Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

I received some e-mails asking about my reference to the Aristotlean-Medieval “Great Chain of Being” theory in the previous post of December 30, 2023.

The concept of a Great Chain of Being was derived from Aristotle’s Historia Animalia, that was his attempt to develop a taxonomy for living beings, animals in particular. This idea of classification was extended to the universe by later thinkers, into a sort of earlier day “theory of everything.”  Nowadays the quest for a theory of everything is often a topic for reporting and discussion. Present day theoretical physicists are striving, so far without success, to discover the basis for an explanation that will describe the way the universe works. Einstein’s relativity and the quantum theory seem to be at odds with each other in a manner that has yet to be reconciled. Some quests transcend time and place.

The Great Chain of Being theory was sometimes termed the “Ladder of Nature” (scala naturae), but is was decidedly not a ladder or stairway that beings could move up or down on. Everything had its place, which was immutable.

Chain of Being

God was at the top of the Chain and rocks were at the bottom in a hierarchical continuum. Humans occupied the space on the continuum between the wholly spiritual (angels and demons) and wholly physical worlds. Within their category, humans had their own hierarchy. For example the king was God’s lieutenant on earth, at least in his own kingdom. Below the king were the nobility or aristocracy, commoners of various ranks, and serfs and slaves. Everyone was born into his place, and stayed there. Moving up and down was not possible, and to attempt to do so was a crime and a serious sin.

Obviously, such a mind set had great benefit for those in power. It was a wonderful way to keep the hoi polloi in line. Try to change your station in life and you are punished by death; since you have committed a serious sin by attempting to interfere with God’s order, you go to hell for eternity. And the journey is not at all pleasant, to wit:

Auto de fe of a heretic

This idea began to come apart in the West with the Renaissance and Reformation in the 15th and 16th Centuries and received its greatest impetus in the Enlightenment of 17th and 18th Centuries. The United States of America became the Nation of the Enlightenment, its founding document for the first time ever declaring that all men are created equal, and possess certain unalienable rights. That Declaration established an intellectual basis for the rights of individuals being superior to any so-called rights of the collective — i.e., groups.

Obviously, the ideal did not immediately become reality. More than three millennia of tradition and established institutions did not roll over and play dead. The rest of the world, furthermore, was steeped in the same ideological mind set, and for the most part, it still is. Breaking the Chain, or converting it into a ladder, is an ongoing task and it not yet completed. One reason may be that history is a chronicle of people who are mostly lazy, scared, and greedy. Such people can take comfort in a system where everyone has a place.

Notes: The “Nation of the Enlightenment” was coined by Leonard Peikoff in his the Ominous Parallels (1982). “Lazy, scared, and greedy” people is Ian Morris’s description in Why the West Rules; For Now (2010). For those interested, a readable, more detailed narrative of the Great Chain of Being (as it applies to the subject matter of their book) is contained in the first chapter of Robert Bucholz and Newton Key’s Early Modern England (Blackwell Publishing 2004), pp. 22 – 30.

Nikki Haley supposed gaffe in New Hampshire this past week concerning her initial omission of slavery as a cause of the American Civil War might have given her primary opponents and Democrats ammunition. I viewed a video of and listened to her response and read a transcript. Her omission of mentioning slavery may have been impolitic, even clumsy, given the heat of this campaign season, but it was not egregious. This episode probably does not have staying power as an issue.

But what was the Civil War really all about? Here is an answer.

“All wars are sacred, to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ’down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!’” — Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind (speaking through her character Rhett Butler).

Yes, all wars are fought over money. A recent work by York University historian Mark Egnal, Clash of Extremes (2009) performs a detailed and painstaking analysis of the events leading up to it, and empirically validates Mitchell’s thesis as to the reasons we had a Civil War. It was all about money, or, more accurately, wealth, and how it is produced. The War was an epic struggle between the ancient feudal agrarian economic system, and the burgeoning free market capitalism made possible by the scientific-technological-industrial revolution which flowed from the ideas of the Enlightenment. In the large picture, in a process which is still going on, the War was a step in the dismantling of the ancient and medieval idea of the Great Chain of Being, which held that everyone was born into an immutable class: the king and his nobles at the top, and serfs and slaves at the bottom. This process was the long, and often rough and painful, transition from caste system defined by the accident of birth to the concept that “all men are created equal.”

We should reject the notion that any one of us today should have shame for slavery as it existed in the 19th Century and before. Why? For the same reason we should not feel shame (or take pride) in something we have had nothing to do with. There is no one alive on this Earth who does not have some ancestors who were oppressed and others who were oppressors. By today’s moral standards, human bondage is wrong. But that is a standard which has only gained acceptance in the past 200 years or so. Compare that it was once considered moral and even laudable to burn suspected witches alive, and inflict fiendish punishments on others who thought differently. For millennia, slavery was acceptable as part of an economic system that had been universally approved, and only became morally suspect with the liberation of the human mind by the Age of Reason, and Enlightenment. Slavery’s entrenchment in the United States – which occurred prior to the time the last alleged witches were hanged in Massachusetts – was not limited to the Southern states, although it persisted there because of the plantation. Principally cotton, economy. In fact, it was in many ways the welfare system of many bodies politic. It took care of the least functional members of the populace in return for menial labor. It still exists today in some less functional backwater countries.

