Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Theodore Parker – ‘Only a hand-rail of difference between the two parties’
This continues a series of posts intended to demonstrate the ideological relevance of New England Transcendentalism to the Occupy Movement and to direct readers to this invaluable resource.
Theodore Parker (1810–1860) was one of the greatest orators among the New England Transcendentalists. In the excerpt below, Parker explains that, in the perennial struggle between Idealism and materialism, the US has become dominated by the latter. The two great political parties – the one of the rich and the other of the poor – are alike in that their values and policies are dominated by desire for wealth. It is all too painfully clear how closely the Whigs and Democrats of his era correspond to the Republican and Democratic parties of ours.
Source: Theodore Parker, ‘The Nebraska Question’, in Additional Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Vol. 1, Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1855, pp. 328-338.
* * * *
From 1620 to 1788 there was a rapid development of ideas. But since that time the outward pressure has been withdrawn. The nation is no longer called to protest against a foreign foe; no despot forces us to fall back on the great principles of human nature, and declare great universal truths. Even the Anglo-Saxon people are always metaphysical in revolution. We have ceased to be such, and have become material. We have let the programme of political principles and purposes slip out of the nations consciousness, and have betaken ourselves, body and soul to the creation of riches. Wealth is the great object of American desire. Covetousness is the American passion. This is so — nationally in the political affairs of the country; ecclesiastically, socially, domestically, individually. Our national character, political institutions, geographic situation,— all favor the accumulation of riches.…
No country was ever so rich before, nor got rich so fast; in none had wealth ever such power, or was so esteemed. It is counted as the end of life, not as the material basis to higher forms thereof. It has no conventional check in the institutions of the land, and only two natural checks in the heart of the people. One is the talent and genius — intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—that is born in rare men; and the other is the desire, the caprice, the opinion, of the great majority of men, who oppose {p. 329} their collective human will against the material glitter of mere accumulated money. But money can buy intellectual talent and intellectual genius; at least it can buy American talent and American genius. Money, and the men of cultivated minds whom it buys, can deceive the people, so that the majority shall follow the dollar wherever it rolls. The clink of the dollar, — that is the reveille, the morning drum-beat, for the American people. In America, money is inaugurated as a power to control all other powers. It has itself become an “Institution” — master of all the rest.
Three of those bad institutions … whereof our fathers brought the traditions from the old world, have mainly perished. The mediaeval Theocracy has gone out from the Protestant Church; Monarchy has wholly faded from the consciousness of the people; Aristocracy, sitting unmovable on her cradle, has had her heart pierced through and through by the gigantic spear of American Industry horsed on a steam-engine. Money has taken the place of all three. It has got inaugurated into the Church, — it is a Church of commerce; in the State — it is a State of commerce; in the Community not less, — it is a society of commerce; and money wields the triple power of those three old masters, Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy. It is the Almighty Dollar.
In the American Church, money is God. The {p. 330} peculiar sins of money, and of the rich, they are never preached against; it is a Church of commerce, wealth its heaven and the millionaire its saint; its ministers should be ordained, not “by the imposition of hands,” but of bank-bills — of small denomination. In the American State, money is the Constitution: officers ought to be sworn on the federal currency; they should make the sign of the dollar, ($) as their official symbolic cross; it is a State of commerce. In the community, money is Nobility; it is transmissible social power; it is Aristocracy, it makes a man who has got it a vulgar “gentleman;” it is a Society of commerce….
{p. 331} Money having taken the place of these three institutions, it must be politically represented in the nation by a party; for a party is the provisional organization of a tendency. So there is a party organized about the Dollar as its central nucleus and idea. The dollar is the germinal dot of the Whig party; its motive is pecuniary; its motto should be, to state it in Latin, pecunia pecuniata, money moneyed, money made. It sneers at the poor; at the many; has a contempt for the people. It legislates against the poor, and for the rich; that is, for men pecuniarily strong; the few who are born with the desire, the talent, and the conventional position to become rich. “Take care of the rich, and they will take care of the poor,” is its secret maxim. [Note 1] Every thing must yield to money: that is to have universal right of way. Down with Mankind! the Dollar is coming! The great domestic object of Government, said the greatest Expounder of this party, “is the protection of property;” —that is to say, the protection of money {p. 332} moneyed, money got. With this party there is no Absolute Right, no Absolute Wrong. Instead thereof, there is Expediency and Inexpediency. There is no law higher than the power to wield money just as you will. Accordingly a millionaire is reckoned by this party as the highest production of society. He is the Whig ideal; he alone has attained “the measure of the stature of a perfect man.”
…But man is man, can a dollar stop him? For ever? The instinct of development is as inextinguishable in man as the instinct of perpetuation in blackbirds and thrushes, who build their procreant nests under all administrations, theocratic or democratic. So there is another party which represents the Majority of the people; that majority who have not money which is coveted, only the covetous desire thereof…. This is the Democratic party. It loves money as well as the Whig party, but has got less of it….
{p. 333} To the Whig party belong the rich, the educated, the decorous; the established, — those who look back, and count the money got. To the other party belong the young, the poor, the bold, the adventurous, everybody that is in want, everybody that is in debt everybody who complains. The audacious are its rulers [Note 2]; — often men destitute of lofty character, of great ideas, of Justice, of Love, of Religion — bold, smart, saucy men. This party sneers at the rich, and hates them; of course it envies them, and lusts for their gold.…
The Democratic party appeals to the brute will of the majority, right or wrong; it knows no Higher Law. Its statesmanship is the power to enact into permanent institutions the transient will of the majority: that is the ultimate standard. Popular and unpopular, take the place of right and wrong—vox populi, vox Dei [Note 3]; the vote settles what is true, what right. It regards money made and hoarded as the foe of human progress, and so is hostile to the millionaire. The Whig calls on his lord, “Money, help us!” To get money, the Democrat can do all things through the majority strengthening him….
