Month: July 2015

Defending the Indefensible

You wouldn’t think that anyone would be able to defend a practice as grotesque as dismembering babies and selling the parts to cover costs, at least not outside of a Nazi concentration camp or a Planned Parenthood Clinic, although to be fair, I don’t think that even the Nazis went that far. Still, there are some willing to defend what most people would regard as utterly indefensible for political reasons, particularly a certain political party and their supporters at Moveon.org.

Dear MoveOn member,

Breaking news: Reuters reports that Senator Rand Paul is trying to force a vote to block federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has started a “fast-track process” to bring Paul’s legislation to the floor for a vote soon.1

This is just the latest attack against Planned Parenthood since a heavily edited, blatantly misleading video was released attacking Planned Parenthood two weeks ago.2

“The folks behind it are part of the most militant anti-abortion movement,” said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards today. “This entire effort is a political smear campaign.”3

We’re launching an emergency effort to defend Planned Parenthood, and we have to get going immediately. Will you make a contribution now to help us defend Planned Parenthood?

Yes, I’ll chip in to help defend Planned Parenthood and stop the attacks on abortion rights.

Within days of the video’s release, Republicans in Congress started scheduling votes to defund Planned Parenthood—and preparing even broader attacks on abortion rights.4

Then, another deceiving, doctored video was released, continuing the smear campaign against the largest reproductive health care provider in America.5

And now—today—Sen. Paul announced he’s trying to force a vote to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.6

It’s clear we’re facing a highly coordinated attack on reproductive rights. To fight back, we’re recruiting local voices all over the country to speak out in defense of Planned Parenthood—including doctors, women and men who have visited Planned Parenthood clinics, and others.

Planned Parenthood urgently needs people to stand with them now. Will you show your support?

Yes, I’ll chip in to help defend Planned Parenthood and stop the attacks on abortion rights.

The mainstream news media has done a miserable job fact-checking this story, so let’s set the record straight: The claim that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal tissue is a disgusting lie.

Here’s the truth: When a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy and donate tissue for medical research, Planned Parenthood honors those wishes. These donations are hugely valuable for research into diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.7

This is 100-percent legal, consistent with medical ethics, and no different than what happens in thousands of other medical situations every day.

Here’s something else you might not have heard in the media: The anti-choice activists behind the video probably broke the law with their secret recording.8 And one of their leaders runs an organization whose members have bombed abortion clinics and assassinated an abortion provider.9

We don’t have much time to fight back—Republicans in Congress are pushing to schedule votes to defund Planned Parenthood as soon as possible.

With your help, we’ll flood Capitol Hill with phone calls and mobilize grassroots voices all over the country to defend Planned Parenthood. Will you chip in $3?

Yes, I’ll chip in to help defend Planned Parenthood and stop the attacks on abortion rights.

Thanks for all you do.

–Victoria, Maria, Matt, Nick, and the rest of the team

P.S. Planned Parenthood is under attack because of its strong advocacy for reproductive rights and abortion services. But the organization is also a health care provider more generally. Over 2.7 million people turn to Planned Parenthood’s nonprofit clinics in the U.S. each year for affordable health care services—including cancer-prevention tests, well-woman visits, and access to birth control.10

This is it. If Sen. Paul’s bill passes and gets sent to President Obama’s desk—or the vote is even close—it’ll lead to even more vicious attacks on Planned Parenthood over the coming months and years. Will you chip in $3 and stand with Planned Parenthood right now in the face of this outrageous smear campaign?

 

I have not seen the videos myself and do not really wish to. It is quite possible that certain statements made in the videos were edited and taken out of context. I have to say however that I cannot imagine a sentence like;

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

could ever be said in any context that is not horrific.

Notice that Planned Parenthood’s defenders cannot really bring themselves to state frankly what it is that they are defending. They do not say that dismembering fetuses that are recognizably human is a practice worth defending. Instead they refer to tissues being donated and pregnancies being terminated. It is not the killing of unborn babies but reproductive health. If abortion truly is simply a medical procedure with no real moral issues involved, why can they not talk about it without using euphemisms and circumlocutions.

They cannot defend what is going on, so they bring up side issues in an attempt to divert attention away from the grotesque reality. They note that Planned Parenthood is not profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. The money they collect is only to cover the costs of collecting and delivering the tissue. Well, so what? The Nazis didn’t profit from Auschwitz. The Holocaust was an enormous diversion of resources and the German government didn’t even begin to make any sort of profit from it. Does that make the Holocaust any less of an atrocity? Even if Planned Parenthood were not making a single penny off of their practice of using fetal tissue, it wouldn’t make it any less wrong.

It may be that these donations are valuable for medical research. So were many of the experiments performed by doctors in the concentration camps. If dismembering human beings to acquire tissue for medical research is not a violation of the law, that says something about the morality of our laws and how well they accord with the divine law which is the source of man made laws. This practice may be legal. So was slavery. Being legal doesn’t make it right. If it is illegal to expose such heinous practices, than the laws which would conceal them from the public are bad laws and should be abolished. I cannot imagine how these practices could possibly be consistent with current ideas about medical ethics unless such ethics are the ones enunciated by the likes of Dr. Josef Mengele.

