I am not sanguine about us being any more prepared for the next disaster than we were for Hurricane Katrina. There simply has been and is increasingly now too much bureaucracy and too many centers of power and authority in the various levels of government trying to respond to disasters.
Who is to blame for the catastrophe that befell New Orleans and the Gulf Coast? Where to start? The then and still, mayor of N.O., Ray Nagin, can be faulted for not responding fast enough (the order of response should local, state, then the federals) and not following his own disaster plan by supplying transportation (school and city buses) for the people who could not get out of their neighborhoods. And once people were in the Superdome, according to the plan, they were supposed to be given water, RTE meals, and security. None of these was provided.
We are a nation of laws and the law states that the governor has to request help from the federal government in the form of disaster aid and the military before the federal government can legally act. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco bears a great deal of blame for not ordering the state national guard into N.O. sooner and not allowing Bush to send in federal and other state guard units to help. The Red Cross was standing by to go to the Superdome with supplies, but was not allowed in by the Governor’s homeland security dept. because the governor felt that people would then go to the Superdome in greater numbers and she and the mayor did not want that. Where the hell were people supposed to go? Bush actually called Blanco and urged her to act, but she still dithered another 24 hours. Incidentally there was bad blood between Blanco and Nagin even before the hurricane because Nagin supported Blanco’s moderate Republican opponent, current Louisiana congressman, Bobby Jindal, for governor in the last race (I don’t know why). Blanco’s performance as governor is in contrast to Haley Barbour in Mississippi who acted quickly and decisively even allowing that his problems were not of the same magnitude as Blanco’s.
When Bush saw that the mayor and the governor were not up to the monumental task they faced he should have acted and the law and precedent be damned – lives and the suffering of many people were at stake. Bush was 24 hrs. late in acting. He did not come through with the same stellar performance he did after 9/11. Even though FEMA was not set up as a first responder in a disaster it is a hopelessly inept bureaucracy and Michael Brown was an archetypical bureaucrat. He deserved to be canned and Bush showed bad judgment in appointing him in the first place. The type of person who is needed in a job like that is Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. The wife of one of the firefighters from McKinney (a city just north of Plano) said on the radio here that when her husband’s unit volunteered and went to New Orleans a FEMA official there gave them the job of passing out FEMA flyers and told them there would not be doing any firefighting and rescue work because he knew they were just there for the glory! That SOB should have been fired on the spot, but of course was not.
The politicians are not covering themselves in glory with their carping and unseemly criticizing even as the rescue effort was ongoing. For the egregious Howard Dean to say that the slow federal response was racially motivated is just plain nuts and divisive. The tendentious remarks of the insane Nancy Pelosi were inane. Hillary Clinton while more restrained in her criticizing came out with the same old canard of calling for a bipartisan commission. Good lord, doesn’t that woman have any imagination or originality? Who remembers what even the recent 9/11 commission said or accomplished? Name just one thing. I can not. Among others, two Louisiana politicians, Mary Landreau and Bobby Jindal have bitterly complained about the response of the federal government. It is as if they have been complete outsiders and not influential politicians in Louisiana. Landreau is a United States senator, her brother was the Lt. governor, and her father was a long time powerful politico in Louisiana. To paraphrase what Dr. Samuel Johnson said about the American colonialists, Landreau and Jindal should be thankful for any punishment for their culpability for this catastrophe - short of hanging.
What does come through is the generosity and just plain goodness of so many ordinary Americans. There are always the scam artists (according to the FBI there were 2300 phony Hurricane Katrina disaster relief web sites – some came from overseas) and as we all saw there were looters in New Orleans and Mississippi. When the massive amount of government and private relief monies came flooding in, so to speak, there were the inevitable stealing and ‘misappropriation’ of some of the funds.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
SEN. JOE MCCARTHY – A BALANCED ACCOUNT 31
I will attempt to do the impossible. Not literally, of course, because the impossible is by definition impossible. I will try to do the extremely difficult, which is to summarize a balanced story of the late junior Republican senator from Wisconsin – Joseph Raymond McCarthy.
There are few Americans who have been criticized, maligned, marginalized, shunned, demonized, disparaged, and just plain reviled as much as Joe McCarthy – not completely without cause I might add. If one wants to bludgeon opponents just accuse them of “McCarthyism” which to imply they use tactics of smear, deception, lying, demagoguery, and guilt by association to destroy a person’s good name and reputation. McCarthy was sometimes guilty of doing that and so were his opponents – in spades. The word “McCarthyism” has long ago become an obscenity; however with some exceptions (Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot [born Saloth Sar] for example) people are the sum of their parts. It is not useful or accurate to completely demonize or deify them.
Kvetching writers such as Richard Rovere, Ellen Schrecker, and David Caute compared McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusades to Hitler and Stalin’s Great Terror. Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions, including an estimated 6 million innocent Jews, and the suffering of tens of millions of blameless people. Soviet Union scholar Robert Conquest estimates that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 14 ½ million Soviets from 1930 to 1937. Millions more were killed or caused to die by Stalin in the years of WWII and after, continuing until his death in 1953.
Author Arthur Herman says in his 2000 book Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator “We need to remember that during the entire period, from 1947-58, no American citizen was interrogated without benefit of counsel, none was arrested or detained without due process, and no one went to jail without trial.” Who was way over the top, McCarthy or his critics?
It is interesting to contrast the disrepute McCarthy is held in with the respect given to the Kennedy family despite the friendship and support given to McCarthy by the Kennedy clan. Joseph Kennedy Sr. greatly admired and agreed with McCarthy about the threat to America by Communists. He was delighted that during his bachelorhood McCarthy dated two of Joe’s daughters, Patricia and Eunice; Robert Kennedy served as assistant counsel on McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations until a personal quarrel with chief counsel, Roy Cohn, caused him to quit. McCarthy was the godfather of Robert and Ethel’s first child; and John F. Kennedy’s views on Communism and the Soviet threat were not much different from McCarthy’s. Author Arthur Herman recounts how one night in February 1952 when he heard one speaker at Harvard’s Spree Club denounced McCarthy in the same breath as Alger Hiss, Kennedy shot back, “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!” Herman states that Kennedy backed the Communist Control Act, a measure that went far beyond anything McCarthy ever proposed by virtually outlawing the Communist party in the United States (good for Kennedy for doing that).
Conservative Republicans were also supporters and admirers of McCarthy. Among theses were William F. Buckley and his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell jr. (the father of the founder and publisher of the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III) and currently the comely columnist Ann Coulter.
There is confusion in many people’s minds about investigation of Communists in the United States by McCarthy and by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy essentially searched for Communist spies, Communist non-spies, and Communist dupes, security risks all, in the U.S. government as the chairman of a Senate sub-committee starting in 1951. HUAC was formed in 1937, but started interrogating Communists outside the government under its chairman Martin Dies (D-TX) in 1947. It was HUAC, not McCarthy, which compelled the entertainment elite, including the infamous “Hollywood Ten”, to testify under oath whether they, “are now or ever have been a member of the Communist party?” It made those Hollywood snobs very cross to have to admit whether they were supporters of the evil regime of Joseph Stalin – one of history’s most villainous mass murders. The mainstream media, apologists then as now for malevolent groups and governments, were beside themselves with indignation over the treatment of those traitorous or complicitous buffoons.
McCarthy investigated the State Department for Communist spies or communist sympathizers and, contrary to popular belief, found some. Also there is confusion about the Army – McCarthy hearings of 1954. It was not McCarthy who was investigating the Army, it was the Senate who was investigating McCarthy for his charges that the Army was infiltrated with Communists spies and was covering up. It was those hearings starting on June 9th, 1954 which sank old Joe (actually he wasn’t old – McCarthy died at age 48 in 1957). Weepy old (he really was old) Joseph Welsh, the lead lawyer for the Army, put on a thespian performance that should have won an Academy Award. When Welsh repeatedly baited and ridiculed McCarthy’s lead counsel, Roy Cohn, about revealing the names of any real Communists, “before sundown” McCarthy could take it no longer and told Welsh that he should look to his own staff if he wanted to find Communists in the form of one of Welsh’s young assistant lawyers by the name of Fisher. That revelation became a trap and the sly old fox Welsh sprang it. With words that are remembered to this day Welsh told McCarthy: “Until this moment Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us…..Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel [he repeated the words ‘reckless’ and ‘cruel’ just to make sure nobody missed them] as to do injury to that lad……Let us not assassinate this lad further. Senator you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” From that moment McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade was effectively over. And it wasn’t long before his senate career and his life too were over. After the exchange between Welsh and McCarthy the committee chairman, Carl Mundt quickly called an adjournment. Outside the hearing room Welsh, with tears streaming down his face, repeated his oration in front of television cameras. When he finished and rounded a corner, out of sight of reporters and cameras, he asked a colleague: “Well, how did it go?”
Edward R. Murrow’s television broadcast, See It Now, on March 9th, 1954 inflicted a serious wound to the reputation of McCarthy. Like the performance of the sanctimonious fraud, Joseph Welsh, three months later, Murrow’s broadcast was intellectually dishonest. According to Arthur Herman, Murrow and his staff spent two months cutting and editing film clips to put McCarthy in the worst possible light. Murrow added his own sardonic commentary: “Upon what meat does Senator McCarthy feed?” The answer: “Two of the staples of his diet are investigations (protected by immunity) and the half-truth.” The broadcast was a hatchet job without any pretense of being fair and balanced. Murrow himself had engaged in innuendoes and half-truths. Liberals loved it of course. I have not seen it, but just as a wild guess I am willing to bet that the movie good night, and good luck produced by clueless liberal George Clooney is a paean to Murrow showing him to be a paragon of virtue and McCarthy the personification of evil. Any takers? Has anyone heard of Lawrence Duggan? Ann Coulter says that Duggan was a close friend of Murrow. Duggan was also a Soviet spy who did great harm to the security of the United States. After being questioned by the FBI, Duggan leapt to his death from an office window. His death was ruled a suicide, but as Coulter said, given the people he was doing business with, he might have been pushed. Murrow, along with others in the news media, vehemently denied that Duggan was a spy. So much for the perception skills of Murrow and his cronies – decrypted Soviet cables (the Venona Project) and documents from the Soviet archives have since proved beyond any doubt whatsoever the culpability of Duggan.