{p. 334} … The Whig party worships money: it is the body of the Whig God; there is no Higher Law above it. The Democratic party worships the opinion of the majority: it is the voice of the Democrat’s God: there is no Higher Law. To the Whig party, — no matter how the money is got, by smuggling opium or selling slaves, — it is pecunia pecuniata, — money moneyed. To the Democratic party it is of no consequence what the majority wishes, or whom it chooses … If the majority wants to violate the Constitution of America and the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the Universe and the Declaration of God, why! the cry is — “there is no higher law!” {p. 335} “the greatest good of the greatest number!” — What shall become of the greatest good of the smaller number?
There is, therefore, no vital difference between the Whig party and the Democratic party; no difference in moral principle. The Whig inaugurates the Money got; the Democrat inaugurates the Desire to get the money. That is all the odds. So in the times that try the passions, which are the souls of these parties, the Democrat and the Whig meet on the same … platform. One is not higher and the other lower; they are just alike. There is only a hand rail between the two, which breaks down if you lean on it, and the parties mix. In common times, it becomes plain that a Democrat is but a Whig on time; a Whig is a Democrat arrived at maturity; his time has come. A Democrat is a young Whig who will legislate for money as soon as he has got it; the Whig is an old Democrat who once hurrahed for the majority — “Down with money! that is a despot! and up with the desire for it!” …
{p. 336} I once knew a crafty family which had two sons; both men of ability, and of remarkable unity of “principle.” The family invested one in each party, and as it had a head on either side of the political penny thrown into the air, the family was sure to win. A New England Family, wise in its generation! [Note 4]
Now, I do not mean to say that all Democrats or all Whigs are of this way of thinking. Quite the contrary. There is not a Whig or Democrat who would confess it. The majority, so far as they have convictions, are very different from this; but the Whig would say in his convention, that I told the truth of the Democratic party; the Democrat, in his convention, would say, I told, the truth of the Whigs. These ideas, — they reside in the two parties [Note 5], … as chemistry in the water, as in the drop the gravitation which brings it to the ground: not a conviction, but a fact. Each of these parties has great good to accomplish. Both seem indispensable. Money must be looked after. It is a valuable thing; the human race could not do without property. It is the ladder whereby we scale the heavens of manhood. But property alone is good for nothing. The will of the majority must be respected. I honor the ideas of the Democratic {p. 337} party, and of the Whig party, so far as they are just. But man is not made merely for money; the majority are the standard of power, not of Right. There is a law of God which directs the chink of every dollar; it cannot roll except by the laws of the Eternal Father of Earth and Heaven. What if the majority enact iniquity into a statute! Can millions make Wrong right? Justice is the greatest good of all.
With little geographical check or interference from other nations, we are going on solving our problem of “manifest destiny.” Since the establishment of Independence, America has made a rapid development. Her population has increased with unexampled rapidity; her territory has enlarged to receive her ever greatening family; riches have been multiplied faster even than their possessors. But some of the least lovely qualities of the Anglo-Saxon tribe have become dreadfully apparent. We have exterminated the Indians; we keep no treaties made with the red men; they keep all. The national materialism and indifference to great universal principles of Right shows itself clearer and clearer. Submission to Money or the Majority is the one idea that pervades the nation….
{p. 338} … There is a contradiction in the consciousness of the nation. In our industrial civilization, under the stimulus of love of wealth, and its consequent social and political power, we have made such a rapid advance in population and riches as no nation ever made. The lower powers of the understanding have also had a great development. We can plan, organize, and administer material means for material ends, as no nation has ever done. But it is not to be supposed that any people could pass all at once from the military civilization, with its fourfold despotism, to an industrial civilization with democracy in its Church, State, Community, and Family. How slowly we learn; with what mistakes do we come to the true Idea [Note 6], and how painfully enact it into a deed!
Notes
1. E.g., the so-called trickle-down theory of ‘Reaganomics’.
2. Cf. Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006).
3. Latin for ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God.’
4. A prime tactic of special interests today.
5. Today we might express this by saying that, although many elected officials have principles and are decent men and women, the structural forces of the political system inevitably result in compromise of these principles and their sacrifice to the party agenda.
6. i.e., the ‘great principles of human nature’ (p. 328), or the Platonic Ideals of Truth, Beauty, Justice, etc.
The Iraq War Ten Years Later: What are the Lessons?
To mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, we should consider what the lessons are:
1. The US government will lie to any degree necessary to start a war.
2. A war will last at least 10 times as long and cost at least 10 times as much as initially announced.
3. Once the war drums beat, most Americans will step in line unconditionally.
4. There is a single ‘war party’ comprised of the Republican and Democratic parties.
5. Once commenced, no politician will question a war; no reivews will be made of the prudence of continuing it.
6. Foreign-imposed regime changes lead to prolonged, bloody, internal fighting.
7. Those who protested the US invasion of Iraq were neither unpatriotic nor wrong.
8. News and entertainment media promote and glorify war.
9. The Christian churches of America, who stood by doing nothing then and still refuse to denounce US militarism, are abrogating their moral authority, discrediting Christianity, and — though God alone knows for certain but we must dare suggest — grieving the Holy Spirit.
10. The US government will betray its veterans whenever that saves money.
These are the lessons that should be learned. Whether they will be learned is another matter entirely.
The Supreme Court, Gay Marriage, and Prisoners of Plato’s Cave Arguing About Shadows
Despite my best efforts to ignore the subject, I’ve been forcibly informed that on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 the US Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments on the pending gay marriage case. The case interests me no more than the arguments amongst prisoners in Plato’s cave about the shapes of shadows flitting on the wall (Republic 7.514ff).
