Un-ominous Parallels?

We are now in the fourth year of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Unlike the centennial in the early 1960’s, the sesquicentennial has gone largely unmentioned in the traditional media. I think there are several reasons for this. The most obvious is simple ignorance. There are many in the media who do not know or understand much history.  Beyond that, attitudes and prejudices common among people in  the media preclude a sense or appreciation of the idea of an epic struggle.  Then too the fact of a war where hundreds of thousands white Americans fought and died to free black slaves runs counter to the official  political myth of unrelenting and exceptionless evil behavior  of whites toward blacks at all times before 1964. Also, for some on the left,  reflecting on the outcome of  Civil War would produce mixed feeling  because besides freeing the slaves, it preserved the nation they hate most in the world.   

Of course many of us think about the war, and Lincoln, and Grant and Sherman and Lee and the rest. I have lately thought and written about the divisions in the country in the years leading up to the Civil War and some similarities between that time and ours.

Recently I noticed something  I had not thought of before. In the years before  the Civil War, many Southern slave holders underestimated the abolitionists, dismissing them as a fringe group funded by a few wealthy troublemakers  and excited by a passionate novel written by an opinionated woman.  They misjudged the strength, growth, and appeal of the movement and ideas opposing them until the rise of Lincoln and the Republicans made it obvious.  Replace some New England merchants with people like the Koch brothers and Harriet Beecher Stowe with Ayn Rand, and you would be pretty close  to the attitude of the American statist establishment toward the libertarian and anti-establishment agitation of the present time. We can hope that they too are missing something, that the parallelism holds,  the leftists continue to underestimate us, and  our ideas have a similar influence, though of course without a civil war. Seemingly stranger things have happened. In the early 1980’s few would have expected the Soviet Empire to collapse within ten years.  Perhaps we can see a new birth of freedom in this country. We surely need to try to get one.  

Republicans Need to Get Serious

There is still a political controversy over a plank in the platform of the Republicans in Texas endorsing so-called therapies intended to change homosexuals into heterosexuals. It is not clear to me what the Republicans had in mind with this plank. Some say they were merely affirming a person’s right to choose. Others say they were advocating such therapies and supporting their use on unwilling adolescents. What is clear to me is that they were not using their heads when they did it. There is a very nearly zero probability of the Texas legislature outlawing these practices, and they must have known that. So why burden their platform with something which was unnecessary and likely to offend homosexuals?

I believe the actions, plans, and policies of the Obama administration are a serious threat to the freedom and safety of Americans and must be resisted and reversed, starting with the elections  this November. The Republicans in Texas claim to believe this also, yet seem to have trouble seeing what it should mean in terms of action, as their conduct in this example  illustrates.

While many homosexuals may be leftists committed to Obama and the Democrats, many others of both genders are concerned, freedom loving, patriotic Americans who are dismayed by what is going on with this administration and might be more willing  to support the Republicans if the Republicans would stop insulting them.  If we really are in a crisis, that is not too much to ask of the social conservatives. They would not have to change their beliefs or prejudices. They would only have to learn to welcome allies in the important struggle wherever they could find them  and realize that if the place is on fire, the social and cultural controversies (all of them, not just the ones concerning homosexuality) are less important at the moment than putting the flames out.

Libertarians certainly have done that for  the social conservatives. Many of us will hold our noses in November and vote for some really remarkable Republican yahoos, because we believe that the threats we face are real and serious, and that those who oppose them need to make common cause to overcome them.   A great man was quoted as saying it well in a situation far more dangerous than the one we face: “we must all hang together, or, assuredly,  we shall all hang separately.” He meant it literally. We have the luxury of facing the alternative only figuratively, but leaving Obama and company unchecked will be bad enough. Surely the homosexual baiting and all the rest can wait at least until the imminent threat has passed.

Another War to End

Often when grilling steaks on an evening in the summer, I enjoy a warm and pleasant feeling after ingesting a small amount of the potent, dangerous, and sometimes fatal drug ethyl alcohol in the form of Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey or something similar. I do this openly and completely without fear of the police (as I am somewhat over  the legal drinking age).  At the same time in the same city, others - say a black man with cocaine, a redneck with meth, and even a goofy college kid with marijuana -   would enjoy their drugs only at the risk of  running afoul of the authorities and suffering unpleasant penalties. I can buy my drug  reasonably priced (except for taxes) and legally -  in great variety, neatly and clearly labeled, with purity certified by the United States government – all over town at clean and safe establishments run by honest business people. They have to run the risk of purchasing theirs, generally at exorbitant prices and sometimes harmfully adulterated, from often dangerous lowlifes in frequently disreputable and unsafe surroundings. Both my ethyl alcohol and their illegal favorites can do harm to those who use them, as numerous case histories confirm.  Yet mine is not prohibited, and theirs are.