The Southern leaders who brought about secession ill-served their constituencies. They wished to maintain slavery because it was the bulwark of the economic system that they knew, and, while becoming increasingly morally suspect, was not considered by many of all regions and countries to be the abomination that we, with the benefit of hindsight, correctly regard it today. They sought to preserve an archaic system, and in so doing, coupled with the clumsy manner in which they reacted to Lincoln’s election, precipitated a disastrous war. (For more on this topic, see another recent work: Nelson Lankford’s Cry Havoc: The Crooked Road to Civil War (2007).

Those who actually fought for the Confederacy — the poor men who fought the rich men’s war — were less cognizant of the economic reasons, but they understood the invasion of their homeland by outsiders – foreigners, really. Today we forget that what some historians have referred to as the “tyranny of distance” made one much more likely to identify with their state and region more than with the huge nation America was becoming. They, and even those who led the secessionist movement, did not fight to establish slavery – they were defending their homeland against a perceived invasion – which included defending the status quo they inherited, and which only a small minority of Americans wanted to abolish when the War began.

As for Abraham Lincoln, he was much more interested at first in preserving the Union for economic purposes than he was in ending slavery. He understood a united country was necessary to preserve and foster the free-market capitalist system, which was a moral purpose of its own. During the War, however, Lincoln came to realize that making the War explicitly a crusade against slavery was useful as military strategy — see the quotation above. The President also realized the moral value of free-market capitalism and destroying an institution that held men in bondage have the same underpinning – human freedom. That is what our country – all of it, North and South, East and West, however imperfectly – has been about since its inception. But when it comes down to fighting: it’s the money.

The evidence of slavery and the prospect of extending it to new western territories was certainly an underlying cause.
The attempted secession by the lower Southern states, beginning South Carolina was caused by the planters’ fear that Lincoln and a Republican Congress would abolish slavery. Of course, serious historians know that the Republican primary goal at the time was to exclude slavery from the new territories, not abolish it where it existed. And whether a state could secede was still an open Constitutional question at the time. The Confederate attack in Fort Sumter and the Union response in sending troops to quell the rebellion caused the upper South to secede was the proximate cause of the War’s commencement. The fight was on.

This blog published an essay in 2016 noting that that December 25 that year was also the first day of Jewish Hanukkah. I have updated this essay, mainly because of events of the past seven years. Accordingly, it is a good time to reflect on, and show the solidarity between, two great Western religious traditions. Even though many Christians and Jews are not observant, and many, perhaps most Christians, are of different racial or ethnic groups, they share significant values. Christianity is, in a sense, a branch of Judaism. After all, Jesus was born Jewish and never abrogated his religious tradition.

Practically every literate American, including most who are Jewish, knows the story of Christmas. Few know or understand what Hanukkah is all about.

To begin with this festival is not as important to Jews as Christmas is to Christians. It is not a High Holy Day, like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, or Passover. It is not based on an event found in canonical scripture, but in the Apocrypha, in Titus Flavius Josephus’ the Antiquities of the Jews, and in the Talmud. The story of the lights is in the second book of Maccabees, which is not part of the Hebrew Bible or of Protestant Christian Bible. The first two books of Maccabees, however, are considered canonical by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The story comes from the second century B.C. when Judea was a buffer between Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria. These were entities of the Hellenistic world, which essentially means classical Greek colonies that proliferated throughout the Eastern Mediterranean subsequent to Alexander the Great’s conquests. The Seleucids of Syria under Antiochus IV Epiphanes wrested control of Judea and Jerusalem from Egypt. Antiochus was determined to eliminate the Jewish religious practices there. Among other things, it has been said that he banned circumcision, ordered that all of the Torahs that could be found to be burned, and anyone caught with a Torah would be killed on the spot. The Seleucids also desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, which was among the worst of atrocities that could be committed against the Jewish religion.

Having had enough of Antiochus and the Seleucids’ oppression, Jews revolted under Judah Maccabee in 167 B.C.  The rebellion was successful and the Maccabees recaptured Jerusalem in 164, traditionally in the month of Kislev, after a victory at the battle of Beth Zur. Because the Temple had been desecrated, they had to conduct a purification ritual which included lighting a menorah and keeping it lit for eight days. According to a tradition, which is not mentioned in the Biblical Books of Maccabees, Judah Maccabee and his followers could not find sufficient oil that had not been desecrated to keep the menorah lit for more than one day. But they lit it anyway, and it burned miraculously for the requisite eight days.(1)This was considered a miracle from heaven and was celebrated thereafter as Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights.

There is some controversy concerning the inspiration for the celebration. Some scholars believe the military victory inspired it, rather than the miracle of the lights. Much of the Bible—in all of its various versions—is allegorical. The truth is in the lessons taught, not the literal facts.

While the story may be (lowercase “a”) apocryphal, it is no more so then many of the details of the Christian tradition. Much of the Bible, while it may be ultimate truth in many respects, has details filled in where necessary by surmise. For example the birth of Jesus is celebrated on December 25, which is near the winter solstice, but according to Scripture, there’s a wide range of dates when it could have occurred. All the New Testament says is that it occurred during a Roman census that was taken at the time Quirinius was the imperial governor of Syria.

I am not Jewish, and have not studied Judaism any detail, so I can’t comment on all the significance that Hanukkah may have for those who are. The point I see is that these festivals commemorate events in the past shed light on the beliefs of Christians and Jews. Jesus was perhaps the most influential individual in the history of the world. However, arguably Moses shares that distinction. The Greeks might dispute that, while collectively influential, but no single one of the ancient Hellenes inspired a movement that became essential to the foundation of Western Civilization as those men.

