From the Ashes of Empire...

There is much to be criticized in the life and legacy of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), but much to be lauded as well. In the latter category, despite his militarism and often mind-numbingly bureaucratic sensibilities, there remains the uncontrovertible fact that, without Ataturk's timely intervention, modern Turkey would be a patchwork of colonialist "protectorates," professionally managed by (and in the interests of) foreign powers and their local condottieri. In other words, Turkey would be another Frankenstein created by Europe and its North American allies instead of an independent nation embarked upon the never-ending experiment of government of, by, and for its own people. From the ashes of empire, Ataturk constructed a republic. That is the proper direction for a nation to travel.

The government of the United States of Amnesia, on the other hand, continues on the mission it adopted in the early 19th century with (ironically) Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory from France: the construction of an empire from the ashes of a republic.

One studies history in order to gain an intimate acquaintance with the kind of record that historical events inevitably establish: a record that discloses how unintended consequences are by far the most important factor in the determination of the course of human events.

William Faulkner's Mythical Macrohistory of America

From his vantage point among the defeated, William Faulkner became one of the most perceptive observers of the evolution of American civilization this country has yet to produce. Like a latter day Ibn Khaldun, Faulkner composed a mythical macrohistory of America, "built around the conflict between traditionalism and the antitraditional modern world in which it is immersed" (Faulkner, edited by Robert Penn Warren (1966), 23).

For Faulkner, "traditionalism" entails acting "always with an ethically responsible will...[a] vital morality, humanism" (ibid., 24). "Antitraditionalism," on the other hand, involves "acting only for self-interest": it is "amoral" and "animalistic" (ibid).

The novelist personified these two antagonistic forces as families: the traditionalist Sartorises and the antitraditionalist Snopeses. "And the Sartoris-Snopes conflict is fundamentally a struggle between humanism and naturalism" (ibid). For Faulkner, humanism was essentially Romantic: informed by notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige. By contrast, his "naturalism" was "entrepreneurial" and characterized by a "low cunning" that regarded other human beings as means, not ends.

In novel after novel, he developed this mythos of the decline of the Sartorises and the ascendancy of the Snopeses and, in so doing, chronicled the downward course of America's "spiritual history."

Sic transit gloria mundi: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Would That It Were True

The U.S. Is Giving The Developing World A Run For Its Money

More US babies die on their first day than in 68 other countries, report shows

One more stat that should tell us that something is terribly wrong with our society.

My Bad

I grew up under the mistaken impression that it was possible to live in Walt Whitman's America.



Whitman's America was but a beautiful dream. The nightmare reality that I live each day is Ronald Reagan's America.



sic transit gloria mundi...

Reaganomics

An unmitigated disaster.

The Boston Lock-Down

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, law enforcement officials appealed to the public for possible leads on the perpetrators. The information produced through this cooperation led to the identification of two suspects (a pair of brothers). For unknown reasons, the suspects, instead of attempting to elude the police, chose to undertake a brazen crime spree involving a car-jacking, the fatal shooting of a campus police officer, and the robbery of a Seven-Eleven store. The suspects' whereabouts now exposed, the police pursued them; a gun battle ensued that resulted in the death of one suspect. As of this writing, another suspect remains at large. He is believed to be 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and is presumed armed and dangerous.

According to the web-site Neighborhood Scout (a source of information for buyers and sellers of real estate), the city of Boston, Mass., has a population of 625,087. Annually, that population experiences 5,528 violent crimes (8.84 violent crimes per 1000 residents; the national median is 3.9)--making the city safer than only 15% of all American cities. In other words, Bostonians are no strangers to violent criminal activity. Each year, the residents of Boston have a 1 in 113 chance of being the victim of a violent crime. On average, 15 violent crimes are committed in Boston on each day of each year. Despite the danger, Boston law enforcement authorities do not lock-down the city.

When Boston's women were terrorized over a two year period (from 1962-1964) by the so-called "Boston Strangler," Boston law enforcement authorities did not lock-down the city.

In August 2007, Michelle Obama spoke to supporters in rural Iowa about her husband's decision to run for President. Among the reasons that she gave for why she approved that decision was "...I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we have made over the last ten years wasn't for something, but it was because people told us we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different from us, fear people who believed in things that were different from us, fear one another right here in our own backyards. I am so tired of fear, and I don't want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear" (quoted in Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear, 2nd edition (2009), 244).

The Obamas have been in the White House for the past six years and Americans are as frightened as ever--not of the every day violence that makes Boston more dangerous than 85% of all U.S. cities, but of the rare and extraordinary violence that can be perpetrated by individuals who are "different from us."

Lock-downs in the "land of the free and the home of the brave"--something about that just doesn't seem right. Where is Barack Obama's leadership on this vital issue of fear? Where is Michelle Obama's leadership on this vital issue of fear?

Am I suggesting that Mr. Tsarnaev should be allowed to roam free? Of course not. None of the perpetrators of Boston's 5,528 annual crimes of violence should be permitted to roam free. The Boston Strangler should not have been permitted to roam free. Crimes should be reported and investigated; criminals should be apprehended and made to stand trial.

What troubles me about the Boston lock-down is the message that it sends to the world: the citizens of that great American city--a founding city of the American revolution--have, out of fear of the rare and extraordinary, permitted their government to close the city while a search goes on for a 19 year-old fugitive from justice.

We like to say that we (Americans) won't give in to terror. In light of the Boston lock-down, why should anyone believe what we say?