Category: HISTORY

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People We Should Know #24 – Donald Kagan

The Mentors     In  a humbling perspective, the presence of man as a thinking, actionable being in the scope of time as compared to bacteria as the first living organisms seeking interaction with their environment is a pittance.   The relationship of a few score of thousands of years to the greater than three billion years that bacteria have survived takes shape when one compares it to some objective knowable reference.  In perspective of time as distance, if thinking man were walking in the same travelled steps that bacteria have already taken referenced to the three thousand mile distance between Los Angeles and Chicago, man as a rational creature would occupy only the last 20 feet of the journey.  This brief presence hardly seems worthy of historical adulation, but it is of course the impact made by this relatively new participant to history that makes man’s action so worthy of study.

We have in today’s society a rather arrogant view of our current knowledge base, as if it is infallible and purified to a level of perfect reason, that would make spending time to reflect upon ideas in perspective to past thinkers unworthy.  We see it in such comments as global warming as “settled science”, the Constitution as “outdated”, and the study of philosophy and history less worthy than psychology and social science to “understand” ourselves.  This  concept of all that has come before as immaterial to modern thinking unless in agreement with modern thinking, is a disease that has pervaded our entire educational system.  The current common belief is that a crucial component of modern life is a college degree, with little if any focus on what the degree actually comprises or contributes to modern society. The college graduate of today after 16 years of layered education foundation struggles to recall half of the critical elements of knowledge that codify his or her freedom, or form the basis of reason or literacy.  They graduate from a campus that often has an entire faculty uniform in its political correctness and opinions regarding major societal issues.  The sharing or weighing of ideas comes under extreme stress from those who would suggest that the answers are already confirmed, and that education’s role is to instruct individuals on how to continue to uphold, protect, and at most, perfect immutable facts and theorems.

Perhaps it is the guilty recognition of how far we have fallen in our pursuit of age old concepts of virtue, reason, and truth, that has led to the adulation that was conferred this past week on one the last warriors for time honored educational development of an individual, Yale University’s Professor Donald Kagan.  PowerLine presented for review this week Dr. Kagan’s final lecture at Yale, regarding the evolution of critical thought and its current state in the modern educational process.  Dr. Kagan, one of the world’s most prominent authorities on the ancient Greek city state and the epic issues surrounding the Peloponnesian war, has been a lonely voice for diversity of thought on campus, and has come up hard against the entrenched interests that pervade modern universities and seek to suppress thought and education to students that don’t fit their pre-determined “truth”.  Dr. Kagan has argued for decades for a core curriculum for western civilization at universities to assure all students the background and principles that would allow them to better understand and uphold their responsibilities in a western society.  He sees no prejudice in teaching the roots of reason and truth, laws and obligations, religion and natural science, democracies and republics in the fashion of a student capable of putting these foundational principles to work in whatever they eventually determine to study.  The overwhelming logic of his argument is the primary argument against it applied by the educational forces in power.  To accept the huge amount of intellect and reasoned argument that form the centuries of development and success of western ideals, would be to accept their superiority, and that is a concept the entrenched powers will never accept.

Dr. Kagan is acknowledged to be one of those great formative teachers,  like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle before him, who are able to take obtuse subjects and make them an understandable and relative to the student, in such a way that the teacher becomes their pathfinder to knowledge that is permanently relevant in their lives.  In an educational world where teachers have been required to achieve higher and higher educational degrees, and their students are showing less and less understanding and competence, appreciating a giant in the ancient science of teaching is a pleasure indeed.  Watch below how Dr. Kagan introduces why understanding the ancient Greeks are critical to who we are in his introductory Greek History course at Yale and you will be returned to the power and life changing experience that a great teacher can provide.  Professor Donald Kagan is Ramparts People We Should Know #24, because what we should know to be relevant in our own lives has been a lifetime’s vision of this exceptional teacher.

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A Distant Mirror Into the Genius of Thatcher

Can we ever be sufficiently thankful for the magnificence that is the internet? After yesterday’s Ramparts eulogy reviewing the supernova that was Margaret Thatcher, the perfect record of the young and vibrant Thatcher describing with passion and wonderful intellect the basis for conservative political thought was posted by the Weekly Standard today, and it is a wonder to behold. Can we imagine our current political class engaging in such a thoughtful principle driven discussion of the fundamentals of human action and reaction?  Take a minute and revel- its this snapshot of Thatcher before she won the Prime Ministership that made grown men pause in awe, and drop their pretense that a woman could not lead men, breaking the glass ceiling forever:

 

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Iron Lady

     When I was a little boy, it was interestingly my mother who first connected me to my love of history and the storied greatness of certain of its participants.  She was in the kitchen making a meal, when I wandered in to see if I could catch some early hint of dinner to come.  Normally it would have been a certainty I would get a taste of what was to be created without much effort, but this time she seemed to be in a very serious mood.  “Do you know who died today?” she asked.  Being very young I had no clue; but she pressed onward.  “A very great man”, she said, “Winston Churchill.”  She showed me the newspaper- the entire front page was devoted to him; a large photograph of a smiling man with a cigar flashing a victory sign dominated the front fold.  I was hooked – it seemed the whole world knew this man and saluted his memory.  It was my first contact with greatness universally recognized and it would never leave me.

Historical greatness belonged to another British Prime Minister of the 20th century, and she, Margaret Thatcher, in many ways laid a similar stamp of recognition of greatness from all who knew her, or lived in her time on the stage. She was a warrior for the individual and liberty, a true defender of the Ramparts of Civilization that is the guts and basis for this blog.  Today she passed on, and as it was with Churchill, the recognition of greatness cloaked her memory, and reminded the world of the power of those who back up their intellectual prowess with the power of their principles and the will of their conviction.  At a time when all the world trembled before the darkness of fascism’s power, Churchill radiated the confidence in the eventual victory of a free people.  Some three decades later, when Britain once again had become a shadow of its former self, she resurrected the concept of the power of freedom and individual aspiration, and brought that great nation and much of the free world back out of its self absorbed decline.