Why does Planned Parenthood get any federal funding at all, considering that a large number of tax-payers opposed to what they do? I know that no tax money goes directly into providing abortions, but any tax money received allows them to spend more money on abortion that would otherwise go into other programs. Why should the millions of Americans who oppose abortion have to pay for a practice they consider abhorrent, even indirectly? Planned Parenthood ought to be completely defunded as soon as possible. It ought never to have gotten any federal fund at all.

P.S. Planned Parenthood is not under attack because of its advocacy of reproductive rights. It is under attack because it is an evil organization dedicated to the destruction of human life. It’s founder, Margaret Sanger, started Planned Parenthood in order to decrease the number of people she, and others like her, considered unfit and inferior, especially those dark colored people. Planned Parenthood is the only organization I know of that makes the Nazis look good in comparison.

 

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Gay People in Straight Marriages

I am tired of the gay marriage debate and ready to move on. I hadn’t intended to write any more on any issue concerning homosexuality for some time, but I came across this article, How I Found Out My Partner Was Gay, at BBC.com and I thought the wider issues raised by the article were worth exploring. This is not really a post on homosexuality but on priorities and the right way to live. Here is the first part of the article.

Recently we told the stories of gay men who had married women. It prompted a strong response from readers who had experienced it from the other side – those whose wives and husbands had come out as gay.

“It feels almost homophobic to say anything about them. To me it’s not brave to spend 10 or 20 years with someone only to destroy and discard them,” says Emma. She found out her husband was gay a year ago.

“They may go on and have a wonderful new life while leaving a crushed wife behind. You just feel like your whole life is wasted and there’s no closure.”

One of the most difficult things for many spouses is watching their former partner being celebrated as brave for coming out, but knowing the damage they’ve left behind.

It is an experience to which Carol, 43, can relate. With her former husband now active in gay rights, she received a message calling him an inspiration and a role model.

“I was disgusted by this, that someone actually considered him to be both of these things when he had spent our entire relationship lying to both himself and myself.

“To me, there is nothing to be proud of – he destroyed our family through his failure to admit that he was in fact gay,” she explains.

They had married in 2003 and have two children – she says she was “very happy and in love”.

But there were signs something wasn’t right, including gay dating profiles on his computer, which he explained away. In 2009 he said he was bisexual but wanted to be with her.

Carol admits she was probably in denial but thought they would find a way through it as he was the man with whom she wanted to spend her life.

A year later it came to a head when he came home, said he was gay, and left.

“I thought my whole world had fallen apart but then he came back and said let’s stay together for the sake of the kids. I didn’t know what to do so we lived a lie for two years. To anyone else we looked like a normal happy couple,” she said.

But it didn’t work and they divorced.

Carol says the difficulty was the shock – he’d had time to get used to it but for her it happened so quickly. He’s now married to a man and she says they get on for the sake of their children.

“It took me a long time to get over it, for me it is a trust issue. How can I trust anyone again? I can’t compete with other men, I’m a woman, but he should have been truthful from the start.

There are a couple of more examples and a sort of supportive summing up at the end, but I think this is enough to go on.

Setting aside any prejudice or personal feeling about homosexuality, I have to wonder what is the difference, in principle, between a man who leaves his wife because he has decided that he is homosexual and cannot live the lie and a man who leaves his wife because he has decided to have an affair with a younger, more attractive female co-worker or a woman he had met through an online dating service. The only difference seems to be that the idea of abandoning one’s spouse to take up with another of the opposite sex is still largely condemned as selfish and  thoughtless, while abandoning one’s spouse for a person of the same sex is now lauded as an inspiration for their bravery in coming out. Either way, they have left behind a betrayed spouse struggling to put their life back together.

The slogan of the is “love wins”. I am not sure that love, or what is commonly called love in our culture, should win, at least not over considerations of honor and integrity. Even if man or woman were to convince him or herself that their feelings for a person other than their spouse was truly love and not simply a matter of infatuation or lust, they would still not be justified in leaving their spouse or abandoning a previously held commitment.

As far as I know, every culture and religion’s wedding vows include the idea that the newly married couple will stay together for life, regardless of how circumstances change. That is certainly the case in the West. When a couple marries, they generally agree to stay together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.” They do not generally promise to stay married until one partner finds someone more desirable, no longer feels in love, or decides that they prefer the same sex. The two people have made a commitment to one another, a promise to stand by each other no matter what happens. I realize that this is an ideal and in our imperfect world there are some marriages which are not going to last, even with the best of intentions by both partners. I can also appreciate the additional difficulty that a person struggling with homosexual urges must have in keeping their marriage intact. Concessions often have to be made because of the hardness of our hearts, but they should be recognized as concessions to an imperfect world, not lauded as something brave and inspirational.

