Eurocentrism, or How Europe Saved Humanity

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Steve

With the rise of political correctness, and the notions that diversity means that all cultures are the same, and should be respected as equals came the idea that too much focus on one’s own culture showed an excess of pride; ethnocentrism was a sin, and the worst sin was Euro centrism, the tendency to interpret the world in terms of western and especially European or Anglo-American values and experiences (I use European and Anglo-American interchangeably in this narrative). Reading the works of ‘dead white men’ was a waste of time, and it was far more important that our European and American children be taught the literature of Africa (if such can be found) than the literature of their progenitors in Europe.

 This is a fatal notion, the idea that one should study the wisdom of failed cultures rather than the lessons of successful cultures. It is as if there was more value in studying the life of a convicted child molester rather than the life of a corporate executive. Perhaps the thought is that, by studying the life of a failure, one can avoid the pitfalls of that failure, whereas studying the life of a success is a waste of time. It is a defensive philosophy, the philosophy of an adapter, one who adapts to life as it comes, rather than the philosophy of a warrior, one who shapes life to fit ones own needs. It is NOT the philosophy of success.

 There are cultures that are failures, in terms of benefiting their people, and there are cultures that adapt to changing conditions, and survive. European culture is the successful culture of the world. Through its two hallmark institutions, Capitalism and Democracy, Western Civilization has given the common person the opportunity to live truly free, and the potential to rise above his or her birth. We should be proud of that heritage, not ashamed that this heritage was so successful.

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Hot Times at Hazel Grove: The Federal Third Corps at the Battle of Chancellorsville

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Steve

HOT TIME AT HAZEL GROVE:

THE FEDERAL THIRD CORPS AT THE BATTLE OF

CHANCELLORSVILLE, MAY 1-3, 1863

By Steve Haas

May 1, 1863 saw start of the Spring campaign in the Eastern theater of the Civil War. The Federal Army of the Potomac was composed of 120,000 well-equipped, trained men with new moral and a new General, Major-General Joseph (“Fighting Joe”) Hooker.. The Federal army had a confidence and a dash that had been lacking for almost a year, since the disastrous defeat on the Peninsula of Virginia in the Spring of 1862, the Pyrrhic Victory at Antietam in September of 1862, and the disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg in December of 1862. It was eager to come to grips with their Confederate foe.

  The Confederates facing the Federals were, at this time, at the lowest ebb in fighting capabilities than they had been since the beginning of the war. The campaign was beginning, and the Federal army facing him was crossing the river which had separated the two armies over the winter, the Rappahannock river. Yet the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, under its already legendary leader,  General Robert Edward Lee, was not ready to face this Federal thrust. General Lee had only 40,000 troops with him. This was woefully little to face such a huge Federal force.  Fully a third of the Confederate army was south of Richmond, under Major-General James Longstreet, foraging for supplies. These men were not expected to return before this battle was over.

 The original Federal battle plan called for a two-pronged attack; half the Federal army was to pin the Confederates around the Confederate right flank by threatening the Confederate positions at Fredericksburg. The other half of the Federal army was to perform a wide flanking maneuver around the Confederate left flank, acting as a hammer against the Fredericksburg anvil. If the Confederates turned to face either force (either of which was larger than the whole Confederate army), the other force could attack the Confederates from the rear. The plan worked brilliantly at first. By the night of May 1, 60,000 Federal soldiers were camped at the crossroads village of Chancellorsville, poised on the next day to march against the 40,000 strong Confederate army. Sixty thousand other Federals were watching the Confederate army from across the Rappahannock river at Fredericksburg, waiting to follow and attack the Confederates if they abandoned their works. The Confederates were in a seemingly impossible position, unable to flee, without enough strength to fight.  General Hooker was certainly justified in releasing a statement to his troops stating that the Confederates must “either ingloriously fly, or come out from their entrenchments to face certain defeat.”

