Author: bfaure

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People We Should Know #12 – Bernard Lewis

     Since the uprising in Tunisia in November, 2010, the revolutionary fervor in the Muslim world has spread like wildfire through Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and now, Syria. It has caught the West unprepared despite an almost ten year education in the tumultuous strains in the Muslim world emanating from September 11, 2001, through Afghanistan and Iraq. The struggle in the West to respond with a rational and coordinated consensus has its roots in the modern tendency to consider political science over history as the intellectual tool best served to predict an actionable course and satisfactory outcome. Debate revolves around “freedom fighters” and “democracy” as if they had acknowledged similar definitions in the Muslim world to their political expression in the West. One historian has dominated the discussion regarding the ongoing upheaval in defense of historical rather than political interpretations. He is Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and the foremost western scholar on medieval Islam. At 95 years of age, he continues to show prodigious energy and insight regarding the historical perspective of what is currently transpiring in the Middle East and Northern Africa. In an in-depth interview the Wall Street Journal has interviewed Dr. Lewis, and his insights remind us why he is one of Ramparts of Civilization’s People We Should Know.
     Bernard Lewis has been a major contributor to Western thought regarding Islam since the 1950’s. Fluent in twelve languages, he has had unique capacity to delve into Islamic and Ottoman era writings and archives since the time of Muhammad to put together a penetrating view of the Arab and Islamic relationships, psyche, and rationalizations. He has articulated strong opinions regarding the Armenian- Turkish conflict in 1915 and the subsequent massacre, the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and more recently, the rise of what he is credited as first describing as “Islamic Fundamentalism” in the late 1970’s originating in Iran and propagating across the Islamic world over the last 40 years. He was first to make the world aware of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fusion of religious doctrine and political fascism, and later, in 1998, warned the world regarding the then little known Osama Bin Laden’s writings for a means of returning the Islamic Caliphate to a new dominant position through the “ideology of jihadism” and his declaration of war on the United States.
     With his warnings resulting in sorrowful reality with the attack of 9/11, Dr. Lewis has been a frequent consultant to the United States government in an effort to provide clarity to the chaotic aftermath and a potential strategy for dealing with the direct threat radical Islam holds toward Western ideals and security. He is a proponent of firm responses that define western resolve, rather than weak appeasement, as he feels the Islamic psyche abhors signs of weakness as the product of an inferior people. He sees the current conflicts as progressions in what he terms the “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam that began in the seventh century with Islam’s rapid rise and continues to this day.
     Specific to the current upheavals, he applauds the uprisings as a legitimate expression of a suppressed people, but cautions the West not to ‘take sides’ and insist on western versions of democracy and freedom as the means for restoring people’s legitimate rights in these countries. He believes republican expression can provide the rightful provision of people’s economic concerns, educational rights, liberal justice, and societal respect with democracy a mature outgrowthand endgame, rather than the tool of initiation of such rights.  He notes that fascist governments have achieved power through legitimate democratic processes when the societies were not sufficiently evolved and this is a obvious risk currently in the promotion of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood as “democratic” parties.  He is most concerned with Iran’s fixation with the messianic story of the Twelfth Imam and Iran’s frequently stated goal to apocalyptic ally eliminate the state of Israel, with the device being atomic weaponry.  He notes that the concept of mutually assured destruction the prevented the ultimate cataclysm between the Soviet Union and the United States in the Cold War provides no element of deterrence to a society in which the achievement of death in a religiously inspired jihad is the purest means to achieve paradise. 

     We are in a significant historical period with far reaching consequences, and people like Bernard Lewis offer sage advice to the protection of the concepts of freedom, equality, and liberal thought that we hold so dear.  A significant part of the world is trying to find its means of expression of those concepts, and we should be very careful that we are constructive in our actions, or a dangerous darkness has the potential to descend upon us all.

