Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

Greco-Roman myths, Nordic legends, and Grimm’s fairy tales all have their grotesque features. Those stories endure because they reflect the grotesque aspects of human nature, and like other great literature and lore, provide insights to life.

The myth of Prometheus came to mind with a recent death and the continuing controversy surrounding the nature of the decedent’s accomplishment. Prometheus was the mythological titan who allegedly stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to the rest of mankind. For this transgression, Zeus, the chief god, condemned Prometheus to be chained to a rock where a vulture would attack and devour the titan’s liver each day, only for his liver to re-grow overnight so the vulture could feed on it again, day after day. The versions vary as to whether Prometheus was ever released from his torment.

The Greek gods, of course, were not conceptually the same as the Judeo-Christian, or for that matter Islamic, God. They were essentially superhuman, elite beings that manifested various qualities of human and other natural characteristics. They all had human passions and were often in conflict with one another, and waged wars – like the Trojan War – through human and demi-god surrogates. Most of them had the morals of a typical Hollywood celebrity. Fire, to the ancients, was a force and had utility that could control nature and be a source of power for humans. Being able to create fire, control it, and use it for one’s purposes made a human being one with the gods in important respects, so giving the secret of fire to man, was a treasonous act. Thus, Prometheus, a god of the titan class, was duly punished.

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov died at the age of 93 on December 23, 2013 in Russia. He invented the well-known and technically regarded AK-47 automatic rifle. His purpose was to provide a common soldier of the Russian (then Soviet) Army with sufficient firepower to meet that of the invading Germans in World War II. The weapon designed was not produced until after that was over, but it became a mainstay for the Soviets, their client states during the Cold War, even nations not in the Soviet orbit, and numerous guerrillas and insurgents throughout the world. The virtues of the AK-47 include its being chambered for the 7.62mm round that was made standard in NATO countries which made its ammunition supply plentiful and ubiquitous. The rifle’s primary virtue was its rugged reliability and low-maintenance requirements. It could function in Arctic tundra, steamy jungles, and arid deserts alike with minimal failures.

Kalashnikov’s death, predictably, has become the occasion of much angst and hand wringing among those who are inclined to blame the Thing and the inventor or author for misuse of an object or idea they created. During his life, Kalashnikov was occasionally asked by various reporters or a certain bent if he regretted inventing such a “murderous” weapon. His answer appears to have always been that he accepted no responsibility for its misuse, though he might condemn those who did unwarranted harm with his invention, or anyone else’s.

If Kalashnikov is worthy of vilification, what about Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite; or Hiram Maxim, on whose machine gun the AK-47 was a refinement. Surely Albert Einstein, who worked out the theoretical basis for nuclear weapons, and Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, who put them into practical form, would be likewise deserving of condemnation. There is hardly a product that is not misused, often with catastrophic effect. I nominate the motor vehicle for first place among those.

Though they punished Prometheus severely, the gods were unable to take fire back from mankind, nor could the ills of the world all be put back into Pandora’s Box or Aladdin’s genie returned into the lamp. Along with the great benefits the use of fire can bestow upon humankind, its misuse can do great harm. The same is true with weapons.

But aren’t weapons, especially firearms, of a different quality? After all, their purpose is to kill another creature. All creatures do not have good intentions, however. Many are predators, and among human beings, the most serious predators are other humans. There are those who use firearms for predatory purposes; there are those who misuse firearms because they have a mental defect or disease. The purpose of inventing and producing arms to be able to defend against such predators, as was Kalashnikov’s purpose.

T. R. Fehrenbach, the Texas historian who served in combat in Korea (where he presumably faced Kalashnikov’s invention), also passed away in December. He wrote a history of that war first published in 1963. A chapter entitled “Proud Legions” in This Kind of War, is Fehrenbach’s analysis of the necessity for defensive means, even when our ideal might be foreign and domestic peace and tranquility. To paraphrase his succinct conclusion: “The liberal [he uses the word in its classic sense] society has no use or need for weapons – as its prophets have long proclaimed. Except in this world there are tigers.”

