On Hating President Obama

Precedents for Hating Barack

Feeling overworked, I decided to relax today with a copy I unearthed of United States Diplomatic History, Volume I, edited by Gerard Clarfield

Any history book is bound to have revealing details about the past. For instance, in the Chapter on the Jay Treaty with the British Empire (or Treaty of London of 1794), I learned that John Jay (who was already the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), lacking instructions otherwise, decide to not demand payment to American slavers for their slaves that were freed by the British Army during the Revolutionary War.

But what struck me most was the hatred unleashed on President George Washington because of the treaty. The background is complex, but at that time the two major political factions in the U.S. were pro-French (and the French Revolution) or pro-British (and more conservative). The problem was the U.S. really needed a new treaty with the Empire because of unresolved issues from the Revolutionary War. President Washington did not particularly like the new treaty, but he needed it to keep the young nation out of war and with some chance to prosper economically.

One more detail before the main point: the U.S. Senate discussed the treaty in secret, and agreed that it would not be published. But anti-British Senators eventually made it available to the press.

How vitriolic was the hatred for Washington? There were riots against the treaty in Boston. The pro-French press said the President "had completed the destruction of American freedom." A series of articles accusing George Washington of theft was published. A common toast was "A speedy death to George Washington."

I certainly don't condone hatred of President Barack Obama. But I am not shocked that it exists. He is not my favorite President, but I would not slip from criticism (with occasional agreement or even praise) to hatred. But for many Americans, the vitriol of the 2008 campaign just rolled on into hatred of the man in office.

I think there is a racial component to Obama hating, but I don't think it is the main issue. Every President before Obama inspired hatred, at times, among certain people. The more famous an American President is now, the easier it is to find out why he was hated. Jefferson was hated for being pro-French and an atheist. Jackson was hated by the East Coast establishment. Lincoln was hated by the South, and so on down the line. Liberals have hated Conservative Presidents, and Conservatives have hated Liberal Presidents.

Several Presidents have been hated to the point of being assassinated, and attempts have been made on many more.

The political parties, of course, have been responsible for the whipping up of hatred. The Democrats hated Reagan and Bush. The fury unleashed by Republicans at Bill and Hillary Clinton was probably not unprecedented, but odd given that liberal Democrats considered them to be too conservative. Nor was Hillary the first First Lady to be hated. Many prior first ladies had their detractors (notably Eleanor Roosevelt). It probably started with Martha Washington, but that I have not read about, so far.

The President I hated the most was Richard Nixon. He was the President of my teen years, when I started rebelling against authority. I volunteered to campaign for George McGovern in 1972 (something Hillary and I have in common). My college roommate and I clipped pictures of Nixon and recaptioned them in nasty ways and attached them to our dorm door.

Now I see Nixon differently. He was a war criminal, sure, but I doubt he would have committed war crimes if Lyndon Johnson hadn't started the Vietnamese War. He was conservative, sure, but he accepted most of the New Deal. By today's standards he was to the left of Bernie Sanders. As Vice-President in the 1950s he had done much to advance civil rights. I could criticize him all day long, but I can no longer hate him.

Some people are just filled with hate, a few may not hate at all, but most of us live in the gray zone. We learn, over time, that most people are complicated. We can hate one thing they do, and love another. We can even disagree, or strongly disagree, without hating.

I hope Hillary becomes President, but I expect her to be the most hated President ... since Obama. I don't think she hates anyone, though I suspect she is not fond of Republicans or right-wing radio. She is the only candidate still standing who thrives on understanding complexity. And it's a complex world, so we want a President who can make decisions, understanding that the results can be complicated and even unexpected.

Learning from Ho Chi Minh

Like most of my fellow Americans, I associate Ho Chi Minh with the Vietnam War. Having recently completed William J. Duiker's rather detailed biography of Ho [Ho Chi Minh, A Life], I found much that is worthy of study by Americans, indeed by anyone in the world who thinks politics should be about positive change.

