HISTORY – Page 5 – Ramparts of Civilization

July 10, 2016

The Rule of Law on the Endangered List

When the Constitutional Convention met between May and September 1787, the delegates hoped to codify substantial improvements in the previously governing Articles of Confederation that would create a national consensus of governance. The weaker Articles had led to poor decision making and conflict resolution structure, and lack of vision and resources to face the future. A carefully debated and perfected set of checks and balances were devised to provide limitations to the power of centralized government, so recently faced at great peril and barely overcome with so much blood and treasure. The delegates wanted to make sure the aristocratic impulses that are promulgated in the coalescence of power were blocked by a division of capabilities. The Legislature elected by the People would propose laws of the land and secure their passage, and provide the means for their investment. The Executive would use his office to faithfully execute those laws. The Judiciary would adjudicate and secure that both the intent of the laws and their execution would be consistent with delineated and limited capabilities of government specified in the Constitution. Balanced between democracy and forbearance, the document known as the Constitution of the United States was a miracle of its time, and of all time.

The classical liberals of the time of the revolution were, however, not satisfied with the extent of the document to protect the hard won liberties for individuals that had been the causal impulse of the revolution itself. In order to secure the passage of the Constitution by the states required for its entry as the new government of the land, amendments codifying the Unalienable Rights of individual citizens were insisted upon as a price for constitutional support. The passage of ten amendments to the Constitution ratified by the states in 1791, collectively known as the Bill of Rights when passed through the newly formed House of Representatives, secured the rights of the people to liberty,freedom of expression, assembly and worship, self defense, due process and equal protection under the law, and to the states any rights and duties not reserved specifically for the national government.

And there the two pillars of the concept of law have stood since the beginning of the nation, buffeted and strained by events, the bizarre duality of the existence of slavery in a land where all men were created equal and the expunging of that stain by the calamity of civil war, the dangers of unfettered capitalism creating oligarchies, the risk to republican concepts in the dark days of depression, and the existential risks created by world war. Through all, the incredible strength provided by such documents prevented the dissolution of the country, and the unrivaled opportunity for all who came to her shores. Here was a land where the entitled and the indigent, the strong and the weak, the native and the immigrant, the old and the newly born all could assure themselves of their codified protection and rights secured in a rule of law and equal justice that resisted the emotions of the time.

Now we are at a time of similar danger to the concept of the rule of law, but unlike other times, the number of people who understand what is at stake appear to be a rapidly diminishing herd. The nation that used to see as its cornerstone, the education of its youth and newly arrived immigrants in the study of civics, setting this country uniquely among others, now faces an utter ignorance from its own citizens and an arrogant disdain from its governing officials that puts rule of law on the endangered list.

The past weeks, with overt abominations, equivalences, and violent, deadly altercations suggest potentially fatal wounds to the country’s psyche and institutional confidence.

Though the examples are diverse, the threat to the rule of law as the honest arbiter of conflicts and eliminator of corruption is the underlying meme. Exhibit number one is the email security scandal of the former Secretary of State of the United States. The Congress, in order to protect the people of the United States against enemies of the country gaining access to information that put the nation or individuals at risk, passed laws to guard against such damage being done, either willfully or through deceit or negligence. The rule of law secures both the protections of the people and uniform compliance of the law for all that would come under it:

Title 18 Section 793 (F) of the US Code of Law :Chapter 37 Espionage and Censorship (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The clarity of the language is not oblique as to the responsibilities of any individual entrusted with such information, from the lowliest clerk at the Pentagon to the President of the United States. Equality under the law secures both the rights and responsibilities that guarantee both the freedoms and potential penalties prescribed by law are independent of a person’s station in life. Without such guarantees, the nation is helpless against the corrupting influence of the powerful to set one standard for themselves, and one for all others. President Nixon was not impeached for ordering a break in or even creating the incitement for it. He was positioned for impeachment for using the tools of government to obstruct the achievement of equal justice under the law, and the Constitutional principles he had sworn to protect. Secretary of State Clinton took a similar oath of office to faithfully execute the laws of the land and the duties of her office. She had reached the cabinet position after a lifetime of interactions with the concept of law and its role in society. She was a lawyer who had in fact participated on the house Judiciary Committee Congressional Council staff that was charged with investigating President Nixon’s possible crimes, was the lawyerly wife of a President Clinton who was himself impeached for perjuring himself under oath, and had been a Senator involved in committees that vetted sensitive information. Such intimate association with ethics stained events and forty years of law had certainly prepared her for the importance of understanding the rule of law and the role it plays in securing the rights for all in society.

Positioned at one of the most powerful and most sensitive positions in government, and having lived a lifetime of intimate interactions with those who had run afoul of their sworn responsibilities, there was probably no one individual in the entire government who should have been more aware of the importance of fealty to the law. It is therefore a travesty of justice, when the implication was made this week that although her actions regarding maintaining a private unsecured server for all her governmental communications outside of accepted security was clearly from her specific direction, the exposure of multiple secrets and sensitive information represented only “careless” activity, not the gross negligence specified in the law as felonious.

The FBI investigation into Clinton’s server insanity identified lies and actions that would have prevented any other individual from receiving any job in the federal government, most companies, and given the realities of the damage done, an indictment and likely trial for crimes against the United States.

She lied when she said she did not send or receive any classified emails. She lied when she said she turned over all pertinent work related emails. She knowingly routed sensitive and secret government information through a private server she knowingly set up against all policy, servers that did not have, as expressed by the director of the FBI, even the simplest level of security to hackers offered by G-Mail. She lied when she stated her E-mails were reviewed by her team of personal lawyers to assure all pertinent information be turned over to the investigating authorities and brazenly ordered the scrubbing of any potential evidence of her servers to guarantee no one could ever gain access to the actual undoctored information.

When the extent of the negligence is so appalling, and the evidence of willful intent to manipulate both evidence and the appropriate investigation of her actions so clear, how is it possible that the Director of the FBI could make the ludicrous statement that no “reasonable” prosecutor would find reason for indictment? It is because we are becoming comfortable with the idea that people who represent our views are to be forgiven their infidelities, regardless of the damage it does to objective justice and the protection of rights through the rule of law. The FBI Director was more concerned that the determination of guilt be adjudicated by an election, not a court of law. Doing so, he flouted the role that the legislature plays in determining our laws, the executive plays in faithfully executing those laws, and the judiciary’s role in securing justice for all, regardless of position of influence. This careful system of checks and balances assures the objective removal of corrupt processes, before they can do damage to the principles that secure the country as a functioning republic. He brought to risk all individuals responsibility for being faithful to, and respecting law. He provided precedence that laws are contextual only, and that our highest officials may provide their own interpretations, different from those the commoner must face.

It was such context and arrogance toward law that led the nobles of England to secure from King John the delineated principles of the Magna Carta in 1215, assuring that the rule of law be common to the rulers and their subjects. Hillary Clinton has led a life that at almost every turn suggested the rules of society are for the little people, and our establishment has grown impotent to do anything about the single minded destruction she brings to our most basic principles. From flaunting the privacy considerations of the Watergate committee in order to insert her political views into the investigation, colluding to hide documents from investigators from her revealing her billing actions with the Rose Law Firm, assuring the destruction of Whitewater fellow investors in order to protect her involvement with savings and loan shenanigans, and devastating attacks upon the character of women who were harmed by her husband, Clinton has used her position of power to protect and enrich herself at the expense of any who unfortunately touched upon her sordid moral compass. It has been a lifetime built on the altar of lies, amorality, and personal gain. Now the FBI Director, to avoid being accused of denying her what unfettered democracy may yet provide her, ultimate power, has stained himself and a lifetime of work serving justice, joining the many others who have been thrown under the Clinton bus.