For those who believe all things are possible in a free society if you work hard and maintain focus, Margaret Thatcher was the poster child.  Born of absolutely middle class values and capacities, she belied the perceived notion that only the elites of society could have sufficient perspective understanding of societal needs and obligations. She was a bedrock supporter of the idea of individual as owning the ultimate definition of their own existence and fate.  She disdained the idiocy that stereotyped a woman who raised a family and cared for her husband as unable to compete on the stage of egos and intellect, frankly crushing her opposition time and time again in the battle of ideas and the arena of victories with nary a hair out of place on her coiffed hair or a discernible wrinkle in her immaculate dress.   She was a feminist in the truest sense, leading her party and nation through turmoil and victory, not always assuming that her very presence should be proof enough of her capability (unlike a certain American female politician that has spent twenty years being available, and performing poorly when called).

Most importantly, Margaret Thatcher was a person of principles that put her actions where her principles lay.  Like Ronald Reagan, and even more so, she was fully committed to standing on principles at risk of her defeat.  She was a warrior for real conservatism- the concept that freedom and free will best dictate progress, and that progress is the natural evolutionary state of all streams of creativity in the arena of ideas.  She was a chemist, a scientist and a barrister, and recognized that creative streams would need guidance but not correction.  She knew why liberal society failed, and that its failure was the product of expectation not reality.  As Milton Friedman said, and she believed so firmly, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results.”  She was not interested in what felt good, only what worked, and she was particularly derisive of the softcoats in her own party that attempted to undertake shallow copies of their opponents programs in hopes of “appeasing” the voters.  As she strongly projected at the wobbly Conservative Party congress of 1980, ” You turn if you want to.  The lady’s not for turning.” 

She believed conservative, limited government worked, and she stood proudly for it, in the face of vicious attacks on her character.  When they attempted to paint her as infeminant, calling her Iron Lady, as if her forcefulness was somehow “bitchy”, a typical weapon of liberal assassination, she overwhelmed them by grasping the moniker and making it her own.  She withstood the further verbal grapeshot of the left, “racist”, ” snob”, and “hater” and put forth a conservative agenda of privatization, personal aspiration, and firm support for the law to transform the cowering Great Britain of the 1970’s crippled by strikes, moral decay, international withdrawal, and overwhelming socialist regulatory economic stagnation into an economic and independent juggernaut of the 1980’s and 1990’s.  So powerful was her sway, that when the Liberal party under Tony Blair returned to power in the mid 1990’s, no effort was made to return the economic structure away from private development. The lady, it turned out, was not for turning.

The moment of great conviction and return of international influence was  through her steadfast and very public defiance in the face of the twin challenges of Soviet aggression and Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands.  On one front she bolstered the new American President Reagan in his heretical calling out of the Soviet empire as “evil” and stating it would “end up like all totalitarian regimes on the trash heap of history”.  To the other in the face of American indecisiveness, she put Great Britain squarely in the position of defending its territories in recognition of a free people, the Falkland Islanders, selecting their own determination to stay British.  The once great power of Great Britain  again projected halfway across the globe and achieved a victory in a way that most thought impossible without American support.  Thatcher was not about to lose the British capacity to choose its own destiny, as reserved to all free people, even when her best ally could not see a shared interest, other than the philosophic one.

Like all great people, Margaret Thatcher was eventually pulled down by her implacable will, when the furtherance of that will exhausted those who continued to be held by her high standards.  She was thrown out not by her people, but by her party, who made the recurrent failed argument  that a continued rigorous governance on principle had exhausted the population and could no longer be supported.  Once again, the pale copy of ideal over performance led to the defeat of the conservatives, by the liberals led by Tony Blair who recognized the fatal mistake and campaigned as the True Hybrid of Thatcherism and Humanism.  In her later years, as she led a quiet family existence, the chance to forget her successes and rewrite history proved tempting to a media no longer afraid of her brilliance and energy for defense of ideas.  To be great is to eventually be destroyed by those who could not cotton to her greatness.  This proved no different for Thatcher then for her predecessor Churchill or her compatriot Reagan.

Yet death re-writes all history, and the immense imprint of a life overwhelms all superficial efforts to distort it.  The call of contemporary Prime Ministers in her shadow make it clear she is a once in a lifetime figure – no perspectives on Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Major, Blair, Brown, or Cameron are likely to echo through the centuries as will the Lady Thatcher in the hallowed halls of British Parliamentary history.  She was a leader of people who happened to be a woman, a deliverer of a country who happened to be a commoner, and an intellectual giant of economic governance who happened to be the grocer’s daughter. None of these stereotyped categorizations turned out to matter in the least.   Let them try to knock her down.  She is a force of nature that withstands all slings and arrows.   Margaret Thatcher, a true defender of the Ramparts,  died today at 87, but you will never see extinguished the blazing light  of her effervescent star.

 Be not afraid of greatness.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

Twelfth Night   W. Shakespeare

 

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A Crossroads of Western Civilization

My recent neglect of my duty at the Ramparts has been driven by  time constraints, not by the lack of living in interesting times.  I thought I would get ‘back in the saddle’ with a good old fashioned immersion in the complex ribbons of history that have formed our perception of ourselves, our western ideals and way of thinking.  The stimulus is the visit of one of my Swiss relatives who harken from the venerable city of St Gallen, at the Eastern edge of Switzerland, but at the epicenter of many of the fascinating formative influences of modern Europe.

The glory of St Gallen is not in its epic leaders, warrior kings or trading routes.  The little city of St Gallen instead claims its heritage as the home of people who preserved the knowledge of the world when it was considered the least valuable possession of a violent and harsh time of autocracy in Europe.  The center of knowledge of St Gallen was its Benedictine abbey, and the epicenter its magnificent library, a world heritage site.  How so many great books came to populate this library, preserved from the 9th century onward, is the story of knowledge and its battle with  darker forces,  and in the history of its shelves the story of the path to a modern Europe.The creation of a center of knowledge in the central European continental wilderness of the alpinian foothills near Lake Constance is wonder of man’s striving for something more than just existing, and starts in of all places, Ireland.  Christianity had a powerful evangelical influence on Gaelic culture and the concept of knowledge and piety as intertwined concepts made Ireland an oasis of education at one of the truly dark times in history.  The collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century led to a multi-century period of tribal control on the continent with war and conflict a constant.  At a time when a man’s life often depended on his ability to stay within the confines of his feudal lord’s domain, Irish monastic evangelism boldly traveled far from home, spread the word of Christ and the process of education that the training entailed.  First across the Irish sea to the western shores of Albion (England and Scotland) and from there to the far environs of the continent, the Irish Evangelists brought not only the word but the idea of knowledge and study with them.  Saint Columbanus with twelve fellow Irish disciples spread across the continent around 610 AD and brought their concepts and evangelistic fervor to the wilderness tribes at the periphery of civilization’s reach.  Gallus, one of Columbanus’s disciples traveled with him down the Rhine, but due to illness, found himself unable to continue with Columbanus’s journey to Italy and was left to fend for himself in the wilderness around Lake Constance. Here he developed a hermitic existence  in the forests proselytizing to the locals.  Upon his death, a little church was established, but it took other events to shape the eventual importance of St Gall.

