Category Archives: History

The afternoon they drove Old Dixie down

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago…

— William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

Above, you see a picture I took, right about this time of year in 2005, of the high water mark of the Confederacy — the stone wall at the top of the ridge.

I had just looked out over that wall, and was stunned by what I saw. It wasn’t really anything my camera could capture, because what I was looking at was vast, flat, open space — the space across which Pickett’s men walked, suicidally, into a hailstorm of lead. It looked to be two miles across. The high ground was not only well-defended by infantry, but crammed with artillery. It was the worst place in the world to attack, and the world possible ground to attack across.

What could they have been thinking of during that long walk? What ran through their heads?

I’d never seen anything before that made history seem so immediate. I was in awe. How brave they were. How stupid they were. How mad they were. And they just kept coming, until there was only a trickle left to try to fight their way over the wall, and then… it was over. And with it, the South’s hope for having its way — although the South being the South, that wouldn’t be fully acknowledged for almost two years.

And it happened 150 years ago today.

Egypt: Now that’s what I call a coup

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Back in my day, a military coup d’état was a quiet affair. We had one when I was a kid living in Ecuador in the early ’60. One day, my parents informed me there had been a “coup.” I had never heard the word. They told me it was like a revolution — the president was gone, and a military junta was in charge. (Then they had to define “junta.” It was like a committee…)

A revolution? I went to the window and looked out. Same old street, nothing interesting going on. I had expected riots, violence, surging humanity. (The story I heard later was that they just let the president have a bit too much too drink — something that wasn’t hard — put him on an airplane, and let him wake up in Panama.)

In Egypt, they known how to have the kind of coup that I was expecting when I looked out that window. Millions surging in the streets. The military moving in, shutting down demonstrations, taking over state media, and tossing out the president who was so defiant, just last night. The latest, from the BBC:

The head of Egypt’s army has given a TV address, announcing that President Mohammed Morsi is no longer in office.

Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi said the constitution had been suspended and the chief justice of the constitutional court would take on Mr Morsi’s powers.

Flanked by religious and opposition leaders, Gen Sisi said Mr Morsi had “failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people”.

Anti-Morsi protesters in Cairo gave a huge cheer in response to the speech….

TV stations belonging to Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood went off air at the end of the speech….

The ousted leader’s current whereabouts are unclear…

See, now that’s a coup. Meanwhile, Morsi fights back on Twitter and Facebook. This sets up an interesting conflict between the old and the new: Is the Tweet mightier than the army? I love Twitter, but I’m old school; I’m betting on the big battalions this time.

What does it all mean, Mr. Natural? For the United States, it’s a touchy situation. This piece, written before the coup actually took place, sets out how touchy:

Over the past two years, post-revolution Egypt has been a policy minefield for the Obama administration, which has struggled to balance its support for a democratic transition with its need to preserve its interests in the region.

The latest chapter of Egypt’s fraught political transition, however, has left the administration in perhaps its most precarious position yet..

As Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi weathers a storm of opposition that could pave the way for a military coup, Washington and its ambassador in Cairo have emerged as lightning rods. Those calling for the dismissal of Morsi say the United States became too cozy with the Muslim Brotherhood, the political and social movement that brought the Islamist leader to power. The Brotherhood, meanwhile, warns that the United States is failing to speak out loudly and clearly against a military coup in the making.

After voicing support for Morsi, the Obama administration appeared to distance itself from him this week, with the White House issuing a statement saying that President Obama had told the embattled Egyptian leader in a phone call that the United States “does not support any single party or group.”

That may sound sort of hapless, but put yourself in the president’s position: Quick, who are the good guys in this mess? Not an easy question to answer…

Left and right both wrong about Voting Rights Act

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The left and the right are both wrong about the Voting Rights Act.

I agree with the right, and disagree with the president and other Democrats, that it’s a good thing that the Supreme Court has struck down the provision requiring South Carolina and other pariah states get preclearance of any change in voting procedures.

That requirement was fundamentally unjust. It assumed a guilt on the part of these states, and required them to prove their innocence before they could conduct their own voting business in ways other states were free to do without undergoing such procedures.

This was wrong. It condemned people who had absolutely nothing to do with past discrimination — all those who were guilty have long, long ago left office, and most are dead. Everyone in public office, appointive or elective, today has spent his or her entire career, if not entire life, in a world shaped by the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. It is completely unjust to require that some people, and not others, labor under the burden of greater suspicion because of the accident of where they happen to live.

If someone did enact new voting lines or procedures, and they in some way violated the Act, then they were subject to being accused of doing so, and having to answer for it. That will still be the case without preclearance. And that is the way it should be. Individuals, and governments, should have to answer for what they do wrong, and not be automatically punished with suspicion over everything they do.

So… preclearance has been an unjust burden, as conservatives say. And it’s particularly hard to justify such an injustice in a time when, for instance, minority voter participation is better in Mississippi than in Massachusetts.

However… where the right is wrong is when it says that the Voting Rights Act is a huge success, particularly for minorities, and that it has moved us racial discrimination in our politics.

On the contrary, under the Voting Rights Act, we have a new kind of racial tension in our politics. Conservatives rail at Democrats, saying the liberals only want to keep the thumbscrews on the South so they can draw more minority-majority districts. And perhaps they do, if they are fools. For in fact, the drawing of such districts has been a tremendous boon to white Republicans.

White Republicans in South Carolina seized power in the early ’90s by giving the Legislative Black Caucus more districts that were likely to elect black legislators. The way this was done was by putting as many black voters as possible into a few districts, and given the racial patterns common to both black and white voters, those districts had a greater tendency to elect black candidates.

But the truth, which for some reason is not painfully obvious to everyone, is that you can’t make some districts super-black without making surrounding districts super-white. What this meant was that for each new “black” district, you created several districts far, far more likely to elect white Republicans. Not only that, but a certain kind of white Republican — one far less likely to give a damn about the concerns of the black citizens who live in other districts.

So, you get two kinds of people — those from majority-minority districts, and those from ethnically cleansed white districts — who are elected BECAUSE of racial considerations, and who know that.

And the way they start to engage issues starts to reflect that. You can see it in debates over public health, education, and all sorts of things that we desperately need to be considered with regard to the good of all the public. Instead, what we get is a few lawmakers elected from districts with a high poverty rate (which tends to correlate to race, although it’s certainly not a one-to-one relationship). They tend to see the value in, say, expanding Medicaid (especially when the federal government is picking up the tab).

But they are outvoted by people from suburbs who can honestly say that their constituents don’t care about such things, and who can afford to treat the whole thing as an abstract, ideological issue. They can dismiss health care reform designed to provide care for the uninsured for something as frivolous as the fact that the name “Obama” is attached. Their constituents are largely fine with that. That is to say, enough of them are to keep electing the same kinds of representatives.

