Prepping for Titanic's 100th anniversary

The 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic is coming up in only six short months. James Cameron's 1999 box office panjandrum of the ship will be re-released on April 6 in 3D.

But sorry, this all seems kind of sappy to me.

Broadcaster's career from Pearl Harbor to 9-11

City, County and Congressional Leaders to Honor Luther Masingill for 70 Years in Broadcasting | WDEF News 12

Luther Masingill of Chattanooga, Tenn., has been broadcasting for WDEF since 1940.

Luther holds the record for being on the air at the same station for over 70 years and is believed to be the only announcer to have reported over-the-air both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attacks of 9/11.

Amazing.

HT: Michael Silence.

And just why is he named "Steve?"

Okay, it's time for a trivia contest: Why is this joke funny? This appeared on the WSJ's "Best of the Web Today" page today.

This is very subtle humor that took (even) me a moment to get. Really very clever! Can you make the connection here? Take a guess as a comment, please read commenting rules.

Homily for Sept. 11, 2011

My homily this morning was entitled, "Where is the cross in violence?" You may read it on Scribd here.

The photo above was taken by James Nachtwey. Another frame of this scene plus many other never-before-published photos he took on that day, are well worth clicking to.

A 9/11 Memorial Video Reflection

Best viewed full screen.

No brown M&Ms allowed!

In the 1980s, the rock group Van Halen endured media mockery for specifying in their contracts that the venue would provide the band with a large bowl of M&M candies backstage on concert, but with absolutely no brown M&M's allowed.

But there was a reason, and a very good one. Brian J. Noggle explains:

The staff at venues in large cities were used to technically-complex shows like Van Halen’s. The band played in venues like New York’s Madison Square Garden or Atlanta’s The Omni without incident. But the band kept noticing errors (sometimes significant errors) in the stage setup in smaller cities. The band needed a way to know that their contract had been read fully. And this is where the “no brown M&Ms” came in. The band put a clause smack dab in the middle of the technical jargon of other riders: “Article 126: There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation”. That way, the band could simply enter the arena and look for a bowl of M&Ms in the backstage area. No brown M&Ms? Someone read the contract fully, so there were probably no major mistakes with the equipment. A bowl of M&Ms with the brown candies? No bowl of M&Ms at all? Stop everyone and check every single thing, because someone didn’t bother to read the contract.

What has this to do with back-to-school shopping? It's a test!

Is GOP setting us up for 1937 replay?

The Great Depression began in 1929 and continued through most of 1941. By 1937, production, profits and wages had returned to 1929 levels, but unemployment remained high at more than 14 percent, though this was a considerable improvement over the 25 percent level seen in 1933.

In mid-1937, things went seriously south. From then through most of 1938, production declined sharply and unemployment rocketed to 19 percent. Wikipedia says,

The Recession of 1937–1938 was a temporary reversal of the pre-war 1933 to 1941 economic recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Economists disagree about the causes of this downturn. Keynesian economists tend to assign blame to cuts in Federal spending and increases in taxes at the insistence of the US Treasury, while monetarists, most notably Milton Friedman tended to assign blame to the Federal Reserve's tightening of the money supply in 1936 and 1937.

Comes now one Cullen Roche of "Pragmatic Capitalism," who says that the GOP's economic recovery plan will lead to a repeat of 1937. See what you think.



Who is right? I am reminded of Harry Truman's desire to meet a one-armed economist who could never say, "On the other hand . . ."

The awful stakes of D-Day

The alternate history of June 6, 1944 is too terrible to contemplate

There are few days in history that continue to capture the imagination and fascination of Americans the way June 6, 1944 does. Perhaps the day's only close rival is the day President Kennedy was shot.

There is an old preacher story, so old it is a cliche of bad sermons now, that goes like this: An angel awoke who had slept through the first two centuries after Jesus had gone down to earth and ascended back to heaven. The angel went to the Lord and asked, “Where did you go?”

Jesus replied, “I've been down on earth.”

The angel asked, "How did it go?"

Jesus said, "They crucified me."

The angel protested, "You must have had a wide influence."

Jesus said, "I had twelve followers, and one betrayed me to my death."

The angel asked, "What will become of your work?"

Jesus said, "I left it in the hands of my friends."

"And if they fail?" asked the angel.