A society that would put her in such an ultimate position of power has a dead soul, and the hard won miracle of a classless society based on equality under the law, collaterally damaged perhaps beyond recognition. Our choice this fall is the fool’s bargain.

July 3, 2016

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee…

The most disconcerting realization for elites that had assumed the outcome in the Brexit vote to be inevitable and a ringing confirmation of the globalist view of the modern world, was the fervor of such a large segment of the British public to the quant notion of country. The idea that people would be willing to risk the security of being part of a supranational economic superpower for vague notions of freedom and self determination based on cultural roots, seemed absurd on its face. After all, the modern world had done all it could to blur cultural distinctions, remove historical uniqueness, and equalize outcomes for all. What possible residual value could be discerned for the concept of country to any modern person other than a few “bitter clingers”?

It turns out that the concept of history and country has not yet died the pauper’s death. As the Fourth of July approaches for America, the Brexit push back against subordination to a world determined by others, has brought a little renewed shine to a holiday that celebrates the epitome of “just say No”. A country is still an ideal as well as a geography, as much as the elites have attempted to eliminate the education of the cultural codes that bind us, and differentiate us.

On July 4th, 1776, a declaration of independence was announced by thirteen former colonies of Great Britain, forming spontaneously a country of United States of America. The geography and people had not changed; the cultural roots were determined to be sufficiently unique to require the untethering of two similar cultures destinies, by force if necessary. The declaration stated the ideals of nationhood that required this devolvement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

On July 3rd, 1863, two great armies met upon an open field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, sharing the same hereditary and cultural roots, but variant concepts of country. Both saw themselves as representing freedom and self determination, but both felt the need to express themselves as to country to the point of self sacrifice for the larger concept. To the confederate, country required an acceptance of an individual’s rights to commerce and property, and a state’s representation of the circumstances of society without an overbearing federal enforcing power determining their destiny without their consent. The Unionist saw secession as an unlawful rebuke to the shared sacrifices of the original union and an attempt to distort the ideal that all men are created equal and protected under constitutional law that bound them together. Both were willing to travel hundreds miles from their home, and if necessary, die upon an arbitrary field of battle, to defend their concept of country. For one brief moment, all notions of country fell to General Lewis Armistead’s 57th Virginia Infantry who clashed against Winfield Hancock’s Second Corps 69th and 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry at the Angle. Having driven as part of Pickett’s Charge across a deathly blizzard of artillery and musket fire by the mass of the Union army, Armistead’s men had managed through incredible courage and will to reach the angled stone wall, beyond which lay the vulnerable rear of the Union position and the probable destruction of the Union cause. In a moment of time, the Union line was briefly breached, but Confederate destiny was forever quieted by direct blows from the last of two residual Union canon, commanded by Wisconsin native Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, and the Union line held. The breach led to Armistead’s and Cushing’s simultaneous death, in mutual sacrifice to the concept of country in which they held no particular personal advantage in either outcome. Armistead died a hero to a lost cause. Cushing, sustaining an extremity injury, kept his battery firing through the torrent. He received a second injury to his abdomen and groin, but refused to leave the field of battle, and propped up by fellow soldiers ordered his battery to continue to fire into the maelstrom until a third bullet silenced him through the mouth and out his head killing him instantly. Cushing received his country’s belated recognition 151 years later, when he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, on November 6,2014.

On July 4th, 1976, 100 Israeli commandos reminded the world that the concept of country, and the importance and willingness to defend a cultural identity, transcended geography. An Air France Jet with 248 passengers and 12 crew, traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists after leaving a stopover in Athens, flown to Benghazi, then Entebbe, Uganda, where they were welcomed into hostage status by the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The real purpose of the hijacking, the Israeli Jews on board, became apparent when the hijackers separated the jewish passengers, and allowed the other passengers to leave. The brave Air France crew determined to stay with the residual hostages despite the obvious dire risks. With additional guards provided by the Amin’s military, the hostages were threatened with death unless a list of terrorists in Israeli and other jails were immediately released. Four years after the death of Israeli hostages at the Munich Olympics, the ominous destiny of the hostages was only too clear to the Israeli government. But what could possibly be done when hostages were being held under Ugandan military protection, 2200 miles from Israel? On July 4th, 1976, the bicentennial of the American expression of the rights of man and country, the world awoke to the incredible news that an Israeli commando team had traveled the 2200 miles, eliminated the reaction capacity of the Ugandan military, killed the terrorists, extricated safely all but four of the hostages, and returned safely to Israel. The amazing raid on Entebbe has taken special historical poignancy as the only special forces commando killed in the raid was its commanding officer, Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had shown the world that citizens of its country were the nonnegotiable reflections of its very existence, and the country would defend to the death regardless of risk or difficulty, threats to its citizenry, no less than the land itself.

On July 4th, 2016, we will celebrate this country’s 240th anniversary of its independence. Of no small coincidence to the Captain of the Ramparts of Civilization, this July 4th will also celebrate the sixth anniversary of this little blog, dedicated to the defense of those ramparts. In our own humble way, the willingness through the power of free expression to stand up for the great concepts that define the western ideal is a small but distinct contribution to those who through the years have accomplished so much more through their genius and sacrifice. To all the worldwide defenders of the Ramparts, from the distant past to the most recent Brexiters, we salute you. To Ramparts of Civilization, Happy Birthday. To the United States of America, Happy Independence Day. To this great country and the ideals it represents, many many more bountiful and freedom filled years…

My country, tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers die
Land of the pilgrims pride
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring.

June 26, 2016June 29, 2016

Sunrise After Brexit

Sunrise attrib Wikipedia Commons — Sunrise
*attrib Wikipedia Commons*

The morning after the Brexit vote, one imagines Britons awakening with a similar sense of bewilderment, and a diametrically opposed sense of outcome. Those who voted Leave, woke up with a tentative sense of blissful relief, as if a migrainous pressure behind their eyes had been lifted with the rising sun, and they could safely view the rays for the first time in a long time without averting their sight. The Remainers awoke also bewildered, but adjusting to a massive hangover painfully focusing the reality of a resultant wakeup from a decades long bender. Both likely thought, “What just happened?”. What just happened will take some time to sort out, but the makings of something very significant for people in Britain, and beyond, has clearly and irreversibly occurred.

The outcome of the momentous vote in Great Britain on June 23rd to leave formal membership in the European Union spared no one’s worldview. In the stunning bullseye of the outcome stood the Prime Minister of Great Britain himself, David Cameron. Completely misinterpreting his constituents fundamental concerns with an ever more encompassing elitist need to control their lives, Cameron felt he could use fear tactics regarding a world after Leave without elitists’ guarantees of stability for all would be enough to impel the great undereducated to support an establishment who would look after them. He was so wrong, that it appears his political mandate so recently secured in the parliamentary elections of 2015, has been scuttled. He has announced his intent to resign. The British people spoke in 2015, and thus they spoke again. Like most leaders who, upon retaining power, assume it is all about them, Cameron found out that both his comprehensive victory in 2015 and his crashing defeat in 2016, were decidedly not about him. Likewise, the American President Obama, who likes to declare in profound elitist egocentrism every time an opposing opinion to his worldview gains traction, “This is not the America we want,” discovered that the people of Great Britain didn’t find his preening intervention in the issue helpful in the least. It turns out British citizens wanted to let Obama know, “This is not the Britain we want.”