Ho was the son of a peasant-scholar. The closest American equivalent to his father would be someone with a tiny farm that produced food but not money, and a teaching (or tutoring job) that provided middle-class status without the money that accompanies it in the U.S. Because his father continued to pursue his studies (in the only topic considered worthy in 19th century Vietnam, Confucian philosophy), he migrated to the city of Hue and Ho was exposed to the reality of French control of his country. It was a grim picture. After failing to convert the Vietnamese with Roman Catholic priests and commerce, the French had come in with guns blazing. They taught a few people their piggish language and culture, but were mainly there to extract wealth, no matter how many Vietnamese died in the process.

If did not matter who was in charge of the government of France over the decades: conservatives, moderates, liberals, progressives, fascists (Petain and the Vichy regime) and even Socialists all insisted that once conquered, the Vietnamese had to remain in the French empire.

Ho Chi Minh, of course, was not the only one to revolt against French rule. The story of his becoming the leader of his country has some resemblance to that of George Washington in the U.S., but Ho started with less, worked much harder and longer, and accomplished more.

While in theory Ho could be said to be a Marxist, a Leninist, even a Stalinist and a Maoist, he compares well to those men of totalitarian bent. While the Vietnamese did fight the French and eventually the Americans, Ho was by nature a peaceful guy. He negotiated continuously with his friends and enemies alike. Constantly gave both the French and the Americans (and domestic opposition parties) an easy out: withdraw peacefully, and let us govern ourselves, was his only message.

Duiker sums up how Ho operated: "be thrifty, be friendly but impartial, resolutely correct errors, be prudent, respect learning, study and observe, avoid arrogance and conceit, and be generous."

To be thrifty means resources are available for the good of others, or for a good cause. Ho lived in what only could be called poverty for his entire life. Unlike Washington, who was rich and owned slaves, and Mao and Stalin, who lived luxuriously after obtaining power, Ho really just did not feel a leader should live better than the people he served.

To be friendly but impartial is a difficult dance, in my experience. Friends want you to give them breaks you would not give to non-friends. But impartiality is important for many reasons, including that it keeps you from being deluded by your friends. People who hold your impartiality against you are corrupt. They are the problem, not the impartiality.

To resolutely correct errors is a bit more than learning from your mistakes. A lot of people don't even notice when they are making mistakes. In the corporate world the quality control principles used at Toyota, which have spread to many other manufacturers, are a system for resolutely correcting errors. In politics people tend to stick to positions no matter how counterproductive they are in reality. That is how you get organizations like the Democratic Party and Republican Party, and for that matter the dysfunctional communist parties of the 20th century.

Hopefully the benefits of prudence and respecting learning don't need to be explained, though they are often absent or minimally present in American life.

"Study and observe." How often have you seen someone fly off the handle because they misunderstand a situation? How many disasters have occurred because people oversimplify something complex, or don't bother to understand the materials they are working with at all? In particular, Americans don't know their own history, much less world history, and not knowing history, cannot see what will result from various actions or inaction.

"Avoid arrogance and conceit." Not only are these characteristics off-putting, but they prevent you from learning from others. I would note, however, that pretending to be ignorant in order to avoid being accused of arrogance is also a no-win situation for everyone.

Finally, be generous. Generosity can take many forms. I don't think Ho had a lot of money to give away at any point in his life. He was generous, however (considering the circumstances) with people who disagreed with him politically. In retrospect his whole life might have seemed like an endless meeting in which he tried to persuade people to do the right thing. He tried to persuade the French and Americans to give the Vietnamese their freedom. But he also spent countless hours trying (and to some extent succeeding) to get his younger, more ideological communist comrades to not think their job was to boss peasants (or intellectuals, or even business people or other party members) around.

Duiker's book fleshes out how Ho Chi Minh tried to put these guidelines into action. It also sheds a lot of light on the psychology and workings of imperialism, which is still a problem in the world today. Leninist-style communism may no longer be the best way to fight (or peacefully oppose) imperialism, but the lessons from Ho's life are now our common human heritage.

The State of Barack Obama

An interesting way to teach American History would be to have the students read each of the State of the Union addresses, starting with George Washington's first. What students would mainly learn would, hopefully, was to not put too much stock in the opinions of a single politician, even if he is the President of the United States. [for the record, I have read only a limited set of these addresses, notable those I included in my Internet Biography of Andrew Jackson.]