Arthur Herman tells how in 1953 the former McCarthy critic Alistair Cooke noted “a developing discrepancy between ‘McCarthyism’ and McCarthy.” The cultured Cooke, a graduate of Cambridge and a naturalized American and political liberal was famed for his radio program Letter from America which was broadcasted on the BBC (I remember listening to it when I was in Libya from 1957-65) and lasted for 58 years being the longest running series in history to be presented by a single person. Cooke and others realized that McCarthy was proceeding “with careful planning and masterful discretion. He is patient with witnesses whose FBI files would give ordinary citizens the creeps. He has consistently protected the anonymity of highly suspect witnesses.” This judicious and discreet McCarthy was “a new turn which,” Cooke added, “liberals are loathe to acknowledge.”
Asking how many spies McCarthy exposed in his anti-Communist crusade is to ask the wrong question. A more important and pertinent question is to ask whether McCarthy helped or hurt the cause of identifying and rooting out Communist spies, dupes, and sympathizers from the federal government. The 1930’s and 1940’s were lax times as far as awareness of Communists was concerned and certainly many people did not consider them security risks. After Alger Hiss in 1949 and the Rosenbergs in 1950 were charged with espionage the mood in the country changed even if the major news media did not. That there were numerous Communist spies or people otherwise favorably disposed toward the Soviet Union in the Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations is beyond dispute. How much harm they did to the United States and how enthusiastic an effort was made to identify and excise these people from their sensitive positions in the government is a matter of a great deal of dispute. Who were these Communist spies and fellow travelers (a term coined by Stalin himself)?
The departments of State, the Treasury, and Interior harbored the most of these Reds. Prominent among the ones at State were Alger Hiss, John Stewart Service, and the aforementioned friend of Edward R. Murrow, Lawrence Duggan. At Treasury were scofflaws Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Solomon Adler. Owen Lattimore (the hypocritical creep who coined the term ‘McCarthyism’) while never an actual employee at the Department of State was any extremely influential consultant. There were dozens of others in the government, including Noel Field, Frank Coe, Harold Glasser, who were either outright Communists spies or who were so enamored with Communism that they put the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the United States. Of course there were many more agitprop people outside of government - authors, university professors, Hollywood writers, directors, producers, and actors who adhered to the Communist line.
It is sometimes claimed by people on the right that Eastern Europe was ceded to Stalin after WWII and China was “lost” to Mao Tse-tung in 1949 because of the influence of Communists in our government. This charge seems extreme and logically indefensible to me. There is no doubt that as an important State Dept. official in both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, Alger Hiss, especially while attending the Yalta Conference in early February 1945, tried to expedite the takeover of the Eastern European countries by the Soviets, but since the Red Army occupied those countries at the end of WWII, short of starting WWIII nothing could have prevented the hegemony of Eastern Europe by the Soviets – it was a fait accompli. Harry Dexter White and Owen Lattimore along with John Steward Service worked diligently to prevent or delay the funding of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek by the United States and otherwise promoted the interests of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists. While their efforts may have accelerated the downfall of the Nationalist government it is highly unlikely that even without their sabotaging machinations the Chinese Communists could have been defeated.
On December 2, 1954 the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure Joe McCarthy. Joining the majority was moderate Republican senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut – father of future president George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of current president George Walker Bush. Senator John F. Kennedy did not vote on the resolution as he was having a back operation at the time. Some say he scheduled it so as not to have to cast a vote. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona said “Of course Joe McCarthy has made mistakes…… Let the members of this body search their consciences and say whether or not they themselves have made mistakes equally regrettable.” Or did the Senate vote to censure McCarthy? Actually the senate resolution did not contain the term ‘censure’, rather it said ‘condemn’. It is an interesting sidelight, but perhaps not an important distinction.
The censure committee considered five categories of charges against McCarthy ranging from contempt of the Senate, abusing colleagues (he had once told a reporter that Senator Hendrickson of New Jersey was “a living miracle, without brains or guts”), and encouraging government employees to violate the law. Even so, abuse of senate colleagues was a time honored practice. Every senator could remember when former majority leader Tom Connally said of Michigan’s Homer Ferguson that “everything he touches is covered with the vomit of his spleen.” Some could even remember when another Wisconsin senator, Robert La Follette, said on the senate floor that God had given one of his colleagues “a hump on his back” because he was “by nature a subservient, cringing creature.” A total of 46 separate counts were considered, but in the end only one count was agreed to. So what was McCarthy censured, or more accurately condemned, for? For lying, perjury, reckless behavior, and without any foundation, falsely accusing innocent people brought before his committee of being Communists? No. The senate resolution charged him with insulting some of his fellow senators by calling them “handmaidens of the communist Party.” McCarthy had hurt their feelings. One is reminded of the incident where Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) implied that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) was behaving in a cowardly fashion by calling for the immediate withdrawn of American troops from Iraq. The Democrats on the House floor began braying like, well donkeys, in their feigned indignation. Never mind that Murtha, a former marine colonel who served in Vietnam, had not only lost his nerve, but seemed to have lost a few marbles as well.
Did Senator McCarthy make positive contributions towards raising awareness of Communist activity in our government which was detrimental to the country? And did he wreak havoc on and trample the civil rights of innocent citizens? I believe the first answer is yes and the second is a qualified no. Even some of McCarthy’s friends and supporters admitted he was occasionally too ardent in his zeal to rout out Communists and fellow travelers from the government and his excesses lowered his effectiveness as an anti-Communist fighter and gave ammunition to his enemies to use against him. In his 1964 presidential nomination speech Barry Goldwater famously (or infamously – depending upon your viewpoint) said: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue.” Words to ponder when considering the reputation and legacy of Joseph McCarthy. And if the following words apply to Joe McCarthy then they are even more appropriate for his critics: “O shame! Where is thy blush?” Hamlet III, iv.
There are few Americans who have been criticized, maligned, marginalized, shunned, demonized, disparaged, and just plain reviled as much as Joe McCarthy – not completely without cause I might add. If one wants to bludgeon opponents just accuse them of “McCarthyism” which to imply they use tactics of smear, deception, lying, demagoguery, and guilt by association to destroy a person’s good name and reputation. McCarthy was sometimes guilty of doing that and so were his opponents – in spades. The word “McCarthyism” has long ago become an obscenity; however with some exceptions (Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot [born Saloth Sar] for example) people are the sum of their parts. It is not useful or accurate to completely demonize or deify them.
Kvetching writers such as Richard Rovere, Ellen Schrecker, and David Caute compared McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusades to Hitler and Stalin’s Great Terror. Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions, including an estimated 6 million innocent Jews, and the suffering of tens of millions of blameless people. Soviet Union scholar Robert Conquest estimates that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 14 ½ million Soviets from 1930 to 1937. Millions more were killed or caused to die by Stalin in the years of WWII and after, continuing until his death in 1953.
Author Arthur Herman says in his 2000 book Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator “We need to remember that during the entire period, from 1947-58, no American citizen was interrogated without benefit of counsel, none was arrested or detained without due process, and no one went to jail without trial.” Who was way over the top, McCarthy or his critics?
It is interesting to contrast the disrepute McCarthy is held in with the respect given to the Kennedy family despite the friendship and support given to McCarthy by the Kennedy clan. Joseph Kennedy Sr. greatly admired and agreed with McCarthy about the threat to America by Communists. He was delighted that during his bachelorhood McCarthy dated two of Joe’s daughters, Patricia and Eunice; Robert Kennedy served as assistant counsel on McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations until a personal quarrel with chief counsel, Roy Cohn, caused him to quit. McCarthy was the godfather of Robert and Ethel’s first child; and John F. Kennedy’s views on Communism and the Soviet threat were not much different from McCarthy’s. Author Arthur Herman recounts how one night in February 1952 when he heard one speaker at Harvard’s Spree Club denounced McCarthy in the same breath as Alger Hiss, Kennedy shot back, “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!” Herman states that Kennedy backed the Communist Control Act, a measure that went far beyond anything McCarthy ever proposed by virtually outlawing the Communist party in the United States (good for Kennedy for doing that).
Conservative Republicans were also supporters and admirers of McCarthy. Among theses were William F. Buckley and his brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell jr. (the father of the founder and publisher of the Media Research Center, L. Brent Bozell III) and currently the comely columnist Ann Coulter.
There is confusion in many people’s minds about investigation of Communists in the United States by McCarthy and by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). McCarthy essentially searched for Communist spies, Communist non-spies, and Communist dupes, security risks all, in the U.S. government as the chairman of a Senate sub-committee starting in 1951. HUAC was formed in 1937, but started interrogating Communists outside the government under its chairman Martin Dies (D-TX) in 1947. It was HUAC, not McCarthy, which compelled the entertainment elite, including the infamous “Hollywood Ten”, to testify under oath whether they, “are now or ever have been a member of the Communist party?” It made those Hollywood snobs very cross to have to admit whether they were supporters of the evil regime of Joseph Stalin – one of history’s most villainous mass murders. The mainstream media, apologists then as now for malevolent groups and governments, were beside themselves with indignation over the treatment of those traitorous or complicitous buffoons.