And so we don’t get policies designed for the benefit of the whole state. Because neither kind of gerrymandered district “looks like South Carolina.” Neither represents whole communities, but rather subsets of communities, defined by race. So relatively few legislators see themselves as there to serve a broad range of people in different circumstances, with different viewpoints.

It’s great that we don’t have poll taxes. It’s great that minorities who were marginalized are now so engaged with the political process. In those respects, the Voting Rights Act is a great success.

And we have seen success stories that give us hope for a future without elections that are predetermined by the skin color of the electors. Barack Obama’s two election victories offer that kind of hope.

But on the district level, our politics are still largely defined by race. And there, the Act has not been such a boon.

Krauthammer: Syria as the Spanish Civil War

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What with all the travelling I’ve been doing the last few days (I was working on the coast Wednesday and Thursday, drove to Memphis Friday, drove back yesterday), I’m just now getting to Charles Krauthammer’s column from late last week.

I liked his analogy:

The war in Syria, started by locals, is now a regional conflict, the meeting ground of two warring blocs. On one side, the radical Shiite bloc led by Iran, which overflies Iraq to supply Bashar al-Assad and sends Hezbollah to fight for him. Behind them lies Russia, which has stationed ships offshore, provided the regime with tons of weaponry and essentially claimed Syria as a Russian protectorate.

And on the other side are the Sunni Gulf states terrified of Iranian hegemony (territorial and soon nuclear); non-Arab Turkey, now convulsed by an internal uprising; and fragile Jordan, dragged in by geography.

And behind them? No one. It’s the Spanish Civil War except that only one side — the fascists — showed up. The natural ally of what began as a spontaneous, secular, liberationist uprising in Syria was the United States. For two years, it did nothing….

As will not surprise you, he is not satisfied with President Obama’s belated decision to help the rebels with nothing more than small arms and ammo.

He gets way harsh on the pres with regard to Iraq:

The tragedy is that we once had a counterweight and Obama threw it away. Obama still thinks the total evacuation of Iraq is a foreign policy triumph. In fact, his inability — unwillingness? — to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement that would have left behind a small but powerful residual force in Iraq is precisely what compels him today to re-create in Jordan a pale facsimile of that regional presence…

We had a golden opportunity to reap the rewards of this too-bloody war by establishing a strategic relationship with an Iraq that was still under American sway. Iraqi airspace, for example, was under U.S. control as we prepared to advise and rebuild Iraq’s nonexistent air force.

With our evacuation, however, Iraqi airspace today effectively belongs to Iran — over which it is flying weapons, troops and advisers to turn the tide in Syria. The U.S. air bases, the vast military equipment, the intelligence sources available in Iraq were all abandoned. Gratis…

JFK also posed with life-sized Nancy Pelosi

No, Obama isn’t Nixon, much less worse. It’s not even close

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It’s getting to where I find Peggy Noonan more and more tiresome, but keep reading, hoping for flashes of the grace and thoughtfulness I used to admire.

Her column over the weekend was a typical sad example. An excerpt:

The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking, and the Justice Department assault on the free press, in which dogged reporters are tailed like enemy spies, is shocking. Benghazi is still under investigation and someday someone will write a great book about it. As for the press, Attorney General Eric Holder is on the run, and rightly so. They called it the First Amendment for a reason. But nothing can damage us more as a nation than what is happening at the Internal Revenue Service. Elite opinion in the press and in Washington doesn’t fully understand this. Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.

Those who aren’t deeply distressed about the IRS suffer from a reluctance or inability to make distinctions, and a lack of civic imagination.

An inability to make distinctions: “It’s always been like this.” “Presidents are always siccing the IRS on their enemies.” There’s truth in that. We’ve all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, “Look into this guy,” Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment.

But this scandal is different and distinctive. The abuse was systemic—from the sheer number of targets and the extent of each targeting we know many workers had to be involved, many higher-ups, multiple offices. It was ideological and partisan—only those presumed to be of one political view were targeted. It has a single unifying pattern: The most vivid abuses took place in the years leading up to the president’s 2012 re-election effort. And in the end several were trying to cover it all up, including the head of the IRS, who lied to Congress about it, and the head of the tax-exempt unit, Lois Lerner, who managed to lie even in her public acknowledgment of impropriety.

It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a president losing his temper with some steel executives. There was no enemies list, unless you consider half the country to be your enemies.

Let’s just list a few of the things wrong with those few paragraphs:

“The Benghazi scandal was and is shocking…” I’m not yet persuaded that “Benghazi” actually is a scandal, despite the efforts of people I respect, such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, to portray it as such. Much less that it is widely accepted among others, outside of certain Republican circles. Much, much less that it is not only a scandal, but a shocking one. Yet she begins her column throwing it out there as something that doesn’t even need discussion, as an established fact on the way to what she really wants to talk about. It’s like she’s gotten into the habit of writing only for people on the right. She assumes all her readers think Benghazi is a shocking scandal, and she goes ahead and acknowledges that out of hand. It’s like there are no other kinds of readers out there looking at her column. And if she keeps writing like this, she’ll be right in that assumption.
“Part of the reason is that it’s not their ox being gored, it’s those messy people out in America with their little patriotic groups.” Really? Tell me again which ox was gored. “Gore” means to deliver a serious, perhaps fatal, wound. Did any of these “patriotic little groups,” a characterization we could debate all day, lose their ability to do what they do? Were they indeed “gored”?
Richard Nixon is mentioned, followed by “But this scandal is different and distinctive.” As in, she implies, worse.

What Richard Nixon did with regard to the IRS was indeed an article of impeachment. Because of the abuses of power that he, Richard Nixon, carried out.

Excuse me, but I have yet to see the evidence that indicates, even remotely, that Barack Obama was involved in this mess over at the IRS. (Please give me a link if I’ve missed it.)

And this particular scandal has been proceeding how long? A month or so? (Actually, the first press reports were in March 2012.) I seem to recall that the Watergate scandal connected directly to the White House on Day One. Reporter Bob Woodward, then a nobody, was assigned to go cover the arraignment of some guys caught breaking into Democratic headquarters, and that day found that one of them worked in the White House.

Yeah, pretty different, all right.

Oh, and by the way, I should probably say for the benefit of Steven Davis and others who labor under the delusion that I’m a Democrat or something: I don’t say “Barack Obama isn’t Nixon” because I think Obama is so awesome and Nixon was pure evil.

If I’d been old enough to vote in 1968, I’d have voted for Nixon, without hesitation. For that matter, I was solidly for him in 1960, although you may discount that because I was only 7 years old. I would have voted for him in 1972, the first time I ever voted, if not for Watergate. I pulled the lever for McGovern after standing and debating with myself in the booth for about 10 minutes. I firmly believed that Nixon was the better president — in fact, I was convinced that McGovern would be a disaster. But I was also convinced that the Democrat had zero chance, so this seemed like a safe way to register my concerns about Watergate.

