Beyond Gun Control: The Real Reason For Sandy Hook (A Moral Analysis)

Americans are catching up to the state of secular reasoning Europeans reached long ago. Whenever horrid massacres are perpetrated in public places such as schools and universities the blame is given to things that do not quite satisfy a well-rounded explanation of the atrocity.

Some blame the weapons used in the crime, as a means of tightening the laws regulating their availability and distribution. Everyone agrees there must be something horribly wrong with the killer himself (a female counterpart does not come to mind) but can not quite figure out the source of what drives him to commit mass murder. 

Mental illness, personality disorder, a troubled family history, are the usual lines of inquiry, yet none satisfy. These explanations run aground of the reality that there are tens of thousands of people, with the same problems, who never commit a violent crime. The real explanation for Adam Lanza is an older one - familiar to all - but ignored by many because it is out of fashion with the secularization of our culture.

Adam Lanza suffered from Asperger syndrome. This may explain some of his social difficulties, but the deliberate, methodical, and cold-blooded nature of his killing spree is something outside the realm of Asperger's. Children with Asperger's show a lack of empathy, a barrier to making healthy friendships and an asset to a killing machine, yet murderous violence is not a hallmark of Asperger's. Often, a disorder of the Schizophrenic type is also present in violent criminals with Asperger's. Perhaps Adam Lanza was an undiagnosed Schizophrenic; there are reports that his mother feared for her safety and planned on having him committed. We'll never know for sure. 

Despite its link with violent crime, does anyone feel satisfied that Schizophrenia, with its symptoms of hallucinations and paranoia, explains the planned, methodical, and overwhelmingly successful campaign of Adam Lanza's murder of his mother, destruction of his hard drive to conceal information, his drive to Sandy Hook Elementary with enough ammunition to murder as many children and adults as came into his view until the arrival of law enforcement provided convenient timing for his suicide and escape from justice? It would be a stretch for Schizophrenia to fit this bill.

Was Adolf Hitler a Schizophrenic? Was Joseph Stalin a Schizophrenic? No one who met them thought so. On the contrary, both were reported to be fully in command of their faculties. Both were unbothered by the knowledge that millions of people died as a result of their conduct. Thus we have come to the older, more satisfying (and out of fashion) explanation of what drove Adam Lanza to commit mass murder: evil.

What caused the evil? Did violent video games make Adam Lanza evil? Was there a supernatural force emanating from the semi-automatic firearms? Was he corrupted by the demonic firearms? It is doubtful. And more people in world history have been murdered by sane people than by insane people. What does it take for a man to shoot his own mother in the face? If you can not imagine what it takes, it is a good thing you can not. Adam Lanza knew what it took because he did it. His mother's body was found with four gunshot wounds in her head. All his dead victims had multiple gunshot wounds. One, a six year old boy at Sandy Hook Elementary, had eleven.

It is high time our society has a conversation about evil and that we start teaching our children about evil. Evil will do its work with or without guns. On the same day Adam Lanza butchered his mother and shot-up a few dozen at Sandy Hook, another such atrocity was committed at a Chinese elementary school by a knife-wielding perpetrator (guns are illegal in China) named Min Yingjun. Twenty-two children were hospitalized with knife wounds. Amazingly, none died. Even so, CBS news reported:

The attack marks the latest in a series of violent assaults at elementary schools in China. In 2010, a total of 18 children were killed in four separate attacks. On March 23 of that year, Zheng Minsheng attacked children at an elementary school in Fujian Province, killing eight.
One month later, just a few hours after Zheng Minsheng was executed for his crime, another man, Chen Kanbing wounded 16 students and a teacher in a knife attack at another primary school in Fujian. The following month, on May 12, a man named Wu Huangming killed seven children and two adults with a meat cleaver at a kindergarten in Shaanxi Province. That attack was followed by an August 4 assault by Fang Jiantang, who killed three children and one teacher with a knife at a kindergarten in Shandong Province.
In 2011, a young girl and three adults were killed with an axe at an elementary school in Henan Province by a 30-year-old man named Wang Hongbin, and eight children were hurt in Shanghai after an employee at a child care center attacked them with a box cutter.

See the full article here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57559179/china-school-knife-attack-leaves-23-injured/

China has strict gun control laws and stiffer criminal punishments than western societies have. Are we ready to start talking about evil? If we are, we can teach our children about it. If we teach our children about it, fewer of them may grow up to be Adam Lanza.

Patriot Thought

Gun Control Part 3: The Second Amendment (A Legal Analysis)

Pro and anti-gun advocates cite the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as the source fueling their arguments. The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

The phrasing and words employed by the Framers more than two hundred years ago seem awkward and ambiguous to some twenty-first century readers. Questions arise, for example, What is the connection between the first and second phrase of the sentence? Moreover, Is the right to bear arms somehow dependent upon the people’s connection with a militia, or militia-like activities? Certain experts on the news channels conclude this, while others beg to differ. And, What exactly does the words “Militia”, “Arms”, and “infringed” mean?

