What Is History? Part 11
The great events of the world take place in the brain. —Oscar Wilde
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. —G.B. Shaw
. . . a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can. —Ilana Mercer
War is a racket. It has always been. —Gen. Smedley D. Butler
We can now see how the reporting of the past is conditioned by the biases and cowardices of the present. —Christie Davies
The attempt to govern too much has produced every civil war that has ever been. —Nathaniel Macon
We underestimate the power of music and its rhythms at our peril. —James V. Schall
History must be constantly corrected and moderated by the seeing and handling of things. —Belloc
Neither black self-esteem nor racial reconciliation is advanced by a wholesale condemnation of the Old South. Understanding the full complexity of race relations in that society may be a prerequisite for building a more harmonious future.
—Mark Royden Winchell
. . . luxury and corruption . . . seem the inseparable companions of commerce and the arts —Richard Jackson
The discovery of elements of common human frailty in the foe . . . creates attitudes which transcend social conflict and thus mitigate its cruelties. —Reinhold Niebuhr
Dessicated culture at one end and stark utility at the other have created a deadlock in the American mind, and all our life drifts chaotically between the two extremes. —Van Wyck Brooks
If only Longstreet had . . . . —O. Henry
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Our culture is indeed desiccated with no hope of hydration. What should people who chose to live in a desert expect? Our "august" institutions are whitewashed sepulchers in which the state of decay is such that even the matter necessary to produce the stench has rotted away. The Constitution by which the people of the respective thirteen republics created a union and a general government as an agent of and to the principles, the states, has become a meaningless scrap of paper which has ironically in its state of essencelessness been raised to an idol to which we must now all genuflect while the elites carry out their nefarious schemes in its name and behind it facade which conveniently hides the truth, namely that there is really no law at all but merely the whims of fickle men. Our churches continue to be filled with beautiful people and wonderful churchy projects -megawise, but God is nowhere to be found since He does not allow His Name to be taken in vain. We have trillions upon trillions of dollars; there is only one problem: none of them have any real value. There is no objective correlative between the symbols of our culture and the culture itself because the culture is gone - it is either dead or it has fled to some remote place. This orphaned or abandoned symbols have been appropriated by charlatans who use them to sell beer, politicians and nationalism. In the muddled jumble, combinations have become amusingly absurd: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" being sung in Southern Baptist churches; Confederate Battle Flags adorned with eagles; anything will sell and anything goes if it is "red, white and blue"!
"If only Longstreet had..." reminds me of the time Gen. George Pickett was asked by reporters (long after the war) why the Army of Northern Virginia lost the Battle of Gettysburg. Was it Longstreet's fault or perhaps Ewell's fault? Gen. Pickett cocked his hat back, scratched his head and replied: "I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it."
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. —G.B. Shaw"
Paul is doing quite well these days: military/industrial complex; the corrupt agriculture sector; the banking sector; etc.
I am often amused and brought to wrath in the same conversation as my fellow Louisiana natives lambast - and rightly so - the lamentations and crying of the "Katrina victims" who have received millions of dollars in wealth transferred from others by the power of the state while in the same breath talking about how Vitter and Landreau have brought millions into the state via Fort Polk and Barksdale Air Force Base. These same folk malign the "welfare mothers" while discussing their latest landbank windfall. One of the best conversations on this Peter/Paul topic was just last week: a man, a member of the highly subsidized cotton industry, was complaining about the "government stimulation" of the ethanol market which had caused too many farmers to transfer from cotton to corn and hurt his ginning industry. LSU, highly subsidized by state and federal funds, has a pecan station just south of Shreveport - Paul getting a lot of money from Peter - is protesting that the I-69 corridor - Paul getting mega money from Peter - is going to traverse its property, perhaps put it out of business. There was a time when Peter would have overthrown the king! Oh, I forget, there is no private government - king - to overthrow. We have a "public" government. We are all Peter and Paul; we are robbing one another. Why, I am robbing myself! Who says that we have not achieved equality!
Mr. Oosbree,
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and I were visiting Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. As I approached General Pickett's grave, I was stung right on the end of the nose by a red wasp. I let out a yelp and nearly lost my religion. My friend, every ready with a humorous quip, said, "General Pickett has his pickets out!"
While I do have my questions about Longstreet at Gettysburg, I have similar but more compelling questions about Kirby Smith.
The incapacity of our way of seeing things is coming to light.
By 'our' I mean western civilization, since the Romans were smart enough to copy the Greeks. Though not fully absorbing the essence of the Greek contribution (that means in toto), which is no small feat or task, warts i.e. their few mistakes and all.
The Romans, smart themselves, 'got' their own falling short of that essential totality and at some point required the learning of the Greek language as the second language among their elite or educated class. That's a good start. Time is also inevitably a factor but at least one then is at 'square one' and so can go forward. America today is lost.
But among our elite or educated it's not that far to go to be on the right track if they would turn around and start at the very beginning of the new and go forward.
The unifying unity has received no name because it doesn't exist and is not supposed to. That is because there is not only a totality (yes) but individuality at all levels of peoples, groups, families, individuals etc. as well.
Accepting this, call it disunity-Design we can go forward by knowing that *incontrovertible Design = the need for mutual respect which then allows for the only unity possible, (which is of course what Aristotle indicated he wanted to get to but didn't in his single and inevitably limited lifetime)...Acceptance of disunity-Design in my opinion allows for the understanding that we *can gather together 'not having to change' to participate in what Aristotle had intuited eventually would be possible *unity of analogy. This of course is possible among the civilized and educated among us if we truly are so and not merely predatory. This is how in *cooperation we evolve and change along the way. Rather than in conflagration devolve back to what we WERE and destroy one another. It is the only sort of unity possible which yet allows for and in fact preserves freedom, even enhances it nudging it as well into a more joyful aspect.
