perfidy

Yeah, but over half of the households in the United States are now part of the "Investor Class." This is not exactly all the wealth piled up at the top of the pyramid. And before anyone points out the richest 5% blah blah blah, the fact that there is inequity in incomes and wealth is not the issue. Do we want everyone to make 37,000 a year, or whatever the median income is? It is more important that everyone have the equal opportunity to pursue happiness (or wealth) in their own way, to whatever limits their talents allow. Equality of outcome is incompatible with liberty. If we allow everyone liberty, some will do better than others.

The peoples of the Indian Subcontinent were no doubt happy to see the back of the British Imperial administration. But it was the British trained Indian Civil Service that made that country function beyond the typical third world dog's breakfast that is the normal state of affairs. The British were certainly the most benign of the Imperial powers, and while the subject peoples chafed under imperial rule, the British introduced rule of law, railroads, medicine, education - rather like the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian:

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? XERXES: Brought peace. REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!

The United States, only two years later, experienced a periodic downturn in the economy, which caused a national leader to get the boot. Deficits in the United States also happened, but were soon corrected when the economy had expanded sufficiently. Nevertheless, the economic boom of the nineties in both the US and the UK is the result of the structural reforms instituted by Reagan and Thatcher in the early eighties.

Buckethead wrote that, "Considering the vast expansion of the investor class, ironically one of Marx' dearest hope - that the proletariat would own the means of production, has kind of happened." 

Even though this was an off-hand remark, I'm still going to comment. As I've argued before, the world has changed a great deal since the mid-late nineteenth century. At this point, in the United States, there are very few urban industrial workers involved in manufacturing thanks to globalization, environmental restrictions, the shortsightedness of unions in the 1950s and 1960s, and other factors. Workers, and members of the working class, are now overwhelmingly people involved in the service sector. They are waiters, busboys, pizza deliverers, janitors, auto mechanics, grocery store personnel, etc. They, and educated, therefore technically middle class people, who nonetheless have a low income such as archivists, adjunct professors, and the like, do not have excess capital for investment.

Investors, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly middle and upper income middle and upper class people who, while they work, are involved in white-collar office, financial, business, and other professions. Workers are wage-workers. They don't have salaries. They have no capital for investment, they are not investors, therefore, the workers, overall, do not kind of own the means of production. 

There are and have been manufacturing plants, and some other businesses, that are employee owned, but they are few and far between. They also have a tendency to go under since the white-collar types would sooner buy cheaper goods made in other countries where operating costs are lower due to a lack of minimum wage, fewer, if any, environmental restrictions, etc. Hence, globalization rears its ugly head to defeat employee owned businesses in the United States. But back to the aforementioned workers in the first paragraph, janitors do not own the businesses they clean. Busboys and waitstaff do not own the restaurant. Auto mechanics do not usually own the shop, but are rather employed by it. Therefore, it is not fair to say that the workers even kind of own the means of production. The vast majority of wealth and the means of production that exist, in whatever form, are largely concentrated at the top of the pyramid. Besides, Marx prophesied total worker ownership of the means of production, and society is very far away from that. 

Anti-Irish-Americanism in the Ivory Tower 

In case anyone is interested, I'll explain the presence of anti-Irish-Americanism within American ethnic history. Since the 1960s, with the birth of new social history, American ethnic history became a heavily studied field. As such, Irish Americans have historically been the whipping boy of American ethnic history. For example, Oscar Handlin in Boston's Immigrants painted the Irish as racist, mean-spirited, and money-grubbing. Hasia Diner in "Erin's Daughters in America" painted Irish immigrant women as insane, perpetually drunk, and morally bankrupt. Irish men were painted as drunken wife beaters who often abandoned their families. Noel Ignatiev in "How the Irish Became White," argued that Irish-Americans, get this, entirely and consciously made an effort to become white by hating and mistreating African-Americans. The notion of an entire ethnic group consciously and totally making an effort to do anything is absurd. Did all the Irish in America get together at a caucus and unanimously vote to become white? I'd like to see the minutes of that meeting. The whole whiteness concept is equally absurd, but perhaps that's a post for another time. 

Other historians not even dealing with Irish-American topics nevertheless can't resist taking a swipe at American ethnic history's favorite target. Deborah Dash Moore, in "To the Golden Cities," chronicling primarily Jewish migration from New York to Miami Beach and from Chicago to California, quoted several people who felt they just had to get out of Boston because of Father Coughlin. He lived in Detroit. How was he a threat in Boston? According to Moore, each and every Irish-American in Boston was a raging anti-Semite who worshipped Father Coughlin. Robert Orsi, in "The Madonna of 115th Street," claimed that Irish Americans dominated the Catholic Church and virulently hated Italian Americans for being such bad Catholics. Hence, Irish Americans are evil. By the way, Irish Americans were always virulently conservative in their political views according to many ethnic historians, who argue that conservatism makes them evil. I'm sure Buckethead will enjoy that. But, these historians say, you'll never find, say, a socialist or even an MADL Irish American. They're like Santa Claus. 