What has transpired I suspect, is a very natural human reaction to excess. When the Industrial Revolution brought for the first time a means by which individuals could achieve the position of kings without a hereditary portfolio and in the interval of a single lifetime, the benefits were profound, but so were the excesses. As wealth spilled out from the exclusive domain of royalty and clergy, millions of people attained the benefits of a meaningful life filled with both security and bounty. Lives progressively became less the fight for survival then the search for personal worth and meaning. The elites were progressively shunted aside to directional forces determined by the proletariat and burgeoning middle class. Transportation became universal. Food became plentiful. A life now stable became increasingly worthwhile to maintain one’s health. All good things. However, the darker impulses were also apparent. The individualism left other important communal outcomes wanting. The environment sustained critical damage. Morality became a relic, with diminished roles for family, increasing pleasure absorption, and an increasingly bitter sense of being left out, once the reality of opportunities for success was progressively available to all. The most aggressively destructive forces in the twentieth century were not led by the elites, but rather the out of control proletariat that coopted nations into tools of domination. Common men led the most egregious – the journalist Mussolini Fascist Italy, the failed painter Hitler Germany, the would be priest Stalin, the pseudo intellectual Mao. Worse than their own perverted sense of progress was their willingness and ability to draw millions like them into armies of mass destruction.

The world that barely survived this excess turned to elitists to save them. Post war communal arrangements were designed to soften the worst traits of nearly destroyed world of the out of control individualism and national primitivism. The new meme of the elites was “globalism”. Individuals, and the nations they personified would subvert their baser tendencies to a global sharing through the guidance of elites. Companies in competition would consolidate into global corporations in sync with shared values. Nations in competition would align with others to redistribute resources, regulate excesses, and degenerate their uniqueness. Shared money, shared language shared aspirations, shared outcomes would remove the calamitous instincts of individuals to ‘get ahead’, and the world would forever grow beyond the need for violence, greed, and flag waving that got us into all this trouble in the first place. The new wars would be against other – climate, division, asymmetry, and sexuality. Sure there would be some unbalanced aspects. Elites would preserve their world and flourish. The rest would see the benefits of the elites beneficence – just like in the olden times.

The Elites – the Harvard trained Obama and the Eton and Oxford prepared Cameron – could not comprehend that the average individual might want to bring some meaning to their lives by living their lives differently. The Elites had extended their altruism to the point where they demanded to provide solutions for aspects of life where there were no identified problems to solve. Brexit was not so much a negation of all that came before but a democratic break to the undemocratic impulses of those who would determine that the future is a settled science of vast bureacracies, infinite regulations, removal of moral constraints, and destruction of free will and individual opportunity.

The morning sunrise after Brexit brings the faintly uncomfortable sense of a world less predictable. As Groucho Marx cogently once said, he would be uncomfortable belonging to any club that would have him as a member. As a result of Brexit, older forces may have to be monitored for and deftly dealt with. Germany’s natural inclination to dominate the continent and to gaze toward the East. Great Britain’s tenuous hold on its own unified sovereignity with such a close but divergent opinion as to the best course for its future. America’s isolationist tendencies and longing for a simplier world when it could self gaze safely behind a moat of surrounding oceans.

The better option is likely a form of compromise that preserves the best of what both elites and proliterians have to offer, without allowing the worst characteristics of each to see a world better off without each doing its part. Thanks to a bunch of conflicted but resolute Britons who trusted themselves, the world has a chance again to take a breath, and breathe the beautiful air of freedom. This particular sunrise, for those of us who still man the Ramparts of Civilization, is one moment worthy of the sentiments of Rule Britainnia :

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
“Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
“Britons never will be slaves.”

May 18, 2016

The Magnificent Croissant and Jan III Sobieski

So, one starts the homage to the magnificent croissant with a story of its origin too good to be true – which of course it isn’t. When it comes to food, however, great stories don’t have to be true in order to be truly great, and this one has all the elements of greatness. The wonder bread known as the croissant which forms the perfect meal through its irresistible airiness, flakiness, and buttery goodness has its origins in legend, but is the more likely descendant of more mundane bakery craft. The concept of rolling plates of flour with intervening filling has many mothers of invention. The ancient kipferl, a similarly shaped yeast dough based baked layered roll designed to be sprinkled or glazed, projected out of the misty depths of the ancient Hungarian lands of southeast Europe. The recognizably modern croissant was essentially borne in a Parisian boulangerie in the 19th century that looked to mimic the pastry concepts of Vienna, achieving the lightness and richness through applying layers of butter between the plates of dough, battering the layers into thinness and cutting them into triangles that are rolled and twisted, pulling the ends into a crescent shape and baked. The wondrous magic is in the texture and taste, but the real romance is in the shape itself.

A pastry shaped as a crescent with origins in Vienna became linked with the city’s rich past.and a legend was born. Why shouldn’t such a glorious food have a heroic origin? And thus we recall the croissant as an eternal reminder celebrating the moment when western civilization, on the verge of submission to an alien culture, pulled itself together and emerged victorious. In 1683, at the Gates of Vienna, history was at one of those balance points. The zenith of of a 350 year unimpeded march of ottoman islam into the core of Christian Europe culminated at those gates, as the very future of european culture tremulously looked for a miracle way out.

The Ottoman Turks pushed from their homeland in Anatolia in 1299 to become the dominant caliphate of the muslim world, tied together through the culminating 16th century conquests of Suleiman the Magnificent. From Iraq to Egypt, Algiers to Budapest, the massive empire had consumed the previous islamic caliphates and put the final nail in the remnant of imperial Rome in defeating and subjugating the Byzantine Empire, its capital Constantinople and its provinces of southeastern Europe. The jewel of central Europe, Vienna, lay before it, and with it, the gateway into the residual Holy Roman Empire through control of the Danube waterway. Christian Europe of 1683 was an ungodly mess, barely through the devastation of the Thirty Years War, that left its economies devastated and a third of its population dead. The squabbling power centers were constantly in conflict with each other, plotting to take land and riches with the first indication of weakness of a neighbor. The idea that Europe could focus mutually upon a threat as unified, powerful, sophisticated, and confident as the Ottomans seemed the stuff of wistful dreams.

The Ottomans were led by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, a general in charge of an estimated 130,000 troops against grim city walls and a local Hapsburg Austrian force of an estimated 15000 led by an opposing general grandly named in hapsburgian fashion, Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg. Consistent with their desire to subjugate when possible rather than destroy captured value, Mustafa settled into a strangulating siege of the city, blocking all sources of food progressively starving the inhabitants. The rings of siege were moved ever closer to the walls with tunnels dug to allow placement of explosive at the walls to take them down. From such facts the legend grew that the bakers of the city, first to rise in the night to prepare the bread of the diminishing food supply, heard the tunneling actions and warned the city guards sufficiently in time to prevent a breach of the wall.

Heroic bakers were not going to be enough to turn back the irresistible Islamists. It would take a Polish King named Jan III Sobieski. Sobieski, the leader of one of Europe’s largest states, the Polish Lithuanian Confederation, did not sit back when the threat presented at his southern flank. He gathered his army led by Europe’s greatest heavy cavalry, the Hussars, and sought the cooperation of the multitude of less virtuous leaders that stood between him and Vienna. The Hapsburg , Holy Roman , and French royals had to not only resist combatting his effort but additionally underwrite its enormous expense. Hordes that had invaded Europe had a way of focusing their attention, however, and having a King willing to fight when all others were fatigued by war was a godsend. On September 12, 1683, the Ottomans determined to have it out and settle the issue. The battle was vicious and extended with the outcome in doubt, until twilight when, out of the Viennese woods, Sobieski came into the late afternoon sun, and smashed into the Turkish flank. In the largest recorded cavalry charge, 18000 Polish Hussars crushed in the Ottoman flank and the rout was on. The victory became total, Vienna was saved, and the defeated Mustafa Pasha met the end of defeated islamic generals, a silk cord garrotment of the neck by his own troops.

