Category: General Thoughts

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Historical Paradigms

Writers lose control of their work as soon as somebody else reads it, since each reader will bring a different perspective and a different train of thought. If what was written is interesting, it will take on a life of its own. Readers may disparage the authors for claims they never made or praise them for insight they never had, but there is no use in authors trying to “correct” interpreters. Of course they can try to explain and get others to hop onto their own preferred train of thought, but the indignation some creative types feel when they find their work misinterpreted is inappropriate.

These are some of the insights I took away from a lecture by Patrick Allitt who talked about writing history during a Bradley lecture at AEI. Of course, as Allitt conceded, there are no truly new ideas and this concern with losing control of one’s ideas goes back at least as far as Plato. Plato purported to be concerned that his writings might be misused w/o him being there to explain and illustrate with examples. Of course, among ancient philosophers Plato was one of the most diligent about making sure that his works were copied and distributed widely, which is one reason we know Plato so well while many other ancient writers are known only in fragments or lost entirely. This illustrates the dilemma. Writers want to use the written word to communicate.They know, or should know, that their work may be misinterpreted, but they really still want to get it into the hands of those potentially unworthy consumers.

BTW – What you will be reading below will provide an example of the slippage Allitt (and Plato) talked about. I take Allitt’s comments as my starting point, but I will riff off that, so unless I mention him specifically, he may not be to blame for some of the ideas.

Allitt’s was talking about historical writing and writing about conservatism specifically and he acknowledged another problem for writers of history. Where do you start? You can always go “back to the beginning” but when you arrive there you find that the beginning has its own roots in the past and this goes back endlessly.

Allitt thinks that a good place to start talking about conservatism in the U.S. is with the Federalist. America doesn’t really have conservatism in the sense that they might in places with ancient roots. Nobody can seriously advocate a RETURN to royalty, feudalism or the old empire, because we never had any of those things. The United States of America is a creation of human endeavor with some specific starting dates. There were no “Americans” (in the sense of people of the U.S.) before 1776 or 1787 (if you prefer the Constitution), and you could even argue for a more recent date.

American conservatism, according to Allitt, is more of an attitude than a specific set of beliefs. It is a outlook that looks for support in historical precedents and in experience, rather than sweeping theories that purport to completely explain current reality, or at least history, and are able to prescribe yet untried comprehensive solutions. To be conservative is to not believe in comprehensive changes and to understand that there is no finish line or a utopia attainable on earth. Human nature and the challenges faced by people are similar enough that we can understand and learn from the experience of people in ancient times, even though their lives were very different.

Unlike Marxists, conservatives don’t have a good explanation for everything that happens. Marx thought up all sorts of stages and rules of history. He provided a good narrative and even non-Marxists get caught up in his stages. Marx explained how we move from feudalism to capitalism and he projected how we would move out of capitalism into communism. Marx even developed a good way to smack down non-believers. They were victims of “false consciousness.” This explained content workers or peasants. They just were too dumb and misguided to understand their own plight, according to Marxists.

Although Marx was wrong in all the important details of his theory, it is attractive to have a story line. It is particularly attractive to intellectuals, because it is complex and knowable only to those who really study it. Beyond that, Marxism provides a specific role for intellectuals as the vanguard of the proletariat. What more could the mediocre PhD student with poor job prospects ask for?

Conservatism, in contrast, doesn’t have a theory with neat stages, each leading forward to the ultimate utopia where everybody is fulfilled and nobody even thinks about carrying out aggressions against their neighbors. Conservatives understand that people want different things and even the same person changes his preferences with monotonous regularity. History has no overarching goal or directions, according to conservatives. This means that conservatives cannot project progressive history onto current events the way progressives can. This puts conservatives at a steep rhetorical disadvantage. People like to have a detailed story about where things are going to go, even if they understand that the story is wrong and the goals practically unattainable with the methods proposed or by the people designated.

Conservatives become an easy target for the label of “do nothing.” In the field of government, conservatives often do believe in doing nothing, or at least doing less by government. There is a paradox of conservatives in government, since they are using a tool (government) that they think should be used less or not at all in many situations. It is tempting to leave it to those who want to use it, but that is impossible.

You may want to ignore politics, but politics won’t ignore you. Since there is no op-out option, conservatives have the responsibility to op-in and take the heat for being against changes that will ostensibly mitigate misery and help solve the people’s problems. It is not that conservatives are unaware of these problems or that they don’t want them addressed, it is just that they understand that government, although indispensable within its own sphere, is not the proper tool to deliver many changes that the people want. Conservatives in the American tradition are in favor of many changes, but are less confident that government is the proper tool.