But, Mike, you might ask, why aren't the WASPs hated and reviled by American ethnic historians? Simple. When the parents or grandparents of many historians arrived in the United States, they never saw any WASPs. The Irish, however, as previous arrivals, occupied many foreman and floor management positions in industry, and therefore created closer quarters and opportunities for conflict. Many Irish-Americans not of the middle class were also in very close quarters with the new immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

But there's something deeper here. New social historians have glorified and lauded the actions of reformist WASPs, such as Jane Adams, while failing to recognize that those reformists were attempting to forcibly assimilate their grandparents. But the new social historians still just can't get enough of those temperance/abstinence advocating, evangelizing, criticizing progressives. No, no. The progressives were great. Irish Americans, according to the aforementioned and other historians, were more evil than Satan himself. 

Is all this criticism fair? No. Particularly because the strokes are so broad. Of course there are Irish Americans who are racist. But what American ethnic group is utterly devoid of racism right down to every member? Are other groups entirely devoid of anti-Semitism? My mother used to tell me there's good and bad in all kinds. Apparently, other American ethnic historians weren't paying attention when their mother told them that.

Had Thatcher's Tory government made alternate arrangements for workers and miners that would have eased their transition. But they were pretty much just out on the street. It doesn't make much sense to solve high unemployment problems by creating more unemployment. As to Thatcher overhauling Britain and improving its economy, historian Kenneth O. Morgan, in The Oxford History of Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) argues that while Thatcher's policy did introduce some recovery to Britain's economy in the early 1980s, the economy tanked again in the late 1980s after a decade or so of Thatcherism. According to Morgan, 

"Most serious of all [difficulties], the apparent revival in the economy began to lose credibility. The tax-cutting policy of the Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, was now seen to have led to a huge balance of payments deficit, at 20 billion pounds the worst figure on record. Unemployment rose sharply and the pound came under pressure. Worse still, the conquest of inflation, the government's main boast, was now threatened by a consumer-credit and spending boom. Bank rate soared to 15 per cent, and the impact was felt by every mortgaged home-owner in the land" (Morgan 660). 

[Note: I tried to block this appropriately but can't figure out how. Apologies.] 

[ed: fixed it for you!]

Morgan goes on to describe the backbench revolt that removed Thatcher from Tory leadership, partially because of the economic dislocation, partially because her "imperious style of leadership now seemed more of a liability" (Ibid). Thatcher's government saw the same cyclical ebb and flow that affects market economies in general, with some policies reviving elements of the economy, and some policies injuring elements of the economy. But overall it trundled along, up and down, like any other market. Nonetheless, unemployment, particularly for laborers, was a perennial problem during Thatcher's government that she and her cabinet never really sorted out. 

As to the Falklands, given your comments, the inhabitants, the hundred or so sheep on the islands, must have declared themselves subjects of baaaritain. B'dom. Chish! 

While I appreciate your comments on British policy in Ireland, I'm not sure that they, the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Iraqis, black South Africans, the Sudanese, or anyone who had to put up with Cecil Rhodes at some point would agree on their "largely positive impact on history in general." I'm sure you were referring to Britain's representative democracy as example, various contributions in letters, arts, and sciences, and such, which is true. For a small country, they made an indellible mark on the world and offered many positive contributions. But the aforementioned subject peoples were probably glad to remove that mark (work in progress for the north of Ireland), and wish that the British would have made their contributions from home instead of inviting themselves to dine at their tables.

No one's perfect, sure. And you know that despite my anglophilia, I have always said that British policy in Ireland has been reprehensible for 800 straight years. It is the primary exception to Britain's largely positive impact on history in general. It is a black stain, in fact. No British leader, it seems, from the Plantagenets, to Cromwell, to Churchill, to Thatcher can ever think clearly or morally about Ireland. Granted. 

But as for her activities outside Ireland, I must disagree. Britain's economy in the seventies was in even worse shape than in the United States. Industries nationalized by Labor governments after the Second World War were hemorrhaging taxpayer money, unemployment was high, inflation was high, things were generally shitty. The worst offender of the nationalized industries was the coal industry. The government was throwing hundreds of millions of pounds down the hole every year, maintaining mines and pits that could not ever make money. If you owned something that was losing you a third of your income a year, would you want to keep it? Thatcher's government closed unprofitable mills. What any sensible business owner would do. And, they sold off all the other industries - rail, steel, oil, the lot of them. It isn't government's job to run businesses. 

As in the United States, changing economies meant that some industries would be harder hit than others. Like the steel workers in Pittsburgh, the mine workers in England lost their jobs. But, it is not the government's responsibility to maintain unprofitable mines at the cost of the rest of the nation. If you lose your job, get another one. It happens to most people. You don't have a god given right to a job in the pits, or at the foundry. If the government provides unemployment benefits, and maybe some job training, that is appropriate. But it is not obligated to pay them to do a useless job. 

