Paynes Chapel

One of my hobbies is photographing litttle country churches. Where I live--in West Virginia's eastern panhandle--means I have a lot of photo opportunities.

This is Paynes Chapel, near Ridgeway, West Virginia.

The Czars are coming! The Czars are coming!

Years ago, R. Emmet Tyrell, conservative pundit and prankster, described the '70s as "The Great Silliness." Tyrell didn't know for nothin'.

The "naughties" (as our British cousins like to call this decade) are truly the silly season. How else to explain the wing-nuts parading in Washington DC, waving signs decrying our "socialist" President--or "Nazi" depending on who is waving the AstroTurf banners--who just happens to be slightly to the right of Dick Nixon. How else to explain the current obsession with "Czars" roaming the halls of power. If not silliness, could it be calculated cynicism, based on the premise that the American population really is the booboise that H. L. Mencken accused us of being? Could it be that the press--who are supposed to check their facts and not just regurgitate stuff they are fed--are failing miserably at their jobs? You decide.

The Czar issue has been booming around the echo chamber otherwise known as talk radio and Fox News for a while now. Glenn Beck has cautioned that we are soon to be stripped of our freedoms by these Nazgul, no doubt ferried in black helicopters.

There are 32 of them we are told, with extraordinary authorities to menace our liberties. According to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the 32 (an unprecedented number she intones) are, by their existence, a walking constitutional crisis. Representative John Boehner, House Minority Leader (whose name makes me wish Don Imus was still broadcasting on DC area radio) is equally alarmed.

Sheesh!

If 32 Czars is "unprecedented" it is only because George W. Bush blew past that number on his way to appointing 36. I don't remember an outcry back then.

"Czars" have been around at least as long as the Nixon administration. Actually they aren't really called Czars, except by media types who want to call them something snappy. Who after all wants to talk about a special advisor for automotive industry restructuring when you can say "Car Czar."

So the press creates the term, gets it into widespread use, and then trumpets "concern" about it implications...

By the way, Bush actually had more than 36 if you count up the "Assistants To" running around the Pentagon. By naming someone an Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, his administration could get around limits on the number of sub-cabinet level positions he could fill, and he could avoid Senate confirmation. Sort of like an "assistant to the regional manager," only with real power.

Oh yeah. Of Obama's unprecedented 32 Czars, nine were confirmed by the Senate. Their positions were fully vetted, as were their qualifications.

Like I said, Tyrell don't know for nothin'.

More on the Health Care Debate

One of the --frankly--sillier things I have heard from critics of a government health program is: "I don't want a government bureaucrat coming between me and my doctor."

As opposed to an insurance company bureaucrat?

Let us examine the presumption that a government bureaucrat (as opposed to an insurance company bureaucrat) is not competent to adjudicate billing and fee issues between physician and patient.

First of all, the government bureaucrat will likely know what he or she is doing. To get a job, a government employee must describe and document KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, and Aptitude) for the job in question. Getting promoted also requires either documenting KSAs or performing elements of the job at a higher level of performance to the satisfaction of a superior; just ask anyone who has ever applied for a federal position. By the way, the federal KSAs are public record.

On the other hand, the insurance company bureaucrat may have no experience whatsoever. There is no way to tell.

The government bureaucrat has little incentive to deny a claim for cost reasons, because his or her job performance is not measured by bottom-line considerations. Rather the government bureaucrat's work performance is measured against performance-based objectives including speed of processing claims, accuracy, judgement, client satisfaction.

The insurance company bureaucrat is very much judged on how much money he or she save the company (read; number of claims denied).

In our current system, you have an insurance company bureaucrat between you and your doctor; who may have worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken last week and is, in any case, not working for you but for the company's bottom line.

I'll take the government bureaucrat.

40 years along...

Before I forget. I joined the U. S. Navy 40 years ago today. I was 17 years old, getting off a bus at Naval Training Center, San Diego, and scared stiff. The sailors who met the bus made my high school gym coaches seem like weenies.They were loud, coarse, and scary. What the hell had I gotten myself into? It didn't take long to decide that I had made the biggest mistake of my life (all 17 years of it!).

I had no idea--I could not have conceived--that 20 years later I would look fondly on that day as the day I first put on the uniform that I was about to retire.

Today, 40 years later, I still smell the salt air at Nimitz Island, I still hear the martial music blaring from loud-speakers as seaman recruits learn to march to John Phillip Sousa's cadences, and I remember a lot of 17 and 18 year old kids setting out on their greatest adventure.

Health Care; Go Big, Go Long, Go Single-payer

Well, I have been on hiatus for a few months. Once the elections were over, the creative juices sorted of slowed; work picked up; the energy and concentration needed to opine--well--sort of dissipated.