One group with a childish concept of ‘rights’ will face another with an equally erroneous concept of ‘morality.’ No arguments based on logic or explicit first principles will be raised. The names associated with the foundations of moral philosophy, names like Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and Cicero, will not be mentioned. One faction of a dumbed-down, culturally illiterate society will square off against the other. They should name the case Folly vs. Folly.
Her blindfold will spare us seeing Lady Justice roll her eyes in exasperation.
I suspect the Supreme Court will ultimately endorse gay marriage, since, Reason long since having fled the halls of the Court, the matter will be decided politically. If so, some good may come from the Supreme Court placing itself so far out on a limb that all Americans will start to see that it is better for us have these issues decided by logic and good-will, not animosity, power-politics, and the machinations of demagogues.
But since Fate has thrust the matter before me, I will weigh in on it.
Proponents of gay marriage assert that marriage is a right. Now is this true? Is it obviously true? Should we not begin by defining what a right is, and then supply a reasoned argument why marriage is a right?
And if marriage is a right, is it a civil (legal) right or a natural right? A natural right is an inalienable right, one that exists, say, in a state of primitive nature before governments are instituted. Consider this example. If two strangers (let’s say a man and woman, just to keep the example simple) accidentally wash up on a deserted island and then decided to start making babies, they would not, and could not, be married. Marriage would have no meaning. Marriage is a category that produces a relationship of a pair of people to the rest of society. If there is no society, it is meaningless to speak of marriage.
Now someone might reply. “No, you are wrong. It is God who marries two people.” Well, fair enough — we can easily clarify that. Marriage exists both as a religious and a secular institution in today’s society. We are not considering here the issue of religious marriage. That is for churches to consider, not the Supreme Court. Our focus of attention here is exclusively secular marriage, of the kind that would require two people to get a marriage license, register at City Hall, check “married” on a census survey, etc.
Now since, as our example suggests, a secularly defined marriage does not exist without a society, it would appear to be more a civil right than a natural right. Again: having sex is a natural right; but being designated by society as “married” is not a natural right.
This suggests that marriage, if a right at all, is a civil right. Civil rights are decided by legislation. There is nothing inherent in the nature of civil rights that unconditionally demands that all people, in every case, are entitled to exactly equal treatment. Cases in point: children are not allowed to drink alcohol; felons are not allowed to vote (in some states). But let’s stop with this. There is plenty of room to argue either way here — that gay couples should or should not, based on issues of justice and society’s best interests, enjoy a civil right to be married. This should be discussed, but it should be done in a constructive and unprejudiced manner.
However it must also be asked whether marriage is a right at all. There are other paradigms for looking at marriage which seem at least as plausible.
We can, for example, see marriage as a privilege. Let’s again consider the state of a primitive, aboriginal society, before the development of a formal government. In a clan or small tribe, we can likely find examples of the principle that not everybody is sanctioned by the community to be married. Consider the nature of marriage: it is a ceremony attended by many others, perhaps the whole village. It is a cause for community celebration. There are dowries to be paid. Moreover, the married couple typically must show some evidence of being able to contribute to the life and welfare of the community — as judged by the standards and values of that community. In the traditional wedding ceremony, we still have the part that says, “if anyone has any just reason why this couple should not be united, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” Presumably this part is in there for a reason. Doubtless there have been many times when this option has been exercised. Any number of objections might be raised. “The man is a lout, an alcoholic!” “The woman is unfaithful!” “They are both lazy good-for-nothings, who never help with the community labor, and will do nothing but produce more mouths to feed.” The point is that the community has some, and perhaps a great deal to say about who should be allowed to be married. If marriage is a privilege, how else is a community to decide this except by legislation, or at the ballot box. That is what the citizens of California did: they went to the ballot box, and the majority voted against gay marriage.
Do I agree with that? I’ll say this much: that an issue like this is of sufficient gravity that it should not be decided merely by a simple majority vote. Here is a case where a super-majority — say a 2/3 or 75% majority might demonstrate sufficient consensus to decide an issue.
Or what if, along similar lines, we see marriage as an award, an honor granted to certain couples based on merit? If we go back to the origins of marriage in primitive society, that is not an entirely implausible model, and not one that should be dismissed without fair consideration. If a young couple has made a sufficiently good impression on their family and village, people will help them out with a place to live, gifts, etc., as though to say, “we’d like to have more people like you; get working on it!”
In that case it is absurd to claim that everyone is entitled to “equal treatment under the law.” If marriage is an award, then one can no more insist that everyone is equally entitled to marriage than that everyone equally deserves a ticker-tape parade just because an astronaut gets one, or a reception with the president because the Super Bowl winners get one. But, you might ask, who decides who gets the ‘award’ of marriage and who doesn’t. That is society’s prerogative, just as in the case of other awards.
No doubt in the Supreme Court case someone will raise the issue of uniform enforcement: if a gay couple is married in Massachusetts, and it isn’t honored in California, that will make the administrative tasks of the federal government impossible. That is a specious argument. By this reasoning we should simply eliminate the individual states altogether as administratively inconvenient, and adopt a single, uniform national code of law. Further, by such reasoning any state could pass a strange law concerning marriage (e.g., permitting marriage for children under the age of 12) and the other states would have to honor it.
There is one potentially interesting topic likely to emerge in the case. If gay marriage is considered a right based on “equal treatment under the law,” how can society then deny a right to polygamous marriage? What will be interesting is to see the fancy footwork as the pro-gay marriage attorneys try to side-step that question.
Meanwhile the United States is in a state of perpetual war, a matter which concerns all our welfare and basic issues of justice 100 times more than the issue of gay marriage.
