I just love it when CNN posts an utterly unanswerable survey question:
If I say yes, it will make me less likely to vote Republican, then I’d be lying, because my intention of voting for Republicans was zero to begin with. But if I answer no, it won’t make me less likely to vote Republican, then that might be construed to mean I might be voting for Republicans, or that the Foley meltdown doesn’t matter to me, which is both wrong and totally misleading.
[NOTE to readers of Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions: I haven’t forgotten or not read the first two chapters. I’ve been overwhelmed with meat-world responsibilities. Tomorrow, I’ll post on Chaps 1 and 2.]
So Tony Snow referred to the Foley matter as “some naughty emails” this morning and got slapped by the press corps. His response warmed me to the depth of my soul. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time:
“You’re right. That may sound a little bit too glib – I think I’ve used the words… horrifying, appalling, disturbing. “Fill in the blanks,” he added. “It’s absolutely inappropriate.”
Well I’m sorry, but that just won’t do. Republicans had better get out their Thesauruses because we are now deep into sex scandal disclaimer territory. They are going to have to arm themselves with all the words and they are going to have to use them lest their political opponents be allowed to paint them as soft on covering up underage cyber-stalking by middle aged congressmen. These are the rules they made up — they’d better get with with the program.
Here are a few to start with: deplorable, reprehensible, unforgiveable, intolerable, contemptible… you get the drift. There’s plenty more where that came from, but the rules dictate that they use all of those words to describe Foley and the irresponsible House leadership every single time they speak of the matter — and before they even utter a peep of defense.
They can look over any given transcript of the Chris Matthews show during the Lewinsky scandal and see how the Democrats who were forced to do this handled the situation. They were required to make this disclaimer, in ever more florid terms as the scandal unfolded, each time they appeared on television. That’s how it works. No “fill in the blanks” allowed.
They will also find in those transcripts the approved Republican talking points of the period which repeatedly claimed how repulsive and nauseating it was for a middle aged man to become involved with a 22 year old who worked in his office. That might give them some clues about what’s about to happen to them. This time, of course, you have the specter of multiple 16 year old victims, the perpetrator being a closeted, gay Catholic Republican and the House leadership pretty much giving the guy a thumbs up and an “attaboy” — so there’s a lot more for their opponents to work with.
In fact, if you feel like getting involved in this yourself, you can follow Josh Marshall’s advice and give your Republican congressperson a call today and see whether he or she has lost confidence in Denny Hastert and the GOP leadership. (Here’s a web site with all the phone numbers.) You might want to also ask if he or she finds their behavior in this matter deplorable, contemptible, unforgiveable and reprehensible.
I certainly do. In fact, words can’t express just how abominable and despicable I think they are.
“If I catch anyone who leaks in my government,” Bush tells Chrétien in March, 2002, “I would like to string them up by the thumbs — the same way we do with prisoners in Guantanamo.”
In my last post, commenter Mitch pointed to something I hadn’t noticed about Hillary Clinton, that she had given a dynamic speech on the senate floor invoking George Washington in the days following Britain’s 1776 invasion of New York City. Washington had issued orders to his army that in dealing with captives they were not to follow the British example of prisoner abuse:
“Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”
Hillary then concluded:
Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation’s values even as we were struggling as a nation and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new nation. Above all, we are bound by our values…
OK – some credit is due to Hillary, but with regard to the so called American values, I recall a distinction issued by Riggsveda back in ’04:
A Suggestion For Re-Framing Enough with “values”! The word is meaningless. The right has so worn out this word that it has become almost synonymous with hypocrisy, and we, the left, should not be scrambling to latch onto it in some misguided effort to convince the world that we have them, too. Live your morals, don’t waste your breath preaching about them. The real word we should be using, and using at every opportunity, is “honor”. It goes beyond just implying that one has ethics. It means one lives by them.
Honor.
I wrote the following (slightly modified) post in response to Riggsveda’s suggestion. Digby linked to it at the time.
Death Over Dishonor There actually was a culture of honor back in 1776, as can be evidenced by an extraordinary case surrounding the actions of George Washington. September of that year was a time of extreme anxiety for him, a time when he contemplated his own death as a means of avoiding dishonor. You won’t read about this in the biographies or history books, contemporary or otherwise. But if you read his letters, you will see it’s true, that when he foresaw the American cause collapsing, his legacy flashed before his eyes and he contemplated dying, and maybe even attempted to bring it on.
Anticipating a British landing in New York, Washington’s army had built fortifications in strategic places around the city. The aristocrats in the British parliament had won the day and His Majesty’s army was about to launch an 18th century version of shock and awe. On the fourteenth of September, Washington rode his stallion to inspect the various defensive works around the island. Joshua Babcock, a soldier from Rhode Island captured this real image in his journal:
Just after dinner, three frigates and a forty gun ship sailed up the East River under a gentle breeze and kept up an incessant fire, as if they meant to attack the city. Three men, idle spectators, had the misfortune of being killed by one cannonball. One shot struck within six foot of General Washington as he was on horseback riding into the fort.
The next morning hell on earth erupted from five British warships that had anchored in the East River, just off Manhattan at Kip’s Bay, three miles north of the city. A British soldier on one of the ships, The Orpheus, told the story:
It is hardly possible to conceive what a tremendous fire was kept up by those five ships. In the Orpheus alone we fired away five thousand, three hundred and seventy-six pounds of powder in only fifty-nine minutes.
An American officer, Colonel Douglas, wrote about it to his wife: “They very suddenly began as heavy a cannonade than ever came from as many ships, as they had nothing but to fire on us at their pleasure.”
So loud was the pounding that Washington heard it seven miles away at headquarters on Harlem Heights. He later described the scene in a letter to Congress. Washington wrote:
In the morning they began their operations. Three ships of war came up the North River as high as Bloomingdale, and about eleven o’clock those in the East River began a most severe and heavy cannonade to scour the grounds and cover the landing of their troops between Turtle Bay and the City, where breast works had been thrown up to oppose them. As soon as I heard the firing, I rode with all possible dispatch toward the place of landing.
Stop and think about this. Washington hears the sound of New York under attack, so he mounts his horse to ride to the scene. In 2001, on the other hand, George W. Bush hears word that New York is under attack and he reads My Pet Goat for seven minutes, and then, after gathering his thoughts, jumps on Air Force One to fly at warp speed in the opposite direction, as far away from New York as he can get. His first impulse was to run.
