The Big Speech: The New Nationalism; Theodore Roosevelt Osawatomie Kansas, 1910

We come here to-day to commemorate one of the epochmaking events of the long struggle for the rights of man - the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country - this great Republic - means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.

There have been two great crises in our country's history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises - in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, not only did you render life worth living for our generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington's colleagues. If this Republic had been founded by them only to be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then the judgment of the world would have been that Washington's work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned Washington's work, as you carried to achievement the high purpose of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will be forever associated; and Kansas was the theater upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.

It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished. Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking back, we are all of us now able to do justice to the valor and the disinterestedness and the love of the right, as to each it was given to see the right, shown both by the men of the North and the men of the South in that contest which was finally decided by the attitude of the West. We can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self devotion shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have had to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowledge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be found fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war for the uplift of their common country. all alike resolute to raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor and recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the Republic; for to them the republic owes its all; for to them it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.

I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest of half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enable the men of that day to meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do honor to the man who, in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the same time, these same good people nervously shrink from, or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln's time.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:

"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

And again:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.

"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.... Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world."

And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike sentence:

"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us to-day. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on according to the spirit in which the army was carried on. You never get perfect justice, but the effort in handling the army was to bring to the front the men who could do the job. Nobody grudged promotion to Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, because they earned it. The only complaint was when a man got promotion which he did not earn.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.

I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the games, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit. And you men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the brave man who fought, and punishment for the coward who shirked his work. Is not that so?

Now, this means that our government, national and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice - full, fair, and complete - and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, and I most dislike and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protections to property, and we must make that promise good But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business. I do not wish to see the nation forced into the ownership of the railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective regulation, which shall be based on a full knowledge of all the facts, including a physical valuation of property. This physical valuation is not needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis of honest capitalization.

We have come to recognize that franchises should never be granted except for a limited time, and never without proper provision for compensation to the public. It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, and coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have not doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.

I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare. For that purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an agency of first importance. Its powers, and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that of the Interstate Commerce Commission, should be largely increased. We have a right to expect from the Bureau of Corporations and from the Interstate Commerce Commission a very high grade of public service. We should be as sure of the proper conduct of the interstate railways and the proper management of interstate business as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the national banks, and we should have as effective supervision in one case as in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the amendment to the act in the shape in which it finally passed Congress at the last session, represent a long step in advance, and we must go yet further.

There is a wide-spread belief among our people that under the methods of making tariffs, which have hitherto obtained, the special interests are too influential. Probably this is true of both the big special interests and the little special interests. These methods have put a premium on selfishness, and, naturally, the selfish big interests have gotten more than their smaller, though equally selfish brothers. The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration. To this end there must be an expert tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of political pressure or of improper business influence. Such a commission can find the real difference between cost of production, which is mainly the difference of labor cost here and abroad. As fast as its recommendations are made, I believe in revising one schedule at a time. A general revision of the tariff almost inevitably leads to logrolling and the subordination of the general public interest to local and special interests.

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading the army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered - not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective - a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown among the other nations which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs.

It is hardly necessary for me to repeat that I believe in an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us abroad that respect which is the surest guaranty of peace. A word of special warning to my fellow citizens who are as progressive as I hope I am. I want them to keep up their interest in our internal affairs; and I want them also continually to remember Uncle Sam's interest abroad. Justice and fair dealing among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed, with the vital exception that each nation must do its own part in international police work. If you get into trouble here, you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other peoples in connection with us. I believe in national friendships and heartiest good-will to all nations; but national friendships, like those between men, must be founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any American who did not try to make the American Government act as Justly toward the other nations in international relations as he himself would act toward any individual in private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.

Of conservation I shall speak more at length elsewhere. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget now that one hundred years ago there were public men of good character who advocated the nation selling its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper democratic ground that the land should be granted in small sections to the men who were actually to till it and live on it. Now, with the water-power with the forests, with the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that there are many people who will go with us in conserving the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them for their benefit. That is one of the fundamental reasons why the special interest should be driven out of politics. Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.

