bfaure – Page 14 – Ramparts of Civilization

September 30, 2015September 30, 2015

The Battle of Britain

“What General Weygand has called The Battle of France is over. The battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour'”

Winston Churchill June 18, 1940

75 years ago this month, in a September 17th meeting with his military staff, Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany and the conqueror of continental Europe, heard the disparaging news that his air forces were not going to be able to sustain mounting losses and still hope to support a cross channel invasion of Great Britain. Three days later, unbeknownst to the British, who had months of horrific losses ahead of them in nighttime bombing later referred to as the Blitz, Hitler effectively suspended the initiation of the cross channel invasion, Operation Sea Lion, and in doing so, changed the outcome of history. The battle of which Churchill so eloquently spoke of just three short months before, had turned back the greatest war machine ever known through the savvy, will, and courage of perhaps the fewest people one could imagine. 75 years later, it looks like no less a miracle, and ever more important, as we are currently called to summon our will again to combat a marauding evil.

When Churchill spoke to the House of Commons in June 1940, he saw a world where his Britain was the last remaining obstacle to securing Hitler’s stunning successful conquest of the European land mass and the subjugation of the cultures that had determined western civilization for the past five hundred years. The challenge looked immense, if not hopeless, to most, including members of his inner circle. The United States, Churchill’s hoped for ally that might turn the tide, had no inclination to get involved in a trans ocean struggle and was nowhere near ready to do so, if it had so inclined. The United States Ambassador Joseph Kennedy saw in the British a dying empire with no hope of stopping Hitler, and recommended no American support. The Germans as recently as May had gone through the French million man army in a mere six weeks, and the British had narrowly escaped with the remnants of their forces at Dunkirk in a hastily produced withdrawal that was a victory only in avoiding disastrous capture or destruction of the entire British expeditionary army. The Soviet Union has earlier made its own pact with Hitler and swept into eastern Poland and Finland, to secure its own land grab, giving Hitler the ability to focus full attention on Britain.

Full attention meant the world’s largest war machine pointed at the nation that had just had it handed to it over the preceding 6 months in Norway, and then France. The only hope lay in the difficulties of achieving a cross channel invasion. This had not been successfully achieved (without invitation) since 1066, when William the Conqueror defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings, and William had not had to worry about battleships or airplanes during the crossing. The Germans initiated the preamble to Sea Lion in July, 1940 , with a massive daily air attack to destroy Britain’s capacity for defense, with the plan’s logic the destruction of the British Royal Air Force, and with it, the last chance to fend off a cross channel invasion fleet. And so history was joined to the destinies of individual pilots, the German contingent looking to attack, the British looking to eliminate, in a deadly battle of attrition that bound one to exhaust the fighting capacity of the other. Planes as machinery were difficult to replace, but pilots – able pilots were irreplaceable. The destiny of a several hundred thousand man invasion force therefore lay in the hands of several thousand trained pilots on each side, capable of the skills and experience required to marshall the maneuvers of a modern aircraft. Each day a massive bombing force from the continent looked to destroy British will, and each time a group of intrepid fighter pilots in Hurricanes and Spitfires looked to drive the Germans into the sea.

A British Anti-Aircraft Gunnery views contrails of battling aircraft over Britain

The battle was every bit about individual courage, but it was also about revolutionary tactics. The Germans were late to the understanding of the significance of radar and a sophisticated forward spotting network. The British airmen did not have the ability to be everywhere, but sophisticated tracking allowed the concept of force magnification by getting fighters from far afield to the appropriate intercept point with uncanny accuracy. The Germans had somewhat more powerful aircraft in straight line speed, but poor fuel capacity to the extent that for the escort fighters, only about ten minutes of dog fight capacity was present before the fighters had to turn to home across the channel, leaving the bombers exposed. The german bombers were instructed to destroy the airfields and planes initially, a task that proved difficult given the ferocity of the resistance and the accuracy of bombing at the time, That left British industrial capacity for the most part untouched, allowing the capable replacement of the air machinery above loss rate. Eventually, the German losses mounted and the raids turned to night bombing of civilian areas, bringing horrific casualties on the ground in the tens of thousands.

Milkman Fred Morley delivers milk in London despite the devastation of German bombing raids

By mid-October, though the ferocity of the bombing was nowhere near done and the Blitz continued until May 1941, when Hitler re-directed his assets east toward Russia, The idea of a successful cross channel invasion was scrapped by the Germans. The Battle of Britain had resulted in the loss of over 1600 German piloted aircraft, compared to 1400 RAF. More importantly, it removed the word inevitable to describe the German war machine and proved a democratic people could develop the powerful martial instincts necessary to combat a remorseless leviathan. As Churchill was to say in words that have become immortal regarding the Battle of Britain participants : “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” In a war that may have resulted in as much as 25 million military deaths, the sacrifice of less than two thousand airmen may have changed the entire course of the war, and history itself.

75 years is such a time period, that the few that lived through the moment are in no position to teach the current generation of the necessity at times to defend one’s civilization. No invasion took place of the British Isles, because a determined population believed their view of civilization was worth fighting for, no matter what the odds, and potentially at total cost. Surrender of a way of life and tradition of respect for others was thought less worthy than the loss of one’s life for the chance of preserving such principles. Mr. Morley, the milkman in the photo above, saw the surrounding devastation as an obstacle to overcome in his call to preserve a civilized society, not a sign that self preservation was called for. Delivering milk to people who needed it, is what was done in a civilized society, and to stop, would to suggest the barbarians had won. And that, was unthinkable. Civilization once again proved itself to be a bottom-up phenomena, barbarism top down. The shadows of such distant history show us today that our civilization’s decline will occur only if we as individuals stop caring about our role in civility. The island of Britain, all alone, against indescribable odds, showed what one could do, if civilization was your cause. We again to look to Churchill whose words resonate for those of us who see the immensity of the task ahead of us in a time where surrender is all around us – ” You must just KBO!”

Keep Buggering On.

September 26, 2015September 26, 2015

Boehner and the Tea Party Insurrection

Boston Tea Party illustration by Currier — Boston Tea Party
illustration by Currier

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, third in line to the Presidency of the United States, was felled by a procedural dispute. The dispute unfortunately for him was with a group of congressmen and women he could no longer ignore, or avoid. Maligned and derided, miscast as at best doofuses or at worst racists, the tea party insurrection has quietly gone about its business, and is now progressively shaking the very core of what represents the conservative political movement in this country, The tea party movement, now just over six years old, has managed to help win first the House majority for Republicans in 2010, then the Senate majority in 2014, elect political stars such as Mike Lee, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, take down House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and now, Speaker of the House Boehner. Not bad for doofuses.

