Author Archive

The fashion for calling our current economic climate a “second Great Depression” or the second Great Depression or, following the DotComish naming of community organizer/grizzly bear wrestler John Robb, D2, is more evidence of the fundamental lameness of American LegacyThink™.

The vacuum of imagination revealed in American naming of current events is staggering. Take the initial name of this crisis: “global financial crisis”. That name is little more than lexicographic inertia left over from the “global” naming fad of the 1990s: “globalization”, “global war on terror”, “global climate change”, “global village”, and other such rubbish. Compare this to the vivid nineteenth century genius for retrospective naming of historical episodes revealed in names like the “Hundred Years War“, “Pilgrimage of Grace“, or “Rough Wooing“.

Even the most commonly advanced alternative to “global financial crisis” is lame: “great recession”. Recession is a gray word; it’s more accounting identity than description. It’s no more exciting than its gray dawn. Imagine: somewhere deep in the bowels of the sinister National Bureau of Economic Research, an econometrician checks off a few boxes in a spreadsheet and finds with barely concealed glee that gross domestic product has declined for two consecutive quarters.

This glee is why econometricians have been a barely tolerated and often persecuted minority of the population throughout history.

If we insist on retelling history as a series of sequels, and that is the habit of this decadent age, then we are currently living through the third Great Depression. The first episode of economic contraction called the Great Depression by its contemporaries was the period of economic contraction from the Panic of 1873 to c.1896. Some historians, if they believe in it, now call this period the “Long Depression” to distance it from its more vivid sequels. This follows the logic used to name Batman Returns, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. However, the Long Depression is too vague. We should call this period Great Depression I or D1.

D2 is easy: Great Depression II was the definitive macroeconomic collapse, lasting from 1929 to c. 1944. This would leave the current economic unravelling we’re living through Great Depression III or D3.

History without hip catchy abbreviations may be cursed to decay into a dreary march of endless retreads. Unconscious human masochism may have made us like D2 so much that we decided to make a sequel. Human experience may be cursed to occur first as tragedy, second as farce, and third as a whimper.

Grandmother Croizet

Grandmother Croizet was far more regal than any descendent of Georg, Elector of Hanover. She had far more personal qualifications for the title of queen than the ability to produce an heir to secure the Protestant succession of occupied Britain.

She was warm but correct when pleased and wrathful with flashing eyes when displeased. When she was not amused, she was not amused. I was never around when she ordered heads to roll but roll they must have.

I was looking through an online newspaper archive for family history when I came across this photo. The headline beneath says PISTOL-PACKING POLICE WIVES AIM FOR SHOOTING TITLE. The lede reeks of 1951 period charm: The term “weaker sex” certainly is a misnomer for five eagle-eyed ladies who will represent the Nantes police department at the Brittany Peace Officers convention in Meissen next Friday.

Grandpa Croizet was a police officer who enjoyed all the perks of a pre-Miranda era, including the option of driving drunks home in the trunk of his squad car in order to preserve the taxpayers of Nantes’ upholstery from alcohol-induced ejecta. Grandma, referred to in the article in the style of the day as “Madam Jean Croizet”, participated in local police auxiliaries as a pistol-packing society matron.

Three of the police wives in the photos are obviously being campy for the camera. Grandmother, second from the right, looks every part the royal slumming it with the commoners. She is in the photo but not of the photo. She is bemused by the antics of the rabble but she retains the shroud of majesty and mystery as she hovers above them on a higher plain.

If the hapless son of a former subject had come from across the sea and tried to upstage her, she would have had them drawn and quartered and their viscera draped over the gallows at Tyburn as a warning to other presumptuous fresh fellows. But she was a ruler of a different age, a rare creature not of the same common matter of today’s pale shrunken Disneyland monarchs or Urkelesque presidents.

Silent Cal

From the most recent of Michael Kennedy’s recent series of blog posts on Calvin Coolidge over at ChicagoBoyz:

[Coolidge] used radio addresses very effectively long before Roosevelt adopted the medium. Coolidge’s voice, unlike most politicians of the era, was well suited to radio but could not reach the back of large crowds. In a 1927 poll on radio personalities, Coolidge came in fourth, after three musicians.

