The · useless · Fish · of · God, · Affected · by · the · skepticism · of · a · skeptical · age

 11th Hour

We often speak of the 11th hour as being at the last minute. It can be traced as far back as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard by Jesus 200 years ago, it can be traced back to any governor choosing to commute a death sentence at the last minute, or it can be traced back to the early part of the 20^th Century. The centuries leading up to the 20^th were brutal. It was common for wars between countries to break out. England and France had centuries of history fighting one another, it was just the way things were done. Russia and Japan mixed it up in 1904 over expansion. Wars were fought between European nations over territory a world away. But there was always a hope that life would get better.

And then, on June 28, 1914, assassins killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. But, truth be told, his death was simply an excuse. The entire continent had been setting itself up, maneuvering for power and a better position on the chessboard. But his death was the excuse used for toppling the precarious house of cards that was Europe in 1914. And, like a pattern of dominoes, one event led to another that led to another until there was WAR like Man had not seen before. It's safe to say that the slaughter, the tedium, the new and improved methods of death, all could have come straight out of the book of Revelations or Nostradamus' more apocalyptic prophecy. The second decade of the 20^th Century saw the introduction of a new breed of weapons, the penultimate of weapons.

A brief look at the history of weapons shows that Man started with little more than his body, which can be an efficient killing machine. But, add a basic lever and you get a club that makes it more so, at least against an individual. Add a sword for slashing or a spear for attacking from a distance. And, as Man matured, science made all of these more efficient. Add a little gunpowder and compress the point of the spear and you get a gun, still a weapon for killing one person at a time. The 19^th Century took this a step further, first with the Gatling Gun, which enabled a man to shoot rapidly and kill more; then with the Maxim Machine Gun, which no longer required a crank, just pull the trigger and hold. Lord Tennyson captured the horrors of this new gun well in The Charge of the Light Brigade:

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Yes, 600 men on horseback armed with swords, proof conclusive that you shouldn't carry a knife to a gun fight. But the Great War made even that horror seem like child's play as science took us one step higher, with Mustard Gas being used to not just shoot at and wound but actually kill many people with one blow. Yes, effective Weapons of Mass Destruction first came on the scene in 1917. And the world wasn't watching, the world was involved, because this war wasn't between a couple of nations, or even a few, but a majority of the Western World and all of their territories were dragged into this mess.

Yes, Archduke Ferdinand's assassination may have been the spark that lit the powder keg of Europe, but the eleventh hour had already passed and any spark would have ignited that same explosion.

 11th Day

By the Judeo-Christian story of Creation, this would have been a Wednesday (the original Sabbath would have been Saturday). Wednesday, from the Old Norse Oðinsdagr, Odin's Day. An appropriate day, Wednesday, for Odin was a very interesting God. Leader of the Norse Gods, he wasn't above trickery to get his way. Odin was also the god of War, both instigating wars and brining victory. And, while 11-Nov-1918 may have been a Monday, I think it was far more of a Wednesday with a touch of Odin's hand. This eleventh day was not an end, and historians already call the intervening years between what I was taught in History as WWI and WWII as nothing but a temporary truce occurring in one large war.

We had such hopes, this had been the war to end all wars. And yet, as Odin's own tradition shows, it was not Ragnorak any more than it was Armageddon. And the conclusion of this war and the heavy penalties laid upon the losers did little more than fertilize well the ground from which the simmering hate would grow until it exploded out again.

11th Month

November. How ironic that the 11th month, forever now associated with the great war, has topaz as its birthstone, a yellow stone for month associate with the war that introduced mustard gas. But November is also when we celebrate the changing of seasons, whether Fall in the northern hemisphere or Spring in the southern. We prepare to settle in to enjoying the fruits of our harvests. We take stock of what we have to get us through the long winter.

The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

Put all of them together and we have Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day. A time when we can visit Bill Mauldin, quaff root beer and tell war stories, at least if we're a certain beagle we can. A day when we and find a veteran and thank them for all they have done for us. Or for the parents of one.

And, if you remember, at the 11th hour of this, the 11th day of the 11th month, take two minutes to silently thank all of those who have fought to allow us our freedom.

The Launch of Sputnik-1 (or, to be more correct, Спутник) occured on October 4, 1957.

NPR started talking about the "shock of the century" yesterday and I got thinking about the history of space exploration. And, to accompany me I've asked Tom Smith to join us. Tom?

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,
Nothing worth doing that I haven't tried.
There ain't no living on planet-side,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.

How many cities crumble into dust
At the first atomic attack?
How many self-aware, wise, and just
Computers will we have to hack?

How many supercars will turn to rust
'Cause we don't have a spare or a jack?
Give me technology we can trust,
And give it fins like a Cadillac.

I want a shining tower of glass and steel,
A rubber jumpsuit and a freeze-dried meal,
The will to survive, the need to explore,
The love of adventure, who could ask for more?

I want you, baby, right by my side,
Help me get out before my brain is fried.
The stars are waiting, so big and wide,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.

How many demons out in cyberspace
Will possess every hacker's will?
How many members of a master race
Will come closing in for the kill?

Ah, Space. I've written about it before, from reviews of SciFi to emails from Arthur C. Clarke to support Seti@home. We've come a long way since 1957, from orbiting the earth to a project which has so far exceeded it's intended lifespan that scientests wish more projects were like it. But I'm still waiting for a proper rocket. You know the kind, something like this (though I wouldn't mind that car either):

Tom?

How many xenomorphs will change their face,
And then hunt us down for a thrill?
Give me a villain with style and grace,
And a little bit of fencing skill.

They used to be angular, sneering and bald,
If someone got killed even they were appalled,
They tried to marry the heroine, no thought of rape,
And they sure as hell knew how to wear a cape.

They never tortured, they never lied,
They'd honor a promise if it meant they died.
Let's find a villain with professional pride,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.

