9/11 Fifteen Years On, How Are We Doing?

As is well known, on September 11, 2001, the United States endured an attack by Al Qaeda, an organization that was dedicated to the Wannabe sect of Sunni Islam, and which dreamt of the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate, someday.

Since that date, the United States has been continually at war, to some degree. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but never not.  Iraq was invaded by the US in what may perhaps be regarded as an undeclared war, even though there was no clear connection, and indeed no connection, between the Wannabe jihadist and the secular Baathist Iraqi state that we defeated.  U.S. forces entered government-less Afghanistan and drove out the Taliban, the Islamic Punjabi Sunni movement allied to Al Qaeda, which is and was principally Arabic.  The war in Afghanistan continues on with the Taliban struggling to remain and return, fighting against an Afghan government we support.  In Iraq, the defeat of Saddam Hussein's Baathist dictatorship resulted in a civil war between Al Qaeda allies who evolved into ISIL or ISIS, depending upon which term you prefer.  Initially defeated that group regrouped and came back in such force that it occupied large sections of Iraq and neighboring Syria and changed Al Qaeda's goal of an eventually restoration of a Sunni Caliphate to an immediate restoration of one, one which indeed it declared to be in present existence.

War is never predictable, and it was not a war that we wanted or started. But a war none the less. So the question remains?  How have we done, and how are we doing?

Prologue:  How did we even get here?

Before we look at the question, at some point it's worth asking how we got here in the first place.

I'd note, on that, that often during war it's not healthy, nor necessary, to really ask that question. Was it necessary on December 7, 1941, to ask how it was that the Japanese Imperial Navy had launched an air raid on Pearl Harbor?  I think not.  The moral imperative at that time was to address Japanese aggression, not debate  the  history of the Japanese since Admiral Perry.  This question, however, might be necessary to answer now, given that he war has lasted so long, and it's been unique in some ways.

 

Indeed, this was the moral imperative at the time.  Folks wanting to debate and discuss the history of Japan since the US opened it up would have been well off the mark at hte time.

And I use the term "the war" advisably.  Others might not, and some of them advisable as well.  And that gets, I suppose, to part of the point here. We're in a war with a certain world outlook, and we were before September 11, 2001.  We had been at war with it probably since some point in the 1990s perhaps, or at least for a year with the attack on the USS Cole in October 1990. Be that as it may, perhaps we were not incorrect in not realizing that, and indeed for those who would argue that viewing this as other as a war is a better option are not without their point.

To really look at the roots of this we need to go way back, and indeed we should do that if we are to understand the nature of the enemy that attacked us.

Americans in particular, and Westerners in general, have a hard time with conceptualizing the war we are in, and its probable length (Europeans less so) as our world outlook is so different from other cultures, which is to say that the European and European American outlook is distinctly Christian. Even non Christian's in the West have a Christian outlook on the world, and it's fair to say that their outlook is both Catholic and catholic in a larger sense.  That's due to our history and the remaining impact of it, even though we dimly perceive that.

As a result of that our culture emphasizes the concept of all men being equal in nature, free will, and indeed as an aspect of that, free choice. Additionally, the Hellenic nature of early Christianity (most, maybe all, of the early Gospels were written in Greek, contrary to what some commonly believe,  and the version of the Jewish writings commonly cited by the New Testament, which we call the "Old Testament", was the Septuagint, a Greek translation of those texts.) caused much of the Hellenic world view to be incorporated into Christianity.  At least some Christian theorists have maintained that this was far from accidental, but rather Providential, in that Christ's appearance in the Middle East came at the point at which Greek thought and the Greek language was common in the region.

Other cultures and non Christian religions, however, do not have this wort of world outlook and Islam does not.  This reflects its early history.  Indeed, early in its post Muhammad history there was a struggle between a Hellenized branch of Islam and the rest of it, with the Hellenized branch loosing.  When people cite to early Muslim theologians who take a world outlook similar to our own they often fail to note that those who held that view fell more than a little out of favor, and aren't looked upon by Muslims today as influential.

Now, the early history that I'll give here is certainly not one that a Muslim is likely to give, but it's the one that's most likely correct, and it is the source of the problems that Islam has in its relationship to the modern world today.

Much of the really early history if Islam is poorly known.  Unlike Christianity, which spread enormously rapidly and which had foundational writings nearly immediately after Christ's Crucifixion, Islamic texts, including the version of the Koran now used, seem to have had about a three century or so gap before their appearance following Muhammad's death. For that reason, there's a lot we don't know about Muhammad or early Islam, unlike Christianity which has an early history that's extremely well documented (although many Christians are wholly ignorant of it).  Even Muhammad's real name is a mystery, as the world "Muhammad" is almost certainly a title, not a name.  The first depiction of him, coming on a coin, shows a figure with a miter and a cross, and that provides quite a clue as to who he likely really was.

Young Muhammad encountering a Christian monk in his youth.  In Islamic tradition the monk predicted his mission as a prophet, but what's more likely is that this demonstrates an exposure by the illiterate Muhammad to Christian theology very early on.  Christianity itself took no note of Islam until well after Muhammad's death at which time it was noted simply as another Middle Easter heresy, which it no doubt was.

At the time of its first appearance Islam was treated as a Christian heresy, as that's almost certainly what it actually was.  Muhammad, who was illiterate, was married to a Christian woman before he started his proselytiziation.  She had an uncle who was a Gnostic priest.  Chances are very high that Muhammad was a Gnostic through these influences.

Depiction of Khadīja bint Khuwaylid, Muhammad's first wife, who died in 619.  Twelve more wives would follow.  She was a  Christian and in Islamic tradition converted to her husband's new faith. But what was that faith?  Chances are high that an infant Islam was more Christian than the religion that exists today, but probably in a Gnostic from.  Indeed, its easy to see how the illiterate Muhammad could have taken the basic Gnostic message and added a few elements to come out with a heretical evolution of Gnostism, which itself was a heresy.

Indeed, he may have never ceased being one, as we know little about what he actually did from direct contemporary sources. But assuming that this is not the case, what he seems to have been is an example of a Christian preacher who was poorly educated and who began to reinterpret his religion heavily, or began to excuse personal vices as allowed behavior. This is not an atypical story.  In Muhammad's case, moreover, the gap between his actions and the writings concerning them is sufficiently long so that his teachings, whatever they were, may have evolved in the meantime, perhaps considerably.  We could think of him, in this sense, of being somewhat like Rasputin, whom people often imagine to have been a Russian Orthodox monk, but who in fact was not ordained and was simply a layman with a self declared religious mission.

Muhammad, veiled, advances on Mecca.  The residents of Mecca, a town with was home to a wide variety of religions, were not keen on Muhammad when they first encountered him.

