The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
The camera captures the wrenching earthquake as it happens in Japan, and the tsunami surge with tumbling debris; through the transmission of satellites one sees cars and chunks of buildings in the surge.
All of us have seen water flow across a flat surface, but this is the nightmarish possibility made real.
We see the suffering and feel sympathy transcending language and culture. The words of a survivor are interpreted: She doesn't know whether it's good or bad that she survived. Sympathy is immediate.
For a time there will be stories of hardship in Japan, as it was after the Haitian earthquake, and hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Images are transmitted through the air. We are fascinated but unaffected. The stories have impact, but we are not directly affected.
If one is sensitive there is a lasting impression. The underlying precariousness of life is understood. If not the next dramatic image created in a studio supplants the consciousness of real horror. Movies are wonderfully distracting. Images and stories, real and created, circulate in our consciousness. Television conveys the image, but it is utterly impersonal and transitory. One moment there is revolution in Egypt and Libya, the next, earthquake and tsunami in Japan - symptomatic of modern life.
Our distance is essential. It's not really happening to us. Through marvelous technology we are habituated to tragedy.
Ordinary life plays out among a circle of acquaintances and friends. If we are lucky we care about many friends, but perhaps more than a few of us have the capacity to care for only a few.
I once made the acquaintance of a handsome black fellow in his early forties. He grew up in a family without a father. My acquaintance was not present in the upbringing of his son, and his son is not now present in the raising of his own children: through four generations a father has not taken part in the life of the family. The norm of a two-parent home has been destroyed for black America. Once a healthy, societal norm has been destroyed, how do we get it back?
My acquaintance left town suddenly under bad circumstances. I gathered from my brief time with him that this was the pattern of his life.
This is the sort of devastation measured out day-by-day that plagues present-day America: not the dramatic event, but the slow dissolution of the bounds of friendship and family.
Marriages are failing throughout America, not just among black Americans. Divorce is common - signaling that something is missing in our way of living.
Who can measure how much misery has been introduced to America because of the disintegration of marriage? Its effects are hidden in the emotional disposition of each person.
As awesome as a tsunami is, the slow disintegration of a once-healthy institution, such as marriage, is as devastating, but in a different way. Towns can be rebuilt, but if children aren't learning patience, hard work, loyalty, courage, honesty, and empathy, how can we build a functioning, nurturing neighborhood?
We can't see an institution as we can see a building, but healthy institutions make for a thriving country. America has been blessed with many virtuous institutions. They are vital and precious.
The St. Croix Review is dedicated to preservation of healthy American institutions. *
The following is a summary of the February 2011 issue of the St. Croix Review:
Barry MacDonald writes in "Peace Isn't Found in the Free Market," that something more, something stronger is needed to bind us together as a community and nation.
Mark Hendrickson in "New Year's Resolution: Stop the Fiscal Insanity," describes the mess government has reached at all levels; in "On Reading Aloud in Congress," he comments on the reading of the Constitution at the opening of the 112th Congress; in "The Tea Party's Uphill Challenge," he writes that the daunting task is breaking the power of bureaucracies such as the Fed and the EPA; in "Fed Up with the Fed," he writes that the Fed has been the cause of boom-bust cycles and, that its only mission should be the integrity of the dollar; in "Dead Man Walking: Dealing with Deflation," he points out that deflation is the inevitable result of governmentally created inflationary bubbles; in "Honoring Bill of Rights Day -- and Responsibility" he focuses on the Founders' view of our "rights."
Allan Brownfeld, in "A Growing and Largely Ignored Crisis: Public Pension Funds are Running Out of Money," shows how public employees are bankrupting states; in "Racial Achievement Gap Is Alarming and Focuses Renewed Attention on the 'Culture of Poverty'," he writes that the problem centers on declining marriages among blacks; in "NPR and Juan Williams: the Peril of Speaking Honestly in an Era of Political Correctness," he relates how speech is becoming less honest and open.
Herbert London, in "Everyone Knows . . ." points out that what "everyone knows" is often not true; in "The Mullen War Strategy," he believes the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff misunderstands radical Islam; in "Why Do Modern Women Convert to Islam?" he believes some women are seeking escape from the cultural degradation of Western Culture; in "German Schools Embrace Islam," he sees Western Europe turning its back on Judeo-Christian culture; in "New York's Traffic Gridlock," he describes the poor planning that has brought a great city to a standstill.
In "On 'Dupes' and the Religious Left," Paul Kengor exposes how left-leaning clergy and intellectuals in America were manipulated by the Soviet Union.
Marvin Folkertsma, in "Dealing with the Debt Monster: A Political Lesson from Millard Fillmore," compares the lack of courage of politicians to address the national debt to the reluctance of Millard Fillmore to address slavery before the Civil War.
In "The Lessons of Japan," Shawn Ritenour debunks the myth of Japan's "deflationary depression," and points to the solutions to our problems.
R. B. A. Di Muccio, in "Will the Real Realists Please Stand Up?" considers President Obama's policies in Iran and Afghanistan; in "How Jimmy Carter and I Were Wrong on North Korea -- and How Carter Is Still Wrong," he says some people never learn.
Thomas Martin, in "What's Wrong with Same-Sex Marriage," believes the family is based on husband and wife, as determined by natural law and the creator.
Jigs Gardner starts a new series, intended as a diversion from politics, titled "Letters from a Conservative Farmer."
Jigs Gardner, in "The Incomparable Dickens," believes that Dickens is the greatest English novelist in part because he created such great characters.
William P. Cheshire eulogizes one of the St. Croix Review's distinguished writers -- "Anthony H. Harrigan."
In "Who Spoke Last in a 1983 Courtroom?" Joseph Fulda writes of his experience as a jury foreman.
Mike Bemis reviews Shimmering Blue Line: The St. Croix River in Pen, Brush and Music, by James Wilcox Dimmers and Don Mitchell
Shimmering Blue Line: The St. Croix River in Pen, Brush and Music. Paintings by James Wilcox Dimmers. Essays and Music by Don Mitchell. Copyright 2010. ISBN: 978-0-615-39376-6. Price: $54.95. Copies of this book may be ordered online at www.shimmeringblueline.com.