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The now arrived year 2014 will contain the centennial of the beginning of the central event of the 20^th Century – what I and a few other historians might call the Eighty Years War, or maybe the real Great War. The war from 1914 – 1918, or “The World War” has more commonly been called “World War I” to distinguish it from the 1939 – 1945 war. In effect, both were phases of a global war that really did not end until the month it began, eighty years later.

August 1994 saw the last Russian troops leave Germany and Poland, giving full effect to a Peace Treaty signed in 1990. That Treaty was meant to end the Cold War, and return full sovereignty to a united Germany, which it did. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the Cold War, which included several hot conflicts between principals and client states or other principals, and several times seemed to brink on total hot war, was but the third phase of the world wide conflict that began in 1914.

Maybe an argument can be made that it still might not be over. The current conflict between the Islamist world and, it seems, all the rest, ostensibly has grown out of the colonial experience of the Middle East as it was cut up and parceled out to Britain and France after the Ottoman Empire was dismembered after 1918. There are important differences, though. The Islamists, except maybe for Iran, do not control a sovereign state and their aggression consist of terrorist activity, making them more akin to the anarchists of 100 years ago, than any of the belligerents in the 1914 -1994 conflict. Their cause also does not flow from the same disputes and does not focus upon conquest or control in the traditional sense. Thus, it is not really another phase.

What was this Great War all about? Part of the answer has to do with the nature of war. Two hundred years ago, the Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz gave a partial answer in his treatise On War, which he wrote in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Clausewitz’s thesis is that “war is not merely an act of policy, but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” That description is accurate, so far as it goes. The harder question is why do nations go to war. What was the object of the “political intercourse”? Was it money — or wealth – by control of land, people, and other resources? Abstract ideals like liberty, equality, fraternity? How about making the world “safe for democracy”? Or power for the sake of power? All of these possible reasons bear examination.

The causes of the Great War are all the more mysterious because it followed a century of peace and material advancement that suddenly came crashing down. As for peace during that time, it is true that apart from brief wars between Russia and a British-French force in the Crimea, the Six-Weeks War between Prussia and Austria, and the Franco-Prussian War, the European powers did not resort to violence toward each other like that characterized the better part of the 17th and 18th Centuries. There were plenty of colonial wars of varying length and intensity, and the American Civil War was not without consequence across the pond. Nevertheless, while imperialism and colonialism gave some moralists heartburn, the colonial powers, which after 1899 included the United States had few conflicts within their empires and virtually no quarrels with each other over colonial territories.

Observers early in the century theorized that no war between European powers would occur because they have become so interdependent upon each other, and a war would be ruinous. There were certainly correct about the latter, at least in the short term, but that did not stanch the coming war.

As far as the acquisition of wealth is concerned, war generally destroys, rather than creates it, though it has been observed that there can be as much money to be made in the destruction of an empires as in the building of one. There were undoubtedly technological advances like had never been seen before or, really, since like those that occurred in the century before 1914. An article in a 1993 issue of American Heritage magazine points out that, though there have been many changes, the London, Paris, New York, or Saint Petersburg of 1993 would be recognizable to one who lived in those cities in 1914, but in 1914 would not have been so to an inhabitant from 1814. In that century, the discovery and application of energy sources that were previously unknown transformed the World, or at least that of the West. The tyranny of distance had been overthrown by the power of first the steam and then by the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, or had been made irrelevant by the electric telegraph and then the radio. The sun no longer dictated when human activities requiring light could occur. The century following 1914 saw further developments, some truly epochal, were nevertheless refinements of the breakthroughs in the Nineteenth.