Of course there was a time when mine was illegal in the United States. Prohibition of alcohol was one of the major political causes of self-styled reformers in  the so-called progressive era of American politics in the first twenty or so years of the 20^th Century, and a  constitutional amendment to  require it was ratified during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Production and consumption of beverages containing ethyl alcohol were illegal for a little over a dozen years.  The result was a disaster which led to increased corruption of officials, more disrespect for law, and the growth of criminal organizations into larger scale enterprises.

Just as alcohol was once illegal, drugs which now are banned once were permitted. Marijuana, opiates, and cocaine were legally available at the turn of the 20^th Century. A series of gradual steps starting around the time of World War I led to their use being fully outlawed by the 1930’s. There are several hypotheses for why this happened. Some people believe it was an attempt to give governments more power over the lower class blacks, Mexicans, and Chinese who were supposed to be especially likely to use those drugs. Others see a simple case of officials who by various ways had gotten a living out of alcohol prohibition wanting something else to be prohibited. Still others point to real or exaggerated concerns relating to public health.

The questions we should be asking today are first whether any sort of prohibition is right in a free society, and second whether the prohibition of the present day works any better than the prohibition of alcohol did in the past.  Most  libertarians answer no to the first question. We believe people  own their lives and bodies, and mentally competent adults can ingest what they want without obtaining others’  approval or permission, subject only to their not directly endangering others by such things as driving under the influence.  The second question is thus unimportant for us in terms of forming our opinions on the issue of prohibition. We would not favor even effective prohibition, because of our opinion that regulating such things is not the proper business of government.

 However, the second question can be very important for those who do not share these beliefs on individual rights and the proper limits of government, and I think the evidence suggests  the answer to that second question is no. We clearly have corruption of officials, disrespect for the law, and growth of criminal organizations similar to that which resulted from prohibiting alcohol.  The cost of trying to enforce drug prohibition laws is staggering, and yet millions of people continue to obtain and use the drugs.  The cost  should concern both those who would like  the government to spend less and those who would like to get the government to spend money on other things. The lack of success should concern people wanting to require governments to justify spending with results. The pervasive bribing and suborning of law enforcement officials should concern people worried about corruption in government. The power and reach of the Mexican drug selling cartels and other criminal organizations in the drug trade should concern people worried about crime and the safety of the public.  The damage and suffering caused by sending non-violent prohibition lawbreakers to prison should concern people interested in treating  their fellow citizens with decency, fairness, and appropriate compassion.  The way a claimed need to enforce drug prohibition laws has been used as a foot in the door, establishing precedent or rationale for all sorts of invasions of people’s privacy and violation of their rights by officials in cases having nothing to do with drugs should concern those wishing to protect civil liberties.  A strong case can be made that  the collateral damage to society from drug prohibition has been worse than that from alcohol prohibition, while the prohibition has been ineffective in terms of reaching its stated objectives. People of various political beliefs should consider whether this is another war it is time to end.

Politics of Changes

There has been a political controversy recently over  psychological techniques or therapies intended to change homosexuals into heterosexuals. Some pro-homosexual activists want them banned completely while some others want a ban only on their use on adolescents. While they are right to oppose people, adults or adolescents, being forced into undergoing these treatments  (or any other treatments to modify their behavior or attitudes, sexual or otherwise), they are wrong  when attempting to prevent people from being allowed to use them voluntarily.

A mentally competent adult has a right to try any therapy he wants and can pay for to deal with any condition he thinks he has, no matter how odd or pointless it seems to others. It is his business and not the business of anyone else, including the government.  The assertion that these techniques do not work is irrelevant. There are all sorts of techniques out there for weight loss, hair removal or restoration, making women prettier and men more virile, and restoring youth which often do not work, but people are free to try them anyway.