In what may be a literary and artistic first, two men have produced a valentine to a river. The object of their affection is the St. Croix; having spent a good deal of their lives in its valley, writer Don Mitchell and artist Jim Dimmers have long considered these 164 miles of wild waters to be their muse. As a source of inspiration, they could have done worse. Their joint passions have been manifested in 41 essays from the former and 85 full color illustrations of original paintings from the latter. Touching on such topics as the underlying geology, flora and fauna, history, and a host of other interesting and informative aspects of riparian lore, this is essentially a guided tour by a couple of old time river rats.
Mitchell gives the reader a "you are there" experience; in his piece entitled "Syruping," for example, he relates the satisfaction of one's honest toil in tapping maple trees amidst the melting snows of March:
The first drips of sap from the tree . . . tell us that spring in not an illusion. The first bubbles in the big pan show that the fire will work its magic again . . . the scent of the vapor . . . the pops of the lids as we stand nearby in the kitchen, miser-like, counting our bounty of liquid gold.
Dimmers is no less adept at capturing the manifold glories of unspoiled nature. If, as the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words, then these portraits of flowers, trees, and majestic stone formations speak volumes unto themselves. Working primarily in acrylics, the vibrant hues he has selected for his myriad canvases depict the many moods of the waters of the "Sacred Cross" (English translation of Saint Croix), taking the viewer through the endless cycles of the theater of seasons.
Not content to convey their message of inspiration in merely two dimensions, these two decided to team up with a group of local musicians to produce a compact disc of instrumental works reminiscent of paddle wheelers past, bearing such tuneful titles as "Flood Stage," "Slow Water," and "Catfish Bar." Mitchell makes a reappearance as he also wields a pretty mean violin; the piano, bass, and acoustic guitar will have listeners up on their feet swaying to the "Lady's Slipper Waltz" in short order.
An up close and personal look at a corner of our Midwestern backyard that we all know is there, but too often take for granted, a copy of the Shimmering Blue Line will help anyone remember why we call this home.
Joseph Fulda is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is the author of Eight Steps Towards Libertarianism.
This is a tale that can be read two ways. The reader who is merely a libertarian will read it one way. The man of faith will see a lot more. It must be capable of being read in two ways or faith would not truly be faith.
I had the privilege and the honor of being selected for service on a civil jury in New York State Supreme Court, where a six-member jury is impaneled, with five sufficient to render a verdict.
The case concerned a woman who had been badly scalded -- to the point of considerable disfigurement -- in her shower. She, and her husband, filed suit against the landlord and the boiler-repair company. Her claims were several. His claim was loss of consortium.
I listened to the testimony alertly and intently and, after the charge was given to us by the presiding Justice, saw immediately that the boiler-repair company could not possibly be held liable. They were on-call and there was no evidence given whatsoever that they had ever been notified that the boiler was malfunctioning! Who knows why they had been named a party to the lawsuit?
In the jury room, I asked my colleagues to send a note to the judge asking him how the repair company could possibly be held liable. It seemed to me that as a matter of law, they should be held harmless. When the judge received the note, he had a small fit. "You are not the foreman," he lectured me staring at me intently, "and only the foreman can send out a note with a question." Of course, he did not want us to show our hand to the parties. If a question is properly asked, it becomes a part of the record and must be divulged to all parties. So he sent us back, after disallowing the note. But I was undeterred, and not at all through; I wanted what I normally want: the complete exoneration of the innocent. So, I boldly asked my colleagues to elect me foreman, although I was the youngest of the lot. They obliged. The note went out again.
The judge scowled, but said that the jury could elect its own foreman, although that was unusual. He then "answered" the question by repeating verbatim et literatim his jury instructions on negligence. But this time the note was entered onto the record. So, I had the privilege and the honor of speaking first, and of exonerating the completely blameless. Little did I know that I would not be permitted to speak again. And, try I did! Four of my colleagues saw it my way, that the law of negligence did not hold the landlord liable either -- although ethics clearly did, a subject we could not and did not even broach. The sixth juror, a woman of little intelligence but much empathy, simply repeated over and over again that she could not make up her mind, notwithstanding our concerted efforts at persuading her.
So, I tried to speak again, this time to no avail. I tried ever-so-hard to persuade my four colleagues to deliver a five-person verdict, based on the law and the facts as we all saw them, but they would not allow it. They said to me, "Have some patience. Wait. She may yet come around." What she actually did, however, suggested otherwise: She asked to examine the extensive photographic evidence of the injury taken when it was fresh. Having been obliged, I had little choice but to oblige her. Note after note was sent out of the jury room calling for the production of this-and-that evidence of the severity of the burns. This, of course, sent a clear and unmistakable signal to the landlord: Settle, or else! I have no idea whether my four concurring colleagues understood this or not; all they did was wait, and I, however reluctantly, with them.
I entirely misunderstood the woman's review of the photographic evidence. She turned out not to be completely unpersuadable at all; she was merely showing enormous empathy. Finally, she was ready, and she joined the five of us for what my colleagues had wanted all along: a unanimous verdict for the defendants. They, too, were not to be permitted to speak. They were allowed to speak second, merely to counsel -- nay, insist on -- patience, while the woman was permitted to speak third, merely to display empathy.
My finger, as foreman, was now on the button -- literally, on the button -- from the jury room to the Court, ready to press it to ring the bell notifying the Court that the jury had reached a verdict. At just that very moment, the other bell rang, from the Court to the jury room. We were all summoned into the presence of the judge, who, this time cordially, addressed me: "Mr. Foreman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service; the parties have reached a settlement; you are free to go." The judge's charge, and all else that he had said, turned out not to matter at all.
I was stunned, and more than a little upset. I did not approach counsel for the plaintiffs or for the landlord, for I had nothing to ask them. I made a beeline for the lawyer for the boiler-repair company and, with considerable dismay, asked him why he had settled. His reply caused a light bulb to go on within my thick skull: "The other parties settled; I did not."
So, who spoke last in that courtroom in 1983? The libertarian will say that the parties who should have been talking all along -- and without the involvement of the State at all -- spoke last. This was truly just between them, and they settled it -- as they should have.
That, however, is not my conclusion, although I am a libertarian. My conclusion is that the entire performance, from beginning to end, was orchestrated by the Almighty Conductor above us all, including exactly who was permitted to play what notes when. Now you know, dear readers, why selection for service on that jury was described by this author as an honor and a privilege. None of us, ever, truly has the last word. *
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Thomas Jefferson
William P. Cheshire was a friend of Anthony H. Harrigan. Long-time readers of the St. Croix Review will remember Anthony Harrigan as one of our distinguished writers.
