Author: bfaure

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Crossroads

     The past week has not showered our civilization in glory.  President Obama spent the greater part of an hour at the State of the Union address ignoring an nation’s economic tribulation with an impressively deaf ear to what sage pundit Mark Steyn calls “our unprecedented world record brokeness“.   Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich surveys the ever approaching economic calamity and states what we are missing is a drive to colonize the moon by 2020.  His opponent for the Republican Party nomination for president viewing the debt bomb and destructive government driven healthcare initiative known as Obamacare as “nothing to get angry about.“

     I was out with friends last night that decried the lack of seriousness of our so called leaders when it comes to western civilization’s critical debate of our times, our ability to recognize and respond to our impending debt crisis.  It is obviously more enjoyable for politicians to talk about solar panels and moon colonies rather than the sacrifice and hard decisions necessary to structure a process that maintains our quality of life while preserving our fiscal capacity for that quality.  All the difficult questions that are in front of us –  what is a safety net and what is an entitlement, how are entitlements paid for and what security do they truly provide, what are national investments and what are national kickbacks,  what reflects a caring society and what reflects a functioning one – so many important questions, so many others to consider, and yet, a deafening silence. 

     The extent of the problem has been reviewed many times on this blog  but the cold hard facts never stop to send shivers up the intellectual spine of rational thinkers.  The 31% of the entire liable debt of the 235 years of the existence of a national government of the United States was accumulated in the last three years, with no end in sight of the upward spiral.  The Gross Domestic Product of the United States, the assembled market value of all the goods and services produced in  a calender year is now less than the acquired debt.  Confiscation by tax of the entire assets of the 400 richest Americans would no longer pay for more than one year of the nation’s annual deficit.  The unfunded mandates of the United States estimated at over 100 Trillion dollars is more than the accumulated wealth of all the world’s economies.  The estimated current individual responsibility of the debt to every living American is 48, 835 dollars and counting.  The United States borrows 43 cents for every dollar it spends, and the chief country it borrows from is its ever growing adversary.



        
It seems we are at a crossroads, and the guides we have counted on our entire lives are clueless as to which road portends a better future. Leadership that forever gives us what we want, versus showing the way to what we need, is not, minus some profound epiphany, in the current crop of those who seek to lead us. The British politician Edmund Burke has been quoted as saying, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” It looks like we are going to have to be our own guides on the correct road to national redemption, and pull our so called leaders kicking and screaming into recognition of the basic truths that face us all. In this case to paraphrase Burke we good men are going to have to overcome the do-nothings to inevitably triumph on the crossroads moment of our time.

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The State of The Union Sham

     The United States Constitution identifies a specific responsibility of the head of the executive branch, the President, to report to the legislative branch his or her understanding as to the current state of the nation and recommend possible agendas for review and development.  Article 2 Section 3 specific to the powers and responsibilities of the Executive branch, requires of the executive:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information as to the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient

     From the first President of the United States to the current one, the requirement has been taken on with variable sincerity.  After Washington’s first address to the Congress in person, the tradition was converted to a report read indirectly by a designate to the Congress on the request of Thomas Jefferson, to avoid the appearance in Jefferson’s eyes of magisterial overtones, so committed was Jefferson to the concept of co-equal branches of government.  Woodrow Wilson took back the role of personally delivering the speech  in front of a joint session and ever since the event has taken on appearance of spectacle.  The eventual presence of television did what nearly 200 years of Presidential speeches could not, warp the purpose of the president’s requirement to report to Congress into one in which he reported directly to the American people, with Congress, Judiciary, and assembled military figures and important guests the captive props for the President’s stage.  The modern media have become willing accomplices in the elevation of the speech to theater, as it allowed them to create a dramatic venue.  No one has bothered to note the damage done to the nation’s Framers original intent.

     The President who may have begun the process of sticking a fork in the serious nature of an executive report was our first actor in chief, Ronald Reagan, who began to highlight personal stories in the speech by inviting guests who represented “American hero” props for the president’s agenda.  Soon no president could be without identifying a “hero”, or seem to appear to be insensitive to the ‘average joe’s’ role in the American agenda.  President Clinton took the speech to another level, converting the report into a never ending litany of self absorbed projects without any correlative agenda other than they all sprang from his disorganized wonk personality.  Clinton’s state of the union speeches introduced America to the concept of speech as endurance contest, with members of Congress visibly falling asleep during the speech, including one specially poignant moment when his own wife Hillary nodded off.

    President Obama has managed however in 2012 to be the first President to give a state of the union speech in which he never discussed the state of the union.  Certainly the job of explaining your role in projecting an agenda that has led to 10% unemployment, 5 million fewer jobs then when he took office, a 5 Trillion dollar increase in the nation’s debt in three years, an empty energy plan based on undermining any form of energy development in cost effective, efficient and available fuel sources, and a myriad of foreign policy reversals is assuredly not easy. But the speech managed to score a perfect avoidance of any subjects that would address any of these pressing issues, instead becoming a platform for another campaign speech.  The president even devised a new prop not thought of before, inviting Warren Buffet’s secretary to sit with the first lady and substituting the typical “American Hero” prop with instead an average “American Victim” that in its current tax policy, America has decided to screw, making her supposedly pay more taxes on a percentage basis than her billionaire boss Buffet.