(I did the same thing, only with the parties reversed, in 1996. I respected Bob Dole more as a man than I did Bill Clinton. But Dole had run such a horrendous campaign that I doubted his ability to be a good president. I actually thought Clinton better suited to the job. But I had a lot of problems with Clinton by this time and, knowing that Dole had no chance of winning, I pulled the lever for him as a protest.)

Nixon was in a number of important ways a pretty good president, on the big things. Probably better than Obama in a number of ways (although I haven’t thought deeply about that, and it’s difficult to compare, since the challenges facing them are so different). But his abuse of power on stupid, petty things did him in. And I’ve seen no evidence so far Barack Obama has done anything of that kind.

So no — Obama’s not as bad as Nixon in this regard, much less worse. It’s not even close.

Missing the point about the wicked Lowcountry

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Last night before the results were in, a friend shared with me this Facebook update from John Dickerson of CBS and Slate:

If Mark Sanford wins tonight it will mark a real evolution for South Carolina as a state where values voters play a big role. Sanford, Gingrich’s win in the SC GOP primary. This is not the state where George Bush spoke at Bob Jones in 2000.

No, no, no. Apples and oranges. As I responded:

It’s the Lowcountry. Stuff like that never mattered as much in the Lowcountry. Bob Jones is in the part of the state where they think Charlestonians are all heathens.

I could have added, “drinking, swearing, gambling, fornicating heathens,” but it was a text, so I kept it short.

The Calvinist/fundamentalist part of the state, where Bob Jones is, is the Upstate. It’s like confusing Maine and Florida, only on a smaller scale. Charleston is where the hell-raisers live, and let live. It has always been thus.

Mr. Dickerson compounded his error with a piece in Slate this morning headlined, “Paris, South Carolina:”

South Carolina conservatives may still say a candidate’s sins matter, but they aren’t voting that way. In fact, if you weren’t privy to the state’s strong social conservative history, you could almost mistake South Carolinians for city folk—people who vote for experience, policy, and political leanings and show a sophisticate’s relativism toward personal moral failings. These days, South Carolinians seem almost Parisian when they enter the voting booth.

It’s a clever angle. And accurate, in that Charleston is, indeed the Paris of South Carolina. The difference is that South Carolina isn’t France.

It’s true that the values voters don’t have the impact statewide that they did back in the early 90s. The two strains of libertarianism (economic, not cultural) — the Club for Growth types who love Sanford, and the more populist Tea Party types who love Nikki Haley — have crowded them out to a great extent.

But they’re still here. And just because Sanford won in the Lowcountry doesn’t mean their influence isn’t still felt. Maybe he would have won in another part of the state. But winning down there doesn’t prove it.

The Gingrich angle that Dickerson brings up is indeed intriguing. But I don’t think that’s a good example. South Carolinians had a fit and broke with their history of choosing the eventual nominee because Gingrich at that moment was coming across as the guy who most wanted to rip out Barack Obama’s throat with his teeth. It was a weird moment. He appealed to something dark and visceral and atavistic in the SC electorate, something that for me hearkened back to Tillmanism. There was that, and the fact that a lot of establishment Republicans didn’t want Nikki Haley’s candidate to win.

I don’t think the two instances mark a trend away from family values. But yeah, Charleston is Paris if you like…

Mark Sanford’s utter contempt for the Republican Party

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Mark Sanford on the last night of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

I don’t have much time for blogging today — I was sick all weekend (ran a fever over 100, which for me is high, since I’m normally about 97 degrees) and couldn’t get to some things I wanted to get ahead on, so now I’m way behind.

But since the special election in the 1st Congressional District is tomorrow, and since Mark Sanford is again what he was at the beginning — the front-runner — I thought I’d share an observation.

Over the weekend, in a story about the state Republican Convention Saturday, Andy Shain wrote:

The mixed feelings of party faithful over former Gov. Mark Sanford’s return to politics also were on display.

Sanford did not attend the convention, spending the day campaigning in the Lowcountry ahead of his Tuesday contest against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the 1st District congressional special election. However, Sanford’s campaign had a phone bank operating in the coliseum lobby that was sparsely attended, even after a plea for volunteers…

Sanford wasn’t there. No big deal. After all, he’s busy, right? His political comeback is in the balance, and he’s on an upswing, so he just couldn’t take time out for the convention, as much as he wanted to be there, right?

Wrong. Even in the best of circumstances, Mark Sanford would as soon have a root canal as attend a state GOP convention — especially since he already has the party’s nomination, meaning that there’s nothing more the party can do for Mark Sanford.

Mark Sanford’s contempt for the Republican Party is a palpable thing. Back in the days when I was supporting his candidacy for governor, and for perhaps a year or two after, I used to find it an endearing, although somewhat odd, trait. Because, as you know, I hold the parties in contempt myself.

A couple of incidents from that period:

Right after the bitterly-fought primary and runoff against Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler in 2002 — in which what essentially amounted to the party establishment had done everything it could think of to stop Sanford — the party bigwigs staged a big reconciliation event out in front of state party headquarters. Not only were all of Bob Peelers’ key backers there, but even people who usually took little interest in gubernatorial politics, by which I mean Glenn McConnell (who as senator had little time to spare on such lesser offices as governor). It was quite the lovefest. Sanford showed up for it, but when I tried to grab him afterwards to see how he felt about this show of support after the bitter primary, he was gone. I found Jenny, and she urged me to call him on his cell, as he was on the way back to Charleston. So I did, when I got back to the office, and when I asked what he thought of all those people who had so recently opposed him bowing down and offering their wholehearted fealty, he said something like (I don’t have the exact words in front of me now), “Yes, well… I suppose people do those things.” Which sort of communicates the degree to which he didn’t care about those people, but not quite — you had to hear his tone to get the full effect. Wow, I thought. Even though I have no fondness for parties or respect for party loyalty, I was impressed by his insouciance. Those people had done all that for him, had gathered from across the state to show how much they cared, and he really could not give a flip. I tried to think of it in positive terms, but it was weird.
The next incident that stands out most in my mind occurred at the climax of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. This is a story I’ve told before. George W. Bush was giving his acceptance speech, and partisan passion in the room was at that fever pitch that it only achieves about once every four years. For people who are into the party, this is the supreme moment, so every square inch of the floor and risers of Madison Square Garden was packed. I was standing in the aisle next to the South Carolina delegation, and had other standing people pressing against me on all sides. Even those who had seats were standing, some of them on their chairs. When he bent over to say something to me, I realized that the person pressing against my left shoulder was Mark Sanford. I forget most of what he said, but I made note of what he said, in that usual bored, lollygaggin’ voice, at the moment when the excitement all around us was at its peak: “I don’t know if you’ve read that book, Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds….” I laughed, and said no, I hadn’t. But the overwhelming impression I had at the moment was that there was one person, among all those thousands, who felt even less connected to the pulsating sense of unity in that enormous room than I did, and that was Mark Sanford.

