HISTORY – Page 8 – Ramparts of Civilization

June 7, 2014

A Close Run Thing

In his later years, the 1st Duke of Wellington, Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley, celebrated as the pre-eminent hero of final defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo and subsequently twice the Prime Minister of Great Britain, would have been forgiven a glossy remembrance of his greatest victory. Asked, however, of his impression of the moment at Waterloo that cemented his martial immortality, he stated:

” It has been a damned serious business. It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”

The Duke’s statement has been modernized into reminding us that nice in 1815 vernacular referred to as “uncertain” – the quote has become “a close run thing”. Wellesley recognized something profound that exists when enormous forces of history come together in a specific time and confined location – the outcome is nothing short of profound and completely at the mercy of fate. No matter how intense or brilliant the planning, no matter how careful the preparation of the resources and talent, the final struggle is between immense forces of equal indomitable will, and the outcome more often than not resides in the unpredictable synthesis of execution, weather, individual responses to enormous stress and out and out luck.

Wellesley could have been describing the amazing accomplishment of D- Day, June 6th, 1944, and the successful invasion of the continent of Europe by the liberating allied forces initiated on that day. The seventieth anniversary of D-Day has just been marked at Normandy with the usual cocktail of a Presidential soliloquy and the celebration of the rapidly diminishing band of participants in that fateful day. The eighteen and nineteen year old boys that were asked to commit to the beach that day as the youngest members of the invasion force are now the frail old survivors in their late eighties. A president born far after their day of sacrifice is asked to synthesize the forces and emotions of that day into a recognizable tome. We are reaching the last of the ‘decade’ remembrances of D- Day, as the final group of participants will likely be gone, or unable to travel, to the next. The political leaders are using the event as usual to promote their ‘appreciation’ of history, the righteousness of the cause, and the clarity that time has provided that the right side would inevitably win.

The truth is, it was a very close run thing.

The reality facing the allied nations in June of 1944, was that Nazi Germany was anything but a spent force. The allied challenge was to be able to establish immediately an army in force that could stably secure a position in Europe and could resist and ultimately dislodge a fully equipped mechanized and highly experienced fascist army that had spent several years in unimpeded planning and construction of an impenetrable west wall of defense. As has been recognized over time, Plan A was the full injection of material, men and will on the beaches of Normandy, and Plan B was – there was no Plan B. Men can be brave beyond comprehension, plans creative and comprehensive, but ultimately a small force briefly securing a beachhead would have no ability to resist a counterblow of superior forces, artillery and devastating tanks properly dispensed.

The loss of the armies of Normandy and the irreplaceable supplies and force commitment that went with it, would have had a devastating effect on the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The loss would have been the end of Great Britain’s land army capacity, the political collapse of the ‘unconditional surrender’ strategy of Churchill and Roosevelt, and the potential stagnation of Stalin’s ability to determine the destiny of his eastern battle against a now unimpeded Germany. A massive victory for a staggering Germany would have allowed her the time necessary for implementation of the jet engine into her airforce, reversing the allied air superiority, ending the bombing campaigns, and securing the safety of her rocket weapons to destroy her opponent civilizations.

Plan A required a one day achievement of the landing of 160,000 men amphibiously with flanks secured, and the immediate establishment of harbors that would permit force multipliers, artillery and tanks, a million men disembarked and supplied, all before the enemy could sufficiently react. Never before tried on such an awesome scale, at the complete mercy of favorable tides and the weather, and requiring of complete surprise and secrecy while preparing and training a million man force who would have to executive a plan with success with no foreknowledge of the date or the place, the most complex battle plan in history relied on the call of a single meteorologist. At a time without weather satellites or computers, Captain James Stagg managed to come up with the most accurate and critical weather forecast in history, that prevented the armada from being swept away in a gale on June 4th-5th, and predicted a 24 hour window for relatively calm seas on June5th-6th, sufficient to provide a landing zone capacity. General Eisenhower hinged his decision on the forecast, delayed D-Day on the night of the 4th, and gave the go on the night of the 5th, and secured a fate different then that of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel in 1588, a successful amphibious landing. The German weather forecast did not see the brief window of stable weather Captain Stagg saw, and believing the weather too foul to allow a complex operation, the man most responsible for German’s Fortress Europe west wall defense headed home to Germany to visit with his family. On the morning of the 6th, the one man that could have redirected Germany’s panzer tanks to repel the invasion was far from the field of battle.

Plan A could not afford any exposure of flanks. All five beaches had to be surmounted or the gaps would have allowed crushing of the fragile force. Omaha Beach was the linchpin, and 6 hours after the first wave, the water was littered with hundreds of bodies and the invasion force was only feet into France, pinned disastrously against a seawall under murderous fire, not the several miles inland required. General Bradley, the American directly responsible for the American army force, considered the possibility of withdrawal, as it appeared an epic defeat was eminent. It came down to the individual man, who determined the water behind him was more certain death than the cliffs in front, that finally penetrated the murderous fire raining down and found the way off the beach. Thousands of boys and men died, pushing out of the water onto land, and thousands of men and boys died for the defenders equally determined to push them off. It was a close run thing on Omaha, and nobody there on that day will ever forget the terror.

Plan A required a level of secrecy and subterfuge of an almost metaphysical level to succeed. The ability to move an awesome force across open waters to a location surprised to see what had been predicted and prepared for by the enemy for two years defies understanding in our current world of satellites, Google maps, and instant communication. Maintaining the secret of a million man force, with spies all around, incredibly complex planning required, and multiple opportunities for slipping up defies belief. Yet the secret was maintained so well and the confusion as to the allies real intentions so spectacularly sold to the enemy, that even days after the invasion took place, German Central Command and Hitler himself was sure that the Normandy invasion was a feint and the real invasion would come by Calais. Entire false armies, errant bombing, parachuted dummies, even false orders on dead bodies produced an epic magic trick distraction that worked to perfection and provided the precise delay in response required for success.