McCarthy investigated the State Department for Communist spies or communist sympathizers and, contrary to popular belief, found some. Also there is confusion about the Army – McCarthy hearings of 1954. It was not McCarthy who was investigating the Army, it was the Senate who was investigating McCarthy for his charges that the Army was infiltrated with Communists spies and was covering up. It was those hearings starting on June 9th, 1954 which sank old Joe (actually he wasn’t old – McCarthy died at age 48 in 1957). Weepy old (he really was old) Joseph Welsh, the lead lawyer for the Army, put on a thespian performance that should have won an Academy Award. When Welsh repeatedly baited and ridiculed McCarthy’s lead counsel, Roy Cohn, about revealing the names of any real Communists, “before sundown” McCarthy could take it no longer and told Welsh that he should look to his own staff if he wanted to find Communists in the form of one of Welsh’s young assistant lawyers by the name of Fisher. That revelation became a trap and the sly old fox Welsh sprang it. With words that are remembered to this day Welsh told McCarthy: “Until this moment Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us…..Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel [he repeated the words ‘reckless’ and ‘cruel’ just to make sure nobody missed them] as to do injury to that lad……Let us not assassinate this lad further. Senator you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” From that moment McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade was effectively over. And it wasn’t long before his senate career and his life too were over. After the exchange between Welsh and McCarthy the committee chairman, Carl Mundt quickly called an adjournment. Outside the hearing room Welsh, with tears streaming down his face, repeated his oration in front of television cameras. When he finished and rounded a corner, out of sight of reporters and cameras, he asked a colleague: “Well, how did it go?”
Edward R. Murrow’s television broadcast, See It Now, on March 9th, 1954 inflicted a serious wound to the reputation of McCarthy. Like the performance of the sanctimonious fraud, Joseph Welsh, three months later, Murrow’s broadcast was intellectually dishonest. According to Arthur Herman, Murrow and his staff spent two months cutting and editing film clips to put McCarthy in the worst possible light. Murrow added his own sardonic commentary: “Upon what meat does Senator McCarthy feed?” The answer: “Two of the staples of his diet are investigations (protected by immunity) and the half-truth.” The broadcast was a hatchet job without any pretense of being fair and balanced. Murrow himself had engaged in innuendoes and half-truths. Liberals loved it of course. I have not seen it, but just as a wild guess I am willing to bet that the movie good night, and good luck produced by clueless liberal George Clooney is a paean to Murrow showing him to be a paragon of virtue and McCarthy the personification of evil. Any takers? Has anyone heard of Lawrence Duggan? Ann Coulter says that Duggan was a close friend of Murrow. Duggan was also a Soviet spy who did great harm to the security of the United States. After being questioned by the FBI, Duggan leapt to his death from an office window. His death was ruled a suicide, but as Coulter said, given the people he was doing business with, he might have been pushed. Murrow, along with others in the news media, vehemently denied that Duggan was a spy. So much for the perception skills of Murrow and his cronies – decrypted Soviet cables (the Venona Project) and documents from the Soviet archives have since proved beyond any doubt whatsoever the culpability of Duggan.
Arthur Herman tells how in 1953 the former McCarthy critic Alistair Cooke noted “a developing discrepancy between ‘McCarthyism’ and McCarthy.” The cultured Cooke, a graduate of Cambridge and a naturalized American and political liberal was famed for his radio program Letter from America which was broadcasted on the BBC (I remember listening to it when I was in Libya from 1957-65) and lasted for 58 years being the longest running series in history to be presented by a single person. Cooke and others realized that McCarthy was proceeding “with careful planning and masterful discretion. He is patient with witnesses whose FBI files would give ordinary citizens the creeps. He has consistently protected the anonymity of highly suspect witnesses.” This judicious and discreet McCarthy was “a new turn which,” Cooke added, “liberals are loathe to acknowledge.”
Asking how many spies McCarthy exposed in his anti-Communist crusade is to ask the wrong question. A more important and pertinent question is to ask whether McCarthy helped or hurt the cause of identifying and rooting out Communist spies, dupes, and sympathizers from the federal government. The 1930’s and 1940’s were lax times as far as awareness of Communists was concerned and certainly many people did not consider them security risks. After Alger Hiss in 1949 and the Rosenbergs in 1950 were charged with espionage the mood in the country changed even if the major news media did not. That there were numerous Communist spies or people otherwise favorably disposed toward the Soviet Union in the Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations is beyond dispute. How much harm they did to the United States and how enthusiastic an effort was made to identify and excise these people from their sensitive positions in the government is a matter of a great deal of dispute. Who were these Communist spies and fellow travelers (a term coined by Stalin himself)?
The departments of State, the Treasury, and Interior harbored the most of these Reds. Prominent among the ones at State were Alger Hiss, John Stewart Service, and the aforementioned friend of Edward R. Murrow, Lawrence Duggan. At Treasury were scofflaws Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Solomon Adler. Owen Lattimore (the hypocritical creep who coined the term ‘McCarthyism’) while never an actual employee at the Department of State was any extremely influential consultant. There were dozens of others in the government, including Noel Field, Frank Coe, Harold Glasser, who were either outright Communists spies or who were so enamored with Communism that they put the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the United States. Of course there were many more agitprop people outside of government - authors, university professors, Hollywood writers, directors, producers, and actors who adhered to the Communist line.
It is sometimes claimed by people on the right that Eastern Europe was ceded to Stalin after WWII and China was “lost” to Mao Tse-tung in 1949 because of the influence of Communists in our government. This charge seems extreme and logically indefensible to me. There is no doubt that as an important State Dept. official in both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, Alger Hiss, especially while attending the Yalta Conference in early February 1945, tried to expedite the takeover of the Eastern European countries by the Soviets, but since the Red Army occupied those countries at the end of WWII, short of starting WWIII nothing could have prevented the hegemony of Eastern Europe by the Soviets – it was a fait accompli. Harry Dexter White and Owen Lattimore along with John Steward Service worked diligently to prevent or delay the funding of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek by the United States and otherwise promoted the interests of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists. While their efforts may have accelerated the downfall of the Nationalist government it is highly unlikely that even without their sabotaging machinations the Chinese Communists could have been defeated.
On December 2, 1954 the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure Joe McCarthy. Joining the majority was moderate Republican senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut – father of future president George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of current president George Walker Bush. Senator John F. Kennedy did not vote on the resolution as he was having a back operation at the time. Some say he scheduled it so as not to have to cast a vote. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona said “Of course Joe McCarthy has made mistakes…… Let the members of this body search their consciences and say whether or not they themselves have made mistakes equally regrettable.” Or did the Senate vote to censure McCarthy? Actually the senate resolution did not contain the term ‘censure’, rather it said ‘condemn’. It is an interesting sidelight, but perhaps not an important distinction.
The censure committee considered five categories of charges against McCarthy ranging from contempt of the Senate, abusing colleagues (he had once told a reporter that Senator Hendrickson of New Jersey was “a living miracle, without brains or guts”), and encouraging government employees to violate the law. Even so, abuse of senate colleagues was a time honored practice. Every senator could remember when former majority leader Tom Connally said of Michigan’s Homer Ferguson that “everything he touches is covered with the vomit of his spleen.” Some could even remember when another Wisconsin senator, Robert La Follette, said on the senate floor that God had given one of his colleagues “a hump on his back” because he was “by nature a subservient, cringing creature.” A total of 46 separate counts were considered, but in the end only one count was agreed to. So what was McCarthy censured, or more accurately condemned, for? For lying, perjury, reckless behavior, and without any foundation, falsely accusing innocent people brought before his committee of being Communists? No. The senate resolution charged him with insulting some of his fellow senators by calling them “handmaidens of the communist Party.” McCarthy had hurt their feelings. One is reminded of the incident where Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) implied that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa) was behaving in a cowardly fashion by calling for the immediate withdrawn of American troops from Iraq. The Democrats on the House floor began braying like, well donkeys, in their feigned indignation. Never mind that Murtha, a former marine colonel who served in Vietnam, had not only lost his nerve, but seemed to have lost a few marbles as well.
Did Senator McCarthy make positive contributions towards raising awareness of Communist activity in our government which was detrimental to the country? And did he wreak havoc on and trample the civil rights of innocent citizens? I believe the first answer is yes and the second is a qualified no. Even some of McCarthy’s friends and supporters admitted he was occasionally too ardent in his zeal to rout out Communists and fellow travelers from the government and his excesses lowered his effectiveness as an anti-Communist fighter and gave ammunition to his enemies to use against him. In his 1964 presidential nomination speech Barry Goldwater famously (or infamously – depending upon your viewpoint) said: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue.” Words to ponder when considering the reputation and legacy of Joseph McCarthy. And if the following words apply to Joe McCarthy then they are even more appropriate for his critics: “O shame! Where is thy blush?” Hamlet III, iv.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
OUR ENGLISH LANGUAGE 30
Wherefore do we speak English? The word ‘wherefore’ as in the dialogue from the Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet plaintively and rhetorically asks, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” means ‘why’, not ‘where’. After all, Juliet knows where Romeo is – he is right there below her balcony window in Verona talking to her. She is lamenting that Romeo is member of the Montague family and she is a Capulet. She fears that the bitter feud between the two families will forever keep them apart.
Unlike Italian, Spanish, French and a couple more languages based on Latin, English is a mess. Yes, English is derived from Old English and therefore in turn from Middle English, but also from German, French, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian languages, Indian (from India), Indian (from North America), Sanskrit, directly from Latin and Old Greek, and myriad other languages.
