Napoleon, the Bastile and the Pachyderm Part 3

The colonists revolted when their fears of virtual enslavement came true in Boston in 1774 and 1775. Ironically, the efforts of the Crown to isolate the radicals in Boston from the rest of the colonies and quash rebellious sentiment had the direct effect of uniting the squabbling colonies and igniting the War. Let’s review the main reasons the American subjects felt they were being enslaved.

First, they lost the right to have a say in government. Their petitions for redress of grievances were simply ignored by Parliament and the King. This made it possible for the Government to be abusive and left no way for the colonists to try to fix the situation but violence; hence the Boston Tea Party.

Second, the Government striped several rights in response to the Boston Tea Party via the Intolerable Acts. Essentially the Crown put an end to democracy in Massachusetts with the Massachusetts Government Act. With the Administration of Justice Act they destroyed the rule of law by giving royal officials de facto immunity in all the colonies. The Boston Port Act stopped commerce in Massachusetts and threatened to create a man-made famine in the colony due to its reliance on the Port of Boston for food shipments. The Quartering Act was used as a punitive measure against the population at large, (the French pioneered this tactic against the Huguenots in the 17th century.)

Third, the Government tried to disarm the populace. Men between the ages of 17 and about 45 were required by law to serve in the militia. With their democracy and rights as Englishmen trampled all over by the Crown the colonists started stockpiling munitions in the town of Concord. Disarming a populace is one of the most important criteria to enslaving it-just ask Apartheid South Africa for one.

You can see these concerns clearly in the Bill of Rights. Right to redress grievances with the Government is in the 1st Amendment along with the right to assemble. The Government quartering troops in houses in a time of peace is prohibited under the 3rd Amendment. Right to bear arms is protected by the 2nd Amendment and to show its importance to the founders I have a quote from one of them

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the
peoples' liberty's teeth" - George Washington

What all of this has to do with a plaster elephant, I am sure you are wondering, is that it is important to remember why, exactly why, our forefathers uprose, what tyranny was to them. The over quoted “no taxation without representation”-which is on the DC license plates-doesn’t do a very good job of telling the story. It was not for abstract philosophical principals that the founders threw off the Crown but over a long series of abuses and ignited by specific actions to snuff out freedom in America in 1774 and 1775

Napoleon, the Bastile and the Pachyderm Part 2

As the second of my three part series on the American Revolution we will pick up where we left off at the Boston Tea Party. December 16, 1773 the Sons of Liberty thinly disguised as indians stormed the tea baring ships Dartmouth, Beaver and Eleanour and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea in 342 caskets worth £10,000 ($1.87 million in 2007 USD) into Boston Harbor. Already seeing Boston as the home of a few malcontents responsible for the trouble this act led the Crown to take harsh action to isolate the revolt. Believing they could contain the radicals and make an example of them the instituted what was known as the Intolerable Acts. They were as follows:

The Boston Port Act: Port of Boston closed until both the Crown and the East India Company had been repaid for the lost tea.

The Massachusetts Government Act: Made most positions in the Government of the Colony appointees of the Crown or Governor and limited Town meetings to once a year.

The Administration of Justice Act: Allowed the Governor of Massachusetts to move the trials of royal officials he felt would not get a fair trail to other colonies or to Great Britain.

The Quartering Act: Applied to all colonies and allowed the Governor to quarter British troops in homes.

These harsh punishments on the entire colony for the actions of a few radicals alienated the population and galvanised pan-colonial unity. All across the colonies people came together to send aid as they realized that on the whims of the Crown they too could have their democracy abolished, their livelihoods ruined and be occupied in their homes (Boston, population 18,000 had 4,000 redcoats living in people's homes, hence the 3rd Amendment.)

Already they had lost the ability to redress grievances with the Government and taken a first step towards enslavement. Now, with their local democracy gone, the right to assemble gone, their source of income and food supply shut down and agents of the government forcibly living in their homes the people of Boston had gone from risking enslavement to actual enslavement. They had only one right left, one means of maintaining freedom and on the early morning of the 19th of April 1775.