The mine unions violently opposed this plan - understandably, perhaps. Organized labor is far less important or needful today, or twenty years ago, than it was a hundred years ago. In our country, the federal workers' and teacher's unions are far more powerful than they should be. 

Dislocation happens to economies. Sometimes some bits get hit harder than others. But in a healthy system, like ours or Britain's, new things come along. Over the last twenty years, we have developed several whole new industries that didn't even exist in 1980. There are more jobs now than before. Unemployment has been very low in this country for most of the last two decades, thanks largely to the efforts of Reagan, and the British economy has been strong, thanks to Thatcher. While the mine workers lost their jobs, the rest of the economy benefited enormously, and in time, the unemployed mine workers joined the rest of the economy. 

On the war angle, if Hawaii was invaded, I think we'd take it back. The Argentineans invaded the Mavinas to detract from the baleful effects of their socialistic economic program. The inhabitants of the Falklands were British, and didn't want to be Argentine. The British went to war only after Argentina invaded - they did not provoke that war, as you imply. (Granted, she did use the big win for political purposes, but that was after the fact.) 

Further, the Soviets were a threat. And Cold War strategy was rather more complicated than you state it. Deterrence may have prevented a full nuclear exchange - but it almost didn't on at least two occasions. But the reason that we formed NATO, and had our troops right on the line, was so that any attack on Western Europe would be considered an attack on us. The reason for that was that if the Soviets, with their advantage in conventional weaponry in the fifties, sixties and seventies, had invaded, we would have lost. And losing Europe to communism would have meant that North America would be pretty much all that was left of the free world. From that position, it would be harder and harder for the United States to fight off the Soviet Union. That would be bad. Our nuclear arsenal kept that at bay. Also, building lots of nukes assured that he Soviets would not try a sneak attack - they were much more sanguine at the thought of losing a few million citizens, and might consider the losses if they could take us out completely. 

By finally driving the stake into the heart of Communism, Reagan and Thatcher removed that threat. Now, millions who lived under totalitarian communist regimes are now free, and some are even becoming prosperous. 

I don't know about the poll tax. I'll look into it. 

No leader or nation, is perfect - but I don't know that Roosevelt did a great deal to limit freedom in this country (though I could lose my membership in the vast right wing conspiracy for saying that.) Or Churchill either. The internment of the Japanese was wrong, certainly, as were the other things. But he did not leave this country substantially less free than when he found it. And some of those problems were solved later. The British lost much more of their freedom under Atlee than Churchill. Reagan did nothing that I can think of that reduced anyone's liberty in this country. Pissed people off, sure, but not limit their freedom. 

Defeating the Soviet Union and Communism was at least as important as defeating Germany and Nazism. The ones who finally managed it deserve credit for achieving it.

Steve, I'm going to quibble with your statement that Reagan, Thatcher, Roosevelt, and Churchill were superhero defenders of freedom. Emphasis on the hero with Thatcher if you know what I mean. Roosevelt and his administration I'll grant you conditionally, aside from racism in the New Deal, ignoring the Holocaust, denying European Jews access to the United States, Executive Order 9066 that interned Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, etc. But he qualifies as a defender of freedom in that he led the United States through most of the second World War and did a lot to bring down Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Mistakes were made, but challenges also met. 

I could say much the same about Churchill. His actions while in the Imperial office, unleashing the Black and Tans on Ireland, and in negotiating the 1921 Treaty with Ireland significantly limited the freedom of subject peoples. But for two years, he and Britain stood alone against Germany. Like Roosevelt in the U.S., he led Britain through the second World War and also did a lot to bring down Nazi Germany. 

I'll leave alone the Reagan issue, and will offer to agree to disagree on that score. On Thatcher, however, I will make a few remarks. Thatcher did a great deal to limit the freedom of British workers and engaged in the most brutal campaign against Catholics in the north of Ireland since her Tory predecessor Edward Heath's government sanctioned the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. Under Thatcher and her own orders, rather than permitting the Blanketmen to wear their own clothes with prisoner of war status, many of the Blanketmen starved to death. In other words, Thatcher preferred that northern Irish Catholic insurgent prisoners starve rather than allowing them to wear civilian clothes. 

Thatcher refused to negotiate with anyone. She would not negotiate with Irish insurgents, she would not negotiate with striking workers. She responded to strikes by closing factories and collieries, and putting thousands of British workers out on the street. She and her administration virtually liquidated the TUC, the cornerstone of British organized labor. She went to war with Argentina over the Falkland islands, a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica, in an archaic colonial war specifically designed to drum up reactionary patriotism. Thus, Thatcher beat up sixth graders as an adult. In the last year of her administration, Thatcher introduced a poll tax. Poll taxes are a tremendous limitation on freedom. 