It's not true that all of this died out once we landed on the moon but that last section could be describing a well-known villian of the late 70s. Sputnik. It helped bring about the realization of generations of folks who grew up on stories from a great man and the inspired writings of those men gathered by a true visionary to shape the world of tomorrow as our dreams today. He must be turning over in his grave at the state of affairs today, I mean... well, Tom does a good job explaining it.

Terminators, Life Force, Robot Jox, Predators,
Lots of things that know how to flense,
Defenestrate 'em out the doors, gimme gimme Star Wars,
Bring back the Children of the Lens.

Puppet Master, Child's Play, Fright Night, Judgment Day,
Jason, Freddy, Michael, and Stripe,
Let Frankenstein, Ardeth Bey, and Kong chase them all away,
The Movie Snatchers' pods are overripe.

I want more than action and special effects,
To think about what might happen next,
A hero, not a weapons shop with pecs,
A heroine, not an excuse for sex.

I want a bubble helmet matting down my hair,
The ground giving way to the open air,
The joy and wonder as I head out there,
And I know I can have it, if I only dare.

How many bodybuilding macho jerks
Will blow everything full of holes?
How many imitation Captain Kirks
Will spill beer on the ship's controls?

How many stupid personality quirks
Will we see instead of souls?
Give me my baby and a ship that works,
And give us the starring roles.

In short, 50 years ago, the world changed. And, we changed with it. And we wanted.... a lot. And those early movies and books were truly inspiring. But, as Tom so nicely points out, we've let our dreams lapse. We have sunk from the dreams that it may be possible to overcome our most base instincts to the nightmare that is most of what passes for Science Fiction today. But we don't have to accept it. While we may not have these yet, we can still dream of it. We're human. We want more. And we can reach and achieve those dreams.

Me? Well, I really do want to cruise the galaxy at FTL and, as long time readers of my blog know, I already persue heaven and defy hell on a regular basis. Tom?

I want to cruise the galaxy at FTL,
Pursuing Heaven and defying Hell,
I want to do everything that a man can do,
And I want to do it all out there with you.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,
Nothing worth doing that I haven't tried.
There ain't no living on planet-side,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,
Nothing worth doing that I haven't tried.
There ain't no living on planet-side,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.

I'm way past wanting my flying car. How about you?

The title of today's post comes from Carl von Clausewitz's "On War" and it was brought to mind as I was looking for what to do this weekend.

While I will grant that it is a three day weekend, it is not just any three day weekend but a time for Americans to remember those who have given their lives for us. This is something I have written about before, and will write again on Monday, but I was just making plans for this weekend and considering taking R up to the Air Force Museum when I stumbled across this interview with General James H. Doolittle, talking about his famous raid on Tokyo.

It was a raid with three purposes:

• Provide the first good news to the folks at home after sudden entry into WWII with the attack on Pearl Harbor
• Caused the Japanese to question the military regarding how easily successful their war would be.
• To pull planes back to Japan for defense, even though we had no real plans to attack again.

Those purposes all make sense. And, of the 80 crew who left on that raid, 64 survived to fight again.

To those 16 men who did not survive, I raise my glass of root beer and thank them.

Peace, gentle readers, for that is the goal those men died for.

The WABAC machine is going to take us to April 18, 2003, for the Entry: Rube Goldberg LIVES!?!?! And he's kicking Harley Earl's butt!

Mainly because the video is now available on UTube.

Ironically, I was talking this over with a coworker last week.

Making of video

Ever had one of those days when you're tired? Maybe you've been doing something physical and your back and arms ache? You really want to just get home and relax. So, you let a full bus go by so you can catch the next one and be able to sit. The next bus comes along and you sit down and the bus moves on and another passenger gets on and demands you get up so they can sit down.

Yes, you know who I'm talking about so I'm not gonna even try to play Paul Harvey.

As she was to later say, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired but that wasn't true. I was not tired physically, I was not old. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Rosa Parks was a remarkable woman. Unlike some people on both sides of a divide, she didn't set out to make a name for herself. There is no reason to believe that this gentle, self-effacing woman woke up that morning and thought all day, while pressing pants, "Today, I'm gonna make history." No, she was a normal person, like you, like me. She would later admit that she was sore, but it was not a physical tiredness that made her, without forethought, refuse to give up her seat on that first of December, 1955. No, she had been active in what was to be galvanized into the Civil Rights movement for a long time, registering voters in the 40s, boycotting Jim Crow laws along with fellow Montgomerians. But it was on that December day that she was herself and showed that an ordinary person in an extraodinary situation can be the spark to set off a powderkeg.

The seat Ms. Parks did take was in the middle section of the bus,because the back was filled. To make sense of what happened, you need to understand the byzantine Jim Crow laws in effect on the bus. The first four seats were for Whites Only. The middle section of the bus was for blacks as long as no white person wanted to sit there. When, a few stops further down the line, a white man got on and demanded a seat, the driver ordered Parks and three other black customers to move. The other riders did as they were told, but Parks quietly refused to give up her place. The driver threatened to call the police. Parks said: "Go ahead and call them."

When they arrived, the police asked the driver if he wanted to swear out a warrant or if he wanted them to let Rosa Parks go with a warning. The driver said he wanted to swear out a warrant. And so Rosa Parks was driven to the police station, booked, fingerprinted, and jailed. She was also photographed as she was being fingerprinted, a snapshot for the history textbooks. Parks was granted one telephone call, and she used it to contact E. D. Nixon, aprominent member of Montgomery's NAACP chapter.

Rosa Parks getting fingerprinted

She was not the first black woman arrested that year for refusing to give her seat to a white man, three other women had suffered the same fate. But, for whatever reason, she was the person whose arrest lit the powder keg that blew the cover off of segregation.