The city was said to have celebrated by commemorating the victory by having its hero bakers who had played their role in blunting the Turks prepare a pastry. It was a baked good that would be shaped into a crescent to forever more remind all of the victory against the soldiers of islam, led by their crescent symbol. The wondrous victory would always be associated wtih the wondrous pastry, and the romantic origin of the croissant was identified.

Except of course, that not how the croissant originated. It would be an additional two hundred years before anybody would determine a recipe for the fantastic pastry we recognize today. No matter. The glory of the croissant resonates with us, even if the story told is a wonderful myth. Me? I like my myths, with coffee, thanks.

April 24, 2016April 24, 2016

Unleashing the Whirlwind

Old North Bridge Concord Massachusetts — Old North Bridge Concord, Massachusetts / *thecrowleyconnection.com*

Two coiled springs had been tightening, gaining immense potential energy for years. The question was simply where and when the spring would release, and whether it would be premeditated, or spontaneously let go. The overwhelmingly powerful British Empire, supported by the greatest military capacity present anywhere, was coiling against a perceived challenge to its authority that had consequences that were simply unacceptable for its very being. The opposite spring, a group of British subjects in the far away American colonies, saw a world that had yet to be invented, and like a prophet that had foreseen the glories of heaven, could not wait any longer to undertake the ascension. On April 19th, 1775, the spring uncoiled, and the whirlwind was released.

Since the climax of the French and Indian War, that in 1763 left Great Britain in the dominant position on the North American continent, the seeds for strife between the British crown and its colonial subjects grew progressively, and inexorably. This journey to the American Revolutionary conflict is (or at least was) an essential foundation of every elementary history course. Following the French and Indian war, the British Parliament felt that a significant burden of the massive financial debt created by the war should be assumed by the American colonies given the tremendous advantages for growth and security that had been created for them with the victory. The most direct was the Stamp Act, a tax that the colonists objected to not so much that it was oppressive in size, but rather in that it had been enacted without any representation and discourse with the colonies. With the elite educated class in America, progressively enthralled with the momentum of what would be called the Enlightenment, the lack of ability to influence their present or future was intolerable to the concepts of personal liberty and freedom of initiative.

Particularly in the restive New England colonies, radical discussions and progressively organized dissent proliferated. One such group, the Sons of Liberty led by Samuel Adams, became recognized as driving for a world beyond British parliamentary representation. The Adams radicals looked to kindle the fire that would make the world anew. The answer from Great Britain was to assert its authority, and progressively British regular soldiers were seen in Boston. The spark first showed itself in the so called Boston Massacre of 1770, in which a platoon of British soldiers threatened by a snowball throwing mob lost its cool and shot into the crowd, killing three. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 led by Samuel Adams was a direct affront, and the British government saw a local problem beginning to spiral out of control. The response that turned the process into an irreconcilable mess were the Intolerable Acts of 1774 enacted by Parliament, that asserted a form of military dictatorship over the colonists, restricting assembly, seizing control of the critical Port of Boston, removing a legal authority over British troops by American courts, and allowing British troops to be housed in American homes without consent of the owner. The response was predictable, for now the colonists that for 150 years had pretty much determined their own way in the Americas were forcibly notified of their subservient position in the British hierarchy. The colony of Massachusetts exploded in fury, and initiated a shadow government to the local British authority, a Provincial Congress that put forth the Suffolk Resolves, a group of acts that declared a boycott of British goods and public disobedience with the Intolerable Acts until they were repealed. Even more worrisome and threatening to the British, a meeting of all American Colonies took place in September 1774, forming a continent wide shadow legislature known as the 1st Continental Congress, that suggested the local radicals had permeated the concept of disobedience to British authority across the entire continent.

The Suffolk Resolves suggested the detachment of British authority from its American colonies and was an Intolerable Act to the conservative parliament and the king. Regular army detachments were sent to Boston to put it in a vise, and the reaction of the colonists were to form organized militia capable of rapid deployment with arms collected and positioned for maximum impact in case of conflict. The arms were distributed to allow 12000 militia to respond immediately to an aggressive British military maneuver, secured in 50 man units known as Minutemen. The commanding general in Boston, General Gage, recognized he could not possibly stand by and allow an organized force to arm itself. He determined to extend his forces into the countryside with strength, arrest the radical leaders, break up the militias, secure the arms, and send the leaders back to Britain for trial for high treason.

The when was April 19th, 1775 and the where was the public green in Lexington and the Old North Bridge in Concord.

The opening battle of the American Revolution - April 19th, 1775 Lexington and Concord — The opening battle of the American Revolution – April 19th, 1775 Lexington and Concord /*wikipedia*

Gage heard of massive stores of arms being collected in Concord, Massachusetts and selected the little town 24 miles from downtown Boston to be the sight to reassert British authority. The goal was to send overwhelming force in a stealthy fashion, marching through the night, but Boston was rife with spies, and the rebels had already planned for an early warning system. When it was determined that British troops were moving and their determined target, the Internet of the time sprang into action. Horsemen, most notably the silversmith Paul Revere, left Boston in three directions to alert the many communities that contained the Minutemen companies, and for the most part succeeded in marshaling the rapid deployment force before the British could intercede. Gage sent a massive force of 700 regulars on the road to Concord, with a desire to break arm stores in the intervening towns of Monatomy and Lexington.

At Lexington green, just as the sun came up, the advance British forces encountered the first of Revere’s alerted Minutemen led by a grizzled Indian fighter named John Parker. 77 minutemen stood in formation on the green nervously facing a representation of the most powerful military on earth, led by Major Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, who demanded the “rebels” immediately disarm and disperse. Parker, fully aware of the gravity of the moment and the importance of how it had to evolve to secure the right side of history, had told his men earlier, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they want to have a war, let it begin here.” There appeared to be a brief moment of indecision as both sides realized what might result from a mistake, but a shot rang out, and the British fired a point blank volley into the Americans. The damage was done. 8 Americans lay dead or dying and the British moved in and bayonetted. The minutemen dispersed and retreated to Concord. The British marched on to Concord and soon realized they were in a world of trouble. Initially the town allowed them to search uninhibited, but it was obvious that the weapons stores had already been removed, and the British became frustrated and burned downed several structures in town. British detachments moved to secure the bridges into town, and at the Old North Bridge it became clear the honeybees were being replaced by hornets. Minutemen were waiting for them on the bridge, and this time they didn’t just accepted the punishment delivered at Lexington. The volley was returned, and this time there were dead on both sides. As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously described,

By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to freedom’s breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard’round the world

The British retreated, and it became apparent that a potential calamity was underway. The officers began to retreat back toward the safety of Boston, and the extent of the hornet’s nest they had kicked over became apparent. The march back to Boston became a Hell’s road, facing a fully aroused guerrilla force, having been made aware of the morning’s events and sacrifices, that sought nothing short of full annihilation of the 700. Behind every rock and tree for twenty miles, a diffuse force of militia trained in the savage warfare of the Indian conflicts, snippered, ambushed, and harassed the beleaguered British force to massive loss, saved only by a rescue force from Boston that brought heavy artillery and cavalry to bear. The proud British force had been decimated with 0ver 250 casualties compared to 88 for the American militia, and came within an eye-blink of complete annihilation. The British, who hoped to assert complete authority, now found themselves under siege in Boston ringed by an entire countryside of furious hostility.