As to preserving the freedom of America by winning the Cold War, at what point could the Soviets have conquered the United States? The strategy was they nuke us, then we nuke them, and it's all over. Cold War brinksmanship could have gotten us all killed. And I haven't admitted that Reagan and Thatcher won the Cold War. I still adhere to my thesis that the Soviets simply couldn't maintain the House that Stalin built and I'm not convinced that it was because they got into a spending arms race with the U.S. But we've had this discussion before, and it will remain forever unresolved and disagreed upon between you and I. 

That aside, the above League of Superheros members Churchill and Roosevelt did lead the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and Reagan and Thatcher won the Cold War, according to you, not me, but all of them did a great deal to limit the freedom of their own and subject peoples in various ways.

Let's talk about why that was a good thing. BFD, you say? The two stage world war defined the first half of the twentieth century, and the cold war defined the second. On that basis alone, winning that schoolyard fight must be a big fucking deal. And the people that won it should get medals - because they won it, people like us aren't in gulags. And Mike, you would probably be in their ahead of me, because the communists always purged heretics before they purged the infidel. 

The Cold War was a ideological contest between, not to put to fine a point on it, freedom / goodness / light and enslavement / evil / darkness. On any given Sunday, the Communist empire was every bit as evil as the Nazi one, but it lasted for seven times as long, and killed at least three times as many people. If we had rolled over for the Soviets, or allowed ourselves to become like them, we would not be living in our peachy keen, if imperfect, republic of liberty. Secret police, reeducation camps, show trials, total state control of every aspect of your life: this is what we avoided. And Reagan and Thatcher, by resisting it, and calling it what it was, (and by shoveling money into the fire faster than the Russkies could ever dream of hoping to do) drove the beast over the cliff. Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents, told of the way that the Evil Empire speech heartened them in their resistance to the Soviet state. 

I know you don't like Churchill, either, Mike; but Churchill and Roosevelt, Reagan and Thatcher were the four greatest defenders of liberty and the free world of the last century. 
 

Why else are we doing what we do here? 

A Canadian commentator, David Warren, makes a valid point here. Especially this:

It is the American way to stress optimism, and to be extremely empirical. They learn by doing, and did not have much experience governing demolished Arab countries. They make ghastly mistakes, and as often as not, turn around and fix them. They have, if I may make one of those generalizations about national character that aren't all the rage, a national disinclination to panic. The media are delegated to do the panicking on their behalf, the American people are fairly hard to scare.

While carping about mistakes is valuable, in that it calls attention to them; the real important thing is that they get fixed. We are making the attempt to fix things, and the constant whining of "blood for oil" and other canards is truly off base. If you judge a nation by its enemies, we are doing pretty well. 
 

If any of our six readers don't already do so, go check out I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts. He pays attention to international news, and I don't. Great story up about the possible non-rescue of Jessica Lynch, another about North Korea and nukes, and a third about the EU, the UK, and the value of the $. He's a smart one and reads the things I don't read. 

[update] I am going to go out on a limb here. Bad Thoughts has a story up about how Britain will have to give up universal health care if it wants to fully join the EU, or risk breaking the EU's bank to pay for said care. I don't get it-- in the EU's charter, is there no provision for member states to allocate funds locally? I know that Europe has a mania for central control, but that is just bad policy if I understand correctly. Any input from people who actually know something about this?? 
 

An Orthodox Marxist would not necessarily have to hate the United States, but probably would, as the United States is a capitalist nation with a class structure. An Orthodox Marxist would have to advocate the overthrow not just of the United States government and economy, but all governments and capitalist economies throughout the entire world. As I've said before, it's about global class war and revolution. The Vanguard of the Proletariat in America would be responsible for the overthrow of the U.S., but if they're serious about their aims they would have to immediately encourage and coordinate revolutions elsewhere to fulfill the prophecy, and a la the efforts of the Comintern under Leon Trotsky.

Clayton Cramer is blogging a good series on how to manage your personal finances, based on his experiences. Now, I'm no financial wizard. My net worth right now is equivalent to a Zagnut and a cup of diner coffee. But, since I now am also responsible for Goodwife Two-Cents, and hope someday to be responsible for Increase Two-Cents, Mercy Two-Cents, and Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith Two-Cents, I need to get my Little Commonweal in order. As far as I can see, Cramer's series is full of practical advice and simple explanations of concepts that might help me do that. Good for me, as I have the internet attention span of a five-year-old.

The series parts are here, here, here, and in four more places that are linked from part III, so I shan't belabor the point. Besides, it's Friday afternoon and I need to get home so I can go to Target in our shitheap Pontiac. There's a section in the Cramer guide called "Cars: The Monkey On Your Budget Back." It really spoke to me, like the Beatles spoke to Charles Manson. Except not as murdery.

For several months, some of my compatriots have been kicking around a discussion on ethnic problems in France. Bad Thoughts, who has actually spent time in France, and is an actual historian of French history and therefore knows many things I don't about the field, had some interesting insights. Follow the link and scroll down. He's a thoughtful and unique thinker anyway. 

