I was going to post this yesterday, but ASM826 posted about the victims of that day. But this story is exceptionally well-told and deserves to be remembered.
No training. This was just what people did that day.
- One of the captains that evacuated Manhattan on 9/11
It's
not quite fair to call this "America's Dunkirk", since the English
Channel is a lot wider than the Hudson River. And the Luftwaffe had
something to say in 1940, that they didn't have in 2001.
But this
is a great story, well told by Tom Hanks. About the time that the Coast
Guard sent out a radio message to all boats that can help evacuate
Manhattan. This is the story of the boats who responded, and evacuated a
Million people in a day.
I've posted about this before. But this seems somehow apropos. And click through to that post to see the comment from Friend Of The Blog Paul, Dammit! who knows a bunch of the people interviewed in this. It's worth your time.
The National Portrait Gallery has acquired the oldest photo of a First Lady, an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolly Madison. This is a very cool picture, as it captures some of her personality - people chose very formal poses back then. No smiling. Except for a hint of a smile from Dolly.
The Queen of the World and I were talking today, remembering the bicentennial celebration in 1976. She pointed out that two years from now will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Wow.
We are all the way to the middle of the year, and hard up against Independence Day this week. I have long thought that you can better know your own country by visiting others (at least, this has been my experience). Sometimes a foreigner can tell you something you hadn't known about your own land.
Henri Vieuxtemps was a Belgian composer and violin player in the first part of the 19th century. A child prodigy, he toured all over playing for the Great and the Good. In the 1840s he came to tour America. He left us this, what is perhaps his most famous composition, at least on these shores. It's quite different from other versions of the song, which makes it interesting (at least to me).
It's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln's was the 12th, Washington's is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today. But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's annual bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.
Top Five:
#5: Calvin Coolidge
Nothing To Reportis a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.
#4. Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase). He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.
#3. Grover Cleveland.
He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now. He continually vetoed pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later. This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill:"Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."
#2. Ronald Reagan
He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above). He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash. It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.
#1. George Washington
Could have been King. Wasn't. Q.E.D.
Bottom Five:
#5. John Adams.
There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment. It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2.
#4. Woodrow Wilson.
Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918. He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy. The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.
#3 Lyndon Johnson.
An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.
#2. Franklin Roosevelt.
America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle. At least Mussolini met an honorable end.
#1. Abraham Lincoln.
There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to. Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history. Along the way, he suspendedHabeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit. Needless to say, Progressives adore him.
So happy President's Day. Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad. Yet.
The bustard's a fortunate fowl with almost no reason to growl. Saved from what would be illegitimacy by the grace of a fortunate vowel
Via Aesop comes news that the Republic is now in a full fledged constitutional crisis. The short version: Texas put up razor wire along the border, the Federales cut it down, Texas sued to stop the Fed interference, and the Supreme Court sided with the Feds. Now Texas has told SCOTUS to pound sand and the Texas National Guard is putting up more razor wire.
It is unreported whether Texas Gov Abbot echoed Andy Jackson's famous words that the SCOTUS has issued its ruling, now let them enforce it.
This is an enormous blow to the prestige and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, and demonstrates just how fragile that sense of legitimacy is. Good grief, what an unholy mess.
TheCorwin Amendmentis a proposedamendmentto theUnited States Constitutionthat has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could still be adopted by thestate legislatures. It would shield slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the wordslavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. The outgoing36th United States Congressproposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of theAmerican Civil War, with the intent of preventing that war and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.
Yeah, yeah - Wikipedia. But the article plays it straight up.
So if the war was about slavery, why did both houses of Congress pass this amendment, and why did the President sign the bill, sending it to the States for ratification? And oh by the way, Congress passed this without the Representatives from the seceding States.
And Abraham Lincoln - the "Great Emancipator" himself did not oppose the Amendment.
So the War was all about slavery, but Congress was playing 6-dimension chess or something, right?
[rolls eyes]
I'm no fan of Haley, but she is also right that the question was a liberal plant. Her response might have been bad politics in 2023, but she is 100% correct on the facts.
But while facts are stubborn things, so is the ignorance and arrogance of the media (including the ostensibly conservative media). Remember, the history of that war as taught today is retarded.