In the 50 years since, there have been remarkable strides (and, admittedly, some backsliding) and it is with some sadness that I heard today that she had passed away. Always gentle and kind, she reminded me of what we should strive to become. In the face of the Farakhans and Limbaughs of the world, who set out to incite folks and who seem to be more interested with grabbing headlines than making change, Rosa Parks was always a reminder that one needn't be greatly known to be a great individual.

When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe he is said to have remarked, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!" I have no doubt that Rosa Parks will long be remembered as the little lady who helped to finish that war.

First, the current news:

The Associated Press WASHINGTON: The FBI is warning police officials across the United States to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists might use almanacs ‘‘to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.’’ It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. ‘‘The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning,’’ the FBI wrote. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the bulletin this week and verified its authenticity.

So, in addition to our almost high alert status, we should be wary of those scurrilous folks who read almanacs <melodramatic organ music swells in the background> Which brings to mind the most famous almanac, sorry, almanack writer, Richard Saunders. Or, as you are probably more familiar with him, Benjamin Franklin, author of the original Poor Richard's Almanack. Here, let me quote from the 1733 edition about why Poor Richard was writing his almanack:

Courteous Reader,
I might in this place attempt to gain thy Favor, by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other View than that of the public Good; but in this I should not be sincere; and Men are now a-days too wise to be deceived by Pretenses how specious so ever. The plain Truth of the Matter is, I am excessive poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her Shift of Tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the Stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my Books and Rattling-Traps (as she calls my Instruments) if I do not make some profitable Use of them for the good of my Family. The Printer has offered me some considerable share of the Profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my Dame's desire.

Indeed this Motive would have had Force enough to have made me publish an Almanack many Years since, had it not been overpowered by my Regard for my good Friend and Fellow-Student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose Interest I was extremely unwilling to hurt: But this Obstacle (I am far from speaking it with Pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable Death, who was never known to respect Merit, has already prepared the mortal Dart, the fatal Sister has already extended her destroying Shears, and that ingenious Man must soon be taken from us.

He dies, by my Calculation made at his Request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3:29 P.M., at the very instant of the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury: By his own Calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same Month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these 9 Years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my Judgment; Which of us is most exact, a little Time will now determine.

As therefore these Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his Performances after this Year, I think my self free to take up the Task, and request a share of the public Encouragement; which I am the more apt to hope for on this Account, that the Buyer of my Almanack may consider himself, not only as purchasing an useful Utensil, but as performing an Act of Charity, to his poor

Friend and Servant
R. SAUNDERS.

Sure, Mr. Saunders was a tongue-in-cheek hoax by Franklin but people only partially buy almanacs for the information they contain. Sometimes it may turn out to be incorrect:

On his way to a distant town one day, John Partridge, a charlatan famed for his immensely popular almanacs, stopped to rest at a local inn. Some time later, as he prepared to set off on his horse again, the innkeeper stopped him. "You should stay," the man advised, "because if you go on you will certainly be overtaken by heavy rain." "Nonsense!" Partridge cried, riding off.

Sure enough, Partridge was soon overtaken by heavy rain. Intrigued by the innkeeper's predictive powers, he returned to the inn and offered the man a sizable sum for his 'secret'.

Pocketing his payment, the innkeeper explained: "You see, we have an almanac in the house called Partridge's Almanac, and the fellow is such a notorious liar that whenever he promises fine weather we can be sure it will rain. Now today he had put down 'settled weather, fine; no rain,' so when I looked that up before I saddled your horse I was able to put you on your guard."

And farmers, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, used weather information for planning, though they knew enough to look out the window the night before to help them figure out what was really going to happen. But many people read Poor Richard's for the homespun wisdom they found. Gems like:

• He's a Fool that makes his Doctor his Heir.
• Beware of meat twice boiled, and an old foe reconciled.
• The favor of the Great is no inheritance.
• Beware of the young Doctor and the old Barber.
• The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.
• Eat to live, and not live to eat.
• To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy Meals.
• The proof of gold is fire, the proof of woman, gold; the proof of man, a woman.
• Neither Shame nor Grace yet Bob.
• He that lies down with Dogs, shall rise up with fleas.
• Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
• Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.
• Men and Melons are hard to know.
• He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.
• A fine genius in his own country, is like a gold in the mine.
• The heart of a fool in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.
• Innocence is its own Defense.

And those remain good advice, not just for terrrorists but for us all.

Oh, and what about poor Mr. Leeds? You know, the fellow R. Saunders had predicted would die "at the very instant of the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury:" ( The following year's almanac had Mr. Leed's response. )

Something has been bugging me since my birthday. But I couldn't put my finger on it until just recently. You see, it starts with a document a couple of centuries old, predicated by the document it is attached to. That document would be the Bill of Rights and it is attached to the Constitution. More specifically, it would be the Fifth Amendment that I am having trouble with. Here, let me read it to you:

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Now, what has this to do with my birthday a couple of weeks ago? Well, that was the day Saddam was captured and President Bush said:

[Saddam] will face the justice he denied to millions.

Ok. And in America that justice includes a presumption of innocence. Actually, so does international law and the various war crimes tribunals. Except that President Bush said, in an interview with Dianne Sawyer on December 16th:

He is a torturer, a murderer, and they had rape rooms, and this is a disgusting tyrant who deserves justice, the ultimate justice. But that will be decided not by the president of the United States, but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another.

Had Bush been a prosecutor he would have been taken to task for prejudicing the jury pool. But he's not.

So the real question about all this is whether the Democrats will actually have the guts to call him on this. Of course, that will depend greatly on what happens to Saddam between now and then. So I suppose I shall wait and watch.

Peace, gentle readers

I'm sitting in my cubicle just a few miles from the spot the bike shop stood that the Wright brothers owned and operated while they worked on revolutionizing the world. And, just a few minutes ago, the president finished his speech and someone attempted to fly a recreation of the original plane. I don't know if they did it or not, I'll find out tonight. but it is a time to sit and ponder.