In four years we will know how much of the objectives outlined in Barack Obama's speech have been achieved. Probably little.

What we already know is the 2013 State of the Union speech failed to inform Congress or America of the State of the Union. It was filled with misleading statistics, political hype, digs at the Republicans, meaningless tales of individual Americans, and just plain obfuscation. President Obama wants some good things: more confidence in the private sector, resulting in more jobs; world peace (without sacrificing American power or imperialist loot); a higher minimum wage; more careful Federal spending. He even wants both more natural gas production and less global warming. But wanting things is the easy part. We all want to have our cake and eat it too. That is why we are not a nation of savers.

The word "bank" is not mentioned in the speech, except for "food bank." That is a pretty funny thing. Compare Andrew Jackson's speeches, which almost always had something to say about banks. What's wrong with this picture, Mr. President? Could not 90% of the problems of "middle class" Americans be summed up in one word: banks?

His speech provokes the Islamic faithful, which means we must continue to spend more money on bloodshed, or leave the Islamic nations to work out their own fates. "And we will stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace." Which means the private property of the Palestinians will not be returned to them, nor will damages be paid. So the prior sentence, "but we can -- and will -- insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people," is just a bold-faced lie. The oppression of women in Israel, Ireland, Saudi Arabia and numerous American allies will be overlooked, but used to justify murder with drones in Pakistan, Somalia, Iran, and other states not buckling under our imperialist demands.

As to good jobs, the President wants to fill them with immigrants: "real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers." Perhaps the President should be required by the Constitution to report on his campaign donations. Then we would know what policies he will pursue.

Getting $9 per hour will not make anyone "middle class." Thirty years ago, even, $9 an hour would not have made a person middle class. Why won't the President use the term "working class?" There are a lot more working class American citizens than middle class ones.

History has shown their is only one sure way to make working class Americans middle class. Unionize them, and use the power of the union (One Big Union, united to seek fairness for all) to take, not just higher wages, but a fair share of capital and a majority share of decision making power. But the state of union organizing is not mentioned.

Nothing about clear cut forests from sea to shining sea. Nothing about mountaintop removal. Nothing about overpopulation. Nothing about reproductive rights.

Nothing about the rapid proletariatization of the work force by robots and artificial intelligence. No honest talk about foreign policy or the destruction of the American economy by the imperialist military budget.

Nothing about the Obama policy of closing down marijuana clinics in states where they are legal; nothing at all about the effects of U.S. recreational drug consumption on crime in the U.S. and in Mexico.

Mr. Obama just proved again that he is a very good political campaigner, but can't settle down to actually governing a nation with liberty and justice for all.

Of course Democrats will find much to love in the speech, and Republicans will find much to hate. Again, illustrating what George Washington and other Founders foresaw, that the party system would be bad for America. That is why political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

Halloween Horrors from American History

When people think of horrors rising from the grave at Halloween, if they think about American history the best they can come up with is usually Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. That just shows how well-built our mental defenses are against true horror.

Perhaps tonight some unlucky people will see the ghost of John Woods. His older brother had been conscripted into the Tennessee militia in the war of 1812. For reasons unknown John, who was just 17, took his brother's place in Andrew Jackson's army in February, 1814. They had been fighting Indians, and none too victoriously. "He made the mistake of arguing with the Officer of the Day outside of the General's tent. Jackson stepped outside and ordered: "Shoot him." Two days later, on March 14th, at 10 A.M. John Woods was shot dead by his fellow soldiers at Jackson's command. The General now believed he was ready to fight the Red Sticks again, with less insubordination from his underlings." [from Andrew Jackson Fights the Red Sticks]

John Woods was hardly the only victim of Andrew Jackson, a slaver who went on to create the Democratic Party and use it to make himself President, but let's make this a variety horror show. There were, of course, the natives. If every murdered American Indian showed up on Halloween, it would be a sight. Practically every major figure in American history up to the Civil War was an Indian killer of some magnitude. George Washington killed Indians, as did Thomas Jefferson, as did hordes of forgotten European colonizers. The rapid accumulation of wealth and establishment of a ruling class in the United States was largely accomplished by the murder of Indians and theft of their lands.