This is really a question of how we ought to live our lives, the same sort of questions philosophers have been asking since the time of Plato and Socrates. Is the point of life making oneself happy, even at the expense of others, or should one pursue a path of virtue, even if if means putting other’s happiness before one’s own? Perhaps there should be a balance. I do not really know the answer to such questions but I cannot imagine that I would be very happy knowing that I had caused so much pain to someone I loved. Perhaps others feel differently.

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The Cadaver Synod

In the old days, popes were a lot more fun than they generally are nowadays. Twentieth and twenty-first century popes generally make nice speeches about helping the poor, ending war, and occasionally clarifying some bit of Catholic theology, not at all like the times when popes led armies into battle, appointed their relatives to all the top positions in the Church or had sex scandals with scores of mistresses and illegitimate children. The Papacy has become more tame and while that must be of considerable relief to the millions of Catholics who revere the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, it is a little disappointing to those who relish the scandalous or even the bizarre. Perhaps the strangest episode in the history of the Papacy has to be the notorious Cadaver Synod, the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus, in the year 897.

cadaver-synod

The term Dark Age is generally very inaccurate when applied to the entire Medieval Period from 500-1500, but the late ninth and tenth century was indeed a very dark time for Europe, perhaps the darkest period except for the aftermath of the destruction of the Roman Empire in the West in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Empire built by Charlemagne which included much of Western Europe was breaking up, divided between his grandchildren and great-grandchildren wh. fought among themselves incessantly. The all too brief cultural renaissance sponsored by the great king and emperor could not be maintained in a disintegrating empire and the progress made during Charlemagne’s reign was in danger of being reversed. The Carolingian dynasty had devolved from Charles the Great (Charlemagne) to Charles the Bald, Charles the Fat, and finally Charles the Simple. As if internal struggles did not create enough misery for the Europeans, invaders from every direction, the Vikings from the North, Muslims from the South and Magyars from the East, raided across Europe plundering and destroying at will.

berserkers

The Papacy fared no better in this tumultuous time. The popes of this period were little more than the creatures of the nobility of the city of Rome, the Papal tiara being passed back and forth among the various Roman families. Most of the popes of this era were ineffectual, short reigned, decadent and corrupt, far worse than the notorious Renaissance popes who at least had political skill and patronage of the arts and sciences to recommend them. Not for nothing was this period called the “night of the Papacy”.

This was the background in which Formosus became pope. He was born in Ostia perhaps around the year 816. In 864, Formosus was made Cardinal Bishop of Porto, a suburb of Rome, and he was trusted with diplomatic missions to Bulgaria in 866 and the Franks in 869 and 872. He carried out missionary work among the Bulgarians and impressed them enough that they request Pope Nicholas I appoint him archbishop. Pope Nicholas refused since transferring a bishop from one see to another was a violation of canon law. Upon the death of Pope Adrian II, Formosus was a candidate for the Papacy, but John VIII was selected instead. Formosus seems to have had some sort of disagreement with John VIII, since he left his post as Cardinal Bishop and the city of Rome. Pope John order his return to Rome on pain of excommunication of various charges including opposition to the Holy Roman Empire, conspiring to seek the archbishopric of Bulgaria and the Papacy, and abandoning his post as Cardinal Bishop. His excommunication was withdrawn in 878 but he was forbidden to enter Rome or exercise his priestly functions. John’s successor, Marinus I was more favorably disposed towards Formosus and he restored him to his post at Porto in 883.

 

Pope Formosus, while he was still alive.
Pope Formosus, while he was still alive.

Marinus I and his two successors, Hadrian III and Stephen V had short reigns as Pope and by 891 the Papal throne was vacant once more. This time Formosus was elected Pope with no opposition. He would reign from 891 until his death in 896. As pope, Formosus was more involved with political issues, both secular and ecclesiastical, than pastoral matters. He was asked to rule on the status of Eastern Bishops ordained by an ousted Patriarch of Constantinople, and tried to settle a dispute over the crown of West Francia, or France. Formosus did not get along with the Holy Roman Emperor Guy of Spoleto and had to endure an invasion of Italy in 894. As if that wasn’t enough, Formosus had to contend with raiding Saracens ravaging the coasts of Italy.

Pope Formosus died in 896 after a short reign of a little less than five years. He wasn’t one of the more notable popes and it is likely that he would be altogether forgotten if it were not for his macabre posthumous career. Formosus was succeeded by Boniface VI who died after only fifteen days as pope and then Stephen VI who convened the Cadaver Synod. In January 897, Stephen VI had Formosus’s corpse disinterred, dressed in his papal vestments, propped up on a throne and put on trial . The charges were  transmigration of sees, from the Bulgarian affair, perjury, and serving as a bishop while a layman. Since Formosus could hardly be expected to answer these charges verbally, a deacon was appointed to answer for him. According to some accounts, when questions were put to Formosus, this deacon moved his head to indicate yes or no. Naturally, the court found Formosus guilty on all courts. Pope Stephen VI had Formosus stripped of his papal vestments and the three fingers of his right hand that were used for blessings cut off. He then invalidated all Formosus’s ordinations (except for his own ordination as Bishop of Anagni) and annulled all his acts and measures and had the corpse thrown into the Tiber.