The greeting ‘good morning’ in German is ‘guten Morgan’. It is not a co-incidence that the words are similar – both are derived from the Old English ‘göd’ meaning excellent or pleasant and ‘morgen’ the beginning of morning. Determining the etymology, morphology, orthography, phonology, syntax, polysemy, and just plain evolved and evolving usage of any language is impossibly complex and convoluted and English is one of the worst.
When Americans pick up a telephone or press the talk button on a remote or a cellular phone they usually say “hello.” Why? Italians say ”pronto” which means I am ready to talk (Of course they are ready to talk; why else would they answer the telephone?). Spanish speakers say “si” (yes) or “bueno” (good). The French say “Allô” (they are copycats). Germans say “bitte” (a multiple usage word which means ‘please’, or a reply to “danke” (thank you) would be “bitte schón” (your welcome). It is also use as an equivalent to ‘pardon?’ when one did not hear or understand something correctly. It is always a polite word.
The person who originated the use of ‘hello’ to answer a telephone was Thomas Edison. As the telephone started to come into wider use in the 1880’s no standard greeting was used in answering telephone calls. People would use such awkward phrases as “Are you there?” or Are you ready to talk?”, completely foreign to the direct and right-to-the-point American predilection. One day Edison picked up the telephone receiver and shouted “hello!” The term is a historically nautical one used by sailors from one ship to hail sailors on another ship.
When you think about it you realize that answering a telephone caused a dilemma in social relationships. In face-to-face greetings people have difference ways of addressing who they are talking to whether it is family members or close friends, subordinates to superiors, strangers to strangers, or adults to children. Even now with caller ID (this is a term which did not exist a few years ago), initially one can not be sure who they are talking to so a neutral way was needed to answer the telephone. Once again necessity begat invention.
In a 2007 book INVENTING ENGLISH: A Portable History of the Language the author, Seth Lerer, discusses the origin and evolution of the English language. He describes his book as about inventing English (invent from the Latin invenire, to come upon or find). The development of English can roughly be divided into the periods of Old English (circa 600-1100 A.D.), Middle English (circa 1100-1450), and Modern English (1450-present).
As pointed out by Lerer, by the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, Old English words with a long a sound changed to a long o sound. Thus ban became bone; ham became home; twa became two. Old English had consonant clusters at the beginning of words (hl-, hw-, hr-) that were simplified in Middle English. For example hlud became loud; hwaet became what; hring became ring. By a phenomenon called metathesis, the same thing which causes some children to pronounce spaghetti as psghetti and for a dialect to change the pronunciation of “ask” to “aks”, sounds in some words from Old English were reversed in Middle English. The Old English word for bird was brid and third was thrid.
According to Lerer, Old English largely built new words out of the familiar stock of roots or morphemes; instead Middle English borrowed copiously from other languages. The Normans (the Norman Conquest at the Battle of Hastings was in 1066) imported new words from France for administration, commerce, the church, cooking, learning, technology, etc. Such words are easily recognizable because they are often polysyllabic with distinguishable sounds. In fact the language of the English monarchy was French well into 13th century. The Anglo-Saxons generally were the food growers while the Normans ate it. Not surprisingly the names of animals such as calf, cow, deer, sheep, and sow remained Old English while the words for meats changed to French: beef (boeuf), mutton (mouton), pork (porc), veal (veau), and venison (venison).
The languages of Europe, Northern India, Iran, and parts of Western Asia belong to what is known as the Indo-European group. Words that share a common origin are called cognates. For example, the word moon appears in recognizable form in such diverse languages as German (Mond); Latin (mensis- meaning month); Lithuanian (menuo); and Greek (meis-also meaning month). The word yoke in German is (Joch); Latin (iugum); Russiam (igo) and Sanskrit (yugam). The word wind in Latin is (ventus); Russian (veter); Irish Gaelic (gwent); and Sanskrit (vatas).
As the various language families from the Indo-European group developed there were also cognate words. Latin gave rise to what became known as the Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. The word for wolf in Latin is lupus; French (loup); Italian (lupo); Romanian (lupu); and Spanish (lobo). Because English is a branch of the Germanic languages there are many words which are cognate with German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages. Most words for numbers are cognate. Consider the English numbers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred. In German they are: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, seiben, acht, neun, zehn, hundert. Dutch: een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, honderd. Swedish: en, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, hundra. The days of the week and months of the year are spelled so similarly (or are the same) in Swedish that it isn’t even necessary to give the English equivalent (even though the Swedish alphabet has 29 letters to 26 for English). Thus: Söndag, Möndag, Tisdag, Onsdag, Tordag, Fredag, Lördag, and januari, februari, mars, april, maj, juni, juli, augusti, september, oktober, november, and december. Comparing words from Germanic languages and Latin we have: English (bear); German (Bär); Danish (bjorn); but Latin (Ursus). Also English (sea); German (See); Dutch (zee); Danish (sö); but Latin (mare) and Greek (thalassa).
The Celtic language which still exists as Gaelic in Ireland, Welsh in Wales, and Cornish in Cornwall contributed to Old English. Afon is the Celtic word for river with the most famous example as the birth place of Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon. The name of the river Thames is also a Celtic word.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) was almost to Middle English as William Shakespeare was to Modern English. I say almost because although Chaucer’s influence on the use and forms of English was similar to Shakespeare’s, especially through his stories in the Canterbury Tales and his greatest poem Troilus and Criseyde, he did not coin many new words and phrases although he did introduce many French and Latin words into English. By contrast William Shakespeare (1564-1616) coined nearly 6000 new words and phrases. Many people today use these words and expressions without realizing they came from Shakespeare. These are but a few examples as given by author Paula LaRocque: Eating me out of house and home; Kill with kindness; Laid on with a trowel; Forget and forgive; Sweets to the sweet; Elbow room; Naked truth; Charmed life; A dish fit for the gods; Salad days; Over hill, over dale; Middle of the night; Quiet as a lamb; Sink or swim; Pound of flesh; A motley fool; Bag and baggage; Brave new world; Forever and a day; Men of few words; Not a mouse stirring; In my mind’s eye; The undiscovered country; The better part of valor is discretion; and At one fell swoop. More Shakespearian sounding are: To be or not to be; What light through yonder window breaks; Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown; Cowards die many times before their deaths; The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers; Something wicked this way comes; To sleep, perchance to dream; That way madness lies; Loved not wisely, but too well; Parting is such sweet sorrow; More sinned against than sinning; What fools these mortal be; Brevity is the soul of wit; and All’s well that end well.
Beyond the coinages by Shakespeare, the contributions to the uses and evolution of the English language by both Chaucer and Shakespeare are immense and can hardly be overstated. This advancement in the language was accomplished through some of the most entertaining and insightful stories, poems, and plays ever written in English and in the case of Shakespeare arguably the greatest plays ever written in any language. English would truly be much impoverished had these two giants not existed.
There was a process which occurred approximately from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 17th century and was called The Great Vowel Shift. It was first studied by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) who coined the term. This was an important, but complicated, major change in the pronunciation of the English language which separates Middle English (1100-1450) from Modern English (1450-present) and this change made the language of the age of Chaucer largely opaque by the time of Shakespeare. It is difficult to understand, let along explain. Nevertheless, I will do my best, in my limited linguistic way, to clarify it.
The pronunciation of the long vowels form the main, but not the only, difference between Middle English and Modern English. And the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was one of the historical events marking this separation. In order to get a feel for how the vowels sounds changed it is necessary to explain what a diphthong is. In phonetics a diphthong (literally with two sounds or tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick, but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. While monophthongs or ‘pure’ vowels have one target tongue position, diphthongs have two target tongue positions.
Each of these long stressed monophthongs may be said to have occupied a place in the mouth. Vowels could be high or low – that is, pronounced with the tongue high in the mouth or low in the mouth. And they could be front or back – pronounced either in the front of the mouth, towards the lips, or the back, towards the throat. Linguists have come up with ways of representing the place of these vowels schematically, and much of the business of explaining the GVS has in fact gone on by coming up with visual representations of its stages. Diphthongs are considered to be long vowels and monophthongs short vowels. Examples of long vowels are bait, beet, bite, boat, and beauty. Examples of short vowels are bat, bet, bit, bot(tle), and put. In the course of the GVS only four words (great, break, steak, yea) and one proper name (Reagan) that had the long open e and were spelled ea did not change their pronunciation. The reason for this is unknown.
Why did the Great Vowel Shift occur? There are no definite answers, just speculation. Some theories attach one cause to the mass immigration to South-East England after the Black Death (1347-52), where the differences in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation which continued to spread out from London. Another highlights the language of the ruling class – the medieval aristocracy had spoken French, but by the early 14th century they were using English – the King’s English. This may have caused a change in the “prestige accent” of English, either by making pronunciation more French in style or by changing it in some other way, perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought to be more “English” (England was at war with France for much of this period - the same reason that the British Royal family changed their name to Windsor from Hanover during WWI when Britain was fighting Germany). Another influence may have been the great political and social upheavals of the 15th century which was largely contemporaneous with the GVS.
Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was one of England’s best known literary figures and the most quoted after Shakespeare. In the mid 1700’s he became convinced that English was being “corrupted” by misuse, especially by the masses. He therefore set out to write a comprehensive dictionary of the English language to establish standard word usage. Other dictionaries in English had been written, but they were all on specialized subjects – none was comprehensive. The French had their comprehensive dictionary so Johnson thought it was time the English did also.
Although Johnson could legitimately be called a curmudgeon (more on this word later) he was also brilliant and intellectually honest. In the years (1747-55) of putting this dictionary together Johnson came to realize that language was not static – it was naturally dynamic and evolving so he changed his opinion on what he had previously thought was incorrect and debased use of English.