Who are these ‘doofuses’ and what do these ‘doofuses’ want? The establishment politicians, enamored with their supposedly invincible incumbent status, gold plate retirement plans, and propensity to support the version of democracy that functions as a one party state, the government party, are asking the question much as the British establishment did at the original tea party in Boston Harbor in December, 1773. It was hard to project in 1773 how such an obscure rebellious act would result in the revolutionary tumult only a few years later. Such is the obscure origin of the current tea party insurrection. Smoldering for years, as Washington grew progressively larger and larger and more and more tone deaf, the ignition spark occurred when a little known financial reporter for CNBC, Rick Santelli, went on a spontaneous rant on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, on February 19, 2009. Santelli railed against the new Obama Administration that was willing to spend billions of stimulus money to secure mortgages that had been given out by many banks to individuals who had no assets to pay for them. Santelli spoke up for the average person who plays by the rules, takes appropriate risk, and has no one look out for them when fate determines a bad outcome. Santelli felt something profound had just been broken, the equal opportunity that was at the heart of the American Dream. Little did he know what his four minutes of rant would start:

Within weeks “tea Party” movements broke out across the country, and a slow steady wild fire began. Initially formed as Tea “Taxed Enough Already” Party, the movement began to develop unappreciated depth, impressive patience, and significant political acumen. Early missteps with unprepared candidates such as Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin were learned from, and the skill and winning ways of the candidates began to take hold. Scott Brown winning the Senate seat previously ‘owned’ by Teddy Kennedy in deep Blue state Massachusetts, Scott Walker achieving and then retaining the governorship of Wisconsin despite a furious and vicious effort to defeat him in three elections over four years, and Eric Cantor’s stunning loss to unknown David Brat showed a disciplined and committed movement. Further earthquakes prior to Boehner began to show themselves in the summer Presidential process, with establishment favorites Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton loosing traction despite enormous money advantages, and a ‘throw the bums out and make America great again’ demagogue named Trump storming to the top of the polls. The concept of Trump is closely tied to the poor selections of O’Donnell and Akin but can be seen as the temporary weapon the modern movement is using to evidence its displeasure with the status quo and warn everyone what is coming.

Which brings us back to Boehner. The final straw had nothing to do with taxes per se. It had everything to do with leadership mistaking their positions are not related to their experience with process, but rather, their grasp of principle. Boehner committed the ultimate sin in suggesting that an electoral success of 2014 putting Republicans in the position of leadership of both legislative houses, would lead to clear actions thwart the runaway train that is the constitution subverting Obama administration. Rather than show backbone and take stands that would make clear distinctions of philosophy between republicans and Democrats, the two houses sheepishly folded time and time again, as the President ignored laws and made laws that were never legislated with Obamacare, outsmarted Boehner and McConnell in avoiding any vote on the disastrous Iran agreement that would have at least made all parties responsible for their actions, and finally crumbled into silence on any action on defunding Planned Parenthood’s development as a fetus factory for profit.

The phony tears that are those of Boehner’s supporters suggest that there was little he could do with the numbers in the President’s favor. For Tea Party proponents, the excuses rang hollow. They had labored mightily to give Boehner his majority and hence his Speakership. They saw him much like General McClellan in the Civil War, blaming his lack of action on the forever excuse of not having enough troops or provisions. Lincoln, much like the tea party finally exhausted by the excuses, was willing to take a chance and absorb some heavy punishments on a considerably non-establishment figure, General Ulysses Grant. He stated, ” I can’t spare this man- he fights”. The tea party was not looking for Boehner to win in order to fight, it was looking for him to fight to win.

The tea party has grown into a principled social movement that demands that America return to rules of behavior, limited governmental size, reducing repression on personal freedom, equal opportunity, fiscal sanity, and firm defense of its exceptionalism. In six short years, it has grown beyond insurrection, into something that is beginning to look like revolution. Revolutions are unpredictable, but sometimes are necessary to re-orient a lost compass. One thing is for certain, and John Boehner knows it now if he didn’t before. The tea party is not the provence of a few raving reporters and political outcasts. It’s a political movement that’s rocking the world.

September 19, 2015September 19, 2015

Media Democracy

John Kennedy/ Richard Nixon Presidential Debate October 7th, 1960 — John Kennedy/ Richard Nixon Presidential Debate
October 7th, 1960

Television was barely a decade old in being available to a substantial cross section of the American public, when it vaulted to the role of ‘decider’ in the nation’s democratic process. On the night of October 7th, 1960, two politicians vetted their philosophies in front of a large shared real time audience, and television was there to frame for all time our memory of it. The U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy was seen by viewers as young but capable, prepared, tanned, energetic, and the promising future; the sitting U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon old, cautious, pale, and the establishment past. The image television perpetrated of Kennedy as clear “winner” was out of keeping with the relative realities of the debate itself. Heard by millions more Americans on the radio, it was Nixon, not Kennedy, that was felt to project a more measured, prepared, and in-depth performance. At 47, Nixon was barely three years older then the ‘young’ Kennedy and had shared with Kennedy the generation’s defining life experience of World War II combat service. Unbeknownst to most everybody, it was Kennedy, not Nixon, who was sickly and medicated, only still recovering from an Addisonian crisis several years previously. It was Kennedy, not Nixon, who declared a nonsensical ‘missile gap’ existed between the Soviet Union’s capabilities and that of the United States, ignoring that fact that the US had a several hundreds times more nuclear delivery capacity, but clearly designed to reinforce the vision of the shock of Sputnik in the uninformed audience’s mind.

Kennedy, following the debate, secured public perception as ‘up to’ the job of President with his projection on TV that night, and defeated Nixon in one of the closer elections in US history. Television, as the new media, found in its discovery of Kennedy’s on screen projection, the definition of ‘telegenic’, and was happy to promote the Camelot myth of a young vibrant President and his family as the new definition of leader. Camelot sold a lot of television sets.

In the 55 years since that debate, television has ruled supreme as the venue for definition of a politician, and has guarded that role ruthlessly. Television was adversarial to Lyndon Johnson and particularly Nixon, despite their political success, as they projected poorly on television, and prominently in Nixon’s case, saw the media as the enemy in defining their public perception. The media wanted Reagan to fail, painting him as dangerous and a dullard, but television could not undercut his telegenic presence, that masterfully projected calm, dignity, and humanness.