     And we were all asked to watch.  It is part of the sham of the current American political process that the newspeak Orwell warned us about has penetrated the President’s duty to Congress. President Obama demands passage of a bill he just vetoed.  President Obama expresses his willingness to drill for oil a week after killing the Keystone pipeline  that would take such oil to refineries.  President Obama decries the role of regulation in burdening job growth then describes one after another governmental process to “assure fairness”.  President Obama talks of budgetary restraint in the greatest outpouring of national deficit spending in our nation’s history.

     Is this the cornerstone of an agenda designed to advance America as envisioned by the Founders, or the creaky pablum of a politician who is no longer even aware of why this event, the State of the Union, exists in the first place?     We are in the throes of a President who sits not astride history, but rather, has turned his back on it.  Unfortunately he reflects an ever growing number of Americans who assume their bounty has come about because of all encompassing government, not as a result of any individual’s labors. If President Obama will not assess the state of the union as required by his oath as executive, I humbly will.  Citizens, the State of the Union is bad,  and its going to take a real awakening to stop all the theatrics, and get down to some real and lasting solutions.  We need to recognize a sham when we see one confronting us, and note it rhymes with scam.  Let’s use the Constitution to remove those who want to make a pretense of all that it stands for, with their every word and inaction.

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The Newt Re-Boot

      A cat is said to have nine lives.  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich may indeed have a feline pedigree.  Closing polls in preparation for the vote in the South Carolina primary for the republican nomination for the U.S. presidency suggest a lead in the double digits for Gingrich in a bell weather state that has unfailingly predicted the republican nominee over the years with their primary’s winner.  The 68 year old Gingrich has managed to become the establishment’s worst nightmare in his apparent teflon coating to their unceasing denigration of his persona and candidacy.  The essential summation of their argument, whether it be the national media, Mitt Romney, the National Review editorial board, the republican party establishment, or essentially anyone who has ever known him well, is “Come on, Newt! Don’t you get it? Nobody likes you!”

     Well, apparently some people out there like Newt. Gingrich has managed to amazingly position himself as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, after every other conceivable alternative so obviously better suited for the mantle has fallen away.  Gingrich’s path to supremacy has been patterned after your local county fair sponsored demolition derby – take your tired old car out there and rear end everyone else’s car until you are the last man standing.  Even if your car barely moves, as long as its the last one running, you win.  Gingrich was first viewed last summer as an out of touch has been with no chance, starting with the incomprehensibly stupid attack on Paul Ryan, the only politician in recent memory to articulate a rational plan to save us from catastrophic deficit doom.  Noting the profound mistake of unserious thinking in an era of a very serious electorate, Gingrich bided his time and somehow managed to cling to a political life raft long enough to get to the debate season of last fall. The debates performed in repetitive fashion showed that being able to formulate a cohesive thought in a reproducible fashion managed to elevate him above half the pretenders in the field.  Conservatives took notice, not of his conservatism, but rather his relative eloquence, and found themselves determined to avoid the perpetual quandary of nominating conservatives who are incapable of enunciating a coherent defense of conservatism. 

     Suddenly Gingrich’s debating star began to rise with a parallel rise in the polls, and with it, the re-focus on all his foibles. And oh, those foibles!  The taking of money from Fanny and Freddy, the string of incoherent ideas ping ponging from libertarianism to socialist thought, the mine field personal life, the continuing attacks on free market capitalism – all packaged in one candidate.  The focus on the foibles made voters shake themselves dry of their quick dip in the waters of Newt, and he proved an also ran consecutively in both Iowa and New Hampshire, finishing behind a candidate who believes the United States should build a surrounding moat and kiss the rest of the world goodbye.  One would have thought that would be enough to have, as the brilliant Eliza Doolittle once stated so insightfully, ” dun ’em in”.

     In little more than a week, all that has changed. Governor Perry has dropped out and endorsed Newt, Congressman Ron Paul keeps talking, which eliminates any chance of him being elected, and Rick Santorum is, well, Rick Santorum.  For all the conservatives, constitutionalists, tea party advocates, limited government crusaders, return to standards warriors, and Ryan, Christie, Jindal, and Palin dreamers, the last car in the way of the statist candidate Romney is —    newt.

     Now that didn’t exactly work out quite like we were hoping, did it?  The crusading hero to finally lead us out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves is this guy?  It boggles the mind. At least it is a recognition that in this time of soundbites, tweets, and collusional press, that the strains of democracy can still push and pull the system to propel candidates to face up to the chaos and try to find a winning message.  The electoral process was designed to have candidates fine tune their message in response to the voters across the country, not walk away with the prize before the first ballot was struck.  This could take awhile, and to the candidates’ and nation’s benefit.   Romney versus Gingrich.  Hmmm.  Not exactly Frazier – Ali but compared to the alternative…. a nation shudders.

