July 4, 1776

Without comment:

This is getting out of hand

Your Freedom and Ours is what this blog is called and that is what it is. I am getting a little perturbed by the news that is coming over from the other side of the Pond where there is now war of cultural and historical vandalism going on in the wake of the tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina.

There is no need to rehearse what happened, which was terrible, or the dignified response of the city to the tragedy that struck them. Nor is there any need to go through the various articles, essays and analyses (the books are to come) that have followed the shooting. For one thing I have no space for all the links and for another anyone who is interested would have read a great deal and will probably do so in the coming days, weeks, months but not years because something else will happen to take people's attention away.

What caught my interest, inevitably, is the campaign against the Confederate Flag, which is now being taken off not just public buildings but private merchandise. In fact, it will soon be banned completely and not for the first time in American history. It came back last time and it will come back again but, in the meantime, a good deal of historical knowledge and understanding will be destroyed in the name of some spurious feeling of justice. The truth is that the events that led up to the Civil War or the War Between The States or the War For The Union, the actual war and the years after it are far too complicated to be reduced to this sort of simplistic rubbish. (Though I am rather enjoying the reminders that the Confederate Flag was the flag of the Democrat Party. Of course, it was. Don't believe me? Look it up, while you can.)

I hear stories of Civil War memorials being defaced with stupid slogans and suggestions that Confederate generals should be dug up (what's left of them) and put on trial or their bones thrown to the dogs or whatever. This is insane. All of it.

The killer of Charleston did not carry out his attack because of the Confederate Flag or the presence of Civil War memorials. And, let's face it, even on this side of the Pond we know that the greatest number of black lives wasted in many American cities are in gang fights and criminal attacks carried out by other black young men. The situation is appalling and something ought to be done because black lives do matter but not only when the killer is white.

The worst suggestion I have seen is that Gone With The Wind should now be "retired". Well, good luck with that - "retiring" one of the most popular films of all times is not going to be easy, not even for leftist, progressive journalists. I hope nobody is thinking of retiring Birth of a Nation, which I am due to see at the NFT on Sunday. I notice that there are several comments on the NY Post article that I have linked to, which compare this attitude to the destruction of historic and cultural sites by IS because they do not like the religion or ideology that motivated their building. Well, I cannot disagree too much.

Incidentally and completely off the topic, here is a conundrum: why is it that the best and most highly regarded films about the Civil War, Birth of a Nation, The General and Gone With The Wind are all from the point of view of the South? There have been films from the point of view of the North, not least several biopics of Abraham Lincoln (no, dear, he was not a Democrat either, but a Republican) but nothing of that calibre. Is it because like the Royalists, according to 1066 And All That, the Confederates were Wrong but Wromantic?

So, just because I hate what is happening I have decided to post two pictures: one of the Confederate Flag as it used to fly together with the Stars and Stripes and a photo of General Robert E. Lee, the man who not only fought in that War but, when that became hopeless, surrendered, refused to institute a guerrilla war and worked for the reconstruction of the shattered union.

July 4, 1776

Rebels they may have been but they could write.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --

July 4, 1776

Fourth of July

And on a lighter note:

Thanksgiving

To start with, I looked up previous postings on the subject and found this one from 2006. It links back to Michelle Malkin's list of what Americans (and, as I said, we) can be thankful for and has a go at whiny journalists. Oh go on, you know you want to read it. Here is Michelle's posting for this year's Thanksgiving, a sadder and more personal one. A couple of nice Thanksgiving postings on Chicagoboyz, one of my intermittent blogging homes (here and here).

The Wall Street Journal, as ever, had provided the right articles. Thomas Fleming writes about American servicemen and women celebrating Thanksgiving in many parts of the world, specifically in Britain in 1942.

And so we come to the annual articles that never fade: A Desolate Wilderness by Nathaniel Morton, that records the Pilgrims' arrival (though that is not what the first Thanksgiving celebrated) and the one about America now, And the Fair Land.

'For all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators.'