The Demons Of Fear And Disorder In the East River, the British ships had formed a cover for the landing troops, and eyewitness accounts mentioned the heavy smoke hanging over the water. While the firing continued from the ships, eighty-four transport boats carried five thousand British troops to shore where the enemy soldiers walked onto Manhattan unopposed. The American militia, whose only mission was to hinder the British progress coming onto the island, instead abandoned their positions and took to flight. British General William Howe who was in charge of the operation described his success in a report to London:
The fire of the shipping being so well directed and so incessant, the enemy could not remain in their works, and the descent was made without the least opposition.
One American wrote that the cannonade “seemed to infuse a panic through the whole of our troops.” Another described an “incessant fire on our lines” and grapeshot “so hot” that the militia were compelled to retreat. Colonel Douglas again in writing to his wife:
Their boats got under cover of the smoke of the shipping and then struck to the left of my lines in order to cut me off from a retreat. My left wing gave way, which was formed of the militia. I lay myself on the right wing waiting for the boats until Captain Prentice came to me and told me if I meant to save myself to leave the lines, for that was the orders on the left, and that they had left the lines. I then told my men to make the best of their way as I found I had but about ten left with me. They soon moved out and I then made the best of my way out. We then had a mile to retreat through as hot a fire as could well be made, but they mostly overshot us. The brigade was then in such a scattered posture that I could not collect them and I found the whole army on a retreat. The regulars came up in the rear and gave me several platoons at a time when I had none of my men with me. I was so beat that they would have had me a prisoner had not I found an officer that was obliged to leave his horse because he could not get him over a fence.
Private Martin recalled that his company “kept the lines until they were almost upon us, when our officers, seeing we could make no resistance, and that we must soon be exposed to the rake of their guns, gave the order to leave the lines.” He then described the fleeing militia: “In retreating we had to cross a level clear spot of ground, forty or fifty rods [about 750 feet], exposed to the whole of the enemy’s fire.” Martin next noticed a group of American soldiers “on the main road leading to Kings Bridge. They were fired upon by a party of British from a cornfield, and all was immediately in confusion again. I believe the enemy’s party was small; but our people were all militia, and the demons of fear and disorder seemed to take possession of all and everything that day. When I came to the spot where the militia was fired upon, the ground was literally covered with arms, knapsacks, staves, coats, hats, and old oil flasks.”
I suspect it was the demons of fear and disorder that caused Bush to run from the attack on the World Trade Center in September of 2001. He was probably thinking, “What if they come after me?”
He Sought Death Rather Than Life In a letter to Congress, Washington described the chaos as he reached Kip’s Bay:
To my great surprise and mortification, I found the troops that had been posted in the lines retreating, flying in every direction and in the greatest confusion, notwithstanding the exertions of their Generals to form them. I used every means in my power to rally and get them into some order but my attempts were fruitless and ineffectual.
Testimony from a later court martial revealed a few more details. A Brigadier General “saw Generals Washington, Putnam, and Mifflin at the top of the hill eastward, and rode up to them.” Washington directed him “to keep his brigade in order and march on into the cross road.” Washington next ordered the men to “take to the walls” directing them to cover. “Immediately from the front to the rear of the brigade, the men ran to the walls in a confused and most disordered manner.” Another soldier testified the Brigadier tried “to form some order, but the men were so dispersed he found it impossible.”
Meanwhile, the British continued landing their troops and Washington determined it best to make an orderly withdrawal from the area. The testimony indicated Washington’s order to withdraw and recounted a second panic:
“[General Washington] gave order to form the brigade as soon as could be done, and march on to Harlem Heights. When they had proceeded about a mile or two, a sudden panic seized the rear of the brigade; they ran into the fields out of the road.”
This second panic is the one Martin referred to above. Washington also reported it to Congress:
On the appearance of a small party of the Enemy, not more than sixty or seventy, their disorder increased and they ran away in the greatest confusion without firing a single shot.
The journals and letters of several soldiers picked up the scene. Smallwood wrote:
Sixty Light Infantry, upon the first fire, put to flight two brigades of the Connecticut troops, wretches who, however strange it may appear, from the Brigadier-General down to the private sentinel, were caned and whipped by the Generals Washington, Putnam, and Mifflin. But even this indignity had no weight. They could not be brought to stand one shot.
George Weedon wrote that Washington “was so exhausted” by his efforts to rally the men “that he struck several officers in their flight and dashed his hat on the ground. It was with difficulty his friends could get him to quit the field, so great was his emotions.”
General Heath said the poor showing of the troops so exasperated Washington that he “threw his hat on the ground, and exclaimed, are these the men with which I am to defend America?”
Historian Andrew Ward, borrowing a quote from the work of Washington Irving described the fleeing soldiers and the remaining solitary figure of Washington:
And they left Washington almost alone within eighty yards of the oncoming enemy. Blinded with rage — or with despair — he sat his horse, taking no heed of his imminent danger. He would have been shot or captured had not an aide-de-camp seized his bridle and “absolutely hurried him away.”
One of Washington’s closest confidantes and a trusted subordinate, General Nathanael Greene, writing to the Governor of his home state of Rhode Island told of the closing scene. Note the words Greene uses which go to Washington’s state of mind.
We made a miserable retreat from New York owing to the disorderly conduct of the Militia, who ran at the appearance of the Enemy’s advance guard. This was General Fellow’s Brigade. They struck a panic into the troops in the rear, and Fellows and Parsons whole Brigade ran away from about fifty men and left his Excellency on the ground within eighty yards of the Enemy, so vexed at the conduct of the troops that he sought death rather than life.
He sought death rather than life. No one will ever know for sure if Washington in that moment was hoping he would be struck down by enemy fire, but he did pull his horse to a dead stop within range of enemy guns. And though he could have merely intended to demonstrate battlefield courage to the fleeing troops, he knew at a minimum he was putting his life gravely at risk. The letters Washington would write in the days following leave little doubt what was on his mind, and leave no doubt that dying with honor was more important to him than living in dishonor. Washington imagined that his reputation would evaporate as quickly as his army had. To his way of thinking, when the dust settled, and the American cause had been lost, no one would understand that he really never had a chance.
Two letters in particular that Washington wrote after the panic at Kip’s Bay, one to his brother John and another to his cousin Lund, are revealing. The letters parallel each other repeating many of the same details, and track almost identically with what he had written to Congress, with this important exception: each letter revealed a hidden aspect of Washington’s state of mind. In the letters, Washington did something he had never done before Congress; he vented his personal emotions revealing intimate details about what he was thinking at the time. To his brother John he wrote:
Immediately on hearing the cannonade I rode with all possible expedition towards the place of the landing, where breast works had been thrown up to secure our men, and found the troops that had been posted there, and those ordered to their support, to my great surprise and mortification, running away in the most shameful and disgraceful manner, notwithstanding the exertions of their Generals to form them. I used every possible effort to rally them, but to no purpose, and on the appearance of a small part of the Enemy, not more than sixty or seventy, they ran off without firing a single gun. Many of our heavy cannon would inevitably have fallen into the Enemy’s hands, but this scandalous conduct occasioned a loss of many tents, baggage, and camp equipage, which would have been easily secured had they made the least opposition. … The dependence which the Congress has placed upon the militia has already greatly injured, and I fear will totally ruin our cause. Being subject to no control, they introduce disorder among the troops you have attempted to discipline, while the change in their living brings on sickness. This makes them impatient to get home, which spreads universally and introduces abominable desertions. Our numbers by sickness and desertion are greatly reduced. We have not more than 12 or 14,000 men fit for duty, while the Enemy, who it is said are very healthy, have near 25,000.