 No other major campaign of the Civil War had started with such a disparity of numbers between the two forces facing each other. Confederate General Lee would not have been faulted for retreating in the face of overwhelming numbers, finding a good defensive position and waiting for his Second Corps under General Longstreet to come up and even the odds against him. General Lee, however, was supremely confident in the quality of his army, the quality of his subordinate leadership, in his own capabilities and the capability of his chief subordinate, Major General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson. Lee also knew the army he was facing and, especially, knew the man in charge of that Army, Joseph Hooker. Lee felt he could handle General Hooker, and anything Hooker could throw at him. So, not only was General Lee willing to face the Federal army with only 1/3 of their numbers, he was also to do something which some would say stretched the word audacity to the point of lunacy; he split his army three different times in the face of overwhelming numbers. Yet there was method to this madness. At the point of combat, he managed always to have a superiority of numbers. In no other battle in American history would one general so dominate another as General Lee dominated General Hooker.

 General Lee was successful in everything except his stated goal of destroying the Federal army, and many say it was happenstance which prevented him from doing that. On the first day of the battle, General Jackson’s flank march completely routed the XI Corps of the Federal army, driving it from the field in total disarray. Only the fall of darkness prevented the Confederates from driving on and routing the rest of the Federal army. The one blot on his victory was the mortal wounding of the famous Stonewall Jackson; some say if General Jackson had not been shot on the first day of the battle, the South would indeed have driven the Federal army into the Rappahannock River and destroyed it.

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Rational Anarchism

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Steve

In his 1966 novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, science-fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein relates how the inhabitants of a colony on the moon carry out a revolution with the aid of a self-aware computer.. During a discussion leading up to the start of the revolution, one of the characters, Professor De La Paz, describes his political philosophy to fellow conspirators, Manuel O’ Kelly and Wyoming Knott.

De La Paz states that he is a rational anarchist:  

“A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.  But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world . . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.”

 Society can be divided into three brought groups of people, citizens, barbarians and para-barbarians, defined by the level by which they follow the laws and tenets of the society. Citizens, of course, follow the laws because they are laws, and are the mainstay of every society. Barbarians, of course, break the laws, at every chance. Para-barbarians are somewhere in-between these, following the law when it suits their purpose, breaking the law when it suits their purpose.

 A rational anarchist is a sub-set of the para-barbarian category. A rational anarchist differs from a true anarchist because the RA believes in the necessity of the State;  not because the State makes any rational sense, but because the State is necessary in human society. The Rational Anarchist recognizes the inevitability of hierarchy in human organizations. Our very evolution as a species, is one of groups or packs with hierarchical dominance. An anarchist, insists on the dominance of individual intelligence and personal will over that of the hierarchy. The rational anarchist though, recognizes the need for these hierarchies. A rational anarchist supports society, and obeys the laws of society because he has made a rational choice to do so…and does not obey those laws if those laws do not follow a moral code.

 That is the key….the rational anarchist makes moral choices. On what basis are these choices made? In Robert Heinlein’s book “Starship Troopers,” the Col. Dubois, teacher of the course titled “History and Moral Philosophy” explains:

 What is ‘moral sense’? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. This truth is mathematically demonstrable, every-where verifiable; it is the single eternal imperative controlling everything we do.

“But the instinct to survive,” he had gone on, “can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. Young lady, what you miscalled your ‘moral instinct’ was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale. And so on up. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual’s instinct to survive—and nowhere else!— and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.

“We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race—we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relationships But all moral problems can be illustrated by one misquotation tation: ‘Greater love hath no man than a mother cat dying to defend her kittens.’ Once you understand the problem facing that cat and how she solved it, you will then be ready to examine yourself and learn how high up the moral ladder you are capable of climbing.

A rational anarchist makes choices based on self-interest, a hierarchy of self-interest, where the self is at the top, followed by the family, and then society. It is anarchy because it is the individual, not the state or government, who must and does decide. In order to decide morally, the individual must attempt to “correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts”. The resolution of the conflicts requires that the demands of some levels are subjugated to the demands of higher levels, a very simple case being when a mother or father gives up his life to protect the children. In a lawful society, desires for justice or revenge are given over to the state rather than being performed by the individual.   Note, however, that should an individual make the choice to fulfill that desire personally, then he is answerable to the state and its laws

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The Strange Death of Boston Corbett

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Steve

This story is from “the Real Wild West, The Creation of the American West,” by Michael Wallis. Read this to the end; it has a shocking, surprise ending (it isn’t what you think it is).

