Science is a very good predictor of observable events. But it doesn't tell us why or to what purpose or how to act. All truth doesn't come from science. Science vehemently denies that; all events have material causes and can be explained by natural forces acting in the universe, Science argues: even the inner workings of the Brain. Now we know a lot about the brain. But the brain is more or less a tool for the mind; science contradicts this to argue that we are mere products of chemical processes within the brain.
Freud argued very convincingly that reason, much like the ancients thought, could be the tool to release the inner daemonsThe arguments for the Science’s claims are compelling. Technological advances are astounding in the areas of flight and computing and medicine just to mention a few. The pre-Socratics some 2,500 years ago began to postulate what was the composition of nature: earth or water or a mixture of elements: earth, wind, fire, water, in order to replace mythic explanations, such as Hesiod's stories about the supposed god's creative activity. Ever since divine activity in nature has been gradually reduced in scope. Thunder was thought the voice of god or demonstration of his power; think that Luther, the great Protestant reformer, committed himself to the monastery when caught in a thunder storm. We can guess he heard God's wrathful voice as He directed the wind, rain, and lightning. Five hundred years later we take it for granted that weather has its natural causes.
Over time natural philosophers saw the workings of God behind the natural forces sustaining and moving the universe: the forces of gravity and centrifugal force causing the planets to move in ordered patterns for example. Eventually scientists of the 19th and 20th Centuries saw all observable events as product of natural forces. The things for God to do became few indeed. And since the universe was eternal, as Aristotle surmised long ago, truly there was nothing for God to do and Nietzsche can say, God is dead.
Now science has come to dispel the spirits and ideas and the mythology within the Brain. Come to find out we're simply a product of chemical reactions within the brain and nothing "spiritual" or godly there either. Further more Darwin tells us we're products of evolutionary forces and all our mental activity arises from and is subject to them.
Socrates argued our inner essence as being more real than the changeable observable reality that passes away. And went to great lengths to prove the disabilities of relativism.
The ancients including the Psalms saw our existence after death as shadowy. Hades was a land of shadows and lesser reality. Orthodox understand that Jesus at his Death on the Cross descends into Hades releases the spirits formerly doomed to this less than real existence, spiritual existence.
Ironically, Freud, Scientist of the Mind of the prior 100 years, held differently. He dominated psychological thinking in the first 80 years of the twentieth century, at least in America. To Freud, a neurotic himself, our distress arises from improper suckling as an infant and proposed very convincingly for his contemporaries that reflection and reason could be the tool to unlock the most deep seated complexes in our minds; his project was to release the “ID” from the constraints of society. Even psychosis, universally understood as chemical imbalances today, was deemed amenable to the “couch”, the Analysis.
It was enough to dispel spiritual realities and replace them with the knowledge that natural mental forces were captive to social ones; spiritual truths were dismissed. Similarities to his method can be seen in the Ancients, who would propose to use Reason to harness the incensive powers and appetitive urges to good. Freud postulated the Id (basic urges), Ego (conventional thinking) and Super Ego (our censor); i.e. another 3 part partition of the brain with our Reasoning as arbitrator. Freud, on the other hand, wanted to liberate the Id (appetitive) not harness it.
His therapies have been superseded by chemical approaches to mood changing. Science only admits evidence from its own tools and own purview: the observable universe not moral or spiritual one. And he insists this is the entire universe of facts, unless they posit an infinite number of these universes ala Mr. Hawkins. God not seen here! they confidently proclaim. Yep, no, God there!
They don’t know who built their ideological framework. They’re like ideological Druids who claim to be heirs to a structure that was built a thousand years before they were on the scene. The Medieval Scholastic, with the belief we are images of God and free agents, was discovering the immutable Laws of God. Upon science’s ascendancy Hume, the 17th Century skeptic, dismissed the certainty of Science in the face of those bent on discovering God’s Laws; Kant demarcated science’s limits with his Categories, in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Overwhelmed with science’s manifest benefits, we concede as to the Priests of the Megalithic era, because they could determine when to plant, since they provide us comfort and pleasure and longevity. (Which seems to be the ultimate truth to them and anything questioning these being the highest values becomes a danger.)
Truth becomes that which promotes the greatest ease. Please note science always has created weapons of mass destruction that could end civilization and even life on the planet.There are several limits and problems with the “all-knowing” scientific principle. All that’s here is a product of forces, including our thought process then where is the objective truth? Isn’t the right project for the seekers of this “truth” then a transcendence of the “Maya” the illusion, the Eastern Mystical path?
The Modern Scientist is using a putative feeble instrument, the brain, a product of the same universe it’s trying to discern. Where is the grounded truth? The brain is a product of the Universe and where does it gain its insights but from that the same forces and reactions that created the same Universe. Truth becomes a bit relative. Furthermore, our moral sensibilities are simply a product of the evolutionary forces, we’re told. Let’s turn that on its head. So Religious practice may be an evolutionary adaption (I’m certainly not convinced of that of course) and those avowed atheists who have begun to crawl out the woodwork, after the fall of atheist Communism, making it safe to be an atheist again, may be an evolutionary mal-adaption doomed to extinction, despite all their efforts in Soviet Russia, Communist China, Eastern Europe, revolutionary Mexico (1911+), Republican Spain (1930’s), etc. to exterminate Christians for their faith in the last hundred years.
A religious fanatic like me could be as right as the brilliant Chris Hutchins, atheistic Crusader, being that the stated ultimate purpose is to survive and we’re simply a product of it. I’m deluded in thinking I’m going somewhere after this life. He must content himself with ephemeral pleasures of this world, thus his melancholia and dim outlook or at least undisguised hatred of the Religious, less optimistic you know.But wait there’s more.
Heisenberg’s principle of Uncertainty: either motion or charge can be discerned but not both at the same time in the subatomic world. Whatever method we choose determines what is observed. Thus we see the observer merges with the observed. The objective observer fails us, ultimately. The retort I imagine that scientific method works everywhere else it’s claimed, but we’re making absolute claims. The claim is that the scientific method explains all and is the foundation of all truth, but fails at the sub-atomic level. And so the very method touted as the gleaner of truth in each and every instance falters; the scientific method is found to have limits.
Most importantly, how can one prove the proposition that scientific method explains all, using the scientific method to prove it? We can’t of course. See Hume above, the skeptic. Note Hume was far from being a Religious. Each demonstrated hypothesis is superseded in time by another, the geo-centric universe of Ptolemy, then Kepler and Newton and now Einstein, challenged by Heisenberg principle of uncertainty in the inner workings of the atom. To the modern scientist this seems natural and right but he doesn’t think through the full conclusions of it. Eventually, the current models give way to others. There’s little ultimate or absolute about them. I suppose it’s enough to demonstrate that a divine power didn’t act to cause them. Their amoral universe continues to be supereminent and actions can have no moral restraints; all is well, I suppose.
Scientific models are limited in scope as well. Einstein’s General Relativity fails to operate within the sub-atomic world. In the Big Bang universe our psychics fail in the “singularity”. The all-encompassing scientific universe has many a gap, it appears still waiting to be filled. Faith in science, despite its failure under sub-atomic realms and elsewhere, remains supreme; the scientist will faithfully wait until an answer is formulated to explain the “Mysteries”. The tool, the method works quite well….to a point, you see.
My thrust is theological not philosophical. It’s interesting the ancients had sympathetic views to a moral and spiritual universe as well. Socrates argued our inner essence as being more real than the changeable observable reality that changes and passes away, and went to great lengths to prove the disabilities of moral relativism. Now mind you, the ancients including the writers of the Psalms saw our existence after death as shadowy. Hades (Sheol) was a land of shadows and lesser reality.
Orthodox understand that Jesus, the Redeemer at his Death on the Cross descends into Hades releases the spirits formerly doomed to this less than real shadow, to spiritual existence. Our forthcoming spiritual life is to have greater substance than in the fallen, current world.The Platonics, the Stoics and others except the Epicureans believed in the existence of a moral universe; one that we all subscribe to, poignantly demonstrated when it’s violated.
C.S. Lewis, 20th Christian Apologist expostulates that everyone is attune to their moral universe (Mere Christianity). When violated, we naturally demand justice. (Note once again this is not akin to motivations related to the struggle for survival, which evolutionists deem predominant.) If possessions are stolen or one is addressed rudely, our moral compass is disquieted. We envisage redress for these wrongs. This is our moral universe. Even scientists have one. Spiritual universe has been reported throughout human history by the most primitive peoples up to today. All manner of Christian Saints, including many desert Fathers, psychics (Swedenborg, R. Moody, Van Praagh) and others across religious traditions such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead report contact and visitation of a spirit world, including out of body experiences (St. Paul).
Unfortunately, these are most usually dismissed as simply delusions and discounted. Most recently there is clinical evidence of life after death. People, who are clinically dead, report an experience being out of body see their surroundings and at times reaching a very bright light. One recent best seller recounts this experience in 90 Minutes in Heaven. Note Socrates had what seems to be a spirit guide, daemon he called it. Note I only mention these to say there is a spiritual world that science knows nothing of. Orthodox Christian tradition, the Saints including the Desert Fathers, and others strongly caution against contact with this reality. Contact is likely to be daemonic in origin and thus very dangerous. I do not encourage or advocate contact with it.
As Christians our destiny is meant to transcend this demonic realm (the Tibetan Buddhist and Socrates would too both look beyond this realm as our true eternal destiny, despite not being in full knowledge of Christian Truth). There is a spiritual world that science can tell us nothing, although they have claims to explaining it all away one day I presume.There is a mental universe. In effect the brain is a tool for the mind and that’s why there’s a placebo effect. The results of drug tests must take into consideration. They give sugar pills to one group and the real drug to another. The real drug must out perform the other group’s mental state affecting in some part the cure of the illness. And frankly, I don’t accept my mental state is a product of determinist evolutionary forces and I don’t think must people do either. Something tells them there’s a “me", a brain whose complex calculations predicted planetary motions and more.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Stalin: An Assessment
It's easy to picture Stalin as this sinister characature. But then this raises the question wouldn't somebody have noticed?... you could hear them wonder, hey, doesn't that guy look like he's going to kill us all?
Once, again it’s easy to look upon Joseph Vassarionovich Stalin (Djughashvili) as completely sinister, mass murder as he was. But this doesn’t come close to explaining how he could rise above equals to dictatorship. Stalin was a masterful manipulator of people, who could be quite charming, and a sharp mind with an instinct for power and dominance, besides someone who loved to exercise his beautiful singing voice with friends. He had no problem charming party members and Roosevelt.
And so I characterize Stalin more as a thug, a gangster at the head of the powerful socialist ideology, not deranged maniac. Nonetheless, he became more and more suspicious as he grew older.
His vengeance could wait years to see itself satisfied. And few had his suspicion married with a hyper-sensitivity to personal slight. He demanded complete loyalty from his followers; high ranking members lost wives to his terror (to name a couple Molotov, Soviet Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Budonny, Defense Minister). Questioning him would sooner or later be very harmful to your health either in the labor camps or simply by execution. Yet, he could be very good with children; he doted on his daughter Svetlana until she reached the age of 15, when she began a romantic attachment to an older man.
But fundamentally Stalin was a megalomaniac with a decided punitive streak unhampered by conventional morality; his punitive streak led him to “break the back of the peasant” through forced collectivization, the Communist party and the military through purges, and ethnic minorities (exiled thousands of Germans and Chechens to name a couple) through forced migration.
In his rise to power after Lenin’s death he led the majority against Trotsky, the theorist, who deemed himself above politics and saw him eventually deported. He also took the seemingly unimportant position of General Secretary to Communist Party which became the most powerful position in Soviet Russia. The Secretariat, of which he was head, had great influence over the composition of those eligible for membership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Stalin's power of appointment had allowed him to gradually replace local party secretaries with loyal functionaries and thus control most regional delegations at the congress, which enabled him to pack the Central Committee with his supporters, mostly at the expense of Zinoviev and Kamenev's backers. [unattributed quote]
He took the majority theoretical position that the socialist revolution could be carried on in Russia alone, a largely agrarian society, without required assistance from more industrial societies. The internationalists including Trotsky insisted upon a world wide revolution. Lenin himself promoted international revolution as necessary to the success of the Russian Revolution. In contrast the main emphasis would be building Communism within Russia. This was popular with many a Bolshevik; communism could be pursued most vigorously and the NEP (National Economic Plan which had free market elements) could be and was set aside; the Socialist revolution within Russia was to begun in earnest. The political stances he took would vary with a view to eliminating his political opponents, whether they be Leftist or Rightist deviations.
Suicide of his wife, Natalya, sixteen years his junior in 1932, has been mentioned by more than one author as a turning point in Stalin’s life. A fellow student had told her of the famine in the countryside due to the forced collectivization. Its likely she questioned Stalin over it. Of course this was not the only factor and probably not the most important; she had unstable characteristics it is said. Nonetheless, her classmates paid for their information with their lives.
Stalin at this point had established dominance but not dictatorial position. He continued to meet with the leaders of Communist Party in the Politburo. Natalya’s suicide was viewed as a complete betrayal by Stalin. He had not yet begun the “physical destruction” of his enemies. There was an unwritten understanding that the execution of fellow Bolsheviks was out of bounds. Shortly this little guideline would be violated with the coming purges.
The ruling Bolshevik elite at the time was convivial, lived close to each other; vacationed together in the Black sea resorts for 2 or 3 months at a time. They were a Bolshevik clan, centered around Stalin. This began to change with Natalya’s suicide.
What precipitated it was the aforementioned political turn. Essentially the revolution was to be built on the backs of the tradition bound, backward peasant. In 1927 grain harvest was short; the Bolsheviks were offering low prices to the peasant with a hope to use the cheap grain as one means of building a modern socialist society. Of course the Peasant responded poorly. The Bolshevik had in their own way a very moralistic view point, and punished human failings as with religious fervor. As can be seen in the reaction to refusal to give up grain, which was termed betrayal of the Communist revolution, not just the natural inclination of individuals to better themselves in the way that capitalist societies view these things.
The Bolshevik was hostile to the Russian peasant society, traditional and conservative and largely Orthodox Christian in belief, similar in disposition as other traditional societies we still see today in India and other third world countries and formerly in China and Tibet, resistant to change and education and tied to the past. Oddly, these traditional societies are much more remote to us than the modern one that Stalin directed to be created in Soviet Russia. And this may contribute in some way to Stalin’s popularity in current Russian society; a modern society looking back at its creator and destroyer of the traditional and seemingly very remote peasant Russia society of pre-Communism. In a recent poll more than half teenagers consider him more a good than an evil to Russia.