Perhaps the central paradox of conservatism in the United States, and to some extent in other free market places, is the conservatives defend the free market, which it the most revolutionary system in human history. The free market means constant change, but it is change that bubbles up from below, from diverse and unexpected sources. There is no direction that can be predicted in advance. Historians often create what looks like a progress narrative by weaving ex-post-facto weaving together disparate threads, but it wasn’t like that at the time. The test of any theory is its ability to predict future events, not merely explaining the past in what seems to be a coherent way. By that measure, all the fancy theories of historical inevitability have been wrong. The free market is a process, but not a plan. That is how it works and why it delivers such radical change w/o making the promise.

Cultures can go along for decades or centuries with few significant changes, but when market forces get to work, suddenly change comes fast and furious. It is one of the things “conservatives” in from non-market cultures most dislike. **

So the liberal-conservative divide (defining both terms in the modern American sense, since liberal & conservative mean very different things in different places and times) is not about change or no change. It is a difference of whether the primary agent of change should be centralized and government or distributed and non-governmental. It is also not an argument about government or no government. It is about the size and the roles government should play.

A few odd & ends from the Q&A – One of the questions concerned leadership. Allitt pointed out that conservatives tend to believe more in leadership as the agency of change or progress. Liberals tend to believe more in wider historical forces. This is no surprise, given the more general philosophical differences.

He also pointed out the good historians try to be fair and impartial, but that they really cannot, since they choose the subjects to study based on their interests, preferences and what they think are important subjects, focusing attention on some areas by necessity means neglecting others. People also write about what they like or are passionate about. It becomes very hard not to take sides.

Allitt said that if you feel very good after reading a history, it is probably poorly done, since the historians has created, perhaps, inadvertently, a good guy-bad guy narrative. No matter how they look in retrospect, nobody thinks of himself as the villain of the story and they don’t go into conflicts expecting to lose. Historians sometimes don’t consider the motivations and aspirations of the losers, or at least the other side. History is often the story of people doing very bad things, but perhaps it would be enlightening to understand why they thought they were good or at least expedient. On the other hand the “heroes” are also always flawed. We can recognize this w/o becoming cynical about the good people have done or absolutely despairing about the evil. There are lessons to be drawn from both.

Speaking of lessons, Allitt said that we should not take more from lessons that they have to teach. For example, after World War II, historians and leaders took the broad lesson that they had countries had acted too quickly and w/o sufficient compromise. That was what contributed to the terrible war. So in the 1930s, the Democracies were more accommodating – appeasing the dictators. We now look at that as a big mistake, but at the time it seemed like a good idea – “peace for our time.” The experience of World War II gave us the need to act and prevent countries from falling to dictators. This had its own downsides. In fact, each situation is different. What works in one time or place may be just the wrong thing to do in another. Of course, it is easy to see that in retrospect and much harder when you are making decisions in a climate of uncertainty.

Anyway, if you are interested in this subject, I suggest you watch for yourself. As I said, I started with Allitt’s talk, but extrapolated. If you want what he actually said, you have to listen to him.

BTW – Fox News is featuring a series on conservatism that starts tonight (Sunday)

The pictures in this piece are unrelated to the text. I just like to put in what scenes I have noticed recently.The top shows Jesus in front of the Cathedral of St Thomas Moore in Arlington. A similar but much bigger and more famous Jesus looks out over Rio de Janiero; this one looks out over US 50, maybe as far as Glebe Road. Below that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building in Washington.  It is across from the White House on Lafayette Park. Next is Thomas St in Arlington VA. I just like that neighborhood, mostly because of the big trees. I walk that way to FSI.  Finally is Rochambeau, the French general who helped us win independence.  He is in Lafayette Park. 

BTW, for reasons I cannot explain, Rochambeau is also another name for the game rock-paper-scissors as well as for a stupid game some of us “played” as kids, which involves getting kicked in the groin. Actually, you didn’t play voluntarily and I never understood the rules. It usually resulted in a fight or a quest for revenge. I do not think there is a relation to the general.

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Justice for Poland

Below and at this link is a petition from the Kosciuszko Foundation. I understand that those unfamiliar with the controversy may think it is no big deal, but it makes a big difference to the Poles. You can see why when you read the petition.