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People We Should Know #11 – Eva Cassidy

     Sometimes the brightest flames shine for the briefest time. Life is funny that way. A virtually unheard of songstress named Eva Cassidy has become one of the all time leaders in album sales for solo vocal musicians with essentially all the music sales occurring after she died at the incredibly unfair age of 33 years of age. Toiling in essentially complete obscurity in small clubs around Washington DC in the 1990’s, Eva produced a few recorded sets of music that represent our only available record of her brilliant versatility in the entire lexicon of song music, regardless of the genre. At a point where it looked like a wider public may finally recognize her talent, she took ill, and past from our view in a few short months. A solitary melanoma removed from her back three years prior, had metastasized and spread virulently and ruthlessly throughout, and the woman known as the Songbird was extinguished.

      Eva was borne and spent her entire brief life in the Washington DC area, but her song interpretation was innate and universal.  A talented self taught musician, she understood the instrument that was the human voice and brought out all its capacities.  She therefore showed an amazing range that included the ability to sing gospel, jazz, country, and popular music with equal skill, and an interpretative quality that made unique the most well known songs.  Her treatment of Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” made her an ‘overnight’ sensation in England several years after her death,  and is achingly beautiful and respectful to the wistful melancholies of the music and Yip Harburg’s lyrics.   She could additionally ramp up her pace and swing in the best traditions of Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee without mimicking them, as appreciated in songs like “Cheek To Cheek”.   She had a spot-on higher range that allowed her to drill notes in the way of the great gospel singers without sounding  harsh.  She was simply a magnificent musical vehicle for the Cosmic American Sound that had we had any more time to appreciate, may have put her in the pantheon of the short list of singers we turn to when we think of the great interpreters of that songbook.

     Eva Cassidy gave us a special gift , recording her concert at the night club Blues Alley in the Washington DC area  just a few months before her death in 1996.  Thankfully some video exists that helps us to appreciate the depth of her genius.  When we listen, we are not ready but are inevitably drawn, like a moth to the light, to the brillant comet trail that was Eva Cassidy’s art.


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Kesennuma No More

     This blog essentially relates the journey of western civilization, both currently and historically, from the human perspective in both challenge and triumph. As spectacular as human capacity can be, the awesome force that Nature can apply, to make small the mightiest of civilization’s achievements, was brought to bear in Japan’s devastating 9.0 earthquake of two weeks ago. The Japanese port of Kesennuma on the Pacific coast of the island of Honshu faced the incredible force of the epic earthquake’s tsunami, and a city of 73000 individuals was in five horrifying minutes literally wiped of the face of the earth. As so often acknowledged in events that defy description, the video below shows the apocalyptic force of a 25 foot tsunami on the city in a vivid way that is unforgettable and awe-inspiring. But for the grace of God, go we all.
     Behold, the destroyer of worlds…..

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Can Our Democracy Survive Without A Legislative Branch?

     The recent upheavals in Madison, Wisconsin have focused attention on the progressive inattention of citizens to the carefully thought out structure that drives this nation’s democratic republic. Although dramatically exemplified by the attempt of a county district judge to suspend the lawful process of a bicameral legislature, it is more profoundly about the national neglect that has permeated the democratic process and the depth of understanding of its value for some time. The identifiable underpinnings of this decline have presented themselves in a progressive reduction of participants in the democratic process, the reduction of standards of virtue in preservation of the sanctity of the voting process through lax standards, loss of confidentiality, and intimidation, and the lack of civics instruction. This has most profoundly affected the most democratically sensitive of the three branches of government, the legislature, and its progressive impotence in the difficult problems of our times threatens this nation’s democratic existence.

     The founders put the most profound domestic powers in the hands of the legislature, the powers to enact laws and the powers to fund them, and accordingly put the most democratic constraints upon the legislature, with frequent elections to modulate their actions.  The legislative branch, connected so profoundly to the will of the people, was assumed to be most responsive to that will.  Owning the power of the purse through taxation, it was assumed that governmental representatives would be responsive to the  electoral process that positioned them to be the spenders of the nation’s treasure.  This bond between the people and those elected to serve the people was expected to be paramount. The founders were not foolish idealists, and certainly understood the potentially corrupting influences of human nature, thereby identifying the need for checks and balances.  James Madison in Federalist Paper 51 put it succinctly:

