How Does One Become A Great Historical Figure?

The Insight of an American Historian, H.W. Brands

Having read the work of many popular historians of American history, I've concluded H.W. Brands stands out among them. Biographers tend to fall in love with their subjects, a condition David McCullough mildly suffers from. In reading his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece John Adams, a critical thinker could not help but notice the author would have us believe politics played no role in President Adams' appointment of a large number of midnight judges, shortly before his adversary (Thomas Jefferson) was inaugurated to take his place as president. 

So what if Adams was politically motivated in stacking the courts with judges of his ideological bent the night (or weeks) before leaving the presidency? As president, he had the right to make those appointments. Yet, McCullough felt the need to defend his biographical subject, even on such a benign issue. A cynic may think the author has become the parent of his subject. Such parental protectiveness is less apparent in Brands' works of history (if it is detectable at all).

H.W. Brands is one of my favorite historians because he tackles both sides of every major controversy without imposing his judgement heavily on one side. His handling of President Andrew Jackson's role in the forced removal of the Indian nations to places west of the Mississippi, what we might today call ethnic cleansing, (without the genocidal purpose which often accompanies it) is fascinating because Brands shows us the dilemmas each of the major participants had, and what their options were. The result was that the tragedy of the Indian removal was conveyed to the reader without a biased or slanted judgement toward one party or another. I happen to believe the state of Georgia behaved shamefully and fraudulently in its instigation of that crisis, but Brands didn't force me to make that conclusion.

Recent history is the litmus test of a historical writer's even-handedness. During a time-killing walk through the history section of a local Barnes and Noble, I perused a copy of Brands' American Dreams: The United States Since 1945. Subjecting it to the ultimate test of fairness, I went straight to the chapters covering 1980 - 2009. I discovered the book is striking for its even-handedness in treating presidents as controversial as Reagan, the Bushes, and Obama. The same can not be said for other historians who have written good work on the same history, Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz to name a few. 

Although recognizing Reagan never saw a weapons order he didn't like (contradicting his pledge to dramatically reduce the deficit), Brands conveys the Reagan presidency on all its merits, good and bad. By contrast, Paul Johnson's overwhelming praise for Reagan, and his excessive sympathy for Nixon, is matched by his dripping contempt for FDR and JFK. Nevertheless, Johnson's History of the American People is a fantastic (and vital) exploration of American history, aside from its flaws.

Sean Wilentz's Age of Reagan has the same problems, although from a liberal angle. His chapters on Reagan are chock full of stories about government corruption, yet that theme disappears when the reader gets to the Clinton chapters, as if the arrival of a Democrat president suddenly cleanses the sins of a corrupt bureaucracy. For ideological balance, Brands' work stands out from the rest. Brands is the type of writer who would come across as liberal to a conservative reader and conservative to a liberal reader, a quality unique and refreshing in an age of partisan extremes coloring information coming from today's media.

H.W. Brands has written biographies on Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and is currently working on one about Reagan. Taken together, these six biographies will represent a view of the entire history of America through the prism of the presidency (excepting Ben Franklin, although he was a dominant political figure of his age).

Brands is a professor of history at the University of Texas. His students are mainly undergraduates. He is a prolific speaker at colleges across the country. Many of his public lectures are available on youtube. From listening to his lectures, one gains remarkable insight into the way a presidential historian assesses leadership qualities. Regardless of one's aspirations in life, Brands helps us understand the qualities that make someone a great historical figure.

Of particular interest is what Brands calls "the half-step rule." Have you ever realized you may be conflicted in your own views of a historical figure? For example, there are some qualities of that person's character you find admirable, and other qualities which contradict, or work against the quality you think is likeable in that character? To be more specific, let's take Thomas Jefferson's lofty words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" with his vehement denunciations of slavery in that he "shuddered" to think "God is just" and that there will be a "reckoning" regarding slavery. Now, on the other hand, how do we square Jefferson's words with the reality that he owned well over a hundred slaves, and was dependent on their labor until the day he met the maker he knew would bring the reckoning for it?