This combined would explain why some aspects of Islam closely mirror Christian teachings, including some that closely mirror Gnostic beliefs in circulation at the time, while some radically depart from them.  It would also explain why so much of Islam it self seems self contradictory in some aspects.  Islam both praises peace and advocates war, but in the context of Muhammad's own experiences this makes sense.  Proselytizing, at first unsuccessfully, in the Arabian Peninsula and suffering as a result, when he returns with followers they were armed and charged was a holy mission. Finding themselves far from home and their wives, he found that the taking of female slaves was just fine.  Finding himself personally attracted to multiple women, rather than carry the cross of the attraction, he found it sanctioned.  Finding women in general problematic, he placed most of them in Hell in the afterlife.  Finding lust a personal cross in his lifetime, he found that it would be perpetually satisfied in the afterlife.  Had he not encountered difficulties of the type he did, and had he not gone into the Arabian peninsula, probably originally simply as a Gnostic lay minister, he probably would have simply been a nameless forgotten Gnostic, and to some extent he actually may be.  The beliefs now attributed to him may, in fact, not have been so fully, and some would say not at all.

At any rate, that early history does indeed charge Islam with license to act violently in its name, and to dominate over everything where it exists.  It expanded by the sword.

But it hasn't always acted fully in that way, and it doesn't act fully in that way everywhere now.

It did early on, as it spread.  Distinctly different from Christianity, it spread by the sword and nearly exclusively by that means.  Where it came to conquer it frequently didn't succeed in converting for centuries.  Christian communities in remote North Africa held out for nearly a millennia after it came to politically dominate t here.  It spread by violent means all the way until the armed progress of Islam was arrested at Vienna in 1529, by which time the Protestant Reformation had already commenced.  Had the Ottoman's not been turned at Vienna, Europe would now be Islamic without question.  Further to the West, however, Islam had already been turned back, starting much earlier with the Battle of Tours and, in 1492, by the final reconquest of the last remaining Islamic principality in Spain.

It's worth recalling, which is rarely done now, that by and large Islamic occupation of Christian lands was never pleasant for Christians. While its frequently noted that Muhammad called these people the "People of the Book", in apparently reference to the Old Testament, they were definitely not equals, merely tolerated. Subject to punitive taxation and less than third class citizens, they endured for centuries, but never in pleasant circumstances.  In a few locations, notably Iraq, Turkey Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, they endured into current times, sometimes doing well, and other times not so much.

But Islam quit expanding in 1529.  And Europeans started expanding their world in the 1600s.  And a much different sort of situation took place.

From the 1600s through the mid 20th Century Europeans came to dominate an increasingly large expanse of the globe, including many Muslim nations.  Europeans never reconquered (which is what it would have been) Turkey the seat of the Ottoman Empire, but they came to essentially occupy or influence much of the rest of the Islamic world save for the Arabian Peninsula itself, which they did not attempt to take in any fashion.  And in Turkey, the forces of secularism itself came to displace Islam up until very recently.

This provides an interesting counter story.  From the 1600s Islam was in retreat, but not in the face of Christian expansion, but in the face of European economic expansion. European colonialism was not religiously motivated, but motivated by financial interests.  While Christian missionaries typically followed in the wake of European colonialism, they were never the motivation for it, and indeed in the case of the French, they actually reflected a bit of a counter culture to the dominant secularism of the French republics.  This is hugely significant to our story as while Christian missionaries were enormously successful in most places that Europeans conquered, in North Africa and the Middle East they met with little success, which is further interesting when its recalled that in much of this region a a remnant of Catholic or Orthodox Christianity remained, as well as a remnant of Oriental Judaism.  Indeed, that may be why it did not succeed, as it was not the case that anything new was really being introduced and lines had hardened long ago.

Beyond that, however, while the opposite is commonly assumed by snotty moderns, by and large in the 19th and 20th Centuries European colonial powers not only did not sponsor missionary activity they didn't accord any advantage to those who converted, and that also likely played a role in what occurred, as we will see.  In the case of hte English, moreover, that was always true.  The United Kingdom itself was distinctly anti Catholic in its early colonial period, but at least as of point at which it acquired Quebec it never acted on that.  Indeed, it was remarkably tolerant of every Faith in the regions in which it ruled.  18th Century France and Spain did combine a missionary aim with their colonial enterprises but they'd stopped doing that by the 19th Century and, after the French Revolution, French missionaries, while they were taking advantage of the French presence, were often out of sync with their own governments.  Everywhere the Europeans ruled missionaries had the ability to go, and the advantage of legal protection, but by and large they had very little, if any, state assistance.  And converts were not given an advantage in local administration.

European missionaries were often spectacularly successful in this era in many places, but what's notable about that is that the conversions were highly genuine, which likely explains why in many places today the Christian churches are highly vibrant.  Unlike conversions under the Caliphates to Islam, there wasn't an advantage to be gained by converting, however, during the period of high European colonialism of the 19th and 20th Centuries.  In the Middle East, the British and the French had the policy of being tolerant towards all the native religions and protecting them, and affording all of them roughly equal opportunities in colonial administration, keeping in mind that in many instances these roles were definitely inferior to those afforded to Europeans. Given that, the opportunities and the prejudices were pretty much equally doled out on an ethnic, but not a religious, line.  So in a place like the Middle East, which had a very long existing Christian and Jewish minority, there wasn't a big reason for Muslims to convert other than religious ones. That's to the European's credit, but it forms part of the background to the complicated story.

What did take root, however, was European political thought, but oddly, that part that took was the highly radicalized variation.  As the local populations developed politically and began to have nationalist yearnings they tended to gravitate towards European political extremes, which welcomed them.  That this occurred is highly understandable as the European mainstream was large tolerant of, or supportive of, colonialism.  So, in looking to break the chains with their colonial masters, they tended to integrate with the extreme forces at work.  Communism, socialism and fascism all found their expressions in Middle Eastern nationalist movements.  Very significantly for us today, all of these forces were very secular and in fact many of them were quite hostile to Islam, which they saw as a force that would hold their populations back from reaching the political state they sought. So, when revolutionary movements broke out in the Middle East in the 30s through the 60s, they were not Islamist as a rule.

Which doesn't mean traditional Islam went away.  Rather, when oppressed by authoritarian forces, it went underground.  Always part of the culture, it did not go away so much as it became a subversive force.  It did so in Egypt, Iran, Algeria and Syria.  While westernized, which is to say secular but authoritarian governments, sought to  create new, Europeanized, Middle Eastern countries, they suppressed and repressed any other force, including the hard edge of Islam.

During the Cold War this did not perhaps matter much.  With the entire world seemingly at play, secular forces in the Middle East benefited from Superpower sponsorship that allowed them to seem both permanent and dominant.  The alignments themselves were more than a bit bizarre, however, as Middle Eastern politically totalitarian regimes tended to receive Soviet support, while traditional authoritarian, and what few democratic regimes there were, received Western support.  So, governments such as Nasser's in Egypt or the Baath regime in Syria tended to be backed by the Soviets, even though their ideology could not be described as communistic.  Regimes like that of the Saudis (which the British actually plotted to depose in the 1950s) received Western support even though they were no more democratic than that of the Baathist. 