I am, as anyone who reads my journal knows, an enormous history buff. And I remember, a few years back when the Internet was new and all, an email made the rounds about "If you were turning 100 today, here's all the marvels you would have witnessed" and the birth of aviation was one of them.

It'll still hold, for a bit. The first fligth, 59 seconds, heralded the beginning of an age but it was an age with birthing pangs all its own. And, to set the record straight, the Wright brothers were not the first to fly a heavier than air machine. They were the first to do so in a controlled manner (ie, they landed successfully). That's not to diminish from their accomplishments. Their flyer was advanced and, even though they kept a lot of information to themselves and started bitter fueds within the aviation industry, they are, indeed, the fathers of the plane, flying it four times that day 100 years ago.

And, like so many technologically advanced steps, the military was ready to take advantage of it. What started out as a better way to spy on the enemy soon had a pilot taking a gun with him and then WW! brought us the Red Baron that Snoopy's nemisis is modeled on and it brought us Eddie Rickenbacker. And it greatly saddened Alberto Santos-Dumont.

Dumont was someone I only heard about recently. A Brazilian inventor that was profiled on NPR as a part of their race for flight series. As Paul Hoffman, a recent biographer of Dumont, says in his book:

He thought flying machines would bring about world peace. He thought you could fly and visit people with whom you had differences and that would help you understand them better.

The Wright brothers avidly worked with the military. I've seen some of their original war planes in the local museum.

And I think much can be said about the fact that, though Dumont kiilled himself in despair over the use of the machines in war to kill people, he was paid quite a tribute on his death. At the moment of his coffin was lowered into the ground, at a prearranged signal, all of the pilots in flight in the world tipped their wings

I'm rambling, no doubt, and will ramble just a little further on. You see, I've been in the air in all kinds of planes, from single engine props to large Boeings. I've been to the Air and Space Museum in Washington and I've been to the Air Force Museum just down the road from where I'm writing this. I've yet to go up in a balloon or a glider, though I plan to some day. And I often think we take for granted how much the wold has changed. Dumont was correct about somethings. We can visit folks and learn about them more quickly. If you've got the cash, there's nothing to hopping on a plane and landing half a world away.

I think this ties in with the Fourth Estate entry from yesterday. I'm not sure how and I'll let it noodle around in my brain awhile and see what I come up with.

Until then,
Peace

To begin with, let me address the term, the Fourth Estate. The nineteenth century historian Carlyle coined the term while pointing back to the three estates defined by Burke:

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, .... Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. ..... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite.

And the fourth estate has expanded to include multi-media, even the web. Why, you and I, my fellow bloggers, are part of the fourth estate. Or are we?

Let me borrow from Ani's poem: self evident (pointed out to me by the always well written hermionesviolin):

and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me

I'm not going to argue the first two, though I could and at length. But the comment about the media is an intriguing one and, more importantly, relevant to this post. Mass Media has always been a means of getting out a viewpoint. In fact, it is not too hard a case to make to say that mass media formed the United States. What, you disagree? Let me give you a major f'rinstance... Have you ever heard of the Federalist Papers? Let me quote from the government web site:

The Federalist, commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, is a series of 85 essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison between October 1787 and May 1788. The essays were published anonymously, under the pen name "Publius," in various New York state newspapers of the time.

The Federalist Papers were written and published to urge New Yorkers to ratify the proposed United States Constitution, which was drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. In lobbying for adoption of the Constitution over the existing Articles of Confederation, the essays explain particular provisions of the Constitution in detail. For this reason, and because Hamilton and Madison were each members of the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers are often used today to help interpret the intentions of those drafting the Constitution.

The Federalist Papers were published primarily in two New York state newspapers: The New York Packet and The Independent Journal. They were reprinted in other newspapers in New York state and in several cities in other states. A bound edition, with revisions and corrections by Hamilton, was published in 1788 by printers J. and A. McLean. An edition published by printer Jacob Gideon in 1818, with revisions and corrections by Madison, was the first to identify each essay by its author's name. Because of its publishing history, the assignment of authorship, numbering, and exact wording may vary with different editions of The Federalist.
About the Federalist Papers
(Emphasis mine)

Or who can forget William Randolph Hearst's famous line to Frederic Remington when Remington couldn't find evidence of a war:

You provide the pictures and I'll provide the war.

But is there a difference between those two examples? That's hard to say. They both seek to influence popular opinion, though for vastly different reasons. But step further into the present and look at the codified Fourth Estate of journalism. While papers are still motivated to sell, they are also motivated to be responsible journalists. Even the alternative papers know they must keep to a certain level of professionalism.

Every member of the Fourth Estate has an agenda. Newspapers will print a list of candidates they endorse precisely because they believe those candidates can do a certain thing. What doesn't matter and can vary from paper to paper but they use their position to say, Here, this is how we would recommend you vote so the world will turn out as you, are readers who are sympathetic to our views, would like it to.

But there is a new and growing grass roots section to the Fourth Estate, the bloggers. Espeically with folks like Robert Scoble who preaches the ten rules for getting your message out to customers in an interactive way (All 10 read: BLOG!). I won't deny that it needs done. And on a corporate level it is a good thing. But when folks rush to publish their opinion without checking facts you encounter the biggest benefit and problem that blogging represents.

You see, back when Ben Franklin was slipping Silence Dogood letters under the door of the print shop where his brother employed him, it took money to create a published work. And money implied that you had the means to be someone of consequence or that you had convinced someone of the validity of your news.

As printing become less expensive, we turned out the yellow journalism that led to the Spanish American War.

And now there are blogs.

Blogs are cheap. And anyone who has a blog can post a "fact" and it gains weight. You can post your opinon and make up facts from the whole cloth and most folks aren't willing to take the time to research the truth but will simply accept it. Perhaps because we live in a world made up of 30 second soundbites. I don't know.

In fact, it would not surprise me that a number of folks who have been pointed to this site don't read the whole thing because it is so long. Nonetheless, I shall not hide it behind a cut tag <chuckles>.