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Distant Mirror

    

      2011 was the 70th anniversary of two epic world shaping events, the cataclysmic invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany and the Japanese surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. World War II, a conflagration that resulted in over 60 million deaths and involved every corner of the earth, continues today to cast a profound shadow over almost every country’s posture in the modern world and their reaction to perceived actions or historical inequities. Historians often describe the value of a distant mirror in objectively understanding historical events, waiting a sufficient number of decades until emotions cool and perspective clarifies. World War II is reaching that status, as the population that remembers in real time the events that led to the war passes on, and the books that recorded those events with acute memory become dated.   The enormous number of volumes attempting to delineate the story of World War II is staggering, and one could surmise that something that has been treated so expansively by the world’s great historians would leave no room for further assessment. The contrary appears to be true, however, as new summary statements regarding the war and its denouement continue to be published.  Two celebrated treatments have recently come forward and both are from eminent British historians, Max Hastings and Andrew Roberts.  I am in the process of reading, and learning from them both.

     Andrew Roberts has participated in the indispensable internet interview platform of the Hoover Institute, Uncommon Knowledge,  and reviews many of the elements that defined the war’s reasons for being and eventual outcome.  The learning lessons are many, but I’d like to bring forward a few for some comment prior to hearing Robert’s views in their entirety.

     1) The radical political historical degenerate – Central to the calamity of World War II was the identification of a specific type of political leader who viewed the world in historical scope with their particular views in inexorable ascendancy, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Tojo.  As Roberts points out, Hitler’s single minded focus on the concept of racial superiority and its need to establish hegemony over lesser races and ideologies, dominated every decision he took and prevented any kind of logical strategic thinking.  Stalin, ideologically locked in his view of communism as the inevitable dominant ideology, suffered from similar strategic delusions, to the incalculable suffering of his people. Tojo had more precise view of what was possible, but no less delusional in his view of racial superiority, to the extent that he allowed his armies to perpetrate horrendous treatment and enslavement of millions of Asians. This overarching historical view, that any current catastrophic sacrifice is worth the eventual outcome of ideological purity did not die with World War II.  Currently, Iran’s  Khamenei and Ahmadinejad espouse the pretense of the ’12th Imam’, their pathological hatred of Jews and the existence of Israel, and their willingness to initiate world conflict to achieve the eventual Islamic caliphate resonates almost exactly to the verbiage of World War II’s racialists.  No one should make the assumption that the outcome of such degenerate ideological purity would not again be cataclysm.

     2) Wars fought by ideologues – The battles in World War II between Hitler and Stalin dwarf in size, scope,  and sacrifice any comparable event in world history.  The battles of Leningrad, Kursk, and Stalingrad have no reason for having been fought the way they were beyond the two leader’s need to participate in a forum that implied the clash of entire civilizations. Eastern front battles were titanic, because the leaders viewed their ideology as needing the purification provided by titanic sacrifice, with the elimination of any momentary weakness in will or dangerous sprouting of rational thought.  Strategic retreats to improve the circumstance of battle have zero value to ideologues, who view the circumstances of the battle not as a military set-piece but a battle of the gods of ideology.  The battles were fought on purpose with the blunt impact of massive forces, with no consideration whats so ever for the individual combatant.  The result for the Germans were the deaths of millions of infantrymen  and for the Russians, tens of millions of civilians and soldiers.  Ideology through history has resulted in enormously greater destruction than any puny value its more positive ideals may have provided some in a peaceful society.

     3) The innate weakness of ideological struggle- Roberts takes time to describe the relatively small sacrifice of the United States in World War II in proportion to the enormous sacrifices of the Germans and Russians, and the resultant ongoing dissonance between the former allies’ view of the conflict, and the current world.  The lesson I take from World War II is somewhat different.  The Germans may have “cracked” their resolve in taking on the enormous losses resulting from the Russian invasion, losing 4 out of 5 German soldiers to the Russians, but they did so purposefully, for the battles against the ultimate ideological competitor, Bolshevism, required civilizational sacrifice.  This was not about defeating a country so much as wiping out forever an ideology and a people.  The western allies were strategic thinkers and were not about to bleed themselves to death to prove a point.  If the German Infantry were to be superior, the allies were superior on the ocean and in the air, and eventually technologically. The battle without a Russian cataclysm would have been more drawn out and more tactical, but ideology always makes its critical mistake in thinking its people will sacrifice forever for purity of ideology. I think the eternal truth of  individual rationalism would have eventually dissected the German effort from within, and led eventually to the same outcome.  As sane men, the Rommels and Guederians wouldn’t have forever participated in insanity. Not without great pain, but inevitably, none the less.

    Enjoy a great historian’s perspective in  Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge interview, courtesy of Powerline, of  Andrew Roberts:

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A Genius Shows Us Everyday Life

     A relatively obscure local artist in his lifetime, whose entire known catalogue of artwork may encompass 36 paintings, has become an absolute modern superstar draw in any retrospective containing even one of his works.  The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University in England is only the latest gallery to experience the enormous public passion and wonderment associated with Johannes Vermeer.  A collection of paintings focused on women in domestic scenes in the Netherlands of the 17th century is crowned by four masterpieces of Vermeer including The Lacemaker pictured above, on loan from the Louvre in France.  The tens of thousands that are crowding the exhibit are appreciating in person what most of us because of the minuscule opportunities to see Vermeer collections will never get to see – the chance to view several examples at once of one of the great creative geniuses of western civilization.