Elsewhere in Europe other forces were coming to bear.  The monastic tradition of desert isolation so much a part of the early church was being changed by the experiences of the Irish monks and others. Monastic life began to evolve into the fabric of the surrounding populous rather than be completely separated from them, despite the isolation suggested by monasticism.  St Benedict would define rules of monastic life that would provide a bridge between individual isolation and zealotry and the realistic necessities of community life with like minded individuals. The central focus would be service to God, but it began to extend into behaviors with others and  focuses of communal life that suggested the value to this service of activities such as work and education.  This lead to a closer positioning of the monastery to the population, and the monastery as a source of education for the secular class, bonding the religious tradition in a safe embrace with those who would rule the population, and ultimately protect, the monastery.  With the development of large imperial empires on the continent through the resources of the Carolingian kings such as Charlemagne and the later eastern competitors under the Habsburgs. Kings, recognizing the importance of the organized monastery in elevating the capacity of the empire, began to “assist”the placing of abbots who would adhere to Benedict’s rules of order.

Under the auspices of the Carolingian kings, St. Othmar would be the actual developer of the monastery at what was eventually to become the abbey at St Gallen, and the site of the little church that marked the hermitage of Gallus, was converted to Benedictine rules, and became the site of great Benedictine abbey of St Gallen.  The focus of Benedictine monks on introspection and study required the presence of a scriptorium, a place where concepts of religious thought and learning could be secured by monks permanently onto paper, for others to study, and eventually the development of a repository, or library, for the accumulated scripts of the community.  The abbey at St Gallen became acknowledged over time as one of the great repositories of knowledge in Europe, and St Gallen became a prized location for various factions who felt the city belonged in their sphere of influence.  The city became a center for education and eventually industry, with its skill in textiles particularly valued.

St Gallen had made itself valued through its abbey, but the progressive prosperity of the city increased the strains between the abbey and the burgeoning middle class that wanted to control their own destiny separate from the princely power of the abbot. This led to a period of great instability in the fifteenth century, in which the town and its guilds rebelled against the abbey’s administration and the abbot threatened to move to the town Rorschach on Lake Constance.  The city would have none of it and the result was a tumultuous time of conflict that eventually led to the spread of the conflict to the surrounding cantons and the intervention of the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian. The Hapsburg Empire, thoroughly galled by the ongoing autonomy of the Swiss confederation cantons was not interested in seeing this border city or others like it act independently, particularly when it came to valued assets and progressively the cantons and the empire slid towards war. The Swiss, however, were not amateurs to conflict, having become known as front line troops in the conflicts of the Holy Roman Empire, and Maximilian proved rapidly in over his head, absorbing a humiliating defeat to the Swiss confederation in the battle of Dornach in 1499, ending the set of conflicts known as the Swabian War, and securing the independence of the city state of St Gallen and the other Swiss Cantons until a brief conquest in 1798 by Napoleon.

The abbey was not quite as lucky given the outcome of the Swabian War.  It lost its connection to imperial protection, and with it became vulnerable to the rigid hold it had on its properties.  When the Protestant reformation swept through St Gallen as it did much of northern Europe, the Catholic abbey lost its influence, and in 1803, its existence as a monastery, with only the surviving segments of the functioning monastery, the baroque inspired cathedral and the library.

Though pummeled by forces of history and at various times losing portions of its magnificent collection, the library remains a window into thirteen hundred years of European history, with the particular gemstone of its collection over 2100 hand scribed manuscripts from the Middle Ages, and over 400 preserved manuscripts more than a thousand years old.  Reaching back into the time when the only secure connection of man’s intellect with history was preserved by the isolated monk accepting as a  concept of service to God the hard work of scribing for posterity human thought,  the library stands as a rampart of civilization that has come to us ennobled by time. In the little town of St Gallen there stands some of the brighter embers of man’s capacity for greatness.

 

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Rand Paul and the Rise of the Principlitarians

This week we saw something rare in modern political discourse. The junior Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, invoked one of those archaic legislative tools from the nation’s past, the filibuster,  to awaken the world to the reality that he was going to have a say about the nation’s future.

The venerable filibuster, the action by which a Senate action can be delayed, adjusted, or withdrawn on the basis of a single individual’s action, has been under attack by the controlling interests in Washington, who have been embarrassed by its quirky nature to upset carefully laid plans for culmination of the elites’ agendas. Elite dominance of the legislative process is nothing new, nor is the concept of filibuster.  Cato the Younger, zealotrous defender of the idea of Rome as a republic, formally initiated the concept to foil Julius Caesar’s manipulation of the Senate by devising long winded speeches that would delay any action on Caesar’s requests until nightfall, where , by edict, the Senate had to adjourn. The United States Senate has been the stage of a filibuster over the many years since its founding, for good or ill, but in inevitably as a device to assure an overwhelming majority of support is present for an action, as it takes 60 votes out of 100 Senators to obtain cloture on the filibuster.

Recently, both Republican and Democrat leaders have considered the elimination of the filibuster, for in a closely divided nation, the ability to push things through the Senate has become considerably more perilous.  The filibuster, evoking the rights of the individual against the weight of the majority, has in reality on many occasions been a delay tactic without structure or inherent value.  It has often looked silly with debate being artificially extended with reading into the Senate record baseball statistics, or names and numbers in the phone book.  Rand Paul took the concept and wrenched it back into its deeper reason for existence, “talking back” Senate action on the basis of principle.  In a carefully crafted recitation on the principle of the rights of the individual and the concept of limited governmental powers,  Paul exploded the idea that elemental ideas that founded the nation were from and for another era, and were immaterial to the way the government currently views itself.