What do you think? Am I right or wrong?

-J

It was quiet. People were moving about and the day was beginning much like any other day that had gone before. Men and women were going about their business, families were sleeping late. A typical day that reflected life in America as though we were looking into a large mirror. But it was a false mirror and it was shattered with brutal determination by a ruthless enemy.

And the president responded. Here, listen to what he had to say.

( More... )

George Santayana, a notable philosopher, coined the phrase, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Mark Twain, on the other hand, said "History doesn't repeat itself; it rhymes." And how true this seems. Let's step back a little over four decades to the early 60s for this history lesson, though I hope you were paying attention to years prior to that. WWI was a classic demonstration of the domino effect where a tripwire caused alliances and treaties to start the "War to end all wars" and the end of that war simply planted and fertilized the seeds for the next war. And so American policy wonks understood dominoes. Even more so given that the Soviet Union and Red China were attempting to spread their brand of how the world works in direct opposition to our brand.

It is within this geopolitcal framework of keeping our allies and wooing our enemies allies that we find ourselves working. The French have left Vietnam and the communists are moving in, but there are rebels, folks who do not want to be in a Communist nation. And so, President Kennedy put up to 16,000 "military advisors" in Vietnam. These were soldiers whose job was not to fight but to teach the rebels how to fight. to help lead them in the cause. Then, on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Kennedy. And, on November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby tried Oswald, found him guilty and executed him, giving conspiracy theorists fodder for their grist mill, especially since Ruby was never properly tried and died of brain cancer before his retrial.

Crease: Now what are you saying, the NSA killed Kennedy?
Mother: No, they shot him but they didn't kill him. He's still alive.
Sneakers

This sets the stage for a Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, to become President. Ok, actually it was simply Kennedy's assasination that did that but don't get picky on me. He was also re-elected with the largest popular vote margin of any president, 15,000,000 votes. As President (and a firm believer in the domino theory), he escalated American troops in Vietnam. He wanted to beat the Communists. But he also had another vision, "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor." Some of the pieces of this great society included:

• aid to education
• attack on disease
• Medicare
• urban renewal
• beautification
• conservation
• development of depressed regions
• a wide-scale fight against poverty
• control and prevention of crime and delinquency
• removal of obstacles to the right to vote.

It was a good dream. It led to many cornerstone pieces of legislation being passed, including the Medicare act of 1965.

Unfortunately for Johnson, "that bitch of a war" on the other side of the world was hurting him. It costs money to run a war and money to support internal reforms. And, in the end, it was the war that LBJ is most remembered for, a war considered a failure by many.

And so we come to the present. We have another Texan in the White House, though his popular support in the election wasn't so great. And he, too, has an agenda of social issues including

• "No Child Left Behind"
• Medicare Prescription Drug Benefits
• Strengthening Social Security

And the parallels are eerily similar.

Make no mistake, Iraq is not Vietnam. The comparisons that get drawn between the two have little basis. But we are involved in a war on the other side of the world. We have far more troops committed to Iraq than we had to Vietnam and far fewer casualties so far but the fact remains, this is a large item in the budget that takes away from other reforms.

Today it is expected that the Medicare reform bill will pass, Johnson passed the original.

You see, rhymes, not repeats.

No, gentle readers, I really have no conclusions to draw today. You may do that and list them in the comments. I'm just pointing out the rhymes and pondering them.

Peace

Stand by Ready.
Ready.
Fire!

Seven rifles fire into the pristine blue sky, shattering the silence with their roar.

Fire!

Again these tubes of destruction ring out, not to kill but to honor.

Fire!

One last time the seven rifles, handled by seven men paying honor to a fallen comrade ring out. As the men lower their rifles on command, a bugler steps forward and starts to play Taps.

---

---

As the notes reverently drift from the bugle's bell, a casket is lowered and the flag that draped it is given to the family members of the person for whom this ceremony is being held. It could be any one of 1700 veterans who die every day. It could be Sgt. Nicholas A. Tomko, 24, of Pittsburgh, PA, who was killed on Nov. 9 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq. Sgt. Tomko was the door gunner in a convoy vehicle when his team came under small arms attack. It may be someone you know, someone you grew up with, or one of the many folks who have died so you can live your life today in a world unimagined when they were fighting.

Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that what we enjoy has a cost. Though frequently taken out of context, he did say:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

And we have refreshed our tree with the blood of our sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers. When Germany threatened in 1914, it took us three years, but we entered the fray and helped preserve democracy. When Germany and Italy and Japan threatened again, 30 years later, we went. In the last 100 years the blood of our country has been shed in two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places. And today we take time to celebrate and honor those whose blood has been shed and those who have risked their life and survived.

It's been many a year since I've been to a Veteran's Day celebration. Work tends to interfere. But I can remember marching in the parades as a Scout. I can remember standing at attention while the rifles roared and the bugle's clarion call haunted through the air as if all the veterans who had ever fought so that I could march freely to honor them were wafting through the sky with it.

I've been to Arlington and seen the stark white monuments stretching out in orderly rows like the formation of an army at the ready.

I've witnessed the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a tomb unlikely to have any more occupants interred thanks to genetic fingerprinting enabling us to identify remains better.

And I've known men and women who have risked their lives for me and you, even though we weren't born yet, because they wanted us to be able to live in a free world.

And so, to all the veterans of this fine country, those who died in battle, those who survived to live and die a natural death, those who are living full lives and those who are still in the line of fire for us, I salute you.

Fading light dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar drawing nigh -- Falls the night.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky.
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Then good night, peaceful night,
Till the light of the dawn shineth bright,
God is near, do not fear -- Friend, good night.

Peace, gentle readers

Quick... What's 50 feet long, made of steel, was as important to the City as blood is to a human, could hold several dozen people and will now be home to millions? ( Click to read the answer )

If you are interested... here's a link to a historical perspective of that broadcast.