IMO, the lack of knowledge on this issue is appalling. I had to explain to many journalists and political staffers that the Poles were invaded by the Nazis, that they never gave in to the Nazis, that many more Poles participated in the resistance & many more died than the more famous French resistance, that Poles served in allied armies, participating as pilots in the Battle of Britain and as soldiers all over Europe, that the Warsaw uprising of 1944 held back the Nazis for two months and at the same time stalled the Soviet advance, since after encouraging the uprising Stalin’s troops paused and waited for the Nazis to destroy the Polish resistance in Warsaw, all the while not helping and in fact hindering relief efforts by others. Had it not been for this wait, the Red Army may have advanced significantly farther west, with fearful consequences for the future of freedom after the war. This is a largely forgotten history, with bravery and sacrifice unrecognized and unrewarded. Shamefully, at the end of the war Poland was subsumed by Stalin’s evil empire. 

The communist government executed many of the brave resistance fighters, cynically labeling them “fascists”. The communists were also a reason why Polish bravery in the war is so unknown outside Poland. The communists systematically denigrated the efforts of Polish resistance and the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and surviving veterans were not given any justice until Poland regained its freedom, when they were already old men and women. You can see some of them marching in the picture at above & left.

I had the extraordinary privilege of meeting heroes like Jan Nowak Jezioranski and Jan Karski. These brave men risked their lives repeatedly moving in and out of Nazi occupied territory and even into concentration camps themselves, finding evidence and trying to warn the allies about the Holocaust and the fate of civilians populations in Poland. They and the millions of Poles (civilians as well as soldiers) who fought the Nazis and died at the hands of the Nazis deserve better than to be identified with their enemies and murderers.  The constant, ignorant use of the term “Polish camps” disrespects their memories.  Please read and sign the petition below.

Petition on German Concentration Camps
WHEREAS the media uses the historically erroneous terms “Polish concentration camp” and “Polish death camp” to describe Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps built by the Germans during World War II, which confuses impressionable and undereducated readers, leading them to believe that the Holocaust was executed by Poland, rather than Nazi Germany,
WHEREAS these phrases are Holocaust revisionism that desecrate the memories of six million Jews from 27 countries who were murdered by Nazi Germany,
WHEREAS Poland was the first country invaded by Germany, and the only country whose citizens suffered the death penalty for rescuing Jews, yet never surrendered during six years of German occupation, even though one-sixth of its population was killed in the war, approximately half of which was Christian,
WHEREAS educated journalists must know these facts and not cross the libel threshold of malice by using phrases such as “Polish concentration camps.”
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the undersigned request that The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, include entries in their stylebooks requiring news stories to be historically accurate, using the official name of all “German concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland,” as UNESCO did in 2007 when it named the camp in Auschwitz, “The Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945).”
 

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Odds & Ends for October 31

I used to talk about the success of South Carolina in attracting foreign investment in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. It was one of my hardy perennial issues when I was in Krakow, since leaders in southern Poland were trying to attract investment and appreciated the successful experience of others. The people in SC are still at it. The latest example is the expansion of BMW. We sometimes complain when American jobs are outsourced to others. The Carolina uplands show how to get them to come to us. They have workers with strong work ethics; living costs are low and unions are scarce. Read a little more here & here.

We may not be aware of how much shift has indeed occurred and how industry is now more decentralized, often rural. Nucor Steel, headquartered in Charlotte, NC, is a good example of an American firm that flourishes among Americas medium sized cities and small towns. The trademark rural occupation is agriculture, but when we think of the old guy on a tractor doing what his father taught him, we are more than a generation behind the times. Agriculture in America is high tech and becoming more so and agricultural tech is informing other fields, such as pharmaceuticals. I was recently reading articles about how the North Carolina Biotech Center is using tobacco plants to help develop vaccines. Tobacco used to dominate much of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. It used to be associated with rural poverty, but now that is changing too.

When we think of high tech, our thought usually run to computers and electronics. But the high tech of the near future will be biological/agricultural (biotechnology) and structural (nanotechnology) and a lot of it will be produced far away from the cool and very expensive high tech places we know today.

I still am surprised at how much science goes into something as old fashioned as forestry. We have better trees that grow twice as fast as the species used to, while producing better wood, with fewer inputs & less disease. They are even better looking, IMO. Working smarter allows us to create a more sustainable society.