As television moved into its middle ages as a media force, it has rallied to the need to re-instill the Kennedy magic, first through Bill Clinton, and in a tour de-force, Barrack Obama. Clinton, who nearly put every viewer into a coma with his 1988 droning, overwrought Democratic National Convention speech, finally achieved telegenic Valhalla wagging his finger at the camera, denying sexcapades in the White House and inventing the political television reality show. Obama preened in front of Greek columns and claimed olympian talents of controlling sea levels and ending division on the strength of his world diversified telegenic projection, echoing Kennedy but with a fraction of the political grasp or respect for process. Television needed to balloon these two in particular because the threat of the internet to be even more real time and defining than television, was slowly becoming a reality and threat to the force that television played in defining our discourse.

Unfortunately for television,, the emerging media, the social media through the internet, has loosened television’s tight grip on the narrative. Progressively, the internet has screwed severely with the narrative television has been built to project. The Internet has broken down multiple fortifications television had built around its star child Obama as the global unifier and the smartest man on the planet. Television media groups were stunned when it positioned Donald Trump for collapse by projecting his most stupid, offensive comments and discovered the more he did it, the more the Internet liked what it heard. Trump has thus far proved immune to television defining of him, because he has turned out to be the hybrid, fully cognizant of the reality show deterioration of television and the synthesis of the visual with the immediate and emotional qualities of the Internet.

The latest debate of Republican candidates shows television trying to respond to its slipping position as the primary media vehicle to define this nation’s direction. A large group of diversified, intelligent, and capable conservatives is not exactly what television has in mind when it sees itself as owner and pathfinder for the nation’s consensus. The debate was designed by CNN to be part reality show and part circus side show.

Republican presidential candidates, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, right, and Donald Trump both speak during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015, in Simi Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) — CNN sponsored Republican Presidential Debate – AP photo

The idea was to develop a bunch of mudslinging matches that would show the nation the pettiness and vacuousness of the Republican field, and distract from the emerging disaster that is Hillary and her effect on the virtuous party, the Democrats. Fox was stunned when 24 million Americans tuned in to see the first debate, and CNN wanted to magnify the Trump celebrity factor to make the irrelevant cable network seem relevant again. More than 20 million Americans tuned in to see this second debate. CNN treated them to questions like, ‘Mr Trump says you’re ugly, what do think of him’, ‘Mr. Bush speaks Spanish, shouldn’t he speak English?’ , and ‘ Mr. Paul, Mr. Trump says you don’t belong on this stage, because you only poll at 1%, how do you feel about that?”‘ – among other questions, in this most dangerous and serious of times. Despite CNN’s best attempts, surprisingly and progressively though, an actual debate broke out in the second half, and this bright field of candidates began to find its legs and maneuver into serious discussion, directed at the internet generation, more directed, and personal, and deliberative. Stream of consciousness born for Internet discussion started to develop that television struggles with – What do living fetus organ harvests say about our nation’s character? What are the consequences of citizenship? How does the nation achieve personal highways to success for the most people? What are our mechanisms for dealing with a dangerous world? Progressively, no one missed the visual references as to who is the prettiest, shortest, meanest, or tanned. The celebrity Trump was mollified, quiet, and progressively a non-participant.

Television is in danger of being marginalized into the corner of an internet screen feed, competing with the huge diversity of opinion drivers available. The concept of the nation huddling around the television in the living room is becoming a dated concept in the same way that the newspaper delivered to the door once connected our thoughts. Something that may be quite profound is beginning to project with the lack of message control that once dominated our thoughts through the visual media. It may turn out that the huge audiences are continuing to tune in to the debates, are doing so not so much to watch as to organize their own thoughts. The debate the other night, so designed to define our way of thinking, may have initiated our journey back to a more town hall vetting of ideas, shorter on visual magnetism and longer on the victory of ideas. Whatever comes after television, an internet nourished democracy built on ideas, not personalities, may not be the worst thing The Trump personality comet may actually come to represent nadir of visual consensus, fundamentally mis-interpreted. It may actually be speaking to the final divorce with forced consensus based on visual manipulation. The Trump factor may be saying, we will form our own opinion, thank you. And now we will start looking to the pathfinders that can articulate the ideas that we form. That kind of media democracy might finally put us back on the path to salvation.

September 6, 2015

War and Peace

Syrian War refugees struggle to gain access to Europe greekreporter.com — Syrian War refugees struggle to gain access to Europe /greekreporter.com

In between golfing expeditions on his recent extended summer vacation, the President of the United States must have at various times noted the recent news of the day. There was of course that irritating Hillary Clinton struggling to explain how she had determined to house the nation’s secrets on an unguarded server for her own benefit, as a matter of preference. Then there was that silly Donald Trump ranting about something or the other. Most importantly, it appeared the various golf outings had managed to secure the Iran deal with his democrat politicos, making it possible for a non treaty, with provisions no one has seen, and inspections no one intends to uphold, secure the jihadist radicals as the secure rulers of an Iran emerging as world power for the next President to deal with. That last bit of news, now that was a good one.

Lining up the putt on the 18th green of the Cape Cod golf course, perhaps the President briefly gazed upon the vast ocean that separated his country from the continents beyond, and thought, how wonderful a time of peace can be. After all, he had ended two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pulled American influence completely out of the Middle East, and punctured the quant and old fashioned American resolve to try to always do the right thing, no matter how difficult or potentially risky the situation. That martial, imperial impulse that had dominated American foreign policy since the beginning of World War II had finally met its overdue demise under the disciplined, steady direction of this smartest of all presidents. Now, finally, some real Peace. And the opportunity to spend the Peace Dividend on more pressing needs.