He closes the letter with this emotion:
In short, it is not in the power of words to describe the task I have to do. £50,000 should not induce me again to undergo what I have done.
To his Cousin Lund he wrote:
Your letter of the 18th now lies before me. The amazement which you seem to be in at the unaccountable measures which have been adopted by Congress would be a good deal increased if I had time to unfold the whole system of their management since twelve months. I do not know how to account for the unfortunate steps which have been taken but from that fatal idea of conciliation which prevailed so long. [He means reconciliation with the British.] Fatal, I call it, because from my soul I wish it may prove so, though my fears lead me to think there is too much danger in it. This time last year I pointed out the evil consequences of short enlistments, the expenses of militia, and the little dependence that was placed in them. I assured [Congress] that the longer they delayed raising a standing army, the more difficult and chargeable would they find it to get one, and that at the same time, the militia would answer no valuable purpose. The frequent calling them in would be attended with an expense that they could have no conception of. Whether, as I have said before, the unfortunate hope of reconciliation was the cause, or the fear of a standing army prevailed, I will not undertake to say. But the policy was to engage men for twelve months only, the consequence of which, you have had great bodies of militia in pay that never were in camp; you have had immense quantities of provisions drawn by men that never rendered you one hour’s service (at least usefully), and this in the most profuse and wasteful way. Your stores have been expended, and every kind of military discipline destroyed by them; your numbers fluctuating, uncertain, and forever far short of report, [and] at no one time, I believe, equal to twenty thousand men fit for duty. At present our numbers fit for duty amount to 14,759, besides 3,427 on command, and the enemy [is] within stone’s throw of us. It is true a body of militia are again ordered out, but they come without any conveniences and soon return [home].
Next, I think we see the bottom of Washington’s heart. This is where he reveals what he thinks of honor and character:
In short, such is my situation that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to an enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead, with my feelings. And yet I do not know what plan of conduct to pursue. I see the impossibility of serving with reputation, or doing any essential service to the cause by continuing in command, and yet I am told that if I quit the command, inevitable ruin will follow. In confidence I tell you that I never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born. To lose all comfort and happiness on the one hand, whilst I am fully persuaded that under such a system of management as has been adopted, I cannot have the least chance for reputation, nor those allowances made which the nature of the case requires. And to be told, on the other, that if I leave the service all will be lost, is distressing. At the same time, I am bereft of every peaceful moment.
But I will be done with the subject, with the precaution to you that it is not a fit one to be publicly known or discussed. If I fall, it may not be amiss that these circumstances be known, and a declaration made in credit to the justice of my character. And if the men will stand by me (which I despair of), I am resolved not to be forced from this ground while I have life.
A few days will determine the point if the enemy should not change their plan of operations; for they certainly will not — I am sure they ought not — to waste the season that is now fast advancing and must be precious to them. I thought to have given you a more explicit account of my situation, expectation, and feelings, but I have not time. I am worried to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances — disturbed at the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, who never had officers, except in a few instances, worth the bread they eat. My time, in short, is so much engrossed that I have not leisure for corresponding, unless it is on mere matters of public business.
In the letter to his brother, Washington showed that he still maintained a glimmer of hope:
I should hope the enemy would meet with a defeat, if our troops would behave with tolerable bravery. But experience, to my extreme affliction, has convinced me that this is to be wished for rather than expected. However, I trust that there are many who will act like men, and show themselves worthy of the blessings of freedom.
New York was gone now, the rebels having lost it back to the British without any measurable fight, just as they had lost Long Island in late August. A minister who was loyal to the British wrote in his journal after Long Island, and again after Kip’s Bay, the latter entry marking a momentary pause, just as the power changed over.
Friday August 30th. In the morning, unexpectedly and to the surprise of the city, it was found that all had abandoned Long Island, when many had thought to surround the King’s troops and make them prisoners with little trouble. The language was now otherwise; it was a surprising change, the merry tones on drums and fifes had ceased, and they were hardly heard for a couple of days. It seemed a general damp had spread; and the sight of the scattered [soldiers] up and down the streets was indeed moving. Many looked sickly, emaciated, cast down; the wet clothes, tents, and other things, were lying about before the houses and in the streets today; in general everything seemed to be in confusion. Many, as it is reported for certain, went away to their respective homes. The loss in killed and wounded and taken has been great, and more so than it ever will be known. Several were drowned and lost their lives in passing a creek to save themselves. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland people lost the most. … Sunday September 15th. There was a good deal of commotion in the town; the Continental stores were broke open and people carried off the provisions; the boats crossed to Powlus Hook backward and forward yet till toward evening; some people going away and others coming in; but then the ferry boats, withdrew, and the passage was stopped. Some of the king’s officers from the ships came on shore, and were joyfully received by some of the inhabitants. The King’s flag was put up again in the fort, and the Rebels’ taken down.
Washington quickly composed himself, but events did not let up. Late at night on the twentieth, a mysterious and spectacular fire broke out in New York and burned uncontrollably until midday on the twenty-first. Nearly a quarter of the city was destroyed. No one knows how the fire started, but the British had no reason to burn New York, which was soon to become their winter headquarters. History has cast the fire as accidental, but Washington had asked Congress whether he should destroy the city in order to deprive the British of a place to winter. After discussing the matter, Congress decided New York should be preserved. While Washington undoubtedly played no part in its destruction, the military advantage of burning the city was easily known outside his own circle, which meant there were many who could have been responsible. The eyewitness descriptions of the fire sound eerily familiar to what we saw on television in September of 2001:
Several women and children perished in the fire. Their shrieks, joined to the roaring of the flames, the crush of falling houses, and the widespread ruin, which everywhere appeared, formed a scene of horror great beyond description, which was still heightened by the darkness of the night.
