I've read some stuff online about Hemingway this weekend. It's been 50 years since he took his own life on July 2, 1961. I suppose the fascination with Ernest Hemingway will continue in some circles for years to come. However, I do suspect that his popularity will decline in the coming decades. He's had his time, and his time is coming to an end.
Harold Holzer, one our leading Lincoln scholars, presents an entertaining article on Lincoln's overlooked message to Congress on July 4, 1861. Abraham Lincoln used words better than any U.S. president in history, and here is a good example of a President rallying the country to the proper task at hand.
Gordon S. Wood writes on the signficance of the Declaration of Independence. We can hardly overstate the historical importance of this incredible document. The origin of our country is of supreme importance and I can never know enough about it.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Lincoln Rallies the North
July 3, 2011, 8:36 pm
Lincoln’s Rhetorical Fireworks
By HAROLD HOLZER
When the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln responded within hours, ordering a naval blockade of Southern ports and calling for 75,000 volunteers to “maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.” But in a 19th-century precursor to President Obama’s decision to act alone against Libya, Lincoln made no effort to win immediate Congressional approval — much less appropriations to pay for his orders. The reason seemed simple enough: Congress was out of session and out of town.
Lincoln was fully aware that House and Senate support was required, if only to rubber-stamp the emergency measures he took during their recess. So he made one of the most audacious political decisions of his entire presidency: he called Congress back into special session. And with symbolic panache, he ordered it to re-convene on a sacred holiday — the Fourth of July — as if to recapture the ideals of independence and revolution for the North before they could be misappropriated by the South. There, amid the Independence Day celebrations, he sent Congress the text of (presidents rarely addressed Congress directly) one of the best and most overlooked statements of his presidency, a stirring and politically savvy call to arms against the Confederacy.
Enemies of the administration had predictably bristled at Lincoln’s exercise in executive power in the wake of Fort Sumter. New Orleans’ Daily Picayune denounced Lincoln as a “military dictator … grasping at the power of a despot.” And the New York Evening Day-Book likened his threat to “save the Union” with “the bayonet” as no less inhumane than the repressive actions against his own people by the French dictator, Louis Napoleon.
Lincoln might have avoided such attacks by summoning Congress back to Washington sooner (even though some seats were still up for grabs in springtime House races). Railroad and steamboat travel made the capital far more accessible than it had been in the days when Congressional sessions were preceded by weeks of exhausting travel. Instead, he gambled that once he had ordered resources into the fray, none would be recalled, not even by a Congress filled with dubious Democrats. Perhaps Lincoln could even suppress the rebellion and re-unite the country on his own.
On that score, Lincoln miscalculated. In the 10 weeks between April 18 and July 4, Southern resistance hardened, Upper South states seceded, and federal troops filled the capital. (Lincoln responded by acting alone once again, on April 27, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus between Philadelphia and Washington.)
Lincoln largely avoided the harsh judgment of history by deploying the most effective weapon in his personal arsenal: words. For at least two weeks in June, during which time he saw few visitors and focused intently on writing, he crafted a lengthy, deceptively simple, yet ingenious message for the special session. Though his final text did ramble, it combined lawyerly logic with evangelical zeal to accomplish several daunting but essential goals.
For one thing, it reminded Congress and the public that the South had been the original aggressors, not the North: “They have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government.” Lincoln also used the message to defend his initial response to hostilities. He had acted alone with “the deepest regret,” he claimed almost apologetically, only because “no choice was left but to call out the war power…to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation.” It had been a further duty, he argued, to suspend the hallowed writ. After all, he asked, “are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” He “could but perform this duty, or surrender the existence of the government.”
The message then deftly recruited Congress as a partner in the impending war by requesting 400,000 men and $400 million in financing: “The material for the work is abundant, and … needs only the hand of legislation to give it practical shape and efficiency.” When read aloud, this passage reportedly elicited cheers from the House galleries.
Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln rallied the entire North by using appeals to both history and hope in words designed for “plain people” to understand (he even said so in his text). Today we would call them “sound bites.” The idea that any state held supremacy over the entire Union he termed a “sophism.” Secession was patently illegal, its defenders absurd, their arguments “sugar-coated” (a phrase he proudly retained even when a government printer suggested it was too coarse). Its supporters were the enemies not just of the Union, but of the entire concept of popular government.