Namely, he argues that France's foreign policy toward the Middle East is shaped by how the government thinks the large Muslim population would react. Fair enough. He also provides evidence for a parallel argument, that US foreign policy toward Africa is shaped by how the government thinks the African-American population would act. 

Excerpt: 

There is an article that has been making the rounds for several months that attempts to explain the degeneration (yes, that is the appropriate word) of the French nation by pointing out its problems with North African immigrants. In a nutshell, it explains that these immigrants are a major source of social problems in France that the government has no ability to solve. Instead, the government concedes. Whole neighborhoods go without proper policing, and law and order are effectively nullified. This reality extends into foreign policy, where the Quai d'Orsay cannot make moves that would anger the Muslim population of France. 

As I pointed out in my original response, this is hardly unique to France. The United States has been saddled with a racial problem that it has been unwilling to solve for several decades. There has been little help for the black America, whole sections of cities are under-policed as priorities are still shifting to protect property rather than to deal with crime, people are concentrating themselves in gated communities to keep out (racially-based) crime, and a major income gap is developing between whites and blacks.

This is an interesting point, but this section of the argument has a couple problems that don't necessarily affect the rest. Mainly, I think comparing France to the US on this issue doesn't quite work for three reasons. 

First among these is although the US has had a racial problem for several centuries, I'm not sure that the policing problem is endemic - that is, that across the board the emphasis has shifted to policing the property of the rich at the expense of entire minority neighborhoods. It undeniably happens, in California most notably. But this trend is balanced by efforts in other major cities to return policing to the neighborhood level. This brings up another struggle between competing philosophies of social order, that I have no expertise in whatsoever, so I shall digress. 

Second, the income gap that is developing so quickly in France has existed since the beginning in the USA. Obviously, I'm not saying this is a good thing! But, it hurts more acutely when the gap first opens than when it's been there a while. Therefore my sense is that the rapidly growing inequality in France is more dangerous to public order than the entrenched inequality in the USA. 

The third major difference between French racial troubles and US racial troubles is the question of dual allegiances. African-American families can generally trace their lineage in the US back for many generations. Now, the legacy of slavery and the reconstruction of a shared African past that has resulted in the African Consciousness movement does give the African American community as a whole an identity apart from others in the US. But despite that, most African-Americans were born here, are US citizens, and carry within them an ideal United States that, though it may be wildly different from the reality they see around them, is still a United States that includes them. They are Americans. Partly this is the result of time. But it is also the result of 150 years of concerted efforts to mend the abuses wrought by slavery. 

France, on the other hand, has yet to adequately address the needs of their immigrant population. The current tensions (please correct me if I'm wrong) arose fairly recently when enclaves of Islamic immigrants collect in council estates, and remained there without jobs to apply for and without mechanisms for integrating into the larger fabric of French culture. As a result, these immigrant populations remain closely identified with their enclave rather than with France as a whole. They self-identify as Muslims and as Pakistanis (for example). 

This situation is deepened by a high crime rate, organized youth gangs, massive unemployment, and the policing tactics in these areas used by the French authorities. Ultimately, rather than being/becoming French citizens with a sense of ownership in the place where they live, they identify themselves as strangers in a strange land. In this day and age, a population of highly dissatisfied and alienated young male Muslims with strong ties to the nations from which they came is a worrying proposition. It is not merely a domestic issue but a potentially international problem as well, and one that the French approach is not currently solving. Not that the USA could necessarily do any better, but France is having a bit of a rough go, there. 

It does seem that France is reluctant to act in the Middle East due to these internal pressures. I'm not sure the same is true for the US and Africa - I'm going to have to look into this further. 

I would argue that major US involvement in Africa is guided less by what various administrations think it will do for their political prospects among black voters, and more by when there's huge political capital to be gained among all voters. That is, Bad Thoughts is arguing a positive correlation between pleasing black voters and not libervading African nations, and I am arguing a positive correlation between pleasing all voters and not libervading African nations. I can't remember the last time I heard a policy speech about Africa. It's not in too many peoples' consciousnesses, and the first step toward building approval for a military action is to start cultivating outrage. 

I notice that I'm wandering into all kinds of thickets I don't have maps to, so I'm going to leave it for now and return to my usual bitching about free speech and privacy rights. And rock music. Rock music is good.

There have been some articles floating around lately announcing that the French are in serious trouble. (Loyal reader #00008, Aziz Poonawalla has a list of them here.) Some of this may be wish fulfillment, seeing as how we all want the perfidious French to suffer for their weasely backstabbing. But there are some indications that the French do have some serious problems.

However, all of that segues into the other thing I wanted to write, about the upcoming EU constitution. So it will all wait for tomorrow, because I have to go to an Red Cross Infant First Aid and CPR class. Ciao til tomorra.