Land Management

The Brazilians are trying to figure out ways to both conserve and develop the Amazon. They get fairly annoyed when we preach at them and have even developed elaborate conspiracy theories about UN takeovers of the Amazon. It doesn’t help that some activists have indeed proposed an internationalization of the Amazon. It is easy for us living comfortably in North America or Europe to demand that they preserve the “lungs of the world.” Brazilians will develop their country, as we did and development need not mean permanent destruction. When I first studied this issue more than twenty-five years ago, I was convinced that forest cutting would in short order result in destruction of soils and essentially the creation of deserts. We now know more about soils and the ecology and, not surprisingly in such a large area, it depends where you are. Some soils are deep and could be developed; others not. One size does not fit all.

I have been reading a book called The Big Burn. It talks about Gifford Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt and the establishment of our own forest service. The story is heroic in many ways. It takes place in 1910 the American environment and describes events around the great blowout fire, which destroyed an area the size of Connecticut in the course of two days. (It was bigger than the great Peshtigo fire, but killed fewer people because it burned over even less populated places.) The fire burned way inland in Montana and Idaho, but smoke was reported 500 miles out in the Pacific Ocean and as far east as New York.

What does 1910 America have to do with 2010 Brazil? Our experiences are remarkably parallel. Many people don’t understand how bad things were 100 years ago in the American environment. There were all sorts of land grabs, destructive mining techniques and illegal logging. All the things we hear about happening in the Amazon were happening in America. We probably reached the nadir sometime in the 1930s, but the years from around 1890 to 1940 were really terrible. Our country was burning, washing away or blowing away. Experts predicted we would run out of wood in a generation and it looked like the high plains would soon be just a desert. We learned a lot since then. And of course we are still learning. Our significant success in preventing fires and belief that nature was self regulating led to disastrous fires and then to different management techniques. By costly error, we learned. We can and we are sharing our experience. We can learn a lot from each other about sustainable development.

The picture up top shows the results of better land management in Northern Arizona. The Forest Service regularly burns the ponderosa pine forests. The ponderosa pine ecosystem is fire dependent. When we excluded fire, often limited grazing and made thinning difficult, we created lots of trouble. The forests grew too thick (what they call dog hair forests). This overstocking of trees allows bugs like pine beetles to destroy forests (when the trees are too close, the bugs can easily move from tree to tree) and excluding little fires leds to large, disastrous fires. We learned the lessons.

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The Lasts

Fall is always the season of finishing. Another growing season is done. Days are getting shorter and cooler; the last flowers are blooming; the last leaves are falling. It is both a sad time and one of contentment of harvest and jobs completed. This fall has more of these characteristics for me than usual. I won’t be here next year. This is the last time I will be seeing some parts of Washington for maybe some years, maybe forever. 

Of course I will be back at the Main State, but my visits will be episodic and not the continuous presence I have now. I probably won’t be going over to Gold’s Gym, for example. I expect to be in Brazil for three years.  Who knows after that? I like to live in Washington, but the work here is not as interesting as what I can do overseas. There just aren’t many good jobs at my level. Many of the lower-ranking positions are more fun, if less ostensibly prestigious. I don’t like the political interface or the endless meetings. That doesn’t bode well for a triumphant return sometime in the medium term future. 

I have never had much of a long-term career plan and I don’t have one now. I have always relied on serendipity and opportunistically taking advantage of what comes. You don’t have to be smart if you are lucky and I have been lucky. Brazil, Norway, Poland and even Iraq were places that I wanted to o and places where I was content to be. There is not much time left anyway and I suppose I should be thinking about career transition.

The story I recall, the one I tell myself and others is that I learned about the FS randomly. I remember waking up from a nap at the student union in at UW-Madison and finding a booklet about careers in the FS left on the table in front of me. I was only vaguely aware of the FS before that time. The booklet had a practice test that didn’t look too hard, so I decided to try for it. For me that has become a kind of creation myth. I really no longer know how much is certainly true and how much is embellishment borne of the retelling. But I think the story has colored how I view the job. I guess I still see it as more of a gift than something I worked hard to get. And it has usually been fun. A sort of career plan that I did have was to work in the FS for around seven years and then leverage my experience a well-paying executive job. It never happened because there has never been a significant amount of time when I wasn’t either having too much fun at my current assignment, too excited about the next one or both. 

It was more like a hound-dog following the next scent than a step-by-step progress.