Doesn't it seem contradictory that history is moved by some of the very people you would least expect to move it? If so, Brands' answer is the half-step rule. He explains that history moves in half-steps. For a person to become a truly great historical figure, he or she must have one foot planted in the future, while keeping the other foot rooted in the present. If both feet are planted in the future, a person's contemporaries will think he or she is out of touch with reality, or too radical, and therefore impressionable minds will not be impressed. A person who is a full-step ahead of his times will never have the opportunity to become a historical figure, at least not a great one because his impact will not be large enough. 

The key to greatness is to be a half-step ahead of the times, keeping enough common ground with contemporaries to convince them of the change you want them to accept. Future generations will struggle to square what they will see as contradictions in your character, but the fact that they will struggle with it (at all) is a testament to your impact as a great historical figure. 

If Jefferson hadn't owned slaves, he never would have been among the planter class that ruled Colonial Virginia. Therefore, Jefferson would never have been elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses. From there, it follows that he never would have been selected to go to the Continental Congress. Therefore, he never would have been appointed to the committee drafting the Declaration of Independence. Finally, Jefferson would never have set America on the ideological footing of liberty and equality for all (men), putting slavery on the permanent defensive. Other men may have accomplished this, but Jefferson would not have, had he not owned slaves. A great figure is not good in all his attributes, yet without certain (if unpleasant) attributes, he never becomes great.

Patriot Thought

Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense

This reflection comes not from a legal expert on Florida laws concerning self defense, but from a thoughtful observer forming impressions of news commentary and reports from the recent trial of George Zimmerman, charged (but ultimately found not guilty) with second degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

WSB pundit Erick Erickson explained Florida law concerning self defense like this, "In Florida, if you feel someone is threatening your life, you have the right to kill that person, even if you started the fight." Erikson went on to say, "In this case it looks as though George Zimmerman may have provoked Trayvon Martin." Of course, we'll never know who provoked whom. Does George Zimmerman following Trayvon Martin amount to a provocation? Is it illegal to follow someone? Surely it is not. No one likes being followed, but being followed in of itself does not give us the right to charge after our pursuer and beat him bloody. After all, beating someone up is illegal; our laws call it assault. Certainly, if a person is being assaulted, the thought may cross his or her mind that their life is being threatened. If so, we have legal protection (in Florida) to kill the person threatening our existence. Without having read the law in question, I've noticed no one has challenged this interpretation of it.

Our judicial system is fair. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. If the prosecution can not prove its case, the defendant must go free. Whether or not the acquitted gets what he or she truly deserves is a separate matter. The question is, Did the defendant get a fair trial?  People may speculate on the composition of the jury and how their backgrounds may have biased the verdict. Yet, the jury needed to decide whether or not Zimmerman was guilty of second degree murder (or at the last minute, manslaughter). For a guilty verdict, the evidence had to show some degree of intent to kill. The jury did not have the evidence or the eyewitness testimony to show that Zimmerman intended to kill Trayvon Martin. Therefore, their verdict of not guilty was the only reasonable outcome based on the conditions of a fair trial.

The evidence, such as it was, supported Zimmerman's testimony of self defense. He was being assaulted. The pictures taken after the event prove his assertion that Zimmerman had a broken nose and lacerations on the back of his head. Those lacerations look as though someone ran a cheese grater down the back of his head. He claimed he'd been knocked down, and that Trayvon had straddled him and was pummeling him from above, smashing Zimmerman's head against the concrete sidewalk. It's difficult to imagine how Zimmerman could have received the cuts and scrapes on the back of his head, if he (rather than Trayvon) had been on top in the fight.

The person on the top or the bottom of a fight is a crucial component in determining who had the opportunity to stop the fight and who had the opportunity to keep it going. The person on top can decide whether to get off and end the fight, whereas the person on bottom can only defend his or herself. For the bottom fighter, there is no retreat. There is nowhere to retreat to. Since the evidence more conclusively showed Zimmerman to be the bottom fighter, and the prosecution could not prove otherwise, we have nothing to contradict his testimony of acting in self defense. Killing in self defense can not convict a defendant of second degree murder or manslaughter in Florida. Therefore, the jury had no legal or ethical choice other than to acquit George Zimmerman.

