Every once in a while sport provides us with moments of awe of what humans are capable of. And what they are capable of sometimes exceeds the laws of physics. In a college football game on Saturday night, in-state rivals Oklahoma and Oklahoma were locked in duel and Oklahoma State was getting the short end of it, when Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones was flushed out of the pocket and decided to throw the ball away out of bounds. Unfortunately for him, defensive back Broderick Brown of Oklahoma State determined to take that very moment to defy the laws of gravity and several other undetermined laws of physics. In a perfectly timed flight, he tipped the ball to his teammate in an unconscionably spectacular play that deserves viewing if you haven’t seen it. It didn’t help Oklahoma State win, losing again to their rival Oklahoma, 47-41, but it did move the eternal and ongoing measure of human experience one positive molecule forward.
Roger Wilco
The theater that is a modern rock band is always soap operatic, full of artistic idealism, ego, special collective inspiration, and messy divorces. The rock band Wilco is a prime example of this, itself borne of a messy divorce and full of line-up changes that would make a purist dizzy. Through it all, however, they have time and time again produced evocative and progressive music that has led the band to be considered an icon of the alternative rock scene and a special favorite of music critics. They are an amalgam of Americana folk, American pop, 60’s and 70’s mainstream, Beatlesque experimentation, and occasionally bombastic electronic chaos. In a time of artificial talent and fained musicianship, Wilco is at the heart of what is left of the talented few groups carrying on the tradition of roots rock centrally created by artist musicians.
The soul of the band is the lead singer and composer Jeff Tweedy, responsible for most of the compositions and all of the drama. Tweedy and Jay Farrar were the dynamic duo of the seminal alternative country rock band Uncle Tupelo, and as is typical of two egos with alternative visions of music, the band fractured in 1994. Farrar left to form a band of similar bent, Son Volt, and Tweedy picked up the remnants of Uncle Tupelo to form Wilco. The initial Wilco efforts, the album A.M., presented little variation form the Tupelo sound, but with Being There and Summerteeth, a new Wilco sound evolved, full of Tweedy’s special capacity to write witty and melodic verse and experiment with varied sounds and influences. Critics began to take notice, and so did Tweedy, becoming more and more sensitive to outside influences messing with the group. This led to moving Wilco from one record company to another, after a particularly acrimonious set arguments with his fellow band mate Jay Bennett and Warners Records executives regarding the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and its perceived lack of crossover radio appeal and Bennett’s incessant need to overproduce the Wilco sound and not trust the musicianship, A Tweedy mortal sin. Moving to Nonesuch Records with an album nobody seemed to want, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot proved to be the album everyone said it was not, holding crossover appeal to the tune of 600,000 albums sold, and winning critical aclaim as one of the 100 most important rock albums of all time by RollingStone magazine.
The albums and awards have continued to flow for Wilco, including two Grammys and five nominations. Each album stands on its own as a prismatic reflection of multiple musical influences as diverse as an album of forgotten Woody Guthrie songs in Mermaid Avenue that re-established that populist poet as a writer of first rate songs, A Ghost is Born and Sky Blue Sky as reminders of the height of American Band Pop, and Kicking Television as pinnacle of live performance album rock. The newest album Wilco (The Album) is the perfect reflection of music twenty years in the making, with all influences represented and all the excellent musicians of Wilco getting a chance to make their contribution. Wilco stands, after all its experimental heart , in the epicenter of the tradition of great American music.
People We Should Know #4 – Paul Ryan
The 111th Congress recently elected and positioned to take office in January 2011 will seat potentially the most influential and powerful Wisconsin politician on the national stage ever and the most recognizable the since Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950’s and Fighting Bob LaFolette in the 1920’s. He is a relatively unassuming six term congressman from Wisconsin’s 1st District named Paul Ryan, and he will with the placement of the new congress assume the chairmanship of the powerful Committee on the Budget, which frames the expenditures of the United States and crucially entitlement spending. At only 40 years of age, and already recognized as a national resource and creative intellect on budget issues, he will be a progressive star on the national stage, and obvious member of Rampart’s People We Should Know.