Oh, a word about why Sanford was standing there in the aisle to begin with. He wasn’t an actual delegate. When I said something about his not having a seat, he indicated — I forget the exact words — that no one had offered him one. After the president’s speech, as things were breaking up, I joshingly asked Speaker David Wilkins why nobody had seen fit to offer their governor a seat, and he suddenly looked very serious, and not a little put-upon. He said he had personally offered the governor his seat, but had been refused.

This was Mark Sanford’s relationship with his party in a nutshell. From the moment he became his party’s nominee, through his entire time in office, he gave loyal, dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, people ready to bend over backwards for their governor, the back of his hand.

Given my own disdain for parties, it took me awhile to connect his lack of caring about other Republicans with what I came to know as his utter lack of concern for anyone other than himself. I didn’t realize what a narcissist Sanford was until June 2009; that came as a shock. Why was it such a shock? Because Mark Sanford was always so different from any other politician I had ever encountered that it was hard to know what to think of his actions.

Once I did, his contempt for his party seemed itself contemptible, and I actually had some sympathy for the party loyalists whom he had repeatedly dissed.

Usually, people who go into politics are to some extent people people. With Sanford, that’s just not the case. He basically has no use for people other than himself, and that included Republicans.

What is bitterly ironic about this is that he is likely to win tomorrow for one reason: That district was drawn to elect a Republican, any Republican, and there are thousands of voters who will pull the lever because Sanford has “Republican” after his name. Because they think he is one of them. When in actuality, he would probably be amused by their assumption, by their unthinking loyalty, if he bothered to care about them at all…

Blaming media, Nobel for rise of modern terrorism

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Probably for the same reason I got a second major in history in college, I enjoy when someone takes a step back from events to provide a bit of historical perspective, as Max Boot did this morning in the WSJ on the history of modern terrorism.

And just as Eli Whitney revived the cotton industry and therefore slavery in this country, Boot (I love that guy’s name; sounds like a character Arnold Schwarzenegger would play in a movie) says three things helped launch a wave of terrorist groups around the world about a century ago: the inventions of dynamite, the telegraph and the high-speed newspaper press:

Nobel

It is no coincidence that the era of modern terrorism began at almost the same time that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite: 1867. There had been a few isolated terrorist gangs before then—which is to say, groups that murdered civilians in order to further a political or religious agenda. The Sicarri, the Jewish dagger-men who killed Roman collaborators in first-century Judaea, come to mind. So do the Assassins, the Shiite sect that terrorized Middle Eastern leaders in the Middle Ages. But such examples are few and far between, whereas the late 19th century saw the flowering of the first age of international terrorism, featuring such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Fenians, the Russian Nihilists and the anarchists who operated in both Europe and the Americas.

Their growth was greatly aided by the invention of portable weapons such as breech-loading revolvers and especially dynamite, which was 20 times more powerful than the gunpowder that Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators had used in an attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.

Just as important was the invention of the telegraph and the high-speed printing press, which made possible the rise of cheap newspapers and magazines—the world’s first mass media. Terrorism is above all an act of communication, insofar as terrorist groups are too small and too weak to fight conventional armies in the open field. Unlike guerrilla groups, most purely terrorist organizations don’t even attempt attacks on security forces; they prefer to strike “soft” targets such as the Boston Marathon, where they know that their actions, the more heinous the better, will attract widespread publicity. (Note, however, that many insurgencies use both guerrilla and terrorist tactics, striking both security forces and civilians, as the Irish Republican Army and the Viet Cong did.)…

There’s one flaw in this explanation, as it applies to the most recent incident: The pressure-cooker bombs used in Boston may have used black powder, rather than dynamite or plastique.

Still, I like a good theory.

Pablo Neruda: ‘…y por las calles la sangre de los niños…’

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Here’s a grim coincidence.

When I heard that one of the three dead in Boston was an 8-year-old boy, I remembered what I had heard on the radio early in the afternoon, before the explosions.

Celeste Headlee was interviewing someone about the legacy of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the guest read the last part of Neruda’s poem “Explico Algunas Cosas.”

Here’s how it went:

Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo
y una mañana las hogueras
salían de la tierra
devorando seres,
y desde entonces fuego,
pólvora desde entonces,
y desde entonces sangre.
Bandidos con aviones y con moros,
bandidos con sortijas y duquesas,
bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo
venían por el cielo a matar niños,
y por las calles la sangre de los niños
corría simplemente, como sangre de niños.

Victim Martin Richard, 8.

Chacales que el chacal rechazaría,
piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo,
víboras que las víboras odiaran!

Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre
de España levantarse
para ahogaros en una sola ola
de orgullo y de cuchillos!

Generales
traidores:
mirad mi casa muerta,
mirad España rota:
pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo
en vez de flores,
pero de cada hueco de España
sale España,
pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos,
pero de cada crimen nacen balas
que os hallarán un día el sitio
del corazón.

Preguntaréis por qué su poesía
no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas,
de los grandes volcanes de su país natal?

Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver
la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver la sangre
por las calles!

And here it is in English:

And one morning it was all burning, and one morning bonfires sprang out of the earth, devouring humans. And from then on, fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandidos with planes and Moors, bandidos with rings and duchesses, bandidos with black friars signing the cross, coming down from sky to kill children. And in the streets, the blood of children ran simply like blood of children.

Jackals the jackals would despise, stones that the dry thistle would bite and bit on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate. Facing you, I have seen the blood of Spain rise up to drown you in a single wave of pride and knives. Traitors, generals: look at my dead house, look at Spain broken: from every house, burning metal comes out instead of flowers, from every crater of Spain comes Spain, from every dead child comes a rifle with eyes, from every crime bullets are born that one day will find out in due the sight of the heart.

You will ask: why doesn’t his poetry speak to us of dreams, of leaves, of the great volcanoes of his native land? Come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets, come and see the blood in the streets.

In Neruda’s day, the threat was fascist government. Today, in the West, it’s deluded individuals and small groups of lunatics.

The thoughtful hedonist: Russell Brand on Thatcher

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You probably don’t want to watch it with your mom, or with your children for that matter, but I have seen few things funnier in recent years than Russell Brand in “Get Him to the Greek.” From his first line, “I’m Aldous Snow, the rock star,” his embodiment of an out-of-control hedonist is so devastatingly spot on, you come away convinced that that is who he really is (of course, his personal biography isn’t that far distant from Snow’s).

But messed up as he may be, he’s a bright guy who can actually be fairly thoughtful (interestingly, there were flashes of that in the Aldous Snow character, tucked among the Jeffrey-induced outrages). He showed that in a piece he wrote for The Guardian a couple of days back. Excerpts:

One Sunday recently while staying in London, I took a stroll in the gardens of Temple, the insular clod of quads and offices between the Strand and the Embankment. It’s kind of a luxury rent-controlled ghetto for lawyers and barristers, and there is a beautiful tailors, a fine chapel, established by the Knights Templar (from which the compound takes its name), a twee cottage designed by Sir Christopher Wren and a rose garden; which I never promised you.

