As seen from Just Above Sunset

Thursday, 28 April 2005

Topic: Making Use of History

The Alarmist Dialogs: On the crazies who are pulling all the strings in Washington today, rubber-stamped by an uninformed electorate who already doesn't hold complex political theory in very high regard…

An interesting question here from Dave Johnson over at Seeing The Forest. And the answer it is the will of the people. It is what they voted for.

Setting Aside The Rules

I participated in a conference call with Senate Minority Leader Reid Monday. The topic was the Republican "nuclear option" of not allowing filibusters anymore.

Senator Reid said something that I don't think the public is being made sufficiently aware of. He said that the Senate Parliamentarian has stated that this idea the Republicans have of changing the rules of the Senate to disallow filibusters of judicial nominations is itself against the rules of the Senate! (For one thing, the rule change itself could be filibustered, so the Republican insistence that 51 votes is enough to change the rules is against the rules.)

But the Republicans are saying no, they are just going to change the rule, regardless of what the Senate rules allow or do not allow. Just because they can, and no one can stop them.

I think the implications of this are disturbing, to say the least. The Republicans are saying they just will not follow the rules of the Senate, because they have the power to say this, and that's that. Rules will no longer apply. And as I understand it the Democrats can't take this to the courts, because separation of powers prevents the courts from getting involved with the internal rules of the Senate. (And if they could take it before the courts, would judges appointed under the Republican rules hear the case...?)

So this is a bigger deal than just a battle over appointing a few judges. This will be a full-blown Constitutional crisis, well beyond the 2000 Supreme Court decision to set aside the election and appoint Bush as President. This will be about the Republicans saying they will just make up the rules as they go along, because they have the power to do so.

My question is, how is this different from a coup, takeover, whatever you want to call it? I ask that question in all seriousness and I hope we can have a discussion in the comments, because I don't know the answer. I know I get worked up over things like this (I mean, I'm a blogger, right?) and I would like someone to calm me down and tell me how this is not a takeover. Leave a comment. Reassure me. Tell me not to worry.

Okay. Don’t worry.

On the other hand, our high-powered Wall Street attorney disagrees -

Can't do that. Worry! These are dark days indeed.

But Vince in Rochester asks for information:

Besides hanging on here for potential insight from our attorney friend or other students of rule-making, I'm also curious to hear from any historians we may have in our house to comment on whether there have been similar challenges to the rule of law in the past. Have other generations suffered through abuse of due process - either on the congressional floor or out in the "relatively" open operations of our governmental agency process? Perhaps in those lawless days of the late 19th century?

And if so, how did they re-right the ship of state to the balanced bipartisan process we've all come to love and embrace? (… return with us now to the days of yesteryear, when things were sane! or appeared that way...)

And I'm guessing the reaction to the Johnson query will split evenly down partisan lines... or so I fear.

Have there have been similar challenges to the rule of law in the past? The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 come to mind (see this in these pages where they are compared to the USA Patriot Act of 2001), but that is not exactly the same sort of thing.

FDR trying to pack the Supreme Court in the thirties?

I don’t know.

This push for theocracy may be a first – not that it hasn’t been tried before. This time it seems to be working. (Jeffrey Hart is an emeritus professor of English at Dartmouth College and a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and he has a pretty good but really long explanation of American Christian evangelical movement in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Sunday, April 17 here. The impulse is not new – the relative success is.)

The correction? Common sense?

That’s in short supply these days. More scotch will do. As our attorney friend often says to me – he prefers the phone to this forum given his workload and family demands – we’re screwed.

Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, offers some historical clarification regarding The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and FDR trying to pack the Court -

The first was an actual legal statute, signed into law by John Adams (reportedly only signing it because his wife was so much in favor of it, but also allegedly relieved when it eventually went out of existence, the law having been such an embarrassment to him.) The acts may actually have been unconstitutional, but this all happened before John Marshall's court established the responsibility of the judiciary to decide such things.

And FDR, as I recall, also tried his packing scheme the legal way, but failed. (Although the attempt did spook the Supremes enough in 1937, prompting them to change their approach to the Constitution such that the present day "Constitution in Exile" conservatives think SCOTUS continues to uphold unconstitutional laws all the time. See the article a week or so ago in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.) [That was April 17, 2005 - available here for a fee, and discussed by lawyers here and here.]

But what is being discussed here, of course, are Senate "rules," not actual laws as such. And as someone else pointed out in here, Senate rules are out of the reach of the courts, who see them as in the "political" jurisdiction of Senate leaders, as opposed to "legal" jurisdiction of courts. Tradition has been that to treat it differently could be seen as a violation of the separation of the three branches.

Then again, I myself (although admittedly not an expert on this stuff) would guess that, if ever the Senate rule-changing got way out of hand, the Supreme Court, the acknowledged defender of the Constitutional faith, could intervene on the grounds that - let's face it - the Constitution does lay out the basic idea of what Congress is supposed to do, something the Senate does not have the power to change without going through the amendment process. But if it ever came to this, I imagine that would be considered a "constitutional crisis" if there ever was one, especially if the Senators fight back.