Jesus said, "I have no other plans."

That punchline, I think, is why D-Day remains so compelling. The specter of defeat on June 6, 1944 was overwhelmingly dreadful. The Allies had no other plans. There was no Plan B in case the landings were repulsed.

There are many "pivot" days in human history, when the course of human events swung in a new direction because of discrete actions. It is hard to find another moment in all history when so much rested on an outcome of one day as rested on the success of the Allies' landings on Normandy.

Read the entire post here.

Remembrance and honor

Fairview Tennessee, Hudgins Cemetery

An Anti-Israel President - WSJ.com

Stephens: An Anti-Israel President - WSJ.com

The WSJ's Bret Stephens points out that President Obama's plan for Israel and the Palestinians pretty much ensures another war if it is carried out even approximately.

Obama's insistence that the "pre-1967 borders" must be the starting point for boundary agreements between Israel and the presumptively-coming Palestinian state is simple verbal legedermain. In fact, he so misrepresents the facts that he must purposely be doing so. Not even this president can unintentionally make such a fundamental error.

And that error is: there is not, and never has been, any such thing as "pre-1967 borders." There are no borders between Israel and any of the neighboring countries or territories. (There are independent agreements between Israel and Egypt and Jordan on the territorial demarcation line between them, but as I understand, these lines do not constitute "borders" as the term is used in international law, and do not correspond to the pre-1967 lines anyway.)

What the president referred to as "pre-1967 borders" actually date to 1949 and the end of Israel's war for independence (well, existence). And those lines were, and remain, nothing but the cease-fire line agreed to by Israel and the Arab countries attempting to destroy it aborning. Some of you may remember when the eastern line was called the Green Line - so named because it was drawn on the map with a green pencil.

But cease-fire lines were all the lines were. To call them borders is simply ludicrous. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointedly told President Obama, those lines are "indefensible." They would leave Israel less than 10 miles wide at one point and would return the Golan Heights in the northeast back to Syria. However, the Heights are the key militarily significant terrain for all of Israel - and for Syria if it wants to attack Israel again. That's why Israel made sure it captured them in 1967 and why Israel will never return them to Syria.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It bears repeating that the United Nations resolution establishing Israel in 1948 also established a nation for Arabs in Israel who did not want to live in the Jewish state, although none would be required to displace. (It also bears repeating that Jews were already living in the land. In fact, Jews have lived there continuously since about 1200 bce.) The Arab states completely rejected all of the UN's plan and promptly attacked the Jewish rump state. Unable to prevail, they agreed in 1949 to cease military operations across the cease-fire lines that Obama dishonestly calls "borders."

What happened in June 1967 was that Syria, Jordan and Egypt, in coordination, planned and massed to attack Israel. Israel was too weak to defend - Egypt alone had more than twice as many jet planes as Israel - so it had only one choice, preemptively attack them first. This it did, beating being attacked by probably mere hours.

Fighting against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the latter's forces augmented by an Iraqi division and warplanes, Israel destroyed their air forces on the first day. Land campaigns against the Arab forces followed. At the end of six days, Israel had crushed the Egyptian army, seized Gaza and the Sinai peninsula, thrown Syria out of the Golan Heights and had captured the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

Under terms worked out with Egypt at Camp David, sponsored by the Carter administration, Israel returned all of Sinai to Egypt while retaining administrative control of Gaza. Gaza was vacated by Israel lock, stock and barrel under the government of PM Ari Sharon in 2005. Israel presently retains possession of the Golan Heights and much of the West Bank.

I Strongly recommend Ruth Lautt's excellent and relevant essay, "The Church’s Witness on Issues in the Arab/Israeli Conflict."

Highlights of PM Netanyahu's address to the Congress today:

3,500 year-old Egyptian princess had clogged arteries

Egyptian princess from 3,500 years ago had clogged arteries proving heart disease is not a modern condition | Mail Online

My gosh, I would think that anyone 3,500 years old would have clogged arteries! Bet her teeth were rotted, too!

Update: Great minds think alike!

Admiral Yamamoto and the Justification of Targeted Killing

The Volokh Conspiracy » Admiral Yamamoto and the Justification of Targeted Killing

Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s School of Law, echoed Greenberg’s argument that “targeting individual enemy combatants in war is perfectly legal and moral”.