My mate John and I were wandering there together, he expertly proselytising on the architecture and the history of the place, me pretending to be Rumpole of the Bailey (quietly in my mind), when we spied in the distant garden a hunched and frail figure, in a raincoat, scarf about her head, watering the roses under the breezy supervision of a masticating copper. “What’s going on there, mate?” John asked a nearby chippy loading his white van. “Maggie Thatcher,” he said. “Comes here every week to water them flowers.” The three of us watched as the gentle horticultural ritual was feebly enacted, then regarded the Iron Lady being helped into the back of a car and trundling off. In this moment she inspired only curiosity, a pale phantom, dumbly filling her day. None present eyed her meanly or spoke with vitriol and it wasn’t until an hour later that I dreamt up an Ealing comedy-style caper in which two inept crooks kidnap Thatcher from the garden but are unable to cope with the demands of dealing with her, and finally give her back. This reverie only occurred when the car was out of view. In her diminished presence I stared like an amateur astronomer unable to describe my awe at this distant phenomenon…

The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else. There are pangs of nostalgia, yes, because for me she’s all tied up with Hi-De-Hi and Speak and Spell and Blockbusters and “follow the bear”. What is more troubling is my inability to ascertain where my own selfishness ends and her neo-liberal inculcation begins. All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people’s pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate…

Rough stuff. But then there are bits like this:

When I awoke today on LA time my phone was full of impertinent digital eulogies. It’d be disingenuous to omit that there were a fair number of ding-dong-style celebratory messages amidst the pensive reflections on the end of an era. Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. “I thought I’d be overjoyed, but really it’s just … another one bites the dust …” This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher’s ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one’s enemies…

I found it interesting because it gave me insight into the attitudes of a young Brit growing up in the Thatcher era — someone whose life wasn’t politics. I think he probably speaks for a lot of people in his generation, those who aren’t inclined to engage in the execrable “Ding-Dong” celebrations, but aren’t at all interested in fitting her with a halo, either.

I was also intrigued by the bits of communitarianism that crept into the writing of this young man best known in this country for playing a narcissist, such as “If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t.”

I share it as something from an unexpected quarter that broadened my understanding a bit.

The overshadowed passing of Annette

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Long before there was a Cher, or a Madonna, or a Sting, there was Annette, who preceded them all in needing no surname. Even “Elvis” had “Presley” attached more than Annette used “Funicello” in the early days.

That’s because she was the most famous of the Mouseketeers, and I mean the original, real Mouseketeers, not the latter-day imitations.

We expected the passing of Margaret Thatcher; that movie with Meryl Streep made it seem imminent. But Annette, leaving us at 70, was more of a shock.

I suspect you have to be almost exactly my age — one whose preschool years were entirely contained within the ’50s — to get this completely. Later, seeing her in the beach movies, I’d form another picture of her, and that one probably stuck better — that of a young woman rather than a child, although still a squeaky-clean image. (Alas, she was not my favorite character in those films; that honor belonged to Eric Von Zipper.)

John Updike used a passage, early in Rabbit Run, in which Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom watches the “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which comes across as a way of assuring us that this is, indeed, a quintessentially American novel. But Harry could never connect with the Mouseketeers the way we did. Harry was spoiled goods; he wasn’t one of us. Harry, in that and subsequent novels (OK, so I really only made it through Rabbit Redux before I gave up on him), was always too old for the cultural passages he was experiencing. Yet he plunged through them anyway, which for me imbued him with a certain falseness.

How did we get on Updike? Oh, yeah, Annette…

The Mouseketeers, Elvis, Mickey Mantle and Andy Devine were my first celebrities. It was years and years before I learned from Dumas there had been something in history called a musketeer, which at first looked to me like a misspelling.

Annette! If only once more we could see her standing by Jimmie as he led us through:

M-I-C (see you next week!)
K-E-Y (Why? Because we LIKE you!)
M-O-U-S-E

… and know, with a child’s certainty, that yes, we would see them next week, and that they did indeed like us as much as we liked them…

Who were these ‘amateurs’ who, according to Sanford and Bostic, founded this country?

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The five-man committee presents its draft of the Declaration to Congress.

Let’s knock down a myth, shall we? I hope you don’t mind if I choose one that is particularly near and dear to the anti-government crowd.

In a debate last night, on the eve of their runoff contest today, Curtis Bostic quoted from a book written by Mark Sanford, as follows: “America was a country founded by political amateurs.” (And no, I don’t know why he said “America was” instead of “America is,” and I’m not going to go back and read the whole book to find out.)

Bostic was attempting to gain moral advantage here, you see. His point was to claim that he is the amateur, and Sanford the “career politician” (a term that in certain political circles is a grave insult).

Quoth Bostic:

I am the ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’ I’m the amateur, like those people who founded this nation of ours. I am not looking for a career. I am not looking for somewhere to go. I want to serve you.”

Set aside the fact that Ms. Bostic has served on Charleston County Council for eight years, or the more obvious fact that he is looking to go somewhere — Washington. I’m perfectly willing to grant that he has spent fewer years in public office than his opponent. Although I’ll say in Sanford’s behalf that although he’s been in the public sphere since the early 1990s, he has learned almost nothing from the experience. If that elevates him in your estimation. It doesn’t in mine.

I don’t care about which of them is the least knowledgeable and experienced; let them fight it out.

What I want to ask is, Who were those amateurs “who founded this nation of ours”? Although I majored in history with a particular concentration in that period, I’m having trouble coming up with the names.

Of course, there were a lot of founders, and as a blogger with a day job, I don’t have time at the moment to look them all up. But let’s start with the core nation-founders. Let’s consider the three best-known members of the committee that the Continental Congress appointed to write the Declaration of Independence:

Thomas Jefferson — He was the youngest and least-experienced of the group. But he had served in the Virginia legislative body from 1769 to 1775. He had established himself as a sufficiently compelling writer in the realm of political ideas that John Adams particularly wanted him on the committee.
John Adams — His public career was launched in opposition to the Stamp Act in 1765. He became known at that time for drafting the instructions for delegates from Braintree to take to the Massachusetts legislature, which served as a model for other communities. He represented the British soldiers accused in the Boston “Massacre,” and got all of them off except for two convicted on lesser charges (as he should have). Going into the ’70s his reputation as the go-to guy for presenting political arguments only grew. It was quite natural that he would do the heavy lifting when the debate over independence came, as he had extensive experience making related arguments in the public sphere. He served Massachusetts in both the First and Second Continental Congresses.
Benjamin Franklin — Known for many enterprises, he had been involved in politics for about three decades. Starting in the 1740s, he had served on Philadelphia city council, a justice of the peace, as a delegate to the Pennsylvania assembly, as head of the PA delegation to the Albany Congress, and as deputy postmaster-general for North America. He had proposed a Plan of Union for the colonies as early as 1754.

Neither of the other two members of the committee — Roger Sherman or Robert Livingston — was a political novice, either. And they went on, alas, to have extensive public careers.