The Orthodox Church, so much a part of peasant life, had to be destroyed with its thousands of monasteries and churches to propel Russia into modern socialist state. Even in pre-revolution Russia, the urban centers with its urban elites had little interest in the Church and its archaic beliefs. This “Westernization” began with Peter the Great in the early 18th Century and was carried on by the Westward leaning aristocracy until the Revolution swept them away.
One example of a work of art created for this ruling elite in the late 19th Russia can be made to illustrate this. Present-day audiences continue to appreciate the beloved Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; it’s very close to modern sensibilities and can easily be appreciated today. This was composed specifically for the ruling aristocracy and wouldn’t have been even recognizable to the Orthodox peasant as a proper Christmas celebration. On the other hand the old peasant society is nowhere to be found; it’s back broken in Stalin’s modernism.
Shortfalls in grain also threatened hunger in the cities, the Bolshevik power base. A forced collectivization began in 1928 and the Kulak (once again Stalin, with his punitive streak, locates the culprits) in the “rich” peasant with maybe a cow or horse is singled out. The Chekists (state police) carried out a forced confiscation of grain. The peasant was forced to give all their property to the collective. Some were shot immediately, some sent off to camps in the far north and some exiled to Siberia with virtually no means of sustaining oneself. Countless thousands, hundred of thousands even millions it is said died in this collectivization. The figures are in some dispute since who was counting? Certainly not the Soviet regime. Stalin broke the back of the peasant, knowing how resistant to change they would be, and transformed Russia forever. Surplus labor and grain also found its way to the cities to work in the new industrial facilities.
The ridiculous goals of the 5 year plan to industrialize Russia beginning 1928 onward were fraught with mistakes and accidents on a massive scale. In Stalinist Russia the search was on for those responsible, Trotskyites, the Trotskyite Centre and Capitalist wreckers. One author saw this a part of Stalin’s religious training seeing people as sinners needful of punishment and Stalin who had an extremely punitive disposition exercised on political allies and family members, even wives of Politburo members (Molotov for example). And this could be attributed even more easily to his harsh upbringing from an alcoholic father. Others see import in a Georgian historic legacy in the connection with the harshness exhibited by Georgian tyrants attempting to maintain independence fighting the Russian, Persian and Turkish yoke.
Large numbers of the party faithful in the 1934 Communist Party Congress voted for an alternate candidate, Sergei Kirov. Kirov was suspiciously assassinated later that year in Leningrad. Stalin attributed vast counter-revolutionary plots for the assassination. The purge saw the execution of countless thousands from the Communist Party and likely a million overall. Also something like 3/4th of the officer corps was purged as well, under Stalin’s paranoia.
Written confessions of conspiracy, which seem preposterous today, played an important part in convincing the doubtful especially other party leaders of the guilt of those otherwise seemingly loyal party cadres and thus providing support for the purges, despite the fact that these outlandish charges originated from otherwise stalwart Communists; they were deemed proof of betrayal and persuaded the otherwise doubtful to accept outlandish accusations and drastic measures against putative members of Trotskyite centers or foreign influence. This was dovetailed with the Stalin’s canard that the closer they got to ideal socialism the more desperate the forces of opposition would become and more draconian the measures against them would be justified. We must remind ourselves Russia was invaded in the Civil War of 1919-1922 by Western European powers, to little avail mind you. This invasion would have been used as proof the Soviet Regime was under attack.
***
Stalin refused to see Hitler’s warlike intent prior to Germany’s massive invasion in June 1941. Communist and Anti-Fascist Russia made a pact with Nazi Germany, virulently anti-Communist in September 1939, much to everyone’s shock. Stalin neither trusted Western Democracies nor saw them as reliable allies, seeing how they folded in the face of Germany’s demands upon Czechoslovakia in 1938. Germany was allowed to overrun, under a peace agreement with Britain, the Sudetenland, the predominantly German portion of the country.
Another stumbling block was that Stalin, in talks to reach a mutual defense accord with Western Democracies, insisted on freedom of action against Baltic countries and Finland. I suppose Stalin was thinking of terms of the same forbearance granted Germany in swallowing up Austria and Czechoslovakia, a kind of quid pro quo. Western democracies wouldn’t accept those terms. Nazi Germany didn’t have those scruples. I think Stalin was buying time and guessing Germany and France fight long prolonged war, much like the conflict in World War I. I suspect no one was more surprised than Stalin, when the Wehrmacht, sliced through France like butter in May of 1940.
Once, again it’s easy to look upon Joseph Vassarionovich Stalin (Djughashvili) as completely sinister, mass murder as he was. But this doesn’t come close to explaining how he could rise above equals to dictatorship. Stalin was a masterful manipulator of people, who could be quite charming, and a sharp mind with an instinct for power and dominance, besides someone who loved to exercise his beautiful singing voice with friends. He had no problem charming party members and Roosevelt.
And so I characterize Stalin more as a thug, a gangster at the head of the powerful socialist ideology, not deranged maniac. Nonetheless, he became more and more suspicious as he grew older.
His vengeance could wait years to see itself satisfied. And few had his suspicion married with a hyper-sensitivity to personal slight. He demanded complete loyalty from his followers; high ranking members lost wives to his terror (to name a couple Molotov, Soviet Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Budonny, Defense Minister). Questioning him would sooner or later be very harmful to your health either in the labor camps or simply by execution. Yet, he could be very good with children; he doted on his daughter Svetlana until she reached the age of 15, when she began a romantic attachment to an older man.
But fundamentally Stalin was a megalomaniac with a decided punitive streak unhampered by conventional morality; his punitive streak led him to “break the back of the peasant” through forced collectivization, the Communist party and the military through purges, and ethnic minorities (exiled thousands of Germans and Chechens to name a couple) through forced migration.
In his rise to power after Lenin’s death he led the majority against Trotsky, the theorist, who deemed himself above politics and saw him eventually deported. He also took the seemingly unimportant position of General Secretary to Communist Party which became the most powerful position in Soviet Russia. The Secretariat, of which he was head, had great influence over the composition of those eligible for membership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
Stalin's power of appointment had allowed him to gradually replace local party secretaries with loyal functionaries and thus control most regional delegations at the congress, which enabled him to pack the Central Committee with his supporters, mostly at the expense of Zinoviev and Kamenev's backers. [unattributed quote]
He took the majority theoretical position that the socialist revolution could be carried on in Russia alone, a largely agrarian society, without required assistance from more industrial societies. The internationalists including Trotsky insisted upon a world wide revolution. Lenin himself promoted international revolution as necessary to the success of the Russian Revolution. In contrast the main emphasis would be building Communism within Russia. This was popular with many a Bolshevik; communism could be pursued most vigorously and the NEP (National Economic Plan which had free market elements) could be and was set aside; the Socialist revolution within Russia was to begun in earnest. The political stances he took would vary with a view to eliminating his political opponents, whether they be Leftist or Rightist deviations.
Suicide of his wife, Natalya, sixteen years his junior in 1932, has been mentioned by more than one author as a turning point in Stalin’s life. A fellow student had told her of the famine in the countryside due to the forced collectivization. Its likely she questioned Stalin over it. Of course this was not the only factor and probably not the most important; she had unstable characteristics it is said. Nonetheless, her classmates paid for their information with their lives.
Stalin at this point had established dominance but not dictatorial position. He continued to meet with the leaders of Communist Party in the Politburo. Natalya’s suicide was viewed as a complete betrayal by Stalin. He had not yet begun the “physical destruction” of his enemies. There was an unwritten understanding that the execution of fellow Bolsheviks was out of bounds. Shortly this little guideline would be violated with the coming purges.
The ruling Bolshevik elite at the time was convivial, lived close to each other; vacationed together in the Black sea resorts for 2 or 3 months at a time. They were a Bolshevik clan, centered around Stalin. This began to change with Natalya’s suicide.
What precipitated it was the aforementioned political turn. Essentially the revolution was to be built on the backs of the tradition bound, backward peasant. In 1927 grain harvest was short; the Bolsheviks were offering low prices to the peasant with a hope to use the cheap grain as one means of building a modern socialist society. Of course the Peasant responded poorly. The Bolshevik had in their own way a very moralistic view point, and punished human failings as with religious fervor. As can be seen in the reaction to refusal to give up grain, which was termed betrayal of the Communist revolution, not just the natural inclination of individuals to better themselves in the way that capitalist societies view these things.
The Bolshevik was hostile to the Russian peasant society, traditional and conservative and largely Orthodox Christian in belief, similar in disposition as other traditional societies we still see today in India and other third world countries and formerly in China and Tibet, resistant to change and education and tied to the past. Oddly, these traditional societies are much more remote to us than the modern one that Stalin directed to be created in Soviet Russia. And this may contribute in some way to Stalin’s popularity in current Russian society; a modern society looking back at its creator and destroyer of the traditional and seemingly very remote peasant Russia society of pre-Communism. In a recent poll more than half teenagers consider him more a good than an evil to Russia.
The Orthodox Church, so much a part of peasant life, had to be destroyed with its thousands of monasteries and churches to propel Russia into modern socialist state. Even in pre-revolution Russia, the urban centers with its urban elites had little interest in the Church and its archaic beliefs. This “Westernization” began with Peter the Great in the early 18th Century and was carried on by the Westward leaning aristocracy until the Revolution swept them away.
One example of a work of art created for this ruling elite in the late 19th Russia can be made to illustrate this. Present-day audiences continue to appreciate the beloved Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; it’s very close to modern sensibilities and can easily be appreciated today. This was composed specifically for the ruling aristocracy and wouldn’t have been even recognizable to the Orthodox peasant as a proper Christmas celebration. On the other hand the old peasant society is nowhere to be found; it’s back broken in Stalin’s modernism.
Shortfalls in grain also threatened hunger in the cities, the Bolshevik power base. A forced collectivization began in 1928 and the Kulak (once again Stalin, with his punitive streak, locates the culprits) in the “rich” peasant with maybe a cow or horse is singled out. The Chekists (state police) carried out a forced confiscation of grain. The peasant was forced to give all their property to the collective. Some were shot immediately, some sent off to camps in the far north and some exiled to Siberia with virtually no means of sustaining oneself. Countless thousands, hundred of thousands even millions it is said died in this collectivization. The figures are in some dispute since who was counting? Certainly not the Soviet regime. Stalin broke the back of the peasant, knowing how resistant to change they would be, and transformed Russia forever. Surplus labor and grain also found its way to the cities to work in the new industrial facilities.
The ridiculous goals of the 5 year plan to industrialize Russia beginning 1928 onward were fraught with mistakes and accidents on a massive scale. In Stalinist Russia the search was on for those responsible, Trotskyites, the Trotskyite Centre and Capitalist wreckers. One author saw this a part of Stalin’s religious training seeing people as sinners needful of punishment and Stalin who had an extremely punitive disposition exercised on political allies and family members, even wives of Politburo members (Molotov for example). And this could be attributed even more easily to his harsh upbringing from an alcoholic father. Others see import in a Georgian historic legacy in the connection with the harshness exhibited by Georgian tyrants attempting to maintain independence fighting the Russian, Persian and Turkish yoke.
Large numbers of the party faithful in the 1934 Communist Party Congress voted for an alternate candidate, Sergei Kirov. Kirov was suspiciously assassinated later that year in Leningrad. Stalin attributed vast counter-revolutionary plots for the assassination. The purge saw the execution of countless thousands from the Communist Party and likely a million overall. Also something like 3/4th of the officer corps was purged as well, under Stalin’s paranoia.
Written confessions of conspiracy, which seem preposterous today, played an important part in convincing the doubtful especially other party leaders of the guilt of those otherwise seemingly loyal party cadres and thus providing support for the purges, despite the fact that these outlandish charges originated from otherwise stalwart Communists; they were deemed proof of betrayal and persuaded the otherwise doubtful to accept outlandish accusations and drastic measures against putative members of Trotskyite centers or foreign influence. This was dovetailed with the Stalin’s canard that the closer they got to ideal socialism the more desperate the forces of opposition would become and more draconian the measures against them would be justified. We must remind ourselves Russia was invaded in the Civil War of 1919-1922 by Western European powers, to little avail mind you. This invasion would have been used as proof the Soviet Regime was under attack.
***
Stalin refused to see Hitler’s warlike intent prior to Germany’s massive invasion in June 1941. Communist and Anti-Fascist Russia made a pact with Nazi Germany, virulently anti-Communist in September 1939, much to everyone’s shock. Stalin neither trusted Western Democracies nor saw them as reliable allies, seeing how they folded in the face of Germany’s demands upon Czechoslovakia in 1938. Germany was allowed to overrun, under a peace agreement with Britain, the Sudetenland, the predominantly German portion of the country.
Another stumbling block was that Stalin, in talks to reach a mutual defense accord with Western Democracies, insisted on freedom of action against Baltic countries and Finland. I suppose Stalin was thinking of terms of the same forbearance granted Germany in swallowing up Austria and Czechoslovakia, a kind of quid pro quo. Western democracies wouldn’t accept those terms. Nazi Germany didn’t have those scruples. I think Stalin was buying time and guessing Germany and France fight long prolonged war, much like the conflict in World War I. I suspect no one was more surprised than Stalin, when the Wehrmacht, sliced through France like butter in May of 1940.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Conservatism Betrayed: G.W. Bush
I'm wondering where the conservative party went that was called the Republican Party?
I’ve been a lifelong Republican voter. The behavior of the Bush Administration in this latest economic crisis has made me question my allegiance. This calls into question the Country Club wing of the party. I don’t think they can be trusted to govern.
The Republican Party has always been the party of the business interest. And unlike Democrats we understand we do need rich people to create jobs. Amazingly poor people don’t create very many. So the policy is to promote risk and reward, where some people get rich and others not so. And limit the scope of government as the Founding Fathers intended since unlimited government can do unlimited amount of wrong including take our liberties away. That’s the idea anyway. Note all these political ideas come within the context of a Christian ethos, not Confusion or Hindu or Islamic, etc.