In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court endeavored to construe the meaning of the Second Amendment. The following is a summary of the Court's decision, written by Justice Scalia:

Held:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.

(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation 2 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

   Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, con­cealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of fire­arms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. [for example]Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.

     The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scru­tiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbi­trarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64. (Emphasis in bold added by Charles J. Emma)

478 F. 3d 370, affirmed.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,

C. J., and KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, SOUTER, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined.

The 5-4 ruling in this case shows a Supreme Court divided on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's 27 words. Furthermore, although the connection between colonial militias and the modern day right to own and possess a firearm was clearly rejected by the court, we don’t know what future government restrictions on the right to possess and own will pass constitutional muster. 

New questions are enriching the controversy. Is a total ban on assault rifles and high volume clips a “reasonable” state action consistent with the lawful defense of self, family, and property? Are other types of weapons such as single-shot pistols or hunting guns sufficient to protect self, family, and property? How about the court’s elevation of the sanctity of possession in the home? Could possession of an assault rifle be limited to the inside of one’s house? 

Finally, Scalia's allusion to the Court's ruling in another case raises 'historical tradition' to a level of authority rivaling that of the U.S. Constitution: ‘Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.’   

Have we reached the time in our history when assault weapons, designed to kill as many people in the shortest amount of time, constitute a prohibited dangerous and unusual weapon?

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, these are the issues and questions that require diligent, yet respectful, argument as ours is a government of laws. St. Thomas wrote, “Law is an ordinance of reason enacted and promulgated by he who is in charge of the community for the common good.” (Emphasis added). So let us reason together to find the common good. 

Charles J. Emma

Gun Control Part 2: Would Society Be Better Off If All Guns Were Made Illegal? (A Reasonable Treatment)

Gun control is hotly political. After all, the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives the individual the right to bear arms. Virginia's George Mason, a key author of the Bill of Rights declared, "To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." For more than two hundred years, gun rights activists have shared the same sentiment. At the same time, a movement to control and in some cases ban the legal sale of firearms has gathered strength. All states practice some form of gun control, especially in background checks done during waiting periods for purchase. In many states, any conviction of domestic violence is enough to prohibit a gun purchase for a lifetime.

What follows is a reasonable analysis, not one reinforced by statistics. In this framework, "reasonable" does not mean "right" and "statistical" does not mean "wrong". It is just important to draw a distinction between two types of analysis and this one is of a reasonable kind. In the interest of being reasonable, the views of both sides on gun control will be treated with equal respect in this analysis. 

Statistics are of limited value in support of gun control because they mostly measure the correlation between gun ownership and gun-related violence. The problem on either side of the equation is that the presence of a gun is already a key variable. Therefore, automatic correlation is shown no matter the outcome of the study. Statistics measuring murder rates among several categories of death method are problematic because they are only comparing among instruments of death. The reason for the murder, suicide, or accidental death, goes unaddressed.

Proponents of gun control point to higher numbers of murder by firearms and assume that fewer guns would lead to fewer murders and accidental deaths. They have several reasonable arguments in their favor. For example, if there is intent to kill, a gun shot from a distance is easier to accomplish and safer for the killer, than murder by other methods. By contrast, a knife attack requires closer proximity, lesser advantage of surprise, greater room for resistance, greater chance of failure, and greater danger to the killer's safety. 

Furthermore, considering modern technological improvements made to firepower, accuracy, distance, innocent by-standers are many more times likely to be killed or injured by stray bullets, bullets passing through their target, and the ricochet effect, than by other instruments of death by criminal intent. It is hard to imagine a scenario, without the presence of guns or explosives, in which James Holmes could have entered a movie theater, butchered twelve people and wounded fifty-eight, inside of six to eight minutes before being rushed and overcome by some of the people in the theater.

Intent, however, provides the stronger reasonable argument for the opponents of gun control. For whatever, they teach us, statistics can not reveal to us what murder rates would look like if guns were legally eliminated from society. Guns can not be uninvented. The genie has been out of the bottle for well more than a thousand years. If guns can not be unmade, they can only be legalized or criminalized. The technology of modern weapons does not disappear with a change of laws. Criminalizing gun possession may very well take guns out of the hands of people who follow the law and limit possession to those who break the law. 

The criminal mind does not want to do the right and legal thing and, so it follows, that the criminal will obtain the weapons without legal sanction. The law-abiding public will be disarmed. The criminal public will remain armed and organized crime will make a killing (financially, but the pun works anyway) from the sales of illegal weapons with spiraling prices. James Holmes may have lacked a criminal history, but it is clear that James Holmes had a criminal mind. He purchased his weapons legally because he did not have to purchase them illegally. James Holmes well understood that committing murder is illegal, but would he not have obtained the weapons if buying them had been made illegal?