In one particularly sublime passage, he dubbed the approaching war nothing less than “a people’s contest,” one that presented “to the whole family of man, the question, whether… a government of the people, by the same people — can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.” More than a fight for national preservation, it was “a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is to elevate the conditions of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders — to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
Reaction to this bravura declaration was predictably mixed. Even though Border State legislators chafed, Congress rallied behind the president. Friendly Republican newspapers heaped lavish praise. To the pro-Lincoln New York Times, it was nothing less than the most “careful” and “important” message ever transmitted to Congress. But a French journal warned that Lincoln was about to plunge his country into debt (some issues are perennial). And to one Baltimore paper, the message showed that the president was either “a disgusting fool” or “the equal, in despotic wickedness, of Nero or any of the other tyrants who have polluted this earth.” But Lincoln meant business; the army soon shut that paper down. As he had ominously warned in the message: “Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war — teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
Lincoln himself never uttered a word of his greatest Congressional message. By tradition, he simply sent it to Capitol Hill to be read aloud by clerks; it was then sent to newspapers for wider distribution. In fact, the publication of the so-called July 4th message was not actually read until July 5th, and even then its first telegraphic transmissions were garbled.
Lincoln had brilliantly defined the coming struggle in words ordinary Americans could understand, appreciate and support. He could now count on public and Congressional support for his burgeoning war effort. No president before ever used the power of words more deftly. “And,” as Lincoln sadly recalled four years later, “the war came.” Had his Independence Day message failed, history — and this nation — might have been far different.
Lincoln’s Rhetorical Fireworks
By HAROLD HOLZER
When the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln responded within hours, ordering a naval blockade of Southern ports and calling for 75,000 volunteers to “maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.” But in a 19th-century precursor to President Obama’s decision to act alone against Libya, Lincoln made no effort to win immediate Congressional approval — much less appropriations to pay for his orders. The reason seemed simple enough: Congress was out of session and out of town.
Lincoln was fully aware that House and Senate support was required, if only to rubber-stamp the emergency measures he took during their recess. So he made one of the most audacious political decisions of his entire presidency: he called Congress back into special session. And with symbolic panache, he ordered it to re-convene on a sacred holiday — the Fourth of July — as if to recapture the ideals of independence and revolution for the North before they could be misappropriated by the South. There, amid the Independence Day celebrations, he sent Congress the text of (presidents rarely addressed Congress directly) one of the best and most overlooked statements of his presidency, a stirring and politically savvy call to arms against the Confederacy.
Enemies of the administration had predictably bristled at Lincoln’s exercise in executive power in the wake of Fort Sumter. New Orleans’ Daily Picayune denounced Lincoln as a “military dictator … grasping at the power of a despot.” And the New York Evening Day-Book likened his threat to “save the Union” with “the bayonet” as no less inhumane than the repressive actions against his own people by the French dictator, Louis Napoleon.
Lincoln might have avoided such attacks by summoning Congress back to Washington sooner (even though some seats were still up for grabs in springtime House races). Railroad and steamboat travel made the capital far more accessible than it had been in the days when Congressional sessions were preceded by weeks of exhausting travel. Instead, he gambled that once he had ordered resources into the fray, none would be recalled, not even by a Congress filled with dubious Democrats. Perhaps Lincoln could even suppress the rebellion and re-unite the country on his own.
On that score, Lincoln miscalculated. In the 10 weeks between April 18 and July 4, Southern resistance hardened, Upper South states seceded, and federal troops filled the capital. (Lincoln responded by acting alone once again, on April 27, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus between Philadelphia and Washington.)
Lincoln largely avoided the harsh judgment of history by deploying the most effective weapon in his personal arsenal: words. For at least two weeks in June, during which time he saw few visitors and focused intently on writing, he crafted a lengthy, deceptively simple, yet ingenious message for the special session. Though his final text did ramble, it combined lawyerly logic with evangelical zeal to accomplish several daunting but essential goals.
For one thing, it reminded Congress and the public that the South had been the original aggressors, not the North: “They have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government.” Lincoln also used the message to defend his initial response to hostilities. He had acted alone with “the deepest regret,” he claimed almost apologetically, only because “no choice was left but to call out the war power…to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation.” It had been a further duty, he argued, to suspend the hallowed writ. After all, he asked, “are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” He “could but perform this duty, or surrender the existence of the government.”
The message then deftly recruited Congress as a partner in the impending war by requesting 400,000 men and $400 million in financing: “The material for the work is abundant, and … needs only the hand of legislation to give it practical shape and efficiency.” When read aloud, this passage reportedly elicited cheers from the House galleries.
Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln rallied the entire North by using appeals to both history and hope in words designed for “plain people” to understand (he even said so in his text). Today we would call them “sound bites.” The idea that any state held supremacy over the entire Union he termed a “sophism.” Secession was patently illegal, its defenders absurd, their arguments “sugar-coated” (a phrase he proudly retained even when a government printer suggested it was too coarse). Its supporters were the enemies not just of the Union, but of the entire concept of popular government.