Ghosts of dead slaves, too, could put together quite a Halloween ball. Many died horrible deaths while in chains in Africa or on the ships that brought them across the Atlantic. In America the life expectancy, and living conditions, of slaves working at cotton or tobacco culture was nothing to sing songs to Jesus for the blessings of Christianity about. Again, the same names pop out of our history books, slavers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson not being particularly noted for their cruelty, but rather as the political frontmen for the owners of larger lots of expendable human workforce. Of course, even after the Civil War, the Democratic Party made sure that life for African Americans was halloween everyday in the former slave states.

White people, don't despair. Not all of our ancestors were Indian killers and racists. In fact, most white people who arrived in the colonies before the American Revolution came over as indentured servants, and their ghosts, in their millions, could tell some tales. While indentured slavery was for a period of time, usually 7 years, and many survived and went free, most were worked and starved to death by the end of their term, that being more profitable than turning free a healthy, well fed human being.

I cannot neglect to mention the foreign wars. There are too many ghosts and spooks to mention them all here, even in lumps, so a few must represent all. The Philippines War, an addendum to the Spanish American War, was carried on with the same principles of an Indian extermination campaign. No one knows how many Filipino freedom fighters and civilians died under the cheery tutelage of Theodore Roosevelt and crew, but rough estimates range from a low of about one-half million to a high of two million. The U.S. war to occupy Korea and the Vietnam War are worth an all-saints mention.

If you are looking for glow-in the dark zombies, perhaps you would enjoy the resurrection of the only large bodies of people killed by atomic weapons, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The average American, who deserves to be haunted into an early grave, simply repeats the charming meme, "it saved lives of American soldiers." That the rules of war have always said it is not okay to kill civilians to save your own soldiers seems lost on people. That Science, which should be a beacon of light, was bent to this unholy purpose, makes it all the more criminal. President Harry Truman, the leader of the Democratic Party, made the decision to drop the bomb. The Democratic Party is the only party in history that has dropped atomic weapons on human beings. Had America lost World War II, or had a fair and impartial system of international justice been created, the Democratic Party would have been permanently banned, just like the National Socialist German Workers Party was.

For me, the horror is walking out into a world where a bunch of Democratic Party zombies grope about in continual denial of the reality of what their party has done, and what they have embraced by joining it. How many more people will die violent deaths at Democrats' hands before its reign of terror fades into history?

States Rights and the Federal Reserve

"Such is the character of human language, that no word conveys to the mind, in all situations, one single definite idea; and nothing is more common that to use words in a figurative sense."

—John Marshall in McCulloch vs. Maryland, 1819

If your knowledge of American history is shallow enough, you might think that the question of states' rights was answered by the Civil War. The Republican Party opined that for a state to secede from the Union was an act of treason. A lot of people died to make the point. Yet states did not become mere administrators of Federal law. They retained important rights and duties.

Before considering how the Federal Reserve fits into our system of governance, it is worth a bit of review about the Bank of the United States. America had no banks at all in 1776, which at least proves it is possible to get along without them. Great Britain had a number of banks, including the Bank of England, which had been created by the British government, but which had not branches in the American colonies.

The first Bank of the United States was chartered by the first Congress under the new Constitution in 1791 for twenty years, based on a proposal from Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington. Like the Bank of England, it was set up as a private company that would hold federal funds, but act as a bank to commercial enterprises. From the beginning some political figures (anti-federalists) opposed it and believed that its creation was not a power granted to Congress by the Constitution. In 1811 Congress refused to recharter the bank (by a vote of 64 to 65). The War of 1812 created such financial chaos in the United States that the bank was issue a new charter in 1816.

In 1818, to prevent the Bank of the United States from competing with local banks, the State of Maryland passed a tax on all banks not chartered by the State. The Bank cashier, McCulloch, refused to pay the tax. The Bank lost in the Maryland courts, but appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. By a vote of 8 to 1 the Supreme Court found the Maryland law to be unconstitutional. [See McCulloch vs. Maryland, 17 US 316 (1819)]

In the ruling John Marshall discusses the nature of the federal system at some length. He discusses how sovereignty can be shared or split by states and the federal government. He discusses the phrase "necessary and proper" at some length. He also splits the hair of the 10th Amendment by noting that it differs by one important word from the wording of its predecessor in the Articles of Confederation.