You might think this would be the end of this bizarre affair, but Pope Formosus got revenge, of a sort. The strange trial of a cadaver turned public opinion against Stephen VI. Formosus’s body washed up on the banks of the Tiber and rumors began to spread that his body was performing miracles. A mob deposed and imprisoned Stephen VI and by August 897 he found strangled in his cell. Formosus was buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica. In December 897, Pope Theodore II nullified the findings of the Cadaver Synod and future posthumous trials were prohibited.

It is easy to smile at the antics of these Dark Age barbarians. Surely, in our more enlightened time, no one would dig up buried corpses and put them on trial. I am not so sure about that. As I write this, the city council of Memphis, Tennesee has just voted to exhume the corpse of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and move him from the park where he has been buried for the last one hundred and ten years. They also plan to remove his statue from the site and sell it. Forrest was not only a Confederate general, which is bad enough, but also one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, which makes him one of the most evil men in history, clearly unfit to be buried in a public place. There are no plans yet to put General Forrest on trial for hate crimes, cut off his hand that wielded his cavalry sword, and throw his body into the Mississippi, but in this current climate of anti-Confederate hysteria, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

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The Election of 1840

People often complain that modern presidential politics is more about personalities than issues. The news media and the readers and viewers they serve seem less interested in what the candidates plan to do once in office and more interested in personalities, slogans, and sound bites. Political debates have devolved from the stately, informative Lincoln-Douglas debates in which the issues dividing the country were discussed at length to opportunities for politicians to deliver focus group tested zingers and one liners. People who idolize a past in which presidential candidates earnestly discussed detailed solutions for resolving the issues of the day had best not look too closely at the election of 1840. This was an election singularly devoid of any discussion of any issue except which candidate was born in a log cabin and drank hard cider. Actually, there was one serious issue which was beginning to divide the nation between North and South, but no one wanted to talk about it. Hint: it began with “S” and ended with “lavery”.

By 1840, the Jacksonian revolution was complete. Property requirements had been abolished in every state and every White male had the vote, beginning a new era of mass politics in the United States. The Whig Party had gotten its act together to form a truly national party and they learned enough from Andrew Jackson’s victories in 1828 and 1832 to understand the necessity of developing an organization for stirring up mass enthusiasm for their candidate and ensuring a good turnout at the polls on Election Day. The Whigs also learned to cast their candidate as a military hero and a man of the people. As events turned out, the Whigs had learned these lessons all to well as far as the Democrats were concerned.

The Whigs met in their national convention at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in December 1839, and nominated a military hero, William Henry Harrison over his rival Henry Clay. Harrison had been a senator from Ohio and governor of the Indiana Territory and had fought against the Indian leader Tecumseh, defeating his forces at the Battle of Tippecanoe. He had been one of the three Whig candidates in 1836 and since he had gotten the most votes of the three in that election, he seemed a good pick for 1840, even though at 68 he was the oldest man to be elected president until Ronald Reagan. Although Harrison had been born in Virginia, he was associated with the North so, in order to balance the ticket, the Whigs nominated the Virginian, John Tyler as his running mate. Tyler had served in both houses of Congress and as governor of Virginia. As a Democrat, he had supported Andrew Jackson at first, but turned against the president over state’s rights and the spoils system, and had joined the Whigs by 1835. His selection as the Whig’s vice-presidential candidate later proved to be not a particularly good idea.

 

For their part, the Democrats met at Baltimore in May, 1840, and easily nominated Martin van Buren for a second term as president. Van Buren’s Vice-President, Richard Mentor Johnson was still very unpopular in the South because of his romantic relationship with his slave Julia Chenn. Van Buren was reluctant to drop him from the ticket, but the Democrats simply refused to nomination Johnson for another term as Vice-President, so no running mate was nominated at the convention. They had an understanding that each state would vote for its own candidate and the Senate would pick the Vice-President, if van Buren won. Undaunted Johnson went ahead and campaigned for the vice-presidency as if he had been nominated.

Van Burn was fairly unpopular throughout the country as the economy was still in recession as a result of the Panic of 1837, so the election was Harrison’s to lose, provided he did not do anything divisive or unpopular like making any statements about the issues of the day, particularly the one involving the “S-word”. So, Harrison and his supporters made it a point to say very little. Instead, they promoted their candidate as a humble man of the people. It was one of Clay’s supporters who gave them the idea for their campaign theme. During the convention, he had said derisively of Harrison that  he would be perfectly happy living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider. Harrison’s supporters took this and ran away with it, tirelessly depicting their man as born in a log cabin and drinking simple hard cider, as opposed to the aristocratic van Buren who lived in luxurious mansions and drank only the finest and most expensive wines. The Whigs organized parades demonstrations, and gatherings with a log cabin theme and served hard cider while praising Harrison for his simple lifestyle. Along with the log cabin went the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”.