In one particularly sublime passage, he dubbed the approaching war nothing less than “a people’s contest,” one that presented “to the whole family of man, the question, whether… a government of the people, by the same people — can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.” More than a fight for national preservation, it was “a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is to elevate the conditions of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders — to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
Reaction to this bravura declaration was predictably mixed. Even though Border State legislators chafed, Congress rallied behind the president. Friendly Republican newspapers heaped lavish praise. To the pro-Lincoln New York Times, it was nothing less than the most “careful” and “important” message ever transmitted to Congress. But a French journal warned that Lincoln was about to plunge his country into debt (some issues are perennial). And to one Baltimore paper, the message showed that the president was either “a disgusting fool” or “the equal, in despotic wickedness, of Nero or any of the other tyrants who have polluted this earth.” But Lincoln meant business; the army soon shut that paper down. As he had ominously warned in the message: “Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war — teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
Lincoln himself never uttered a word of his greatest Congressional message. By tradition, he simply sent it to Capitol Hill to be read aloud by clerks; it was then sent to newspapers for wider distribution. In fact, the publication of the so-called July 4th message was not actually read until July 5th, and even then its first telegraphic transmissions were garbled.
Lincoln had brilliantly defined the coming struggle in words ordinary Americans could understand, appreciate and support. He could now count on public and Congressional support for his burgeoning war effort. No president before ever used the power of words more deftly. “And,” as Lincoln sadly recalled four years later, “the war came.” Had his Independence Day message failed, history — and this nation — might have been far different.
The Meaning of the 4th
How the Complete Meaning of July Fourth Is Slipping Away
Gordon S. WoodJuly 4, 2011
At least one of the Founders thought that Independence Day would become important. When the Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, John Adams, who more than any other single Founder was responsible for that vote, was ecstatic. America’s declaring of independence from Great Britain, he told his wife Abigail, marked “the most memorable Epocha in the History of America.” He hoped that the day would be “celebrated by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated,” he said, “as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one end of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
Although Adams was wrong about the day (two days later on July 4 the Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence), he was right about the celebrations, at least through much of our history. For us today July Fourth is still an important holiday, and we can be thankful that no one is suggesting that we move it the closest Monday. Yet the day no longer seems to have the solemnity and significance that Adams hoped it would have. To be sure, we have lots of parades, games, and fireworks, but much of the meaning of these festivities seems to have slipped away from us.
This is too bad, for July Fourth, 1776, is not only the most important day in American history, but because the United States has emerged as the most powerful nation the world has ever known, it is surely one of the most important days in world history as well. The Declaration legally created the United States of America. It announced to a “candid world” that Americans were assuming “among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them.” But it did much more than that. It stated all governments everywhere were supposed to derive “their just powers from the consent of the people,” and that when any one of these governments became destructive of the people’s rights and liberties, the people could alter or abolish that government and institute a new one.
These words have served as inspiration for peoples everywhere. Colonial rebellions against imperial regimes throughout the world have looked to the Declaration to justify their cause. In declaring Vietnam independent from France in 1945, Ho Chi Minh cited the American Declaration of Independence. Members of Solidarity in Poland and dissidents in Czechoslovakia invoked its words to oppose Soviet domination in the 1980s. And the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 used its language. And maybe there are some participants in the Arab Spring who are aware of our Declaration of Independence. It certainly has become one of the most influential documents in world history.
But for Americans the Declaration has a special significance. It infused into our culture most of what we have come to believe and value. Our noblest ideals and highest aspirations—our beliefs in liberty, equality, and individual rights, including the right of every person to pursue happiness—came out of the Declaration of Independence. Consequently, it is not surprising that every reform movement in American history—from the abolitionists of the 1830s, to the feminists at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the civil rights advocates of the 1960s—invoked the words and ideals of the Declaration. It was Abraham Lincoln who made the most of the Declaration, particularly its assertions of human equality and inalienable rights. Thomas Jefferson, the principal drafter of the Declaration, said Lincoln, “had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” A century later, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. took inspiration from this abstract truth embodied in the Declaration.
For us Americans, the words of the Declaration have become central to our sense of nationhood. Because the United States is composed of so many immigrants and so many different races and ethnicities, we can never assume our identity as a matter of course. The nation has had to be invented. At the end of the Declaration, the members of the Continental Congress could only “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” There was nothing else but themselves that they could dedicate themselves to—no patria, no fatherland, no nation as yet. In comparison with the 235 year-old United States, many states in the world today are new, some of them created within fairly recent past. Yet many of these states, new as they may be, are under-girded by peoples who had a pre-existing sense of their ethnicity, their nationality. In the case of the United States, the process was reversed: We Americans were a state before we were a nation, and much of our history has been an effort to define that nationality.
In fact, even today America is not a nation in any traditional meaning of the term. We Americans have had to rely on ideas and ideals in order to hold ourselves together and think of ourselves as a single people. And more than any other single document in American history, the Declaration has embodied these ideas and ideals. Since it is our most sacred text, the day, July 4, 1776, that gave birth to it ought to be understood with all the significance and solemnity that John Adams gave to it.
