Beware the Ides of March

As has been noted:

Caesar. Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

Caesar. What man is that?

Brutus. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March. 

Caesar. Set him before me; let me see his face.

Cassius. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

Caesar. What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

Caesar. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

 

Any Interesting Theory

 The NY Times had an interesting piece on Germany's view of WW II and VE Day. They note:

Over recent decades, it has become an ever more common convention in Germany to commemorate May 8 as a day of “liberation.” Germany, the thinking goes, was saved from the evils of Nazism, and therefore Germans, too, ought to rejoice. There have been growing calls — particularly from leftist parties — to make May 8 a holiday. Last year, on the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, the city of Berlin observed a one-time public holiday, The Day of Liberation From National Socialism and the End of the Second World War. A message in English, Russian and French, the languages of the occupation forces, was projected on the Brandenburg Gate: “Thank You.”

 The argument is that the Allies liberated the Germans from the Nazis, some alien force that had taken over the country.

Now I have had the advantage of living in German occupied lands after WW II. So some observations are worth noting.

1. I had a German subsidiary located in Munich. My first visit with my new partners first involved sausage and beer. I do not drink bee so for me sausage and wine, not a great match. After dinner, and some beer, they took me on a tour of old Munich, mostly rebuilt after the War. They wanted to show me every place Adolph was in. Thus I feel it is reasonable that these Germans were still connected to the "occupiers". 

2. I lived in Prague. One of my employees thought speaking Russian would help. It did not. So he switched to German...it was worse. I kept to English, they liked me.

3. I also had partners in Moscow. For anyone coming from the airport to the city see the still damaged German tanks along the road. A stark reminder. The best one was visiting Deutsche Telekom. The Russian had them get an office at the outskirts of Moscow across from a park with some demolished German tanks. When I asked the DT manager why he was so far out of town he replied looking at the tanks, "The Russians let us cross the street."

4. On a brief sojourn from my Athens office I went to Crete. Speaking a bit of Greek we arrived just after Oki Day, when the Greeks rebelled. A large group of German tourists were leaving. My Greek hoteliers looked at me as we exchanged my Greek English phrases and they stated their general dislike of the parting guests.

Thus for those who experienced the German destruction of Europe, it was not Nazi liberation but German defeat. The lesson; don't try this again!

Bertrand Russell on Power

This may be an interesting observation:

In every democracy, individuals and organisations which are intended to have only certain well-defined executive functions are likely, if unchecked, to acquire a very undesirable independent power. This is especially true of the police. The evils resulting from an insufficiently supervised police force are very forcibly set forth, as regards the United States, in Our Lawless Police, by Ernest Jerome Hopkins. The gist of the matter is that a policeman is promoted for action leading to the conviction of a criminal, that the Courts accept confession as evidence of guilt, and that, in consequence, it is to the interest of individual officers to torture arrested persons until they confess. This evil exists in all countries in a greater or less degree. In India it is rampant. The desire to obtain a confession was the basis of the tortures of the Inquisition. In Old China, torture of suspected persons was habitual, because a humanitarian Emperor has decreed that no man should be condemned except on his own confession. For the taming of the power of the police, one essential is that a confession shall never, in any circumstances, be accepted as evidence. This reform, however, though necessary, is by no means sufficient. The police system of all countries is based upon the assumption that the collection of evidence against a suspected criminal is a matter of public interest but that the collection of evidence in his favour is his private concern. It is often said to be more important that the innocent should be acquitted than that the guilty should be condemned, but everywhere it is the duty of the police to seek evidence of guilt, not of innocence. Suppose you are unjustly accused of murder, and there is a good prima facie case against you. The whole of the resources of the State are set in motion to seek out possible witnesses against you, and the ablest lawyers are employed by the State to create prejudice against you in the minds of the jury. You, meanwhile, must spend your private fortune collecting evidence of your innocence, with no public organisation to help you. If you plead poverty, you will be allotted Counsel, but probably not so able a man as the public prosecutor. If you succeed in securing an acquittal, you can only escape bankruptcy by means of the cinemas and the Sunday Press. But it is only too likely that you will be unjustly convicted. If law-abiding citizens are to be protected against unjust persecution by the police, there must be two police forces and two Scotland Yards, one designed, as at present, to prove guilt, the other to prove innocence; and in addition to the public prosecutor there must be a public defender, of equal legal eminence. This is obvious as soon as it is admitted that the acquittal of the innocent is no less a public interest than the condemnation of the guilty. The defending police force should, moreover, become the prosecuting police force where one class of crimes is concerned, namely crimes committed by the prosecuting police in the execution of their ‘duty’. By this means, but by no other (so far as I can see), the present oppressive power of the police could be mitigated.

See Russell, Bertrand (2004-02-24). Power: Volume 89 (Routledge Classics) (pp. 232-233). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Microagression?

The following is from a biography of Henry Cabot Lodge, written by William Lawrence, the Bishop of Massachusetts in 1925. This is an interesting composition of micro if not nano bias in that old colony then, and perhaps it still lingers. It is truly worth the read, for it tells how people thought then and not what biographers try to make us think today. 