But, I've been listening to the debate on health care; on television, radio, street-corners, my sister's kitchen, anywhere people get together with differing views on the subject. I though, what the hell...

For starters. Obama needs to go big and go long. Go straight to single-payer. Tell Americans the truth. Single-payer is cheaper, it allows cost containment (without which no health plan will work), care will improve, it will be a boon to business, and Americans who want Cadillac care can still get it through their choice of insurance plans.

The difference will be that health care will no longer depend on employers -- and will no longer burden employers. That should translate to higher wages; since money that could have gone into wages has been sidelined into paying for the spiraling increases in health plan costs. It should also translate into lower prices for goods and services because the cost of providing employees' health care should no longer be a factor in setting prices for said goods and services.

What is single-payer? It is the big "government-run" health plan that the Republican leadership in Congress is doing their best to scare the wits out of Americans with. It is, in fact, Medicare for all Americans, regardless of age. Medicare is one of the most effective and cost-effective programs this country has fielded. With an approximate 4 percent administrative overhead, it is one of the cheapest to operate. Doctors point out Medicare's success in cost-containment every time one of them quails at taking on a new Medicare patient -- because Medicare sets limits on what can be charged and scrutinizes treatment and testing options.

It is late and I am drooping, but I have more to write on this topic and I hope some will be there to read it.

Sidewalks; a family value

So, I am sitting in a Starbucks in Boulder, CO, contemplating election withdrawal. I am too much the sloth to know if this is what it feels like to finish a marathon and wonder where the buzz went; but I surmise it is. Well there is always the cabinet to speculate about...

As I sit in this coffee shop that didn't exist when I lived in Boulder, some thoughts do pop into my head that don't have to do with who will be in Obama's cabinet. Boulder is a lefty sort of town. I like lefty towns. I lived in Takoma Park, MD on weekdays for three years. Takoma Park epitomizes lefty towns.

These are places that send the "family values" crowd through the roof. And I find that curious to say the least. If I see family values anywhere I see them in the lefty, red-diaper baby towns like Boulder and Takoma park. I don't see people walking their kids and dogs in the evening along sidewalks that bound neatly mown and cared for lawns in places like Colorado Springs or Frederick, MD. I am sure they do, I just don't see it the way I do in Boulder and Takoma Park. One reason is that you can't find sidewalks in many parts of the Springs, or Frederick, or pick your suburb/exurb that was thrown up in the last thirty years.

Forty years ago, Boulder passed a green belts proposal that set aside green spaces around the city, to protect much of its nature and quality of life. The developers at the time accused the city of council of communism and any other ism they could think of. Today, Boulder is not a huge strip mall, which can't be said of many nearby towns. It has a vigorous outdoor culture, trails, bike paths, and sidewalks.

It is amazing the difference sidewalks can make in a town. People who take walks sometimes stop to talk to people who live near-by and thus become neighbors. Next thing you know, people start to talk about their neighborhoods. Next thing you know, they form a community that looks out for its own. Sort of like: it takes a village to raise a child; and enable families to act like families and neighborhoods to act like collections of neighbors.

A lot of developers don't like sidewalks because they cut into profits. But they do something else, that--until housing collapsed as an inflatable commodity--was undesirable. People who live in neighborhoods, as opposed to tracts, don't move as often and aren't as susceptible to the impulse to "buy-up" which is (or was) the developers answer to crack cocaine.

But then, to the "family values" crowd, as opposed to those families who have values, money trumps all.

So, if you are anywhere near a sidewalk, give thanks -- and maybe jump over a crack.

Bye, bye, Bradley effect

If John McCain has done nothing else this campaign season, he may have well and truly banished the Bradley effect from our politics and lexicon.

The Bradley effect pertains to (African American) Los Angeles Mayor, Tom Bradley's defeat in 1982 when he ran for Governor of California. Bradley was considered well ahead of his Republican challenger, George Deukmejian. But once the polls closed he had lost by a slim margin. Pollsters theorized that, when interviewing likely voters, they were lied to by people who didn't want to appear racist, but who could not bring themselves to vote for a black man.

So what has McCain done to end the Bradley effect? Simple. By providing the racists reasons to not vote for Obama, other than that he is black (Socialist, Terrorist, Muslim, etc) he has give visibility to would have been a hidden, racist-caused undercount. The racists will still be voting against Obama because of his race, but the Obama campaign knows better than Bradley's people did, who is voting against them, and how many there are.

McCain gets a good campaign line

I think that Barack Obama will win next Tuesday. But, if he doesn't it will be, in no small part, due to the campaign argument that John McCain trotted out last week.

McCain is arguing that Americans should vote for him to prevent the Democratic party from getting their hands on the Congress and the White House.