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. “

     The pattern of checks and balances assured the separation of powers as well.  The legislative branch had primary force to enact laws, the executive branch to execute them, and the judicial branch to review their faithfulness to the constitution.  Madison, again in Federalist #51,  however recognized there was no device by which to make the branches co-equal, and still effective:

” It is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”

     Madison recognized the legislative process as coming closest to mirroring the will of the people.  As designed, representatives would review and vet the merits of the law in committee, debate and adjust it, assess its effects on the general good and its expenses to the general treasure, then representatively vote, so that a record would be available to the voting population to assure compliance with the will of the people in the next election, or adjust the legilature accordingly.  The entire process commands that the people have a will, and that the will of the people is respected.  Legislative branch has suffered most under the modern corruptions of lack of civics understanding, money of special interests, and general disinterest in the common good and importance of governmental restraint.  In the past few decades, laws have achieved epic status, thousands of pages in depth, so that no serious vetting of theire effect is feasible.  Committees have given themselves up to poor attendance and lobbyist influence with legislators forming their opinion before reviewing a law’s consequences.  The massive influx of money has made legislators progressively immune to the ballot box, and more willing to do the bidding of the interest that is supplying them with their re-election funding than for the voter citizen.  The citizen has become ignorant of the importance of informed voting,  and has accepted lax standards as to the sanctity of the vote, the propagation of numerous “democratic” votes to preserve non-democratic and self serving governmental mechanisms, and dis-interest in the outcome regardless of its effect on the society that has protected his rights for over 234 years.

     The weakness in the legislative branch has led to a dangerous instability in the carefully crafted balance between branches of government. Executives at both state and federal level now usurp the vested powers of the legislature . State governors, have line item veto power that allows them to completely change the essence of an enacted law.   Federal executives  name unelected “czars” that deflect laws and rework apportioned money to achieve their political agendas, as well as initiate wars that defy  the legislative power to declare them.  Activist judges go profoundly beyond the constraints of the Constitution to declare laws unacceptable on the basis of  effect, not lawful standing, dangerously injecting themselves into the legislative process. The legislative branch’s unwillingness to assert its constitutional responsibilities progressively leads to the paralysis we see today to deal with profound questions of individual rights, freedoms, and economic sanity.

     It is no small irony that the coalescence of all these dangerous trends are coming together in the capitol of a state named for one of the framers of one of the most carefully thought out means of a people to rule themselves.  We have seen the unholy storm of vulnerabilities injected into the Wisconsin process that is a microcosm of our national vulnerability – a duly elected legislature attempts to enact law in the face of threats of violence and intimidation, lawmakers who flee their representative responsibilities under the demand of the interests that economically supply their elective position, the infection of federal executive influence on an issue of state’s rights, the national corruption of special interest money, the interference of the judiciary in a matter of legislative process, and the self absorption of a citizenry that can not see the trampling of the protections that maintain their influence over those that govern them through the process of free and fair election intervals, not reactionary recall processes.

     Our founders were not, despite appearances, ancient powdered wig reactionaries, but rather visionaries with incredible foresight into what has made one of the most successful self governed visions of a people in recorded history.  Try as we might to destroy their vision, the wisdom shines through over the centuries.  Maybe its time again for less yelling, and more reflection on why our processes were put in place, so that we can have at least a  tinker’s chance of fixing the mess we have allowed to develop.