Even Marshall, the federalist, noted that the Constitution gives the Congress some responsibilities, and prohibits certain types of legislation, while reserving others to the states. Two basic problems remain, even if you are convinced by Marshall's reading of the Constitution. You may not agree with how the Constitution divides up responsibilities between the states and federal government. That could be fixed by amendments, although amending the Constitution is difficult, and what is already in place is favored.

The more difficult question arises when specific situations cross multiple issues, or when there are shades of gray within a single issue. The Supreme Court itself has often made differing rulings on the same subject during different periods of American history.

President Andrew Jackson did not like the Bank of the United States; he thought its powers exceeded those grantable under the Constitution. Jackson, like most Americans, wanted states' rights when he agreed with the states, and was against states' rights when he wanted to impose his ideas on the entire nation. When the people of South Carolina nullified an oppressive tariff (import customers duty), Jackson threatened to use military force. But when George asserted states' rights to evict the Cherokee nation, and the Supreme Court backed the Cherokee in Worcester v. Georgia (31 US 515), Jackson (and later President Van Buren) refused to use federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court's decision. In 1833 President Jackson took federal money out of the Bank of the United States, and its charter was allowed to expire in 1836.

The Federal Reserve was controversial when it was created in 1913 it was no less controversial than the Bank of the United States. However, it did not compete directly with private commercial banks, instead using its function as a reserve bank to maintain a money supply consistent with economic health. Recently the Tea Party and Republican presidential candidates have been attacking the Federal Reserve. Partly the attacks are pragmatic, partly they raise yet again the ancient question of what are the powers of the federal government under the Constitution.

Anyone can criticize the Fed on pragmatic grounds. Take your choice: the Fed created too much money, or the Fed created too little money. Heck, the Fed insiders debate that question among themselves.

Questioning the Federal Reserve's constitutionality is wacky, except perhaps as an academic exercise. The Tea Party has no good answers for the reasoning in McCulloch vs. Maryland. Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce and to establish a system of currency, both of which it chooses to do through the Federal Reserve. Congress has the power to change the Federal Reserve, to replace it with something different, or to abolish it outright.

Many in the Tea Party now hold there is an Original Constitution, written by God himself, and easily interpreted by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of English and the Ten Commandments, the amount you would get from their home schooling program. For them it is simple: the Constitution does not mention the Federal Reserve, so having one cannot be constitutional.

The first Congress (admittedly a rogue's gallery of corrupt men) chartered the Bank of the United States, and it was signed into law by George Washington. Who do you think is in a better position to opine on the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, the village idiots of the Tea Party, or the first Congress? The men who knew the men, sometimes even were the men, who wrote the Constitution, or Michele Bachmann?

We do not need to return to some mythic original Constitution. We need to amend the Constitution to bring it into line with what we, the people, have learned in the past 200 years. The problem with Congress is not that it has exceeded the power granted to it, though it probably has at times. The problem with Congress is that it has not done everything necessary and proper to "promote the general Welfare." Neither, for that matter, have the various state legislatures.

Presidents Day, Remembering Their War Crimes

In my theory of democracy, Presidents of the United States are executive officers. Congress writes the law; Presidents are not supposed to be policy makers.

In looking at history, however, it is easier to remember the relatively limited number of Presidents of the United States of America than to remember all the Speakers of the House, Senate Majority leaders and committee chairs, much less the other members of congress. In reality, too, Presidents have been makers of policy.

When I remember the Presidents of the United States, what I mostly recall is that almost every one of them started at least one war against another nation. I include Native American Indian nations among the nations.

The pattern of the Indian wars became the pattern for later wars. Every war had its pretext, but in every case the U.S. was in the wrong. Indians nations engaged in self-defense against the depredations of white settlers. That self-defense was labeled aggression, and used in every case for the United States to expand at the expense of the Indian nation or nations involved.