The Booth legend that persisted the longest came from the OklahomaTerritory town of Enid, just west of the immense domain created in the late 1800’s by G.W. Miller and his sons. This Booth story began in Enid on January 13, 1903, with the demise of David E. George, an itinerant house painter nearly sixty years old who swallowed strychnine and died after having told several folks that he was John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Lincoln.

The story of David George did not cease with his death. His corpse was taken to an Enid undertaker for embalming, but because of questions about his identity, local authorities requested that the burial be delayed until the investigation was completed. Apparently, that case quickly fell apart and everyone eventually lost interest in the case and forgot about the body, which languished for many years on a storeroom shelf.

Enid old timers could recall that when they were boys they would sneak into the funeral parlor to take a peek at “John Wilkes Booth.” Some Enid boosters planned to ship the body, entombed in a glass case, to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair as part of the Oklahoma exhibit. Not surprisingly, the world’s fair people rejected that proposal.

The ‘Booth Mummy” would up in the possession of carnival exhibitors and went out on the road. By the late 1930’s, the mummy was reported to be on the carnival circuit. It survived a train wreck, thieves, debt collectors, and enraged veterans of the Grand Army of the Potomac who threatened to hang the cadaver.

In 1938, a tattooed man from a circus bought the Booth mummy-by then known only as “john” for several thousand dollars. He and his wife lugged the body around the country in a trailer that doubled as their home and a portable exhibit hall. When the tattooed man ran into financial problems, a report surfaced that “John” was seized in lieu of overdue loan payments.

Folks in Enid who tried to track the mummy through the years said that by the 1960’s, they heard that “John” was on exhibit somewhere in Ohio. That was the last reported sighting of   the remains of the man who once said he was John Wilkes Booth.

Then, in 1995, a Maryland schoolteacher and history buff petitioned a court to exhume the remains of John WIlkes Booth, whom most credible historians contend was buried in 1865 in a Baltimore cemetery. The teacher believed Booth really had escaped the burning barn and gone to Enid. He wanted to have tests conducted on the remains to prove his theory. The judge refused the request, finding no good reason to disturb the grave.

But, in Oklahoma stories still circulate about the mummy. So does another tale of Boston Corbett, the soldier who allegedly killed Booth.

After collecting a cash bounty for his deed, Corbett reportedly developed severe mental problems which led to his castrating himself as a radical form of penance for past promiscuities. By 1887, he had found a job as a doorkeeper for the Kansas legislature. His service was brief but memorable. Angered by a legislative chaplain’s prayer which Corbett considered sacrilegious, he brandished two pistols and terrorized the entire chamber. Declared insane, Corbett escaped from the Kansas State Hospital in Topeka in 1888, vanishing in the mists of history and time.

More than a century later, another story about Corbett has surfaced. It tells of his escaping to Oklahoma terriritory, where he took an assumed name. It was said he found a town out in the cattle country that he liked, and he stayed there until the day he died. The name of the town was Enid.

There is another story about Bosten Corbett, the man who killed John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed President Abraham Lincoln:

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Oak Island and the Templar Treasure

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Steve

Getting away from politics, for a bit, some of you might remember the part that Rosslyn Chapel played in the book ‘The DaVinci Code.” I have been reading as much as I can, lately, about the Knights Templar, and that has brought me continuously back to Rosslyn chapel… I won’t go into all the anamolies associated with this incredible building; you have to see it to believe it. There is no Church or Cathedral like it in the world…but here is an oddity, one that brings us to the new world, Oak Island and the Templar Treasure. 

There were carvings in Rosslyn Chapel that shouldn’t have been there. Among the most prominent are carvings of Indian Maize (corn)…Europe didn’t know about corn when Rosslyn was built, in 1446, 46 years before Columbus. Where did the Masons who built this castle learn about corn? 

On this site  is the story of Henry Sinclair’s (of the Sinclair family that built Rosslyn castle) voyages to the new world, in the 1300’s. 