I suspect that, had John McCain started with this argument a month ago, I might be predicting the likelihood of a McCain victory right now. I don't know if the 40 watt bulbs that have run the McCain campaign hit on this themselves or if they had help, but it is a fiendishly clever argument. I just hope it is too late.

The argument accomplishes one big obvious thing, and a few not so obvious things. Obviously, it appeals to a lot of independents who are afraid of Democrats "gone wild" in Washington and lukewarm about Obama -- even if they are cold to McCain and Palin. We are a center-right country and a lot of "Reagan Democrats" might be willing to shift towards McCain if they were sufficiently concerned about a left-ish version of the the first term and a half of George W. Bush; which brings us to one of the less obvious benefits of the argument.

The Democrats can't answer it.

Any response Democrats make to the argument reinforces its merit. What can they say; look how well it turned out when the Republicans had both houses and the White house? That just reinforces McCain's point; which leads me to my last point.

It allows McCain to run against his own party; which appeals to independents and Reagan Democrats.

By talking about the perils of one party dominance, he implicitly criticizes the Republicans for their behavior from 2001 to 2007 when they pretty well dominated the Congress and White House (there was an 18 month period when the Senate was Democratic by one vote). John McCain gets to run away from Bush, tout his Maverick credentials, and dare the Democrats to say anything.

I am really glad it took him this long to figure it out.

Great Blog

Check out Helen Philpot's blog here: http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/.

Helen Philpot is an 82 year old woman who acknowledges a sailor's mouth, and I think has a razor wit.

John McCain is a good and honorable man...

... which came through today in Minnesota. The tone of his audience towards Barack Obama was past bitter and hateful. It bordered on scary, and this was one of the milder crowds in recent days. John McCain apparently had enough of the hate that his audiences were spewing and called on them to show some respect. He was booed. By his own supporters.

So, I give McCain credit for trying to call off the crazies. But he is responsible to no small extent for sparking the madness in the first place. McCain did authorize the "Obama hangs out with terrorists" line that Sarah Palin has been using. He did promise a speaker at one of his townhalls that he would step up the attacks on Obama's character.

Someone once wrote about Al Gore that he really didn't like the slash and burn campaigning he found himself doing in 2000. As a result he didn't have a good sense of when he went too far. Sort of like a kid who never eats spinach, he doesn't know when he has a mouthful of rancid leaf because it is never "supposed" to taste good anyway. I think John McCain shares the same attribute. Because he doesn't like or approve of the character assassination his campaign has indulged in, he doesn't know when they have gone too far. Until yesterday when someone yelled "kill him!" when Obama's name was mentioned, and McCain's face registered shock.

I think there is another "thing" in play. John McCain has likely never seen race hatred in full flower. Few white Americans have actually. Make no mistake, many of the people who call Obama an Arab, or a Terrorist, or a Muslim, or a Socialist really are calling him a N*****. They are just too "polite" to do so in front of a TV camera. I believe that John McCain, when he decided to use the Karl Rove/Swifties playbook, didn't realize how race hatred would combine with those already vicious tactics to form a truly explosive mixture of hatred and violence.

John McCain now realizes what he and his running mate have unleashed. You could see it in his face today and yesterday. I hope he can put this evil genie back in the bottle. If not I hope the Secret Service is working overtime.

What my dogs can teach Henry Paulson

I was just watching Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson on MSNBC. His news conference reinforced a suspicion I began courting a couple of days ago. Then, he went before the press to explain how additional actions that the government was taking would ease the credit crunch and get money moving again. The Dow took a nosedive. Today (maybe it was yesterday, it is hard to keep these things straight anymore) Bush told the media that the economy was going through a rough patch but that his administration were getting things under control. The Dow took another nosedive.

My wife, who trains dogs, is always after me not to coddle our dogs when they are spooked by something. When I reassure them that everything is okay, they conclude that -- if I am worried enough to reassure them -- they must really have something to worry about.

Investors can't be less rational than dogs can they?

Investing is ultimately an exercise in confidence. When our leaders keep telling us that everything will work out -- when these leaders, particularly, tell us that -- then we get spooked. And when they try to explain things while doing their best Alan Greenspan imitation it gets really scary.

So here is a modest suggestion for Mssrs Paulson and Bush: Shut. Up.

Kathleen Parker on why Sarah Palin should step down

This is from Kathleen Parker, a usually reliable promoter of the Republican line, hook and sinker. If Parker has turned on Palin, McCain is in trouble.

The Palin Problem
Kathleen Parker
Friday, September 26, 2008

WASHINGTON -- If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream -- away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president -- and possibly president -- is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick -- what a difference a financial crisis makes -- and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan's president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she's had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin's narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain's running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood -- a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. Palin didn't make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted. Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there.

Here's but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: "Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we're talking about today. And that's something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this."
When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama's numbers, Palin blustered wordily: "I'm not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who's actually done it?"