Gordon S. WoodJuly 4, 2011
At least one of the Founders thought that Independence Day would become important. When the Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, John Adams, who more than any other single Founder was responsible for that vote, was ecstatic. America’s declaring of independence from Great Britain, he told his wife Abigail, marked “the most memorable Epocha in the History of America.” He hoped that the day would be “celebrated by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated,” he said, “as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one end of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
Although Adams was wrong about the day (two days later on July 4 the Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence), he was right about the celebrations, at least through much of our history. For us today July Fourth is still an important holiday, and we can be thankful that no one is suggesting that we move it the closest Monday. Yet the day no longer seems to have the solemnity and significance that Adams hoped it would have. To be sure, we have lots of parades, games, and fireworks, but much of the meaning of these festivities seems to have slipped away from us.
This is too bad, for July Fourth, 1776, is not only the most important day in American history, but because the United States has emerged as the most powerful nation the world has ever known, it is surely one of the most important days in world history as well. The Declaration legally created the United States of America. It announced to a “candid world” that Americans were assuming “among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them.” But it did much more than that. It stated all governments everywhere were supposed to derive “their just powers from the consent of the people,” and that when any one of these governments became destructive of the people’s rights and liberties, the people could alter or abolish that government and institute a new one.
These words have served as inspiration for peoples everywhere. Colonial rebellions against imperial regimes throughout the world have looked to the Declaration to justify their cause. In declaring Vietnam independent from France in 1945, Ho Chi Minh cited the American Declaration of Independence. Members of Solidarity in Poland and dissidents in Czechoslovakia invoked its words to oppose Soviet domination in the 1980s. And the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 used its language. And maybe there are some participants in the Arab Spring who are aware of our Declaration of Independence. It certainly has become one of the most influential documents in world history.
But for Americans the Declaration has a special significance. It infused into our culture most of what we have come to believe and value. Our noblest ideals and highest aspirations—our beliefs in liberty, equality, and individual rights, including the right of every person to pursue happiness—came out of the Declaration of Independence. Consequently, it is not surprising that every reform movement in American history—from the abolitionists of the 1830s, to the feminists at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the civil rights advocates of the 1960s—invoked the words and ideals of the Declaration. It was Abraham Lincoln who made the most of the Declaration, particularly its assertions of human equality and inalienable rights. Thomas Jefferson, the principal drafter of the Declaration, said Lincoln, “had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” A century later, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. took inspiration from this abstract truth embodied in the Declaration.
For us Americans, the words of the Declaration have become central to our sense of nationhood. Because the United States is composed of so many immigrants and so many different races and ethnicities, we can never assume our identity as a matter of course. The nation has had to be invented. At the end of the Declaration, the members of the Continental Congress could only “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” There was nothing else but themselves that they could dedicate themselves to—no patria, no fatherland, no nation as yet. In comparison with the 235 year-old United States, many states in the world today are new, some of them created within fairly recent past. Yet many of these states, new as they may be, are under-girded by peoples who had a pre-existing sense of their ethnicity, their nationality. In the case of the United States, the process was reversed: We Americans were a state before we were a nation, and much of our history has been an effort to define that nationality.
In fact, even today America is not a nation in any traditional meaning of the term. We Americans have had to rely on ideas and ideals in order to hold ourselves together and think of ourselves as a single people. And more than any other single document in American history, the Declaration has embodied these ideas and ideals. Since it is our most sacred text, the day, July 4, 1776, that gave birth to it ought to be understood with all the significance and solemnity that John Adams gave to it.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
This was an entertaining book. I have a clearer understanding of psychopaths and psychiatry, although both are more complicated and require further study to truly understand. I was interested in how the third version of the psychiatry checklist manual greatly expanded, boosting the prevalence of misdiagnoses and the sale of drugs for mental illness. Certainly, we live in a time in which everyone seems to be diagnosed with something, to be taking drugs for something, or to be attending therapy regularly. It is both disturbing and fascinating.
Ultimately, psychiatry may be nothing more than a crapshoot. Sometimes, the diagnoses, drugs, and therapy may be helpful and needed. Other times, psychiatrists may not know what they are doing and have it all wrong.
The paradox for me is that there is too great a tendency to label and define everything, but not doing so can be dismissive. Every quirk or oddity must be the result of a mental illness. However, the flip side is that the behavior could be ignored or inadequately defined.
Ultimately, psychiatry may be nothing more than a crapshoot. Sometimes, the diagnoses, drugs, and therapy may be helpful and needed. Other times, psychiatrists may not know what they are doing and have it all wrong.
The paradox for me is that there is too great a tendency to label and define everything, but not doing so can be dismissive. Every quirk or oddity must be the result of a mental illness. However, the flip side is that the behavior could be ignored or inadequately defined.