As was to occur later with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) except that was on a much larger scale, Johnson received many suggestions from the public for words to be included in his dictionary. One suggestion was the definition and etymology of the word curmudgeon. The writer suggested that the word was derived from French words coeur (heart) and méchant (evil). Either the letter was unsigned or he lost it; nonetheless, Johnson thought it plausible so he set it down for what it was worth: “a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur méchant, Fr. An unknown correspondent.” Twenty years later in 1775, in his New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Dr. John Ash, cribbing from Johnson but, unfortunately for him, knowing no French, entered it as “from the French coeur unknown, méchant correspondent.” This was one the most flagrant and jolly instances of plagiarism in English.
When he was wrong Johnson was quick to admit it. In his dictionary he defined the “pastern” as the knee of a horse. On being queried by a admirer who was of the horse riding set as to how he could possibly make such a mistake he replied, “Ignorance madam, pure ignorance.” What could one say?
That Johnson was an irascible and crabbed old man can not be gainsaid as illustrated by the following stories. Quakers had moved into the area fairly recently where they had some women preachers. Johnson was asked what he though of women preachers. “Ah, yes, women preachers” Johnson opined ” are like dogs walking on their hind legs, you don’t marvel that they do not do it well, but that they can do it at all.”
During the period the American colonists were objecting to being taxed without representation in the British parliament and had British soldiers quartered in their homes without their permission, Johnson exclaimed that the colonists deserved anything that was done to them, short of hanging. After the Revolutionary War began he did not exempt that. A nice fellow, that Johnson.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, came into the world and went out in consecutive appearances of Halley’s Comet) did more than any other single author to define American English. The words hello and dude were used for the first time in literature in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (published for the first time in 1889). He is considered the archetype American novelist and the foremost exponent of the American idiom in his writings. Twain is legendary for his aphorisms. A few of them are: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” “Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.” “Always do right. That will gratify some and astonish the rest.” “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the one who can not read.” “Remember the poor. It cost nothing.” There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.” “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” “Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.” “One of the most remarkable differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.” “Be good and you will be lonesome. Be virtuous and you will be considered eccentric.” In addition to humor, these sayings are liberally laced with sardonic insight.
By a process called onomatopoeia (Greek: onomatopoiiā – from onoma name + poiein to make) which is an agglutinative language formation of a word in imitation of a sound, languages are enriched and English is no exception. Some of these words are: zap, zip, click, clank, sniff, snort, boom, crackle, and sizzle in addition to animals/insect sounds of quack, roar, meow, buzz, bleat, oink, cuckoo, chickadee, whooping crane, and whip-poor-will. In Gulliver’s Travels Jonathon Swift named the race of horses endowed with the power of speech the Houyhnhnm in imitation of the whinny of a horse.
If this essay has been informative and entertaining then I have accomplished my task.
Unlike Italian, Spanish, French and a couple more languages based on Latin, English is a mess. Yes, English is derived from Old English and therefore in turn from Middle English, but also from German, French, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian languages, Indian (from India), Indian (from North America), Sanskrit, directly from Latin and Old Greek, and myriad other languages.
The greeting ‘good morning’ in German is ‘guten Morgan’. It is not a co-incidence that the words are similar – both are derived from the Old English ‘göd’ meaning excellent or pleasant and ‘morgen’ the beginning of morning. Determining the etymology, morphology, orthography, phonology, syntax, polysemy, and just plain evolved and evolving usage of any language is impossibly complex and convoluted and English is one of the worst.
When Americans pick up a telephone or press the talk button on a remote or a cellular phone they usually say “hello.” Why? Italians say ”pronto” which means I am ready to talk (Of course they are ready to talk; why else would they answer the telephone?). Spanish speakers say “si” (yes) or “bueno” (good). The French say “Allô” (they are copycats). Germans say “bitte” (a multiple usage word which means ‘please’, or a reply to “danke” (thank you) would be “bitte schón” (your welcome). It is also use as an equivalent to ‘pardon?’ when one did not hear or understand something correctly. It is always a polite word.
The person who originated the use of ‘hello’ to answer a telephone was Thomas Edison. As the telephone started to come into wider use in the 1880’s no standard greeting was used in answering telephone calls. People would use such awkward phrases as “Are you there?” or Are you ready to talk?”, completely foreign to the direct and right-to-the-point American predilection. One day Edison picked up the telephone receiver and shouted “hello!” The term is a historically nautical one used by sailors from one ship to hail sailors on another ship.
When you think about it you realize that answering a telephone caused a dilemma in social relationships. In face-to-face greetings people have difference ways of addressing who they are talking to whether it is family members or close friends, subordinates to superiors, strangers to strangers, or adults to children. Even now with caller ID (this is a term which did not exist a few years ago), initially one can not be sure who they are talking to so a neutral way was needed to answer the telephone. Once again necessity begat invention.
In a 2007 book INVENTING ENGLISH: A Portable History of the Language the author, Seth Lerer, discusses the origin and evolution of the English language. He describes his book as about inventing English (invent from the Latin invenire, to come upon or find). The development of English can roughly be divided into the periods of Old English (circa 600-1100 A.D.), Middle English (circa 1100-1450), and Modern English (1450-present).
As pointed out by Lerer, by the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, Old English words with a long a sound changed to a long o sound. Thus ban became bone; ham became home; twa became two. Old English had consonant clusters at the beginning of words (hl-, hw-, hr-) that were simplified in Middle English. For example hlud became loud; hwaet became what; hring became ring. By a phenomenon called metathesis, the same thing which causes some children to pronounce spaghetti as psghetti and for a dialect to change the pronunciation of “ask” to “aks”, sounds in some words from Old English were reversed in Middle English. The Old English word for bird was brid and third was thrid.
According to Lerer, Old English largely built new words out of the familiar stock of roots or morphemes; instead Middle English borrowed copiously from other languages. The Normans (the Norman Conquest at the Battle of Hastings was in 1066) imported new words from France for administration, commerce, the church, cooking, learning, technology, etc. Such words are easily recognizable because they are often polysyllabic with distinguishable sounds. In fact the language of the English monarchy was French well into 13th century. The Anglo-Saxons generally were the food growers while the Normans ate it. Not surprisingly the names of animals such as calf, cow, deer, sheep, and sow remained Old English while the words for meats changed to French: beef (boeuf), mutton (mouton), pork (porc), veal (veau), and venison (venison).
The languages of Europe, Northern India, Iran, and parts of Western Asia belong to what is known as the Indo-European group. Words that share a common origin are called cognates. For example, the word moon appears in recognizable form in such diverse languages as German (Mond); Latin (mensis- meaning month); Lithuanian (menuo); and Greek (meis-also meaning month). The word yoke in German is (Joch); Latin (iugum); Russiam (igo) and Sanskrit (yugam). The word wind in Latin is (ventus); Russian (veter); Irish Gaelic (gwent); and Sanskrit (vatas).
As the various language families from the Indo-European group developed there were also cognate words. Latin gave rise to what became known as the Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. The word for wolf in Latin is lupus; French (loup); Italian (lupo); Romanian (lupu); and Spanish (lobo). Because English is a branch of the Germanic languages there are many words which are cognate with German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages. Most words for numbers are cognate. Consider the English numbers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred. In German they are: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, seiben, acht, neun, zehn, hundert. Dutch: een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, honderd. Swedish: en, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, hundra. The days of the week and months of the year are spelled so similarly (or are the same) in Swedish that it isn’t even necessary to give the English equivalent (even though the Swedish alphabet has 29 letters to 26 for English). Thus: Söndag, Möndag, Tisdag, Onsdag, Tordag, Fredag, Lördag, and januari, februari, mars, april, maj, juni, juli, augusti, september, oktober, november, and december. Comparing words from Germanic languages and Latin we have: English (bear); German (Bär); Danish (bjorn); but Latin (Ursus). Also English (sea); German (See); Dutch (zee); Danish (sö); but Latin (mare) and Greek (thalassa).
The Celtic language which still exists as Gaelic in Ireland, Welsh in Wales, and Cornish in Cornwall contributed to Old English. Afon is the Celtic word for river with the most famous example as the birth place of Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon. The name of the river Thames is also a Celtic word.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) was almost to Middle English as William Shakespeare was to Modern English. I say almost because although Chaucer’s influence on the use and forms of English was similar to Shakespeare’s, especially through his stories in the Canterbury Tales and his greatest poem Troilus and Criseyde, he did not coin many new words and phrases although he did introduce many French and Latin words into English. By contrast William Shakespeare (1564-1616) coined nearly 6000 new words and phrases. Many people today use these words and expressions without realizing they came from Shakespeare. These are but a few examples as given by author Paula LaRocque: Eating me out of house and home; Kill with kindness; Laid on with a trowel; Forget and forgive; Sweets to the sweet; Elbow room; Naked truth; Charmed life; A dish fit for the gods; Salad days; Over hill, over dale; Middle of the night; Quiet as a lamb; Sink or swim; Pound of flesh; A motley fool; Bag and baggage; Brave new world; Forever and a day; Men of few words; Not a mouse stirring; In my mind’s eye; The undiscovered country; The better part of valor is discretion; and At one fell swoop. More Shakespearian sounding are: To be or not to be; What light through yonder window breaks; Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown; Cowards die many times before their deaths; The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers; Something wicked this way comes; To sleep, perchance to dream; That way madness lies; Loved not wisely, but too well; Parting is such sweet sorrow; More sinned against than sinning; What fools these mortal be; Brevity is the soul of wit; and All’s well that end well.