Ryan is an economic wunderkind who has already been identified for many years since his mid twenties as a particularly sharp student of budgetary issues in Washington. Only six years after graduation from Miami Ohio University he managed to convince a predominantly democratic district in Wisconsin of his mature political grasp, winning a surprise election in 1998 and successfully holding the seat ever since. He has progressively come into prominence for his measured and articulate debate style, his encyclopedic understanding of the byzantine US budget process, and his market oriented proposals for radical overhaul of the failing United States tax and entitlement system in his revolutionary and comprehensive Roadmap for America’s Future . This plan articulated a logical means of preserving American enterprise and standard of living while dramatically curtailing the deficit spending in out years producing strangulating national debt. The seriousness of the plan has been confirmed by the howls of protest from progressives that see it as a threat to their dreams of a European style social compact for America. President Obama himself referred to it as a serious plan, while laying out an alternative accelerated spending process at complete juxtaposition to Ryan’s plan. The two protagonists came intellectually head to head at the debate prior to Obama’s budget destroying healthcare proposal in its run to becoming law, and it was at this White House summit that a national audience first saw the tremendous skills and intellect of this congressman, as he methodically took apart Obama’s plan for the economic debacle it would create, piece by piece:
The spectacular performance put Ryan on the map and he has wasted no time in positioning himself as the conservative intellectual alternative to Obama’s idealistic progressivism. The November election with the recapture of the House of Representatives by Republicans places Mr. Ryan on the perfect stage to define US budget policy as chairman of the powerful Budget Committee. He has pre-meditatively in brilliant and politically savvy fashion already taken the offensive with a bi-partisan proposal in conjunction with Clinton economic advisor Alice Rivlin proposing a more sane alternative plan for Medicare entitlements compared to Obama’s healthcare act that promises to create real havoc with “inevitability” arguments of Obama’s hastily through together health impulses. The sky is the limit for this articulate and creative politician and he is bound to have to fight off overtures for national office in the coming years. The next two years of Paul Ryan are going to be a very interesting act to watch, and the future look of the United States and its willingness to preserve the tenets of market forces that brought it to the pinnacle of western civilization’s economic leadership will be very much defined by this Wisconsin defender of the Ramparts.
A Divine Providence
We are loathe in today’s society to attach any kind of religious connotation to our holidays for fear of derision from a societal modernist post religious view of celebration. Thanksgiving is about the food, Christmas about the gifts, and Easter about the rabbit. It was not always the case; the very real hand of Divine Providence was an accepted companion to all daily events and had particular focus around communal celebrations. The basic challenge to survival was a very real threat for most human beings in past centuries with none of the conveniences of today. The need to find and develop consistent food sources, decent shelter, protection from the elements and hostile humans facing the same life challenges underwrote every life story prior to our modern conveniences and security. The power of a Divine Being, by whom the forces of nature and fate were directed to determine who would succeed and who would succumb, was considered an inalienable fact of existence. No action taken by man or nature was assumed to be free of the guiding unseen hand of the Divinity. This powerful view of life allowed the most amazing leaps of faith and risks to be taken with an assumption that the outcome was foreordained and therefore not to be reasonably feared in the believer. The story of the first Thanksgiving in particular is an intense example of the power of faith to lead people through great challenge, great sacrifice, and ultimate internal triumph regardless of the external outcome.
The people who celebrated the first recorded communal thanksgiving in North America believed themselves locked to the vagaries of Divine Providence. The Separatists, or Pilgrims as they were much later referred to by, were by very definition separate from the mores of their current society. Practicing a particularly fierce reductionist and devotional brand of Protestantism, they found little capacity to get along with the great majority of their fellow Englishmen and the state driven Anglican religion. They felt truly separated from the trappings of organized religion and felt it got between each individual and their intimate relationship with God. In 1600, denying the ultimate ecclesiastical role of the head of the Anglican Church, the King of England, was a hanging offense, and the future of the Separatists to maintain their views and remain loyal English subjects was heading to a cataclysm. Leaders of the faith succeeded at transitioning their flock into exile to Leiden, Netherlands in 1609, and for awhile found an adequate home of religious tolerance. Dutch society was, however, relatively mercantile driven and the morals were not for the taste of the Separatists sufficiently secured by the population. Missing the unifying culture of English society and unable to return home, the leaders of the Separatists petitioned the English government to allow them to establish a colony in the American wilderness and succeeded in 1619 with permission to secure land for settlement in the recently defined “New England” segment of the Virginia land tract. The group, 102 strong, eventually set sail September 16, 1620 on the second of two ships originally commissioned for the voyage, the Mayflower. The voyage was classic fall season North Atlantic drama with strong storms lashing the ship and at one moment nearly scuttling the trip due to a fractured main beam. Conditions on board were as was typical for that time, cramped and foul. With the loss of one passenger and the birth of one, the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod on November 13th, 1620, and eventually settled on a small land bluff at a site referred to as Plymouth selected and landed December 21th.