In our professional lives we traveled on parallel tracks, Tony and I -- he barreling across the continent in a bullet-train and I chugging along on the Toonerville Trolley. By the time I had moved out of the newsroom in Richmond and onto the editorial pages of the Charleston Evening Post, Tony long since had left his job as a police reporter in Norfolk and was a nationally known writer, assisting the gentlemanly Tom Waring on the editorial pages of the News & Courier and contributing to various out-of-town publications, conspicuously William F. Buckley, Jr.'s National Review.
In the pages of that journal I first encountered Tony's remarkable talent. Fresh out of college and subsisting just barely as a reporter on the old Richmond News Leader, I couldn't subscribe to pricey publications, but a newsroom colleague took Buckley's magazine -- in fact, was a frequent contributor -- and passed along his old copies.
Those were the days of Frank Meyer, James Burnham and other celebrities of the newborn "conservative movement," most of them regulars at "The Magazine." Prominent among these trailblazers was Anthony H. Harrigan, whose view of national politics from a Southern perspective was distinctive and refreshing, especially to a beginning writer from below the Potomac. The colleague whose magazines I borrowed possessed remarkable talents as well and later made his mark as a magazine editor and best-selling author in New York. But Tony's work was special. Even the soaring prose of James Jackson Kilpatrick, editor of my Richmond paper and a stylist of enormous ability, did not possess quite the savor of Tony's carefully seasoned pieces.
Like many outstanding writers, Tony's career preparation was out of the ordinary. He was born in New York, but following the death of his father moved with his mother to the family's native Charleston when he was a small boy. Tony skipped the last year of high school, joined the Marine Corps at 17 and over the years attended the University of Virginia and several smaller schools, enrolling in a variety of courses, with particular emphasis on the classics. At Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a free-spirited and now defunct institution where specializing in art was regarded as central to a quality education, he even tried his hand at musical composition. But soon he moved on, recognizing the need for a more rigidly structured environment than was available at progressive Black Mountain, where the only rule, he later recalled, "was that one had to work on the garbage truck once a week."
What some might have regarded as a hodge-podge approach to formal education was, in Tony's case, the means of accumulating an enormous store of information in a variety of disciplines, thereby widening his field of vision far beyond the narrow focus of daily journalism. Tony was not a career journalist, as I was, though he would revert to journalism as a means of instruction when necessary; he was by both ability and disposition an educator and concentrated during most of his active life on furthering, especially among young people, an appreciation for traditional American values, moral and political, which he viewed as essential to national well-being and survival. During the Cold War especially, which is to say during most of our working lifetimes, such discussions necessarily involved complex matters of national defense, trade and economics, areas in which Tony was especially well versed.
For 20 years he was president of the Washington-based U.S. Business and Industrial Council and its Educational Foundation, in which capacity he was a frequent lecturer on college campuses, including those of Yale, Harvard, and the National War College. He also sponsored such lectures by others, including on occasion, I am pleased to say, me.
In addition to a thorough grounding in political philosophy, on which Tony wrote and spoke with wisdom and authority, he possessed an astounding familiarity with modern warfare and weapon systems, an interest that may have reflected his experiences in World War II -- though I hasten to note that he was that rara avis, the humble Marine. During nearly half a century of friendship I never heard him mention his military service, of which he had every reason to take pride. He frequently wrote and lectured on military affairs and twice received the Military Review Award of the U.S. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1965 he was a guest in Vietnam of the Secretary of Defense and flew with a Marine helicopter squadron at Da Nang and accompanied U.S. Army units along the Laotian border and in the Mekong Delta.
"As author or editor of nearly two dozen books and as a contributor to more than seventy journals on both sides of the Atlantic," wrote Mark C. Henrie several years ago:
Anthony Harrigan has demonstrated an unusual combination of the traditionalist and anti-Communist impulses of the postwar American conservative movement. As a foundation executive, he has also entered into economic debates, warning that unrestricted free trade can weaken American industry and, thereby, American security.
. . . concerns that some would regard as outmoded in today's global economy, but that may not have been altogether laid to rest.
It remains to be mentioned that Tony began his literary career not as a pundit, but as a poet, with the publication of Ten Poets Anthology in 1946 and subsequent contributions to The Yale Poetry Review and other journals. Several years afterward he inaugurated American Letters in Charleston, the city's first literary review since the 1850s.
Soldier, poet, pundit, author, educator -- Tony was all these and more. He was, above all, a kind and gentle man and a stranger to evasion and deceit. His manner was scrupulously straightforward. He did not mince words. But, though he would take vigorous exception to opinions with which he disagreed, I do not think I ever heard him question the motives or disparage the character of an opponent -- at least not one on this side of the Iron Curtain.
The older generation, the one older even than mine and Tony's, commonly would refer to a man of exemplary character as a "true Christian gentleman." My friend Tony Harrigan, God rest his soul, was precisely such a man. *
Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Some readers may remember National Review back in the days when William Buckley edited it and its composition was markedly different from what it is today -- all politics all the time. Buckley had room for a cookery column by Nika Hazelton, a countryside column by Bill Rickenbacker, and other excursions outside the realm of politics, because he believed that being conservative meant much more than a mere political allegiance. A conservative should be interested in as much of life as he can apprehend.
These letters, unpretentious essays, are offered in that spirit. They also have a didactic purpose, because I fear that conservatives are not as well informed about what goes on in the countryside these days, ignorant of the forces that are seeking to mold the countryside to their designs.
We have been farmers (of a sort, as you shall learn) since 1962, first in Vermont, then for thirty years on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and now in the Champlain Valley in New York. These essays are based on our experiences of the last forty-eight years, as well as some earlier ones of mine.
(I learn a conservative moral lesson and unconsciously assimilate a conservative ideal.)
When I was in my fourteenth year, in the spring of 1947, we moved to a small saltbox house in what was then rolling farm country in central New Jersey, to an area called Waln's Mill, and there I lived, when I was not away at school, for nearly the whole of the next four years.
