Dissident Veteran For Peace

I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Source: Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787.

Labels: class, government, Indians, media, politics, quotations, Thomas Jefferson, United States, US Founding Fathers

All excerpts below are from the December 2017 version of George Washington's 1796 "Farewell Address" as prepared by the United States Senate Historical Office (S. PUB. 115-5). By way of introduction I will say it seems to me as if modern American politicians, with rare exceptions, have considered Washington's advice and decided to do the exact opposite.

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. (pp. 5-6)

Comment: As I pondered the above passage I could not help but think about the Civil War and the disputes that preceded it. Undoubtedly, Washington had the tensions that slavery entailed in the American body politic in mind, too, as he wrote these words. It would seem that Washington was of the school of thought that the Union was indissoluble and individual States were not at liberty to secede.

... overgrown military establishments ... under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and ... are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. (p. 8)

Comment: This passage is part of Washington's ongoing discourse on the importance of the "national Union". Lincoln's decision to build an overgrown military establishment to force the Confederate States back into the union comes to mind.

... you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of government better calculated than your former [i.e. the Articles of Confederation] for an intimate Union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. 

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, 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; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to 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 councils and modified by mutual interests. 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, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. (pp. 10-12)

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state ... Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. 

... It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. 

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. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It 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, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another (pp. 13-14)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is 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?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. (pp. 16-17)

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. (p. 17)

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all—religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? ...

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest ...

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions—by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained—and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. (pp. 18-21)

Comment: At least since the Wilson administration America's leaders have rejected Washington's advice, betrayed their oath of office, and formed or maintained a "passionate attachment" with the Zionist lobby and the Jewish state to the great detriment of the people of the region and to America herself.

Labels: George Washington, Israel, Israel Lobby, militarism, military, philosophy, politics, quotations, religion, slavery, United States, US Founding Fathers

I listen to National Public Radio (NPR) every day, not because it's so great but because it's the least bad of all the alternative news sources I am aware of. Every day there emanates from NPR a steady stream of distortions, half-truths, plain old falsehoods, and/or blind ignorance.

You can call it "fake news". Here are two examples from yesterday that came just minutes apart.

On the Media

First, at the beginning of On The Media co-host Brooke Gladstone ends a 12-minute baldly partisan rant on the Kavanaugh nomination with an actor quoting Founding Father John Adams on democracy from his December 17, 1814, letter to John Taylor. The quoted portion says:

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty ... Individuals have conquered themselves, Nations and large Bodies of Men, never.

Gladstone then chimes in, "Democracy can't protect us, we have to protect it. You know what to do." The misleading implication being that Adams was warning of us the fragility of our democracy. In fact, he was likening democracy to that other form of government he rejected—aristocracy or monarchy.

Later in the Taylor letter Adams discusses the French Revolution asserting, "Democracy is chargeable with all the blood that has been spilled for five and twenty years." As is clear from the Taylor letter, when read in context, Adams was no fan of democracy.

He was an advocate of the alternative, republican form of government founded under the United States Constitution. In the chapter "Republican Government" in Adams' Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States he wrote:

Others, again, more rationally, define a republic to signify only a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the laws. This, indeed, appears to be the true and only true definition of a republic. 

Adams even contrasted this against:

a peculiar sense in which the words republic, commonwealth, popular state, are used by English and French writers; who mean by them a democracy, or rather a representative democracy; a "government in one centre, and that centre the nation;" that is to say, that centre a single assembly, chosen at stated periods by the people, and invested with the whole sovereignty; the whole legislative, executive, and judicial power, to be exercised in a body, or by committees, as they shall think proper. 

Just a little over a year before the Taylor letter Adams hyperbolically wrote to Jefferson that "Our pure, virtuous, public Spirited federative Republic will last for ever, govern the Globe and introduce the perfection of Man, his perfectability being already proved by Price Priestly, Condorcet Rousseau Diderot and Godwin."

In short, Gladstone dishonestly hitches John Adams to her anti-Trump, anti-Kavanaugh wagon. Adams was no advocate of the democracy that Gladstone implies is under threat and in need of protection.

KUOW

The second example of fake news on NPR I want to mention may be peculiar to KUOW, based in Seattle. They have been recently running a series of fund-raising pitches featuring national NPR personalities, such as Ailsa Chang and Kai Ryssdal, reading from the same script.