Prince Henry Sinclair was the subject of historian Frederick J. Pohl’s Atlantic Crossings Before Columbus, which was published in 1961. Not all historians agreed with Pohl, but he made a highly convincing case that this blond, sea-going Scot, born at Rosslyn Castle near Edinburgh in 1345, not only wandered about mainland Nova Scotia in 1398, but also lived among the Micmacs long enough to be remembered through centuries as the man-god “Glooscap”. 

This Zeno Narrative told about a survey to make a map of in about 1393; it was conducted by Nicolo Zeno, and later by Prince Henry’s ships. This Zeno Map of the North proved to be the most accurate map in existence for the next 150 years!

Not only did the Zeno Map chart the sea with uncanny precision, it also showed certain landmarks. For example, it illustrated two cities in Estotilanda (Nova Scotia), possibly founded by Sinclair at and St. Peter’s. A castle or fortification was shown. There is speculation that Zeno based his map upon a much more ancient map, coming from the Templars in the Middle East, carried in secrecy by them for safekeeping in RosslynCastle , until Price Henry commissioned its update by Zeno. 

Further, there is a carving, in Westford, Massachusett , on rock, of a Templar knight. 

In the 1880s, the people of Westford, Massachusetts, knew of a strange carving on a rock beside a quiet road.

Back then, they believed it to be a “primitive” Indian carving and, thinking no more of it, left it alone. But in 1954, the carving was “re-discovered” by an amateur archaeologist.

Upon further examination, it was declared that the six-foot high figure punched into the rock seemed to represent a medieval knight. The effigy was in full armour, wearing helmet, mail and surcoat.

The existence of this incised figure – if it is genuine – would appear to corroborate a statement in the Zeno Narrative that explains that a cousin of Zichmni’s died while on the continent. If the Westford Knight is indeed a 14th century carving, it is typical of an effigy used to mark the grave of a fallen knight.

Now…on Oak Island, a small island off of Nova Scotia, is a hole where people have spent 150 years trying to discover treasure supposedly buried there. The legend was that it is pirate treasure, but the hole is an ingeniously engineered trap to prevent people from discovering what is inside it. To date, no one has gotten to the bottom of the hole.

Pirates did not have the skills to build such an effective hiding place for their treasure…but the Knights Templar did. If Henry Sinclair, a Knight Templar, spent a few years on Nova Scotia Island, he would be the perfect candidate for having constructed the treasury on Oak Island, to bury the Templar treasur

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Physics vs. Metaphysics

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Steve

There was a time when there was no conflict between science and religion in the popular mind of the West. It was accepted, at least on the surface, by everyone that the Universe was created by and ruled by God(s), and science did not exist, as we know it. With the rise of rationalism, and the introduction of mathematical concepts into philosophy in the 17th century by Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, we see the beginnings of the separation of science and religion. If the world can be described in mathematical terms, we do not need God.

 I am always taken aback when someone intelligent makes an absolute statement such as there is no God. What they are saying, of course, is  that we live in a rational Universe, one in which there could not be anything super-natural, such as a supreme being who created the Universe out of nothing. This statement implies that we understand the Universe enough to make the statement that it is a rational universe, and that is an assumption, an article of faith as blind as the article of faith of someone who believes in a supreme being. The best that can be said is we do not know what we do not know.

 The fact is, both science and religion explain the origins of the Universe by an act of faith; either by a big bang, or by the hand of an eternal God. Neither one can prove that beginning…but they begin an entire and complete explanation of everything else starting from that article of faith. Neither one is provable, and both have problems, dealing with the concept of infinity. What happened before the Big Bang? Where did God come from, and why did he create this universe at the time and place he did?

 To suggest that we live in a rational universe implies that everything can be explained and described Theoretically, if we had a big enough computer, we could, theoretically, track every particle in the Universe and predict the future…but we KNOW that this is impossible. One of the basic principles of Physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, states quite clearly that we can either know the position, or the momentum (speed) of a particle, but not both. We cannot know that a particular particle exists in one place and is moving towards another. The principle theory that governs our physics, Quantum mechanics, relies on the idea that the particles that make up the Universe can only be understood as probability vectors. The Universe, as far as we know now, is not rational, it is chaotic. We can predict certain events on a large scale, if they are simple and repeating, but there are far many more events that we cannot predict.