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The “This Is Not A War” War

     We live in an age of hypocrisy so it is not shocking to have found ourselves in one of the most hypocritical of contests of will.  The United States and assorted allies have spent the past week participating in what has been termed by a winking dupe of the executive branch a “kinetic military action” against Libya.  Assorted videos of the conflict exhibiting active rocket launchers, flaming planes, concussive bombs,  exploding buildings, and dead combatants and innocents alike would certainly tend to skew one’s opinion regarding what they see – it surely looks like a war.  Then again, modern governments take great pleasure in going up to the line of war and just hedging their effort, in order to maintain plausible deniability.  That way, none of the expected thinking processes that used to define the difficult process of going to war get in the way.  Philosophers as far back as Cicero and St. Augustine contemplated the conditions for “Just War” – the concept that war could be justified in the face of just cause – the damage caused by the aggressor to the nation must be lasting, grave and certain; the complete exhaustion of other means of solving the conflict; the prospect of victory should be identifiable; and the use of arms should not create evils more profound then the ones they were attempting to vanquish.  In modern terms, the indication that a nation’s treasure in riches or people should not be wasted in an action where the perceived national security interests are not directly attacked or threatened.  The restrained quiet by the public and media flies in the face of the most recent reactions to a similar war or “kinetic military action” propagated recently in Iraq.  The story went, a President with little indication of a perceived national threat, hastily drove towards war against a country that had not attacked his country, led by a dictator of an oil rich nation who had once been his ally, and did so with minimal national or international consensus, and no identifiable end game or exit strategy.  Hmmm…..substitute “Libya” for “Iraq” and you have  an almost identical presumptive argument, but none of the vitriol that surrounded President Bush regarding the Iraq conflict.  One mustn’t forget that , of course, that was the dumb president, and this one is the smart one.

     The  tragedy of most modern conflicts is that the consequences of actions are so poorly conceived and vetted before plunging in.  A million questions abound. Who are the people trying to throw Qaddhafi out? Are their goals for the Libyan people better than his? What are we willing to do to impose our will? What if it doesn’t work?  What if it does work?  Who will support the massive humanitarian crisis that could develop if stalemate enters?  What wars have been won by committee decision? Who will declare victory and who will declare defeat?  What would victory look like?  These and other questions would seem to be ones you would want to have thought through before you would typically put a nation’s young men and women in harms way. 

     The availability of high tech weaponry has made these well thought out justifications too easily brushed aside.  Cruise missiles flung from afar can seem to lessen the sense of risk to the launching country because after all, no country men risk harm firing from hundreds of miles away. Sterile wars seem to have amazingly unpredictable outcomes and more often then not painful realities and goal stalemates.  The multi-decade presence of troops in Korea, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are just a few reminders of what prolonged stalemate looks like. As the war Napoleon once said of war strategy, ” If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna!”  The lack of direct goals, aims, eye on victory makes this the most hypocritical of conflicts, where men and women will die, because no one could think of anything else to do.

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Rodgers and Hart

     Something magical in the world of music that approaches Divine intervention occurred around the turn of the twentieth century in the the tight, crowded  tenements of New York City.  In the space of a few years, giants of lyric and melody that have defined the American Experience for over a century and have brought all of us countless hours of joy were born within a few miles of each other with almost identical immigrant American success stories and uniformly jewish heritage.  The contributions of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers to what has become known as the American Songbook in someways diminishes their formative contribution to the larger musical universe, the special synthesis of song and verse to the elevation of both as equal partners evoking the basest of human emotions. Gershwin and Rodgers especially were composers of serious merit apart from their popularity on the theatrical stage, but they never denigrated the marriage of lyrics and lyrical music, creating both mature musical expression that responded to the adult poetry of their lyricists.

     Richard Rodgers had a long and influential career blessed by comparatively good health amongst the other stalwarts mentioned, participating with multiple lyricists in establishing a particularly classical and symphonic Rodgers style, but the poignancy and intimacy that he was so capable of in his music saw its fullest expression in his short but fruitful collaboration with the lyricist Lorenz Hart.  Hart was a conflicted and tortured soul that struggled with personal demons that often sabotaged his success and made collaboration unpredictable and difficult for Rodgers.  The two met as classmates at Columbia, Hart studying journalism and Rodgers attending the musical institute, later renamed Julliard.  Lorenz Hart had the fragmented constitution of a true poet, sublimating an unexpressed homosexuality required of the times, barely five feet tall and convinced of his unattractiveness, finding solace in alcohol, and terminally wistful and melancholic.  Rodgers of firmer constitution, recognized early Hart’s special capacity for tying intimate poetic verse into a form particularly suited to his more orchestral and balletic musical stylings.  The result was a unique internal voice  to the songs, the statement of unstated  emotions more powerful than the singer would normally be willing to expose, if the object of the song was standing before them – a Shakespearean soliloquy for music.