Beyond the coinages by Shakespeare, the contributions to the uses and evolution of the English language by both Chaucer and Shakespeare are immense and can hardly be overstated. This advancement in the language was accomplished through some of the most entertaining and insightful stories, poems, and plays ever written in English and in the case of Shakespeare arguably the greatest plays ever written in any language. English would truly be much impoverished had these two giants not existed.
There was a process which occurred approximately from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 17th century and was called The Great Vowel Shift. It was first studied by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) who coined the term. This was an important, but complicated, major change in the pronunciation of the English language which separates Middle English (1100-1450) from Modern English (1450-present) and this change made the language of the age of Chaucer largely opaque by the time of Shakespeare. It is difficult to understand, let along explain. Nevertheless, I will do my best, in my limited linguistic way, to clarify it.
The pronunciation of the long vowels form the main, but not the only, difference between Middle English and Modern English. And the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) was one of the historical events marking this separation. In order to get a feel for how the vowels sounds changed it is necessary to explain what a diphthong is. In phonetics a diphthong (literally with two sounds or tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick, but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. While monophthongs or ‘pure’ vowels have one target tongue position, diphthongs have two target tongue positions.
Each of these long stressed monophthongs may be said to have occupied a place in the mouth. Vowels could be high or low – that is, pronounced with the tongue high in the mouth or low in the mouth. And they could be front or back – pronounced either in the front of the mouth, towards the lips, or the back, towards the throat. Linguists have come up with ways of representing the place of these vowels schematically, and much of the business of explaining the GVS has in fact gone on by coming up with visual representations of its stages. Diphthongs are considered to be long vowels and monophthongs short vowels. Examples of long vowels are bait, beet, bite, boat, and beauty. Examples of short vowels are bat, bet, bit, bot(tle), and put. In the course of the GVS only four words (great, break, steak, yea) and one proper name (Reagan) that had the long open e and were spelled ea did not change their pronunciation. The reason for this is unknown.
Why did the Great Vowel Shift occur? There are no definite answers, just speculation. Some theories attach one cause to the mass immigration to South-East England after the Black Death (1347-52), where the differences in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation which continued to spread out from London. Another highlights the language of the ruling class – the medieval aristocracy had spoken French, but by the early 14th century they were using English – the King’s English. This may have caused a change in the “prestige accent” of English, either by making pronunciation more French in style or by changing it in some other way, perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought to be more “English” (England was at war with France for much of this period - the same reason that the British Royal family changed their name to Windsor from Hanover during WWI when Britain was fighting Germany). Another influence may have been the great political and social upheavals of the 15th century which was largely contemporaneous with the GVS.
Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was one of England’s best known literary figures and the most quoted after Shakespeare. In the mid 1700’s he became convinced that English was being “corrupted” by misuse, especially by the masses. He therefore set out to write a comprehensive dictionary of the English language to establish standard word usage. Other dictionaries in English had been written, but they were all on specialized subjects – none was comprehensive. The French had their comprehensive dictionary so Johnson thought it was time the English did also.
Although Johnson could legitimately be called a curmudgeon (more on this word later) he was also brilliant and intellectually honest. In the years (1747-55) of putting this dictionary together Johnson came to realize that language was not static – it was naturally dynamic and evolving so he changed his opinion on what he had previously thought was incorrect and debased use of English.
As was to occur later with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) except that was on a much larger scale, Johnson received many suggestions from the public for words to be included in his dictionary. One suggestion was the definition and etymology of the word curmudgeon. The writer suggested that the word was derived from French words coeur (heart) and méchant (evil). Either the letter was unsigned or he lost it; nonetheless, Johnson thought it plausible so he set it down for what it was worth: “a vitious manner of pronouncing coeur méchant, Fr. An unknown correspondent.” Twenty years later in 1775, in his New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Dr. John Ash, cribbing from Johnson but, unfortunately for him, knowing no French, entered it as “from the French coeur unknown, méchant correspondent.” This was one the most flagrant and jolly instances of plagiarism in English.
When he was wrong Johnson was quick to admit it. In his dictionary he defined the “pastern” as the knee of a horse. On being queried by a admirer who was of the horse riding set as to how he could possibly make such a mistake he replied, “Ignorance madam, pure ignorance.” What could one say?
That Johnson was an irascible and crabbed old man can not be gainsaid as illustrated by the following stories. Quakers had moved into the area fairly recently where they had some women preachers. Johnson was asked what he though of women preachers. “Ah, yes, women preachers” Johnson opined ” are like dogs walking on their hind legs, you don’t marvel that they do not do it well, but that they can do it at all.”
During the period the American colonists were objecting to being taxed without representation in the British parliament and had British soldiers quartered in their homes without their permission, Johnson exclaimed that the colonists deserved anything that was done to them, short of hanging. After the Revolutionary War began he did not exempt that. A nice fellow, that Johnson.
Mark Twain (1835-1910, came into the world and went out in consecutive appearances of Halley’s Comet) did more than any other single author to define American English. The words hello and dude were used for the first time in literature in Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (published for the first time in 1889). He is considered the archetype American novelist and the foremost exponent of the American idiom in his writings. Twain is legendary for his aphorisms. A few of them are: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” “Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.” “Always do right. That will gratify some and astonish the rest.” “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the one who can not read.” “Remember the poor. It cost nothing.” There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.” “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” “Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.” “One of the most remarkable differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.” “Be good and you will be lonesome. Be virtuous and you will be considered eccentric.” In addition to humor, these sayings are liberally laced with sardonic insight.
By a process called onomatopoeia (Greek: onomatopoiiā – from onoma name + poiein to make) which is an agglutinative language formation of a word in imitation of a sound, languages are enriched and English is no exception. Some of these words are: zap, zip, click, clank, sniff, snort, boom, crackle, and sizzle in addition to animals/insect sounds of quack, roar, meow, buzz, bleat, oink, cuckoo, chickadee, whooping crane, and whip-poor-will. In Gulliver’s Travels Jonathon Swift named the race of horses endowed with the power of speech the Houyhnhnm in imitation of the whinny of a horse.
If this essay has been informative and entertaining then I have accomplished my task.
Friday, August 10, 2007
HONESTY 29
Honesty is the best policy. Or is it? Let’s examine that concept in some of its myriad aspects from a practical standpoint and try to avoid, as much as possible, moral strictures.
A few of the world’s, or at least Western World’s, deepest thinkers and writers have something to say on the subject: (1)“Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.” Montaigne: Essays I.xl; (2)“Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.” Shakespeare: Othello III.iii; (3)“Honesty is the best policy.” Cervantes: Don Quixote II.xxxiii; (4)“He that resolves to deal with none but honest Men, must leave off dealing.” Thomas Fuller: Gnomologia; (5)“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” Alexander Pope: An Essay on Man IV; (6)“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.” Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale IV.iii; (7)“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” Shakespeare: All’s Well that Ends Well III.v; (8)“Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.” Shakespeare: Timon of Athens III.i; (9)“The honest man though e’er so poor, Is king of o’ men for a’ that.” Robert Burns: For a’ That and a’ That; (10)”Clear and round dealing is the honor of a man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it debases it.” Francis Bacon: Of Truth.
Those are decidedly a mixed lot of opinions. No help there in trying to decide whether honesty is helpful or a hindrance.
It may be more useful to try to come at the question from a different direction. It once was that most parents taught their children to be honest and when the little tykes fibbed they were lectured to and disciplined. To be fair some parents still do, although my memory and perception is that it is now a ”custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.” That of course begs the question (begging the question means to assume as fact what is under dispute) whether honesty is a beneficial practice to be pursued.
There is honesty and then there is honesty, e.g. there are lies and little ‘white’ lies (interesting isn’t it, as has been commented upon many times, that ‘white’ is good and ‘black’ is bad as when the good guy wears the white hat and another, a dangerous and menacing fellow, wears the black hat). My personal take on ‘white’ lies is that I would not be so gauche as to tell a woman her suit was ugly unless she asked me for my opinion, then I would be as truthful as reasonably proper manners would dictate. Likewise if a man asked me if I liked his dress I would simply tell him it was not my style.
The animal kingdom of course is replete with examples of deception, i.e. dishonesty. Even plants get in on the act. Venus’s-Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, deceptively presents the chance for a meal to a roving insect, but it is the innocent insect which ends up as the meal. It makes me believe there are plants which will not make it to plant heaven. Would you want to share paradise with such a diabolical character as the aforementioned insect eater?
An African monkey, the Vervet, gave gratuitous leopard alarms when challenged by a rival male, causing the other male to flee up a tree and a chimpanzee was observed using his fingers to readjust his mouth in order to hide a grin before turning to bluff a rival.
The common Mockingbird, Mimus, M. polyglottos, (which means many-tongued mimic) mimics the songs of many other birds and one would think for reasons other than its own amusement. The Brown-Headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater, lays eggs in other bird’s nests thereby shirking the responsibility of raising its own chicks.
A natural question is do we or should we, Homo sapiens, consider ourselves morally superior to plants and animals and therefore strive to be as honest as humanly possible?
What are the practical aspects of dishonesty? Nobody believes anything you say. You are not trusted in any business dealing or social situation. And as a general principle you are held in disrepute and obloquy. The positives? You might, to your gain, get away with it, at least for a while.
The main advantage for honesty can be summed up with the word, “credibility.” Reputation for honesty is of no small moment. The deserved appellation of “Honest Abe” served to enhance the image of and respect given to Lincoln. If former President Bill Clinton were to be described as honest most people would interpret it to be meant ironically. An exception is Dan Rather who, in an interview, answered a question by stating that he thought Clinton was an “honest man.” This could occur only in ‘Dan’s World’ where reality was not always recognized.