Long may it continue and reflect back on the rest of the Anglosphere. Happy Thanksgiving.

America and its future

The biggest argument against that much-vaunted decline of the United States and rise of the post-American world is, as I said to a slightly despondent American friend earlier today (it is, after all, that day), the absence of any other power that is remotely as strong, rich and flexible as the one that is on top now. In the past, when powerful nations slowly sank from their position there was someone else to take over. Who is there now? China? Brazil? The EU? Are you kidding me?

Britain, as the progenitor of America and other Anglospheric countries and societies should be proud of this fact and not resentful, as too many on all sides of the political spectrum are.

Walter Russell Meade says much the same but he argues it slightly differently. Here is the link but I think you have to go through Google each time to get round the pay wall. What the heck, here is the article in full, as published first in the Wall Street Journal on July 2.

It is, the pundits keep telling us, a time of American decline, of a post-American world. The 21st century will belong to someone else. Crippled by debt at home, hammered by the aftermath of a financial crisis, bloodied by long wars in the Middle East, the American Atlas can no longer hold up the sky. Like Britain before us, America is headed into an assisted-living facility for retired global powers.

This fashionable chatter could not be more wrong. Sure, America has big problems. Trillions of dollars in national debt and uncounted trillions more in off-the-books liabilities will give anyone pause. Rising powers are also challenging the international order even as our key Cold War allies sink deeper into decline.

But what is unique about the United States is not our problems. Every major country in the world today faces extraordinary challenges—and the 21st century will throw more at us. Yet looking toward the tumultuous century ahead, no country is better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities or manage the dangers than the United States.

Geopolitically, the doomsayers tell us, China will soon challenge American leadership throughout the world. Perhaps. But to focus exclusively on China is to miss how U.S. interests intersect with Asian realities in ways that cement rather than challenge the U.S. position in world affairs.

China is not Germany, the U.S. is not Great Britain, and 2011 is not 1910. In 1910 Germany was a rising power surrounded by decline: France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary were all growing weaker every year even as Germany went from strength to strength. The European power system grew less stable every year.

In Asia today China is rising—but so is India, another emerging nuclear superpower with a population on course to pass China's. Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and Australia are all vibrant, growing powers that have no intention of falling under China's sway. Japan remains a formidable presence. Unlike Europe in 1910, Asia today looks like an emerging multipolar region that no single country, however large and dynamic, can hope to control.

This fits American interests precisely. The U.S. has no interest in controlling Asia or in blocking economic prosperity that will benefit the entire Pacific basin, including our part of it. U.S. policy in Asia is not fighting the tide of China's inexorable rise. Rather, our interests harmonize with the natural course of events. Life rarely moves smoothly and it is likely that Asia will see great political disturbances. But through it all, it appears that the U.S. will be swimming with, rather than against, the tides of history.

Around the world we have no other real rivals. Even the Europeans have stopped talking about a rising EU superpower. The specter of a clash of civilizations between the West and an Islamic world united behind fanatics like the unlamented Osama bin Laden is less likely than ever. Russia's demographic decline and poor economic prospects (not to mention its concerns about Islamic radicalism and a rising China) make it a poor prospect as a rival superpower.

When it comes to the world of ideas, the American agenda will also be the global agenda in the 21st century. Ninety years after the formation of the Communist Party of China, 50 years after the death of the philosopher of modern militant Islam Sayyid Qutb, liberal capitalist democracy remains the wave of the future.

Fascism, like Franco, is still dead. Communism lingers on life support in Pyongyang and a handful of other redoubts but shows no signs of regaining the power it has lost since 1989 and the Soviet collapse. "Islamic" fanaticism failed in Iraq, can only cling to power by torture and repression in Iran, and has been marginalized (so far) in the Arab Spring. Nowhere have the fanatics been able to demonstrate that their approach can protect the dignity and enhance the prosperity of people better than liberal capitalism. The heirs of Qutb are further from power than they were during the first Egyptian Revolution in 1953.