Christianity and Judaism have in great measure conquered the world culturally, and had at one point nearly politically. It is interesting to note that the liberation movements seeking to end political domination by Western nations in former colonies have been inspired by the Judeo-Christian tradition.(2)

The Maccabees’ liberation of Jerusalem and bringing light to purify the temple is symbolic of the continuing quest for freedom and independence of the State of Israel. Jesus birth heralded freedom from oppression of a different sort. We in the West should realize why Israel is our best friend in the the Middle East, or the World, for that matter. Like the the Jews in the Books of Maccabees became sick and tired of Seleucid oppression fought back, the present Israelis are sick and tired of the various savages who seek to destroy the Jewish state and Jews (and Christians) everywhere.

Anyway, Christians and Jews are natural allies. Where their theology differs, it’s in the accidents, not the essence. This is illustrated by a piece in a Wall Street Journal from awhile back. In his op-ed article “Why this Rabbi Loves Christmas,” Michael Gotlieb, rabbi of a Conservative congregation in Santa Monica California, opines that both Christians and Jews await the messiah. When he arrives, Rabbi Gotlieb suggests, we’ll ask him if he’s been here before.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-this-rabbi-loves-christmas-1482450895

Note (1): the menorah used at Hanukkah has nine lights, not seven. Why? The significance of that is for someone who knows more about it than I do.

Note: (2)

For more information see: http://scheinerman.net/judaism/chanukah/texts.html and http://thetorah.com/uncovering-the-truth-about-chanukah///

A front page story in the Dallas Morning News (11/21/2023) reports that the population of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas has reached 8,000,000, most of which is in suburbs. That is around five times that of 1963. The city of Dallas has doubled its population during that period from around 679,000 to 1,303,000. A lot else has changed during that time, in Dallas, the State, and the Nation. It was a different world sixty years ago.

How much difference flowed from one horrible event that occurred here has been and probably will be an ongoing topic of research and speculation, though most rational persons know the case is closed.

Sixty years ago this day, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed on a downtown street. It is difficult to believe that so many years have passed since that horrible event. President McKinley’s assassination in 1901 was as distant for those in 1963 as Kennedy’s is for us today.

The Kennedy assassination events spawned widespread condemnation of Dallas and its citizens collectively. Such condemnation was practically worldwide. It ascribed collective guilt, or guilt by association, for the evil acts of an individual to a whole community of other individuals who had a connection to the place.

Dallas further was condemned because the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was killed while in police custody shortly after committing his foul deed. To the extent there was culpable negligence on the part of Dallas Police for this second killing, it must be viewed in context. City officials at the time believed it was important to show the world via the news media that there was timely identification and capture of Oswald, at the time a prime suspect, and allay the fears there might be a conspiracy threatening the government similar to the cabal that killed Abraham Lincoln and attempted to kill several of his cabinet members. Many would regard Oswald as receiving swift justice at the hands of Jack Ruby, albeit without due process. Ruby stated that he killed Oswald because he wanted to spare Jackie Kennedy having to be a trial witness and relive the horror of seeing her husband’s brain blown out while sitting next to him. One can sympathize with Ruby, though not excuse him for that.

It has been asserted that the downstream effect of Oswald’s killing spawned numerous conspiracy theories. Perhaps, but such theories would have doubtless come forth anyway. It is difficult for many persons to accept that a lone pathetic individual, a serial loser, could by himself kill a President and change the course of the country’s — and perhaps the world’s history.

Assigning collective guilt or collective responsibility — for evil deeds the concept amounts to the same thing — is endemic to the human condition, even in a country and culture that values and is supposed to assign responsibility to the individual rather than to associations or collectives. The same goes for the guilt of which numerous pundits accused Dallas and its citizens.

Part of the reason for such accusations was because Dallas in 1963 was seen to be a hotbed of conservative, even far-right, politics that provided the climate for political violence

. In 1963, like the resurgence in recent years, most of our national intelligentsia and media leaned to the left and often opined that those to the right-of-center politically were an “existential threat” to democracy. Kennedy on the other hand was a celebrity politician and regarded as a liberal who leaned leftward. It was reported that Mrs. Kennedy said she was disappointed that her husband was deprived of martyr status for his stand on civil rights for black citizens because his killer was a “silly little communist” rather than the right-wing hater the President’s assassin was at first assumed to be. The reality was the President was essentially moderate, particularly in economic matters (he cut taxes, drastically). He turned out to be an effective President in foreign affairs. No conservative would fault his staring down the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis or his stance on West Berlin.

There is little question that there are violent crazies on each of the far ends of the political spectrum. Possibly more on the left, as recent events have born out.

As for Presidential assassinations in this country, in the 20th Century there have been two successful and no fewer than a half dozen attempts. Successful assassins Leon Czolgosz, President William McKinley’s assassin, and Oswald were both leftist fanatics. Other Presidents who were attacked but not killed include Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 (out of office but campaigning for another term) whose assailant was adjudged insane by a court; Franklin Roosevelt, two weeks before his first inauguration was shot at by a leftist who said he hated “capitalists”; Puerto Rican nationalists tried to kill President Harry Truman in 1950; Gerald Ford was shot at once and threatened close-up on two occasions within a month of each other 1975 by leftist women (one of whom was a follower of Charles Manson); President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in 1981 by a man who was tried and adjudged to be legally insane.