There was no going back from the brink, and the whirlwind was unleashed. The fighting was more savage than anyone could have predicted, and the losses stunning to the British. The Americans recognized the next battles would be of epically greater scale and began to form a Continental Army led by a Virginian named George Washington. The British saw that this was no longer a mob action led by a small minority, but a growing fire that could consume their hard won dominance in North America.

It would take 8 years of incredible sacrifice, amazing moments of heroism and initiative, epic mistakes, and a level of savagery of relative against relative that would presage the Civil War 80 years later. At the end of it all stood a dream and a promise, of equality of men, freedom of thought, and liberty in action that is as close to anything that man can claim as inspired greatness. On the 241st anniversary of the April events that shook the world at its foundations, we can only gaze in awe of the tiny contingent of brave men who stood their ground in a little town in Massachusetts and were willing to make such an ultimate sacrifice, on the sliver of faith that a promise could support a dream and create a better world. The impossible was made the possible, and the possible, happened. The dream and the promise held by common men were able to surmount the greatest military force of their time and turn the world upside down. Some felt it was Divine providence; it amazed even the most secular of men, when they looked back and realized what had transpired. As fellow Virginian John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson after the after the Declaration of Independence was signed:

We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?

We are still in the whirlwind of history. Maybe we will once again listen to our better angels, and find our way through our current storm.

March 20, 2016

Around The World

Lowell Thomas used to bring you the world on Movietone

At the height of the calamities of the mid twentieth century, an assured and distinctly American voice brought focus and attention to world events in brief movie vignettes presented at the primary American gathering place of that time, the movie house. Thomas, a very American entrepreneurial character, was in a strange way his own news

service, and invented many of the concepts that currently form our visual news services today. Thomas was the man who brought the visual media to news celebrity, finding and engaging T.E. Lawrence, helping turning him into “Lawrence of Arabia”. He helped found nightly radio national news broadcasts, was responsible for the first television news broadcast, and anchored the first telecast of a political convention. But Lowell Thomas is secured in history for going around the world in Movietone News, tying crisp and tight prose to sharply edited and dramatic newsreel footage to bring impact to the stories of the day, often in far off places ,to the contained world of the viewer. You could leave the movie theater knowing what you needed to know, because Lowell had synthesized it for you.

Well, nobody could possibly do like Lowell Thomas, but there are plenty of reminders out there of a world of ongoing events that we should keep in front of us as cascade down the year of 2016. Ramparts therefore humbly borrows the snapshot techniques of Lowell
Thomas and Movietone and takes you Around The World with RAMPARTS-TONE NEWS.

Great Britain: On June 23rd, 2016, the voters of Great Britain will contemplate in the voting booth a referendum decision to potentially overturn the political directions of Europe cultivated over the last 70 years since the end of the Second World War. Out of the calamity of war, the governments of Europe determined to bind themselves together ever more securely in a union that they hoped would sublimate the nationalist tendencies that bedeviled Europe’s peace for five hundred years. What was at first the concept of a common market, has progressively become more of a political union in which the member states have less and less to say regarding their own economic and political decisions. Great Britain, the fifth largest economy of the world, feels increasingly hamstrung by its place in the European Union, the rules of trade with any partners outside of the EU at the mercy of joint EU decisions, its monetary system based on the pound sterling unteathered to the Euro. Germany and France, the joint force behind both EU and Euro policies, is not about to let Britain make independent decisions without being lashed to the Euro. Given the economic events in Europe over the last several years, being lashed to the Euro is the last thing on Britain’s mind. What makes up a modern nation state, how do economies work, what would happen to the United Kingdom (particularly pro EU Scotland), and what is the effect on the stability of post WWII Europe are just some of the small considerations Great Britain’s voters will need to educate themselves upon before voting on June 23rd. Polls suggest that those who want to stay in the EU comprise 45% of the voters, those that wish to exit, the BREXIT voter are close behind at 40%. The BREXIT referendum currently has a volatile 14% undecided, so with so much on the line, the heat will certainly turn up as one gets towards the June referendum.

South China Sea: A great economic power inevitably looks to secure its economic future and defend it with a strong military. What is happening in the South China Sea is more complicated than China simply defending its right to commerce. China is claiming hegemony over the South China Sea and the islands within it, and it is not asking the opinion of any of its neighbors. The South China Sea happens to be one of the world’s busiest sea trading lanes, and many countries see it as vital to their independence and prosperity.

The South China Sea - and the competing claims of the little atolls and reefs that form the Spratly and Paracel Islands — The South China Sea – and the competing claims of the little atolls and reefs that form the Spratly and Paracel Islands

The sea lanes have been guaranteed for decades by the world’s largest military, the United States. What happens when a country such as China sees free access to a region it feels is vital to its economic self interests is a recipe for real trouble. The region is thought to contain huge oil and gas reserves, and the neighboring countries of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan, do not intend to allow China to exclude their access to the riches of the sea, or the freedom to navigate. China is forcing the issue by building up the reefs into capable islands with air and sea access for their military, and the United States, responsible for freedom of the sea lanes is none too happy. When a country like China starts determining to secure its neighborhood, the reverberations can be very,very dangerous. This is a building story that will go far beyond the calendar year of 2016.

Libya: Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, it doesn’t look like the calamity of Libya she fostered in her ill considered decisions as Secretary of State, is going away any time soon. The country was unravelled by France, Britain, and the United States by assisting in the overthrow of Muammar Quadaffi in 2011, then passively standing back as the wolves descended on the carcass of the country. Clinton’s unique role in the US disaster at Benghazi is still being investigated, but the future is much scarier than the past. The country is split in half with a General Al-Sisi like strong man, General Khalifa Haftar, running the eastern half of the country and looking to extend his control over the western half which includes the capital of Tripoli, , truly a wild,wild west, run by competing Islamic extremists, including with increasing radicalism and strength, ISIS. The formation of a caliphate with its dagger edge pointed much as in the days of Carthage

directly at the Italian and Iberian peninsulas is a dream come true for ISIS and a nightmare for Italy and Europe. In classic President Obama fashion, the lead from behind strategy has promulgated special levels of damage in a region where passivity is seen as true weakness, and ruthless strength is considered the calling of greatness. Obama, and his apparent successors in Clinton or Trump, are not exactly the type of deep thinkers that understand existential risks. It may be up to Europe, if it wants to survive, to start understanding and reacting to what is at risk from its southern exposure.

Turkey and Syria: Lawrence of Arabia, if he were to accompany Lowell Thomas today to the Middle East, would recognize the increasing calamity that is Syria and every one of its players. Events are happening on a daily basis that are rending the decisions of the day before rapidly past tense. The vestiges of the Ottoman Empire continue to vibrate in every action and reaction. Syria, converted into a horrible wasteland by marauding warriors from distant places and the corrupt and genocidal acts of its on government is at the mercy of ever larger forces.

The current battle for Syria - washingtonpost — The current battle for Syria – washingtonpost

Turkey, looking to insert its dominance on the region in an effort to reinstitute an Ottoman past, now finds itself under dual direct threat from a vicious ISIS terrorist cell and an increasingly aggressive Kurdish minority that sees a way to a greater Kurdistan across Iraq, Syria, Iran…and Turkey. Russia has masterfully succeeded in entirely usurp US influence in events to become the dominant international broker, creating strange bed fellows, but now must see how to lock in its newfound position while avoiding getting sucked in to the day to day battles. The pressure on the innocents has led to the greatest migration of people within Europe since the wars of the twentieth century, and ISIS has diabolically placed its wolves among the sheep, making for multiple threats across the continent. Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are warily watching each other, knowing an emotional decision could create a real, first class regional war. The Obama United States, forever inward turning, can only watch, as 70 years of being the steadying influence, is going up in smoke.