The Country Club set has been the moneyed presence behind the party. They have little interest in cultural issues; and give lip service to its crazy religious fanatics like me (kinda like the crazy uncle best avoided). But they need a popular movement like a pro-life message to support their unpopular policies benefitting large multi-national corporations and such. That’s ok, I’ll get mine in the afterlife and more importantly must answer to my behavior here to Almighty God. Of course foolish talk to sophisticated secularists. And the majority of non-church goers don’t vote Republican. They don’t want to be cheated here, since there’s nothing in the after life; better get yours while you can. There’s always talk from the Country Club set that it’s time to ditch the Pro-Life wackos: the most recent example was the candidacy of esteemed Rudolf Guliani, former Mayor of New York, whose get tough stance was wedded with stands on Pro-Abortion and legalizing non-traditional marital relationships. Much touted by the media as the anointed front runner of the Republican Party early in the 2008 campaign, he polled something in the low single digits in the primaries. I guess his Country Club friends didn’t show up to vote for him. And maybe they did but there weren’t that many of them.
Country Clubbers think they can pander to the “Seculars” with a social program here and a concession to “progressive” social policy there. Of course little do they know that a full loaf is better than half and so folks that place Faith in government to mitigate the inequities, i.e. seeing those rich bastards living off the fat getting their justs, will vote for a government that wants to take from the rich and give to the poor like our friends the Democrats. Country Club set simply wants to appear friendly and not so judgmental like those religious fanatics and that won’t be enough. Conservatives want to see life defended and individuals taking responsibility for their decisions.
The Bush administration Supreme Court justice appointments have been commendable. Unfortunately, this leaves the Pro-Life movement only something at a level a kin to a situation prior to a Brown V. Board of Education like ruling, in other words the first baby step towards the Civil Rights movement for the unborn has yet to be taken. So we haven’t even gotten to a Court Ruling yet and Republican Justices have been appointed again and again to virtually no result. There’s some million or two unborn being murdered nonetheless each year. Nothing has been done for the Pro-Life movement despite the generous Judicial appointments. So the prospect of a favorable judicial ruling is the highlight of the administration; that is some day in the future the Supreme Court might recognize that abortion is not an unlimited privilege.
Republicans become a Party without Fiscal Responsibility: once in power they failed to restrain government spending. All the decades of calling the Democrats tax and spend Liberals rings hallow. Republicans became spend like a Liberal party. They have soiled their reputations as the party of fiscal responsibility; this can’t be reclaimed for at least a generation. How can ideals of Conservatism be claimed here?
Tax policy was skewed to the wealthy unlike Reagan who tried to equalize taxes on all income types. Tax policy has virtually removed taxes from un-earned income with rates at zero to 15%. In contrast earned income for the vast majority of the self-employed populace is taxed at 35% to 45%. I bet you’re wondering how that could be. Most folks are in the 15% or 25% Federal income tax bracket then add the 15.3% Self Employment tax and say 5% for state income tax and guess what? You’re paying a giving a very large portion of your income to the government to earn a living.
On the other hand if you’re sitting around with large capital investments say into rental housing spinning off paper losses then you don’t have any deemed income and pay no tax until you sell the investment and once again you’re at tops 15% capital gain rates and maybe zero, same as dividends (taxed at capital gain rates). Ironically, the Self Employment tax helps to support Social Security payments, which are in fact one big income transfer program from one generation to another: the putative Social Security fund to have been built up over generations, depleted long ago by overgenerous entitlements. How can we expect a majority of people to see this as fair?
As been the policy over many Presidents, Republican and Democrat, a policy of a strong dollar was maintained. A strong dollar to finance deficits and provide cheap consumer goods comes at a great cost: the insistence on strong dollar and the vaunted global economy have destroyed our manufacturing base. Eventually, this Great Republic will be behest of the international financial market and currency traders, whose perception of value of the dollar it is. A dramatic decline in the dollar will cause financial disaster; prices would soar, since nothing or little is made here any longer. Ok, I exaggerate. 25% of our economy is from foreign trade. Upon collapse of the dollar, inflation would run rampant as oil and consumer goods would suddenly be priced much higher. I still hear voices that the strong dollar much be maintained with an eye to the oil sheiks, China and Japan, etc. who finance our trade and budget deficits. America is so indebted its already beholden to its lenders. One can’t fault Republicans solely for this one but this policy still values cheap consumer goods over a manufacturing base: needed to give good jobs to citizens of the Republic and not put the Republic at risk to foreign financial powers.
The ultimate outrage was the massive effusion of funds to corporations, best termed as Corporate Welfare, to the tune of over a $trillion dollars in response to faltering financial markets. Suddenly it was deemed necessary to prop up financial corporate America, save them from their own wrong headed moves in contradiction to a risk and reward system. Now it’s a no risk policy and bail you out if you fail system. First Bear Stearns, a stock brokerage firm, gets $30 billion to prop it up. These are engineered by Secretary of Treasury, Henry Paulson, formerly head of Goldman Sachs. Then AIG (insurance) gets rewarded twice once for $ 80 billion then another $50 billion or so for their stupidities with Credit Default Swaps (they would continue to receive billions in 2009); the sale of insurance against bond failure: as it turns out insurance on bad mortgage backed securities that AIG in their genius figured would never default. Ooops! Mortgage backed securities begin to fail and they don’t have the funds to cover the losses.
It seems they’re for capitalism except when it comes to a financial industry which makes bad decisions. These bailouts mentioned above were done independently by the Treasury without oversight. (Note that the $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns had absolutely no oversight or strings attached; kind of like here’s your $30 billion check, Johnnie, don’t spend it all in one place.) I fail to mention a $100 to 200 billion bail out of the mortgage giants Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. Wait we’re not done yet.
Thence came the mother of bailouts that is the proposal to buy up the $700 billion worth of bad mortgage loans that caused the financial meltdown in the first place. This was presented to the public and the Congress with all the hysteria of an impending financial holocaust a la Great Depression 1929. It was implied without this “remedy” the economy would go into irretrievable collapse and the stock market would sustain massive reverses. Well, the package was rushed through Congress with the approval of both Senatorial presidential candidates as well as President George W. Bush. Then the Stock Market proceeded to lose over 20% of its value despite the Bailout.
Amazingly, after the election the Bush Administration announced it made a mistake it really wasn't going to use the bail out of $700 in the means protrayed; an astounding admission of incompetence. The initial alarm with all the panic that Civilization as we know it will cease to exist if we don't get the bail out money then a month later saying we've changed our mind about this we're not going to use like we said we would.
Now, the underlying subtext is no political party wants to be presiding over another crash of ’29; the Republican Party didn’t get fully back into power for another 60 years. Nonetheless this was a massive shift in policy; a massive intervention into the financial markets far beyond what could have thought to have been envisioned by a conservative party. A Republican opposition would have railed against these measures as socialistic or even worse. But it continues, Paulson decides to give some $25 billions in cash to bolster banks some of whom really didn’t want it, at least as it was reported. (In 2009 these cash payments are done repeatedly to Citi Bank and Bank of America to prop them up… We lose track how much of the taxpayers money gets handed over.)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are governmental sponsored entities (corporations), funded by the Federal government and administered by private management. Their mission was to promote homeownership with below market mortgage loans. Congress with its Community Re-investment Act would force Banks to lend to clients with subpar credit to plow money back into communities. These Government Sponsored Entities (GSE) would buy securities backed by this mortgages, allowing banks to off load these suspect mortgages. When their massive accounting irregularities came to light in 2005 Congress could find no defalcations or even see a need for more scrutiny. Most culpable were House Democrats, many of whom were recipients of extensive campaign contributions, namely Barney Frank and Barbara Waxman, who wondered why this organization’s procedures were called to question at all. Note long time Congressman Barney Frank’s lover was a high level executive with Fanny Mae. Barney was also a campaign finance recipient. Three years later this financial mess came to roost. These are the securities AIG insured and brokerage firms purchased to leverage other investments.
Just as offensive were the truly spectacular salaries that some of the corporate executives that headed these bail out recipients. The newspaper USA Today, Oct 1, 2008, reported bonuses for these departing executives.
• AIG CEO Martin Sullivan received $25.4 million, including $322,000 for private use of corporate aircraft, $153,000 for car and parking, $160,000 for home security and $41,000 for financial planning.
• Former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld got $187 million. (Actually allowed to fail!)
• O'Neal of Merrill Lynch received $66 million, including $357,000 for car services and personal use of aircraft in 2007. (Bought by Bank of America which is now showing signs of failure as well, taxpayers next bailout?)
• Prince of Citigroup made $42 million, including $180,000 for corporate aircraft, ground transportation and security services.
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made $76.2 million, including $233,000 for car and driver services and $61,000 for financial and benefits counseling services. (Not bailed out….yet.)
All deserving chaps, everyone of them, I suppose. The problem being, corporate America gives itself great liberty to “manage” its work force with layoffs in any economic clime (see the forced layoffs in the 1980’s to simply make additional profits and insistence on using foreign employment) and reward management very handsomely indeed as seem above. Corporate Welfare violates this pact with its modern latifundia.
This brings me to foreign policy. Anyone for spending $500 billion to remove a foreign regime, destroy a country then re-build it, namely IRAQ? This is a praiseworthy project. Saddam Hussein was presumed to be a threat to America, with violations of UN resolutions and an all around vicious guy with lots of weapons of mass destruction to pass around to others. Once again in Biblical proportions America destroyed a country on the other side of the global losing a hundred or so soldiers. An incredible historic military feat. Now that the Iraqi house was destroyed, how to build it back up again? Well, being a Democracy the house of Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization some five millennium old, some four millennium before Western Europe could even read, had to be rebuilt to our specs. It’s still being built after some five years. 2008 Presidential Candidate John McCain didn’t mind if it took an hundred. All commendable and I had young men from our block and from our church who dodged bullets and bombs over there and I stand four square behind them. Unlike the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates both of whom who voted to cutoff funding, much like what was done in Vietnam era, in which the government collapsed under invasion of the North Vietnamese much for lack of funding. This precipitated a reign of communist terror in the region with the loss of several hundred thousands of innocent lives slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and a Communist Regime in South Vietnam so reprehensible with thousands sent to “re-education camps”, many died there, that thousands preferred to flee anyway they could to the endangerment of the lives as the “boat people” testify.
Anyway back to the re-building of Iraq, American Democracy couldn’t just put someone in place aligned with the most powerful segment sympathetic to America in the country, whether Shiite or Sunni and let them knock heads to any resistance: problem solved - no more crazy Saddam with WMD. They had to “Nation build” and create a mini-America there. Years later and hundred of billions of dollars America is still building.
Nonetheless carrying on foreign policy like this is one extremely expensive. It’s difficult for the majority of the public to comprehend and then they vote you out, ala 2006 when both Houses of Congress went Democratic. This was the first vote of no-confidence. The extended campaign in Iraq lost Republicans congress.
America must know its limits and not forget the lessons of the World Wars in the 20th Century upon which large amount of blame can be placed on Great Britain’s policy of hegemony punctuated by continued land grabbing in the Middle East with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War One which was itself precipitated by insistence on Britain’s pre-war hegemony. Germany, a newly formed nation in 1871 with a Constitutional Monarchy, a nation of laws, was exercising its newly attained hegemony in continental Europe and was painted as pernicious warmonger not simply threat to British colonial interests.
A new conservative party may be the only way to go. Question is still open as to who’s going to lead the Republican Party. The conservative wing has no confidence in the current leadership in the former White House or many ci-disant of the Senate. It would be better to lose a few elections until the Pork Barrel Party of Democrats has completely discredited itself. And based on its record in the first month and half with the massive Stimulate Big Government bill of $800 billion jam packed with pork, it may only to the next election that the public will have forgotten the incompetent policies of the party in opposition. Then again the Republican House must be cleaned and if not a new party has to be created.
I’ve been a lifelong Republican voter. The behavior of the Bush Administration in this latest economic crisis has made me question my allegiance. This calls into question the Country Club wing of the party. I don’t think they can be trusted to govern.
The Republican Party has always been the party of the business interest. And unlike Democrats we understand we do need rich people to create jobs. Amazingly poor people don’t create very many. So the policy is to promote risk and reward, where some people get rich and others not so. And limit the scope of government as the Founding Fathers intended since unlimited government can do unlimited amount of wrong including take our liberties away. That’s the idea anyway. Note all these political ideas come within the context of a Christian ethos, not Confusion or Hindu or Islamic, etc.
The Country Club set has been the moneyed presence behind the party. They have little interest in cultural issues; and give lip service to its crazy religious fanatics like me (kinda like the crazy uncle best avoided). But they need a popular movement like a pro-life message to support their unpopular policies benefitting large multi-national corporations and such. That’s ok, I’ll get mine in the afterlife and more importantly must answer to my behavior here to Almighty God. Of course foolish talk to sophisticated secularists. And the majority of non-church goers don’t vote Republican. They don’t want to be cheated here, since there’s nothing in the after life; better get yours while you can. There’s always talk from the Country Club set that it’s time to ditch the Pro-Life wackos: the most recent example was the candidacy of esteemed Rudolf Guliani, former Mayor of New York, whose get tough stance was wedded with stands on Pro-Abortion and legalizing non-traditional marital relationships. Much touted by the media as the anointed front runner of the Republican Party early in the 2008 campaign, he polled something in the low single digits in the primaries. I guess his Country Club friends didn’t show up to vote for him. And maybe they did but there weren’t that many of them.
Country Clubbers think they can pander to the “Seculars” with a social program here and a concession to “progressive” social policy there. Of course little do they know that a full loaf is better than half and so folks that place Faith in government to mitigate the inequities, i.e. seeing those rich bastards living off the fat getting their justs, will vote for a government that wants to take from the rich and give to the poor like our friends the Democrats. Country Club set simply wants to appear friendly and not so judgmental like those religious fanatics and that won’t be enough. Conservatives want to see life defended and individuals taking responsibility for their decisions.
The Bush administration Supreme Court justice appointments have been commendable. Unfortunately, this leaves the Pro-Life movement only something at a level a kin to a situation prior to a Brown V. Board of Education like ruling, in other words the first baby step towards the Civil Rights movement for the unborn has yet to be taken. So we haven’t even gotten to a Court Ruling yet and Republican Justices have been appointed again and again to virtually no result. There’s some million or two unborn being murdered nonetheless each year. Nothing has been done for the Pro-Life movement despite the generous Judicial appointments. So the prospect of a favorable judicial ruling is the highlight of the administration; that is some day in the future the Supreme Court might recognize that abortion is not an unlimited privilege.
Republicans become a Party without Fiscal Responsibility: once in power they failed to restrain government spending. All the decades of calling the Democrats tax and spend Liberals rings hallow. Republicans became spend like a Liberal party. They have soiled their reputations as the party of fiscal responsibility; this can’t be reclaimed for at least a generation. How can ideals of Conservatism be claimed here?
