What happened to banded collar shirts?

 One of the two banded collar shirts I have.  Ironically, this shirt was made by the Arrow Shirt Company.

Up until at least the end of World War Two, banded, or "collarless" shirts were a relatively common item for men, in some places.

Not equally in all countries at all times, however.  They were less common in the United States, but they weren't uncommon at all early in the 20th Century and in some places into mid century.  Now, they're sort of hard to find, and when you do find them, they can be really expensive.  It's weird.  It's too bad as well, as I really like them.

As recently as last year, the Wall Street Journal declared that "band collar" (collarless, banded collar, they're all the same thing) was the shirt for the summer.  Stated the Journal:

When the heat closes in, men want chill-out clothing. That’s why a shirt that’s shed its stifling collar—aka a ‘band-collar’ shirt—might be the most important piece of the season.

Well, if so, it'd be nice if a person was able to find one around here.

The Journal tapped right into the history of the shirt, partially, and that goes where I want to go a bit here as well.  The Journal observed:

Though the breezily incomplete look also enjoyed a vogue in the bohemian 1970s, its roots go back to the era when collars were starchy, detachable things that men fastened to a basic collarless shirt to appear properly dressed. (The advantage: You could just launder the collars while rewearing a shirt a few times.) That so many contemporary designers are now marketing such shirts to be worn on their own speaks to the steady casualization of modern men’s style. First went the tie, now goes the collar. “Guys just aren’t wearing ties as much,” said Mr. Olberding. “And with a band collar, it’s the anti-tie shirt. You just simply can’t wear [a tie].”

Yep, exactly right (but wait, it's a bit more complicated than that actually).  Hence the scarcity of the shirt type as well. 

While the thought of rewearing a shirt, rather than a collar, probably would strike a modern audience as gross, the Journal is right on. We've dealt with it at length in another post, but before the invention of the modern washing machine, people re-wore clothes. They had fewer clothes, they wore quite a bit of wool, and they didn't wash things nearly as often. Frankly, people could do that today, it would not raise a might stench like you might suppose, but people generally don't do that.  I, for one, will toss an Oxford cloth work shirt in the laundry pile after I wear it at a work for one day.  I could, I'm sure, get away with hanging it back up and pressing it for a second, or third, go, but I don't.

But if I had to wash it by hand, I might. And therefore, back in the day, it was easier and practical to have a starched collar that I'd launder first.  Collars get dirty.  And the shirt cold keep on keeping on.  When I was home and not wanting to wear the collar I'd detach it, which of course would give the shirt its casual look by default right then.

 Drew Clothing  Company advertisement for collars, April 1913.  Man, who hasn't had these problems?

When I say "I'd launder", I should note that I mean I'd likely send the collars to the laundry.  Indeed, some laundries advertised this very service.  For example, when Lusk Wyoming had a new laundry come in, prior to World War One, it specifically advertised washing and starting collars.

This small building in Wheatland, Wyoming is still in use.  A newer sign above the door says "Coin Operated Laundry", so perhaps its still in its original use, although presumably not as a "steam laundry".  Its location is just off of the rail line, which was likely a good location for a laundry, although this is a surprisingly small structure, much smaller than the laundry in Lusk was. Anyhow, while we think of laudrimats as being the domain of students and apartment dwellers today, prior to the invention of the washing machine they were a big deal for regular people.  From Painted Bricks.

Indeed, that laundries would  advertise such a service says a lot about the state of washing prior to the invention of the household washing machine.  Most people don't send routine washing to the laundry unless they live in an apartment or are students. But at that time, they did quite often, as the alternatives were basically non existent. Today, quite a few businessmen and women still retain the practice of having their shirts laundered, I should note, and indeed I do (something I adopted after I got married for some reason, as I used to launder all my shirts myself, but after we had kids, it seemed to be a chore I was happy to omit. . . maybe some things don't change as much as we think).  Laundries were so important at the time that they are specifically given a priority in the state's laws on water appropriation.

41-3-102. Preferred uses; defined; order of preference.

(a) Water rights are hereby defined as follows according to use: preferred uses shall include rights for domestic and transportation purposes, steam power plants, and industrial purposes; existing rights not preferred, may be condemned to supply water for such preferred uses in accordance with the provisions of the law relating to condemnation of property for public and semi-public purposes except as hereinafter provided.

(b) Preferred water uses shall have preference rights in the following order:
(i) Water for drinking purposes for both man and beast;
(ii) Water for municipal purposes;
(iii) Water for the use of steam engines and for general railway use, water for culinary, laundry, bathing, refrigerating (including the manufacture of ice), for steam and hot water heating plants, and steam power plants; and
(iv) Industrial purposes.
(c) The use of water for irrigation shall be superior and preferred to any use where water turbines or impulse water wheels are installed for power purposes; provided, however, that the preferred use of steam power plants and industrial purposes herein granted shall not be construed to give the right of condemnation

Detachable collars got their start early in 19th Century and by mid century they were fairly common. This isn't to suggest that their use was universal, which would not be true.  It was never true. But it became common.  Men bought banded collar shirts and detachable collars. Sometimes they also bought detachable cuffs.  When the collars were dirty, they were boiled and restartched, and then buttoned back onto the shirt. That way a person could have both a clean collar, and one that was incredibly stiff. Such shirts were, of course, worn with ties.

I've never seen anything directly linking it in, but I strongly suspect that the banded collar shirt, at least of this type, was  partial victim of the laundry machine. Again, while we've dealt with the revolutionary device, the washer, before, its impact on things was so significant that it's ignored, and of course, when people want to talk about revolutionary machines, they want to talk about Computers, or Enigma Machines, not washers and dryers.  But people ought to take a second look.  Just as it was Maytag, not Rosie the Riveter, that took women out of a mandatory domestic role, good old Maytag attacked the banded collar shirt and defeated it.

Collars on shirts had been around, of course, for a long time.  But as noted, if you were working in an office and wearing a clean white shirt, that collar wouldn't look so clean for so long.  But with the washing machine things changed.

Indeed, the fact that the changed is illustrated nicely by the history of Cluett Peabody & Company, a collar manufacturing firm. As washing machines began to come in during the 1920s, their fortunes declined. The reason was that the demand for dress shirts with attached collars increased and the shirt with the collar began to supplant the banded collar shirt.  Cluett Peabody and Company, thinking it over, figured a way out of the problem by 1929. The Arrow Collar Shirt.

 Arrow collar ad, 1907.  The fellow with the checkered touring cap is wearing an Arrow collar, to the apparent distress of the fellow with the starched white collar in the background.   The fellow to the left appears non pulsed and I fear a duel may break out latter.  All of the collars in this 1907 advertisement are likely of the detachable type except for hte arrow collar.

Now, in fairness, Americans have always had a stronger attachment to the collared shirt than seemingly Europeans did, and collared shirts no doubt made up the majority of shirts in the US, even taking the position of collarless shirts in certain roles that banded shirts did in Europe.  The US was a heavily rural nation up until the mid 20th Century and as a result, most men didn't have a real pressing need for s starched collar on a daily basis and instead wore a collared shirt.  Indeed, Americans always wore a lot of conventional collared shirts as dress shirts even in the starched collar era.

 Theodore Roosevelt, 1910.  This photo was originally posted on our Caps, Hats, Fashion and Preceptions of Decency and being Dressed. In this photo a very formally dressed Roosevelt is wearing a spread collar shirt, a type that's still in common use.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1914, in three piece wool suit and tie,with a spread collar shirt.  This photo is also from our Caps, Hats, Fashion and Preceptions of Decency and being Dressed thread.

Indeed, the recent idea we've picked up from television that everyone in the 19th Century, including folks like cowboys, were wearing banded collar shirts is simply wrong.  Sure, you'd see a banded collar shirt out on the plains occasionally, but that's because that fellow was pressing a dress shirt into that service for some reason.  More likely, cowhands would be found with collared shirts.  Indeed, a favorite shirt of the 19th Century cowhand was the collar U.S. Army shirt introduced for frontier service after the Civil War.

Actor Francis X. Bushman wearing an Arrow collar and subtly smirking in 1917.  Maybe he was smirking as he knew that US troops were fighting in collared shirts under their service coats, while Tommies were wearing banded collared shirts.  Or not.