Patriot Thought

Gun Control Part 1: Politics and the Batman Theater Shooting

Everything is political. The movies we watch, the songs we listen to, the books we read - all are loaded with political messaging intended to make us feel a certain way about our society. Superhero films are very political because they get straight to the heart of everything we want: safety, security, love, and prosperity. We never have any or all of these in the way we want or in the quantity we desire. It is tempting to blame it on the imperfections of our world and the powerlessness of ordinary people to make it better. The attraction of a hero to rush in, deliver us from our fears and restore our hope is intoxicating, especially in the difficult times many of us are facing these days; times which many Americans had grown up unaccustomed to. 

Predictably, politics followed hard on the heels of the release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. So too, did tragedy. A gunman in Colorado took his politics to a crowded theater and massacred innocent people, many of them teenagers and young adults. Before that, nationally syndicated talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, was already telling his millions of listeners what he believed was the political messaging of the film. Then, the Colorado massacre gave new ammunition to nation's on-going debate over gun control. 

A political animal by nature, my mind eagerly absorbed the political messages that came to me last Saturday afternoon when I caught a matinee showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Gotham City had enjoyed eight years of unprecedented safety and security because of a controversial law (inspired by the memory of District Attorney Harvey Dent) that had made it easier to jail criminals, infringing to some degree on the ordinary rights of the accused. The superhero, Batman, was in retirement all this time. He felt society no longer needed him. The system took care of its self, at last.

Yet, out this calm, a storm gathered. Gotham's criminal underworld gradually came under the control of a mercenary/villain known as Bane (who happens to have a Darth Vader-like dependency on a breathing device that gives him steady doses of a substance that relieves chronic pain from severe, past injuries).  

Bane's mission was to gather an army of followers and an arsenal of mega-ton explosives to destroy the city's entrances and exits; seal it off from the rest of the country; paralyze and control it through fear of nuclear holocaust if the people disobeyed him; open up the jails and "liberate" the people from the chains of the few, rich people who (Bane claimed) lived off the backs of the poor and oppressed; redistribute the wealth by allowing the people to loot the property of the rich, at will; invite the masses to participate in his regime of terror by setting up and executing their own trials and punishments of anyone they have a problem with. 

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. It comes straight out of the playbook of the 20th century's various Communist revolutionaries. As if this wasn't enough to make the point, Christopher Nolan has Catwoman (Ann Hathaway) roam among Gotham's ruins as a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, taking her cut, and tossing the remaining spoils to the needy. Is she a villain? Not in the eyes of Che Guevara.

In the film, Bane accomplishes all the above and it is clear to everyone that the system can not defeat this foe, only Batman can. Bruce Wayne has to tough out the aches and pains from all the years of punishment his body has taken from fighting bad guys, do some more push-ups, and dust off the old Batman costume. This sounds like a very simple, straight-forward formula for a superhero story, doesn't it? In fact, there's a lot more texture to it than that, but this observer does not want to give away any more plot spoilers than is necessary to make the point that this film is very political.

The Dark Knight Rises is so political that even before its release, Rush Limbaugh ranted about it to his listeners over the airwaves. He viewed Nolan's choice of villain (Bane) as an attempt to blacken the image of presidential candidate Mitt Romney in an election year. In discussing the film's impending release, Mr. Limbaugh said moviegoers are, "going to hear [Bane]in the movie, and they are going to associate [Bain]." Bain Capital was a company Mitt Romney had once been C.E.O of. Mr. Limbaugh complained, "The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date's been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?" Apparently, Mr. Limbaugh does not see an innocent coincidence.

Ironically, Bane's desire to bring down the rich capitalists and give their money back to "we the people" bares closer relation to the various "occupy" movements of the last year than it does to the values and deeds of Mitt Romney. Indeed, one scene shows Bane "occupying" Gotham City's stock exchange with his thugs, terrorizing the brokers, and sending the market into a tail-spin. One cowering broker tells Bane, "This is a stock exchange. There's no money to steal here" to which Bane asks "than why are you people here?" We can just imagine the followers of "the ninety-nine percent" give out a raucus cheer as Bane proceeds to toss the wimpy broker several feet across the room. Mitt Romney? Bain Capital? Hardly.

In fact, even Mr. Limbaugh's claim of a deliberate word association between "Bane" and "Bain" in the 2012 election is not plausible considering how long the script and film were in production. Before the outcome of the Republican primary contest this last spring, no one knew Mitt Romney would still be a presidential candidate come November. Furthermore, Bane had been a character in the Batman universe for many years. A version of him appeared in the 1997 film Batman and Robin. No one at that time had any clue Mitt Romney would some day have a shot at the presidency. But such political posturing from one of the nation's leading political pundits suggest the potential for politics to be read into any film that gets released in 2012.