United States of America: Can a great country overcome its desire to self destruct? Facing a world of increasing instability and threat, internal debt, and a progressively self absorbed, uninterested population regarding the hard work of a republic, the US is looking at a socialist, a populist, an ideologue, and crony capitalist would be felon, three of the four around 70 years of age, to lead it through these many events demanding innovative and assertive leadership. Sanders. Trump. Cruz. Clinton. That is the roster of talent that will be asked to handle this increasingly difficult world. Not exactly an inspiring thought. There are terrific talents waiting in the wings, but none are positioned to help the country on November 8th, 2016. Will the rest of the world be willing to wait for the US to get its act together?

Stay tuned. Now it can be shown. Maybe just like the old days…

March 12, 2016March 13, 2016

America In Transition

Fully Automated Robotic Assembly Line in a Tesla Factory - smashgear.com — Fully Automated Robotic Assembly Line in a Tesla Factory *photo/smashgear.com*

It’s an emotional time when one is transitioning from what was, to what will be. America, as a result, appears to progressively be an emotional wreck. The economy sloths along at an anemic 1-2% growth rate with job growth being led by service industries such as call centers. The most powerful military in the world has devised rules of engagement that defy any engagement that would secure any meaningful outcomes or strategic advantage. The political parties are in tatters, with candidates promoting populist nationalism, serving up extreme versions of the past in an attempt to preserve what is no longer viable. The foundational principles that have adjudicated so many other previous periods of upheaval are helpless to buttress an increasingly ignorant population that has only the vaguest notion of what they are. What passes for public discourse is increasingly more reactionary, emotional, and agitated, defined by the slogan, What Do We Want (fill in the blank), When Do We Want It? NOW!!

Its enough to make you want to simply sign off. That would be denying however any hope for civilization, and we of course, in our own little way, are defenders of the ramparts of that very civilization, so a little more introspection and looking for silver linings are called for.

The first thing is to recognize that we are at the end of one order of civilization, and yet to discern the elements that will begin another. In the chaos of watching things fail that no longer work, it is easy to believe you are seeing change at work, when you are simply watching the last tired efforts of a society to desperately hold on to what it knows. The current President thought he was bringing the Change and the Hope, but the reality was that trying to make people’s behavior bend to your will was a worn out idea that was bound to fail. Something new is indeed coming, but we need to understand what is likely gone forever and let it go, if we are going to be able to respond and potentially flourish in a new world. The answer is leveraged in a return to, and a celebration of, critical thinking, and the challenge is to raise our consciousness to that reality.

Personal Privacy: The concept of personhood as mysterious as an unbreakable code and unique as a fingerprint is about to disappear. Almost every fact and nuance about each of us is available electronically to those who would look, and is progressively given up by many freely without the least concern. We are a data cache to large companies, governments, and social exchanges to the extent that our behaviors, thoughts and reactions are comprehensively known and open to manipulation. Social exchanges such as Facebook have discovered people are only too willing to put the most intimate information out into the cloud to any one who wants it. The health information of essentially every modern society is on an electronic platform, and what you eat, drink or interact with, are increasingly owned by the society rather than the individual. Governments such as China see themselves as the ultimate owners of every citizen’s thoughts, and have become world leaders in surveillance cameras, internet monitoring, and even proactive policing (predicting and preventing the “crime” before it occurs).

There is no sense to arguing the information is yours any longer, the question is, will we be willing to protect our individuality, our personhood against unwanted invasion or manipulation. You can’t be comfortable with the loss of some fundamental liberties, and be squeamish about losing others, without losing them all. A higher definition of liberty and personhood is in order, and the fight for the next generation is to recognize what is at stake.

Labor as a Means of Personal Freedom: A physical job used to link directly to personal opportunity and freedom. It provided the stability of predictable income, health care and future pension that allowed the individual to either maintain or position oneself for advancement. A relatively small group of people had the pride of ownership and production, and the risk/reward equation that came with ownership. For most people, the job was simply the byproduct of a stable life and other pursuits. Now, the very concept of “job” is disappearing. Manual labor, the capacity to contribute to production of goods and services, that would provide the economic means to eventually secure those goods and services for oneself, is, for most of the planet, the relic of a bygone era. Robots are substantially more productive than people in assembly work, mining, and farming. Computers reduce the value of human data interpretation, with their ability to summon and source massive amounts of data in infinitesimal amounts of time compared to humans. What will most people do, when there are fewer and fewer jobs for them to do? This has been the primary impetus of our current anxieties about immigration, free trade agreements, and loss of industries to other countries. The very number of jobs in the world are diminishing, as the ability to more productively outsource to machines increases. No amount of tariffs or taxes as proposed by current candidates are going to protect jobs that will be increasingly performed by machines no matter how onerous we make their transition to other countries. Governments placating people with safety nets will only delay the critical thinking required to recognize what is at stake. What will more and more people do when their productive value is progressively outsourced to machines? Critical thinking regarding what brings value to lives, not protectionist tactics, will be necessary to imagine a way forward when industry labor is no longer the source of individual productivity.

Traditional Education Defining Advancement: Education has become the unholy home of artificial value and pseudo – self actualization. Increasingly exploding in cost beyond anyone’s rational ability to pay, at the very time that the ‘education” offered promotes the lack of any actual skill development, traditional means of education are becoming incapable of providing us with the critical thinkers to help solve our problems. Degrees lean more and more to dividing our knowledge base into expertise in victimhood, chaos theory, and manipulation of the masses, rather than rewarding critical thought and linking disciplines to provide creative outcomes. Requiring massive amounts of individual investment or societal support to fund further examination of our divisions – our blackness or brownness, our sexual variance or physical differences, does nothing for recognition of our common problems or contribute to their creative solutions. Forcing people to identify their intellectual development through a degree rather than an accomplished set of achieved insights or skill acquisitions has led to an enormous ignorance as to what provides real personal development. Education no longer requires rigid isolation to campuses where thinking becomes both expensive and able to be manipulated into a politically correct ‘groupthink’.

Government as the Collective Answer: The sense of loss of control and situational anxiety has led to people seeking the comfort of worn out concepts of the last century to protect them against change, particularly lashing themselves to the masts of an ever larger and more intrusive government. Once designed in America to support only actions that individuals could not do for themselves, government has become the dumping ground for every failure in insight. Designed to exist for our collective defense against attack, it now seeks to protect us against unconquerable foes such as changes in climate and equality of outcome. The result is a morbidly bloated government that promises everything and secures nothing except the pathologic maintenance of the status quo. We are now inexorably committed to securing our future health and well being through devices that were inadequate from inception, long ago destined for failure, and financially, catastrophically unsupportable. And yet we cling to the concepts because the alternative to government’s sclerotic approach is to require some risk of ourselves, and anxiety makes it easier to pass the responsibility onto an unborn generation. It won’t matter because the virus effecting all world order is the reliance on historical conditions that no longer exist and insight that long since failed. The beauty of the critical thinkers that fashioned the Constitution is that they built the perfect machinery to evolve a society, rather than codify solutions. We need a return to critical thought processes in our governance to cleanse ourselves of the last century’s loss of focus.