I have spoken elsewhere also of the great task which lies before the farmers of the country to get for themselves and their wives and children not only the benefits of better farming, but also those of better business methods and better conditions of life on the farm. The burden of this great task will fall, as it should, mainly upon the great organizations of the farmers themselves. I am glad it will, for I believe they are all able to handle it. In particular, there are strong reasons why the Departments of Agriculture of the various States, and the United States Department of Agriculture, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations should extend their work to cover all phases of farm life, instead of limiting themselves. as they have far too often limited themselves in the past, solely to the question of the production of crops. And now a special word to the farmer. I want to see him make the farm as fine a farm as it can be made; and let him remember to see that the improvement goes on indoors as well as out; let him remember that the farmer's wife should have her share of thought and attention just as much as the farmer himself. Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

But I think we may go still further. The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare. Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him. No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. We need comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself we need to set our faces like Mint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers. If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that, whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other. I have small use for the public servant who can always see and denounce the corruption of the capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself, especially before elections, to say a word about lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small use for the man, be he a judge on the bench, or editor of a great paper, or wealthy and influential private citizen, who can see clearly enough and denounce the lawlessness of mob-violence, but whose eyes are closed so that he is blind when the question is one of corruption in business on a gigantic scale. Also remember what I said about excess in reformer and reactionary alike. If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them. Here in Kansas there is one paper which habitually denounces me as the tool of Wall Street, and at the same time frantically repudiates the statement that I am a Socialist on the ground that is an unwarranted slander of the Socialists.

National efficiency has many factors. It is a necessary result of the principle of conservation widely applied. In the end it will determine our failure or success as a nation. National efficiency has to do, not only with natural resources and with men, but is equally concerned with institutions. The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the people of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all the people. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the national legislature fails to do its duty in providing a national remedy, so that the only national activity is the purely negative activity of the judiciary in forbidding the State to exercise power in the premises.

I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The national government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the national government.

The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from overdivision of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people.

I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.

If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-practices act effective to prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases.

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.

The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs - but, first of all, sound in their home life, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well - just so far, and no farther, we may count our civilization a success. We must have - I believe we have already - a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent. Let me again illustrate by a reference to the Grand Army. You could not have won simply as a disorderly and disorganized mob. You needed generals; you needed careful administration of the most advanced type; and a good commissary - the cracker line. You well remember that success was necessary in many different lines in order to bring about general success. You had to have the administration at Washington good, just as you had to have the administration in the field; and you had to have the work of the generals good. You could not have triumphed without that administration and leadership; but it would all have been worthless if the average soldier had not had the right stuff in him. He had to have the right stuff in him, or you could not get it out of him. In the last analysis, therefore, vitally necessary though it was to have the right kind of organization and the right kind of generalship, it was even more vitally necessary that the average soldier should have the fighting edge, the right character.

So it is in our civil life. No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitution for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man's career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character - character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good husband - that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

The Best Post of the Week of September 29, 2013.

Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was. . .

Today In Wyoming's History: October 4

Today In Wyoming's History: October 4:

October 4

Today is Cinnamon roll day in Sweden.

2013  Major blizzard shuts down central Wyoming.

Second major storm of the season.  Pretty much right on time.  Last snow came in just about exactly one week ago.

For a first snow, that's late.  And this started off as a rain storm, which is also atypical.  When I was a kid, we usually had our first storm in the first half of September.  I always worried about it at the time, as it might mean that we couldn't get out for sage chickens.

Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was.

When smoking really took off in North America, I don't know, but it was no doubt pretty darned early. Tobacco, after all, was one of the first cash crops ever grown in North America.  You can't eat it, and you can't smoke it all yourself, so it was grown for money.  That makes it a bit of a unique crop in some ways, for the early history of the country, although it wasn't the only crop grown for cash.

Children of tenant farmer, working tobacco, circa 1916.

Tobacco actually fueled the early slave trade in the US more than cotton.  At the time of the Revolution, slavery was an economic institution in the South because of tobacco, not because of cotton.  It was partially for that reason that the founders were willing to put up with the horrific evil of slavery, as they presumed that it would decrease in a tobacco farming industry which would become increasingly the province of smaller farmers and demand increasingly fewer chained laborers.  Of course, they were wrong, but that shows that the time, smoking the continent up was already a pretty big deal.

I don't have a clue what percentage of the population smoked, or used tobacco in some other fashion, but by the late 19th Century, it was (still) pretty darned common.  Maybe a majority of men smoked.  They didn't all smoke cigarettes, however.  Indeed, most didn't. Cigarettes were somewhat uncommon. Cigars and Pipes were the norm for smokers at the time.

Banjo playing Union artillerymen during the Civil War.  Contrary to what people might generally expect, this pipe looks surprisingly 1950ish.

Civil War era cavalryman with rather long pipe.

Cigars became an increasingly big deal as time passed, and by the early 20th Century they were a pretty big deal.  In the first decade and a half of the 20th Century, it was really the cigar, not the cigarette, that dominated tobacco consumption.