We have a modern term for this, which is war crimes. It is a war crime to start a war of aggression. There are other war crimes besides, likely engaging in war where civilians are in harms way, killing soldiers who surrender, etc. Legalistic minds would argue that early American Presidents did not commit war crimes because they had not been established in the 1700s or 1800s. That is a deceptive argument, since both religious and secular reasoning about the criminal nature of aggressive war goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks.

Codifying war crimes at the beginning of the 20th century did not stop U.S. Presidents from committing them. Wars of aggression continued to be characterized as wars of defense. For the smaller wars, the U.S. could always find some South American or Asian puppet to pretend to be a national government and then have that puppet invite in U.S. troops.

Most Americans don't know about most of the small wars the U.S. engaged in. Despite reading extensively about them, I can't remember details of most the the wars to steal real estate from native Americans. U.S. invasions of nations in the Western Hemisphere have happened so often that, again, it is difficult for me to connect individual wars to individual Presidents. I keep meaning to make a cheat sheet.

Americans usually know enough history to recall a few big wars: the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War (actually, there were several), the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan. These big wars are all blamed on the other party, even though it takes minimal research to find that the U.S. either started them, if they were bilateral, or joined in without good cause, if they were general wars.

I would suggest we rename Presidents Day. Let us call it Apology Day. Let us apologize to the remnants of the native american nations. Let us apologize to the Canadians (the War of 1812 was actually declared explicitly to conquer Canada), the Mexicans, Spanish, the Latin American nations, the Hawaiians, the Philippines, the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans.

Before setting up Apology Day, we should also stop our current war and reduce the U.S. to a peaceable military posture. We should turn our current crop of war criminals over to fair and impartial international tribunals to be condemned and hung until dead.

With Apology in place, I think I could start to emphasize some of the good things U.S. Presidents have done. George Washington established that Presidents in a democracy should only serve two terms. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Grover Cleveland refused to annex Hawaii. The nation did indeed prosper under Harding and Coolidge. Lyndon Johnson did put his prestige on the line to give all Americans full civil rights. Richard Nixon did create the Environmental Protection Agency and recognized the legitimate government of China.

But not yet. First we need to know our true past, admit it was immoral, and change our institutions so that the people of the United States can stay on the moral high road, the road of peace, in the future.

Independence and the 200 Year Hangover

The first independence day was July 4th, 1776. The Declaration of Independence, written by committee but attributed with some cause to Thomas Jefferson, was meant to explain to the world why the gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia did not want to be ruled by Great Britain.

The Declaration carefully skirted at least two of the main reasons that select group of mostly rich men were so eager to split up with England. Before examining them in detail let me say clearly: I believe in democracy. I believe that the U.S. colonies of England should have become independent. I just believe that much bad policy was packaged up in the independence deal.

The idea of independent colonies, bound together or not, was not new in 1776. It had had advocates for decades. But interestingly, until 1772, agitation for independence had gotten nowhere. Why did things change in 1772? Because of a court case in Great Britain.

A slave of African descent from Virginia, named Somerset (or Sommerset or Somersett; spelling was no exact science in those days) had run away from his master, who had taken him to be his servant in London. After lengthy procedings a British judge, Lord Mansfield, declared Somerset to be free. He declared that slavery did not exist in England; that English soil was free soil; that whatever you prior status, when you stepped on English soil you became free. [See Slave Nation by Alffred and Ruth Blumrosen].

This decision, which Ben Franklin wrote about, endangered the livelihoods and thus the liberty of slave owners in Virginia and other U.S. colonies. Thomas Jefferson and other slavers formed the now famous Committees of Correspondence, linking up with certain New England merchants who were also keen on independence. They did not demand representation in Parliament, for that would have made it even clearer that American soil was English soil and that the slaves would have to be freed. Instead they moved the country steadily and inexorably towards independence and their own liberty to continue to own slaves. The American Revolution was underway.