At Lexington and later Concord local militia clashed with British regulars as they tried to seize militia weapons and ammunition and arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When the government sought to finally crush the liberty of the colonists they tried to seize their weapons and that, was the last straw. Petitions, non-importation/consumption agreements and rioting finally bloomed into rebellion when the colonists were down to their last option being threatened.

Napoleon, the Bastile and the Pachyderm Part 1

Paris, 1812, Napoleon erected a plaster statue of elephant over the site of Bastile so people would forget the events there on the 14th of July 1789 and keep risk of revolution against his own tyranny low. Originally it was to be plated in bronze and be quite elaborate but because of budget reasons and Napoleon's defeat and surrender in the War of the Sixth Coalition it was left as only plaster.



















We just finished going over the American Revolution in my History 390r class in some detail and would like to share a brief overview in three Parts of the events that led up to the War and, more importantly, why. First I'll talk about the Tea Act, then the Boston Tea Party. Second will be the Intolerable Acts followed by the fighting at Lexington and Concord, MA. Finally I will summarise the why of the revolution, we must not be fooled by a plaster elephant.

The Tea Act of 1773, unlike so many other acts of Parliament that raised the ire of the colonists was not a tax and was not intended to raise money. In fact, it provided significantly cheaper tea to the colonists. The reason behind it was the East India Company, a royally sanctioned monopoly, was in deep trouble financially and had lots of low quality tea rotting in warehouses in England. Colonists were already forbidden to import from non-British sources so forbidding them to import tea from anyone but the East India Company seemed simple enough. Now the colonists would have cheap tea in abundance and would be paying the Townshend Duties on the tea, making good subjects out of the rebellious colonists in the process.

This was repugnant to the Patriots for several reasons. First, it was directly undermining the attempts at non-importation and non-consumption of English goods agreements that they had been trying to put in place to deal with the British Government, since they were ignored when they sent letters to Parliament and the Crown. Which leads me to the next point, no one consulted the colonists as to how they felt about the idea, the Tea Act was simply a fiat as far as the colonies were concerned. Third, it was really bad, rotting tea they couldn’t sell in England, America was simply a dumping ground for what wasn’t good enough for real Englishmen. Fourth, they were being used simply as an engine of wealth for the East India Company.

The above played into the sentiment that, in their own words, they were “risking enslavement” from the Crown. Funny words coming from slave owners but what they were getting at wasn’t being chained up to pick cotton but something more complicated. Slaves are merely engines of wealth to their owners, you don’t argue about vacation days with your slaves, you use them to best maximize profit. Feedback and appeal had already been cut off by the Crown, a first sign of slavery. Next the Government spent its time thinking how best to exploit the colonies and wouldn’t even take complaints! They responded like slaves would, first trying to degrade their value as engines of wealth by these non-importation and non-consumption agreements. Now they were being slapped in the face on several fronts and combine this, the Sons of Liberty, alcohol and Indian garb and you get-The Boston Tea Party.

What happend to Statesmen?

Our founders, as great and as visionary as they were didn't see our long standing party politics coming. Fortunately they did come up with the most versatile democratic system to date. Their ability to take 13 colonies with at first virtually no chance of throwing off the mother country, then taking 13 very independent countries into to a small federal republic on the edge of civilization, paving the way for it to become the greatest nation in the annals of great nations. The United States of America dominates every sphere it enters. The USA dominates land, sea, air and space. We are the financial and business center of the world and our culture is spreading the world over (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you are.) McDonald's, that American icon, is found in 119 countries and no country with a McDonald's has ever attacked the US. But we must remember history, no great civilization has ever been destroyed from without, but crumbled from within.

Let me share a story:

When I was 19 I voted for the first time in Hyattsville, MD. I had to walk to the school where the voting was due to lack of parking (no, I don't deserve a medal, but I did get a sticker.) I knew everything there was to know about the presidential candidates but on the local level I didn't have a clue. I had only just moved there and really didn't know or care about local politics. Luckily they came with a (D) or a (R) after their name so I knew how to vote. When it came to some of them, like judges, they didn't have a little (D) or (R) so utterly confused as to what to do I either did eni mini mo or left them blank.