For Lloyd George not counting, read the previous sentence. Then read the Lloyd George sentence. It will all make sense. Not all Welshman are bastards. Little disclaimer. 

Bear in mind that the little excerpt from my journal was not edited, except for two words. It's a random thoughts thing. But I'll explain. Churchill made things worse prior to the actual Treaty negotiations because he was responsible for deploying the Black and Tans in Ireland. He made things worse during the Treaty negotiations by strong-arming Collins and Griffith, constantly using threats of force. The Civil War to which I refer is the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, between pro and anti-Treaty factions. Churchill, Lloyd George, Birkenhead, Chamberlain, the lot of them, made things worse with partition because a 32 County Ireland, with Free State as opposed to fully independent Republic status, probably would have seen only the Civil War of 1922-3. The hook comes with the Troubles. No partition, no Troubles. Best case scenario was a 32 county fully independent Republic. No Civil War, no Troubles either. But Churchill, et al wouldn't hear of it. 

Some would argue, but the Loyalist community in the north would have complained and, blah blah blah blah. It was complicated. We don't what might have happened. We only know what did happen. Partition made the Troubles. Churchill helped make partition, but one in a long line beginning with Henry VIII, as far as the north is concerned. 

So yeah. I hate Cromwell too. James VI and I, for that matter, plantations and all. Elizabeth I? Oh yeah. Constant campaigns in Ireland under her. They're like presidents. They all kinda suck somehow. 

Here is an excerpt from my journal, containing some of my thoughts on greatness and infamy. I wrote this about a year ago. 

I have devoted some thought to greatness, and what it is that makes someone great. I believe the first category of greatness is someone who leaves the world a better place than it was before their arrival and activities. Infamy, in contrast, is achieved when someone leaves the world in a worse position than it was before. Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Heinrich Himmler are just a few political and military examples of infamy, in my opinion. I doubt, however, that Hitler, Himmler, Pinochet, and Stalin would generate much dissent from other voices. But what about greatness? Can greatness be tainted with infamy? Is there no clear good and evil at all? I would think that Himmler, Hitler, and Stalin were the face of evil without any redeeming characteristics whatever.

But sticking with twentieth century political examples, the great have a taint of infamy. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill have long been considered by some historians to be untouchable pillars of greatness. But Roosevelt was a racist who saved capitalism in the United States rather than overseeing its transition to a socially responsible welfare state. He fooled around on his wife too, but shit, most people do that, it's just normal. Roosevelt's greatness lies in his stewardship of the United States in its most dire economic times, and preventing a complete collapse and catastrophe. In addition his administration saw the United States mostly through the second World War and US assistance in the destruction of the aforementioned face of evil in Germany. His infamy does lie in racism and prejudice, for example the internment of Japanese American citizens under Executive Order 9066, as well as the racism inherent in several New Deal programs. His infamy also lies in his role as the savior of American capitalism, and not taking the New Deal far enough to the left. He is great for what he did. He is infamous both for what he did and what he did not. 

Churchill, don't get me started. He and Lord Birkenhead did more to condemn Ireland to partition and civil war than any other English bastard. Lloyd George was Welsh, he doesn't count. He did more to condemn Ireland to partition and civil war than any other Welsh bastard. Churchill was a wanton imperialist, a member of the Conservative party, and a fat fuck. But his infamy was balanced with greatness. Perhaps were it not for Churchill and the English people of World War II, this journal would be written in German and there would be only praise for Hitler and Himmler. A bit far fetched I agree, since the US was conventionally unconquerable in all likelihood, but the world would be a different and much worse place were it not for Churchill the fat English bastard. His greatness lies in keeping the world from getting worse, his infamy in making Ireland worse than it could have been. A 32 county republic would also have resulted in a civil war, but then so did partition. Consider the Troubles initiated in 1972, and the fact that they have yet to end entirely. 

But to move from political to social greatness and keeping with the twentieth century, an era of which I am fond, there are examples. The ordinary men in extraordinary times in the United States Army, Navy, and Marines who fought World War II achieved greatness in that they kept the world from getting worse. The Soviet people, the bulwark of resistance to German imperialism sacrificed their lives in the millions, but I would rather glorify their actions than their unnecessary deaths, because there simply is no glory in death. The English have already been mentioned, though I should add the British, northern Irish, and the Irish who crossed the border to serve in the English military to defeat the greater evil. 

But social greatness, of course, is not always so big. A few days ago I saw a program on the Animal Planet network that described a young girl's campaign to outfit the K-9 units of her suburban police department with kevlar jackets. She collected enough money to get a vest for each and every dog on the force, something like six. This could conceivably save the lives of those dogs serving on the force. Few people outside of her suburb who don't watch Animal Planet know this, and I confess that I cannot remember her name, but she is great. That's it. It goes without saying, so of course I'll say it, that greatness and infamy are highly subjective. Many seem to have a little of both.