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein, leader of Egpyt in the 1950s and 1960s.  Personally an observant Muslim, his government wasn't a theocracy

This continued through the 1960s but by the 1970s it began to break down as alignments began to change. At the same time, suppressed Islamic forces began to emerge demonstrating the age old situation that minority movements tend to gain support where suppressed, but in a malignant form.  In the 1970s they became strong enough to topple the Western backed government in Iran and they began to challenge the military dictatorship in Egypt and the Baath regime in Syria.  The success of the Iranian revolution, in and of itself, greatly boosted Islamist movements everywhere in the Middle East.

 Leaders of Algeria's FLN, the movement that successfully expelled the French from Algeria. Every one was no doubt at least nominally a Muslim, but it wasn't that which motivated them but rather Algerian nationalism.

By the 1980s there were very serious, and seriously radical, Islamist movements throughout the Middle East all of which looked towards a highly traditional interpretation of the religion.  By that time they'd taken a run at the government in Syria, assassinated Anwar Sadat in Egypt, and threatened the governments in Algeria and Tunisia.  And they'd made the sectarian strife in Lebanon an added nightmare. All of this was regarded as serious in nature, but as a regional problem.  They were regarded more, for example, as a threat to Israel and oil exportation than as an outright threat to the United States itself.  Elsewhere, the civil war in Afghanistan that had broken out over the communist government's alignment with the USSR, which in turn had resulted in a Soviet invasion that would fail, left that country with a provisional government ruled as a radical Islamic theocracy.  That development destabilized democracy in neighboring Pakistan, which had showed promise in that direction up until then.

Then came the First Gulf War.

The First Gulf War and the changing of the game.

An odd feature of wars is that looking back they appear inevitable, but really only because they actually occurred.  Looking at them in context, it's frankly amazing that some of them actually happened.  The Vietnam War, for example, strikes me particularly that way.  An American war in a region of the globe we had no traditional interest in.  Pretty unlikely.  But it happened none the less.

So too with the First Gulf War.

 U.S. armor during the First Gulf War.

That war was about oil, that's easy to say, but not in the greedy sense we so often like to imagine. The dynamics of it were simple.  Saddam Hussein lead his country into an invasion of neighboring Kuwait.  It wasn't the first time Iraq had tried that.  It was a pure territorial land grab.  It's clear that the Western powers couldn't allow that to occur.  Iraq was a fascistic state and unstable.  Kuwait was a stable monarchy aligned with  the West.  Iraq would be pushed out, and it was.

The problem rapidly became what to do with Iraq, and the George Bush I administration decided to basically leave it in place, but restrained.  I have been critical of this in the past, but that was probably the correct call.  It was fascistic, but it was not Islamist, and it was a buffer state for the Middle East against Islamist Iran, which detested it, and which it detested.  Liberal revolutionary movements attempted to overthrow the Baath government as it started to loose the war, but we did not support them.  In retrospect, that was likely the correct course.

In order to take Kuwait back it was necessary to stage our forces, and those of the other western allies, in Saudi Arabia.  Even though the Saudis were threatened they understood the difficulties that this placed them in.  Much less stable than they would appear, the Saudi monarchy is one of the most repressive regimes on earth.   A Wannabe monarchy, in effect, like Franco's Spain it has not been afraid to suppress even the forces that support it and which brought it to power, on its own soil. Repression of real political movements and other religions other than the Sunni branch of Islam (and there are other religions that are there, and have long been) is extreme.  The Saudis feared what having Western soldiers on their soil would mean.

But they had to allow it, and it occurred.

It might be noted here that there should be a real question as to whether the American lead effort in the Gulf War, which I think was necessary, was legal.  Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was an act of war.  Our participation in the retaking of Kuwait was also a war.  No Declaration of War was made.  As this was more than a local police action, and this wasn't in the nature of our supporting an established government, such as the Vietnam War, so a Declaration of War appears, at least to me, to have been legally necessary.

Be that as it may, we quickly won that war but some US forces remained in Saudi Arabia.  And in that country, amongst hard core Islamic adherents, in a land where Wannabeism had long been sponsored, it sparked outrage.  Women in uniform, even restrained Western behavior, Christians on Saudi soil, it was all more than they could tolerate.

This gave rise to the Al Qaeda war on the United States.

Caliphatist war on the West

Al Qaeda arose in the Arabian Peninsula as a movement that really did not vary greatly from Wannabeism.  It was an extreme form of Sunnism, and indeed it likely would have been regarded as heretical had Saudi Arabia not long sponsored Wannabeism.  The difference, perhaps, between the officially extreme version of Sunni Islam and Islam as viewed by Al Qaeda is that Al Qaeda looked to the reestablishment of the Caliphate and the utlimate creation of a global Sunni monarchy.  Not immediately, as even it, as illusionary as its goal clearly is, recognized that it could not bring that about overnight.

 The black flag of the Wahhabi combatants that brought the House of Saud to power.  The Islamic State has its own black flag.

 

 The green flag of Saudi Arabia.

As an extremist movement at war with the West, it could have no home in Saudi Arabia, and soon it became repressed there, but not before it had already struck at the U.S. Navy in the form of the attack on the USS Cole.  From then on it, and closely aligned movements, would strike at the US whenever they could. The September 11, 2001 attack on the United States was when we really took notice of it, however.

 Damage from the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole.  It's interesting to note that we widely remember September 11, 2001, for obvious reasons, but the opening shot had been fired on October 12 of the prior year.

By that time it had entrenched itself in Afghanistan for the simple reason that it was welcome there.  That was already well known to us, and therefore the war in Afghanistan would become an inevitability after the September 11, 2001 attacks.  It had to be.  Afghanistan was effectively a country without a government that harbored a vile terrorist organization.

The second war against Iraq, however, didn't have to be.  Indeed, again in retrospect, it didn't make sense and it was a mistake.  Highly secular Baathist Iraq had no love for Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda despised it, claiming that the Baathist were "Communist". 

Again, as an aside, the second war against Iraq was clearly an illegal war given that it was an invasion of that country and it required a Declaration of War that was never asked for.  The war in Afghanistan, however, was different.  Lacking a legal government of any kind, the lawless nation could not really be regarded as at war, so much as in anarchy, and our role there, while certainly a war in terms of what it entailed, was not legally one.

So where are we at?

Following September 11 we were a united country. So much so that the country supported an invasion of Iraq in spite of there being no real reason at the time to do it.  In our minds, the war there blended with the one in Afghanistan.  It was all one effort.

We removed the Taliban from control of Afghanistan and crushed Al Qaeda there.  But we must admit that the country remains very unstable and the Taliban has managed to somewhat regroup and remains a threat.  So, after fifteen years, we really haven't completed that job and we speak fairly routinely about simply leaving the country.  Typical American short attention span has kicked in, apparently. Forgetting what Afghanistan can be, we choose to pretend the country is ungovernable, rather than press for the end of the job.  That the country can be stabilized should not be doubted, as it has been a stable country in periods of its past.  The question is whether we choose to complete the job or not.  Right now, in spite of commemorating fifteen years past, its doubtful that we will.