Of course, we may already be heading toward such a crisis, given that certain segments of Congress are discussing impeaching judges who they disagree with. It seems to me the Constitution is pretty clear about how this is not allowed.

Still that's interesting about this rule change being technically against the rules, and that the change itself could be filibustered. I wonder why we haven't heard much about that.

Why? Because folks don’t like details, or complex sentences? But it is curious.

Nevertheless, as our attorney friend says – we may be screwed. This is, actually, a big deal.

Then, out of the blue, this came across the transom – or the email equivalent of a transom - from Joseph, our expatriate American in Paris – who was finally aroused from his long silence by this topic -

I've been way to busy (and possibly too apathetic) to participate of late, and the immediate future does not bode well. Moving to Belgium next week, for chrissakes!

But I disagree that were screwed. Were only temporarily screwed. Yep, this is a constitutional crisis of the highest order, one that could end our current government (but only in that French 5th Republic kind of way).

Bring it on.

I've been saying for a long time that the constitution is a broken document, one that doesn't work in the age of news 24/7, the fiction of "states rights", the military industrial complex, shamelessly gerrymandered congressional districts, 100 million dollar presidential campaigns and so on. This is our chance to stop thinking of the constitution as some holy writ, and eventually enter a 2nd American Republic, with a constitution that works today. This will only happen if the 1st completely stops working.

Hey, this will be painful. We may have to live through some dark years, but this is a way forward, don't you think? A bit of creative destruction?

George Bush, President for Life! (pardon the pun)

Belgium? Whatever.

Well, another friend who teaches would-be MBA’s at a famous business school adds this -

Joseph, you're on to the same kick that gave Tom Peters his big third run of remaking his evangelical self - the break it and rebuild it (before someone else breaks you first) kick. Peters advocated institutional pro-activity. As we all know institutions - especially public ones - are anything but - so in a reactionary sense, Tom (and me too) would approve of your French Republic corollary.

And Belgium gets to claim you next? Is that good fortune? Hope so! Have fun with the disruption in lifestyle (personal microcosm of your national thoughts?)

Well, moving from Paris to Belgium may play a part in the thinking here. All is flux, and all that. The peripatetic sees things differently? And curiously, no one in the pages has mentioned Tom Peters before. Perhaps this is a matter best thought through using organizational theory, or even Peters’ dumbed-down pop version of such theory.

But Rick, The News Guy in Atlanta, gets REALLY alarmed -

Yipes! I really disagree with you two on this one.

I really like the idea of us having the world's oldest constitution still in effect, and have always been proud that we didn't go the route of the French (who, don't get me wrong, I mostly admire otherwise), with this business of knowing you can always just scrap the old plan and come up with a new one. I think that would, especially in this country, open the system up to lots of very dangerous mischief, most likely supplied by the crazies who are pulling all the strings in Washington today and rubber-stamped by an uninformed electorate who already doesn't hold complex political theory in very high regard.

With whatever there may be wrong with our constitution today, I vote we keep improving on it, rather than risk what might happen if we trash the whole thing and start over.

Well, new Constitution Convention would be amusing. Or not.

And Dick in upstate New York adds, not without dark humor –

Joseph, I understand the idea that if you want an omelet you have to break some eggs. That said, I ain't real hot on bulldozing the henhouse. The theoretical improvement that you think might benefit my grandchildren (if I had any) isn't going to help me a whole lot, and I would just as soon not go through an "It Can't Happen Here" or "Handmaid's Tale" to get to Utopia.

Ah, but sometimes you have to take risks?

No, you don’t. We might get that theocracy, where gays – the new Jews? – end up in the concentration camps. And who knows what else. A state religion? It would not be the Unitarians.

Let the people – all of them - argue all this out? Randall Terry and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly on one side? On the other side? Bill Moyer? Michael Moore? We could get a civil war – a real one.

But, then again, it might be fun. These are indeed odd times.

Posted by Alan at 21:31 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Saturday, 30 April 2005 13:26 PDT home

Thursday, 2 September 2004

Topic: Making Use of History

Low-Rent Crystalnacht

As so it begins -

On November 10, 1938 the Nazi enthusiasts went on a spree of threats toward and vilification of certain undesirable people - and caused quite a bit of damage to their shops and homes throughout Germany. Historians named it "Crystalnacht," the "Night of the Shattered Glass."

Note this from the Centre Daily, the newspaper of State College, Pennsylvania, where Penn State has its main campus -

Posted on Thu, Sep. 02, 2004

Vandals strike county Democratic headquarters
Byline - Lara Brenckle

STATE COLLEGE - Centre County Democratic Headquarters was vandalized late Tuesday when someone smashed the thick, tempered glass in the building's storefront window, causing about $3,000 worth of damage.