Paul invoked intense discussion on whether the government that currently viewed itself as having an ultimate right to view an American citizen overseas as an enemy combatant and thereby attack him without due process, had the same right to deny an American citizen due process on American soil. The war against terrorism over the last decade has progressively placed American military action on the side of decisiveness rather than discretion, and Paul was having none of it.  Paul’s  almost thirteen hour filibuster to delay a vote on John Brennan, the Obama Administration’s nominee to take over the CIA, on the lack of Brennan and Attorney General Holder’s response to one question, whether the United States government felt it had the right to perform a drone strike on an American citizen on American soil without due process, was a wonder of the concept of principle, logic, and philosophical depth.  This was no reading of the phonebook.  In the end, the Obama administration got their vote on Brennan, but not before Paul stunned Washington by gaining the acquiescence of the administration in formal letter response, that it did not have a constitutional right to such action.

Rand Paul and a new group of citizen legislators are filling a need that a jaded Washington has been too long without, the idea that principle matters, and that the country has not entirely succombed to the concept of having their priniciples bought off.  Dismissed as a “a tea party generated son of a kook” by establishment types when the kentuckian Paul first won  the Senate seat in 2010, Rand has instead projected himself into a modern version of  palatable libertarianism, and with measured, intelligent defenses of the most basic rights endowed in the Constitution, a formidalble opponent to the usual Republican”to win we must be more like them” strategy. The idea has intense appeal among people who feel that government and rights are philosophically constructed, and based on principles, not laws that can be changed on a whim to prevailing winds.  The people that Paul appeals to see the Bill of Rights as a critically  secured set of principles independent of time, read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution, conceive the framework of the constitution as the living protector of the basis of why an America exists, and find modern disdain for carefully crafted principles disdainful in and of itself.  Paul is not alone, as Senators such as Rubio, Lee, Cruz, and Johnson are of like seriousness and internal mettle.  The concept of “kookdom” is becoming more and more absurd when the “kooks” are arguing individual rights, state rights, budget discipline, right to life, sanctity of the concept of marriage, and reduced American adventurism, while the modern establishment in the form of progressivism is arguing enforced restrictions on speech, ignoring border stability, global warming, alternative lifestyles, abortion on demand, budgetary obliviousness at the expense of future generations, and drone strikes on American soil.

Whether Rand Paul and his fellow Principlitarians can create a new consensus in the country that a serious discussion of ideas and future actions start with a foundation of principles, not desires, formative policy, not reactionary indulgence, is certainly unclear.  The forces represented by President Obama, that use demagoguery and bribes to convince the voter, has always been powerful, and the fuel of trillions of dollars of persuasion is a devastating weapon against the desire for identifying and promoting  personal responsibility and a freedom in life’s choices.  It appears however in the personage of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, principles to live by will not go quietly into that good night.

 

 

 

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Miracle On Ice

To see it as a television projection is ultimately the most appropriate way.  The memory after all, for all but the 8500 people in the stands of the Lake Placid hockey arena on February 22, 1980 is a gift of the medium of television.  Mike Eruzione, a college player from Boston University, is caught at the moment of release of a shot that had incredible repercussions in sport, national relations, and history. Its impact continues to this day as a defining event of the later half of the 20th century and indirectly affected the lives of tens of millions of people through memory and inspiration.  Instead of epic, sacred, or profound, it occurred, of all things, in a hockey game.

33 years later, the anniversary of one of sports and history’s epic events was brought to the forefront by an auction.  Eruzione, whose life has been molded by the Game, determined to get value out of his jersey and hockey stick from the event, for the purposes of value to himself and his charity.  The jersey sold for 657,250 dollars, the hockey stick for 262,900 – the memory obviously for everyone who experienced the moment, priceless.

The funny thing is, almost nobody out of the arena saw the event live.  Television wasn’t the superconnected force it is in today’s society.  The Olympic hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union occurred in the afternoon prior to prime time television and the game was broadcast on tape delay.  I was a college student at the University of Wisconsin and went to a bar on a snowy, cold night with two friends to watch(drinking age was 18 years of age then, but that is another story) as none of us had a TV, and all of us had interest in hockey, particularly with the local connection to Wisconsin players in the game such as Mark Johnson and Bob Suter.  It is hard to imagine in today’s world of instant Internet informational access, that nobody outside of Lake Placid had any idea what had transpired.  We watched the game with complete innocence, and progressive, utter disbelief.

The game itself had ridiculous connotations beyond what a hockey game, or frankly, any sporting event deserved.  The United States in the late winter of 1980, was in a world of psychological hurt. the previous decade had seen ignominious defeat in Vietnam, the devastating effect to the concept of moral leadership of Watergate, the economic blow of the rise of OPEC and resultant oil embargo and rationing, the national paralysis over the impudent Iranian takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, and the rise of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.  President Jimmy Carter, an ineffective , righteous micro-manager, appeared helpless in the face of such forces, and determined to take out his anger with the Soviet Union through sport, having threatened through his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, just before the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid to boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow later that year, summarily in protest for the incursion into Afghanistan.  The United States as an international force for stability and good, was felt to be a hollow shell of its former capacities, and the world was moving onward toward progressive volatility without it.

The game was positioned to be as David vs Goliath as any sporting event in history. The United States team was filled with obscure amateurs from a country in which the best athletes participated in sports such as basketball and football.  Most Americans watching hockey for the first time were likely unaware that US colleges even  fielded hockey teams, as  so few universities actually supported such a minor sport.  The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had a team of professional players practicing year round with financial support and state of the art facilities sponsored by its military superstructure, making the team a propaganda arm of Soviet might.  The Soviet team was deeply comprised of hall of fame quality depth, that made a practice of devastating other professional teams from Europe and the National Hockey League.  It was without doubt, the finest professional team currently playing, and the idea that upstart college players from a minor hockey country like the US could compete in a match was considered fantasy, the proof of the pudding a nasty 10-3 spanking the Soviets applied to the US team just ten days before.  Having already “proved” parity in the international basketball arena by defeating the US in a controversial upset at the 1972 Olympics, the Soviet team was not about to make room for the upstarts in the sport they owned.

The amazing thing about sport is, of course, the incredible power of carrying a chip on your shoulder.  The American team underwent blast-furnace coaching by Herb Brooks, determined to use the psychology of “shocking the world”  in preparing his team.  The game in his mind was to break fine crystal; in other words wreak havoc on the precision of the Soviets through contesting every minute as a physical contest of wills.  The Soviets, convinced of their overwhelming superiority, expected the Americans like every other team,  to  wilt under the continuous pressure of superior talent and precision play.  Brooks was more interested in the game becoming a survival of the fittest contest.