Our war in Iraq massively destabilized Mesopotamia and our bungling of that has in turn brought about a disaster.  As the Baath regime collapsed Al Qaeda moved in and a new war commenced.  That religious war was successfully concluded by making alliances with Sunni chieftains, but not before Al Qaeda in Iraq had evolved into the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, a new strain of the same movement which determined to bring about t he Caliphate right now, thereby taking the delusion into the presence.  Biding its time, it struck after we prematurely pulled out of an Iraq whose civil government fully aligned itself with the Shiia's of Iran and thereby made itself massively unpopular with the Sunnis.  Taking advantage of destabilization in Syria, and the isolation of that regime, it rose up with success there by taking advantage of an existing rebellion and then spread it self into Iraq, where it remains.  The tide does seem to be turning against it, but it has a lot of fight left in it yet.

The problem is, however, that ISIL, while declaring the Caliphate in existence right now, has changed Al Qaeda's "strike at the west" strategy to a new one, which basically amounts to strike everywhere, with everybody.  It has appealed ti Muslims in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the West with an amazing degree of success, and its organization is so loose that it can effectively take credit for barbarities that stretch from Iraq to Florida.  We are so stunned by this that we can hardly effectively recognize that its a fact, preferring to rationalize and excuse the attacks that come closest to us.

An Existential War

We're so accustomed to thinking of war in territorial terms, and ultimately all war is about territory, that we have not been able to really grasp that the current war is for all the territory, everywhere.  Indeed, in real terms this war shares that feature with the long struggle with Communism.  We face an enemy that conceives of itself having a global mission.  Unlike the Communist, however, it also conceives of that struggle in a sort of eternal terms that can withstand the loss of territory, which the Communist never did, fearing that territory lost was lost for ever.

To use the terms so often applied to the Vietnam War, this is somewhat of a war for "hearts and minds".  We and our enemy conceive of it in that fashion, but they further conceive of it as a war against Devine Good and evil. We may talk of good and evil in this war, but our leaders have a very immediate and sometimes washed out concept of that means.  Our enemies don't.  They are charged with a world outlook that's definiative and vast.  It appeals to people who look for meaning in their lives.  In order to defeat them, if we are to, we have to have a cogent world view as well.

But do we?

Earlier on this blog I've argued that we do not, and I'll argue it here again.

I'll also note that this was not always the case for us.

Here's one of the places I recently noted the nature of our struggle, although it is not the only one:

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 returning 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.

Our enemy, to put it simply, has a world outlook that looks outside of the world, to an eternal something.  Right now, in the West, we pretty much stand for the proposition of absolute relativism.  The problem with that is not only is it not emotionally satisfying, it's demonstratively false.

There is, very obviously, a set of absolutes as nature exists.  No matter what a person's view is of nature, it doesn't care much about that view.  It is clearly outside of us, and it clearly has its own set of laws.  Early on, and indeed up to very recently, we clearly understood that ourselves.  Now we don't.  This is so much the case that five of the current Supreme Court justices actually believe that the law protects any sexual union as long as it makes individuals feel good.  That's stupid.

And it puts us at a disadvantage against an enemy that recognizes a natural law, even if its a debased version of it.

So, in a war like this, gaining territory will help, but it won't determine the war.  This is a war of ideas. They have some. We have. . . low, low prices and Justice Anthony Love! Kennedy.  We aren't going to win a war based on that.

So, in terms of how we're doing.  Well, we're loosing interest in winning in Afghanistan and Iraq is a mess. We will probably prevail in Iraq, but we have some serious thinking to do. What do we stand for? We need to think about that. We have the high side of the argument, if we don't simply wash it all away.

Holscher's Hub: Chevrolet Panel Truck

Holscher's Hub: Chevrolet Panel Truck:

An exceptional example of a restored Chevrolet panel truck circa late 40s early 50s.

Harvest

Allowing Tribal Hunts in Yellowstone National Park. . . .

has been proposed by a Montana Legislative Committee

I'm sure that will go nowhere, and I'm also sure that even if Montana passed such a law, it'd do nothing, as its a Federal enclave and the Federal government wouldn't allow it.

But, it's a good idea.

Humans, of the natural hunting type, are the only species absent from the Yellowstone ecosystem.  Tourism, at least in its present form, isn't bad by any means (although its now too intense in Yellowstone), but that's not really our real role in nature.  Allowing the Tribes to take a few buffalo inside the park would be a good idea for a lot of reasons.  But it won't happen.

Villa raids Cuidad Chihuahua

Showing exactly how dangerous he remained even while semi incapacitated (he was recovering from a wound by this time), how capable he remained in regards to rebuilding his forces, and how ineffective the US mission had become, Pancho Villa raided Ciudad Chihuahua on this day with about 2,000 to 4,000 men, a considerable increase in the number he'd had only a few short weeks ago.  Indeed, at the time of his raid on Columbus, New Mexico, he was down to a few hundred and had been down to as few as 400 men just a few weeks prior to this date.  His main target was the prison, where many of the men freed were former soldiers of his.  The raid is remarkable in that it was conducted in the face of the US presence while against Carranza's forces.

 Villa leading his forces prior to his 1915 defeat at Celaya, from the post noting the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in real time.

The raid was a success in spite of a Constitutionalist force being in town. Villistas occupied the city during the night and withdrew in the early morning hours.  Recent efforts by the U.S. Army to corner Villa had resulted in some engagements and sightings, but no success. And he remained capable of taking Carranza.

Pershing had recently gone on record as arguing that only the occupation of the entire state of Chihuahua would be effective in the campaign against Villa, and he'd urged the same.  This raid seemed to reinforce his view, but fairly clearly the occupation of the entire state would risk war with Carranza, no matter how ineffectual he was, and therefore there was no realistic chance that Wilson would authorize such an action.  Villa, therefore, in desperate straits just a few weeks prior, seemed, in some ways, to have effectively called the American bluff.

The Battle of Flers–Courcelette commences.

The Battle of Flers–Courcelette, which ran through September 22, commenced.  The battle is notable for the commitment of Canadian and New Zealand troops to the Battle of the Somme, of which this is part, and for the first British use of tanks in World War One, and hence, the first use of tanks.

Four Mark I tanks filling with petrol, Chimpanzee Valley, 15 September (Q5576).  Note the mounted soldiers.

This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs taken, or artworks created, by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that license, which is considered expired 50 years after their creation.

The Commonwealth forces did advance, but there was less achieved than had been hoped for.  Critics have focused somewhat on the ineffective use of tanks, both then and now, but then they were a new weapon.  Some, such as Winston Churchill, who was significant in the development of the tank, felt that had tanks been used en mass, a breakthrough might have occured.