The result of the technological advancements was material betterment for all classes, though much more for some than others. Consequently, there was quite a bit of social disruption and economic displacement during the 19^th and early 20^th Century. The immediately preceding decades to 1914 saw plenty of agitation for political reform by socialists and anarchists that occasionally erupted into class violence, usually during times of economic adjustment. No one, however, seriously contends that the Great War was precipitated by class conflict. Any such hypothesis fails when one considers that the working classes of all of the belligerents enthusiastically flocked to the colors of their respective nations when war broke out despite socialist and anarchist leaders urging that it was not their fight.

Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor who unified Germany in 1870, and presided over its imperial government for the first twenty years, once opined that the next war, if there is one, will be the result of some damn fool thing in the Balkans. He did not live to see it, but he was right.

There have been numerous books and other works published in anticipation of this centennial, and will doubtless be many more to come. It is a fascinating story, and all the more because of the continuing controversy as to the causes.

More to come.

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In this late 2013 post, I decided to choose some events and ongoing issues that had a special impact during the year past, and make a few, brief comments on them.

Given the global reach and sheer number of those who are at least nominal followers, Jesus Christ has to be the most influential person in history. It is therefore a big event when the office that a majority of those followers consider the seat of Jesus’s vicar on earth changes hands. In the case this year, itself notable for its rarity – Pope Benedict did not wait to die before leaving the Papacy – the new Pope Francis seems to be of a different mold than any of his predecessors. He certainly is less focused on the niceties of doctrine and pomp. In many respects, he seems libertarian, which is what the New Testament and other historical sources seem to indicate Jesus was. Whether some of Francis’s pronouncements are really anti-free market remains to be seen. Some of the left-leaning commentators who profess to be Roman Catholic like E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post seem to be pleased with the new Pope so far.

Events relating to the two earlier posts concerning the crisis in Ukraine bear out why geography matters. Ukraine shares a lengthy common border with Russia, was a constituent republic (theoretically) of the Soviet Union, and was previously part of the Czarist empire. Ukraine depends on natural gas, abundant in Russia, as its primary energy source. Russia is am important trading partner. That is why the wish of so many Ukrainians to establish ties with the European Union will probably be unrequited, at least for now. Further illustrating the force of geographical proximity, an essay on Poland in the current issue of Foreign Affairs points out that the post World War II shifting of the Polish borders westward caused that country to be oriented to Germany and Western Europe, rather than to Russia, once the Cold War ended. As now part of the European Union, though not in the Eurozone, Poland is prospering.

Nationally, the rollout of the (un)Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, looked like a train wreck, which its many opponents, including me, from the beginning thought the whole scheme would be. It will probably get worse. With a 2000 page statute and tens of thousands of pages of implementing regulations, how could it be anything else?

Even with the hysteria in wake of the lunatic who killed 20 plus students and teachers at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook school in December 2012, the anti-gun nuts failed to enact the oppressive laws they have long sought. Their efforts’ main effect was to drive up the price of firearms and “high-capacity” magazines, encourage hoarding of ammunition, and increase sale of posters proclaiming President Obama as the “gun salesman of the year” for display at gun shows and stores.

Advocates of homosexual marriage made progress in the courts this year. This is to some degree parallel to the failure of the gun control measures. Both issues concern individual rights. Rights of individuals to acquire and keep the means to protect themselves are much like the right to choose personal relationships. I do not see the Supreme Court making a sweeping ruling that states must allow homosexual marriages in the same way the Roe v. Wade forbade states from outlawing all non-therapeutic abortions. That ruling caused too much division because it took an issue over which many persons had deeply held conflicting positions out of the political arena. I see a ruling that requires federal benefits, and perhaps state benefits, be given to all couples that have the legal equivalent of a marriage. My compromise solution is to provide for legal civil unions for all couples regardless of sex. If they wish, they can call it marriage and have it solemnized by a church or other private organization that is willing to do so.

The tension between security and privacy continues. High tech surveillance cameras and cell-phone tracking identified the Boston marathon bombers and led to the killing of one and the capture of the other in short order. The collecting of telephone call records by the National Security Agency is still disturbing to many Americans. Edward Snowden’s disclosures have made him a villain and traitor, or a hero and patriot, and to some, both. Lower federal courts are now split over whether such data gathering is Constitutional, setting up an almost sure Supreme Court review.