Unfortunately, it turns out, it is our Peace, their War. Despite the determination to remove the warmonger USA from inciting the locals in the Middle East, warmongering has continued at an accelerated pace. An increasingly nasty war contagion is filing the void created by the American withdrawal, and the damage is cataclysmic. Michael Ledeen, a long standing Middle East observer, notes that increasingly larger players are taking sides and developing war strategies in the region that supposedly would have been pacified by removal of the American hegemonist, and are savagely feasting on the carcasses of Syria, Iraq, and Libya the Americans left behind. The visible result is human misery on a massive scale, with millions of refugees fleeing the horror most profoundly effecting Syria, and risking everything to come to the shores of a Europe that doesn’t want them. The Arab nations, trained for decades on the ability to ignore Palestinian refugee plight, are comfortable with thrusting all the refugees toward the hated ottomans in Turkey and the colonialists in Europe, making sure none land in their own countries and mess with their oil monies. The Russians, who have always been world players, seek to mold the war in a way that serves their interests, and are increasingly taking a direct role in the mad center of the tornado, Syria. The greatest war strategists of all are Obama’s new partner, the Iranians, buying anti-ship missiles from the Russians for when it becomes time to clear American ships from the Persian Gulf, strategizing with the Russians to secure President Assad’s position in the Syrian holocaust, and reaping real casualties from the Saudi and United Arab Emirate troops in Yemen, testing their resolve and willingness to die for their oil princes.

War and Peace. Throughout history, the two expressions of human existence have always co-existed, each preventing the other through hard choices. Peace is not the absence of war, but the prevention of it. Despite all the historical precedents, the President thought somehow by withdrawing the policing forces from a pacified Iraq, removing the leadership of Libya and defining no alternative, ignoring the progressive disaster of Syria as if it were a local affair, and releasing the restraints on a jihadist Iran, peace would ensue. Instead he, and the U.S. leadership to come, will have War. Europe, other than Great Britain, always willing to avert its eyes from responsibility and assume that the victory in the cold war was achieved by the attractions of passivist socialism, is now facing the reality of millions of entrants to their societies, and the urgent need to do something. The something is unlikely to allow them to wait to be rescued once again by the U.S. If Europe’s recent brief period of “peace” is to be extended, they may have to finally be willing to admit that the concept of Peace does not survive without constant, aggressive vigilance and defense. The millions and millions of people caught in the middle, as always, will be the sentinel sacrifices, of the dithering democracies.

The President, in his final year of office, probably has plans to enjoy the Peace dividend he has created, and get in some serious golf. I suspect, that War, is going to turn out to be his very uncomfortable caddy.

August 30, 2015August 30, 2015

Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

Trump, Clinton and the decline of a nation abcnews.go.com — Trump, Clinton and the decline of a nation
abcnews.go.com

At the opening of William Shakespeare’s peerless study of malevolence, Richard III, the protagonist initiates his soliloquy with the seven words that focus the entire play – Now is the winter of our discontent. To Richard the seeming stability enjoyed by the elites is about to see the havoc of the discontented, from unpredictable and opaque directions, until the world experiences the reordering that will upturn the status quo. In more down to earth terms, the whole miserable truth is, that the joke is on them.

Such is our current season of discontent. The polls suggest that the position of chief executive of the most powerful country on earth may come down to a choice between a bombastic clown and a truth-addled crook. In Great Britain, there is a groundswell in the Labour Party to select as leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a man who would make Karl Marx blush regarding his proletariat uber-sympathies. In France, the leading candidate for the Presidency of France is forced to evict her father from his own party for saying out loud the prejudices upon which the party was founded.

The discontent crosses philosophies and principles. The unifying force is the discontent itself. Legions of people who feel their particular issues have been stomped in the dust by the elites who set the rules that the rest must live by, and the elites blithely ignore. To the discontented, it is refreshing for a Donald Trump to admit what they always suspected – that patronage is purchased, and the entire governing body is in on it. He does what they wish they could do, act out, and call people out, without recriminations. The rule of law has crumbled behind the ever shifting sands of lawyerisms, so why not suggest extra-legislative means harshly correcting the inequities? For the discontented, Trump doesn’t have core beliefs, just the cojones to do something to restore their voice.

Trump is pitted against Clinton, the poster child of name calling and victimhood. She stands for the nihilist principle – Let me do what I want, and you get to do what you want. She might be the first candidate in history to whom the candidate who presumptively will run against her, proudly admits to having previously bought her patronage. Yet even Clinton stands vulnerable to attacks from even farther out on the anarchist fringe from a progressively popular Bernie Sanders, who wants to take the ‘us versus them’ to a celestial level. The toxic stew stands to drowned out any deliberative debate as to the country’s problems, as the emotional discontent gains further traction.

The discontent in Great Britain threatens the status quo, with competing nationalisms driving progressive unprincipled extremism, from the ‘throw the rascals out until it looks like England again’ mentality of UKIP, to the ‘drain the capitalists of their money and power’ invectives of Corbyn the rest of the Labour party seems helpless to thwart. Tony Blair stands aghast at the unleashing of Corbynmania but seems clueless as to how his peculiar brand of elitism helped to create the monster. The European Union, and by proxy the dominant German backers, cling to their bureaucratic dictums that demand the obedience of all under its puritan reach, yet are progressively alarmed at the increasingly nationalistic populations that thumb their nose and suggest that if they are to be ruled by a bastard elite, better a bastard elite they recognize and to which they can relate .

The discontent surges not knowing necessarily what it wants, only sure it doesn’t want the status quo. Why have a constitution if no one follows it? Why follow the rules if the elite tell you that those that don’t follow the rules, will receive an equal if not greater piece of the pie? We are deep into our winter of discontent, and the former balancing forces of a stable society maybe unable to restore the accepted order, or the predictable outcomes. For Richard III, when the tidal forces he unshackled came back upon him, he temporarily sought refuge from the progressive calamity, willing to give up “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” When Catesby urges him to withdraw from battle, achieve the steed, and therefore safety he requested, Richard III knows his destiny is the calamity he has unleashed, responding, “Slave, I have set my life upon the cast, and I will stand the hazard of a die!”

It is the mystery of our time to see whether our current protagonists will have Richard’s courage to see their role in stoking the darker shades of our nature, to destiny’s fitting conclusion.

August 22, 2015August 23, 2015

Felix Mendelssohn and the Romantic Age

Fingals Cave, Staffa, Inner Hebrides Scotland

At the western edge of the island land masses that form the Hebrides off the coast of Scotland, stands a little tuft of volcanic elevation known as Staffa. Barely a quarter mile in area, the southern most tip of this uninhabited island faces the huge expanse of the Atlantic with a peculiar formation of crevice, cave, and stone referred to as Fingals Cave. Despite its natural isolation, it has been reknowned for as long as there has been humanity on the islands known as Albion for the strange cathedral like natural formation of its prismatic hexagonal basalt columns formed by the slow cooling masses of sea lava that pushed out of the sea and were reoriented by intermittent flooding of the lava flows by the great ocean. Natural formations such as Fingals Cave have taken on supernatural characteristics to those who are open to its coalescence of sights and sounds that seem to have been directed by an unseen hand into something beyond the sum of its parts. At a certain time of day, in a certain light, the very rational explanation of the natural formation in the shadows and mists is progressively lost to the mysterious otherworldly sensual experience of that which is beyond explanation.