 More importantly, our level of understanding of the mathematics of the Universe, the physics of the Universe, is nowhere near perfected. We have developed two systems of physics, Newtonian physics, which describes the movement of large bodies, such as cars, rocks and pebbles, and Quantum physics, which describes the movement of small bodies, quarks, electrons, pi-mesons, etc. The problem is the Universe cannot have two systems of physics. There has to be one, and we cannot reconcile Newtonian and Quantum physics…thus, we do not even have the tools, at the moment, necessary to describe the Universe. We are at the ‘blind man and the elephant’ stage of physics, where we can feel a large, round body, can invent the tools to explore this body, and say that an elephant is like a tree trunk. We CANNOT see the side of the elephant, the tail, the trunk, etc. We can only describe what we can see, and what we can see is bounded by those tools we use to see them. We did not know radiation existed until we actually invented the tools to detect it.

 Scientists work by using their eyes; a blind scientist is almost totally incapable of performing scientific experiments. He or she has to be able to see the data to interpret it…but what does that say about our other senses? Most spiritual people claim to work by detecting other forms of energy, using other senses. Scientists dispute this, because this phenomenon cannot be detected by scientific methods, but that is sort of the point, isn’t it? These phenomenons are not in the realm of science, they are in the realm of, for a better wording, ‘the spirit.’ Certainly, insects and animals detect the world by senses we don’t understand

 I accept that Science can describe and predict much of the physical world, and has brought us many advantages. We live longer, are able to communicate over the internet, are going to the moon and can watch movies whenever we want. I am grateful for all of that. I also accept that we have only worked with the scientific method for two hundred years, or so, and are very much in our infancy with respect to truly knowing and understanding reality.

 Let us approach this ‘logic’ from a different direction. Instead of suggesting that, since our logic cannot encompass the thought of worlds outside of our logical frame of reference, they do not exist, is it not just as logical and reasonable to suggest that we do not truly understand reality, and that the Universe might be incomprehensible to our current level of understanding? That science is a way of describing one aspect of reality and, say, Buddhism a way of describing another? That Christianity makes one aspect of reality clearer for those people who adopt that way of thinking, whereas Shinto makes a different aspect of reality clear? And, perhaps, we are not really capable of understanding the totality of reality, yet?

 I say yet, because understanding takes time, and often requires prior understanding; we gain knowledge through our ability to use previous understandings to come up with new understandings. It is rare to make jumps of understanding, while skipping intermediate steps. For instance, our understanding of the world of Quantum mechanics would have been impossible without previous discoveries in mathematics and physics; it is hardly likely that Archimedes, the Greek inventor, would have dreamed up Quantum Physics. We needed to go through a revolution in Physics to get to where we are, now. It is inconceivable that we would not have future revolutions in our knowledge of the physical universe as new discoveries force us to invent new branches of physics.

 Arthur C. Clark, in his book “Childhood’s End” wrote of a future time when 2,000 children evolved into a state of expanded consciousness and left the Earth to join a greater consciousness beyond our experience. The rest of the Earth was destroyed when they left, because the purpose of Earthly evolution had been achieved. Is it not possible that our consciousness is evolving…and we have far more to learn about the functionings of the universe than we know now? And that where we are, now, is part of a wonderful adventure that extends into infinity?

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THE UTILITY OF WAR

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Steve

Victor Davis Hanson

Military History Quarterly, Winter, 2003

 In the thirty years since the Ameri­can defeat in Vietnam, an array of anti-war catch phrases has per­meated our popular culture: “Vio­lence only breeds violence”; “Make love, not war”: “War never solved any­thing”: and “Give peace a chance.” But behind the popular rhetoric that armed conflict is inherently wrong is the more problematic record of past centuries that suggests such pacifism is not only naive, but even quite dangerous. “theoretical. often utopian, arguments persist against the use of force to solve national and international disputes, as echoed by en­trenched peace studies and conflict­ resolution programs that now abound in our universities.