Going forward, next year’s elections might see the Senate return to GOP control. The House could go to the Democrats, but probably won’t. Nationally, the President’s poll rating are seriously low, but Congress’s are in the toilet. The thing to remember in that regard is that the electorate does not vote for a Congress, but for Senators by state and Representatives by district. If Congress is gridlocked and doing nothing, that might sit well with the constituents of many individual members of Congress.

In the early 1970s, I was not alone in the belief that marijuana would be legal by the end of the decade. We missed by at least 40 years. With pot being legal for medicinal purposes in six states, and, as of this Wednesday, for recreational purposes in two, I believe this libertarian trend is clear. Marijuana may well be decriminalized in a majority of states by 2020. At some point, the so-called “hard” drugs will follow, as they should. The War on Drugs has been a perfect example of Albert Einstein’s insanity definition. (For what its worth, I personally have never used any controlled substance, except medicine prescribed by a physician, and never intend to.)

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Since there are actually twelve days, not just one day, of Christmas, Walter Russell Mead Bard College professor and editor at The American Interest, posts interesting essays on his Yule Blog each of those days, plus Christmas Eve. His Fourth and Fifth Day are at these links:

Fourth Day

Fifth Day

The other posts are (or will be) found at http://www.the-american-interest.com/page/2/

T. E. Lawrence is one of the more famous alumni of Oxford University. A large portrait of him looks out upon the dining hall at Jesus College where he was an undergraduate. That portrait bears an uncanny resemblance to Peter O’Toole, the actor who portrayed Lawrence in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. O’Toole, who died several days ago, was considerably taller than Lawrence, but their facial features were similar. So were their personas.

Lawrence was O’Toole’s first major role in film acting, but he made the title character his own and went on to be a popularly, and often critically, acclaimed movie star. Nominated for best actor eight times, he never won an Oscar. Perhaps the competition was too steep during the years he was nominated for, the roles he played were not in vogue, or the voting members of the Academy didn’t particularly like him for one reason or another. It hardly matters. O’Toole is a film legend anyway.

O’Toole played leading roles, particularly of when portraying historical figures, with astounding force and depth. Unlike many actors, he actually made his characters. There are also many that critics panned some of his work, though I can’t opine on those that I have not seen. The three most memorable to me were Lawrence of course, the four-part made-for-television Masada, and The Lion in Winter.

The now fifty-year-old Lawrence movie chronicled the role of the Oxford educated archaeologist and British Army officer in the Middle East front of World War I. Within the past few years it has been re-released in a enhanced director’s cut on DVD, and is worth seeing more than once. There’s little question that it was one of the finest epic films ever made. At four hours, it certainly was one of the longest.

Two of O’Toole’s most memorable lines were from that film, lines that define the meaning of courage and determination. Early in the plot, Lawrence snuffs out a match with his bare fingers without flinching. Another officer tries to do the same thing and painfully asks what is the trick. Lawrence replies “Of course it hurts, the trick is not minding that it hurts.” Later, when an Arab falls off his camel in the middle of a fiercely hot section of desert, Lawrence determines to go back to rescue the man. Prince Faisal tries to dissuade him saying “Gasim’s time has come, Lawrence. It is written.” To which Lawrence replies: “Nothing is written.” When he returns with Gasim, he, even more sonorously repeats those words.

Masada is a fictional account of the remnants of the Jewish nation’s last stand against the Romans before the Diaspora. Challenged by the leader of the Jews Eleazar ben Yair to try and find and kill the rest of then. O’Toole’s character General Cornelius Flavius Silva replies: “You invite me to try? Your country is one long and narrow graveyard already; your cities are flatter than your deserts, your temple has been destroyed and most of the survivors are slaves, all for seven years of our ‘trying’. Give us our due, man, we know how to kill.” Yes, Silva’s legions knew how to kill, but after conquering the fortress at Masada and finding the defenders have all committed suicide, Silva realizes what he really accomplished. “A victory? What have we won? We’ve won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.”