Tax policy was skewed to the wealthy unlike Reagan who tried to equalize taxes on all income types. Tax policy has virtually removed taxes from un-earned income with rates at zero to 15%. In contrast earned income for the vast majority of the self-employed populace is taxed at 35% to 45%. I bet you’re wondering how that could be. Most folks are in the 15% or 25% Federal income tax bracket then add the 15.3% Self Employment tax and say 5% for state income tax and guess what? You’re paying a giving a very large portion of your income to the government to earn a living.
On the other hand if you’re sitting around with large capital investments say into rental housing spinning off paper losses then you don’t have any deemed income and pay no tax until you sell the investment and once again you’re at tops 15% capital gain rates and maybe zero, same as dividends (taxed at capital gain rates). Ironically, the Self Employment tax helps to support Social Security payments, which are in fact one big income transfer program from one generation to another: the putative Social Security fund to have been built up over generations, depleted long ago by overgenerous entitlements. How can we expect a majority of people to see this as fair?
As been the policy over many Presidents, Republican and Democrat, a policy of a strong dollar was maintained. A strong dollar to finance deficits and provide cheap consumer goods comes at a great cost: the insistence on strong dollar and the vaunted global economy have destroyed our manufacturing base. Eventually, this Great Republic will be behest of the international financial market and currency traders, whose perception of value of the dollar it is. A dramatic decline in the dollar will cause financial disaster; prices would soar, since nothing or little is made here any longer. Ok, I exaggerate. 25% of our economy is from foreign trade. Upon collapse of the dollar, inflation would run rampant as oil and consumer goods would suddenly be priced much higher. I still hear voices that the strong dollar much be maintained with an eye to the oil sheiks, China and Japan, etc. who finance our trade and budget deficits. America is so indebted its already beholden to its lenders. One can’t fault Republicans solely for this one but this policy still values cheap consumer goods over a manufacturing base: needed to give good jobs to citizens of the Republic and not put the Republic at risk to foreign financial powers.
The ultimate outrage was the massive effusion of funds to corporations, best termed as Corporate Welfare, to the tune of over a $trillion dollars in response to faltering financial markets. Suddenly it was deemed necessary to prop up financial corporate America, save them from their own wrong headed moves in contradiction to a risk and reward system. Now it’s a no risk policy and bail you out if you fail system. First Bear Stearns, a stock brokerage firm, gets $30 billion to prop it up. These are engineered by Secretary of Treasury, Henry Paulson, formerly head of Goldman Sachs. Then AIG (insurance) gets rewarded twice once for $ 80 billion then another $50 billion or so for their stupidities with Credit Default Swaps (they would continue to receive billions in 2009); the sale of insurance against bond failure: as it turns out insurance on bad mortgage backed securities that AIG in their genius figured would never default. Ooops! Mortgage backed securities begin to fail and they don’t have the funds to cover the losses.
It seems they’re for capitalism except when it comes to a financial industry which makes bad decisions. These bailouts mentioned above were done independently by the Treasury without oversight. (Note that the $30 billion to bail out Bear Stearns had absolutely no oversight or strings attached; kind of like here’s your $30 billion check, Johnnie, don’t spend it all in one place.) I fail to mention a $100 to 200 billion bail out of the mortgage giants Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. Wait we’re not done yet.
Thence came the mother of bailouts that is the proposal to buy up the $700 billion worth of bad mortgage loans that caused the financial meltdown in the first place. This was presented to the public and the Congress with all the hysteria of an impending financial holocaust a la Great Depression 1929. It was implied without this “remedy” the economy would go into irretrievable collapse and the stock market would sustain massive reverses. Well, the package was rushed through Congress with the approval of both Senatorial presidential candidates as well as President George W. Bush. Then the Stock Market proceeded to lose over 20% of its value despite the Bailout.
Amazingly, after the election the Bush Administration announced it made a mistake it really wasn't going to use the bail out of $700 in the means protrayed; an astounding admission of incompetence. The initial alarm with all the panic that Civilization as we know it will cease to exist if we don't get the bail out money then a month later saying we've changed our mind about this we're not going to use like we said we would.
Now, the underlying subtext is no political party wants to be presiding over another crash of ’29; the Republican Party didn’t get fully back into power for another 60 years. Nonetheless this was a massive shift in policy; a massive intervention into the financial markets far beyond what could have thought to have been envisioned by a conservative party. A Republican opposition would have railed against these measures as socialistic or even worse. But it continues, Paulson decides to give some $25 billions in cash to bolster banks some of whom really didn’t want it, at least as it was reported. (In 2009 these cash payments are done repeatedly to Citi Bank and Bank of America to prop them up… We lose track how much of the taxpayers money gets handed over.)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are governmental sponsored entities (corporations), funded by the Federal government and administered by private management. Their mission was to promote homeownership with below market mortgage loans. Congress with its Community Re-investment Act would force Banks to lend to clients with subpar credit to plow money back into communities. These Government Sponsored Entities (GSE) would buy securities backed by this mortgages, allowing banks to off load these suspect mortgages. When their massive accounting irregularities came to light in 2005 Congress could find no defalcations or even see a need for more scrutiny. Most culpable were House Democrats, many of whom were recipients of extensive campaign contributions, namely Barney Frank and Barbara Waxman, who wondered why this organization’s procedures were called to question at all. Note long time Congressman Barney Frank’s lover was a high level executive with Fanny Mae. Barney was also a campaign finance recipient. Three years later this financial mess came to roost. These are the securities AIG insured and brokerage firms purchased to leverage other investments.
Just as offensive were the truly spectacular salaries that some of the corporate executives that headed these bail out recipients. The newspaper USA Today, Oct 1, 2008, reported bonuses for these departing executives.
• AIG CEO Martin Sullivan received $25.4 million, including $322,000 for private use of corporate aircraft, $153,000 for car and parking, $160,000 for home security and $41,000 for financial planning.
• Former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld got $187 million. (Actually allowed to fail!)
• O'Neal of Merrill Lynch received $66 million, including $357,000 for car services and personal use of aircraft in 2007. (Bought by Bank of America which is now showing signs of failure as well, taxpayers next bailout?)
• Prince of Citigroup made $42 million, including $180,000 for corporate aircraft, ground transportation and security services.
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made $76.2 million, including $233,000 for car and driver services and $61,000 for financial and benefits counseling services. (Not bailed out….yet.)
All deserving chaps, everyone of them, I suppose. The problem being, corporate America gives itself great liberty to “manage” its work force with layoffs in any economic clime (see the forced layoffs in the 1980’s to simply make additional profits and insistence on using foreign employment) and reward management very handsomely indeed as seem above. Corporate Welfare violates this pact with its modern latifundia.
This brings me to foreign policy. Anyone for spending $500 billion to remove a foreign regime, destroy a country then re-build it, namely IRAQ? This is a praiseworthy project. Saddam Hussein was presumed to be a threat to America, with violations of UN resolutions and an all around vicious guy with lots of weapons of mass destruction to pass around to others. Once again in Biblical proportions America destroyed a country on the other side of the global losing a hundred or so soldiers. An incredible historic military feat. Now that the Iraqi house was destroyed, how to build it back up again? Well, being a Democracy the house of Iraq, the Cradle of Civilization some five millennium old, some four millennium before Western Europe could even read, had to be rebuilt to our specs. It’s still being built after some five years. 2008 Presidential Candidate John McCain didn’t mind if it took an hundred. All commendable and I had young men from our block and from our church who dodged bullets and bombs over there and I stand four square behind them. Unlike the 2008 Democratic Presidential candidates both of whom who voted to cutoff funding, much like what was done in Vietnam era, in which the government collapsed under invasion of the North Vietnamese much for lack of funding. This precipitated a reign of communist terror in the region with the loss of several hundred thousands of innocent lives slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and a Communist Regime in South Vietnam so reprehensible with thousands sent to “re-education camps”, many died there, that thousands preferred to flee anyway they could to the endangerment of the lives as the “boat people” testify.
Anyway back to the re-building of Iraq, American Democracy couldn’t just put someone in place aligned with the most powerful segment sympathetic to America in the country, whether Shiite or Sunni and let them knock heads to any resistance: problem solved - no more crazy Saddam with WMD. They had to “Nation build” and create a mini-America there. Years later and hundred of billions of dollars America is still building.
Nonetheless carrying on foreign policy like this is one extremely expensive. It’s difficult for the majority of the public to comprehend and then they vote you out, ala 2006 when both Houses of Congress went Democratic. This was the first vote of no-confidence. The extended campaign in Iraq lost Republicans congress.
America must know its limits and not forget the lessons of the World Wars in the 20th Century upon which large amount of blame can be placed on Great Britain’s policy of hegemony punctuated by continued land grabbing in the Middle East with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War One which was itself precipitated by insistence on Britain’s pre-war hegemony. Germany, a newly formed nation in 1871 with a Constitutional Monarchy, a nation of laws, was exercising its newly attained hegemony in continental Europe and was painted as pernicious warmonger not simply threat to British colonial interests.
A new conservative party may be the only way to go. Question is still open as to who’s going to lead the Republican Party. The conservative wing has no confidence in the current leadership in the former White House or many ci-disant of the Senate. It would be better to lose a few elections until the Pork Barrel Party of Democrats has completely discredited itself. And based on its record in the first month and half with the massive Stimulate Big Government bill of $800 billion jam packed with pork, it may only to the next election that the public will have forgotten the incompetent policies of the party in opposition. Then again the Republican House must be cleaned and if not a new party has to be created.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Pickett's Charge: Failure of a Desparate Gamble
There’s little in which to defend Lee’s charge against prepared positions on the Third day of Gettysburg July 1863. It was foolhardy anyway you look at it. The better than three quarter mile march across open ground against those two Federal corps, the First and parts of the Third that held the higher ground. It speaks of Lee’s disrespect for his opponent. Mind you he had time and time again defeated them, as recently as May, 1863 at Chancellorsville.
There was no finer general and man in the Civil War than Bobby Lee. His character was such that men would go anywhere he led. Contrast him with Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who fought in the West, who managed to alienate all around and about him from his senior officers that called for his removal and the front line troops that basically would no longer fight for him as evidenced in the Battle of Chickamauga in November 1863. Here Grant’s troops pinned down in Chattanooga amazingly were able to drive the Confederates off the commanding heights of Missionary Ridge and break the siege of Chattanooga. Bragg was finally removed from command. I’m off point already, lets go back to Lee and Gettysburg.
Between July 1 and 3 Lee cast the dice in hopes of destroying the Federal Army in a Cannae, a decisive annihilation, as the Ancient Romans had suffered under Hannibal in the Carthaginian Wars. The Confederacy couldn’t invest the North. So from the beginning his strategy was a gamble. His army had to live off the land for supplies. There was no thought of a permanent presence in the North and he knew it; nothing like the North was trying to do in the South and had been relatively successful in the West. Lee needed to strike the larger Federal Army in detail; overwhelm a portion of it to gain a decisive victory. The fear was this larger Federal Army could smother the Confederate Army as it did the year before around Richmond with McClellan in 1862.
If you slept through your history lesson (then again they may not even be teaching the Civil War in school any longer) Pickett’s Charge of some 12,700 Confederate troops, under command of General Longstreet including Pettigrew’s, Trimble’s and Pickett’s divisions, was a frontal assault against prepared positions with the Federal infantry having the benefit of high ground on Cemetery Ridge.
In rough figures off the top of my head they would have been crossing some 1000 yards of open ground. The last 400 yards would be under the fire of canister, a tomato juice can size of ball bearings which would be exploded just above the marshaled troops as they march forward by the thousands. Cannon could fire three of these a minute and there were some 80 cannon directed toward the charge. And rifled musket began to be deadly at that range as well. Surprisingly, at what was called later the “Angle”, the Union lines were breached momentarily by the small fraction of what was left of the total number in the charge. The Confederates needed support to hold the breach, which was not forthcoming, and they were driven back. Less than have half made it back; meaning some six or seven thousand casualties, including thousands of prisoners. The charge took something less than an hour.
There have been a couple books with Lee’s Real Plan in the title that surprisingly purport Lee had something up his sleeve that day but it all went array. I don’t have the time to pour over them but one seems to say that Lee was just naturally trying to get the high ground on Cemetery Ridge that the Federals occupied so a charge up the hill made sense. The other seems to place the blame on Jeb Stuart’s failure to push past the Union Cavalry that same afternoon Northeast of the battlefield and disrupt the Federal rear. My apologies to both gentlemen for most likely butchering your theses, however the little I have read doesn’t support either one of those ideas, if my understanding is correct.
Note the purpose of cavalry was for reconnaissance primarily. If the author is correct about having the cavalry become an assault force, I don’t know of any other instance where cavalry was meant to have been used as an assault force against infantry (meaning to say if they were successful at brushing the Federal Cavalry aside); on any given day infantry would wreck attacking cavalry. Union Cavalry General Buford is highly praised for simply delaying for a short while the Confederates approaching Gettysburg from Chambersburg until the Federal Infantry could arrive the morning of the First day of battle. The Confederate cavalry was no where to be seen until late in the Second Day.
The rap against cavalry: “I never saw a dead cavalryman” was mostly true but there’s mitigating circumstances. They were constantly skirmishing with the enemy, many times over the instances in which the infantry would see battle. These cavalry, if they fought pitched battles, would soon be wasted away and cease to be able to perform their scouting and reconnaissance functions.
I’m not sure what the author Lee’s Real Plan had in mind when he mentions firing off of a single cannon in all four directions by Stuart, Confederate General of Cavalry, as a signal to Lee to coordinate attacks, Pickett and Stuart. At this very time the Confederate artillery barrage of Union positions prior to Pickett’s charge was taking place. Nobody over there would have been able to hear it.
If Lee had a plan, it doesn’t appear he told General Longstreet who had very grave reservations about the charge.
He was to have told Lee:
General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.
Longstreet didn’t even have 15,000; he had some more than 12 thousand. You really have get out on that battlefield and see the expanse across where they would have marched and have to wonder, what was Lee thinking? Longstreet had those same thoughts. I read he even tried to distance himself from responsibility by giving General Alexander, commander of the artillery barrage prior to the charge, the authority to cancel it, if Anderson deemed his barrage ineffective. Anderson, a junior officer, did all he could to place responsibility back onto Longstreet.