It was a close run thing. The world of a thousand years of darkness enforced by perverted science envisioned by Churchill if the Nazis were to succeed was not an incalculable outcome of the struggle on the beaches of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. 9000 graves in the Normandy cemeteries mark the final resting places of young people who placed themselves in the violent vortex of history and did not live to see their sacrifice achieve the destiny they hoped to see to fruition. The freedoms we so casually take for granted and carelessly toss aside to any bureaucracy that lives to take them, were on the final breaths of every participant in the epic struggle of that far ago day.

Soon the men who personally viewed, participated and fought in the awesome spectacle that was D Day will be no more. That is of course a requirement of our mortality and the endless onward journey of time itself. But the tipping point that so few moments in history truly evoke, is safe in the epic story of that distant day. As would the Duke of Wellington, we tip our glass to fate, and admire her generosity to us. It is why we celebrate the battle at Waterloo and not the catastrophe at Ligny, and epic triumph of the amphibious landing at Normandy and not, in the face of failure at Normandy, lament the potential German invasion upon the beaches of Brighton and Portsmouth. For all the men on June 6th, 1944 who soldiered and sacrificed to convince Fate, who the winner should be in history’s story, we again salute you.

May 31, 2014

Doctrines and Legacies

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton

Presidents of the United States from its inception have felt a pull to leave some form of recognizable imprint on the destiny of the country that would suggest a contribution worthy of the nation’s Olympian founders. Since the end of World War II, this has been elevated by the nation’s position as the undisputed economic and military superpower in the world. At its most identifiable, the policy considerations bear the vaunted label of the chief executive himself as the “architect” of the policy – the Truman Doctrine, the Kennedy Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine, the Bush Doctrine. The establishment of a recognizable doctrine implies the formal intellectual understanding of the world’s various historical forces and the United States’ position within it. It secures for the President his legacy – a measurable effect upon world history that will have legions of intellectuals debating the doctrine’s merits years after – a permanent accolade to the view of this individual as an effective and wise “leader”.

Last week, President Obama felt the need to use the commencement address at West Point Military Academy to try to put form to his foreign policy actions over the previous 51/2 years as President as a logical and consistent doctrine of international management that he hoped would cement a legacy of his time at the helm. An Obama Doctrine, as it were.

The tenets of a doctrine tend to allow for a very contracted definition for what in each case was an extremely complex set of policies that drove the machine of the policy and the tremendous patience and investment in seeing it through: Truman Doctrine : Peace Through Containment Kennedy Doctrine : Peace Through Competition of Ideas Nixon Doctrine : Peace Through Détente and Balance of Power Reagan Doctrine: Peace Through Strength Bush Doctrine: Peace Through Freedom as Universal Ideal

The evolution of a doctrine that holds merit is magnified by its survivorship over future administrations and its continuing logic in changing circumstances, but most profoundly by its ultimate success in accomplishing its goals. The penultimate examples are Truman’s and Reagan’s Doctrines, which are effective bookends of the same strategic overview. President Truman, burdened with the colossal responsibility of an entire continent in collapse as the detris of a crushing military conflict and facing the ominous reality of a megamilitary power in the Soviet Union with a antithical set of ideals as to a future world, saw presciently in an obscure State Department policist George Kennan a means to achieve peaceful containment sufficient for the time required for a free world to recover from its prostrate position juxtaposed to the Russian dominant force. Kennan’s famous Long Telegram, published February, 1946, was a foundation on which a whole set of complex structures were laid – the Marshall Plan, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank – were developed under Truman’s clear headed understanding of how long the battle would take and what on what fields the battles would be fought.

For thirty years, Truman’s doctrine served to provide the United States the breathing time and protection it needed to avoid direct conflict until the time when the free world’s resources could be fully marshaled to secure a permanent result. That occurred in 1980 with the election of President Reagan. The Reagan Doctrine was natural outgrowth of the Truman process, though few recognized it as such in its time. Reagan saw that containment has reached its evolutionary position where the enormous progress of democratic economies were in position to roll back the hegemony of the communist tyranny in the world. ‘Peace Through Strength’ was the metaphor for the simultaneous release of the economic might of the free world, the advance of technologic innovation into the military force, and the exposure of the deficiencies of the communist world and the aspirations of its subjected populations. In spectacular form, the combined tenets achieved in the life of the two terms of the Reagan Administration, the victory of this ‘cold war” strategy fruition in the collapse of Russian hegemony in Europe and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

What is to be made of President Obama’s attempt to define a ‘premeditated’ thinking to the American actions in an apparent series of passive and confoundingly self-defeating responses to one calamity after another on the world stage? Is there a thinking process that secures a positive outcome in the parade of foreign policy apparent setbacks in the withdrawal of troops from a hard won victory in Iraq, the simultaneous surge and withdrawal strategy in Afghanistan, the red line declarations and subsequent lack of follow through in Syria, the appeasement strategy for nuclear weapon control with a autocratic Islamist regime in Iran, the aggressive military detachment of a functional government from Libya into the current dangerous chaos that cost America a terror attack and loss of an Ambassador and that rules the Libyan people today? What doctrine describes the dithering support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the demonization of the Mubarak and now Sisi regimes, the peripheral disappointment and minimal sanctions for a bald land grab of the Crimea by Russia, and the continuing whining regarding past American policies?

The doctrine of Obama as outlined in his West Point speech shows the reality that the ‘doctrine’ followed the disparate actions, and not the other way around. The speech, a collection of verbosities and generous interpretations of outcomes, suggests the Obama Doctrine to be ‘Peace Through Controlled Decline’. America must lead and when necessary militarily without asking anyone’s permission, but not”rushing into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building support or legitimacy for our actions“. America must not be responsible for crises in the world that do not involve our direct national security interests, but “needs to energize the global effort to combat climate change, a creeping national security crisis that will help shape your time in uniform, as we are called on to respond to refugee flows and natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food, which is why, next year, I intend to make sure America is out front in putting together a global framework to preserve our planet.” The concept of American Exceptionalism is not a foreign concept to this President, simply a concept that has been misinterpreted by all the Presidents before him – “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.” America must be prepared to face her enemies with complete resolve and where necessary military action and sacrifice but only with the near certainty of no collateral damage- ” But as I said last year, in taking direct action, we must uphold standards that reflect our values. That means taking strikes only when we face a continuing, imminent threat, and only where there is no certainty — there is near certainty of no civilian casualties, for our actions should meet a simple test: We must not create more enemies than we take off the battlefield“.