     The most spectacular example of the Vermeer effect was the once in a lifetime 1995-1996 Washington DC National Gallery of Art exhibition of 21 of Vermeer’s 36 known paintings that resulted in miles long waiting lines and near hysteria for the artist that painted almost exclusively everyday people in repose before a window illuminated by daylight.  Each rare Vermeer example of 17th century Dutch life encompasses a magic concoction of light, perspective, and composition that makes the simplest scene epic and immortal.  The recognition of what was achieved by the man from Delft is the reason why Vermeer’s reputation in the world of art has grown to such immense status.

     Johannes Vermeer was born on October 31, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands and lived his entire life of 43 years in the same city.  His father owned an inn in the town square but was additionally known as a highly skilled silkweaver.  The growing prosperity of the burgeoning middle class of craftsmen and businessmen in the Spanish Province Of the Netherlands led to a heightened interest in culture and with it art of Dutch artists.  A true golden age of Dutch art including masters such as Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, and Frans Hals developed as wealthy patriotic men of the recently protestant Netherlands wished to view examples of Dutch culture and everyday life in their homes.  Vermeer’s father recognized the opportunity and initiated an art dealership which his son eventually took on, becoming an outlet for his own work.  It is not clear if Vermeer received specific instruction, but art had become  an outlet for an explosion in cultural expression and the opportunities for numerous learning venues were probably available through his father’s business.  His compositional style was what was popular at the time, genre and portraiture painting, placing people in their daily activities.  But  Johannes Vermeer was like no other of his time,though,  in talent, though it would remain an obscure regional secret during his lifetime due to his extremely small output, and reality that essentially one benefactor, Pieter Van Ruijven, purchased the majority of his work, preventing dissemination.  Vermeer, to his detriment during his lifetime, was a very slow, meticulous painter and constructionist, and at the height of his craft produced at the rate of two or three paintings a year.

     But what creation. Vermeer managed to suspend time into an eternal vortex, taking waves of light and bouncing them in complex glows off walls, objects, and people that added immense definition and warmth to simple daylight illumination.  The etherial effects of light elevated the subjects into a more sustained profound dignity of presence. The simple acts of pouring milk, sewing, or just quiet contemplation became in Vermeer’s paintings exemplary actions.  Painting no longer had to be about heroic or religious subjects to be epic or spiritual.  Living life and participating in its activities through Vermeer achieved  a status once attributed only to saints and princes.  It is impossible to view a Vermeer and not feel the simple pride and attraction to being human.  Vermeer celebrated this richness of culture through the prolific and luxurious use of costly pigment paints, such as the very expensive ultramarine blue pigment made from lapus stone that dominates his painting color pallets, likely placing a significant financial burden on the family.  The richness of color blasts through the natural light of the day, suffusing the subjects in an incomparable tonal warmth that few other artists have achieved. The symphony of color is perfectly accented by a spectacular understanding of light and shadow, that combined with Vermeer’s preternatural sense of composition draws the viewer into  the perfect point of definition of each painting, a very modern sense of perspective at a time when the internal light was muted, interrupted only by the occasional candle.  Not a single detail of the painting is ignored to create the sense of the whole, using everything in the painting to reflect upon everything else, resulting in works though small in size, worthy of hours of contemplation just to take it all in.

     The use of expensive pigments, camara obscura for perspective, and meticulous, unhurried constructions reveal in Vermeer a self awareness of his talent.  However economically damaging, his perfectionism did not allow a rushed product, and only those that are self aware would continually sacrifice their economic success for their personal satisfaction in achievement.  The Dutch Republic, freeing itself of its Spanish overlords, found itself in constant conflict with its neighbors jealous of its upstart nature and economic vitality. The effect on the Dutch economy of constant conflict was suffocating and was particularly destructive to the resources needed to support a non-essential like art.  Vermeer struggled mightily with debt, and the pressures of it may have led to his demise at 43.  His tiny art output, however has had profound effect on the art world and secondarily on western culture itself.  No one has ever managed to approach Vermeer’s achievement of portraying the act of being human as a condition of sacred, poetic beauty. Everybody who has ever gazed upon a Vermeer knows it in their heart.

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Someone Else Talking 1932

     Dominic Sandbrook of London’s Daily Mail looks to 2012 as a year that portends an ominous future for Europe.  The specter of the series of events regarding the progressive economic calamity  surrounding Europe and its Euro currency mirrors the underpinnings of trouble that enveloped Europe in 1932, and Sandbrook recalls the political reaction to them with apprehension for Europe’s future.  1932 is a year that Ramparts of Civilization has explored before. The natural tendency of drowning people is to panic and pull down those who would attempt to save them, and politically the reaction is inevitably self preservation and personal security first. The comfort provided by dictatorial fascism has repeatedly reared its head on such primitive, reactionary impulses.  Read Sandbrook’s entire article and see if you don’t think he is on to something.

     On an equally cheery note, Mark Steyn of National Review Online ruminates on the passive nature of people and governments to fail to recognize the impending view of unsupportable debts and their effect on future prosperity.  The clamor of 1932 was for governments to do something, anything, to stop the progressive slide into the myre, and people were willing to overlook the loss of personal freedom and the dark underbelly of fascistic and communist movements to at least find someone who would aggressively overcome the societal passivity to problem solving.  Read Steyn’s entire article and decide whether you think he is a false prophet.