Cigar workers.  Only children, that kid in the middle isn't smoking that cigar as a prop.

Criminal defendant Daisy Grace being escorted to court. She'd be found innocent of drugging and shooting her husband.  The officers in this pre World War One photo wear the classic summertime detectives outfit of the era, boaters and suits.  The officer on the left found it consistent with his duties to be packing a stogie.

Cigarettes weren't a big deal in this era.  They existed, to be sure, but most smokers opted for cigars, if they were going to light up.  What the appeal of cigarettes was at the time I don't know, but it basically seems to be that they were convenient under the circumstances, or that they were regarded as a bit edgy.

The captain is well dressed, and holding a cigarette that's burned right down to the end.  Why he's smoking a cigarette, and not a cigar, in this pre World War One photograph, is not apparent.

 "Cigarette Girl", that is a girl offering cigarettes for sale, prior to World War One.  Women in this time period did not smoke, and particularly did not smoke cigarettes, unless they wanted to be considered rather risque or avant garde.

 Women may not have smoked much, but they were exploited a great deal, in early cigarette advertisements.  Already sort of edgy, manufacturers appealed to men via women.  Women smokers weren't aimed at, but male ones were, through advertisements of this type..  As an aside, it's unlikely that anyone ever adopted such an unlikely hat in the history of hats.

 What exactly the appeal of this advertisement is, I'm not sure. This is a European advertisement for a brand that I've never heard of. How smoking cigarettes in Europe compares with the US, I have not a clue.

 Cigarettes very early on associated themselves with Turkey and Arabia.  Whether or not the Arabs were every big cigarette smokers I don't know, but of course the Turks are associated with water pipes.  This advertisement uniquely associates itself with "ambition."

It was World War One that really got cigarettes rolling in the United States.  Up until that time, they were relatively uncommon, but the war made them common. Easy to smoke and carry, they were also provided to troops by the manufacturers.  In a situation in which death was always seconds away, cigarettes apparently provided some small relief from a grim situation, at least until that situation revisited itself in  the rise of cancer some 20 years later, which was demonstratively indicated in medical statistics.

Cigarettes head for No Man's Land.

World War One brought cigarettes into the North American mainstream in force.  Thousands, probably millions, of men who would have only smoked the occasional cigar or pipe were pretty dedicated cigarette smokers by the end of World War One. And the Jazz Age of the 1920s only expanded it.  As it expanded, it expanded not only in the male segment of the population, but the female as well.  Starting off as a species of protest, the addictive cigarette crossed over to the female population pretty quickly.

Advertisements like this pre World War One cigarette advertisement were probably originally aimed at men, but by the 1920s they also came to symbolize youth in the Jazz Age. Women joined men as smokers.

By the 1930s, smoking cigarettes was really in.  Everybody was smoking.  A habit that had been male dominated, and centered on a means of conveyance that was somewhat impractical, pipes and cigars, had become common and convenient.  Everyone, male and female, smoked. The 1930s was Tobacco Road. 

By World War Two, this was even more the case.  Cigarettes were even included in C Rations.  But for the fact that the Germans were also smoking it up, and even smoking vile Russian cigarettes, the Allies could probably have been smelled coming over the seas long before the invasion fleet was visible on D-Day.

 Maybe "some smoke", but asbestosis, a fatal disease amongst those exposed to asbestos, is not only a problem that's pronounced amongst those who served in the Navy (where asbestos lining was common in ships) but it's much more pronounced amongst those who smoked.

 Women not only ferried aircraft in World War Two, they were dedicated smokers by the 1940s as well.

 The chance that a person might get shot by the Germans or the Japanese no doubt made concerns about smoking comparatively small to soldiers or, as depicted here, Marines.  As for the "T"Zone, well. . .

 They've "got what it takes", no doubt, but no doubt many later wished that it hadn't included cigarettes.

 During World War Two "Lucky Strike" "went to war" and it package became green.,

All of which, I suppose, just goes to say that by the 1940s people were smoking everywhere.  Every house, every restaurant, every bar, and every office.  It was smokey.

I wonder how many people appreciate that now? Everything must have smelled like smoke. 

My parents didn't smoke.  Neither one.  That was pretty rare really, in their era.  I've never been a smoker either.  I guess that's always made me a bit sensitive to smoke, but I well remember an era when smoke in restaurants was very common.  My parents didn't smoke, but we had ashtrays at home, in case they had a party or gathering, as it would just be expected that people who were invited would smoke.  My kids are so unfamiliar with ashtrays that recently one of them, upon seeing one of the old ones from my folk's house, had to ask what it was.  They'd be surprised to learn that in grade school art one of the project we did was to make a pottery ashtray.