We have a two party system in this country today run by politicians. Politicians have screwed this country over, big time. The need to get a (R) or (D) created the need to pay homage to the party elites and the corruption, partisanship and enforcement of the party line stifles patriotic fervor, selflessness and compromise. Our two party system, simply strangles statesmen and turns them into politicians. My favorite Congressional leadership position are the Party Whips. Party Whips are responsible for getting the members of the party to vote with the party. I am not sure how they go about that but that is where the name, Whips, comes from.

The founders risked all they had to create and serve their countrymen, even before there was a country. They were statesmen everyone, not doing it for personal gain or personal power but for the betterment of mankind. We live in a nation created by statesmen and run by politicians. If we are so great run by scoundrel politicians what would we be under more Washingtons, Jeffersons, Adams, Franklins or Handcocks?

"What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character
in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of
virtuous actions." -Aristotle

It depends on if your definition of "rights" is right

During the SCOTUS case, District of Columbia v. Heller, Obama was asked at a debate what he thought about the case. He responded that he thought the court would rule in favor of an individual right but added, "But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can't constrain the exercise of that right."

I am sorry, did I hear that correctly? State and local Governments have the power to trample over Constitutional rights? What happened to "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."? As a lawyer he should know that federal law has supremacy over state and local and the Constitution over federal.

Let's step back for a minute and make-believe we are in Obama's world, (a scary thought I know) where unalienable rights are not guarantied by law and subject to the whims of lesser courts and lawmakers.

Right to Habeas Corpus:
Lets say a locality in the south decides to restrict the right of Habeas Corpus seeing as it is such a bother to tell blacks why the are in jail.......After all, do you even need a reason to arrest blacks? Isn't their skin color reason enough?

Right to have a lawyer present during questioning:
So expensive to provide a public defender to all the poor people, especially the ones we "know" are guilty. Let's have our city "restrict" public defenders to only those we think could be innocent not those SOBs we know are guilty.

Right against unreasonable search and seizure:
Waiting to get a search warrant hampers the Sheriff's office from busting suspected meth labs. Restrict need for a search warrant in drug related cases.

Right against self-incrimination:
We have ways to make you talk...........

Right to peaceably assemble:
Let's restrict gatherings of over 30 people to social events only so my opponent can't hold rallies.

Right to petition the government for redress of grievances:
"Hey, I am getting tried of people coming into city council taking up our time whining. Let's restrict access to the meetings to only those here to compliment or bribe us."

Freedom of the press:
"Newspapers keep running negative stories on the mayor, from now on all stories must first be approved by the mayor's office before publishing."

Freedom of religion:
"Our town church is now officially the First Baptist Church of Christ. Those not attending Sunday services will be subject to a $500 fine for first offense, 30 days jail for repeat offenders."


I could go on and on but you see what I am getting at: Rights are rights and if lower courts are free to "restrict" them then where does it end and what good is the Constitution? Talk about opening Pandora's Box, the best way to go about destroying the Constitution I have heard in a while.

Or maybe I have funny ideas about the meanings of words like "Unalienable" and phrases like "Shall not be infringed."

Being a subject matter expert........

I have some thoughts on love, relationships and marriage, I have little experience with the first, almost none with the second and zero with the third. But this year we have a presidential race with both sides downplaying experience and running on values/positions so I figure what the heck. A couple things I have heard ruin relationships are the following:

1. Just trying to be happy in the relationship.

2. "Women are disappointed that the man hasn't changed and the man is disappointed the woman has."