     Happy New Year.

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2011- Annus Horribilis or Mirabilis?

   

    The end of the year leads defenders of the Ramparts to reflect as to whether the year preceding advanced the ideals of western civilization, or damaged them. The year 2011 had its positive moments that suggested some slivers of hope as to the ultimate triumph of man’s battle with himself to secure a better future, but there were also dark clouds galore. It seems to be fundamentally a year in transition, the middle set of a three set match, the pawn takes pawn of a chess battle. We at the Ramparts project the events as threads of a tapestry, that show why this site and others like it that look at events with some perspective of history, have their place. Lets work our way through the significant moments and reflect upon them from our perspective as guardians of the Ramparts of Civilization.

     January 8th – U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords experiences an attempted assassination :     In a horrific moment in time, a deranged sociopath severely wounds congresswoman Giffords and kills six others during a political event in her home district in Tucson, Arizona.  Though the murderer is quickly identified as a disturbed individual with no identifiable rationalization beyond anarchy and medical evidence of schizophrenia, the killer is trumpeted in the media as a presumptive right wing “tea party” extremist possibly inspired by an innocuous graphic on a Sarah Palin website using targets as a means of identifying potentially politically vulnerable politicians for the next election. President Obama declares the event at a memorial for the fallen as an example of an outgrowth of our lack of civility in our discourse, then proceeds to vilify the rest of the year those who civilly disagree with him.  The use of a national tragedy to advance political  ends – not unique, but certainly not our shining hour.

     February 6th – the Green Bay Packers win Superbowl XLV 31-25 over the Pittsburgh Steelers : A win for western civilization as a team with numerous injuries and the worst starting position of all the teams in the playoffs triumphs over adversity to win the game of games.  Okay, maybe not earth shaking in terms of the effect on preservation of our western ideals, but as a part owner of said team, I felt a need for some shameless trumpeting.

     February 7th – Southern Sudan celebrates its ‘peaceful’ independence from Sudan and forms the Republic of South Sudan- President Woodrow Wilson would take pride in the principle of the right of self- determination of indigenous people (excepting his own country), but the founding of South Sudan from Sudan divided one of the poorest nations of the world and managed to create two economic and health care basket cases from one.  The previous battle for the secession of southern Sudan from Sudan was marred by genocidal tendencies on both sides in what was termed by one international aid official as “human rights abuses off the Richter Scale”.  The world continues to confuse the concept of the rights of a collective people to self govern regardless of their ability to be sustainable, thereby promoting the generation of conflict after conflict without the possibility of any hope or life improvement of the individual people suffering within the conflicted lands.  Basket case governments continue to proliferate.

     February 11th – Arab Spring Revolution brings the resignation of President Mubarak of Egypt – The most populous Arab nation in the world throws out its President dictator of nearly three decades in a tumultuous revolution.  The initial exuberance of the international elite to declare a victory for freedom and individual liberty, however, is chastened over the year as the military remains entrenched and a series of elections turns the government over to Islamists antithetical to the rights of minorities, personal liberty, and western concepts of human rights and justice, and with more than a little passion for the concept of “jihad”. The popular liberal naivete of clamoring for democracy before the societal principles of rights and responsibilities are encrypted and political and judicial institutions are in place to assure its unbiased utilization remain a damning weakness of the clamor for unfettered democracy as a cure all tool for civilization.  Across the Arab world, the individual must continue to live in fear of what “democracy” may mean to his individual freedoms, a harrowing thought.

     March 7th – President Obama renews military tribunals at Guantanamo – President Obama declared upon his inauguration that within a year the penitentiary at Guantanamo, Cuba would be closed and the terrorists held within, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 murderer, would be tried under domestic civil courts and laws. Two years later, the well thought out process of the Bush administration to deal with country-less war combatants, so impugned by Obama and his Justice department, proved to be unassailable.  The cave in of the President on this issue hurt him severely on his support from the left, and exposed the rank political nature of the arguments that followed the 9/11 tragedy. The consideration of providing the rights of a U.S. citizen under the constitution to enemy combatants who claim no country as their own was shown to be illogical, and served only to reflect the administration’s disdain for the special nature of those rights, when they later in the year killed remotely the American citizen terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, without a trial or tribunal of any kind.