What the Republican Party is Down To
Why the GOP Loves the Debt
Republicans portray themselves as champions of fiscal responsibility. But as Michael Tomasky argues, they need the debt to push through their radical and unpopular agenda.
July 1, 2011 10:47 AM EDT
Now Minnesota joins the list of states being gutted by the Republican Party. The government in the state famous for being nice has shut down, because Democratic Governor Mark Dayton wanted to impose a higher income tax on Minnesotans earning $1 million or more a year—a whopping 7,700 people in a state of 5.3 million. There are additional matters—a GOP insistence on a 15 percent reduction in state workers over the next four years, for example. And so the evidence mounts: In Saint Paul and Columbus and Tallahassee and Madison, as in Washington D.C., we are watching something that is no longer a political party in the normal sense, but a group of cynical highwaymen perpetuating a national crisis and then exploiting that very crisis to try to destroy the public sphere.
The GOP House speaker in Minnesota is quoted in the Star-Tribune today inveighing against saddling future generations with debt. I don’t know the man, so I’ll allow for the possibility that he’s sincere. But at the highest levels, the Republican Party cares nothing about the public debt. In fact, it wants more. Americans must understand this.
It is the party of debt. It is the party of deficits. It is the party of recession. It is the party of unemployment. It is the party of inequality. And it is the party of middle-class stagnation and slippage.
It is the party of all these things because it needs these conditions to exist—so that its leaders can scream “Crisis!” But they don’t desire in any meaningful way to fix the crisis. They scream about crisis because what they desire is to use the crisis as an excuse to do things to this country that the hard right has wanted to do for 30 years.
We see it all over the place. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich could have behaved more like other governors around the country who’ve won labor concessions, like New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo. But they sought to go much farther with their “emergency” bills. Why? Well, as long as there’s an economic emergency, they can just repeat “Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!” and a certain percentage of the public and the gullible and hopeful media, which refuses to believe that governmental leaders can possibly be as deceitful as these people are, will buy it.
In the words of Sid Blumenthal, the hard-right GOP governors “are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.
But the truth is that their corporate benefactors want to get rid of unions. The unpopular public-employee unions are a handy place to start. And a crisis provides the perfect opportunity to do it. It’s also a perfect opportunity to refuse billions in long-awaited rail infrastructure money, as Florida’s Rick Scott and New Jersey’s Chris Christie have done, the better to delegitimize the idea that the federal government should even be in such a business.
Yet these hard-right governors are failing. The “unpopular” public-employee unions turn out to have some defenders: Organizers of a drive to put a repeal of Kasich’s notorious SB 5 on the Ohio ballot this fall just delivered 1.3 million signatures, about six times the required amount. Meanwhile, it’s the governors who are in fact unpopular. Christie is at 43-53 and sinking. Walker is also at 43, Kasich at 38 percent, and Scott at 29 percent. This matters of course to them and their supporters, but it probably doesn’t matter much to the financial forces behind the GOP as long as they get the job done. As my friend Sid Blumenthal put it to me the other day, “The governors are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.
The cynicism is most rampant in Washington. Once the economy recovers, Barack Obama, whom most people still basically want to see succeed, will be back to a 53 to 55 percent approval rating, and the rage will have no oxygen. And of course he will under those circumstances be reelected. In addition, a less exercised public will be less open to extreme measures aimed at drowning government in the bathtub. So the Republicans have to keep the economy struggling. Unemployment and high deficits provide their only shot at gaining power and dismantling the state. They must rail against both for the sake of their public credibility, but they have to know privately that forcing massive spending cuts in domestic budgets and entitlements has nothing to do with unemployment (except quite possibly making it worse) and even comparatively little to do with deficits.
It follows the pattern. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz wanted a reason to invade Iraq. September 11 gave them one. Never, ever forget what Rumsfeld said on the very afternoon of 9-11 itself. They used a crisis to impose a belligerent foreign policy on a nation that initially did not want it. Now their legatees are doing the same thing with domestic politics. It’s how they roll, and the reason in both cases is simple: The agenda is so radical and at odds with American tradition and practice that they can’t possibly tell the truth about it.
Americans will have to learn this between now and Aug. 2 (when the debt ceiling must be raised). Will the Democrats teach them? Senator Chuck Schumer has started making the argument. Will his fellow Democrats, in their usual disorganized fashion, leave him out there to say it alone, thus ensuring that the theme gets no real traction? Will the president start making these arguments? The Republicans are already trying to make an “angry black man” out of him, on the basis of his only moderately aggressive performance in Wednesday’s news conference. What he needs is to get angrier—and to explain to the country what’s really happening.
Republicans portray themselves as champions of fiscal responsibility. But as Michael Tomasky argues, they need the debt to push through their radical and unpopular agenda.