And in the 1980s, when I was a National Guardsmen, smoking amongst solders was extremely common. I well remember hearing the command "smoke 'em if you got 'em."  Certain Army classrooms, while I was in the Guard, were filled with vast quantities of smoke.  The aircraft I flew over to Korea on, in the mid 1980s, was so full of tobacco smoke that it looked like it was on fire, when we looked back down the plane. This was just the norm of the times.  When I first was practicing law, we had one secretary who routinely smoked in her office, as well as a lawyer who did the same.  One lawyer smoked cigars if he was approaching a trial.

Well, no more.  Now, there's no more smoking in office buildings.  No more smoking in cars either.  And even bars are often smoke free, based on the rare occasions when I happen to go in one.  The air smells like, well. . . air, most of the time.  

I don't mean to condemn anyone for smoking in years past.  But, man, what a change.  Now, it's hard to watch something like Double Indemnity and not think; "geez, everything must have reeked of smoke."

Okay, now this foolishness has gone far enough!

Due to the temporary shutdown of the federal government,
the Library of Congress is closed to the public and researchers beginning October 1, 2013 until further notice.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 1

Today In Wyoming's History: October 1:

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 Depression era WPA poster.

The Federal Government shuts down, and its partially tied to health care. How did we get here?

As people deep in the Philippine jungles, or off the coast of Ceylon, where they remain without contact to the outside world even know, the U.S. Government has closed for business.  The government ran ashore on the second collision with funding in under a year, the last of which depressed our bonding status, even though we all know that they're not even debating actually paying all the bills they're racking up.  In essence the debate is about how much underfunded we'll be, a fairly pathetic state of affairs by most measures.

Part of this has developed as Republicans in Congress are taking another run at defunding the Affordable Health Care Act (like the act or hate it, I can't stand the nickname "Obamacare.")  What with all the debate on this issue, you'd think we be hearing about how we got to this point. That is, the history of this would seemingly be important.  Congress isn't saying too much about that, however, and I'd wager that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are largely ignorant of it.  Those ignorant of history are subject to getting a dope slap from it, so perhaps some education is in order.

Americans like to think we have a fee market health care system, but we do not and haven't since World War Two.  What we really have is a health insurance based system, although it's breaking down by anyone's measure..  Prior to WWII, most Americans just paid as they went for health care, which had the collateral effects of making health care generally very service oriented on a person to person basis.  I.e., "family" doctors were the majority of doctors not just because of the times, but because if mostly "health care consumers" were average folks with average wages, that's where the work was, and it wasn't going to pay all that well as a rule either.  That doesn't mean that there weren't surgeons, etc., of course, and it doesn't mean the level of care, where received, wasn't very good.  Anyhow, the switch to an insurance based system, with health insurance companies regulated on a state by state basis, alters the free market system as the carriers determine what benefits exist and what they regard as a fair price, based upon actuarial concerns and analysis.  Whatever that price may be, it's not the same as an average person going in to the doctor, and of course people who are covered can go in for much, much more than they otherwise would be able to afford.

Health insurance existed prior to World War Two, but most people didn't have it. But when wages were frozen during the war, for the first time a lot of companies started offering health insurance as a company benefit.  The law didn't allow employers to increase wages to compete with other employers, but they could sweeten the pot by offering health insurance.  For a long time after WWII health insurance benefits and retirement benefits were American employer norms for their employees.  Health insurance actually became increasingly common following the war, and was very common by the 1970s, as an employee benefit.  That's passing away now, however, as its become increasingly expensive for employers to provide.

In contrast to the US's history in this area, Germany introduced a type of national health insurance in the Bismarck era as a type of industrial insurance to combat the rising influence of Socialism and to acknowledge the increased danger of industrial work. The German model of health insurance is the model for at least one states Workers Compensation law, my state's, which provides it as a state benefit (no private carrier) and taxes employers accordingly.  The Germans seem to like their system, but there's always a lot of complaining about the same basic type of system here in the state, even though it actually runs fairly efficiently and pays for a lot of horrific injuries and their medical treatment.  It's interesting to note here that the Germans, whose political history is extremely different from ours, introduced national health insurance to combat socialism, when here its generally regarded as a type of socialism. That doesn't mean it is or isn't, but it's interesting to note that Bismarck took that approach in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of his primary opponents.  It worked fairly well too, in that the Socialist did not take over in Germany until the Weimar Republic, at which time they were the first, and ineffectual, party to govern under the Post World War One parliamentary system that fell in 1932.