The house, humble, homely, comfortable, shaded by tall tulip trees and white oaks, seemed to grow naturally out of the small clearing backed by dark woods, halfway up a hill that rose gradually from the creek bottom. In the front, across the dirt road that ran below a bank, the land fell away, on one hand opening a vista of swampy meadows sweeping down to the great trees bordering the creek, and above us, of hayfields stretching up the hillside, of hedgerows and distant woods. Right down the middle of the view was a farm lane that began across from our house, winding its way between the fields to disappear around a far bend.
At first, just being in the countryside filled my days and my imagination: A screech owl in the woods behind the house, swimming in the muddy creek, a marsh hawk gliding back and forth just over the meadows, stepping on what appeared to be a dry hard cow pie, a huge snapping turtle in the creek bank mud, vultures soaring in the summer sky; wild strawberries so plentiful in the roadside grass that we made jam and even ice cream, the smell of country rain, dewy cobwebs in the grass, hiding under the bridge from Jerry, the runaway bull.
Lanes, woods roads, chance forest openings have always been temptations to me, as if I had an obligation to explore them, to see where they ended up. And there was the farm lane right in front of me, dusty, still under the summer sky, latent with purpose and movement, quickened for a few minutes each day with the passage of Mr. Crow's old black Ford pickup. Going away from me, the truck got smaller and smaller, emerged from a dip where a stream ran, passed the weathered empty tenant house (latent itself with its missing life, still under a shadowy elm, its rhubarb patch struggling in a sea of witch grass) and then around the bend, glimpsed once more through a gap in the honeysuckle that swarmed over the fences, leaving at last a drifting dust cloud and the final dying noise. But I did not follow it to its end, not yet, not then, perhaps because I knew there was a farm at the end of it, source of the cows pasturing in the meadows, cause of the haying in the hillside fields, the farm that finally became for me the image, the definition of farming, a symbol that derived some of its great power from the ignorance of the city boy who conceived it. I would not casually stroll up the lane into the field of force generated by that symbol.
We lived in that countryside, but we were not of it; we didn't make our living there, we were only onlookers. On summer evenings we sat on the lawn to watch Mr. Crow's farmhands drive the slowly moving herd out to pasture after milking; on fine afternoons, while the men were haying in the field across the road, we played badminton; awakened at dawn by the clang of milk cans being loaded onto the truck at the end of the lane, we turned over and gratefully went back to sleep. It was I who established a connection, however tenuous, with the countryside, and it came about because, in our area where small scale general farming prevailed, where farms did a little of everything -- raised grain, shipped milk, raised poultry, sold piglets, vegetables, eggs, honey, and fruit, grew tomatoes on contract for canneries, and so on -- Mr. Crow's regime belonged to the 19th century, maybe even the 18th. He milked twenty or so Jerseys, but the stock was poor and inbred (Jerry being the only sire), the hayfields were not regularly plowed and fertilized, and the pastures were largely wasteland. He lived in a handsome, rambling farmhouse built in the early 1700s with his farmhands, two or three elderly men like himself who did what had to be done to maintain the farm from day to day and little else. On dark winter days when sleet beat against the windows, they lay on the hearth before the wide fireplace, drinking cider from the barrel in the cellar and spitting tobacco juice into the flames. These men, in fact, were really much more than farmhands; they were countrymen of a type now vanished, sturdy, self-reliant men who could turn a skillful hand to any country task -- axmen who could fell a tree and hew it into beams to build a barn; honey-gatherers who calmly hived swarms of wild bees, husbandmen who could train a green horse to plow; slaughterers and butchers; tool makers and menders; veterinarians who could heal wounds and deliver difficult calves; weather prophets; hunters who knew how to set snares and where pheasants nested. Much of their time was spent hunting, fishing, and trapping, and we would often see one or another, tall gaunt men in rough clothing, crossing the meadow toward the creek with a long fishing rod, or passing along the hedgerows, rifle in hand.
On a still August evening one of the hands, out hunting woodchucks, a tall shambling man, stepped across the road from the hayfield to chat with us as we sat on the grass watching the dusk come up out of the meadows. I sat to one side watching him -- he introduced himself as Bub Archer -- fascinated by his strangeness, his difference from anyone I knew. His face was rough, weathered, deeply tanned, slab-sided with a prominent Roman nose, and he chewed tobacco! I actually saw the plug in his cheek, and now and then he turned and spat behind him. He told stories about his many hunting adventures, and Mother remarked that he must've begun at an early age.
"Oh, I was a little smaller than the shaver here, maybe I was eight or nine," he said, smiling at me.
I blushed and looked away; I knew I was small for my age.
Bub turned up the next evening with a joint of cooked woodchuck, wrapped in a bit of waxed paper, and nothing would do but we must try it. I remember him standing tall under the low, sloping kitchen ceiling, laughing, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, as we gingerly tasted the meat. It was, just as Bub had said, rather like pot roast.
So I became a hunter. Not because of the meat, you understand -- that was just a pretext. It was the figure of Bub Archer, my Deerslayer, that inspired my adolescent imagination, and although I spoke to him only two or three times after that, I needed only that meeting to send me forth to the woods and fields with my Model 68 Winchester single shot .22, morning and evening, wearing cut-off dungarees and a pair of moccasins, hunting knife at my belt. In those four summers I killed only one woodchuck, soon after I began, but I persisted because it was more than a material quest, and like all such enterprises, something of a mystery, at least to me. Of course, there was the fantasy of the hunt and the woodsman in the primeval wilderness, and there was the wonderfully keen pleasure of solitary observation, all my senses alert, alive to everything around me, but I also think that this satisfied, for the time being, a wish to make some connection with the countryside.
By next summer, Mr. Crow's leisurely regime was gone -- he had sold the farm to a young couple, the Davises, and the farming pace picked up. There were more cows, the fields were plowed and planted, and there was an air of bustle about the place. We began buying our milk there -- ten cents for a two-quart jar of Jersey milk with thick gobs of cream floating in it. And for me, the agricultural era was about to begin.
One muggy afternoon when thunderheads loomed on the horizon, Bob Davis drove into our yard, anxious for help with the hay harvest. Apprehensive as I was, fearful of the farm and of my own ignorance and inexperience, how could I refuse? For the next couple of hours I staggered alongside a flatbed truck, heaving up hay bales. When it was all safely mowed away and Dot Davis brought pitchers of milk and big platters of sandwiches out to the barn floor, I fell on the food voraciously, shaking with hunger and fatigue. I had never done any real work in my life. Walking down the once-forbidding lane, jingling 70 cents in my pocket (35 cents an hour), I sensed the significance of the experience and I felt the beginning of pride.