Nationhood: The concept of what makes a nation has been traditionally tribal. A tribe linked by language – Uzbeks forming Uzbekistan, Swedes forming Sweden, Japanese forming Japan – has conceptually been the means of nation building. Where ignored or artificially subverted, strife has resulted. Kurds have seen their cultural whole divided into multiple countries within each they are a restive minority. Catalonians feel little affinity with Spaniards. Yugoslavia was ripped apart by sectarian and religious differences once the totalitarian government fell. The United States was formed on a unique concept-a union of various peoples bound by a political philosophical culture founded on British juris prudence, British legislative governance and the British concept of freedom of assembly and speech. To best codify this political culture, the tribe became Americans and the binding language of freedom, English. The permanent nature of this union was never in doubt when America was seen as the beacon of freedom in a world of torment, and the nation was the undoubted economic superpower of the world. Strains are developing, however, after decades of flat economic performance, progressive assault on institutions, and a general laissez faire attitude regarding the vulnerability of hard won freedoms. There is a growing perception that there should not be an American “tribe”, and the nation should simply be a repository for whoever sees reason to subsist there. The critical thought that formed unique nationhood for America is no less critical today, if the idea that a nation of shared ideals rather than genetic commonality is to survive.

This year, America has determined to vote for the end of something, rather than the birth of a new beginning. The three top candidates for President will be 70 or older, by the time they would be inaugurated, and they are selling a clinging grasp of the past with promises of illogical economics, class and racial envy, and perpetuation of the status quo. All of which are doomed. It is understandable that a citizenry, poorly educated about its innate strengths, looks to others to be strong for it. It is a scary time for those who see human freedom and individual opportunity for what it is – mankind’s most successful means of maximizing our species’ capabilities and conquering our fears and darker instincts. Inevitably, the choice is ours. And regardless of what we think, history will not wait for us.

February 22, 2016February 18, 2016

George Washington – The Virginian

GEORGE WASHINGTON - Gilbert Stuart - Corcoran Gallery — GEORGE WASHINGTON – Gilbert Stuart – Corcoran Gallery

February 22, 2016 is the 284th anniversary of the birth of George Washington, a giant of history, that with each passing year and with ever more complete research into his actions and motivations, grows evermore in stature. The somewhat dour portraiture of the man promoted by his portraits late in life do not begin to capture what a towering force of nature he was, and the intensity of impact that he had on others, and on his time. Each presidential election season seems to bring us the challenge of finding individuals remotely worthy of the office and the understanding of public service that he so uniquely defined. Ramparts paid tribute to him on February 22,2011, and a return to our essay, The Virginian, is a exemplary reminder of the mettle and character of the man that the current crop of candidates dare to be associated with.

In our more cynical, superficial age we find it hard to imagine the set of circumstances that would lead a man to risk all that he had, and give up the greater portion of his life, to an idea. 279 years ago today, such a man was born in the colony of Virginia, and his indomitable life quest almost single-handedly made possible the American Experiment. There was no expectation in early life of his sacrificial nature, borne to a prominent Virginia family, and he could have settled in to a life of plantation farming and land acquisition that was his family’s mantra. Something restless and animal was part of his makeup , however, and his early journeys into the wilderness to survey land created a unique need not seen in other family members. This man, George Washington, was tuned into a special stereophonic muse that was characterized both by the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Possibility. His forays into the vast American continent began to coalesce for him that this particular land was special, and the capacity of each individual man special, within it. He began to seek positions that would both make possible the maximization of who he was, and steadily, the risks he would need to face to achieve fulfillment.

The young adult Washington showed a warrior instinct. He was named the military leader of an attachment that was to derive the position of the competing French in the Ohio country coveted by both the British and French superpowers, and managed in a short time time get himself involved in both a massacre of French soldiers near present day Pittsburgh, and later a complementary catastrophic massacre of British soldiers in the ill fated Braddock expedition to eject the French. The sequence of events showed Washington to be aggressive, impetuous, and in a trait glorified later in life, unconscionably brave and seemingly immune to battle chaos or bullets. The controversies of these events left the British and the American politicians with different impressions of the Virginian Washington. The British saw him as inferior to the British officer ideal with his Americanized instincts for cagey warfare over stand and shoot soldiering. The Americans saw him as an example of individual creativity and persistence. Both concepts were of Washington, but did not completely describe him, to those who later felt they knew how the “true” Washington in battle would respond.

A leap forward in time to 1775, and the continental congress is desirous of a leader that holds both warrior skills and revolutionary ideals in his make-up. There was frankly little “in-house” experience to chose from, but Washington recognized before anyone that the warrior leader would have to a special hybrid. He would need to be able to commune with the common man who would ultimately provide a volunteer force that would need to be willing to sacrifice and die for abstract ideas, and would have to project a consistent warrior bearing and confidence that would assure all that taking on the most powerful military on earth and winning was not the ludicrous proposition it seemed. He played these two roles to perfection, and retrospectively, was the unique persona for the impossible task.

The revolutionary war years of 1775 to 1783 were epitomized by the crushing reality of the sacrifices necessary by men like Washington to achieve the miracle of independence. The challenges were overwhelming. He was required to fight the greatest military force in the world with a rag tag army of citizen soldiers with little military training and limited resources. He was challenged time and time again to rebuild this volunteer army as deferments ran out, or men simply gave up on the intolerable nature of it all. He was expected to maintain a continental strategy with troops who were thinking that their home to defend was their own state and not necessarily the “foreign” state to which they were forced to defend. He was forced to defend his actions in defeat after painful defeat against individual politicians who thought they knew better and refused to monetarily support the cause or mandate the troops. He did this all continuously for eight years with a price on his head, away from his home, under atrocious conditions, and with the foreknowledge that defeat meant for him certain death and loss of all that he had. He faced all these enormous obstacles – and he won.

When it came time years later to select a chief executive that would form the initial government of the United States, the selection again turned to one man, the Virginian, Washington. He was selected not for any impassioned rhetorical brilliance or acknowledged philosophical depth, but again, because he was the single individual every competing interest group felt they could trust. He was selected for his acknowledged ownership of the American Ideal through the worst of times, and his willingness as a man, to give up power when it was his to take. As the first President of these United States he set for all time the standard that the office, not the man, the Constitution, not the trappings, were the key ingredients of the American Experiment.

On his birthday, at a time when mediocrity of character and lack of in-depth understanding of what makes this American Experiment work frequently desires to inhabit the office of President, our first president, the Virginian, stands forever, like a colossus.

February 6, 2016

Reagan at 105

Ronald Reagan 1911 - 2004 — Ronald Reagan 1911 – 2004

February 6th is the 105th anniversary of the birth of the last great President of the United States. The fortieth of a line of greats, near greats, disappointments and even scoundrels, the reputation of Reagan has only grown in stature since he left the political scene in 1989. Greatness, as always, is not just a list of accomplishments. It is the sense, by friend and foe alike, that the real achievement of Reagan was that he was consequential in the lives of people in a way that left an indelible memory. Reagan secured renewal in America, which is an innate American characteristic flowering intermittently, permitting the country to throw off the pessimism and corrosion of previous versions, and restore the core beliefs that make this country like no other. Approaching another period in time when people fear that the country may be in a permanent decline, the search for another Reagan-like figure is driving the political process, as a general exhaustion for the divisiveness of the last 25 years progressively looks to unify behind a leader that believes in the infinite capability of a people that believe in themselves.

Reagan was the antithesis of the modern model for an executive of an organization as contentious and complex as the United States. The modern model calls for elite training, breeding in the corridors of influence, intellectual power, vigor of an executive personality at the height of its powers, and calculated ruthlessness. Reagan was born of backwater parents in Tampico, Illinois, and attended not Ivy League, but backwater schools, graduating with gentleman’s grades from little Eureka College, and striving not to become a captain of industry, but a reflection of the common man. The natural goodness that was Reagan resonated upon the fairly recent form of mass communication known as cinema, and secured in Reagan a belief that the stories told in the movies were characteristic in form to the real life stories that created the unique American society. To Reagan later in life, the cinema stories blended with reality, not because he was deluded by their contrived nature, but because he believed stories evoked the true, formational American psyche. Having essentially finished one career as celebrity, he then proceeded later in life to a second career of working the levers of power to respond to his beliefs that the success and influence of America was best appreciated in its people and their story. He didn’t see Americans as needing constant direction to prevent chaos and ill considered decisions. By the time he ran for President in 1980, he was already one of the oldest men to do so, but somehow his simple, principled manner and his unwavering confidence in the American dream blew through all generations as a bracing rush of fresh air and energy.