The script asserts: "It's easy to see that Seattle loves public radio". The evidence, we are to believe, is that 92% of the funding for KUOW comes from community-based individuals and businesses and 87% of these donations are less than $100. You don't have to be statistician to realize that this is grossly dishonest.

The reported statistics cited support only the proposition that ~80% of the funding for KUOW comes from individual and business donations of less than $100. Evidence for the claim "Seattle loves public radio" could come from market research but I suspect that the execs at KUOW rejected this because the relevant figures just don't support their claim.

For example, the Neilsen ratings from August 2018 show that while KUOW is tied with KIRO-FM for second place in the Seattle-Tacoma radio market, its audience share is only 5.9%. Second place at 5.9% is a respectable audience share in a competitive market but it doesn't have quite the same zing as the misleading stats KUOW used regarding Seattle's alleged love of public radio. Such narrative-driven dishonesty is, unfortunately, par for the course for KUOW and National Public Radio.

Labels: history, John Adams, media, National Public Radio, politics, Thomas Jefferson, Trump, US Constitution, US Founding Fathers

A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attachd to their officers and disposd to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watchd with a jealous Eye ... Men who have been long subject to military Laws and inured to military Customs and Habits, may lose the Spirit and Feeling of Citizens. And even Citizens, having been used to admire the Heroism which the Commanders of their own Army have displayd, and to look up to them as their Saviors may be prevaild upon to surrender to them those Rights for the protection of which against Invaders they had employd and paid them. We have seen too much of this Disposition among some of our Countrymen.

Source: Samuel Adams, "Founding Father" and American revolutionary, in his letter to James Warren (January 7, 1776) in the Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, Vol. 1, 1743-1777, (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917) pp. 197-198.


Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded ... War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Source: James Madison, "Father of the US Constitution" and 4th US President, from his pamphlet entitled Political Observations (April 20, 1795) in the Selected Writings of James Madison (Hackett, 2006) p. 236.

See also:  "John Adams on the Military Threat"

Labels: freedom, history, James Madison, militarism, military, quotations, United States, US Founding Fathers, War

John Adams was the second President of the United States but before that he was an attorney and an early supporter of independence for British colonies in America. On March 5, 1770, British troops killed five civilians on King Street in Boston in an incident now commonly known as the Boston Massacre. John Adams acted as defense counsel at the soldiers' civilian trial for murder in November, 1770. Adams succeeded in getting jury acquittals for six of the soldiers and conviction of two soldiers for the lesser-included offense of manslaughter. The two soldiers were sentenced to branding of the thumb in open court.

On the third anniversary of the massacre Adams wrote in his diary:

Judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the quakers or witches anciently. As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right. ... This, however, is no reason why the town should not call the action of that night a massacre; nor is it any argument in favor of the Governor or Minister who caused them to be sent here. But it is the strongest of proofs of the danger of standing armies. [emphasis added]

Adams was a supporter of militias composed of civilians called into service as needed, as opposed to standing armies. In the second year of the Revolutionary War he wrote the following in a letter to Brigadier General Samuel H. Parsons, who started his military career in Connecticut's colonial militia:

With regard to encouragements in money and in land for soldiers to enlist during the war, I have ever been in favor of it, as the best economy and the best policy, and I have no doubt that rewards in land will be given, after the war is over. But the majority are not of my mind for promising it now. I am the less anxious about it, for a reason which does not seem to have much weight however with the majority. Although it may cost us more, and we may put now and then a battle to hazard by the method we are in, yet we shall be less in danger of corruption and violence from a standing army, and our militia will acquire courage, experience, discipline, and hardiness in actual service.  [emphasis added]

In Adams' A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States (1787) he wrote:

Shall we conclude, from these melancholy observations, that human nature is incapable of liberty, that no honest equality can be preserved in society, and that such forcible causes are always at work as must reduce all men to a submission to despotism, monarchy, oligarchy, or aristocracy?

By no means. We have seen one of the first nations in Europe, possessed of ample and fertile territories at home and extensive dominions abroad, of a commerce with the whole world, immense wealth, and the greatest naval power which ever belonged to any nation, which has still preserved the power of the people by the equilibrium we are contending for, by the trial by jury, and by constantly refusing a standing army. [emphasis added]

A footnote to the above-cited passage and of uncertain provenance says: "Would that it had constantly been refused! A standing army is dangerous in any hands! Even if the people had preserved their share in the legislature, a standing army in their pay would be inexpedient and dangerous."