The Soviets ended up helping the Americans every chance they could.  They allowed the game to unfold exactly as Brooks hoped for, with the unease all on the Russian side.  An early goal by the Russians was answered with an American goal, but the pressure was all Soviet on the beleaguered American defense and its goalie Jim Craig, the Russians peppering him with numerous blasts and taking a 2-1 lead,, until the inconceivable happened that changed the game, and history.  With seconds to go in the first period almost empty of any US offensive plays,  a long, loose slap shot by the Americans on the Soviet goal was poorly handled by the indisputably best goalie in the world, Vladislav Tretiak, allowing the rebound to inadvertently end on the stick of Wisconsin’s own Mark Johnson, who calmly slapped it by the stunned Tretiak with a second to go.  The game, expected to be a blowout was now tied, 2-2.  The Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov then did the unthinkable – he apparently determined to “punish” Tretiak by pulling him from the game and inserting his backup goalie Vladimir Myshkin.  In the hallowed halls of impetuously stupid coaching maneuvers, this was took the cake, giving the Americans a win on the game’s strategic chessboard they had no reason to expect.

The second period was all Soviet, scoring a goal, and out-shooting the Americans 12 to a pathetic 2 shots on goal and taking a 3-2 lead.  The game was nowhere near as close as that, as Soviet bombardment continued on goalie Craig unabated, with shots deflected by the netpipes and by Craig with near equal occurrence.  Then suddenly Mark Johnson, as those of us who had seen him play so often with the University of Wisconsin team, took advantage of opportunity as only a true scorer does, making the most of a rare American power play man advantage, scoring on Myshkin with just over 8 minutes left, tying the game again at 3-3.  I can still remember my friends and my shared excitement at the idea that at this late stage in game, the upstarts were in a position to do the unthinkable, and potentially actually WIN.  Many camera angles began to capture two amazing sights.  The first was the ‘carnivore tensing for the kill’ expressed in Coach Herb Brooks face as he realized how close the team was to achieving the greatest upset since David slung the rock at Goliath; the second was the incomprehensibly worried looks on the Soviet players as they felt destiny pressing against them with overwhelming force.

With exactly ten minutes left, destiny called Mike Eruzione, and he answered, with a slapshot just inside the right faceoff past Myshkin into the net.  The greatest team in hockey, the pride of the Soviet Army, the unstoppable force of collectivist organization, was now trailing the collection of college hobbyists from the United States on the world stage.  The pressures from this point onward, the gritty defense of the United States against the greatest offensive players in the world, the goalie Craig who was summoning from nowhere one of the greatest displays in goalie play ever witnessed, the power of intense humiliation staring the Soviet professionals in the face, the incredible tsunami wave of emotion pouring forth from the disbelieving crowd, made the last ten minutes hockey an epic of memory never to be forgotten.  Shot after shot, wave after wave of Soviet drives against the ramparts of the American will to persevere defined every succeeding second, until ABC’s TV announcer Al Michaels made his career in broadcasting by framing the final seconds in immortality:

 11 seconds, you’ve got 10 seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?! YES!

The impact of what had just happened (actually what had happened several hours before due to the TV delay) was indescribable. My friends and I were stunned by our own emotional exhaustion, and I remember few words were expressed.  The overwhelming emotion was elation, at its purest derivative.  It describes the sensation, however indirectly, of having participated in something you know is life affirming, and unique in your exposure to it.  It brought to the world possible, out of all that was felt impossible, and I suspect for the next decade drove a resurgence in can do spirit for which the 1980’s became known for.  It is  possible that such elation in its highest form fueled the spark of Solidarity, that out of the factories of Gdansk, took on and eventually dismantled the Soviet omniscient hegemony. It may have brought the can do spirit that caused the American economy to roar back under President Reagan, when framed in prism of what an individual is capable of. It may have powered the return of American creativeness and individual will to succeed that created the Information Revolution and ascendancy of American invention and entrepreneurship.

All that from a hockey game? Maybe, maybe not.  Mike Eruzione is smart enough to understand the power of the symbols of that game to everyone and auctioned some material items off for monetary gain.  He is also smart enough to know, however, that the ultimate prize from the game is the crack in time that is fused forever in the television frame above, where his destiny, and the history of humanity, was briefly fused in undeniable joy.  Such memories are unauctionable; his, mine, and for millions who saw it – ours forever.

 

 

 

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This Week in History: Opening Pandora’s Box

The origin of man’s frailties and flaws are set forth in multiple cultures, through allegory, in the story of the first woman.  In the Bible’s book of Genesis, God’s creation of Man in the idyll of the Garden of Eden is thrown asunder by the temptation of Adam by God’s following creation, Eve, introducing Original Sin and the subsequent darker forces that would bedevil mankind.  In Greek mythology, the supreme god Zeus orders Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create the first woman on earth, Pandora.  Hephaestus secures for Pandora sublime gifts of beauty and fertility, but additionally, curiosity, and with it the elements for the Greek version of fall from grace.  Zeus gifts Pandora a mysterious but non-descript box and forbids her to open it.  Her curiosity, however, overwhelms her dutiful allegiance to Zeus’s instructions,  and she opens the box. The box, containing all the evils of creation, rapidly empties, and Pandora is helpless to re-apply the lid and contain the damage.  The allegory of Pandora’s box, the connection of a seemingly innocuous events with profound later consequences, is appropriate for the event thirty four years ago occurring at the Tehran airport in the first week of February,1979.

On February 1st, 1979, an elderly man gingerly stepped down the exit ramp of an airplane onto the tarmac of the airport in Tehran, Iran, and with his foot contacting Iranian soil, Pandora’s box was opened.  77 year old Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shia ayatollah, 15 years in exile in Paris for opposition to the longstanding rule of Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was returning on the invitation of the Shah’s Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar.  The Shah, who had abdicated his monarchical position of omnipotent ruler of Iran at the end of 1978 in response to severe public unrest, sharing power with a parliamentary government led by Bakhtiar, had determined to leave Iran just two weeks earlier.  Bakhtiar, like many naive liberal revolutionaries before and after him, envisioned being able to control Khomeini by enveloping him in the arms of the revolution, as one of many voices that would formulate the new Iran.