July 1, 2011 10:47 AM EDT
Now Minnesota joins the list of states being gutted by the Republican Party. The government in the state famous for being nice has shut down, because Democratic Governor Mark Dayton wanted to impose a higher income tax on Minnesotans earning $1 million or more a year—a whopping 7,700 people in a state of 5.3 million. There are additional matters—a GOP insistence on a 15 percent reduction in state workers over the next four years, for example. And so the evidence mounts: In Saint Paul and Columbus and Tallahassee and Madison, as in Washington D.C., we are watching something that is no longer a political party in the normal sense, but a group of cynical highwaymen perpetuating a national crisis and then exploiting that very crisis to try to destroy the public sphere.
The GOP House speaker in Minnesota is quoted in the Star-Tribune today inveighing against saddling future generations with debt. I don’t know the man, so I’ll allow for the possibility that he’s sincere. But at the highest levels, the Republican Party cares nothing about the public debt. In fact, it wants more. Americans must understand this.
It is the party of debt. It is the party of deficits. It is the party of recession. It is the party of unemployment. It is the party of inequality. And it is the party of middle-class stagnation and slippage.
It is the party of all these things because it needs these conditions to exist—so that its leaders can scream “Crisis!” But they don’t desire in any meaningful way to fix the crisis. They scream about crisis because what they desire is to use the crisis as an excuse to do things to this country that the hard right has wanted to do for 30 years.
We see it all over the place. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich could have behaved more like other governors around the country who’ve won labor concessions, like New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo. But they sought to go much farther with their “emergency” bills. Why? Well, as long as there’s an economic emergency, they can just repeat “Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!” and a certain percentage of the public and the gullible and hopeful media, which refuses to believe that governmental leaders can possibly be as deceitful as these people are, will buy it.
In the words of Sid Blumenthal, the hard-right GOP governors “are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.
But the truth is that their corporate benefactors want to get rid of unions. The unpopular public-employee unions are a handy place to start. And a crisis provides the perfect opportunity to do it. It’s also a perfect opportunity to refuse billions in long-awaited rail infrastructure money, as Florida’s Rick Scott and New Jersey’s Chris Christie have done, the better to delegitimize the idea that the federal government should even be in such a business.
Yet these hard-right governors are failing. The “unpopular” public-employee unions turn out to have some defenders: Organizers of a drive to put a repeal of Kasich’s notorious SB 5 on the Ohio ballot this fall just delivered 1.3 million signatures, about six times the required amount. Meanwhile, it’s the governors who are in fact unpopular. Christie is at 43-53 and sinking. Walker is also at 43, Kasich at 38 percent, and Scott at 29 percent. This matters of course to them and their supporters, but it probably doesn’t matter much to the financial forces behind the GOP as long as they get the job done. As my friend Sid Blumenthal put it to me the other day, “The governors are the Koch brothers’ suicide bombers.” Seventy-two Fox contracts await them in a future life.
The cynicism is most rampant in Washington. Once the economy recovers, Barack Obama, whom most people still basically want to see succeed, will be back to a 53 to 55 percent approval rating, and the rage will have no oxygen. And of course he will under those circumstances be reelected. In addition, a less exercised public will be less open to extreme measures aimed at drowning government in the bathtub. So the Republicans have to keep the economy struggling. Unemployment and high deficits provide their only shot at gaining power and dismantling the state. They must rail against both for the sake of their public credibility, but they have to know privately that forcing massive spending cuts in domestic budgets and entitlements has nothing to do with unemployment (except quite possibly making it worse) and even comparatively little to do with deficits.
It follows the pattern. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz wanted a reason to invade Iraq. September 11 gave them one. Never, ever forget what Rumsfeld said on the very afternoon of 9-11 itself. They used a crisis to impose a belligerent foreign policy on a nation that initially did not want it. Now their legatees are doing the same thing with domestic politics. It’s how they roll, and the reason in both cases is simple: The agenda is so radical and at odds with American tradition and practice that they can’t possibly tell the truth about it.
Americans will have to learn this between now and Aug. 2 (when the debt ceiling must be raised). Will the Democrats teach them? Senator Chuck Schumer has started making the argument. Will his fellow Democrats, in their usual disorganized fashion, leave him out there to say it alone, thus ensuring that the theme gets no real traction? Will the president start making these arguments? The Republicans are already trying to make an “angry black man” out of him, on the basis of his only moderately aggressive performance in Wednesday’s news conference. What he needs is to get angrier—and to explain to the country what’s really happening.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Aristotle and the Higher Good
By HARRY V. JAFFA
Published: July 1, 2011
Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so saying there were those who thought this was the greatest book of all time. Churchill returned it some weeks later, saying it was all very interesting, but he had already thought most of it out for himself. But it is the very genius of Aristotle — as it is of every great teacher — to make you think he is uncovering your own thought in his. In Churchill’s case, it is also probable that the classical tradition informed more of his upbringing, at home and at school, than he realized.
ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
In 1946, in a letter to the philosopher Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss mentioned how difficult it had been for him to understand Aristotle’s account of magnanimity, greatness of soul, in Book 4 of the “Ethics.”
The difficulty was resolved when he came to realize that Churchill was a perfect example of that virtue. So Churchill helped Leo Strauss understand Aristotle! That is perfectly consistent with Aristotle’s telling us it does not matter whether one describes a virtue or someone characterized by that virtue. Where the “Ethics” stands among the greatest of all great books perhaps no one can say. That Aristotle’s text, which explores the basis of the best way of human life, belongs on any list of such books is indisputable.
In his great essay “On Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss emphasizes the continuity between pre-philosophic political speech and its refinement by classical political philosophy. It is part of the order of nature (and of nature’s God) that pre-philosophic speech supply the matter, and philosophic speech the form, of perfected political speech, much as the chisel of the sculptor uncovers the form of the statue within the block of marble. Before the “Ethics” men knew that courage was a virtue, and that it meant overcoming fear in the face of danger. Aristotle says nothing different from this, but he also distinguishes true virtue from its specious simulacra. The false appearance of courage may result, for instance, from overconfidence in one’s skill or strength, or from one’s failure to recognize the skill or strength of his opponents. The accurate assessment of one’s own superiority of strength or skill, which means one really has no reason to fear an approaching conflict, is another false appearance of courage. A false courage may also result from a passion that blinds someone to the reality of the danger he faces. In short, the appearance of courage may be mistaken for actual courage whenever the rational component of virtue is lacking.
The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.
Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome. The volume before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. Many Greek words cannot be easily translated into single English equivalents — for example, the Greek word techne, which appears in the first sentence of the “Ethics.” It is here translated as “art,” as it usually is. But the Greeks made no distinction, as we do, between the useful arts and the fine arts. The most precise rendering is probably “know-how,” but that does not seem tonally right. The best solution is to use an approximation like “art” and supplement it with notes. This is what the translators have done, in this case and others, with considerable thoroughness.
They have also supplied an informative introduction, as well as “A Note on the Translation,” a bibliography and an outline of the work. All this precedes the main text. Afterward comes a brief “Overview of the Moral Virtues and Vices,” a very extensive and invaluable glossary, a list of “Key Greek Terms,” an index of proper names and at last a detailed “general index.” Together these bring the original text within the compass of every intelligent reader.
Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, believed that in the “Ethics” Aristotle had said everything needful for happiness in this life. Thus Aquinas did not write his own book on ethics, but instead wrote a commentary on Aristotle. This tradition was extended by the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, Leo Strauss, who wrote that all his work had no other purpose than to address “the crisis of the West.”
ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
But what is the West? And what is its crisis? According to Strauss (and many others), the West is the civilization constituted at its core by the coming together of classical philosophy and biblical revelation. The vitality of Western civilization results from the interplay of these alternative principles, though each contains within itself what claims to be exclusive and irrefutable authority. Symbolic of this authority are Athens and Jerusalem. In “The Second World War,” Churchill remarks that everything valuable in modern life and thought is an inheritance from these ancient cities. The debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any other.
In their brilliant and highly readable “Interpretive Essay” Bartlett and Collins suggest, without positively asserting, that Aristotle offers a solution to the problem, or crisis, of human well-being. But they seem to doubt whether it can meet the challenge of the God of Abraham. But these two principles are not adversarial in all respects. Indeed, much of Strauss’s work is a radical attack — made with the greatest intellectual competence — against the latter-day enemies of both the Bible and a Socratic Aristotle. Strauss maintained that Athens and Jerusalem, while disagreeing on the ultimate good, disagree very little, if at all, on what constitutes a morality both good in itself and the pathway to a higher good.
Aristotle’s greatness of soul (magnanimity) may seem to resemble pride, the greatest of sins described in the biblical canon. But Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of the “Ethics” offers proof against theological negativism. And in the “Summa Contra Gentiles,”Thomas made the case for sacred doctrine on the basis of Aristotelian premises. It is an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that the highest good of each species is accessible to all, or nearly all, its members. For man the highest good is wisdom. But since few if any human beings attain it, Aristotle’s nature requires a supernatural correlate: the afterlife. Whatever one thinks of this argument, it points to a dialectical friendship between Athens and Jerusalem. All the more reason for them to join forces in the desperate struggle, still going on, between civilization and barbarism.