Finally, in a letter to Thomas McKean, dated June 21, 1812, Adams said:

The danger of our government is, that the General will be a man of more popularity than the President, and the army possess more power than Congress. The people should be apprised of this, and guard themselves against it. Nothing is more essential than to hold the civil authority decidedly superior to the military power.

Adams' particular fear about the popularity of generals seems not have been realized but unfortunately we have a Congress and Presidency that rarely say no to military funding requests, in peacetime or war. That's true even when it comes to illegal, undeclared wars waged on false pretenses such as the 2003 Iraq War. The civil authority all too often bows to the military.

See also: Quotable: The Military Threat to Liberty

Labels: history, John Adams, militarism, military, United States, US Founding Fathers, War

In the 1980s I read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and I remember being surprised, yet credulous, when I read in chapter five: "John Adams had estimated a third opposed, a third in support, a third neutral." The estimate, according to Zinn, was in reference to colonial/American support for the Revolutionary War while it was ongoing or in its immediate aftermath. The claim can be found on page 77 of the hardcover, 20th anniversary edition of the book (HarperCollins, 1999). There are no annotations in the book and no primary source reference to Adams in the bibliography to chapter five so it is unclear what Zinn's source on Adams was.

Below you will find excerpts (notes omitted) from "The American Revolution and the Minority Myth" attributed to William F. Marina and purportedly published on January 1, 1975 in Modern Age. Marina does not cite Zinn but he does cite Herbert Aptheker as a "Marxist" historian who "exposed the myth, certainly in terms of the misreading of the letter of Adams." I make note of Marina's mention of Aptheker because a different work by Aptheker is the first source in Zinn's bibliography to chapter five.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE are now in the midst of a great celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. It is tragic that this celebration is giving added emphasis in the mind of the general public to at least one myth which a few historians have tried without apparently great success to lay to rest. That failure says much about the present state of the academy in this country and the virtual breakdown of communications within and between important segments of the society.

The widespread, persistent, and dangerous myth to which I should like to call attention here is the notion that the American Revolution was carried out by only a minority of the people. The supposed source for such an estimate is John Adams. Among the many who have cited this view is Daniel Ellsberg, who called attention to "John Adams' [sic] well-known estimate that one third of the population in America supported the rebels, one third the British ... and one third were [sic] neutral." The history of this citation goes back to 1902, to George Sydney Fisher's, The True History of the American Revolution. It has been repeated countless times since then, in books, articles, and other media. Without attempting to give a comprehensive listing of citations since 1902, let me give just a few recent sources making this point, which will serve to demonstrate the persistence of the idea.

In 1971 it was mentioned by the colonial historian Darrett B. Rutman, the next year by Ellsberg, and, at a conference which I attended, by the conservative social critic Irving Kristol, as well as by Alistair Cooke in his "America" series on television, and the book of the same name, though Cooke changed the neutral third to one that did not "give a damn." In 1974 it was cited by Thomas H. Greene in his book on comparative social revolutions where he was in turn quoting Karl Deutsch; the next year several times by the columnist Sydney B. Harris, and, in the Bicentennial year in the excellent new study of the Revolution by Page Smith, which otherwise is a magnificent source to show the Revolution was a majority movement (he reconciles this by saying Adams was referring to the beginning of the Revolution). The above examples ought to be sufficient to make the point that this view is widespread and has considerable appeal to many intellectuals.

When any citation is offered for this "well known" estimate, it is to a letter which Adams wrote to James Lloyd, dated January, 1813 [sic; the letter is actually dated January, 1815 -VFPD]. A close examination of that letter should convince an intelligent reader that John Adams never said any such thing! It is clear that Adams, in point of fact, was writing about American opinion of the French Revolution [1789–1792 -VFPD] and the subsequent struggle between England and France which had a considerable impact on the United States in the 1790's during the period of his presidency from 1797 to 1801.