This being the age of YouTube, I went looking for audio so I could hear the voice of Silent Cal whisper from the dust:

This led me to a collection of YouTube audio of presidents that were even more dead than Silent Cal. Quoth the collection:

Scholars routinely observe that the advent of radio reshaped political speech. But for more than a decade before the first commercial radio broadcast station was inaugurated in Pittsburgh in 1920, citizens had been listening to candidate speeches. This feat was made possible by the phonograph.

I’m old enough to remember being chided by my parents or older siblings not to jump up and down as a small child because I might make the record player jump and scratch the record. To the youngins of today who grew up sniffing heavy doses of Steven Paul Job’s Reality Distortion Field, this might as well have happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away where dinosaurs and discos ruled the Earth by walking 100 miles to school through 1 mile deep snow uphill both ways. But digital audio only discriminates based on the skill of the encoder and the compression algorithm used to encode so here’s a few highlights from the Dead Presidents Society on YouTube:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ed Beakley of Project White Horse alerted me to the untold story of Mathew Joseph La Porte, Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets:

The story of Cadet La Porte on the morning of 16 April, 2007 is tragic and short.  It is not based on eyewitness account but rather on physical evidence.  Given the magnitude of the tragedy, and the seriousness of trying to understand how to prevent further similar events, his story has almost been lost. And that’s just not right…
 

The basic story

 
In the early morning of Monday, 16 April 2007, 23-year old Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho entered a dormitory room and killed two students. Sometime later he then entered the Norris Hall engineering building and began to systematically attack five classrooms on the second floor, ultimately killing 30 students and professors and wounding or causing injury of an additional two dozen. As police officers approached classroom 211, Cho took his own life. These premeditated attacks represent the worst mass-murder shooting to ever take place in an American school.
 

The final act

 
Around 9:52 the police entry teams move up the stairways shouting “Police, Police!” Cho has returned to room 211 where he had previously attacked and killed several students. There is about a half minute of silence with no shots fired by Cho, then a final two shots, the last being the one turned on himself. Evidence indicates that the next to last shot would have been into Cadet La Porte who would have been dead for some time from the previous attack to the classroom.
 

From evidentiary photographs…

 
The body position and the wounds of Matt La Porte indicate that he had maneuvered around the room from his desk in the rear right of the classroom and attempted to attack Cho across the front of the classroom. Attired in his uniform, he fell just short of the door, lying next to the blackboard facing where Cho would have been standing while shooting. Matt’s arms were outstretched in a classic football tackling position. He had eight bullet entry wounds – fingers, thumb, arms and shoulders and to the front of his head – that could only have been sustained while moving forward on the shooter in the very position he fell.
 
The Archangel team believes there is no other conclusion that can be drawn from the physical evidence other than that Cadet Matthew Joseph La Porte died in a charging attack on Seung-Hui Cho.

His story has not been told:

Note that nothing of the above is mentioned on any of the available reports or recounting of the incident, and I cannot find anything indicating this story has ever been told, or that this young man’s bravery has ever been recognized…
 
As to why this story has never been told, I can only speculate.  Recognizing the magnitude of the tragedy, the necessary crime scene investigation, and the intense desire to understand how this could ever happen and thus translate into prevention of future occurrences in our schools, I can appreciate why key aspects may not have been released for some period of time…
 
But to not recognize this act of valor above and beyond just strikes me as –if not wrong – certainly just not right…while there might be an issue of the media presenting a model of student fighting back, the evidence seemed clear of his attempt to stop the killer and dying in the process. Was he not a military serviceman in uniform, who fought to save others under heavy fire at close quarters?  Should Cadet La Porte not be recognized as a national hero?
 
There is no axe to grind here on “why” no recognition or award.  My assumption is that within the magnitude of the tragedy and the nature of the investigation, Cadet La Porte’s actions got lost if for no other reason there were no witnesses.  It is indeed only the physical evidence that supports this – where he sat, vice where he died, his posture, and where his wounds were…It just doesn’t appear that you can draw any other conclusion other than that this young man “gave all valiantly.”
 
[...]
 
Sometimes it is impossible not to be a victim, but I don’t think Cadet La porte died as a victim at all- when challenged, he acted.
 
To me, seems he died like a fighter pilot – “spirit of attack, born of a brave heart.”

If the Government of these United States was truly engaged in a War on Drugs, it would avoid building precision guided munitions designed to target individual midnight tokers. Instead, the USG would concentrate on one particularly dangerous narcotic that floods United States markets from time to time: Wilsonianism.