Make no mistake about it, in the game being played presently because it's untimely thus can't be redeemed on its present course there will be NO winners, since that one will take NOTHING.
And then we'll Do the thought I have articulated above (remember a 'thought' is something complete in itself and something we can do) - we'll do that as a result of our profound misery - rather than doing it now. Now is the accepted time. Whether the war mongers in their own profound myopia and limitation 'believe' now is the "sensible" time or not. We predicted everything that has transpired over the past 8 years, even (errily) to the approximate detail 8 years ago on the old sf site, and I was one of the prognosticators (which doesn't mean prophetic - simply observing the obvious which is what a few of us are able to do, happily & sadly.)
"Ring them bells St. Peter for the people who dream...from the sanctuaries out over the valleys and streams...because 'they've' broken down the distance between right & wrong." -R.Z. But Jesus Christ the Essene had it accurate these gates of hell can win a few battles but *not prevail against you.
Hey look, I like being corny if you perceive this as such. Faulkner pointed out the corny is in Fact the enduring, the eternal truths of the heart. ... I would just add in this case eternal truths of the mind as well. History is what happens too in the brain. amen.
". . . a brave nation fights only because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can. —Ilana Mercer"
When discussing a political entities such as these United States, with the economic, territorial and natural resouces at their disposal, we need more than bravery some humility. If we had a mere modicum of humility, we would not be promoting the false god of democracy with the heavy hand of Mars. Humility, of course, disappears when the fear of God wanes. We begin to call our leaders "saviors" and raise them through state action to the status of demigods, erecting temples for them on our "national" malls, dedicating days to them or lighting "eternal" flames. Cheap sentiments placated by superficial jingoism under which nefarious schemes are plotted and carried out!
Ilana Mercer's quote is , like the author, nothing if not painfully true and honest. Here is another quote that reminds me of the stubborn types like her and Dr. Wilson .
“When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. … Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions.” — Alisdair MacIntyre
I always believed that attacking a sovereign nation was wrong, ie The Confederate States of America. It leaves all nations thinking, "Could we be next"? It makes other paranoid nations want to take the first punch. Iran? Iraq is another example.
I wonder how many wars were started with the aggessor saying, "We had to attach for our own defense". Sounds like Bush. Seems like WW II started like this when Germany attacked Poland.
Jefferson Davis wanted to take to the mountains and fight a guerrilla war when all was lost. Sounds similar to the Afgans and Iraqies. Stategy dictates that when your position is weak you must take an aggresive posture.
Neither black self-esteem nor racial reconciliation is advanced by a wholesale condemnation of the Old South. Understanding the full complexity of race relations in that society may be a prerequisite for building a more harmonious future.
—Mark Royden Winchell
The self-assured superiority of the Northeasterner is indeed a difficult obstacle to overcome. I am a student at a fairly expensive Catholic college in Upstate New York, and during a class discussion on Faulkner's "The Sound and Fury" a few comments were made by some students and the professor about the injustice of the Southern custom (at that time) of having black servants who cook, maintain the property, and look after children. The general opinion of the class was that this was essentially the same as slavery. I then went to lunch at the school dining hall and was served food by a black woman; ate the food that was cooked by black women; threw out my trash that would be picked up by a black man and woman; and went to the bathroom that was cleaned by a black man or woman. A wise man once said, "How can you say to your neighbor, ' friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." Though I do think the Southern custom of black servants was a much more humane system then the impersonal racism in the North. Blacks in the South were woven into the fabric of the white family; here in the North blacks just sort of exist without any real connection to society. I wonder if the Civil Rights movement has resulted in the same condition in the South whereby blacks live in their slums disconnected from society and uprooted from their past as farm laborers, cooks, and mammy's.
Joshua Cooney,
Many are the examples which I could cite, but I will give only one of those many, not unrelated to Faulkner.
My father and about twenty other men had a primitive hunting camp - two stories made of two by fours and tin - in the Big Swamp between the Mississippi River and the Black River.
For all of the years during which we went to the camp each fall and winter there was only one cook, who prepared three meals a day - always three excellent meals. He was a black, and the only name by which I ever knew him was "Black." There was indeed a social distance between the members of the camp (white) and Black. He slept on a cot near the wood stoves and the men slept upstairs on cots. He served the meals as the men sat and ate. Yet, after supper, he would come to the big heating stove and join in the tales and the stories. Men would, like my father, bring their sons to the camp. Black would fret over us that we were dressed warm. He was always on the look out for the sign of a cold when we returned. He always gave us a mixture of something which obviously contained whiskey. Most of us boys likely had our first whiskey with Black's medicine.
Several years after the camp closed as men lost interest, moved off or died, word came that Black himself had died. My father and I went to the funeral at St. Mary's Baptist Church, somewhere in the Red River Delta south of Alexandria. There were not only scores of people from the black community in attendance; but also almost every man and boy who had ever been at the camp, save for the dead ones, were there. We, as outsiders, had planned to sit in the back. But we were told to come sit up front. during the eulogy, we learned that Black counted the times that he was with those "boys" at the camp to be among the happiest of his life. My memory of those times and of him are still fond ones.
I would suggest that you read Ferris Buchanan's Holt Collier for further insight on the topic.
I hope Mark Winchell is well. He is in part responsible for the glorious trouble I am in and for which I am thankful. I am glad to see him quoted here.