The tumult of revolution we associate with the modern concept of ‘Arab Spring’ had convulsed its Persian forebears in 1978, resulting in the abdication of the Shah and dismantling of his vaunted security apparatus.  Khomeini was the spiritual leader of millions of Iran’s Shia followers but as with the Arab Spring only one of several arms of the revolution.  His revolutionary zeal, however, was never pointed toward the goals of liberal democratic consensus.  His was a hardened religious totalitarianism, linked to the fundamentalist dogma of sharia law and supreme societal rule by clerics.  Khomeini may have superficially agreed to form an “Islamic Vatican” in the city of Qom, the spiritual home of Shia religious thought in order to return from exile, but cooperating with a secular leader to progressively reform Iran was the farthest thing from his mind. Ruling Iran through cleric supremacy and formulating a larger Islamic fundamentalist revolution was at the core of his being.

Liberals tend to be attracted to the purity of totalitarian rhetoric and disdainful of the dirty compromises and character flaws of secular leaders who must deal with the reality of their circumstances.  The  message of societal efficiencies propagated by  the “democratically elected” Hitler and Mussolini, the pursuit of socialist perfection by the communists under Stalin, the purity of sacrifice of the individual to the great societal good of the pure communist state put forth by Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot, all with goal of elimination of the “elites” and leveling of the societal playing field, has proved attractive intellectually to liberals, who are thereby willing to sacrifice individual liberties for the greater purity of societal equality.

Khomeini was in the mold of these epic totalitarians, yet was lavished with praise by the intellectual liberal elites and press in Europe and the United States, for his life long opposition to what they saw as the greater evil, the Shah of Iran. To the elites, the Shah was evil incarnate for his secret police, prisons, and harsh rule over those who would seek to water down his omnipotent rule.  Khomeini, however, was no advocate of expanded freedom for Iranians. He was in exile in Paris since 1963 instead for his oppositional rage to the Shah’s initiation of the “White Revolution” – the Shah’s six point revolution to modernize Iran – land reform, nationalization of forests, the sale of state owned enterprises to private interests, the enfranchising of women and nonIslamic minorities  to educational equality and the right to vote and hold office,  a national literacy campaign, and initiation of profit sharing to industry.  To Khomeini and his religious followers, the Shah’s drive toward a Westernized more liberal Iran was the ultimate crime against the core tenet of fundamentalist Islam, that demanded complete submission to the message and laws of the Koran as interpreted by Khomeini and other fundamentalists.  Completing the Shah’s journey to ultimate sin against Islam was his willingness to have diplomatic relations with the state of Israel and his good graces with the Great Satan, the United States.

The elderly man who stepped off the tarmac in Tehran in February, 1979, may have been physically enfeebled by age, but carried the great energy and fire fed by hatred and zealotry.  Prime Minister Bakhtiar had unknowingly transmitted Pandora’s Box from Paris and opened it, releasing what has become the great storm of Islamic fundamentalist rage and retribution of the last 34 years and making the epicenter of the fury the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Khomeini quickly brushed aside Bakhtiar and his  liberalist tendencies and by the end of the year brought the totalitarian cleansing he had dreamed of in those years in exile in Paris.  Gone were the open role of women in education and society.  Gone were the concepts of minority rights and  freedoms.  The Shah’s prison abuses soon paled to the kangaroo courts and  brutal torture chambers Islamic fundamentalist justice with tens of thousands of free thinkers and religious minorities imprisoned and executed.  The concept of jihad proved an ominous Khomeini tool to control events beyond his immediate borders, intimidating liberal Islamic thinkers like Salman Rushdie through the declaration of fatwas, and revolutionizing the youth of Iran. much like Mao. into defense of the faith as Revolutionary Guards. He directed his followers to dismantle the concept of diplomatic immunity and national sovereignty by encouraging and orchestrating the hostage takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for the sheer joy of humiliating the Great Satan.   He soaked his country in the blood of totalitarian war, driving a half a million zealots to their death against the equally murderous totalitarian Saddam Hussein and Iraq.  He turned the democratic concept on its head, forming the concept of Supreme Leader, placing in the hands of a cleric levers of power that even the Shah could not approach.  His final goal was the bringing of jihad against the Great Satans, Israel and the United States, and his surrogates continue to aim for the destruction of each through strikes of terror and Iran’s singled minded drive to develop the atomic bomb.

Pandora was horrified of what she had done in giving in to her curiosity and releasing the contents of the Box.  Our Western apologists unfortunately make no bones of the great damage done to the concepts of individual freedom, separation of church and state, and extension of the concepts of liberty and entrepreneurialism emitted by opening the Box 34 years ago in Tehran.  To them, their cartoonishly negative view of flawed individuals like the Shah prevent them from ever assessing the balance of the good and bad these type of leaders occasion for their people. The Iran of today may be free of the Shah, but managed to trade him in for a darker more ominous totalitarian, and the world is definitely not a safe or freer place as a result.  One wonders how many more of Pandora’s boxes were opened by the encouraging of the process of the Arab Spring.  Unlike Zeus, we can not simply retreat to Olympus, but as human beings, will have to face and bear the untoward consequences.

 

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The Second Inauguration

Tomorrow brings one of the great traditions in the ongoing experiment of American democracy, the swearing in of the executive leader of the country to an oath binding them to the formative and enduring principles of the nation.  From General Washington’s first ceremony in 1789 in New York City, to the elevation of the Senator from Illinois in 2009 to the position of President, the ceremony has survived war, weather, national schism, and depression to create a brief coming together of the nation’s leaders and people to celebrate the uniting force of the Constitution’s means of political peaceful succession.

It has produced unique moments of history. William Henry Harrison in 1841, attempting to overcome the caricature that at 69 he was too old for the job, delivered a two hour 8000 word stem-winder of a speech in miserably cold and rainy weather that proved his physical endurance to all present, but managed to inject the pneumonia that lead to his death within a month.  President Lincoln in 1865 created in brevity what Harrison could only dream about in his extended comments, a masterpiece of poetic majesty that has set the standard for all to follow.  The oath of office has been typically delivered by the Chief Justice of the United States, with Chief Justice John Marshall administering 9 oaths from 1801 to 1833, making Marshall the shepard of  Presidents from the founding moments of the nation  through its infancy and adolescence.  The Capitol has been the traditional home of the ceremony, with both the East and more recently the West Porticos creating the backdrop of the immense prestige of the moment.