It is disappointing to see so many people, some of them famous, who want to take away the people's right to proper self defense. Due to the Zimmerman verdict, Stevie Wonder has declared that he will no longer perform in any state that has a "stand your ground" law. In other words, Stevie Wonder is protesting against the American people having the right to defend themselves and their families from harm. Are we to believe Stevie applies that same standard to his own life? Does Stevie have bodyguards? If so, are they not armed and ready to kill to protect him from an assailant?

Are there any celebrities who do not or have not had either full time or part time armed bodyguards on their pay roll? Are celebrities arrogant enough to think they are the only people important enough to require armed security? What world does Stevie Wonder live in?

What kind of world would we live in if our right to self defense was taken away from us? What kind of America would we have? Certainly, we would not have the America we know and love? We would not have an America of fair trials or juries of our peers. If such sentiments ought to be important to us, than our media culture and our president have failed us horribly in the circumstances surrounding the Zimmerman trial, and its aftermath.

The first NBC report of Zimmerman's 9-1-1 call deleted a crucial segment of the conversation he'd had with the dispatcher. As edited, the segment featuring the dispatcher asking Zimmerman about the suspicious person's race disappeared, making it appear that Zimmerman, without prompting, said to the dispatcher, "He looks black." Such malicious tampering with the 9-1-1 conversation shows a major media outlet that is irresponsible, going out of its way to fan the flames of racial turmoil in this country.

All of the media coverage I witnessed about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, displayed only pictures of Martin as a twelve-year old boy, five years prior to his death! Are we to believe no pictures of Trayvon Martin have been taken in the last five years? To this day, I have not seen a single picture of Trayvon Martin showing him to be anywhere close to what he looked like near the time of his death! Yet, all pictures shown of George Zimmerman have been recently taken. Why have NBC, ABC, CNN, and others not shown us photos of a twelve-year old George Zimmerman? If asked, they would undoubtedly say such photos bear no relevance to this case. However, the photos of the twelve-year old Trayvon Martin bear relevance because the real purpose is to play-up the image of his fragile innocence! There was nothing fragile about the adult-sized figure who used a concrete slab to smash the back of George Zimmerman's head! Such is the detestable, reprehensible bias through which our media culture spins the news before our impressionable minds.

Few Americans are under the spell that our media is unbiased and fair. But in times when our society is rife with divisions, we should be able to look to our president for a message of unity and shared values. Presidents have historically given us what we want from them in times of pain and conflict. Reagan's speech following the explosion of the space ship Challenger, healed the nation in a moment of grief. JFK's address following the Bay of Pigs fiasco showed America it was led by a real man, one willing to accept personal responsibility for his mistakes. Unfortunately, in the days following the verdict of the Zimmerman trial, President Barack Obama botched his opportunity to play the presidential role of nation healer and uniter. Instead, he has come down hard in his sympathy for Trayvon Martin and has expressed disappointment of the jury's verdict of not guilty regarding the second degree murder charge against George Zimmerman.

The president's bias was apparent long before the trial took place. His most memorable statement following the death of Trayvon Martin was, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." No one would have accused the president of bias if he'd followed up that comment with something like, "and I'd want my son to have a fair trial like the one George Zimmerman deserves as an American citizen." Of course, no such quote regarding Zimmerman came from the president. Mr. Obama's one-sided thinking of the case is undeniable in statements like, "I could have been Trayvon Martin thirty-five years ago."

The president's press commentary in the days since the announcement of the Zimmerman verdict has amounted to an outpouring of sympathy for Trayvon Martin coupled with an accusation that our criminal justice system is biased in favor of whites against blacks. Although the president began last Friday's address by acknowledging that the jury produced the only reasonable verdict under the conditions of our judicial system, he showed his displeasure in every other statement he made about the trial and the circumstances surrounding it.