As far as the futility of frontal assaults there is an example a half year before. Fredericksburg was fought in December of 1862 with Federal General Burnside using frontal tactics against Lee’s fortified positions much to Union forces futility; they were shooting ducks.
Later in the war in June 1864 at Cold Harbor 1o miles outside of Richmond, Federal troops would attempt to advance on fortified positions; Grant would hear of some 6,000 killed and wounded in a matter of less than an hour and the advance was halted. Orders to renew the assault were ignored. The battle around Richmond and Petersburg would last some 10 months.
A much lesser know frontal assault was made later in the year in December at Franklin, TN by Confederate General Hood where some 19,000 assaulted Union troops over a period of 5 hours; it was a disaster with some 6,000 Confederate casualties and 6 Confederate Generals killed or mortally wounded. The Federal General Schofield withdrew in the night but Confederate troops were decimated. Federal General Sherman was meanwhile marching through Georgia to the inspiration of many of a Civil War novel. General Hood’s army wouldn’t last much longer after that battle. Lee wasn’t the only one who tried these sanguinary charges. And the military genius of the day figured they were worth bloodshed. See the success of a frontal assault up a mountain a the Battle of Chattanooga as the exception that proves the rule.
Lee left much to the discretion of his subordinates, which worked when he had indomitable General Stonewall Jackson, who was killed in May at the victory at Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg Lee remained at his headquarters issuing nary an order the 3rd Day of battle. The hands off style let him down miserably.
On the First day Hill’s corps fought the 1st and 11th Corps at McPherson Ridge, then with the assistance of Ewell’s corps pushed the Union army off McPherson and Missionary Ridges through the town of Gettysburg to the heights and hills southeast of town. Ewell was ordered by Lee to take Cemetery Hill (not to be confused with the long Cemetery Ridge that ran south of it) if practicable, having driven as we said the Federals off Missionary Ridge through Gettysburg. He chose not to attempt to take even it though Brigadier General John B. Gordon felt it was missed opportunity, whose opinion being on the spot holds great authority.
After chasing the Federal troops through Gettysburg, the Confederates were disorganized. They were no longer ordered for battle; they were chasing down Federal prisoners and such. Ewell would have had to quickly re-organize them to continue to attack on the heights which may have not been practical. Only for a short while, a window of an hour or so, were those heights lightly defended. By 5:30 PM there were some 27,000 Federal troops there.
One author suggested that the real failure was Lee’s decision not to send in Anderson’s Division of Hill’s Corps on the right to Ewell’s assistance. A follow up was needed to take the heights; very likely the Confederates didn’t have it in them after a days fighting but without it the re-enforced Federal Army had a commanding position for days 2 and 3 of the battle.
Lee also had suggested to Ewell that he might swing from the left his, current position, to strengthen the Confederate right. A swing of that nature might have made a charge like Pickett’s more formidable. Lee was dissuaded from it for military reasons, one of which was a proposal to invest unoccupied Culp’s Hill. Culp’s Hill would command Cemetery Hill. Once again the window of opportunity was small, a couple hours and before Ewell moved that hill was occupied as well. This is the difference between great generals and the others, knowing when to act decisively. With Lee leaving Ewell where he was on the left, without result as it turned out, this allowed Meade, the Commanding General of the Federal forces, the interior lines in the next two days, meaning to say Federal troop movements left and right would be quicker to supply re-enforcements than the Army of Northern Virginia.
Prior to thee charge Confederates fired the most massive artillery barrage of some 150 to 170 guns of the war. This was to have softened up the Federal positions, but most of the ordinance went over the heads of the lines. In fact General Mead’s headquarters behind the lines were hit; one of his aides was wounded and 16 of their horses were cut down. It was decided to move back from the lines for safety. All in all, the barrage was ineffective.
In addition due to low ammunition artillery couldn’t move up with Pickett’s charge to support it. This is a glaring oversight of the commanding generals, since they were far from supply bases and had been fighting for two days. The question of how much ordinance should have come up. When Pickett asked if it was time to start out Longstreet was too choked up with emotion and simply nodded.
Failure of the campaign began by sending the Confederate Cavalry off, as it ended up, to harass the Union Army not provide reconnaissance and intel. The Confederate Cavalry was lost for 10 days, the eyes and ears of the Army. If Lee was going to be able to hit the Union Army in detail he would have had information as to its whereabouts. The hesitance of Lee on the First day of battle was lack of information and as a result troops weren’t marshaled ahead of time, the Union Army locations being unknown before hand. The Union Army somewhat outnumbered on the First day was able to quickly gather itself with four corps the 12th, 3rd , 2nd and 5th Corps coming up by the end of the First Day. Longstreet’s Corp would arrive on day 2. Note Confederate Corp were much bigger than Union; there were three (3) corps in the Army of Northern Virginia versus seven (7) for the Army of the Potomac about the same size. So on the First day, Confederates had about two thirds (2/3) of its Army and Union two sevenths (2/7).
After the battle the Army of Northern Virginia would no longer be an offensive weapon. The gamble, that this campaign was, might have been the only way to crush the Union Army and break the will of the Northern people, giving the Northern Peace party some credence. Yet with the invasion into the North the Confederate Army was conceived as a threat and with its defeat the North could claim a great victory. The Peace party, the Dixiecrats, was silenced at least for a while.
There was no finer general and man in the Civil War than Bobby Lee. His character was such that men would go anywhere he led. Contrast him with Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who fought in the West, who managed to alienate all around and about him from his senior officers that called for his removal and the front line troops that basically would no longer fight for him as evidenced in the Battle of Chickamauga in November 1863. Here Grant’s troops pinned down in Chattanooga amazingly were able to drive the Confederates off the commanding heights of Missionary Ridge and break the siege of Chattanooga. Bragg was finally removed from command. I’m off point already, lets go back to Lee and Gettysburg.
Between July 1 and 3 Lee cast the dice in hopes of destroying the Federal Army in a Cannae, a decisive annihilation, as the Ancient Romans had suffered under Hannibal in the Carthaginian Wars. The Confederacy couldn’t invest the North. So from the beginning his strategy was a gamble. His army had to live off the land for supplies. There was no thought of a permanent presence in the North and he knew it; nothing like the North was trying to do in the South and had been relatively successful in the West. Lee needed to strike the larger Federal Army in detail; overwhelm a portion of it to gain a decisive victory. The fear was this larger Federal Army could smother the Confederate Army as it did the year before around Richmond with McClellan in 1862.
If you slept through your history lesson (then again they may not even be teaching the Civil War in school any longer) Pickett’s Charge of some 12,700 Confederate troops, under command of General Longstreet including Pettigrew’s, Trimble’s and Pickett’s divisions, was a frontal assault against prepared positions with the Federal infantry having the benefit of high ground on Cemetery Ridge.
In rough figures off the top of my head they would have been crossing some 1000 yards of open ground. The last 400 yards would be under the fire of canister, a tomato juice can size of ball bearings which would be exploded just above the marshaled troops as they march forward by the thousands. Cannon could fire three of these a minute and there were some 80 cannon directed toward the charge. And rifled musket began to be deadly at that range as well. Surprisingly, at what was called later the “Angle”, the Union lines were breached momentarily by the small fraction of what was left of the total number in the charge. The Confederates needed support to hold the breach, which was not forthcoming, and they were driven back. Less than have half made it back; meaning some six or seven thousand casualties, including thousands of prisoners. The charge took something less than an hour.
There have been a couple books with Lee’s Real Plan in the title that surprisingly purport Lee had something up his sleeve that day but it all went array. I don’t have the time to pour over them but one seems to say that Lee was just naturally trying to get the high ground on Cemetery Ridge that the Federals occupied so a charge up the hill made sense. The other seems to place the blame on Jeb Stuart’s failure to push past the Union Cavalry that same afternoon Northeast of the battlefield and disrupt the Federal rear. My apologies to both gentlemen for most likely butchering your theses, however the little I have read doesn’t support either one of those ideas, if my understanding is correct.
Note the purpose of cavalry was for reconnaissance primarily. If the author is correct about having the cavalry become an assault force, I don’t know of any other instance where cavalry was meant to have been used as an assault force against infantry (meaning to say if they were successful at brushing the Federal Cavalry aside); on any given day infantry would wreck attacking cavalry. Union Cavalry General Buford is highly praised for simply delaying for a short while the Confederates approaching Gettysburg from Chambersburg until the Federal Infantry could arrive the morning of the First day of battle. The Confederate cavalry was no where to be seen until late in the Second Day.
The rap against cavalry: “I never saw a dead cavalryman” was mostly true but there’s mitigating circumstances. They were constantly skirmishing with the enemy, many times over the instances in which the infantry would see battle. These cavalry, if they fought pitched battles, would soon be wasted away and cease to be able to perform their scouting and reconnaissance functions.
I’m not sure what the author Lee’s Real Plan had in mind when he mentions firing off of a single cannon in all four directions by Stuart, Confederate General of Cavalry, as a signal to Lee to coordinate attacks, Pickett and Stuart. At this very time the Confederate artillery barrage of Union positions prior to Pickett’s charge was taking place. Nobody over there would have been able to hear it.
If Lee had a plan, it doesn’t appear he told General Longstreet who had very grave reservations about the charge.
He was to have told Lee:
General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.
Longstreet didn’t even have 15,000; he had some more than 12 thousand. You really have get out on that battlefield and see the expanse across where they would have marched and have to wonder, what was Lee thinking? Longstreet had those same thoughts. I read he even tried to distance himself from responsibility by giving General Alexander, commander of the artillery barrage prior to the charge, the authority to cancel it, if Anderson deemed his barrage ineffective. Anderson, a junior officer, did all he could to place responsibility back onto Longstreet.
As far as the futility of frontal assaults there is an example a half year before. Fredericksburg was fought in December of 1862 with Federal General Burnside using frontal tactics against Lee’s fortified positions much to Union forces futility; they were shooting ducks.
Later in the war in June 1864 at Cold Harbor 1o miles outside of Richmond, Federal troops would attempt to advance on fortified positions; Grant would hear of some 6,000 killed and wounded in a matter of less than an hour and the advance was halted. Orders to renew the assault were ignored. The battle around Richmond and Petersburg would last some 10 months.
A much lesser know frontal assault was made later in the year in December at Franklin, TN by Confederate General Hood where some 19,000 assaulted Union troops over a period of 5 hours; it was a disaster with some 6,000 Confederate casualties and 6 Confederate Generals killed or mortally wounded. The Federal General Schofield withdrew in the night but Confederate troops were decimated. Federal General Sherman was meanwhile marching through Georgia to the inspiration of many of a Civil War novel. General Hood’s army wouldn’t last much longer after that battle. Lee wasn’t the only one who tried these sanguinary charges. And the military genius of the day figured they were worth bloodshed. See the success of a frontal assault up a mountain a the Battle of Chattanooga as the exception that proves the rule.
Lee left much to the discretion of his subordinates, which worked when he had indomitable General Stonewall Jackson, who was killed in May at the victory at Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg Lee remained at his headquarters issuing nary an order the 3rd Day of battle. The hands off style let him down miserably.
On the First day Hill’s corps fought the 1st and 11th Corps at McPherson Ridge, then with the assistance of Ewell’s corps pushed the Union army off McPherson and Missionary Ridges through the town of Gettysburg to the heights and hills southeast of town. Ewell was ordered by Lee to take Cemetery Hill (not to be confused with the long Cemetery Ridge that ran south of it) if practicable, having driven as we said the Federals off Missionary Ridge through Gettysburg. He chose not to attempt to take even it though Brigadier General John B. Gordon felt it was missed opportunity, whose opinion being on the spot holds great authority.
After chasing the Federal troops through Gettysburg, the Confederates were disorganized. They were no longer ordered for battle; they were chasing down Federal prisoners and such. Ewell would have had to quickly re-organize them to continue to attack on the heights which may have not been practical. Only for a short while, a window of an hour or so, were those heights lightly defended. By 5:30 PM there were some 27,000 Federal troops there.
One author suggested that the real failure was Lee’s decision not to send in Anderson’s Division of Hill’s Corps on the right to Ewell’s assistance. A follow up was needed to take the heights; very likely the Confederates didn’t have it in them after a days fighting but without it the re-enforced Federal Army had a commanding position for days 2 and 3 of the battle.
Lee also had suggested to Ewell that he might swing from the left his, current position, to strengthen the Confederate right. A swing of that nature might have made a charge like Pickett’s more formidable. Lee was dissuaded from it for military reasons, one of which was a proposal to invest unoccupied Culp’s Hill. Culp’s Hill would command Cemetery Hill. Once again the window of opportunity was small, a couple hours and before Ewell moved that hill was occupied as well. This is the difference between great generals and the others, knowing when to act decisively. With Lee leaving Ewell where he was on the left, without result as it turned out, this allowed Meade, the Commanding General of the Federal forces, the interior lines in the next two days, meaning to say Federal troop movements left and right would be quicker to supply re-enforcements than the Army of Northern Virginia.
Prior to thee charge Confederates fired the most massive artillery barrage of some 150 to 170 guns of the war. This was to have softened up the Federal positions, but most of the ordinance went over the heads of the lines. In fact General Mead’s headquarters behind the lines were hit; one of his aides was wounded and 16 of their horses were cut down. It was decided to move back from the lines for safety. All in all, the barrage was ineffective.
In addition due to low ammunition artillery couldn’t move up with Pickett’s charge to support it. This is a glaring oversight of the commanding generals, since they were far from supply bases and had been fighting for two days. The question of how much ordinance should have come up. When Pickett asked if it was time to start out Longstreet was too choked up with emotion and simply nodded.
Failure of the campaign began by sending the Confederate Cavalry off, as it ended up, to harass the Union Army not provide reconnaissance and intel. The Confederate Cavalry was lost for 10 days, the eyes and ears of the Army. If Lee was going to be able to hit the Union Army in detail he would have had information as to its whereabouts. The hesitance of Lee on the First day of battle was lack of information and as a result troops weren’t marshaled ahead of time, the Union Army locations being unknown before hand. The Union Army somewhat outnumbered on the First day was able to quickly gather itself with four corps the 12th, 3rd , 2nd and 5th Corps coming up by the end of the First Day. Longstreet’s Corp would arrive on day 2. Note Confederate Corp were much bigger than Union; there were three (3) corps in the Army of Northern Virginia versus seven (7) for the Army of the Potomac about the same size. So on the First day, Confederates had about two thirds (2/3) of its Army and Union two sevenths (2/7).