My favorite film of all time, The Lion and Winter, featured O’Toole as the leader of a synergistic cast including Katherine Hepburn, Timothy Dalton, and Anthony Hopkins in his debut. It was the second time he played King Henry II (the first was opposite Richard Burton in Becket). The real King Henry was a significant historical figure, and without a doubt one of the most effective leaders England/Britain ever had. His wife, Eleanore of Aquitaine, was every bit his equal. And his mother Matilda was named as King Henry I’s heir to the throne, spent 18 years fighting a civil war in an attempt to claim it after the barons refused to accept her, and finally won it for her son. The Lion’s plot centers around a Christmas gathering at Chinon in France in the year 1183 where Henry II and Eleanore argued bitterly over which of their sons was to be named heir apparent. “The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many,” Henry marvels on the Eve of the Nativity. Other memorable quotes are too numerous to recount, but Henry’s last words in the movie were particularly stirring, especially now for O’Toole. As Eleanore is leaving Chinon on her barge, Henry calls after her “I hope we never die. Do you think there’s any chance of it?”

No one else could have delivered those lines, and all the others quoted her, with the impact he did. I think there’s a good chance that Peter O’Toole’s legacy will never die.

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Since I continue to receive a plurality of page views to this blog from Ukraine, thought I might keep up with what’s going on in that country.

In today’s (December 9, 2013) Wall Street Journal:

“Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets here for a second weekend, blockading government buildings and demanding that President Viktor Yanukovych fire his cabinet and reject plans to form a closer alliance with Russia.

“After speeches in the central Kiev square that pro-European protesters have occupied for the past week, crowds fanned out peacefully across downtown, crying “Glory to Ukraine!” and “Get the gang out!”

“Activists advanced in columns from the square and set up new barricades on roads leading to government buildings, saying they would prevent Mr. Yanukovych’s administration from working until he cedes to their demands. Protesters, angered by Mr. Yanukovych’s visit Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, tore down a statue of Vladimir Lenin, a potent symbol of Moscow’s historical dominance over this former Soviet republic.”

Back in the 1990s, cantankerous Dallas hamburger purveyor Harvey Goff retrieved a statue of Lenin from a Russian city and placed it in front of his local restaurant on a pedestal that bore the simple inscription “America Won”. The statue in Kiev probably was not quite as provocative.

Ukraine’s economy is hurting from a soft world market for steel, its main export, and the cost of natural gas, its most significant source of energy. One purported reason Yanukovych is seeking ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia is that nation is the main source of gas and pretty much sets the price. at will. As I mentioned before, the cultural divide may be the real reason.

Gas deals seems to be the ostensible reason why Yanukovych prosecuted former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is presently in prison for alleged corruption. Western observers believe the charges against her were trumped up to suit the present administration’s political ends. There is a “Free Yulia” movement in Ukraine, but so far the Yanukovych regime hasn’t paid much attention.

The Obama Administration is playing coy with the current Ukrainian-Russian situation, probably in the hope not to offend Putin. Our Secretary of State John Kerry may have committed a gaffe when he referred to “the” Ukraine. That nation pointedly dropped the definite article prefix, which implied that it was a region rather than a sovereign nation, along with the “Soviet Socialist Republic” when it broke with the USSR in 1991.

There does not seem to be much of a Ukrainian lobby here in the U.S. that is comparable to the Armenian, or other immigrant ethnics believing themselves ill-used in their ancestral country. There are, however, a few prominent Americans of Ukrainian birth or descent. Such as:

Jack Palance – tough-guy villain in many Hollywood films.

Andy Warhol – pop artist.

Neko Case – present day popular singer-songwriter.

Bob Dylan – iconic 1960s folk songwriter.

Mike Ditka – Dallas Cowboys pro football player and Chicago Bears head coach.

Mike Royko _ Chicago news columnist (liked to say he was of Polkrainian descent – mom was Polish born).