3. Mistrust

Now the first one is actually pretty tricky. Everyone knows marriages fail because the couples aren't happy in the relationship. When things start to get a little tough people want to remedy it and a logical step is "I will do everything I can to make this work and be happy." Now I know there is a lot more going on than that but bear with me. People can make make the mistake that they are responsible for making themselves happy in the relationship. The big problem with the above solution is it leads to selfishness. I truly believe that in a marriage relationship your sole goal is the happiness of your spouse. This really only works when your spouse is also focused on your happiness so that with both of you trying to make the other one happy you are both happier than if you just worried about your own happiness. If this is not the case then by all means, you do need to watch your own interests but this is a very dangerous path. 1 Corinthians 7:4 is talking about a slightly different application but explains the principal very well.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard women talk about the chances of changing a man after marriage. The other day there was a discussion of the chances a a girl who is a member of my church marrying a non-member man and eventually converting him. I have heard this discussion many times and have often heard supporting opinions from people who are normally sensible. Think about: there is a major, core value that you do not like and think you can change it. You can not bank that your spouse will eventually change for you and can easily destroy your marriage. I heard a story from a friend who had been engaged to a wonderful woman for a long time and shortly before the wedding he was driving her home and was a few blocks from her apartment when she asked him to drop one of his hobbies (I don't know which one) and he pulled over, called the wedding off and gave her money for a cab. I think he may have saved himself a ton of grief, for all he knew she secretly had a list of things she was going to slowly push to "improve" him into the man she wanted.

Now men can have the opposite problem. I just John McCain would be a great example as his wife waited for him for six years while he was a POW in Vietnam and he came home and divorced her for a rich beauty queen.

One of the many reasons against premarital sex is the question of trust. If you had an intimate relationship before marriage your spouse knows you have and would have sex outside of marriage. If you had a marital affair with your current spouse while married to you last one then the problem is increased ten fold since now your spouse knows you have a record of cheating. I had a friend who was married and I don't know anything about their background. I knew him through a club and one time he mentioned he told her he was going to a meeting and would be back at 9. when he got back at 8:55 she was screaming at him because she thought he had said 8.........How fun.

The sky is falling

I won't pretend to be an economic expert but I have a few thoughts on the matter of the bank bailout and the failure of the bailout bill's passage. We are in this predicament due to risky sub-prime loans and loan officers acting like they were bullet-proof. This crisis isn't something that ambushed us overnight as its been going down hill for several months before it became a national crisis. I could get a little more worried if so many people weren't acting like this was the opportunity of the century. I am reminded of the following from H. L. Mencken,

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The book State of Fear by Michael Crichton talks about how since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 the fear mongering in the media has expanded by leaps and bounds. Why is kind of complicated but basically "You're on the verge of apocalypse! Only I can save you, worship/follow me." covers my explanation. I feel a lot of the Global Warming stuff falls into this category as well as the Patriot Act.

To those in our country who want to socialize us (step forward Congresswomen Maxine "This liberal wants to socialize big oil" Waters) (D-CA), this is a golden gift from the gods. For heavens sake, the populace is crying out for the Government to buy and therefore own corporations because, as they postulate, Capitalism has failed. (see Websters dictionary's entry for Communism) In return for bailing out (see buying) corporations now the government gets control how they do business. Regardless if we like to admit it or not money is what makes the world go around and now, in addition to the power to make laws, tax and make war we want to hand the keys to our financial system over to the government? If we don't we are threatened with the possibility of a new depression. I have only one thing to say:

Better dead than Red

PETA on Milk

I got this link off CNN's website about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals latest push. Apparently, they heard a Swiss restaurant owner is replacing 75% of his cow milk with human breast milk. He bought the milk from nursing mothers in his area. Excited at the possibilities they sent a letter to the owners of Ben & Jerry's ice cream asking that they replace their use of cow's milk in their ice cream with breast milk. To convince Ben & Jerry they presented the following:

1. Health concerns for people from cow milk, including allergies, obesity and heart disease.

2. Horrible treatment of milk cows, constantly impregnated to keep the milk flowing. Then once worn out from years of production the cows are made into hamburger or a tasty soup.

3. Male calves sold to veal farms to be fattened up and butchered.

4. "The breast is best!"

Ben & Jerry's responded via spokesmen with "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child,"


I guess my first question is, “Are you PETA guys really serious?” Second question, “Just in case you are serious, did you think this one through?” Although I am not really sure I assume breast milk tastes different than cow milk which would probably give ice cream a funny taste, which may or may not be appealing. Health problems exist, as I can attest to, I get sick from drinking milk so guess what? I don’t drink milk! Ben & Jerry’s is not, sadly, a staple of life. My request I sent to the US Department of Agriculture to have Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie added as the elusive sixth food group was turned down. If you have ever bought Ben & Jerry’s you know it’s a luxury item costing either your first born or second favorite offspring.