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we'd all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she's a woman -- and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket -- we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can't repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP's unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

A Random Thought...

We are in a financial crisis. The government has taken some bold and controversial steps to resolve some of the problems and they don't seem to be working. The latest step is the proposed $700 billion bailout package. The problem is that few if any institutions are willing -- particularly in the last three weeks--to risk their capital by lending it to anyone else. In short, they are afraid and have lost confidence in the government and finacial sector.

No news there.

But why are they so afraid?

The steps the Fed has taken thus far should have calmed many worries. Opening the lending window made capital available to banks to cover potential losses from the mortgage melt-down (assuming it doesn't suddenly get worse). The government's judicious handling of Lehman Brothers vs AIG should boost confidence that Washington is applying reason to its moves (unless they stop applying reason).

Why so little confidence?

Maybe, about three weeks ago, the people who run these institutions saw something happen that led them to believe that the recent years of fiscal and monetary imbecility might just continue.

Maybe, they watched the Republican party nominate an utterly unqualified small-town mayor with seriously goofy ideas to be the Vice President to a 72 year old Presidential candidate who has had two episodes of melanoma already.

Maybe, after watching that spectacle, they ran home, slit open the proverbial mattress and started stuffing their cash inside.

Economists and financiers do a lot of analysis based on reams of data, but it all comes down to confidence in the end. And, frankly, Rocket J. Squirrel and his trusty sidekick Bullwinkle don't inspire confidence.

More on those double standards...

This election year candidates' personal lives and families are fair game for Republicans as long as the candidate in question is not a Republican.

My niece sent this in an email. It was too good not to post.

" I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

" If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

" Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

" If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

" Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

" Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

" Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

" If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

" If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

"If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

"If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

" If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

" If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

" If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

" If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

"OK, much clearer now. "


Seriously folks, we are voting for someone to lead our country during perilous economic and political times. We aren't drawing straws for who buys the next keg.

Bad jokes and fake outrage; thanks, John McCain

About ten years ago, John McCain told a joke to some Republican fund-raisers. It went, "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."

Today McCain and his crowd are accusing Barack Obama of misogyny and demanding he apologize to Sara Palin. Obama's offense: He said McCain's claims to "change" amounted to "putting lipstick on a pig."

You see, when Republicans are in full attack mode they leap at lame stuff like this. Sarah Palin talked about lipstick in her convention speech, therefore any mention of lipstick is now off-limits as far as they are concerned.

Is John McCain such a hypocrite that he can tell a slimy, hurtful joke then sanction his aides going after Obama with feigned outrage over a non-insult?

Is Ms Palin so precious that she cannot handle criticism, even when it is not aimed at her?

Politics ain't beanbag folks. Get real or get out.

Lipstick, Lipstick, Lipstick!

During a campaign event in Virginia today (9 September 2008), Barack Obama described John McCain's claim that he will change things in Washington as putting lipstick on a pig.

Okay, it is an old line. I have heard it for years before this. But the McCain camp had a fit, thinking it a slam on Sarah Palin. They have, of course, demanded an apology.

Give me a break.

The McCain camp has told us that Palin's family is off-limits. Her personal life is off limits. Do we start saying "The L-word" instead of lipstick now? Is anybody allowed to criticize Sarah Palin?

Can you imagine if the Democrats tried to coddle their candidate in this manner? The Republican attack machine would tear itself apart in their eagerness to heap ridicule on the Democratic ticket. If Barack Obama gave a speech about Sarah Palin that was half as snarky as the one she gave about Barack Obama, the Republicans would be completely beside themselves with feigned outrage.

This is pure crap.

Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President or President. And by putting her on the ticket, John McCain disqualifies himself as well.

It is Barack Obama's duty, and Joe Biden's duty--and the duty of every American who realizes what a cynical and un-American path John McCain is ready to take us down--to denounce this travesty. And it is the duty of every American to demand that the press and media call the McCain camp's double-standards and hypocrisy for what they are.

Abraham Lincoln and the Idea of Union

[I wrote this essay in 1991. I am posting it because (1) I think its well-written, and (2) The States' rights crowd endures (mostly in Lincoln's party, which is sad) and it is useful to have some arguments to rebut them with. I hope these are helpful.]

The Civil War remains our most compelling saga. Its characters, causes, and course loom large in our national memory and discourse. The immediate outcome is, of course, well known. The other results are still debated: was it war or revolution; was the slave-power crushed or merely diverted, did the freedmen fare worse with the yoke of slavery lifted from them? The questions go on, and many are bound up in the person of the saga's protagonist, Abraham Lincoln.

Was he truly the great emancipator, or did he cynically use abolition to climb to the presidency? Did he save the union, or recklessly send 650,000 American soldiers to their graves? And what was his lasting contribution to the United States, once the hagiographers have departed and the myths are set aside?