Anyway, here is Yulia wearing her trademark crown of braids:

　


Free Yulia! /

This blog has a facility where I can review the hits (“pageviews”) by country of origin, number per day, week, month, and all-time. I was surprised to see that for the last several months the country from which the most hits have come has been Ukraine. During the past month, there have been 711 hits, while only 605 from the States. So far as I know, I am not acquainted with anyone who lives there, or anyone of Ukrainian descent in this country. Thus, I wonder who – there must be more than one – is interested in what I have to say.

As an independent country, Ukraine is new. Prior to 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, but for all practical purposes it was wholly subordinate to the Russian dominated USSR. An interesting feature of the Soviet era was that Ukraine was a member of the United Nations, the result of a compromise that gave the Soviets a greater voice in the General Assembly. Ukraine was briefly independent after World War I, but was absorbed into the Soviet Union after the civil war between the Whites and the Reds in the early 1920s. Prior to that it was part of the Russian Empire, and even further back it was split between medieval and early modern Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Austria at various times. Nevertheless, its people maintained a separate ethnic identity. As part of the Slavic linguistic and cultural eastern European group, Ukraine straddles one of Samuel Huntington’s cultural “fault lines” – between the Western and the Orthodox civilizations. The eastern part of Ukraine is generally Russian Orthodox in religion and uses the Cyrillic alphabet, while the western areas tend to be eastern rite Roman Catholic and use the Roman alphabet. Most Ukrainians in the eastern area speak Russian, while those in the west speak Ukrainian. A large number are bilingual.

Ukraine has had a rocky transition from the Soviet state to its present independence, proving once again it is not easy to change from a totalitarian body politic to a liberal democracy. Ukraine is not quite there, but it is a lot closer than its neighbors Russia and Belarus.

Ukraine may not be particularly a free society in the Western sense, but it is not an authoritarian police state. The capital city Kiev has been exploding over the last few days. Hundreds of thousands of people came out into the streets throughout that nation over the past weekend to protest President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision to scuttle the signing of a vaguely worded agreement that would have begun to pull Ukraine into the European orbit—and out of Russia’s. The police can’t clear the streets. The protesters have taken over city hall, as well as some other buildings. It does not appear that there will be a Soviet or Chinese communist style crackdown.

Yanukovich, the man the people in the streets are fighting, is the one they came out to fight in 2004-2005, in what came to be known the Orange Revolution. Those protests saw Ukrainians staying out in the streets in rain and the snow until they got fair elections that overturned Yanukovich’s falsified victory. A new, apparently fairer, election installed Viktor Yuschenko as president. Yanukovich came back to win election in 2010, defeating Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister, in a run-off. Subsequent to his election, Yanukovich is said to have engineered Tymoshenko’s conviction and prison sentence for alleged corruption, a move unpopular with the western, Ukrainian speaking population, and denounced by Western European leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Indeed, the Orange Revolution and now the  supporters of Yanukovich, whose native language is Russian, versus the Viktor Yuschenko-Tymoshenko bloc, seems to embody classic Huntington-style Clash of Civilizations along a cultural fault-line.

It will be interesting to view what happens in Ukraine during the next several weeks and months. Hope they keep reading my blog.

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For more, see this link.

Dies Irae is Latin for Day of Wrath. These are the first words of a recitation or hymn in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, and other Christian denomination’s liturgy, recited or sung in the sequence preceding the proclamation of the Gospel. Its use in the liturgy was eliminated shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s death by Vatican II as too reminiscent of the Medieval negative theology. It probably was sung in Latin at his funeral. Perhaps the most recognizable musical renditions today are in Mozart’s Requiem and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique – the latter containing the ominous tolling of the funeral bell. The first stanza in an English translation is “Day of wrath and doom impending, David’s word with Sibyl’s blending, Heaven and earth in ashes ending!”