It is interesting to speculate that if some prominent political leader were to resolve not only to always tell the truth, but also to be candid and complete in answering questions and stating positions what would be the net result for their standing and effectiveness among political peers and the public? They could refuse to answer certain questions for a variety of legitimate reasons, yet never lie or mislead when responding. My sense is that the disadvantages of having to admit fault or error would be more than offset by the earned credibility and believability when, as often occurs, there is doubt as to the truth of situations and claims. My recommendation is, what the heck, give it a try.
A few of the world’s, or at least Western World’s, deepest thinkers and writers have something to say on the subject: (1)“Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.” Montaigne: Essays I.xl; (2)“Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.” Shakespeare: Othello III.iii; (3)“Honesty is the best policy.” Cervantes: Don Quixote II.xxxiii; (4)“He that resolves to deal with none but honest Men, must leave off dealing.” Thomas Fuller: Gnomologia; (5)“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.” Alexander Pope: An Essay on Man IV; (6)“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.” Shakespeare: The Winter’s Tale IV.iii; (7)“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” Shakespeare: All’s Well that Ends Well III.v; (8)“Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.” Shakespeare: Timon of Athens III.i; (9)“The honest man though e’er so poor, Is king of o’ men for a’ that.” Robert Burns: For a’ That and a’ That; (10)”Clear and round dealing is the honor of a man’s nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it debases it.” Francis Bacon: Of Truth.
Those are decidedly a mixed lot of opinions. No help there in trying to decide whether honesty is helpful or a hindrance.
It may be more useful to try to come at the question from a different direction. It once was that most parents taught their children to be honest and when the little tykes fibbed they were lectured to and disciplined. To be fair some parents still do, although my memory and perception is that it is now a ”custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.” That of course begs the question (begging the question means to assume as fact what is under dispute) whether honesty is a beneficial practice to be pursued.
There is honesty and then there is honesty, e.g. there are lies and little ‘white’ lies (interesting isn’t it, as has been commented upon many times, that ‘white’ is good and ‘black’ is bad as when the good guy wears the white hat and another, a dangerous and menacing fellow, wears the black hat). My personal take on ‘white’ lies is that I would not be so gauche as to tell a woman her suit was ugly unless she asked me for my opinion, then I would be as truthful as reasonably proper manners would dictate. Likewise if a man asked me if I liked his dress I would simply tell him it was not my style.
The animal kingdom of course is replete with examples of deception, i.e. dishonesty. Even plants get in on the act. Venus’s-Flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, deceptively presents the chance for a meal to a roving insect, but it is the innocent insect which ends up as the meal. It makes me believe there are plants which will not make it to plant heaven. Would you want to share paradise with such a diabolical character as the aforementioned insect eater?
An African monkey, the Vervet, gave gratuitous leopard alarms when challenged by a rival male, causing the other male to flee up a tree and a chimpanzee was observed using his fingers to readjust his mouth in order to hide a grin before turning to bluff a rival.
The common Mockingbird, Mimus, M. polyglottos, (which means many-tongued mimic) mimics the songs of many other birds and one would think for reasons other than its own amusement. The Brown-Headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater, lays eggs in other bird’s nests thereby shirking the responsibility of raising its own chicks.
A natural question is do we or should we, Homo sapiens, consider ourselves morally superior to plants and animals and therefore strive to be as honest as humanly possible?
What are the practical aspects of dishonesty? Nobody believes anything you say. You are not trusted in any business dealing or social situation. And as a general principle you are held in disrepute and obloquy. The positives? You might, to your gain, get away with it, at least for a while.
The main advantage for honesty can be summed up with the word, “credibility.” Reputation for honesty is of no small moment. The deserved appellation of “Honest Abe” served to enhance the image of and respect given to Lincoln. If former President Bill Clinton were to be described as honest most people would interpret it to be meant ironically. An exception is Dan Rather who, in an interview, answered a question by stating that he thought Clinton was an “honest man.” This could occur only in ‘Dan’s World’ where reality was not always recognized.
It is interesting to speculate that if some prominent political leader were to resolve not only to always tell the truth, but also to be candid and complete in answering questions and stating positions what would be the net result for their standing and effectiveness among political peers and the public? They could refuse to answer certain questions for a variety of legitimate reasons, yet never lie or mislead when responding. My sense is that the disadvantages of having to admit fault or error would be more than offset by the earned credibility and believability when, as often occurs, there is doubt as to the truth of situations and claims. My recommendation is, what the heck, give it a try.
Friday, August 3, 2007
THE MYTH OF A 50/50 COUNTRY 28
The elections in the past two presidential cycles prove this is roughly a 50/50 country don’t they? The country is split equally right down the middle – half Red and half Blue, right? Well, actually not. Balderdash, you say. Alright let’s just consider what the evidence is on that score:
Author Morris Fiorina has written a book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, in which he explodes the myth that people in this country are at opposite poles on the issues which are important to them and are divided equally. In fact when it comes to the important social, financial, and political issues, a majority of people, whether they are in the Blue states or Red states, are not that far apart in their opinions. In survey after survey when people are asked their positions on issues such as national security, government role in education, abortion, taxes, state and national government involvement in health care, gay marriage, appropriate punishment for crime, government enforcement on civil rights, government protection of the environment, and the degree of separation of government and religion one sees the results plot in the familiar bell or Gaussian shaped curves. And interestingly enough there is not much difference whether these opinions come from people in Blue or Red states. Further, these data have not changed to any important degree in the past generation.
It is instructive that three of the Bluest states, New York, California, and Massachusetts currently have Republican governors. They are moderate Republicans true enough, but that is exactly the point.
Why then this apparent severe and almost equal divide in presidential elections? The answer is simple. When voters have only two and not a continuum of choices they have to pick one or the other, i.e. Democrat or Republican. The total for all of the third parties (Ralph Nader, Libertarian, Green, Constitutional, Socialist, Flat-Earthers, Aliens-Among-Us, etc.) in 2004 amounted to approx. 1% - Bush received 52% of the popular vote and Kerry 47%). It turns out that currently as happens more times than not in history the electorate is split between Dems & Repubs almost equally. Even when there is what is called a ‘landslide’ the vote may go 55% to 45%; hardly an overwhelming difference.
Naturally the tails of the opinion curves contain the crazies – on both the left and the right. Of course according to us sane, rational, and appealing people there seem to be more loonies on the left than on the right. That may be because they have bigger microphones. Consider the strident, unstable, and famous (some would say infamous) Hollywood types; then there are the well known U.S.A. haters, e.g. Michael Moore, George Soros, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, Eric Alterman, Robert Scheer, E.J. Dionne, Bob Herbert, Michael Kinsley, and Katrina vanden Heuvel to name a few (She is the editor of The Nation magazine and is not a wild-eyed loony – she is a Communist or close enough to it to count. Unlike many liberal gals she is attractive and in her generally smiling and cheerful way she would simply consign conservatives to the Gulags if it were within her power. Come to think on it the egregious Michael Moore was a Leninist as a youth and may still be for all I know although being sent to a Gulag would be the least onerous sentence one could expect from him).
A couple of days after the elections Michael Moore posted a map on his web site showing the Blue states linked with Canada with the title The United States of Canada; the Red states were labeled Jesusland. Paul Krugman wrote in a syndicated column in the New York Times that George W. Bush was a radical. That is not the pot calling the kettle black – that is a pot calling a silver chalice black. Carole Simpson of ABC News likened the Red states to the old slave holding Southern states. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi explained after the elections that the Democrats were holding a caucus to “save civilization as we know it.” Geraldine Anne Ferraro said all the talent and wealth of the country are in the Blue states; implying that the Red states are peopled by hicks, losers, and religious nuts. If the Democrats keep that up the country will become Redder and they will be consigned to a permanent minority status. But if they want to avoid relinquishing their position as a competitive political force they need to find more prominent places in their party for such moderates as Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, and especially they need to listen to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia.
The rightists, in particular some local talk radio hosts, have a few of their own lunatics. Ann Coulter qualifies as a hard right spokeswoman and is a best selling author, but lacks the vicious and hate-filled persona of bomb throwers on the left. Coulter flails the libs, leaving them raw and bloody, yet how can anyone be too put off with such a good looking long-legged blonde? The females on the strong left, with a couple of noted exceptions, look like they deliberately make themselves as homely and unadorned as possible.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Than are dreamt in your philosophy.” Who would have dreamed that the chasm which has opened up in the ethos of the Old World (Europe) and the New (U.S.A.) makes this country seem like one Big Happy Family by comparison? Fewer than 5% of Europeans go to church or synagogue regularly contrasted with 40% to 50% who do so in the United States. Europeans make the word ‘secular’ seem religiously devout in juxtaposition to their nihilistic philosophy. Apparently, especially after seeing the devastation of WWI & WWII, modern Europeans would sooner surrender to Muslim religious fanatics than confront them in another conflict. The “Rather Red than Dead” slogan of the 1960’s has apparently been replaced by the cringing admission of ‘better to be Muslimized that decapitized (not real words, but they rhyme).’
In a recent survey, before Yasser Arafat became brain dead (some would say that occurred 20 years ago), 13% of the French considered Arafat a terrorist, and 27% thought him a freedom fighter; 13% favored Israel and 34% favored the Palestinians in their ongoing battles in the Middle East. Doubtless part of the preference is due to anti-Semitism which is rampant in Europe today (technically since Arabs are also Semites it should really be called anti-Jewish bigotry).