By HARRY V. JAFFA
Published: July 1, 2011
Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so saying there were those who thought this was the greatest book of all time. Churchill returned it some weeks later, saying it was all very interesting, but he had already thought most of it out for himself. But it is the very genius of Aristotle — as it is of every great teacher — to make you think he is uncovering your own thought in his. In Churchill’s case, it is also probable that the classical tradition informed more of his upbringing, at home and at school, than he realized.
ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
In 1946, in a letter to the philosopher Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss mentioned how difficult it had been for him to understand Aristotle’s account of magnanimity, greatness of soul, in Book 4 of the “Ethics.”
The difficulty was resolved when he came to realize that Churchill was a perfect example of that virtue. So Churchill helped Leo Strauss understand Aristotle! That is perfectly consistent with Aristotle’s telling us it does not matter whether one describes a virtue or someone characterized by that virtue. Where the “Ethics” stands among the greatest of all great books perhaps no one can say. That Aristotle’s text, which explores the basis of the best way of human life, belongs on any list of such books is indisputable.
In his great essay “On Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss emphasizes the continuity between pre-philosophic political speech and its refinement by classical political philosophy. It is part of the order of nature (and of nature’s God) that pre-philosophic speech supply the matter, and philosophic speech the form, of perfected political speech, much as the chisel of the sculptor uncovers the form of the statue within the block of marble. Before the “Ethics” men knew that courage was a virtue, and that it meant overcoming fear in the face of danger. Aristotle says nothing different from this, but he also distinguishes true virtue from its specious simulacra. The false appearance of courage may result, for instance, from overconfidence in one’s skill or strength, or from one’s failure to recognize the skill or strength of his opponents. The accurate assessment of one’s own superiority of strength or skill, which means one really has no reason to fear an approaching conflict, is another false appearance of courage. A false courage may also result from a passion that blinds someone to the reality of the danger he faces. In short, the appearance of courage may be mistaken for actual courage whenever the rational component of virtue is lacking.
The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.
Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome. The volume before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. Many Greek words cannot be easily translated into single English equivalents — for example, the Greek word techne, which appears in the first sentence of the “Ethics.” It is here translated as “art,” as it usually is. But the Greeks made no distinction, as we do, between the useful arts and the fine arts. The most precise rendering is probably “know-how,” but that does not seem tonally right. The best solution is to use an approximation like “art” and supplement it with notes. This is what the translators have done, in this case and others, with considerable thoroughness.
They have also supplied an informative introduction, as well as “A Note on the Translation,” a bibliography and an outline of the work. All this precedes the main text. Afterward comes a brief “Overview of the Moral Virtues and Vices,” a very extensive and invaluable glossary, a list of “Key Greek Terms,” an index of proper names and at last a detailed “general index.” Together these bring the original text within the compass of every intelligent reader.
Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, believed that in the “Ethics” Aristotle had said everything needful for happiness in this life. Thus Aquinas did not write his own book on ethics, but instead wrote a commentary on Aristotle. This tradition was extended by the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, Leo Strauss, who wrote that all his work had no other purpose than to address “the crisis of the West.”
ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
But what is the West? And what is its crisis? According to Strauss (and many others), the West is the civilization constituted at its core by the coming together of classical philosophy and biblical revelation. The vitality of Western civilization results from the interplay of these alternative principles, though each contains within itself what claims to be exclusive and irrefutable authority. Symbolic of this authority are Athens and Jerusalem. In “The Second World War,” Churchill remarks that everything valuable in modern life and thought is an inheritance from these ancient cities. The debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any other.
In their brilliant and highly readable “Interpretive Essay” Bartlett and Collins suggest, without positively asserting, that Aristotle offers a solution to the problem, or crisis, of human well-being. But they seem to doubt whether it can meet the challenge of the God of Abraham. But these two principles are not adversarial in all respects. Indeed, much of Strauss’s work is a radical attack — made with the greatest intellectual competence — against the latter-day enemies of both the Bible and a Socratic Aristotle. Strauss maintained that Athens and Jerusalem, while disagreeing on the ultimate good, disagree very little, if at all, on what constitutes a morality both good in itself and the pathway to a higher good.
Aristotle’s greatness of soul (magnanimity) may seem to resemble pride, the greatest of sins described in the biblical canon. But Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of the “Ethics” offers proof against theological negativism. And in the “Summa Contra Gentiles,”Thomas made the case for sacred doctrine on the basis of Aristotelian premises. It is an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that the highest good of each species is accessible to all, or nearly all, its members. For man the highest good is wisdom. But since few if any human beings attain it, Aristotle’s nature requires a supernatural correlate: the afterlife. Whatever one thinks of this argument, it points to a dialectical friendship between Athens and Jerusalem. All the more reason for them to join forces in the desperate struggle, still going on, between civilization and barbarism.
Carville on Texas Gov. Rick Perry
“He talks a lot and he's not very bright. And that's a combination I like in Republicans.”--James Carville, talking about Rick Perry on CNN.
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