Nevertheless, Rush Limbaugh's politics is harmless compared to the politics of James Holmes, who shot up a movie theater during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20th. Twelve people were killed and fifty-eight wounded. The full motive is still unclear, but the fact that Holmes dressed himself in a disguise; told police that he was "The Joker"; executed a well-planned massacre using several types of guns and screened with tear gas; booby-trapped his apartment with trip wire and explosives; all suggests he was acting out a punishment on society in a way inspired by the Batman universe. The fact that his guns and 7,000 rounds of ammunition were purchased legally, has given new fuel to those who advocate a tightening of gun control laws.

Was it the politics of The Dark Knight Rises that led to the tragedy in Colorado? Was it the availability of a vast array of legal weapons? Was it the result of a member of society conditioned by violent entertainment acting out his frustrations in a way inspired by that same entertainment? This observer will not play politics by attempting to answer these questions for you. The proper conveyance of this tragedy's magnitude can not be done if it is shrouded in politics.


Patriot Thought

Blaming Bush: Executive Hypocrisy in the Obama Age

We've all heard President Obama say time and again that he "inherited" from President Bush "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression" and that it takes more than four years or eight years to "clean up the mess." Blaming Bush has been part of the wiring of the Obama team since they began campaigning for the presidency in 2007. In 2008, Obama called Bush "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the national debt in eight years. He called it "irresponsible" to saddle the nation's children and grandchildren with debt paid for "by a credit card from the national bank of China."

Sometimes Obama officials tell the truth when blaming Bush for problems they inherited; other times they lie when blaming Bush for their own poor choices. The most outrageous lie was when Press Secretary Jay Carney stated at a White House press conference (when asked about the calamitous $500 billion-dollar loan made to the now bankrupt Solyndra) that "the process leading to" the Solyndra loan "began under President Bush." The message is the Obama administration is not responsible for any blunder they choose to blame Bush for.

The reality is the Bush administration rejected Solyndra's loan-guarantee request! It was rejected because the administration's budget office told the president Solyndra's financial state was so precarious that the company would be bankrupt in a year's time. President Obama received the same advice from the budget office, but made the loan-guarantee to Solyndra anyway. A loan-guarantee means that the taxpayers co-sign for the loan. In this case, the taxpayers co-signed a $500 billion-dollar loan to a company that couldn't pass the credit check!

Aside from this most flagrantly dishonest example of Bush-blaming, can we still swallow Obama's claim that cleaning-up Bush's mess has been such a huge task that he needed a second term to finish it? Let's examine this claim in a little detail.

The Bush years were not so long ago. It seemed like a rough ride at the time. On 9/11/2001, the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked by terrorists. Three thousand Americans were dead. The same evening, the president of the United States gave a radio address announcing that this country was now in a state of war. I was twenty years old. War was something my generation did not grow up with. The Gulf War of 1991 had only lasted a few weeks and Vietnam had long been in school history textbooks. When I was growing up, politics was bland, uninteresting. It seemed far away. Times had been good.

Then, George W. Bush (43rd president of the United States 2001-2009) led the nation into scary waters. Suddenly, we were fighting a world-wide war against terrorism. Troops by the tens of thousands were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq to defend our freedom and to bring our enemies to justice. War is costly, not just in lives and property, but in finance as well. Republican presidents do not like to raise taxes to pay for increased expenditures. President Bush was no exception. To finance the wars, he borrowed the money instead of charging the American taxpayer. Within a year and a half of the attacks on 9/11, the United States was running record deficits. By the end of the decade, Bush had added $4 trillion dollars to the national debt. This state of affairs could not go on forever. If it did, an eventual run on the dollar would wreck the American economy and make the American dream a thing of the past.

As it turned out, the economy was wrecked by the time the Bush presidency ended, but it was not triggered by the national debt. Another monster had been growing alongside the debt and had received much less attention. This monster was a housing bubble, fed by the availability of sub-prime mortgages. For many years, there had been a collusion between the government and the banks to make mortgage requirements low for lower-income people. Soon, all manner of investment fed off the flourishing mortgage market. Risky mortgage securities were sold, bought, and re-sold again. The entire cycle depended on the ability of the homeowners to pay on the mortgages.

In the summer of 2007, the job market stalled and a wave of foreclosures swept the nation. A year later, the wave arrived at the doors of the major lending houses. Lehman Brothers went under and suddenly the government enacted the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which enabled the U.S. Treasury to spend $700 billion dollars to buy up the risky assets held by the nation's lenders. This influx of cash would save the financial system from collapse. In the coming months, this bailout would be followed-up by additional bailouts of the auto industry. The assumption behind the approach was to save the entire economy by preventing the fall of public and private institutions deemed "too big to fail."