The fire commenced in a small wooden house, on the wharf, near Whitehall slip, which was then occupied by a number of men and women of a bad character. The fire began late at night. There being but a few inhabitants in the city, in a short time it raged tremendously. It burned all the houses on the east side of Whitehall slip, and the west side of Broad Street to Beaver Street. The wind was then southwesterly. About two o’clock in the morning the wind veered to the southeast; this carried the flames of the fire to the northwestward, and burned both sides of Beaver street to the east side of Broadway, then crossed Broadway to Beaver lane, and burning all the houses on both sides of Broadway, with some few houses in New Street to Rector Street, and to John Harrison’s three-story brick house, which stopped the fire on the east side of Broadway; from there it continued burning all the houses in Lumber Street, and those in the rear of the houses on the west side of Broadway to St. Paul’s church, then continued burning the houses on both sides of Partition Street, and all the houses in the rear (again) of the west side of Broadway to the North River. The fire did not stop until it got into Mortkile Street, now Barclay Street. The college yard and the vacant ground in the rear of the same put an end to this awful and tremendous fire.
Trinity church being burned was occasioned by the flakes of fire that fell on the south side of the roof. The steeple, which was one hundred and forty feet high, the upper part wood, and placed on an elevated situation, resembled a vast pyramid of fire, exhibiting a most grand and awful spectacle. The southerly wind fanned those flakes of fire in a short time to an amazing blaze, and it soon became out of human power to extinguish the same; the roof of this noble edifice being so steep that no person could go on it. St. Paul’s church was in the like perilous situation. The roof being flat, with a balustrade on the eaves, a number of citizens went on the same, and extinguished the flakes of fire as they fell on the roof. Thus happily was this beautiful church saved from the destruction of this dreadful fire, which threatened the ruin thereof and that of the whole city. The Lutheran church being contiguous to the houses adjoining the same fire, it was impossible to save it from destruction. This fire was so furious and violently hot, that no person could go near it.
The next day, in another part of the city, a handsome twenty-four year old Yale graduate, blue eyes and flaxen hair, had spoken his last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”General Howe, had ordered Nathan Hale to be hanged, accusing him of spying for Washington, a charge Hale would not deny. The British left his corpse twisting in the wind for days, and hung an effigy next to him, a carving of an American soldier stolen from a nearby yard. Across the effigy in bold letters, British soldiers had painted the name “George Washington.”
Actuated By Principles of Honor On the night of the twenty-fourth, Washington retired to the Georgian mansion owned by a loyalist sympathizer who had fled to London at the outbreak of the war. Washington had made the home his headquarters earlier in the month, and would begin the evening by reading several letters requiring his attention. Next he would write several letters, just as he did every night. (What time does time does the modern, incurious, and values-based George W. go to bed? Nine o’clock?) On this night, Washington first wrote the General Orders for his officers, about five hundred words. He then wrote a short letter, maybe two or three hundred words, to John Hancock, the President of Congress. He wrote a second letter to Congress, this one approaching three thousand words. Although he started before midnight, he did not finish this last letter until the early morning hours of the 25th. As I read this and consider Washington’s graceful prose written against a backdrop of defending against a foreign invasion, and as I consider his real dedication to the cause of freedom, and the enormous and constant pressure he was under, I laugh when I think that George Bush probably couldn’t even read the letter, let alone write it. Here is a smattering of what Washington wrote that night. He opened to Hancock with a political touch that should precede a warning as dire the one he was about to give.
Sir: From the hours allotted to sleep, I will borrow a few moments to convey my thoughts on sundry important matters to Congress. I shall offer them with that sincerity which ought to characterize a man of candor; and with the freedom which may be used in giving useful information, without incurring the imputation of presumption.
We are now, as it were, upon the eve of another dissolution of our Army. The remembrance of the difficulties which happened upon that occasion last year, and the consequences which might have followed had advantages been taken by the Enemy, added to the present temper and situation of the troops, reflect but a very gloomy prospect upon the appearance of things now, and satisfy me, beyond the possibility of doubt, that unless some speedy and effectual measures are adopted by Congress, our cause will be lost.
It is in vain to expect that any (or more than a trifling) part of this Army will again engage in the service on the encouragement offered by Congress. When men find that their townsmen and companions are receiving 20, 30, and more dollars, for a few months service it cannot be expected without using compulsion, and to force them into the service would answer no valuable purpose. When men are irritated and the passions inflamed, they fly hastily and cheerfully to arms. But after the first emotions are over, to expect among such people as compose the bulk of an army, that they are influenced by any other principles than those of self-interest, is to look for what never did, and I fear never will happen. The Congress will deceive themselves, therefore, if they expect it.
A soldier reasoned with upon the goodness of the cause he is engaged in, and the inestimable rights he is contending for, hears you with patience, and acknowledges the truth of your observations, but adds, that it is of no more importance to him than others. The officer makes you the same reply, with this further remark, that his pay will not support him, and he cannot ruin himself and family to serve his country, when every member of the community is equally interested and benefited by his labors. The few therefore, who act upon principles of disinterestedness, are, comparatively speaking, no more than a drop in the ocean. It becomes evidently clear then, that as this contest is not likely to be the work of a day; as the war must be carried on systematically, and to do it, you must have good officers, there are, in my judgment, no other possible means to obtain them but by establishing your Army upon a permanent footing, and giving your officers good pay. This will induce men of character to engage, and till the bulk of your officers are composed of such persons as are actuated by principles of honor, and a spirit of enterprise, you have little to expect from them. Besides, something is due to the man who puts his life in his hand, hazards his health, and forsakes the sweets of domestic enjoyment. … If I was called upon to declare upon oath whether the militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter. I do not mean by this, however, to arraign the conduct of Congress. In doing so, I should equally condemn my own measures, if not my judgment. But experience, which is the best criterion to work by, so fully, clearly, and decisively reprobates the practice of trusting to militia, that no man who regards order, regularity, and economy; or who has any regard for his own honor, character, or peace of mind, will risk them upon this issue. The jealousies of a standing Army, and the evils to be apprehended from one, are remote, and in my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded. But the consequence of wanting one, according to my ideas, formed from the present view of things, is certain and inevitable ruin.
Personal Sacrifice It’s well known that Washington loved to dance. He regularly held parties at Mount Vernon, always comfortable with a large group of his friends. They would gather frequently and dance the night away. This passage is from a book called General Washington’s Christmas Farewell:
After more than eight years of war, Washington was impatient to return home. The unpretentious and unfinished country house, its wood panels shaped and covered with a sandy white paint to resemble wood stone, was still without a completed cupola and weather vane. Eight square wooden pillars already fronted the portico overlooking the broad waters of what was then known as the Potowmack. Mount Vernon and the postwar improvements he wanted to make to it had rarely been out of Washington’s thoughts since the shooting had stopped. He had lived on the property, purchased by his father as Little Huntington Creek Plantation in 1735, since he was three years old. At nineteen, in 1751, he had inherited it from his half-brother Lawrence.