Anyway, I think about these things as I walk around in the still warm fall days and evenings. I came into the FS in October and got to know Washington for the first time during this time of the year. That was twenty-six years ago, but the area around the Mall has not changed much. I remember walking around the first time. It was like in that movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I was so excited to see the monuments: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and so many other things. It is no longer a new experience, but it is still exciting. What a privilege to be able to be among them all the time. That is something I will miss. So this fall has a special poignancy for me.

Let me tell you about the pictures. They are simple things taken around Washington. First is an informal football game on the fields in front of the Washington Monument.  Next is the Main State, the Harry Truman building. It is not one of Washington’s most attractive. I am not a big coffee drinker, but the next picture shows them that do.  The little wagon is owned by a guy from someplace in the Middle East. It is good coffee, I guess. People wait for him to show up in the morning. Horse cops patrolling the Mall on Clydesdales in the next picture. Jefferson Memorial with fall color maples. Another of my Capitol pictures. The African Art museum is just above and below is the statue of Casimir Pulaski on Freedom Plaza.

Below is the Washington Memorial and the last is just the moon.

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Weekly odds & ends for October 22

Why neither Republicans nor Democrats can win permanent majorities – both parties coalitions are unstable, writes Michael Barone, the smartest independent political analyst in the U.S.. It is a good history lesson.

Unhappy Americans – Gallup finds only 21% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time. If that does not improve in the next two weeks, it would be the lowest level of U.S. satisfaction Gallup has measured at the time of a midterm election in more than 30 years of tracking.Wal-Mart goes even greener – People like or dislike Wal-Mart for lots of reasons, but nobody can doubt that when it sets its policy toward a goal, things happen. That is why it is very good that Wal-Mart is making a commitment to sustainable agriculture. I have no doubt that Wal-Mart will accomplish more than many hundreds of those earnest conferences held around the world for the chattering classes and big-name celebrities. I suppose the goal of “raising awareness” is to get firms like Wal-Mart to make the right decisions.

Environmentalism is becoming mainstream and a routine part of doing business. I understand that having the big capitalistic firms on their side makes the lefty-wing of environmentalists a bit uncomfortable, but for everybody else it is a great development. It makes sustainable progress more likely.

Most Americans think we are too politically correct – And 74% considered political correctness a problem. In an earlier, but related poll 63% believe that PC thinking contributed to overlooking warning signs that might have prevented the Fort Hood massacre. Most of us have avoiding saying things we believe true for fear of crossing the PC lines.

IMO – PC has led to a decline of humor, which often depends on making fun of odd behaviors and characteristics. The only group it is safe to ridicule anymore is bald white males, and there is only so much you can humorously say about them. Ironically, PC has made humor more nasty & coarse. What gets laughs is often crude and rude, but it doesn’t step on any PC protected toes. And crude leads to cruder as shock wears off and requires more.

Why European productivity lags the U.S. – No matter how you slice or distribute wealth, prosperity ultimately depends on productivity. Europe was catching up with the U.S. in terms of productivity until the middle of the 1990s, when they U.S. again pushed ahead. US productivity grew by 22 percent between 1995 and 2005; in Europe, productivity grew by 15 percent, of which only one-quarter came from these service industries. The fact that Europeans tend work less than Americans doesn’t explain the gap. This Mckinsey Report explains some of the causes.

Atlantic wind connection – I was happy to hear that a group led by Google was planning a $5 billion transmission backbone cable 15-20 miles out in Atlantic to connect future wind power generation to the Eastern U.S. grid. It would have a capacity of 6,000 megawatts. The biggest challenge to wind power is transmission. This would address that. There is some gnashing of teeth that it is not worth it, but the beauty of the free market it that investors get to make that call, risk their own funds and make profits if they are right. There is some Luddite opposition, of course. Interesting for me is that it is also viewed with tepid enthusiasm by environmental groups, who fear it might weaken political support for more wind.

I wonder sometimes if they believe more in politics than in the environment.

I have never seen a mature American chestnut tree and never will. The blight that was first discovered in 1904 destroyed the giant trees that had dominated Appalachian forests before I was born. They were not annihilated, however. Even a century later, they still sprout from roots and grow until the blight takes them down.
It was a true ecological & economic disaster when they were laid low by the blight, but people did not give up on them and generations of cross breeding may be about to bear fruit, literally, in the form of chestnuts that will grow into blight resistant trees. I will be getting my two seeds for next growing season from the American Chestnut Foundation. My land is a bit outside the native range of the chestnut, but still within the acceptable climatic zones. I have already identified a spot for them among the oaks, beech and tulip-poplars in the stream management zones. Maybe they will grow blight free, but even if they do, I will never see them at their former glory size. But my kids can show their kids.