My own reading of John Adams' letter to James Lloyd is that Marina and Aptheker got it right, Zinn and the others got it wrong. In the work cited by Marina, The American Revolution, 1763-1783 (New York: International Publishers, 1960), Aptheker (pp. 53-54) does indeed refute the minority support reading of the Adams letter to Lloyd. Later, referring to a December 22, 1815, letter from Adams to Dr. Jedidiah Morse, Aptheker concludes:

[John Adams -VFPD] says nothing at all about indifference and neutrality; rather the inference from his letter would appear to be that he felt that (approximately) seventy percent of the American population favored the Revolutionary cause. ... My own view would go along with that kind of a reading of this Adams letter, and I agree with Professor Alden that a clear majority of the colonial population favored the revolutionary effort.

O1 May 2016 Addendum: In an August 31, 1813, letter to Thomas McKean, Adams writes:

You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, "The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America." "The great mass of the people" is an expression that deserves analysis ... Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be.

Labels: history, John Adams, United States, US Founding Fathers

On the morning of November 4, 1791, St. Clair’s Defeat aka the Battle of the Wabash took place on the banks of a tributary of the Wabash River near present-day Ft. Recovery, Ohio. The US troops had moved north from Ft. Washington en route to the Miami town of Kekionga. They were intercepted before they reached their destination and in the course of a three-hour battle, Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Chippewa and Wyandot warriors under the leadership of Little Turtle (Miami), Blue Jacket (Shawnee), and Buckongahelas (Delaware/Lenape) killed 632 and wounded 264 US enlisted troops (a casualty rate of 97.4%).

When it was over "Nearly 1/4 of America’s standing army had been killed." The US death toll "was more than three times the number" killed "85 years later at Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn - and, by far, the worst defeat of an American force by Indians in the nation's history." Some say it was "the single worst defeat suffered by the U.S. Army in its history."

Well, members of Congress decided to investigate with the House of Representatives issuing subpoenas for War Department (the military was a little more honest about what they did back then) documents. This prompted George Washington to call the first ever Cabinet meeting, where it was decided that "the President could keep matters secret from anybody whenever it was required for the greater good." Thus, was "executive privilege" born.

Sources:

• "Early America's Bloodiest Battle" on Archiving Early America
• "St. Clair's Defeat" on Suite101.com
• "St. Clair’s Defeat and the Birth of Executive Privilege" on Babeled.com

Labels: George Washington, history, Indians, politics, United States, US Founding Fathers, War

"The history of secret geographies shows that when they do come into contact with the legal system, the legal system tends to change in order to accommodate them." Thus writes Trevor Paglen, author of Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (p. 140). One of the legal cases discussed by Paglen is 1953 United States v. Reynolds decision, which cemented the "state secrets privilege" in American law. But the privilege did not protect national security but rather a lie that implicated the US Air Force in the death of Bob Reynolds in a swampy field near Waycross, Georgia. This is just one of the places Paglen ties to "blank spots" in the law or on a map, including Area 51.

Paglen also discusses the blank spots in the federal budget, writing (pp. 183-4):

The Founding Fathers understood the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." They understood that, in the halls of government as it is in so many other affairs, money is both information and power. As such, [Article I, Section 9, Clause 7] is a rebuke to the old monarchism the Founding Fathers wanted to free themselves from. "The people," argued George Mason, "had a right to know the expenditures of their money." Open books, argued James Madison, imparted both knowledge and responsibility upon a democratic citizenry: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both," he wrote. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Yet, as Paglen notes, even the amount, let alone what it pays for, of the "black budget" is secret . Nevertheless Paglen offers an estimate from R. J. Hillhouse of $60 billion--"roughly comparable to what the Chinese military—the second-largest military in the world—spends each year." Two-thirds of that figure goes to even less accountable private contractors (p. 205).

In the book's epilogue (p. 275), Paglen says:

The black world has sculpted the United States in numerous ways. Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution, creating blank spots in the law, institutionalizing dishonesty in the halls of government, handing sovereign powers--what used to be the unlimited power of monarchs over their subjects and territories--to the executive branch, making the nation's economy dependent upon military spending, and turning our own history into a state secret.

All in all Blank Spots on the Map was a quick and fascinating read. It is highly recommended.

Labels: James Madison, law, militarism, repression, United States, US Founding Fathers

LTC Ralph Peters (US Army, ret.) has an article, "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look" in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal that's making the rounds on e-mail and in the blogosphere. Peters argues for, among other things, dividing Iraq into three separate countries.