The year to follow held an all too real harshness and brutality that was typical for these early attempts at colonization. The Atlantic voyage had made most of the group disasterously sick with respiratory and gastric diseases as well as the ravages of scurvy, and only 47 colonists survived the harsh winter conditions. The Pakanoket native tribe with previously poor interactions with Europeans held a particular distaste for the efforts had colonization and persistently harassed the process. The knowledge base of the colonists for communal farming and survivorist instincts was limited, and food production was scarcely supportive, with hunting and fishing the primary means of calorie intake. The survivorship of the colony, much like the ill fated attempts earlier at Roanoke, Virginia were balanced on the thinnist wisp of fate, but the Separatists held an unquenchable trust in a God that held a personal pact with each man and woman who accepted Him, and trusted Providence to determine the outcome.
And by the thinnest of wisps, the outcome slowly became assured. A small but successful harvest was achieved in the late summer of 1621, and the health of the residual colonists stabilized. Having reached some cooperative relations with another local native tribe, the Wampanoag who supplied further game and fish, a 
determination by both to communally celebrate in thanksgiving for the bounty provided by a Divine Providence led to a shared harvest feast. The recording of the event by William Bradford, lead to the acknowledgement of this event being the sentinel moment of this eventual tradition of Thanksgiving.
In modern days we struggle to understand a world where people would willingly risk their comfort, their livelihood, their very survival on completely unknown hazards and risks of a harsh alien existence for the solitary advantage of confronting their internal faith in a way they could feel uninhibited. There are few modern examples and the complete acceptance of spiritual force in their lives more important than any material process seems alien in our current existence dominated by security and comfort. In the face of such sacrifice, though, a simple truth emerges of the more unsullied happiness achieved at that time for sheer miracle of existence and in many ways I envy their sense of internal well being. We would all do well to take a moment on this Thanksgiving, to take our own stock in the powers of Providence in our own lives that has brought us such comfort, such security, and such wonderful capacity to determine the direction of our own individual voyage through life on this beautiful planet.
As our pilgrim ancestor William Bradford so proudly spoke of this unique human spiritual voyage in words that resonate to this day:
Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. Let them therfore praise ye Lord, because he is good, & his mercies endure for ever.…
To all of you, a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!
Lincoln’s Masterpiece of Brevity
November 19th was the 147th anniversary of the Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln’s masterpiece of perfectly structured prose defining for all time the standard of speech writing and public rhetoric. In a mere 272 words, Lincoln memorialized the heroes of the specific Gettysburg battle, the larger principles that would be worth such horrid sacrifice, and the greater good that the cataclysmic struggle would bring to fruition. Most importantly, he re-framed and confirmed the basic argument for the existence of the American republic itself, and from that point on it was never again an subject for rational question.
Reading the words and acknowledging his exalted place in the pantheon of American history, we can easily forget this man had only a few weeks total of formal education, was fundamentally self taught, and formed almost all his philosophy from his narrow exposure to Cicero, the Bible and Shakespeare. The depth of his intellect in the face of such a hard scabble upbringing and limited means and exposure to intellectual critical analysis remind us to look again at our absurdly silly modern biases that the only intellectual leaders are those who have advanced degrees from ivy league type educational citadels. 
