by on

Tomorrow will mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. I was reading a CNN article entitled “4 ways we’re still fighting the Civil War”. It quotes author David Goldfield as saying: “The erosion of the center in contemporary American politics is the most striking parallel between today and the time just before the Civil War.”

I also saw that California Governor Jerry Brown has apparently been drawing parallels between the divisions in the Civil War period and the present day.

I don’t know; it’s true the country is divided, but I don’t think this is close to the most divided it has been since the Civil War. I’ve been re-reading Rick Perlstein’s excellent book Nixonland and I’d have to say that there seems to be much less politically-motivated violence now than there was in the 1960s.

by on

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War this week. It’s fascinating.

I know very little about military theory and such things, but it amazes me how many of the Civil War battles seem to consist of one side simply sending waves of its men, marching in formation, directly at the other side’s position, where they were usually slaughtered. The Union, especially, threw away thousands of men in the early part of the war doing this. The Confederacy seemed to be smarter about this, with one huge exception.

The most well-respected commanders (Lee, Grant, Stuart, Chamberlain etc.) all seem to have gained their fame mostly by using the flanking maneuver in various ways. I wouldn’t have thought it would take military geniuses to figure that out.

by on

Freddie de Boer at L’Hôte has a great post about the Libyan situation, which you all should read. It has set me thinking about two points that were not exactly relevant to the point of that post, (which is why I didn’t mention them in the comments) but nevertheless might be important to the Libya discussion.

-In the first place, it must be remembered that while the rationale for the attacks on Col. Gaddafi’s men seems ill-considered, the U.N. is probably privy to all manner of intelligence which the news media is not. Therefore, their actions may appear sudden and inexplicable when reported by the press, even if they are not.

This is not to excuse the “infantile Manicheanism”, as de Boer calls it, of the media’s presentation, which no one is happy with. Nor is it some attempt at defusing all criticism of the operation, as similar claims made by the Bush administration were. But it needs to be remembered.

-Secondly, there is claim that, again to quote de Boer that: “You cannot enforce democracy from without.” [Italics his.] This is technically true, but foreign intervention may be necessary for a revolution to succeed. Although some Nationalists would undoubtedly prefer to forget this, the colonists defeated the British at Yorktown with the aid of the French navy. So perhaps it is not wholly foolish for Americans to suppose that, if we wanted to remake another country in the image of our own, (and note I am not judging here whether this is moral or even possible) it would be possible to do so through military intervention on behalf of their rebels.

Neither of these are really “critiques” of his point in any way, but they occurred to me as I was mulling his post over.

I’ll probably post many more thoughts on this whole Libyan war later.

by on

I try to post daily, and whenever I go away from the blog for longer than that, I feel like I ought to at least come back with some interesting story to post. But I didn’t. I was just busy with boring stuff.

By the way, today is the 2055th anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar. It’s also the 2nd anniversary of this blog.

by on

A new Gallup poll puts Ronald Reagan as the nation’s greatest President. Then it’s Lincoln, Clinton, Kennedy, Washington and FDR.

Yes, in that order.

My opinion: Lincoln, Washington and FDR are the only ones out of that crowd who could conceivably have any claim to the title of “greatest President”. And where is Eisenhower? I mean, maybe he wasn’t the greatest President ever, but he ought to have been in the running.

Also, George H. W. Bush should have gotten more votes than George W. Bush, in my opinion. Finally, I think President Obama shouldn’t even be eligible for this poll yet, since he’s currently President and we have yet to see what he’ll do the rest of his term and if he’ll win re-election.

by on

Conservative film critic John Nolte has capped off his series on the “Top 25 Left-Wing films” with Oliver Stone’s JFK. In the preamble, explaining why he considers it a “liberal” film, Nolte writes: “Simply put, the Left cannot psychologically or emotionally reconcile their undying hatred of the Vietnam War with their undying love for the same president who escalated our involvement in that war.”

Well, I’m sure Nolte would consider me part of the “Left”, and I don’t believe in any of those conspiracy theories. In any event, however, whether Nolte’s claims are true or false is irrelevant for my purposes. What I want to discuss is the Republicans‘ peculiar attitude towards President Kennedy. For they too seem to have paradoxical feelings towards him. As in, for example, the conservative wiki Conservapedia’s analysis of him as “basically a conservative”.

Republicans have come lately to believe that his tax-cuts were the precursor to President Reagan’s supply-side, Laffer curve-based tax cutting program. (That Kennedy was in fact following the advice of Keynesian economics is strangely forgotten.)

They also seem to admire Kennedy for having a hawkish approach to foreign policy–and there is clearly some truth to this. After all, he had been a military man, and no doubt he certainly found himself in quite a few showdowns with Khrushchev. His anti-communism is hailed by the Republican party of today.

The Republican admiration for Kennedy isn’t complete, of course. There are still times when they find it useful to portray Kennedy as just another Liberal president, to be reviled like Woodrow Wilson and FDR. In what is perhaps the seminal work of the Tea-Party canon, Liberal Fascism, you can really see author Jonah Goldberg wrestling with this dilemma.

Goldberg doesn’t like a lot of Kennedy’s behavior in office, and draws upon it to further his “Liberalism resembles fascism” argument. But when, he gets right down to it, Goldberg can’t just lump JFK in with the rest of the supposedly “liberal fascists”, writing: “While not a modern liberal himself, JFK was turned after his death into a martyr to the religion of government.” Goldberg writes that Kennedy’s myth was “hijacked” by Lyndon Johnson to advance his own brand of (you know it) “liberal fascism”.

This is interesting because it illustrates just how complex the Republicans’ relationship to JFK’s legacy really is. Maybe they just think it would be too cruel to openly despise a man so tragically cut down, or maybe–as a cynic might put it–they are simply looking to do a bit of myth-hijacking for themselves.

Or maybe they feel compelled to offer gestures of bipartisanship, but cannot seriously claim that there was anything good about more recent Democratic Presidents for fear of implying that they were in fact legitimate politicians with reasonable ideas. Such an implication would no doubt draw a sharp rebuke from Rush Limbaugh. So, they are forced to reach back nearly a half-century to find some Democrat who they can like without risking much ideological ground.

by on

I was doing some research on historical Presidential campaigns, and I came across this 1952 ad for Eisenhower:

…and now I have that song running through my head.*

Anyway, interesting to compare that to the campaign ads of today, no?
 

*And I guess now you might, as well. Sorry.

by on

I just started reading George Orwell’s book Homage to Catalonia. It’s a fascinating read for a host of reasons, not least for passages like this:

“When a man refused to obey an order, you did not immediately get him punished; you first appealed to him in the name of comradeship. Cynical people with no experience of handling men will say instantly that this would never work, but as a matter of fact it does ‘work’, in the long run.”

I confess that, when I read the first line, I myself thought “that would never work”.

What amazes me most about the book so far, though, is how witty Orwell could be, given the fact that the period he is describing–like most of his life, really–was quite miserable.

by on

How ironic would it be if, as suggested by prominent Conservative writer Charles Krauthammer, Julian Assange were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917; an act originally endorsed by the Conservatives’ hated foe; the alleged “Liberal Fascist” Woodrow Wilson?

by on

Today is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a tragedy in which many believe, to quote Kennedy’s Secret Service agent Clint Hill: “the Age of Innocence died”; and which famously–or infamously–brought about many conspiracy theories.

Personally, I never bought in to any of the conspiracy theories. They’re all just too convoluted to work, in my opinion.

I did see Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. It was a good movie, but it didn’t do anything to make me think there really was a conspiracy.