The British NHS system, which most Britons seem to be quite proud of, also came about due to World War Two, sort of.  It was first proposed in its current form by the Labor Party in its 1945 platform.  As we all know, Churchill lost his position in 1945 at a time when most Britons believed a return to the Depression was inevitable.  Indeed, that was a very current view all over the world and generally assumed to be almost a certainty.

Stating that "Victory at war must be followed by a Prosperous Peace" the Labor Party proposed:

"By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill-health can be prevented. In addition the best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment.

In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.

Labour will work specially for the care of Britain's mothers and their children - children's allowances and school medical and feeding services, better maternity and child welfare services. A healthy family life must be fully ensured and parenthood must not be penalised if the population of Britain is to be prevented from dwindling.

Sort of interesting, therefore.  Germany's national healthcare system came about when it was becoming a modern industrial power, in an effort to tamp the socialist down.  The US system came about as a way to skirt the wage freezes imposed during World War Two in order to attract workers.  The British NHS came about when Labor successfully argued that it could better protect the British against what was thought to be an almost certain return to Depression economic conditions.   Whether Labor successfully ran the government after the war is another question, but the NHS remains today and no British political party is going to touch it.

A national health care system was first proposed in the United States during the Truman Administration, but it failed to get very far.  Truman's presidency came hard upon the heels of FDRs and at the time the New Deal was pretty much accepted as having saved the United States from full economic collapse during the Great Depression. That proposition wasn't debated much (although it was always debated by Hoover, who remained a dedicated public servant even after the loss of the election to FDR) but it isn't nearly as accepted now, and really hasn't been since the rise of modern Conservatism starting in the late 1970s.  Even at that, however, Truman wasn't able to pass a national health care bill. The concept revived from time to time, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, without getting very far. Prior to Bill Clinton's attempt during his administration, spearheaded by his wife Hillary, the last really serious attempt had been under Richard Nixon.

Prior to Barack Obama's presidency nobody got very far with such ideas, as noted, in part because Americans were basically satisfied with the existing health care system, which had roots predating World War Two, but which had been heavily impacted by it, as noted.  People might asked what changed between 1970 and now, or 1990 and now, and the answer probably would be "personal experience."  And what that personal experience would likely reveal is a change in culture and in technology.

Prior to World War Two the country was much more rural than it is today.  Indeed, the rural nature of the country, which was predominate up through World War One, has declined steadily since that time and is mostly a memory, if that, for most people now. But that isn't that long ago in historical terms, and its an important aspect of this story.  "Rural" doesn't mean "everyone lives on a farm" like people tend to believe.  But agriculture heavily impacts everything about a rural society, and part of what that impacts is the nature of towns and cities in rural areas.

In that more rural era, doctors were principally general practitioners and generally had solo practices.  Over time this has steadily changed to where today group practices are likely the norm.  At any rate, in that earlier time, health care was very direct and personal.  It was also much less technical. Given that, being that it was less technical and more direct, it was priced accordingly.

That doesn't mean everything was wonderful.  Less technical equates with an era when a great deal less was known on every medical topic.  My grandfather, for example, who was born on this day, died from a stroke when he was 47 years old. There was just nothing that could be done for his condition.  He had high blood pressure and that equated with a type of death sentence really.  One of my partner's father's shared the same fate.  Today, they'd probably both have lived on a great deal longer.

At any rate, technology and an evolving practice model, funded mostly by insurance, has provided us with wonderful health care, but it's also become very expensive.  From World War Two, and increasing on through the 1970s, this was largely funded by health care which was purchased by employers. Some people bought their own health insurance, which was affordable at the time. Those without insurance paid as they went, which was inconvenient for most, and bad for some, but generally workable.

Now, expenses have reached the point where many cannot afford to pay themselves and health insurance has gone from being a workplace benefit to a near necessity for most.  People actually keep jobs just for the insurance.  I've known, for example, of one person who kept a job she wanted to leave to return to school for just that reason.  As a practical matter, the government has become the insurer of last resort for many who have no insurance and who end up using the hospital, in emergencies, as their health care provider.  Increased private medical competition, in the meantime, has become an increasingly common feature of health care as the large dollar amounts that are present in the industry naturally has resulted in private competition.  County and state facilities, therefore, end up in competition with each other, with the practical result of that often being that county and state facilities end up becoming more and more in the nature of public clinics in some ways.