But it doesn't even sound good on paper. Dictatorship of the proletariat? It seems to be all about resentment; resentment of those who have stuff, resentment of those who have better fashion sense, whatever. And while religious religions like Christianity and Islam and Buddhism keep the promised land safely in the afterlife, Marxism and its heretical splinters make promises here on Earth, promises that have been proven false over and over again. If you're going to have a secular religion, I might humbly offer the American dream, and the adoration of the republic that used to be common hereabouts. 

While the American Dream(tm) is not always, everywhere perfectly realized, the reality of American life gets closer to the dream as time goes by, rather than further away. The idea that anyone, red, brown, black, white yellow, plaid or purple-polka-dotted can come here, accept a few basic concepts, and make good is basically a real offer. All you have to do is not try to kill your neighbors because they don't talk like you, work hard, apply some initative and *poof* you've got the American dream - however you define it. If that is a house in the suburbs, 2.4 kids, a dog, a cat and a convertible; great. If it's a compound in the Idaho mountains, just apply concept #1, above, and you're still fine. If the American dream is living a bohemian lifestyle in a city condemning the soceity that makes it possible for you to be a bohemian in the city condemning it, that's fine too. This secular religion gives you the liberty to do that, and the liberty to screw up, but it doesn't kill you, throw your family in a gulag, force your grandma to work on a collectivized farm, and in general erase history, lie, terrorize and poster the entire nation with poorly drawn portraits of the great leader. 
 

"Don't try and frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Marx. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the worker's revolution, or given you clairvoyance enough to predict the end of the Bourgeoisie..."

See, the thing about Marxism, is it sounds so darned good on paper. If I may make an unweildy and inappropriate analogy, expecting a revolution of the proletariat is like expecting frogs to grow wings. I'm going to go out on a limb here are argue that there are fundamentally irreducible aspects of human nature.

• People are greedy and self-interested. Examples to the contrary, such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and myself, are notable by their rarity.
• People like to have stuff. Not having stuff means that one bad winter could wipe you and your family out.
• Corollary: many people enjoy power, and taking other people's stuff.

Given these factors, and given that, as Mike ably points out, any state which does not wither away is not a Marxist state, Marxism is impossible. It makes unreasonable assumptions about human nature, logistics, and the weight of social tradition, and by its own internal paradoxes makes its own fulfillment impossible. 

Final note: Marxism is indeed like a religion, not least because it provides a higher cause by which people may commit both petty and hideous crimes with a clear conscious.

Nazis and such 

I don't know crap about the recent history of the middle east, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the wrasslin' match between youse two. 

On measurement 

Buckethead, One Standard Den Beste is a daily measure! 

On terrorism, WMD's, and other crapola 

Weapons of Mass Destruction, as they undoubtedly exist in Iraq (or hidden in Syria, or whatever), are not of themselves the single justification for the libervasion of Iraq. They are however the political BFG 10K (remember Doom?) that would put egg on the face of naysayers in the international community. That is a secondary goal, but could help in mending fences and rebuilding concensus. This would help the campaign to root out terrorism. Like Mike, I also haven't heard compelling evidence that Iraq was providing systematic support to al Qaeda or other international terrorists. So... is Iraq part of the War on Terror? 

By the way, I understand full well that my position on Iraq requires that I accept some paradoxes of my own. I've been thinking about this for months now and I'm no closer to resolving them. If I may, I would like to make another howlingly bad analogy to describe my sentiments about the US in Iraq, and the War On Terror in general: It's like being in the backseat of a car going 100mph down Storrow Drive (Storrow Motor Speedway) in Boston: Sheer panic punctuated by moments of mortal terror, combined with great exhilaration and a continued sense of wonder that you haven't crashed and burned yet. 

Is Syria next? Well, they are a terrorist-supporting state. QED. Should Syria be next? Hell, I don't know. What do I look like, its biographer? 

Saudi Arabia 

As for Saudi Arabia, I would strongly recommend you both read the cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly (not online). It describes how the Saudis are doing EXACTLY what the US wants, and paying a hefty fine. That's not to argue that they are angels (quite the contrary), but that by being in the oil business, by being ostentatiously wealthy and western, and by not actually ruling their own country as much as presiding over the oil business alone, they are digging their own graves by alienating ordinary Saudi citizens. The money paid to al Qaeda can best be described as protection money-- $25 million ensures that this year, there will be no assassinations of Saudi royalty by al Qaeda operatives. At the same time, the wealth, ostentation, and Western focus of the royal family rightly earns the enimity of the Saudi on the street, who live under the heel of poverty and harsh clerical oversight in plain sight of their riches. Is it any wonder regular Saudis resent the US's influence when all they can see is our President making good buddies with the same people who keep them miserable? 

Hence, the Saudi royals, who are not generally nice people to begin with, are in an increasingly perilous position. Based on the article, it's pretty much only with our support and our huge oil need that they remain in power. The situation is incredibly convoluted, but it's at least partly of the US's making. 