No training. This was just what people did that day.
- One of the captains that evacuated Manhattan on 9/11
It's not quite fair to call this "America's Dunkirk", since the English Channel is a lot wider than the Hudson River. And the Luftwaffe had something to say in 1940, that they didn't have in 2001.
But this is a great story, well told by Tom Hanks. About the time that the Coast Guard sent out a radio message to all boats that can help evacuate Manhattan. This is the story of the boats who responded, and evacuated a Million people in a day.
I've posted about this before. But this seems somehow apropos. And click through to that post to see the comment from Friend Of The Blog Paul, Dammit! who knows a bunch of the people interviewed in this. It's worth your time.
And you do read his blog every day, don't you? Thought so.
Alternate title: how The United States accidentally committed suicide.
Co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826 and I have had a number of conversations lately about how when we both started blogging 15 years ago, we still had hope. Yes, I cribbed the alternate title from histories of Rome, but there's a fateful dynamic at play today that mirrors what played out back then.
In 400 AD, Rome stood tall. Sure, there were problems, but Rome was the only super power. 76 years later, it no longer existed.* It was simply unable to respond effectively to the barbarian invasions - the problem wasn't a military one, it was structural. The Legions were still strong, but the ruling elite could not use them effectively to keep the barbarians out. You see, they didn't want to keep them out.
Barbarian hordes were an opportunity to various members of the elite. The rewards of power and wealth to those at the top of the Roman Empire were so unbelievably vast that, well, a wandering barbarian horde might be able to be used to put somebody new on the throne. And so the elites played 27 Dimensional Chess against each other until the Empire was overwhelmed. What temporarily helped local Senators and Provincial Governors quite frankly led to the downfall of them all. I'm looking at you, Constantine III.
And so to today. The Ruling Class in this Republic is institutionally incapable of dealing with the problems facing the Republic because they don't want to. Indeed, there is a dynamic at work: never let a crisis go to waste. This has come about in a shockingly short time - twenty years or so.
But this happened to Rome as well. Between 410 and 430 AD, the Eternal City itself was sacked and Spain and Africa were lost to the Empire - and with them went the tax revenue that had supported the Legions. Today we have a President who is a feeble-minded puppet; the Emperor Honorious was (at the time) compared to a jellyfish.
The grandeur that was America was very great indeed, but so was Roman grandeur. Sic transit Gloria Mundi, and all that.
Entering this Independence Day weekend I wish I could be more optimistic. I leave you with a song from the dark days after 9/11, a reflection of a time when the grandeur of this Republic was great, even though the dynamic that has led us here was already formed.
The civil war that both sides seem intent on having will be ugly. War isn’t a game where two sides engage in some football game where the players, rules, and boundaries are clearly defined. Americans think that war is some sort of game, a crucible where masculinity is defined. It isn’t. It’s messy. It won’t just be players getting targeted. The combatants will be targets. So will the people who deliver food. So will their families. Women. Children. The side who refuses to participate in that will lose.
He has a telling Civil War 1.0 example of how civilians were explicit targets, and I've written for a long time about how Billy Sherman was America's first war criminal:
Moving [south] from Yankeeland has made me realize the extent that the history of [The American War of Southern Independence*] as taught today consists of little more than red, white, and blue cardboard.
The events are disconnected in a quite striking manner. Events just sort of happened, you see? But since the desired outcome was reached, there's no sense in dwelling on things, and those that do are sore losers.
The concentration camps didn't start in Nazi Germany, or even the Boer War (as is often presented). They began right here on these shores, started by one William T. Sherman's personal order. But this is just an isolated event in the colorful cardboard history.
Only 2 of the deported woman returned after the war. It's unclear whether the rest died or settled down elsewhere. It seems that record keeping was poor or non-existent, and modern day historians are curiously comfortable with their red, white, and blue cardboard history of that era.
But art can pierce this veil, and allow us to view (if darkly) through the glass to see what civil war does to non-combatants. I suspect that this song will need no introduction to most readers. I also suspect it will attract the usual comment trolls saying that the folks living in southwest Virginia "had it coming". A lot of people are happily ignorant of the true causes of that war and have no intention of doing anything about that ignorance. That same ignorance is seen in Divemedic's post describing what is propelling us at Flank Speed towards Civil War 2.0.