Back in 2003, I heard NPR's Neal Conan yucking it up with Peters and wrote the unpublished "Open Letter to National Public Radio's Ombudsman" that appears below:

March 29, 2003

Dear Mr. Dvorkin:

Last Thursday, I heard the host of National Public Radio's (NPR) Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan, joking with retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Ralph Peters as they began a discussion of the US invasion of Iraq. This isn't the first time I've heard Peters on NPR but hearing him again got me wondering how many NPR listeners and staff members are familiar with his work--I doubt very many

So, as a courtesy, I thought I would provide some representative selections from LTC Peters' 1999 book for you to share with NPR listeners:

There are two obstacles to a genuine Pax Americana in the coming century. The first is a series of technological barriers. We shall overcome these. The second--and far more challenging--is moral relativism. We must leave behind this era of self-debasement. American civilization is the most humane, hopeful, decent, magnetic, and generous of opportunity in history. It marks a break with all that has come before, leaving behind even northwestern Europe, with its drab cubicles of the spirit and pared-down lives.

With America, the twenty-first century might see the triumph of good. But we must accept the responsibilities of our power and our civilizing mission. We will be in a position to bring the world lasting peace. But to do so, we must say good-bye to the crippling notions that all cultures, no matter how odious, enjoy equivalent validity, and that even the most wicked foreign leader is inviolable in his person. The American peace will have to be on American terms, and those terms cannot be negotiable.

The goal, initially, is not to interfere in the affairs of foreign states, as long as they behave humanely toward their populations. The first--realizable--step is to force an end to interstate warfare. We alone will have the wealth and power to do it--plus, we could collect defense taxes from states that benefit from our actions. As the world's only extant empire of law and justice, we also have the right and responsibility to do it. We need have no moral reservations about outlawing aggression and then enforcing that prohibition.

Should we have the moral authenticity to grasp this opportunity, we may at last see the withering away of military establishments, since they will prove unusable. Only constabularies and police forces need remain, except for our own forces and those of a few morally coincident allies, such as the other English-speaking, law-cherishing states.

There is no real legal or moral requirement to grant foreigners the same rights and protections as we do our own citizens. To do so is pompous stupidity that endangers our own citizens while preventing us from helping the foreign victims of dictators, criminals, and terrorists.

We must regain a sense of who we are and pride in what we are about. We do have a right to act abroad, whether in cyberspace or on foreign soil, if it benefits our citizens and the global rule of law.

The greatest opportunity for us, and the greatest danger to us, will come with the development of behavior-control weapons by the middle decades of the next century, if not sooner. On the one hand, these will be the weapons most horrible to our civilization, but we will be unable to prevent their development. In their perfected form, they will permanently alter the perceptions and beliefs of men and women.

Attacking the human body has been a sloppy and inefficient means of making war. Attacking the mind may prove the culmination of military history.

This is our choice: Shall we dominate the earth for the good of humankind? . . . Or will we continue to insist that diplomatic niceties and the social prejudices of global elites demand that we wait, decade after decade, for evil men to act first?

The passages that appear above are from the title essay of a collection entitled Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? published by Stackpole Books. The essays first appeared in Parameters, a journal of the US Army War College and Strategic Review, a journal of the Strategic Studies Institute. The book was favorably reviewed by US Navy Captain Jan Van Tol, in the spring 2001 edition of the Naval War College Review.

According to the biography on the book jacket, Peters is "a best-selling and critically acclaimed novelist" whose "profoundly influential" analysis is the "result of firsthand experience in more than forty countries . . . and in assignments that took him from an infantry battalion to the Executive Office of the President. He campaigns for military and policy reform in a wide range of media outlets and lectures internationally on cultures in conflict and the future of war." Peters was interviewed for the PBS Frontline documentary "The Future of War."

I confess, Mr. Dvorkin, that I find LTC Peters' analysis and vision of the future disturbing, as many other NPR listeners might. What is more disturbing, though, is that views such as those expressed above have achieved considerable acceptance among the ruling elite of this country. See, for example, last year's US National Security Strategy which I mentioned in a letter to the United Nations' Security Council last year.