It was all a lie, though. Harrison had, in fact, been born into one of the wealthiest and politically prominent Virginia families with plantations and slaves. He had attended college and studied medicine, but it was not a field that appealed to him and upon the death of his father, he had left college to join the army. The aristocratic van Buren was the one who had been born in humble circumstances and had worked his way up in New York politics. But, politics and truth seldom intersect.

The Democrats responded by attacking Harrison’s age and military record. He was old and senile, they claimed and a vulgar, profane man who slept with Indian women while in the Army and then resigned his commission just a year before the War of 1812, abandoning his country in its hour of need.

It was not a close election. The Democrats were never able to muster enough enthusiasm for their candidate to match the Whigs and the faltering economy weighed down van Buren’s efforts at re-election. The popular vote was 1,275,390 to 1,128,854 or 52.9% to 46.8% in Harrison’s favor. A third party, the anti-slavery Liberty Party, with James G Birney as its candidate gained 6,797 votes, This was utterly insignificant at the time but the Liberty Party was a harbinger of the anti-slavery movement which would create the Republican Party and tear the nation apart. In the Electoral College, Harrison won 234 votes from all over the country, while van Buren only got 60 votes, winning New Hampshire, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas.

The Election of 1840
The Election of 1840

William Henry Harrison did not have long to enjoy his presidency. After giving the longest inaugural speech in history on March 4, 1841 and a month later had died of pneumonia making the Harrison administration at only thirty days, the shortest in American history. Harrison was the first president to die in office, causing something of a constitutional crisis as it was not clear to what extent the vice-president assumed the powers and responsibilities of the presidency. Most of Harrison’s cabinet assumed that Vice-President John Tyler was only an acting president until such time as new elections could be arranged. Tyler, however, insisted that he was the new president upon taking the oath of office and with the support of  Chief Justice Roger Taney, his view prevailed. Tyler was not a particularly successful president since his political views were not much aligned with those held by his fellow Whigs in the cabinet or in Congress, or for that matter with the Democratic opposition, and this along with the then unprecedented manner in which Tyler became president made it difficult for him to get much done.

 

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Don’t Let the Hippies Shower

It used to be that the hippies were easy to identify and avoid. Covered with mud and behaving like drugged animals, it was easy to see that their hippie ideas were very bad ones that could not possibly work in the real world. As long as that was the case, the hippie was a harmless beast, useful as examples to the young on what bad decisions and lack of responsibility could lead to. But then the hippies started to shower. Once they were cleaned up, they discovered that they could infiltrate normal society and spread their hippie ideas on an unsuspecting population. They became educators in order to indoctrinate our children with hippie ideas like sports where everybody gets a trophy, or their parents are destroying the Earth by using plastic bags.

This is the premise of Stephen Kruiser’s Don’t Let the Hippies Shower. Under the cover of humor, Kruiser writes about real problems afflicting our culture based on ideas from the seemingly harmless like the EGAT principle in sports mentioned above and the contemporary campaign against bullying, to the annoying and unworkable like much environmentalist nuttery and the strange idea held by too many young people that they are entitled to whatever they want, paid for by the evil rich, to the malignant totalitarianism increasingly found on college campuses and in the culture at large. Don’t Let the Hippies Shower is that rare book that makes you think, while you are laughing out loud. I recommend you give it to all your conservative friends to encourage them to fight back against the Invaders in the only way that is really effective, by laughing at them. You should also give copies to your liberal friends, and watch them gaze with incomprehension as they try to make sense of such foreign concepts as facts, logic  and humor.  And if you happen to know any hippies, for goodness sake, keep them out of the shower.

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Conquest: The English Kingdom of France

The Hundred Year’s War is not really an accurate name for the medieval war between England and France. The war actually lasted one hundred sixteen years, from 1337-1453, and was not a continuous war but a series of conflicts, with off and on fighting depending on the belligerence of kings and the course of the plague. The war began when the last son of Philip IV of France died without issue. As the mother of the English King Edward III was Phillip’s daughter, Edward claimed the French throne, as well as his own. The French refused his claim, citing the Salic Law which prohibited royal inheritance by a female descendant of the king and gave the crown to a nephew of Philip IV, Philip VI. Naturally there was war.

After the death of Edward III in 1377, the fighting died down somewhat as both realms were more concerned with internal matters. Henry V renewed the fighting in 1415, taking advantage of  political unrest between branches of the French royal family, particularly the feud between the Armagnac or Orleans faction and the Burgundians. After his decisive victory at Agincourt, Henry V was able to compel the French King Charles VI to disinherit his own son, the Dauphin, later known as Charles VII, and declare Henry his heir. Henry V died in 1522 leaving an infant son Henry VI who became king of France upon the death of Charles VI later that year. Thus France had an English king from 1420 to 1450, at least in theory.