For us to tackle the essential question of whether Obama can blame Bush, we must first ask ourselves what Bush did, what Obama has done, and if their respective approaches to problem-solving were similar or different. President Bush and Senator/President-Elect/President Obama were both at the center of the decision-making behind the bailouts. From September 2008 until January 2009, they worked together and were of the same mind. Bush told Obama the plan he and Treasury Secretary Paulson wanted. Obama agreed and promised to deliver the needed votes from Senate Democrats.

After January 2009, President Obama followed-up the bank bailouts with auto bailouts. Then, his first stimulus bill gave the states an $800 billion-dollar bailout. Soon more, massive infusions of cash into the economy were piped-in.

Four years later, where are we? We are stuck with with high unemployment, a $16 trillion-dollar national debt, and a downgraded credit rating for the United States. (As of 2011, America has lost its AAA credit rating for the first time in history).

Who is to blame? (A) Wall Street Fat-Cats? (B) Republicans? (C) Democrats? (D) Bush? (E) Obama? (F) Poor people who get in-over-their-heads with a mortgage they can't pay? (G) Fannie and Freddie (government sponsored enterprises)? (H) The Federal Reserve?

Everyone shares a part of the blame, but  B, C, D, E, F, and H, are much more to blame than A and G. Yet, Wall Street and Fannie/Freddie have had more fingers pointed at them than everyone else has had. This is unfair. Can we imagine ourselves turning down a perfectly good opportunity to legally make a ton of cash from trading mortgage-backed securities, or from any other commodity? Why have so many fingers been pointed at Fannie/Freddie when they just take orders from the government when it comes to setting lending rules? For years Congress, the President (Clinton and Bush), and the Federal Reserve (Greenspan) had pressured Fannie/Freddie and banks throughout the system into making easy mortgage loans.

Bush is to blame for the mushrooming debt and the bloated, risky sub-prime mortgage market that tanked the economy in 2008.  But who is Obama to be blaming his own failure to fix the problem on Bush when he worked in tandem with him in growing the debt and by responding to the same crisis with the same measures? Since Obama has taken office as the 44th president, he has added $5 trillion [more than Bush added] to the national debt and the consequence has been a downgraded credit rating for the country. According to his own stated principles, Obama is "unpatriotic" for being "irresponsible" in saddling the nation's children and grandchildren with debt paid for "by a credit card from the national bank of China."

The eventual run on the dollar everyone feared in the Bush years has become an even greater likelihood under Obama. Obama can not turn us away from a headlong sprint toward a cliff by taping-down the gas pedal and keeping us headed in the same direction! There is not a chance he will reverse this state of affairs in the next four years.

Patriot Thought

Pearl Harbor: Was It Japan's Fault, or America's? Conspiracy Theory vs. History

"December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy..." 

-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, December 8, 1941

What did FDR know and when did he know it? Allegations that President Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plot to attack Pearl Harbor before the event took place initially came from his Congressional [Republican] critics. In the years since, books such as Robert Stinnett's Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor and Patrick J. Buchanan's article from last year's anniversary of the event, claim the entire thrust of FDR's Far East policy was designed to push Japan into a war with the United States.

This observer does not buy the allegations of U.S. guilt or FDR's conspiracy. The objective evidence supporting such theories rests on interceptions of wartime Japanese plans, cherry-picked events in the timeline that point toward U.S. guilt, and a flawed reading of presidential motive.  

The intercepted Japanese plans make for problematic evidence because they came in a code not broken until after the event had taken place. The Japanese used different codes for diplomatic and military messages. Some codes had already been broken prior to Pearl Harbor, others had not. It remains unproven that messages advancing plans to attack Pearl Harbor had been received and decoded before the event took place.

The broader accusation of American provocation in pushing Japan to attack Pearl Harbor is unsupported by an unbiased analysis of the events leading to the attack. Patrick J. Buchanan's reading of these events is flawed (if honest). Most problematic is his over-sympathetic appraisal of the Japanese military condition in the run up to Pearl Harbor:

"Consider Japan's situation in the summer of 1941. Bogged down in a four-year war in China she could neither win nor end, having moved into French Indochina, Japan saw herself as near the end of her tether."

See the full text of Buchanan's article here: http://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan/did-fdr-provoke-pearl-harbor.html

Buchanan's analysis tells us Japan had no choice but to attack Pearl Harbor (after the U.S. had done everything diplomatically wrong up to that point). Yet, a more dispassionate observer looks at the same events and wonders the following. 

If Japan was at the end of its tether, why did it bring itself there? Who made Japan invade China? Not America. If after getting bogged down in China, Japan was militarily over-extended, why did she invade poor French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, etc.)?  Only then, did Japan reach the tether Buchanan and others claim America brought it to. Having bitten too much to chew, Japan had to look for other resources to keep greasing its war machine. Hence the countdown to Pearl Harbor.