President Obama’s first inaugural of 2009 in retrospect foreshadowed the many contradistinctions of this still ill-defined figure.  The candidate Obama had campaigned on the concepts of a “purple” nation, grown beyond the political divisions of “red” and “blue” states to work together to address the nation’s challenges.  Many predicted a speech of elevated and poetic muse to focus the nation, in keeping with the assumed intellectual brilliance of the individual that had just been elected.  His campaign rhetoric had been delivered in epic forums, the most spectacular, the Denver convention acceptance speech, delivered with the backdrop of Olympian columns in front of tens of thousands of adorational listeners, moved to tears by the moment more than the rhetoric.

Instead, the speech exposed the nation to many of the Obamian impulses that developed as his signature.  The use of a teleprompter creating a rather flat delivery, as if the speech was to be read rather than delivered.  The petty trashing of those that had come before him to the responsibilities of the office, as if his mere presence would change the fractious nature of politics. The disturbing repetitive use of cliches and tired language in the speech that created an atmosphere of superficiality and lack of depth of understanding or commitment to real solutions, with clumsy text like “rising tides”, “gathering storms”, “nagging fears”, and “icy currents”.  Claims regarding rock bed personal principles of a new era of responsibility that stood in absolute contradistinction to later actions – “a recognition on the part of every American that those of us who manage our nation’s dollars will be held to account”. The lack of definitive framing of core convictions that would suggest a road map to the nation’s triumph over adversity.

The enormity of accomplishment of the nation overcoming its past in electing a person of color to the highest office lead to a celebration of great intensity in 2009 and resulted in the glossing over of the many flaws of this individual as an executive and constructive leader over the coming years.  The re-election in 2012, while affirming the nation’s victory over prejudice, has re-enforced the collective impulse to forgive amateurish skill sets in this President that are leading to some real calamities.  The ‘responsibility’ President has presided over the greatest spiral of unsupported spending and growth of government in history.  An ongoing tendency to distance himself from the process of political compromise and paint his opponents in ever starker language of division has created an acid environment that threatens the country’s growing need for consensus in overcoming formidable economic challenges.  A thin skin and righteousness about his own supposed superior intellect leaves little room for other intellectual arguments and a healthy diversity of political creativity. A disturbing disdain for the fundamentals of the Constitution to which he has sworn to uphold, has projected itself in neglecting budgetary responsibilities, processes of appointment, and a blatant  avoidance in the enforcement of current laws already approved through the democratic process.

The second inauguration of a President always celebrates the triumph of vision of the first administration of the individual, but notably injects the inevitable waning of persuasive influence of the President as the lame duck status of the political entity is immediate with the oath of office.  President Obama is unique in his view of his position in history and capacities of his office.  Tomorrow I suspect the words he will emote will simply re-enforce my view of him as a detached figure from his nation’s challenges, who seeks to bend the narrative of history to his liking, without outlining a constructive vision and process to the nation’s future that includes all Americans and the unique story of our success.

Nothing would please me more than to turn out to be wrong regarding this man, but I’m not about to hold my breath. The country gets a chance tomorrow to celebrate a great theme of history, but I don’t expect to hear the rhythms and call to unity and greatness that once echoed from that storied spot on the Capitol’s West portico:

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

“To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

“So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

John F Kennedy  1.20.1961

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The New World Order – 1991 gives way to The New World Disorder – 2013

      The circumstances of revolutionary events brought with the celebration of the new year January 1st, 1991 a sense of a new pragmatism in solving problems.   The concept of a “new world order”, was presented, in which the world, now fundamentally connected by the progressing information revolution, would settle its differences on a rational political, scientific,  and economic basis, shepherded by the two in tune-super powers, the Untied States and the Soviet Union, and with the peaceful assistance of the emerging economic super powers of Germany and Japan.  The progressive collapse of power of the Soviet Union following the dissolution of Soviet dominated eastern Europe and its post World War II Warsaw Pact military arm, however, made the reality on the ground of a U.S. superpower dominant in a multi-polar world.

Like all considerations for an ideal cooperative spirit, there was some tidying up to do.  The U.S. had used the new world order concept to achieve a spectacular alliance comprised of such disparate participants as Syria and Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, to eject Saddam Hussien’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait. After an unprecedented “smart bomb” air campaign, 100 hours of on the ground power in February was sufficient to get the job done, and the United States looked to link this spectacular triumph at the Madrid Conference to finally achieve a comprehensive world solution to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.

It turned out of course the world was not ready for leaving behind its calamitous martial past for a more cooperative future.   The final dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 left the United States without a state foil, and the many countries reliant on the USSR for support without a “protector” on the world stage.  The result of collapse of a bipolar checks and balances has left the world with twenty years of a new reality, economic instability and bloody local conflicts, and 2013 will likely see the culmination of all that has been wrought in A New World Disorder.

The mistake was likely the idea that the world’s societally under developed nations would accept the concept of ‘Roman citizen’ to the United States as Rome (no matter how understanding this Rome would be).  The two pronounced examples of the collapse of the theorem was the presentation of the Palestinian Israeli conflict solvable in a negotiated fashion.  The aforementioned Madrid conference of 1991 saw Israel and Palestinian representatives seated at the same table, and following secret direct Palestinian Israeli talks, the infamous Oslo accords.  No handshake between former avowed enemies  was going to break the radicalization of the conflict now that balanced super power restraint was absent, and the radicals abhorrent of the idea of rational progress and enamored with the idea of Islamic triumphalism saw their historic opening.  From the duplicitous Arafat’s own Intifada to Bin Laden’s orgiastic terror tidal wave to Hussein’s Iraqi Armageddon in the desert, the lack of world order mechanisms to suppress the worst was absent.  No comprehensive grand alliance or respect for UN resolutions, so much a tenet of the new world order, were available to the second George Bush to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003.  Rather, the cumulative world response to the horrors of 09/11 were empty rhetoric, allies who sought to undermine the U.S. , and a feeble and friable ‘coalition of the willing’.   The equally spectacular destruction of Hussien’s forces and eventual capture and eradication of Hussein and ultimately Bin Laden, has led to none of the hopes of the post-conflict new order theoreticians like Francis Fukuyama, Strobe Talbot, and Brent Skowcroft.