President Obama's entire address asserted that our judicial system, and by extension the Zimmerman verdict, is racially biased, and that a double standard is applied in favor of whites against blacks. The president summarized, "All that contributes to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that from both top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different." It is one thing for cultural figures such as Al Sharpton to say something like this. It is a travesty for the president of the United States to say something like this. He is supposed to be above the fray. He is supposed to stand for all Americans, not just one racial or ethnic group. He is not supposed to take sides in a judicial case. He is not supposed to play politics with judicial matters.

What's worse, the president of the United States is wrong even in the things he said about our criminal justice system in that address. How do we the people know that if Zimmerman were black and Trayvon white, the outcome would have been different? NBC and ABC do not report on those kinds of cases! As far as high profile cases go, if our judicial system was racially biased shouldn't O.J. Simpson have been convicted in the murder of his ex-wife? I'm not saying O.J. was guilty or innocent. I'm just pointing out that if the president's logic were true, O.J. should've been convicted in that case. How about Jay Z's alleged role in the stabbing death of someone he had altercation with in a club, some years ago? If our judicial system was biased against African Americans, why was Jay Z not convicted? Or how about Michael Jackson? I happen to believe he received a fair trial in his final go around with the judicial system over accusations of sexual child abuse. He received a fair trial because the prosecution could not prove his guilt. Yet, if President Obama's words are to be true, Michael Jackson's racial identity should have convicted him. Yet, none of this logic is demonstrably true, not in the twenty-first century. 

The inescapable conclusion a fair observer can make is that the president of the United States is racially biased in his own interpretation of the American judicial system and that he is fanning the flames of racial turmoil in this country by backing it with the force of the Oval Office. Moreover, the president's attorney general has pledged himself to the cause of overturning "stand your ground" laws across the states. The Obama administration does not want the American people to have the right to defend themselves and their families, with the necessary means, from those who would do them harm.

In the concluding remarks of Friday's address, the president linked his twin themes of a racially biased judicial system and of his opposition to the American people's right of self defense as follows: 

"I just ask people to consider that if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he had felt threatened. And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, than it seems to be that we might want to examine those kinds of laws."

In this time of great social anxiety, the American people need to be told the truth by our media institutions. We are not getting it. In this time of great division, the American people need uniting leadership. We are not getting it from the White House. In this time when Americans need confidence that we have the right of self defense from those who would do us harm, the Justice Department of the federal government is against us.Thus is the revealed legacy of the Zimmerman trial and its aftermath.

Patriot Thought

A New Ground Game: A Conservative Road Map for Winning the Culture War and Taking America Back from the Brink of Ruin

Is it possible, or even likely, that conservatives can win elections in the age of Obama? Yes. Does it mean abandoning the Republican party in the hope that it will dissolve or be subsumed by a new party? No. Does it mean all conservatives must become Republicans? No. Does it mean Republicans can win without Independents, Libertarians, and Tea Party activists? No. Can Republicans win if they write off Democrat voters as being beyond the pale?No. The bottom line is, conservatives can win if they think of their activism in terms of education and coalition-building rather than party, identity, or ideological loyalty. 

Across the electoral spectrum, there is a growing awareness among the people that our current leadership in Washington has been, and is continuing, to lead America toward financial, economic, and international ruin. Disgust of the status quo is widespread, and the forecast offers much of the same. Conservative policies are not driving public policy. Therefore, the ruin is not attributable to conservative activism. Moreover, conservative solutions to America's economic problems are the only solutions verifiable with historic results. This state of affairs offers fertile soil for conservative grassroots to flourish. There are several steps conservatives can take if they want to succeed in taking back the soul of the American people from the big spenders and government growers who are threatening our liberty and prosperity.

Step 1: Wage our Cause in the Classrooms and Lecture-Halls 

Through like-minded proxies in the entertainment and academic world, liberals have waged an astonishingly successful war to assimilate the hearts and minds of generations of Americans. Public school teachers and textbooks have trumpeted the achievements of liberal presidents and liberal activists throughout history. Print and televised media outlets from the New York Times to ABC liberalize news coverage before it gets presented to the people.