Another thing that was bothering a great number of wealthy (and some not so wealthy) Americans, and here George Washington is the perfect example, was something called the Line of 1763. Most wealth in America was accumulated by land speculation; native American Indian land had to be seized for this game to continue. But the British Crown had negotiated with various Indian tribes for peace and guaranteed that no land would be stolen beyond this line of 1763. State legislatures, being even more corrupt back then than they are now, had granted certain individuals vast lands that lay past the line. Washington belonged to such an investment group. To make the claims good the land speculators had to convince king and Parliament to forget about the treaties and line. The king and Parliament did not want the expense of another Indian war, so they protected the Indians from the colonists.

The two-hundred year hangover came not from independence itself, but from the institution of slavery and greed for other people's land. During the American Revolution the British freed American slaves (funny how we know about the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the earlier granting of freedom), but the freed slaves were handed back to their owners, including Washington and Jefferson, when England lost the war.

The treaty ending the war also ceded lands beyond the 1763 line to the the United States. The fact that these lands belonged to Indian nations was immediately forgotten. The grabbing did not even stop at the Pacific Ocean; the government of the greedy, by the greedy, for the greedy eventually grabbed Hawaii and the Philippines.

For the most part the Native Americans were simply exterminated, but the African slaves became an internal problem, such were there numbers. The Dred Scott decision held the opposite of the Somerset case: in the U.S. you remained a slave even if you lived on the soil of a state that had abolished slavery. In theory slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Democratic Party (the party of slavery and the Confederacy) enacted Jim Crow (segregation) laws in the states it controlled that lasted until the 1970's.

Now we celebrate Independence Day (the Fourth of July) in an era of global interdependence. Green house gas emissions in the United States caused global warming that expands deserts in China; plastics manufactured in China accumulate their toxic burden in America's landfills.

Independence Day should be a day for somber reflection and for resolutions to do better. The hangover from today's foolishness looks like it will last much longer than a mere 200 years.

More data:

Line of 1763
Declaration of Independence
Somerset case

Dracula, Hitler, and Washington

I am reading a nice new vampire novel, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and it is the best I have read in a while, so far (I reached page 120 last night). It is a bit wordier, with unnecessary descriptions, than I like, but I know other readers like that sort of thing, so I skim when necessary to keep my brain alert. The central characters are history professors. The theme is that the past holds horrors, and that investigating that past may provide clues to the horrors of the present. It is a good theme.

Doubtless he did not invent the idea, but Plutarch is noted for comparing one political figure against another in his Lives of Illustrious Men (better known as Parallel Lives). Lysander compared to Sylla; Pompey compared to Agesilaus; often a Greek compared to a Roman. For centuries Plutarch was required reading for educated Europeans. Unfortunately he has not been required reading for the latest round of Presidents of the United States.

The favored person of modern times to compare politicians to is Adolf Hitler. This is usually more to label a politician as someone you don't like than to do a serious comparison. In the United States today political parties and their most rabid partisans hold any President of the opposite party in absolute contempt. President Clinton was hated for being too liberal when in fact he was the most right-wing President from the Democratic Party since Woodrow Wilson. My lefty Democratic Party friends have convinced themselves that George W. Bush is the worst American president ever elected and comparing him to Hitler is entirely appropriate. This is because they are emotional and ignorant of history. I don't like the politics of George W. Bush, but he is no Hitler.

And I don't think any American President, fairly assessed as a political leader, can make a sensible comparison with Dracula, the most Catholic former Prince of Walachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler. Except maybe George Washington. And maybe Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party. Well, maybe General Grant, known to some people as "The Butcher."

First, in case you have forgotten, Vlad the Impaler. At that time, the mid-1400's, the Turks were the world's great power. Europe feared them. Their armies were better-organized and had better weapons than those of Europe. They had taken over the south-east corner of Europe and wanted more. Vladimir was inducted into a Catholic group called the Order of the Dragon and sent to Walachia (right next to Transylvania) to fight the Turks. First he put his own house in order: he impaled anyone who showed the least bit of disagreement with him. In battle he put the fear of the Lord Jesus Christ into the Turks. We would probably all be in the peaceful brotherhood of Islam today if it were not for Vlad. By the time he died in battle the Turks were getting soft and concentrated more on extracting tribute from their extensive line of subjects rather than fighting crazy Christians leading suicide charges. [See also Sixteenth Amendment]