After the battle the Army of Northern Virginia would no longer be an offensive weapon. The gamble, that this campaign was, might have been the only way to crush the Union Army and break the will of the Northern people, giving the Northern Peace party some credence. Yet with the invasion into the North the Confederate Army was conceived as a threat and with its defeat the North could claim a great victory. The Peace party, the Dixiecrats, was silenced at least for a while.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Bomber War over Europe WWII
The massive bombing campaign of WWII over Europe wrecked great destruction over Germany. In Germany numerous cities were flattened. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were killed. Massive amounts of resources were expended to pursue strategic bombing, resources only Britain and America could spare.
In contrast Germany used their aircraft in large part as a Tactical bombing with immediate military results. The Stuka 87 was used extensive against enemy military positions to destroy tanks and such. Strategic bombing needed years to show results although the proponents of it thought otherwise.
The British who began the strategic bombing campaign first by November 1941 in the Butt report determined that the bombers couldn’t find nor hit their targets. Only 30% of the bombings were as close of 5 miles of the target. And they found daylight bombing too costly. With fewer resources than America they went to night bombing.
Area attacks on cities began to be the object; the goal of the bombings became terror against the civilian population. As was found out this only hardens the civilian determination as it did in both in England and Germany. Before the war the idea of strategic bombing was to destroy the countries means to carry on war and shorten wars. In the light of the bloody stalemate of WWI this was seen as a way to relieve war of the butchery with its millions of casualties.
Armadas of airplanes were required to propagate the campaign. Groups up to 1000 airplanes were sent up to reign bombs over German cities. Flying tight formation almost wing tip to tip to concentrate fire power and not allow a small group or single plane to be picked off.
Americans came into the bombing campaign with a thought that it could do daylight pinpoint bombing over strategic industries. B-17 was to have been literally the Flying Fortress able to defend itself against fighter attacks. Problems arose. European skies were overcast much of the time. And thus the Norden bombsites that were to have guided the bombers to their final destination were ineffective. In the bomber campaign of the Battle of Berlin, Royal Air Force here, of the winter of 1943-44 the cloud cover so obscured the target that these bomber groups of 500 or more bombers missed it completely, a city of some millions.
Unescorted daylight bombing was perilous the British had quickly found out. With the Flying Fortress the Amercian airforce thought they could fly into Germany to attack industrial sites with pin point bombing. On August 17th, 1943 USAF fly in force over the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant some 38 were shot down out of 200 hundred. On September 6 they went to Stuttgart and 48 out of 338 were shot down. They came back on October 15 and some 60 bombers were shut down. These type of losses simply couldn't be maintained. But unlike Britain's stated military policy America's was always directed to industrial type targets; in practice due to the inaccuracy of bombing in the war they participated with Britain in their "area" bombing as well.
Despite the fact a vast majority of the bombers got through, even with a kill rate of 5% or so, your highly trained air crew and hugely expensive machinery would be run through in no time. 30% of bomber crew wouldn’t survive 25 bombing trips if the kill rate was 5% which oft times it was higher. Americans lost some 25,000 airmen during the war, that is one tenth the number of Americans killed in WWII.
Bomber groups got bigger thus more defensible and the P-51 and P-47 fighters began to escort the bombers on their entire trip. The P-51's and 47's were superior aircraft to what the Germans could put up and they began to hunt the hunters so to speak as well. During 1944 the German fighters were wiped from the skies at least during day.
Hilter effectively ruined the effectiveness of German fighter defense against these bomber attacks by refusing to put the necessary resources into it. In fact the Me-262 jet plane, meant to have been a fighter plane, was forced to be used as a bomber. This plane could have in use by spring of 1944 but Hitler was always thinking offense: V2 rockets and such. He thought fighters as defensive agents were a waste. Only in late 1944 were the Me-262 began to used as a fighter in much fewer numbers than could have accomplished earlier. The result Germany was eventually overrun. More importantly the arsenal of democracy, United States, was able to massively produce thousands of fighters and bombers to overwhelm Germany.
Hitler’s Germany couldn’t afford to pursue a strategic bombing policy. In its attempt the London blitz in 1940 was carried on over the Fall by fighter bombers that were meant to be able to fly away from their pursuit. Great Britain’s Spitfires fighters fought off the bombers, although thousands of civilians were killed during the bombing, but with increasing destruction of the bombers, the campaign was halted. The biggest failure of the Lutfwaffe was the fact that the Royal Air Force was not driven from the air and thus gain freedom of the skies that would permit invasion by land forces across the Channel.
After all the expenditure of resources its telling that in 1944 Germany produced more armaments after three years of strategic bombing than ever. Much thanks to Albert Speer, whose contribution was held so highly he spent the next 20 years in prison. And of course especially revealing was Britain’s concession to the inaccuracy of strategic bombing by a change to area bombing, which in effect was terror bombing.
Since WWII no nation has targeted cities as was done in WWII. In America’s wars against Iraq great efforts were made to avoid collateral damage, as was the bombing in Kosovo despite the unfortunate collateral casualties.
In contrast Germany used their aircraft in large part as a Tactical bombing with immediate military results. The Stuka 87 was used extensive against enemy military positions to destroy tanks and such. Strategic bombing needed years to show results although the proponents of it thought otherwise.
The British who began the strategic bombing campaign first by November 1941 in the Butt report determined that the bombers couldn’t find nor hit their targets. Only 30% of the bombings were as close of 5 miles of the target. And they found daylight bombing too costly. With fewer resources than America they went to night bombing.
Area attacks on cities began to be the object; the goal of the bombings became terror against the civilian population. As was found out this only hardens the civilian determination as it did in both in England and Germany. Before the war the idea of strategic bombing was to destroy the countries means to carry on war and shorten wars. In the light of the bloody stalemate of WWI this was seen as a way to relieve war of the butchery with its millions of casualties.
Armadas of airplanes were required to propagate the campaign. Groups up to 1000 airplanes were sent up to reign bombs over German cities. Flying tight formation almost wing tip to tip to concentrate fire power and not allow a small group or single plane to be picked off.
Americans came into the bombing campaign with a thought that it could do daylight pinpoint bombing over strategic industries. B-17 was to have been literally the Flying Fortress able to defend itself against fighter attacks. Problems arose. European skies were overcast much of the time. And thus the Norden bombsites that were to have guided the bombers to their final destination were ineffective. In the bomber campaign of the Battle of Berlin, Royal Air Force here, of the winter of 1943-44 the cloud cover so obscured the target that these bomber groups of 500 or more bombers missed it completely, a city of some millions.
Unescorted daylight bombing was perilous the British had quickly found out. With the Flying Fortress the Amercian airforce thought they could fly into Germany to attack industrial sites with pin point bombing. On August 17th, 1943 USAF fly in force over the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant some 38 were shot down out of 200 hundred. On September 6 they went to Stuttgart and 48 out of 338 were shot down. They came back on October 15 and some 60 bombers were shut down. These type of losses simply couldn't be maintained. But unlike Britain's stated military policy America's was always directed to industrial type targets; in practice due to the inaccuracy of bombing in the war they participated with Britain in their "area" bombing as well.
Despite the fact a vast majority of the bombers got through, even with a kill rate of 5% or so, your highly trained air crew and hugely expensive machinery would be run through in no time. 30% of bomber crew wouldn’t survive 25 bombing trips if the kill rate was 5% which oft times it was higher. Americans lost some 25,000 airmen during the war, that is one tenth the number of Americans killed in WWII.
Bomber groups got bigger thus more defensible and the P-51 and P-47 fighters began to escort the bombers on their entire trip. The P-51's and 47's were superior aircraft to what the Germans could put up and they began to hunt the hunters so to speak as well. During 1944 the German fighters were wiped from the skies at least during day.
Hilter effectively ruined the effectiveness of German fighter defense against these bomber attacks by refusing to put the necessary resources into it. In fact the Me-262 jet plane, meant to have been a fighter plane, was forced to be used as a bomber. This plane could have in use by spring of 1944 but Hitler was always thinking offense: V2 rockets and such. He thought fighters as defensive agents were a waste. Only in late 1944 were the Me-262 began to used as a fighter in much fewer numbers than could have accomplished earlier. The result Germany was eventually overrun. More importantly the arsenal of democracy, United States, was able to massively produce thousands of fighters and bombers to overwhelm Germany.
Hitler’s Germany couldn’t afford to pursue a strategic bombing policy. In its attempt the London blitz in 1940 was carried on over the Fall by fighter bombers that were meant to be able to fly away from their pursuit. Great Britain’s Spitfires fighters fought off the bombers, although thousands of civilians were killed during the bombing, but with increasing destruction of the bombers, the campaign was halted. The biggest failure of the Lutfwaffe was the fact that the Royal Air Force was not driven from the air and thus gain freedom of the skies that would permit invasion by land forces across the Channel.
After all the expenditure of resources its telling that in 1944 Germany produced more armaments after three years of strategic bombing than ever. Much thanks to Albert Speer, whose contribution was held so highly he spent the next 20 years in prison. And of course especially revealing was Britain’s concession to the inaccuracy of strategic bombing by a change to area bombing, which in effect was terror bombing.
Since WWII no nation has targeted cities as was done in WWII. In America’s wars against Iraq great efforts were made to avoid collateral damage, as was the bombing in Kosovo despite the unfortunate collateral casualties.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Ideal of Medieval Government
Moderns view Medieval government in a very dim light. The Monarch ruled without restraint, arbitrarily lopping off heads here and there at will and riding roughshod over the serfs. They did nothing but oppress the populace. Life was brutal, short and impoverished. Most of this is true of course, yet not the complete picture. The Medievals had a view of society much different than our own.
Regardless of their capriciousness, the Monarch could only summon a fraction of the nation’s resources. It was limited albeit authoritarian and unrepresentative. Monarchs were beholden to the ruling elite in great part to carryout his wishes. He had no bureaucracy to command. And history shows that the monarchy ever vigilant towards rivals in this ruling elite. And thus many a plot would need to be ferreted out; and folks executed and such. He (or she) didn’t command great resources like populist governments can that enlist the loyalty of masses of people, who commit their talents to it. Kings admittedly were highhanded, yet they held very little power and oversight compared to the modern democratic state which insists on regulation of all areas of life. They either had to hire an army as sometimes seen in the late Middle Ages or enlist the nobility to supply arms. No draft here. Arming the disaffected peasant would be political and social suicide.
And yet the monarch could act much more quickly and more astutely than democratic governments. My contention is that with a figure head of Queen Victoria in the monarchy, the British Empire allows the rise of Prussian Germany; then the Prussians were able to take on their rivals one at a time. First they defeat Austria in 1866 alone then France in 1870. Admittedly, one can argue that the British were more concerned with the Empire as demonstrated by their battle to preserve the Ottoman Empire against Czarist Russia in the Crimean War 1854-56. Possession of the Ottoman Empire threatens Egypt and the route to the Jewel of the Crown, India. Nonetheless, the Prussian Empire, if you will, becomes the most powerful state in Europe and claims the same rights and influence as Britain to colonize and such. Hotly, disputed by the British of course.
But Germany had been fought over for centuries with the knowledge a united Germany would be a very imposing state in Europe. This is what the 30 Years War was fought over (1618-1648). Whether a decisive Monarchy could prevent general conflagration is highly debatable and off point, but what it couldn’t do was galvanize the society for war as could Modern governments. Germany’s unity was destroyed in the 11th Century in a conflict between the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor. Using the weapons of interdict and excommunication Popes garnered the right to appoint Bishops and other clerics and encouraged revolt by the nobility within German states. The resulting civil war and rebellion fractured German unity for centuries.
It takes populist governments to summon the resources of the whole society for good and bad; witness the massive conflicts in the 20th Century. Note it’s the populist governments that have enough weaponry to annihilate not only civilization but life on Earth as it is known today. We live in comfort and relaxation with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.
Medieval Philosophy of government saw society best composed into orders. This idea was derived from the Ancient Philosophers, Plato. Plato's Republic envisioned a well ordered society with three classes of people, Philosophers, the Military class and the merchants and workers. The Philosophers would have the role of guiding the state and educating its members. This idea of government endured and was present as late as 18th Century. King Louis 16th called the Estates General prior to the French Revolution; it was composed of the Nobility, Clergy and the commons, revealing the mindset about the ancient three orders of Medieval good government.
Montesquieu, the 18th Century French Philosophe, most influential to the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution opposed this thinking with the a tri-partite: executive, legislative and judicial model, each counter balancing each other. (Makes sense to us, doesn’t it.) But most governments throughout history have been authoritative not consensual as Modern Democracies are nor counterpoised. Note the example of authoritarian China today, which proves itself to be a very successful government, despite our objections based on Liberal democratic principals of freedom of speech, press and religion.
As I stated, the Medievals, if you will permit, had a much different view of the role of society. Today, we see society dedicated to wealth creation to the comfort and welfare of the populace. The ideal of Medieval society was to edify the subjects to acquisition of Goodness, i.e. promote good character. This had its roots in Ancient Society, the Greek and Roman civilizations that placed great emphasis on character building and reform. Biographies were meant to be examples of individuals worthy of imitation not tell alls for titillation. Now it was understood that ultimate Goodness was Christian Salvation with the required acquisition of virtue. Of course today good character simply implies discipline and nothing towards attainment of some ideal character or quality of the Good.
In large part Medieval society was arranged in these putative orders to promote stability; the implicit understanding that lower classes were incapable of running society. It would have been said that the crew couldn’t possibly guide the ship, lacking knowledge with its multiple and competing voices. The skilled captain was best to steer the course, not mutinous crew. This idea was buttressed by the idea on the idea how the society was best ordered: rulers, rightfully placed in position by the Almighty; the Church, tending to the immortal souls of individuals and the common folk to produce the necessary goods to sustain society.
Society wasn’t designed strictly to create wealth or administer benefits to the greater good of the populace, but to the attainment of eternal verities (which nearly all segments of current society Christian and otherwise dismiss) and ultimately the salvation of immortal souls.
This Medieval ideal has pre-Christian roots. Plato’s The Republic contains the famous allegory of the Cave. In this allegory humanity is seen chained to a wall in a cave. They can only view the shadows of the real objects projected on the wall of a cave. They never see behind them to the outside. Never seeing the real objects outside but simply the shadows, the Cave dwellers were deluded in thinking that the shadows were reality. One individual escapes, runs out the cave entrance and discovers the real world. He comes back to explain his discovery and is killed by the others, as if he were a madman (much like Socrates was executed by Athens in 399 B.C.). In the Platonic world of ideas, truly Real things are not of this world. Thus society would have a view to these Real things, the eternal verities.