According to State College police Cpl. Mark Argiro, witnesses in the 300 block of Calder Way heard the window break and saw a white Ford Tempo carrying three men leaving the area.

Investigators will review surveillance tapes taken by cameras posted on Beaver Avenue from McAllister Street to Hiester Street, in hopes that the white car seen leaving the area was caught on tape. If it was, police can attempt to identify the license plate, Argiro said.

Joanne Tosti-Vasey said she was working alone at 9:32 p.m. in the headquarters at 236 East Calder Way when she heard "a loud thud and a boom and (the glass) fell."

Tosti-Vasey, who was not injured, said she did not see anybody because a wall blocked her line of vision. ...

And the Associated Press reports this via the Grand Rapids Press -

Vandals smash window at Grand Rapids HQ of Kerry campaign
September 1, 2004, 2:20 PM

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) -- Someone tossed a cement chunk through a storefront window of the local John Kerry presidential campaign headquarters in an act of vandalism a Democratic official said appeared to be politically motivated.

"They could have gone through any number of storefronts, so I don't think it was an accident," said John Otterbacher, Kent County spokesman for the Democratic presidential ticket.

Local campaign official Jim Rinck said nothing was taken from inside the headquarters during the vandalism early Tuesday.

Kim Yob, chairwoman of the Kent County Republican Party, said she was sorry to hear of the vandalism but dismissed the possibility of any Republicans being involved.

"We're not yelling at Democrats, telling them we hate them," said Yob, who The Grand Rapids Press contacted at the Republican National Convention. "But out here in New York, these (protesters) are out of control. I'm walking down the street and some people were screaming, "I hate Republicans."'

Justification? Fair is fair?

This week we saw the current governor of California, a charismatic German-speaking Austrian muscleman movie star, speak at the Republican Convention in New York. He was a big hit - a strong leader who folks cheered, as he himself cheered on a leader who also should not be questioned. And he excoriated all the "girly-men" out there who doubt we always are right in all we do.

His enthusiasts decided to have some fun?

One thing leads to another.

There was Zell Miller's speech twenty-four hours after Shwarzenegger spoke.

William Saletan says this -

The election is becoming a referendum on democracy.

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn't, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election.

Not every country works this way. In some countries, the commander in chief builds a propaganda apparatus that equates him with the military and the nation. If you object that he's making bad decisions and disserving the national interest, you're accused of weakening the nation, undermining its security, sabotaging the commander in chief, and serving a foreign power--the very charges Miller leveled tonight against Bush's critics.

Are you prepared to become one of those countries?

I don't know. I have a brown shirt or two - but more rust-colored actually. They are nice shirts.

So Miller's enthusiasts decided to have some fun?

Maybe so.

Digby over at Hullabaloo says this -

It has been clear for quite some time to anyone who is paying attention that the modern Republican party is actively undermining the democratic process. Look at the Republican funded recall in California or the strong-arm redistricting all over the country, not to mention the more subtle forms of anti-democratic rule like bald-faced lying about government statistics and holding secret meetings and creating entirely new forms of executive privilege.

Yes, standing up before the nation and saying that speaking out against the president during a presidential campaign is putting our troops at risk is a very shocking charge. But, this is hardly the first time they've said that. I simply don't understand how people who are paid money to watch politics for a living have missed what seems to me to be an obvious development over more than a decade. Every election since 1992 has been dicier and dicier. With each cycle, they have gotten more and more aggressive in breaking the rules and challenging accepted norms. The only real question at this point is if they have been successful in rigging enough voting machines to swing this election if it's close enough. I'm hoping that they just haven't had the time to get it done because if they have there is absolutely no reason to believe they won't do it. They do not have any limits.

So yes, this election is a referendum on American democracy. At this point, they all are - and they have been for quite some time. I'm glad some members of the media are noticing. Maybe this time they won't be so willing to smugly tell us to "get over it" if things go wrong.

But, I doubt it. Until elections are actually cancelled (which we -- shockingly -- even discussed openly for a while) or journalists are jailed for sedition or some other heinous suspension of the constitution (for ordinary white people, mind you) is employed, the media will continue to support the slow erosion of our political system until it will be too late to get it back.

Wrong. The press isn't going to save us. Too many people long for the strongman who ignores all the rules to get things done - the bold man who will save the homeland, the fatherland. The press just reports the news.

Arnold won easily out here and is now talking about abolishing the state legislature, or making it, actually, part-time and, shall we say, honorary. A crude solution but didn't Mussolini at least get the trains to run on time? Sometimes, to get things done, you just have to act boldly and assume all the power - and not be one of those girly-men. One level up, the president famously says treaties and rules don't apply to us and we need no allies like before - the UK and Fiji will do fine - and folks love him for it. He will save us from the bad guys. He's no wimp. He may make some really bone-headed decisions, and cannot explain himself if he perhaps even knows what he means, but he gets things done. The women swoon. The men are emboldened to punish folks with questions.