Since May 4, 1775, Washington had been back only once, for a few days in October 1781, during the culminating Yorktown campaign. Nearly fifty-two, his once reddish hair was graying above a Roman profile weather beaten by early exposure as a surveyor, planter, and frontier soldier and etched by smallpox at nineteen. He felt physically and emotionally drained. In the limbo between war and peace, his weight, on a solid six-foot-four frame, had burgeoned to 209 pounds. To his worshipers, military and civilian, to whom he symbolized the new United States, Washington embodied rocklike perseverance. He appeared even more majestic and larger than life late in 1783 than in his lean and anxious early years directing what seemed an unwinnable war.
Things only got worse for Washington and his army after they withdrew from New York. As Hillary pointed out, the retreat continued north and then across the Hudson River into New Jersey and eventually Pennsylvania.
Hillary’s speech on the senate floor provided a testimonial to Washington’s honorable action of denouncing prisoner abuse. I applaud her for making it. But a testimonial about values is different than acting with honor. Washington acted with honor, Hillary spoke about values. Republicans talk about values.
I agree with Riggsveda that above all else we need more politicians (and Americans) who act with honor.
What self respecting woman would work in a powerful position for a man who runs his organization like this:
Rumsfeld also infuriated another powerful woman – then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice – by not returning her phone calls. So she complained to the boss.
Bush advised Rice to be “playful” with the stubborn Rumsfeld in an effort to get along. And he cajoled Rumsfeld, telling him: “I know you won’t talk to Condi. But you got to talk to her.”
This is the famous macho cowboy president? Did he tell Colin Powell to be “flirty?” Does he instruct Stephen Hadley to toss his hair to get Rummy’s attention? It would be less insulting if he’d told Condi to give Rummy a blow job. At least she wouldn’t have been infantalized.
This is your Republican Party folks, protecting you from the terrorists who are coming to kill you in your bed. Feeling safer?
In the midst of all the excitement over the GOP congress’s under-age cyberstalking, I hope that we don’t lose sight of the other white meat — Woodward’s astonishing revelations in his new book “State of Denial.”
Yes, Woodward is a court stenographer and his earlier Bush hagiography shows the extent of his fealty to DC insiderism, but that’s exactly what makes this book so extraordinary. It’s clear that the Republican establishment is feverishly cannibalizing itself from within. Not only is the story of infighting, ineptitude and bad policy compelling, it’s especially interesting since it’s being told by the Republicans themselves as they begin the work of ex-communicating the Bush administration from themselves and the conservative movement.
We’ve all discussed the Shakespearean dimensions of this bizarre presidency, but I had no idea about this particular plotline:
Cheney had suggested Rumsfeld to Bush in late December 2000. Rumsfeld was so impressive, Bush told Card at the time. He had had the job in the Ford administration a quarter-century before, and it was as if he were now saying, “I think I’ve got some things I’d like to finish.”
But there was another dynamic that Bush and Card discussed. Rumsfeld and Bush’s father, the former president, couldn’t stand each other. Bush senior didn’t trust Rumsfeld and thought he was arrogant, self-important, too sure of himself and Machiavellian. Rumsfeld had also made nasty private remarks that the elder Bush was a lightweight.
Card could see that overcoming the former president’s skepticism about Rumsfeld added to the president-elect’s excitement. It was a chance to prove his father wrong. And Rumsfeld fit Cheney’s model of a defense secretary who could not only battle things out with the generals but who also had as much gravitas as the rest of the new national security team.
Bush would nominate Rumsfeld, he told Card. Cheney had been selected for his national security credentials. He was the expert, and this was the sort of decision that required expertise. Still, Bush wondered privately to Card about pitfalls, if there was something he didn’t see here. After all, his father had strong feelings.
Is this a trapdoor? he asked.
Man, that vaunted “gut” of his sure is imprssive, isn’t it? From the very beginning the sly old weasel Dick Cheney muscles out the former president (whom everyone in America assumed would be a valuable and valued advisor to his dimbulb son) using Junior’s adolescent need to reject his father. He and Rummy became the “good” fathers to the idiot dauphin and successfully shut out all the voices of reason from the (too prudent and cautious) old guard establishment that would have lined up with him. They were radicals who cleverly managed to make themselves appear to be wise old men. Junior knew no better — and wouldn’t have cared if he did.
(Who would have thought this could become such a huge factor in a modern representative democracy? It might as well be ancient Rome or the Borgia era in renaissance Italy.)
The extent of Rumsfeld’s screw-ups is well known by now, but this book seems to be asserting something about the war that is quite startling at this late date — the real reason they were so anxious to go into Iraq come hell or high water. Yes, we know it was about oil and it was about Israel and it was about PNAC wet dreams and seven thousand other things. But I’m talking about the Big Reason, the one that united all these people: Iraq is their long awaited chance to do Vietnam right.
Back in the days of the Ford presidency, in the wake of Watergate—the pardon of Nixon, the fall of Saigon—Cheney and Rumsfeld had worked almost daily in the same Oval Office where they once again stood. The new man in the photo, Bush, five years younger than Cheney and nearly 14 years younger than Rumsfeld, had been a student at Harvard Business School. He came to the presidency with less experience and time in government than any incoming president since Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
Well into his seventh decade, many of Rumsfeld’s peers and friends had retired, but he now stood eagerly on the cusp, ready to run the race again. He resembled John le Carre’s fictional Cold War British intelligence chief, George Smiley, a man who “had been given, in late age, a chance to return to the rained-out contests of his life and play them after all.�
“Get it right this time,� Cheney told Rumsfeld
In order to get Iraq right, they brought in another one of their old pals
A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush’s Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.
“Of the outside people that I talk to in this job,” Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, “I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him.”
The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.
Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.
In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.
In a column in The Washington Post on Aug. 12, 2005, titled “Lessons for an Exit Strategy,” Kissinger wrote, “Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy.”
He delivered the same message directly to Bush, Cheney and Hadley at the White House.
Victory had to be the goal, he told all. Don’t let it happen again. Don’t give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back.
He also said that the eventual outcome in Iraq was more important than Vietnam had been. A radical Islamic or Taliban-style government in Iraq would be a model that could challenge the internal stability of the key countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Kissinger told Rice that in Vietnam they didn’t have the time, focus, energy or support at home to get the politics in place. That’s why it had collapsed like a house of cards. He urged that the Bush administration get the politics right, both in Iraq and on the home front. Partially withdrawing troops had its own dangers. Even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory.