Lincoln formed his genius the most credible way, though constant introspection, mental exercise through memorization, and intense study of the science of debate. In Lincoln’s time, the availability of significant data to prove debating points was available to almost no one, and the audience was almost assumed to be predominately illiterate. The equally important point, however, was that Lincoln had honed his debating skills in the prairie wilderness of Illinois where the powers of thought and argument, and confidence in human intuition were required to be at a highly developed state due to the necessity of surviving in such a difficult and primitive world. In the harsh loneliness of the great west there was time only for hard work and hard thought, and no one made the prejudicial mistake to assume that intellect and talent were exclusive to the schooled. Lincoln was a debater his whole life, from the skills learned as a self taught travelling lawyer on the circuit courts of the rural midwest, to the state legislature, U.S. Congress, brilliant public debates with Stephen Douglas for Senate, and finally Presidency at the moment of greatest philosophical crisis in the history of the country. He never made the modern political mistake of “dumbing down” the depth and seriousness of the argument to his audience. He always assumed the native intellect of those he was communicating to, and the need to persuade, not to indulge. In modern times, only Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan come remotely close to this innate skill set of Lincoln’s.
The Gettysburg Address as legend has it was framed by Lincoln on the train to the national cemetery commemoration at Gettysburg, and was considered an afterthought following intense oration of Everett Edwards, the professional orator who preceded him with an erudite 2 hours of rhetoric. Ironically, it was only Edwards initially who recognized that Lincoln had done more to perfectly frame the moment in his three minutes then Edwards had in his two hours, and told him so. We can only imagine the disappointment of the crowd gathered, when the president followed Edward’s loquacious sonorous testimonial with a brief high pitched simple discourse that was over almost before it started. It rapidly however was appreciated for its perfect structure and brilliance and has come to be recognized as a jewel of english language rhetoric and human thought. If only our current leaders would be capable of learning Lincoln’s special insight into humanity and the American Experience.
The Gettysburg Address
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
A. Lincoln November 19th, 1863
A Year Later, the World Is Slowly Warming to the “Truth”
It was a year ago that one of the great farces and premeditated frauds perpetrated on civilized culture began to unravel, to the benefit of all that care in the least about human progress and individual freedom. World leadership was preparing to gather in Copenhagen for a world wide conference about “climate change and humanity driven global warming” that would codify the economic disarming of the western world in order to “convert economic behavior” through mandatory reduction in so-called greenhouse gas (CO2) production and carbon based fuels. Secondarily for past environmental sins, the developed countries would agree to shift hundreds of billions of dollars to to economic backwaters like Zimbabwe and Fiji in order to “equalize the playing field” in an action having nothing to do with climate science and everything to do with Marxist economic theory. The lemmings in charge of western governments were prepared to sacrifice their own population’s well being and give up enormous chunks of sovereign power to global bureaucrats to sage their guilt on the altar of “settled science”. Emerging economic powers like China and India were intelligently having none of it, but were perfectly willing to see their major competitors self-emolliate. The forced serfdom of individual freedom and human security was all but complete, when the miracle of the Internet once again charged to the rescue. A still unidentified insider at the global temple of climate change science, East Anglia University in England, released on the Internet thousands of e-mail exchanges by the climate scientists at the center of the “settled science” of human mediated global warming revealing their own doubts of the validity of their own data and their willingness to cover up the inconsistencies to protect “truth” of global warming, along with the billions of dollars of research funds that the “truth” brought to their career work. May I say it again? Thank God for the Internet.
One of the intrepid heroes of the unmasking of the fraud, James Delingpole, who blogs for the UK Telegraph, brought light to the incredible web of deceit exposed in the e-mails of Anglia scientists. He almost single handedly turned the tide of momentum through his journalist work, when the mainstream media was prepared to bury the facts to protect the Copenhagen meeting. Thankfully the conference broke down in chaos with the emerging pattern of fraud Delingpole and others brought to light and the organized destruction of western capacity dreamt about deciples of Al Gore was narrowly averted. Over the past year, trends in global climate measurement continue to show continuing marked deviation and lack of precision from the “settled science” computer models that world leadership was prepared to swallow whole. We are no closer to accurately predicting man’s effect on world temperature and climate change a hundred years from now than the weather two weeks from now, and that at least is becoming “settled science”. Thankfully the upcoming world climate conference in Cancun, Mexico as a follow-up to Copenhagen reflects the world’s identification of the underlying realities of the global warming hoaxers and will be attended by one tenth of the earth enders that populated Copenhagen and Kyoto.