The society in this Plato’s Republic was dedicated to promoting the virtues which in turn are meant to lead us to apprehension of the ultimate ideal, The Good. Society would be led by the Philosopher elite who would edify it into striving to obtain the virtues.
I’ve spoken of ideals but reality of Medieval could be far different and almost always was I’m sorry to say. Part of the Modern’s repugnance of the Medieval is its intolerance. Some of the most outrageous instances of intolerance were the outbreaks of pogroms against Jews that occurred throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the aftermath of the Black Plague, a disease that killed over one third of Europe.
Medieval Spain was no exception to this intolerance. Persecution of Jews arose in late 14th and continued on throughout the 15th Century until all Jews were expelled in 1492. A ferocious persecution took place in 1391 which persuaded many Jews to convert; these were termed Conversos. This it would seem to have solved it but there were doubts about the sincerity of the conversions. Spain’s response was what is known as the Spanish Inquisition. Still unconvinced the Monarchy determined to rid themselves of the Jews altogether by a measure of ethnic cleansing. A truly sad episode in history.
In the Middle Ages intolerance manifested itself in another way: witch burnings. Some thousands of individuals, two thirds women, were executed for the practice of witchcraft. This started with the Papal Inquisitions in the late 14th Century. Once in the grips of the Inquisition there was a presumption of guilt and confession was only way to evacuate yourself, but with the practice of witchcraft the penalty was burning. Oddly enough the vast majority of witch burnings occurred in the 16th and 17th Centuries after the Reformation by Protestants. Once again highly regrettable episode in European history. Of course witches were executed in other societies as well, not to condone the practice in any way. And Orthodox Christians, in Eastern Europe and Russia, didn’t see the need to terrorize their members.
Yet, how do they compare in the light of the barbarities of the 20th Century? Death camp? Gulag? Incineration of Cities? death and destruction in the millions. And potential widespread Earth destroying use of nuclear weapons?
One motivation for the witch burnings, besides pure malice and misogynistic intent, lies in the idea that the society had the responsibility to educate, inform and caution its members regarding the care of their immortal souls. Burning would provide a very public warning to other members of society that this was most serious. In the Medieval mind burning the witch could lead to the repentance of the practitioner of bad magic and be a dramatic admonition to the society.
This begs a question: why such intolerance in Medieval Western Europe? First answer of course is the presence throughout history of intolerance across the world. One can point to pre-British Hindu India with its suttee (emolation of the widow on her husband's demise) and the ostracizing of the Intolerables. See the mass murders in the 20th Century of seemingly civilized nations not overlooking the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turk in 1915. Still this is offensive and causes one to wonder, why? Tough question.
In centuries prior there was no need for such draconian methods and as stated Orthodox Christians didn't practice this at all in Eastern Europe or Russia; places not known for their modernity. Charlemagne outlawed the belief in witches, no less, in the 8th century. Witchcraft was not a major concern. The catalyst was the Papal Inquisition but things didn't get frequent until the Protestant Reformation and the burnings were centered in southwest Germany. My theological spin is that the Reformers viewed spiritual transformation of man as ineffectual; he remains fallen and depraved in nature. This meant our spiritual state was virtually crippled. Congress with the spirit world could only be demonic. Those claiming intercourse with it, as witches did, would be much more threatening and suspect than previously. Very important however the Reformation was a religious reform and there was less tolerance of pagan elements in society. Thus in southwestern Germany Roman Catholics participated in witch burning.
A broad conclusion can be sketched out. Western Christianity needed to be mitigated with Enlightenment to cool fervent religious impulses. Being a devout Orthodox christian I don't want to dismiss religious impulses, so I won't agree with secular humanists that humankind is best viewed as the naked ape. I just arrive at the obvious; it's best not to burn your fellow neighbor.
Then again I counter Modern's hedonistic view; whatever turns you on and floats your boat attitude. Character education is greatly needed and the Christian church has carried out this needed task in Western Civilization for nearly two millenium. The Atheistic desire to de-christianize Western civilization will lead to a moral relativistic disaster. Civilization needs moral framework, thus note the rise of Islam in Europe.
Regardless of their capriciousness, the Monarch could only summon a fraction of the nation’s resources. It was limited albeit authoritarian and unrepresentative. Monarchs were beholden to the ruling elite in great part to carryout his wishes. He had no bureaucracy to command. And history shows that the monarchy ever vigilant towards rivals in this ruling elite. And thus many a plot would need to be ferreted out; and folks executed and such. He (or she) didn’t command great resources like populist governments can that enlist the loyalty of masses of people, who commit their talents to it. Kings admittedly were highhanded, yet they held very little power and oversight compared to the modern democratic state which insists on regulation of all areas of life. They either had to hire an army as sometimes seen in the late Middle Ages or enlist the nobility to supply arms. No draft here. Arming the disaffected peasant would be political and social suicide.
And yet the monarch could act much more quickly and more astutely than democratic governments. My contention is that with a figure head of Queen Victoria in the monarchy, the British Empire allows the rise of Prussian Germany; then the Prussians were able to take on their rivals one at a time. First they defeat Austria in 1866 alone then France in 1870. Admittedly, one can argue that the British were more concerned with the Empire as demonstrated by their battle to preserve the Ottoman Empire against Czarist Russia in the Crimean War 1854-56. Possession of the Ottoman Empire threatens Egypt and the route to the Jewel of the Crown, India. Nonetheless, the Prussian Empire, if you will, becomes the most powerful state in Europe and claims the same rights and influence as Britain to colonize and such. Hotly, disputed by the British of course.
But Germany had been fought over for centuries with the knowledge a united Germany would be a very imposing state in Europe. This is what the 30 Years War was fought over (1618-1648). Whether a decisive Monarchy could prevent general conflagration is highly debatable and off point, but what it couldn’t do was galvanize the society for war as could Modern governments. Germany’s unity was destroyed in the 11th Century in a conflict between the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor. Using the weapons of interdict and excommunication Popes garnered the right to appoint Bishops and other clerics and encouraged revolt by the nobility within German states. The resulting civil war and rebellion fractured German unity for centuries.
It takes populist governments to summon the resources of the whole society for good and bad; witness the massive conflicts in the 20th Century. Note it’s the populist governments that have enough weaponry to annihilate not only civilization but life on Earth as it is known today. We live in comfort and relaxation with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.
Medieval Philosophy of government saw society best composed into orders. This idea was derived from the Ancient Philosophers, Plato. Plato's Republic envisioned a well ordered society with three classes of people, Philosophers, the Military class and the merchants and workers. The Philosophers would have the role of guiding the state and educating its members. This idea of government endured and was present as late as 18th Century. King Louis 16th called the Estates General prior to the French Revolution; it was composed of the Nobility, Clergy and the commons, revealing the mindset about the ancient three orders of Medieval good government.
Montesquieu, the 18th Century French Philosophe, most influential to the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution opposed this thinking with the a tri-partite: executive, legislative and judicial model, each counter balancing each other. (Makes sense to us, doesn’t it.) But most governments throughout history have been authoritative not consensual as Modern Democracies are nor counterpoised. Note the example of authoritarian China today, which proves itself to be a very successful government, despite our objections based on Liberal democratic principals of freedom of speech, press and religion.
As I stated, the Medievals, if you will permit, had a much different view of the role of society. Today, we see society dedicated to wealth creation to the comfort and welfare of the populace. The ideal of Medieval society was to edify the subjects to acquisition of Goodness, i.e. promote good character. This had its roots in Ancient Society, the Greek and Roman civilizations that placed great emphasis on character building and reform. Biographies were meant to be examples of individuals worthy of imitation not tell alls for titillation. Now it was understood that ultimate Goodness was Christian Salvation with the required acquisition of virtue. Of course today good character simply implies discipline and nothing towards attainment of some ideal character or quality of the Good.
In large part Medieval society was arranged in these putative orders to promote stability; the implicit understanding that lower classes were incapable of running society. It would have been said that the crew couldn’t possibly guide the ship, lacking knowledge with its multiple and competing voices. The skilled captain was best to steer the course, not mutinous crew. This idea was buttressed by the idea on the idea how the society was best ordered: rulers, rightfully placed in position by the Almighty; the Church, tending to the immortal souls of individuals and the common folk to produce the necessary goods to sustain society.
Society wasn’t designed strictly to create wealth or administer benefits to the greater good of the populace, but to the attainment of eternal verities (which nearly all segments of current society Christian and otherwise dismiss) and ultimately the salvation of immortal souls.
This Medieval ideal has pre-Christian roots. Plato’s The Republic contains the famous allegory of the Cave. In this allegory humanity is seen chained to a wall in a cave. They can only view the shadows of the real objects projected on the wall of a cave. They never see behind them to the outside. Never seeing the real objects outside but simply the shadows, the Cave dwellers were deluded in thinking that the shadows were reality. One individual escapes, runs out the cave entrance and discovers the real world. He comes back to explain his discovery and is killed by the others, as if he were a madman (much like Socrates was executed by Athens in 399 B.C.). In the Platonic world of ideas, truly Real things are not of this world. Thus society would have a view to these Real things, the eternal verities.
The society in this Plato’s Republic was dedicated to promoting the virtues which in turn are meant to lead us to apprehension of the ultimate ideal, The Good. Society would be led by the Philosopher elite who would edify it into striving to obtain the virtues.
I’ve spoken of ideals but reality of Medieval could be far different and almost always was I’m sorry to say. Part of the Modern’s repugnance of the Medieval is its intolerance. Some of the most outrageous instances of intolerance were the outbreaks of pogroms against Jews that occurred throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the aftermath of the Black Plague, a disease that killed over one third of Europe.
Medieval Spain was no exception to this intolerance. Persecution of Jews arose in late 14th and continued on throughout the 15th Century until all Jews were expelled in 1492. A ferocious persecution took place in 1391 which persuaded many Jews to convert; these were termed Conversos. This it would seem to have solved it but there were doubts about the sincerity of the conversions. Spain’s response was what is known as the Spanish Inquisition. Still unconvinced the Monarchy determined to rid themselves of the Jews altogether by a measure of ethnic cleansing. A truly sad episode in history.
In the Middle Ages intolerance manifested itself in another way: witch burnings. Some thousands of individuals, two thirds women, were executed for the practice of witchcraft. This started with the Papal Inquisitions in the late 14th Century. Once in the grips of the Inquisition there was a presumption of guilt and confession was only way to evacuate yourself, but with the practice of witchcraft the penalty was burning. Oddly enough the vast majority of witch burnings occurred in the 16th and 17th Centuries after the Reformation by Protestants. Once again highly regrettable episode in European history. Of course witches were executed in other societies as well, not to condone the practice in any way. And Orthodox Christians, in Eastern Europe and Russia, didn’t see the need to terrorize their members.
Yet, how do they compare in the light of the barbarities of the 20th Century? Death camp? Gulag? Incineration of Cities? death and destruction in the millions. And potential widespread Earth destroying use of nuclear weapons?
One motivation for the witch burnings, besides pure malice and misogynistic intent, lies in the idea that the society had the responsibility to educate, inform and caution its members regarding the care of their immortal souls. Burning would provide a very public warning to other members of society that this was most serious. In the Medieval mind burning the witch could lead to the repentance of the practitioner of bad magic and be a dramatic admonition to the society.
This begs a question: why such intolerance in Medieval Western Europe? First answer of course is the presence throughout history of intolerance across the world. One can point to pre-British Hindu India with its suttee (emolation of the widow on her husband's demise) and the ostracizing of the Intolerables. See the mass murders in the 20th Century of seemingly civilized nations not overlooking the slaughter of the Armenians by the Turk in 1915. Still this is offensive and causes one to wonder, why? Tough question.
In centuries prior there was no need for such draconian methods and as stated Orthodox Christians didn't practice this at all in Eastern Europe or Russia; places not known for their modernity. Charlemagne outlawed the belief in witches, no less, in the 8th century. Witchcraft was not a major concern. The catalyst was the Papal Inquisition but things didn't get frequent until the Protestant Reformation and the burnings were centered in southwest Germany. My theological spin is that the Reformers viewed spiritual transformation of man as ineffectual; he remains fallen and depraved in nature. This meant our spiritual state was virtually crippled. Congress with the spirit world could only be demonic. Those claiming intercourse with it, as witches did, would be much more threatening and suspect than previously. Very important however the Reformation was a religious reform and there was less tolerance of pagan elements in society. Thus in southwestern Germany Roman Catholics participated in witch burning.
A broad conclusion can be sketched out. Western Christianity needed to be mitigated with Enlightenment to cool fervent religious impulses. Being a devout Orthodox christian I don't want to dismiss religious impulses, so I won't agree with secular humanists that humankind is best viewed as the naked ape. I just arrive at the obvious; it's best not to burn your fellow neighbor.
Then again I counter Modern's hedonistic view; whatever turns you on and floats your boat attitude. Character education is greatly needed and the Christian church has carried out this needed task in Western Civilization for nearly two millenium. The Atheistic desire to de-christianize Western civilization will lead to a moral relativistic disaster. Civilization needs moral framework, thus note the rise of Islam in Europe.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: A Medieval Outlook
Medieval government gathered its inspiration from the Platonic philosophy and it idea good government. And this Medieval ideal saw polity as composed of Nobility, the Church and the common man, much like Plato in his Republic saw the ideal government ruled by the philosopher, defended by the military and feed and provided for the merchant and farmer. Each class would have its designated purpose in order to promote the Good.
A society’s purpose was to educate and edify: to promote the goodness of the man and women. The Good was an eternal verity not simply a concept; the acquisition of which ultimately determines ones eternal destiny. Modern society’s purpose is to promote the most widespread well being and pleasure of the citizenry. Stating what would be obvious to a Modern, the greatest value is comfort not preparation for any putative afterlife not to mention any struggles to attain the eternal verities, the highest of which is the Good, which are without question nonexistent to the Modern.
The pursuit of Good led to Nobility of virtue. The ruling class was meant to have Nobility and be noble in their governance. And thus, the Medieval lacked egalitarian sensibilities as well. The common man was deemed one step away from the mob. Uneducated and unrefined, their participation within the polity was unthinkable. How would one allow the ignorant crew of the sailing vessel to participate in sailing the ship? It would be chaos. The ship of state needed a wise captain to navigate the seas: not a mob of brutish crewman to argue over the progress of the vessel. As alien as that is to us look across the ocean to the world’s most vibrant economy: China ruled by “enlightened” authorities. The Medievals would have thought similarly: the Noble authorities had a right and purpose to rule.