There have been other alleged plots, security incidents, and expressions of intent to kill or harm other Presidents, including Carter, both Bushes, Obama, Trump, and Biden. These would-be assassins have come from both extremes of the political spectrum, or suffered from various stages of mental derangement.

What about the speculative theory that Oswald was a hireling or dupe of some national or international conspiracy? The bipartisan Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone. Later, after exhaustive research and analysis detailed in his book Case Closed (1993) Gerald Posner concluded that Oswald and Ruby acted alone and independent of each other. Former Los Angeles district attorney Vincent Bugliosi (who prosecuted Charles Manson and his acolytes) concluded the same in his 1,632 tome Reclaiming History: the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007). There are those who will continue to believe in conspiracy, whether by the CIA, Fidel Castro, or venal businessmen. Such persons are like the medieval alchemists who insanely sought the Philosophers’ Stone.

See also Investigation of a Homicide: The Murder of John F. Kennedy by Judy Whitson Bonner (1969); Death of a President by William Manchester (1967).

“Dope. They sell that shit to schoolkids.”
“It’s worse than that.
“How’s that?’
“Schoolkids buy it.”
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

There has been a lot of attention around this region and elsewhere about deaths and near deaths from overdose of the super-potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, especially by teenagers and young adults. An overdose of this drug can fit on the tip of a pencil. Drug trafficking cartels disguise fentanyl as pills of legitimate medicine and other, less potent, street drugs that used to control pain.

No matter what law enforcement can do to interdict the supply side, it is up to the parents primarily (and secondarily to the educators) to stanch the demand side. So longs as there are huge profits to be made, illegal manufacturing and vending will occur. Even if it we possible to locate and destroy every drug cartel’s headquarters and lab, and arrest and incarcerate (or execute) every kingpin and their lieutenants, new ones would take their place, sooner or later.

“Here’s the elephant in the room. All those who have died — who were poisoned or who overdosed — had purchased or accepted something that was not legally prescribed for them. There is an element of personal responsibility.” — Eduardo Chavez, DEA Special Agent-in-Charge, Dallas.

We should be compassionate towards the parents of minors who are drug abuse casualties, but neither they nor their children are absolved from all blame. Some persons — schoolkids — who are casualties are at least partially excused by parents or loved ones because “they only thought the were taking [some less potent, but illegal pill.]” But why use a medicine that is not prescribed? No one should buy or use any prescription medication unless it prescribed by a licensed practitioner and sold by a licensed pharmacy.

The latest ballyhooed movie Oppenheimer has generated quite a bit of angst among certain traditional media and social media denizens. It ranges from whether it was necessary to use nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities to was it a war crime. These questions also relate to the use of conventional weapons in “carpet bombing” enemy cities and other tactical methods that put noncombatant civilians at risk.

The protagonist of the film is the nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer who provided the technical expertise in designing the bombs. He is reported to have suffered similar angst. (Full disclosure, this writer has not seen the film yet, but has read several well-regarded accounts of the Manhattan Project that developed the weapons.)

On August 6, 1945, and again on August 9, United States Air Force dropped the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three days later Japan surrendered, thus ending World War II.

In the 78 years since, not one nuclear weapon has been used in anger, despite many escalations of tensions over this time, and proliferation of those weapons, even to those that may legitimately be called “rogue states.” Nearly forty years of Cold War saw a number of wars between client states of the Soviet Union and the United States. Despite the ferocity in which they were fought at times, none resulted in an exchange of atomic weapons. Of course, that could change at any time. There has been some nuke-rattling by some Russian officials with respect to Vladimir Putin’s military adventure in Ukraine.

Perhaps one reason hostile nations have so far foregone the use of nuclear weapons is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the sheer horror of the use of those weapons.

During this annus horribilis of 2023, we have the usual suspects calling for a “conversation” (which really means recrimination) questioning whether Robert Oppenheimer and others involved in developing those weapons, President Harry Truman’s ordering the use of them, and military officers and men who deployed them, was necessary, or perhaps profoundly immoral. Some have even accused the President and those involved in dropping the bombs of being war criminals.

That is nonsense. British writer A. C. Grayling wrote Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan in 2006. I wrote a review of the book for a local blog. It bears an updating on this occasion of the release of the Oppenheimer film proximate to the anniversary of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings. It follows:

A friend once opined that if the United States and its British ally had pulled their punches in World War II as they have in every war since, including the present one, we’d all be speaking German and/or Japanese. Rhetorical hyperbole this might be, and it would in no sense justify a no-holds barred approach to current conflicts. It should be undeniable nevertheless that the total war Britain and America fought was necessary to beat the Axis. After all, Nazi Germany and Japan began the concept with a vengeance and fought ferociously until the bitter end. Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, head of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command is reported to have observed while watching the fires around St. Paul’s during the London Blitz “they’ve sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.” Harris, of course, was the chief wind maker, the architect if one can use that appellation in such circumstances, of the utter devastation of German cities in the air war that ensued. His bombardiers sowed the seeds of the tornadic firestorms that engulfed Hamburg, Dresden, and other cities, incinerating tens of thousands of civilians and reducing houses, shops, museums, and public buildings to hideous skeletons. The U.S. Air Force in the Pacific, once islands in range of Japan had been captured, carried out similar raids on Japanese cities creating even greater destruction. The final two raids witnessed the only wartime use ever of nuclear weapons.