It is in that place, that an entire cultural line of creative thought we now refer to as the Romantic Age propelled out of the rationality of the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Enlightenment, with man as rational thinker, and God as Engineer, saw the world as ordered and explainable, limited only by the means available to understand it. At the turn of the 18th century and for fifty years following, a reaction to this ordered universe developed in the cultural world that connected the internal world of unspoken thoughts and dreams to the great unknown of the supernatural, and sought expressions in their writing, art, and music. The writings of Shelley, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Robert Burns and William Blake, the paintings of Goya and Friedrich, and the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, and Berlioz provided a reaction and withdrawal from the very real turmoil of the marshal and nationalist Romanticist impulses optimized by the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

Though a multicultural movement seen in every western society of the time, the greatest amount of definition came from the german remnant of the Holy Roman Empire, through its philosophers Harmann, Goethe and Schiller. The German expression of “Sturm and Drang”, literally Storm and Drive, referred to sublimation of the rationalist to the internal turmoil of both individualism and emotion. The natural world took on progressive attraction and awe, as it tended to stimulate unique emotions, and provided escape from the brutal realities of the development of state militaries and the darker effects upon people of the mass scale of the Industrial Revolution.

Felix Mendelssohn is the somewhat under-appreciated musical master of his time. Typical for his age, he accomplished a prodigious amount in the very short life span so common before the Age of Medicine. Born in 1809 in Hamburg of a prominent intellectual Jewish family, he suffered under the rigid anti-semitism of european culture.Raised in a secular home, he was eventually converted to Christianity, but insufficiently Christian for most of european society, and insufficiently Jewish for his own understanding of his people and ancestry. Although his family with its Christian conversion took the name Bartholdy, Mendelssohn never fully dropped his ancestral name, and his courageous juxtaposition defined his relationships for the rest of his life. This inner turmoil provided an exceptional platform for Harmann’s Sturm and Drang, and the undeniable genius that was Mendelssohn proved a fortress of this movement’s expression over his short 38 years on earth. From the 17th century’s end to the atomic age, genius was the province of birth, not formed through scholastic preparation. This particular form of genius was celebrated for its polyglot capabilities in language, music, and art, and Mendelssohn was from childhood recognized for the depth of his intellect and the prodigy level of his talents. Like Mozart, he was born a musical prodigy, by age 17 already considered at the highest order of pianist performers and composers, completing his seminal overture to the Midsummer Night’s Dream by age 16, and the aforementioned ode to Fingals Cave by 21. The Symphonies poured out in his twenties and the great Violin Concerto in E Minor by age 33. The music was sonic, pictorial, and nativist, connecting to the internal but never losing its relationship with the classical roots from which it sprung.

It was Mendelssohn’s unwillingness to sever his connections with the ancestry of musical expression the offended the more radical romantic dreamers like Liszt and Berlioz, and Mendelssohn’s pride in his jewish roots that even more offended the german racialist Wagner, who worked to demean Mendelssohn’s reputation where he could. Mendelssohn created a very personal dream world that celebrated nature and individual but painted with a cool light that seemed too rational for the more disordered and exhibitionist world that a performer like Liszt inhabited. Mendelssohn’ s universe foreshadowed more than later cool impressionism of Debussy and Matisse than the dense emotionalism of Mahler and Van Gogh. Mendelssohn also was selfless in almost single handedly bringing back to light the genius that was Johann Sebastian Bach, almost completely buried in the past, as well as the more present works of Schubert and Schumann to prominence. It was Wagner’s racialist hatred, perhaps additionally fueled by Mendelssohn’s apparent earlier indifference to the youthful Wagner’s composing efforts, that nearly buried Mendelssohn’s musical memory. In Nazi Germany, Mendelssohn’s works were banned as reactionary and his influence scrubbed, but the universal connection felt by his audience and particularly the performers who admired the seamless perfection that was his Violin Concerto would not let his musical expression die. To the horror of the racialists, Mendelssohn’s very germaness overwhelmed their ignorant theories, and his sublime work combined with his rescue of former German cultural greatness makes him one of the titans of Germany’s significant cultural gift to humanity.

In today’s world, where our current homage is to the twin temples of Settled Science and Athletics, it is nice to harken back to the creative geniuses that saw pleasure and awe in the unsettled and mysterious nature of life, and celebrated its obtuse and otherworldly side. We don’t have to travel to Staffa and linger in the cathedral like cove that is Fingals Cave to feel our connection with the grandeur that is God’s Creation and our soul’s connection to it. We only need to close our eyes and let a genius from another age take us there and make us one with it.

August 16, 2015August 16, 2015

Vice President Biden Gets It

Vice President Joseph Biden at Chattanooga memorial services for slain soldiers Jason Davis/Getty Images — Vice President Joseph Biden at Chattanooga memorial services for slain soldiers
Jason Davis/Getty Images

President Obama has been firm with concept that America’s heavy footprint in the Middle East is partially responsible for stoking the intense violence of the region and that our withdrawal will reduce the nidus for the conflict. He has been adament that the descriptiion of the violence as a premeditated goal of a radicalized Islam is our contribution to the seeds of that violence, and has no place in American thinking. His view has led to the conceptualization of the Major Hassan as “workplace violence”, the Tsarnaev Boston bombing as “lone wolf” actions, and the recent Chattanooga recruiting station attack as a problem of “mental illness”.

Specific to the Chattanooga attack of July 16th, 2015, five unarmed military personnel were murdered by a Palestinian American named Mohammed Youssef Abdulazeez, whose parents left the middle east in 1996, and accepted American citizenship, but never left their fundamental Islamist beliefs behind. Abdulazeez, pummeled by a life of drug abuse, poor personal discipline costing him stable employment, and consumed by the internal rage of arab youth felt denied their position as the superior race, attained an AK 47 automatic assault rifle and unloaded 100 rounds into people who could not defend themselves, until he was put down by police fire.