Somin points at US targeting of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese fleet during World War II, and the British and the Czechs’ killing of German SS General Reinhard Heydrick [sic] in 1942, as precedents.

“Surely international law does not give terrorist leaders greater protection than that enjoyed by uniformed soldiers such as Admiral Yamamoto.”

“And if it is legal to individually target the commander of a uniformed military force, it is surely equally legal to target the leader of a terrorist organisation, including Osama bin Laden,” he told Al Jazeera.

I made the same point commenting on another Volokh post by Kenneth Anderson on May 6.

By any standard, OBL was commanding officer of al Qaeda. Why was it okay for the president to order the assassination of Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto in 1943, but not of Osama bin laden in 2011? Is it just that Yamamoto wore a uniform and OBL did not?

Related to the claims, such as the UN's, that the bin Laden raid was of dubious legality if not outright illegality, just consider that the SEALs' could not be less legal than a domestic no-knock raid. These are frequently lethal.

Dressed in black and carrying assault rifles, members of a local multi-jurisdiction police unit burst into a dark home in Ogden, Utah, one night in September shouting, "Police! Search warrant!" ...

A video of the incident made by the Weber-Morgan counties Narcotics Strike Force and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency shows a man suddenly appearing in a hallway holding a shiny object that an officer thought was a sword, but was really a golf club, according to Weber County Attorney Dee Smith.
In the instant he appeared, the video shows, three shots rang out and the man, Todd Blair, 45, fell to the floor, dead. ...

[Police] Sgt. Troy Burnett was found to have handled the situation appropriately, Smith says. "This was a split-second decision. He acted according to his training."

And now the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled thus:

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

So how can it possibly be legal for a police officer to break down the door to your home and shoot you dead for practicing your putting on your carpet, but not be legal to attack and kill an enenmy combatant (and an unlawful enemy combatant at that)?

The authentic Rebel Yell?

With the 150th anniversary of the Civil War under way, here are a couple of recordings that I found that are historically interesting, at least to Southerners. The subject is the fabled "rebel yell," the legendary war cry of Confederate soldiers as they began battle. Wikipedia's piece is very good.

One of the earliest accounts of use of the yell comes from the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) during then Brig. General Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson's assault at Henry House Hill. An order was given during a bayonet charge to "yell like furies", which was instrumental in routing the Federal forces under General Irvin McDowell back to Washington D.C.

“Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens–such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” -Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky's Orphan Brigade

"It paragons description, that yell! How it starts deep and ends high, how it rises into three increasing crescendos and breaks with a command of battle."-a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter

The origin of the yell remains unknown. Some historians think it took after Indian war cries while others say it was of Celtic or Scottish highland heritage.

But what did it actually sound like? Wikipedia recounts,

“In an instant every voice with one accord vigorously shouted the ‘Rebel yell,’ which was so often heard on the field of battle. ‘Woh-who-ey! who-ey! who-ey! Woh-who-ey! who-ey!’ etc. (The best illustration of this "true yell" which can be given the reader is by spelling it as above, with directions to sound the first syllable ‘who’ short and low, and the second "who" with a very high and prolonged note deflecting upon the third syllable "ey.")”- Colonel Harvey Dew of the 9th Virginia Cavalry, in Century Illustrated Magazine (1892)

However, there are two credible audio recordings of the Rebel Yell made decades after the war. One was made in 1938 at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg. In newsreel footage taken of former Confederate and Union veterans of the battle shaking hands across a rock wall at a battle site known as The Angle, someone let out a whoop or two. The veteran standing nearest the camera turns and says, "That's the rebel yell."



Segtours comments,

Although weakly belted out here by a man near the age of 100, one can still imagine the fear that it must have struck into the northern army when they were being charged by hundreds of young men yelling it at once.

Or thousands! Speaking of a whole formation of Johnny Rebs yelling all at once, is it possible to recapture what that might have sounded like? There is another recording, purportedly of an elderly Confederate veteran giving the rebel yell. His name was Thomas Alexander of the 35th North Carolina Regiment, who made the recording in 1935 for a radio station at a regimental reunion. Here is the recording, followed by a contemporary digital special-effects simulation of Alexander's yell emulating that of a whole infantry company.