Doctrines and Legacies often intertwine, but the more modern of our politicians progressively confuse that legacies are earned, not managed. The genetic flaw in President Obama’s makeup is his confusion of instinctual intelligence for the hard work of learned strategy. It is depressingly clear every time this President opens his mouth of his alarming ignorance of history and events and his willingness to interpret every event as reflecting his need to insert his personal spin as the defining historical participant . Charles Krauthammer perceptively lays this out in his essay “Emptiness at West Point” which he states more than anything reflected the President’s increasing irrelevance and “smallness”. In the process of “leading from behind” , the two most politically skinned leaders in American history in Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton have put America in potentially irreversible waters in five short years. A circular Doctrine that sees contrary events as having been guided by the same unidentifiable plan has placed not only America, but the world, in a perceptively more dangerous place. Now that is a legacy likely to leave a lasting impression.

May 24, 2014

The Rise of the Nationalists

On November 30th 2010, Ramparts of Civilization focused on an obscure, in your face politician representing Great Britain at the assembly of the European Union named Nigel Farage as People We Should Know #5, for his aggressive framing of the concepts liberty and national sovereignty in the temple of supra-national rule.

I don’t want to say I told you so, but…

This past week saw ascendance of Nigel Farage’s UKIP party in Great Britain’s local council elections that sent a shudder through the establishment parties and bewilderment from a media press that assumed ideas such as national sovereignty and personal freedom a relic of the past. Farage’s party is positioned to change the discussion in a hurry. His Britishcentric party is one of multitude of similar movements that have blossomed in the United States and Europe. The response of the establishment is aggressive and predictable, painting the movements as ‘Potemkin village’ parties hiding a dark racist streak and evil intent. The spector of national socialism is blanketed over the liberal vision of the movements, ignoring the history of the marriage of racial politics and socialist central planning having coming directly from socialism’s fascistic genetics.

The triad of the resurgence of European nationalism is based on three anti’s: anti-supra-nationalism, anti-tax, and anti-immigration. From the Netherland’s Geert Wilders Freedom Party to Marine LePen’s National Front in France, local political strength is now starting to effect national politics that has the European Union taking notice. Local nationalism in Switzerland, Finland, Hungary, and Austria are recognizably recruiting individuals from across society’s spectrum, while Greece’s Golden Dawn has more the shadowing of previous darker traditional European racial xenophobia. America’s Tea Party trails only in that it has yet to identify a unifying national spokesman for the movement.

The national parties each have a local inflection, but the response is to decades of progressive socialist trampling on the rights of individual entrepreneurship and expression, and the progressive superceding of democratic local corrective capacities. Nigel Farage’s ascendance was initially tied to his disdain for the European Union’s arrogance in naming a “President of Europe” , the remarkably frumpy Belgian bureaucrat Herman Von Rompuy, who has secured that position for the past 5 years, accelerating the rule of Europe by fiat through regulation rather than local democratic debate.

In 782 AD, Charlemagne secured his rule over Europe by massacring 4500 Saxons at Verden who refused to bow to his edict to convert to Christianity and accept his rule. Von Rompuy has achieved the same power through the massacre of considerably more than 4500 personal freedoms through his onerous regulations. It is this central un-elected dictate that drives the national parties resurgence. It is certainly more complicated than the liberal media’s desire to paint the movements as hatred of “other”.

The anti-immigration plank of these parties has left them open to the racism arguments, but the philosophical arguments are certainly more complex. In many cases, the argument is regarding the progressive assault on culture that liberal doctrine is so aggressively undertaking. For the United States, it is what is considered the founding twin tower elements of individual freedom and individual responsibility for lives that are being derided, and has led to a resistance in the form of the Tea Party. The principles of limited government with identified checks and balances was placed to prevent a central government from usurping the capacity of individuals to achieve their own vision quests. In Europe the hard won cultural maturity of Western civilization, forged through hundreds of years of bloody conflict, and based on the rule of law as secured by the power of elected assembly has been under the attack of unfettered immigration, from cultures with no similar cultural respect for these tenets. The liberal agenda has been on identifying the world as ruled by an entity known as homosapien, with its herds allowed to freely cross borders and graze in uninhibited fashion on the fruits of the local produce, the herd to be culled and organized by the all seeing, all knowing council of elders, assuring a “fair” distribution of the herd’s resources.

So Nigel Farage’s smile grows and grows, and the scowl of the liberal minders gets more scowly by the minute. They are infuriated this beer swilling pack smoking politician continues to resonate with the very populations that they are trying to regulate out of existence. The very actions of Farage’s unapologetic beer swilling and pack smoking are the height of insult, because they seem to reflect a statement of personal freedom to voters, rather than a nasty habit that should be regulated out of Farage’s personal choice for his own good. In four short years, Farage has made the transition from derided peripheral clown to socialist globalism’s worst nightmare, a politician who makes sense across social stratifications.

Liberalism will do their best to paint the politicians of the nationalist surge as the second coming of Hitler. It will be the challenge of these parties to identify with politicians that articulate the positive character of the message without attaching to the baser darkness of the xenophobic crowd.

Once again, we live in interesting times.

May 3, 2014May 3, 2014

Charles Fritz and the Corps of Discovery

"The Corps of Discovery Running the Columbia" Charles Fritz — “The Corps of Discovery Running the Columbia” Charles Fritz

"The River Rochejhone April 25, 1805" Charles Fritz — “The River Rochejhone April 25, 1805” Charles Fritz

On May 13th, 1804, 33 explorers led by Captain William Clark set out from a staging area known as Fort Dubois in the Indiana territory, left the Mississippi River into the mouth of Missouri River, picked up their expedition co-leader Captain Meriwether Lewis, and embarked on one of mankind’s great adventures into the unknown. Over the next two years, the expedition group, known as the Corps of Discovery, performed the spectacular feat of successfully transitioning through thousands of miles of undefined territory to the Pacific Ocean and back, losing but one member of the corps (to appendicitis), and created a brilliant record of accurate maps, scientific observations, and out and out artistic prose. The success of the expedition codified America’s reputation as a “can do” nation and changed her forever. This record, in its highest form found in the Journals of Lewis and Clark, have stimulated historians and artists alike to try to bring time and time again a modern reflection on the epic accomplishment.