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Eclectic Sources

This is my new feature, a weekly blog posting with links to things I found interesting this week. They are not representative and in no particular order. I am posting it as much for my own use as others, since I often find interesting things and then forget them.

Currencies out of Whack

In China a McDonald’s Big Mac costs just 14.5 yuan on average in Beijing and Shenzhen, the equivalent of $2.18 at market exchange rates. In America the same burger averages $3.71. That makes China’s yuan one of the most undervalued currencies in “The Economist’s” Big Mac index, which is based on the idea of purchasing-power parity.

On a more serious note, “The Economist” also has an article about how to avoid a currency war.

Environmental Politics in Brazil

What the Green Breakthrough in Brazil Means – The loser in Brazil’s recent presidential election scores a win for the environment— the Nature Conservancy director of conservation strategies in South America explains. I also bookmarked this guy’s nature blog & traced down a link on Brazil’s new forest code. I have not found good, non-polemic, articles about the forest code in English and may have to do some research on my own to figure it out. The Brazilian minister of the environment is coming next week. I suppose she knows.

Forest Certification

People usually are unaware the most of the timber harvested in the U.S. comes from privately owned land, often family or individually owned. The American South produces 58% of the country’s timber. It is important to most owners, to be good stewards of their land, but sometimes it is hard to know if you are doing a good enough job. That is why many of us look for certification that kind of assures us that things are okay.

My tree farms are certified by the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) the oldest certification system, founded in 1941. ATFS is a good organization. It is easy to figure out what you have to do and it doesn’t let the perfect interfere with the good. In 2008, ATFS was accepted under the aegis of Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. As you can tell by the spelling, it is not an American-based organization. In forest harvesting, it is good to be part of an international system, one that sets high standards but does not over interfere with management. Most of the things you do in sustainable forestry are reasonable. The only thing that I have some concerns about is that PERC is prohibiting GMOs. It hasn’t really come up yet as a problem, but with all the nasty invasive bugs flying around the globe catching rides on our airplanes or on our container ships, I think GMOs will become necessary to forest health within the next ten years. I suppose the ban can be reconsidered as science and circumstances advance.

Horrible Dictators of the Past

“The Economist” had a good review of a new book called “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin.” It talks about how Hitler and Stalin complemented and enabled each other in their massive crimes & how most of the destruction was in Eastern Europe. A couple of historical facts were mentioned that I am familiar with because of my Polish experience but I realize are little known or appreciated in outside. One is that the only government that took direct action to help Jews during the Holocaust was Poland. Seven of the first eight operations conducted in Warsaw by the underground Polish Home Army were in support of the ghetto uprising. After the war the communist authorities executed Polish soldiers who had helped the Jews and tried as best they could to wipe out the memory. I remember talking to Polish heroes like Jan Nowak Jezioranski and Jan Karski, who risked their lives to call attention to the Holocaust during the war. Jan Karski had to take a train through Germany, so he had some of his teeth knocked out to give him an explanation for his poor German. Somebody should make a Schindler’s list sort of movie about them.

Karski, Nowak and most all the other heroes of those time are dead now. Soon they will all be gone. “old men forget yet all shall be forgot …” We may not soon see their like again, and that may be a good thing. Great men are forged in hard times most of us hope we will never endure.

Index of Government Dependence

The 2010 Index of Dependence on Government – The number of Americans who pay taxes continues to shrink—and the United States is close to the point at which half of the population will not pay taxes for government benefits. This new report talks about that.

Rare Earth

China’s Choke-hold on Rare Earth Minerals – China holds the largest reserves of the minerals required to manufacture cell phones, smart bombs, wind turbines and other high-tech products. In recent months, industries reliant on rare earths have encountered increasing delays, quotas and price hikes amid heightened demand. In 1990, the US was the industry’s dominant force, but because of costs, ceded control to China.

Wasting Money

Tax Spend & Shovel – Back in early 2009, President-elect Barack Obama was asked on Meet the Press how quickly he could create jobs. Oh, very fast, he said. He’d already consulted with a gaggle of governors, and “all of them have projects that are shovel-ready.”

Oh Wow Man

Drug Decriminalization Works – Next month, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, a measure to legalize marijuana. Because no state has ever taken such a step, voters are being subjected to a stream of fear-mongering assertions, unaccompanied by evidence, about what is likely to happen if drug prohibition is repealed.