When the 15-20 Americans (on a good day) that think about current U.S. foreign policy in the light of past U.S. foreign policy, their use of the term “Wilsonianism” embraces three out of four of the “New Testament” of Walter McDougall’s American foreign policy traditions:

(5) Progressive Imperialism (comprising Navalism, Overseas Bases, and the Open Door Policy)
 
Born 1898, reaffirmed or enlarged 1901-17, 1940-41, 1949 to the present
 
Annexation of Spanish islands, Panama Canal Zone and Roosevelt Corollary, Pacific and Caribbean naval bases, FDR’s hemispheric defense, Truman, Eisenhower, Carter, and Bush doctrines, and foreign bases and global power projection during and since the Cold War, Gulf War I, NATO expansion, and GWOT
 
(6) Wilsonianism, or Liberal Internationalism (as more accurately called)
 
Born 1918, reaffirmed or redefined 1921-29, 1940-46, 1977-79, 1993-2000, 2009-?
 
Wilson’s 14 Points and League of Nations Covenant, Hughes’s and Kellogg’s 1920s engagement in Asia and Europe, FDR’s Atlantic Charter and United Nations, Carter’s human rights agenda, Clinton’s Enlargement and Assertive Multilateralism, Obama’s Engagement (?)
 
(8) Global Meliorism (aka Democratization, Nation-Building, Foreign Aid and Development)
 
Born 1899 and practiced et seriatim, esp. 1901-23, 1944-52, 1961-68, 1977-80, 2003-09
 
McKinley’s Philippines Speech, Wilson’s “Idea of America” and War Message, Hoover’s Relief Programs, FDR’s Bretton Woods and UNRRA, Marshall’s Plan and Truman’s Point Four in Inaugural, Kennedy’s Inaugural and May 25, 1961, address, The “Best and Brightest” strategy in South Vietnam and Third World, Carter’s Third World agenda, G. W. Bush’s “democratization of the Middle East”

Three of McDougall’s four “Old Testament” foreign policy traditions are often offered up as Wilsonianism’s evil nemesis under terms like “realism” or “isolationism” (depending upon who you ask):

(1) Independence, Unity, and Liberty At Home, or “Exceptionalism” (as properly understood)
 
Born 1776, reasserted 1796, 1800, 1812, 1821, 1848, 1863 et seriatim until 1898
 
Declaration of Independence, Tom Paine’s Common Sense, Washington’s Farewell, John Quincy Adams’ Fourth of July Address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, etc.
 
(2) Unilateralism, or “Isolationism” (as mistakenly derided)
 
Born 1796, reasserted 1801, 1812, 1885, 1917, 1920, et seriatim to 1947
 
Washington’s Great Rule, Jefferson’s Inaugural, Cleveland’s Inaugural, Wilson’s War Message, Reservations about League of Nations, Borah’s self-definition, etc.
 
(3) The American System, or Monroe Doctrine (as commonly called)
 
Born 1783, codified 1823, reaffirmed or enlarged 1841, 1861, 1895, 1904, 1941, 1962
 
Tom Paine, Treaty of Paris, Monroe’s Message to Congress, Tyler’s Corollary, Union Blockade, Olney’s “14-inch gun,” Roosevelt Corollary, etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most prominent examples of experimental genetics is the infamous domesticated silver fox:

The domesticated silver fox …is a domesticated form of the silver morph of the red fox. As a result of selective breeding, the new foxes not only became tamer, but more dog-like as well…
 
Domesticated foxes exhibit both behavioral and physiological changes from their wild forebears. They are friendlier with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wag their tails when happy, and vocalize, and bark like domesticated dogs. As a consequence of breeding, they also developed color patterns like domesticated dogs and lost their distinctive musky ‘fox smell’…
 
The experiment was initiated by scientists hoping to produce easier to handle fur animals and who were interested in the topic of domestication and the process by which wolves became tame domesticated dogs. They saw some retention of juvenile traits by adult dogs, both morphological ones, such as skulls that were unusually broad for their length, and behavioral ones, such as whining, barking, and submission…
 
[Project founder Dmitry] Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for [in the] domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behavior; specifically, amenability to domestication, or tameability. He selected for low flight distance, that is, the distance one can approach the animal before it runs away. By selecting this behavior it mimics what happened through natural selection in the ancestral past of dogs. More than any other quality, Belyaev believed, tameability must have determined how well an animal would adapt to life among humans. Because behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body’s hormones and neurochemicals. Belyaev decided to test his theory by domesticating foxes; in particular, the silver fox, a dark color form of the red fox. He placed a population of them in the same process of domestication, and he decided to submit this population to a strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.
 