In recalling and reading the story of these years, we are compelled to note the contrasts and antagonisms in the character, point of view, and action of President Wilson and Senator Lodge. It is commonly said that they were personally and persistently antagonistic to each other; that their words and actions were often guided by jealousy, ambition, or hate. Such an estimate is, I believe, unworthy of either man, standing as they did in positions of high responsibility for their country. We must look farther afield for our diagnosis of these apparent antipathies, back a hundred, even thousands of years, into race temperament and national associations. Henry Cabot Lodge was of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, with a dash of Norman blood through the Cabots. His forbears had been in this country, in Massachusetts, for from over one hundred to over two hundred and fifty years. They were citizens in the English Colony days; active in the Revolution; familiar with the beginnings and upbuilding of the Nation. They lived, breathed, and gloried in the national traditions. They had the characteristics of the English: a sense of duty and high ideals tempered in practical action by common- sense. They mingled their judgments with those of others and supported the common result. They valued clear and exact statement, knowing that vagueness is the mother of misunderstandings and controversy. As public servants their personal opinions were subject to the limitations of the duties of their office. Senator Lodge was the embodiment of Anglo-Saxon character. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was, on the Wilson side, Irish — Scotch-Irish; on the Woodrow side, Scotch: he was thus predominantly if not wholly Celt. Both peoples lived for centuries in the North apart from the larger movements of history. In the Irish blood was the light vein of humor, the idealism, and imagination which often makes men unpractical and which emphasizes the personal element in all transactions.In the Scotch was the dour temperament born of that dour clime. Theirs was an isolate and at times an uncanny and melancholy temper. No forbear of Woodrow Wilson was in this country until after the Revolution was over, Washington dead, and the Nation fully established. None of them had lived in the traditions of English freedom or the forming years of this country.They were all Presbyterians, Calvinists: men and women who, when they were convinced of their mission, believed them-selves called of God; and no force of man or devil could turn them. Woodrow Wilson’s father, his mother’s father, and his wife’s father were Presbyterian ministers. They were preachers, prophets, idealists: some of them had great power of expression and of moving people to faith in the Bible as they understood it. They dealt in noble thoughts and eloquent phrases which do not usually accompany exactness of expression and definite language. A few were educators and writers. President Wilson was the embodiment of the Celtic character. Has history ever recorded an instance when the Anglo-Saxon, the true Englishman, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian have, as the Psalmist sings, ‘Taken sweet counsel together, or have walked, even in the House of God, as friends’? We can now grasp something of the reason, of the tragedy, and of the humor.

Jefferson, Democrats, and 125 Years Ago

I have the tendency of rummaging through old book stores. I picked up a biography of Jefferson written at the end of the 19th century. I thought it would be worth the while to share the Preface. This is from Life Of  Thomas Jefferson. Third President Of The United States, by James Parton, Houghton, Mifflin And Company. (Boston, 1892)

Nor ought we to be impatient with those who assert that both America and Jefferson were wrong, since we cannot yet claim for either a final and indubitable triumph. In France the politics with which he was in the warmest sympathy resulted in organized massacre and fell Bonaparte; and the party which he led in the United States issued, at the South, in armed rebellion, and, in some portions of the North, in the Rule of the Thief. We must face these facts, and understand their meaning. They no more prove that Jefferson and Madison, Lafayette and Paine, were wrong, than the Inquisition and the religious wars prove that the maxims of Jesus are false. They are only illustrations of the familiar fact, that the progress of truth and justice is slow and very difficult. They show that no country is ripe for equal rights until a majority of its inhabitants are so far sharers in its better civilization, that their votes can be obtained by arguments addressed to the understanding.

We must now accept it as an axiom, that universal suffrage, where one-third of the voters cannot read the language of the country they inhabit, tends to place the scoundrel class at the summit of affairs. We see that it has done so in France, in the Southern States, in New York, and in Philadelphia.

But such virtue is there in the Jeffersonian methods, that, even in those places, we find them our best resource. In New York, a mass meeting and its Committee of Seventy, in two years, suppressed the worst of the public stealing. In the South, the freedman rages for the spelling-book. In Pennsylvania, the reign of the scoundrel draws to an end ; and it is everywhere evident, that nothing is farther from the intention of the American people than to submit to lawless or lawful spoliation.

It is even possible that the party which Jefferson founded — such vitality did he breathe into it—may again, instructed by defeat and purified in the furnace of affliction, deliver the country from the evils which perplex and threaten it, employing the only expedient that will ever long succeed in a free country, the expedient of being right. Jefferson’s principles will do this, if his party does not. A government simple, inexpensive, and strong, that shall protect all rights, including those of posterity, and let all interests protect themselves, assuming no functions except those which the Constitution distinctly assigns it, — these are the principles which Jefferson restored in 1801, and to which the future of the country can be safely trusted.

Parton was well respected in his time but just a reminder, the voters he reminds his reader about were the Irish, Italians, African Americans, and many others often detested by what he refers to as Democrats, the followers of Jefferson. History is all too often defined by the writers and popularizer.

Pearl Harbor: Then and Now

Above is my father's ship, USS Albert W Grant, in Manus for repairs, after the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. This was the beginning of the end for Japan. Its fleet destroyed but Okinawa was still ahead, thousands of Japanese aircraft dive bombing in suicide manner the ships in the landing force. Some felt that Japan was on the brink of surrender, I am assured that none at Okinawa thought the slightest as such.

But on December 7th in 1941 the US was attacked and we went to War, total and devastating war. Millions died as a result of the actions of Japan. But Japan attacked military sites. Our recent "war" was precipitated by an even more deadlier attack on civilians while the only defense were unarmed National Guard Fighters from several hundreds of miles distant.

Now we have been attacked again, and again, and again, most recently in California. The response is tepid at best. Perhaps we need better history lessons.