In a meeting with presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson in early September 2005, Kissinger was more explicit: Bush needed to resist the pressure to withdraw American troops. He repeated his axiom that the only meaningful exit strategy was victory.
“The president can’t be talking about troop reductions as a centerpiece,” Kissinger said. “You may want to reduce troops,” but troop reduction should not be the objective. “This is not where you put the emphasis.”
To emphasize his point, he gave Gerson a copy of a memo he had written to President Richard M. Nixon, dated Sept. 10, 1969.
“Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded,” he wrote.
The policy of “Vietnamization,” turning the fight over to the South Vietnamese military, Kissinger wrote, might increase pressure to end the war because the American public wanted a quick resolution. Troop withdrawals would only encourage the enemy. “It will become harder and harder to maintain the morale of those who remain, not to speak of their mothers.”
Two months after Gerson’s meeting, the administration issued a 35-page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” It was right out of the Kissinger playbook. The only meaningful exit strategy would be victory.
I have written a lot about the right’s stubborn obsessions. They just can’t seem to get out of their intellectual ruts, insisting forever that they were right about things they have been proven wrong about and carrying on for years disputing facts and evidence that nobody else disputes. It’s an odd affliction that you can see even today when people too young to have been born at the time, like Ann Coulter or Michele Malkin, take up ancient arguments of their rightwing forebears and carry on as if it is a matter of tribal pride to win the point even after the facts are long settled everyone else has ceased to care.
Dick Cheney’s single-minded insistence on reconstituting Nixon’s doctrine of the extremely powerful executive branch has long been seen in that light. But I have to admit that even though I knew all this, I failed to see that Iraq was consciously and literally motivated by the Vietnam experience among many of those who had been associated with the “defeat” in ways they psychologically couldn’t reconcile. It rings true. It simply didn’t occur to me that anyone would knowingly go down that road again so soon. Indeed, I thought it was impossible that the post-Vietnam military would ever let it happen. (That’s where Rummy came in…)
Coincidentally, Spencer Ackerman has a piece in TNR also discussing the right’s obsession with Vietnam:
On the right, the latter half of 2006 is feeling a lot like 1968, the year that the American public finally lost faith in the Vietnam war. And, just as they did then, conservatives are turning causality on its head: People aren’t growing disillusioned with the war because we’re not winning it; we’re not winning because people have grown disillusioned. After Vietnam, this analysis enabled the right to avoid the agonizing reappraisal of U.S. foreign policy that has been that war’s legacy for liberalism and the Democratic Party.
But avoidance has its consequences as well. It’s true enough that, for more than 30 years, the left has not infrequently suffered from “Vietnam syndrome”–the assumption that any military engagement will be a moral disaster and a potential quagmire. But, though it has been less examined, the lesson the right took from Vietnam–that the true danger to national security is not misguided wars, but overzealous opposition to misguided wars–is, if anything, more dangerous. Call it the Other Vietnam Syndrome.
[…]
Most Republicans and conservatives initially supported the war but criticized Lyndon Johnson’s handling of it. The myth took hold that if only Johnson would allow his generals to prosecute the war with sufficient brutality–mining the Haiphong Harbor, destroying the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia–it could be won. Richard Nixon took office promising to end the war on a platform of “peace with honor,” which nodded to opposition to the war across the political spectrum but, in truth, represented only the right-wing critique. (As Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer noted in 1972, “What President Nixon means by peace is what other people mean by victory.”) Just as importantly, he identified the forces of peace with dishonor. In a crucial speech in 1969, Nixon married middle-American discontent with the protesters to a plea for patience as he expanded the war. “If a vocal minority,” Nixon said, “however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this nation has no future as a free society.” It was no longer necessary on the right to be pro-war–only anti-antiwar.
[…]
The “stabbed in the back” myth has flourished on the right ever since. Indeed, what is so striking about conservative–and especially neoconservative–treatment of Vietnam is a near-complete disregard for the actual circumstances of the war. Occasionally, a book or scholarly article will come along challenging the conventional wisdom that the war was unwinnable or foolhardy, and it will receive some attention. (Lewis Sorley’s A Better War, for instance–an impressive piece of scholarship that argues, unconvincingly, that General Creighton Abrams made the war winnable–was headlined by The Weekly Standard as “the truth about vietnam.”) By and large, however, conservatives are content to shunt the actual Vietnam war to the background and elevate criticism of its critics. In his 1999 book, How We Got Here, David Frum argued that, just as the war showed signs of turning in America’s favor, victory was snatched away by an anti-American fringe on college campuses and in the halls of Congress. Though the conservative movement reviles Henry Kissinger, Frum approvingly quoted his contention that “[t]he so-called peace movement had evolved from seeking an end of the war to treating America’s frustrations in Indochina as symptoms of a moral degeneration that needed to be eradicated root and branch.” Similarly, in a revealing column during the Sunni and Shia insurgencies of spring 2004, Charles Krauthammer rejected the Iraq-as-Vietnam comparison–except in one crucial sense: “Walter Cronkite, speaking for the establishment, declared the war lost. Once said to be lost, it was.”
Believing themselves to be victimized (as always) by the hoary myth of the liberal elites, the conservatives just keep doing the same thing over and over again, running like frantic little rodents on the same hamster wheel, the goal as elusive as it ever was.
Ackerman concludes:
Faced with a disastrous war, the most important consideration is not “Were we wrong?” but “Why were we wrong?” and “How can we avoid being so wrong in the future?” These are questions that often will implicate the country’s leading politicians and intellectuals, and its cherished myths. The anguish of confronting them has been on display in the Democratic Party’s foreign policy debate for 35 years.
The results have not always been pretty. But they have been important. It is only when the United States shrinks from asking such agonizing questions that we wade back into agonizing wars. That is a price that conservatives have been willing to pay, as the ugly pre-Iraq war debate vividly displayed. When conservatives achieved power, their 35-year-old willful blindness led the country right back into a quagmire, this time in a desert.
Republicans did worse than that. They nursed their grudges against the counter culture and turned them into an opportunistic partisan culture war. And the real pieces of work, the neocons and the partisan veterans like Cheney and Rumsfeld waited patiently until they got their chance to “do it right.” Never having honestly assessed what went wrong the first time but merely laying facile blame on liberals and the anti-war movement, they have willfully made the same mistakes all over again and seem to have no more sense of their own responsibility than they did three decades ago.
Woodward slips in a little tidbit about all this that should prove to be very powerful for the Democrats if they understand what they are seeing and act accordingly:
Karl Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, weighed in with the president. A contentious session with Congress was coming up. As he saw it, the Democrats were in no mood for a honeymoon. With Rice’s confirmation hearing to replace Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and with the expected nomination of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general, would another Senate confirmation overload the system?