Reagan didn’t need to feel himself the smartest man in the room as more insecure men who followed him to the office did. He sublimated the concept of intellectual heft to the equally awesome power of personal wisdom and understanding of what motivates people to achieve great things. He did not need to demean people or ruthlessly use them, because he knew the gains would be short and superficial. He understood that true power resided in a country’s sense of self esteem and shared story. He crushed the opposition time and time again not by explaining to the people why trusting themselves would overwhelm any insecurity, and the people became his army that no opponent could hope to fractionate. When Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, he didn’t really need to tell them it was Morning in America. They felt it at the very core of their conviction, and they knew that he had renewed them.

To the elite of the country, Reagan’s simple faith in Americans and their ability to seize opportunity and trust themselves , was polyannish and ultimately irrational. Elites knew that most Americans could not be expected to understand the complexities of modern society and make good decisions. Real, altruistic governance would always be not so much a safety net as a it should be a hammock, designed to soften the blows and disappointments of life for those that could not possibly be expected to absorb and overcome failure. Reagan’s simplistic view of Americans having more in common with the concept of being American rather than the bonds to any individual group, suppressed grievances and blurred the political divisiveness that could build voting blocks. By the time an Obama positioned himself as a deliverer, Americans had subjugated themselves to smaller and smaller self interest groups, and the exploitation of perceived grievances allowed base instincts of envy and advantage to take rigid hold. Obama saw no value in shared success and people feeling self worth. Political power lay in making sure if there was failure, it was important to have someone who would clearly reveal for those who failed who was responsible – their neighbor, their fellow American. Obama’s over-riding impulse was to extend this attitude to the global perception of America, If there was instability and chaos in the world, America could be seen as a driver of such malfeasance, and she could make it up to others only by apologizing and getting out of the way. The self esteem of America and its people, renewed by Reagan and allowed to flourish for twenty-five years, required an Obama to restore the elites and crack America’s can do spirit.

Reagan unbelievably at 105 somehow seems younger than the tired contrivances that pass for leadership today. The restless rejection of the so called establishment candidates for president in Clinton and Bush seem to foretell however, a stirring of another renewal. If the country begins to sense there is real hope, not the nonsense of 2008, and that people will once again be given the chance to live their lives unencumbered by those who would crush their spirit for renewal, we may yet see a tidal wave of confirmation in the person who can define a path back out from the wilderness. If so, like 1980 and 1984, you won’t be needing to interpret any broken chads to know who won. It wont be a republican or democrat wave, it will once again be an all American one.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Reagan.

October 17, 2015

The Obama Doctrine

President Obama meets with his National Security Council

The world has become an exceedingly dangerous and unstable place in the seven years that President Barrack Obama has been the steward of American foreign policy. Certainly some realities as an outgrowth of September 11th, 2001 and the radicalism of Islam subsequent to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 were unpleasant gifts the previous administrations bequeathed to this president, but a substantial number of metastases of instability, chaos, and dramatic violence have sprouted from multiple directions in response to his decisions. As much as he has been comfortable of blaming every untoward response to American interests as a reaction to President Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, the pattern of Obama as more than just “anti-Bush” is beginning to project as a premeditated decision process, what used to be referred to as a policy philosophy, or a “doctrine”.

Presidents in the modern period have structured their foreign policies behind attempts at consistent interpretations and responses to world events, known as doctrines. The Truman Doctrine, in response to a post war Soviet Union bent on expanding its rigid grip on eastern Europe and Asia, defined a policy of containment as outlined by George Kennan, that became the benchmark of American foreign policy for the next forty years. The Carter Doctrine, reacting to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution, declared that any effort by foreign powers to attempt to usurp the status quo of the Persian Gulf would be considered in direct conflict with America’s vital national interests and would be met militarily. The Reagan Doctrine declared the goal of American policy toward the Soviet Union was no longer containment, but rather a comprehensive effort to “roll back” the global influence of the Soviet Union – or as Reagan so presciently described it, “we win, they lose”. The George W Bush Doctrine grew out of the catastrophe of 9/11 and became a multi-pronged strategy essentially defined as, if necessary, preemptively attacking enemies of the United States at their root, to prevent the fight being brought to America’s shores.

These doctrines, some successful, some not so successful, at least defined a consistent and articulated national policy process and understanding of a national interest. But what of the current president? Is there a discernible American interest in Obama’s seemingly haphazard declarations?

Niall Ferguson, a Professor of History at Harvard and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford, has editorialized on what he believes is the “Real Obama Doctrine”. A must read, the editorial reflects what one of America’s most astute intellectuals sees as the essential pattern of the “patternless” and seemingly contradictory Obama actions. Sadly, he concludes all these colossal ‘mis-steps’ are on purpose:

“But what that meant in practice was not entirely clear. Precipitate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq, but a time-limited surge in Afghanistan. A “reset” with Russia, but seeming indifference to Europe. A “pivot” to Asia, but mixed signals to China. And then, in response to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya, complete confusion, the nadir of which was the September 2013 redline fiasco regarding the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria and Mr. Obama’s declaration that “America is not the global policeman”–..

An approximation of an Obama strategy was revealed in April last year, at the end of a presidential trip to Asia, when White House aides told reporters that the Obama doctrine was “Don’t do stupid sh–.””

Dr. Ferguson sees the Obama Doctrine as much more than threat avoidance. He now believes the President is driving a forced re-set of America’s position in the world and a particular desire to create a new balance of power, most particularly in the Middle East. The Doctrine as Dr. Ferguson sees it is directed by the pre-conceptions of the president himself, with almost no significant intellectual counterweight in the administration in the skill set of policy development. The president has surrounded himself progressively with fellow lawyers who are predominantly concerned with the process of negotiation rather than reflecting a world view. That leaves President Obama himself to refine the rationale and his strong opinion of his own intellectual prowess leaves little room for the discussion alternative scenarios.

The result – has been nothing short of disastrous. A resurgent Al Qaeda after Obama declared it dead and a even more murderous cousin ISIS after Obama disdained it as “junior varsity”. A catastrophic collapse of nation states in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. A ruthless Russia that has forced itself back into the position of power broker in the middle East after 50 years as irrelevant and the United States as the definitive arbiter, and has brazenly absorbed the Crimea and thumbed its nose at NATO and the US in creating a proxy war in Ukraine. A China that is aggressively threatening to turn the world’s busiest sea traffic lanes into an internal Chinese sea. And perhaps, most stunningly, the President agreed to a massive infusion of cash and capability into the world’s most aggressive supporter of terrorism, Iran, which has declared its intent to ignore all the supposed agreement Obama crowed about negotiating with it, including ballistic missile and nuclear weapon development. And ominously, repeated its stated goal to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

The Obama Doctrine is succeeding beyond even the President’s projections in re-setting America’s position in the world, and the result is calamitous. For a President that planned to “stop” America’s addiction to “ceaseless wars”, the doctrine is looking like it will make 2016, the last year of the Obama presidency, at risk for real non-stop global conflict.

It turns out that thinking you are the smartest guy in the room, might just make you the dumbest man on the planet.