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Around the Mall & Left Over Pictures

I walked from State Department to Gold’s Gym in SW.  Since we moved to Foggy Bottom, I don’t get to the Mall as often. Too bad. It is pretty and relaxing. I usually find something to look at or something to admire, even if it is the same old monuments that never lose their appeal. I have a couple of pictures with not much text to go along, but I wanted to post them.I also have a few left over from our drive up country. Above is the Washington Memorial at around 6pm. The Washington Monument is the only one w/o any inscriptions carved into the stones. I guess Washington was so great that he requires no explanation.

Above is a “peace camp” on the Mall. The sign said that they were going to hang around until peace was established. I think that their camping permit will run out sooner.  I didn’t go in. It seemed like a bunch of hippies. I didn’t mind that, but they had some kind of ritual when you walked through their gate. I didn’t need that. Below is Stonewall Jackson’s grave in Lexington, VA. I wonder how famous Stonewall would be if he was just called Thomas Jackson? He was a good general, but the South had many such.

Below is a bit of over-protection at the cemetery where Stonewall and lot of other Confederates are buried. I guess I have been endangering myself for a long time walking under trees.

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Local Heroes in Western Tennessee

We spent last night at the Holiday Inn in Forrest City, Arkansas.  The town was named for Nathan Bedford Forrest.  As we drove through western Tennessee, we came across Forrest a few more times. He was very much the famous home town boy.  I read that there are thirty-two monuments associated with him in Tennessee. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate cavalry officer and a true military genius.  On the other hand, he trafficked in slaves, was accused of war crimes and was associated with the KKK, although he denied both of the latter. On the other hand, in later life Forrest advocated re-consolidation between North and South and between the races.   

The man was a fighter and good at his job.  He famously said that war means fighting and fighting means killing.  What you can say for sure about Nathan Bedford Forrest is that he was a man of significant contradictions and that he was well-thought-of at least by some people around Western Tennessee, Western Arkansas & Northern Mississippi.

A less controversial local hero is Casey Jones.  He was an engineer on the Illinois Central Railroad.  His passenger train, the Cannonball Express, ran into a stalled freight train near Vaughan, MS.  Jones stayed with the train, pulling on the brakes. He managed to reduce the speed of his train from around 75mph to 35mph. His bravery undoubtedly saved the lives of passengers, none of whom were killed, but Casey Jones died in the wreck.

Casey Jones’ experience was immortalized in a song, much like the Wreck of the Old 97, in Virginia. Train wrecks made an impression on those around to see them. We visited the Casey Jones museum in Jackson, Tennessee and saw his house, some railroad artifacts & an engine much like his. It is one of those places that is worth seeing if you are already driving past, but probably not worth going to see if you are not.

The lyrics to the song are at this link.

The top picture is a cotton field in Western Tennessee. Cotton is very hard on the soil & the crop exhausts the nutrients quickly. This was wasteful but it also provided incentive for westward expansion, as new lands were constantly needed. Next is the pyramid of Memphis. I guess it is an arena.  Chrissy took the picture of the pyramid, as we drove over the bridge and she demanded I give her credit. This was indeed a good picture, but the others she took on the fly look like they were taken by a drunken monkey.  We have to take the sweet with the bitter. BTW – there are no pyramids in the original Memphis. The next picture is an engine like the machine that Casey Jones would have driven, but this one is smaller. The bottom picture is the bathroom in Casey Jones’ house. He was fairly well off for the time. I would like to visit the past, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Besides all the exotic diseases, poor dentistry and interesting smells, we had bathrooms like this for those lucky enough to have such luxurious accommodations.

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Waiting at the Bat Cave

We went to an old railroad tunnel near Fredericksburg to see the bats emerge. You can see from the picture above that bat viewing is a minor local attraction. We didn’t actually see the bats emerge. They did it too much after dark. They come out around dark every night. If they come out around dark before it gets too dark, you can see them, otherwise we just take their word that they came out.

The bats in the tunnel are Mexican free tail bats. They are small bats that eat insects, mostly moths.  They are useful because they devour prodigious numbers of corn moths. 

We were told, but I didn’t actually see, that the bats take off in a spiral to get enough lift to get into the air.  The experienced bats do it well.  When there are lots of new bats, the show is evidently more chaotic, presuming you can see it.  The bats never come out on schedule and nobody is sure why they come out when they do. One theory is that they just come out when they get hungry, so it depends on how much they ate the night before.  Another theory is that there is not theory. One or more of them wanders out and others follow.