Among the Dead Cities is one of a number of histories of the strategic bombing in World War II. Its dramatic title (possibly an allusion to I Samuel 31:7) alone sets it apart from the prosaic works by more methodical historians. Grayling styles himself a philosopher rather than a historian and focuses on the morality of the area bombing – sometimes called “saturation” or “carpet” bombing – of German and Japanese cities. That such bombing was indiscriminate and served to terrorize the targeted populations, kill civilians in great numbers, and destroy their cities makes the whole concept morally repugnant to Grayling. He and others claim that, while the stated purpose was to break the enemy’s morale and spirit and disrupt the daily lives and economy of the German and Japanese people, it served only to increase the resolve of the Germans – much like the 1940-41 Blitz steeled the British to resist. All that the bombing accomplished was wanton and useless mass destruction of centuries’ old cultural treasures and wanton slaughter of civilians, and had little effect on the outcome of the war.

That thesis is nothing new. A postwar assessment of the effect of strategic bombing indicated that German industrial production continued to increase almost up the end in spite of nearly continuous attacks during the last year of the war. Grayling’s conclusion, however, is that the area bombing was unjustified by military necessity, and thus amounted to a moral outrage and a war crime. Harris, Churchill, and other commanders who carried out their orders (Grayling, perhaps protesting too much, includes a disclaimer that he does not intend to impugn the RAF and American pilots and crews’ bravery or morality) perhaps escaped prosecution because no international protocols like the Geneva Convention proscribed aerial bombing of civilian targets, and, most important, because the Allies won the war.

Similarly, Grayling believes the area bombing raids of Japanese cities were American war crimes, and, by implication, Roosevelt, LeMay, and Nimitz were war criminals. The firebombing of Tokyo and other cites, even more destructive, is of course overshadowed by the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, criticism of which from time to time is the subject of unctuous breast beating by certain elements – but that is another story.

Area bombing in Europe was destructive and deadly. Did it win or hasten the end of the war? Did it have any salutary effect at all? Was the loss of civilian life and the ruining of historic structures and artifices worth the cost? Was there any justification to continue the bombing after late 1944 in Germany or after April or May of 1945 in Japan when the war was all but won? While a majority of Germans never voted for Hitler (when it was still possible to vote for leaders prior to 1933), few protested Nazi policies, most acquiesced in the anti-Jewish laws, and probably a huge majority were thrilled by Hitler’s diplomatic and early military victories. So-called terror bombing was first used by the Nazi controlled Luftwaffe against Holland and Britain. When tit was given for tat, the bombing in Germany was not carried out wantonly against a defenseless people. The German military fought back ferociously. More than 50,000 British airmen (and a considerable number of Americans) were casualties of the campaign and thousands of aircraft were shot down. Until the United States geared up sufficiently to help in Europe (remember, the American military had its hands full with Japan in the first two years of the Pacific war, while the Russians were reeling from a withering German offensive) Britain was essentially alone. It had itself been subjected to a Nazi terror bombing campaign from May 1940 through June 1941 that was halted only when Hitler turned his attention to the Soviet Union. The British fought the only way they could. Given the technology of the time – a far cry from the kind that allowed U. S. forces to pinpoint and kill terrorists with drones and computer guided missile resulting in minuscule collateral damage – and the European weather conditions, nighttime area bombing was the only method that could be remotely effective. The main accomplishment the British wanted was to create sufficient disruption to discourage the Nazi bombers from coming back to their homeland. The diversion of resources to air defense, particularly after the Cologne raid of 1942 and Operation Gomorrah over Hamburg in 1943, surely kept the German air force from attacking Britain again, at least with manned aircraft. The bombing likewise surely hindered the effort on the Russian front. The Soviets begged the western Allies to open a western front for more than two years before the invasion of France on D-Day. Aerial bombing was the best that Britain and the U. S. could do until sufficient resources were marshaled for the Normandy invasion.

Grayling, and others, argue that after the establishment of a western front, and the liberation of most of France by September 1944, combined with contemporaneous Russian drives into Poland, every indication was that Germany was defeated, and all was over but the shouting. Continuing the relentless bombing of German was thus unnecessary.

This is hindsight; it was not all that apparent at the time. To illustrate this point, in September 1944, the Anglo-American forces were dealt a severe setback in Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, and in December of that year, the German army launched a fierce offensive in the Battle of the Bulge. All the while, Great Britain again was subjected to air raids; this time by the unmanned V-1 and V-2 missiles, the latter being supersonic and striking without warning of any kind. The only defense against the V-2s was to prevent their being available to be launched in the first place. Area bombing, haphazard as it was, was the only possible way. Even after the Bulge, the Anglo-American-Canadian forces were fiercely opposed every step of the way. The Soviet Army in the East was even more ferociously opposed. The Russians suffered nearly a half million casualties in the final drive to Berlin and had to fight for the city block by block. It is incontrovertible that Britain and the U.S. had to use everything at their disposal to end — and win — the European War.

As for Japan, the resistance of the enemy was even stronger. Japan began its war with the United States with a sneak attack. Japanese forces contested every battle by fighting, almost literally to the last man. American and British prisoners of war were treated abominably. And when the war was clearly going against Japan, the Kamikaze suicide campaign began. After the liberation of the Philippines, the U.S. was faced with the necessity of invading the home islands of Japan to end the war. Given this situation, could any rational American commander in chief not conclude that serious softening up of the Japanese homeland was a necessary prelude to an invasion? When the atomic bombs became available, why should it have been preferable to spare Hiroshima and Nagasaki so the United States and its allies could suffer a million casualties (the estimate at the time, never seriously refuted) invading Japan?