Interest in the Civil War peaked in the last months of 1990 as PBS broadcast the Ric Burns series, and the United States contemplated a potentially bloody ground war in the Persian Gulf. On that occasion, columnist George Will wrote that the Civil War was the inescapable ingredient of our history, that in that struggle the nation was distilled.

Will, as have many others, noted that in 1860 the United States was a plural noun; in 1865 it was a singular noun. Where before the great tragedy, it was arguable that the United States ”were gathered, at their discretion and pleasure, in a compact as self governing states; when the war was ended the idea that the United States is" an indivisible union, a nation and a people was a marker firmly fixed in the mental landscape of Lincoln's America -- because he put it there.

In the beginning, in the months following 1860 elections, the breaking of the union seemed a certain thing. Secession had the tacit support of two ex-presidents, John Tyler and Franklin Pierce, and was thought unavoidable by the soon to depart incumbent, James Buchanan. Abraham Lincoln had other ideas however.

First a look at the historical arguments preceding Abraham Lincoln's defense of the union.

South Carolina's John C. Calhoun was the architect of States' Rights. In the 1820's and 30's he articulated the idea that the various states joined the union voluntarily, and could depart voluntarily as well. This was the fulcrum of Calhoun's argument that the federal government could impose no law on any state unless the state was agreeable to the law, and that any state could declare any federal law "null and void" within their state. The "right" of the states to withdraw from the union was a check on the federal government's inclination to impose its will on the states. Calhoun was challenged on practical grounds by Andrew Jackson during the secession crisis of 1832. Jackson knew well that a government such as Calhoun envisioned was unworkable. Moreover he knew that if the states were allowed to go their separate ways, a rump United states would be short work for the European Powers. Jackson defused the first threat of secession by mobilizing the army to march on South Carolina, while offering the secessionists an opportunity to save face.

Calhoun was challenged on philosophical grounds by Daniel Webster in the latter's January 1830 speech in reply to Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina. The occasion was a debate on appropriations for the western territories. Hayne was to present the southern case; Benton of Missouri would speak for the west; Webster was expected to speak for the north. Calhoun, as Vice President and presiding over the Senate debate, was officially in the role of observer, and often used Hayne to advance his agenda of states' rights.

Hayne spoke fulsomely of the glorious role South Carolina's patriots played in the revolution, advancing with their blood, the principals that were inherent in states' rights. He reiterated his master's contention that any law thought injurious to South Carolina or other states of the region would be nullified by those states, and that the others must accept it as the rights of the states for which the founders fought. In short, the nation was a league of sovereign states, bound together by a pact, and that bad faith by a tyrannical majority constituted grounds for breaking the pact.

In Webster's reply, delivered on January 27th, 1830, he spoke of the union of people, rather than states, forged by the Declaration of Independence and the revolution. This union, he declared existed before the constitution enumerated the role of states and federal governments, and was inseparable. Speaking, as protocol permitted, to the president of the senate (Calhoun), Webster said, "Is [the government] the creature of the State Legislature, or the creature of the people?... It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people... I hold it to be a popular government, erected by the people; those who administer it responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be... We are here to administer a constitution emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the creature of the State governments."

In his speech Webster emphasized the homogenization of the Continental Army by the end of the revolution to show that it was ”Americans" who wrested independence from England, not Carolinians,or Virginians, or New Yorkers; and that those Americans were fighting for the ideal expressed in the Declaration of Independence which was the founding document of the American nation.

Webster's Reply to Hayne was the most notable speech of its day. It was copied and distributed throughout the country. Schoolboys memorized and rendered the speech in contests. In Illinois, aspiring politician and future lawyer Abraham Lincoln thought it was the greatest American speech. Lincoln's political views were approaching maturity in 1830, and the Reply to Hayne was a significant ingredient in the mix. In 1858, Lincoln consulted Reply to Hayne as he prepared his House Divided speech. In the First Inaugural, Lincoln made his case for preserving the union by borrowing from Webster: "Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the union itself. The Union is much older than the constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association of 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 'to form a more perfect union'."

Lincoln and Webster both subscribed to the notion that the Declaration, the ”founding document" of the nation, enunciated a people's desire to exist as a nation. This was the philosophical basis for treating secession as rebellion rather than a revolution, or even counter-revolution, against sectional tyranny. Hearkening back to James Wilson's and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story's views, the Lincoln/Webster view has a more notable pedigree than that of John C. Calhoun.

To Lincoln, secession "was simply a wicked exercise of physical power" -- without legal or moral justification. "It may seem strange," he said of the Confederate leaders, "that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces." The insurrection was prompted by the Republican's victory in the 1860 election, which was accomplished by commanding a majority of electoral votes in an election conducted in accordance with the Constitution. The secessionists lost an election and wanted to leave the country as a result.