The result is that Russian scientists now have a number of domesticated foxes that are fundamentally different in temperament and behavior from their wild forebears. Some important changes in physiology and morphology are now visible, such as mottled or spotted colored fur. Many scientists believe that these changes related to selecting for tameness are caused by lower adrenaline production in the new breed, which causes these physiological changes in a very small number of generations, thus allowing for these new genetic offshoots not present in the original species.

Bryant Gumbel once observed of former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his relationship with late NFL Players Union head Gene Upshaw:

Before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw’s leash. By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted. Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch.

While watching this TEDtalk by New York Times columnist David Brooks, I thought of silver foxes, Gene Upshaw, and how David Brooks would be the ideal sire for a selective breeding program to produce a tamer right-winger. Generation after generation, you’d just have to breed for floppy ears, wagging tails, and low flight distance and you’d eventually end up with a more amenable Loyal Opposition. American politics would be a simple matter of showing your successor where you kept David Brooks’ leash.

For the record, Brooks does take some well-aimed potshots at his TEDset/Davos-set masters. But his digs are in that long tradition of peasant humor where the serf was allowed to let off some steam while the lord of the manor reached for his knout to give the recalcitrant peasant a good whipping.

I’m confident the next generation of TED-ready, Davos-approved conservative will offer less lip.

And have floppier ears.

[props Isegoria]

Corporal Frank Buckles, U.S. Army

World War I: a War so Great that it demanded a sequel.

One that topped the original.

In bloodshed.

Long after the guns fell silent on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the one thousand nine hundred and eighteenth year since the year Dennis the Small misidentified as the year Our Lord came in the flesh, the war raged on the in the memory of those caught up in the collective madness that consumed Western Christendom. The last living soldier who experienced World War I died today.

Frank Buckles was 110 years old when he died. He was 16 1/2 when he lied about his age in order to join the U.S. Army:

“I went to the state fair up in Wichita, Kansas, and while there, went to the recruiting station for the Marine Corps,” he said. “The nice Marine sergeant said I was too young when I gave my age as 18, said I had to be 21.”
 
Buckles returned a week later.
 
“I went back to the recruiting sergeant, and this time I was 21,” he said with a grin. “I passed the inspection … but he told me I just wasn’t heavy enough.”
 
Then he tried the Navy, whose recruiter told Buckles he was flat-footed.
 
Buckles wouldn’t quit. In Oklahoma City, an Army captain demanded a birth certificate.
 
“I told him birth certificates were not made in Missouri when I was born, that the record was in a family Bible. I said, ‘You don’t want me to bring the family Bible down, do you?’” Buckles said with a laugh. “He said, ‘OK, we’ll take you.’”
 
He enlisted Aug. 14, 1917, serial number 15577.

His war service wasn’t the end of Buckles’ adventures:

In the 1940s, Buckles worked for a shipping company in Manila, Philippines. He was captured by the Japanese in 1942, and spent the next three and a half years in the Los Baños prison camp. He became malnourished, with a weight below 100 lb, and developed beriberi, yet led his fellow inmates in calisthenics. He was rescued on February 23, 1945.

Buckles married after the war and moved to the farm in West Virginia where he passed away today:

When asked about the secret of his long life, Buckles replied: “Hope,” adding, “[W]hen you start to die… don’t.” He also said the reason he had lived so long was that, “I never got in a hurry.”

Robert Ingebretson, a friend of mine from high school, posted this video of the world’s first 3-D computer animation.

His father, the elder Robert Ingebretsen, was an important pioneer in the development of digital audio. Earlier he’d been a classmate of Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull at the University of Utah in the early 1970s. During that era, the U. was a hotbed of computer and digital graphic, audio, and video innovation. Its computer science department produced important pioneers in the field like Ingebretsen, Catmull, and Adobe founder John Warnock.