New York Street Car Strike Parade, September 14, 1916

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Ride With The President

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Ride With The President: In late May of 1903 the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt,  rode 50 miles from Laramie to Cheyenne. The story is well know...

Mid Week at Work: Driving pigs, September 15, 1916

LOC Title:  "Driving boy" taking pigs to market. Says he is 14 years old and has been working with pigs for 9 years. Goes to school in Paris, Ky. Location: Winchester [vicinity], Kentucky. Published September 15, 1916

The agony of hotel breakfasts

I get a lot of hotel time.

Given that, I eat a lot of hotel meals.  They're frankly bad for my waste line as, of course, the proportions are whatever the standard American proportion is, usually, which might not be my own.  I can manage that with dinner, and while I eat a lot of truly mediocre hotel dining room dinners, it's breakfast where hotels really fall short, quite often.

As I often stay in "business hotels" I frequently find myself eating the free breakfast.  Indeed, if I don't, I'm gambling on no breakfast at all, as a lot of times I don't otherwise know where I really am well enough to eat anywhere else anyway.  That shouldn't be much of a problem as I don't eat a very big breakfast anyhow, but it oddly is.

I'd guess that very little thought goes into most hotel free breakfasts.  They're usually in a common room and what you get is an assortment of cereal, maybe, a selection of stale bagels, some heavy duty pastries, and cold scrambled eggs.  Yum.

Granted, that is something, and it is early, but its less than appetizing.  By and large everyone goes with it as you don't have much of a choice and its early.

No matter how early the "coffee shop" or whatever it is opens, I've usually been awake for quite awhile when I get there.  Its frustrating, therefore, to find that the coffee shop sometimes opens late. That's really frustrating if you are in a hurry, but it can be just flat out frustrating. All the more so to find the breakfast fare is stale bagels.  Oh well.

Where choices are offered, if a person isn't really a "morning person", which isn't related to being an early or late riser, I'd note, the other patrons can be a bit of a trial, I'd note.  Sometimes, if there's a true breakfast buffet, your efforts to simply get something will be deterred by the befuddled, who will simply freeze in line, apparently paralyzed by options.  If a selection of coffees are present, you'll have to endure the odd contemporary American phenomenon of somebody, maybe everybody, ordering something that's in the category of the bizarre.  "I'd like the Antarctic gluten free, free range, free trade, freedom for Tibet, double mocha swirl coffee please".  Yeah, whatever, I'd like black coffee.

Most of the time the patrons are fairly quiet, but not always.  I always dress super casual on my way to breakfast, unless I'm running late, because they open late, so people probably assume I'm working on the mechanical plant of the hotel.  So other lawyers from other towns who are in there and businessmen, already turned out in suits, don't know what you really are.  So in that case, you can get their conversations, whether you want to or not.  Just recently I overheard an older businessman, in full suit, address a younger, about some talk he was giving that day.  "I thought I'd start off with company history and then go on to things like safety".

Well, with an Iphone generation audience that's sure to send them right to their phones.

And all I was hoping for was a stale bagel.

More layoffs. . .

this time in the medical field.

Mountain View Regional Hospital in Casper will layoff fifteen of its employees, according to the Tribune.

That they'd be experiencing a slowdown probably shouldn't be regarded as surprising, but just a couple of years ago I recall hearing an opinion expressed by somebody I knew that the medical field was immune from ups and downs, as Casper had become a new regional medical hub. That opinion was expressed by a lawyer, I'd note, not a doctor, but it's typical of the "new era" comments that were so common only a couple of years ago.

Not so much, it would appear.

Coal employment drops 45% Nationwide

According to statistics quoted by the Tribune.

The paper also reports that the drop in employment, which is severe in Wyoming but not as severe as the national average, has leveled off, even though a Federal report predicts a decline in coal production of 155% over the next 24 years.

The Big Picture: Allison, New Mexico, 1916

Allison, New Mexico, 1916. Copyright deposit September 12, 1916.

The Big Picture: Elks Club Annual Gathering, September 13, 1916. Ohio.

Lex Anteinternet: September 11

Lex Anteinternet: September 11

The Sheridan Enterprise for September 11, 1916

And in Sheridan too, the Quebec bridge disaster was front page news.

News was traveling fast.

The headline writer for the Sheridan paper had some fun with Greece, noting that it was "being clubbed into love for Entente Allies", which is pretty much correct.

The Sheridan paper had a big article on the Punitive Expedition which noted the American foray into Santa Clara Canyon.  General Pershing was quoted, which he had not been for some time. Quite obviously, in spite of the type of stalemate that was going on in Mexico, the US Army was still operating far afield from its supply base, as the article notes.

The Laramie Republican for September 11, 1916

The Quebec bridge disaster was also reported the day it occurred in Laramie, testament to how quickly news was now able to be reported.

Also in that news was a report of the ongoing failure to capture or corral Pancho Villa.

And the founding of what would become Tie Siding, outside of Laramie, a tie treatment plant and later a major environmental clean up location, was also in the news.  And the crisis in Greece over World War One made front page news in the Gem City.

The Wyoming Tribune for September 11, 1916

The bridge disaster in Quebec managed to make the front page the very day it happened, which is truly remarkable.  The big news for Wyoming, however, was the failure of the Stock Raising Homestead Act to pass to pass on its first attempt.  The act, a modification of the series of Homestead Acts dating back to the 1860s, was important for those in Wyoming agriculture and therefore extremely big news.  Particularly as the entire West was in the midst of a homesteading boom at this time.

Something was also going on with a "border patrol", which wouldn't mean the agency we think of when we hear those terms, as it did not yet exist.

Churches of the West: Glendo Community Church, Glendo Wyoming

Churches of the West: Glendo Community Church, Glendo Wyoming:

The Quebec Bridge Collapse. September 11, 1916

LOC Caption:  Photograph shows the Quebec Bridge across the lower St. Lawrence River. After a collapse of the original design a second design was constructed the center span of the second design collapsed as it was being raised into position on September 11, 1916 killing eighteen workers. (Source: Flickr Commons project,

Lex Anteinternet: Late Summer, 2016

 I recently posted:

Lex Anteinternet: Late Summer, 2016: I can't wait for the fall to arrive.

And the good luck just continues.

After the jeep incident, the Diesel Particulate Filter (my 07 Dodge is probably the last diesel Dodge in the world that still has its filter still on the truck blocked up.  I'd had that replaced in January when the old one failed, and so that was a surprise.  More of a surprise even as the truck had just been into our regular mechanics for a new clutch.

Well, it turned out it had an exhaust leak (but it may be worse) that was causing this.  I took it to the great local diesel shop here and they fixed it.  It's several miles from my house, so I walked from there. No big deal.  I rode my bike down yesterday as I knew I'd have to pick it up.

When I went to get on my bike, trusty Ol' Blue, I had a flat tire.

Great.

And the "See Dealer Now" warning is already back on, on the Dodge.  They warned me that it might be the injectors.