In the world of art, many famous artists of the likes of Charles M. Russell have put their creative stamp on the highlights of the expedition. The land with its endless vistas have been material enough, but the Lewis and Clark Journals brought such perspective to the landscape that the many of the landscape impressions seem empty without the attempt to view them as the voyagers in the Corps of Discovery did. No one I suspect, however, took to the concept of recreating a visual Iliad for the journey to heart as did modern Western artist Charles Fritz.

Last year, I was introduced to Charles Fritz through a small painting I purchased at a gallery in Tucson. In discussing the excellent skillset of the artist, and the accuracy and devotion he showed to the subject matter, I was informed that Fritz had previously achieved an immeasurable artistic feat on a particular historical favorite event of mine, the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I ordered the book documenting the accomplishment, ” Charles Fritz: the Hundred Paintings Illustrating the Journals of Lewis and Clark” and spent hour upon hour in progressive awe of what Charles Fritz undertook and what he accomplished. In an effort of exceptional devotion to the accuracy of the journals and personally sighting each of the panoramas as the journals described Lewis and Clark experienced them, Fritz produced a comprehensive masterpiece that brings to life visually the entire voyage. Stimulated by a commission to paint a specific location described in the journals, Fritz determined with plenty of encouragement to devise a dramatically more substantial mission he had contemplated since his youth, a comprehensive artistic telling of the story of the complete expedition. Over seven years, and with no doubt personal hardship to his ongoing career as he determined to not sell individual paintings but instead show them in a comprehensive grouping, an authoritative collection of 72 paintings morphed into an initial traveling highly popular exhibition by 2005. The extent of the work in terms of originality, scope, and man-hours was huge, but the obsession hit Fritz, and with the support of a collector named Tim Peterson, the financial wherewithal to expand the scope to 100 paintings and fill in the story holes with the original creation was achieved by 2009.

The gift to us is a spectacular collection to the nation that birthed the Corps of Discovery and produced the men who achieved the adventure of many lifetimes. The art brings the intrepid explorers to life, and precisely places them in the historically accurate depictions and landscape. Yet this is not illustration, but true art, with the emotions and passions of the people, the drama of the events, and huge canvas of the landscapes come to life.

Portage Around the Great Falls - June, 2005 Charles fritz — Portage Around the Great Falls – June, 2005 Charles fritz

Fritz placed himself into the journals to create the drama of the works and in the landscapes he loved before they passed out of time in recognizable ways. He makes all of us feel the danger, the wonder, and the exhilaration Lewis and Clark, and their corps must have felt.

"The Arrival of Captain Lewis at the Great Falls of the Missouri June13, 2005" Charles Fritz — “The Arrival of Captain Lewis at the Great Falls of the Missouri June13, 2005” Charles Fritz

The journey stories from the funeral of Sergeant Floyd to the Mandan Village winter, the interactions with the Sioux, Blackfeet, and the corps own unofficial guide Sacajawea and Clark’s black slave York are all represented. The eye of the master artist and integrity to the historical truth are matchless. Fritz’s natural love of the West and to the traditions of American painting from Bingham to Remington, Moran to Russell come out in each individual masterpiece. The respect for the land and the indomitable spirit of the explorers who first saw it as unsullied paradise projects from each creation.

We are led by Charles Fritz’s epochal life work to the wonder of who we were and what we hoped to be, and maybe through the appreciation of the enormous effort of a man to his craft and to his country, what we perhaps yet, could still become.

Lewis and Clark - charles fritz — Lewis and Clark – charles fritz

March 9, 2014March 9, 2014

A Birthday Celebration for Those That Live in the Shadow

Frederick the Great plays, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach at Keyboard -wikipedia

Yesterday, March 8th, was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s birthday. Born March 8th, 1714 to the most illustrious of fathers, Johann Sebastian Bach, one can feel some sympathy for C.P. Emanuel as the role of living in the shadow of greatness is not always the easiest of jobs. It is fitting to celebrate Herr Bach’s birthday though as, all things considered, he held up the family mantle rather well. Somewhat better of a politician than his father, he ended up in the court of Frederick the Great, and in his lifetime was well known across Europe for his own prodigious talents at the clavier and composition. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all recognized his contributions, George Philipp Telemann was his godfather – you could hardly do better with a set of connections such as that. Yet as for all offspring that had to stand in the shadows of the brilliant suns that were their fathers, C.P. Emanuel faced the battle of achieving happiness and personal accomplishment permanently measured against the Promethean accomplishments of his progenitor.

We might take a moment to acknowledge a profound contributor to advances in sediment transport, Hans Albert Einstein. Maybe hydraulic engineering doesn’t exactly elicit the same awe as the Theory of Relativity, but Hans knew about sedimentation, and his father Albert was proud of him as a full professor at Cal Berkeley. Or Ernst Freud,

Ernst Freud's Modernism Architecture — Ernst Freud’s Modernism Architecture

an architect in the Art Deco to Modernist style, who generally allowed none of the submerged psychological conflicts outlined by his father Sigmund to confuse his clean and accessible modernist style of architecture. John Quincy Adams managed to achieve the height of success that was his father John’s legacy, the Presidency of the United States, but a generation removed from the concept of founding a revolutionary democracy, he is not about to have David McCullough write a book about him.

Unfortunately, there are also the legacies of greatness that devoured the sons that seem to be telling. Charlemagne’s son Pepin was potentially gifted the Holy Roman Empire as heir to the throne, but misfortune was his calling. Two strikes were present upon Pepin’s birth and youth that doomed him to history. The presence of significant scoliosis made him Pepin the Hunchback, not exactly the impression the first Emperor of a continental power wanted to project to his people as his progeny, and additionally Pepin had the misfortune of his father’s contracted relationship with his mother Himiltrude deemed illegitimate, making him in mid-youth a bastard son and out of the line of succession. Such blows of fate are not exactly historical foundations for greatness. Pepin responded like all diminished sons, spending the majority of life plotting against his father, resulting in his permanent banishment to a monastery, and guaranteeing no statues commemorating Pepin the Hunchback. Randolph Churchill was the son Winston and the great, great, great, great grandson of the Duke of Marlborough.