Mr. Delingpole continues to do important and critical analysis of the work being done in the climate science field and the underlying political agendas of the most stalwart climate bureaucrats who continue to spout the human driven global warming gospel despite all the evidence to the contrary. In two blogs that I consider must reads, he reminds us of the Marxist political agenda underlying the continued demands for the developed world to economically disarm for climate change, and how the culprits responsible for the farce are changing their attack through new vocabulary with the same destructive intentions of the global warming mantra on human freedom.
As a defender of the ramparts of civilization, it is critical to always be on the lookout for the fool on the hill who would destroy all the progress humanity has made to feed a desire to return the planet to a more “natural” state. 
We all want clean air to breathe. We all want clean water to drink. We all want to be good stewards of the mother earth that has been our home since Eden. All that is more likely to occur, when we recognize the power of real truth and real scientific method to explore the boundless creativity and genius housed in each one of us, and not the ravings of those would seek to return the world to a place that never existed in reality and one in which there is no place for us.
“Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!”
The month of November is on the whole a gold mine of interesting events to a web blog that loves history as this one does, and no more stirring day exists to defenders of the ramparts of civilization than does November 9th. I never thought growing up I would ever see the epic events of 1989, events that occurred with such spectacular suddenness, and with overwhelming affirmation of the human spirit. No one not alive during the certainty of the eternal collision of communism and capitalist democracies can possibly relate to the awe and spectacle of that very special summer and fall. The day of days was November 9th, 1989, when the East German government bureaucratically tried to reduce the enormous pressure of its population’s demand for free transit to West Berlin by suggesting limited access to be available over time. No longer willing to accede to paternal restrictions of a stone deaf governmental dictatorship, the people of East Germany simply refused to be held back any longer. By the night of the 9th, thousands pressed the entrances to West Berlin and eventually overwhelmed the pathetic efforts to hold them back. History was changed for ever when the psychological as well as physical wall constricting west Berlin was perforated, eroded, and finally destroyed.
What was the Berlin Wall? Built in 1961 by the Communists to stop the uncontrolled flow of eastern Europeans unsatisfied by the communist alternative to western capitalist recovery after World War II, the wall quickly became the singular physical symbol of the communist challenge to individual freedom. No transit between east and west would be tolerated; not in culture, not in interaction, not in economics. The east would go a different way and it would be willing to enforce this difference with bricks, mortar, and sharpshooters. Eventually 192 East Germans died at the hands of rifle bullets stopping their attempts at experiencing western freedom, and thousands more were incarcerated. The wall had been up several years when President Kennedy articulated the response of the free world to the draconian construction of the wall, declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner” as the appropriate retort of all free peoples. The West and the people of Eastern Europe never gave in to the Stalinist effort to colonize – beginning with the Berlin air-lift of 1948, the intense moments of the East German revolt of 1953, the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Prague Spring for 1968, and the Solidarity demonstrations of 1981, the tense events at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, the cold war cat and mouse fights in surrogate countries, submarine exploits, and spy agencies. No one noting the aggressive ascendancy of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s could have imagined the precipitous downfall of this massively powerful dictatorship with world wide reach. The power of the individual proved devastating to the state hegemony and the names ring like celestial bells – Andrei Sakarov, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and, the champion of freedom, Ronald Reagan.
The push came from Reagan in his outing of the Communist Soviet Union as an “evil empire” to the aspirations of free people, and the focus from Reagan in his speech at the Berlin Wall. He spoke to the final destruction of the artificial edifice of communist “separateness”, with the challenge to the Russian comissar to act; “Open these Gates; Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The groundswell built in Poland and Hugary that summer, spread to the Baltic republics, the Czech republic, the Romanian dictatorship, and finally Germany itself. It was as if for once undeniable evidence was present that good could ultimately triumph when for generations it had been preached that triumph over evil was impossible. It was gripping television, at a time when people still got their news on television , and the real time miracles occured one after another in front of our eyes. Unforgettable, inspirational, and majestic, the summer and fall of 1989 stand as a monumental time in the logs of the defenders of the ramparts of western civilization and human freedom.