Fifty years ago, and onward for some time, many regarded November 22, 1963 as that day of wrath and doom. At times, especially in the 1960s, it seemed to some that we were of the eve of destruction. Doom was imminent.

It was not, as it turned out. The next half century in retrospect reminds one of the Antrobus family in Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth – humankind bungling onward but incrementally upward. There is no way to know whether the nation, or the world, would have been better off, worse off, or about the same if Lee Harvey Oswald had not fired the shots, or had missed. Contra-factual historical speculation is a fool’s errand.

I began writing this post thinking that I would relate where I was, what I was doing and how the news of President Kennedy’s death affected me. After four or five handwritten pages, I decided: Who cares? Everyone who was alive and old enough then to appreciate what happened has their own story. No one needs mine. Anyway, for those past year or so, we have been subject to a hash and re-hash of the assassination and everything surrounding it. Overload. So I‘ll just say a few words about my impressions now and leave it at that.

On this day, the Dallas County courts and offices – which are all not much more than the distance a major leaguer could hit a baseball from the site on Elm Street – are closed. The flags will fly at half-staff, and there will be commemoration ceremonies in the shadow of the former Texas School Book Depository building presided over by the Dallas mayor with the help of historian David McCullough.

A constant theme in the newspapers and other media locally, and maybe elsewhere, is whether the City of Dallas has “come to terms” with the event, and if it has transformed itself from the “city of hate” to, perhaps, a “kinder and gentler” place. All of this is nonsense.

I have total contempt to the concept of collective guilt by association. Even giving it some credence, it makes no sense to apply it to Dallas, certainly not because of the President’s murder. For one thing, the killing was committed by a lone communist fanatic. President Kennedy was on the same page as former General Edwin Walker, Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey, and other vociferous locals insofar as their opposition to and trepidation for the Soviet Union and its international communist movement. Their disagreements, some serious and irreconcilable, were over how to combat it. My belief was that Kennedy had the best approach, but others were entitled to their opinion and to express it, however intemperately. Walker and Kennedy were both Cold Warriors, and were shot at for the same reason by a communist true-believer, silly and little though he might have been. Commander-in-chief President Kennedy deserves a posthumous Purple Heart at the very least, perhaps the Navy Cross, the award for valor in that service second only to the Medal of Honor.

Considering the foregoing, please spare me the conspiracy hypotheses. Every such scenario I’ve heard or read of is rank speculation without a scrap of credible evidence to support it.

As far as “hate” is concerned, it has been the last refuge of scoundrels who have no more rational arguments to make for their pet cause. Certainly it is appropriate to hate, despise, disdain certain ideas, concepts. or acts. Naziism, communism, murder, fit that. As far as individual persons being the object of hate, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Lee Harvey Oswald perhaps merit such. No one other than fringe fanatics – Oswald being one, no doubt – and losers, expressed hate for President Kennedy as an individual, or even as President, other in than hyperbolic rhetoric. Many did not like, maybe ever hated, what they thought he stood for. But not the man, however intemperately they expressed their opinions.

Dallas has evolved over the past five decades, but not because it was trying to redeem itself. There was nothing to be redeemed from. The “city” is a figure of speech for the society it embodies, and society is only a convenient way of referring to a group of individuals that have roughly the same locale, attitudes, values, and aspirations. It is not the attitudes of the ephemeral politicians, prognosticators, pundits that cannot resist stepping up and shouting from every stump they pass by.

The Dies Irae is a long poem, and has been abbreviated for musical compositions and for liturgical use. Its finale is not as pessimistic and negative as its critics allege. To that I’ll end this essay with the final stanza, and include it here especially for President John F. Kennedy: “Lord, all-pitying, Jesus blest, Grant them thine eternal rest. Amen.“

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This month news outlets throughout the world reported that Manfred Rommel, German lawyer and three term mayor of Stuttgart, died on November 7 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Rommel (lawyers in Germany are customarily so addressed) was the son of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, known as the “Desert Fox” for his brilliant tactics while commanding the German Army in North Africa during World War II.