     April 5th – Justice David Prosser wins re-election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court – The story that perhaps best outlines the progressively titanic battle of the forces of government statism and the rights of individuals has been running non-stop in the state of Wisconsin since the November, 2010 election of Republican governor Scott Walker and an accompanying republican legislature.  Faced with the strangulating deficits accrued by incompetent and irresponsible predecessors in office, Governor Walker campaigned on a platform of budgetary discipline and solvency that once in office, he fulfilled almost immediately.  A balanced budget required by law was achieved partially by restraining the unfettered perks of government unions and asking government employees to pay a percent of their health and pension benefits, more reflective of what the private sector employee faces.  In an explosion foreshadowing the cataclysm to come on a national level when even more spectacular debt is finally faced up to, the unions fought back with a vengeance and furor, pouring tens of millions of dollars and thousands of protesters into the maelstrom that became the Wisconsin capital of Madison. Having little sway in effecting the popularly elected governor and legislature, the unions turned the ratchet tightly onto their own, demanding legislative obstruction and obtaining the flight to Illinois of their democrat legislative stoolies, and using the courts to attempt to obstruct the legislative process.  County liberal justices put forth restraining orders on the legislative process restricting the democratic will of the populous from the previous election, and the restraint came down to the ultimate control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the election between sitting judge David Prosser and his rabidly liberal opponent Joanne Kloppenberg, as to whether a democracy would function through its elected legislature or its courts.  In a race with huge implications and massive turnout, Prosser beat back Kloppenberg by 7000 votes out of over a million and a half cast, and the voice of the elected legislative process was preserved.  The result in Wisconsin has been a balanced budget for the first time in over a decade without federal stimulus dollars or stolen funds from other constituencies, an emerging national hero for governmental sanity in Walker, and a never say die anarchist strategy of the unions who fear their power over the democrat party is at risk.  The result has been never ending special recall elections to attempt to overturn the results of the previous election, and one that is planned to threaten Walker himself in April, 2012.  Will the perks of the privileged and protected be preserved in the face of obvious crisis?  The question is one that all western governments are facing and will likely determine our future as responsible democratic republics. Stay tuned. In a Wisconsin microcosm, this is The Story of our times.

     May 2nd – American special forces kill Osama Bin Laden –  A spectacular raid into Pakistan leads to the cornering and killing of the central figure of the 9/11 attack and murderer of 3000 people,  who premeditatively ignited a world wide war on terrorism that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.  The principle concept of a death cult that saw the suppression of the rights of millions and slaughtering of innocents for the ‘assured’ reward in the afterlife came to a instantaneous end in the identification of a pathetic old man who watched himself endlessly on videos and titilated himself with pornography.  The inherent emptiness of a philosophy that determines for others at the threat of a gun a righteous life was once again exposed.  For President Obama, and a world that believes in human worth, a huge victory.

     September 17th – Occupy Wall Street begins its sit in in New York City-  The reverse mirror image to the Tea Party first presents itself in New York as the people’s representative of the economic inequities that exist in society, as emblazoned in their chant, “we are the 99%”.  Unlike with the Tea Party of the previous year, the clarity of the message quickly degenerates into the concerns of multiple special interests, that have as their core philosophy, they have it, we want it! .  The stated cohesion of the eventual demonstrations that broke out the world over is that society has an obligation to assure the security, comfort, and health of all, and the concept of self actualization and personal responsibility an outdated concept.  Like so many events of recent years in western society, Occupy is driven by the desire to separate the will of a society to provide from its means of production, and as Hayak surmised, would inevitably lead to the demise of free will and the power of the market to improve the life experience.  TEA PARTY vs OCCUPIERS , the battle royale of the 21st century.

     October 5th – Apple founder Stephen Jobs dies –  the genius behind the development of the personal computer, the portable music library, the smart phone, and the interactive tablet started his dream in his parent’s garage, daring to be different and self reliant, and ended it feeling the same way.  Jobs’ very being was tied up in providing to each individual sufficient connection to the surrounding universe to assure each  maximal freedom in interpreting their place in it.  He made the world forever an interconnected place, and disdained the idea of a government picking technology winners.  At a time when creative invention was felt all but lost, Jobs sent it soaring towards the heavens.   

     October 18th – Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, five years in capitivity is exchanged for over 1000 Palestinian prisoners –  The only functioning democracy in the middle East respecting the rights within the government of religious and political minorities, shows its vulnerability in the commitment made to one of its own.  Israel, in weighing the trade of a single human life, for many who sought the death of innocents to further their cause, shows the way for all belligerents to wear down the will of the nation state that believes in its citizens.  For Gilad Shalit, freedom.  For the nation of Israel, the strength of the commitment to one of its defenders, threatens its very defense.  The most difficult of trades, for sure.

     November 12th – Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigns – The burgeoning crisis of the Euro and its underlying exposure of the frailties of the concept of a social democracy, progressed through Italy with the fall of the elected government of Berlusconi and the appointment of a pan- European techi-bureaucrat, showed the progressive failure of European democracies to convince their populations of the need to show fiscal discipline and improved self reliance.  Like the Greek government before it, the Italians faced an intolerable situation of more citizens receiving the bounties of society than those capable of underwriting it, and collapsed under the weight of burgeoning debt.  The inflexibility of the Euro to allow the southern European  Union nations to manage their debt led to a crisis in the pan European economic union and the eventual fragmentation of the united front governing single market policy, with great Britain on one side and Germany and France on the other.  Far from solved, the temporary fix through “market fracture” only delays into 2012 the telling bill of this crisis.  In a continent where previous wars were measured in decades and even centuries, the inequities that are developing are an ominous sign of what could develop.

     December 18th – the last American troops leave Iraq ending eight years of American military involvement –  The quiet withdrawal seems anti-climatic to a military force that overthrew a vicious dictator in Saddam Hussein, endured a violent, costly guerilla war, birthed a messy arab democracy, and crushed a world wide terrorist network on the battle fields of the Tigris and Euphrates.  Whatever the outcome to Iraq (and the fragile democracy within hours of the withdrawal already seemed perilously close to collapse), the incredible performance of the military force in the face of severe conditions and variable public support stands as an epic performance in the annuals of western military actions.  The dominant conqueror in the field, they left with no territory ever as the goal, only the sacrifice to bring the fragile sprout of human freedom a tenuous root in an ancient soil of humanity that had been so long without.  It was a supreme ramparts of civilization effort, and no outcome can ever diminish it.