The largest Civil War veterans reunion ever held was at Gettysburg on the battle's 50th anniversary in 1913. More than 50,000 Civil War veterans of both armies attended, though not all had fought at Gettysburg, of course.

One story of the 1913 reunion I read said that when thousands of the Southern veterans lined up before Cemetery Ridge and together wailed out the rebel yell, a loud moan of despair arose from the Union veterans on the ridge. PTSD?

The elderly Confederate line advanced at a walk while the Union veterans crouched behind the stone wall of The Angle and other places along the old defensive line. No one else made a sound. When the two formations were only a dozen feet apart, suddenly all semblance of old military discipline was broken and the former enemies embraced and shook hands and slapped each others' backs.

150 years ago today

The single event in American history that most affected the country's character was the Civil War. It was today that the war began when Confederate artillery began firing on Fort Sumter in the harbor approaches of Charleston, S.C.

Thousands of cannon rounds were fired to and from the fort, although the Union guns fell silent before the Confederate guns did. Finally, Fort Sumter's commander, Maj. Robert Anderson, ordered the white flag of surrender be raised. On April 14, the US flag was lowered and the fort was taken under Confederate control. The Confederate commander, Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, did not take the Union troops into captivity. Maj. Anderson and his troops were simply evacuated from the blasted fort and returned to the North. It must have been a bitter pill for Anderson to swallow to have been defeated by one of his former military students, Beauregard.

This was the least bloody battle of the rest of war, bloodless in fact, since neither side suffered a fatality during the battle. However, two Union soldiers were killed by accident during the surrender ceremony. Anderson's one condition for evacuating the fort was that his men be allowed to fire a 100-round salute to the Union. This Beauregard permitted. Union Pvt. Daniel Hough died instantly in an accidental explosion that also mortally wounded Pvt. Edward Gallway, who died in a Charleston hospital. Hough and Gallway were the first men to die in the Civil War.

The CSA occupied the fort until February 1865, then abandoned it because US Gen. William T. Sherman had seized Charleston and other US forces had taken supporting fortifications around Sumter, making its further occupation untenable. For most of the war, the US Navy had conducted extensive gunnery practice upon Fort Sumter, rendering it into rubble far more than the Confederates' bombardment had done.

The United States flag was raised again over Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865, exactly four years after it had been lowered. The officer raising the flag was Robert Anderson, then a medically-retired major general.

Fort Sumter today as seen from The Battery in Charleston.

A gun encasement inside the fort. The Union gunners tried to give as good as they got, but they were literally outgunned.  Click images for larger view. Photos by myself.

A pretty good video by the National Park Service, which owns the Sumter property today, is here.

The pointlessness of NATO

Joseph Harriss, who has been covering NATO since 1966, explains how the alliance became a subcontractor of the United Nations in, "NATO Reconsidered."

Behind the façade of variegated non-defense activities, bigger and more complex command structures, and far-flung operations is an organization in identity crisis. "NATO's mission has been unclear since the end of the Cold War, and there is a sense of it trying to validate itself as relevant to today's world," Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and former chairman of the NATO High Level Group, told me. "It's no longer the indispensable defense organization it used to be. It's become so much less important that, if it didn't already exist, you couldn't start it today. It's living on its legacy."

When the USSR and the Warsaw Pact disappeared into the dustbin of history, NATO became an alliance with no foe. So,

NATO went into limbo and into a funk. "It entered a profound existential crisis two decades ago," explains Dominique David, executive director of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. "But it managed to survive for several reasons. First, big bureaucracies never go away. They always find other pretexts to stay in business. Then, the U.S. wanted to keep an eye on Europe and NATO was a convenient way. But the biggest boost came in the early 1990s when former Soviet satellites requested membership. It became both a military organization and an instrument for the political stabilization of Europe. That made it a strange, schizophrenic animal constantly looking for new threats to relegitimize itself." ...

In December 1992 the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body, declared that the Alliance was "prepared to take further steps to assist the UN in implementing its decisions to maintain international peace and security." Suddenly it was in the global peacekeeping business as a subcontractor to the UN.

Read the whole thing. It's telling that the French are complaining about NATO's bureaucratic inefficiency. Man, when the French complain about unwieldy bureaucracies, you know there's a problem! And here is Exhibit A:

This is NATO's new, $1.38 billion headquarters sitting on 100 acres near Brussels, under construction now. This for an organization that has essentially no purpose.