The vehemence of the activists suggests something beyond mere concern over the therapies not working. People rarely get that worked up over others doing pointless things which don’t work.  The real point seems to be a belief that attempting to change one’s sexual orientation is not merely  futile but also wrong and against nature. In making such claims, pro-homosexual activists who also support transgendering, are in the strange position of arguing that while one’s conjecturally genetically influenced sexual orientation is  sacrosanct and immutable, one’s demonstrably genetically determined gender is ethically unimportant and subject to alteration by an act of will. It is hard to miss some inconsistency there.

The facts are that some people do change their sexual interests, and some people do go through processes to change their gender. Others may find  their doing so to be bizarre, immoral, neurotic, or worse, but in a free society should not attempt to make the government stop them. 

Revoked?

There is a phenomenon in government, large businesses and non-profit organizations which some people call the affirmative action pass. It is the tacit understanding that one must not demand performance or professionalism from an affirmative action hire matching that required of those hired by ordinary means, but rather must apply lower standards to and refrain from public criticism of a person hired under affirmative action.  (This of course does not mean that everyone hired under affirmative action  is less competent or professional than the norm. Clearly many are not and would have been perfectly qualified for their positions in the absence of affirmative action and may be unfairly suspected of being less qualified than their peers because of affirmative action.  It just means that those who need the pass often get it.) 

There are various reasons for this. One is fear of getting into trouble. Part of the game in affirmative action is pretending lower standards do not lead to lower performance.  Many organizations have enforcers in human resources or diversity departments who try to make sure this orthodoxy does not get questioned without consequences. There is also often  a deeper fear, one which is often mingled with guilt, at work  – the fear of being seen as prejudiced and being labeled a racist.  Then there is the simple general tendency of people to go along with the prevailing winds and do and think what they are told.

Throughout his candidacy and presidency, Barack Obama  has been a beneficiary of something similar to an affirmative action pass. His supporters have claimed that any criticism of his performance is secretly based on racial prejudice, and too many of his opponents have cringed and eased up in ways they would not have done otherwise. Many Americans have been reluctant to give up on Obama or to hold him to ordinary standards of performance out of fear of being seen as prejudiced or guilt over not supporting the first black president. People in the traditional media have been incessant in extolling and excusing Obama and fanning up prevailing breezes in his favor.

The interesting thing in the last couple of months, is that with the scandal at the VA and the release of dangerous  terrorists in exchange for a deserter, Obama’s pass seems to have been revoked.  More people, including even people in the  traditional media, are now treating him and evaluating him on his performance more nearly as  they would any other president. That is bad news for him and his followers. 

Midway 2014

In June of 1942 outnumbered and outgunned American forces of the Pacific Fleet engaged the Japanese Navy in the world’s most important and decisive naval battle since Trafalgar, a battle which determined  that World War II in  the Pacific would end with a Japanese defeat.  The American task forces’ three aircraft carriers, including the recently patched up Yorktown which had been made battle ready in an astoundingly short time after suffering damage in an earlier battle, faced a Japanese force of four large and two small carriers.  The balance in surface firepower was even more in favor of the Japanese, as the Americans went to sea with no battleships and fewer cruisers and destroyers than their enemy.  The main battle was fought on June 4, 1942 though some action continued for a couple of days later. It ended with all four of the large Japanese carriers sunk and most of their pilots and planes lost, with the Japanese abandoning their plans to occupy Midway Island, and with the United States losing only one of its carriers, the Yorktown. It was both one of the most complete victories in military history and perhaps the quickest reversal in the strategic positions of two adversaries in world history.  

After Midway the Japanese, who has swept through Asia and the Pacific in the six months after Pearl Harbor, conquering Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, what is now Indonesia, the Philippines, and half of New Guinea, and occupying numerous islands in the Pacific including Guam and two in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, never went on the offensive against the United States again.  Instead, just two months after the battle, the United States began its first major offensive of the war at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and remained on the offensive until the defeat of Japan in 1945.

 

If the victory had gone to the Japanese, they would have been able to remain on the offensive, probably severing  the line of bases in the South Pacific connecting America to Australia and New Zealand  and perhaps even threatening American control of the Hawaiian Islands.  There would have been no opportunity for American offensives until at least well into 1943, and the Japanese would have had much additional time  to strengthen the perimeter of their empire, and perhaps make the war so costly the United States would accept a negotiated peace leaving them with it.

Yet for all that, this year once again I find little or no mention of Midway in the news media.  The men who fought the war continue to die off, and soon will all be dead. The memory of what they did should not. Writing about it every year or so seems the least a person ought to do.