Neither China nor Indochina provoked the naked aggression, murderous conquest, and slavery Japan unleashed on them. The assault on China began in the summer of 1937. Let no one forget what the Japanese did to the Chinese people of Nanjing, where they slaughtered 300,000 civilians in cold blood and gang raped untold thousands of women.

The attack on Indochina came in September 1940. Japan wanted its rubber for their army. This conquest placed the Japanese army and navy within striking distance of Malaya and the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). With these rubber and oil riches, Japan could end the war in China and set up a new East Asian empire on the backs of enslaved non-Japanese Asians. 

At this stage, the U.S. government had had enough. FDR responded with an embargo on Japan's oil imports and put the U.S. army on alert in the Philippines (where General MacArthur had been watching all these events). If Japan wanted to win its wars and safeguard its hideous empire, the American military presence in the Philippines had to be wiped out. To ensure that, the Philippines had to be severed from the reach of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. The attack began early in the morning, on December 7. Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, and most of the Pacific Rim were under Japanese occupation within five months. Japan wasn't pushed. It wanted to go there.

The chain of events notwithstanding, what of the allegation that asserts FDR's prior knowledge? Objective evidence does not bear his fingerprints. Speculation swirls around statements made between the state department and military chiefs. Given the relentless expansion of the Japanese Empire, everyone thought war between Japan and America inevitable. Japan could not rule the Pacific and expect America to remain idle. FDR and MacArthur anticipated an attack in the Philippines (which eventually came) and braced for it there. By contrast, the near knockout of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor came as a shock and a great embarrassment.

Lack of evidence aside, what about motive? The conspiracy theory holds that FDR needed an attack on Pearl Harbor to obtain a declaration of war from Congress. He wanted war because his failure to rejuvenate the American economy (from the Great Depression) led him to seek war production as a means of stimulating prosperity. He knew the attack was coming, kept the information secret, and got his declaration of war at the price of 2,402 dead American servicemen.

This motive is laughable. American presidents have never needed to hide information in order to obtain a declaration of war from Congress. 

• In 1846, President Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico, after American troops were attacked in territory they ought not to have been in if avoiding a war with Mexico was desired. 

• In 1965, President Johnson unleashed a full scale war in Vietnam without even bothering to ask Congress for a declaration. 

• In 2003, President Bush asked for a declaration on the assumption Iraq was stockpiling Weapons of Mass Destruction which, as it turned out, were never discovered.

• In 2011, President Obama ordered Tomahawk missile attacks on Libya without even bothering to inform Congress beforehand.   

Evidence of an impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would have been all FDR needed to get a declaration of war from Congress. The president had no motive to risk his own neck when transparency would have achieved the same goals and more. Imagine the headline, "President Roosevelt Saves Thousands of American Lives By Foiling Japanese Plans To Attack Pearl Harbor!" As it was, the attack was a surprise and FDR obtained a declaration of war. Unfortunately, the failure to anticipate the attack cost 2,402 American servicemen whom we should remember on this day of infamy.

Patriot Thought 

The Great Depression and Today's Depression

Recession Myths: De-Constructing Historical Falsification


Persuading voters in the middle of a bad economy is an exercise in convincing them government policies actually impact economic health. From there it follows, one candidate is on the right side of economic health and the other candidate is on the wrong side. It is too late to decide for 2012, but history can prepare us for 2014 and beyond. The Great Recession of our time resembles the Great Depression of our grandparents' time in ways that are more eerie than you may realize.

For starters, there is no difference between a recession and a depression. Until the Great Depression of the 1930's, the term depression was applied to every instance when there was a decline in economic growth. Depressions as such happened every ten or twelve years. Usually, they ended after 18 months and the recovery was often a booming one.

But something strange happened in the 1930's that made the term depression apply only to that crisis. There was no bounce back. Instead the economy limped, ever so sluggishly, with low growth, for eleven years! The scars ran so deep that the term depression came to be associated with an entire generation. Depression became not just a word associated with economic indicators, but rather, it defined the mood and psyche of people old enough to remember suffering through that terrible decade! 

Subsequently, a new term was needed to describe usual periods of economic reversal, and so recession provided that need. The American economy boomed following the Second World War. Recessions still happened, sometimes more than once in a decade. But they were brief, and the damage temporary. Sometimes the stock market crashed (in 1987, and again in 2000) with mild consequences except for the people who had a vested interest in the industries that took the plunge.

But beginning in 2007 another recession broke out, and the aftermath has been more depression-esque than anything experienced since the Great Depression. What happened that made both the Great Depression and the Great Recession stand out among the cycles of boom and bust throughout history?