This English kingdom of France is the subject of Juliet Barker‘s Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, which covers the last part of the Hundred Year’s War. It is a fascinating story of a France almost completely defeated rising again to expel the invader, of a disinherited prince with no hope of gaining his throne turning the tide with the help of Joan of Arc, and of an infant king  with a faction ridden council of regents and a land worn out by fighting, growing up into a weak king willing to make peace at any price. It is a story of battles and sieges, of brave knights and treacherous mercenaries and family squabbles that affect the course of nations.

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Juliet Barker makes this story come alive with the skill of a novelist. She brings out the personalities of the principals involved in the war and politics of the two kingdoms and describes the events in a way that excites the interest of the reader. By the time I was halfway through the book, I found the narrative so fascinating that I had trouble putting it down. If you like the Game of Thrones, you’ll surely love this history of a real life game of thrones. The only complaint I have is that the maps really weren’t enough. It might have been nice to include one or two maps showing the course of the various campaigns. Other than that, this was an excellent history of a long ago war.

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Gavrilo Princip

 

In a somewhat controversial move, last week Serbia put up a monument in Belgrade commemorating Gavrilo Pricip. Who is Gavrilo Pricip and why would a monument to a Serbian hero be controversial? Well, Gavrilo Princip happens to be the man who started World War I by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and so was indirectly responsible for all the horrors of the twentieth century. Here is the story I read from the Associated Press.

Serbia on Sunday unveiled a monument to Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince in Sarajevo helped ignite World War I and still provokes controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans.

Hundreds of citizens attended the ceremony in central Belgrade held on the anniversary of the 1914 assassination which is also the Serbian national holiday of St. Vitus Day.

President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip — who is viewed as a terrorist by many outside Serbia — as a freedom fighter and hero.

“Today, we are not afraid of the truth,” Nikolic said. “Gavrilo Princip was a hero, a symbol of the idea of freedom, the assassin of tyrants and the carrier of the European idea of liberation from slavery.”

He added that “others can think whatever they want.”

Austria accused Serbia of masterminding the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Backed by Germany, Austria attacked Serbia, whose allies, Russia and France, were quickly drawn into the conflict. Britain, with its sprawling Commonwealth empire, and the United States also joined the fighting.

Princip’s legacy is also viewed differently by different nations in the Balkans, which remains a smoldering patchwork of ethnic and religious rivalries two decades after the end of the conflict in the 1990s that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

In Bosnia, Serbs regard Princip as a hero, while the country’s Muslims and Croats widely regard him as a killer and a Serbian nationalist whose goal was Bosnia’s occupation by Serbia. A century ago, Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats preferred to stay in the big Austrian empire that had brought progress, law and order.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said during the Belgrade ceremony that the unveiling of the Princip monument amounted to “fighting for freedom today.”

World War I claimed some 14 million lives — 5 million civilians and 9 million soldiers, sailors and airmen — and left another 7 million troops permanently disabled. Princip, who was only 19, was immediately arrested and died in captivity months before the war ended.

If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back in time to kill Hitler or Stalin, or any other of the mass murderers who so afflicted the world in the past century. I would stop the man who set the stage that allowed such men to gain power in the first place. I would either take Princip’s gun away or jump in front of him and take the bullet he aimed at Franz Ferdinand.

Gavrilo
Gavrilo Princip

 

Just think how different, and better, the world would be if World War I had been averted. The Communists could never have seized power in Russia if the Czar’s government hadn’t been fatally weakened and discredited by years of defeat in war. Russia was changing very rapidly in the years before 1914. Its economy was growing and it was becoming industrialized. It is likely that the Russian living in 1913 had a higher standard of living and was freer than any of his ancestors. The Czar was still an autocrat, but Russia had begun an evolution towards some sort of constitutional monarchy. If this process had not been interrupted by war and revolution, Russia would be a free and prosperous land today. Lenin would have died in exile and Stalin would have remained a petty criminal.

Without the defeat in World War I and the Versailles treaty, the Nazi Party would never have been formed and Kaiser Wilhelm would have remained in power. The German government was somewhat democratic with a Reichtstag elected by universal male suffrage, but there was little patience for radical parties which sought to overthrow the government. Hitler would have lived out his life as an itinerant artist in Munich.

It is commonly believed that the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its large population of national minorities was on the verge of breaking up even before the war. It is possible that over the twentieth century such nationalist movements would have grown stronger until Austria-Hungary was obliged to grant independence to groups like the Czechs, the Slovaks, Croatians,and others. Then again, it is also possible that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy might have made concessions towards autonomy for various regions, perhaps causing the Empire to develop into a sort of Central European Federation. That was, in fact, what Franz Ferdinand was planning to do when he became Emperor. If Gavrilo Princip wanted to free his people, he might have been better off staying home that day.

He also should have stayed home that day.
He also should have stayed home that day.

Without World War I, France and Britain would not have seen whole generation of young men decimated in battle. Their finances would not have been stretched to the breaking point by the cost of that war and they might have been able to maintain their colonial empires for a longer time. This may not seem to be a good thing, but the colonial powers really abandoned their colonies too quickly and without as much preparation for independence as there might have been, not to mention infecting the newly independent nations with the European disease of socialism, which might not have been so virulent without the war.