On August 15th, 2015, the military finally secured a combined service for the five servicemen and their families, a month past the point where the rest of the country has already put the event behind them and moved on to other things. In a country anxious to avert its eyes to the growing threat of radicalized Islam, assisted by the Averter in Chief, the individual loss of soldiers does not take hold. After all, the country lives through assaults every week in its major cities as part of routine urban violence and does nothing but salute the occasional thug that determined to strike back against the police. The shared sacrifice idealization of a soldier defending their country no longer secures an emotional response among a population where the great majority of the population no longer serves, or knows someone who has.

The Vice President of this country is thankfully different, and eloquently expressed what is rarely expressed anymore by those in power. Vice President Biden has reason to connect with loss of loved ones; in 1972 he lost his daughter and wife in a car accident in which his two sons, Beau and Hunter were seriously injured. This summer he lost his son Beau, Delaware’s attorney general, to brain cancer. Beau, the Biden hope for the future, a major in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, and assumed next governor of Delaware, was taken from the Vice President with a vicious cancer that has clearly and deeply affected the Vice President’s views on life, sacrifice, and loss. There is likely no loss as personal as a child to a parent, and places Biden in direct sympathy with those military families who must face their overwhelming loss in silence from a country that prefers not to know.

Vice Presidents do funerals, and perform eulogies. But there was something very special about the eulogy Vice President Biden gave yesterday. Something so heartfelt and direct, only someone who has lost, could understand. With his eulogy, Biden showed great clarity in what it means to serve and defend the ramparts, what it means to sacrifice, and what it means to be an American. Sometimes the most unpredictable events elevate a person and make them worthy of our attention. In an election season where the presumptive republican front runner clowns his way through policy discussion, and the presumptive democratic front runner has shown herself to be laden with corruption and indiscipline, Vice President Biden may have just set himself apart, and shown the world that there is still a place for someone who gets it.

Watch the speech in its entirety, and you will get it, too.

August 8, 2015August 8, 2015

Averting a Train Wreck

Donald Trump at the republican presidential debate

On Thursday evening, August 6th,2015, an estimated 24 million Americans tuned in to watch the national broadcast of a debate of republican presidential aspirants. With such an audience, the standard was set for the highest rated non sports related telecast in cable network history. I’m fairly confident this huge audience didn’t tune in to see Rand Paul articulate libertarianism, judge what Megyn Kelly was wearing, or query whether Jeb Bush would respond to the name Jeb Bush. No, the great majority tuned in, I believe, to be potential witnesses to a real time train wreck. On June 16th, the Donald Trump train left the station with his announcement that he was running for the Presidency, and has been teetering on the rails ever since. A nation’s audience reveled in the chance he just might in front of everybody swerve completely off the rails and self destruct.

Donald Trump is the triumphant example of the progressive superficial vacuousness that has overcome the nation’s political discourse. The Trump agenda for the country is essentially bluster. Were it not for bluster, he would have no program at all. But to Trump, what ails the country is not the lack of formative ideas to solve the nation’s challenges, it is the lack of politicians being willing to lay it on the line, and tell it like it is. Or at least tell it as Trump think it is to be told. He sees the world not in layers of complex historical trends, intellectual assessments, and strategic insights, only as groups of winners and losers. If you win you are “wonderful”. If you fail, you are “terrible” and a “loser”. In 1987, Donald Trump burst upon the national consciousness authoring a best seller called “Art of the Deal”, in which he relayed his recipe for success. Among its breakthrough concepts, Think Big and Get the Word Out. As Trump tells it, ” I like to think big. If you going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.” The Donald starred in his own television show in which he identified “losers” and “fired” them. He states he would bringing this cutting edge management style to the executive branch of the nation’s government.

Is it feasible that 25% of the nation’s voting public, as currently reflected in the polls, sees Trump’s political core thought as innovative and worthy of the nation’s highest office? I suspect not, but there has been a progressive tendency to look for leaders that elicit emotional reaction, rather than measured thought. Its seen in the tendency to want to look to elect the “first” of something – the “first African American”, the “first Woman”, the “first Other”. Leaders that stoke victimization seem more caring about individual problems and concerns, rather than promoting challenging processes that might actually solve them. Politicians also seek to identify the “villains” – the “Rich”, the “Gun Owner”, or the “Christian zealot”. Trump nestles into the psyche of the average voter that is not entirely willing to investigate why problems exist, but fairly certain they are being at least impersonally screwed by the establishment. Since Trump sees himself as never being duped, he aligns himself with the voters, who see him as protecting them against unseen forces.

As he is the deliverer of emotional retorts, Trump is under no pressure to secure is the logic or the consistency of his statements. He has been able to make outrageous and contradictory statements, because to him, the outrage is not his lack of facts, it is everyone else’s lack of outrage. As Kevin Williamson in National Review articulates:

Asked to provide evidence for his daft conspiracy theory that our illegal-immigration crisis is a result of the Mexican government’s intentionally flooding the United States with platoons of rapists, Trump’s answer was, essentially, “I heard it from a guy.” Challenged on his support for a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system, Trump described the system of his dreams in one word: “better.” As though nobody had ever thought: “What we need is better policies instead of worse policies.” Trump’s mind is so full of Trump that there isn’t any room for ideas, or even basic knowledge.

Logic like that used to be recognized in American politics as a form of satire. Pat Paulson, a sketch comedian on the Smothers Brothers television show ran for the Presidency in 1968 and five times thereafter on the Straight Talking American Government(STAG) party

Pat Paulsen, Presidential candidate 1968,1972,1980,1988,1992,1996

platform, with the healthy comedic cynicism of an observer of body politics’ inherent hypocrisies. Paulsen, freely willing to be a flip flopper and double talker regarding his policy statements, when caught in his incoherence, always responded with the catch phrase “picky, picky, picky!” His presidential campaign slogan was “I upped my standards, now, up yours!” Paulsen always secured a certain protest vote, but everybody knew he was in on the joke.

In 1992, H Ross Perot, a Texas businessman with a particular hatred for the sitting President George Herbert Walker Bush, set himself as a Trumpian candidate, and his form of satire was certainly less funny and somewhat more ominous in its success. He was quoted as saying obtuse policy statements such as, “ If someone as blessed as I am not willing to clean out the barn, who will?” and “If you can’t stand a little sacrifice and you can’t stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we’re never going to straighten this country out.” Whatever potential policies Perot felt such remarks would evolve into, he never let on, but he translated it into 19% of the national vote in 1992, and although he didn’t win a single state’s electoral vote, Perot managed to take down a sitting President and give us Bill Clinton.