Military history is rarely taught these days. Even when wars are discussed in culture and history classes. they are not usually considered as being universal oc­currences across time and space or as reflecting truth about the human expe­rience in every age. Instead, conflict is presented as senseless, amoral, retro­grade, and counterproductive in our own times, which are characterized as excep­tional due to the novel threats of rogue nuclear states, international terrorism. and weapons of mass destruction.

The end of the draft in the early 1970s, the creation of professional armies, and the collapse of a bellicose and nuclear Soviet Union have removed the immedi­ate threat of war from the public consciousness. Yet an increasingly affluent and suburban citizenry is more abstractly sensitive to war’s potential dangers and costs than ever before. Perhaps because of a dramatic rise in the standard of liv­ing in most Western countries, it is diffi­cult to contemplate forgoing the good life in order to endure the misery and material sacrifices of battle. Instanta­neously televised images from the bat­tlefield also ensure that killing appears in our living rooms in brief sound bites-often broadcast apart from tacti­cal, strategic, or moral contexts, and with instant editorializing by inexperi­enced journalists. Split-second scenes of shooting flash by, often accompanied by narration characterizing such acts as senseless and evil-without explaining who is shooting at whom, and why. There is also a great inconsistency in thinking about the utility of war. Anti-war activists and internationalists some­times urge the United States to unilater­ally employ its overwhelming military force against corrupt, authoritarian, and mostly weak states that spread mayhem among innocent civilians. Intervention of U.S. troops or warplanes to thwart the dictators in Haiti, Somalia, or Bosnia­ clear-cut moral causes to save thou­sands-seemed to entail few American casualties, confirming a real need for war. Yet riskier operations against more formidable powers like Iraq are often de­rided as “bellicose,” even though Sad­dam Hussein has killed as many inno­cents as other dreadful despots. Modern Westerners perhaps increasingly define war as just and even necessary when vic­tory is assured and cheap, but some­times amoral and avoidable when real carnage and sacrifice are possible.

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Sarah Palin, the Anti-Feminist Feminist

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Steve

Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama’s mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses and a skirt.

I hate that she makes Joe Biden look like John McCain and John McCain look like the maverick he is not.

[…]

Palin’s extreme views on abortion (she once said she would be against her daughter having an abortion even in the case of incest or rape) and her support of abstinence-only programs should make her a laughingstock to feminists.

Instead, she’s a star.

That ought to be enough to make any true feminist sick. 

Or so Mary Mitchell opines in her New York Sun Times column. I like the Sun Times, and am sorry to hear it might be closing, but the fact that it has such people writing for it might explain why that is happening.

 So, what is it that is making Ms. Mitchell so ill? Is it the rimless glasses? The skirt? Obviously not. Ms. Mitchell can’t stand the fact that Governor Palin is not a Liberal, does not share Ms. Mitchell’s Liberal political agenda. Sarah Palin has a mind of her own. What horror!

 I have not talked to Governor Palin about the subject of Feminism, but I am willing to make some assumptions with which the Governor would probably agree. I suspect that the governor does not consider herself to be a feminist. Feminism has morphed from a movement to give women an equal opportunity into an East/West Coast movement to explain the sense of victimization felt by unfulfilled female intellectuals. Feminism probably did not make its way into the hinterlands of Alaska and, while I am sure that Governor Palin has heard of the term, she never considered herself to be a Feminist. She probably never saw herself as a victim. The Governor’s career is one of solving problems, instead of sitting down and crying about how the world is against her.

 Ms. Mitchell’s can’t understand how Governor Palin can a smart, accomplished woman who does not believe in Liberal feminist Shibboleths…and cannot understand how other women can be driven to support the Governor. This could possibly be understood from a black woman, part of the largest Democratic voting block; over 80% of black people support the Obama candidacy, and one has to believe that not all of them are doing so for his policies. Governor Palin is not in lockstep with Democratic women. She must be evil.