We have to add here, however, that Europeans, and those on the British Isles in particularly, seemingly picked up a fondness for banded collared work shirts in a way that we here in North America never did, and that does complicate this story a bit. Well, more than a bit, sort of.  Anyhow, Europeans adopted banded collared shirts in the early industrial era, and they spread to all sorts of workmen fairly quickly, in a way that in the US might rival the collared chambray shirt.  This lead to a sort of shirt called the "Granddad Shirt" that's particularly associated with Ireland for some reason, but which was really the working man's shirt of Great Britain up until after World War Two.  The British working man's use of the shirt (and the Irish use of it) was very widespread, and they even were adopted into official use by the British Army as the service shirt that went under the service blouse, which was a light blue shirt at first, and all the way through World War One, but which became an olive (or khaki, in British parlance) by World War Two.

 Arrow made shirts and collars both, as this 1920 advertisement in Powell attest to.

That's telling as well, as the U.S. Army, unlike European armies, never went for banded collared shirts.  It did issue one mid 19th Century, but that shirt was an undergarment meant for field use, not for outerwear.  After the Civil War, when the hot conditions of the West meant that solders were stripping down to shirtsleeves, the Army started issuing a collared shirt that could be worn without the service coat.  (As an aside, the routine wear of wool coats in most conditions in the Civil War must have made summer service beastly hot.).

 Detail from Edgar Paxon's remarkable Custer's Last Stand.  The incredibly detailed painting is incredibly accurate, including its depicition of cavalrymen fighting in blue wool shirts (stained reddish due to dust) and wearing flannel shirts underneath them.  At this time, in one minor error, the issue flannel shirt worn under the blue shirt was gray.

Federalized National Guardsmen at the time of the Punitive Expedition, from the earlier thread on hats.  The U.S. Army was downright odd at the time in having a shirt that could be worn like these New York National Guardsmen are wearing it. . . alone with no service coat.  This was likely a remnant of the Frontier Era when soldiers commonly omitted the coat during the summer months.

European armies, in contrast, sometimes issued banded collar shirts in that role, and did for a really long time.  The British in particular did..  Not all retained them the same length of time, but the British, as noted, issued a wool, banded collar, shirt for wear underneath its service jacket all the way through World War Two, although it was of the "granddad" variety we otherwise discuss in this thread.

American workmen, quite frankly, tended towards collared shirts also, as they were buying shirts to work in, not to double as nice dress shirts. Those shirts may in fact have so doubled, but that doesn't mean that they gave priority to the dress shirt. Europeans, or at least the British, were otherwise wearing banded collared shirts anyway.

As arrow collars were rising in the workplace, supplanting banded collars, a couple of other competitors came in too to really do in the banded collar shirt.  The big victor was the button down collar.  It came in during the 19th Century in the United Kingdom, but not as a dress item. It was worn by polo players to keep the collar down in hard play.  Obviously the polo shirt was somewhat different at the time.  In the 1896, however, Brooks Brothers, the famous clothiers, took note of them and introduce dress shirts that buttoned down, which is why Brooks Brothers still refers to them as a "polo collar", basically claiming pride of place in their introduction.  Oxford cloth button down shirts became so dominant over time in men's wear that they nearly define business dress, and even business casual and casual.  This was so much so that the early comedy lp of Bob Newhart, who had been accountant, could be titled The Button Downed Mind of Bob Newhart with no explanation being needed.  You see button down Oxfords everywhere, every day.

Some time in this same era tab collars and tie bars also came in, which served the same purpose, but in a way that retains a more formal appearance.  A tie bar holds the knot of the tie forward and, quite frankly, gives it a certain spiffy appearance as accented by the gold or silver tie bar.  Tie bars had become sufficiently widespread by the early 20th Century such that British officers routinely wore tie bars for that purpose by World War One, as the British had, by that time, introduced an opened collared service coat for officers and collared shirt, with tie, for them.  When the US did the same in 1923, wearing of tie bars by American officers was also common.  Every once in a while you'll see a shirt with pin holes manufactured in it for a specialized type of tie bar, although that's rather rare.  Anyhow, tab collared shirts had a tab that buttoned behind the tie knot that did the same thing, which also aided in the spiffy appearance.  I'll confess to having a couple of tabbed collared shirts in my collection, although as I've aged (becoming I find, more and more like my father in these regards) I tend to dress up nicely for work less often, which is something I likely should address.  And I'll admit to having had several tie bars as well, although never more than one at a time.  I lose them.

By the 1920s, stiff starched collars were on their way out, and also with them the banded collared shirt in the US.  Daily armor, for some reason, of the working man and man in the field (both the agricultural field and the field of war) they kept on keeping on in the British Isles.  But after the war they died away there too.  Perhaps they were just too old fashioned.

Well, while they've waned, they've never really disappeared entirely.  They revived a bit in the 1960s, in the counter culture era, as a hip alternative to a shirt that could take a tie, and then they nearly vanished again. But they are back now, both here and in Europe.  Here, as the Wall Street Journal relates, they've become a cool shirt that's an alterntaive to a button downed Oxford, and I've seen quite a few of them worn as dress shits even with sports coats.  Sometimes with full suits, giving a sort of cool, if not somewhat Middle Eastern, appearance.  But they sure aren't cheap, as the journals listing of available shirts reveals:

From left: Michael Bastian Shirt, $425, mrporter.com; Boglioli Printed Shirt, $375, Barneys New York, 212-826-8900; Half Raglan Shirt, $198, stevenalan.com; 1883 Poplin Shirt, $195, Hamilton Shirts, 713-264-8800.

If you are paying $425 for a shirt, man, you are paying too darned much.

The always amusing J. Peterman Catalog lists a couple as well, with its fantastic short story form advertising copy. Consider, for example, the "Gatsby Shirt".

Gatsby was amazing. He even managed to see to it that the book about him was regarded as a novel, as pure fiction, as though he didn’t exist.

Even Fitzgerald, by the time he was through writing it, believed he’d made the whole thing up.

There were those who knew the truth all along, of course; knew everything except where all that money came from. (Even by today’s standards, when millions mean nothing, only billions matter, Gatsby was incomprehensibly rich.)

Gatsby walked into rooms wearing a shirt with no collar. Even a little thing like that made people talk. And probably will still do so.

Our uncompromising replica of Gatsby’s shirt has the same simple band collar. The placket is simpler, also narrower. The cotton we have used is so luminous, in and of itself, that even a person who notices nothing will notice something.

Gatsby, of course, could afford stacks of these shirts — rooms of them. Never mind. All that matters is that you have one, just one. A piece of how things were.

What a hoot.

The protagonist of Fitzgerald's novel, of course, would have worn banded collar shirts, probably, unless he was wearing one of the up and coming Arrow Collars. But he sure would have worn a starched collar with him, in that heavily tied era.  Indeed, in that era of rebellion the young were dressing up, not down, and women had affected the tie, dressing with starched collars themselves.  Indeed, the irony, perhaps, of that era so long ago is that men and women's dress, amongst the fashionable, came about as close to resembling each other as they ever would, something that perhaps those in perpetual angst over such topics should consider.

The Peterman outfit charges $89 for its Gatsby shirt, but only $69 for its "Irish Pub Shirt", which is a Granddad Shirt.  The ad copy is just as delightful, however.

It’s Friday night at the Hog & Fool, a 200-year-old pub off O’Connell Street in Dublin. World headquarters for conversation.

Dark mahogany walls. Lean-faced men. Ruddy-faced women.

The bursts of laughter aren't polite, but real, approaching the edge of uncontrollability.

The stories being told are new, freshly minted, just for you, my dear. There is no higher honor.

The room roar is high (but still, not as bad as in certain New York restaurants where you can’t make out what it is you just said).

These Irishmen, in collarless Irish shirts, under dark herringbone vests and tweed caps, have managed to keep their mouths shut all week, saving up the good stuff for now, for Friday night, for this very place, for this very moment...

How could one single city possibly give birth to Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Wilde, Beckett... and all those here tonight as well?

Again, what a hoot.  And at least $69 approaches affordability, which $89, after shipping, doesn't, in my cheap view. Which is the same problem afflicting Orvis' Granddad shirt, which otherwise looks pretty nice.

Well, would that a person could find one locally.  You can't.

A glimpse into getting jilted in an earlier era

A newspaper from Chicago, 1916, linked in through Reddit's 100 Years Ago subreddit.

It was linked into note the ABA's cheering of the passage of the 8 hour day, but a person can't help but note the "heart balm" law story that appears so prominently on the front page. Truly, a glimpse into another era.

First air to air radio communication between aircraft. September 2, 1916

On this day, in 1916, the first air to air radio communication between aircraft took place.  The plane was U.S. Army's "No. 50"" piloted by Lt. A. D. Smith and U.S. Army "No 51" piloted by Lt. Dargue.  The message was part of an ongoing effort lead by the U.S. Army's Cpt. C. C. Culver and involved aircraft that had been involved in radio experimentation.  The message, "North Island makes new world record" was written by California Congressman Kettner.  The aircraft were two miles apart and less than 1,000 feet in the air.