So was Adolf Hitler some light weight? Depends on how you weigh things. Like Vlad the Impaler, Hitler was a Catholic. His mission was to stop the advance of Godless Communism. I know of no instance in which Hitler was personally cruel. Even though he was known for flying into rages, his abuses were verbal. But he sat at the head of a state that was far more powerful than Walachia had been. Germany was an industrial state; Hitler's wishes were carried out on a massive scale. Concentration camps supplied cheap labor and later turned into extermination camps. In Russia (then the USSR) alone ten million civilians died and ten million Russian soldiers died pushing back Hitler's mechanized armies.

So for magnitude Hitler is the champ; only in personal cruelty and personal bravery could Vlad hold up in a comparison.

What about George Washington? Hey, wait a minute, wasn't he the founder of our Country? Wasn't he a good guy?

Note that I have not said anything good about Hitler or Vlad. In a longer work listing their good deeds and qualities would be appropriate. Of course if you consider Catholicism good then both of them might seem blessed. Given that Vlad, or Dracula, is known to have appeared to people after his death, veritable proof of resurrection, you would think they would have made him into a Saint.

You may not be able to think of anything Hitler or Vlad did that was good, but you know some good things about George Washington. Some of them are even true. But in comparing him to Vlad the Impaler and Adolph Hitler, we must seek out his evil side.

Which is not too hard to find if you have a good heart and a few hours for research. George showed a penchant for cruelty fairly early on. Of course he grew up in a cruel environment, that of the ruling class of Virginia, men who owned slaves. The cruelty of the destruction of families in Africa was of no consequence to these men; out of site, out of mind. What was of consequence was Native American Indian land, which had to be taken by force. George Washington made his mark as a soldier, officer really, in wars to kill Indians. In his diary he records the day to day humdrum and occasional hot fighting. He also records how his men killed a French soldier and scalped him. Washington was pleased to ask the Legislature of Virginia if he could not have the same bounty for the Frenchman's scalp as for an Indian one. [And why are we more appalled by that than by the ordinary practice of Virginia of paying a bounty for Indian scalps?]

Washington was supportive of the Committees of Correspondence that led eventually to the American Revolution. That is usually listed in the "good" column. But only because a great deal of trouble has been take to keep us from knowing about the Somerset [or Somersett] Case. This case, which declared slavery illegal on English soil, took place in 1772. Lawyers in Virginia saw it might end slavery in the British Empire (they were wrong, at least in the short run) and set up the Committees of Correspondence. While the causes of the American Revolution were complex, for Washington, Jefferson and their friends they were fairly simple. The Revolution was about slavery; liberty was the liberty to own slaves. Everything else was glossy propaganda.

Many scholars and patriots will take issue with that, but consider what followed. Slavery was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, one that George Washington approved of and became the first President under.

But there is more. The Revolutionary War is presented as glorious; the rule of England as tyranny. But those who fight wars always have excuses. Vlad the Impaler did not want to become a Moslem or underling of the Sultan of Turkey. Hitler did not want Germany to be a second-rate nation. Was Independence for the American Colonies really worth killing a bunch of English soldiers and American loyalists? Would not change have come over time through less violent methods?

George Washington was a violent man who had no problem using violence to get what he wanted. If his violence was not on the same scale as Hitler's, it was not for want of will. Like Vlad the Impaler, it was for lack of resources. As the United States of America gained resources George Washington's successors killed Indians and then anyone else who thwarted their aims.
As to personal cruelty, I suspect, but can't be certain, that if George Washington had impaled his enemies on the White House lawn we would have heard about it. But General Washington did have deserters from his army shot. Was that necessary or cruel?

The cruelest thing Washington did was at Yorktown. The British army had freed a large numbers of American slaves. Among them were some that "belonged" to Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. Washington accepted the slaves back into slavery and handed them over to their "owners," including Thomas Jefferson.

Only because Washington, for all his faults, did not make himself dictator, but instead helped establish a republican system, can I rate him as a better man than Vlad the Impaler or Adolf Hitler.

III Publishing home