Conservatives are getting their message out in talk radio, Fox News television channels, and through internet sites. But this is not enough. What is stopping conservative groups from obtaining the necessary permits for speaking engagements at college campuses, and not just at the big, media-attracting arenas like Columbia and Princeton? 

Why not seek out activists across the country, and help them organize rallies and other types of speaking events at local colleges? Would this cost much? It depends on how it is done, but let's consider the billions raised by GOP during the 2012 primaries and in the general election. Now, let's ponder how many of these billions were dumped on television ads, only to be skipped by DVR-equipped viewers wanting to get back to Jersey Shore or Monday night football. Would it have been worth it to have spent some of those billions on funding activist projects at college campuses? At the least, the GOP would have had everyday people shaking hands with everyday people, listening to their concerns, and explaining conservative principles in ways both understandable and attractive. If the GOP and other conservative groups want the people's support, they must invest in the people.

The people, broadly speaking, are in need information about true conservatism. The under-forty's out there have no memory of Reagan or Gingrich-led prosperity. A forty year-old in 2012 was seventeen when Reagan retired from the presidency. How politically aware do you think he or she was in high school, when they were getting their driver's licenses, chasing girls/boys, and preparing for the prom? Today, the under-forty's think conservatism reigned in the Bush II years. All they know is: it failed. 

Plausibly, President Bush handed the country to Obama in much worse shape than he found it in. What the people don't know is, in all the ways Bush failed America, he departed from conservative principles. There was nothing conservative about the Bush-backed mortgage-lending policies that wrecked the economy in 2008. There was nothing conservative about the $4 trillion in new debt Bush saddled the country with. But Republicans are loath to speak frankly about this out of partisan loyalty. In so doing, they are only contributing to the partisan fog that shields the people from learning the truth about what roads we've taken that have led to where we are now. 

In desperation, the people turned to someone from the other party, hoping for a change. That's the spirit that put Obama in power, has kept him there since, and has made 51% of the electorate unwilling to give the party of Bush another chance. If the people are equipped to understand that conservative solutions haven't had a hand in the road-to-ruin we're on, they will give conservative solutions a chance. Why not? They're desperately looking for something different than what they've had the last twelve years. 

Imagine conservative groups investing in education and bringing it to the youth of our country. How can this be done? Like all people throughout the ages, people of means have never relied on public (i.e. government) schools to educate their children. Private tutors and private institutions provide an outlet. In our present age of high unemployment among qualified educators, exploding class-sizes and fewer services due to budget cuts, horrified parents in ever greater numbers have opted to put their children in private schools (if they can afford it), charter schools (if they have the option), or home-school (last resort).

Many of these parents are of the patriotic sort and have no faith in government education. Those who home-school their children are looking for good resources to use. What is stopping conservative groups from partnering with like-minded educators (many recent graduates are looking for work and are willing except employment in a non-traditional educational venture) and forming virtual schools to deliver a quality education for home-schooled children? This would provide an opportunity to teach real history; real civics; the truth about what America is supposed to be about; the truth about the U.S. Constitution. (At same time, these virtual schools can also teach critical-needs subjects as well.) 

What is stopping conservative educators from writing 4th grade language arts stories that do not demonize business people and simultaneously glorify people who are more in tune with "the earth"?  There's nothing wrong with teaching the morals of cleaning-up after ourselves and conserving natural resources, but what's wrong with teaching the practical virtues of getting a job that can support a family instead footing that bill to others in the community who are doing it more self-sufficiently? Is this moral not worth a short story in an elementary school reading lesson? 

Educational outreach can be delivered in a multitude of ways, but 21st century parents and students, many of them possessing cutting-edge digital technology are looking for new options. There is a need to be met and there is nothing barring conservative activists and like-minded educators from engaging in this cultural front. 

The entertainment world is much harder for conservatives to do something about, but we can stand behind celebrities (like Phil Mickelson) who periodically speak out against the crushing taxation their state subjects them to. We don't have to buy movie theater tickets to support the latest Matt Damon film that promotes falsehoods about the fracking industry. 