Randolph Churchill - son of Winston — Randolph Churchill – son of Winston

Unfortunately he was also the grandson of Sir Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, inheriting his grandfather’s tendencies for poor choices and rash behavior. Living in the shadow of the man who saved western civilization is obviously a burden that would be great for any offspring, and Randolph cascaded between jealousy, alcohol, and womanizing, obscuring the additionally present familial character traits of courage, adventurous spirit, and literary talent. He paralleled his American compatriot, James Roosevelt, son of Franklin in that both felt the pull of politics that defined their father. But though both James and Randolph eventually were elected to political office, neither could establish individual identities from their famous fathers, and their political careers floundered. Randolph late in life seemed to find stability in writing for history his father’s legacy through a biography of the famous father, but his alcohol driven poor health, crashed this salvation in its infancy with his death in 1968, just three years after Winston.

And that brings us back to Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, not ever to be confused with his father on the Mount Rushmore of composers, or perhaps even with his somewhat more innovative brother, Johann Christoph Friedrich. All in all, given the immense legacy he labored under, C.P. Emanuel Bach proved to be a decent composer, a respected intellect in Frederick the Great’s court, and a pretty good piano (clavier) player. Not bad.

Happy Birthday, Carl Philipp Emanuel.

March 1, 2014

The Most Irrelevant Man In The World

On October 24, 1973, in response to the rapidly deteriorating position of the Arab forces during the Yom Kippur War against Israel, The Soviet leader Brezhnev sent President Nixon a communique stating

“I will say it straight that if you find it impossible to act jointly with us in this matter, we should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider taking appropriate steps unilaterally. We cannot allow arbitrariness on the part of Israel.”

The Russian leader was expressing to the leader of the United States its determination to increase its belligerence with any evidence of increasing Israeli advantage in the conflict against its Arab client states. Brezhnev was implying that the Soviet Union was expecting the United States to stand aside as the Soviets injected military forces into the region, or face the consequences of direct contact between the Cold War foes themselves.

There is no video of the President of the United States’ response to this provocative communique. There is no public response, as none was necessary. The United States proceeded to reinforce Israel through supply, move Sixth Fleet forces into the Eastern Mediterranean, and increase the readiness status of its world wide forces. The Soviet Union understood exactly what this meant. The President of the Soviet Politburo Nicolai Podgorny pretended bewilderment at the aggressive response, and expressed it was not reasonable that the Soviet Union be engaged in a war with the United States because of Egypt and Syria, and the KGB head Andropov recommended reduced Russian provocation because the United States was clearly “too nervous”. The Soviet Union recognized that a regional conflict had been elevated silently by the United States president to the position of the direct national interests of the United States, and was therefore no longer a conflict with controllable consequence.

This moment achieved the elements necessary for all parties to determine to find a way out one of the most dangerous moments for the world since World War II. The cold war foes the United States and the Soviet Union understood the rules of the game – and the capacities of each without the need for either to assert in public these rules and thereby risk possible humiliation and loss of control of dangerous moments.

This careful understanding of capacity, national interest, regional roles and need to control events without potentially dangerous humiliation was the central focus of all diplomatic efforts during the Cold War. Presidents, whether Democrat or Republican, knew that, what was at stake when they expressed themselves was inherently and fundamentally more than their personal reputations. The President of the United States and the Premier of the Soviet Union realized that in public they were the personification of the national identity of their powerful countries, and their spartan use of words had to reflect their profound responsibilities, their actions, to send clear and precisely understood messages as to consequences.

This was the diplomatic concept that President Obama has spent almost six years of Presidency undermining and disassembling. From the public disdain for the previous President’s foreign policy, to the public apology tour of the President across the world, to the inaction and indifference to constant challenges to American prestige across the globe, to inane public announcements of so called “red lines” for the United States which are crossed then ignored, to the pathetic public “reset” with its traditional global opponent without the careful development of alternative responses for poor behavior- the president has publically and foolishly confused his public persona with the country he represents. This narcissism is leading to calamity after calamity and somewhere someone is going to make a tragic mistake.

During the republican convention of 2012, the actor Clint Eastwood pretended to have a conversation with the President, speaking to an empty chair. The unfortunate truth is that this actor’s prop may have been the most illuminating caricature of this President that could possibly be made. The picture of the empty Presidential podium above has become an unfortunate symbol of this president, as he has with every overexposed public word, become increasingly irrelevant to management of world events. The latest “red line” announced by the President, the movement of Russian troops into the Ukraine to reinforce their Crimean interests, was humiliatingly ignored as soon as he said it. The enormous danger of having a leader who believes his personal views are the world’s views is progressively coming to bear. Having the most powerful country in the world, led down an incalculable path by the most irrelevant man in the world, is a story that is going to have a tragic ending, and stories like that, are ominous and ugly for all of us inhabitants.

February 16, 2014

El Pretendiente Is No Bolivar

Simon Bolivar - The Liberator — Simon Bolivar – The Liberator

On September 7th 1821, General Simon Bolivar stood astride a liberated land colossus of current day Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, Panama and northwest Brazil as President of the republic of Gran Columbia. Born of the age of Enlightenment, and intensely shaped by the American and French Revolutions, Bolivar envisioned the possibilities of his own native Latin America and with brilliant strategy helped by 1825 to eject the Spanish overlords from nearly half the Latin American continent. A fervent admirer of the American experiment and philosophy of Jefferson he none the less differed from the American founders in two significant ways. He was virulently against slavery, and he felt the 400 year Spanish rule of the region had corrupted the capacity for unfettered democracy. He described the Spaniards as having dominated through unholy triad of “ignorance, tyranny and vice”, and that it would take a firm leader to shepherd the people to a point where their own aspirations could be fairly realized.

Simon Bolivar, a son of Venezuela born in Caracas, but father to the hopes and dreams of an entire continent, could not know that his efforts to mold the concepts of the American dream to a Latin American version of paternal guidance, would lead to two hundred years of pretenders, who would corrupt Bolivar’s vision and retrench the concept of master rule.