Much of this was confirmed to the Nobles in Medieval Society by the vast disparities in education and wealth of the tiny elite (1-3%) in constrast to the lower classes. These folks in the benighted classes would be consigned to a life of grinding poverty. And this was due to the inability of an individual in this technologically challenged society to build wealth. Few could honestly build enough wealth in a lifetime to attain a level of comfort. As a result social order was very restraining to contain expectations: we would say oppressive.
The vast lower class would accurately be viewed as uneducated and brutish and no way ready to take part in governance. See the largest Peasant Riot, before the French Revolution, in 1520’s when the Germans were inspired by Luther. Inspired by his opposition to the Church authorities, widespread riots over Germany took place. Things were near anarchy. Only a brutal suppression by the ruling elite, killing thousands, suppressed it.
Most of us have read, seen or studied Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I saw it again this summer at Shakespeare Fest in Jackson, MI. I love Shakespeare: the language is a beautiful tapestry that transports above mundane dialog into poetry if you will. We are carried into another world: the world becomes a stage.
Like much of Shakespeare, Julius Caesar is a bit confusing even beyond the ofttimes arcane language. Shakespeare is our bridge to Medieval sensibilities. Characters act passionately, shouting and bewailing their fate (the most egregious example is King Lear: Edgar on the heath in the raging storm; who’s literally frothing at the mouth it would seem. Wow! what histrionics!). No detached aloof James Bond type, secret agent in His Majesty characters, here.
But the confusing problem with Julius Caesar is not in the outrageous, unrestrained, excessive emoting which is mostly absent here but figuring out who the hero is. We moderns look to Julius Caesar, and are not sure what to make of him. He represents the populist call for justice and yet a threat to the Republic. Of course mid-ways through the play he’s assassinated in the Senate by a group of senators led by Brutus..
Brutus, where the words brutal and brutality originate, is the betrayer, assassin and murderer. Yet Brutus is our tragic hero, noble and magnanimous. The populace will be portrayed as fickle and Anthony, devotee of Caesar, as cowardly at times, vindictive and manipulative.
Shakespeare has Medieval sensibilities; he is our window and link to the medieval. A break from the medieval he is writing in the common vernacular about non-religious themes: histories, comedies and tragedies for common entertainment not spiritual enlightenment as was seen in the Medieval festival Morality Plays. On to the play.
First scene of Julius Caesar we see a group of boisterous common working men on their way to see Julius Caesar’s triumph over Pompey in the recent Civil War, proclaiming their allegiance to him. They are met by two members of the government who tell them to go home on this laboring day and remind them of their recent allegiance to Pompey and question Caesar’s accomplishments after the Civil War.
Wherefore rejoice?
What conquest brings he [Caesar] home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,Knew you not Pompey?
Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,To hear the replication of your sounds
Upon leaving them they vow to do what they can to dispel the popular acclaim for Caesar.
Later Roman Nobles, Brutus, Caesar’s good friend and Cassius gather to muse about this Caesar, so elevated to lofty heights by popular acclaim. Cassius wonders:
Why, man, he [Caesar] doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
And then concludes
Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
To say that is they lack noble virtues
And he questions the purported greatness of this conqueror and bemoans the fallen Roman character
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
A shout is heard and Brutus questions:
What means this shouting? I do fear, the people
Choose Caesar for their king.
So from the beginning scenes the effusive popular support of Caesar and his status as great leader above all of Rome is questioned by the nobles.
Brutus, a confidante of Caesar, is finally persuaded to act in opposition and becomes the leader of a group that will see Julius Caesar meet his bloody demise within the Senate Floor. After the deed Brutus calls for restraint and assures no others will be murdered. A public funeral for Caesar is allowed with honors.
Anthony, Caesar’s devoted follower, cowardly has a flunky call upon the assassins to determine if they will murder him as well if he comes to view the corpse. Upon Anthony’s arrival he tries to ingratiate himself to them. And then when they’ve left him alone with Caesar’s corpse chastises himself for being servile to these vile murderers and vows vengence.
The most famous scene from the play is Julius Caesar’s funeral. First Brutus speaks and explains what the assassins stood for: the Roman Republic and a free Rome.
--Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I lovedRome more. Had you rather Caesar were living anddie all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to liveall free men?
He invites the mob to speak out if he has offended any in killing Caesar to save Rome. The mob shouts their hearty denial, “None, Brutus, None”. The crowd is heard shouting,
“Build a statue of him [Brutus] with his ancestors! Let him be Caesar! The best parts of Caesar are crowned in Brutus! “
Then Anthony brings Caesar’s corpse in. Brutus magnanimously urges the crowd to listen to Anthony.
The crowd is in opposition at first being persuaded by Brutus’ fine words. People in the crowd are heard shouting towards Anthony:
This Caesar was a tyrant.
We are blest that Rome is rid of him.
Then Anthony begins his famous oratory:
“Friends, Romans, Country men, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.”
Of course, a devout follower of Caesar, he does the opposite. He reminds them how Caesar filled the public treasury with ransom and in humility thrice turned down the crown when thrust upon him by popular acclaim.
Anthony reads Caesar’s will to the crowd and they find Caesar wills his fortune to the populace, each getting 75 drachmas and grants his lands as public parks for their recreation. And Anthony mentions how Caesar’s closest friend Brutus, betrayed that friendship by bloody murder. The crowd is called to view the sanguinary stains in Caesar’s toga draped over his corpse and the enormity of the crime is made clear to the crowd. This sets them to a mutinous rage. Thus Shakespeare depicts how easily the mob is swayed, now set against the nobles, including Brutus, who have done this deed.
In contrast to the republicans, who spared all but Caesar, Anthony and Octavius, Caesar’s adopted son who will eventually be Caesar Augustus, Rome’s First Emperor, and Lepidus conspire to compose an enemies list for elimination.
And when Lepidus, co-conspirator leaves the scene, Anthony reveals his duplicity:
Octavious, I have seen more days than you
And though we lay these honours on this man, [Lepidus]
To ease ourselves of divers sland'rous loads,
He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,
To groan and sweat under the business,
Either led or driven, as we point the way;
And having brought our treasure where we will,
Then take we down his load, and turn him off,
Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears,
And graze in commons.
Several battles scenes ensue and Brutus and his compatriot, Cassius are defeated. Over his corpse Anthony proclaims his nobility:
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did what they did in envy of great Caesar
He only, in general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them
His life was gentle, and the elements
And so mix’d up in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world of him, “This was a man”.
Brutus is the noble Roman, whose tragedy is played out against Rome's Great man, Julius Caesar and his legacy. Medieval society saw their rulers demonstrating nobility of purpose foremost and Shakespeare shows us that just that in Julius Caesar.
A society’s purpose was to educate and edify: to promote the goodness of the man and women. The Good was an eternal verity not simply a concept; the acquisition of which ultimately determines ones eternal destiny. Modern society’s purpose is to promote the most widespread well being and pleasure of the citizenry. Stating what would be obvious to a Modern, the greatest value is comfort not preparation for any putative afterlife not to mention any struggles to attain the eternal verities, the highest of which is the Good, which are without question nonexistent to the Modern.
The pursuit of Good led to Nobility of virtue. The ruling class was meant to have Nobility and be noble in their governance. And thus, the Medieval lacked egalitarian sensibilities as well. The common man was deemed one step away from the mob. Uneducated and unrefined, their participation within the polity was unthinkable. How would one allow the ignorant crew of the sailing vessel to participate in sailing the ship? It would be chaos. The ship of state needed a wise captain to navigate the seas: not a mob of brutish crewman to argue over the progress of the vessel. As alien as that is to us look across the ocean to the world’s most vibrant economy: China ruled by “enlightened” authorities. The Medievals would have thought similarly: the Noble authorities had a right and purpose to rule.
Much of this was confirmed to the Nobles in Medieval Society by the vast disparities in education and wealth of the tiny elite (1-3%) in constrast to the lower classes. These folks in the benighted classes would be consigned to a life of grinding poverty. And this was due to the inability of an individual in this technologically challenged society to build wealth. Few could honestly build enough wealth in a lifetime to attain a level of comfort. As a result social order was very restraining to contain expectations: we would say oppressive.
The vast lower class would accurately be viewed as uneducated and brutish and no way ready to take part in governance. See the largest Peasant Riot, before the French Revolution, in 1520’s when the Germans were inspired by Luther. Inspired by his opposition to the Church authorities, widespread riots over Germany took place. Things were near anarchy. Only a brutal suppression by the ruling elite, killing thousands, suppressed it.
Most of us have read, seen or studied Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I saw it again this summer at Shakespeare Fest in Jackson, MI. I love Shakespeare: the language is a beautiful tapestry that transports above mundane dialog into poetry if you will. We are carried into another world: the world becomes a stage.
Like much of Shakespeare, Julius Caesar is a bit confusing even beyond the ofttimes arcane language. Shakespeare is our bridge to Medieval sensibilities. Characters act passionately, shouting and bewailing their fate (the most egregious example is King Lear: Edgar on the heath in the raging storm; who’s literally frothing at the mouth it would seem. Wow! what histrionics!). No detached aloof James Bond type, secret agent in His Majesty characters, here.
But the confusing problem with Julius Caesar is not in the outrageous, unrestrained, excessive emoting which is mostly absent here but figuring out who the hero is. We moderns look to Julius Caesar, and are not sure what to make of him. He represents the populist call for justice and yet a threat to the Republic. Of course mid-ways through the play he’s assassinated in the Senate by a group of senators led by Brutus..
Brutus, where the words brutal and brutality originate, is the betrayer, assassin and murderer. Yet Brutus is our tragic hero, noble and magnanimous. The populace will be portrayed as fickle and Anthony, devotee of Caesar, as cowardly at times, vindictive and manipulative.
Shakespeare has Medieval sensibilities; he is our window and link to the medieval. A break from the medieval he is writing in the common vernacular about non-religious themes: histories, comedies and tragedies for common entertainment not spiritual enlightenment as was seen in the Medieval festival Morality Plays. On to the play.
First scene of Julius Caesar we see a group of boisterous common working men on their way to see Julius Caesar’s triumph over Pompey in the recent Civil War, proclaiming their allegiance to him. They are met by two members of the government who tell them to go home on this laboring day and remind them of their recent allegiance to Pompey and question Caesar’s accomplishments after the Civil War.
Wherefore rejoice?
What conquest brings he [Caesar] home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,Knew you not Pompey?
Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome:And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,To hear the replication of your sounds
Upon leaving them they vow to do what they can to dispel the popular acclaim for Caesar.
Later Roman Nobles, Brutus, Caesar’s good friend and Cassius gather to muse about this Caesar, so elevated to lofty heights by popular acclaim. Cassius wonders:
Why, man, he [Caesar] doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
And then concludes
Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
To say that is they lack noble virtues
And he questions the purported greatness of this conqueror and bemoans the fallen Roman character
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
A shout is heard and Brutus questions:
What means this shouting? I do fear, the people
Choose Caesar for their king.
So from the beginning scenes the effusive popular support of Caesar and his status as great leader above all of Rome is questioned by the nobles.
Brutus, a confidante of Caesar, is finally persuaded to act in opposition and becomes the leader of a group that will see Julius Caesar meet his bloody demise within the Senate Floor. After the deed Brutus calls for restraint and assures no others will be murdered. A public funeral for Caesar is allowed with honors.
Anthony, Caesar’s devoted follower, cowardly has a flunky call upon the assassins to determine if they will murder him as well if he comes to view the corpse. Upon Anthony’s arrival he tries to ingratiate himself to them. And then when they’ve left him alone with Caesar’s corpse chastises himself for being servile to these vile murderers and vows vengence.
The most famous scene from the play is Julius Caesar’s funeral. First Brutus speaks and explains what the assassins stood for: the Roman Republic and a free Rome.
--Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I lovedRome more. Had you rather Caesar were living anddie all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to liveall free men?
He invites the mob to speak out if he has offended any in killing Caesar to save Rome. The mob shouts their hearty denial, “None, Brutus, None”. The crowd is heard shouting,
“Build a statue of him [Brutus] with his ancestors! Let him be Caesar! The best parts of Caesar are crowned in Brutus! “
Then Anthony brings Caesar’s corpse in. Brutus magnanimously urges the crowd to listen to Anthony.
The crowd is in opposition at first being persuaded by Brutus’ fine words. People in the crowd are heard shouting towards Anthony:
This Caesar was a tyrant.
We are blest that Rome is rid of him.
Then Anthony begins his famous oratory:
“Friends, Romans, Country men, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.”
Of course, a devout follower of Caesar, he does the opposite. He reminds them how Caesar filled the public treasury with ransom and in humility thrice turned down the crown when thrust upon him by popular acclaim.
Anthony reads Caesar’s will to the crowd and they find Caesar wills his fortune to the populace, each getting 75 drachmas and grants his lands as public parks for their recreation. And Anthony mentions how Caesar’s closest friend Brutus, betrayed that friendship by bloody murder. The crowd is called to view the sanguinary stains in Caesar’s toga draped over his corpse and the enormity of the crime is made clear to the crowd. This sets them to a mutinous rage. Thus Shakespeare depicts how easily the mob is swayed, now set against the nobles, including Brutus, who have done this deed.
In contrast to the republicans, who spared all but Caesar, Anthony and Octavius, Caesar’s adopted son who will eventually be Caesar Augustus, Rome’s First Emperor, and Lepidus conspire to compose an enemies list for elimination.
And when Lepidus, co-conspirator leaves the scene, Anthony reveals his duplicity:
Octavious, I have seen more days than you
And though we lay these honours on this man, [Lepidus]
To ease ourselves of divers sland'rous loads,
He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,
To groan and sweat under the business,
Either led or driven, as we point the way;
And having brought our treasure where we will,
Then take we down his load, and turn him off,
Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears,
And graze in commons.
Several battles scenes ensue and Brutus and his compatriot, Cassius are defeated. Over his corpse Anthony proclaims his nobility:
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did what they did in envy of great Caesar
He only, in general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them
His life was gentle, and the elements
And so mix’d up in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world of him, “This was a man”.
Brutus is the noble Roman, whose tragedy is played out against Rome's Great man, Julius Caesar and his legacy. Medieval society saw their rulers demonstrating nobility of purpose foremost and Shakespeare shows us that just that in Julius Caesar.
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