And it follows that a few enthusiasts will prove they're not wimps and smash a few windows here and there. One thing leads to another.

And here in the Hollywood Hills I thought I just saw the Von Trapp family climbing out over the hills headed for Vermont.

Here we go again.

Posted by Alan at 18:52 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:16 PDT home

Wednesday, 25 August 2004

Topic: Making Use of History

History - The Liberation of Paris (and the rise of California)

Wednesday, August 25, 2004 looking back on August 25, 1944 - sixty years after Paris was liberated from the German occupiers....

Ric Erickson over at MetropoleParis has many details of what's up in the city on the anniversary. Check it out.

Ric additionally sends this along by email from the scene -

The entry of the French 2nd Armored Division was re-enacted today in front of the city hall of the 14th arrondissement. There were Parisians costumed in WWII French and US uniforms, and as civilians were dressed in 1944. There were scout motorcycles, jeeps, army trucks, a DUK, a half-track with four Brownings, plus some FFI rides, a firetruck and some old Renaults and Citroens.

There was a popular band on a flat-deck and a marching band on the city hall steps. Stage producer Jerome Savary, responsible for this evening's big dance show at the Bastille - and for organizing 1944-era dance lessons using the Hotel de Ville ballroom as a rehearsal hall - was on hand to say a few words mangled by a defective sound system. Schoolgirls sang a popular air of the times, and Parisians in their costumes danced, with flags fluttering.

Just as the rain started the motorcycles were fired up, to lead the ensemble out of the place and over to the Avenue Leclerc, to make the run northwards to the city center. The heavy rain had almost stopped by the time the historical parade reached Denfert-Rochereau, no more than 500 metres away. This place, named for a hero of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian conflict, was partially renamed for Col. Rol-Tanguy, leader of the FFI resistance fighters. His headquarters were located in the underground catacombs which have their entry in this place.

The parade stalled by accident or design at Denfert-Rochereau, enabling more Parisians to show off their recently acquired jitterbugging skills. Later the parade reached the Luxembourg, which was a scene of heavy fighting on this day 60 years ago. The parade eventually wound through a very crowded Quartier Latin, to the Pont Neuf.

There was a parallel parade, starting from the Place d'Italie. It represented the 4th US Army Division that also entered Paris in tandem with the French 2nd Armored Division. Originally, it was another unit of the French 2nd that entered Paris here, almost entirely manned by Spanish Republicans. The American division came into Paris more from the west in 1944.

Besides a popular 'bal' staged by the French Senat at the Luxembourg Place, there was a solemn ceremony of remembrance at the Hotel de Ville. According to today's papers there was to have been a modern military display of some sort in the Place de la Concorde.

The stage show at Bastille tonight is also supposed to be followed by a popular 'bal' there, but the weather isn't cooperating. Live TV coverage is supposed to begin just after midnight; perhaps as a recap of the day's festivities. Unlike the formal military parades on 14 July and 11 November, all Parisians were invited to take part in today's parades.

And Ric send these shots -

____

Additional comments on the day sixty years ago from this:

60 years of memory: Paris of myth, Paris of reality
Mary Blume, International Herald Tribune (Paris) Wednesday, August 25, 2004

... Analyzing the event is like taking apart a birthday cake. What does matter is the emotion Albert Camus described in the Resistance paper Combat: "This huge Paris, all dark and warm in the summer night, with a storm of bombers overhead and a storm of snipers in the streets, seems to us more brightly lighted than the City of Light the whole world used to envy. It is bursting with the fires of hope and suffering, it has the flame of lucid courage and the glow, not only of liberation but of tomorrow's liberty."

... The past, with its defeatist generals and complaisant Parliament who voted Marshal Henri-Philippe P?tain to power by a great majority, was unthinkable, the future unimaginable. "I calmed down and lived wholly in the present," Simone de Beauvoir wrote. The present meant seeking heat in the Caf? de Flore and cooking up her infamous turnip sauerkraut. "But previously the present had meant a happy proliferation of new schemes in which the future bulked large; reduced to itself alone, it crumbled away into dust. Not only time but space had contracted."

... If everyone has his or her own Paris, arguably the city is most important to Americans who, unlike older civilizations, came to it unlumbered by history, tradition or fancy lifestyles of their own. Even Ben Franklin took up flirting in Paris in order to be ? la mode; others studied science or political theory, wrote books or just loafed, moving eastward, as Malcolm Cowley wrote, into new prairies of the mind.

It cannot be claimed that Paris welcomes foreigners, distrusting the Other as it does, but in ignoring them it tolerates them; it is accommodating in its indifference.

"I have a feeling that there's a voice saying take it or leave it, kid," said Mavis Gallant, who has gladly taken it. "I have lived half my life in Paris," Gertrude Stein said. "Not the half that made me, but the half in which I made what I made."

One thing Americans liked from the start about Paris was that while they fully enjoyed its sensual pleasures they felt they had retained their native virtue. "We have not as much refinement, but more of everything that is good," a New Yorker wrote to his son in the mid-19th century.