Moreover to Abraham Lincoln, the Union represented a still fragile experiment in liberty; that could be all to easily extinguished if the minority exercised, ala Calhoun's theory of States' rights, the prerogative of departing whenever its whims were not granted. To Lincoln, in 1861, the evolution of civilization stood at a junction and could pass on to liberty or tyranny. He expressed the thought at the conclusion of his 2nd annual address to Congress in 1862, "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve, we shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth."

Lincoln's idea of Union was expressed in most of his actions as a war president. His refusal to free slaves, except as a measure of military necessity (under his constitutional power as commander in chief of the Army and Navy) was based on his belief that the act of secession, while it may have made criminals of them, did not deprive the secessionists of their protections under the constitution. Slaves were constitutionally protected property, and Lincoln had taken an oath to protect and preserve the constitution for all Americans, even those that temporarily didn't consider themselves Americans. Similarly, while he privately opposed the Crittenden Amendment (1861), which would have guaranteed the continuation of slavery and its introduction into new territories, Lincoln, as president, promised that he would not interfere with its ratification and would enforce its provisions

Ironically, with Crittenden the South achieved everything it had sought before the 1860 election. Their refusal to accept Lincoln's offer to enforce Crittenden if it were passed and ratified undercut the philosophical and legal basis of their claim to a right to secede from the union, and strengthened the Republican's contention that they were basically sore losers.



Notes on the Gettysburg Address

To fully appreciate the impact of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,it is necessary to examine some aspects of American nationalism.

Nationalism, as I use the term here, should not be confused with that quality which in the 1960's was descriptive of mindless obedience to the state. Rather I use the word in its truer meaning of a desire of people sharing common heritages to exist as a nation.

In the United States of America, our shared heritage is a thing of ideas; rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In the America of 1860, the concept of an American Nation was different than today. Shelby Foote characterized it noting that "before the Civil War, it was customary to say - the United States are ..... After the war, it became - the United States is ......" The difference is profound. In the first instance the U.S. is a collective, plural, entity; in the second it is a single entity, united by common bonds, history, and vision.

It is this latter view that is largely Abraham Lincoln's legacy. It was his personal view that carried him from a young Whig, or National Republican, in the 1830's to the White House in 1860. Lincoln was a pupil of the most important nationalist figure of the mid-century, Henry Clay. He even described Henry Clay as his "beau ideal" in the Congressional races of the 1840's.

Faced with the secession crisis on his inauguration as President, Lincoln's dedication to the principle of an American Nation allowed no compromise to Union. In correspondence Lincoln had described fears that the American experiment in liberty was in jeopardy. In his second address to Congress he referred to America as the "Last best hope of earth". These sentiments were no doubt with him in the hours before he spoke on November 19th, 1863.

Lincoln was also, in my opinion, the most literate of our presidents. His writing was remarkably free of the rococo construction and mellifluous phrases of the day. The Gettysburg Address is, among all his writings, the most poetic, and probably reflects his deepest thoughts on the war, and the horrible price the nation was paying to come into its own - as he saw it.

In short, this speech (invocation seems more appropriate) is one of the seminal passages in our national consciousness. It is one of our defining documents, as is the Declaration. And with the Declaration, it sets forth for all men the clear intent and justification for our (his) actions. "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

For additional information, the following references are recommended:

James M. MacPherson, ”Abraham Lincoln and the Second AmericanRevolution", 1991, Oxford University Press, New York

Garry Wills, ”Lincoln at Gettysburg", 1992, Simon and Schuster, NewYork

David Donald, ”Lincoln Reconsidered", 5th edition, 1961, VintagePress, New York

William Safire, ”Freedom", 1987, Doubleday, New York

The Political Theory of States' Rights

(I wrote this essay in 1991 and recently came across it. It read better that when I first read it over in a rush to get it to my advisor. I thought I would post it here.)


In 1786 the new United States of America faced a choice, not between federalism and anti-federalism, but between nationalism and anti-nationalism. As Clinton Rossiter noted in 1787, The Grand Convention the issue was whether it would be a country like England or France; or a "country" like Germany or Italy. The larger states, notably New York and Virginia, were confident that they could go it alone; while the smaller states such as Delaware and New Jersey feared they would be devoured in effect, if not in fact, by the larger states.

