Sunday, December 14, 2025
Friday, December 14, 1945. Tragedy and ethnic Germans, the LDS and conscription.
As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west. One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.
The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.
Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.
It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:
1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.
2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.
3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.
4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”
5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.
6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.
7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.
8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.
9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.
10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.
11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.
12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.
13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.
14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.
15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.
16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.
17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.
Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.
Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.
I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon. It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned. While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.
Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid. Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.
There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years. In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.
Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945. Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task. Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it. In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided. I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s. By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today. Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.
When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will. That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it. Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now. That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class. Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.
Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it. Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military. But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve. Their characters would have been better off if they had.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.
Tuesday, December 14, 1915. A petition.
Native American Rev. Red Fox James PH D. D. D (Red Fox Skiuhushu) presumed to be from the Blackfoot Tribe of Montana, arrived in Washington D.C. after riding 4,000 miles on horseback from state to state seeking approval for a day to honor Native Americans. His starting point was the Crow Reservation in Montana, or Sheridan Wyoming.
He presented his petition on this day.
He was an active member of the Society of American Indians and was the Most High Chief of the Tipi Order of America. He was also the first to organize the Indian Boy Scouts in America, at the United States Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
He had been born in Canada in 1884 and lived to at least 1946.
The ride is the origin of Native American Heritage Month.
Central Park in New York on this day:
Last edition:
Sunday, December 12, 1915. Allied failure in Macedonia.
Labels: 1910s, 1915, Allied Powers, Battle of Kosturino, Central Powers, Mexico, Music, Personalities, World War One, Yaqui people
Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 13. Disassociation.
December 12, 2025
From the Casper Star Tribune.
The Democratic bill to extend the credits failed.
Senate blocks Obamacare tax subsidy extension, all but ensuring spikes for Wyoming consumers: Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called tax subsidy extension a “disaster” and lobbied for a Republican health savings account proposal that also failed.
So did a moronic Republic bill for health savings accounts. That was no sort of plan.
The evidence is too well established to ignore. A national health care system needs to be established and frankly it would not be that difficult. It'll be interesting to see if this brings it about, as the populist contingent that opposes it, including here in the state, is about to lose its insurance. This is, quite frankly, a disaster.
It's a disaster that the GOP hopes will kill off the AHCA and there really isn't any serious proposals to replace it. They want it dead, as it's "socialism", even though it isn't. The Health Savings Account concept was just pablum and everyone is well aware that it'd achieve nothing at all.
Which brings me back to this point. The difference between right wing populism and left wing populism is nearly non existent. The ox that will end up being gored here is that of the street level right wing populist, who can be, and in some instances was, left wing populist.
Speaking of average folks:
Also from the CST.
December 13, 2025
December 14, 2025
The Federal government terminated the collective bargaining status for the union that covers TSA officers, the American Federation of Government Employees, as to TAS officers.
The union, which covers the employees of other agencies as well, has over 300,000 members, probably none of whom will caste a vote for the GOP next year.
We also have Chuck Gray sounding like a broken record:
Gray's in a bit of a spot as he'd hoped to use the Secretary of State's office as a springboard to something else. It's not looking like that will pay off, as Bill Barlow is clearly in the lead for the Governor's office and Gray can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound like it's from the junior edition of the MAGA playlist, which is rapidly becoming a set of moly oldies. To make matters worse for him, he's now so acclimated to absurd name calling that he can't stop it, as in:
We should be deeply troubled by the efforts of Gov. Gordon and other insider politicians to jam through woke wind projects that violate so many of our core principles as Wyomingites.
"Woke wind projects"?
I know what he means, of course, which is that as the Federal Government backed wind under Biden, and as global warming is a fib, and as Joe Biden is responsible for all of the ills in society, it's the dreaded evil "woke". Gray has used this sort of rhetoric so often, however, that if a cafe burns his toast I'm sure that he reflexively calls the short order cook a liberal, let wing woke Marxist.
Gray's career in Wyoming politics is probably shot. Barlow will get the Governor's office, Hageman won't run for it as she knows that, so she'll keep her office, Lummis is the Wyoming sphinx, rarely saying anything, and she'll keep her office. Gray will be lucky if he doesn't draw opposition and lose his.
On wind, all the fossil fuel true believers were dead set against it but now oil is hovering around $60.00 and it appears that the Federal Government might be pushing to depress the price. A well placed GOP politician told me the other day that the administration wants it at $30.00/bbl next year, which would wipe out domestic production and throw Wyoming into an oilfield depression.
On a different note:
Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 12. Don't look . . . everything's just fine edition.
Friday, December 14, 1900. Quantum Mechanics.
Max Planck presented his paper Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspektrum (On the Theory of the Law of Energy Distribution in Normal Spectrum) at a meeting of the German Physical Society in Berlin.
For that reason, today is regarded as the birthday of quantum mechanics.
The 1899 Hague Convention was revised.
Last edition:
Saturday, December 8, 1900. James Roosevelt dies.
Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 9. The Neville Chamberlain Edition.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
The settlement of the Czechoslovak problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is a paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you perhaps have already heard what it contains, but I would just like to read it to you. " ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again".[3]
* * *
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour.
I believe it is peace for our time...
Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.