There are no Good Guys and Bad Guys in the Middle East. Author Richard Ben Cramer wrote a 2003 book entitled How Israel Lost. He was the foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Enquirer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the Middle East in the 1970’s. Cramer points out the economic ties between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Cement, steel, other durable goods, and even fuel oil and gasoline are sold by Israel to the PA to the profit advantage of both even though the Palestinians could do better on the open market. The Israeli equivalent of our CIA, the Masad, was instrumental in setting up and financing Hamas. Naturally they did not do this so Israel would be subjected to terrorist attacks; they did this to try to counter the power of Arafat. It was a colossal miscalculation. When he was growing up in Philadelphia Cramer remembers the mantra he heard at the synagogue: “A people without land for a land without people.” In his assignment in the Middle East he saw first hand that although the first part of that formulation might have some validity the second part certainly did not. There were plenty of Arabs as well as a few other peoples in Palestine before the Jews forced them out in 1948. In fact I met several displaced Palestinians when I was working in Libya in the late 1950’s. To say they were bitter about the situation would be to indeed understate it.
Still there is no moral equivalency between the murderous acts of terrorism committed by the Palestinians against non-combatants, especially women and children and retaliation by the Israelis. Terrorism trumps everything. When you commit heinous crimes against humanity you cede the moral high ground to your opponent regardless of how legitimate your cause. This is where the self-serving and perfidious Europeans go wrong in their one-sided bias against Israel.
Examples of how anti-Christian Europe has become is shown by the case of Italian European Union minister, Rocco Buttiglione, who is a personal friend of Pope John Paul II. When Buttiglione expressed reservations about gay marriage, mind you he only expressed reservations he did not outright condemn it, the EU blocked him from becoming an EU cabinet member. The Pope lobbied hard to have Christianity noted as part of Europe’s heritage in the EU constitution, a historical fact that even an uninformed visitor to Europe’s museums and urban centers would observe. He failed. Never mind, the Euros in the not too distant future can forget about Christianity (see the paragraph below).
In the 8th century A.D. Muslim armies tried to conquer Europe and failed. Europeans are not reproducing themselves in any great numbers and Muslins have a high immigration rate into Europe and are considerably out reproducing the natives by apparently being reflective rather than periodic ovulaters (just joking). Respected Middle East scholar and author, Bernard Lewis, estimates that by the end of the current century Europe will be essentially an Islamic continent. The Muslims will have triumphed this time without firing a shot. The young grandchildren in Europe today might be well advised to teach their children to say Salam Alekum and point out the direction to Mecca so they will be able to pray properly.
Author Morris Fiorina has written a book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, in which he explodes the myth that people in this country are at opposite poles on the issues which are important to them and are divided equally. In fact when it comes to the important social, financial, and political issues, a majority of people, whether they are in the Blue states or Red states, are not that far apart in their opinions. In survey after survey when people are asked their positions on issues such as national security, government role in education, abortion, taxes, state and national government involvement in health care, gay marriage, appropriate punishment for crime, government enforcement on civil rights, government protection of the environment, and the degree of separation of government and religion one sees the results plot in the familiar bell or Gaussian shaped curves. And interestingly enough there is not much difference whether these opinions come from people in Blue or Red states. Further, these data have not changed to any important degree in the past generation.
It is instructive that three of the Bluest states, New York, California, and Massachusetts currently have Republican governors. They are moderate Republicans true enough, but that is exactly the point.
Why then this apparent severe and almost equal divide in presidential elections? The answer is simple. When voters have only two and not a continuum of choices they have to pick one or the other, i.e. Democrat or Republican. The total for all of the third parties (Ralph Nader, Libertarian, Green, Constitutional, Socialist, Flat-Earthers, Aliens-Among-Us, etc.) in 2004 amounted to approx. 1% - Bush received 52% of the popular vote and Kerry 47%). It turns out that currently as happens more times than not in history the electorate is split between Dems & Repubs almost equally. Even when there is what is called a ‘landslide’ the vote may go 55% to 45%; hardly an overwhelming difference.
Naturally the tails of the opinion curves contain the crazies – on both the left and the right. Of course according to us sane, rational, and appealing people there seem to be more loonies on the left than on the right. That may be because they have bigger microphones. Consider the strident, unstable, and famous (some would say infamous) Hollywood types; then there are the well known U.S.A. haters, e.g. Michael Moore, George Soros, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Al Franken, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd, Eric Alterman, Robert Scheer, E.J. Dionne, Bob Herbert, Michael Kinsley, and Katrina vanden Heuvel to name a few (She is the editor of The Nation magazine and is not a wild-eyed loony – she is a Communist or close enough to it to count. Unlike many liberal gals she is attractive and in her generally smiling and cheerful way she would simply consign conservatives to the Gulags if it were within her power. Come to think on it the egregious Michael Moore was a Leninist as a youth and may still be for all I know although being sent to a Gulag would be the least onerous sentence one could expect from him).
A couple of days after the elections Michael Moore posted a map on his web site showing the Blue states linked with Canada with the title The United States of Canada; the Red states were labeled Jesusland. Paul Krugman wrote in a syndicated column in the New York Times that George W. Bush was a radical. That is not the pot calling the kettle black – that is a pot calling a silver chalice black. Carole Simpson of ABC News likened the Red states to the old slave holding Southern states. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi explained after the elections that the Democrats were holding a caucus to “save civilization as we know it.” Geraldine Anne Ferraro said all the talent and wealth of the country are in the Blue states; implying that the Red states are peopled by hicks, losers, and religious nuts. If the Democrats keep that up the country will become Redder and they will be consigned to a permanent minority status. But if they want to avoid relinquishing their position as a competitive political force they need to find more prominent places in their party for such moderates as Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, and especially they need to listen to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia.
The rightists, in particular some local talk radio hosts, have a few of their own lunatics. Ann Coulter qualifies as a hard right spokeswoman and is a best selling author, but lacks the vicious and hate-filled persona of bomb throwers on the left. Coulter flails the libs, leaving them raw and bloody, yet how can anyone be too put off with such a good looking long-legged blonde? The females on the strong left, with a couple of noted exceptions, look like they deliberately make themselves as homely and unadorned as possible.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Than are dreamt in your philosophy.” Who would have dreamed that the chasm which has opened up in the ethos of the Old World (Europe) and the New (U.S.A.) makes this country seem like one Big Happy Family by comparison? Fewer than 5% of Europeans go to church or synagogue regularly contrasted with 40% to 50% who do so in the United States. Europeans make the word ‘secular’ seem religiously devout in juxtaposition to their nihilistic philosophy. Apparently, especially after seeing the devastation of WWI & WWII, modern Europeans would sooner surrender to Muslim religious fanatics than confront them in another conflict. The “Rather Red than Dead” slogan of the 1960’s has apparently been replaced by the cringing admission of ‘better to be Muslimized that decapitized (not real words, but they rhyme).’
In a recent survey, before Yasser Arafat became brain dead (some would say that occurred 20 years ago), 13% of the French considered Arafat a terrorist, and 27% thought him a freedom fighter; 13% favored Israel and 34% favored the Palestinians in their ongoing battles in the Middle East. Doubtless part of the preference is due to anti-Semitism which is rampant in Europe today (technically since Arabs are also Semites it should really be called anti-Jewish bigotry).
There are no Good Guys and Bad Guys in the Middle East. Author Richard Ben Cramer wrote a 2003 book entitled How Israel Lost. He was the foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Enquirer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the Middle East in the 1970’s. Cramer points out the economic ties between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Cement, steel, other durable goods, and even fuel oil and gasoline are sold by Israel to the PA to the profit advantage of both even though the Palestinians could do better on the open market. The Israeli equivalent of our CIA, the Masad, was instrumental in setting up and financing Hamas. Naturally they did not do this so Israel would be subjected to terrorist attacks; they did this to try to counter the power of Arafat. It was a colossal miscalculation. When he was growing up in Philadelphia Cramer remembers the mantra he heard at the synagogue: “A people without land for a land without people.” In his assignment in the Middle East he saw first hand that although the first part of that formulation might have some validity the second part certainly did not. There were plenty of Arabs as well as a few other peoples in Palestine before the Jews forced them out in 1948. In fact I met several displaced Palestinians when I was working in Libya in the late 1950’s. To say they were bitter about the situation would be to indeed understate it.
Still there is no moral equivalency between the murderous acts of terrorism committed by the Palestinians against non-combatants, especially women and children and retaliation by the Israelis. Terrorism trumps everything. When you commit heinous crimes against humanity you cede the moral high ground to your opponent regardless of how legitimate your cause. This is where the self-serving and perfidious Europeans go wrong in their one-sided bias against Israel.
Examples of how anti-Christian Europe has become is shown by the case of Italian European Union minister, Rocco Buttiglione, who is a personal friend of Pope John Paul II. When Buttiglione expressed reservations about gay marriage, mind you he only expressed reservations he did not outright condemn it, the EU blocked him from becoming an EU cabinet member. The Pope lobbied hard to have Christianity noted as part of Europe’s heritage in the EU constitution, a historical fact that even an uninformed visitor to Europe’s museums and urban centers would observe. He failed. Never mind, the Euros in the not too distant future can forget about Christianity (see the paragraph below).
In the 8th century A.D. Muslim armies tried to conquer Europe and failed. Europeans are not reproducing themselves in any great numbers and Muslins have a high immigration rate into Europe and are considerably out reproducing the natives by apparently being reflective rather than periodic ovulaters (just joking). Respected Middle East scholar and author, Bernard Lewis, estimates that by the end of the current century Europe will be essentially an Islamic continent. The Muslims will have triumphed this time without firing a shot. The young grandchildren in Europe today might be well advised to teach their children to say Salam Alekum and point out the direction to Mecca so they will be able to pray properly.
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