Let's say you were alive 65 years ago. There wasn't Television. What you did was listen to the radio. And, if you were hep, you listened to the Columbia Broadcasting System and Mercury Theater of the Air. And, if you tuned in at the top of the hour you would have heard both the Mercury Announcer and Orson Welles saying the following:

MERC ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen: the director of the Mercury Theatre and star of these broadcasts, Orson Welles . . .

ORSON WELLES: We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30, the Crossley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios.

If, however, you were just a couple of minutes late tuning into your show, you might have thought you had tuned into another show entirely:

ANNOUNCER: . . .for the next twenty-four hours not much change in temperature. A slight atmospheric disturbance of undetermined origin is reported over Nova Scotia, causing a low pressure area to move down rather rapidly over the northeastern states, bringing a forecast of rain, accompanied by winds of light gale force. Maximum temperature 66; minimum 48. This weather report comes to you from the Government Weather Bureau. . . . We now take you to the Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza in downtown New York, where you will be entertained by the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.

(MUSIC: SPANISH THEME SONG [A TANGO] . . . FADES)

ANNOUNCER THREE: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish. Ramon Raquello leads off with "La Cumparsita."

(PIECE STARTS PLAYING)

ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation, and describes the phenomenon as (quote) like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun (unquote). We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York.

It was a landmark broadcast because folks who missed the first couple of minutes were hooked. They kept listening to Ramon Raquello because they wanted to hear what was happening. And they did. With interruptions like this:

ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, following on the news given in our bulletin a moment ago, the Government Meteorological Bureau has requested the large observatories of the country to keep an astronomical watch on any further disturbances occuring on the planet Mars. Due to the unusual nature of this occurance, we have arranged an interview with noted astronomer. Professor Pierson, who will give us his views on the event. in a few moments we will take you to the Princeton Observatory at Princeton, New Jersey. We return you until then to the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.

This went on for the entire show until, at the end, Welles broke character:

Orson Welles: This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn't soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night. . . so we did the best next thing. We annihiliated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C. B. S. You will be releieved, I hope, to learn that we didn't mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody's there, that was no Martian. . .it's Hallowe'en.

But the damage was done. People had panicked and Welles had opened a Pandora's box, one aptly described by New York Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson:

All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time," she wrote. "They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic.
They have demonstrated more potently than any argument, demonstrated beyond a question of a doubt, the appalling dangers and enormous effectiveness of popular and theatrical demagoguery....
Hitler managed to scare all of Europe to its knees a month ago, but he at least had an army and an air force to back up his shrieking words.
But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralization with nothing at all.

Nothing except their own imagination, the theater of their minds <cue Vincent Price's maniacal laugh from the end of Thriller>

Good? day?

Later when their bodies were examined in the laboratories, it was found that they were killed by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared. . . slain, after all man's defenses had failed, by the humblest thing that God in His wisdom put upon this earth.

In one of the many autobiographical books he wrote, Roy C. Andrews said:

I was born to be an explorer. There was never any decision to make. I couldn't do anything else and be happy.

But his was a strange road to exploring. He saved up his money from being a taxidermist in Wisconsin to travel to New York City in 1906, after graduating college. His only ambition was to work for the American Museum of Natural History. When he applied, the director told him there were no jobs available. Not one to give up, Andrews asked, "You have to have somebody to scrub floors, don't you?" When the director admitted he did, Andrews took the job with the explanation that he didn't want to scrub just any floors "but museum floors were different."

He started off scrubbing floors in the taxidermy department and it wasn't long before he was a member of the collecting staff. His initial interest? Whales. He obtained a record sized whale that had come ashore on Long Island. Then he traveled to Alaska, Korea, Japan and China to collect various marine mammals, writing two papers on them while he completed his Masters of Arts in mammology from Columbia.

By 1920, he was ready for something new. He'd been thinking about a grand scheme to reconstruct the whole history of the Central Asian plateau, the area we now call the cradle of life. He wanted to make a complete collection of living flora and fauna and the geological and fossil records. Fortunately for him, the current director of the museum thought along those lines and they decided it had to be done.

Planning was extensive. Mongolia was large, uninhabited, a thousand miles to a side with the Gobi Desert smack in the middle, where temperatures reached 110 during the day and dropped to freezing at night. It was determined the scientests would stay in Asia for 5 years, working in the summer and retreating to Peking for winter.

Of course, the weather and geography weren't the only things to contend with. 1920 Mongolia was politically unstable. Brigands, revolutionaries and other such characters freely roamed the anarchy that ruled the land. Despite that, in 1922 Roy Andrew's fleet of Dodges rolled through a gate in the Great Wall and off into the unknown. They soon found a largely complete fossil of Baluchitherium, a sort of large, ice age rhinoceros. Prior to this time only fragments had been found, and not many of those.

In 1923, July 13th to be exact, one of the most famous finds of the expedition was recorded. We look back now and say, but of course, we know all this. But at the time, lively debates raged as to how dinosaurs recreated. Live birth or eggs? Well, on this day, they found eggs.

Possibly the most significant find was also made in 1923. A small skull embedded in a chunk of Cretaceous sandstone. Labeled as "unidentifiable reptile," it was sent back to New York for analysis. In 1925 the answer came back that it hadn't been a reptile but a mammal. And not just any mammal, but one that could be traced to animals still alive. New York begged for more skulls, Within an hour, they'd found one. They spent the next 7 days looking for mammal skulls and found 6 more skulls for several different mammal species. Andrews called it, "possibly the most valuable seven days of work in the whole history of paleontology to date." <chuckles> He wrote well too.

There's far more to the stories of Roy C. Andrews, including run-ins with bandits and revolutionaries. The last expedition was in 1925, though Andrews attempted to get them through 1930, when it became far too dangerous to do. Andrews returned to the US. In 1934, he became director of the museum. Not bad for a man who scrubbed the floors.