I wrote in, "What Has NATO Done For Us?",

I think the United States should reassess whether the NATO alliance really is serving American interests. I don't think it is, and I don't think it will do better in years to come. Though we must stay politically engaged, I think we'd be better off withdrawing from the military alliance, and work toward building an Anglosphere military alliance in its stead.

And with the Libya misadventure, which serves only European interests, I say that reassessing the United States' relationship with NATO is more justified than ever.

Slow to catch on, but finally.

It only took 236 years, but the Brits finally seem to be getting the right idea.

"Nothing outside the state"

Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy from 1922 until April 1945 (when Italians shot him and strung his body up by the heels in a public square), invented a particular form of progressivist politics that he called Fascism.

Fascism's name was derived from an Italian word meaning, "bundle, band or group," which is why he took a symbol from the ancient Roman empire, right, as the symbol of the Fascist party. It is a depiction of a fasces, a bundle of reeds tied together with an axe, used by the Roman magisterium to symbolize the power of Roman law over life and death.

Mussolini had grown up a strident socialist and maintained a vigorous and cordial correspondence with Vladimir Lenin practically until Lenin's death. After World War One, however, Mussolini broke with socialism because he considered it inherently ineffective because of its internationalist-movement nature.

The result was a variant of socialism that was nationally chauvinistic, entirely anti-democratic, relied on military conquest and allowed for private businesses, though only under close government supervision and regulation.

In 1932, Mussolini defined Fascism for the Italian Encyclopedia. It included this nugget:

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....

Mussolini also summed the Fascist principle another way, explained in March of last year by the "Classic Liberal" blog:

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life. ...

As the nationalized "Healthcare" debacle nears its end game, the people of America are increasingly shocked and disgusted by the raw ugliness of the Obama "governing" philosophy. Those platitudes of "hope and change" are gone, and in their place a thoroughly regretful American populace now witnesses, to its horror, the total desecration of this once triumphal constitutional republic.

At last, the stark reality of liberalism is unmasked in its undiluted form. What cannot be discussed honestly and succinctly is couched in lies and fraud, and then sold to the public as benevolence and compassion. Those in Congress who cannot be convinced, based on the merits of the effort, to participate and support it are coerced or bought off. The means of garnering "votes" in the Senate or House is irrelevant. In the end, all that matters is that the leftist agenda, of which Obamacare is a cornerstone, becomes the law of the land.

In a saner time, decorum and respect by the government for the will of the people would have necessitated that the effort be dropped, and the socio-economic fabric of the country be allowed to remain intact. But as the nation is realizing, the current "leadership" in Washington is significantly different from anything ever contended with in the past. These people have never had the slightest intention of "deriving their governing power from the consent of the governed," as advised in the Declaration of Independence.

The Washington Post reports the February 2011 governing version of fascisti ideology:

The president's political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to mobilize thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals.

Their efforts began to spread, as thousands of labor supporters turned out for a hearing in Columbus, Ohio, to protest a measure from Gov. John Kasich (R) that would cut collective-bargaining rights.

By the end of the day, Democratic Party officials were working to organize additional demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana, where an effort is underway to trim benefits for public workers. Some union activists predicted similar protests in Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. [...]

The White House political operation, Organizing for America, got involved Monday, after Democratic National Committee Chairman Timothy M. Kaine, a former Virginia governor, spoke to union leaders in Madison, a party official said.

The group made phone calls, distributed messages via Twitter and Facebook, and sent e-mails to its state and national lists to try to build crowds for rallies Wednesday and Thursday, a party official said.

As Matt Welch asks, "Is This How a President Should Act?" No, it's not how an American president should act, but it is just how you'd expect an Imperial president to act.

"What does it mean to be a Marxist?"

I suppose it should be obvious that I am not a Marxist, but I would commend to you Prof. Norm Geras' test, "What does it mean to be a Marxist?" Prof. Geras, of the UK's University of Manchester, is an "oldline" Marxist, not one of the radical chic - which he roundly criticizes in this posting.

I've been reading Norm's work since I began blogging in 2002 and I was honored to be the subject of his 67th "Normblog Profile" in 2004.