 

     2011 ended with little settled and many open ended story lines.  Historically, the perspective is too soon to discern titanic shifts in the human experience.   The defenders of the Ramparts will have to stay vigilant, as the enemies to freedom are many and persistent. 2012 will be the palate upon which the varied colors of the mosaic of history will be drawn.  Here’s hoping for the good guys winning out.

    

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White Christmas

    

      From my vantage point on the ramparts in Wisconsin, a white Christmas is a distinctly unlikely possibility.  The strange fact regarding Christmas in the northern climes is that most everybody hopes they will experience Christmas under a heavy blanket of the whitestuff, and then insist that for the rest of the forlorn winter they will be free of the burden of snow.  The connectivity of Christmas with snow is obviously a phenomena of its northern European inflections.  The birth of Christ in the sacred isolation of a manger occured in Bethlehem, Judea, a region of earth in which the climate is obviously not conducive to snow.  The great proportion of Christians in the world celebrating the Christmas event live in the temperate band around the equator, and will likely never experience snow without travelling to it. 

     The image of a white Christmas as a positive and comforting vision is I think directly related to the underlying unique conceptionalization of Christmas as an event celebrating man being at peace with himself.  The enormous stresses and strains of a modern society allow for almost no period of restful reflection and introspection.  The holiday of Christmas itself has been subsumed by a commercial pressure to buy  and exchange gifts, find time to acknowledge everyone who interacts with you in your life, and provide these public expressions in a short pressure cooker in time while continuing to perform your daily duties.  It all sounds exhausting, doesn’t it?  And thus the power of snow to put a progressive blanket that slows all that hyperkinetic activity to a halt.  We envision ourselves having a moment where the element of snow has put all the world on hold, and we are therefore forgiven for taking a collective breath, and just relaxing.  The momentary lull allows the sublimated emotions to take root – man at peace with himself and with others, the beauty of the natural world, the shared experience of slowing down and taking stocking of one’s blessings, the direct connection of man with his God through the gift of His only Son.  It can all happen without snow, but snow in its universal whiteness blanketing all, and exempting none, makes these subliminal emotions a communal experience shared in real time.

     In 1940, Irving Berlin, the songwriter, recognized the power of juxtaposing the images of snow and Christmas in a song that has become the pre-eminent reflection of the emotions of the holiday.  He was writing in balmy California where snow had no chance of occuring in his immediate pervue but understood what people were seeking was a return to a simpler less stressful reflection of the holiday.  The world was at war and the United States struggling to stay out of the confligration.  The future was highly uncertain, and frankly, felt ominous.  Berlin, maybe the best reflector of his nation’s emotional pulse, projected in the song White Christmas  a world where emotions were cooled by a blanket of snow, where the centerpiece of all thoughts was home, and no one need feel negativity.

     The song was not an immediate success, but as the nation became consumed by war and 15 million men and women were pulled far from their homes into mortal danger, the song struck a powerful chord with the nation, and has never let go.  The version performed  by Bing Crosby in 1942, and rerecorded in 1947 has become the greatest single recording seller of all time at over 50 million, and the many versions by other artists have sent White Christmas well over 100 million in sales making it easily the most recorded song of all time.  The song became an Academy Award winner in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn and likely secured for Crosby the position as chief interpretor of the Christmas song catalogue for the rest of his life.  Corny in its setting and using a female performer to voice over Crosby’s duet partner, the original movie performance still holds a special power of the Christmas song genre to this day.   We are always caught by the song’s special awareness of how complicated the world has become, and how we all need to take a breath, and forgive ourselves for our pressured lives.

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People We Should Know #19 – Vaclav Havel

    

   This weekend of December, 2011, continues to experience the loss of some of the true giants defending the ramparts of western civilization. The dissident playwright who became his country’s founding father, Vaclav Havel, passed away today at the age of 75.  Mssr. Havel would be pleased to be recognized as a defender of the Ramparts – no life in the 20th century is more tied to the concept of the free expression of ideas as the fundamental weapon in the liberation from totalitarianism. He may have been a little put off to share the ramparts stage with his alter-ego Czech nemesis, Vaclav Klaus, current President of the Czech Republic, and Ramparts People We Should Know #1 – but he would probably have shrugged his shoulders and moved on.  He was always a calm estuary in a turbulent sea of dangerous events, and was always about the achieving the ultimate goal in a steady non-violent fashion.  This quiet, steady playwright, though, was truly one of the momentous figures of the 20th century, participating in a 25 year struggle to lift his country and in effect all of Eastern Europe from the suffocating embrace of totalitarianism, and in celebration of his unequivocally triumphal life, deserves to be Ramparts People We Should Know #19.