Curtis JN4 on the border with Mexico, 1916.

The event was more significant than it might now seem.  

The U.S. air fleet itself was minuscule at the time and, given the rapid development of aircraft due to the war in Europe, it lagged behind technologically.  It was deployed in the effort in Mexico, where the limitations of the aircraft had demonstrated themselves.  Like aircraft everywhere in military use, the scouting role and potential of the airplane was evident, but like the cavalry that it was seeking to augment in this role, delivery of information obtained in the air was largely by direct word of mouth.  Faster, obviously, than cavalry in these regards, it still wasn't instant.

Cpt. Cluver had been working on this situation as early as 1910, remarkably early, and was responsible for an Army effort that was studying "wireless" and aircraft.  In that year, his efforts yielded the first ground to air radio communication.  In 1915 he was billeted to the Army aviation school in San Diego California to continue to pursue his efforts, which included designing purpose built radios for aircraft.

Culver, then a Colonel, in 1918.

While radio had obvious application to aircraft, in all sorts of ways, and indeed would revolutionize much about flying, including military flying, advancements did not come rapidly enough to really see the new technology used much during the Great War.  Some use was made, and at least the British experimented with some air to ground communication in a scouting and artillery spotting role. But, while the technology was developed, it didn't develop rapidly enough to really come into practical use to a great extent until after the war.

Related Posts:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Part Two. Radios and Telegraph

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition. Looking at Horses and Tack. Part 3(a), the Equines

Woodrow Wilson delivers his acceptance speech for the 1916 Democratic nomination

Wilson delivered the speech on this day, in 1916.  Odd to think that this was once so late in the year (he said, wishing they still were).  The convention was actually held in June, and then the nomination delivered later, to be accepted later.

The St. Louis Democratic Convention.

Senator James, Gentlemen of the Notification Committee, Fellow-Citizens:

I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which the National Democratic Convention has again, in such generous fashion, asked me to accept without first expressing my profound gratitude to the party for the trust it reposes in me after four years of fiery trial in the midst of affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and the keen sense of added responsibility with which this honor fills (I had almost said burdens) me as I think of the great issues of national life and policy involved in the present and immediate future conduct of our Government. I shall seek, as I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary confidence thus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart and purpose of every personal and of every misleading party motive and devoting every energy I have to the service of the nation as a whole, praying that I may continue to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men at every turn of the difficult business.

For I do not doubt that the people of the United States will wish the Democratic Party to continue in control of the Government. They are not in the habit of rejecting those who have actually served them for those who are making doubtful and conjectural promises of service. Least of all are they likely to substitute those who promised to render them particular services and proved false to that promise for those who have actually rendered those very services.

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases nobody but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit promises. But there can be no violation of good taste in calling attention to the manner in which those promises have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting fact that many of the things accomplished were what the opposition party had again and again promised to do but had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part of the business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There is no means of judging the future except by assessing the past. Constructive action must be weighed against destructive comment and reaction. The Democrats either have or have not understood the varied interests of the country. The test is contained in the record.

What is that record? What were the Democrats called into power to do? What things had long waited to be done, and how did the Democrats do them? It is a record of extraordinary length and variety, rich in elements of many kinds, but consistent in principle throughout and susceptible of brief recital.

The Republican Party was put out of power because of failure, practical failure and moral failure; because it had served special interests and not the country at large; because, under the leadership of its preferred and established guides, of those who still make its choices, it had lost touch with the thoughts and the needs of the nation and was living in a past age and under a fixed illusion, the illusion of greatness. It had framed tariff laws based upon a fear of foreign trade, a fundamental doubt as to American skill, enterprise, and capacity, and a very tender regard for the profitable privileges of those who had gained control of domestic markets and domestic credits; and yet had enacted anti-trust laws which hampered the very things they meant to foster, which were stiff and inelastic, and in part unintelligible. It had permitted the country throughout the long period of its control to stagger from one financial crisis to another under the operation of a national banking law of its own framing which made stringency and panic certain and the control of the larger business operations of the country by the bankers of a few reserve centers inevitable; had made as if it meant to reform the law but had faint-heartedly failed in the attempt, because it could not bring itself to do the one thing necessary to make the reform genuine and effectual, namely, break up the control of small groups of bankers. It had been oblivious, or indifferent, to the fact that the farmers, upon whom the country depends for its food and in the last analysis for its prosperity, were without standing in the matter of commercial credit, without the protection of standards in their market transactions, and without systematic knowledge of the markets themselves; that the laborers of the country, the great army of men who man the industries it was professing to father and promote, carried their labor as a mere commodity to market, were subject to restraint by novel and drastic process in the courts, were without assurance of compensation for industrial accidents, without federal assistance in accommodating labor disputes, and without national aid or advice in finding the places and the industries in which their labor was most needed. The country had no national system of road construction and development. Little intelligent attention was paid to the army, and not enough to the navy. The other republics of America distrusted us, because they found that we thought first of the profits of American investors and only as an afterthought of impartial justice and helpful friendship. Its policy was provincial in all things; its purposes were out of harmony with the temper and purpose of the people and the timely development of the nation's interests.

So things stood when the Democratic Party came into power. How do they stand now? Alike in the domestic field and in the wide field of the commerce of the world, American business and life and industry have been set free to move as they never moved before.

The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of repelling foreign trade, but upon the principle of encouraging it, upon something like a footing of equality with our own in respect of the terms of competition, and a Tariff Board has been created whose function it will be to keep the relations of American with foreign business and industry under constant observation, for the guidance alike of our business men and of our Congress. American energies are now directed towards the markets of the world.

The laws against trusts have been clarified by definition, with a view to making it plain that they were not directed against big business but only against unfair business and the pretense of competition where there was none; and a Trade Commission has been created with powers of guidance and accommodation which have relieved business men of unfounded fears and set them upon the road of hopeful and confident enterprise.

By the Federal Reserve Act the supply of currency at the disposal of active business has been rendered elastic, taking its volume, not from a fixed body of investment securities, but from the liquid assets of daily trade; and these assets are assessed and accepted, not by distant groups of bankers in control of unavailable reserves, but by bankers at the many centers of local exchange who are in touch with local conditions everywhere.

Effective measures have been taken for the re-creation of an American merchant marine and the revival of the American carrying trade indispensable to our emancipation from the control which foreigners have so long exercised over the opportunities, the routes, and the methods of our commerce with other countries.

The Interstate Commerce Commission is about to be reorganized to enable it to perform its great and important functions more promptly and more efficiently. We have created, extended and improved the service of the parcels post.

So much we have done for business. What other party has understood the task so well or executed it so intelligently and energetically? What other party has attempted it at all? The Republican leaders, apparently, know of no means of assisting business but "protection." How to stimulate it and put it upon a new footing of energy and enterprise they have not suggested.

For the farmers of the country we have virtually created commercial credit, by means of the Federal Reserve Act and the Rural Credits Act. They now have the standing of other business men in the money market. We have successfully regulated speculation in "futures" and established standards in the marketing of grains. By an intelligent Warehouse Act we have assisted to make the standard crops available as never before both for systematic marketing and as a security for loans from the banks. We have greatly added to the work of neighborhood demonstration on the farm itself of improved methods of cultivation, and, through the intelligent extension of the functions of the Department of Agriculture, have made it possible for the farmer to learn systematically where his best markets are and how to get at them.

The workingmen of America have been given a veritable emancipation, by the legal recognition of a man's labor as part of his life, and not a mere marketable commodity; by exempting labor organizations from processes of the courts which treated their members like fractional parts of mobs and not like accessible and responsible individuals; by releasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; by making adequate provision for compensation for industrial accidents; by providing suitable machinery for mediation and conciliation in industrial disputes; and by putting the Federal Department of Labor at the disposal of the workingman when in search of work.

We have effected the emancipation of the children of the country by releasing them from hurtful labor. We have instituted a system of national aid in the building of highroads such as the country has been feeling after for a century. We have sought to equalize taxation by means of an equitable income tax. We have taken the steps that ought to have been taken at the outset to open up the resources of Alaska. We have provided for national defense upon a scale never before seriously proposed upon the responsibility of an entire political party. We have driven the tariff lobby from cover and obliged it to substitute solid argument for private influence.

This extraordinary recital must sound like a platform, a list of sanguine promises; but it is not. It is a record of promises made four years ago and now actually redeemed in constructive legislation.