May God save this Honorable Republic. At this point it looks like only He can. I sure hope that Bismark was right that the Lord looks after fools, drunks, and The United States of America.
* It wasn't a "Civil War" because the south didn't want to conquer the north. "The War Between The States" is unspecific as to motive. Thus, "The American War of Southern Independence" which tells you everything you need to know about the causes of the conflict.
ASM826 posted about a July 4th from living memory. But there are other things about July 4th that make you think that Divine Providence did, as Otto von Bismark remarked, look out for the United States of America.
Lots of people know that fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Independence Hall, both John Adams (President #2) and Thomas Jefferson (President #3) passed on to that Undiscovered Country from whose borne no traveler returns. But they weren't the last. five years later, James Monroe (President #5) joined them.
With 45 Presidents (not counting the current pResident of the office), you would expect 0.12 Presidents to have dies on any given day of the year. But today, there are 3 - that's 25 times the number you would expect. I don't know what the standard deviation is here, but this has to be ten or twenty sigma from what you would expect. Yes, I'm a nerd here, but those of you who Get This will feel the hair on the back of your neck go up.
In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people.
The Res Gestae Divi Augustus was Imperial Roman propaganda, commissioned personally by Augustus to put out his side of the story of his reign. In it, he declares that he restored the Roman Republic, torn after a century of bloody civil war. Well, that's how it has been translated by historians.
Except the ancient Romans did not have the idea of a "Republic" as we know it. Plato famously wrote a book called The Republic, although since he wrote in Greek it was actually called Politeia. Translated into Latin as De Republica, Plato's politeia bears no resemblance to any modern concept of a Republic so we should not be surprised that the Romans didn't really understand notions of bicameral legislatures and all that.
Translations are funny things. A better translation of politeia might be "the body politick" - this expression was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It ran a wide range of options, from individual democracy (as in ancient Athens) to tyranny (rule by a Tyrant, or dictator). Check your concept of "Republic" at the door.
Likewise with Caesar Augustus, who unsurprisingly did not speak English nor have an Ivy League education. He used the term res publica, not Republic. Res publica is notoriously hard to translate because the translations come out clumsy but more accurate, or graceful but less accurate. It combines government, the economy, public morality, and the happiness of the people. You see why it is so hard to translate.
So when Augustus restored the res publica, he did not mean at all that he "restored the Roman Republic". But his propaganda was very much that he restored things to the way they were supposed to be, before all that nasty civil war stuff.
This may be our future. Our Res Publica is in pretty bad shape, and getting worse. It very well may take things getting very bad indeed until someone with the right marketing and messaging "restores the American Republic". What it will look like is anyone's guess, but Augustus' model was an entirely new one that was very carefully draped in the cloak of the Old Ways.
If we were going to vote ourselves out of this, we would have done it 60 years ago. But even then, it wasn't really America. Moldbug yet again:
By my count, Anglophone North America ex Canada is on its fifth legal regime. The First Republic was the Congressional regime, which illegally abolished the British colonial governments. The Second Republic was the Constitutional regime, which illegally abolished the Articles of Confederation. The Third Republic was the Unionist regime, which illegally abolished the principle of federalism. The Fourth Republic is the New Deal regime, which illegally abolished the principle of limited government.
Of course, all these coups are confirmed by the principle ofadverse possession. Otherwise we would find ourselves looking for the rightful heirs of Metacom, or Edward the Confessor, or whoever. Nor is there any automatic reason to treat any of these five regimes as better or worse than any of the others. If, like me, you're tired of the Fourth Republic and would like to see it abolished, all we know about its successor is that it will be the Fifth Republic. It has no need to resemble the Third, the Second or the First.
We snicker at the French, always rewriting their Constitution. We gloss over that our Constitution has been a "living document" at least since the time of James Polk. At least the French had the decency to write their changes down in public.
Archaeologists unearth layers of detritus, reconstructing ancient living patterns from the cast off, scattered rubble. Similarly, we can observe the layers of parasitic attachment to theRes Publica. RTWT, all of the links.