This moral self-satisfaction persists. Parisians, for the most part, don't think a lot about high-minded ideas, these having been resolved by the heavy thinkers memorized in the lyc?e. Americans trumpet moral views and find them, especially to their cost today, hard to enact. Americans want to do the right thing, not realizing it can be plural. Parisians want to do things the right way; that is, with precision and style. This can require more discipline than many realize: being Parisian is not a free ticket to indulgence.

The Parisian is deeply superficial, the American superficially profound. This should balance out, but the French are more complicated than we are, as Henry James noted in a letter telling a friend not to be put off "by what I might call the superficial and external aspect of the superficial and external aspect of Paris."

New Yorkers are merely self-absorbed but Parisians are world-class narcissists. This is a city made for preening, and the endless public grandstanding, physical and intellectual, may shock Americans, but in our innermost hearts wouldn't we love to gaze at ourselves in the mirror with unabashed delight and let fall from our lips a well-timed and irresistible mot juste?

The differences are endless, the similarities often more than skin-deep. Maybe we all need a Paris. What Paris is, and not just for Americans, is wishful thinking come true, whatever the wish.

Sixty years ago, the wishes ranged from the most basic (more meat) to the most lofty (peace forever). Many agreed that the thing they had most missed was the freedom to speak. "Paris is fighting today so that France may speak up tomorrow," Camus said. Speaking up meant daring to hope out loud. "Peace," Camus said "will return to this disemboweled earth and to those hearts tortured by hope and memories.... Happiness, tenderness will have their moment." He was surely speaking to the dead as to the living.

You might want to click on the link and read the whole item.
_____

Other items of interest -

'You can't know how wonderful it was to finally battle in the daylight'
Jon Henley talks to Madeleine Riffaud, a Resistance fighter who helped save the city
Saturday August 21, 2004 in the Guardian (UK) -

August 15 1944 Paris police and metro workers begin all-out strike, followed the next day by postal workers

August 17 German-controlled state radio stops broadcasting; BBC reveals capture of Chartres and Orleans. Heated debate by resistance officials on when to call uprising. Raoul Nordling, Swedish consul, negotiates prisoner exchange that frees Madeleine Riffaud. Marshal Petain, head of Vichy government, told to leave France

August 18 Collaborationist press fails to appear. General mobilisation of Paris declared

August 19 First fighting of the uprising. Several government buildings taken. Police occupy their HQ. German commander Dietrich von Choltitz makes first contact with Resistance.

August 20 Street-fighting continues. US 4th Infantry crosses Seine. De Gaulle lands at Cherbourg. Paris city hall occupied peacefully.

August 21 Street fighting. General Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division send advance detachment to Paris. First Resistance newspapers on sale.

August 22 Street fighting reaches peak. Barricades all over the city. US general Omar Bradley gives Leclerc order to advance on Paris.

August 23 Von Choltitz receives order from Hitler to raze Paris to ground. Leclerc runs into resistance near Orly.

August 24 2nd Armoured fights on. Advance detachment, escorted by Resistance, reaches city hall in evening.

August 25 Von Choltitz signs formal act of surrender at Paris police HQ in afternoon. De Gaulle appears at city hall.

August 26 A million people crowd Champs-Elys?es for De Gaulle's victory parade.

August 31 Seat of provisional French government transferred to Paris.

From l'Agence France-Presse (AFP) by way of The Tocqueville Connection an interesting detail here -

For the French, the liberation of Paris stands as a stirringly patriotic moment. Unlike the D-Day and Provence landings, which were led by US and British forces, the first Allied forces the Parisians saw in the streets were their own countrymen, followed by the Americans.

Therese Henry, 74, told AFP of her experience that day: "On the 25th and in the days following, the Americans gave us chocolate bars with hazelnuts and almonds in them. I never again tasted chocolate that good."

De Gaulle, the designated leader of the free French forces, marched in victory along the famed Champs-Elysees the day after Paris's liberation, on August 26, and attended a mass in the Notre-Dame cathedral to give thanks for the city's liberation.

On Thursday, Chirac -- who sees himself as de Gaulle's political heir -- will attend a mass at Notre-Dame, following in his predecessor's footsteps.

And this below is good - and contains these lines - Nick rolled his eyes when I described to him how I had held forth to Sartre. "Him big cheese in some circles," he commented.

Paris: 1946
Paula Fox - Paris Review - Summer, 2004 - Issue 170 (with link to and interview with the author)

But Le Nouvel Observateur (Semaine du jeudi 19 ao?t 2004 - n?2076) at the kiosks all over Paris this week points to the future. The past is Paris. The future is out here in California, the home of Just Above Sunset.

Here are some of the items -

Californie : Voyage au pays du future

300 km par jour pour travailler ? Los Angeles
Des champignons dans le d?sert
Pour ?chapper ? la saturation immobili?re de L. A., les nouveaux urbains font pousser des villes au milieu de nulle part
(Yeah, folks do commute from Apple Valley to work in Los Angeles - day in and day out.)