And people have an expectation of health care, which is not abnormal, nor greedy, in a generally affluent society.  That's true of our views on a lot of various things, and its particularly true of health care.  People generally feel that anyone ought to, and even should, seek the health care that they need, when they need it, and there's a feeling of distress when a certain percentage of the population cannot afford it.  Put another way, back in the 1940s if a person was afflicted with a stroke died, it was probably the case that this would have occurred no matter what.  If they were unable to secure health care for some reason for that condition, the result probably would have been the same as if they did.  This would not be true, of course, for every sort of condition, but what that does mean is that there was an overall greater acceptance that if economic conditions prevented treatment, that this was part of the nature of life, rather than being something that would be regarded as deeply unfair. And, for that matter, the medical community made a dedicated effort to include those who could not pay in their practices. They still do, but the nature of that society wide had become different.

I note all of this not to promote or discredit any particular health care system.  It does, however, inform a bit of the background of the debate, and it might explain why the system that is presently being debated is an insurance based system.  That is, the AHCA is actually an insurance centric national system, which was probably a natural route given our history in this area, although its certainly been a controversial one.

The Big Picture: Dyersville Iowa

Dyersville Iowa, where my father's father was born.

Courthouses of the West: Still Open For Business

Courthouses of the West: Still Open For Business: This is an announcement e-mail message generated by Court action through the CM/ECF system. Please DO NOT RESPOND to this e-mail because ...

Sandwich Monday: The Woody Allen : The Salt : NPR

Sandwich Monday: The Woody Allen : The Salt : NPR

That is one fine looking sandwich.

Percentage of U.S. Soldiers in Europe in 1944 who only had a grade school education.

33%

Including Maj. Gen. Raymond S. McClain, commander of the XIS Corps.

Percentage of U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1944, with high school degrees

25%.

Perentage of Dentist conscripted in World War Two by 1944

1/3d.

Average U.S. Soldeir, hieght and weight, 1944

5'8".  144lbs.

Rick Atkinson, The Guns At Last Light, page 19.

Prostituting their image

I'm not a fan of children's television, and I'm particularly not a fan of television aimed at "tweens."  Generally, it's well established that that children tend to watch television which the producers of which have aimed at an older demographic, so TV aimed at tweens really hits a younger demographic than that, just as the teenage soap dramas that television loves to slop out tends to hit tweens. 

Most of the tween TV is incredibly vapid.  The plots are all stamped out of a mold, and the shows are overall extremely irritating.  It'd be better, in numerous ways, if the entire genera didn't exist at all.

Of of the tween television that's been around in recent years, one of the very worst, in my view, was Hanna Montana.  I hated it, but my daughter simply loved it when she was a little girl.  This isn't surprising.  Overall, Hanna Montana had a huge following amongst girls.  For those so fortunate as to not know what the show was about, it centered on a early teenaged country music star who lived a double life, being Hanna Montana while on the stage and being Myley while not.  It was stupid, in my view, but it was relatively harmless, and it wasn't at the chemical weapons grade level of irritation that the Suite Life of Zack and Cody were.

I mostly dislike these shows because I hate how stupid and predictable they are.  I frankly think that they grossly underestimate the intelligence of children, but I have to confess looking back that when I was in grade school, when we went home, we'd watch Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy or Hogan's Heroes, shows of equal stupidity that were aimed at adults.  At any rate, my dislike, therefore, is largely personal and perceptional.

But, amongst the other reasons to dislike this genera of television, indeed to hope for its demise, is what it apparently does to its starts, the young actors who are featured in these shows, and what that in turn does to our culture.

Popular entertainers are, in general, seemingly uniquely plagued by personality problems.  Perhaps that has something to do with why they entered those fields in the first place.  There are people in any sort of performing art who are stable as can be, but for those who are singularly focused on the regions of those fields that produce fame, there seem to be a lot of truly messed up people.  And our culture has become so debased that for those who need to feed off of constant fame, the depths to which they need to reach down to are increasingly deeper.

For that reason, I'm often amazed that anyone thinks anything that people in the entertainment industry does is interesting or avant-garde.  Most of it is just "look at me!"  This is particularly the case when they take up a cause, as the basic nature of their personalities is such that what ever cause is trendy at the time, which they can fallacious claims as avant-garde, they will.  In other words, if Hollywood is protesting for you, you are probably yesterday's news.  If an entertainer really wanted to shock, the most shocking thing they could really do would be to espouse orthodoxy on something.

Indeed, given that this class of people, while famous, seemingly uniquely plagued by peculiar problems, it further amazes me that anyone is really interested in their personal opinions on anything.  Take any number of actors who run through spouses and housemates like cats run through kibble and ask yourself, why would I listed to this screwed up person's opinions on politics?  But I digress. . . .