These things must profoundly disturb the thoughts and confound the plans of those who have made themselves believe that the Democratic Party neither understood nor was ready to assist the business of the country in the great enterprises which it is its evident and inevitable destiny to undertake and carry through. The breaking up of the lobby must especially disconcert them: for it was through the lobby that they sought and were sure they had found the heart of things. The game of privilege can be played successfully by no other means.

This record must equally astonish those who feared that the Democratic Party had not opened its heart to comprehend the demands of social justice. We have in four years come very near to carrying out the platform of the Progressive Party as well as our own; for we also are progressives.

There is one circumstance connected with this program which ought to be very plainly stated. It was resisted at every step by the interests which the Republican Party had catered to and fostered at the expense of the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a reaction which will save their privileges,?for the restoration of their sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have lost. They fought with particular desperation and infinite resourcefulness the reform of the banking and currency system, knowing that to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are they hoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal Reserve Act by the concentration of control in a single bank which the old familiar group of bankers can keep under their eye and direction. But while the "big men" who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance of the Treasury have been hostile,?all but a few with vision,?the average business man knows that he has been delivered, and that the fear that was once every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit and directed enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crush him, is there no more, and will not return,?unless the party that consulted only the "big men" should return to power:  The party of masterly inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to resist change.

The Republican Party is just the party that cannot meet the new conditions of a new age. It does not know the way and it does not wish new conditions. It tried to break away from the old leaders and could not. They still select its candidates and dictate its policy, still resist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know no methods of encouraging business but the old methods. When it changes its leaders and its purposes and brings its ideas up to date it will have the right to ask the American people to give it power again; but not until then. A new age, an age of revolutionary change, needs new purposes and new ideas.

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles clearly conceived and consistently lived up to. Perhaps they have not been fully comprehended because they have hitherto governed international affairs only in theory, not in practice. They are simple, obvious, easily stated, and fundamental to American ideals.

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we had had no part either of action or of policy in the influences which brought on the present war, but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving cur strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healing which must follow, when peace will have to build its house anew.

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved: that was inevitable. Where they did this was our guiding principle: that property rights can be vindicated by claims for damages and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate such claims; but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither can direct violations of a nation's sovereignty await vindication in suits for damages. The nation that violates these essential rights must expect to be checked and called to account by direct challenge and resistance. It at once makes the quarrel in part our own. These are plain principles and we have never lost sight of them or departed from them, whatever the stress or the perplexity of circumstance or the provocation to hasty resentment. The record is clear and consistent throughout and stands distinct and definite for anyone to judge who wishes to know the truth about it.

The seas were not broad enough to keep the infection of the conflict out of our own politics. The passions and intrigues of certain active groups and combinations of men amongst us who were born under foreign flags injected the poison of disloyalty into our own most critical affairs, laid violent hands upon many of our industries, and subjected us to the shame of divisions of sentiment and purpose in which America was contemned and forgotten. It is part of the business of this year of reckoning and settlement to speak plainly and act with unmistakable purpose in rebuke of these things, in order that they may be forever hereafter impossible. I am the candidate of a party, but I am above all things else an American citizen. I neither seek the favor nor fear the displeasure of that small alien element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign power before loyalty to the United States.

While Europe was at war our own continent, one of our own neighbors, was shaken by revolution. In that matter, too, principle was plain and it was imperative that we should live up to it if we were to deserve the trust of any real partisan of the right as free men see it. We have professed to believe, and we do believe, that the people of small and weak states have the right to expect to be dealt with exactly as the people of big and powerful states would be. We have acted upon that principle in dealing with the people of Mexico.

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory was no violation of that principle. We ventured to enter Mexican territory only because there were no military forces in Mexico that could protect our border from hostile attack and our own people from violence, and we have committed there no single act of hostility or interference even with the sovereign authority of the Republic of Mexico herself. It was a plain case of the violation of our own sovereignty which could not wait to be vindicated by damages and for which there was no other remedy. The authorities of Mexico were powerless to prevent it.

Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable wrongs against the persons of Americans have been committed within the territory of Mexico herself during this confused revolution, wrongs which could not be effectually checked so long as there was no constituted power in Mexico which was in a position to check them. We could not act directly in that matter ourselves without denying Mexicans the right to any revolution at all which disturbed us and making the emancipation of her own people await our own interest and convenience.

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking?  Blindly, it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with profound and passionate purpose and within their unquestionable right, apply what true American principle you will,?any principle that an American would publicly avow. The people of Mexico have not been suffered to own their own country or direct their own institutions. Outsiders, men out of other nations and with interests too often alien to their own, have dictated what their privileges and opportunities should be and who should control their land, their lives, and their resources,?some of them Americans, pressing for things they could never have got in their own country. The Mexican people are entitled to attempt their liberty from such influences; and so long as I have anything to do with the action of our great Government I shall do everything in my power to prevent anyone standing in their way. I know that this is hard for some persons to understand; but it is not hard for the plain people of the United States to understand. It is hard doctrine only for those who wish to get something for themselves out of Mexico. There are men, and noble women, too, not a few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes are invested in great properties in Mexico who yet see the case with true vision and assess its issues with true American feeling. The rest can be left for the present out of the reckoning until this enslaved people has had its day of struggle towards the light. I have heard no one who was free from such influences propose interference by the United States with the internal affairs of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the Mexican people has proposed it.

The people of the United States are capable of great sympathies and a noble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. As their spokesman and representative, I have tried to act in the spirit they would wish me show. The people of Mexico are striving for the rights that are fundamental to life and happiness,? 15,000,000 oppressed men, overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual bondage in their own home of fertile lands and inexhaustible treasure! Some of the leaders of the revolution may often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, but the revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The unspeakable Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitorously overthrew the government of which he was a trusted part, impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven his people to the rebellion with which he had pretended to sympathize. The men who overcame him and drove him out represent at least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies at the very heart of liberty; and so long as they represent, however imperfectly, such a struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve their ends when I can. So long as the power of recognition rests with me the Government of the United States will refuse to extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery and violence. No permanency can be given the affairs of any republic by a title based upon intrigue and assassination. I declared that to be the policy of this Administration within three weeks after I assumed the presidency. I here again vow it. I am more interested in the fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful women and children than in any property rights whatever. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, but not in purpose or object.

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and the relations of the United States with a distressed and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now being made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among our weaker neighbors. We have undertaken these many years to play big brother to the republics of this hemisphere. This is the day of our test whether we mean, or have ever meant, to play that part for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in ours) depends every relationship of the United States with Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and enterprise. These are great issues and lie at the heart of the gravest tasks of the future, tasks both economic and political and very intimately inwrought with many of the most vital of the new issues of the politics of the world. The republics of America have in the last three years been drawing together in a new spirit of accommodation, mutual understanding, and cordial cooperation. Much of the politics of the world in the years to come will depend upon their relationships with one another. It is a barren and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such things!

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to face with many great and exacting problems which will search us through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play. It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, the moment the war in Europe is over. They will be new problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a new setting and with new elements which we have never dealt with or reckoned the force and meaning of before. They will require for their solution new thinking, fresh courage and resourcefulness, and in some matters radical reconsiderations of policy. We must be ready to mobilize our resources alike of brains and of materials.

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future to stimulate and excite us to the display of the best powers that are in us. We may enter it with confidence when we are sure that we understand it,?and we have provided ourselves already with the means of understanding it.

Look first at what it will be necessary that the nations of the world should do to make the days to come tolerable and fit to live and work in; and then look at our part in what is to follow and our own duty of preparation. For we must be prepared both in resources and in policy.

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in America must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm and of our authority as a nation to the organization of that peace upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily be shaken. No nation should be forced to take sides in any quarrel in which its own honor and integrity and the fortunes of its own people are not involved; but no nation can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If hopeful and generous enterprise is to be renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life are indeed to be revived when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and friendship must be generated by means the world has never tried before. The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world's life must first be tested in the court of the whole world's opinion before it is attempted.

These are the new foundations the world must build for itself, and we must play our part in the reconstruction, generously and without too much thought of our separate interests. We must make ourselves ready to play it intelligently, vigorously, and well.

One of the contributions we must make to the world's peace is this: We must see to it that the people in our insular possessions are treated in their own lands as we would treat them here, and make the rule of the United States mean the same thing everywhere,?the same justice, the same consideration for the essential rights of men.

Besides contributing our ungrudging moral and practical support to the establishment of peace throughout the world we must actively and intelligently prepare ourselves to do our full service in the trade and industry which are to sustain and develop the life of the nations in the days to come.