     Vaclav Havel was the epitome of what proved to be the ultimate weapon of the Cold War, a starry eyed intellectual professing ideas.  A modestly popular playwright with a gift for beautiful expression in his native tongue, Havel grew into adulthood in the 1960’s into a stultifying blanket of oppression behind the so called iron curtain of Soviet dominated eastern Europe.  He was every bit a child of the sixties, yearning for the right to listen to the Rolling Stones, or participate in freestyle relationships.  Unlike the “hippie” culture of the west, however, Havel as an intellectual, saw the reflection of such superficial rights in the greater context of fundamental and universal human rights that were savaged by the all powerful few running the Politburo and her Soviet puppet clients.  The final straw for him was the short lived Prague Spring in 1968 which Communist leader Alexander Dubcek made the mistake of assuming the Communism could co-exist with basic human rights. Havel participated in the briefly permitted public forums under Dubcek and became recognized as a national figure in Czechoslovakia.  The Soviet impulse to crush any dissent culminated in the invasion of Warsaw Pact forces, and the ruthless toppling of Dubcek’s short lived experiment. 

     The effect on Havel was galvanizing, and despite enormous pressures and multiple imprisonments, he proceeded to devise a long term strategy for the exposure of the farce of the propped up system and its collapse, forming Charter 77, a group of writers and dissidents who would expose the system’s frailties, contradictions, and crimes.  With other movements such as Solidarity in Poland the pressure on monobloc began to grow and cracks progressively developed, climaxing in the spectacular year of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall and sequential loss of control over events by the tyrants of the the Warsaw Pact group.  The week of November 24th, 1989, proved to be Czechoslovakia’s turn, with the presence of daily massive demonstrations in the hundreds of thousands in what was eventually termed the Velvet Revolution culminating in the November 24th resignation of the entire Czech communist leadership.  Typical for the heady times, the populations of eastern Europe turned to their revolutionaries to lead, with variable results, but in Czechoslovakia’s case, Havel as President despite the lack of training was up to the task.  He shepherded the progressive movement of Czechoslovakia into the European Union and NATO and managed to navigate the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in a peaceful and successful transition in 1992.

     Havel lived long enough to see his beloved homeland take a proud irrevocable position in the European community and experience the flowering of a truly free society.  Like all idealists he found himself somewhat disappointed with the eventual compromises required in a society where all views require respect, but like the calm contemplater he was, lived to accept the realities of the modern world. What he achieved with the quiet but overwhelming power of the ideas of liberty was stunning and historical, and the changes to the world once assumed impossible, as a result of courageous visionaries like Havel, blossomed into the brilliant sunshine of freedom peaceably, in one of the true miracles of this or any other era.

     The story of Havel deserves a special place in our hall of heroes who have manned the ramparts defending the fragile ideals of our western civilization.  He passes quietly into a elite group of warriors who will be remembered for their understanding, that the most devastating weapon against totalitarianism is not the number of military divisions, but the simple power of ideas.

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A War Comes To An ‘End’

     The Associated Press reports today on the final withdrawal of American forces from the territory of Iraq, ending an 8 year ordeal that strained the fabric of American society and cost an estimated 800 billion in resources and over 4000 American lives.  The withdrawal of the forces was successfully navigated by a President and administration that had declared their very presence in Iraq a massive mistake and primary incitement to further violence in the region, yet in the end, declared the outcome of a functioning democratic Iraq a worthwhile sequelae of the original action.  The contrarian notion of abhorring the action and celebrating the outcome is part of the conflicted nature of almost all the thought processes that developed out of the stunning violence of September 11th, 2001, and the protracted aftermath of the United States through both its actions and inactions.

     History takes significant time and measured thought to provide the informative feedback that brings clarity.  The “off the cuff” reactionaries that inhabit many of our academic and governmental institutions base much of their comments on the cacophany of unfiltered stream of information of the day and innate biases of their political persuasion, rather than any inciteful analysis of history and the foundations that led to the actions of the last ten years.  As the decision to take action in Iraq and the measure of the outcome gets appropriate perspective over time, perhaps we will be able to better synthesize the thought processes that led to the better outcomes and discern those that failed, in a ongoing mission to forge a better society and civilized existence.  The politicians will keep score with a skewered scorecard that maximizes their best impulses and hides their worst for their own benefit.  A society is more than a politician’s means of employment, though, and a healthy society takes the time to understand itself and its actions that allows for progress and development that transcends politician’s egocentric interpretations.

     The recently departed Christopher Hitchens was quoted as saying a pseudo-intellectual is a person who is sure he is right about what ain’t so. At Ramparts we will try to not make that mistake. The Iraq war was a component of many considerations that grew out of the Soviet incursion into Afganistan in the late 1970’s and the mujahideen response to the invasion, the overthrow of the Shah and eventual rise of Islamo-fascism, the Palestinian Israeli conflict, the invasion of Kuwait in 1991 by Saddam Hussein, and the successful development of a world wide nihilistic terror organization that culminated in 9/11.  Try as we might to extricate it as a separate, unrelated,  and perhaps unnecessary diversion, history will not allow.  Thanks to Instapundit and the producers of Uncommon Knowledge, we have today a unique snapshot of perspective of two discerning thinkers in 2002, prior to Iraq, that provides a reminder of what was going through our minds we did not know what we know now, and didn’t have the confident swagger of the pseudo-intellectuals of today for whom it all seems so obvious.  It is no small gift of history that the two participants were Christopher Hitchens, recently departed, and Newt Gingrich, who now hopes to be President.