After the Declaration, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin served their countries, as ambassadors and presidents, for the rest of their productive lives — rather than going home to run a shop or whatever virtuous, private thing “amateurs” do after founding countries.

If one of y’all has the time to research all the other Founders, let us know what you find. I need to get back to work. But if you find that a majority was inexperienced in public life, Ill be surprised.

Top Five TV Shows about the Cold War (I’ll stop now)

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tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-alec-guinness_brownsuit

Alex Guinness as George Smiley.

Just to beat the topic from yesterday totally into the ground, here are my Top Five TV Shows About the Cold War:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — The Alex Guinness version, of course.
Smiley’s People — The sequel to Tinker, Tailor. I have both series on DVD at home.
Game, Set and Match — A series cobbled together from the first three novels in a Len Deighton trilogy of trilogies. It took some liberties, and I seem to recall hearing that Deighton hated it. This is possibly because the character that Ian Holm created for the series was quite different — a more tormented, stressed-out character — from the Bernard Samson in the novels. But I enjoyed the series anyway.
The Missiles of October — Worth watching if only for Martin Sheen’s version of Bobby Kennedy.
The Day After — A huge TV event at the time when it came out. Sort of the Cold War equivalent of “Roots.”

There’s sort of a lack of variety in this list, I’ll admit — the first three are spy series, and two by le Carre with the same chief protagonist. But I have to work with what TV gives me. And I really believe the first two are among the best things ever made for the tube.

“The Day After” — nuclear apocalypse in Kansas.

Top Five (and other) Cold War Movies

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Richard Burton as Alec Leamas in “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”

Bryan Caskey has drawn up his Top Five Cold War Movies over at his blog, and I feel compelled to answer it. My perspective is a little different from his, because I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, giving me not only different cultural touchstones, but a different feel for the Cold War itself.

Here’s my Top Five:

The Spy Who Came in from The Cold — This defines the genre. Starts and ends at the Berlin Wall. A lot of bad movies were made from good books in the ’60s, but this wasn’t one of them. It did a great job of capturing the atmosphere, the moral ambiguity and the deception-within-deception-within-deception plotline of LeCarre’s book.
Dr. Strangelove — I was torn between this and Fail-Safe, which was the same story without the comedy. But this was such an awesome piece of film-making, it had to go on the list. Strangelove got us to laugh at the things that caused our hair to stand on end in Fail-Safe. The link is to my favorite scene: “Now, then, Dimitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb…”
Our Man in Havana — I’m going for satirical again with this spoof of the spy genre. Both Alec Guinness and Ernie Kovacs. How do you beat that? Based on Graham Greene’s most enjoyable “entertainment” (which is what he called his less serious novels), which inspired le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama.
The Mouse That Roared — Yes, I’m going for the more obscure reference because Barry in High Fidelity (the ultimate authority for the science of Top Five lists) would sneer at any Top Five list that didn’t have one that no one else would think of. I’ll even admit that the movie wasn’t very good — although I enjoyed the book. This is about a tiny country with a medieval military capability that becomes the world’s greatest power by stealing a Doomsday Machine from the U.S. For Strangelove fans, this also has Peter Sellers in multiple roles.
The Manchurian Candidate — Paranoia is a huge part of what the Cold War was about, and this is the classic of that genre.

Another Five, in case you’d like a Top Ten:

Seven Days in May — In a way not really about the Cold War, except for the paranoia thing.
Fail-Safe — I initially had this in the Top Five, trying to be cool by picking on the less-obvious choice. I was going to say that “Awesome as it was, Strangelove was more about a sort of smartass 60s cultural sensibility than it was about the way real people felt about nuclear annihilation.” But I changed my mind.
The Ipcress File — Perhaps the all-time best Michael Caine vehicle, based on Len Deighton’s very best novel. Deighton’s book is breezily ironic, very hip, yet far more realistic than Bond.
The Lives of Others — A look at what life was like on the other side of the curtain.
WarGames — More of a movie about the then-new phenomenon of computer hackers than about the Cold War, but it still fits in the genre. Ferris Bueller meets Fail-Safe.

Also-rans, in no particular order:

The Third Man — This might have made the list, but I think it’s more about postwar black-marketeering than about the Cold War proper.
Stripes — Great fun, but too silly to make the Top Five list.
The Right Stuff — Not what you think of as “Cold War,” maybe, but what was it all about? Trying to prevent the godless Russkies from being able to drop nukes on us from space, like rocks from a highway overpass. An amazing job of turning a book that is mostly about the narration into an engaging film.
Red Dawn — A high school kid’s fantasy of World War III. I mean, wouldn’t every adolescent boy like to see the boredom of school interrupted by a shooting war in which he is the hero?
Twilight’s Last Gleaming — Didn’t we see Burt Lancaster play this character before, in “Seven Days in May”?
The Quiet American — The jaded European view of Americans as blundering do-gooders.
Blast from the Past — Bomb-shelter anxieties transformed into romantic comedy.
2010 — The sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, this one wrongly guessed that we’d still be goin’ toe-to-toe with the Russkies nine years later. Best parts: Both Dave and Hal show up.

Ernie Kovacs playing minibottle chess in "Our Man in Havana."

Ernie Kovacs playing minibottle checkers in “Our Man in Havana.”

Nazi killing apparatus had more locations than Starbucks

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The Warsaw Ghetto, during the Uprising.

Speaking of storm troopers, here’s something on the opposite end of the gravity spectrum from my last post…

This, brought to my attention by Stan Dubinsky, sort of blew my mind this morning:

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington…

Just to give you a little perspective: There are fewer than 17,000 Starbucks stores in the world, about 11,100 in this country. When you consider that there’s pretty much one on every block in Manhattan, that makes 42,500 all that much more staggering.

At the risk of sounding like a Holocaust denier, a number like that strains credulity. Of course, we’re talking about more than the genocide of Jews, but the whole Nazi murder machine, including homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and member of other groups.

But still… Are there even that many cities in that part of Europe?

One thing seems for sure… it becomes harder and harder to believe that anyone in Germany or the “Greater Reich” didn’t have some idea of what was going on.

First, key SC lawmakers were dead serious about nullification; now, they’re taking testimony from a secessionist. And yes, it’s 2013

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We are really on a roll in South Carolina this week. On a rapid downhill roll, as on the proverbial handcart to hell.

SC Democrats put out this release today:

Well-known Secessionist invited by GOP lawmaker to give testimony in support of Nullification

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Laws held a hearing on H3101, otherwise known as the “Nullification” bill that seeks to nullify the Affordable Care Act, heard testimony from dozens of Tea Party activists on Wednesday. One of the speakers, Dr. Donald Livingston of Georgia, separated himself from the other speakers when he publicly advocated for secession during his testimony.

Dr. Livingston, a retired philosophy professor testifying in support of nullification, was invited to give the lead testimony by the bill’s chief sponsor, Representative Bill Chumley. Dr. Livingston later admitted in his testimony that he had not actually read Rep. Chumley’s bill.