     The period of collaboration between Rodgers and Hart between 1925 and 1943, ended by Hart’s premature death to pneumonia after an alcoholic binge, was the incubator of some of the most beautiful music and poetic verse marriages ever created. Standards that resonate forever to anyone who has ever felt the human need for relationship poured from their respective pens with such gems as Where or When, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered, Glad To Be Unhappy, In A Small Hotel, Blue Moon, Isn’t It Romantic, It Never Entered My Mind, This Cant Be Love, Spring Is Here,and My Funny Valentine, among so many others.

      In Spring Is Here ,  Hart called out to the inequity and pain that the rebirth the season of spring provides out of the harsh winter, to the solitary and lonely soul who has no one with which to share spring’s eternal promise :

Spring is here!  Why doesn’t my heart go dancing?     Spring is here! Why doesn’t the waltz seem entrancing?    No desire, no ambition leads me – maybe its because nobody needs me.     Spring is here! Why doesn’t the breeze delight me?  Stars appear! Why doesn’t the night invite me?     Maybe its because nobody loves me.      Spring is here  –  I hear.

     Hart doesn’t just pour out his desperation in such words, but his internal conflict in being unable to celebrate those life experiences he felt seemed so easy for others.  Even when he notes the presence of the achievement of love, he expresses this confusion of recognition of the process of human relationship, as expressed beautifully in the verses of  Where Or When, where friends discover to their surprise that their friendship has evolved into an intimate love:

It seems we stood and talked like this before, we looked at each other in the same way then, but I can’t remember where or when…..The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore, the smile you are smiling, you were smiling then, but I can’t remember where or when.         Sometimes you think you’ve lived before all the things you lived today; things you do come back to you – as though they knew the way – oh, the tricks your mind can play!    Somethings that happened for the first time, seem to be happening again. And so it seems we have met before – and laughed before – and loved before- but who knows where or when?

     Hart can feel the pull of human intimacy and all its glory, but remains stunned by its primordial and uncontrolled force.  In some of the most musically inspired verse put to paper, Hart in Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered  links the  joy, loss of control, confusion,  and anticipation associated with love’s emotion  into the perfect synthesis.  Framed by Rodgers’ understated but hopeful musical trellis, the collaboration achieves maybe the most poignant and memorable expression of the American musical songbook :

I’m wild again, beguiled again, a simpering wimpering child again.  Bewitched , bothered, and bewildered -am I.       Couldn’t sleep, wouldn’t sleep, when love came and told me I shouldn’t sleep. Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered – am I.

     Lorenz Hart said things in his verse that people quietly felt but never wanted to express because of its rawness, and Richard Rodgers brought the melancholy color and beauty to such intimate and painful expression. Bound together they become a very special whole that we are forever thankful for.  As painful as life can sometimes be, it helps to know, that someone understands in a way that elevates us all.

    


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Where Have The Experts Gone?

     As the world seems to be battered by one “surprise” after another and current leaders seem clueless to fashion a logical and committed strategy to begin to tackle any of these problems, the question arises, where have the experts gone?  The can do spirit of the twentieth century to conquer some of the most overwhelming challenges ever devised to man’s  humanity and security has disappeared in a blizzard of shoddy historical interpretation, pseudo-science, and junk economics.  The harsh juxtaposition of examples abound.  The rigorous objective mental genius without the availability of computer exhibited by the brilliance of scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, Neils Bohr, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg who in the space of fifty years went from discovery of the atom to unlocking its power reigns supreme over the religious machinations of  the current dominance of climate scientists who in order to prove their philosophy of man as the source of the planet’s ills, hide and bend data to fit their vision.  The western tradition of economic thought elegantly put forth by Adam Smith over 250 years ago that built the greatest expansion of individual economic freedom and security in the history of the world is under assault by so called progressives who ignore measured outcomes in performance, rigorous rules of economic standards in banking, budgeting and commerce to blithely spend away a nation’s future.  And acutely,  the fundamental ignorance of history in interpretation of current events that make the present day leaders seem disorganized, contradictory, and reactionary with every event that transpires that does not fit their poorly conceived vision of how the world should be.   Where are the experts a nation used to tap that provided  a bottomless well of  thought that guided the ship of state through perilous waters?