Uff.

Poster Saturday. Hey Joe-Our Planes!

Also posted in World War Two Posters.

September 10, 1916: Paramount releases Reward of Patience

The release date on the poster was actually a day off, the release date was September 10, 1916.

1916 was the year that John Bowers began acting in film.  His career would not survive the talking movie era, which he seemingly was not able to personally adjust to.

Friday Farming: Picking cotton

Six year old Jewel Walker, Comanche County, Oklahoma.  Published October 10, 1916.

Friday Farming: Hauling tobacco. 1916

LOC Title:  Hauling tobacco. Location: Hebbardsville [vicinity], Kentucky / Lewis W. Hine.  Published on September 13, 1916

Behind Their Lines: Gramophone Tunes

Behind Their Lines: Gramophone Tunes: Popular music provided the soundtrack of the First World War.  Troops sang “ It’s a Long Way to Tipperary ” as they marched toward rail st...

Woodrow Wilson addressed the Suffrage Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 8, 1916

Madam President, Ladies of the Association:

I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen to the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than speak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address you to-night and say some of the things that have been in my thought as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it.

And there are some interesting historical connections which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions of method, not questions of what you were going to do with your Government, but questions of how you were going to constitute your Government,—how you were going to balance the powers of the States and the Federal Government, how you were going to balance the claims of property against the processes of liberty, how you were going to make your governments up so as to balance the parts against each other so that the legislature would check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and the courts both of them put together. The whole conception of government when the United States became a Nation was a mechanical conception of government, and the mechanical conception of government which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment of parts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run the Government of the United States, and a distinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American Government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the Americans could run any constitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery question. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the same proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,—not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does this gathering force mean," if he knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the perfection of her development.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

And now for someting completely different. . .

Um . . .recruiting after the Vietnam War must not have been easy.

Joint Commission on Mexico meets in New London, Connecticut

A joint commission of the United States and Mexico commenced meetings in New London, Connecticut, in an effort to resolve the issues that lead to American military intervention in Mexico.

First modern grocery store opens in Memphis, Tennessee. September 6, 1916.

It was a Piggly Wiggly.

 The interior of the first Piggly Wiggly.

It was unusual as shoppers found the food they were looking for themselves, rather than present their list clerks who found the items for them.  The business plan was revolutionary.

Interior of the first Piggly Wiggly.

There are people who like beautifying their yards and lawns. . .

and there are people who couldn't care less about the yards.

I'm in the latter class.

My wife is in the former.

All summer long has been one endless yard project here and I'm now way beyond it.  I'm at the point where, on weekend days when I hear my wife state "can you help me in the yard to do. . ." or "come look at this in the yard" I'm actually refusing.  I don't care where the next flower goes.  I don't care about putting in a bush here or there.  I don't care.

Its a huge freaking waste of money, in my view, at some point save for one thing. For people who enjoy doing it, it isn't.  I don't enjoy it.  My wife does. But she enjoys having me participate in this.

Which to me sounds a lot like "don't go fishing today but. . ." or "don't go hunting today but . . . "

I like some flowers.  Poppies.  Okay, I like a single flower that's it.

And I like fruit trees and bushes as they have fruit.  I like pines as well, and aspens, as they remind me of the mountains which we're nearly in.  That is, they give me the illusion of living in the woods.  The rest of the stuff I don't care about.  At all.

I like gardening for stuff I can eat, as that's farming on a small scale, and I like farming.

This all probably makes me a bad person.  But I'll be glad when it snows and the flower and grass season comes to an abrupt and final end.

Which still speaks poorly of me, I am quite and sincerely certain.

Roads to the Great War: The Doughboy Cookbook

Roads to the Great War: The Doughboy Cookbook: This has been one of the most visited sites at our DOUGHBOY CENTER Website over the years.  Visit it at:   www.worldwar1.com/dbc/food.h...

Advice to law students. . . Quit. Or at least think.

This impressive structure in downtown Salt Lake City houses Utah's Third Judicial District.  The interesting design, poorly photographed here, combines modern and classical elements to make for an attractive courthouse.

Yikes!  Are you serious?

Yes.

Okay, let me explain.

First let me note what this isn't.

A tour around the net can find a lot of blogs or net articles about how law schools fooled people into miserable careers, or by or about lawyers who hold their careers are miserable.  This isn't a post like that.  Indeed, as the Internet is one vast sea that is more akin to a vast sewage pond than it is to a pristine Mare Pacific, who knows how accurate that stuff actually is.  Usually happy people don't post stuff rejoicing "I love my job!", although I would guess if I google that about the law you'd find lots of hits. If you are a law student, I encourage you to do that. To get a balanced dose of the questionable, you probably ought to google something like the opposite as well.

Anyhow, that's not what this is about, except I don't want to be reading your  new blog in four years about how you are an unhappy camper.

No, what I have in mind on this Labor Day is something else.  On this day, all across the country, new law students are contemplating their first or second weeks of law school, probably nervous and excited at the same time.  Happy that they made it in (although that was never as big of challenge as they thought it was).  Sent off by happy parents who have dreams that in a decade they'll have a big job, big house, and a beautiful wife/husband, rather that a little job, big debt and a divorced wife/husband.  Somebody needs to tell the what their professors, most of whom have very little experience actually in the law, or the real law, won't.  Quit.

Now, that's the same thing that my great University of Wyoming Calculus teacher, Steve Morello, told us on the first day of class.  More specifically, he said "I encourage you to quit this class".  Why did he do that (and no, I didn't)?

He wanted people to know exactly what they were getting into.  Calculus, for most people, is really hard. The class entailed long hours of study and very hard tests.  You had to be dedicated to make it through the class.  And if you had a career that required its use, you had to have a real acclimation for it, or a real desire to work in the field.  I made it through three semesters of collegiate upper mathematics and liked it, but it was a struggle the entire time as unlike my father and his father, I don't have a natural mathematical ability.  

So I didn't quit, but if I hadn't had a goal at the time that accepted that this was fraught with difficulty it would have been a peculiar effort.  Morello only wanted students who were dedicated like that.

Now, I'm not saying that law school is rough like that.  Indeed, the entire belief that law school is difficult is a laughable joke.  Law school was like a cakewalk compared to my undergraduate in geology and I've never grasped how anyone could think law school was hard.

The practice of law is, however.

This isn't to say, right away, that there aren't a lot of good things about the practice of law.  There are. But those things are almost never emphasized to potential students, so that's not the thing that attracts them.  It's interesting and varied, but people don't use that a s recruiting pitch.  You might be able to go to your hometown  and work, rather than be one of the three people who go into what the ABA calls "Big Law", which most lawyers don't give a rat's ass about.  If you like reading and writing, we read and write all the time.  Just some of the stuff that is good about what we do.

