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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Published Letters: 43 Editor's Choice: 3
I can only refer people to Richard Frank's book, What Happened to Kansas? In the promotional tour, he was asked about this idea of campaign events and the like. The problem for the Democrats is that without labor, where are they going to go for a sustained campaign?
Republicans have done well in the cable TV world, C-SPAN, and the cyber world. All the while, real people in the labor movement can get almost no toehold in this media operation. Someone--presumably the Democrats--will need to restore organized labor to a position where they are noticed by the general public.
This is an excellent article and the 14th Amendment cannot be emphasized enough. As a fine historical point, however, Epps left out the big idea of the time. W.E.B. DuBois probably included this in his book, Gift of Black Folk, but if he didn't he should have. While immigrants were talked about incidentally to the 14th Amendment, the big idea was to give former slaves equality before the law. It was the Black people whose votes would pass the 14th Amendment in the South. It was the racists, North and South, who could not imagine a world of equal treatment before the law.
The battles fought by Black people, in the 1860s as well as later periods when the Supreme Court finally extended the full range of 14th Amendment rights to all people between 1926 and 1973, should be remembered by all Americans whatever their ethnic origin.
One attack on Jack Murtha which will require some spin the very next day is the speech in Johnstown in which a Republican said Murtha was hurting the morale of the troops by telling them they were not making progress. The very same news cycle showed General Abazaid of the Central Command saying that the situation in Iraq was as bad as he had ever seen it.
So the public needs to question, what have we been doing over there the past three years?
When talking about the "soul" of the Republican Party, no better example can be found of a bargain with the devil than George Bush the Elder. As a young politician he was a member of Planned Parenthood. He held sensible beliefs and was bold enough to label Voodoo Economics for what it was. His first corrupt bargain came during the Election of 1980 when he met with Iranians in Paris to undercut US foreign policy in trying to release the hostages.
Some time between 1986 and 1988, he completed his deal with the devil by explaining, "he had seen the light." He did an even greater disservice to the country by encouraging key Republicans to finance his incompetent son for the office, even going so far as to discourage campaign contributions to others. Tom DeLay did publicly and offensively what George Bush the Elder mastered in private.
George Bush the Elder is the greatest Faustian tragic figure. Many other neoconservatives do not have the sense to know better--but he did. On key issues influencing our future for thirty to one hundred years, he did one damaging thing after another.
We must always remember the truism that the military is a a part of American society. The values, beliefs, prejudices, and "cultural awareness" of Americans as a group are reflected, possibly in an exaggerated measure, in the military.
It is impossible to think that the military can do more in terms of language study than they did in earlier social movements. Illiterate soldiers in World War I, for example, were used in Army studies to promote education and end child labor. Military desegregation was ahead, but not by much, of the general social movement bringing racial equality. The widespread civilian racism toward Japanese people was reflected by the excessive racism of the war in the Pacific.
As an older person, I can understand a young woman accusing her sister of throwing away the best years of her youth. Youth is so impatient. But the fact is, life is long. This 32 year old beauty has plenty of time to change--and change she will. She also has plenty of pleasure to look forward to in her 40s and 50s.
Meanwhile, she is learning about herself while appearing to learn about men.
Speaking of parlor games, I wish the author would consider Harry Truman, student of Rome. He never attended college, but his history teacher turned him into a life-long specialist in Roman politics and civilization. This is important because he first had the opportunity in 1945 to "rule" America as the sole nuclear superpower.
There were personal and instutional factors that caused Truman never to take seriously advice that we should act like an empire. He knew, from his education, that we could not rule the world through nuclear weapons without becoming a totalitarian empire just like Rome. The question is, what has changed in America since Truman's day? Much has not changed since the 2nd Red Scare and Joe McCarthy. But something has changed that allows the continued drift toward George Orwell's world.
The parallels are important in this article, but an even more instructive study could be done on the misadvanture of Napoleon III.
The attack on a country that had not attacked France, stimulated by media hysteria, with no concept of the consequences is what happened in the late summer of 1870.
European historians trace the consequences directly to World War I, which then led to Communism, World War II, Hitler, The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam and the Yugoslavia breakup.
In short, the Franco-Prussian War took about 120 years to resolve. I believe that the rearrangement of geopolitical forces unleashed in 2003 will similarly take at least that long to be stabilized. Napoleon III showed us how one foolish leader with a political name can do such long lasting damage.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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