The measureless human suffering caused by the bombing is evident. The loss of lives, particularly innocent children who could not have made the world they are born into, is an unfortunate reality of war. The resultant loss, particularly in Germany, of cultural treasures is one of the saddest legacies of the area bombing. Photographs of the pre-war German cities – Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, and others — reveal charm and beauty that had been utterly destroyed. Berlin suffered the most, not only from the bombing, but the devastation of the last battle, and division between two hostile powers for the next two generations. During my first visit to Berlin twenty-one years after the end of the war, the scars were still there, and where rebuilding had taken place, it was mostly soul-less modern. At the time of my visit a few years before the Wall fell, it had not changed much. Even in 1995, large tracts were still rubble-strewn vacant areas. But Berlin has come back, much of the city has been restored to its pre-war appearance, and the newer architecture has its own beauty. Dresden was more remarkable for the restoration of the old city area, including plans, much delayed by the former East German communist regime, for the restoration of the totally destroyed Frauenkirche (which now is complete and was rededicated in 2005 last year, Britain’s late Queen – during the war, Second Lieutenant Elizabeth Windsor – sending her best wishes). Nuremberg’s old city center, especially targeted because it was a Nazi hotbed, has been almost completely restored to its pre-war appearance. This demonstrates that artifacts can be rebuilt. Civilizations, however, might well not be. World War II was a struggle for civilization, Western Civilization as it had advanced in its highest and finest order. One of its finest exemplars had been hijacked by evil forces that harkened back to barbarism, superstition, and savagery. The reasons this happened are the subject of a surfeit of writings with many more doubtless to follow, so this phenomenon will not be examined here. But happen it did, and was an evil that had to be defeated, at whatever cost, for our civilization to survive.

Naziism was a profound evil, and Japanese militarism was no better, and both committed worse atrocities than could ever be laid at the feet of the British and Americans. He maintains, however, that two wrongs do not make a right, and there is no justification for sinking to the same moral level as the Nazis. True enough, but beside the point. Allied strategic bombing was not calculated genocide or wanton cruelty toward conquered people and prisoners of war. It had the legitimate goal of defending against and defeating the forces that practiced such atrocious conduct.

A final point ignored by many commentators is what would happen when the fighting was over. Winning the war was one thing; maintaining a peace afterward is quite another. After the World War I armistice, which occurred while the German army was intact and still on French and Belgian soil, and no part of Germany had been invaded, gave credibility to the Nazi explanation that the victorious German army was “stabbed in the back” by reformers, bankers, pacifists, and, especially, Jews. At the end of World War II, Germany and Japan knew they had been beaten – badly. While the comparison is apt, the victory did not quite impose a Carthaginian Peace as the Romans did after being troubled three times by the same foe in the Punic Wars. The defeated German and Japanese adversaries were devastated to the point that they had to be rebuilt from the ground up. But they were. And with the help of former foes, were reconstructed in the image of capitalist republican democracies. For nearly eighty years after World War II ended, the world, beset by conflict and bloodshed as it has been, was not to be troubled by military aggression emanating from Germany or Japan. Perhaps, then, at least in two corners of the earth, Arthur Harris’ and Robert Oppenheimer’s whirlwinds managed to uproot the grapes of wrath.

Today we look back hundred years. On this August 2, 1923, the 30th President of the United States Calvin Coolidge was sworn into office at 2:43 AM. He was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace in Plymouth, Vermont. Coolidge succeeded Warren G. Harding, who had died while on a trip in California. The ceremony took place in Coolidge’s father’s farmhouse, where the room was illuminated only by kerosene lamps. In those days, long before the Internet and satellites, even rural telephone and electricity service did not exist. News of Harding’s demise had to be transmitted by telegraph to the village of Plymouth Notch and delivered by messenger to the house. It is a reminder of how far technology has brought this country, and the world, in the past century. Automobiles were not ubiquitous. Functional aircraft were barely 20 years old and scheduled airlines available for the general public, or even government officials, did not exist. Running water, and sewage were installed only in urban areas, and not all of them. Newspapers and other documents, duplicated by technology whose basis was over 500 years old, was the only mass media, although broadcast radio stations had been established in a few cities by 1923. Coolidge was elected in his own right in 1924 and served until March 4, 1929. He famously stated in a note that he did not “choose to run for president” in 1928. He was known as “silent Cal” and his presidency was probably the most low-key tenure seen in the 20th century. Lots of changes in 100 years.

On another note regarding technological achievements, and those that are proposed, it is reported that Italy has tentatively approved a suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina to connect Calabria (the toe of the boot) with Sicily. That bridge would have a 2-mile-long main span that would be the longest in the world. It would be, of course, subjected to high winds and seas around the 1,400 foot towers planted in the channel.

That Strait has been known to be treacherous because of the current and rocks on the Calabrian shore. Ancient myths related the story of Scylla and Charybdis who guarded the Strait were a peril to sailors. Scylla had been a beautiful sea nymph who was changed into a monster by Circe, the jealous suitor of a certain demigod in love with the nymph. She became a monster with six dog-heads on the end of snakelike appendages. She would snatch and devour sailors from their ships when they passed too close. Charybdis was a whirlpool that would sink a ship drawn into its vortex. Homer’s Odyssey related how Odysseus elected avoid Charybdis to save his entire ship at the cost of losing six sailors to Scylla’s maw. Aeneas avoided the peril by sailing around Sicily to Rome. Scylla and Charybdis have become a metaphor for difficult choices, along with the “Hobson’s choice” and “between a rock and a hard place.”