Law students, however, come into law school, by and large, with a set of distinct beliefs about the practice of law, 90% of which are completely erroneous.  Unfortunately the American legal education system is populated mostly by professors whose connection with real law is brief, and they don't know it any better.  Indeed, Justice Posner recently commented on that, noting that law school professor ships are a refuge from the law in many cases.  Generally, a torts teacher, for example, is unlikely to have spent twenty years in tort litigation.  Shoot, he's unlikely to have spent more than a few years, bare minimum, in private practice, if that.  And clerking for a judge isn't working as a lawyer.  Sorry, it isn't.

Given that, all those bright shiny faces that are entering into law schools are by and large entering into an academic world that will feed them bull about the profession, or tell them nothing at all about it, until they emerge on the other side as lawyers.  That's great, if they want to to it, and have the ability and acclimation for it.  If they don't, and as they don't know what they're getting into most don't know, that's not so great.  Indeed, if they end up doing something they love and are really well suited for, it's a little bit of an accident.

So let's look at the frauds about the law, student, to see if you've been fraudulently or negligently induced to fill that seat.

1.  With a law degree you can do a lot of things.

People tell law students this who are already expressing some doubt about practicing law or whom the speaker feels isn't really suited to be a lawyer.  Whether they feel that way or not may or may not be valid, but the statement itself is complete bunk.

Oh, sure, some people with law degrees do something else.  But by and large the one and only think a law degree does is to let you practice law.  That's it.  If you are getting a law degree so you can become an entrepreneur or something, quit right now.  When you are  a public defender four years from now that's going to have seemed like an exceedingly stupid thing to have done.

And if you are so uncertain about entering the profession that this is your parachute, you are going down in flames already.  Seriously, are you about to spend thousands of dollars to study something that you think you might abandon, with a jump into. . . who knows what?  That's like boarding a rickety airplane to Hawaii and figuring, well, if it doesn't look good, I can always jump out.  Into what? The Pacific?

Not the time to think, well, uncertainty is my plan.

2.  Lawyers help people, and other self romanticizing propaganda.

Bar associations like to shovel this drivel but its really self serving propaganda.  You can find the same propaganda, by the way, in ever single profession.  Pick up any trade journal and you'll find it.  "The Journal of Executioners. . . detailing the dirty work in helping people since 1642".  "Journal of American Turkey Pluckers. . . Helping People since 1875".

Sure, lawyers help people, garbage men help people, postal carriers help people, dog catchers help people, whatever.

Lawyers hurt people too. They don't tell you that very often.  I've met people who lost hard fought causes and were left with a burning hatred of the opposing lawyer, and sometimes their own lawyers, even though I know those lawyers and they're good guys. They were just doing their job.  We don't worry that much about the ultimate result so much as we worry about winning.  Lawyers don't hate other lawyers who are their opponents, we expect that.  Clients are often baffled by that "I hate that guy. . why aren't you running him over in the parking lot".  Why?  His client probably hates me.

By the way, if you can't stand being in a group of hated people, you truly don't belong here.

The general self aggrandizing belief here, which we tell ourselves, is that we are a noble profession out for truth, justice, and the American way, or something like that.  Well, bs.

Lawyers are in actuality part of a system, the justice system.  That system is based on the old English trial by combat theory that if you put two combatants together, the right one will win, most of the time.  That may in fact be right, but the entire concept of it is that two champions will afflict as much pain and destruction on the other until the one that wins ought to win.  The little acknowledgement in there is that we know sometimes the matches aren't even and the wrong one wins.  Oh well.

 Lawyers in court. . .oh wait, those are British Tommies in World War One.  Hard to tell the difference.

This has very little to do with "helping people" in the way that people seem to think it does.  Indeed, people who believe that lawyers "help people", in the warm and fuzzy sense that they believe it, have a distant view of the cause in the same way that people who glorify war do.  It's easy to back a war if you don't have to make the decision about whether or not shelling the village to save the platoon is a good idea.  Up close and personal, war's icky.

 England, Australia and New Zealand, Attorneys and Counselors at law, arguing with the firm of Ottoman and Empire, 1st Gallipoli District Court.

So is litigation. So is a lot of law.  Keep in mind I'm not talking about transactional work, but most people who feed the "lawyers help people" pablum aren't into transactional law.  

War is often necessary.  

Litigation is as well.

But romantic notions about it being something like feeding starving children are misplaced entirely.

Additionally, as aspect of that, there's a common concept in the "helping people" line of thought about a singular event.  That is, Joe Lawyer gets out of law school and takes on the Big Case for the Little People and wins.

Okay, fine, but that isn't how things really work.  Being a trial lawyers isn't so much akin as signing up for one Crusade as it is volunteering to be part of the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. Sure, there are going to be those big days, but you are going to be there day after day after day, fighting in all of them.

Indeed, you'll have a lot of fights going on, great and small, all the time.  So, that concept of singularly glory should have George Armstrong Custer in mind. Yes, he was glorious at Gettysburg.

But a decade later, at Little Big Horn, not so much.

I should note that it doesn't even work this way for "public interest law", most of which entails a person working for darned near nothing for an organization that has a cause. If you can afford to use an expensive education for free, well so much the better for you, but you have to keep in mind that your role in that cause is as a foot soldier.  Not as the general. So, when your boss tells you to get in the Enola Gay and nuke Hiroshima, that's what you are expected to do, providing its within the rules.  Put in legal terms, if you work for that organization that's seeking to stop coal shipping in your state, and you succeed, and then you see Joe Railroader walking down to the unemployment line with his fifteen starving children and his wife, well you have to accept you hurt them and you can live with that.  Just doing your job, after all.

That's because in a legal contest, there's always two sides. And the two sides almost never involve good vs. evil. Usually everyone involved in the contest is a pretty decent person.  Somebody will probably win and somebody else lose (actually a settlement is more likely) but people who like to imagine that the will be Charles Martel are more likely to be Charlie Chaplin.

And some of the causes lawyers advance in the name of "helping people" are quite detrimental, in reality.  Lawyers were heavy in radical socialist movements around the world when they were up and coming.  Fellows like Lenin didn't really help people all that much.  No, not at all.  Lawyers helping people right now have seriously undermined the nature of domestic relationship in real natural terms, and long term this will be regretted.  There's almost no bad idea that lawyers won't back in the name of the public interest.

3.  The money and the glamour.

Yeah, right.

Even now, in the wake of lots of stories about lawyers being unemployed, there's a common belief that once you find that law job you'll be rich and live in glamour.

Maybe you will be rich. And maybe you will be glamorous.  But probably not.

The other day I was in a deposition with a whole host of plaintiffs lawyers when the lead plaintiffs' lawyer went into a long dialog to the witness about all the real world problems associated with the law and lawyers.  He had them memorized.  Some huge percentage of lawyers are addicted to something, in his words "booze, drugs or women". Depression is rampant.  On and on. It was something that had clearly been on his mind, and I'd regard him as a dangerous (in litigation) but jovial fellow.  I was stunned, really.  But he's right, all of it is true.