PETA cites the conditions and treatment of milk cows and their non-milk bearing offspring. I don’t want to be too insensitive to PETA’s cause (or do I?) but cows are in fact animals. Women, however, are people (despite occasional inhumane treatment of ex-boyfriends), babies are also people (see Horton hears a Who, “A person is a person no matter how small.”) Ben & Jerry’s makes a lot of ice cream and need a lot of milk to operate. While the emotions of milk cows weighs heavily on my mind, the thoughts, feelings and happiness of women is foremost in my consciousness. Not really a reflection of speciesism on my part but because I hope to mate with, have offspring with and share a home with a woman and really do not want to do any of the above with a milk cow.

Hence, I am a little weary of plans to turn the pregnant women of this nation into nothing more than milk cows. Of course the PETA plan is to get the milk from “willing” donors but we are really opening a Pandora’s Box with this one. Strangely-or not so strangely, I come back to my main objection to legalized prostitution. The complete denigrating of women to provide service for money with the extreme potential for coercion. Imagine a young poor woman going to a social services office. She is pregnant and for whatever reason cannot rely on the father for support and need welfare. She is told that because she will now produce milk she is not eligible for welfare until she runs dry since she can sell the milk and get formula. Similar situations have played out in Germany since they legalized prostitution.

I do have to admit, they got me with that last one, how do you argue against “The breast is best!”?

War in '49

Here is the intro to the book I am writting

War in ’49
The Great War of Liberation

“Only the dead have seen an end to war”
-Plato

“I know not what weapons World War III will be fought with but, World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”
-Albert Einstein


August 6th, 1945: At about 8:15 a.m. local time, the American B29 bomber Enola Gay dropped one bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb’s codename was Little Boy and it is one of the most famous bombs in history. But there was nothing little about what followed, the bomb detonated about 19,000 feet above Hiroshima with the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. The city was flattened, hardly one brick stood on another. About 70,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed by the blast and another 70,000 or so wounded. The explosion was so bright and so hot that it burned shadows into the sidewalk. Burns caused flesh to fall off in roasted chunks when touched, the dead were truly the lucky ones.

August 9th, 1945: The B29 bomber Bockscar flew over the city of Nagasaki and dropped a Bomb codenamed Fat Man. It killed 40,000 people and wounded 25,000. Due to the hilly terrain in Nagasaki the damage was not as wide spread as it was in Hiroshima.

August 15th, 1945: Emperor Hirohito makes a radio address announcing Japan’s Unconditional Surrender. World War Two is over, on September 2nd the Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed on the deck of the USS Missouri. The Allies celebrated their joint victory but the philosophy of Communism and the philosophies of Democracy and Capitalism are at odds and shortly after World War Two the Cold War started and both sides became locked into a great arms race and were constantly planning the others’ demise.

Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD was the only thing that kept World War Three from breaking out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. MAD is a policy of deterrence, its key is to make it so there is no way for one side to launch a sneak attack and destroy the other country without massive retaliation. Thousands of nuclear weapons were made mobile or hidden or scattered so that they could not be destroyed before having the chance to launch a retaliatory strike. It was the assurance of MAD that kept both sides from going to war.

But what if the US had not developed the Atomic Bomb in World War Two? During the summer of 1945 US war planners drew up the plan for the ground invasion of Japan called Operation Downfall. It was to start on X-Day, November 1, 1945 and it would have gone forward had not the Atomic Bombs ended the war first. A War Department study estimated 1.7 to 4 million US casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 dead. The Generals and Admirals planning it predicted between 31,000 and 49,000 casualties by X-day+30 and 125,000 by X-day+120. To put that in perspective, total US casualties in World War Two were 1,080,000 with 418,000 dead.

The casualty estimates were based on losses incurred fighting the Japanese for nearly four years. The closer to the Japanese mainland they fought the more determined they became and their military was not the only thing they had to fight. Japanese civilians were being prepared to fight to the end as well. Women, children and those not fit for the military were being organized to rush US troops on the beach with nothing but sharpened bamboo stakes. US casualties would be much lower than the Japanese’s, in the end Japan would have been a devastated no-man’s-land with few or no Japanese left to rebuild.