And so Obama is a commie, as it Mitt Romney, George Bushmajor, and Eisenhower. Non-commies (Sarah Palin [and Donald Trump - Borepatch]) are fiercely excluded from the political Great Game. What's different is that information flow now is possible outside of the political and intellectual elite. The perceived legitimacy of this class is now at ahistoric low. How will it end?
Who can tell? But one thing is clear - it cannot continue as it is, with the Elite papering over the cracks with increasingly low caliber drivel. The Republic waits, expectantly. Maybe it will just be a higher caliber drivel.
This is my annual President's Day post - actually the 10th time I've posted this. The rankings are based on a simple question: did the President leave the Republic better off or worse off? This eliminates many fascinating people like John Tyler who basically infuriated his own party that they expelled him. But he didn't clearly leave America better or worse off, so he doesn't make the list. It also does not delve into bad decisions made by the best presidents or wise decisions made by the worst - it's only whether they left the Oval Office better or worse than they found it. Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.
Also, it's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln was the 12th, Washington is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today. But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.
Top Five:
#5: Calvin Coolidge
Nothing To Reportis a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.
#4. Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase). He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.
#3. Grover Cleveland.
He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now. He continually infuriated his own party by vetoing pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later. This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill:"Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."
#2. Ronald Reagan
He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above). He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash. It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.
#1. George Washington
Could have been King. Wasn't. Q.E.D.
Bottom Five:
#5. John Adams.
There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment. It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2.
#4. Woodrow Wilson.
Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918. He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy. The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.
#3 Lyndon Johnson.
An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.
#2. Franklin Roosevelt.
America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle, sending American citizens to concentration camps. At least Mussolini met an honorable end.
#1. Abraham Lincoln.
There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to. Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history. Along the way, he suspendedHabeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit. Needless to say, Progressives adore him.
So happy President's Day. Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad. Yet.
Brion McClanahan is a conservative author who has a quite interesting blog and podcast. Here he writes about how "olive branches" from the Left are anything but:
The left has always been the instigator in the culture war, and while they pretend they don’t know what’s stoking the flames of American angst, they fully know they are at the wheel.
On the surface, this would seem to be something like an olive branch. “You see, we are just trying to figure this out. Can’t we all get along?”
That sounds great until you learn that they don’t really want to get along. To Harris and his political theater friends on the left, the entire reason Americans are at odds is because of, you guessed it, the Deplorables.
I ran across him from an episode of the podcast History Unplugged where he spoke about his book 9 Presidents who screwed up America and 4 who tried to save Her. His choices for bad presidents is pretty darn close to mine. He had some intriguing thoughts there that likely will filter into my annual President's Day list of best and worst Presidents.
All the coolkids are posting uplifting things today, and so I'll jump in.
I've posted repeatedly about America as Fall-Of-The-Roman-Empire/Republic before. It's looked pretty bleak for a while, not being able to figure out how the Next Big American Thing will come into being. It's looked like that process will be really blood soaked.
But maybe not. I've also posted before about Curtis Yarvin, who blogged under the nom de blog Mencious Moldbug. It was ten years ago that I wrote about him in an uberpost titled The Fifth American Republic. It has perhaps the best opening paragraph I've ever written:
Barack Obama is a communist. That's a low schoolyard insult, even though it's true, but it doesn't matter. You see, Mitt Romney is also a commie. No, this isn't yet another Mitt Romney rant. Allof our political establishment are commies, and have been for a long time.
Glen Filthie found a Tucker Carlson interview with Yarvin. It's quite something - Tucker is a much better interviewer than I had known (I don't watch much - or any - political TV) and Tucker allows Yarvin great big huge uninterrupted blocks of time to explain his philosophy of how America is ruled by an oligarchy, why the oligarchy is decentralized, how the US Government has evolved over time (with a shout out to his original post that I blogged about ten years back), how the periodic evolutions come to be needed as the system slowly degrades, and how this explains why we lost in Afghanistan.
He ends with a discussion of the end of the Roman Republic and how that could plausibly happen here without the rivers of blood. This is a very long and very thoughtful interview that left me feeling much better about this Republic's chances than I have in a long, long time.
Go watch this. I cannot recommend this too highly. You might want to read my old uberpost as an introduction first, because it will set the stage for much of what Yarvin describes. Yarvin is a first rate intellect and you will end up smarter when you're done.