Ingebretsen helped Catmull make this 3-D computer animation in 1972:

The film fell into my hands because Ed and my dad were good friends and office mates at the University of Utah in the 1970s where they were both pursuing upper graduate degrees in computer science. My dad was focused on digital audio and Ed (of course) on computer graphics. Either because of their friendship or possibly because they were renting time on the same computer, my dad ended up being responsible for the 3D morphing titles at the beginning and end of the film (his credit is at 6:15). I guess that entitled him to a copy of the 8mm reel (it was rendered to actual film; this, of course, predated any kind of real time digital playback by many years).
 
A couple of years ago, Ed was speaking at the University of Utah (giving, I believe, some version of this talk) and ran into my uncle. They talked about my dad and that resulted in Ed inviting a handful of us to take a tour of Pixar.
 
A few months later we took a plane to SFO for the tour. I sort of expected to shake Ed’s hand and then take a tour with an intern. It wasn’t like that at all. Ed spent an hour with us. It was amazing and incredibly personal. He shared stories about the early days, gave advice about managing creativity, told stories about Steve Jobs, shared thoughts about the transition to Disney and even told stories about my dad.

Catmull later worked for Star Wars director George Lucas’ special effects shop Industrial Light and Magic. While there Catmull was instrumental in making the first computer generated animation used in a motion picture. A few years later ILM’s computer graphics division, along with Catmull, was purchased by a washed up former Silicon Valley executive turned cult leader noted for his obsessive concern for typography.

I pity the fool. I pity 'em.

It is altogether fitting that Ronald Reagan reinvigorated the USSR with hate only to kill it with love.

American public discourse offers us two major explanations for the end of the Cold War. One explanation was, “the Soviet Union didn’t fall, it was pushed.” The opposing explanation holds that a tau neutrino fired from a neutron star on the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy 2.6 million years ago that collided with one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s synapses on June 24, 1959 had more to do with the end of the Cold War than either the United States or President Ronald Reagan.

Some observers (kind according to their own lights) take a more moderate course. They’ll concede that Reagan had something to do with the end of the Cold War. Perhaps mesmerized by the sight of his own reflection looking back at him from Gorby’s shiny bald head, the senile old dinosaur was stunned into a quiescence sufficient to allow Gorby to let peace break out without the hurdle of Reagan’s habitual warmongering. Under other circumstances, Reagan would wake up, eat his Wheaties, break out a map, and plan which bastion of worker’s solidarity he would besiege that day. Gorby’s charm and skill in handling this wild rampaging elephant of imperialist plutocracy was only just enough to overcome even the power of the Breakfast of Champions and end the Cold War.

Others concede that Reagan was more than a patsy skillfully played by a smooth talking Commie. Instead, he was a patsy skillfully played by a smooth talking State Department. In this version, George Schultz and other enlightened diplomats slowly weaned Reagan away from the Precambrian depths of his native Birchery and convinced him that speaking softly was more constructive than his unthinking waving of a big stick. The mandarins of Foggy Bottom supplied the script and Reagan, secretly yearning the direction of Hollywood days of yore, performed his role with all the aplomb a B-movie actor could summon. Reagan was convinced that the diminutive Gorby was Bonzo. It was his job to put the little bald chimp to bed with all the tender care a leading man could devote to an expensive studio prop. If Gorbachev happened to outshine him, it was all in good fun. Reagan understood in the light of the timeless wisdom of W.C. Fields: “Never work with animals or children”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mr. President

I blame many things.

For one thing, the 1970s were good to my family. Oil prices were high. While a stumbling block for most American families, my father was a geologist specializing in domestic petroleum exploration. Due to the oil shock, his skills were in high demand. He was well paid and our family prospered. We had all the Star Wars action figures that money could buy.

The 1980s were less kind. The price of oil plunged and soon there was no need for geologists specializing in domestic petroleum exploration. Indeed, an entire generation would pass before that skill set was in demand again. By then it was too late. My father never worked in his field again, subsisting on the occasional odd job or failed business scheme until he was well past retirement age. Things were tight for years afterward.