We have already been provident in this great matter and supplied ourselves with the instrumentalities of prompt adjustment. We have created, in the Federal Trade Commission, a means of inquiry and of accommodation in the field of commerce which ought both to coordinate the enterprises of our traders and manufacturers and to remove the barriers of misunderstanding and of a too technical interpretation of the law. In the new Tariff Commission we have added another instrumentality of observation and adjustment which promises to be immediately serviceable. The Trade Commission substitutes counsel and accommodation for the harsher processes of legal restraint, and the Tariff Commission ought to substitute facts for prejudices and theories. Our exporters have for some time had the advantage of working in the new light thrown upon foreign markets and opportunities of trade by the intelligent inquiries and activities of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce which the Democratic Congress so wisely created in 1912. The Tariff Commission completes the machinery by which we shall be enabled to open up our legislative policy to the facts as they develop.

We can no longer indulge our traditional provincialism. We are to play a leading part in the world drama whether we wish it or not. We shall lend, not borrow; act for ourselves, not imitate or follow; organize and initiate, not peep about merely to see where we may get in.

We have already formulated and agreed upon a policy of law which will explicitly remove the ban now supposed to rest upon cooperation amongst our exporters in seeking and securing their proper place in the markets of the world. The field will be free, the instrumentalities at hand. It will only remain for the masters of enterprise amongst us to act in energetic concert, and for the Government of the United States to insist upon the maintenance throughout the world of those conditions of fairness and of even-handed justice in the commercial dealings of the nations with one another upon which, after all, in the last analysis, the peace and ordered life of the world must ultimately depend.

At home also we must see to it that the men who plan and develop and direct our business enterprises shall enjoy definite and settled conditions of law, a policy accommodated to the freest progress. We have set the just and necessary limits. We have put all kinds of unfair competition under the ban and penalty of the law. We have barred monopoly. These fatal and ugly things being excluded, we must now quicken action and facilitate enterprise by every just means within our choice. There will be peace in the business world, and, with peace, revived confidence and life.

We ought both to husband and to develop our natural resources, our mines, our forests, our water power. I wish we could have made more progress than we have made in this vital matter; and I call once more, with the deepest earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates of a careful and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the advocates of a free and inviting field for private capital, on the other, to get together in a spirit of genuine accommodation and agreement and set this great policy forward at once.

We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard life and promote health and safety in every occupation in which they are threatened or imperilled. That is more than justice, and better, because it is humanity and economy.

We must coordinate the railway systems of the country for national use, and must facilitate and promote their development with a view to that coordination and to their better adaptation as a whole to the life and trade and defense of the nation. The life and industry of the country can be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open, efficient, and complete.

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circumstance and international policy effect their unfolding, whether the changes come slowly or come fast and without preface.

I have not spoken explicitly, Gentlemen, of the platform adopted at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all that I have said. I have sought to interpret its spirit and meaning. The people of the United States do not need to be assured now that that platform is a definite pledge, a practical program. We have proved to them that our promises are made to be kept.

We hold very definite ideals. We believe that the energy and initiative of our people have been too narrowly coached and superintended; that they should be set free, as we have set them free, to disperse themselves throughout the nation; that they should not be concentrated in the hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as our opponents have again and again, in effect if not in purpose, sought to concentrate them. We believe, moreover,?who that looks about him now with comprehending eye can fail to believe??that the day of Little Americanism, with its narrow horizons, when methods of "protection" and industrial nursing were the chief study of our provincial statesmen, are past and gone and that a day of enterprise has at last dawned for the United States whose field is the wide world.

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all America, the republics of both continents, on to a new life and energy and initiative in the great affairs of peace. We are Americans for Big America, and rejoice to look forward to the days in which America shall strive to stir the world without irritating it or drawing it on to new antagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at last come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice our passion for peace rests, and when all mankind shall look upon our great people with a new sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry and real affection, as upon a people who, though keen to succeed, seeks always to be at once generous and just and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power.

Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose we go to the country.

Proposed land swap comes under fire for restricting public access

From the Douglas Budget:

Proposed land swap comes under fire for restricting public access: A proposed land exchange between the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners and   Bonander Ranches, LLC is set to pose a significant loss of public land access for Wyoming sportsmen and hunters, according to a growing number who oppose the swap.

Doggone, enough is enough! 

And I've had enough of the State Land Board's actions on these things. At least the last one around here appeared to be quite inequitable and by and large these things just don't work out of the state, in a way that we appreciate.

And here's why:

If acquired, Wyoming’s hunters and recreationists face losing access to more than 4,000 acres of public land located in Albany County, according to Jeff Muratore, Casper board member of the Wyoming Chapter of Back Country Hunters & Anglers (BHA).

So what would the state get?

According to the detailed analysis report posted on the Office of State Lands and Investments website, Rick Bonander, owner of Windy Peaks Ranch, has proposed to trade 295 acres of Moskee lands within the Black Hills Forest, located in Crook County, for 1,040.67 acres of land located in the Laramie Peak area of Albany County, more specifically within elk hunt area 7 south of Douglas.

295 acres for 1,040.67.  Of course.

Now, the Black Hills land is worth a lot more, I'm sure, than the Albany County land. Well, most of us do not care. We do not care one whit.  And here's the reason why:

Although the state is in the process of trying to consolidate land and the Black Hills land is good for mineral processes, valued at more than three times as much as the land around Laramie Peak, it is a  “lopsided trade” in Mutatore’s opinion because it is being evaluated on a scale of “value to value” rather than “acre to acre for elk hunting.”

He argued that the problem is the 295 acres of Bonander land does not offer access to the part of elk area #7 that will be affected, therefore, the only gain for the public will be having access to the 295 acres of Moskee land in Crook County.

“It’s not a quality exchange because (the Moskee land is) mainly home to white tail deer and wild turkey,” Muratore said. “Hunting and fishing are a big part of Wyoming, especially when it comes to tourism and recreation, which brings a lot of money into the state. The number one reason people don’t hunt or fish . . . is because of access to land.”

In other words, those of us who are average folks here, are a lot more agrarian than the State. We don't like these trades.

Assistant Director for the Office of State Lands and Investments Jason Crowder said Bonander had applied for several types of land transfers. This exchange was chosen because it met the trust plan management objectives, thus it could move forward with the analysis and appraisal of the proposed land trade. In order of importance, the objectives are revenue and value to the state; efficiency to manage the property; and effect on community need, as well as benefit to public recreation. 

The Office of State Lands and Investments is “pursuing” this exchange “mainly because it’s a benefit to the trust land objective” and  “because of the value potential of lands in the Moskee area to appreciate,” Crowder said.

M'eh.

This provides, I'd note, one good reason why the State should never be allowed to get its hands on the Federal domain.  We'd see the same thing all over. 

Here's the State Link on this. And the state's resolution (its not a done deal yet, however) to support it.

Now, I'm not saying that Rick Bonander, the land owner, is a bad guy.  Not at all.  Indeed, he's done some great things for Casper.

But I am saying that this should be opposed. And I'm about at the point where any proposed land swap coming out of the state ought to be opposed, quite frankly.  And its not too late to oppose this one.

How dense we've become. Denver Topless Day, How genetic impulses really work, Weedy Denver and the decline into stupidity. A Rant

This is, I'll confess, a full blown rant.

Which means, perhaps, that I shouldn't publish it at all.  If I do, it means I've overcome my reluctance to do so and my better sense

 From the edifice of NCHS in Casper Wyoming:  Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them. They'd probably take their clothes off in Denver for the distress comments in that first sentence.  My goodness.

Which doesn't mean, that, every now and then, a rant my be in order.

Emily Davidson, dead.  She was killed when she stepped into the path of a horse owned by King George V at the Epsom Derby.  While her act was ill advised, she didn't loose her life so brainless twits could parade around topless in Denver. Get a clue.

Denver, it's reported, participated in Denver Go Topless Day on August 29, proving that the Big Weedy is just as dense as it seems.  What used to be the Hideous Blight on the Plains has truly become the Stoned Hideous Overgrown Blight on the Plains, tempered perhaps by a warmish climate that allows the supposed snow capitol of the Rockies to bring out hills of another type for male viewing enjoyment combined with overblown deluded declarations of gender equality being achieved by an annual surrender to combined delusion and lust.

M'eh.

I should note here that it should be fairly obvious from the get go, if anyone reads my prior comments regarding Denver that I don't like the city.  That should probably be taken into account, and its really rather obvious.  I think its a big, overgrown, city and that common sense seems to be largely suspended there, particularly recently. So, I guess, perhaps my comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

 Denver, before it was a complete loss.