Norm offers three perspectives to answer the question: the personal, the intellectual and the socio-political. This is very much a worthwhile read regardless of your affinity, or not, with Marxism conceptually.

I sent Norm an email, thus:

[H]ere is one question and one observation:

Q: Do you think that Christianity and Marxism are inimical, conceptually, to one another, or can there be a conceptual accord? I do not refer to the frankly Marxist bent of much contemporary theology and social principles, many of which barely or only passingly cite the Scriptures. The leftist trend of our leading seminaries in the UK and the US hardly needs be mentioned. Rather, I mean, do the teachings directly from, say the Gospels, and/or from the Jewish prophets, leave room for faithful declaration of, for Christians, the Apostles Creed, or for Jews the Mosaic Law? Does Marxism, as you have delineated it, leave room for (though not at all necessarily affirm) that human affairs are under the majesty of a God who can and does intervene in human affairs?

The observation: your apologia for Marxism, especially in the socio-political section, struck me as a form and content (significantly) that is easily adaptable for a Christian apologist such as I to use with equal integrity. I mean this as a compliment, by the way, since, like Marxism, Christian practice has much in history that cannot be justified by apologists such as I. Yet withal, I take that history into account and declare, I am a Christian, nonetheless.

Perhaps he will answer.

Professor Piven Gets Her 15 Minutes

So Sociology is finally having its 15 minutes of fame. Frances Fox Piven in The Nation laments the lack of revolutionary spirit in the current age. Where ARE those cannon fodder proletariat anyway.

The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers.

Could it be that maybe that’s not the droids we’re looking for? But wait, there’s more.

Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves "mothers" instead of "recipients," although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.

Oh, yes, anger. That’s THE ingredient for the Revolution (along with Draino and Prell). After all, that’s been the scenario when Capitalism replaced the Agrarian Modes of Production. Marx and Engels Speak!

But Professors Altman and Taranto dissent and voice a distinct opinion (okay, Taranto is not REALLY a professor—in fact he did not finish college but he IS the opinion editor at the Wall Street Journal and that’s LIKE being a professor since he’s in a position where he doesn’t care if we don’t like him or not—is that like tenure?).

The uproar Frances created generated some angry attacks—apparently people consider HER to be a good target for THEIR anger! This was met by the Four Riders of the American Sociological Association (REAL Professors) professing THEIR support of their fallen angel and returning fire at those ANGRY under educated masses (the Proletariat?). In short, the academic world is turning out to do what they do best—hiss.

This is so much fun! It’s like being back in Gradual School! I get to watch really cool guys and chicks (er, professors) discussing REALLY high level stuff like Marx and Engels. They are oh so hip and cool. When I grow up, I wanna be a sociologist just like them! Still to this day, I wanna be a sociologist, too.



We could pretend its 1979 when all the cool professors were ex SDSers who had made it. And THEY can give over a really powerful sermon on the Gospels of Marx and Engels. REALLY worth your time and they can use the FTE's.

In seminar, the professors sit poised on the divan while we students merit the floor at their feet. Gracefully, Frances (it's her seminar) gives over the Truth of THE Manifesto according to Karl and Fred.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. [They ALWAYS add the italics and bold print when they lean forward to preach their points!]

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

So, we learn the Holy Word that The Revolution comes when members of the Bourgeoisie, like Prometheus, leave their Towers to teach the masses the means and modes of revolutionary technologies. After all, the Proletariat are not up to learning these tools themselves being unemployed factory workers and all.

But, wait! There’s danger in the fields. The wolves run wild in the cold Russian Winter Nights chasing lone horse drawn sleds filled with terrified children and their mothers where Grandmothers leap from sleds to be eaten to save the precious little ones from certain death! Grandma! Don't do it!

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

Frances leans forward and whispers that even though a massive coagulation of American humanity is coalescing about Tea Rooms—they are NOT the Revolutionary Ones. They are reactionary POSERS out to LOOK like a Revolutionary Class, aware of itself acting for its own self interest. Oh no! These are the ones trying to roll back the times to some Ancient Order—to a Halcyon Age when White Men gathered to throw off the tyranny of a King, another White Man. Yes—they want to bring back the ancient glory of the Constitution.

But, do not trust them, my pretties.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

So this cannot BE those frequenters of Tea Rooms. No. The Revolution MUST be violent. That’s what our studies have shown. And, we KNOW.