Speaking of colonial powers, the Ottoman Empire would also have lasted longer. While the Ottomans were hardly models of liberal government, they did manage to keep the Middle East at peace. This means no Israel, but then there would not have been a Holocaust in Europe. Maybe the Zionists would have managed to gain autonomous status within the Ottoman Empire.

I am sure that not everything would have been better. Technology would not have advanced so rapidly without the stimulation of war. Democracy would have been slower to take hold, though there would have been no totalitarianism. The scientific racism held by most educated Europeans and Americans would not have been discredited by the atrocities committed in the name of the master race. And, it is likely that war would have occurred even if Gavrilo Princip had missed. Perhaps the war would have started in 1964 with atomic bombs. There is no way of knowing what would have happened.

Considering that World War I resulted in the deaths of untold millions both in the course of the war and the the war that followed as well as the murder of millions in the Holocaust and in the Soviet Union, I hardly think that Gavrilo Princip was a hero. He did not intend to set off the war that destroyed Europe, but he bears much of the responsibility for that war. I don’t think he deserves a statue in his honor.

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Was the American Revolution a Mistake?

For Dylan Matthews at Vox.com the answer to that question is yes.

This July Fourth, I’m celebrating by taking a plane from the US to the United Kingdom. The timing wasn’t intentional, but I embrace the symbolism. American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it.

Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is messy business. We obviously can’t be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada.

Would we be better off today if the Revolution had not succeeded? Rather than celebrating our independence from the mother country, ought we to regret it? I am something of an anglophile, so I am a bit wistful about that regrettable separation myself. Sometimes I do think it would be nice to be part of the country that gave us Doctor Who and Mister Bean, not to mention the many more substantial gifts that the British have given the world. Still, that is not saying that we would all be better off, and it is possible that much that was good about the British Empire may not have come to be without the sentiments expressed by our founding fathers.

The best thing to have come out of England, except for the Magna Carta, the English language, etc.
The best thing to have come out of England, except for the Magna Carta, the English language, etc.

It is, of course, impossible to know what would have happened. It seems to me that much would depend on the way in which the American Revolution had failed. If King George and his ministers had been more statesmanlike and showed a better understanding of the sentiments of the colonists, and if cooler heads had prevailed in the colonies, the Revolution might have been averted altogether. Perhaps there might have been some trouble in 1775 which was quickly resolved by judicious compromises, in which case the North American colonies might well have developed somewhere along the lines of Canada or Australia. On the other hand, if the British had defeated the Continental Army in 1779 or 1780 and killed George Washington, things might have been very different. Years of war had increased bitterness on both sides and it is likely that the rebellious colonies would have been held as conquered and occupied provinces, much like Ireland. Like Ireland, there might have been continuing unrest and repeated rebellions. Since Mr. Matthews seems to take the former scenario, so will I.

Maybe this would have been the flag of the Anglo-American Empire
Maybe this would have been the flag of the Anglo-American Empire

Dylan Matthews gives three reasons for believing that the American Revolution was a mistake.

But I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse.

I believe all three reasons are mistaken. I do not think that slavery would have been abolished earlier, that the policy towards the Indians would have been greatly different if the American Revolution had not succeeded, nor do I believe that a parliamentary system of government is superior.

The main reason the revolution was a mistake is that the British Empire, in all likelihood, would have abolished slavery earlier than the US did, and with less bloodshed.

Abolition in most of the British Empire occurred in 1834, following the passage of theSlavery Abolition Act. That left out India, but slavery was banned there, too, in 1843. In England itself, slavery was illegal at least going back to 1772. That’s decades earlier than the United States.

This alone is enough to make the case against the revolution. Decades less slavery is a massive humanitarian gain that almost certainly dominates whatever gains came to the colonists from independence.

According to Matthews, the American Revolution was fought by White men, for White men and everyone else would have been better off if they had failed.

The main benefit of the revolution to colonists was that it gave more political power to America’s white male minority. For the vast majority of the country — its women, slaves, American Indians — the difference between disenfranchisement in an independent America and disenfranchisement in a British-controlled colonial America was negligible. If anything, the latter would’ve been preferable, since at least women and minorities wouldn’t be singled out for disenfranchisement. From the vantage point of most of the country, who cares if white men had to suffer through what everyone else did for a while longer, especially if them doing so meant slaves gained decades of free life?

Though he admits that abolishing slavery would have been harder if the North American colonies were still in the British Empire.

It’s true that had the US stayed, Britain would have had much more to gain from the continuance of slavery than it did without America. It controlled a number of dependencies with slave economies — notably Jamaica and other islands in the West Indies — but nothing on the scale of the American South. Adding that into the mix would’ve made abolition significantly more costly.