Nevertheless, despite my misgivings I am not, by any means, asking to have Peters banned from NPR. On the contrary, I hope NPR will do several in-depth segments on this "new thinking" in US foreign policy and military doctrine and the chilling technologies Peters envisions. More importantly, though, I hope you will endeavor to bring more enlightened commentators on NPR to critique or offer alternatives to the Bush Administration's and LTC Peters' dark visions of a global "Pax Americana" imposed and maintained by force and "behavior-control weapons." Perhaps, the readers of this letter can provide you with some suggestions.

Author's note: You can e-mail the NPR's Ombudsman at ombudsman@npr.org. Talk of the Nation can be contacted at totn@npr.org.

In some ways, the imperial candor of guys like Peters is refreshing. I'll share a few more 'gems' from Peters' writings. He published "Constant Conflict" in Parameters in Summer 1997 while he was still on active duty. Here are a few excerpts (emphasis in bold added):

We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy.

Commentary: The phrase "clash of civilizations" comes from Samuel P. Huntington who, in the same book, also wrote:

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) pg. 51.

... (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community). ...

Commentary: On the UN and diplomacy, a couple of quotes come to mind:

"It is part of the wisdom, I think, of the religious tradition always to be skeptical of what governments are doing. If their acts are done in secrecy, all one can do is to draw into that darkness the light of one's own nonviolence, plus the lessons of their past conduct. ... One has to keep reminding oneself and other people that an exalted contempt for human life lies at the basis of diplomacy; and that one had better think of the unprotected and innocent, and be prepared for the bad news when the leaders meet."

Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist/Christian Awareness. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) p. 69.

"It would be some time before I realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness."

Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his book, Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga (New York: Random House, 1999) p. 198.

These noncompetitive cultures, such as that of Arabo-Persian Islam or the rejectionist segment of our own population, are enraged. Their cultures are under assault; their cherished values have proven dysfunctional, and the successful move on without them. The laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan are brothers in suffering. ...

It is fashionable among world intellectual elites to decry "American culture," with our domestic critics among the loudest in complaint. But traditional intellectual elites are of shrinking relevance, replaced by cognitive-practical elites--figures such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, or our most successful politicians--human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary. Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. While some other cultures, such as those of East Asia, appear strong enough to survive the onslaught by adaptive behaviors, most are not. The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people's culture. It stresses comfort and convenience--ease--and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx's dream, and his nightmare.

Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can't wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather "Baywatch." America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no "peer competitor" in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted--men and women everywhere--clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.

American culture is criticized for its impermanence, its "disposable" products. But therein lies its strength. All previous cultures sought ideal achievement which, once reached, might endure in static perfection. American culture is not about the end, but the means, the dynamic process that creates, destroys, and creates anew. If our works are transient, then so are life's greatest gifts--passion, beauty, the quality of light on a winter afternoon, even life itself. American culture is alive. ...

Ours is also the first culture that aims to include rather than exclude. The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand. The action films of a Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris rely on visual narratives that do not require dialog for a basic understanding. They deal at the level of universal myth, of pre-text, celebrating the most fundamental impulses (although we have yet to produce a film as violent and cruel as the Iliad). They feature a hero, a villain, a woman to be defended or won--and violence and sex. Complain until doomsday; it sells. The enduring popularity abroad of the shopworn Rambo series tells us far more about humanity than does a library full of scholarly analysis.

When we speak of a global information revolution, the effect of video images is more immediate and intense than that of computers. Image trumps text in the mass psyche, and computers remain a textual outgrowth, demanding high-order skills: computers demarcate the domain of the privileged. We use technology to expand our wealth, power, and opportunities. The rest get high on pop culture. If religion is the opium of the people, video is their crack cocaine. When we and they collide, they shock us with violence, but, statistically, we win.

As more and more human beings are overwhelmed by information, or dispossessed by the effects of information-based technologies, there will be more violence. Information victims will often see no other resort. As work becomes more cerebral, those who fail to find a place will respond by rejecting reason. We will see countries and continents divide between rich and poor in a reversal of 20th-century economic trends. Developing countries will not be able to depend on physical production industries, because there will always be another country willing to work cheaper. The have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves. And we in the United States will continue to be perceived as the ultimate haves. States will struggle for advantage or revenge as their societies boil. Beyond traditional crime, terrorism will be the most common form of violence, but transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars will continue to plague the world, albeit with the "lesser" conflicts statistically dominant. In defense of its interests, its citizens, its allies, or its clients, the United States will be required to intervene in some of these contests. We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it.