Back to child actors, one of the things that being a star, young, in these fields seem to do is to create a massive dependence on news media attention in the souls of these people.  But translation of childhood success into adult success, as an entertainer, has always been against the odds.  Most don't make it.  But, up until recently, most seemingly tried to make the transition and faded away, with some never adapting very well to the spotlight's glare growing dim.

Now, however, with our debased focus on the vulgar and obscene, these declining personalities have hit on the truly pathetic, the prostitution of their image.

This seems to have really started to be noticeable, in its current form, with Lindsey Lohan, who started off as a child actress and then went into her teens as sort of a troubled soul. Right about that time, she took up a lot of public bad behavior, and then finally, in an attempt to get back into the public eye, determined to show all she had in Playboy magazine.  So, an actress associated early on with "identical cousins" in the renewed Parent Trap, or high school glamor girl in other shows, now was bearing it all for inspiring lust in glossy print.  Pretty sad decline, but apparently one that didn't serve to reverse the declining fortunes of ossified creepster Hugh Hefner's sagging empire.  Apparently the bloom was already off her rose.

More recently, we've been unwilling participants in Amanda Bynes efforts to run out in front of us and show us everything.  Bynes was a child actress and the focus of her own show, which was so bad that I wouldn't let it be played in the house.  Past her prime, apparently, she's' been unable to handle it, and has been taking nearly topless photos of herself and tweeting them..  By all accounts, she's troubled, but a lot of that trouble may be based on an inability to just handle reality.  Being young and well off isn't a bad thing.  You'd have the luxury to devote yourself to worthy pursuits.  But apparently the drug of fame, or what being in the entertainment industry does to you, is too corrupting to address.

As bad, weird or pathetic as the Bynes example is, we're now all spectators in the more calculated efforts of Myley Cyrus, the Hanna Montana of old, who now has is repeatedly showing us all she has in a manner that's nearly inescapable.

Cyrus has been becoming increasingly trashy in her public personal for some time, in what seems to be a calculated effort to shed her childhood actress persona. The chosen method has been to be as brazen as possible, thereby seemingly set to destroy the old image with a new one that's as wantonly sex driven as possible. Not too long ago Cyrus appeared sans clothes in a campaign to draw attention to skin cancer, but which tended to serve to draw attention to Cyrus as well, and not in a good way. This past week she went a step further and performed Blurred Lines on a televised music awards show. Blurred Lines is already in the trash category and Cyrus adopting it for a species of striptease, sort of, isn't surprising, except as an illustration of how far down the latter we've climbed.  Apparently the performance was so prurient that it could not be shown in its entirely on the morning news shows.

A person can pretend that this is all artistic self expression, but they'd be pretending. This is simply a desperate effort to get a "look at me" reaction from somebody whose fame was indelibly associated with a childhood role. And she shouldn't do it.

Cyrus, like others of her ilk, want fame, but the fame they have now comes only due to a childhood image.  If they no longer wish to be associated with that image, that's their right, but they don't have right to pretend that they have any other claim to it, and they shouldn't prostitute it.  That is what they are doing. Their image is based on a childhood portrayal of innocence, and they use that association, which they seek to escape, in order to draw attention to themselves.  They're trading on their former fame, exchanging memories for leering glances.

When they do that, they destroy the image, in some ways, for the thousands who were attracted to it as children in the first place.  Fame is conferred, not owned, and in this case they are seeking to grasp a continued hold on something by wrecking it. 

When I was in high school the J Geils Band had a popular song on the charts entitled Centerfold. The song centered around the shock of a young man finding that a girl he had a crush on in high school was now a centerfold. Satyric and comical, the song used a central theme of shame that would be almost inconceivable now.  Portrayals like Cyrus' have made it so.

If Cyrus et al really want enduring fame, they have a brief window of opportunity to build on that fame conferred by a childhood role.  A few managed to do that, most do not.  It requires smarts and exceptional talent, however.  Simply parading nearly naked isn't going to do it.  It does damage to them, and to us.  By doing it the fame they achieve will be a species of infamy in a real sense, and the positioning that gave them the ability to trade for it shows itself to be corrupted in some fashion by its impact.  And with each nearly naked former childhood actress on the television, the overall culture becomes that much more cheapened.

Epilogue

Since writing this, Myley Cyrus has reentered the public eye, quite literally, through photographs associated with a single she is releasing entitled "Wrecking Ball."  Not to be outdone by Thicke's parading around of naked models, Cyrus apparently decided to parade herself around naked, apparently, further debasing herself.  Wrecking Ball would seem to be an apt name too, as she appears to be intent on wrecking herself.