At this point, the visiting professor, who looks real cool with his tweed jacket, leather elbow patches, thick brown tortoise shell glasses rimmed by his thin balding brown hair, bespeaks from his reclined place on the divan.

"But, Frances," he purrs. "Just what DO these proletariat look like? I mean, is it not an empirical question? Just what is the spark that sets this off? After all, Frances, would not one person’s Revolutionary be another person’s Reactionary? Would we even recognize what they look like? Are they like us just poor and unemployed or do they not bathe and reek of the odiousness of labor, street effluvia, and body odor? What would Frederick Engels say to get this Revolution happening?"

Good question and one that was asked to Frederick Engels over a century ago. His response is classic. But first some background.

The questioner was Isaac Hourwich, an economist and a jurist from Russia who taught at the University of Chicago and Columbia and periodically was an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He was also my great grandfather. [I come from several generations of Gentle Marxists and Marxettes.] He had been a rabble rousing Revolutionary in The Old Country and was sent to Siberia for the Cause. His sister translated the Manifesto into Russian for its first edition there. So, the family was pretty Red. His daughter told me about the wolves. When I teach the Manifesto, I always apologize on her behalf—my fault. I also blame Global Warming.

Anyway, Isaac wrote to Fred in 1893 to see if Fred could say a few things to encourage the Serfs of Russia to rise up against their Oppressors. Fred’s words to Izzie ring true still.

London, 27 May 1893
122 Regent's Park Road, NW

Dr. Isaac A. Hourwich

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your interesting study on the Economics of the Russian Village, which I read, I hope, not without profit.

As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the part which the peasantry may be effected to take in it, these are subjects on which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But for that I am sorry to say I have not at present the time. And then, I have every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the effect you expect of it.

I know from my own experience of 1849-52 how unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent factions, so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an over active mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means of action.

The word of an outsider would have but a trifling, and at best passing effect. If you have followed the Russian emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for instance, passages from Marx's writings and correspon¬dence have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts from the Classics or from the New Testament, by various sections of Russian emigrants.

Whatever I might say on the subject you mention, would probably share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so from all these various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, to abstain.

Yours very truly,
F. Engels

[Source: Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishing Group Corp, 2004) Vol. 50 pp. 144-45.]

Now THIS is how a true Marxist Scholar SHOULD address the issues of the popular uprising in America:

Yo, Dude (or, Dudette as the case may be); I’ve haven’t the FOGGIEST notion of how this is playing out, who the players REALLY are; and I am the very LAST person on earth to ask about such matters.

Are Tea Room attendees the formation of the Proletariat revolutionary force or not? Are the twenty-first century technologies associated with the information the New Mode of Production that the Prophet and his Priest foretold in their visions? There are some social scientists who say yes, some say no, and eventually, when the facts are in, we'll all know a portion of the explained variance. It is, after all, an empirical question.

So, Frances, go back and study your sources and quit posing. You are far too established and Bourgeois to be manning the picket lines—you’ll have to give up your pension. As a sociologist, you may have something to offer but only after the facts are in. That's the problem with science. You have to wait until events have unfolded to assess whether or not your hypotheses are correct. As attractive as it is, the lecturn is not a bully pulpit.

It's pro-slavery to support tax cuts

Sociologist James W. Loewen writes in the WaPo, "Five myths about why the South seceded." Of the five reasons stated, only two actually relate to the rationale of secession itself, but let that pass.

Reason number 3 is, "Most white Southerners didn't own slaves, so they wouldn't secede for slavery." After accurately pointing out that most Southern whites did not own even one slave, Loewen gives us this whopper:

Now you see, supporting the extension of the Bush tax cuts is just like supporting slaveowners even if you don't own slaves yourself.

So what to make of one Barack Obama?

President Barack Obama is surrounded by lawmakers as he signs a two-year extension of tax cuts. 
Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/business-news/2010/12/17/obama-signs-tax-cut-extension#ixzz1APHn2npA

That Barack Obama, what a racist!

As long as we're lingering on the WaPo, let's play WaPo Wheel of Fortune. Here's WaPo's sidebar ad-link to Slate.

Fill in the blank.

An engrossing page of links to Civil War history and interesting essays, including on slavery, is here.