But the South’s political influence within the British Empire would have been vastly smaller than its influence in the early American republic. For one thing, the South, like all other British dependencies, lacked representation in Parliament. The Southern states were colonies, and their interests were discounted by the British government accordingly. But the South was also simply smaller as a chunk of the British Empire’s economy at the time than it was as a portion of America’s. The British crown had less to lose from the abolition of slavery than white elites in an independent America did.

It is not clear to what extent abolitionism would have gained any traction in Britain if a major part of their empire depended on slave labor and if the principles of equality and consent by the governed that were expressed so well by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence had remained unwritten. In any case, slavery would not have been confined to the South. In 1776, slavery was legal and accepted in all thirteen colonies. It was only after the American Revolution had been won that the first wave of abolitionism, prompted in part by the obvious hypocrisy of declaring all men equal while still holding slaves, led to the Northern states to abolish slavery. In 1787 the Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, organizing the Northwest territories and prohibiting slavery. Most people believed that it was only a matter of time before slavery was ended in the South. This didn’t happen partly because of the invention of the cotton gin and partly because the expansion into the south west, where slavery hadn’t been prohibited, was made easier by slave labor.

It seems likely, then, that by 1834 slavery would still be legal throughout North America both in the original thirteen colonies and in the settled lands beyond the Appalachians. Would the British Parliament still have abolished slavery, knowing that such an act would lead to revolution in the colonies. We would have fought the American Revolution in the 1830’s instead of the 1770’s. It seems likely that the Parliament might have delayed abolishing slavery for many years rather than lose the colonies, especially if the French, no Louisiana Purchase, and the Spanish, no Florida cession and perhaps no revolutions in Latin America, maintained some presence in North America.

What about the Indians?

Starting with the Proclamation of 1763, the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward settlement in the United States. It wasn’t motivated by an altruistic desire to keep American Indians from being subjugated or anything; it just wanted to avoid border conflicts. But all the same, the policy enraged American settlers, who were appalled that the British would seem to side with Indians over white men.

American Indians would have still, in all likelihood, faced violence and oppression absent American independence, just as First Nations people in Canada did. But American-scale ethnic cleansing wouldn’t have occurred. And like America’s slaves, American Indians knew this. Most tribes sided with the British or stayed neutral; only a small minority backed the rebels.

Ethnic cleansing is a loaded word that is not particularly applicable to what occurred in the relations between the Indian tribes and the American government. It was never an official policy of the U.S. government to exterminate the Native Americans. Here is what the Northwest Ordinance had to say about the Native inhabitants of the Northwest territory.

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

Condescending, to be sure, but meant well. Unfortunately both Indians and settlers wanted the same lands so there was war and the Indians were defeated. This is bad enough but not the same as rounding people up and exterminating them in camps. But, who cares about accuracy when we have a chance to portray America as the Evil Empire? In any case, there is no reason to believe that the Indian policy, both intended or actual, would have been greatly different. The Proclamation of 1763 could not have been enforced for any period of time, given the demographic pressures that led the British colonists to want to expand westward. Matthews compares the treatment of the Indians by America and Canada, in Canada’s favor, but there were fewer settlers in Canada and the lands were less desirable.

Finally, the question of good government.

And parliamentary democracies are a lot, lot better than presidential ones. They’resignificantly less likely to collapse into dictatorship because they don’t lead to irresolvable conflicts between, say, the president and the legislature. They lead to much less gridlock.

In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours. In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that’s literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems.

This is no trivial matter. Efficient passage of legislation has huge humanitarian consequences. It makes measures of planetary importance, like carbon taxes, easier to get through; they still face political pushback, of course — Australia’s tax got repealed, after all — but they can be enacted in the first place, which is far harder in the US system. And the efficiency of parliamentary systems enables larger social welfare programs that reduce inequality and improve life for poor citizens. Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher, after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that’s very good news indeed.

This is actually the best argument I could make against a parliamentary system. It is too easy to pass legislation. Under Britain’s current system all that is needed to make any changes imaginable is a majority in the House of Commons. There are no checks and balances. Any dictator would only need that majority to impose whatever rules he wanted. It is only tradition and the good sense of most Britons that has prevented anyone from trying, so far. I would be happier if the House of Lords had equal power with the House of Commons and the Monarch would still exercise a veto over legislation. This would be undemocratic, but many people confuse democracy with liberty, or ends and means. The end of government is the preservation of liberty. Democracy is only a means to that end. A democratic government can fail to preserve liberty and tyranny under a democracy is every bit as odious as any other kind. Frankly, I prefer freedom to efficiency in government.

After reading this article, I am not convinced that the American Revolution was a mistake. If anything, I am more grateful than ever that the founding fathers made the sacrifices they did to make the United States of America a free and independent country. I do not believe the world would have been a better place if the revolution had failed. It is more likely to have been less free and less prosperous. So, I will continue to celebrate the Fourth of July, while being grateful that the British are our best friends.

Besides, we would have him to look forward to as our next king.
Besides, we would have him to look forward to as our next king.
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Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

English:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been, for the last 239 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.

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