Armistice Day
November 11, 2010 was celebrated as the Veteran’s Day holiday paying homage to all American soldiers who have served their country over the years, but is borne of a very specific event day referred to as Armistice Day. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, combat operations ceased in armistice ending for all purposes the cataclysmic conflict known as ironically known at the time as the Great War, and eventually, as the combatants were doomed to repeat the horror twenty years later, as World War 1. The effects of all wars are devastating but this one in particular seemed to hold a special irrationality and sorrow. The war was fought across multiple continents but prism of death and destruction focused on a fairly narrow 50 mile killing field stretched out from the North Sea to the Swiss border, gashing France with battles named for her three natural river barriers, the Meuse, the Marne, and the Somme. I visited Verdun in my youth, where an estimated 1.5 million casualties exhausted any semblance of rationality to the battle and devastated an entire generation of French youth. Its poison to the French nation shows itself in microcosm in the village of Thones, France a town of 5800 inhabitants, where I visited the village’s World War 1 memorial in 2009, commemorating the deaths of over 200 of the village’s sons in the Great War. Taking into account the population of women, children, and old men unavailable to service, it is obvious to project through the loss of so many young men, the end of this town’s and projectionally of France’s economic capacity, generational proliferation, and vitality.
To Great Britian, Armistice Day is an equally poignant memorial day, and was painfully scarred this year by the insensitive and caddish demonstration of muslim youths purposely disrupting a national moment of commerative silence for their own unaware, selfish, and petty complaints. The years separating the incredible losses of the British nation have obviously made callous the youth of Britian today who have benefited from their countrymen’s dedicated service. It would do all well to relive the events of one day of that conflict to understand the enormous sacrifice that separated Great Britian forever from her position as a leader in the world economy and politic.
On July 1, 1916, a single day in the Great War, 100, 000 soldiers of the British Commonwealth surged out of their trenches and pressed out to engaged their German enemies at the Somme. The surge followed an artillery barrage dedicated to dissolve the German lines with over 250,000 shells concentrated over one hour from 1000 field guns, 180 heavy guns, and 245 heavy howitzers (John Keegan). 
The British commanders Haig and Rawlinson had little doubt the incapacitating nature of such a barrage and assumed back breaking separations in the German defensive line and resolve, to be rapidly exploited by the spontaneous charge of the 100,000. The assumption was that the nearby holocaust at Verdun had weakened German capacity for resistance and that such concentrated power would show irreversible line collapse. The fantastical plan seemed to ignore almost two years already of similar attempts and failures by both sides. The very heart and soul of British youth, drawn so romantically into the war by a desire to triumph in similar personal fashion to their forefathers’ glory in much smaller conflicts, exploded out of the trenches that morning on cue and surged across the fields to engage the apparently weakened foe, only to discover almost unaffected German positions with impenetrable defensive structures armed with the modern scythe of death itself, the machine gun battery. 100,000 went out , and in the day of greatest loss to the British nation in history 60,000 did not come back, with imperceptible gains in the line overwhelmed by the stunning losses of vital manpower. 
By the end of the day, the battle, for all purposes, was over, but in the cruel tradition of this most cruel of wars, crawled on until November without identifiable strategic gain, until a total of 680,000 British Commonwealth troops were claimed as casualties, in this one, this singularly obscene battle.
Armistice Day is now forward 92 years from the actual cessation of battle, but the damage to the romantic notions of western civilization’s view of conflict as a means to an end were forever destroyed. there is no moment more deserving of reverential silence then the sacrifice of so many who willingly separated their personal life from the desire to complete “a war to end forever all wars”. Such personal demonstrations of sacrifice for ideas bigger than oneself is a particularly poignant and unique human trait.
On the morning of July 1, 1916, a 23 year old soldier named William Noel Hodgson, a British Lieutenant joined his 100,000 comrades in the surge, and was soon one of the 60,000 casualties of a war day like no other in British history. He felt his day in history and prior to the charge from the trench left us this beautiful reminder of why no matter how many years separate us from his charge, that we take a moment to remember. To you, William Hodgson and all like you…
“I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this!
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.”