As staggering as the estimated casualties of Operation Downfall are, the casualties of a World War Three, with or without Nuclear weapons, would have made World War Two look like a skirmish. That is what this book is about, World War Three in a world without the A-Bomb. Using now declassified war plans from the late ‘40s and theoretical fielding of experimental weapons of World War Two and the early post war years, I try to imagine what it would have been like had there been a War in ’49.

The Oath

This ancient tale comes to us from mid-7th Century BC Rome. Rome was at war with her neighbor Alba Longa and eventually the outcome was agreed to be decided in the “old” way. The Horatii, a set of male triplets from Rome and the Curiatii, male triplets of the same age from Alba Longa, would duel while both Armies watched. Jacques David’s key masterpiece The Oath of the Horatii captures the Horatii as they leave their home and family for the battle.

As the 6 men fought in full view of their nations we can only imagine how every blow was watched by a thousand eyes, victory or enslavement hinging upon its landing. As all three Curiatii were wounded Romans cheered and the Alba Longans mourned but then one of the Horatii fell dead! Then another fell and the last of the Horatii fled across the field back to Roman lines with the Curiatii in hot pursuit. The Romans cried in horror at the cowardice of the last of the brothers as his light doomed them all. Looking over his shoulder the last Horatii suddenly wheeled around, for wounded the Curiatii pursued at different speeds. Now separated the Horatii was able to cut down all three Curiatii one at a time; Rome was victorious!

A victory parade made its way to the home of the Horatii with the bodies of the two fallen Horatii and the last at the front. Upon seeing one of her brothers alive the sister of the Horatii broke down in tears because it meant that her lover, one of the Curiatii, was dead. In a fit of rage her brother killed her for greaving more for the enemy dead than her own fallen brothers. Initally condemned to die, the City could not bring its self to execute its savior of the previous day.

Adolf Legalité

In 1923 Germany was in the throes of the volatile post-Great War period. In an attempt to keep up with war reparation payments to the victorious allies imposed in 1921 Germany hyper-inflated it’s Mark. Before the reparations it was four Marks to the US Dollar but by 1922 it was 400 Marks to the USD. In the Late summer of 1923 when the Mark was about 1,000,000,000 to the USD a former army corporal and head of the National Socialist Party Adolf Hitler announced he would hold a series of mass meetings in the City of Munich’s large beer halls starting on the 27 of September. Able to call up 15,000 of his loyal SA Stormtroopers Hitler was a force to be reckoned with; as a result Bavarian Prime Minister Eugene Knilling declared a state of emergency.

Following the example of Mussolini’s successful March on Rome, Hitler planned on bring in his SA and taking the leaders of Bavaria at gun point and forcing them to recognize Hitler, with Great War hero General von Ludendorff at his side, as their leader. Once in control of Bavaria the Nazis would move on the rest of the country. On November 8th, 1923 Hitler, Göring with his SA and others burst into a beer hall the local leaders were speaking at with guns drawn and shouts of “The National Revolution has begun!”

Over the next 24 hours the uprising unraveled culminating with Hitler, Ludendorff and Göring at the head of a column of SA numbering 2000 men. They ran right into a roadblock of 100 soldiers and police. In the ensuing skirmish 4 police and 16 Nazis were killed and Göring was severely wounded in the groin. While Ludendorff pressed forward under fire Hitler fled leading the Great War General to brand Hitler a coward.

It was while serving his five year prison sentence that Hitler and Rudolf Hess wrote Mein Kampf. Also during his imprisonment Hitler rethought his ideas on violent revolution. The sehr ordenlech German people were not comfortable with the rules being broken and reacted badly to it. So once Hitler got out of jail his rise to power was characterized by doing everything strictly legal. Hitler was so committed to exact legality that he became known as “Adolf the Legal One” or Adolf Legalité.

In our time we face many threats to our wealth, peace of mind, freedom and our very lives. Marching under foreign flag and wearing stormtroopers’ uniform, goose stepping in jack boots, evil is easy to see and defeat. While we must always watch for Hitler’s SA marching towards us there is another kind of evil we must fear and watch for most: The Fifth Column rallying around our flag!