And this from a person, I'd note, who has strong connection with Denver.  My grandmother on my father's side spent much of her formative years there, and met my grandfather there. My father was born there, as were at least one of my aunts.  One of my cousins lives there having returned, in a way, to our ancestral metropolis.  My great grandparents on my father's side moved down into the Hideous Blight after leaving Leadville, where my grandmother was born and where they'd spent much of their married life.

Yes, my connections to Colorado are much deeper than most Coloradans. So I come by my disappointment with the city honestly.

And I like some things about it.  I like the Colorado Rockies.



And I like the A Train.

 Union Station, from Railhead.

That's about it.

Well, not maybe, but a lot of what's wrong with things recently is powerfully symbolized by how pathetic Denver is.

Now, to start off with, regarding my comments, I'd also note that when I've commented in this same general are in the past, I've usually tended (but not always) to write in such a style as to somewhat camouflage the conversation.  I've done that as I don't really want the blog to become bizarrely graphic or vulgar. So, when I've written about that creep, Hugh Hefner, I've generally referred to him as the "ossified freak", and likewise I've only once called the rag he publishes by name.  When Kate Upton and her fellows have suspended sensible thought and sent photographs of themselves with out a lick of clothing on, only to have them show up on the Internet, I haven't mentioned her or her fellows by name, up until now. Well, given this topic, I'm suspending that practice and just being blunt. This is, quite frankly, as people are becoming increasingly stupid.

On to the topic, or rather, topics.

Go Topless Day ostensibly promotes gender equality.  It doesn't. What it does do is provide an opportunity for men to ogle women without having to be secretive about it or turning on their computers in their apartments.  Get real.

As a person with a daughter, I'm frankly angry that dimwits are hurting the image of women this way.  They're dolts, and they need a dope slap.

The feminist twits who back this sort of thing apparently have absolutely no clue whatsoever how men work.  Want men to treat women equally and put personal appearance into the equation? Don't undress them for goodness sake, that does the polar opposite.  How freaking stupid are you people, really, if you believe that? And I don't know that many of you really do.  Indeed, I think some are just out for a libertine exercise in exhibitionism, and this is the sorry pathetic excuse used to do it.  Others, I think are engaged in a radical hatred of our very natures and go to such extremes in an attempt to deny them.  And yet others I think are so mired in the dead propaganda of a bygone era that, like old Communist on May Day, they drag out the old, old issues as if they are relevant.  Let's burn the bras again.  Huzzah.

Whatever.

But more than that, really, there's some sort of pagan naturalistic element to this, and I think people who engage in it very well know that.  Young women who do this may say one thing, but on another level, they're crying out to men "look at my boobs and want me".  They wont' admit that, but they are. And that's reducing them to an animalistic level that we routinely declare we wish to avoid. 

That society tolerates it rather than shames people for such exhibitionism is shameful in and of itself. Shame on us all.

No matter what feminist may think, undressing women, particularly young women, totally sexualizes them. Totally.  Men showing up at these things, unless they are as gay as a millennia is long, are going to experience lust. Yes, they are.  Frankly, probably at least 70% of the reason that any man shows up is so that he can look at the boobs.  And that doesn't even take into account the impact of the Internet, which has become a vast sea of pornography with only islands of real content here and there.  In a world in which a person can't look at YouTube video on anything without, sooner or later, some suggestion coming up that you should see a boob related video of some sort, individuals, or rather women, who think that showing their boobs in public isn't rank exhibitionism and titillation are out to lunch, in a major way.  So far out to lunch, they may have retired to lunch forever.  Their images won't, however, as whatever they thought they were doing, those images will now be memorialized on the net and in computer downloads everywhere, with those downloads not going into the hard drives of ardent feminists.  No, not at all.

This is due to a natural attracting, and the natural way men work.   This has always been, the case.

What hasn't always been the case, at least for the last 1,600 years or so, is that women were reduced to objects in this fashion for men's enjoyment, and then to be discarded so freely.

"You've come a long way baby!" declared the Virginia Slims cigarette ad, marked to women, in the 1970s. You sure have. All the way back to year 400.  Equalization. . . emancipation, and right back to objectification.

Thomas Wolfe said "you can't go home again and stay there".  Hmm.

Men like boobs as it causes a sexual response in them, and this is the case in absolutely every culture there is.  Even cultures where the temperature is blistering hot and therefore women have traditionally suspended the wearing of tops (none of which, I"d note, is particularly marked by gender equality) will find that the men are checking out the boobs.  Yes, they are.  Women have apparently become so dense to this that they don't believe it, but back in the men's hut, the conversation is "wow, have you seen the rack on that one?"

Nature sparks the interest because nature's interest is that it put some of those men and women together and they create little people.  Nature doesn't give a whit about concepts of shirtless equality.  Nature does want the young men taking interest in the young women, and not solely in an intellectual way.  Nature doesn't maintain that you're reading the topless crowd for the articles.  Nature demands that men look at the tits and pursue them.  Human intellect is supposed to temper that, morality is supposed to inform it, but neither stops it.

Evidence of this might in part be provided by the fact that in the 18th and early 19th Centuries European men, who came from a culture that at that time was very heavily endowed with a concept of racial and religious superiority, and which abhorred the genetic mixing of the races, did not sustain those barriers in the presence of topless women.  The lure proved too great.  While little discussed, it's well known that Protestant British missionaries, who believed that the Anglo Saxon Race was the absolute pinnacle of human creation, ended up marrying African women pretty darned frequently. Sent to Christianize and civilize them, and charged with a world view in which the British Race was the world civilizer and equal to none, they found themselves defeated by female appearances at a high rate.

Likewise, the sailors of the HMS Bounty are frequently noted as having rebelled against the cruel oppression of Captain Bligh, but in reality the lure of Polynesian women proved a huge element of it, and not just for the ranker, but even for the officers in at least once case.  Lead by an officer in mutiny, they turned right back to grab their topless Polynesian girlfriends and took off for a remote island.

Did they say, at any point, "you know, now endowed with a full realization that men and women are equal in ever sense and wishing to live in an egalitarian society we're going to cast off the chains of servitude and go into freedom"?  Not hardly. They basically said, to some degree, let's go back to the  babes and take off.

Not nearly as noble as people might wish to believe, but let's be real.

Indeed, a lot of history is just that basic and juvenile.  The entire Helen of Troy thing makes prefect sense if none of the principal actors is out of their teens. . . which a lot of them probably were not.

Not nearly as noble as people might wish to believe, but let's be real.

It's a complicated matter, but genetics and the related sciences have long established that men respond to visual ques and this forms an attraction for them with women, and more than an attraction as well.  Hips, Breasts,  and obvious female forms, do not exist for no reason. Indeed, there isn't anything in a human anatomy that is or was there by accident.  We may live in an era of decreasing testosterone (we do)  but all of this remains the case.

Which has always been a challenge for women. And which provides the notable historical fact that women have only received real equality where the Christian influence was very heavy.  Christianity, right from the onset, was the only real force in the world that treated women equally with men.  Ironically, the Christian law and Christian influenced laws that feminist have sought to toss off were the very ones that protected them.  No fault divorce?  Don't forget that it was only the Christian prohibition on divorce (retained now, really, only in the Catholic church) that protected women from simply being dumped.  No fault has returned the dumping era in full force, and women, and children, are the worse off for it.  Laws that required couples "cohabitating" to marry protected women and children, not men.  But that's been forgotten.  Social views that looked down on premarital sex, in the end, protected women from being left when pregnant and inconvenient, but this has been forgotten, leaving women the worse off for it, in spades.

In smarter eras in the Western World, the desire to put women on an equal footing with men therefore didn't involve stripping them down so that the men could look at them.  It involved the opposite.  The Suffragette era, and the 1920s that immediately followed, are remarkable in that serious women affected clothing that was female, but which tended to replicate the appearance of male business clothing. That is, just as the gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s sought to look respectable by dressing respectably, women of that same era did the same thing.  And they were successful at doing it.  Modern feminist might look to the women of the 60s and 70s as the ones who they admire, but they ought to really be looking at the women of the 10s, 20s, and 30s who plowed a lot more ground and came a lot further.  They didn't do it nearly nude either.

 Suffragette, age 19.  A true feminist.

Which is why women are really loosing ground today.  And no pants suit wearing President is going to change that simply by getting elected, as she almost certainly will be. This isn't a comment on Hillary Clinton, no not by any means.  No, it's a comment about the women parading topless, and women like Kate Upton.

I've written about it earlier, in the context of the Kate Upton's of the world who have made a living flashing their nearly bare chests in men's faces, but as long as there's one woman making a living prostituting her image, women will never be equal.  Encouraging all of them to run around looking like their wares are free for the imaginary taking puts a huge dent in a quest for equality.  It sure doesn't help it.