No comments please. This subject hold no interests for me. I write only to bemoan the fact that this topic is being mishandled by all parties.
Taxing the Rich: What We Can Learn from Ancient Athens
The ancient city-state of Athens employed means of ‘taxing the rich’, the principles of which modern Americans might well consider.
One of these was a special tax called the eisphora. It was levied on rich Athenians in wartime. In effect, a wealthy person might be required to provide and equip a warship for the Athenian navy. In modern terms, it would be like the US government requiring wealthy citizens to pay for an Apache helicopter ($15 million) or Predator drone ($4 million); someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett might have to pay for a destroyer ($1.5 billion).
One advantage of such a system today is that it would supply a powerful incentive for the wealthy to lobby against war. Rather than pay the eisphora tax, the Koch brothers might prefer to subsidize an anti-war Super-PAC or a world peace think-tank!
Ancient Athenians also required the wealthiest citizens to underwrite religious and cultural events. For example, the famous tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were written for performance at an Athenian religious festival called the Dionysia. Each year several rich Athenians were selected and matched with a playwright. The rich person paid for the cost of producing the writer’s plays (each writer produced four plays).
Under this scheme a rich person was taxed, yet in compensation they received public recognition and praise. It’s a fair trade, don’t you think? At present, our attitude is more, “you pay money, because we demand it.” But then the attitude was, “Let’s make a deal. You pay a lot of your money for civic benefit, but in return we hail you as a benefactor.” This is a marvelous custom — virtually a win-win scenario. Instead of encouraging mutual resentment between rich and non-rich, it fosters good-will all the way around.
Again in modern terms this would be like, instead of simply taxing billionaires and placing the money in an anonymous coffer where it indiscriminately pays for all manner of government programs (many of which, it must be admitted, do little to improve the quality of life of Americans), they would be asked to pay for museums, parks, civic beautification programs, etc. Have Bill Gates build a new museum of art in Seattle. Then write on the entrance, “Dedicated to the People of Seattle by Bill Gates”, and put a statue of him in front.
Everybody’s happy. You tax the rich, while at the same time promote love and harmony.
The Lions and the Tigers (A Political Parties Fable)
Long ago in olden times, the human beings were oppressed by a tribe of lions. The people fought back bravely, however. They made spears and learned how to keep the lions at bay and to protect their village and children. Then the lions got together to reconsider their plans. “I have an idea”, said one crafty lion. “Let us divide ourselves into two bands, calling one the ‘lions’ and the other the ‘tigers’. Each group will then approach the villagers saying, ‘Those evil tigers/lions are certainly a threat to you. We propose that you enlist our help to protect you from that other group. Whereas the other group will eat 10 of your children each year, we will only ask that you feed us one or two a year.’” This plan met with great approval among the lions.
And so each of the newly formed bands of ‘lions’ and ‘tigers’ alternately approached groups of villagers, offering protection against the other band of cats. Naturally the villagers were delighted with the plan. Being basically lazy, they much preferred relegating their protection to someone else.
And so the ‘lions’ and ‘tigers’ each struck a bargain with roughly half the villagers, and this arrangement continued for some time. Periodically, representatives from each group would visit their sponsoring villagers, reminding them of how evil the other cats were, and how necessary it was for the protection to continue.
As the villagers began to feel completely dependent on this protection, the cats raised the ante. “Our work is so difficult,” they said, “and the lions/tigers we protect you from are more dangerous than ever! We must therefore ask for more compensation. We now request you sacrifice 5 children a year to us.” And the villagers complied with scarcely a complaint. And this continued until eventually the ‘lions’ and ‘tigers’ each demanded 10 children a year — twice in total what the cats had originally taken.
At any time the villagers could have ended this tragedy, if only they had again taken their spears and confronted the animals directly. But by now they had become completely dependent on their external ‘protection’, and had forgotten how to make or use spears. Much worse, they also forgot how to act together. The ‘lions’ and ‘tigers’ had poisoned their minds completely, turning one group of villagers (the ‘lions protect us from tigers’ party) against the other (the ‘tigers protect us from lions’ party).
Now every fable must have a moral, and the moral here is this: never place your protection in the hands of lions.
Third Parties Quotes — Founding Fathers
In response to inquiries, here are some Founding Fathers quotes related to third parties. Specifically, these relate to the spirit of faction and animosity that characterize our current, radically polarized two-party system.
John Adams
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
~ John Adams, Letter to Jonathan Jackson (October 2, 1780). In: Charles Francis Adams (ed.), The Works of John Adams, Vol. 9, Boston, 1854. pp. 510-11.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
~ John Adams, Letter to J. H. Tiffany (March 31, 1819). In: Charles Francis Adams (ed.), The Works of John Adams, Vol. 10, Boston, 1856. pp. 377-8.
George Washington
Let me … warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
The alternate triumphs of different parties … make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
[The spirit of party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
[The spirit of party] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
All combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.
~ George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796.
Thomas Jefferson
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Francis Hopkinson (March 13, 1789). In: Merrill D. Peterson (ed.), Letters of Thomas Jefferson, New York, 1984, pp. 940-42. [PL Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 5, pp. 75-78].
Alexander Hamilton
Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
~ Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist #1, October 27, 1787.
We are attempting, by this Constitution, to abolish factions, and to unite all parties for the general welfare.
~ Alexander Hamilton, Debates in the Convention of the State of New York on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Tuesday, June 25, 1788. In: Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton (Federal Edition), Vol. 2, New York, 1904, p. 57.
James Madison
A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.
~ James Madison, The Federalist #10, November 22, 1787
So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.
~ James Madison, The Federalist #10, November 22, 1787
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.