      My own theory is that death of objective thought is self inflicted by our society’s pathetic neglect of our educational process.  We have allowed a primary and secondary school system to completely run off the rails on its primary objective of  providing an education to the nation’s youth,  and the tools needed to comprehend, assess, and conquer the obstacles to individual achievement.  The modern conversation centers on whether the dominant and monopolistic teacher’s union and its strangulating bureaucracy is appropriately re-imbursed and protected, rather than focusing upon the absolute collapse of  student reading, mathematical, and interpretative skills that have soared in the last thirty years.  Our advanced education process has become an over bearing financial behemoth rapidly tumbling out of financial reach of most families and individuals, that through political correctness has filled its campuses with rigid thought, the demise of platonic reasoning and socratic debate, and clogged the educational  pallet with self absorbed study of victimhood and forehead thumping at the expense of a two thousand five hundred year tradition of analytic thought, objective debate, and scientific hypothesis and proof process.  Out of such a primordial ooze, few are the experts that can be expected to evolve.

    What does objective thought process sound like?  Lets appreciate a brief video of one of our “old dinosaur” experts, 88 year old Henry Kissinger, who in five minutes extemporaneously manages to touch base on all necessary considerations that should attend the use of force in Libya:

     Agree or disagree with Kissinger’s argument, no one would disagree that a rational argument has taken place, with historical underpinnings and rational review of outcomes. I defy anyone to point out a rational discussion with logical underpinnings put forth today on any of the major challenges of the day regarding energy policy, economic concepts, or political science, by those currently in power. Is there no one left who is willing to read a book with positions opposed to their own and rationally debate an argument to rebut and persuade?

     I am afraid that would require someone who actually is willing to open a book, and if you ask most of today’s youth, books are yesterday’s news. Its enough to make western civilization’s grand old philosopher to role over in his grave.

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The Re-Incarnation of President Buchanan

     At the close of his Presidency in 1861, with multiple states having declared secession and the federal military post Fort Sumter faced with violent attack from its own countrymen, President James Buchanan presided over a State of the Union address that summarized his four year policy of “indecisive indecision” on the subject of secession. After hearing Buchanan’s address, Senator William Seward of New York, soon to be Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln, ascerbicly translated for the nation President Buchanan’s convoluted and ineffectual logic with the following statement:

“No state has the right to secede unless it wishes to, and it is the president’s duty to enforce the laws, unless somebody opposes him”

     We have a current President in President Obama who is proving to be the re-incarnated President Buchanan, serving up a soup of the indefensible hedge when it comes to the nation’s most pressing problems. Elected under the banner of “Hope and Change”, the process of governing has been more that of “Dodge and Hedge”. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has remained immersed in two wars and struggled to identify with any freedom movement since his election. He has managed to alienate almost every individual who viewed him as the propped up savior of the world self perpetuated by a fawning media. The Green Revolution in Iran waited for any word of support from him to help free themselves from an oppressive and murderous regime. Thousands of deaths later, they are still waiting. He announced last year that he would “surge” troops in Afghanistan, and announced on the same day that date at which he would begin to withdraw them. He struggled to sustain a coherent message with the recent Egyptian turmoil, having no stance for almost two weeks, only to announce support for the autocrat Mubarak, as he was about to fall. The turmoil spread to Libya, where he almost immediately declared the thuggish regime of Qhadaffi must go as it was illegitimate, then dithered when the tyrant started bombing his own people from the air and winning back territory from the regime opponents. The indecision was enough to send his own Secretary of State into a classic Clintonian leak, having an “unnamed source and close confidant” declare Ms. Clinton’s exhaustion with her boss’s lack of decision making capacity.
     The domestic front is no better, with the President demanding fiscal discipline, naming a commission last year to create a bi-partisan consensus for the burgeoning budgetary crisis being created by entitlements. When the commission came out with a surprisingly tough set of agreements to reign in out of control spending, the President ran away from the commission like it wasn’t there. His most recent budget has been in described in direct terms as a fiscal fraud by his own nominee of the Office of Management and
Budget, Heather Higginbottom. He descended into fruitless war of words with the Governor of Wisconsin when he attacked the state executive’s efforts to balance his own budget by reducing collective bargaining rights, fully ignoring his own federal government’s complete lack of provision of the same collective bargaining rights for its own employees. The only issue he was willing to make declarative statements upon was the outcome of the US NCAA Basketball Tournament – “Pittsburgh will make the Elite Eight.”
     The litany goes on and on, but unfortunately so does this President’s tactic of using a conclusion in any crisis to define his position, long after there is any capacity for him to truly affect the outcome. I must admit I had early hope of this man’s potential pragmatism. The world is finding out what we hoped was not the case of putting forward such an inexperienced person into the pressure cooker job of “world leader”.  The truth of the matter is, Change comes, and from this man, No Hope.