H Ross Perot Presidential candidate 1992 — H Ross Perot
Presidential candidate 1992

Perot’s success set the stage for the current “businessman savior” Trump, who feels his supposed dominance in the business world would translate into the more arcane and compromise filled world of politics. Of course such talents never need to show their skill level running for any lower office – the Chief Executive office of the country is fundamentally just big enough for their egos.

The 2016 republican field was felt to be one of the most talented in recent history, with multiple vetted and articulate candidates with willingness to confront one of the more challenging political environments in years. Into this maelstrom comes the distortion of Trump, who looks to steal the energy and attention of the moment to pump his own ego and potentially upset the applecart. Trump, the runaway train, threatens to take his circus “Independent” and achieve the same notoriety that propelled Perot, and likely bring another Clinton into the office. It would suit Trump fine as he believes the office holders are meant to be “managed” for favors, and their policies consumer items for purchase. It certainly wouldn’t phase him as to which party would be in power, as power comes from the Art of the Deal. Is the country so gone that it can no longer participate in a real battle of ideas and help mold its destiny? My gut sense is that the country has had its flirtation with the superficial (see current administration) and will trade it for some serious adults, not the theater of the absurd. If so, Trump’s train will soon be passenger-less, and its conductor once again reduced to running beauty pageants, wrestling events, and roulette wheels. I suspect after a period of time in the klieg lights, that will suit the conductor of the crazy train just fine.

August 2, 2015August 2, 2015

The Lion in Winter

This week was one of the more difficult weeks in my life. My great companion of thirteen years, my dog Woodrow, succumbed to a nasty cancer of his spleen, that like a thief in the night, stole without warning our living bond. Clinically the event was perpetrated as the result of a spontaneous rupture of a malignant hemangiosarcoma, but it presented as internal bleeding,spontaneous deterioration, and the acute need to make a rapid and very,very painful decision. Like the warrior king he always was, Woodrow fought the vicious foe tenaciously for several hours. He would not let his warrior heart give in…

I had to do it for him, to end his suffering. The battle lost, the warrior king was at rest for the ages. His best companion’s deep suffering continues.

Above is the king at the height of his powers. An exotic mix of Golden Retriever and Chow, he carried the dual personality characteristics of beauty and beast. Rescued in his youth from a kill shelter in Idaho, he maintained always the frontier spirit of the West in his soul. He was a throwback. Self sufficient. A hunter. A loner. He liked being outside in the elements when other wussified dogs of the suburbs to which his rescue delivered him headed in doors at the first weather. He would go on vision quests, long walks which irritated the neighbors and brought him in a precarious love hate relationship with the local constabulary. He did not suffer fools, neither dogs nor humans. If a stray coyote sought to take over the territory, Woodrow made sure there would be none of that.

He brought an intense bond with his owners in that it was easy to see there was nothing to own, only life to share. He did not whine, and he took care of his own wounds – the occasional untoward moments in life. A missing canine. Facial scars from raccoons. The stiff gait of many a battle.

He also let you know he was your wing man. Always by your side. He deeply enjoyed human contact, and showed real gratefulness for the comfortable life he ended up achieving through rescue, released from the wild, difficult, unknown world of his youth and the harrowing experience of the shelter.

He was strong and beautiful, but as life does to us all, he was slowly and insidiously drawn down by the ravages of age. The hips stiffened, and the massive shoulder muscles weakened. He no longer could run, and progressively getting up and down became a daily challenge. He had become the Lion in Winter. In his last year, he would still guard his territory from the porch, surveying his domain from his padded bed – weakened, but still not suffering fools such as the UPS man. The body began to deteriorate before the final insult, but the warrior heart remained strong and the deep eyes always burned with the fires of the ancient eternal soul within.

The night of nights came for Woodrow, as it must inevitably for all of us. The stark rupture from the bonds of life to the vagaries of death is the essential moment that reminds us of the precious gift that is life. In this same week, we are confronted with our modern culture’s confusion with the gift. We note society’s faux outrage with a hunter’s kill of a somewhat domesticated lion in the country of Zimbabwe that dominates people’s emotions internationally. The people of Zimbabwe are confused as to the intensity of the emotion of people for a lion they did not know, in a country where lions kill people every year, and other animals every day. In the same week, we are exposed to moral emptiness of a bureaucratic human extermination process run by Planned Parenthood, exposed by video to be actively selling late term aborted fetus body parts for profit, taking care not to damage the “crop”. The latest video identifies the horrifying reality that in some cases, the execution is not fast enough, and the fetus escapes the womb fully formed and viable – what used to be universally recognized as a human baby. No matter. The baby is “harvested” anyway. Society, unable any longer to sustain a soul, unable to understand the life creation process stands mute. As the Nazi monster physician Joseph Mengele ominously and presciently was quoted,

” The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

We have progressively lost our wonder of the miracle of creation, God sent, with natural order of things a struggle to be mastered and the awesome beauty and diversity of life to be celebrated. To live in a world where humans become divisible consumer products and animals strange objects of worship demeans the entire constellation of the sacred gift of life. The universe has balanced it all, the joy and tragedy, struggle and triumph, wonder and loss that makes the idea of living on a fulfilling one. We can only hope to be worthy of the miracle and live a life totally respectful of it.

Norse legend suggests that for Woodrow , as one of God’s creatures, his time on Earth done, a lush meadow awaits him between this world and the next, where he can be young and strong again, body restored to its majesty. There he can wait, until one day he notes a familiar scent, lifts his eyes forward, and leaves the pack behind. And comes running to me, joy thus restored and the universe now healed… and from that point, together, we cross the rainbow bridge, to our shared eternal destiny.

Were it to be that the universe indeed worked that way, that would be all right with me.

July 26, 2015

People We Should Know #27 – Tom Cotton

1st Lieutenant Tom Cotton in Iraq theatlantic.com — 1st Lieutenant Tom Cotton in Iraq with the 101st Airborne theatlantic.com

In Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith goes to Washington, an American everyman Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington as an obscure replacement Senator from an insignificant Western state. At a critical moment in the film, the inexperienced Senator Smith, under pressure from the corrupt establishment and facing personal damage to his reputation, determines to fight them all and stand up for the principles of democracy, and the people who he represented. He gives it all up to filibuster a corrupt bill and, in the end, wins the day for all that is good and fair in America. The establishment, so blinded by the way Washington works, sees ultimately in Senator Smith the essentials of America they left behind so very long ago, and there is a epiphany of sorts. Well, on January 6th, 2015, another Western everyman was sworn in to the United States Senate and this everyman has done everything to set the current establishment on its heels. From his first day he has stood athwart the efforts of the establishment to accede to the authoritarians of Iran in their relentless drive to obtain nuclear weapon capacity and threaten the world. The new saga might be called Mr. Tom Cotton Goes to Washington, and this senator is rapidly becoming one of Ramparts People We Should Know.