Most lawyers don't make huge amounts of money, and even though some do, by and large the law is a middle class profession.  As a middle class profession it really isn't glamourous at all.  For transactional lawyers its day after day in the office. For litigators its day after day on the road, away from home, under high stress, and sleeping in hotel rooms.  I have yet to meet a lawyer that I think is glamorous, although I've met some young ones who were living in full delusion that it would be (one such fellow told me he couldn't stand working indoors, which of course is exactly what we were doing).

And lawyers work.  

Once a person really become established in the law they never quit working again.  I never have a morning I don't think about a case. There's never a day that goes by, no matter what I'm doing, that doesn't involve thinking about the law.  Most lawyers work more than eight hours a day and more than five days a week.  

Indeed I think actually practicing law might fundamentally alter a person's thinking.  I'm not sure, but I wonder.  I tend to think it does.  If a person is going to be an effective lawyer they have to have an analytical mode of thinking to start with, and that will be forever emphasized in their thinking.  It can make lawyers hard to be around for people who are close to them, as lawyers will inevitably analyze any problem presented to them and get very frustrated if their analysis isn't wanted.  It's common, for example, so spouses to dump problems on their spouse and not really want the fix.  A lawyer husband or wife is going to give the fix, and then given argument if the suggestions are ignored.  I do this all the time. 

That fact combined with the intense nature of  the work burns out any competing interest over time with many lawyers. I feel that's the real reason you'll see lawyers in their 80s still practicing.  "They sure must love the law".  Maybe, but what did they do when young?  This might be all that's left.  I know that at nearly thirty years in I now do less of everything than work than I did twenty years ago.

All of which isn't to say that all lawyers are misdirected fools.  Far from it.

So, young student, that's the point.  Are you motivated by an accurate, obtainable, goal? 

I doubt it.

Ask yourselves these things.

Am I in it for the money?  If so, quit and do something else.

Am I in it for the glory?  Well, there's no glory here.  Indeed, there's little glory in anything, and most glory is conferred accidentally in anything.  That's why its glorious. But if you must have glory, the PKK and YKK are recruiting.

Am I in it as I like to argue? Well, then you are an asshole and we don't want you.   Seriously, argumentative people are just argumentative. We want thinking people, not jerks.

Am I in it for the prestige? Sorry, lawyers are hated by more than admire them. No prestige available.

Am I in it to help people?  The world needs people who will help, in real terms. Doctors Without Borders really helps people.  The Red Cross really helps people.  Consider becoming a Rabbi, Pastor or Priest (and if you can't imagine why you'd do that, if this is your goal, then your desire to "help people is so thinly grounded you'd better sit down and reflect on it).  The law isn't a crusading profession, no matter what the ABA might have told you or what you read from your law school.  It's trench warfare for whatever side will pay you.

Am I in it as I like to fight? See the one about arguing and double it.

Do you just not know what to do?  Well, misdirected polymath, okay.  Lots of lawyers fit that definition.  The law might be for you, but read the rest of this stuff first.

Do you just love the law?  Great.  You are weird, but you should be a lawyer.

Am I condemning the entire profession and all in it?  No, I am not.  I've been a lawyer for almost thirty years.  But in recent years I've seen more and more young people enter this career and feel lost. And I know something that they don't.  This profession is changing, and not for the better.  It's slowly getting stupider, nastier, and poorer paying.  Hours are getting longer, and its only a matter of time until state bar boundaries are destroyed to the point where all the good work is grounded in big cities, most of which are not worth passing through, let alone living in.  I'll be retired, or dead, before all that happens to its fullest, but those entering today will not be.

But I don't want you unhappy.  More than that, I don't want you messing up a profession that's somewhat messed up to start with.  If you don't belong here, and I think you might not, please don't come in.  Indeed, maybe part of what we need in order to address a system which seems to me to be in decline is for people to say, "ewww. . . ick. . . " and not come on in and stomp around the slop and then leave crying.  If you don't sign up, that tells the 1,000 year old lawyers who are in the judiciary and the three or four people left in the ABA that something really needs to be done, and a judicial declaration that you can self identify as a tree sloth or something isn't really taking that on.

Well, happy Labor Day. And, no matter what your Liberal Arts teachers told you at Big State College, you are getting an education so you can get a job.  You are already on campus, so today, before class starts tomorrow, go look in the window of the medical and pharmaceutical schools (they "help people"), check out the college of business (business actually is about making money), see what's up in the engineering school (it's not to late for a second bachelors in an industry that also helps people), go check out ROTC (a real fighting profession).  Read that course catalog.  You can still do something else. But once you get that JD, you can't, and don't fool yourself that you can.  You're one of us now, like it or not, and if you don't, well too darned bad for you.

And if you really want to help people, you can probably still get in the Seminary next fall.

Taking it to the courts. . . the appalling spread of litigation into Wyoming's politics.

Conservatives, which with rare exception almost all Wyoming politicians claim to be, have long decried the intervention of the courts into politics and even daily life.

So why are they causing that here?

The Casper Star Tribune has a front page article on suits by and against politicians, all of which have some common threads here, and in fact some of which have common individuals in at least the "Seven Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" fashion.

Boo hiss.

One suit profiled is the suit by Cindy Hill, whose name came up here back when the big power struggle over her position was going on.  Hill was a divisive figure whose leadership of the state Department of Education was hugely controversial.  She left that position to take a run at Governor Mead, apparently grossly overestimating her popularity and resulting in the vacation of her position for a new office holder.  Good riddance in my view.  She has a suit against former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tim Stubson over something he apparently wrote on his Facebook page.

Defamation suits in modern America are nearly impossible to win and my predication is that this one will fail.  It'll have served no purpose other than to cost Stubson money, keep Hill's unfortunate public personal in the news longer, and perhaps have cost Stubson some votes in the recent primary. It ought to serve to keep Hill from ever running for anything again as public officials who are so thin skinned they sue for defamation aren't suited for the office, as things are going to be said against you.  Look what they said about Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt (either one). Shoot, for that matter, look what they've said recently about Bush and Obama.  It's overall appalling.  But they didn't sue anybody.

Next we have a suit by serving Legislator Gerald Gay and an ultra conservative Uinta County resident against Governor Mead about some funding on a building.  Gay is quoted in the paper today complaining that part of the problem is that the Legislature wouldn't consider a bill of his.

Well, Gerald, grow up.  They don't have to.

I don't know if Gay is currently running, but this should be a red flag to Republicans in his district.  Get rid of this guy next primary season. 

Finally, there's a person who was some sort of Hill lieutenant of some sort back when, who filed the ethics complaint about Eli Bebout. Reading the paper, I thought this one a closer call, but the complaint recently was dismissed in Bebout's favor.  The complainant has stated "it's not over".

Well, it should be over.  You lost.

The common thread is an interesting resort by the Tea Party here to the courts. 

Sort of takes a page out of what is routinely claimed to be the liberal play book.  Interesting.