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The Wisconsin Drama

      A brief Sunday evening update for the “Inside Baseball” addition of the recent political drama that unfolded over the last month in the state of Wisconsin.

      In a terrific piece of reporting, the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, a Wisconsin native, and John McCormack describe the tense struggle between the republican and democrat leaders over the proposed budget repair bill that was positioned to revolutionize the available leverage elected officials would have to address their budgets through the removal of collective bargaining for pensions and benefits. The recently concluded drama is the harbinger of a raucous oncoming year of political cage matches as the public unions fight with their very sinew to maintain their power to control governments.

      It is a must read from beginning to end. As Hayes states, “And that is what democracy actually looks like!”

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People We Should Know, #10 – Alicia De Larrocha

     Music is a universal medium that immediately explains the unique colors and emotions of all of humanity in a way no other language could. What separates us in our dialects, grammatical contexts and difficult verb tenses and behaviors, is brought together by the brilliant translators of the language of music. One such legendary translator was the diminutive bundle of piano genius, Alicia De Larrocha, and one of Ramparts’ People We Should Know.
     Alicia De Larrocha was a magnificent interpreter of a wide spectrum of classic music, but what she brought to the world more than anything was a appropriate recognition of the under-appreciated works of composers of Spanish dialect. Prior to artists like Segovia and De Larrocha, the streams and colors of music consciousness that reflected the Latin psyche were interpreted by foreigners with only superficial grasp, such as Rimsky Korsakov’s Capriccio Espanol or Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole. De Larrocha, proud of her Spanish heritage and immersed in the two thousand year latin vein of culture, promoted to appropriate status superb Spanish composers such as Isaac Albeniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel De La Falla to an appreciative public who recognized the unique rhythms and musical pallet than can be created only by those who are intimate with the cultural identity.
     De Larrocha was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1923, the daughter of pianists, and took to the keyboard instrument with such visible talent that she publicly performed at age six and was a concert pianist by age eleven. Under five feet tall and with tiny hands, typically a physical barrier to performing the great piano works, De Larrocha used her special flexibility and reflexes to conquer the works of titans such as Beethoven and Rachmaninoff to the enraptured satisfaction of audiences worldwide. Once she established her credentials as a leading virtuoso of the keyboard in the twentieth century, she took advantage of the limelight to expose the listening public to the works of Spanish composers and helped create a renaissance in appreciation for Spanish culture at a time when the mighty reach of Spain had crumbled to backwater status in Europe.
     The works of De Falla, Granados, and Albeniz are now an essential impressionistic part of any modern pianist’s recital repertoire. Alicia De Larrocha’s performances are the standard to be compared against with her perfect rhythmic balance of the peculiar off beat dangers of the Spanish dances such as the tango and her understanding of the unique cultural Spanish tensions created by underlying Moorish influences. The size of the musical picture painted by De Larrocha’s tiny hands is a juxtaposition only a savant can create, and tiny De Larrocha easily stood with the giants of her time, Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubenstein, Rudolph Serkin, and Edwin Fischer, and Claudio Arrau.
     Alicia De Larrocha was a eminent ambassador of Spain, promoting the binding nature of music the world over. Her death in 2009 silenced a tiny but powerful force for good and healing in a world that fights every day to understand each other, and her vitality in that calling lives on through her wondrous music.