Des puces et des hommes
Plong?e dans la soci?t? de demain
C'est l'endroit le plus high-tech de la plan?te mais les machines ? laver y ont parfois vingt ans de retard. Et si ce mariage du pass? et de l'avenir ?tait une des cl?s du g?nie californien?

Aime ton chien comme toi-m?me
Ici, on peut confier ses poissons rouges ? une clinique de remise en forme et faire cloner son chat. Ici, on entend instituer le droit au bonheur des animaux
(To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "They shant clone Harriet.")

Retour aux racines
Dans l'Etat le plus riche des Etats-Unis, la derni?re mode est ? l'asc?se, ? la m?ditation, ? la protection de la plan?teet aux plaisirs simples et bruts de la vie de pionnier
(Yes, there is a Zen ashram up in the Hollywood Hills not far from here.)

La ru?e vers l'eau
N?cessit? ou g?chis, la Californie a puis? plus que sa part dans le fleuve Colorado et les lacs environnants. Devra-t-elle se rationner?
(Always a problem here, as the city was built in a desert.)

Note also Myl?ne Farmer's breathy pop ditty has these words -

A?roport, a?rogare
Mais pour tout l'or m'en aller
C'est le blues, le coup de cafard
Le check out assur?
Vienne la nuit et sonne l'heure
Et moi je meurs
Entre apathie et pesanteur
O? je demeure
Changer d'optique, prendre l'exit
Et m'envoyer en Am?rique
Sex appeal, c'est Sunset
C'est Marlboro qui me sourit
Mon amour, mon moi, je
Sais qu'il existe
La chaleur de l'abandon
C'est comme une symphonie

C'est sexy le ciel de Californie
Sous ma peau j'ai L.A. en overdose ...

[You can download this in MP3 format here.]

This song from the album Anamorphos?e (1995) did well in France and French-speaking Canada (saw the music video several times when I was living in Canada and it looked as if it actually had been filmed in the courtyard of the apartment building where I live, down by the pool). The album was recorded at the old A&M Studios six blocks east of here, on La Brea, one block south of Sunset Boulevard. The French love California?

Oh yes, Le Nouvel Observateur has the usual political item.

La n?buleuse anti-Bush

Pour battre le pr?sident sortant, ils organisent des concerts, l?vent des millions de dollars et alertent des milliers d'activistes par internet. Ils ont dop? la campagne de John Kerry

Bruce Springsteen, REM, Jackson Browne, James Taylor en tourn?e pour MoveOn. Un joli coup de plus pour la nouvelle star de la campagne pr?sidentielle am?ricaine! MoveOn? Certainement pas un groupe de rock, encore moins un parti, et ? peine une organisation: avec seulement quatre permanents, mieux vaudrait parler d'un r?seau. C'est pourtant cette n?buleuse de 2 millions de membres qui a convaincu le Boss et ses potes rockers de se lancer dans une s?rie de concerts pour un ?Vote for change?. Les concerts anti-Bush, annonce Eli Pariser, le directeur de MoveOn, constitueront ?la sonnette d'alarme pour l'?lection la plus importante de notre vie?...
MoveOn et consorts sont-ils en train de r?inventer le Parti d?mocrate et la politique am?ricaine en g?n?ral? Trop t?t pour le dire, mais le mouvement a largement d?pass? le stade de l'?piph?nom?ne. Quand Howard Dean s'est pris une racl?e lors des primaires, d?but 2004, on avait beaucoup rican? sur cette n?buleuse internet qui le soutenait. Cette frange d'?lecteurs plus jeunes et plus ? gauche que l'ensemble de la population n'avait pas pes? lourd devant la volont? g?n?rale de d?signer un candidat centriste cr?dible face ? Bush. Mais John Kerry s'est empress? d'emprunter ? la campagne Dean son savoir-faire pour la lev?e de fonds par internet. MoveOn, ACT (America Coming Together) et une n?buleuse de ?comit?s d'action politique? ou de ?groupes de pression? ont pris une importance chaque jour plus grande dans cette campagne.

A l'exception des partisans de Ralph Nader, toute la gauche est aujourd'hui rang?e sous la banni?re ABB (Anybody But Bush - n'importe qui plut?t que Bush). ...

You get the idea.

But back to the past - Wednesday's French national dailies. -

Posted by Alan at 11:45 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 25 August 2004 17:31 PDT home

Wednesday, 4 August 2004

Topic: Making Use of History

History: It's always the French, isn't it?
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

William J. Watkins, Jr., is an attorney practicing in Greenville, South Carolina, and we see, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and the author of the recently released Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and their Legacy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

In the August 2, 2004 issue of The Independent Institute he offers this.