Perhaps the Italians should take twice about their bridge. The rock that Scylla became can be easily avoided these days, and modern watercraft used to ferry people and vehicles can resist the currents. The engineering and logistical problems might result in a bridge too far. Nevertheless, in the land that gave us Da Vinci, Marconi, and Fermi great feats of technology and engineering are possible.

Today, July 14 is observed in France, and elsewhere, as a holiday. Here in the United States we call it “Bastille Day” I understand in France they simply referred to as 14 July. Like so many other events in France, especially after the late 18th Century, the day has a checkered history there.

That day is popularly regarded as the onset of the French Revolution in which the monarchy of the old regime was overthrown and a republic established. Much like the Russian Revolution of 1917, however, this one quickly got out of hand. It began as a movement to establish a limited monarchy in which the people, here meaning the Third Estate which primarily were the bourgeois — middle-class merchant, tradesmen and artisans — would have the primary say in governance of the nation. Because of the power vacuum created, the movement deteriorated into the mob rule known as the Reign of Terror. King Louis XVI and his wife were executed along with numerous aristocrats and some of the senior clergy. After that Terror burned itself out, the subsequent governments frequently changed a number of times. For the next 150 years, France had a restored monarchy, two Empires, and five republics — they are in the Fifth Republic— as forms of government. Accordingly, any observance of the day the Bastille fell, brings forth different sentiments among the French.

Not so in America. Though we have had our share of tribulations and internal controversies, the Republic established here the same year the Bastille fell has survived its essential form. To the extent that it symbolizes liberty and the end of despotism, Bastille Day is one of our holidays too.

One aristocrat who survived, and took an important role in Revolution, and later French governments, was none other than Marquis the Lafayette, who earlier had supported and aided the American war of independence from Great Britain. Shortly after the Bastille fell, Lafayette obtained a one pound, three ounce wrought iron key to the demolished fortress. He entrusted the key to Thomas Paine, who played a part in both the American and French Revolutions. Paine brought the key to America and in the late summer of 1790 it was presented to the new President of the United States, George Washington. Upon leaving the Presidency in 1797, Washington brought the key to his home at Mount Vernon where the key to the Bastille remains displayed to this day.

“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
    — Justice Harry Blackmun, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) concurring and dissenting in part.

“There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”
    — Justice John Marshall Harlan, Plessy v. Ferguson,(1896), dissenting

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
    — Chief Justice John Roberts, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) 

The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice.
    — Attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr, and others

This Independence Day will be celebrated as it has for the past 247 years, but it is especially significant this year. This is thanks to the United States Supreme Court for re-affirming several of the core principles of the Declaration of Independence as ensconced in law by our Constitution. This past week the Court re-affirmed our freedom of speech and expression, or more particularly, freedom not to speak or express a viewpoint; it ruled that the President of the United States is not a dictator who can give away tax money; that is, private property lawfully collected for public purposes; and, most momentously, ended a patently racist policy that had continued to exist despite the end of legal segregation and enactment of laws against racial discrimination.

There are many talking heads who say that we have “systemic” or “institutional” racism in this country. If one believes that, then he must agree that a truly “systemic” example of racism is the so-called affirmative action programs that many institutions of higher learning (and indeed government agencies and many private businesses) use in an attempt to remedy past discrimination on the basis of race. Programs that do currently penalize some individuals on the basis of their race or skin color do no favors to those such programs are supposed to help. Affirmative Action programs have existed for both virtue-signaling, and for political purposes. As the famous Watergate era informant said: “Follow the money.” There is a lot of money to be made in race-baiting.

In the ruling and opinion announced in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and a companion case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (June 29, 2023), the Supreme Court abolished the use of race as a basis for choosing who will be admitted to colleges and universities. This result affirmed the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and requirements of our Constitution.

In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed his earlier view quoted above, vindicated Justice Harlan, and repudiated Justice Blackmun. The majority opinion and the concurrences further repudiated the concept of collectivism based on an individual’s immutable physical properties.

Among the observations Chief Justice Roberts made in his majority opinion is that “Harvard’s admissions process rest on the pernicious stereotype that ‘a black student can usually bring something that a white student cannot offer.’ [citations omitted] UNC is much the same. It argues that race in itself ‘says something about who you are.” Roberts goes on to approvingly quote a 1995 opinion ‘One of the principal reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.’ But when a university admits students ‘on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that [students] of a particular race, because of their race, think alike.’”

It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with current events and reads/sees/hears media — especially outside their bubble — that such a stereotype is untrue. Justice Clarence Thomas is the prime example here. (His concurrence, albeit lengthy, is worth a read.) But economists like Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams, educators Ward Connerly and Marva Collins, and commentators Jason Riley and Shelby Steele when contrasted with the opinions of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibrim X. Kendi, certainly belie any notion that skin color is determinative of an individual’s ideas and attitudes.