 In fact, Ms. Mitchell could be proud of Governor Palin, without agreeing with her politics. Governor Palin is a normal woman who found she could do a job, and has worked her way up by her own skills. She demonstrates that anyone can be someone in this country, with a lot of skill and a bit of luck. Ms. Mitchell should be proud to be living in a country where such is true, instead of reflexively bringing up dispute canards to destroy another woman.

 What ever happened to Sisterhood, Mary? Or did it ever really exist?

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Copperhead Democrats Then and Now

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Steve

By Spring of 1864, the American Civil War seemed to be going no place to many of the American people. The Federal government had undergone a sting of tragic defeats and pyrrhic victories and to the average citizen, the war seemed no closer to ending than it had four years ago, when it started.

The Democratic party saw an opportunity for victory in the 1864 Presidential election by exploiting this war-weariness that had spread throughout the country. Their rhetoric against the Lincoln administration, and its handling of the war had become more and more heated as the war dragged on. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy called Lincoln “fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism” and a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero… The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer…. And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.” Others claimed that Lincoln “prefers to tear a half million more white men from their homes … to continue a war for the abolition of slavery rather than entertain a proposition for the return of the seceded states with their old rights.” Never mind that no such proposition existed; Democratic newspapers convinced thousands of Northern voters that the South would have accepted such a proposition if Lincoln had not made abolition a condition of peace. The New York Herald, an independent but Democratic-leaning paper with the country’s largest circulation, opined that Lincoln had signed his political death warrant by making abandonment of slavery “a ne plus ultra in the terms of peace. Edward G. Roddy, owner of the Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Genius of Liberty was an intensely partisan Democrat who saw blacks as an inferior race and Abraham Lincoln as a despot and dunce. Although he supported the war effort in 1861 he blamed abolitionists for prolonging the war and denounced the government as increasingly despotic

On August 31, the Democrats nominated McClellan for president and a Peace Democrat for vice-president on a platform that declared, “After four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war … [we] demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union.” This last phrase was little more than window dressing; almost everyone recognized that an appeal by the U.S. government for an armistice would be tantamount to confessing defeat. McClellan himself recognized this, and his letter accepting the nomination made peace negotiations contingent on prior agreement to reunion as a basis for such negotiations.

The Presidential election of 1864 was a marvel. There were some who suggested to President Lincoln that the election should be cancelled, considering the fact that the nation was in the middle of a fight for its survival, and no honest election could be held under those circumstances. Eleven of the 30 States would be, in fact, absent from the election due to their secession from the Union, and the legitimacy of the election itself was in question.

Nevertheless, the election went forward and, due to the heavy vote from the soldiers in the field, Lincoln was overwhelmingly reelected for his second term. Six months later, the war was over, with an overwhelming capitulation and surrender by the Confederacy. The Democratic predictions of doom, and their efforts to champion retreat and defeat were thwarted by the victory that Lincoln, Grant and Sherman understood all along to be inevitable, once the power of the United States were concentrated on an achievable goal.

The Democrats have not changed. They have opposed every war we have ever fought. They opposed our entry into WWI. They opposed our entry into WWII, an opposition which forced the President into subterfuge to aid our allies. They opposed our entrance into Korea. In at least one war, Vietnam, they managed to turn a certain victory into a drastic defeat.

In this war, Iraq, they have turned the level of rhetoric up to the point of hysteria. Charles Krautehammer has even coined a phrase to describe this phenomenon, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.: BDS is evidenced by those who suggest that the President was smart enough, and clever enough, to subvert the electoral process to be elected, and then re-elected, despite the will of the people, and also too stupid to not be controlled by a cabal lead by Vice President Dick Cheney, who has conspired to lead us into war in order to increase the profits of his co-conspirators in industry. The President has been accused of foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, of conspiring to ensure that minority citizens die during a major hurricane catastrophe in New Orleans, of tricking Congress into voting to support our current war in Iraq, of subverting the Constitution, of attempting to foist a fundamentalist Christian regime on the American People and aiding and abetting the destruction of the human race, by opposing panicky efforts to stop an imaginary threat to our environment.