There's a lot of speculation that you have probably seen Roy C. Andrews. Well, at least someone based on him. You see, after he retired from the museum, he wrote a lot of books, some on his adventures. I've read parts of them and they make mighty fine reading. Adventure stories. Almost like what Indiana Jones might have encountered. Many believe Indy is actually based on Roy C. Andrews, though no one has ever confirmed that.

All the same, I know have a new set of books to start looking for.

Peace, gentle readers

No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers.... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided.
Tecumseh, Chief of the Shawnee Nation

---

Thus Were We Created
Our Creator put us on this wide, rich land, and told us we were free to go where the game was, where the soil was good for planting. That was our state of true happiness. We did not have to beg for anything. Our Creator had taught us how to find and make everything we needed, from trees and plants and animals and stone. We lived in bark, and we wore only the skins of animals. Our Creator taught us how to use fire, in living, and in sacred ceremonies. He taught us how to heal with barks and roots, and how to make sweet foods with berries and fruits, with papaws and the water of the maple tree. Our Creator gave us tobacco, and said, Send your prayers up to me on its fragrant smoke. Our Creator taught us how to enjoy loving our mates, and gave us laws to live by, so that we would not bother each other, but help each other. Our Creator sang to us in the wind and the running water, in the bird songs, in children's laughter, and taught us music. And we listened, and our stomachs were never dirty and never troubled us.

Thus were we created. Thus we lived for a long time, proud and happy. We had never eaten pig meat, nor tasted the poison called whiskey, nor worn wool from sheep, nor struck fire or dug earth with steel, nor cooked in iron, nor hunted and fought with loud guns, nor ever had diseases which soured our blood or rotted our organs. We were pure, so we were strong and happy.

But, beyond the Great Sunrise Water, there lived a people who had iron, and those dirty and unnatural things, who seethed with diseases, who fought to death over the names of their gods! They had so crowded and befouled their own island that they fled from it, because excrement and carrion were up to their knees. They came to our island. Our Singers had warned us that a pale people would come across the Great Water and try to destroy us, but we forgot.

We did not know they were evil, so we welcomed them and fed them. We taught them much of what Our Grandmother had taught us, how to hunt, grow corn and tobacco, find good things in the forest. They saw how much room we had, and wanted it. They brought iron and pigs and wool and rum and disease. They came farther and drove us over the mountains. Then when they had filled up and dirtied our old lands by the sea, they looked over the mountains and saw this Middle Ground, and we are old enough to remember when they started rushing into it. We remember our villages on fire every year and the crops slashed every fall and the children hungry every winter. All this you know. -- Tenskwatawa (Shawnee)

Every 4th of July since 1988, National Public Radio's Morning Edition has read the Declaration of Independence. 27 different people read a sentence each. You can listen to it here.

If you'd rather see the persons who are actually reading it, you can click here. You'll need real player to be able to listen or see the slide show.

In any case, as you listen to "On the Threshold of Liberty" by Mark Isham in the background, you can read the text below.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, gentle readers, are priveleges paid for by our forefathers' blood to water the tree of Liberty, under whose shade we enjoy our day off today. So enjoy it.

-J

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

"No tool is more beneficial than intelligence. No enemy is more harmful than ignorance."
Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Harithi al-Baghdadi al-Mufid

Last year, on the 4th itself, I wrote about what the 4th of July meant to some folks. I still find King George III's diary entry for July 4, 1776 to be an appropriate comment on life:

Nothing of importance happened today.

Of course, Americans will be celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Some more of us may be celebrating the end of the battle of Gettysburg. I wrote briefly about both of those last year. But today I want to take a different look at writing from a historical standpoint.

For my readers who may not be familiar with American history, let me set the stage, for it's all interrelated. You see, the United States may have been "born" with the Declaration of Independence, but it was a hard labor. There was a reason that the signatories of the Declartion closed with:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

It was a costly birth. Had the British won, many of the heros of the US would have been executed as traitors. From our lens of almost 23 decades later that may seem impossible but to them it was a very real possibility. But the Declaration was only the first of the important documents. The second was not, as many expect, the Constitution but the Articles of Confederation. This document served America from March 1, 1781, until 1789. The Confederation put states in charge and created a secondary body called the Federal Government. The problem was that the states had too much power and the strain almost ripped the country apart. In May of 1787, the Federal Convention was convened in what is modern day Independence Hall in Philadelphia to "revise" the Articles of Confederation. It quickly became apparent that what was needed was not a bandaid but a replacement and a new Constitution was drafted, one that reversed the power between the states and the federal govenment. It wasn't done lightly and it wasn't done without much blood, sweat and tears (though less blood than was shed when the US freed itself from Britain). The preamble is pretty well known, but I quote it here because I'll need it again in a bit:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Unfortunately, the federal government didn't rest well with everyone, even after the (almost immediate) adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791, which had the very important 12th amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And the Supreme Court kept enforcing that, even down to Dred Scott v. Sanford, in which the Supreme Court declared that slaves were not citizens and therefore were not protected by the Federal Government and that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a Federal territory. It moved the country onto the fast track for a Civil War.

Much has been said about the Civil War being a case of slave owners versus slave opponents. While there is some truth to that, it is a far more complicated issue than that. There was a large part that came down to states rights, although many believed that to be little more than a code word for slavery. Less than 4 years after Dred Scott, the southern states formed the Confederacy. And they started the fight. It's true that they wouldn't have fought had Lincoln not pushed but Lincoln had to. What value is there in a Federation that let's it's member leave whenever they want to. Thus the war began. And it was bloody. In WWI/II the body count had two sides but for the Cival War there was only one: Americans. Every man and boy (and there were lots of boys) killed was a count of American dead. And, in 1863, Robert E Lee decided to try something new. He invaded the North and was doing well until Gettysburg.

There, 140 years ago today, North met South in three days of hell, during which 46,000 Americans would die, Lee's army would be broken and, while the war would continue to rage on, the South had lost.