Neville Chamberlain.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain showing off the Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler that granted Germany territorial concessions in Czechoslovakia and which set the stage for increased German avarice and World War Two.
November 23, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War.
Regarding the articles of surrender being pushed by Donald Trump on Ukraine, a CST headline:
KYIV’S ALLIES PUSH BACK ON US PEACE PLAN
The claimant of Presidential Power, Дональд Трамп, stated that the proposal was his "final offer", as if the US is doing the offering. Secretary of State Rubio, who always looks like he's caught in a bad dream and who is probably the only significant member of the cabinet who is not a complete today, claimed that the plan is a "wish list", not a plan.
Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said earlier in the day that the plan is “one of the most serious geopolitical mistakes in my lifetime" comparing it to the 1938 Munich Pact. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in statement, “if Administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisors.” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said McConnell’s criticism didn’t go far enough. “Putin is a murderer, a rapist and an assassin. . . We should not do anything that makes him feel like he has a win here.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan an “outrage.”
Israel v. Hamas in Gaza
Israel hit Gaza yesterday with airstrikes.
November 24, 2025
Israel v. Hezbollah
Israel launched a raid in Lebanon Saturday that killed Hezbollah's chief of staff.
November 26, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
Yuri Ushakov: Yeah Steve hi, how are you?
YU: I am ok. Congratulations my friend.
YU: You made a great job. Just a great job. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.
SW: Thank you Yuri and thanks for your support. I know your country supported it and I thank you.
YU: Yeah, because we think that you are making the real job there in the region.
YU: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you need to solve only one problem. [laughs]
SW: I know! How do we get that solved?
YU: You do. And when you think it could be possible?
SW: I think as soon as you suggest, my guy is ready to do it.
SW: Yuri, Yuri, here’s what I would do. My recommendation.
SW: But here’s what I think would be amazing.
SW: What if, what if... hear me out...
YU: I will discuss that with my boss and then I come back to you. Ok?
YU: Ok, that sounds good. Sounds good.
SW: And here’s one more thing: Zelenskiy is coming to the White House on Friday.
YU: Ok, ok. I got your advice. So I discuss that with my boss and then I come back to you, ok?
SW: Ok Yuri, I’ll speak to you soon.
From Bloomberg.
This comes at a time when the illegitimate Trump Administration, headed by a man who committed actual sedition, is threatening to prosecute members of Congress for sedition.
November 28, 2025
Russo Ukrainian War
Putin termed the Trump surrender terms a "starting point" and threatened to overrun Ukraine with Russia's larger army if Ukraine did not come to terms.
It should be plain by now that Russia's army is crap. It has been since some point before 1900. If it could overrun Ukraine, it would have by now. If all aid was cut off to it, and Russia then overran Ukraine, a guerrilla war would then ensue.
cont:
US. v. Venezuelan boats
From the Washington Post:
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
So now we kill people in the water. Something we decried in World War One and World War Two.
A U-boat commander was tried and executed for that after the Second World War.
Heinz-Wilhelm Eck. He ordered his crew to kill survivors and was convicted of a war crime and sentenced to death as a result.
United States v. Venezuela
Trump threatened to close Venezuelan air space.
cont:
The United Kingdom no longer shares intelligence with the US in the Caribbean due to the illegal actions of the United States in this region.
December 5, 2025
Congo
Rwanda and Congo signed an agreement aimed at bringing peace in the region, but analysts are skeptical of it holding.
United States v. Venezuela
U.S. Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley denied in front of Congress that there'd been a "kill them all" order given by Hegseth.
December 8, 2025
United States v. Venezuela
Members of Congress appeared on the weekend shows about the murder of two men in the fist strike who were on a remnant of the destroyed boat.
Tom Cotton showed himself the most extreme, maintaining that they were a dangers as they were attempting to upright the boat and reload the cargo, which is absurd. He pretty much took the position that killing drug runners through military force is perfectly okay.
If that's the GOP position, and it apparently is in Congress, they should just state that. The problem is, of course, that Trump just pardoned convicted drug runner, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. Cotton claimed not to know the details of that while berating the host of This Week.
Add Cotton to the list if individuals who are temperamentally unsuited to be in Congress.
Thailand v. Cambodia
The countries entered into a ceasefire agreement recently which Trump claims as one of his "eight wars". Thailand bombed Cambodian positions on their disputed border yesterday.
December 11, 2025
United States v. Venezuela
The US seized the Guyana-flagged "Very Large Crude Carrier" that was loaded covertly with 1.1 million barrels of oil in mid-November. The ship was headed for Cuba, but has been anchored offshore Venezuela since being loaded with oil. Half of the country's oil production goes to Cuba.
Why did we stop it?
This isn't clear, actually. The government claims the ship is involved in the illegal transportation of oil.
December 14, 2025
US (and Syria) v ISIL
An attack in Syria killed U.S. troops and civilians.
Israel v. Hamas
An attack by Hamas wounded Israeli soldiers and Israel retaliated by killing a top Hamas figure.
Related threads:
Labels: 2020s, 2025, 2025 Occupation of Washington D.C., It was because of the War in Afghanistan, The Second Trump Administration, The War in Afghanistan, West Virginia National Guard, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History
Last edition:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)