On this, I can't help but think of an automobile advertisement of a few years ago, I think it was by Volkswagen, in which some parents buy a toy for some kids at a gas station. Advertising the mileage of the car, we next see the family when they finally stop again. The toy was a "Rapping Ball", which repeats, over and over again "I'm a rapping ball!"  The parents are sick to death of it when they stop.  I suspect that's generally what will be happening to Cyrus.  Or already is.

Epilogue II

I have to give Cyrus credit for having a unique talent for destructive self promotion.  Every time I think she, and therefore in this overbroadcasted world the rest of us, have hit rock bottom, she proves me wrong.  Not even a week or so has gone by in her clothless self promotion of her latest musical release when we now awake to find out that the news is reporting that she has had "rolling stone" tattooed on her feet.

I suppose this is some sort of odd shout out to the old phrase "a rolling stone gathers no moss", although I think relatively few people even know that there was such a phrase and think, instead, it's simply the odd name of a British rock band.  But it is such a phrase.  Of course, all rolling stones eventually come to rest and are reabsorbed by the earth or crushed into dust, so the ultimate lesson of the phrase isn't really cheery, in so far as that goes.  But as a phrase endorsing low material attachments, I suppose it has its merits.

It seems, however, that Ms. Cyrus is gather a lot of moss.  Perhaps stones that roll through a bog do gather moss.  Or rather she isn't so much a rolling stone as she is some poor creature caught in a swamp.  I suppose to really avoid those sort of attachments, and indeed to be a real rebel in this day and age, you'd actually probably have to enter a religious order with a high attachment to poverty.  There are such orders, of course, but I don't expect Cyrus, or Lady Gaga, to any such person, really be a true radical by taking such a course of action.

At any rate, I hope for a week with no Cyrus news soon.

Epilogue III

I happened to read the USA Today this morning and found that it had an article relevant to this discussion.  The article, moreover, is both revealing and not too surprising.

It turns out that almost all of the really libertine music popularized by young female musical performers recently has been written by, you guessed it, men.  Indeed, the whole exploitation of the female image, both musically and in terms of the video presentation of it is male in origin.  Basically, as the article concludes, what we're seeing and hearing isn't a female image of this topic at all, but rather a middle age male fantasy of it.  Women's aspirations and feelings in this arena remain quite traditional.  I suppose male explotation of females is, unfortunately, traditional also.  In other words, pimping remains male.

Over time, it seems that some musical artist exploited in this fashion have objected to it,  but not enough to prevent it.  Olivia Newton John apparently objected to the video for Physical, but not enough to keep it from occurring.  And Fiona Apple was horrified about the release of a video some years ago that depicted her nude, which she was pressured into doing.

So, not surprisingly, these videos are both destructive to females, and the product of males regarding women in a cartoonish way.  All the more the shame.

History of Enlisted retirmement

The U.S. Army's FM 7-22.7 provides:

Enlisted Retirement

In 1885 Congress authorized voluntary retirement for enlisted soldiers. The system allowed a soldier to retire after 30 years of service with threequarters of his active duty pay and allowances. This remained relatively unchanged until 1945 when enlisted personnel could retire after 20 years of service with half pay. In 1948 Congress authorized retirement for career members of the Reserve and National Guard. Military retirement pay is not a pension, but rather is delayed compensation for completing 20 or more years of active military service. It not only provides an incentive for soldiers to complete 20 years of service, but also creates a backup pool of experienced personnel in the event of a national emergency.

I wonder if this is correct?  I thought the 30 year retirement system pre dated 1885, and the 20 year one came in at the start of World War Two.

Electronic Boarding Passes

Yesterday I used electronic boarding passes for the first time.

Man, they're great.

I'd thought of using them earlier, but for some reason I couldn't get the Apps that I downloaded in order to do that to work correctly and download the passes, and I was reluctant to try them in case they didn't work correctly.  Even on this occasion, I downloaded two paper passes, but I just packed them away.

Most changes of this type leave you wondering if they're really that much of an improvement, and if they are, there's still a period of time in which you get used to them. I still feel that way, quite frankly, about the cell phone, which I regard as a mixed blessing really.

But electronic boarding passes are great.  By the time of my return flight I was already amazed by how many people "still used" paper, which was everyone I could see but me.

I even found emailed boarding passes to be a little questionable at first, and would still check in at the desk for quite a while thereafter, even though I didn't need to.  But with electronic boarding basses, instant success in my book!