The nineteenth century of nationalist dictatorships gave way to a twentieth century of military dictatorships, with patchy occasional experiments with democratic process. The new century has found an even more disturbing model in Bolivar’s home, Venezuela. A military coup leader, Hugo Chavez, who in the fine tradition of South American militaries unsuccessfully attempted in 1992 to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela, was elected in 1998 to the presidency of Venezuela, on a

platform of providing the poor with their fair portion of the bounties of the state. After his failed coup in 1992 and brief imprisonment, Chavez was released from prison, and determined to learn from the coup master Fidel Castro as to how to attain ultimate rule. Castro’s unique combination of fascist and socialist tenets, creating one man permanent rule and a progressive destruction through socialism of a nation’s economic fabric, had succeeded in holding Cuba for the Castro family for fifty years. Chavez saw Venezuela as prime for a similar future, with one spectacular advantage Castro could only dream of, Venezuela’s huge oil reserves available to fund the vision. Chavez had learned well from Castro, and declared upon winning the Presidency, “the resurrection of Venezuela has begun, and nothing and no one can stop it.”

Nationalizing the oil wealth and reorienting media and government to fit his vision, Chavez ruled for 14 years, progressively organizing the socialist state to permanence, and was stopped only by cancer leading to his death in 2013. Using the Castro concept of “permanent revolution”, he was able to suppress rising discontent from the Venezuelan middle class that had progressively to pay for the brunt of his anti market strategies. Learning from Castro the necessity of fascistic imagery, Chavez put for his charismatic personality in similar form, wearing the uniform of the revolutionary, promoting the concept of an “indispensable” leader, railing against anyone who saw through his cartoon image.

The plan broke down with Chavez’s cancer, and he was forced to find a substitute who would continue the process of centrally dominating the Venezuelan society. His clone was to be Nicolas Maduro, a union leader of bus drivers, who had worked his way up Chavez’s inner group, and had the willingness to maintain the grip on power that would be necessary when the charismatic Chavez was no longer on the stage.

Maduro has positioned himself to be the natural successor to Chavez’s one man rule, creating laws for the purpose of centralizing military and police power, declaring”economic war”, and requesting emergency dictatorial powers. The typical effect of socialistic management and fascistic cult worship is leading to a historical collapse of Venezuela’s economy, and the people are getting tired of the pretender to the cult. Maduro is no Castro, no Chavez, and definitely no Bolivar when it comes to charisma and is responding to progressive societal unrest with all the subtle reflexes of a union thug. Average Venezuelans have seen the oil wealth squandered to create a price control economy now with an inflation rate of 56%, among the highest on earth, with massive shortages of daily necessities, such as medicine, food, and even toiletries. Maduro has responded to the unrest in the nature of a strongman, using force to suppress protest, resulting in injuries and death, and increased suppression. Like Ukraine earlier this year, Venezuela is heading for a showdown and the cap on significant violence may be uncapped in a horrific way.

Simon Bolivar hoped that eventually the yoke of Spanish intimidation, once lifted, would allow the flourishing of a better life for Latin Americans in a land of immense resources. His problem was that he presumed that the men who would follow Bolivar would be upholders of the Rights of Man, not pretenders to the goals of his revolution. The false promise of the twin deceivers of socialism and fascism is that they exist for the benefit of the people. As the current Pretendiente Maduro in Venezuela, like all before him, has proven, the only ones who will ever see a better life in the socialist reality are the elite, and the rest of us are left to accept their good graces if they so desire.

As for the violent suppression of a people, Washington DC is likely once again to stand silently by. After all, we have our own Pretendiente to consider.

January 11, 2014January 11, 2014

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Cincinnatus was a farmer. In 458 B.C., as he was plowing his field, a representative of the Roman Senate travelled to the farm, and described the crisis facing the Roman nation in a fight to the death with neighboring tribes the Aequi and the Sabines. He told Cincinnatus that the Senate had determined to vote him dictator and give him all powers necessary to save Rome from the invaders. The farmer Cincinnatus became the patriot general Cincinnatus and accepted the charge, eventually leading Rome to a crushing defeat of its adversaries. With the roman world at his feet, he then did what was unheard of for a warrior general with absolute power. He gave up the power voluntarily and absolutely, and returned to his farm. He served the country that he loved, then returned to the farm that he loved. He never confused himself as to who he was, or what was asked of him.

Israel’s farmer general died today, on his farm, and like Cincinnatus , never confused his role as a savior general with his role as a citizen of the country he loved. In various roles, he helped lead Israel from its inception in 1948, through almost every conflict the nation faced over 50 years and returned to his farm until asked again to lead. Ariel Sharon had been in a coma since 2006, but according to his family, decided his time to leave the mortal coil was now. Sharon as through his life, determined his own timetable for action.

And lead he did, to the often stunning unpredicted results as interpreted by those that would be his eternal foes. Sharon was as he put it, a simple farmer, but as a military and political leader he was anything but simple. In the field of battle, he was a implacable foe of the enemy, strategic and innovative in action, and single minded in his determination to defeat those before him. In politics, he often brought his strategic vision into actions that flummoxed his opponents who could not appreciate the clarity of his singular focus, the permanent existence of a viable Israeli state. His strategic realism, saw each battle political or military, as a battle of survival, in which the outcome was to be contributory to the permanent existence of the state. All else was merely charade, he didn’t play charades. His foes despised him because there was no way to defeat him, and his friends struggled with him because he had already determined his victories before his actions. He gave voice to the adage that he achieved results, and left it to others to devise a theory to explain it.