A Tea Party Rant from Arizona
The Libertarian Party has never really achieved legislative force in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of adherents in the country to the principles of self determination and reduced governmental oversight. The intensity of expression of libertarian anger in the form of tea party advocacy in the recent election is expressed well in a self described rant from a friend of mine from Arizona and the comprehensive manifesto I decided deserves a viewing on the Ramparts. It is an important consideration of our recently elected government that they realize the presence of so many highly educated people and intellectually based arguments in the depth of the tea party movement. A Defender of the Ramparts passionately expressed by my fellow blogodier j. benjamin:
To say that most people are fed up with politics / campaigning right now would be a gross understatement. Most people wonder if our political process and politicians can behave any worse. It is difficult to believe anything they say about themselves or their opponents and it seems like they will say anything. The carefully edited sound bites of themselves and the competing candidates are good at depicting whatever point of view best suits the needs of the party with the biggest campaign budget. This translates to incumbent since they have had the opportunity to work at collecting as much money as possible from special interest groups and lobbyists during their tenure. Indeed the re-election rate for congressmen / women in this country is greater than 90%. This year our congress is scheduled to work 137 days, which translates into 45 3-day workweeks. On Mondays and Fridays we pay to fly them to and from Washington so they can spend weekends working hard for us in their home states. Or maybe lobbyists fly them places on “fact finding” trips.
In the 19th century essentially all government jobs were distributed to the winning political party workers. The best way to guarantee a well paying government job was to work in an election for the winning party and this ensured that there was no shortage of campaign workers.
The disgusting behavior of politicians is hardly a new development. In the presidential election of 1828 the behavior of the candidates (Andrew Jackson and john Quincy Adams) reach what many felt at the time a new low. Jackson was accused of adultery, murder, treason, drunkenness, theft and cockfighting and declared unfit for the presidency. Jackson’s campaign charged Adams with serving as a minister to Russia – supplying young women to a lust-crazed Czar. Adams was also portrayed as aristocrat who squandered taxpayer money to furnish his home.
So not much has changed with politics or politicians in the last 200 years. They will still say anything to get elected and the wheels of government are still greased by favors bestowed by the victorious to their loyal supporters. Luckily for politicians, the public has a very limited attention span and in a four-year election cycle can forget almost any transgression by their elected officials. The only apparent way a congressman can screw the pooch is by a particularly heinous transgression that lands them in jail. But if the mayor of DC (Marion Barry – Also convicted of tax evasion) can get re-elected after being videotaped buying and smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room, then maybe there is nothing politicians can do that wont be forgotten or forgiven.
Does this reflect on the quality of individual that enters the political arena? Surely there are some who pursue a career in politics that, at least initially, have altruistic intentions of service to their community / country. It would appear that whatever their initial intentions are, they quickly learn that the people who voted them into office are not what is important if they want to stay there.
Because I vote I am registered in a political party. We essentially have three choices in this country – Republican, Democrat and Independent. It is not that I have any allegiance to a particular party or its politics, in fact I could care less. My political motivation seems at times to be driven more by being peeved at one elected official or ruling party at a time. I think in reality I am a Libertarian. I believe that government should stay out of my private life as long as I am not hurting anyone – and “hurting” can be used in the broadest sense of interpretation. Government’s role should be to only help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud. I don’t feel this promotes a lawless society but should foster one that encourages people to respect others rights without shoving their own down someone’s throat.
I think anyone elected to a political office should be limited to a single term – maybe two at most. If they knew they couldn’t be re-elected then they may be less interested in taking money from special interest groups that ostensibly can only be used for their re-election. If they truly want to serve their constituents then they can run again after being out of office for a term.
The centralization of government power in the United States probably began in the early 19 century under the direction of Chief Justice John Marshall who was involved in numerous decisions that expanded the authority of the Supreme Court and congress while weakening the administrative power of individual states. This process has continued to the point that we now have an “elected” ruling class that is above the laws they pass and administrate. What happened to by the people and for the people?
Elected federal officials should be subject to the same laws as they people that they are imposed on. Currently a single term in congress gets you discounted health care for you and your family (not that crappy Medicare either). In 2009 taxpayers spent approx $15 billion to provide health care for 8.5 million federal workers and their dependents. And an annual retirement pension that averages $45K (Even the ones with lucrative jobs provided to them by the lobbyists they befriended while in office). Currently the retirement package for the 400 “retired” congressmen costs the US public about $20 million a year.