The Revolution of 1800 and the USA PATRIOT Act

The argument is straightforward. There are a whole lot of similarities between Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 - and he runs them down. His main point seems to be that when people really found out what the Alien and Sedition Acts said, they voted in such a way as to make the go away. Poof. Gone. He says we cannot do that with this new Patriot Act. Both Bush and Kerry support it, just to greater and lesser degrees. We don't have that choice. He doesn't like that at all.

Be that as it may, his reminding us of certain details is pretty cool, like here on the 1798 direct parallels with the 2001 Patriot Act -

In the summer of 1798, the United States Congress passed and President John Adams signed similar legislation. At base, the Alien and Sedition Acts prohibited criticism of the federal government and gave President Adams the power to deport any alien he viewed as suspicious. Americans found guilty of sedition faced prison terms of up to five years and hefty fines. In certain circumstances, aliens remaining in the United States could be imprisoned "so long as, in the opinion of the President, the public safety may require."

Yeah, yeah. History is a cycle and we've come to the same place again. History does repeat itself and so forth and so on.

But the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were bad - everyone knows that. They were a threat to everything we stand for. They made most of our basic freedoms - of speech, of assembly and of the press - just plain null and void. A terrible idea.

Now? Everything changed since 9/11 of course. John Adams didn't have to face Islamic radical fanatics with weapons of mass destruction, provided by a sly but brutal madman and his two awful sons in Iraq, and a madman who was sitting on the second largest reserve of oil in the world - a critical resource the importance of which John Adams couldn't even begin to understand. Different times, now. We have to do this.

Watkins also points out that the Bush administration unsuccessfully argued to the Supreme Court that it could detain American citizens and foreign nationals on US soil indefinitely and without access to legal counsel - "all when the writ of habeas corpus has not even been suspended." And he notes that even John Adams only claimed such a power over aliens, not citizens.

Different times, now. We have to do this.

But what was it John Adams and his crew so afraid of back then? The French of course -

... In the 1790s, a number of Americans feared the democratic excesses of the French Revolution would be exported to the United States. They believed that French agents were plotting the destruction of the Constitution and the overthrow of the Adams administration. Rumors abounded in Philadelphia that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison planned to assist a French invasion force that was sailing across the Atlantic. Some expected a guillotine would be set up to deal with patriotic Americans. In this environment, Adams and the Federalists pushed for legislation that would secure the home front in the face of invasion and that would also, they hoped, secure Federalist political hegemony.

Why are the French always the bad guys? Must be the cheese or something.

Well, now the French are only secondary bad guys. And Churchill and his British buddies hadn't invented Iraq yet, hadn't carved it out of the rotting Ottoman Empire and found Hashemite tools to become fake, then real kings, then be overthrown by ambitious generals and wild-eyed clerics. That wouldn't come for more than a hundred years. The French had to suffice for Adams and the Federalists.

Watkins notes that "fearing revolutionary France," most Americans at first supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. At first, but Jefferson became a pain in the ass. He spoke up. And James Madison joined him.

In Thomas Jefferson's words, the people were "made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves."

... To combat the Acts, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. In these Resolutions, Madison and Jefferson accused Congress of exceeding its powers and declared the Alien and Sedition Acts void. Times were so tense that Madison and Jefferson hid their authorship because they feared prosecutions under the dreaded Sedition Act. The Acts were seen as such a danger to liberty that there was also some discussion of resisting the measures by force and secession.

Folks got up a head of steam. We got the "Revolution of 1800." Jefferson's guys - the Republicans (ha!) won a wide majority in the House of Representatives. Jefferson was elected to the presidency. And what did he do? He suspended all pending prosecutions under the Sedition Act and pardoned those previously convicted of being uppity and critical of those in power.

But this was done by voting for a new crew.

Watkins notes that Jefferson would later boast how this revolution was brought about not by the sword, "but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people."

This is unlikely to happen now. Kerry did vote in favor of the Patriot Act and, in fact, he authored some of its provisions. Watkins listened to the very same Kerry speech from Boston we all heard - keep the powers in place and trust Kerry with these powers that Kerry admits have been abused. The problem is Ashcroft. And Bush. Not the Patriot Act.

Watkins concludes the problem is this very legislation, that Kerry has it wrong, and we're screwed -

The ballot box is a powerful weapon in the people's hands when they have real choices. With the franchise the people can defend their liberties and reform the government. To paraphrase Jefferson, they can effect a bloodless revolution. However, when both parties offer the people candidates with indistinguishable views on issues relating to fundamental liberties, the franchise is an impotent weapon. And if democracy so falters, the people are left with few attractive options in defense of their freedoms.

Options?

1. A revolution - an actual one - and one that doesn't have anything to do with ballots and voting. This would be to restore democracy, or establish one if you will. That's not going to happen. There are a whole lot of folks who like things just as they are, for good reason, and don't mind the Patriot Act or anything like it. That's probably most folks. The freedoms they lose are not something they miss. Who cares? Those freedoms don't pay the bills or get you a good life-partner or help you lose weight or any of that day-to-day stuff. Join the revolution? Why?