Bob had regular hands, but during that summer and the next two I was often hired for specific jobs, like handling bags of grain on the combine, or picking tomatoes, or pulling tassels from hybrid corn. I was not paid much, but I knew I wasn't worth much, something brought home to me when I worked alongside Dean, a local boy my age, another temporary hand. He was slightly built, but having been raised to it he knew how to do a job of work. When we picked tomatoes, Dean, despite my best efforts, always finished his row first, well ahead. We were not really competing; Dean was just doing his job as he always did, moving right along at a steady clip without pause or wasted motion. It seems odd that I was no more than mildly chagrined by his obvious superiority, but there were special reasons for my lack of rancor. For one thing, Dean was a fine boy, quiet, polite, modest, friendly, trustworthy. For a wonder, he never scorned my poor efforts nor flaunted his ability, as other boys would've done. For another, although I wanted to have some relation to the rural scene in which Dean so admirably fitted, the wish was not deep; I knew I was an outsider, that I belonged to another scene, that in the fall I would return to boarding school, and eventually I might go on to college, moving into a world where I could not foresee that my ability to pick tomatoes or buck bales would matter at all.
My favorite job was combining. Bob drove the tractor, while I stood, swaying on a platform in back of the combine, bagging the grain as it came down a pipe. Combining took forever. Often we would be at it all day, even till dusk. I loved it, riding around and around the field, out in the sun, like the grain handler of the world. Sometimes when we worked late, folks from our house would drive out to the field with bottles of cold beer, and we would all sit on the flatbed truck and drink beer and laugh and talk, and in the dusk we could feel the coolness coming up from the creek bottom.
Bob grew tomatoes on contract for a cannery in Trenton, and I would go with him when he took in a load. The day before, several of us would load the '38 Chevy flatbed with a great pyramidal pile of baskets of tomatoes. At three o'clock the next morning the truck would slowly grind along the lane, lights on in the misty pre-dawn darkness, and I would run across the lawn, jump down the bank, and scramble into the cab. He left so early in order to get a good place in the line, but there was always a long line ahead of us. Sometimes it was midnight before we were unloaded. We spent the day napping, chatting with other farmers in line, talking about all kinds of things, smelling the pervasive odor of canning tomatoes. It was, more often than not, a dull way to spend a day, and I was not paid for it either; I was just along to keep Bob company. But only once did I miss, and after the truck had left me behind, just waking, I jumped on my bike and pedaled the fourteen miles to Trenton. Why did I go?
Like all thoughtful, serious men, Bob had a strong, subtle sense of humor, and I suppose I looked on our relationship as all larks, although I respected and admired him, without consciously thinking about it, for depths that at 14 and 15 and 16 I could only sense, not know, not name. But they came to the surface for a moment during my last summer there, just before I turned 17. I had taken advantage of the cannery trips to ogle the girls we saw on the streets, remarking coarsely on their charms to Bob. The last time I did this, and you'll understand in a moment why it was the last time, Bob, who always spoke deliberately in a voice that was not deep but which seemed to come from far inside him, quietly rebuked my coarseness and then went on to ask if I did not intend to preserve my virginity until marriage? That had been his sexual code, he said.
The effect was devastating. At once I felt very small, very callow. What made such a great impression was his depth contrasted to my shallowness. When he spoke gravely, as he did then, I felt the words as natural growths, consequences that flowed inevitably from an extraordinary breadth of character imbued with experience, knowledge, and wisdom; they were not words of the moment off the top of his head, conventional clichs. Bob was the first person to address me on such a level with such piercing conviction, and the impact was terrific. And there was more, something moving in the way he spoke to me. I think Bob was really shy, not given to glib expressions of his moral sentiments, so it cost him something to overcome his reticence to speak across the gap that separates all of us from each other, and I felt that in the delicacy with which he spoke.
Some years ago, one of my sisters surprised me by asking it if was Bob Davis who had inspired me to become a farmer. I had not thought of the Davises for years, and now, thinking back, I could say with surety that farming never entered my head as a possible occupation then. Statesman, General, Actor, Lawyer, Author, Senator, yes, but Farmer? Any form of manual labor (I did not know then how much intellectual labor farming demanded), beyond a teenager's summer job, was not part of my world. It was not that I thought I was too good for it, but simply that in my class and situation only certain occupations were even conceivable. Besides, there had been other, much more recent influences, farmers I had worked for in New England. Thinking about them, recalling how and why I had respected and admired them, I realized they were of the same species as Bob: grave, humorous, sage men of great integrity, whose lives seemed to me a credit to humanity. Yet they were unheroic, unsung, ordinary men of what was quickly becoming an antique rural world, citizens of the Republic. General farmers all, they provided me with a pattern of farming as well as behavior and character.
I knew none of this at the time, and I gave up that life without a qualm. In the last year I lived in New Jersey, before I went away to college, I was hardly ever at Waln's Mill. Living in the northern part of the state, I worked as a golf course greens keeper that summer, and spent my evenings playing miniature golf with my dopey girlfriend. Meanwhile, the fireflies were thick in the creek bottom, there were oats to be combined and hay to be made, a marsh hawk hunted the meadows, and the boy with the .22 was missing from the hedgerows and fields. I shake my head when I think of it, but it had to be done, I had to turn away from that life to seek what I thought was my fortune in what I thought was the world, and it was fitting that I should do it lightly, without a backward glance. I had to go away to come back -- not to the same place, I mean. I never returned to New Jersey, but I did become a pokey general farmer and more than half a century after I first met Bob Davis, I realize that I have been trying unconsciously (and with indifferent success) to model my character on his.
Nevertheless, it would be nice to go back to that one rural place. I put down my pen and daydream that some of the family still live at Waln's Mill. What I'd really like, I guess, is that it should be the summer of 1950 again, and I can feel the rhythm of the combine, chaff flies up golden in the sun, and I can hear Bob say, as I climb into the old truck at 3 AM, "Well, well, and how's Jigsy this morning?" *
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported." --John Adams
Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Recently in the "Midland Voices" of the Omaha World-Herald there was a series of op-eds on the controversial issues of abortion and same sex-marriage. Regardless of the legality of these two practices or a citizen's approval or denial of these acts as rights guaranteed by the Constitution, both practices are united in their refusal of the life-giving fruits of the act of procreation, the means by which human creation is forwarded. The former aborts the delivery of the child into creation and the latter denies the natural procreative function.
Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, recently clouded the issue of marriage in ruling that:
. . . moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians, and further claimed that Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.
Judge Walker is confused about the institution of marriage when claiming "Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine the notion in the California Constitution that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."
Using Judge Walker's term "opposite-sex couples" for married couples is like calling bachelors single -- it is a redundancy. He might as well establish the right for bachelors to marry and remain bachelors or for a man to marry himself on the grounds that he alone is compatible with himself.
The relationship between husband and wife [opposite-sex couples] is not superior in kind to that of man and man or woman and woman. It is different in kind.
Marriage is not a natural right, it is a natural practice that forwards mankind on earth.
Aristotle long ago noted that the natural domestic society, a family of father, mother, and children, precedes the political society. It is the social relationship of a father and mother into which each child is naturally born. This is the root of natural law, what is natural to man, and can plainly be seen as the natural function, for example, of the sexual organs.
Furthermore, the father and mother are entrusted with raising their children to live virtuously, which is learned habitually until the child comes to the age of rational discernment. At this point, he has the capacity to live a moral life by actively following the moral principles necessary for the end and perfection of the family, as well as the nation.
In the moral universe in which man resides, Aristotle's patriarchal family of father, mother, and child was turned on its head by the Holy family of history -- Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The traditional position of the Father was replaced by the Son when Mary looked down on her child and her God. A child born of a woman was now at the center of the moral universe.
President John Adams noted:
Nature, which has established in the universe a chain of being and universal order, descending from archangels to microscopic animalcules, has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal. Although, among men, all are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.
We are not equal in kind as physical beings, nor do we possess the same physical capacities or intellectual aptitudes by nature. A father is not a mother and a mother is not a father. Government cannot take what is unequal in kind and make it equal, but it can enforce juridical equality, which is to protect each person's right to fulfill himself as nature has so endowed him and to do freely what is right as a virtuous citizen.
American-endowed rights in the Declaration of Independence come from God, nature's creator, and are the basic principles of the moral universe that Judge Walker fails to recognize when claiming that "moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.
George Washington's Farewell Address is well worth remembering in these times when judges dispense of moral disapproval in the face of natural practices:
'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
So goes the moral foundation of the family, so goes the nation. *
"If you meet it promptly and without flinching -- you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!" British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
R. B. A. Di Muccio is a guest commentator for The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. A former assistant professor and chair of the international relations program in the political science department at the University of Florida, he is now vice president of research and advisory services for a global business advisory firm. He received his Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Southern California. These article are republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Barack Obama's supporters have been trying to create a narrative around his foreign-policy doctrine for several years now, even before he was president. The goal has been simple: to preempt efforts to portray Obama as a nave idealist by establishing his so-called "realist" credentials. A Google search on the phrase "Obama realism" yields an astounding 704,000 hits, with all of the top ranked hits supporting this core narrative. One could almost say mission accomplished.
But as we have seen elsewhere, President Obama's advocates have taken a concept with a relatively unambiguous meaning (think, "tax cut") and have turned it on its head to win legitimacy for ill-conceived policies. The result is not only a gross distortion of what "realism" actually means to students of international relations, but also a terribly misguided doctrine that, in my estimation, is making the world more dangerous.
As near as I can tell, Obama's purported realism appears to be a sort of foreign-policy version of the serenity prayer: "change what you can, accept what you cannot." In other words, being a foreign-policy "realist" within this narrative is merely about being "realistic" about things.
Thus, for example, why get all worked up about a nuclear Iran when there's realistically very little we can do about it anyway?
Put bluntly, just being "realistic" is far cry from true political realism in the tradition of Thucydides, Sun Tzu, St. Augustine, Hobbes, von Clausewitz, Niebuhr, Morgenthau, Waltz, and others.
So, if realism is not merely a matter of acting out the serenity prayer on the world political stage, what is it?
Descriptively, classical realism is rooted in a fundamentally pessimistic view of human nature, growing out of the Judeo-Christian notion of original sin. Because human beings are individually prone to depravity and evil, their collective behavior will be similarly prone. To expect or hope otherwise is simply to deny reality.
From these principles, clear prescriptions follow. While individuals are free to deny the reality of human nature in their personal affairs, the world affords no such luxuries to national leaders. Given human nature and the absence of a global arbiter, nations must seek to protect their own interests and security, which are constantly at risk.
Furthermore, realism is often painted as a "straw-man" philosophy that blindly promotes the use of military force. This is simply not true. Morgenthau crafted his realist treatise, Politics Among Nations, largely based upon his belief that democratic leaders failed to confront a rising Germany in the 1930s because they were acting upon utopian rather than realist principles. On the other hand, Morgenthau was also convinced that the Vietnam War was folly because it couldn't be justified in terms of U.S. national security.
In short, realism is not about accepting all conditions as they are; it is about accepting one eternal condition, "national interest defined in terms of power."
Now, realism does not deny the existence of common interests (e.g., low tariffs), or the potential importance of moral principles (e.g., human rights), or the possibility that some people are fundamentally good. What it does reject though -- utterly and completely -- is the wisdom of ever betting national security on such considerations.
This brings us full circle back to the "Obama realism" narrative. This narrative has heavily leveraged not only the realistic-outlook-as-foreign-policy-doctrine already discussed. It has also rested on the argument that George W. Bush certainly was not a realist (given his Wilsonian wars to make the world safe for democracy). But neither Obama's realistic outlook, nor the fact that Bush was probably not a very good realist, makes Obama a true realist.
Afghanistan and Iran provide two excellent though very different cases in point. We now know that Obama never believed any of his rhetoric about Afghanistan as the "necessary war of national security." If success in Afghanistan truly were vital to U.S. interests, Obama wouldn't care one iota whether the dogged pursuit of that success would cause him to "lose the whole Democratic party."