By the end of the revolution, states were imposing restrictions on river traffic, interstate trade, fishing rights, and a variety of other issues that usually arise between independent nations. Fishing fleets from Virginia and Maryland actually fired on each others' vessels. New York's Governor Clinton tried to "acquire" Vermont and was frustrated by Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

To further aggravate the situation, the treaty of Paris gave the new nation most of the country between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. These vast lands were parcelled out among the states to administer until such time as they were settled and could become states in their own right. The large states saw the western lands in much the manner that England had seen the colonies and meant to exploit them similarly. Of course the small states had no claim on the western lands and were reluctant to see any national resources directed toward their development -- not that national resources were available for that or any other purpose in 1786. It is in the first stirring of a national movement, that would lead to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the seeds of states' rights were planted. The nationalist spirit that animated the men of Philadelphia co-existed with a feeling, and belief that the states (at least some of them) could have emerged as self-sufficient entities given time. The smaller states, unable to survive on their own would have joined with their larger neighbors. The belief that they could have been self-sufficient evolved, among the ardent states' righters over the next 70 years, into a belief that somehow they had been self-sufficient.

After the convention, the anti-nationalists made common cause with the anti-federalists. Indeed many of the anti-federalists were anti-nationalists the year before. Among their leaders were George Clinton and Thomas Jefferson. The position of the two men bears some examination.

Clinton was the governor if New York, serving his fifth term in 1787. He was nicknamed "the old incumbent". Clinton was one of the most powerful men of his day. His political machine controlled much of the patronage of New York, and he effectively played the aristocratic patroons of the Hudson Valley against the wealthy bankers and businessmen of New York City. Clinton believed that New York was, of all the states, in the best position to break away from the others and go it alone. He actively opposed the constitutional convention by sending a delegation that consisted of two ardent anti-nationalists, and one nationalist (the nationalist, Alexander Hamilton became so impatient with his fellow delegates that he left the convention in a rage, only returning for its closing ceremony).

Once Clinton saw that the constitution was going to be ratified, he threw his lot in with those men who insisted on interpreting the relationship between the states and the federal government in the loosest terms possible. Led by Thomas Jefferson, this group fought for a Bill of Rights, which enumerated the rights of the states and citizens which the federal government could not infringe.

Jefferson's beliefs seem based in Rousseau's interpretation of man as "noble savage." Rousseau proposed that man was at his best the closer he was to earth, and his natural state. To Jefferson, this meant man as farmer and planter. Jefferson's idea of a just government was one that ensured basic liberties, offered protection to its citizens, and otherwise stayed out of their lives. Jefferson conceded the necessity that government must have authority to tax and regulate trade, but thought that these functions should be carried out at the level of government closest to the yeoman farmer/citizen as possible; which meant at the county and state level. Jefferson was willing to concede to a federal government only those powers that were needed to address issues that transcended the states; maintaining a navy, gathering the militias to resist foreign invasion, diplomacy, interstate trade.

Throughout the last years of the 18th century, and during his eight years as President, Jefferson often expressed the thought that the United States might well divide along sectional lines into independent countries. Not until his later years did he demonstrate concern about the sectional issues that threatened national unity. In 1821 he wrote of the slave issue that culminated in the Missouri Compromise, that it "was a fire bell in the night, striking the knell of the union." However, in the years before, Jefferson's espousal of a loose-knit federation of states and a weak central government contributed to his fears.

In the early years, the divisions were along economic lines. New England considered secession in the 1790's and early 1800s'. The trans-montane was always abuzz with secession rumors, the Burr conspiracy and the Spanish conspiracy being just two occasions that the rumors echoed on the banks of the Potomac. After the War of 1812 however, the tensions began to occur on a different fault, and states' rights assumed a new energy and a new meaning.

The issue was slavery. And the debate turned on economic and, increasingly, moral points. After international slave trading ended in 1808, the expense of purchasing and maintaining slaves increased. Never very profitable in the north, slavery all but died out north of the Mason-Dixon line by 1820. In the south however, it was a thriving and effective system of labor.

The problem was that it was too effective. With slavery, and a generous climate, the southern states made little progress toward a diversified economy. There was little outside of agriculture; some shipping from New Orleans, Charleston, and Baltimore -- and limited industry in Birmingham, Alabama and the northern reaches of Virginia.

The south's agrarian life depended heavily on the north's capacity to process raw commodities into marketable goods. The north, in turn, depended on a certain supply of raw materials to keep their factories working. To ensure that supply, the north enacted a series of tariffs that made it uneconomical for the south to trade directly with foreign buyers. The tariffs kept the cost of southern cotton artificially low to northern buyers, while European buyers were kept out of the action.

There was no small degree of southern resentment over the tariffs. Indeed the first secession crisis was caused by the "Tariff of Abominations” of 1828. The tariff so enraged South Carolina's Senator John C. Calhoun that he enunciated a proposal that states, under the sovereign status they enjoyed under the constitution, had the right to declare any federal act "null and void" within the confines of the state. If need be, the states could individually break the pact with which they ”voluntarily” joined the union, establishing themselves as separate political entities.