~ James Madison, The Federalist #10, November 22, 1787
Afghanistan: Vietnam 2 — And Still We Have Not Learned
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~ George Santayana (The Life of Reason)
We don’t need to make this post any longer than necessary – the title makes the message plain enough. Just as it is obvious to anyone with common sense that the war in Afghanistan is pointless (if not suicidal) and should end.
Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 and a prime architect of the Vietnam war, admitted that the Vietnam war was a mistake, and had the good sense to reflect on where the nation went wrong in pursuing it. In 1995, he published his reflections in a book, titled, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (Vintage Books, 1996. ISBN: 0679767495). The chapter titled, “The Lessons of Vietnam” (pp. 319–336) explained eleven specific mistakes. These mistakes are summarized below, along with obvious parallels to the current US involvement in Afghanistan. [Note: McNamara's words are italicized and in quotes; headings and bold text are my additions.]
“If we are to learn from our experience in Vietnam, we must first pinpoint our failures. There were eleven major causes for our disaster in Vietnam.”
1. Exaggerated dangers
“We misjudged … the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries (in this case, North Vietnam and the Vietcong, supported by China and the Soviet Union).”
The common assumption is that we are fighting in Afghanistan to prevent terrorist attacks here. Yet Al Qaeda is effectively removed from Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden is dead. We are now fighting the Taliban, an Afghan cultural and political faction, which has never attacked the US, and would appear to be only concerned with affairs in Afghanistan.
2. Misjudged people and leaders
“We totally misjudged the political forces within the country…. We [mistakenly] saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for – freedom and democracy.”
What do we know about the intentions and determination of the political leaders in Kabul, except that all evidence points towards their corruption and greed?
3. Underestimated patriotism
“We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people (in this case, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong) to fight and die for their beliefs and values.”
The common assumption is that the Taliban is merely a front for warlords who wish to exploit and oppress the people of Afghanistan. But would it not conform with common sense to suppose that they see the US as an imperialistic invader, and are at this point strongly motivated by a genuine and realistic sense of nationalism and patriotism? Our government and political system is today so plainly out of control that we ourselves seem unable to control its vicious advances. Who, then, could doubt that there are people in Afghanistan who would fight to the death to prevent this same machine from taking over their country and subjecting them to the same dehumanizing institutional forces. We shouldn’t suppose that the Taliban are saints, or that their motives are completely honorable. But whatever their other failings, they are human beings, and human beings are well known to die rather than surrender their homeland to an invading force.
4. Ignorance of history and culture
“Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.”
What do we know about the culture and politics of Afghanistan? Are we truly so naive as to think that the cultural dynamics are as simple as the formula “Taliban = bad guys, anti-Taliban = good guys”? In what area of life is such primitive, black-and-white thinking correct or adequate to solve a problem?
5. Machines vs. men
“We failed … to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements.”
All available evidence and testimony points to the rural and rugged terrain of Afghanistan as decisively favoring the guerilla tactics of the Taliban, and making our approach there, based on superior technology and conventional troop actions, an impossible logistical nightmare.
6. No honest debate
“We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia before we initiated the action.”
The American public bought into the Afghanistan operation under the stated premise that it was to be a short-term operation (e.g., 90 days), designed to destroy terrorist training camps and to capture Osama bin Laden. Since then there has been no “full and frank discussion” about our goals, objectives, and strategy. Rather, the war has dragged on by institutional momentum, and by the irrational yet widespread belief that we should continue precisely because we began, and to leave would be unpatriotic or a sign of weakness.
7. No public communication
“We failed to retain popular support in part because we did not explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we did…. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, but, rather, in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.”
The war has created (or, we should say, increased) a deep chasm between citizens and government. At present, polls show (as they have for some time) that most Americans oppose our continued involvement in Afghanistan.
More fundamentally, the public has no idea (and, likely, neither do members of Congress) as to the true reasons for our involvement. Upon repeated inquiry to my US Senator (Barbara Boxer D-CA), I finally received a short response alluding to “geopolitical objectives.” In the face of such vague government communications, the public can only speculate. Are our “geopolitical objectives” to place a US-style democracy adjacent to Iran? ; or next to China? Is it to get our foot in the door of the mineral-rich Caspian Sea area?
And why have we let the war spill over into Pakistan with drone strikes? Are we trying to keep Pakistan’s nuclear arms out of the hands of Pakistani terrorists? Have factions of the Pakistani government secretly asked our help to control their internal terrorist problem in exchange for other concessions, while at the same time they publicly denounce our drone strikes to quell the indignation of their citizens?
Or do the AfPak military operations continue merely because they line the pockets of war profiteers, who, by making large campaign contributions, control US foreign policy?
8. False sense of omniscience
“We did not recognize that neither our own people nor our leaders are omniscient. Where our own security is not directly at stake, our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose.”
Clearly the US government still labors under the burden of a false sense of omniscience. And while our leaders continue to say that the Afghanistan war is not an effort in nation building, our actions and massive siphoning off of US funds – while our own infrastructure deteriorates – shows beyond doubt that this is exactly what we are attempting.
9. Unilateralism
“We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action – other than in response to direct threats to our own security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.”
It is no secret that the so-called multinational effort in Afghanistan is indeed merely cosmetic. Several members of the original coalition have at least had the decency to withdraw their support.
10. No easy solutions
“We failed to recognize that … there may be problems for which there are not immediate solutions…. At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.”
Perhaps we don’t like the Taliban, and perhaps with good reason. But, ultimately, what happens in Afghanistan is not our business. Can we not trust the innate capacity of the Afghan people to gradually work out their problems? And if we wish to save the world, why not do so with positive efforts, like ending famine or eradicating disease – goals which, unlike a military victory in Afghanistan, are attainable?