On Iran, the contrast between realist and un-realist doctrines is even starker. Does anyone believe that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, and does anyone not agree that such a development would constitute a massive threat? Anyone? And yet, all indications are that the Obama administration is increasingly accepting of a nuclear Iran and is attempting to reset the world community's expectations on this issue.
Are these actions those of a true realist? In both cases we need only ask: "What would Morgenthau say?" On Afghanistan, Morgenthau would be utterly appalled at the transparently domestic political motivations dominating the president's policy. On Iran, he would surely regard as inexplicable and totally misguided the unwillingness of the United States to confront and thwart this unmistakable threat to stability and security.
President Obama a realist? Hardly. And because he is not, we stand on the precipice of a politically motivated capitulation in Afghanistan and a refusal to oppose nuclear proliferation in Iran. If there's anything we should all be hoping for, it's that the real realists will soon stand up.
It is not often that I am struck speechless by any individual act of political commentary. Yet, former President Jimmy Carter accomplished just that through a recent editorial in the Washington Post. To put it bluntly, the article is a poignant example of what appeasement looks like in black and white. Of course, "appeasement" is a strong word, viewed as name-calling; but it is a descriptive term that I have studied at length, and that applies here.
In a nutshell, Mr. Carter's argument is that North Korea's recent actions merely confirm that:
Pyongyang is ready to conclude an agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to replace the "temporary" cease-fire of 1953.
Did you catch that? It's not a misprint. North Korea's recent revelation of increased uranium enrichment and deadly bombing of targets in South Korea are not the erratic and dangerous provocations of the most erratic, dangerous and provocative regime on the planet. Rather, they are actually "consistent messages" to the West of a readiness to acquiesce.
Dr. Paul Kengor has suggested in these pages that Mr. Carter is only the latest among "duped" progressives in the United States who have been misled by pro-Communists and the North Koreans. I beg to differ. To be duped implies the preexistence of at least a minute possibility that the person had been capable of perceiving the situation correctly in the first place, but was ultimately convinced otherwise.
Not so here. For Mr. Carter to land on such a spectacular level of separation between reality and perception requires a worldview hopelessly skewed by utopian ideals and driven by an all-consuming desire to see every single conflict resolved peacefully, come what may. President Carter isn't being duped, he is being enabled.
On this topic, I know of what I write. You see, I am a reformed "dupe-ee." In 1998, I published an article in Peace Review (10:2) titled "The Irony of U.S. Policy Towards North Korea." My argument was that despite being saddled by what I called "inherently problematic native logic," the appeasement of North Korea as of 1998 had been a surprising success.
I was wrong. Having written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of appeasement, including a detailed analysis of how the policy of appeasement had failed to avert war in the 1930s, I was motivated to try to find a positive example. Could there be a case where appeasement worked? That example seemed to present itself with the so-called "Agreed Framework" concluded between the United States and North Korea in 1994, led by Jimmy Carter.
The agreement, occasioned by North Korea's threatened departure from the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), provided for massive energy aid. The goal was to help convert North Korea's fledgling weapons-grade reactors to light-water/nuclear-reactor technology, along with securing a commitment by North Korea to remain in the NPT.
My analysis highlighted "substantial progress," such as improved North Korean diplomacy, economic liberalization, and improved North-South Korean relations. The all-carrot-and-no-stick approach seemed to be causing real behavior change, I concluded, while also averting the outbreak of violent conflict.
Alas, my assessment was quickly overtaken by events. Already in 1999, there was a significant naval skirmish in the Yellow Sea; in 2002, yet another hot flare-up that killed several South Korean sailors. By 2003, the U.S.-North Korean deal had completely collapsed, with more bad news to follow: 2006 saw further underground nuclear tests; three years later, in 2009, Pyongyang launched missiles over the Sea of Japan, conducted further nuclear tests, and formally rejected the 1953 armistice. The list goes on, up to and including the events of recent weeks.
To be fair, few believe there are easy answers to this problem. I don't know of anyone eager to use force. Moreover, successive U.S. administrations of both parties have fallen prey to North Korea's serial use of brinksmanship to gain more aid and achieve gradual acceptance of its nuclear program. Finally, China's and even South Korea's positions have been persistently conflicting, unclear, and problematic. It's a true conundrum.
In fact, the only person on the planet who does not seem burdened with uncertainty in this matter is Mr. Carter. That is because he is a committed appeaser. In order to avoid debilitating cognitive dissonance, appeasers must view the rogue actor's grievances as legitimate and its aims as rationally limited.
In this sense, Carter's views fit perfectly. As Carter says, the Kim regime's actions are only "designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future," emanating from their desire to "avoid domination by others."
It's a breathtaking example; an object lesson in appeasement thinking. Appeasing the North Koreans, the world's most egregious agitators, has only resulted in unending cycles of successively more dangerous crises.
President Carter is still wrong on North Korea. Let's hope the current administration is not. *
"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?" --Benjamin Franklin
Shawn Ritenour is a professor of economics at Grove City College, contributor to The Center of Vision & Values, and author of Foundations of Economics: A Christian View. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Since Fed chairman Ben Bernanke announced his plan for the Federal Reserve to inflate (I'm sorry, "quantitatively ease") commercial bank reserves by $600 billion, he has come under surprising, but understandable, criticism. So much so that he has felt compelled to defend his policy as necessary for continuing recovery. While defending his plan on CBS' "60 Minutes" over the weekend, Bernanke revealed that he might expand his program and inflate even more.
Why the need for such monetary expansion? Conventional wisdom has it that unless the Fed is vigilant to protect us, we are in danger of falling into a bottomless pit of deflationary depression. Many think that deflation explains the 20-year "lost decade" in Japan, and the fear is, as the old World War II slogan goes, "It can happen here!"
Ben Bernanke is on record stating that prices are not rising fast enough for effective monetary expansion. His solution is to pour more money into the economy. Bernanke is no longer merely a deflation-phobe. He is a not-high-enough-inflation-phobe.
Japan is often pointed to as the quintessential recent example of the disastrous effects of deflation. Paul Krugman has been saying since the 1990s that Japan is caught in a liquidity trap, and the only solution is to manufacture inflationary expectations by creating money in earnest until the Japanese are convinced that prices are going up. Then they will stop holding money and start spending again, which is seen as the fount of economic rejuvenation. It is asserted that Japan's once vibrant culture has been transformed into one of pessimistic risk aversion, due to a prolonged deflationary spiral following its boom of the 1980s.
