between this date (an official holiday in 29 states) and his defacto nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate as to have made a significant speech on race, history and the American future. His Philadelphia speech made back in March, however candid by political standards, still only scratched the surface. There’s yet a whole lot remaining that whites, blacks and everyone in between needs to hear and say. And Barack Obama appears to be in a very good position to keep the discussion going.

Well, there is a brief note in barackobama.com acknowledging Juneteenth. But it looks as though Senator Obama had bigger fish to fry that day . . . such as sinking the Presidential campaign fund, because it got in the way of his fundraising juggernaut. Is this change we can believe in? Or is it just the usual brand of change, change that forgets the past and is ultimately condemned to repeat it?

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:49 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

◊ FDR’s Private RR Tracks

History ... Politics ...

I was watching a PBS show on Franklin D. Roosevelt the other night. As you may know, FDR was crippled and confined to a wheelchair. But he didn’t want the public to know it. Those were the days when the press could keep a secret! There were lots of clips showing all the elaborate preparations that occurred whenever FDR made a public appearance, so as to hide his disability.

Following up on this, I came across a web site that talks about a “secret” railroad track that ended under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan. This track was used for a variety of things, but one of the most important uses was for President Roosevelt. This siding was walled-in, so whenever FDR visited New York they would put his private train car on this track and get him up into the hotel without any nosy reporters taking embarrassing pictures (or exposing him to a whacko with a gun).

That brought back a memory from my youth. My first real job out of college was with the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington DC. I was working on facilities projects, and one day I was in the basement with one of the old-timers in my section. He brought me over to a dimly lit old concrete platform where there was an unused train track, which led toward a closed metal garage door. Years ago, they would occasionally open this door to let a train bring in a tank car of printing ink, for use in the money printing factory. But by the 1970s, the BEP got all of their ink in barrels that were shipped by truck and the train door was sealed. The old guy told me that as grungy as this basement scene was, it was historical; it was where they would sometimes get FDR onto or off of his train car when he was traveling to or from Washington. As with the Waldorf-Astoria siding in Manhattan, it was fully enclosed. Even better, it was government property that was guarded at all entrances (again, because this was the national currency factory).

The article about the Waldorf-Astoria siding notes that Andy Warhol once threw an “underground party” there. Unfortunately, the inky old track at the BEP enjoyed no such celebrity. But hey, at least I saw it.

PS, back on the political front, most of the pundits seem to be attributing Hilary Clinton’s demise to Barack Obama’s superior handling of the state caucuses. Senator Obama used the lessons regarding grassroots level organizing that he learned in Chicago during his days with the Industrial Areas Foundation in the caucus states; Hilary’s people stuck with a top-down reliance on the big state primaries. Given the edge that this gave to Obama, I wondered what did he have to say about IAF’s founder and guru, the legendary Saul Alinsky? Mr. Alinsky was gone by the time Obama hit the scene, but you’d think that the Illinois Senator would give him his due. However, it appears otherwise; Obama recently said that “. . . the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful.”

Hmmm. This sounds a bit revisionist to me. Obama’s people used Alinsky’s organizing principles to good advantage in Iowa and a slew of other small states thereafter; that made all the difference for Obama (and it’s not a big difference, remember — he may win the delegate count by less than a 10% margin). But he seems to focus on “ideas and words” — as in an Obama speech, the event where Obama transcends himself. It’s not that Alinsky didn’t have ideas; he wrote several books, and I have one of them myself. But Alinsky wasn’t an eloquent orator, like Obama. So now the good Senator-cum-Presidential Candidate can look down at Alinsky, even though without the lessons that he learned from Alinsky’s machine (the IAF), his speeches would now be mostly forgotten.

A nation can’t live on eloquent speeches alone, as McCain will be reminding the country this fall. I’m not in any mood to vote for McCain, but I’d still like to see a bit more substance from Obama. Also some more evidence of good-old-fashioned Alinsky-style “can do”. If we were voting this fall for National Speechgiver, I’d feel entirely comfortable with Barack Obama. But as to the office of President of the United States . . .

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:10 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

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