2. Leave. Find a place where people care about such things. France? Mon dieu ! l'Horreur ! Ne pensez pas de telles pens?es !

Posted by Alan at 19:36 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 4 August 2004 19:48 PDT home

Thursday, 10 June 2004

Topic: Making Use of History

Ronald Reagan is dead. So is Emma Goldman.

Reagan, like Franco, is still dead - not one of my heroes, a little bit of a dim bulb, but pleasant enough. He had five thousand times the intellectual horsepower of the younger Bush, and not much of the inherent mean-spiritedness of the younger Bush. Everyone said he was warm quite good-hearted. But all in all a dangerous man.

On the other hand I saw my own parents slowly fall to Alzheimer's and it wasn't pretty. My memories of all those days, each and every one of those days, are far too precise to feel any glee at this at all.

I didn't care for the man, or his politics. But no one should die that way.

The assessments of the man fill the week. A lot of praise, and also more that a few critical comments on what he actually did and didn't do.

Just after the announcement of his death I received a comment from The News Guy in Atlanta (Rick Brown) -

So the guy hasn't been dead two hours and already I'm getting tired of people talking about him - especially the part (mostly from Novak) about his having ended the cold war. I'm still of the school that says he didn't see it coming, didn't know it when it arrived, and afterward, took credit for it, much like the proverbial rooster taking credit for the dawn.

And suddenly I also feel like the Barbra Streisand character in "The Way We Were" who, on hearing all these friends of her husband rejoicing at FDR's death, screamed something like "For God's sake, have you no shame? The man is dead!" Sorry.

But now that he's "passed," as they say here in the south, and after all these years as an untouchable invalid, are we allowed to criticize him yet? No? Okay, can we at least start filing the paper to rename that airport in Washington?

Suggestions for the new name for Reagan International Airport?

Bill Frist, Republican leader of the senate, wants to rename the Pentagon after Reagan. Others suggest his face replace FDR on the dime, or that we have his face on the twenty dollar bill, or the ten. Poor Alexander Hamilton. Poor Andrew Jackson. Some suggest his face on the fifty-cent piece, replacing JFK. Others suggest he be the fifth face on Mount Rushmore.

There is talk of a monument on the Mall in DC - but Reagan himself signed the bill that made that impossible until the person to be honored had been dead at least twenty-five years. Darn. No one has suggested just renaming the Washington Monument, the big white obelisk, for Reagan. But that will probably come.

This is the man who strongly opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the man who decided the Apartheid rule in South Africa was fine, who laughed at the AIDS problem when he wasn't ignoring it... the list goes on and on.

Christopher Hitchens has his way of putting it -

Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war. Reagan allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling." Reagan sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck. Reagan then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too.

Reagan then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. ...

And that's not to mention his record in California.

But all of this is called mean-spirited this week. Maybe it is.

Perhaps it all should be left until next week.

Anything critical said this week is called crassly political at best, and really, at bottom, unpatriotic.

We'll we should be used to this. Agree with Bush and his neoconservative handlers and you'll be called brilliant. Raise an issue and you'll be called an appeaser of terrorists, in league with traitors, if not one yourself.

So next week I will take up a cause someone mentioned to me - getting Reagan's picture on every food stamp printed for the poor.

Well, long before David Frum put the words "Axis of Evil" into George Bush's defining speech, Reagan spoke often about the Evil Empire we had to fight. The sacred word this week is Reagan brought back pride in America and made us patriotic once more. No matter what mistakes he might have made, he did that.

In the meantime, think about what patriotism is.

I found this at a site called Body and Soul and it seems somehow appropriate to the week. The death of Reagan the ceremonies and the funeral swamped all else, or so it seemed.

Here you will find the text from Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. Pages 133-150. Selected excerpts -

PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivet?, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

Gustave Herv?, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate.

Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with bloodcurdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it--four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the people. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves?

... But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the historic wisdom of Frederick the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire, who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses."

That patriotism is rather a costly institution ...

... The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their "defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

The usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that they can gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."

It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. ...

... The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the internal enemy that the Powers of various countries are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader.

The powers that have for centuries been engaged in enslaving the masses have made a thorough study of their psychology. They know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And the more gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it will appeal to the million-headed child.

An army and navy represents the people's toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, [remember this was written in 1911] that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand. To entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and wine a few superior officers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.

Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory for the child."

A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is to be poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood?

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism.

Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,--that poor, deluded victim of superstition and ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of his nation,--what has patriotism in store for him? A life of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.

... Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, "Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."

Well, Emma Goldman isn't one someone should cite, I suppose.

She was a radical and an anarchist. Heck, finally 1936 she committed herself to the support of the anarchists and their fight against fascism and Stalinism - that Civil War in Spain. Against Franco, who wasn't dead then. She died in 1940. This is all just ancient history.

But she was onto something.

Posted by Alan at 21:55 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Thursday, 10 June 2004 22:14 PDT home

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