“I’ve got Powell going. I’m going to have to replace Condi,” the president told Rove. “Do I have to have some continuity in all of this?” And, clearly, the conduct of the war in Iraq would be the subject of confirmation hearings for anyone Bush nominated to be the new secretary of defense.
Rove agreed they did not want to do anything that would prompt hearings on the war.
I’ll bet they didn’t. But all their dirty linen is now being exposed. The macho GOP they’ve been selling for 30 years turns out to be a bunch of whiny cranks who are so obsessive about their youthful “failures” that they have spent their entire lives getting into a position that they could prove they were right after all. But it’s clear that the modern Republican party is incapable of governing a superpower. They have no capacity for self-analysis or learning from their mistakes so they cannot be trusted to learn from this two term debacle of terrorist attacks, unnecessary wars, economic insecurity, corruption and now even covering up for known sexual predators rather than risk their hold on power.
Therefore the Democrats simply must hold thorough investigations into the Iraq war if they become a majority in either house of congress. For the good of the country, this must be stopped, and the Republicans have shown they are completely incapable of doing it themselves.
It is long past time that Democrats killed the 60’s albatross the Republicans hung around their necks more than three decades ago and throw the dead carcass right back at them. This country’s problems are not caused by unreconstructed hippies ruining the political system. The problem today is the eternally resentful, unreconstructed anti-hippies who somehow got psychologically paralyzed by the events of that time.
Lord Almighty, it looks like we got us a gen-you-wine Republican sex scandal. And it’s a doozy, isn’t it? Maybe people will notice that something is seriously rotten under GOP rule now.
If we lived in a nation that wasn’t completely dysfunctional, this scandal wouldn’t be at the top of the list of scandals that have been revealed just in the last week:
A new book by the official court scribe describes an administration so inept, unorganized and incoherent that if most people were aware of the details, the president’s fear campaign would blow back hard against him. If the terrorists really are coming to kill us in our beds any day now, then we are in deep shit with these guys in charge.
We have more news this week-end that Karl Rove and the white house were actively and personally involved in all the Jack Abramoff congressional corruption scandals which feature ripping off taxpayers of many millions of dollars.
It turns out that Bush fired Colin Powell.
The intelligence community agree that the invasion of Iraq super-charged the extremist jihadist moviement and is fuelling terrorism far more quickly and broadly than we would have had to deal with otherwise.
We have officially sanctioned torture and the repeal of habeas corpus — at the least competent president in history’s discretion.
I’m sure I’ve missed something.
But it looks like Mark Foley’s raunchy emails are going to be the scandal that may just bring it home for November. They made their puritanical, moralizing bed, now their going to have to roll around in the muck and the mire they made it with. Let’s let ‘er rip.
First of all, Mark Foley is clearly one exceptionally screwed up dude. A semi-closeted gay Republican whose signature issue is online sex predators and missing kids sending sexually explicit IM’s to congressional pages is one of the most blatant act of self-immolation I’ve ever seen.
But that’s not the real scandal, is it? While I’m sure the religious right will make the same charges about “gayness” they always do when their institutional leaders turn out to be hypocrites and chickenhawks (in all senses of the word), Foley’s unsavory habit of hitting on teen-agers who worked at the capital and the GOP leadership’s truly disgusting propensity to cover it up at all costs is the issue.
George Will mentioned “Elmer Gantry” this morning on This Week, a novel that I have discussed many times on this blog. There’s a great line from the book that I think perfectly describes the modern Republican moralists who’ve been kicking us in the teeth with their alleged family values for the past couple of decades:
“He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.”
The politicians of the modern Republican party are a bunch of Elmer Gantrys who sold a lot of Americans a bill of goods for a long, long time. I don’t know if their supporters are ready to hear it, but I have to believe that if the leadership of the GOP congress allowing one of their own to sexually prey on 16 year old male pages doesn’t wake them up, nothing will. I am not sanguine.
Chalk up another win this week for the established order as they grind forward with a full and complete grip on power. The Hillary and Bill display of righteous indignation, which coincides not with the latest atrocity accomplished by the administration, but with the attack upon their ‘good’ name (a Rovian ploy, by the way), did little to assuage my contempt for mainstream Democrats. The Clintons, like most other Democrats (save the likes of Feingold and Conyers) are highly sublimated animals whose efforts are geared more toward social acceptance into the club, and not sufficiently toward political opposition, in my opinion. I’ve expressed before my belief that all the engineered politics of Billary are designed to cover her flawed judgment of having ever supported the war in Iraq. Karl Rove neutered the entire Democratic party when he forced them to anti-up on the war – in or out – and all those who registered high on the presidential ambition meter — John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton — said, “Oh, count me in … I’m strong on defense too.” As the then twenty-two year old dylanesque song-writer, Conor Oberst, exclaimed at the time (in his song called “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves”) — “The approval rating’s high, so someone’s gonna die.”
The rest is history, as they say.
So once again I feel helpless as that amalgamation of the most powerful persons in industry, politics, religion, and military — I’m speaking of the Republican Party — commits ongoing tyranny against every citizen of the United States. Yesterday it was by misleading the nation into war, authorizing illegal wiretapping, bribing legislators for favorable votes in Congress, and exerting power and control over the now-corporatized press, and today it is by authorizing human torture without any due process whatsoever. It’s human tyranny, something so new and unusual (tongue firmly in cheek) that the opposition party has no idea how to deal with it. We must be very careful with the language we use so as not to offend the sensibilities of the American Idiots.
And this is why one more time I find myself hearkening back to the pre-Revolutionary period when a group of New England liberals took opposition to a previous established order, one that also got too big for its britches, and one that also began committing acts of tyranny in order to preserve its power. I’m referring, of course, to the British parliament. Note the similarity of the setting: At the time, Great Britain was the wealthiest nation on earth, and the foundation for free institutions; the people of England had a Bill of Rights, and an unwritten constitution based on the natural law; the constitution had been confirmed more than fifty times by Parliament, according to John Adams. In short, the English people were — free.