Dr. Rommel was 15 in late 1944 when his father was given a choice by two Nazi SS officers: either commit suicide or face a show trial on charges of conspiring to kill Hitler. The Nazis made a veiled threat that if he chose a trial, Erwin Rommel’s family would not be safe. He chose the former.

The rank of Field Marshal was the highest in the German Army, equivalent to five-star general in the U.S. Army. Unlike some of the other officers that attained that rank as a result of toadying to Hitler, there is little doubt that Rommel earned it through his military prowess. His talents and abilities were enlisted in service of a thoroughly bad regime, but as a career soldier he had little choice but to do his job and do it as best he could. There has never been an accusation or even suggestion that he participated in, or was even associated with, any of the Nazi war crimes. Rommel also insisted that prisoners of war be treated honorably, and hoped his adversaries would do likewise. The Americans and British, at least, generally did so. When as a callow teenager, Manfred expressed a wish to join the Waffen SS, the Nazi paramilitary fighting force, his father forbade it, and arranged for him to be posted to a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft battery at age 14.

After his father’s death, young Manfred left his post and surrendered to Free-French forces. When released he completed his preparatory education and then studied law at Tubingen University. He began a career in the civil service of the Baden-Wurttemberg state government, serving in the interior and finance ministries. He was elected mayor of Stuttgart in 1974 and held that post until his retirement in 1996.

During his tenure, Mayor Manfred Rommel met and became friends with both Major General George Patton IV, who was assigned to a U. S. Army post near Stuttgart, and Lord David Montgomery, both sons of his father’s World War II adversaries, General George S. Patton and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. His friendship with these scions of former enemies went a long way toward solidifying the friendship of the postwar Federal Republic of Germany with the United States and Great Britain. Manfred Rommel is quoted “father once said during the war, ‘The best thing would be to live as a British dominion now that we’ve shown we can’t manage our own affairs.’ He was being sarcastic, of course.”

Sarcastic, perhaps, but prescient. For roughly seven years after the surrender, western Germany was indeed governed by the British and Americans. During the latter part of the occupation, and throughout the early days of the Federal Republic, Manfred Rommel was instrumental in the rebuilding, physically and spiritually, his state and country.

Possessing the name of a legendary wartime officer untainted by the Nazis, regarded by many Germans as a hero, and by former adversaries as an honorable opponent, Manfred Rommel could easily have entered national politics and conceivably become chancellor or president. He eschewed national in favor of local and state politics. One of the features of the German Constitution, written under the tutelage of American and British occupiers, was federalism and separation of powers. The prerogatives and powers of the German states were restored and strengthened. Manfred Rommel experienced firsthand the result of centralization of political power. One of the first things Hitler and the Nazis did was strip the German states of their powers, making the government in Berlin all powerful, and able to establish the totalitarian regime that it did. Possibly with that in mind, he used his talents to strengthen his city and state.

One of his acts as mayor of Stuttgart that underscored Manfred Rommel’s character occurred during his first term. He was a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (the party of the present German Chancellor Angela Merkel) regarded as center-right. He was regarded as a liberal which, in Europe, is generally analogous to an American conservative who leans libertarian. In the 1970s, West Germany was rocked by terrorist acts of the ultra-left Red Army Faction (sometimes known as the Baader-Meinhoff Gang). Many leaders of that gang had been arrested and were held in a Stuttgart prison. Several, including Ulrike Meinhoff and Andreas Baader, committed suicide there. Dr. Rommel insisted, against the wishes of many politicians and ordinary citizens, that the terrorists be given a decent burial, even though many feared that the terrorist graves would be a shrine and rallying point for their followers. Perhaps he hoped such magnanimity would help dampen the terrorist’s ardor for their cause. Despite their atrocious acts, he is reported to have said that “with a little generosity of spirit, enmity ends with death.”

But perhaps good will can live on.

Manfred Rommel was 84.

For more on this story, see these links.

The Australian

The Telegraph

New York Times

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