From Israel’s formative battles for independence in 1948, to his spectacular victories against more powerful Egyptian tank forces in the Sinai in 1973, Sharon was a brilliant leader of troops and recognized tactical genius. Such heroes are enormous targets for critique, and Sharon’s aggressiveness was felt intolerable by some who felt Israel’s best position against its foes was an compromising co-existence. Sharon understood the concept of enemy and studied his enemies. He saw no conversion of Arab nationalism or Palestinian desires to seek the obliteration of the state of Israel, so he accepted all issues as to their positive or negative impact on Israel’s ongoing existence. He never made any assumption that he could trust others to protect Israel’s fundamental interests, and did not seek the trust or respect of his foes. To world liberalism and to Israel’s peace lobby, he demonstrated his intolerable flaws in 1982, when he did not hide behind excuses of a massacre of Palestinian refugees that occurred in Lebanon under his watch in 1982 during the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon to rout out increasing dangerous and aggressive Palestinian cells. As defense minister, Sharon sought the elimination of Palestinian forces from southern Lebanon and allowed the blisteringly vengeful forces at work in Lebanon to work toward that goal. In a country torn by competing forces of Christian Lebanese, Sunni and Shia, Druise militia, and a huge dose of Palestinian interlopers, Sharon permitted the Christian Phalangist forces to enter Palestinian refugee camps, to identify Palestinian fighters, and to the Maronite Phalangists, all Palestinians were usurpers to Lebanese territory. A massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps ensued, and although the actual history of the raids are a confusing morass of Lebanonese versus Palestinian versus Syrian atrocities, the world blame fell directly on the shoulders of Sharon.

He was forced to resign, and returned to his farm in disgrace. And so he remained in the political wilderness, until the Palestinian Intifadas of the turn of the century brought Sharon’s version of realism rather than idealism back into vogue. Despite Israeli efforts for ten years to reach a negotiated accommodation with the Palestinians, The Palestinian leader Arafat found that 96% territorial concessions by Israel were insufficient to the 100% he felt appropriate, and turned the West Bank into a war zone. He achieved the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians and returned terror as a weapon to his negotiating technique.

Sharon as always was unaffected by enemies acting in expected ways. As leader of Likud and eventually the hybrid political party, Kadima, he became Israel’s eleventh Prime Minister despite his controversial background, and proceeded to turn the concepts of peace upside down. Seeing the Gaza strip militarily indefensible by Israel and meaningless strategically. he unilaterally pulled Israel out and left it to the Palestinians, stunning the world that always assumed he would see all of Israel’s military gains as inviolate. To that end he dismantled and moved Israeli settlements in Gaza, considered politically impossible, but achieved by Sharon in short order. Negotiating with Palestinian leader Abbas, following the death of Arafat, he determined that decisions henceforth regarding territory would be singularly based on Israel’s strategic defensive interests, and was on his way to a comprehensive process for permanence when he was suddenly silenced by a stroke in 2006. He remained in a silent coma until his passing today.

There is no telling as to what might have been the sequence of events with a Sharon in power for the first decade of this century. It is clear that his enemies are happy to see him gone, as he was unbeatable, and tireless in their destruction. It is also clear his country and neighbors lost the pathfinder that envisioned a way out of the blind idealisms and dysfunctional radicalisms that haunt the region today. Today the lion finally sleeps, and the world has lost one of its great leaders. Somewhere, as in the picture that leads this blog, Sharon and Moshe Dayan are again sharing the tactics that allowed the survival of Israel against overwhelming odds. The farmer of the Negev desert would remind Dayan, that even in the desert, unyielding will and visionary thinking can make for a bountiful harvest.

December 29, 2013

May 10th, 1940

On May 10th, 1940, His Royal Majesty advanced the seals of office of prime minister to Winston Spencer Churchill, thus finally placing Churchill in the leadership position he had coveted for 4 decades. The previous prime minsters Baldwin and Chamberlain had managed to coddle the bombastic dictator of Germany Hitler through the policy of appeasement, allowing the territorial acquisitions of the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, followed by laying prostrate before the ruthless acquisition of Poland and Norway. The day before, May 9th, a hundred division German army exploded on the western front slicing through Luxemburg, Belgium, and the Netherlands and stunningly, out of the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes forest into the heart of France. Through these previous stalwart leaders Great Britain had responded to such aggression by symptomatically reducing its investment in Britain’s own forces leaving the home of the British Empire at a spectacular disadvantage to the Nazi war machine.

Now they turned this unsolvable mess and crisis over to Churchill. Thank You very much.

There are tremendous lessons that can be learned by watching what Churchill did with such a craptacular gift bestowed upon him.

It would be assumed the first response would be to whine. After all, he had spent the previous eight years warning of the impending and building disaster, only to be ignored, disdained, and humiliated by the very men who now expected him to somehow find a way out. Even at the moment of governmental collapse, amazingly Prime Minster Chamberlain and the King, hoped to avoid an ‘uncontrollable’ Churchill government, looked to Lord Halifax, one of the architects of the appeasement policy and sure to seek an accommodation with Germany, as their first choice to succeed Chamberlain. Halifax, a better politician than thinker, realized he had no hope of securing the confidence of now thoroughly disgusted and anxious House of Commons and deferred to Churchill. With such wobbly indications of support, Churchill became prime Minister.

Lesson #1 – no whining. Churchill’s first public announcement of where to start in such a crisis was to define , unequivocably, the end:

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

The hand Churchill had been dealt was all but unwinnable, but he wasn’t about to compromise on the necessity of defining the end as complete victory, not a set of “make due, our time is past, the challenges are too great” compromises. The aim? Victory. The means? Whatever it takes, however long it takes. Churchill knew that in order to toughen people up for great hardship, it would be critical to assure them their leaders would not in the end sell their sacrifices out to some weak compromise that would ensure their enslavement. Everybody would be in together to victory, or annihilation. With such stark realities, there would be no time for whining or playing the blame game.

