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When the Army Was Democratic by William Pfaff | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

4 Aug

The final paragraph (my boldface):

What fundamentally was destroyed in Vietnam was the democratic army. The all-volunteer professional army enables undemocratic wars, ideological in nature and inspiration, and, it would seem, without real end.

Pfaff opens by recountin Gen. McCrystals’s call for a universal draft if it intends to continuing fighting wars. However

But I cannot think that he is so far out of touch with his country as to fail to understand that the restoration of American national morale, unity, and sense of solidarity and patriotism he wants to see would come not as the result of universal national military service, but as the condition that makes universal service possible.

The war in Vietnam destroyed the draft:

The US had national service from September 1940, just before World War II, until 1971, when the Vietnam War was ending. It was accepted with patriotic resolution at its start, and hated by its end. I am of an age to have put on my country’s uniform in high school ROTC in 1942, when I was fourteen years old. I put it on again for the Korean War, and did not take it off for the last time until 1958, after limited active reserve service. That was a total of sixteen years.

I can’t say that I enjoyed military service, but I learned a lot, about myself and about others—including the young black men who made up a good half of my all-southern, and mostly rural, basic training company (where I was not only the sole college graduate but probably the only high school graduate)… The regular army…hated and feared the consequences of that order, but said “yes, sir” and did it, producing undoubtedly the biggest and most successful program of social engineering the United States had ever experienced …

The army, in my opinion, did more to desegregate the United States than the civil rights movement of the 1960s. From 1948 on, nearly every able-bodied young man in the United States served and lived side by side with Americans of all colors, all in strict alphabetical order, in old-fashioned unpartitioned barracks, sleeping bunk to bunk, sharing shelter-halves on bivouac, in what amounted to brotherly endurance of the cold, heat, discomfort, and misery of military training—and following that, of service…

When their war was over, the survivors, white and black, didn’t go home to Georgia and hang out together on Saturday nights. They hardly saw one another again. But those two years changed them. It certainly changed many of the younger generation of white southerners who served and who a decade and a half later were ready to accept desegregation, even though they disliked it. A man-to-man respect existed for their black contemporaries.

via When the Army Was Democratic by William Pfaff | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.

Hiroshima to grade states on disarmament | The Japan Times Online

1 Aug

Looks like Hiroshima’s going to start its own foreign policy.

A prefectural official told The Japan Times on Tuesday that Hiroshima will conduct its own research and analysis of nuclear disarmament around the world and grade each country on its commitment to abandoning atomic weapons.

“This is the first time Hiroshima Prefecture has embarked on such a project,” the official said. The study is “a duty that Hiroshima must carry out,” the prefecture says on its website.

Experts are expected to start meeting soon and publish a final report in Japanese and English within the fiscal year.

via Hiroshima to grade states on disarmament | The Japan Times Online.

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Greens and Libertarians

1 Aug

This piece is ancient (1992), but worth a read.

Over the past three decades, people have become dissatisfied with both major parties, and two new minor parties are showing promise of growth and success. They are the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. These are not the only new parties, but they are the only ones that promise to attract people from across the political spectrum. Most other small parties are either clearly to the left of the Democrats or to the right of the Republicans. Such parties would have a place in a system that accommodates multiple parties, but are doomed to failure in a two-party system.

The Libertarian Party is made up mostly of former conservatives who object to the Republican Party’s penchant for militarism and its use of government to entrench powerful interests and shield them from market forces. The Green Party is made up mostly of former liberals who object to the Democratic Party’s penchant for centralized bureaucracy and its frequent hypocritical disregard for natural systems of ecological balance, ranging from the human metabolism and the family unit to the ecology of the planet.

Both minor parties attempt to adhere to guidelines that are much clearer than those of either major party. Libertarians focus on rights of individuals to control their own lives, limited only by the prohibition against interference with the rights of others. These rights include their right to the fruits of their labor and the right to freely associate and form contracts. They advocate limiting government to protecting those basic rights.

Greens advocate ten key values (ecological wisdom, grass roots democracy, social justice, non-violence, decentralization, community-based economics, post-patriarchal values, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and sustainable future focusas a guide for government as well as for their own party organization.)

These different guidelines underscore basic differences between the approaches of the two parties and their members. Libertarians tend to be logical and analytical. They are confident that their principles will create an ideal society, even though they have no consensus of what that society would be like. Greens, on the other hand, tend to be more intuitive and imaginative. They have clear images of what kind of society they want, but are fuzzy about the principles on which that society would be based.

via Greens and Libertarians.

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Empty Town Halls and ‘Easter Bunny Epiphanies’: On the Campaign Trail With Gary Johnson | Swampland | TIME.com

1 Aug

Gary is indeed “the pot guy.” He’s a libertarian who wants to legalize drugs, downsize government and balance the budget in one year by slashing spending by 43%. He would toss out the tax code and replace it with a Fair Tax on consumption, and solve America’s illegal-immigration problem by handing out more work visas. Johnson is a pro-choice, pro-civil-union fiscal conservative who doesn’t wear religion on his sleeve—a perfect fit, by his analysis, for New Hampshire. But he’s not a plausible contender in a Republican Party that has already had to adjust its contours to make room for Ron Paul.

via Empty Town Halls and ‘Easter Bunny Epiphanies’: On the Campaign Trail With Gary Johnson | Swampland | TIME.com.