Quite a record for a stupid man, one would think. It goes further, though. Apparently the President is also willing to send thousands of American troops into a futile effort to spread (GASP!) Democracy through the world. Only the Democrats understand that the rest of the world is too stupid to understand or accept Democracy. The effort in Iraq was doomed, from the start, and the only cure for the stupidity/devious brilliance of the President is to abandon our commitments and bring our troops home, presumably so the troops can march down Broadway in New York City to celebrate another defeat for American arms!

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Death and Dying

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Steve

My mother’s 85th birthday was last week, and I traveled the 1500 miles home to celebrate with her; my mother is one of  my best friends. We laugh a lot, together, enjoy each other’s company, and enjoy our intelligent conversations…and even at 85, she still drives her car, goes to the gym every day she can, and is a doyen of our small, rural, Catskill Mountain community.

It seemed like a pleasant vacation, to me, sharing a few days with family, and having a party with my mother’s few remaining older friends. As with many things, however, it did not turn out as uncomplicated as that, at all.

The day before I was to fly out, my mother called me twice, in the middle of the night. I missed the calls because I have no land-line, am not used to anyone ever calling me, and kept the phone downstairs charging. When I was able to get in touch with her the next night, she told me she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer…and was going into the hospital for testing the day I was to be traveling. I assume she wanted comfort since, as with me, she has really no one else to call in the middle of the night, when she is scared. In addition, apparently my sister’s mother-in-law’s ovarian cancer has spread to her intestine, blocked it off, and she was expected to die almost any day.

So, my birthday trip turned quickly into a journey about death and dying.

We are all, of course, going to die. Most of us prefer not to think about it…and, in fact, most of us probably don’t have to think about it. Our deaths are so sudden and unexpected that there is no time to plan for how we wish to die. For many of us, that is a saving grace. We do not like to think of our mortality. We hope the decision will be taken out of our hands. There are too many fears and emotional pains associated with dying that we do not wish to face. There is the fear of pain, of course…there is the pain of having to leave loved ones, there is the fear of the unknown…and then the fear of a long, lingering death, maybe unable to communicate, with no way to end ones existence since one has no control over one’s faculties.

The last is my mother’s big fear. She has always been active in the community, and has received many awards for her civic activities. The thought, on her part, of not being able to participate in activities, to no longer be able to drive, herself (she lives in a rural community and, without a car, she is housebound), and to be diminished in importance is worth for her than death…and I believe she plans to end her life, somehow, if it comes to that. She has not expressed this, as such, but she is finishing up her affairs, has made a will, a living will, and a living trust, appointed executors to her will and seems all prepared.

I do not blame her for this. In fact, I have told her I would help; if it comes to going to jail for helping my mother end her life in a dignified manner, I shall somehow learn to live with that. I would hope someone would do the same for me, though I would never ask anyone for that.

My sister’s mother-in-law, Mary, was definitely dying. She had grown up a typical Southern belle, spoiled unmercifully by her family, as a young girl, and spoiled unmercifully by her husband for over 60 years. He loved her, unswervingly, and gave her anything she wanted, if possible, though when she had her infrequent spoiled yelling and screaming tantrum, when she couldn’t get what she wanted, he was the only one who could tell her that her actions had gone too far, and she would stop.

When I went to visit her, she was in her hospital bed, with a feeding tube through her nose, her hair pure white, her lips swollen, but conscious, and aware. She recognized me when I came in, and we exchanged some words and conversation. She did not know she was dying, at the time, but we figure that she guessed it soon after, as her children began arriving from all over the country. I understand that, even in this state, she was still driving people crazy, ordering them around; nothing was good enough in her room, and she was uncomfortable. She had the feeding tube removed, because she didn’t like it…and was still alive after many days. Maybe she will outlive us all, after all. Who knows? That would certainly fit the universal sense of humor as I know it.

There are those who suggest that there is nothing after death…that our lives are finite and death is final. That point of view could be as correct as any other. We shall all find out, eventually…

find sufficient argument to the contrary to leave hope for a future after death…and, as such, feel we owe it to each other to ease our passage, and look kindly at those who are at that point in their journey. I find nothing sadder than the thought of dying alone, and friendless  and feel this could, very well, be one of the more important responsibilities each of us has in our life, being there with someone who is passing.

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