The flaws in Calhoun's arguments are obvious. His argument presumed that at some point in the past the states functioned as independent political entities. It has been shown previously that some in the larger states believed that they could function independent of the others, and that this belief took on a fictional quality, particularly in the south, that they actually did function in that manner.

Calhoun's argument also ignored the fact that four states, including New York, didn't ratify the constitution; yet all chose to subject themselves to its terms, should it be ratified by two-thirds of all the states.. To argue, therefore, that the states joined as a nation; agreeing with the pact as it existed at the time, and reserving the right to withdraw at a later date, ignores the reality that four of the states joined in spite of the pact. Had there been reservation, they wouldn't have joined in 1787. Simply put, they placed an American nation ahead of their own state's rights.

The tariffs were troublesome to the south because slavery was becoming more expensive. Moreover, slave property was, like land, not particularly liquid. As the tariffs reduced southern options in trade, and impeded commerce, slavery became an increasing economic burden. This raised a second problem; what to do with the slaves if they grew too costly. In the eyes of the southerners, they couldn't just be freed.

By the mid-1820's many southerners were terrified that the slave rebellions that wracked the Caribbean would spread to the United States. In 1831, the nightmare happened. A Virginia slave named Nat Turner, and some of his followers went on a killing spree that lasted several days and resulted in scores of dead. They faced a dilemma, the slaves couldn't be freed -- not without tremendous financial loss and social disruption -- and they had to be kept under control, lest another rebellion occur.

Meanwhile, in the north, a small but vocal abolition movement began demanding immediate abolition and even encouraged slave rebellion. These event, occurring at the same time that Calhoun introduced his arguments for the states' rights to void federal laws and even withdraw from the union, catalyzed a new and virulent secession movement; one that would require a violent civil war to quell.

Can we be serious, please...?

This morning, on Meet The Press, Tom Brokaw raised General Wesley Clark's comment about John McCain's qualification to be President, again. You know the comment; something to the effect that getting shot down while flying a fighter plane doesn't qualify you to be President. Of course, the approved response is to condemn the remark, which Tom's guests, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman dutifully did. Tom also suggested that Barack Obama was laggard in his condemnation of the remarks.

So, once again, for the record. Clark, of whom I am not a huge fan, is right. And he is not disrespecting McCain's or anyone else's service by pointing out the obvious. McCain is no more qualified to run for President based on his Naval service than I am qualified based on my Naval service. The fact that McCain's service is decidedly more heroic than mine still doesn't qualify him.

If McCain wants to cite his qualifications he should cite his service on a number of Senate committees. He should cite his principled stand on campaign finance reform. He should cite his leadership in preventing a constitutional crisis over judicial nominations in the Senate. He should cite his willingness to look at stem cell technology on its merits rather than on the theology of his party's most extreme elements.

Of course McCain is loath to run on too much of his record, because so much of it is at odds with the Republican party's "base" which doesn't trust him and may just stay home this year. Which, in turn, leaves me wondering if his courage in battle hasn't quite made it to politics after all.

Of course, Kerry understandably objected to Clark's remarks, because during the 2004 primary campaign, Clark said the same thing about Kerry, to the effect that driving a swift boat and earning some awards was fine but not on a par with commanding two regional combatant commands when it came to getting someone ready for the Presidency.

To which I would add, it doesn't come close to the qualifications gained from being a haberdasher (Truman) or a railroad lawyer (Lincoln) either.

Thank you General Clark, sort of...

A group that I belong to, and have great respect for, VoteVets.org, recently sent me a note asking me to thank and support General Wesley Clark. In an interview, General Clark opined that John McCain's unquestionable heroism as a prisoner of war did not translate into qualification to lead as President.

Not surprisingly, the Republican attack machine wheezed and rattled to life, sputtering, harrumphing, and gasping the usual crap.

Okay, this part is kind is kind of hard because I don't particularly like General Clark. But, all things being equal, I can thank him for this one. It isn't that he said anything profound. He stated the obvious. But he did force the Republicans' hypocrisy and double-standards out in the open for all to see.

Remember when the Republicans waxed indignant over Democrats pointing out that our draft-dodger-in-chief was, well, a draft-dodger, who lacked any imaginable qualification to lead the national security mechanisms.

And remember the history lessons we received in the 2004 campaign? Lincoln had almost no military experience when he saved the Union, we were told. FDR had never served in uniform when he saved to world from the Nazis. Who were the Kerry folks to talk about chicken-hawks? Who was this Vietnam veteran and his followers to suggest that people who avoided service in one war had little right to start another one.

But now that the Republicans have a war hero, it is all different and they think we are stupid enough to buy the hypocrisy.

So I appreciate General Clark giving the Republicans the opportunity to remind us that they think we are ignoramuses. And for reminding us that they are hypocrites.