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. ...

Commentary: Several quotes on the military and the US economy come to mind here:

"In spite of the enthusiasm Americans affect for general freedom of commerce when such liberty is favorable to them, they will be equally warm for an exclusive system when they can apply it advantageously to their commerce. They share this way of thinking with all merchants, alternately zealous for a monoploy and for free trade according to the interest of the moment."

French Minister Louis Guillaume Otto in 1785. Quoted in David P. Szatmary, Shay's Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection. (Amherst, MA: Univ. of Mass. Pr., 1980) p. 20.

". . . I am decidedly of [the] opinion we should take no part in European quarrels, but cultivate peace and commerce with all, yet who can avoid seeing the source of war in the tyranny of those nations who deprive of us our natural right of trading with our neighbors? The produce of the U.S. will soon exceed the European demand. What is to be done with the surplus, when there is one? It will be employed, without question, to open by force a market for itself . . . "

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, dated Dec. 4, 1788.

" . . . globalization requires a stable power structure, and no country is more essential for this than the United States. . . . The fact that no two countries have gone to war since they both got McDonald's is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America's willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization--from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designers of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars.

"With all due respect to Silicon Valley, ideas and technologies don't just win and spread on their own. 'Good ideas and technologies also need strong power that promotes those ideas by example and protects those ideas by winning on the battlefield,' says foreign-policy historian Robert Kagan."

Thomas L. Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). p. 373. Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times foreign affairs columnist, is a staunch proponent of corporate globalization.

For a generation, and probably much longer, we will face no military peer competitor. Our enemies will challenge us by other means. The violent actors we encounter often will be small, hostile parties possessed of unexpected, incisive capabilities or simply of a stunning will to violence (or both). Renegade elites, not foreign fleets, should worry us. The urbanization of the global landscape is a greater threat to our operations than any extant or foreseeable military system. We will not deal with wars of Realpolitik, but with conflicts spawned of collective emotions, sub-state interests, and systemic collapse. Hatred, jealousy, and greed--emotions rather than strategy--will set the terms of the struggles.

We will survive and win any conflict short of a cataclysmic use of weapons of mass destruction. But the constant conflicts in which we selectively intervene will be as miserable as any other form of warfare for the soldiers and Marines engaged. The bayonet will still be relevant; however, informational superiority incisively employed should both sharpen that bayonet and permit us to defeat some--but never all--of our enemies outside of bayonet range. Our informational advantage over every other country and culture will be so enormous that our greatest battlefield challenge will be harnessing its power. Our potential national weakness will be the failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust that bayonet into an enemy's heart.

Pilots and skippers, as well as defense executives, demand threat models that portray country X or Y as overtaking the military capability of the United States in 10 to 20 years. Forget it. Our military power is culturally based. They cannot rival us without becoming us. Wise competitors will not even attempt to defeat us on our terms; rather, they will seek to shift the playing field away from military confrontations or turn to terrorism and nontraditional forms of assault on our national integrity. Only the foolish will fight fair.

... Beyond the Beltway, the United States is wide awake and leading a second "industrial" revolution that will make the original industrial revolution that climaxed the great age of imperialism look like a rehearsal by amateurs. Only the United States has the synthetic ability, the supportive laws, and the cultural agility to remain at the cutting edge of wealth creation. ...

Yes, foreign cultures are reasserting their threatened identities--usually with marginal, if any, success--and yes, they are attempting to escape our influence. But American culture is infectious, a plague of pleasure, and you don't have to die of it to be hindered or crippled in your integrity or competitiveness. The very struggle of other cultures to resist American cultural intrusion fatefully diverts their energies from the pursuit of the future. We should not fear the advent of fundamentalist or rejectionist regimes. They are simply guaranteeing their peoples' failure, while further increasing our relative strength.

It remains difficult, of course, for military leaders to conceive of warfare, informational or otherwise, in such broad terms. But Hollywood is "preparing the battlefield," and burgers precede bullets. The flag follows trade. ... Our unconscious alliance of culture with killing power is a combat multiplier no government, including our own, could design or afford. We are magic. And we're going to keep it that way. ...

Labels: capitalism, critical thinking, Empire, Hollywood, militarism, military, National Public Radio, quotations, Thomas Jefferson, United States, US Founding Fathers