A couple people run the “bat watch”. Bat people are special and they are very enthusiastic about bats.  They showed pictures and explained the importance of bats in the environment.  As I wrote above, the most useful thing they do is eat lots of flying bugs. Bat guano makes very good fertilizer and the bat woman explained guano used to be one of Texas’ biggest exports.

Bats are threatened by a fungus disease called white nose.  It can wipe out whole bat colonies.  Nobody knows what causes it, but it is probably helped to spread by people coming around from cave to cave, so many bat caves are now closed off to casual visitors. At out bat viewing area, we were told not to go down to the opening.  I would not have done so anyway. I appreciate the importance of bats and understand that these little bats are harmless, but I still  think it would be a little creepy to be standing right among them.  Besides, they probably crap when they fly.

The top picture is the crowd waiting for the bats. Below that picture is one of my friend Dennis Neffendorf’s sheep just before sun up. Dennis owns a peach farm near Fredericksburg. If you want some great peaches, let me know and I will put you in touch. You met Dennis in earlier posts. He worked with me in Iraq.  The sheep are unrelated to the bats, but I needed a place to put the nice picture. 

President Johnson & his ranch

We also visited the LBJ ranch. Unfortunately, I deleted the pictures by mistake. My only text would be that LBJ actually cared about his ranch. He had a great herd of cattle and he took good care of the land. No matter what you think of him as a politician or a human being, he was a good steward of the land.  For me, that means a lot. 

Dennis, mentioned above, grew up near the Johnson ranch and as a kid got to do odd jobs around the ranch. He know a lot about the Johnson’s and the people around them. He said Johnson was a bigger than life type guy. He could be a bully and an A-hole, but he remembered his roots and took an interest in everyone he met.  Like all great men, he was complex and contradictory, so biographers can find what they want.  Lady-Bird Johnson was universally a lady in all the positive senses of the word and she stood by Lyndon. I took a good picture of the tombstones of Lydon and Lady-Bird. Hers is a little bigger.  On his tombstone is the presidential seal.  Hers features a Texas bluebell. Mrs. Johnson did a good job with wild flowers.

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Deutschland uber Texas

You can see the physical German influence in the buildings and the people in Fredericksburg and all around the Texas hill country. I knew that lots of Germans colonized Texas, but I was surprised by how much this resembled Wisconsin in terms of heritage and appearance. My picture doesn’t really show it. I made a mistake and erased fifteen of my pictures, so I have to use what I have left.  Along this street there are mostly German names. We had breakfast in a nice German bakery. 

Germans were hard-working and frugal, which meant that they adapted fairly well almost wherever they went.   We visited one of their neat farms – the Sauer-Beckmann farm – near the LBJ ranch.  They have living history, with period costumes, appropriate livestock etc.  The original colonists, the Sauer family, made a “modified” log cabin.  I say modified because logs were relatively rare in this part of Texas centuries ago.  (It is a little misleading to look around today because there are more trees today, since the wild fires started by lightning and Indians have been controlled.) To save on wood, the logs were interspersed with stones, which were common. Making a wall entirely of stone takes longer than making this kind of hybrid.  When they had the time, they made the buildings out of limestone and so later additions were often stone.

The pictures above and below are from the Sauer-Beckmann farm, part of the LBJ park complex.  One good thing about both is that they have actual livestock. Livestock were a big part of rural life and when they do the recreations w/o them it is not realistic.  Johnson himself left some of his land to the park system with the stipulation that they maintain the place as a working ranch with cattle. 

The Germans fit uneasily into the pre-Civil War Texas because they set themselves apart to some extent and had a superior attitude at times.  More importantly, they were strongly and loudly against slavery.  When Texas voted to succeed from the Union in 1861, the counties with heavy German populations voted to remain in the Union.  Texas Confederates declared the hill country in rebellion – against the confederates.  There were open battles between pro-union and Confederate forces.  Scores of Germans were killed in the fighting, others were shot and hung.  Lynching of Germans was practiced. These episodes of Civil War history are not well known.   Germans being lynched, beaten and murdered because of their stand against slavery doesn’t seem to fit in well with subsequent narratives.

I have written before about Germans in the U.S. and recently about the Amana Colonies. We now have forgetting the contributions of America’s largest ethnic group because Germans and their contributions have become as American as hamburgers, hot dogs and good beer.