Another thing: much of my initial self-education came from a 1964 set of Collier’s Encyclopedias my parents had purchased right after they first got married. It was a good investment from my perspective. After I developed an interest in military history, the trusty encyclopedias became a more useful source of knowledge on military history topics than my parents or siblings limited knowledge (or interest) in the subject. As an accidental side effect, I developed a wide range of historical knowledge (for a pre-adolescent). As Bartholomew J. Simpson once observed, acquiring facts through study and retaining them in memory is like a whole new way to cheat.

However, there was a vacuüm. My knowledge of history after 1964 was limited to personal experience, what I read in the papers or saw on the TV news, or picked up through anecdotes from family and friends. The second half of the 1960s and the 1970s were a historical black hole. I was completely oblivious to the existence of the Great Society, hippies, Vietnam, Watergate, the Oil Shock, malaise, or other events of that period.

Perhaps I was blessed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Consider the Gap to be closed…

Core: I got my job because I have a remarkable talent for reading a teleprompter.

Gap: That’s interesting. I got my job because I have a remarkable talent for killing Tibetans.

Surprises can always happen…

The thirst for a magic bullet is profoundly American. In war, the magic bullet manifests itself in the antiseptic wonder weapons that promise to transform conflict into a harmless, contact-free sporting event. In politics, the magic bullet manifests itself as something like a 2,000+ page health care reform law. In finance, it manifests itself as the AAA rated senior tranche in a collateralized debt obligation (CDO).

In diplomacy, the manifestation of magic bulletry is the “grand bargain”. Every diplomat’s secret desire is making the agreement to end all agreements and conducting the negotiation to end all negotiations. As a magic bullet, the grand bargain would kill all diplomatic disputes for all time, Unfortunately, over every aspiring 1648 or 1815 hangs the long shadow of 1919. Versailles was intended to be the magic bullet to end all magic bullets. Instead, it became the magic bullet that wasn’t. Inasmuch as it possessed magic, it was the magic to ricochet off its intended target and right back at its originators.

In today’s West, dominated by those high on the heady drug of global meliorism, the mere act of talking has somehow become an end unto itself. Whether it’s a “peace process”, “six-party talks”, “quartet”, “agreed framework”, “security council resolution”, or some other high-falutin’ hogwash, Western diplomacy resembles is more the decrepit liturgy of a dying baroque cult than the hard-nosed power brokering beloved by naïve realists. Like a general who puts the desperate lunge for a tactically decisive battle above stodgy strategic logic, a diplomat who puts talking, negotiating, and agreements first puts the tactical cart before the strategic horse.

Strategy seeks to convert power into control to achieve purpose. The ideal was outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 31:

Read the rest of this entry »

BEWARE!!!

Because of the real risk that a butterfly might flap its wings in China and thereby trigger a hurricane that might kill a member of our legislative branch, I propose that we outlaw butterflies.

Think of it as a sort of preventive war on butterflies.

Disembodied Floating Clausewitz Head

Genghis John

Recent outbreaks in the ongoing Cold War between advocates of Maj.Gen. Carl von Clausewitz, KPB and advocates of Col. John Boyd, USAF (ret) coincided with other outbreaks between supporters of Sun Wu and Clausewitz. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that all such outbreaks would vanish into the maw of the Dread Zenpundit Comment Filter (DZCF), the same vortex that swallows <p>, <br / >, and other innocent HTML tags, never to be seen again. Yet, if these debates must rage until every tag destroyed by the DZCF is paid for by yet another tag marking up yet another piece of rhetorical excess, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

I won’t attempt to reconcile Sun-tzu and Clausewitz. That calling was fulfilled by the late Michael Handel in his Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought with an aplomb that is far beyond my poor power to add or detract. However, I will second Adam Elkus’ efforts in pointing out where the frameworks of Clausewitz and Boyd coincide.

Read the rest of this entry »

From Wikipedia:

During World War II, nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty-five years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.^[2] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers in the field.^[2]

Good job, atom bomb.

Good Boy!

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

 

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”

 

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book.

 

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

 

By the President of the United States of America.

 

A Proclamation.

 

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of almighty God.

 

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

 

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

 

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

 

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

 

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

 

William H. Seward,

Secretary of State

POWER → CONTROL → PURPOSE

This is the threefold path of strategy:

1. power: the possibility of friendly conditions
2. control: conditions friendly to aspiration
3. purpose: an aspiration for how things should be

Power is converted into control to achieve purpose. This is 97% of any general theory of strategy. The rest is details.

Read the rest of this entry »