There are many striking parallels shared by both crises. Among them are

• In both cases a calamity was brought-on by choices made the government and the Federal Reserve. 
• In both cases the blame was shifted from these culprits to more convenient ones like "Wall Street", "greedy banks", and "the rich." 
• In both cases the solutions applied by the government made the calamity worse and longer-lasting. 
• In both cases few Americans understood the truth about what had caused the crisis and what solved it. (This misunderstanding stemmed from layers of mythology perpetrated by public officials, the media, and educators who have affinity for an activist government.)
• In both cases the crisis broke-out under a Republican president thought to operate under a "hands-off" approach to governance, but who in fact was a believer and practitioner of activist governance. 
• In both cases the Republican president was succeeded by a Democratic president who did more (not less) of them same.
• In both cases the damage and suffering was spread over a wider swathe of the economy than needed to be the case.
• In both cases the recovery (if that's what it can be called) was slow, grinding, fitful, sporadic, and unpredictable. This reality kept people (with money) from having the confidence to invest.

Let us tackle the parallels...

Myth:
Teachers and textbooks tell of a decade when credit was cheap and people were living high on the hog. This decade was the 1920's. More commodities were purchased with credit than ever before (radios, cars, household appliances, etc.) People became rich trading stocks in these booming industries. Their greed fed a frantic boom which was followed by an equally intense bust when the stock market collapsed at the end of that decade. Retribution followed the greed when Wall Street bankers jumped out of windows or shot themselves. This was the cause of the Great Depression, or so we've been taught.

Fast Forward:
Following the Great Recession of 2007, similar mythology has put the blame for the crisis on "Wall Street" and the greedy "one percent". But As the deconstruction (below) shows, the real culprits were the same as in the Great Depression: the government and the Federal Reserve.

Deconstruction:
Anyone who understands how credit works knows that the people spending the credit are at the end (not the beginning) of the decision-making circuit. The decision-making begins with the Federal Reserve and the leeway given it by elected officials. In the 1920's, Benjamin Strong (Governor of Federal Reserve Bank of New York) inflated the U.S. and world economy with massive and continuous injections of money available for credit. 

Strong and his counterparts in Britain (Montagu Norman) and in Germany (Hjalmar Schacht) sought to play God with credit. They wanted to see if they could engineer a formula to keep the world on a permanent economic boom. Elected officials in Washington did nothing to restrain the Fed. This money fed the speculative boom on the stock market which in the end caused the great crash. At some point, prices got too high for the people paying. 

It was Washington and the Federal Reserve in an experiment in social engineering  -not social "greed"- which caused the Great Depression. Even so, the Great Depression may not have been anything more than a normal downturn had it not been for the massive efforts of Washington to reverse it.

Fast Forward: 
Similar acts of social engineering by the government and the Federal Reserve caused of the Great Recession of 2007. This time, the motive was to level the opportunity of the masses to become homeowners. Was this a noble goal? Perhaps so, but idealism is often a poor substitute for practicality. 

Starting in the 1990's and continuing for a decade, leaders in the White House (Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush), Capitol Hill (Barney Frank, among others), and in the Federal Reserve (Alan Greenspan), browbeat lenders to lower mortgage application requirements for lower and middle income people to qualify for a loan. This would never have been a problem so long as most of these borrowers could pay on their loans.

The chickens came home to roost when waves of foreclosures pulled down the entire economy in a systemic free-fall. Since then President Obama, congressional Democrats, liberal media commentators, and thousands of "occupy" protesters have demonized the financial and business communities across the nation. They should have aimed their fingers at the White House and Capitol Hill instead.

Myth: 
For quite some time, it was accepted wisdom that the stingy Republican president, Herbert Hoover (31st U.S. President 1929-1933), made the Great Depression worse by taking a "hands-off" approach to solving the crisis when a rescue of the workforce could have reversed the downward spiral of deflation which ground the economy to a standstill.

Deconstruction:
It is true that Hoover preferred keeping banks solvent as opposed to providing shovel-ready jobs. Direct government relief was not in fashion in those days. Nonetheless, he made great strides to protect workers and, ironically, worsened the crisis. He backed labor unions in keeping wages artificially high. With prices plummeting, employers had no choice but to lay-off workers in masses. By 1932, 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed. Hoover stood no chance of re-election.

Myth:
As the same myth follows, recovery began with the massive government relief programs of Hoover's successor, a Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd U.S president 1933-1945). 

Deconstruction:
It is true that Roosevelt and his helper, Harry Hopkins, created 4 million jobs in a six month period between late 1934 and early 1935 (as many as President Obama claims to have created in four years). Yet, unemployment did not break single-digits for the remainder of the 1930's. Many people had to compensate by working two or three part-time jobs. Consumer spending was low. The stock market scarcely had a pulse. All this, despite unprecedented deficit-spending by the Roosevelt administration and millions of acres of land opened by the federal government for the development of hydroelectric power, roads, parks, you name it.