Dr. Donald Livingston is the former director of the League of the South, a neo-confederate group that actively supports southern nationalism as well as secession from the United States. (Source) The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the League of the South as a “racist hate group.” (Source) Dr. Livingston has been dubbed the “Intellectual Godfather of the secession movement” by New York Times journalist Chris Hedges. Dr. Livingston has written extensively in support of secession and southern heritage. (Source)

In 2001, he told the Intelligence Report that “the North created segregation” and that Southerners fought during the Civil War only “because they were invaded.” The next year, he established the Abbeville Institute, based in Atlanta, along the lines of the League of the South. (Source)

At a 2003 “Lincoln Reconsidered” conference he said that “evil is habit-forming” and no habit is as evil as believing that Lincoln acted out of good motives. (Source)

Representative James Smith, a member of the subcommittee, released the following statement in response:

“I was surprised and extremely disappointed Rep. Bill Chumley would invite Dr. Livingston to serve as his chief advocate in front of the Constitutional Laws Subcommittee. His extreme views on secession and his association with a known racist hate group insults the institution we serve and reveals the motives behind many who support this legislation. I fundamentally reject his vision for our country and I call on my colleagues to do the same.”

####

It’s really been weird lately. At home in the evenings, I read Team of Rivals, and just started rewatching Ken Burns’ classic “The Civil War” on Netflix. Reading and watching at night, I think that what I’m doing is studying history.

But then I get up in the morning, and day after day, this insane nonsense turns out to be current events over at our State House.

What SC needs is a good UnParty think tank

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Speaking of “conservative, conservative, conservative,” repeated as a mind-numbing mantra…

This came in today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ellen Weaver – 803-708-0673, [email protected]

JIM DEMINT ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF NEW S C THINK TANK
Palmetto Policy Forum to serve a vital role in policy research, innovation and collaboration

Columbia, SC – Today, former U.S. Senator and Heritage Foundation President-elect Jim DeMint announced the launch of the Palmetto Policy Forum, an independent, South Carolina-based think tank.

DeMint, who is investing a portion of his remaining campaign funds to help establish the group, will also serve as its Founding Chairman.

Joining him on the Founding Board is a roster of prominent South Carolina leaders including C. Dan Adams, President and CEO of The Capital Corporation; J. Gresham Barrett, Stewardship Director of NewSpring Church; Michael R. Brenan, Group/State President of BB&T; Michael H. McBride, Chairman of the Board of Directors of HMR Veterans Services, Inc.; and Stu Rodman, Founder and Vice-Chairman of the Board.

The organization will be led by newly-appointed President & CEO, Ellen Weaver, a seasoned veteran of policy, communications and politics. Weaver has worked with DeMint in both Washington, DC and South Carolina, most recently serving as his State Director. She will assume full-time duties with Palmetto Policy Forum on March 4, to allow for the completion of an orderly transition between the former DeMint office and that of newly-appointed U.S. Senator Tim Scott.

Dr. Oran Smith, a trusted advocate for conservative policy during his many years of service in South Carolina, will join the staff as Senior Fellow, applying sharp analytical skills to legislative research and policy innovation.

Kate Middleton Maroney, who worked on Capitol Hill in the office of U.S. Representative Trent Franks, will join the staff as Executive Assistant and oversee management of new media outreach.

“While Washington is stuck in an endless cycle of debt, “cliffs” and crisis, a growing number of states are seizing the initiative to implement bold policy innovation that will expand opportunity and economic prosperity for all of their citizens. Conservative success at the state level will be the catalyst that saves our country,” said DeMint.

He continued, “I am pleased to have this opportunity to invest in Palmetto Policy Forum and the future success of the state I love. I believe South Carolina can lead the nation with the most principled, powerful and effective conservative advocates in America. The Forum will play a key role in cultivating the bold and visionary ideas that we know form the ladder of opportunity for every American. In my new role at The Heritage Foundation, I look forward to working with Palmetto Policy Forum and like-minded groups all around the country to lead an opportunity renaissance that speaks to the dreams and aspirations of every American.”

“South Carolina needs an organization that will develop a broad spectrum of well-researched policies, rooted in conservative principles and promoted in a positive, coalition-building way. There is no reason why South Carolina cannot lead the nation in passing market-based policies that we know form the foundation of long-term economic and social success. On behalf of the Board, we look forward to the work ahead,” said Founding Board Member, Mike Brenan.

Forum Senior Fellow, Dr. Oran Smith said, “An opportunity like Palmetto Policy comes along once in a lifetime. I am honored to add a portfolio at The Forum to my duties as President of Palmetto Family. Positive, conservative but winsome policy entrepreneurship is what South Carolina needs, and that is what Jim DeMint and The Forum represent.”

In closing, Forum President Ellen Weaver stated, “Our challenge – and opportunity – is to develop principle-based policies and to promote them in a way that connects back to the shared values of people all over South Carolina. By promoting best-practice conservative ideas from around our state and nation, we can show the way forward to increased opportunity for all. It has been an honor to serve in the DeMint office for the past 12 years and I am humbled to have now been asked to oversee this exciting new venture. I look forward to the chance to work with our board, staff and South Carolina leaders to launch positive policy solutions for the future of our state and those willing to follow South Carolina’s lead.”

###

Really? Somebody looked at South Carolina, with its SC Policy Council and its SC Club for Growth, and its Nikki Haley and its GOP controlled Legislature, its two Republican senators, and its congressional delegation with one token Democrat, its ranks purged of anyone not pleasing to the Tea Party, and decided that what this state really needed was another entity to advocate for the currently fashionable definition of “conservatism?”

I’ll tell you what SC needs — a forum for ideas that aren’t handcuffed to ideologies, a force that advocates for practical policies that help move this state forward to where we’re no longer last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last. Which, by the way, is what multiple generations of leaders who conformed to their day’s definition of “conservatism” got us. In antebellum times, we had the most conservative form of government in the nation (powerful legislature, weak executive). Our “conservatism,” our passionate defense of the status quo, led us to secede from the union. After that ended in disaster, forces of reaction in our state managed to restore the same form of government that had served the slaveholders before 1860, although now it served no one in SC. Generation after generation since then has worn its avowed “conservatism” like a glorious crown. And now we are afflicted by a generation that thinks it invented conservatism, and that all that went before it was rabid socialism.

As one who wants the best for my native state, this is discouraging in the extreme.

I’ll be glad to help run such an UnParty think tank, if somebody will put up the money. Ah, there’s the rub! For in South Carolina, there are always millions to be found for bumper-sticker ideology, but not a thin dime for reason and pragmatism.