Closer to home, Hugo Chavez and his Axis of Anklebiters are descending towards farce. The economic success of Chile and Brazil cuts the ground out from under the "Bolivarean" caudillos. They may strut and prance on the stage, appear with Fidel on TV and draw a crowd by attacking the Yanquis, but the dream of uniting South America into a great anticapitalist, anti-U.S. bloc is as dead as Che Guevara.

So the geopolitics are favorable and the ideological climate is warming. But on a still-deeper level this is shaping up to be an even more American century than the last. The global game is moving towards America's home court.

The great trend of this century is the accelerating and deepening wave of change sweeping through every element of human life. Each year sees more scientists with better funding, better instruments and faster, smarter computers probing deeper and seeing further into the mysteries of the physical world. Each year more entrepreneurs are seeking to convert those discoveries and insights into ways to produce new things, or to make old things better and more cheaply. Each year the world's financial markets are more eager and better prepared to fund new startups, underwrite new investments, and otherwise help entrepreneurs and firms deploy new knowledge and insight more rapidly.

Scientific and technological revolutions trigger economic, social and political upheavals. Industry migrates around the world at a breathtaking—and accelerating—rate. Hundreds of millions of people migrate to cities at an unprecedented pace. Each year the price of communication goes down and the means of communication increase.

New ideas disturb the peace of once-stable cultures. Young people grasp the possibilities of change and revolt at the conservatism of their elders. Sacred taboos and ancient hierarchies totter; women demand equality; citizens rise against monarchs. All over the world more tea is thrown into more harbors as more and more people decide that the times demand change.

This tsunami of change affects every society—and turbulent politics in so many countries make for a turbulent international environment. Managing, mastering and surviving change: These are the primary tasks of every ruler and polity. Increasingly these are also the primary tasks of every firm and household.

This challenge will not go away. On the contrary: It has increased, and it will go on increasing through the rest of our time. The 19th century was more tumultuous than its predecessor; the 20th was more tumultuous still, and the 21st will be the fastest, most exhilarating and most dangerous ride the world has ever seen.

Everybody is going to feel the stress, but the United States of America is better placed to surf this transformation than any other country. Change is our home field. It is who we are and what we do. Brazil may be the country of the future, but America is its hometown.

Happy Fourth of July.

July 4, 1776

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Censorship will not make anything better

One of the most shocking reports from the United States was a relatively small one: it seems that a man who has the barefaced cheek to describe himself as a Mark Twain scholar will be publishing editions of the two great novels Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without what he refers to as "racial slurs". In other words the words "nigger" and "injun" will not appear in the text. Instead of the first one there will be the word "slave" and it is not clear what there will be instead of the second one.

I am glad to say the news has been greeted with an uproar of indignation. The comments on the piece I have linked to are all negative, pointing out the ridiculousness of it all. The Freedom Association has done a good job putting together some of the arguments. I can't help thinking about one of the best early teen novel that came my way some years ago, Nat Hentoff's The Day They Came to Arrest the Book. It deals with a school that decides to ban Huckleberry Finn because of the many unpleasant words in it and the fight against that ban in the name of freedom of speech and the need to understand history.

Professor Gribben, it seems, is using this method to ensure that the books are read at all in some American schools as teachers say they can't or, more like, won't teach them because of those painful words. The fact that they have not the ability or the courage to explain why those painful words were used, how Mark Twain made sure that his readers shared his outrage and how things have changed is a sad reflection on those teachers.

A bowdlerized version will not do much for the children who cannot face up to the truth of history or for teachers who have no ability to explain. It means that they will never really understand the horrors of slavery on the one hand or Mark Twain's brilliant writing and angry denunciation on the other. "Nigger" Jim is one of the finest characters in literature. Furthermore, by the end of the book he is a free man, so calling him a slave makes no sense. "Injun" Joe, on the other hand, is one of the nastiest, most frightening characters around and even his death is terrifying. And that is what they were called in Mississippi in those days and in many other place for many years afterwards. That is reality. The idea that ignorance should be perpetuated because of some artificially cultivated sensitivity about the past is very sad and one knows exactly who will suffer - the children who will not get a chance to read the real novels of Mark Twain.