Why isn’t English our national language? When immigrants first came to this country they learned to speak English to function in public and in the workplace. At home they spoke whatever their “native” language was and the preservation of their cultural practices at home and in ethnic neighborhoods was gradually assimilated into the melting pot of our culture. ( I think preservation of one’s cultural heritage is important and a valuable thing and I am not suggesting that anyone has to embrace another’s cultural habits just to fit in) Why do we need to pay to provide public services in every language? If you are going to receive a free education, health care, social services in this country, is it too much to ask that you can at least learn to speak English? When I travel to another country I am always impressed that people are fluent in a language other than their own and I appreciate how it makes my life easier but I certainly wouldn’t expect their government to provide translators for my convenience.
The American constitution is a wonderful document that has been used to guide our country for almost 250 years (originally adopted in 1787). Our constitution has been amended twenty-seven times and the first ten amendments were the bill of rights. Amending the constitution at the present day is a daunting proposition requiring 3/4 of the states support. At the time the bill of rights was adapted there were 13 states all of which had ocean front property on the Atlantic Ocean. There were 12 amendments ratified in the 20th century the last being passed in 1992 that limits congressional pay raises. (Not sure how that ever came up or got passed). At the time the constitution and bill or rights was adapted I doubt our country’s leaders anticipated the citizenship and welfare issues that our country is struggling with at the present time and the financial burden that the rights of US citizenship imposes on its society. We have also blurred the line between civil rights and human rights in this country to the point that the laws that determine citizenship still constitute being born in this country – even under illegal circumstances. It is doubtful that we will be able to address this issue within the law until our society collapses under the strain of the many being supported by the few.
It seems that too many people feel they are entitled to the rights of a US citizen without the responsibilities of a US citizen
Constitutional devotion, term limits, equality in the rights and burdens of citizenship, immigration reform, American exceptionalism, self determination – hmmmm…sounds like a tea party leader has been discovered in the Copper State.
Decision Points
A circumspect George W. Bush appeared on NBC with Matt Lauer reviewing the major difficult decisions of his consequential presidency on 11/08/10 recounted in his new book Decision Points which opened today on Amazon.com at #1. It is no surprise to anyone that the former president states on multiple occasions that personal popularity meant little to him in determining the course of major policy decisions. In a strange way it seems to be almost a source of pride to him that often the tough decisions seemed to be generally unpopular ones. The tide of history certainly exposed his presidency to more than the usual profound moments and for the most part I think he believes he stayed true to the ” right course” for the country.
The pivotal moment was clearly 9/11 and on this pinnacle of crisis essentially all of his decisions radiate outward. His explanation for the emotion that formed a backdrop to his speech on the world trade center rubble is a riveting piece of history. Almost as wrenching is President Bush’s description of the burden of serving as commander in chief in consequential times resulting in the deaths of over 4000 servicemen. He relates the story of the Chapman family, who he met at a service for their fallen son among many others. President Bush noted that after the service, Mrs. Chapman brought him a note that read, ” My son did his duty, now go and do yours,” a buckling, emotional moment. His visible attachment to the memory serves as an undeniable view into the sincerity of his motivations in the actions he took. President Bush sleeps well at night with his conviction that what he did was in the service of his country’s best interests and security.
Equally interesting is the focus on the Hurricane Katrina natural disaster. The former president is clear that the perception of the national government refusing to provide troop support and security was a false one. The governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans dithered for days on whether to invite in federal troops, and the president was hamstrung without a state invitation. The federal government would have had to declare an insurrection to put in the military without an invitation and that would have clearly led to an explosive situation. He is clear, also, in his contribution to the sense of presidential detachment to the tragedy, and admits it almost single handedly brought his functional presidency to an end in the public purview of him as a leader. Not one of his finer moments, and certainly not one of Louisiana’s.
The consensus of the interview is the sense of the former President that he did his best and did what he thought was right. It is certainly a presidency that will require more than a few years to absorb the extended impact of George W. Bush’s decision making. On so many fronts, from defining western civilization’s response to the violent challenge of radical Islam, to the introduction of elemental democratic freedom to the autocratic Middle East, to destructive assault on free market mechanisms in the TARP legislation in order to “save’ them, and surviving the closest election in American history with the capacity to lead intact, this has proved to be one consequential presidency, and one consequential man.