Lesson #2 – complete commitment. The first stunning surprise of the British governmental bureaucracy to the new Prime Minister’s style was ‘nobody rests until the goal of victory was secured’. Entering into the job at the advanced age of 65, no one was prepared for Churchill’s incredible work drive. Every minute of every day was committed to the goal, and the days were as long as even much younger men could possibly tolerate. Churchill drove everyone to care about everything, no matter or fact too small or unimportant if it might contribute to the fabric of victory. Churchill defined progress as Action- “Action this Day”. “Action in Three Days”, “Potential Action”. Moving, probing, challenging, resisting were the processes to be developed. Sitting back and reacting was defeatist, and would not be tolerated.

lesson #3 – Man’s best instincts evolve through crisis. Churchill had an unassailable historical perspective, and understood that true crisis often brought about great achievements of will. Once he had succeeded in focusing the national will not on achieving the best of possible outcomes of defeat, but on a future victory, he knew determination and creativity would take hold. Under the pressures of expected overwhelming defeat, Britain found the capacity to win the Battle of Britain, solve the Enigma code, advance the secrets of the atom, develop radar, and understand the complementary role it would have to play to the emerging super power the United States.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Lesson #4 – Transparency. It was assumed by the British government before Churchill that the people were best left in the dark about the menace presented by the German military machine and the potential horrors of assault on the homeland. Churchill would have none of it. From the start he accepted the intelligence of his people to understand the task at hand, and the dangers they faced. Though not professing religiousity, Churchill embraced the Christian Virtues of Temperance, Patience, and Diligence as essential elements in the DNA of the people he led, and recognized the need to support the those traits with unvarnished Truth. He never underplayed the dangers or the sacrifices required, nor the difficulties that lay ahead.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Lesson#5 – Tools of Victory. Great challenges are won by inexorable will, but Churchill knew that one could not fight modern battles with sticks and stones. The fundamental weapon in victory was a people’s understanding of their basic position in the battle as one of being in the Right. Victory however has to be achieved on a progressively level playing field, and Churchill looked to seal the leaks in capacity so permitted by his predecessors and look to all avenues to achieve capacity, including developing his relationship with the United States. He wanted to make clear that it was not expected by the British people that the world would need to share the sacrifice, but rather that the world would accept that the battle outcome was one worth winning. Churchill believed that the tenets of western civilization were a shared responsibility and advantage, and the investment in preservation was in the interests of not only Great Britain, but like minded democracies like the United States, and even the subjugated peoples of Europe now living under the Nazi tyranny. Churchill was not asking for sacrificing lives for British existence, he was interested in supporting the unalienable existence of western principles, and by providing the means where available to support and supply, stand up for those rights.

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

———–

On June 22nd, 1940, France capitulated and all of continental Europe was under the yoke of the Nazi war machine. Five weeks into his premiership, Winston Churchill faced the overwhelming crisis of our times – alone. Less than five years later, the omnipotent Nazi threat was crushed and no more. The achievement is truly stupefying, but grounded in the recognition that in all crisis management , principled focus on your inherent strengths, grim determination, and marshaling your resources can with destiny’s help achieve victory.

Unfortunately, I feel today’s western world is approaching similar moments of crisis and threats to their existence. Although the menace is not so much state sponsored, the pattern of defeatism, appeasement, and self destruction is progressively apparent, and our leaders reflect similar traits to the British bumblers of the 1930s. Progressive debt, isolation, appeasement of foreign tyrants, and draw down of a nation’s defenses are sowing a defeatism in our nation that make it increasing difficult to imagine defeating the impending crises of existence that our wayward habits are driving us toward. The President stands in a posture that almost seems blind to the tides of destruction, not dissimilar to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who seemed progressively denser as the risks grew higher. Churchill, in perfectly framing Stanley Baldwin, may have inadvertently defined perfectly our current President Obama as well.

“Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened”

As we gear ourselves up for what will be necessary to return to stability and progress as a people, let us hope that a Churchill awaits in the wilderness to tell us the truth, a show us the way out.

November 24, 2013

The Gardens of Aranjuez

In the locale of Aranjuez , south of modern Madrid, the royal family of one of the world’s greatest empires placed their spring home to celebrate their spectacular power and wealth. At the end of the 15th century, with the Castilian monarchs having finally ended 700 years of Moor colonization of the Iberian peninsula, the confident rulers of Spain and Portugal saw no issue in dividing the entire world between them. In the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, the lands of the New World (minus Brazil) and the Far East were considered to be in the Spanish sphere of hegemony, Africa and the Indian islands the province of Portugal. No one of course bothered to tell any of the indigenous peoples, but such was the air of supreme authority that Spain spent the next two centuries taking this divide very seriously and proceeding to exploit their sphere with dominant conquest. For a time the inhabitants of Aranjuez injected intense catholic religiousity and the Spanish language into a third of the planet, and absorbed unimaginable wealth.

Spain became Europe’s most intense empire, its explorers Conquistadors, its religious intellectuals Inquisitors, and its monarchs supreme authoritarians. The intensity was felt throughout the culture, in the intensity of linguistic expressions, the power of its religious art, and particularly the music. The home of Flamenco, Andalusia, married the supreme confidence, intense romanticism, faint mysticism, and woven rhythms of Moor culture into an erotic and powerful cultural dance and music that survives to this day. The family of plucked stringed instruments of the renaissance, the lute and the mandolin, particularly appropriate for solo expression, proved inadequate to the Flamenco artist until idealized in the the form of the guitar. The guitar deepened the resonation of the sound and the scope of the available expression. Although the inherent strengths of the guitar attracted many composers of many nationalities , it was in the venue of Spanish culture that the instrument seemed to be invented for. The dry heat, the vast plains, the inescapable power, and the apparently eternal nature of Spanish influence long after the supreme monarchial power was gone, seemed to resonate through the guitar.

By the twentieth century, the spectacular reach of the Spanish Monarchs and the pilgrimage of the world to the Gardens of the palace at Aranjuez

to seek their blessing was a faint memory. The intensity and sense of mysticism that was Spain flowered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the empire’s power collapsed. The music of De Falla, Tarrega, Sor, and Granados all found beautiful expression through the guitar, but it was a mid-twentieth century composer who achieved the perfect expression of unique Latin passion, intense and expression, and maybe, a real dignity that the true conquistadors never had. November 22nd was the 112th birthday of Joaquin Rodrigo, who managed to compose the unrivaled king of guitar concertos as an homage to his homeland and the magnificent gardens at Aranjuez. The modern concert hall is deficient without at some point performing Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, the perfect expression of the guitar’s musicality, dignity, and capacity for expression. The second movement in particular, in which the guitar is sublimely echoed by the English horn , cousin of the oboe, expresses the composer’s love for his homeland vistas better than any photograph could provide, and the depth of the Spanish soul that one great guitar performer after another has attempted to make their own.

In this quiet last week of leading to the celebration of fall’s harvest bounty before winter sets in, we wish Joaquin a happy birthday, a immerse ourselves in the splendor of Spain.