Academia will change from the bottom-up (through educational outreach to the youth before they get into college) and from empowering college students with the knowledge to challenge the liberal propaganda being fed to them by their professors. What is stopping conservative educators from writing history books telling the truth - or a more balanced approximation - about America through the ages? What is stopping them from promoting these books at speaking engagements at college campuses, and putting these books in the hands of students willing to challenge their professors with this newly acquired knowledge? 

In sum, conservatives have long ago conceded educational forums and media outlets to liberal activists. By throwing their hats into this ring, conservatives can begin changing American culture in the homes and campuses across the nation. 

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

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012): A Review From a Fan of the Historic Lincoln

Last Tuesday night, patriotic feeling showered over me as I left a showing of Lincoln at my local AMC theater. I was overcome with a heavy sorrow for the ghastly sacrifices my forefathers made to make America great. As I exited the theater, I overheard a group of teenagers muttering among themselves. One of them said, "That was a lame movie." If you're looking for action and suspense, see the latest Bond movie instead. But if you're looking for a film to learn something from, you will not want to miss Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

What will you learn from a film like this? As an avid reader of history, I sincerity believe Spielberg portrays Abraham Lincoln and the people of his times accurately and responsibly. By taking the battle for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment (which forever abolished the practice of slavery in the United States) as the focal point of the story's events, Spielberg slays the mythology that President Lincoln freed slaves only to pack his armies with more soldiers to wage the Civil War.

If that were true, Lincoln's efforts to free enslaved African Americans would have ended with the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1^st, 1863) - a temporary, wartime measure intended to undermine the capacity of the Confederacy to continue the war. On the contrary, Lincoln placed his own re-election in jeopardy to further the work of the Emancipation Proclamation by pushing for a constitutional amendment that would forever extinguish slavery. The amendment passed the House of Representatives on January 31^st, 1865, and formally became part of the U.S. Constitution on December 6^th of the same year.

Setting history straight is not the only virtue of this film. Superb, Oscar-worthy performances abound throughout Lincoln.  Daniel Day-Lewis looks exactly the way Lincoln was rendered in photographs and behaves precisely the way Lincoln was described by his contemporaries. The historic Lincoln's homey mannerisms and sometimes off-color jokes are on vibrant display in Lewis' rendering. The fiery, anguished, emotion-drenched Mary Todd Lincoln could not be more effectively brought to life by anyone other than by the magnificent Sally Field. The rugged, idealistic, congressional abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens nearly steals the show in Tommy Lee Jones' masterful hands.

The sometimes tedious political discourse in the film is navigable if you understand a few concepts. In the context of the Civil War period, Democrats wanted to leave slavery alone and end the war with or without victory. "Conservative Republicans" did not like slavery, but were unenthusiastic about freeing slaves as a necessary means of winning the war.

 "Radical Republicans" (like Thaddeus Stevens) were crusaders for social justice who cared more about destroying slavery and righting the social wrongs of American culture than about winning the war or preserving the Union; if anything, they wanted to wage the war to forge a new Union based on equality for all.  Lincoln's success was based on his ability to bring the conservative and radical wings of his party together to advance his twin goals of social justice and preservation of the Union. To harvest bipartisan support, Lincoln offered government jobs to lame-duck Democrats who had been turned out of office during the November 1864 election but were still voting in Congress until their term expired.

In sum, Steven Spielberg's Lincoln is a badly needed correction to the mythology promulgated by writers (Thomas Di Lorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln for one) who believe Lincoln was driven by cynical, political calculations rather than moral values centered on social justice.  Quite the opposite, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (based in part on the exhaustively researched work of history Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin) shows the Great Emancipator to have had the qualities of leadership most-needed in America’s current political culture: courage to do what’s right regardless of the political consequences, a willingness to reach across the aisle to look for common ground, and a sincere desire to accomplish something for the greater good of our society.  

Jason Aldous

11/25/2012