Myth and History Repeat
More recently, another president believed in the myth of the do-nothing Herbert Hoover and the do-everything Franklin D. Roosevelt. This president was George W. Bush (43rd U.S. president 2001-2009). In his memoir Decision Points Bush repeats myth and history by boldly declaring to an aide, "I'm gonna be FDR, not Herbert Hoover", upon learning of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the acceleration of the Great Recession in September 2008.

Bush and Congress responded with the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which enabled the U.S. Treasury to spend $700 billion dollars to buy up the risky assets held by the nation's lenders. This influx of cash saved the financial system from collapse. In the coming months, Bush's successor followed-up this bailout with additional bailouts of the auto industry. The approach was to save the entire economy by preventing the fall of public and private institutions deemed "too big to fail." 

Bush misunderstood history, worsened the crisis by delaying a genuine recovery, and in an Oedipus-like way, became Herbert Hoover, another victim of the myth of the stingy, do-nothing Republican. His Democrat successor, Barack Obama (44th U.S. president 2009 - present) was even more convinced he was FDR than was Bush. 

Looking at the Obama presidency from the hindsight of four years, it is hard to place Barack Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the same paragraph. When Roosevelt wanted shovel-ready jobs, he called up people (like Hopkins) who had a proven record of despensing relief in a responsible way. The result was genuine work-relief for millions Americans and the families that needed a paycheck to avoid hunger. The same accomplishment hardly applies to President Obama. 

By contrast, his failure to create work has been compensated by a gargantuan expansion of entitlement payments in food stamps and unemployment checks. Consequently, the unemployed have stayed home while the national debt skyrockets. The 4 million jobs Obama has created in four years are government jobs. New bureaucrats filling cubicles does not create wealth for anyone else besides the bureaucrat sitting in the cubicle!

Yet, let us imagine President Obama had been as successful as FDR in creating shovel-ready jobs. A relief economy funded and run by the government is not a permanent recipe for economic growth. It is vastly expensive and it involves the government in management practices its officials are not trained for. 

FDR understood this and wracked his brain to find ways to get the private sector to take over. But in this, he became a victim of his own rhetoric. In his 1936 re-election campaign, FDR had vilified the "forces of selfishness" who were supposedly to blame for the Depression. He boldly puffed, "Let it be said that in my first administration, the forces of selfishness met their match. Let it be said that in my second, they met their master!"

And so, "the forces of selfishness" sat on their money and decided to wait out the Roosevelt tide. Genuine recovery did not come until after the Second World War. By then Roosevelt was dead and the great crash was sixteen years in the past!

President Obama has shown himself to have all of FDR's shortcomings and absolutely none of his strengths. A poor delegater, Obama has relied on congressional Democrats to craft his relief programs in the form of legislation, instead of assigning that task to people with a proven record of positive results in planning and implementing relief work. Having failed in this, the president jokingly mused, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we thought."

In the full blaze of his re-election campaign, the president touted a 7.8 percent unemployment rate as evidence that his policies were working. Assuming that figure to be accurate, Obama's billions in stimulus spending after four years had succeeded in giving this country the same unemployment rate as when he took office! With a 16 trillion-dollar national debt, and nothing to show for it, we are worse-off than four years ago.

Why does activist governance not work?
The short answer is, it delays recovery by keeping bad capital locked-up in the system. This means, the people who make poor investments are allowed to stay in the system at precisely the moment when the system can not bear them anymore and is trying to flush them out. An activist government tries to solve the problem by pumping billions of taxpayer dollars into the veins of companies with poor financial sense. 

Bad financial decision makers are rewarded with more capital to make bad decisions with. The continued presence of bad capital keeps good capital from competing in the economy. The power of labor unions is a particular hindrance to recovery. They will not allow wages to fall, therefore they have to tell their members, "oops" when they receive a pink slip instead of a wage increase.

The auto bailouts illustrated "bad capital" staying in the system. General Motors claimed it needed a bailout to avoid bankruptcy. GM ended up in bankruptcy after having been bailed out. 

No one remembers the Depression of 1919 - 1920. Republican president Warren Harding inherited that crisis. All he did was slash expenditures, slash taxes, and allow wages to fall to their natural level. Nobody got a bailout. Yet, within a year the depression was over and the Roaring 20's followed it. Yes, the recovery was a "roaring" one! We can have that tomorrow. We just need to elect leaders who will do what it takes and let the private sector take over.

Conservatives have solutions and history on their side. Their drive to make a comeback in 2014 will depend largely on how successful they are in dismantling the historical economic myths to help the public figure out something that has eluded presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Bush, and Obama, for the last 80-plus years.

Patriot Thought