They say all the right things; all they want is our best interest. They say they love everything we love; they will fight for our children. “Rally with me to our flag that our Nation might persevere!” they cry; but listen to them, look at their words and deeds of old and their private words with friends. All great nations that have fallen have fallen from the rot inside; evil was not at the doorstep but at the hearth!
In 1923 German soldiers saw evil marching on them and opened fire, smashing the evil that threatened their nation. Yet in 1933 Hitler was able to size full control of the government that had gunned down his followers less than ten years before. He used Germany’s own laws to destroy the very laws he was using.

We must always be vigilant that our own system is not used against us to destroy us and enslave us. We must always ask not how we would use a law, but how our worst enemy would use it. Be careful in who we let close to the halls of power, do not make hasty judgment in cave in a moment of passion to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Alpine slide a no-go

If you are in Park City, Utah at the resort don't take the Alpine slide if you want to live. I was on it and came off and tore a bloody great hole in my arm. 24 stitches and enough IV anti-biotics to sterilize a pig later, I am starting to recover. That is my excuse for not writing of late, that and starting classes.

Not to worry, I have something in the works.

A Tale of Two Wars

I’d like to take a minute to look at the rise of the Nazis. I am going to try to look at what spawned their breeding ground in 1920s and ‘30s Germany. Please do not mistake that I like Nazism in the slightest. Visiting former concentration camps when I was young are among the more traumatic memories of my childhood.

By the end of World War One, Germany was completely ruined by their huge casualties, by shortages of everything and by the Treaty of Versailles which made Germany take full responsibility for the war and make huge repatriations to the Allies as well as a neutered military. In an attempt to get out of these payments the Germans tried to hyperinflate the Mark, making German money worthless so the victors would not want payments of worthless German Marks. This not only failed when the payments were demanded in other forms such as raw steel and other goods but also crushed what little was left of the German economy. Tales of the inflation are legendary, workers at factories were paid in the middle of the day and used small bags so they could throw it to their families to go buy bread before the money was worthless later in the day. German bills had their values crossed out and new ones written by the mint because buy the time they were done printing it the bill was worth less than toilet paper. Children made kites out of old bills rather than using them to buy paper. By the late 1920s the country was tearing itself apart. There was fighting and revolts in the streets, armed paramilitary gangs of unemployed veterans roamed the countryside and economic disaster.

Into this maelstrom stepped Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party. He had it all, a plan to rebuild the country by huge government projects such as the autobahn, a plan to rebuild the Army, an explanation for how they fell and it not being the fault of the German people by using the Jews as a scapegoat and most importantly, hope. Out of national crisis Hitler resurrected Germany and because of his message the German people voted to give him full control of the government in 1933. Hitler promised to take them down the path to becoming the greatest country on earth………well, we all know how that worked out.

After World War Two ended the victorious Allies did not make the same mistake twice. Under the Marshall Plan vast economic aid was sent to Europe to restore productive economies to war-torn nations. US troops were stationed in Germany to protect them from the Soviets and there are still US troops there. Because the US was able to win the peace Germany became a peaceful and prosperous country.

In 1990 Iraq invaded its southern neighbor Kuwait prompting international outrage. In February 1991 the US led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm, the ground invasion of Iraq. The ground war lasted 100 hours before the Iraqi Army, at the start of the war the 4th largest in the world, collapsed. After imposing aircraft no fly zones the US pulled out with Saddam still in power. One big reason was Iraqs neighbor Iran, a US hating country and state sponsor of terror. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard created Hezbollah the notorious terror group in Lebanon. Iraq and Iran had just bled each other white during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war. Taking out Saddam would leave a power vacuum and set Iran up to dominate the region. Also, taking out Saddam would force the US to stay in Iraq to form the new democratic government (a feat all its own in an Arab country), build a stable economy, train the new Army and keep an eye on Iran. It made much better sense to leave him there to balance out Iran and not get bogged down in another Vietnam-style quagmire. We also figured Saddam would soon be toppled by his own people as rebels uprose across the country to oust the Bath Party. During the peace treaty negations the terms of the no fly zones was being worked out General Schwarzkopf made the mistake of telling the Iraqis they could still fly armed helicopters. This unfortunate remark spelled doom for the large uprising taking place against Saddam and thousands of anti-Saddam Iraqis. As US forces helplessly watched from bases in Iraq Saddam's helicopter gunships crushed the rebellion. A rebel commander, after his request for support fighting the Republican Guard was turned down by the US 1st Cavalry Division shook hands and departed back to the fighting with “We are all dead men.” When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 all the anti-Saddam/pro-US Iraqis were long dead and buried in mass graves. Any survivors were understandably bitter and cynical, making occupation and reconstruction much more difficult.