11. Executive branch disorganization
“Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues… Such organizational weakness would have been costly had this been the only task confronting the president and his advisers…. [But] it coexisted with the wide array of other domestic and international problems confronting us. We … failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia – our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them.”
Two successive administrations have shown an utter lack of ability to confront the war in Afghanistan in an honest and sensible way. And today we have even more pressing social problems than existed during the Vietnam era, problems which demand an even greater proportion of government attention.
McNamara followed his list of these errors by noting how they all interacted in a negatively synergistic fashion:
“These were our major failures, in their essence. Though set forth separately, they are all in some way linked: failure in one area contributed to or compounded failure in another. Each became a turn in a terrible knot.”
He then concluded with important observations that modern Americans should take to heart:
“Above all else, the criteria governing intervention should recognize that, as we learned in Vietnam, military force has only a limited capacity to facilitate the process of nation building. Military force by itself cannot rebuild a ‘failed state.’… External military force cannot substitute for the political order and stability that must be forged by a people for themselves.”
and:
“We must recognize that the consequences of large-scale military operations – particularly in this age of highly sophisticated and destructive weapons – are inherently difficult to predict and to control. Therefore, they must be avoided, excepting only when our nation’s security is clearly and directly threatened.”
“These are the lessons of Vietnam. Pray God we learn them.”
Finally, he said:
“Can we not go beyond the culture of war that saw so many deaths from war in the 20′th century? Surely that must be not only our hope, not only our dream, but our steadfast objective. Some may consider such a statement so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic. But as human beings, citizens of a great nation with the power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less?”
These last words deserve special attention. As mankind has never found the ability to learn from history, we should not be greatly surprised that the same myopia afflicts the current generation. But there is a radical difference between Americans today and during the Vietnam era. At least then people were able to set peace – and an eventual end to war – as a conscious, if distant objective. Now the voice of conscience is utterly absent in the news media and in social discourse. We must not compound our present errors by succumbing to the further sin of what psychologists call learned helplessness. While under the oppression of the present political system, let us at least denounce it, and work by whatever avenues – including but not limited to prayer – are available to us to build a better world.
Cicero on Just War
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BCE)
Source: Cicero, De officiis. (Walter Miller, transl.; Loeb Classical Edition; Latin/English parallel text). Harvard University Press, 1913.
De officiis (On Moral Duties), 1.11.33-1.13.41
11. Again, there are certain duties that we owe even to those who have wronged us. For there is a limit to retribution and to punishment; or rather, I am inclined to think, it is sufficient that the aggressor should be brought to repent of his wrong-doing, in order that he may not repeat the offence and that others may be deterred from doing wrong.
[34] Then, too, in the case of a state in its external relations, the rights of war must be strictly observed. For since there are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; and since the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute, we must resort to force only in case we may not avail ourselves of discussion.
[35] The only excuse, therefore, for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed; and when the victory is won, we should spare those who have not been blood-thirsty and barbarous in their warfare. For instance, our forefathers actually admitted to full rights of citizenship the Tusculans, Aequians, Volscians, Sabines, and Hernicians, but they razed Carthage and Numantia to the ground. I wish they had not destroyed Corinth; but I believe they had some special reason for what they did — its convenient situation, probably — and feared that its very location might some day furnish a temptation to renew the war. In my opinion, at least, we should always strive to secure a peace that shall not admit of guile. And if my advice had been heeded on this point, we should still have at least some sort of constitutional government, if not the best in the world, whereas, as it is, we have none at all.
Not only must we show consideration for those whom we have conquered by force of arms but we must also ensure protection to those who lay down their arms and throw themselves upon the mercy of our generals, even though the battering-ram has hammered at their walls. And among our countrymen justice has been observed so conscientiously in this direction, that those who have given promise of protection to states or nations subdued in war become, after the custom of our forefathers, the patrons of those states.
[36] As for war, humane laws touching it are drawn up in the fetial code of the Roman People under all the guarantees of religion; and from this it may be gathered that no war is just, unless it is entered upon after an official demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declaration made. Popilius was general in command of a province. In his army Cato’s son was serving on his first campaign. When Popilius decided to disband one of his legions, he discharged also young Cato who was serving in that same legion. But when the young man out of love for the service stayed on in the field, his father wrote to Popilius to say that if he let him stay in the army, he should swear him into service with a new oath of allegiance, for in view of the voidance of his former oath he could not legally fight the foe. So extremely scrupulous was the observance of the laws in regard to the conduct of war.
[37] There is extant, too, a letter of the elder Marcus Cato to his son Marcus, in which he writes that he has heard that the youth has been discharged by the consul [Lucius Aemilius Paulus (B.C. 168)], when he was serving in Macedonia in the war with Perseus. He warns him, therefore, to be careful not to go into battle; for, he says, the man who is not legally a soldier has no right to be fighting the foe.
12. This also I observe — that he who would properly have been called “a fighting enemy” (perduellis) was called “a guest” (hostis), thus relieving the ugliness of the fact by a softened expression; for “enemy” (hostis) meant to our ancestors what we now call “stranger” (peregrinus). This is proved by the usage in the Twelve Tables: “Or a day fixed for trial with a stranger” (hostis). And again: “Right of ownership is inalienable for ever in dealings with a stranger” (hostis). What can exceed such charity, when he with whom one is at war is called by so gentle a name? And yet long lapse of time has given that word a harsher meaning: for it has lost its signification of “stranger” and has taken on the technical connotation of “an enemy under arms.”