And, 18 years later, the Tuskegee Institute would open its doors to the students who built it with bricks made in their own kiln. An abandoned plantation in Tuskegee, Alabama was the site chosen for Booker T. Washington’s institution for academic and vocational training.

And here, 140 years later, I still weep about the folks who echo in their LJ King George's sentiment from 227 years ago.

But I'll keep writing. And do you know why? It's because of something Dallas Williams once said. You've heard the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, Dallas had a response to that:

Give me 1000 words and I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and enough left over for just about all of the Boy Scout Oath and I wouldn't trade them to you for any picture on earth.
Dallas Williams

I'll write about the world I see to remind me to look, to remind me that even when nothing important has happened to me, something important has happened to someone.

And here, within my thousand words (which included words I Dallas Williams and I both find fitting) I hope you have found something interesting, educational and perhaps even enjoyable.

Peace, gentle readers

1945. On this date in that year, San Francisco was an important place to be, specifically the Herbst Theater. There, in an attempt to save "succeeding generations from the scourge of war," the UN treaty was signed by delegates from 50 nations.

And yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Eric Blair in India. At the age of 42 (in 1945), he wrote a book that I was highly reminded of while reading OotP. In fact, one line from the book could be paraphrased as:

All wizards are equal but some wizards are more equal than others.

It is a tale of corruption and control that some smart student should compare and contrast for a book report.

I'm speaking, of course, of George Orwell's Animal Farm, the book that Amazon calls the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. And I find it interesting that it came out when it did. Granted, it was a direct slap at the Soviet Union (Stalin's Soviet Union) and the dissatisfaction Orwell saw with it, but I still find an irony in the two events happening at the same time and the current result of the Soveit Union.

But that's heavier than I want to go into right now so I'll just let it set for another year.

Peace, gentle readers

Today we step into our wayback machine and set the dial for 40 years ago, in the great state of Alabama and it's newly elected governor, George Wallace. The title for this entry comes from his inaugural speech where he said:

Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.

Yes, it's a hot button topic. Always has been and always will be. Segregation still exists and sometimes it's not as blatant as the color of our skin, but more on that later.

Ironically enough, the pargraph before the one I just quoted, Wallace said, "I want to assure every child that this State government is not afraid to invest in their future through education, so that they will not be handicapped on every threshold of their lives." You can read the whole speech here.

Fast forward a couple of months, from January 14, 1963 to June 11, 1963.

On June 11, 1963, Wallace kept a campaign pledge to stand in the schoolhouse door to block integration of Alabama public schools. He stood in the door-way to block the attempt of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to register at the University of Alabama. While he was there, he had the following to say:

The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government. This intrusion results solely from force, or threat of force, undignified by any reasonable application of the principle of law, reason and justice. It is important that the people of this State and nation understand that this action is in violation of rights reserved to the State by the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Alabama. While some few may applaud these acts, millions of Americans will gaze in sorrow upon the situation existing at this great institution of learning.

He was, of course, basing this upon the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

. . .

Among those powers so reserved and claimed is the right of state authority in the operation of the public schools, colleges and Universities. My action does not constitute disobedience to legislative and constitutional provisions. It is not defiance – for defiance sake, but for the purpose of raising basic and fundamental constitutional questions. My action is raising a call for strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States as it was written – for a cessation of usurpation and abuses. My action seeks to avoid having state sovereignty sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.
(Again, you can read the whole speech here.

The short ending to the historical part of this is that President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard, and ordered its units to the university campus. Wallace then stepped aside and returned to Montgomery allowing the students to enter.

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I feel that it is necessary, at this point, to stop and make my own personal opinions clear. I don't believe in segregation. I'm not sure that state's rights apply in deference to national needs. But I am hoping to raise some thoughtful questions in what comes after this little disclaimer.

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Let's begin by looking at segragation. It's been 40 years since this incident. Segregation has had many walls broken down. Some have subtly shifted. But what is segregation? I mean, we can turn to the dictionary and see what Merriam Webster has to say:

Main Entry:seg·re·ga·tion
Pronunciation: "se-gri-'gA-sh&n
Function: noun
Date: 1555
1 : the act or process of segregating : the state of being segregated
2 a : the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social intercourse, by separate educational facilities, or by other discriminatory means b : the separation for special treatment or observation of individuals or items from a larger group <segregation of gifted children into accelerated classes>
3 : the separation of allelic genes that occurs typically during meiosis

Segregation by class... Well, that still exists, no? Either by how much you earn or what your sexual preference is or... well, there's segregation here, you, reading this post. After all, not everyone can afford to read online such as you are. That's a form of segregation.

<sigh> Segregation cannot be eradicated. There will always be something that separates people in to groups. Some segregation (economic, for instance) may never be overcome until we reach a Marxian utopia.

I have a friend who bemoans the fact that she was born white and thus has privileges. I've told her, on more than one occasion to stop bemoaning and use those privileges to make changes in the world.

Can one person do such a thing? <shrug> Both George Wallace and John F Kennedy seemed to think so. That's why they had a clash. And here I'm going to say something that may make me very unpopular with a lot of folks but I hope they'll read the whole paragraph before judging me.

I have some admiration for George Wallace. No, not for what he believed in, for I would fit in to the group of "millions of Americans [gazing] in sorrow upon the situation" that Wallace was attempting to block. But for the fact that he took a stand. The Bible, in the book of Revelations, has God telling the church at Laodicea:

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelations 3:15,16)

And that is what I'm going to encourage you to do today. I don't care when you are actually reading this, but do something today that takes a stand on something you believe in. I honestly don't care if you are right or wrong, whether you are standing with me on something or against me, but find some passion in your life today that can change someone's life.

Peace (and thanks for reading my long-windedness)

-J

The joy and wonder as I head out there,
And I know I can have it, if I only dare.
Tom Smith