Obama on immigration: ‘Before they were us, they were them’

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Upstaged Monday by the Gang of Eight, President Obama today rolled out his own plans for comprehensive immigration reform today. Here is a fact sheet put out by the White House, and here are his complete remarks. The president went more in for some high-flown rhetoric in his speech, delivered in Las Vegas. An excerpt:

Immigration’s always been an issue that inflames passions. That’s not surprising. You know, there are few things that are more important to us as a society than who gets to come here and call our country home, who gets the privilege of becoming a citizen of the Untied States of America. That’s a big deal. When we talk about that in the abstract, it’s easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of us versus them. And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of us used to be them. (Cheers, applause.) We forget that.

And it’s really important for us to remember our history. You know, unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. (Cheers, applause.) Somebody brought you.

You know, Ken Salazar — he’s of, you know, Mexican-American descent, but he — he points out that his family’s been living where — where he lives for 400 years.

(Cheers.) So he didn’t — he didn’t immigrate anywhere. (Laughter.)

The Irish, who left behind a land of famine; the Germans, who fled persecution; the Scandinavians, who arrived eager to pioneer out west; the Polish; the Russians; the Italians; the Chinese; the Japanese; the West Indians; the huddled masses who came through Ellis Island on one coast and Angel Island on the other — (cheers, applause) — you know, all those folks, before they were us, they were them. (Laughter.)

And when each new wave of immigrants arrived, they faced resistance from those who were already here. They faced hardship. They faced racism. They faced ridicule. But over time, as they went about their daily lives, as they earned a living, as they raised a family, as they built a community, as their kids went to school here, they did their part to build the nation. They were the Einsteins and the Carnegies, but they were also the millions of women and men whose names history may not remember but whose actions helped make us who we are, who built this country hand by hand, brick by brick. (Cheers, applause.)

But he did talk about the practical business of getting something passed, and favorably mentioned the Gang of Eight’s proposals, while saying if they don’t fly, he’ll be pushing his own plan:

Now, the good news is that for the first time in many years Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together. (Cheers, applause.) Members of both parties in both chambers are actively working on a solution. Yesterday a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for comprehensive immigration reform, which are very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. So at this moment it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s very encouraging.

But this time action must follow. We can’t allow — (applause) — immigration reform to get bogged down in an endless debate. We’ve been debating this a very long time. So it’s not as if we don’t know technically what needs to get done.

As a consequence, to help move this process along, today I’m laying out my ideas for immigration reform. And my hope is that this provides some key markers to members of Congress as they craft a bill, because the ideas that I’m proposing have traditionally been supported by both Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Republicans like President George W. Bush. You don’t get that matchup very often. (Laughter.) So — so we know where the consensus should be.

Now of course, there will be rigorous debate about many of the details. And every stakeholder should engage in real give and take in the process. But it’s important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is already in place. And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.

So after six years, this issue is officially back on the nation’s front burner. Here’s hoping something sensible actually gets done this time.

The utter pettiness of public life in our times

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As a young man, Abraham Lincoln fretted that there was no opportunity for his generation to accomplish anything important; gone were the days in which the founders had risen to the great challenge of establishing the nation.

Here’s an early passage from Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which I finally finished reading a couple of nights ago:

… Lincoln had expressed his concern that his generation had been left a meager yield after the “field of glory” was harvested by the founding fathers. They were a “forest of giant oaks,” he said, who face the “task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land,” and to build “upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights.” Their destinies were inseparably linked” with the experiment of providing the world,” a practical demonstration” of “the capability of a people to govern themselves. It they succeeded, they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be revered and sung, and toasted through all time.”

Because their experiment succeeded, Lincoln observed, thousands “won their deathless names in making it so.” What was left for the men of his generation to accomplish?…

Of course, Lincoln was profoundly mistaken:

In 1854, the wheel of history turned. A train of events that mobilized the antislavery North resulted in the formation of the Republican Party and ultimately provided Lincoln’s generation with a challenge equal to or surpassing that of the founding fathers.

Every day that he was in office, Lincoln and his administration wrestled mightily with questions of ultimate important and great moral weight. Until very late in the war, the great issues — whether the United States would continue to exist, and whether all its people would be free — were in great doubt.

Along the way, he dealt with a great deal of human pettiness — from the criminal uselessness of General McClellan to the scheming, naked ambition of Salmon Chase, from the everyday grubbing of officeseekers to personal disputes that threatened the government’s ability to function — but his focus, and that of most of those around him, was on the towering issues of the day.

And in spite of all, the challenges were met, masterfully. By Lincoln, whom I am more convinced than ever is the most remarkable and able individual ever to hold the office of president, but also by ordinary people who rose to do extraordinary things.

All the time I was reading that book, I kept thinking how unbelievably petty our public life is today. And I’m not just talking about the partisan bickering that I decry here so regularly. It’s the things that we squabble about that are so depressing.

The whole time I was reading that book — and I read it slowly, over a period of months, mostly at the dinner table, a few pages at a time — the great crisis of our time was the “fiscal cliff.” That precipice was created by our utter inability to deal with the most routine concerns, those of financing the government. And of course, we have a series of unresolved conflicts of the same nature that we must deal with this year, since the can has only been kicked, and kicked feebly, down the road.

In her column this weekend, Peggy Noonan wrote the following, in another of her passages finding fault with President Obama:

All the famous criticisms of him are true: He has no talent for or interest in sustained, good-faith negotiations, he has no real sense of alarm about the great issue of the day, America’s debt….

Really? That’s “the great issue of the day”? How mind-numbingly appalling.

And perhaps she’s right. Politicians in Washington, and all those who ape them in the hinterlands, certainly act as though that, and attendant issues, are the great matters of our day.

But here’s the thing: There are no great moral considerations involved here, people. Figuring out what it costs to run the government and how to levy the taxes to pay for it are matters that a middling accountant could work out in a day, and the issue would be behind us. How much to tax, how much to spend are indeed debatable issues. But they are not issues of right and wrong. They are unworthy of anyone’s passion.

No, I don’t long for us to be engaged in a mighty war to settle whether this nation, or any like it, will continue to exist. I don’t want to see more that 600,000 of my fellow citizen die in settling some momentous issue.I don’t lament, as Lancelot did in a time of peace in The Once and Future King, that “We don’t see many arrows thrilling in people’s hearts nowadays.”

I would just like to see us recognize that petty issues are petty issues, and resolve them, and move on. And no, I don’t consider trillions of dollars to be small considerations; I’m just saying that these issues are eminently solvable, with just a modicum of reasonable behavior on the part of all parties. I’m saying that the “drama” of “fiscal cliffs” and debt ceilings is entirely contrived, artificial and unnecessary.

Getting rid of slavery — now that was difficult. It was the great unresolved conflict that had dogged the nation since its founding. The issue could not be resolved without tearing the nation apart and putting it back together again. The solutions accepted as fact in 1865 were unthinkable in 1860. (Yes, they were “thinkable” in that abolitionists advocated them; but it was politically impossible to implement them until the height of the war.)

We shouldn’t need a national existential crisis to solve the problem of balancing the national checkbook. We should just be able to do it, and move on.

bradwarthen.com

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