UPDATE: When I was writing that post yesterday I wanted to refer to one of the most memorable moments in Huckleberry Finn, when Huck's pap, a drunken good-for-nothing liability complains bitterly about a free "nigger" who is regarded as a real human being and can vote. Clearly the monologue is powerful as other people remember it, too. I found that out when I discussed the whole issue with another fan of the book yesterday and this morning the rant is quoted in full by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal. He has some harsh words for Professor Gribben and others of that ilk who do not know and will not learn history. (And I don't care how well known Professor Gribben is as a Twain expert.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is, of course, an American holiday and of especial significance to Americans. But we live in a globalized world (almost as globalized as it was before World War I) and we can all think about it a little. We have much to be thankful for in the West. That is not to say that there are no things we need to be watchful about and others we need to fight for. That is surely true about any society. But one of the things we can be thankful about is that we can fight and we can be watchful and we can, if we try very hard, win.

In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving to all American readers of this blog. As before I am linking to the piece the Wall Street Journal publishes every year, The Desolate Wilderness, an account of the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, based on the account given by William Bradford.

An explanation of sorts

One of the great mysteries of modern history is the difference between the ways Nazism and Communism are viewed in the West (not in Eastern Europe where they have suffered from both) not only in terms of their record in issues of human rights but also as enemies of western democracy. People who denounced Nazi spies and supporters are applauded as heroes; those who denounced Communist spies and agents are seen as rather difficult, distasteful and treacherous towards their friends.

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the ever present issue of “McCarthyism” and its progenitor the crucial Hiss case. In The Conservative Turn Michael Kimmage traces the growth of modern conservatism in the United States through the careers of Whittaker Chambers, who deliberately set out to create anti-Communist conservatism, and Lionel Trilling, who tried to lead liberalism away from supporting Communism. Of the two, I’d say, Chambers was more successful.

As he launches into his discussion of the Hiss case, Professor Kimmage writes (pp. 204 – 205):

Chambers won the Hiss case in court. His adversary, Alger Hiss, was convicted of perjury, sent to jail, and then to a kind of professional purgatory. The Ware circle that Chambers had helped to assemble in Washington, D.C. was devastated by the Hiss case. After World War II, American communism broke up for good, not just as a party but as a political movement.

A strenuous anti-communism advanced in tandem with the careers of senators Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, both of whom Chambers knew personally. The Hiss case lent domestic or internal immediacy to the Cold War, distinguishing it from World War II, which could easily be construed in nationalist terms, as us versus them, whether “they” were the Germans or the Japanese.

The Hiss case revolved around the figure of Alger Hiss, who was not simply an American citizen accused of treason but a prince of the American meritocracy. The list of those who believed in his innocence was awesome: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and many other luminaries. Even as resolute an anti-communist as Richard Nixon was, according to his own description, inclined to believe Hiss because he knew so many people who were friends with both Hiss and Hiss’s brother Donald.

Chambers was a wilfully marginal figure with his low voice, his potentially foreign accent, his suits – invariably described as rumpled – and his memorably bad teeth. To Triumph in the Hiss case, Chambers had to upend the established symbolism of success and failure, insider and outsider. To banish Hiss from political life, which the Hiss case effectively did, was potentially to banish anyone from public life.

Unfortunately, this is only partially true. Hiss may have been banished from political life and a few other people disappeared as well but “public opinion”, that is the media and academia as well as political hangers on has refused to accept the upending of the established symbolism. Hiss is still seen as a martyr, Chambers as a psychopath and McCarthyism the greatest evil in the world. All of that despite the overwhelming evidence we now have that even McCarthy’s accusations were largely correct, though his scattershot attacks did him or his cause no favours.

Chambers told the truth as did Elizabeth Bentley but that cannot be accepted by those who prefer to see the social structure the right way up. That is what we are still fighting against.