It's kind of like the Civil War. Slavery was the big issue, along with states' rights (on many tongues, a shibboleth for slavery), as well as lesser and more contested causes such as economic philosophies and cultural differences. These problems needed to be hashed out, and the War Betwixt The States did that. But let's not forget that war over sectional issues, most of them slavery-based, probably would never have come to pass had the seeds of the Civil War not been written into the Constitution as compromises, thereby sweeping the relevant issues under the rug until there was no peacable solution in sight. Perhaps with Saudi Arabia, it's currently 1786, and we can bring these issues into the light of day before resorting to war. Or, perhaps it's 1859. Only time will tell.

Wright College is currently on Spring Break, so I might be rather prolific on the postings this week. 

The Marxist Conundrum 

I'll offer a few points of clarification, as I'm more than happy to answer your questions in this regard. First, the religious imagery is not unintended. Marxism, as part prophecy, is a form of religion. It has a prophet, its own dogma, and its own scripture. Marxism bears a close resemblance to religious philosophy. It is, in many ways, a political and economic religion. Strange, given that according to Marx himself, religion is the opiate of the masses. But he meant Christianity, really.

I'm sure the environmentalists you worked with either were Communists or considered themselves such, depending on how you look at it. But like some faux Communists in power, they deviated from the scripture in a way that negates their self-definition. As Marx argued that nature existed to be dominated by man, and as the environmentalists you worked with either ignored or broke with that belief, their self-definition becomes dodgy. At best, those environmentalists represent a serious schismatic deviation. Did these folks with whom you worked ever discuss the inconsistency between environmentalism and Marxist doctrine? Or did they just carry around the Manifesto without actually reading it? Of course, the Manifesto is not the be-all, end-all. It's the equivalent of the book of Genesis. 

As to those in power, I do not dismiss people from the definition of Communist simply because they were in power and killed people. Trotsky held power for some time, and his ruthless suppression of the Krondstadt Rebellion certainly qualifies as a slaughter. But Trotsky continued to work toward global revolution and advocated the withering away of the state, whereas Stalin said one state is good enough and the state should be increased, not withered away. Lenin is highly debatable, what with NEP and the Cheka and all. 

My point, and I can't emphasize this enough, is that Communism only occurs with a global revolution and the withering away of the state. Anything less is short of the mark. I submit that there is no such thing as a Communist government. State governments are bourgeois institutions, like marriage, nationalism, and currency. There wasn't supposed to be a government because Communists were supposed to get rid of bourgeois institutions, including and especially individual state governments. The Vanguard of the Proletariat was only supposed to tend the ship while simultaneously reducing the role of the state in favor of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Part of the problem with Marxist doctrine and dogma is that the Vanguard of the Proletariat is supposed to seize power from the bourgeoisies and then do their best to get rid of it. That like many, if not all, aspects of Marxist doctrine, run counter to human nature. People in power hold on to power, not give it up, as Marx prophesied. I understand that as a devotee of political science, it might be difficult to accept. But state governments are bourgeois, and irrelevant. Marx prophesied that state governments had to fall. There is no such thing as a Communist state government. It's all about class. 

So it might be splitting hairs as far as you're concerned, but anyone who leads a state government cannot be a true Marxist or Communist. Stalin et al were Totalitarians, not Communists. Stalin looked an awful lot like the Czar, and Mao looked an awful lot like the Emperor. I would even quibble with calling them Socialists. 

As to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, it wasn't intended as a dictatorship in the repressive Totalitarian sense. The idea was that everyone would have a hand in societal decision making, essentially dictating what occurred, instead of just a small handful of wealthy elites. 

Fox News 

No, it's not just because of their slant. When I compare what Fox News says versus other broadcast sources, Fox frequently turns out to be wrong. 

Ba'ath Party 

Sorry, I'm still not convinced. I'm going to do some research and then I'll get back to you. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I want to really investigate this thoroughly with historical methodology and historical secondary sources as opposed to journalism. Thanks for providing the article link. I'll mention here, though, that complaints I hear about liberal media (in the modern American sense of liberal) and the domination of liberal media don't stand up to news sources like that one, Fox News, Scripps Howard, the National Review, etc. Seems to me there's plenty of not liberal media. 

Weapons and Camps 

Like I said, the one in the north of Iraq wasn't in territory that Hussein controlled. The camp south of Baghdad still yields no evidence that it's specifically al Qaeda. Maybe terrorist, but not necessarily al Qaeda. The Gwynne Roberts article does indicate connections, but I'll want more corroboration. Possible chemical weapons stores are not actual chemical weapons stores. At this point, I wouldn't believe it anyway. I'd think that the Americans just planted it like a cop throwing a baggie of crack into a car trunk. I'm very suspicious. It's easy to lie, even in print or on TV. I want to hear it from NPR, CNN, Reuters, and the AP before I accept it.