The world as it now exists is a far cry from the hopes and aspirations of the forward thinking leaders of post cold War 1991.  The United States in its role as the modern Rome is the Rome of 379 AD, and  President Obama the modern re-incarnation of Emperor Theodosius I.  Theodosis sought to put  Rome’s outlying responsibilities into the hands of forces who saw each abdication of responsibility as another indication of Rome’s terminal illness.  Internally directed by progressively weakened infrastructure, finances, and collapse of will for the burdens of global direction,  our Theodosis has put forth the oxymoronic concept of “leading from behind”  and the gaping hole that is left is being rapidly filled with the modern Visigoths, Islamic radicals.  The premature withdrawal of U.S. forces by Obama from Iraq, has left the hard won stability of 2007 in tatters, and the radicals again on the rise.  The carefully orchestrated leadership of the first President Bush to achieve a peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact is in stark contrast to the epic fail of the Obama administration to shepard the Arab Spring, leading to the catastrophic handling of Libya epitomized by Benghazi, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the calamitous  destruction in Syria.   The over 50,000 casualties in Syria with no end in site is the pie’ce de resistance of the end of the dream of the new world order concept to solve the world’s disharmony.  A United States true to its need to lead from behind has no influence on the conflict.  Russia, living the fallacy of former capacities in backing the Assad regime, can only watch its death troughs.  The egos and pride of the regional powers of Turkey and Iran are progressively, personally and dangerously tied to the outcome, and Israel watches from its border as the calamity will inevitably involve them.

The result of twenty years of  ineffective diplomatic and collective will accompanying a United States in decline has lead to the vortex of global danger in the Syrian conflict, and 2013 may see the world unable to control its inevitable conclusions. Theodosis I proved to be the last Emperor of Rome as a unified confederation, and the world was hurled into a thousand years of turmoil and rejection of the concept of citizen and civilization.  The pull of history to revisit itself is strong, and the seeds for real chaos is out there.  Watch Syria in 2013. The world’s rational impulses may be put to ultimate test in the 5000 year home of the land of Sargon.

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Lincoln

The historian in me couldn’t resist seeing the most recent cinematic effort to portray history, what I hoped to be a  compelling presentation of one of my historical heroes, Abraham Lincoln.  Historical dramas are the stuff of Hollywood.  History offers spectacle and tension that epic moments are rife with, but, to the challenge of the screenwriter, the outcome is known to the audience.  The tendency of the writer therefore is to bend history by inserting plot devices, conversations that never occurred, people that didn’t exist, to heighten the peril faced by the protagonists.  History frequently takes a beating in a drama well told for effect.

Steven Spielberg faced just such a challenge in his current movie, Lincoln .  The sweep and scale of the Civil War and Lincoln’s pivotal role in it has received more scholarly attention than perhaps any time in American history, and the role of  President Lincoln has reached mythical status.  The many faces of mythic Lincoln , Lincoln the Western Logsplitter, Lincoln the Emancipator, Lincoln the War Leader, and Lincoln the Shakespearean Martyr, play to our current image of this enigmatic historical figure.  Spielberg was determined to humanize the Olympic stature of Lincoln, and decided to focus therefore on the interactions of Lincoln the man in a very small sliver of the Civil War saga, the role of the President in achieving the passage of the bill promoting a 13th amendment to the U.S Constitution, abolishing slavery and enforced servitude.

The movie therefore attempts to show us Lincoln , the human, at a moment requiring masterful political abilities.  Necessarily, the typical background for animated a historical drama, dramatic action scenes, are riskily absent from this movie.  The movie instead maintains a laser focus on the artillery like bombardment that Lincoln faced every day of his Presidency in the form of an overwhelming  plethora of pressures.  The scope of crushing forces attempting to suffocate his will are told to brutal effect.  The President faces as a result of his actions to attempt to preserve the union a daily butcher’s bill of hundreds if not thousands of casualties that touch those immediately around him, in a war seemingly without end..  As if the God wanted to assure the personal understanding of such loss, He takes Lincoln’s little boy Will to fatal illness, plunging his already unstable wife Mary into a spiral of depression, self absorption, and irrational acts.  He faces a majority in legislature that wants to destroy the South for its irretrievable sins of slavery and secession, making the elements of a potential re-union all but insurmountable, and a minority Democrat party that was never willing to make the elimination of slavery a priority of peace.  He faces war profiteers, two faced cabinet men, deserters, and a thousand years of racial prejudice in daily battle.

All of these forces lead to the Lincoln we see in the image above –  weary, aged, and introspective.  The daily deluge seems impossible to tolerate, yet this man faces them with a grim determination that is absent from today’s politician, with an innate belief in the founding principles of the nation and an unalterable conviction in the role of Divine Providence.  It takes a great actor to portray the human condition as it exists in a character, and Daniel Day Lewis achieves this in one of the great performances of our generation.  Frankly, Lewis saves the movie from itself, as the scenes project a certain redundancy in Lincoln’s daily stresses and challenges, and script’s need to put constantly profound statements in the President’s mouth to propel the story forward.  Perhaps for the first time, we see Lincoln the man, struggling with himself and his family, as he faces the need to finish the job he played a pivotal role in starting.  This is no cartoon hero Lincoln.  This is a man who seeks an end that will in some way provide some justice to the horrific, incalculable losses.  Daniel Day Lewis brings this very special man to life in a unforgettable way.

As history, unfortunately, the movie takes some huge assumptions that cheapen the learning lessons of the film.  Focusing on the politics of the Amendment abolishing slavery, the movie gives only thready information as to how men and woman at that time could hold such divergent views as to humanity.  Rather than careful interpretations as to the intensity of people’s convictions at the time, we see men throwing bedrock philosophies overboard for a few dollars or a patronage position. African Americans on the President’s house staff in the movie are projected as fully politically aware and engaged, yet Frederick Douglas, a huge intellectual force effecting Lincoln’s way of thinking is essentially no where to be found.   Thaddeus Stevens, a powerful abolitionist in the House, is given the key role in achieving the desired end of the bill, though there is no historical narrative that suggests that was the case.  The South projects in the movie essentially only as a little seen foreign force, and the peace delegation injected in the movie comes off as cartoonish and delusional.

As educational and formative entertainment, it doesn’t seem to me the movie quite works as successfully as Spielberg’s other historical drama, Saving Private Ryan. The special performance of Daniel Day Lewis, however,  in making the epic Lincoln  someone we could recognize and understand as a human being, is enough to make the effort to see the movie through a worthy one.  So little of our nation’s formative narrative is placed in front of our population nowadays that even a flawed attempt by Spielberg is a valued one.  Maybe this we lead to some better efforts to combat the nation’s ignorance on how we got here, and where we are going.