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The Green Team: Jill Stein’s Third-Party Bid to Shake Up 2012 | Swampland | TIME.com

1 Aug

Wednesday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein spoke to about a dozen people–and a couple dozen empty chairs. She had gone to the capital, in advance of the Green Party convention in Baltimore, to announce her running mate: Cheri Honkala. So who is Honkala? And for that matter, who is Stein? Here’s the first thing they’ll tell you: They’re candidates not named Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

Born in the 1980s, the Green Party’s national profile peaked in 2000, when Ralph Nader took 2.7% of the popular vote in the chaotic presidential election that put George W. Bush in office. (One imagines Al Gore still wakes in the night cursing Nader’s name.) Not long after, in 2002, the Green Party recruited a physician and health advocate named Jill Stein to run for governor in Massachusetts. She lost that race and three more in the state over the next decade, while making two successful bids for Lexington Town Meeting representative. Meanwhile, the Green Party candidates in 2004 and 2008 failed to get more than 150,000 votes.

The election fight between Obama and Romney will be close, and a third-party candidate who mounts a significant campaign might be cause for concern as November nears–whether that’s libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Stein. For now, Stein says she’s still introducing herself to the American people, trying to generate interest in the party that’s deflated over the past decade.

via The Green Team: Jill Stein’s Third-Party Bid to Shake Up 2012 | Swampland | TIME.com.

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From Grandfather’s Diary: WWII, Ulysses, and Proust

31 Jul

This is how things look and feel when the world is falling apart. In this case the falling apart was the run up to World War II and into the War. Not so different from now, is it? Life goes on. But for how long?

My paternal grandfather, Axel Benzon, was a Dane. He and his wife, Louise, immigrated to America early in the 20th Century. He was educated as an engineer and knew Greek sufficiently well that he wrote poetry in Greek. He ended his professional career as chief engineer, I believe, of the main US Post Office in Manhattan.

And he kept a diary, the pages of which are generically entitled: “Leaves from my diary.” It’s not a handwritten affair, kept in one of those blank books one can buy at a stationary store. It’s typed on ordinary 8.5 by 11 paper. I’ve got a photocopy of much or most of it, but, judging by his index, not all.

Here’s the opening paragraphs from the entry for 14 April 1940:

Sunday and cloudy with occasionally a little snow-a good day to remain indoors and listen to the war news from Europe. These news are coming in frequently but are most confusing and it is difficult from the british and german dispatches to a form a true picture about the situation in all parts of Norway.

The Danish goose is cooked – there the germans are in possession of all parts and are now fortifying points of vantage, especially the northernmost part of Jutland from where they can dominate a great port of Skagerak and Kartegat.

The invasion of Norway was a masterstroke, no matter how it turns out. It gave evidence of the usual german thoroughness and precision and coupled with the fact that the german navy is so much inferior to that of the English it has been most successful and must have taken the English by surprise.

As you can imagine, his reflections are much occupied by the war. But not entirely so. For example, he also talks of his fondness for the game of golf and playing it on public courses in New York City—he lived in Jackson Heights at the time. I rather imagine that THAT land has long since been given over to building of one sort or another. In fact, at one point he mentions exactly that. Continue reading →

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Let’s Try Apolitical

27 Jul

Mimi and Eunice by Nina Paley.

 

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How to Protest the Major Parties Without Throwing Away Your Vote – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic

26 Jul

If you aren’t crazy about the Republican or Democrat, but think of your vote from a utilitarian perspective and are uninterested in purely symbolic gestures, here’s how to impact presidential elections in two easy steps:

1) Postpone your calculated support for someone you don’t like until you’re standing in the election booth. Before then, support the third-party nominee you’d like to see win. If a pollster asks who you support give their name, not the major-party candidate you may wind up voting for in the end. Doing so doesn’t squander your vote on someone who won’t win, but could be the difference between a Libertarian or Green Party candidate being included or excluded from TV debates.

2) Think about whether or not you live in a swing state. If so, maybe it makes more sense to vote Republican or Democrat. But if you live in a state like California, where the Democrat will obviously win, or a state like Utah where the Republican is obviously going to win, your vote is going to have a lot more impact if you’re part of a third-party surge that signals disaffection to others.

via How to Protest the Major Parties Without Throwing Away Your Vote – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic.

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Report: 2012 Election Likely To Be Decided By 4 Or 5 Key Swing Corporations | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

25 Jul

I know that The Onion is a satirical publication, but, alas, this doesn’t read like satire.

WASHINGTON—With polls this week showing the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney tightening even further, a growing number of political experts have declared this year’s election will almost certainly be decided by a small handful of swing corporations.

“While most publicly traded companies are solidly red or blue, there are four or five major corporations that are complete tossups right now, and any one of them could prove decisive come November,” said Nate Silver of The New York Times, noting in particular that Procter & Gamble, a traditional bellwether for the country as a whole, remained a “total wildcard.” “Both candidates will have to focus almost exclusively on these swing businesses in order to gain the upper hand.”

“And given how close this race is, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing comes down to undecided executives at Dow Chemical or Disney,” Silver continued. “Let’s not forget 2000, when Philip Morris International single-handedly put George W. Bush into office.”

via Report: 2012 Election Likely To Be Decided By 4 Or 5 Key Swing Corporations | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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Bipartisan, Ha!

25 Jul

Mimi and Eunice, by Nina Paley

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