Tom Cotton, like the fictional Jimmy Stewart, came out of small town America, born in the small Arkansas town of Dardanelle, population 4745. His parents were good Arkansas democrats and supporters of Governor Clinton. Son Thomas however was a contrarian from the start, absorbing on his own the conservative wave effecting the South. Small town or not, young Cotton was a unique intellectual talent, and his future course one of one achievement after another. He was an outstanding high school student, and was accepted to Harvard in 1995. He graduated from Harvard and was admitted to the Claremont Institute for graduate studies, determining to return to Harvard after a year when he was accepted into Harvard Law School. Graduating in 2002, he clerked at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, then entered into practice of law with a prestigious law firm. By 2004, the very different nature of this individual to respond to his internal sense of purpose led him to quit the firm and join the Army, at the very height of instability in Iraq. He not only joined, but decided not to take the obvious administrative officer route of attaining a captaincy in the Judge Advocate Corps his law education positioned him for, but instead decided on a combat route, starting as a Corporal, and entering the US Army’s Officer Candidate School, earning a 2nd Lieutenant commission. He then attended both US Army Airborne School and Ranger School, and was assigned to the 101st Airborne as a platoon leader in Iraq in 2004. In 2006, Cotton became a 1st Lieutenant and was re-assigned state-side to Arlington National Cemetery as a member of the Old Guard Unit. The restless Cotton pined to return to the front lines and was re-assigned in 2008 to Lagham Province in Afghanistan where he completed another tour. Having completed two combat tours, Cotton was honorably discharged in 2009, rejoining the US Army Reserves in 2010 and finally discharged as a Captain in 2013.

Tom Cotton by age 35 had achieved a lifetime of accomplishment. Graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law. Two combat tours in the US Army. Airborne School, Ranger School and honorable discharge as a US Army Captain. But Tom Cotton has only just gotten started. His political persona and the unique personality that couples a formidable intellect with the willingness to speak his mind on principle regardless of the risk, first presented on his initial combat tour in Iraq. In 2006, the New Times proudly published classified material exposing the government’s secret program monitoring terrorist’s finances. An obscure combat Lieutenant in Iraq named Tom Cotton read the article and determined to let the world know that to front line soldiers, what the New York Times had done risked American lives and bordered on treasonous. He wrote an open letter, a technique he would use in the future, to go around the establishment and get his opinion out directly to the public. The letter struck a cord and was an internet sensation. This obscure lieutenant became overnight an international figure, and an almost immediate thorn in the side to his superiors. The need to speak his mind risked court marshal and given the political sensitivities of army hierarchy, the potential destruction of his career. It might have been the first time that a letter on the internet required a decision by the Army Chief of Staff, but luckily for Cotton, General Peter Schoomacher backed his right to state his opinion.

The legend of Cotton was born at that moment in conservative circles, and he became a future star to be nurtured. When a House of Representative seat opened up in 2012, Cotton’s political career began with a run for the seat, and he was elected to Arkansas’s 4th Congressional District in 2012, defeating his opponent 59% to 37%. With the Cotton resume now in national focus, he was immediately appreciated for his intellectual and rhetorical skills on the House floor, and his reputation grew well beyond typical freshman status. By 2014, a vulnerable democrat Senator Mark Pryor was in Cotton’s sights, and a similar electoral wuppin’ took place, with the ever more popular and skilled Cotton defeating Pryor 56.5% to 39.5%.

Now Senator, Tom Cotton has focused his attention with laser beam focus on the Obama’s administration’s focus on overturning thirty years of American policy toward the theocrat dictators of Iran and their desire for nuclear weaponry. In typical Cotton focus, where the rest of the establishment political crowd has passively stood by as Obama. determined to get an agreement at any cost, has given in on one critical issue after another to Iran, Cotton has singlehandedly manned the rhetorical and constitutional Ramparts against the administration’s appeasement. Using his now famous Open Letter technique, Cotton published a letter to the Ayatollah countersigned by 47 other senators, that any executive agreement presented by President Obama designed to subvert the constitutional treaty process mandated in the Constitution would not have the obligations of a treaty:

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

Like Cotton’s previous letter, this brought faux outrage from opponents, and particular disdain from the President, who has sought extra-constitutional actions as his modus operandi again and again. Despite the enormous pressures applied from all directions, Cotton as usual remained non-plussed. Cotton has been the direct visible opponent of each Obama appeasement to Iran – from sanction removal to anywhere anytime site inspection to centrifuge research to release of a monster cache of frozen funds to, the final outrage, the furtherance of Iran’s ballistic missile systems, thus improving Iran’s capacity to threaten the world with weapon deliverance, once they have nuclear weapon capacity. Throwing aside President Obama’s usual deceptive tactic of stating the opposite of the obvious to a superficially attentive population and media, Cotton has become a pillar of strength in the effort to protect the world against the Iranian threat. He has proven he can hold his principled opinion even under the challenge of hostile media. Cotton did not rest when the President and the Secretary of State attempted to present the agreement as a fait accompli. He has led to organizing of the Senate to review document in its entirety, including side deals with Iran the administration had purposefully obscured from public notice as they ran contrary to the narrative of a “tough” deal.

Senator Tom Cotton is 38 years old, the youngest Senator in the US Senate, and already is the stiff backed principled opposition to the idea the United States is a has been power that must except its decline, and subject itself to decline as a punishment for the “wrong” it has done as a superpower. Harvard Law graduate. Combat Veteran. Captain in the Army. US Representative. US Senator. Lion in the defense of America and her unique constitutional design promoting limited government and individual freedom. At 38, the future sky’s the limit for Senator Tom Cotton. Resoundingly, Tom Cotton is Ramparts People We Should Know #27 . If Frank Capra,were to make the movie now, Mr. Tom Cotton Goes to Washington very likely would have an even more impressive sequel to come.