[38] But when a war is fought out for supremacy and when glory is the object of war, it must still not fail to start from the same motives which I said a moment ago were the only righteous grounds for going to war. But those wars which have glory for their end must be carried on with less bitterness. For we contend, for example, with a fellow-citizen in one way, if he is a personal enemy, in another, if he is a rival: with the rival it is a struggle for office and position, with the enemy for life and honour. So with the Celtiberians and the Cimbrians we fought as with deadly enemies, not to determine which should be supreme, but which should survive; but with the Latins, Sabines, Samnites, Carthaginians, and Pyrrhus we fought for supremacy. The Carthaginians violated treaties; Hannibal was cruel; the others were more merciful. From Pyrrhus we have this famous speech on the exchange of prisoners:
“Gold will I none, nor price shall ye give; for I ask none;
Come, let us not be chaff’rers of war, but warriors embattled.
Nay; let us venture our lives, and the sword, not gold, weigh the outcome.
Make we the trial by valour in arms and see if Dame Fortune
Wills it that ye shall prevail or I, or what be her judgment.
Hear thou, too, this word, good Fabricius: whose valour soever
Spared hath been by the fortune ofwar— their freedom I grant them.
Such my resolve. I give and present them to you, my brave Romans;
Take them back to their homes; the great gods’ blessings attend you.”
A right kingly sentiment this and worthy a scion of the Aeacidae.
13. [39] Again, if under stress of circumstance individuals have made any promise to the enemy, they are bound to keep their word even then. For instance, in the First Punic War, when Regulus was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; he came and, in the first place, it was he that made the motion in the Senate that the prisoners should not be restored; and in the second place, when his relatives and friends would have kept him back, he chose to return to a death by torture rather than prove false to his promise, though given to an enemy.
[40] And again in the Second Punic War, after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal sent to Rome ten Roman captives bound by an oath to return to him, if they did not succeed in ransoming his prisoners; and as long as any one of them lived, the censors kept them all degraded and disfranchised, because they were guilty of perjury in not returning. And they punished in like manner the one who had incurred guilt by an evasion of his oath: with Hannibal’s permission this man left the camp and returned a little later on the pretext that he had forgotten something or other; and then, when he left the camp the second time, he claimed that he was released from the obligation of his oath; and so he was, according to the letter of it, but not according to the spirit. In the matter of a promise one must always consider the meaning and not the mere words.
Our forefathers have given us another striking example of justice toward an enemy: when a deserter from Pyrrhus promised the Senate to administer poison to the king and thus work his death, the Senate and Gaius Fabricius delivered the deserter up to Pyrrhus. Thus they stamped with their disapproval the treacherous murder even of an enemy who was at once powerful, unprovoked, aggressive, and successful.
[41] With this I will close my discussion of the duties connected with war.
Source: Cicero, De officiis. (Walter Miller, transl.; Loeb Classical Edition; Latin/English parallel text). Harvard University Press, 1913.
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William Graham Sumner – The Radical Incompatibility of Empire with American Values
An important and valuable example of American anti-war literature – more relevant than ever – this speech was given by William Graham Sumner in 1899, just after the Spanish-American war. Sumner was a prominent member of the American Anti-Imperialist League along with Mark Twain, William James, John Dewey and others.There are important parallels between what Sumner spoke out against then and our present situation. His main thesis is that there is a true basis for the traditional belief of America as being uniquely founded on principles of freedom and self-determination, and that this gives us a unique responsibility to maintain – and not to betray – these principles.
At one point he summarizes the message succinctly:
The point which I have tried to make in this lecture is that expansion and imperialism are at war with the best traditions, principles, and interests of the American people, and that they will plunge us into a network of difficult problems and political perils, which we might have avoided, while they offer us no corresponding advantage in return.
According to Sumner, if one thing epitomized the values and intentions of the founding generations, it was a complete rejection of Empire and everything associated with it.
To express this in terms of today: We vividly remember G. W. Bush defending the wars abroad, claiming we need to defend ourselves from enemies who “hate us because we are free.” But what is the meaning of our freedom? That’s what this speech considers. Freedom is not just a word. It’s not just something we say we are. When you look closely at what freedom really means to us, it becomes apparent that militarism of the kind our country currently pursues is utterly inconsistent and incompatible with our unique principles. On the rationale of “defending our freedom”, we are abandoning our freedom. And at this point in history, the history of our country and of the world, there is a very real danger that this freedom, once abandoned, will never be recovered, at least not by us, and not for a painfully long time.
Sumner’s speech crescendos, reaching a climax in Section III, especially the last three paragraphs, included below. For the full speech, see this link or this link. The title suggest that, despite having militarily defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War, the U.S. was in danger of being conquered by imperialism, as Spain had been previously.