Which oddly gets to me to another aspect of this topic.

I go to Denver a lot.  I'd rather not, as I do not like Denver (obviously), but I do.  Just a few weeks ago I was down in Denver for depositions.  I've been to Denver a great deal this year.

While I was there, I had some down time that allowed me to grab a bagel sandwich in some shop on 16th Street whose name I've forgotten, but which is near where I was working.  Denver has a lot of local oddball newspapers for some reason, beyond the serious Denver Post, and as you'd probably expect, some were there for reading.  It always has.  Being alone in the shop at the time, I grabbed one and sat down.

Now, on this occasion, the news story entailed what is a sad story (and I mean that) about a local Denver girl who had just been photographed sans stop in Wax Tracks, the funky downtown records store.  I have no idea why they allowed that, but people were complaining about it. And I agree that their complaints were legitimate.

The odd thing about the complaints, however, is how Neanderthal it is for  the store to allow this to occur, and I agree it is.  The story is downright funky, but this is just flat out wrong.  It's all the more wrong as at least based on the (clothed) photo of the girl in question, she facially looks younger than the 21 years she was claimed to be.  Or, perhaps, I may be so far past 21 years old that 21 year olds look pretty young to me.  But I don't know, I think I might be right, in which case the perpetrator of this moral crime has compounded it by appearing to really creepy instincts.

Isn't enough of this enough?

Is the world not debased enough?

Isn't anyone worried for her?

Rather than allowing this sort of really Neanderthal conduct to continue, and indeed actually bolstering it so that there's no societal restriction on this sort of moral sewer at all, shouldn't we be going the other way?

To add a bit to that, and to admittedly change the topic a bit, but maybe not as much of it as it at first seems, and admitting that part of it is likely may age, I can't help but worry about a kid who shows up in photos of that type in the environment of Denver.  Flooded with weed, and prostituting her image, where does that go?  I can't think it goes very badly for everyone involved, her in particularly, the photographer that perpetuates this moral crime, and the viewers who leer over her wherever that stuff shows up.  It's awful, and very bad.  I suppose she may use whatever little money she was paid for this for her college tuition, but I doubt it.  It in town awash with drugs, and in a culture that no longer has any restraints, my fear is that she gets used in a very bad way.  Where are her parents, and what are they doing? Can they do anything.  I guess a person can say a prayer for her and those like her.  The whole thing is truly pathetic.

 Sojourner Truth. Radical. Brave.  And not acting like a brainless tramp.

And in an environment that's awash with dope, making it all the worse.

Now as every one surely knows, unless they've been living in a cavern within a cave, and hiding in a corner of that, Colorado has legalized marijuana.  There's been a lot of commentary everywhere about this. And a lot of the commentary really misses the point.

There's a common thread in these stories about how marijuana has been "good" for Colorado. Well, maybe, but it hasn't been good for Coloradans, or the drifters who floated in there, at least by my observation.  Indeed, while I tended to be of the view that the law shouldn't worry about marijuana before, even though I don't approve of its use (and I think most of the "medicinal" excuses people give for using it are a crock), seeing it first hand has really and strongly changed my mind.

Some of the ill effects of the drug I was aware of before, mostly by having been exposed to people who had become addicted to it.  To some degree, they may have been cognizant of the problems it caused, them, and to others, not.  The degree to which they became listless and lazy in some instances was notable.  The addictive nature of it was obvious, and probably most notable to me when a former soldier of mine from the Guard stopped me on the street, after he'd gotten out, and asked me for help to get him off it.  Now, at 22 or so years old and a college student, there wasn't much that I could do. That an older fellow, in his 30s by that time, would ask for help, because I guess I'd been his sergeant, made an impression.

Well, Denver has really made an impression.

And not a good one.

Since weed became quasi legal, and then fully legal in Denver, a giant social experiment has been conducted on its streets and the results are pretty easy to see.  They're overrun, downtown, with listless dirty addicts begging, often quite openly, for money for marijuana. No job, no prospects, no motivation, just a craving for the stuff.  Not pleasant.

The first time I really ran across it was just after or just before, I can't quite recall which, it was legalized fully and there was some sort of dopers gathering in Denver.  Now, admittedly, a convention of dope fans may present a skewed image of the stuff, or not.  But present an image, it certainly did.

I could describe it, but I think the best way to describe what I saw on that occasions, and subsequent ones, it to describe singular people.

On that occasion, the person who made the biggest impression was a girl sitting on the corner, back to traffic.  She was probably about 20, and had once been fairly pretty. Now she was dirty in that funky way that only the really ills, or the really stoned, get.  Not that honest sort of dirty that oilfield workers, for example, have.  No, dirty in a diseased way, probably something we note because in an earlier era our natures told us to watch out when we encountered it.

She was glassy eyed and had a sign begging for money.  On her lap was a Husky puppy.  The puppy was cute.

I almost gave her money, but would have extracted a deal that I got the puppy. That isn't very Christian of me, and I didn't do it, but money for drugs wasn't going to help her any, maybe somebody could have helped the dog.  But then, in her condition, I suspect, the dog was truly her only real friend.

Since that time situations like this have been really common.  I've heard panhandlers yell for money.  I've seen seen other glassy eyed dressed in bizarre mixes of discarded clothes rambling in begging appeals.  They're addicts. Marijuana is all they want.

"Radar plot depicting the data presented in Nutt, David, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore. "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse" The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053. PMID:17382831. For more information, see image. It contains not only the physical harm and dependence data like the aforementioned image, but also the mean social harm of each drug. This image was produced with the python plotting library matplotlib"

Now, I know, I'll hear the argument that "well, those are the exceptions to the rule" and "it's no more addictive than booze". Well, those are hardly good arguments. 

First of all, at least based on my exposure to it, its far from the exception.

Now, I'm sure there are occasional users of marijuana that suffer no ill affects, maybe.  But then this is the case with any drug of any type, so its not much of an argument.  The real question is whether it has a demonstrative ill impact on a significant percentage of the users. It clearly does.

Now, right away, the argument will be made that "well it isn't as bad as alcohol". That's a pathetic argument.

First of all, according to some studies, it is in fact "worse than alcohol" is some real ways.  The study printed above, in chart form, for example, would have it as causing less physical harm, a little less social harm, and causing a little more dependence.  That's hardly a sterling endorsement.  And that assumes that this is correct.  It probably has caused less social harm and less noted psychical harm, so far, as its' been widely illegal.  As it becomes increasingly legal we will likely be surprised to find, oh my, it causes harm.

Indeed, we're already learning that a bit.  A recent study shows that relatively little use amongst minors, including teenagers, causes permanent alteration in the brain.  Not good.  And I suspect that the impacts from smoking it will likely duplicate much of  the non cancerous impacts of smoking tobacco, none of which are very good.  Indeed, people tend to associate smoking tobacco's risks only with cancer, but in reality, there's a lot of other cardio vascular and respiratory damage that it causes.  I can't see a good reason why this would be different for marijuana.

Additionally, in regards to the oft made comparison to alcohol, it's worth remembering that the best evidence suggests that human beings have been consuming alcohol for so long that they have a genetic adaptation to it, varying by human population. This has been addressed here before, but the human tolerance for the poison that is alcohol is likely related to the fact that it was once safer to consume it than water.  But that doesn't make it safe.  The point is that we've been consuming alcohol now for thousands of years, probably tens of thousands of years, and we still can't really handle all of its ill and evil impacts.

If we can't really handle something that's been widely legal for maybe 200,000 years, what makes us think we're going to be any better at this?

I don't think so.

And what is going on, on a large level, that we seem to need to be numbed so much?

Alcohol, as noted, has been with us forever.  Marijuana has not doubt been around for some time, but not as long as an intoxicant, and certainly not in such a widespread manner.  But it isn't just these.   We have made real progress in tamping down some really dangerous drugs that were getting widespread circulation, but at the same time we seem to be in a full scale effort to numb ourselves as much as possible.  We still have booze (but not anywhere near at the consumption rate it was once at, in spite of what some may think).  But we are also numbing ourselves in all sorts of other ways.

Indeed, the pharmaceutical level of mind alternation is at an all time high.  Thousands of people have to take medication just to make it through their day, mentally.  And news came this past week of a new psychological ailment based on an addiction to computerized technology. That is, people so deeply into the fantasy world provided by the Internet that they cannot escape it.