So when Great Britain used coercive measures to bring her subjects into compliance on matters of taxation and trade, things that seem almost trivial by comparison to today, many American intellectuals became obsessed with the threat of tyranny. So much so that they actually used the word “tyranny” to describe the party in power. That word, in fact, appeared thousands of times in print throughout the Revolutionary period. It was used in private letters written by and to the delegates of the Continental Congress and appeared in such derivative forms and creative spellings as: tyrany, tyrrany, tyranni, tyranic, tyrannic, tyranical, tyrannical, tyrannically, tyrannies, tyranys, tyrannize, tyrannized, tyrannous, tyrant, and tyrant’s. And how ironic that the letters were directed at an earlier tyrant George, this one the King of England. The delegates’ letters (culled from this CD ) were peppered with colorful phrases:
inexorable Tyrant the artful Wiles of an infatuated and tyrannical Ministry the impious War of Tyranny the severest extremities of tyranny deep lay’d Schemes of Tyranny instruments of tyranny mercenary Soldiers of a Tyrant the Ministerial Sons of Tyranny the infernal hand of Tyranny outrages of Tyranny Threats of a Tyrant barbarous Tyranny the rapacious Hand of a Tyrant the Pillars of Tyranny merciless Tyrant Torrent of Tyranny Slaves of Tyranny bloody Standard of Tyranny Infringements of a Tyrant Altar of Tyranny absolute despotic Tyrant Encroachments of Tyranny System of Tyranny
Particularly colorful, and my personal favorite was one by Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, who asked: “When will Tyrant Worms cease to disturb human Happiness?”
Clearly, in the interest of preserving their hold on power, Parliament had stepped on someone’s liberties.
In spite of the inflammatory language, the early leaders in America were not mere propagandists. They actively sought knowledge of human behavior and understood the threat posed by institutional tyranny. One source of knowledge (please note here that I’m paraphrasing and borrowing heavily from the source by Delbert Cress referenced below) was a book written by James Harrington in 1656 called Commonwealth of Oceana. Harrington tracked the themes of tyranny and corruption, and set forth theories about political degeneration, the decline of freedom, and the need for a constitutional balance. In pre-Revolutionary America, Oceana could be found in the Harvard College Library, the New York Society Library, and the Charleston Library in South Carolina. The contents of Oceana and theories of how political institutions always devolve into tyranny had become part of a pre-Revolutionary mindset.
Another source of knowledge for the revolutionaries was John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon who had written behind the pseudonym of Cato. In the early 1720s, in London, Trenchard and Gordon published a set of works called Cato’s Letters. The letters conjured up images of tyranny, and explored the threat to society posed by institutional corruption. From Cato’s Letters emerged a view that power itself corrupts men, leading eventually to political intrigue, unfair influence, and patronage. By 1776, Cato’s Letters were known to exist in 40% of the colonial libraries and they, along with Harrington’s Oceana, were known to have been studied by Thomas Jefferson, John Dickinson, John Adams, Henry Knox, and Benjamin Rush. These same men also studied the works of Sidney, Molesworth, Fletcher, Hutcheson, and Blackstone. So too did Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, Josiah Quincy, Jr., John Hancock, Samuel Adams, George Mason, James Wilson, and scores of lesser known citizens. The American intellectuals also studied the Greek and Roman republics, the ancient Goths and Germans, the success of the Swiss, and the writings of Machiavelli. James Burgh brought many of the earlier theories forward and added to them when he published Political Disquisitions in 1775. John Adams, George Washington, Samuel Chase, John Dickinson, Silas Deane, John Hancock, Thomas Mifflin, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson all were known to have received copies of Burgh’s work when it was first published in America in 1776.
Those early American politicians were profound in their enlightened thoughts on institutional behavior and the workings of government and society. Many of the contemporary views on the inevitability of political corruption were formed as a result. Josiah Quincy was exceptionally marked in his prose, suggesting that the powerful institution was “a monster” birthed by “human follies and vices” where “depravity and cowardice” can thrive. He called the professional soldier an unwitting “slave” hired by men of “ambition and power” who could then manipulate the soldier for self-serving ends. Quincy believed the military’s awesome power made “wicked ministers more audacious” and saw them advancing “schemes inconsistent with … liberty” and “destructive of the trade.” According to Quincy, the military/political institution was the place where “a will and a power to tyrannize are united.” He called the impacts inevitable and fatal in both the political and the moral world.
The learned nature and the observations made by men such as Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, Simeon Howard, and others, reflected their wisdom and the studied reality which they came to know about human nature. The inclination to increase personal power is simply a part of the natural human makeup. Inclination toward power leads to the unfair advancement of self-interest, personal gratification, and exploitation. And powerful people, facing any perceived threat to their power, large or small, are inclined to use coercion to protect their standing. Tyranny, therefore, was a natural ingredient that could eventually be found in any institution. As the institution devolves, it always seeks to increase its power.
People also morph into unrecognizable characters as their institutions become corrupt. Samuel Adams, writing after the shots were fired at Lexington, but before Independence had been declared wrote in elegant prose to his friend James Warren about the threat posed by ambitious men and the institutional military:
A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a body distinct from the rest of the citizens. They have their arms always in their hands. Their rules and their discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit obedience to their commands. Such a power should be watched with a jealous eye…. Men who have been long subject to military laws, and inured to military customs and habits, may lose the spirit and feeling of citizens. And even citizens, having been used to admiring the heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayed, and to look upon them as their saviors, may be prevailed upon to surrender to them those rights for the protection of which against invaders they had employed and paid them. We have seen too much of this disposition among some of our countrymen.
The anonymous essayist Caractacus earlier expressed the same sentiment when his essay “On Standing Armies” appeared in a colonial Philadelphia newspaper:
History is dyed in blood when it speaks of the ravages which standing armies have committed upon the liberties of mankind: officers and soldiers of the best principles and character have been converted into instruments of tyranny by the arts of wicked politicians.
America was once a vibrant and vocal enterprise where prominent people spoke with courage and conviction. We are now a muted and sublimated culture where the opposition is cowardly, and too afraid they will be ostracized if they speak out. A once participatory and opposition-minded mainstream press is now preponderantly part and parcel of the largest institution, that amalgamation of powerful forces referred to earlier. The most influential reporters (Russert, Brokaw and their ilk) are millionaire staffers, corporate automatons, and vanity authors who have become inured to the ways and customs of their employers. The elite way of living that goes along with their wealth and social status make them less likely to question the actions of government tyrants. Yet they are the very people with the responsibility to do so, and they are the people who are in a position to do so.
I want to ask how did we get here, but I think the answer is obvious. We are still in the dark ages politically and if we are lucky enough survive the current phase of the human journey, it will be a long, long time, I think, until society advances beyond this sorry state.
Sources: As noted above, the references to tyranny are from Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, Paul H. Smith, editor. The background on sources of study for the early American leadership comes from Citizens in Arms, Lawrence Delbert Cress, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
3 GEORGE and SUSAN ALLEN SENATOR & WIFE The former Virginia governor and son of a legendary Redskins coach wears cowboy boots and is all over the news of late – could it be his attempt to win the 2008 Presidential Superbowl of Politics, or is that just a bunch of “macaca?” She’s lovely, bright and known to loosen him up.