* * *
The Conquest of the United States by Spain (1899)
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)
Section III (pars. 40-43]
[40] Another answer which the imperialists make is that Americans can do anything. They say that they do not shrink from responsibilities. They are willing to run into a hole, trusting to luck and cleverness to get out. There are some things that Americans cannot do. Americans cannot make 2 + 2 = 5. You may answer that that is an arithmetical impossibility and is not in the range of our subject. Very well; Americans cannot collect two dollars a gallon tax on whisky. They tried it for many years and failed. That is an economic or political impossibility, the roots of which are in human nature. It is as absolute an impossibility on this domain as the former on the domain of mathematics. So far as yet appears, Americans cannot govern a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants so as to get comfort and convenience in it at a low cost and without jobbery. The fire department of this city is now demoralized by political jobbery – and Spain and all her possessions are not worth as much to you and me as the efficiency of the fire department of New Haven. The Americans in Connecticut cannot abolish the rotten borough system. The English abolished their rotten borough system seventy years ago, in spite of nobles and landlords. We cannot abolish ours in spite of the small towns. Americans cannot reform the pension list. Its abuses are rooted in the methods of democratic self-government, and no one dares to touch them. It is very doubtful indeed if Americans can keep up an army of one hundred thousand men in time of peace. Where can one hundred thousand men be found in this country who are willing to spend their lives as soldiers; or if they are found, what pay will it require to induce them to take this career? Americans cannot disentangle their currency from the confusion into which it was thrown by the Civil War, and they cannot put it on a simple, sure, and sound basis which would give stability to the business of the country. This is a political impossibility. Americans cannot assure the suffrage to negroes throughout the United States; they have tried it for thirty years and now, contemporaneously with this war with Spain, it has been finally demonstrated that it is a failure. Inasmuch as the negro is now out of fashion, no further attempt to accomplish this purpose will be made. It is an impossibility on account of the complexity of our system of State and Federal government. If I had time to do so, I could go back over the history of negro suffrage and show you how curbstone arguments, exactly analogous to the arguments about expansion, were used to favor it, and how objections were thrust aside in this same blustering and senseless manner in which objections to imperialism are met. The ballot, we were told, was an educator and would solve all difficulties in its own path as by magic. Worse still, Americans cannot assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to negroes inside of the United States. When the negro postmaster’s house was set on fire in the night in South Carolina, and not only he, but his wife and children, were murdered as they came out, and when, moreover, this incident passed without legal investigation or punishment, it was a bad omen for the extension of liberty, etc., to Malays and Tagals by simply setting over them the American flag. Upon a little serious examination the off-hand disposal of an important question of policy by the declaration that Americans can do any thing proves to be only a silly piece of bombast, and upon a little reflection we find that our hands are quite full at home of problems by the solution of which the peace and happiness of the American people could be greatly increased. The laws of nature and of human nature are just as valid for Americans as for anybody else, and if we commit acts we shall have to take consequences, just like other people. Therefore prudence demands that we look ahead to see what we are about to do, and that we gauge the means at our disposal, if we do not want to bring calamity on ourselves and our children. We see that the peculiarities of our system of government set limitations on us. We cannot do things which a great centralized monarchy could do. The very blessings and special advantages which we enjoy, as compared with others, bring disabilities with them. That is the great fundamental cause of what I have tried to show throughout this lecture, that we cannot govern dependencies consistently with our political system, and that, if we try it, the State which our fathers founded will suffer a reaction which will transform it into another empire just after the fashion of all the old ones. That is what imperialism means. That is what it will be; and the democratic republic, which has been, will stand in history, like the colonial organization of earlier days, as a mere transition form.
[41] And yet this scheme of a republic which our fathers formed was a glorious dream which demands more than a word of respect and affection before it passes away. Indeed, it is not fair to call it a dream or even an ideal; it was a possibility which was within our reach if we had been wise enough to grasp and hold it. It was favored by our comparative isolation, or, at least, by our distance from other strong states. The men who came here were able to throw off all the trammels of tradition and established doctrine. They went out into a wilderness, it is true, but they took with them all the art, science, and literature which, up to that time, civilization had produced. They could not, it is true, strip their minds of the ideas which they had inherited, but in time, as they lived on in the new world, they sifted and selected these ideas, retaining what they chose. Of the old-world institutions also they selected and adopted what they chose and threw aside the rest. It was a grand opportunity to be thus able to strip off all the follies and errors which they had inherited, so far as they chose to do so. They had unlimited land with no feudal restrictions to hinder them in the use of it. Their idea was that they would never allow any of the social and political abuses of the old world to grow up here. There should be no manors, no barons, no ranks, no prelates, no idle classes, no paupers, no disinherited ones except the vicious. There were to be no armies except a militia, which would have no functions but those of police. They would have no court and no pomp; no orders, or ribbons, or decorations, or titles. They would have no public debt. They repudiated with scorn the notion that a public debt is a public blessing if debt was incurred in war it was to be paid in peace and not entailed on posterity. There was to be no grand diplomacy, because they intended to mind their own business and not be involved in any of the intrigues to which European statesmen were accustomed. There was to be no balance of power and no “reason of state” to cost the life and happiness of citizens. The only part of the Monroe doctrine which is valid was their determination that the social and political systems of Europe should not be extended over any part of the American continent, lest people who were weaker than we should lose the opportunity which the new continent gave them to escape from those systems if they wanted to. Our fathers would have an economical government, even if grand people called it a parsimonious one, and taxes should be no greater than were absolutely necessary to pay for such a government. The citizen was to keep all the rest of his earnings and use them as he thought best for the happiness of himself and his family; he was, above all, to be insured peace and quiet while he pursued his honest industry and obeyed the laws. No adventurous policies of conquest or ambition, such as, in the belief of our fathers, kings and nobles had forced, for their own advantage, on European states, would ever be undertaken by a free democratic republic. Therefore the citizen here would never be forced to leave his family or to give his sons to shed blood for glory and to leave widows and orphans in misery for nothing. Justice and law were to reign in the midst of simplicity, and a government which had little to do was to offer little field for ambition. In a society where industry, frugality, and prudence were honored, it was believed that the vices of wealth would never flourish.
[42] We know that these beliefs, hopes, and intentions have been only partially fulfilled. We know that, as time has gone on and we have grown numerous and rich, some of these things have proved impossible ideals, incompatible with a large and flourishing society, but it is by virtue of this conception of a commonwealth that the United States has stood for something unique and grand in the history of mankind and that its people have been happy. It is by virtue of these ideals that we have been “isolated,” isolated in a position which the other nations of the earth have observed in silent envy; and yet there are people who are boasting of their patriotism, because they say that we have taken our place now amongst the nations of the earth by virtue of this war. My patriotism is of the kind which is outraged by the notion that the United States never was a great nation until in a petty three months’ campaign it knocked to pieces a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state like Spain. To hold such an opinion as that is to abandon all American standards, to put shame and scorn on all that our ancestors tried to build up here, and to go over to the standards of which Spain is a representative.
My new book
The Immortal I