Many Americans can’t understand why we are still in Iraq. Encouraged by politicians many think we can simply leave Iraq. After all, would leaving them pose an immediate threat to America? History is clear on the matter, gutting a nation and leaving them in ruin only leads to even worse enemies taking over and more, many more, Americans in black body bags.

A return to MAD?

During the Cold War MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction was how the US and USSR avoided destroying the planet and obliterating humanity. Basically it worked by having so many nuclear weapons scattered with different delivery systems (ie. bomber aircraft, ICBMs, missle subs) that the other side could not hope to deliver a first strike without massive retaliation. MAD used three "legs" to deliver nuclear weapons: Bombers, InterContinental Ballistic Missles, and Missle Submarines. Throughout the Cold War the US kept bomber aircraft flying just off the USSRs borders 24/7 awaiting orders to nuke the Soviets. The crews understood that most likely by the time they got the orders to strike large mushroom clouds would be appearing over the largest cities in the US. In remote parts of Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota large underground silos housed ICBM missles to be launched at the President's command. Finally, probably the best of the three legs of MAD was missle submarines. During their constant patrols not even their own naval command knew of their location. That was MAD, and at the end of the day neither the USSR or the US wanted to end the world.

After the fall of the USSR the US kept its MAD systems in place although they did stop the expensive 24/7 nuke armed flights off the now former USSR. While the US may have slain the Dragon they have found the jungle full of poisonous snakes. On September 11, 2001, a date that will live in infamy, 19 men with box cutters delivered a devistating bite on America. Now the question that must be asked is if determind terrorists can wreck so much devistation with box cutters what could they do with a nuclear bomb? In the post cold war era we now face the possibility of small states not being controled like they were in the past and going rouge, potentially with nuclear weapons. Terrorists can strike if they ever get the weapons and not fear nuclear retaliation because who would we target? Rouge states with little or no concern for even their own people might actually use nukes if they had them but could also just supply them to a terrorist group upsetting the MAD balance.

The latest invasion of Georgia by Russia and other minor military actions by the Russians are clearly aimed at restoring their place as a world player. By reigniting competion between Russia and the US they would regain the national pride they lost with the colapse of the USSR. The USSR took great care to protect and hide their nuclear arsenal so vital to their survival. But with the fall of the USSR many of those weapons are now being guarded by soldiers on low wages and who don't even get paid every month. As many of the former soviet republics flock to NATO, Russia will need new satalite countries. Russia has a long history of controling their smaller satalites with an iron fist; just look at Hungry in 1956, Czechoslovacia in 1968 or Georgia in 2008.

Russia has bought many of the untapped oil fields in Iran and it is possible that a deapening of tentions with the US could drive Iran to closer a allience with Russia. While this allience of two of America's worst threats is not good; Iran is ruled by an Islamic theocracy and has been throwing out a lot of serious threats of late. If Iran became a prominate satalite of Russia the Russians might be able to rein in Iran. If Iran was a satalite of Russia the Russians would not allow them to run amuck since that could easily lead to conflict with the US. If Iran ever went through with their threats to anhilate Israel the Iranians would drag Russia along into war with the US and NATO.

MAD is a very dangerous policy to live by, but it beats dying under a mushroom cloud by a long shot.

In the Beginning

Well I thought I'd try this blogging thing out. As to the title, Idumea was a region south of Israel in Biblical times and is also used in scripture to refer to the world in general. I plan on writing my thought on current affairs, our society and most of all, History.