Racism, properly defined, is anathema to a free society. Here it is worth quoting parts of a 1963 essay by Ayn Rand written in the middle of the civil rights movement of that era.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

The Court’s opinion was specific to college admission and arguably not precedent for other contexts such as hiring in private industry. Nevertheless, the color-blind principle appears to be applicable there, particularly where a private firm receives government or state largesse, but that is a controversy and case for another time. But in this case, the arc has indeed bent toward justice. It is indeed a happy Independence Day

Note: the July 2, 2023 issue of The Wall Street Journal included the commentary “Is Your Company’s DEI Program Lawful” Austin, Texas lawyer Michael Toth concludes, in view of these Students for Fair Admissions cases’ application of Title VI, probably not. DEI will DIE — ignominiously.

On this June 6, it is again appropriate to repeat an essay I wrote and published almost a decade ago (with an update). Here goes:

The pleasant town of Bayeux in northern France is famous for its eponymous tapestry depicting the events leading to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Across from the railway station there is a café that serves cold beer and the apple cider the region is also famous for. That establishment bears a sign in English “Welcome to our liberators.”

The sign might appear to be incongruous to some of us, except that ten kilometers to the northwest is a bluff overlooking a sandy expanse along the English Channel that for the past seventy-five years has been known to the world as Omaha Beach.

Many words will be written and spoken on this 79th anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of what General Eisenhower called the “Great Crusade” to end the Nazi
occupation of Europe and ultimately win World War II. Today, the word “crusade” is politically incorrect in some circles, being offensive to some who, incidentally, have vowed to kill us and actually have achieved some success in doing so. We have become accustomed to euphemisms, direct and to-the-point speech being too harsh for our sensitive ears. That is just as well. The loudest and most eloquent statements to be made come from the 10,000 American graves at the top of the cliff and the sound of the waves below.

When visiting the beach even this long after the fact, it is not difficult to picture the horror and chaos experienced by the soldiers and sailors who stormed ashore that day. The Germans had fortified nearly the entire coastline of France, as well as the coasts of other occupied countries, into what was called the Atlantic Wall. Various barriers and obstacles had been placed in the water offshore to prevent landing craft from reaching dry land, and to channel invaders into killing zones covered by machine gun bunkers dug into the 100 feet high cliffs above. This required the assault to be made at low tide, leaving a 300-yard open expanse of sand to traverse before the slightest natural cover could be reached. Above the high tide line is another 50-yard stretch of loose sand. Walking unencumbered on loose sand can be difficult; running with 60 pounds of weaponry and equipment, all the while facing withering small arms and artillery fire, is a nearly superhuman feat. Many of the invaders did not make it. That so many did is a credit to the quality of the military training and preparation, as well as the fortitude and power of the survival instinct of the troops. The actual film footage in the Normandy episode of the Victory at Sea documentary demonstrated some of the difficulty, but the bloodiest parts had to have been edited to make it suitable for a 1950s home audience.

The fictional first 24 minutes of the film Saving Private Ryan might more accurately portray the horror and difficulty of the assault, but still may be an understatement. Eisenhower said in his address to the American, British, and Canadian service members who were about to land on the beaches: “Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.” They were about to discover that he got that right.

It could have been worse. A major part of the plan was to deceive the defenders as to where and when the attack would be made. The entire coast-line was fortified, the defending German army indeed was battle-hardened and exceptionally well-led by Field Marshals Gerd von Runstedt and Erwin Rommel. Their main problem was manpower and munitions. Five years of war, and the continuing demands of the Russian front in the east made critical to the defenders the knowledge of the place and time of the landings. The deception, with some cooperation from the weather, worked. The German defenders were caught off guard at Normandy and were unable to bring the full weight of their forces to bear until a beachhead was established. In spite of the withering fire and the obstructions, even Omaha Beach was taken by day’s end. The Americans didn’t get much farther that day, though, and the casualties were huge. This beachhead, established by those soldiers, whose ranks are now thinning day by day, made it possible to end the war in Europe. Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered eleven months and two days after D-Day. Those few that are left, and those who passed before them, merit the gratitude of us all.

For every victor there is a vanquished. So it must be added that within five years of the victory, the United States, and to some degree Great Britain and France, have become allies, if not friends, with Germany during forty years of Cold War, and beyond. There was no doubt then, or today, that the German Army was fighting on behalf of evil masters and a bad cause. Soldiers, most of whom in World War II were not fighting because they wanted to, can nevertheless fight honorably for an ignoble cause (or dishonorably for a good cause, for that matter). Soldiers know this, and once the fighting is over, they are often more inclined than the civilians far from the horrors to let bygones be bygones.

A poignant story related in a British history magazine relates the ordeal of two soldiers, an American and a German defender who shot him at Omaha Beach. Both survived the war. Heinrich Severloh manned a machinegun in a bunker in the cliff. He estimated that he fired over 12,000 rounds before he ran out of ammunition for it, and then picked up his carbine to continue shooting at the attacking Americans. Three of Severloh’s rounds hit David Silva, as he and other GIs were scrambling for cover on the beach. The German was later captured and held in a POW camp until sometime after the end of the war. He was repatriated in 1946 and took up farming. After reading Cornelius Ryan’s book The Longest Day, published in 1959, Severloh learned that he was the one who shot Silva. In 1963, the two former adversaries met each other in Germany. Silva, by that time had taken Holy Orders as a Catholic priest. The two formed a friendship, as former soldiers who fought honorably for opposing sides are often known to do, and corresponded for many years. They both suffered of the circumstances that attend the fog and maelstrom of war.

But the story of Severloh and Silva’s later relationship is only an aside. The honor today goes to Silva and his fellow servicemen who stormed the beaches on the fateful day. They we salute.