Part of that quite frankly circles back to what we started with above.  Amongst the hugely addicted, we are told, are thousands, more men than women, who are addicted to Internet pornography.  They can't control it and sit around consuming it in mass quantities.  Now that the barrier of shame that existed if you had to purchase it, something harkening back to our natural instincts that this is wrong, is removed, they can't control themselves.  This is similar, fwiw, to the impacts that result when the barriers have been removed on other areas of related conduct that have long been prescribed by tradition, law and religion.

So severe is this latter new problem, we're told, that there are now an appreciable number of young men who have so destroyed their natural responses that even in their 20s they have to resort to Viagra when acting in the real world.

And we are also given the news, not a surprise really, by the tremendously brave Elizabeth Smart that her abductor acted in part due to pornography, acting out on her what he was viewing there.  Smart, as people will recall, was the Salt Lake teenager (at the time) who was abducted and repeatedly assaulted by a delusional insane man.  That individual's insanity certainly cannot be discounted, but when the element of pornography is added into the story it gives us all the more reason to be alarmed.

Alarmed for girls like the Denver "model" mentioned above.

And alarmed at a society in which a gathering of women essentially offers the same live and in person in a public area, and no doubt memorialized in thousands of digital images.

Which leads me to the war.

Eh?

Well, stay with me.

We're in a war, whether we like it or not, with a variant of Islam that retains a very, very primitive view of the world and men and women's role in it.  Hardly any of us would agree with the social aspects of our opponents movement, but in opposing it, we actually have to have a point.

We don't have much of one.

Which is why I will say, form time to time, that we could lose the war.

We could, truly, simply because we're fighting for. . . well what is it? The right to wear pants that are too tight? The right for men to self identify as gerbils? What was it?

Okay, I know what our core values are, and so do you, but how often does anyone actually think on those core values and where they come from?  Not very often.  But our opponents do.

Indeed, endowed with a strong sense of right, wrong, and the order of the world, even if we don't agree with it, our opponents have been remarkably successful in recruiting simply by using our libertine example as a recruiting too.  And, part of that it might be noted, has been a distressing success rate with Europeans, including European women.

When we think of Islamic extremist groups in Europe, or the US, we tend to think that they're all radicalized Syrians, basically. But that's very far from true.  Some of them are, but others are radicalized first generation Muslims in Europe, and more than a few have been Europeans with no Middle Eastern heritage. What's going on here?

Well, agree with it or not, Islam stands for something. That's much less true of the modern West.

Now, I'm sure people will react that we stand for democracy, and liberty. But do we?

I think we do, but in such an unthinking way that our examples are pretty hollow, as we've forgotten what democracy and liberty, in the modern context, were supposed to mean. They are not the same as social rationalization and libertine.

Indeed, democratic thought is deeply embedded on a concept of the natural rights of man. And the natural rights of man is a principal that stems from the concept of a natural law. Natural law holds that there are certain fundamentals, observable as "self evident", that all people have.  People, although not poorly educated modern lawyers, like that idea as it is self evident and it seems so very fair.

But what is seemingly forgotten in our modern world is that a natural law that recognizes natural rights will care not a wit about an individual's sense of what rights would be, were he creating them. That's something else entirely.  Indeed, that's so debased that its' basically sick.

Natural law credits nature, and if we're to understand what our entire concept of the world, government, liberty and the like is based on, we have to do the same.  We have free will, but we are not free to will what we will. We cannot, that is, create 6 billion individual realities, there is only one.  Everyone's window on that reality will be different, at least somewhat, but that doesn't mean that there's more than one reality, it means that we're too small to grasp the whole.

Anyhow, properly viewed, we believe in individual liberty as we believe that people are endowed with free will. But that means that people are at liberty to act in accordance with the nature and the natural law, but they can't change it.  Nature, and its law, is bigger than we are, and unchanging.

That may seem not to fit in here (and this post is stunningly rambling, I'll admit) but it very much does.  We have looked out at the rest of the world since 1776 and maintained that we are the champions of liberty and justice, as that's part of the natural law. We've sometimes done it badly, but we've done it well enough that we've been a major factor in bringing about a "liberal" sense of the world globally.  We've certainly had the assistance of the the political and philosophical cultures of other European powers in that, even though not all of us have quite the same sense of these things as a national culture.  I'd maintain, however, that down on the street level the overall concepts are not far removed from each other.  That is, the ethos of 1798 may have been the spark of 1917, but at the same time, the average Frenchman, up until mid 20th Century, held views more akin to an Irish tenant farmer than a member of the Parisian mob.

Since 1917, however, that being the retuning and focusing of 1798, we've struggled with an opposing view that detests the concept of anything but an animalistic view of our species and which has been largely at war with nature.  In more recent years even though its political expressions have failed, it philosophical ones have not, and since the turmoil of the late 1960s most western political thought, both at home and abroad, has been devoid of any deep meaning.  Long habituated to our political culture, we have not noticed much until recently as it slipped its moorings and became fully devoid of a deep meaning, although many now do sense that, but others have noticed.

In the Islamic world some certainly have, and in a Europe that took in a lot of Muslim immigrants post World War Two, post Colonial retreat, and post Algerian defeat, many residing there, where assimilation is poor, undoubtedly have.  In the years following 1968 a Europe that had grasped that its political and cultural outlook was fully Christian in origin now doesn't know what it even is.  It's for "fairness" and "human rights", but it doesn't know what those concepts are grounded in.  We aren't doing all that much better, although we are doing better, which is frankly why our enemies view us somewhat differently.

For a people who retain a sense of a deep purpose, a larger culture that is grounded on nothing more than "if it feels good, do it", comes across as abhorrent, because it truly is abhorrent.  That it is abhorrent provides the basis for young Europeans, particularly European women, crossing over into the minority culture.  It's notable that more than a few of these women have been Scandinavian or British, as these areas are where the fall is amongst the most expressed.

This doesn't mean, of course, that they're right, and we're wrong, overall.  I'm not urging that we all become radical Muslims and salute the black flag.  Not hardly.  Rather, I'm urging that we take a deep look at the deep things.

And that would mean recognizing that "if we feel good, do it", not only is a moronic philosophy, it's contrary to nature, its contrary to nature's law, and its extremely destructive.  We need, apparently, to get back to where we started from and do some serious thinking.

Okay, so now I've made this long, rambling cri de coeur. So what is my point, really?

Well, here it is.

We've really gone off the rails recently.  We've probably been going off of them for some time, but we're off them now.

As a society we've forgotten there are two genders.  And we even have forgotten why the dimorphism in the genders exists.  The most deluded of us now thinks that we can change genders, or ignore them all together.

And we now dislike the world that we live in so much that changing genders or getting stoned out of our minds seems like a better idea that facing reality.  

Well, we probably better look back, to nature. 

That doesn't mean becoming a Cro Magnon, but it does mean becoming a rational, thinking, human.

And rational thinking humans don't parade their daughters, sisters, and wives around to be gawked at.  And they don't tolerate the photographic prostitution of them either.  And they don't ignore it when others do that.  

Nor do they bet numbed out of their skulls, or encourage others to do the same.

Here endth the rant.

Bulgaria declares war on Romania

The war expands a bit more.  Bulgaria declared war on Romania.  Bulgaria was a German ally in the war.

Unlike Romania, however Bulgaria had been at war since October 1915.  War with Romania had not been contemplated by the Central Powers until the summer of 1915 at which time contingency plans for the same were created. By the time of the Bulgarian declaration of war the Central Powers were in fact well prepared for war in the region, a fairly amazing feat given how stretched their resources then were.

Mixed Economic News

Over the weekend, the Tribune reported that the tourism industry in the state, while up, wasn't making up for lost oilfield income to the state.

This is no surprise.  Most tourism related jobs don't pay particularly well.  Tourism, of course, does spill over into retail, but there's a long ways to go before the loss in employment in the extractive industries is made up by tourism. Not that there isn't an avenue to explore maximizing that, which I don't think we've done so far.  Indeed, I think there's a lot that remains to be done in that field.

And perhaps it should be. The State is reporting that the economic downturn is slowing, or flattening. That doesn't mean that an oilfield and mining rebound is in the works, although its certain that some will instantly interpret it that way.  No, rather, what that means is that we've potentially hit bottom and, at the same time, the price of oil seems to be stabilizing. That's far from the rapid recovery people were wishing for, but those wishes were never realistic to start with.

Added to this, Governor Mead has reported that the state will not be making more layoffs. That's certainly good news for the state as the role of the State government in keeping employment rolling is an under reported, maybe even missed, story.  A warning, however, went out to the legislature, which has strong anti Keynesian tendencies, not to cut more as that would reverse this.

So perhaps some stability is entering the picture for awhile.  And if that's the case, it might be a good thing to do some planning around this economy, rather than a boom one.