But is this really the case? Sound economic theory and history instructs otherwise. Recessions are not the result of deflation but the necessary consequence of capital consumption via malinvestment resulting from artificially low interest rates. In both Japan in the 1980s and the United States in the 2000s, entrepreneurs were led astray by central bank credit expansion. This led them to undertake too much investment at capital-intensive stages of production and not enough investment at stages closer to consumption. Investors began a plethora of investment projects that were simply unsustainable. These projects must be liquidated if we do not want to make the situation even worse by continuing to consume even more capital. Recession is the beginning of the necessary restructuring of capital toward its most highly valued uses.
The misery that people continue to experience in Japan is the direct result of Japan's failure to allow wasteful, losing enterprises to be liquidated. The Japanese government has kept unprofitably invested capital in place with fiscal and monetary stimulus as well as central bank policy that continues to keep bad debt frozen on the books of zombie banks.
Additionally, the misery in Japan cannot be due to deflation, because there has not been any. In 1989, the annual consumer price index in Japan was at 91.3. In 2009, it was 100.3. There have been ups and down along the way, but prices are higher now than they were in 1989. The monetary base of Japan is now more than 244 times what it was in July 1991. M1 in Japan almost tripled from 1990 to 2002 and then increased every year after until 2009. The claim that there has been a generation of deflation in Japan is simply wrong.
History also shows that liquidation of unwise investments does not necessarily cause prolonged misery. During the U.S. recession of 1920-21, President Warren Harding cut government spending, cut taxes, and reduced the national debt. The Fed did the unthinkable: It made no effort to reflate to forestall deflation. What happened was not (contrary to some interpretations) a short deflationary ride to the Great Depression; instead, unemployment quickly decreased to 2.4 percent in 1923. The government allowed unsound investments to be liquidated while the necessary capital restructuring commenced.
It is time to put the Japanese "deflationary depression" canard to rest. The true lesson to be learned is that after an inflationary boom turns into the inevitable bust, trying to fix the mess by fiscal stimulus, monetary inflation, and bank bailouts is a fool's game. We should instead reduce the scope of government in the economy by cutting spending, lowering taxes, reducing regulation, and stop propping up profligate banks. Only this prescription will allow the necessary capital restructuring to take place and thereby place our economy on proper footing, setting the stage for future prosperity. *
"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would . . . assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it." --Adam Smith
Marvin Folkertsma is a professor of political science and fellow for American Studies with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. These articles are from V & V, a web site publication of Vision and Values.
In January 1850, President Zachary Taylor peppered the air with language bluer than a Union uniform. He asserted that he would personally lead an army against traitors who threatened secession and would string 'em all up with as much determination as he had demonstrated against deserters and spies during the late war with Mexico. Not one to suffer fools or pompous Whigs, Taylor refused to sign a legislative compromise that in his view pandered too much to Southern sensibilities on the issue of slavery in the newly acquired territories. Six months later, he was dead, and his successor, Millard Fillmore, eagerly signed a bill that included the fugitive slave clause and, among other things, temporarily settled territorial questions involving California and New Mexico. Fillmore boasted that the Compromise of 1850 constituted "a final settlement" of the country's sectional problems, and then proceeded to lose the Whig nomination in 1852 -- and his historical reputation forever. A decade later, the country was at war.
The hapless president's approach was neither unique nor unexpected. Indeed, from the founding of the republic to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the institution of slavery hovered over national policy deliberations like a satanic entity, ready to scourge the continent at any provocation that hinted of sectional discord. And each time this demonic force threatened, American leaders staved it off by putting it off with that lovely process so dear to the hearts of democratic politicians: compromise.
Thus, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was followed by another one in 1850, signed by President Fillmore, which led further to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and perhaps the most despicable decision ever made by the Men in Black -- Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). By this time, the Civil War had already begun in "Bleeding Kansas," and 70 years of procrastination, cowardice, and abdication yielded a decision that Congress had no power to do anything about -- an issue that determined whether or not the "last best hope on earth" would survive. America paid dearly for all this, in a war that still ranks as the most destructive and bloodiest conflict the republic has ever experienced -- all because the vast number of the people's representatives refused to face an issue with courage and moral clarity. And symbolizing this whole sordid process stands Millard Fillmore, who, like those before him and national leaders during the decade after his term in office -- Pierce, Douglas, Buchanan, for instance-declared that just one more meretricious "fix" would resolve the issue forever. Such was the lesson taught by Millard Fillmore.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and observe the brow-furrowing expressions that accompany proposals to deal with one of the worst domestic crises America has faced since Fort Sumter: a debt monster that threatens to swallow the republic in its massive maw and leave pitiful remains scattered across the North American continent like a confetti of Greeces. Government luminaries have ideas, all right; just as the framers of pre-Civil War (final settlement) compromises did, and nearly all their proposals involve the moral equivalent of punishing the slaves while leaving the institution of servitude itself intact.
For instance, both the Obama fiscal commission and the bipartisan task force, the latter chaired by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, propose a wide array of spending cuts and tax increases in efforts to "reduce annual deficits to manageable levels" and to "stabilize the debt . . . at less than 60 percent of gross domestic product, an internationally recognized standard."
Manageable levels? Stabilize the debt? Who's kidding whom, here? Further, and more important, who sacrifices? The American people, the slaves, that's who. Who or what does not sacrifice? Government; that is, a plethora of agencies and departments that should be abolished, like the IRS and the Department of Education.
It gets worse. President Obama's deficit commission suggests a provision that would end "tax expenditures," a term that refers to funds the government would collect, absent specific deductions. This concept is dictatorial in nature; it assumes government ownership of all social resources and considers an "expenditure" those amounts that the IRS graciously allows the private sector to keep. It is Dred Scott v. Sanford all dressed up for modern sensibilities. You want freedom? Fuggetaboutit, we own you.
In 1863, after the country had experienced a number of the most horrific battles in modern times, President Abraham Lincoln came to the realization that the war could no longer be justified on the basis of saving the Union and preventing the spread of slavery. The odious institution itself had to be abolished, which it was with the Emancipation Proclamation. In short, the Fillmore option was dead.
The same conclusion applies today. America needs a Lincoln, not another committee of Fillmores. *
"It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome." --Alexander Hamilton